My chat with Jeff
A long telephone interview with Jeffery Deaver
at the release of his novel "The Blue Nowhere"

April 2001

Orr: I read and enjoyed "The Blue Nowhere"

Deaver: Oh, thank you!

Orr: and wondered what brought your brain to do this book.

Jefferey Deaver at Il Fornaio, San Jose, May 2001Deaver: Well, it didn't really have much to do with the NASDAQ or anything like that -- you're familiar with my books, of course, and uh, I'm always looking for scenarios that will engage readers as emotionally as possible. and, like in "The Bone Collector," the people getting into the cab and being unable to get out, uh, in "The Devil's Teardrop," the crazy guy just showing up and killing people for no particular reason, and uh, actually I was at my computer a couple years ago, and I do a lot of research on the Internet, and my keyboard wasn't working quite right and I don't -- even to this day I don't know quite what the problem was, but I thought "You know, it's almost as somebody is in my computer and looking at all my files right now."

And I thought, "That's quite a scary proposition!" so what I decided to do, based on that very simple premise, the fact that we -- I don't the statistics at the time, but when I started the book, a year and a half, two years ago, 62 percent of the people in America owned computers, so therefore, even more people have access to computers, and I thought, "Well, this is pretty scary," and think of all the that we keep on them. and you know, wanting to create the most emotionally engaging thriller that I can, I thought, "Well, let's have a villain who gets the information he needs to know by simply slipping inside each person's computer and going from there.

Orr: Do you think you've ever been hacked?

Deaver: I guess -- uh, I know I have, as a matter of fact. When I was researching the book, I did the IRC -- that's the Internet Relay Chats, and I did chat rooms on America Online, and at one point, I didn't really think about security, uh, you know I don't really have anything to hide -- so I was typing away -- I don't do my banking on line and I don't -- you know -- I don't have anything secure, I don't do my checkbook or anything like that, I don't do my investments, so I really wasn't thinking about it -- next thing you know, somebody had lifted my screen name, and was posting kind of obscene messages with my screen name -- and the only way he could have done that was to somehow get into my system and then I would try to write and try to post something to the chat room and say "No, this isn't me!" yet I couldn't do it --- he had frozen my system --

Orr: Was that through AOL?

Deaver: That was AOL, yes. And, you know, I thought they would be about as secure as anybody, but what I did was I had to reload everything, and then it never happened again, and I didn't even get to the point where I was going to call AOL and complain about it, but, uh, you know they definitely had to get into my system to ...

Orr: Did you change your password?

Deaver: I changed everything. yeah, I changed everything.

Orr: How'd you change it unless you called AOL?

Deaver: Oh, no, afterward, after I re-booted everything up, then I changed everything. Oh no, I couldn't do anything, I was completely frozen.

Orr: Stealing passwords is ... I was very active on AOL for about six years, I ran a forum on AOL. The easiest way to get passwords is people use passwords that are something in their personal profile.

Deaver: Birthday or reverse birthday or something like that.

Orr: They for hobbies, they put "Like dogs," then they use "likedogs" for their password.

Deaver: Right.

Orr: It sounds like maybe gave you a virus. You downloaded something bad.

Deaver: Could have been. I do know, in researching the book, if somebody wants to hack you, they're gonna hack you. And if they want to read basically anything you've done on line, they're going to do it.

It's sort of like when I lived in Manhattan, had a new car, came out one day and found the empty parking space where the car had. I had a cut-off switch on it -- not a club you know, but an internal --

Orr: Yeah, I have one of those

Deaver: OK. And I said to the police, how did they steal it? Why? I felt very upset about it. And he said, "Are you kidding? It took them 30 seconds to get this car. The only way to protect yourself is to make it so difficult that they pick the car in front of you or the car behind you. But if they want to get your car, they're going to get your car."

And it's just like hacking. If they want to hack your system, they're going to hack your system.

Orr: Yeah. I know this is true.

Deaver: When I was researching the book, I was talking to a computer security expert. He said "You know they -- the hackers -- are always a step ahead of us. We can come up with the cleverest firewalls there are, or the most detailed encryption system, but they will always be one step ahead of them, but again, you try to make it as difficult as possible, to make them go someplace else, but you're never going to be able to completely hacker-proof any system -- short of having, uh, the classic line is two feet of concrete, which means you have a system that's completely isolated from the internet or the phone system.

Orr: Yeah, I remember among the books I've read about computer security, one said that the only way to protect a computer is to have it buried in a cellar and not have it connected to anything, not even a power source, and even then ... even then ...

Deaver: Yeah. You know, John, there's some very interesting stuff going on with computer screens and even cables will then broadcast data, it's radiation in fact, in a way, and it's possible from some distance to read what's on your computer screen through the electronic emissions, and I don't know that the state of the art is such that they can go the other way, that they can hack into your system from some kind of remote, cordless transmission, you know, apart from some wireless modem you might happen to have ...but the crooks have always been right on the cutting edge.

Orr: Do you feel by writing this book you are throwing down a gauntlet to the hacker/cracker community and they're going to be coming after you just to show that they can do it?

Deaver: Actually, I'm rather proud of it. I myself designed a website for the book -- thebluenowhere.com -- uh, that's kind of a fun, kind of little mini-roller-coaster-ride through the inside of a computer that deposits you at a portal where you can read the first chapter of the book or download a screen saver.

And I had a computer -- I can't really go into the details, but he's somebody who does computer security for a federal agency, and he looked at it and said "This is about as secure as it's going to get" -- given my resources, short of spending a million dollars to get ten layers of firewalls in. And he said, uh, "We'll just see what happens. If they want to get into it, I give it probably a day."

Now I haven't been hacked yet, but the book hasn't been out, they're not really promoting yet, but I said, "You looked at this, the people who host the site have multiple layers of security." And he just kind of laughed and said, "As I said, if they want to get into it, we'll give it a day."

So, we're going to see what happens. And he's monitoring it very carefully. He you know has his day job with the government, but he does some freelance work and he's monitoring it real carefully and we'll see what happens, but yeah, I think I'm going to get hacked.

[Deaver's main website is www.jefferydeaver.com.]

Orr: You did all the HTML yourself?

Deaver: Oh, I didn't write it. I designed it, then I gave my art -- I drew the pictures and gave them to a designer who did the actual work. No, I don't program.

For the book, to get a better sense of computers, I did some programming. I wrote a couple, very simple, like, hundred-line long programs in Basic -- uh, Microsoft -- there's a MS Basic, basically, that it comes with, I think, with every version of Windows. And you can write very simple programs in it. And I got a book, and sat down and I wrote some, and did some graphics, just to kind of get a feel for how you write, and then how to compile something, and what the bugs do, and how you de-bug and so forth, and uhm, it was kind of a frustrating experience in a way -- it was very satisfying, but also, uh, you have to have everything 100 percent perfect or it doesn't work.

Orr: The old computer phrase in the old days was

Deaver: GIGO?

Orr: Yeah.

Deaver: Right, yeah, very familiar with that.

Orr: (Bla bla bla about how I checked about cracker tricks he writes about in "The Blue Nowhere.") One of the things that really bothered me was somebody being able to shut down the cooling fan ....

Deaver: Right, yeah

Orr: ... while still running the CPU and parking the hard disc in a bad place. You can't do that on any PC I know of

Deaver: Yeah, right

Orr: But my brother confirmed that you can do that on a main frame.

Deaver: Yeah, actually, that was based on a real incident. I'm afraid I can't tell you ... you know, I read so much and talked to so many people for this ...

Orr: I believe it!

Deaver: Yeah

Orr: And the other thing was I've never heard of anybody getting cracked and having their type go fuzzy on their computer screen, but then I talked with a systems guy who said "Oh yeah, there are some viruses that can do that." So, pretty much everything with one exception that I said, "Oh, wait a minute, Jeff! That can't happen!"

Deaver: (Laughs)

Orr: Pretty much all of them ... Except I haven't found anybody who knows anybody who's written so much code they have calloused fingertips.

Deaver: Oh yeah, I kind of reached there, although I will say a great book, it's one of Jonathan Littman's books, actually I think ... when we have lunch, when I'm out there (in California) I'll get the name of it for you. I'm out right now, obviously, you've got me on the cell ... there was a fellow, they never prosecuted, a young kid, who ... he was sort of the Phate, uh, to the extreme. I mean, he was so into computers the guy hadn't bathed for six months. When they interviewed him --

Orr: The guy they found whose glasses were so dirty they could barely see his eyes --

(Orr is thinking of "@Large: the Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion," by David H. Freedman and Charles C. Mann )

Deaver: Right, right, right. Exactly. And his fingers were just gnarled, they were all deformed because he just sat with them curled all the time. That's what gave me the idea.

But now, in terms of "the hacker manicure," well, I made part up, that's true, but I .. uhm ...

Orr: Well, that's OK, you're a fiction guy

Deaver: It is fiction, after all.

Orr: Where are you?

Deaver: I'm actually in a shopping mall about 30 miles from my home. I've been doing a lot of, I guess they call it "advance work" for "The Blue Nowhere" and then, uhm, I've been in New York researching my new book, a new Lincoln Rhyme book for 2002, and uhm, I just got back and had to pick up some stuff at the shopping center, then I head home, and I head off again tomorrow to do a little more research work.

Orr: Where are you physically sitting? Are you in somebody's office, or --

Deaver: Yeah I'm in my car, with the, uh, on my cell phone with the little adaptor plugged into my phone ... the power thing

Orr: You use a headset?

Deaver: Yeah, I do. I'm over in Europe quite a bit and in many countries there, and Australia and New Zealand, they'll uh, uh, they'll arrest you. If you're driving without one. They see you're holding the cell phone to your head. They'll give you a ticket for it. Which isn't necessarily a bad idea, I have to say.

Orr: Oh, I agree. I use a headset myself all the time. I've nearly been hit by morons who can't deal with a cell phone and driving.

Deaver: Yeah. Yeah.

Orr: Some people shouldn't be allowed outside, that's all there is to it.

Deaver: That's definitely the case.

Orr: Uhm ... I gotta review something, I'm sorry. I hate to make you sit in your car ... what kind of car are you sitting in, by the way?

Deaver: Oh, a really old Mazda MX-6

Orr: The same car you had before, right? (When Orr interviewed him in 1999.)

Deaver: Oh, yeah, it's the same one I've had for years. I just, I resist buying cars, I don't know why. I like to drive and it's got a big engine and a five speed, and good suspension, you know, kind of a quasi-sport car, and you know, I've been, uh, the books have done well the last couple of years, and people say, "Well, why don't get a Mercedes or a Lamborghini or something like that" -- I mean, the idea of spending money like that on a car is so alien to me. This thing is still going fine. I put in a new distributor -- I'm not quite sure what a distributor is, but I needed one, because it wouldn't start, and I put in new brakes and it's just going fine, so I have no excuse to get rid of it.

Orr: You were thinking of getting a new car (in 1999) because arthritis was bothering you, and squatting to get into that thing ..

Deaver: Oh yeah! Its called getting old! Oh! But I found a good cure for that! Have you ever heard of this Condroiten stuff? Glucosamine?

Orr: I have heard of it --

Deaver: It's an herbal kind of thing. I've been taking that. It's amazing. Really is. I think it's made out of shark bones or something like that. And that's made a huge difference.

Orr: Maybe I'll try it. I've got real trouble with my knees.

Deaver: Oh, really? My problem's in my hands. And uh -- well, you must type a lot, too. Does it bother you there?

Orr: Yeah, yeah! (Laugh.) I didn't really have carpal tunnel, wrist kind of stuff too much, until one time I was climbing around on the rocks at Santa Cruz one night and I fell, and caught myself -- I took a step where there was no step, and threw my hands behind myself and caught myself pretty much on stiff arms, which was bad for my wrists and shoulders both.

Deaver: Did you break anything or sprain anything?

Orr: No, but I really wracked them up and was in a lot of pain for a while and taking major drugs, and since then I sometimes use wrist braces, and you know, eat a lot of Advil. (Cough) Sorry, I have a little cold right now.

Deaver: That's all right, a lot of people do.

Orr: So .. these guys who are real hackers, spend a ton of time on their computers, really get into it -- are you beginning to feel like your whole life, practically, is computers?

Deaver: (Laughs) Well --

Orr: Are you beginning to feel like your're getting compulsive about computer use?

Deaver: It's so interesting you mention that .. because I, uh -- the scenario for writing one of my books is this: I spend eight months involved in researching the book, and you know, we've talked about this before -- researching and outlining it and doing the plot twists and turns, and as you know, from "The Blue Nowhere," there are the twists and turns and the surprises that are kind of the trademark my books, and uh, but that eight months is total submersion in computers.

I mean, I was .. I took apart my computer, to look at all these things I was writing about. And, I would talk to programmers, and talk to some people who were involved in the earlier days, you know, what they call "the elder days" of computers -- and, uh, that was my life for eight months. Then I wrote the book.

Now, meanwhile, I put that aside, published it, now I'm on to researching my Lincoln Rhyme book for 2002, and so, the computer stuff has kind of fallen by the wayside -- so I will say I was truly an up-to-date, state-of-the-art expert as of about a year ago. But now I am on to something else, and so, a lot of the technical stuff has fallen by the wayside, although I still, you know, I use my computer every day. I have two computers, a laptop and my desk top, and I am at it, typing -- although not on the Internet that much -- uh, easily .... uh ... today, well, I was flying in, but I was at the hotel this morning, I was on my laptop, on the airplane I was on the laptop, and then, I'll go back tonight, I've got a lot to get ready for, but I'll still spend six hours writing today -- tonight.

Orr: How many hours -- did you say typing eight hours a day?

Deaver: At least eight hours a day, yeah. I'll get in probably eight to ten hours today, and I've been traveling today. Uh, yeah. Working on the new book. That research and outline is finished and now I'm actually writing the prose for that book. The title is "The Stone Monkey." That's the new Lincoln Rhyme book for 2002.

Orr: What's it about?

Deaver: About all I can say at this point, because it's still is somewhat unformed -- it's about illegal immigration, and that's about as far as I can go.

Orr: Where does it take place?

Deaver: In New York City. New York City.

Orr: Why did you set "The Blue Nowhere" in Silicon Valley?

Deaver: Oh, I thought it was such an homage to our society, nowadays. I love ...

Orr: Silicon Valley is?

Deaver: Oh, absolutely, oh absolutely. Basically, your turf right there, that is, uh, really, Ground Zero of the tech world in America, despite the Silicon Prairie, or Silicon Forest, and, actually, where I live, the Silicon -- it's the Dulles Corridor, but they claim it's the head of Internet technology. You know, AOL is here and so forth, but nonetheless, Silicon Valley, you know, goes way back to the '50s, really, the development of the -- well, coming out Stanford, of course, and then Palo Alto, uh, Zerox Palo Alto Research Center, Hewlett Packard.

Orr: All that stuff came out of here. The tube, the transistor ..

Deaver: Yeah, yeah. Everything. All the semiconductors. It was almost -- don't quote me on this -- but I believe it was Geranium Valley, because, it's between silicon and geranium, both semiconductor material -- silicon won out by a hair's breadth -- there was yet another substance, another element that could have been used, and I found that fascinating. Anyway I started to research the area, the history of it, and it was just so fascinating how the area really burgeoned as a high-tech center. But beyond the technology it became such an economic phenomenon, and such a breeding ground for innovative thinking. And that's kind of rare to find in a limited geographic area.

I mean, we got Wall Street and finance, but, you know, nowadays you do day trading. You've got brokers everywhere. True, the exchanges are there, but, uh, Silicon Valley was Ground Zero that has affected all of our lives.

Orr: Spend much time out here looking around?

Deaver: Yeah. Well, you know, I have a place in Pacific Grove, and I spent I don't know, probably a month -- I went to Hewlett Packard, I went to -- just hung out in the coffee houses in Palo Alto, downtown, right by the Hotel California, talked to people, got to know some hackers, and you know, some of it is fictional. For me, always the research and the details serve the purpose of the story. For me, story is always paramount. But, you need to have an authentic air to the whole thing. So yeah, I spent a lot of time driving around and walking around there.

Orr: I hate to do this to you, but, I've got to go get a book. Be right back.

Deaver: That's OK.

Orr: I went to look up something about the Hotel California. It occurred to me while I was reading the book, but I didn't have time to check it. So, since I have you on the phone ...

So, what will you be doing for the rest of the day, after you finish talking to this newspaper moron?

Deaver: Uh, well, I wouldn't say moron, but what I will be doing is driving back home, feeding my large -- excessively large dog --

Orr: What do you have?

Deaver: 125-pound German shepard

Orr: That's a big German shepard

Deaver: That's a very big German shepard -- who likes to sit in my lap

Orr: Is he or she healthy?

Deaver: He. Oh yeah. Very healthy! He just likes to sit in my lap.

I mean, are we talking, like, mental health? That I can't attest to

Orr: No, physically

Deaver: Physically he's fine. Yeah. And I feed him, and then I sit down and I'm going to write, till about midnight, I guess.

Orr: On your new Lincoln Rhyme

Deaver: Yeah, "The Stone Monkey"

Orr: You said the Hotel California is downtown, and I said, "No, it's not!" The Hotel California is on Nash, right off California Avenue, which is like a sort of a second little downtown ... but most people consider downtown to be University Avenue ...

Deaver: Oh, is that right?

Orr: Yeah.

Deaver: See, you know the bookstore and coffee shop right across the street? That was sort of my base of operation out there--

Orr: About five blocks from where I live

Deaver: No kidding? Really? (Laughs) That's so funny. Do you go there? Do you hang -- what's the bookshop again? I don't remember the name --

Orr: Printer's Inc.

Deaver: Right, right, right.

Orr: I've been there several times. I've been buying books on line a lot lately. I know some people think that's evil, but that's what I've been doing. I used to go there quite often.

Deaver: Boy, I loved the coffee shop that was connected to it, you know. Yeah, I ate a lot of sprout and cheese sandwiches there.

Well, anyway, I considered that downtownish, because it looked like a commercial street --

Orr: Yeah, it is

Deaver: -- as opposed to being out toward Palo Alto hills or out toward the campus --

Orr: Yeah, a small thing that would only mean something to one of us who actually lives here --

Deaver: Right

Orr: -- which is probably a large percent of the readership for "The Blue Nowhere"

Deaver: The readership for this book, that's for sure.

Orr: It'll be something for somebody to hammer you with if they want.

Deaver: Believe me, I get hammered all the time.

Orr: On what?

Deaver: It's all the little stuff. It's like .. OK, let me see, OK, "The Coffin Dancer," right" There's a very dramatic scene between Lincoln Rhyme and Percy, the woman protagonist in the book

Orr: And a pilot

Deaver: The pilot, right, very good. And she says, uh, something about well, I'm used to .. I don't remember exactly the phrase, she makes a reference to knots -- k - n - o - t - s - per hour.

Orr: Right

Deaver: Well, the word knots incorporates the concept of hour. Uh, miles per hours, basically.

I can't tell you how many calls -- well, I didn't get calls, because I'm not listed. But the letters, and the emails I got about that kind of thing.

And, uh, you know, I want to hear about it! I'm here to serve my public! If I make a mistake, I want to hear about it.

But, of course, you know, I have to admit going through my mind, in the back of my mind, is, uh, well, "I'm sorry it interfered with your enjoyment, your enjoyment of the book, but there is a lot to be cognizant of."

Orr: Oh, no, there's a ton of stuff, but I mean, don't you think you sort of bring that on yourself by writing such detailed novels?

Deaver: Oh, anybody who has the chutzpah to write a book, you expose yourself to it. And, uh, you know, I don't want to hear complaining from fellow authors, that's uh .. --

Orr: (laughs)

Deaver: You know? It's the same thing that I hear fellow authors who've optioned books or -- a few of them have had movies made -- they say, "Well, you should see what they did to my book, I'm so pissed at that" -- or excuse me, since we're on the record -- "I'm so upset about that."

Well, you know what? If you're upset about it, don't sell your book, or if you want to make a movie yourself, this is the day and age of Telluride and Sundance. Get your credit card and go make your own movie, if your vision is that important to you. Or, just sit on it. Do like, uh, Kinsey Milhone -- uh, Sue Grafton. She hasn't sold anything to movies and refuses to.

So, I don't want to hear any complaints.

But, especially when you write technically oriented books, you get a lot of responses.

Of course, it's interesting, some of the responses are wrong.

I've got-- because Lincoln Rhyme, uh, Lincoln Rhyme''s condition is uh, fairly technical -- he's a quadriplegic --that's a fairly technical thing. I've gotten letters from doctors who say "Well, this is not the case." And, you know, I research that part very carefully, and I will talk to the people I've used as consultants, and they say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, he had information that was five years old. Obviously, he's a gynecologist" --

Orr: (Laughs)

Deaver: -- "or he's -- uh, not a neurologist." I try to keep my information pretty much state-of-the-art.

I don't care. I love to hear from readers, though.

And I do like to be -- I do read criticism of the books. I'll give you an example. I was in England not too long ago. This was pretty funny. Fellow had done his homework. Interview, live BBC radio. And he said, "OK, Jeffery" -- I'm not going to do the accent -- "OK, Jeffery, time for a quiz." He's taken the acronyms in my book and fed them back to me and said "What do they stand for?" Because, he said, "I found them confusing."

And you know, in fairness, I could answer maybe three-quarters of them. But some of them I didn't remember. Some of the abbreviations had acronyms for technical equipment, forensic equipment or for these procedures. And, uh, of course, I'd written the books a couple of years before. It was both "The Bone Collector" and "The Coffin Dancer," I guess that was the next one. And, uh, so, some I didn't remember. But you know, after that incident -- we laughed about it, it was kind of a funny thing -- but after that, I now use the initials and acronyms much less frequently. Or else I explain them at various points through the book, so that the readers are oriented.

Because, you know, the whole point of this is to give readers an enjoyable time.

Frustrating readers is a very bad thing. That is a mistake. And if that happens, it's not their fault, it's my fault.

Orr: Yep. I agree with you. Since you mentioned Percy, from "The Coffin Dancer," did anybody ever mention to you that she was maybe too short to have ever been a Naval aviator?

Deaver: Uh, no. How tall was she, do you remember?

Orr: Pretty sure she was shorter than five feet. She was real small. And I am pretty sure that the Navy doesn't take anybody to be a pilot who's shorter than 5-foot-2 -- although I could be wrong. I think it's 5-foot-4 .. but I could be wrong. My information could be wrong. (Bla bla, bla.) Someone I knew had a draft deferment until the Navy measured him and found out he was too short to reach the pedals.

Deaver: Did he try the bone-stretching stuff that some people do to pass the physical?

Orr: I don't think so.

Deaver: No, nobody mentioned that. Although I did know a funny story. A friend of mine had her heart set on being a stewaress -- flight attendant. And she, um, I think she was under five feet. And -- that was all she wanted to do, all her life. You know, they said, well, "Sorry," because you at least have to be able to reach the oxygen tank or whatever. "No," they said, "we have these requirements." She said, "Oh, damn!" and spent a couple three, four very depressed months, and then promptly went to medical school and became a renowned dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon, down in Atlanta. Which doesn't seem like the sort of thing she would have done otherwise, and yet it was sort of like fate was saying "Maybe you don't want to waste your time flying on airplanes, you want to do this very constructive thing with your life." And so, her height turned it around.

Orr: How do your readers get in touch with you?

Deaver: Through my web site. You can contact me. I have somebody who runs the website, and she forwards all the mail to me.

Orr: What kind of traffic is your site getting?

Deaver: I haven't really tracked it too much. I get about 20 to 25 fan letters a day. But in terms of the hits, now I don't really know.

Orr: By email?

Deaver: By email, yeah. Well, and I guess I'd have to add maybe three or four snail mails a day.

Orr: They get to you through your publisher?

Deaver: Yeah, I don't give my address out.

Orr: That would make sense. What will we see on the site? Is it for your fun, do you think your readers are going to like it, or?

Deaver: Basically I wanted to do some advance promotion for the book, and because "The Blue Nowhere" is about computers, I wanted kind of a cartoony, fun little, cartoony, separate web site for the book itself.

The book won't be out until May 1, but it's being included in all the Simon & Schuster and Pocketbooks advertising and promotion.

Orr: Your book is being sold via Amazon.com apparently.

Deaver: Yeah. Apparently it was, I think, third, or fourth.

Orr: Your idea, or your publisher's?

Deaver: No, they just, the books go up.

Orr: I don't mean the physical books, I mean electronically.

Deaver: Oh, the electronic books! No, as I understand it, Amazon came to Simon & Schuster. But I'm aware of the electronic sales arrangement. You're talking about the download book. I was talking the hard -- the paper -- the dead-tree book, that was number three, advance sales. As far as the electronic book goes, I think that was the first with Amazon, and that's becoming more and more of a viable medium for selling the books.

Orr: I have yet to do that myself.

Deaver: Yeah, I don't do it myself either, but so much of my life is researching, I don't have that much time to read the fun books.

Orr: Your web site, at the moment, in the movies area ... "The Bone Collector" is not listed, even though "The Devil's Teardrop," "The Blue Nowhere," "Manhattan is my Beat" -- the first one, right?

Deaver: Hmmmn hmmmn.

Orr: But "Bone Collector" is not listed here at all. Is that just an oversight, or...?

Deaver: Well, I had a little separate thing on the front page for "The Bone Collector" and that's uh, kind of old news in a way, and it's also .. at Blockbuster, people tend not to know about "Dead Silence" because it had a different title.

Orr: "The Bone Collector" page doesn't mention the movie either.

Deaver: Is that right?

Orr: The only place on your site where "The Bone Collector" movie is mentioned is on "Mr. Deaver." I just think that was interesting, since I didn't think "The Bone Collector" worked as a movie frankly --

Deaver: Yeah

Denzel WashingtonOrr: -- nearly as good as it should have been, given the source material they had. I liked Denzel Washington, I liked uh ..

Deaver: Angelina

Orr: She was wonderful.

Deaver: Yeah.

Orr: They'd be fine to play those characters, but man! The script and the direction! I just wanted to slap them!

Deaver: Well ... you know, my stories, of course, are very plot-driven, and every clue is seeded in very carefully, everything is set up, the back story, every aspect of the back story relates to the present story and moves the plot along, subplots are all resolved, ideally with you know, with one ending, another surprise of some sort or another and, you know, in the films, in the movie, that didn't really happen.

Orr: Yeah, when the movie finished, my wife's reaction was to start laughing.

Deaver: Yeah.

Orr: Because she loved the book and we thought, "Gosh, this could be a great movie," and then it turned out to not be.

Deaver: Yeah

(Bla, bla bla about film industry people Dan Jinks, Marty Bregman, Ron Bernstein, the agent.)

Deaver: Dan Jinks? I talked to him just the other day. Well, about a month ago, I guess. He's with Cohen. You know, they did "American Beauty."

Orr: Yeah, I was going to say he went on to do "American Beauty." Apparently he was pushed out of "The Bone Collector" fairly early on.

Deaver: Yeah, Bregman is quite a power apparently, so .. (laughs) I don't know what happened there ... I'm just the writer, you know? (Laughs)

Orr: It's like you said, if you're complain about it, don't sell 'em. Or make 'em yourself.

Deaver: Right

Orr: Which you said before you don't want to do

Deaver: No. I got a ... it's 12 hours a day as it is.

Orr: What's that?

Deaver: Working at writing books just 12 hours a day. Books and short stories and little projects here and there. So I don't have time to make a movie.

Orr: What other projects do you want to tell me about?

Deaver: I just wrote a rather lengthy introduction to a new edition of "Frankenstein," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Orr: For whom?

Deaver: Oxford University Press.

I did uh ... I do sort of short-story commissions. I did one for Anne Perry -- Shakespearian short story.

Orr: What's that going to be in?

Deaver: An anthology that Anne Perry's putting together. I don't know who's publishing it. Then I do short stories of my own.

Yeah, kind of, it's able to be written, I try to write it. I did a thing for Esquire a few months ago. A fictional uh, non-fictional fictional or a fictional non-fictional piece.

I don't ... (it's) the story of a mother and son team of grifters named the Kimes. Sante and Kenneth Kime. It happened about five, six years ago -- maybe longer ago than that -- in New York. They scammed this 82-year-old woman out of her $7 million mansion in Manhattan, and then killed her. But the body was never found. And, nonetheless, through circumstantial evidence, they were convicted of murder. And over a hundred other crimes related to this scam and other things they'd done. But ...

(END OF TAPE SIDE ONE) (Five writers imagined what happened: Deaver, Edna Buchanan, James Crumley, Stephen Dobyns and Peter Straub.)

(TAPE SIDE TWO):

Orr: The fiction editor called you?

Deaver: Yeah. And it said, Ed Buchanon, James Crumley, Peter Straub, uh, I think another author, too. Anyway, it said, "Do a fictionalized version, sort of a short story, of what you think happened to the body. What you think actually happened."

Orr: Oh, that's cute

Deaver: Yeah, it was a lot of fun to do. So, I -- provided of course, I had my lawyers talk to Esquire's lawyers because these people had apparently sued I don't know how many people in the course of their -- in addition to apparently murdering them, they uh, sued untold number of people just for the fun of it. So I had special indemnification provision put in the contract. So once that was done I wrote this thing and I still haven't heard from them. I do .. of course, have a 125-pound German shepard that I let run free in the house, so .. hmm. I am security minded.

Orr: You live in Viriginia most of the time, right?

Deaver: Yes

Orr: You're not listed in phone books or anything, right?

Deaver: Uh, yeah, but I think we both know if somebody wants to find you they can find you.

Orr: Oh yeah, they can.

I don't want to keep you too much longer

Deaver: Oh, no, I am enjoying talking, John, really.

Are you there?

Orr: I'm just thinking about a couple of different things. Do you ever feel like you're compulsive about writing ...

Deaver: Uh ..

Orr: ... in a negative way? Or do you just feel like you are compulsive in a positive way? I mean, it's all productive.

Deaver: I don't really judge it. I get a great deal of pleasure out of writing. I look for time to write. People often ask me where do I find the discipline, well, it's not a question of discipline. Well, it's not a question of discipline. Discipline, for me, is doing the laundry, doing the dishes, things like that.

I kind of fight to carve out time so that I can write. And I'm very fortunate in that regard. To me, telling stories is a very exhilarating thing. I suppose a therapist could say .. make certain comments and judgments about it, but I don't really look at it in that kind of depth.

But certainly I am obsessed about it. That is true. And I think ... um, I don't think that's a bad thing in terms of the ultimate product. I look at other writers, other writers of thrillers, and um, I consider, for instance, the endings of many of them that kind of fall apart at the end. And, it's too bad! Because they're wonderful premises, and there are just so many truly fine writers out there, people who appreciate words and how they go together, and yet, you just think the end product would be a bit better if they spent that extra 10 or 15 percent, or that extra month or two to bring all the ends together, so when the reader's done they say, "Oh! That was just so exciting!"

That's my goal! Of course, we all stumble sometimes, but I want to bring that kind of feeling to readers, and to do that, you need to spend the time at it.

Orr: Personally I think it's very reasonable. Heck, I'm jealous! If I won the lottery and could quit the Mercury News I would do it tomorrow just so I could write. Time I spend cranking out crap for the Mercury News -- this story excepted, of course --

Deaver: Laughs. Oh, you can include me in the crap catergory, John, I have no problem with that! I was a journalist too, remember!

Orr: I know! Journalism school, then law school at Fordham.

Deaver: Right

Orr: I think it's great what you're doing. Anybody who's going to succeed at anything -- engineers, businesspeople, anything -- you've really got to put the time in.

Deaver: Uh hunh

Orr: I see you on line a lot.

Deaver: Yeah

Orr: I know you're doing a lot of research, a lot of travel, and your writing, the amount of time you spend writing is great. A lot of writers don't spend that much time writing. And your output is pretty astounding ... more than a book a year. More than that .... You had "Speaking in Tongues," then "Hell's Kitchen." Was "Hell's Kitchen" a re-release?

Deaver: No, that was new. Paperback original.

Orr: Two books in a year?

Deaver: Yeah, but I guess, if you want to look 12-month period, that was "Empty Chair," "Speaking in Tongues," "Hell's Kitchen" and now "The Blue Nowhere," although "Hell's Kitchen" had been written before, so in fairness, that was not generated, although I did revise the earlier Rune books ("Manhattan is My Beat," "Death of a Blue Movie Star" and "Hard News"), and I just spent about two months revising an earlier book called "Mistress of Justice," and that was a complete re-write of a book. Bantam had published that some years ago and they wanted to re-issue it, and I said, "Only if you let me rewrite it." And that was a ground-up re-write for that book.

So, it is a book a year .. I'm getting old now, and I'm just going to stick to one book a year and probably two or three short stories.

Orr: Well, you've said that before. It'll be interesting to see if --

Deaver: I did! And I was just out on the West Coast, consulting for a TV show for Fox. There we go. I said I wasn't going to do that, and then they called me up and asked if I'd come out and talk to them about it.

Orr: What show?

Deaver: You know, I'm sorry, I just can't say anything. I'm under this major gag order. All I'll say is it's a reality based, crime-oriented show for Fox, and their lawyers had me sign this big deal that I can't say anything about it. But it's all top secret.

Orr: It's in production?

Deaver: Yeah, it's in production and should be airing within the next few months actually.

Orr: Will you get a credit?

Deaver: Yeah, a consultancy credit for this, not a production credit but a consultancy credit.

It was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed doing it. Although --

Orr: I hope you made a few bucks

Deaver: What's that?

Orr: I hope you made a couple of bucks

Deaver: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was ... although, I don't want to write movies or, uh, write TV shows full time, it was not a huge amount of work, and it was also a very interesting idea. It's kind of cutting-edge television. And, you know, I have seen some of the reality based shows and what they have tended to lack is a story, and this combines a story with the reality situation, so that's what I liked about it.

Orr: That's interesting. ...You told me before that you like to come up with the ending of the book first

Deaver: Hmm hmm

Orr: Because you want to make sure that your ending works. Don't want to be one of these guys who has a great concept and then can't take it anywhere.

Deaver: Exactly

(Some discussion of the ending of "The Blue Nowhere," removed from this account to avoid spoiling the ending for those who haven't read it yet.)

Orr: Did you talk to AOL people about some of what they go through?

Deaver: No, I never talked to AOL. I did, at various points. ... I talked to one of their lawyers, a couple years ago, uh, just socially about sort of what it's like being an AOL lawyer, and it's mostly contract kind of stuff, and then some of the pornography issues that they have to deal with, and you know, when they help out the Bureau, and things like that. But, no, I didn't talk to them on this.

Orr: Do you do any telnetting yourself?

Deaver: No. I don't. I'm just straight AOL. I've done some FTP downloads, which are pretty easy nowadays. In the old days it used to be really tough. You really needed to know some programming stuff.

Orr: Yeah, I know. I've been doing this a long time.

It'll be interesting if someone decides to come after you in some kind of extreme way just because of the book, because they see it as a challenge. I don't know that anybody will --

Deaver: Well, one of the things that's generally been true about my books, and it's true of Michael Connelly's books and James Patterson's books and so forth, this all has to do with the reality versus the fiction in our books. And that we have audiences that tend to be a bit older, they are better educated, they are uh ... relatively middle to upper-middle class. They don't really come out of the criminal element. Somebody is not going to read one of my books or Mike Connelly's books or Patterson's books and say "You know, it never occurred to me, but I'm going to become a serial killer."

By the same token, I don't really have an audience among the classic hacker profile. Now, that could very easily happen. And, if it happens, it happens. Once again, I've kind of exposed myself to that. But generally, the audience that I reach isn't the disaffected youth crowd.

This book is going to pick up more of that, I'll bet! I mean, I would love to become the next William Gibson, you know, "The Neuromancer," "The Difference Engine," some of the stuff that he did. And I've even encouraged marketing the book in -- , uh, what's that magazine out? -- Wired. I think that's published, I think that's San Francisco, and what's the other -- 2600 -- and there are a lot of alternative, tech-based publications I think the company should market it in. Although, what's the readership of novels, thriller novels among that demographics? I don't know. They're probably on line most of the time.

Orr: Probably, although it will be interesting to see. The Mercury News is probably the most read newspaper in that community.

Deaver: In the Valley, yeah

Orr: That and the Chronicle. I don't know if the Chronicle is talking to you or not, but I'm sure they'll review you.

Deaver: I know (producer) Joel Silver just uh -- the script for the movie was just finished. Uh, and so, uh, he's just finished "Matrix" two and three. So ... uh

Orr: That's the guy who's doing

Deaver: "The Blue Nowhere"

Orr: Have you seen the script?

Deaver: No, I haven't seen it, it was just finished. And now they're looking at a strike in the next week or two weeks in Hollywood and that put things on hold for a while, but uh ..

Orr: When's it scheduled to start, do you know?

Deaver: May second, I think. The day the book comes out, May first or second. But of course films take 18 months, you know ... this doesn't slow down ... it may mean the movie will be out -- if, in fact, it is made, in 26 months instead of 24 months.

(Discussion about luncheon plans.)

Deaver: I When I'm researching I'm very hermatic. I just kind of go off by myself

Orr: I am that way myself.

Deaver: I suspect so. Anybody who likes to write tends to aim in those directions. You need to. I mean, you talk about writing books. It's in a dark room, and I shut all the lights out, uh, 'cause I can touch type, as you probably can, I heard you talking there quite quickly, you know, 90 words a minute or whatever. And that's your world, you have to shut everything out. That -- you talk about discipline and so forth, people can have the greatest ideas in the world, and yet to be able to embrace that kind of lifestyle is quite rare, and I'm very lucky that I'm able to handle that. Drives me a little stir crazy sometimes, but ...

Orr: My guess is you must spend the most of your life alone with your computer.

Deaver: Yeah. Easily the bulk of the time, yeah.

Orr: No wife, no regular girlfriends

Deaver: Yeah

Orr: And your dog doesn't require lengthy conversations, so

Deaver: No, he sleeps on my feet, if not my lap. That's the kind of committment I can deal with.

(Goodbyes, etc.)