This is a book Ana and I have been dreaming of writing for 17 years. It is our love letter to the world.

I recently sat down with the accomplished Honduran author/screenwriter José H. Bográn for an interview for ITW’s monthly magazine, The Big Thrill. It was, as you will have already guessed … a big thrill.

I recently sat down for an interrogation — I’m sorry, I mean INTERVIEW — with crime writer Elena Hartwell Taylor. Here’s the confession she pried out of me.

We don’t live in a world of Great Men or Great Societies. We live in a world of Ordinary Men and Broken Societies. Crime writing taught me how to fall in love with that world.

The only reason novels work is that they are solidly rooted in the reality of our experience. Here are some tidbits of real life that we sewed into the cloth of Finn’s story — real places, real people, and real events.

How do you make a fictional character come to life? Same way you breathe life into a relationship: You notice little things.

Someone asked, “Is STEEL FEAR about leadership?” and I realized, I’ve been writing this book my whole life.

Reviewers are calling my novel STEEL FEAR “action-packed.” It’s not really true—but it FEELS like it is. Exactly how does that work?

For years I wrestled with this question: not how to write a convincing killer, but whether I wanted to do so at all. And if so, for what purpose?

When you read a good story, you want to identify with the hero. Which I think is why we like our heroes to be less than perfect. Flawed. Complicated.