PW: You classify Radio Activity as a mystery. Is this a field you want to enter?

I never intended to become a novelist at all. I moved to Los Angeles to write sitcoms, but it didn't work out. I started writing screenplays, and when I couldn't sell those, I turned a script into a novel, and, BOOM! it was published. Most mystery writers write in series, so I decided I would. I had this protagonist, this DJ guy, because I used to do that, so I decided to make him into a series character, and see how that goes.

Are you still interested in sitcoms?

Unfortunately, the sitcom world is too youth-oriented, but if I come up with an idea, I am in a better position now than when I first moved here.

You seem to have an affection for Mississippi rednecks.

Yeah. Early on in my books, my characters were a little more cartoonish, and I decided to give them a little more depth. Not that I would invite them to dinner.

You yourself come from this background. How did it affect the novel?

The first radio station where I worked, in Jackson, I was a terrible high school student, but I loved music, and the local rock station sponsored the Junior Achievement Program, so it was a coup to hang around the people I was listening to.

You sound like you would have paid to work there.

I'm sure the general manager would have taken it, but when I said I'd work for free, like Rob in the book, I had a job, until I finally worked my way up to minimum wage. I was working from 10 at night till 2 in the morning. It didn't affect my grades, they were so bad anyhow. After graduation, I moved to the Virgin Islands, thinking I'd get a job on the local radio, but I ended up working on a squalid freighter, and eventually ended up in Seattle. There's something to be said for having a lot of experiences.

In this new novel, Captain Jack, a famous DJ and a pivotal name, got around too, but is only seen alive while being murdered. Why would he settle in this tiny town of McRae, Miss.?

The idea was Jack had reached the pinnacle of FM rock radio, in the big markets, but he had a coke problem, and snorted his way down to McRae. When the tough guy shows up, he's looking for cocaine money from Jack.

The book is loaded with so many different song titles, how can you possibly do a follow-up?

Let me ask you a question first: In Radio Activity how much of the music and the artists did you know?

After the Beatles, Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, I was stumped. Were you trying to proselytize for classic rock?

Yes, but not the kind you typically hear coast to coast. It's a shame what radio doesn't play. I think that is one of the points of Radio Activity, that because of consolidation and one person controlling what music gets played, the chances for something slightly out of mainstream getting played is virtually nil. Anyway, I am on page 200 of the follow-up, and it's very different. In Radio Activity, the "B" story was my defining classic rock. Now Rick is at a different radio station in Mississippi, where we don't do that at all. He's hung out his shingle, for the private investigation firm he was talking about at the end of Radio Activity, and we don't have much radio stuff. By and large, this book is about the investigation he undertakes, which revolves around a crime in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950s, more of a mystery than this one. I promise, it'll be funny, too.