REDLINERS is possibly the best thing I’ve written. It’s certainly the most important thing, both to me personally and to the audience I particularly care about: the veterans, the people who’ve been there, wherever ‘there’ happened to be.
Having said that, Redliners isn’t a book for everybody. It’s very tough even by my standards, and to understand the novel’s underlying optimism you have to have been some very bad places. continue reading…
What’s your best book?
Again, that’s a matter of definition. Personally I’d say Redliners, but that’s not a book for everybody. It’s a very tough story about war and redemption. With the Lightnings–a space opera–and the Isles Series, my Tolkienesque fantasies, have characters that more people are going to find attractive. I think maybe writing Redliners did something positive for me. At any rate, it probably isn’t chance that the books I’ve written after that one are–I won’t say softer, exactly, but peopled with characters who haven’t done so many things that they can’t forgive themselves for.
Cover art: Steve Hickman
COMING HOME BY THE LONG WAY
A few years ago I collected my humorous stories in All the Way to the Gallows.” In my introduction I admitted that I wasn’t best known for writing humor.
This is what I’m best known for writing.
The impetus for this book was a fan suggestion that with surveillance cameras becoming increasingly prevalent all over the world, it would be a good time to get the Lacey stories back in pring. I thought about the notion. continue reading…