Bad Developments

I learned about the writing of Nathan Walpow when interviewing Gary Phillips (over at Robot6 back in 2009). In addition to discussing his writing (including the recently serialized Bad Developments), Walpow and I touched upon FourStory (a housing advocacy site that supports “fair living conditions for everyone”). As detailed at FourStory: “Nathan Walpow’s Joe Portugal mystery series includes four novels; the latest is The Manipulated. His short story ‘Push Comes to Shove’ was reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories series and he has a story and song in the recent book/CD combination A Merry Band of Murderers. Nathan is past president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and a five-time Jeopardy! champion.” My thanks to Walpow for the email interview (which took place in late February).

Tim O’Shea: Your first book was published when you were 50, how many years before then had you been pursuing professional writing?

Nathan Walpow: Eight or nine. I began writing in the early ’90s, when my acting non-career became too unbearable. I was idly leafing through the UCLA Extension catalogue one day, and came across the short story classes, and thought, Hmm, that sounds like it might be fun. I sold maybe seven or eight short stories, wrote one novel that I couldn’t sell and most of another that I couldn’t finish. Then someone said I should try a mystery, and I said why not, and there you are.

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