Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL’s Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin’ the Dog.

In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, several NAACP Image awards, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mosley now lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

During the interview, we chatted about his writing process, creating iconic characters like Easy Rawlins, writing diverse characters, and about race in American, and a wild story about the production of his recent Masterclass, and a lot more.

His latest book, BLOOD GROVE (the 15th Easy Rawlins mystery) will be published on Feburary 2nd.

Walter Mosley’s Latest Book

Other Books by Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins Mysteries

Leonid McGill books by Walter Mosley

Show Notes

Other author mentions: Elmore Leonard, James Michener, Herman Melville, Jack Kirby (Marvel comics), Gabriel García Márquez, Langston Hughes, Edwidge Danticat.

On Video

Walter Mosley Masterclass

A short trailer on Walter Mosley’s Masterclass.

Transcript

[00:00:00.265] – Alan Petersen
You are listening to meet the Thriller author, the podcast, where I interview writers of mysteries, thrillers and suspense books. I am your host, Alan Peterson, and this is episode number one hundred and thirty two. In this episode of the podcast, I was honored to have Walter Mosley is my guest. He is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America. He’s the author of more than 60 critically acclaimed books. He’s most well known for his crime fiction, including the iconic Easy Rawlins Mysteries. In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writer’s Hall of Fame, and he’s a winner of numerous awards, including the Honor Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy, several NAACP Image Awards, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in twenty twenty. He was named the recipient of the Robert Keusch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. He was born and raised in L.A. and now lives in Brooklyn and in Los Angeles.

[00:01:01.495] – Alan Petersen
His latest novel is Blood Grove, which is the 15th novel in the Easy Rawlins Mysteries, and I received an advance copy and enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s out today, February 2nd, so go get yourself a copy of Blood Grove.

[00:01:16.725] – Alan Petersen
It was a real honor to talk to Walter Mosley about his legendary career, about his writing process, about the diversity in literature and a whole lot more. So stay tuned for that interview coming here in just a second. Before I get to the interview, I’d like to tell you about Walter Mosley’s master class. I’ve been a big fan of the classes available over at Master Class so far. I’ve taken the James Patterson, Dan Brown, David Baldacci, those are the writing ones.

[00:01:44.725]
And now Walter Mosley has his master class. And I took that last week. And it was amazing, such great advice to be able to learn writing from somebody like Walter Mosley. And in the podcast, there’s a very interesting behind the scenes story of how that master class came together. So make sure you listen to that. But I do highly recommend you go check that out at THRILLINGREADS.COM/MOSLEYCLASS, that’s MosleyClass — all one word and you’ll be able to access that master class and many others.

[00:02:13.975]
And of course, that is an affiliate link and is a great way to support this podcast. So that’s THRILLINGREADS.COM/MOSLEYCLASS all right. Let’s get to the interview with Walter Mosley.

[00:02:24.815]
So excited to have Mr. Mosley on the podcast. Welcome, sir.

[00:02:28.525] – Walter Mosley
Thank you. Thank you. It’s nice to be here. I received an advance copy of Blood Group and enjoyed it very much. And I like to think of it in the beginning of the book. It wasn’t so much about solving the murder, but even trying to freeze urines to try to figure out if there was a murder because the body disappeared. So I kind of wondered if that was an idea that you’d been mulling around in your head for for a while before you started to write the blood growth.

[00:02:50.485]
No, no. I just you know. You know what? I don’t know. Sometimes I know exactly what I’m going to write. You know, it just makes sense. But most often I don’t, you know, easy there is in this place is going through his own experiences, which, you know, are going to somehow reverberate with with with the case that he’s gone. But I don’t know what that’s going to be. And then, you know, so a guy comes and he says, I don’t know, I think I might have killed somebody.

[00:03:20.845]
I don’t know. And, you know, and he said, well, if you don’t know them, maybe we should just let it go, you know? You know it. The only the only thing we can find out is that you’re in trouble right now. You’re not in trouble. And, you know, and so as a white guy.

[00:03:34.915]
But the white guy is a veteran and he’s he’s a veteran and he identifies with him much in the way that, you know, people identify racially. You know, they’ve had that experience, the experience of war. And, you know, that’s and so we you know, we follow it. And it’s the guy dead, isn’t he dead? Well, the question is, did this guy kill him? And after a while, it’s not even that.

[00:04:00.025]
After a while, that guy doesn’t matter anymore. The guy who’s hired him and it’s just ease’s gotten too far into a case that he shouldn’t be into. So, yes, deal with it. Yeah, really.

[00:04:11.395] – Alan Petersen
I liked that part the bond between Easy and the other character, like Easy was a Vietnam vet. This is set in sixty-nine and they’re like dealing with the PTSD. But I don’t even know if it was addressed as PTSD back in those days.

[00:04:28.855] – Walter Mosley
It was not you know, they call it shell shock, battle fatigue, that it had different names then. But, you know, it’s the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:39.055] – Alan Petersen
When you when you started to write this, did you look into that to talk to people who are combat vets with PTSD? And I wonder what you’re going to do.

[00:04:46.525] – Walter Mosley
Yeah, I mean, I have read stuff. I know stuff, you know, but you know, that idea, you know, I mean, there’s some writers, you know, who I love, you know, like Elmore Leonard Elmore. He researched everything. And I love it, you know, but. But now I just I just figure I can fight this so much, you know, I mean, this starts dealing with this stuff starts with Freude, you know, and and veterans of World War One, you know, who have all this, you know, hysterical and neurotic responses, which are, you know, purely emotional and not at all physical, but it has physical manifestations.

[00:05:28.265]
You know, I just I just work. So I mean, I do know stuff. I just didn’t go interview people. Yeah, I talked to that before, and I consider that interviewing the, you know, yeah, I really like that from from your writing style. And when you talk about writing fiction that.

[00:05:47.855] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, because said you read about some other authors are like like they’re going the flying jets and these all this research, I’m like, wow. So I kind of like puts it out of like maybe I can’t do that.

[00:05:57.745] – Walter Mosley
You know, like well you know, research is so interesting, you know, because then, you know, all this stuff which has nothing to do with the story.

[00:06:07.165]
And, you know, I think missioner was the one who got me the most that he knew so much stuff and he wrote it all down. And I was completely not interested. I might have been interested if I was reading some, you know, something else now, of course, a long time ago, when you have somebody like Herman Melville, who I mean, he wasn’t doing research. He was actually, you know, on a whaling ship.

[00:06:27.205]
But and but that was a time when you didn’t have the Internet, when you didn’t have television, when you didn’t have radio. Most people didn’t get daily newspapers that if you want to explain to people how the world worked, this is another thing today. It’s it’s mostly about, you know, psychology and and people’s emotions, you know, and and that’s why it’s so much of modern day fiction is about character. And so, you know, I’m worried about my characters and they’re all different.

[00:06:59.605]
I mean, even if two people have PTSD, it’s not the same thing. It’s not like, you know, you have covid-19 and covid-19. It’s not the same thing, you know? I mean, everybody’s different, so. Well, how did you respond? So I couldn’t breathe. Well, how did you respond? Well, I couldn’t taste anything, you know? I mean, you know.

[00:07:16.585] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, yeah. The people would even know they have it. Yeah, right.

[00:07:19.445] – Walter Mosley
Exactly. You don’t know you had until three months later I know. I don’t think about we didn’t get the blood grovers.

[00:07:27.565] – Alan Petersen
Easy gets into the racial tensions of the 60s, the riots and all that. And then everything that happened in the summer here last summer in the States with George Floyd. Were you done writing this book when all that happened? I was wonder what you take in all that because it was like it had already been.

[00:07:45.865] – Walter Mosley
I had already finished this book. I mean, a lot of the things that, you know, that happened, the people that are new for people, you know, is these things aren’t new for most black people in America. Most people who, you know, have lived close to the streets of America. You know, it’s it’s it’s terrible the things that happen. But they’re not surprisingly easy, you know. And one part of this book, I mean, he gets stopped by the police is going this way.

[00:08:12.175]
They stop him. He’s going that when they stop me goes the other way because he’s driving a Rolls Royce because a guy couldn’t pay him. So I gave him his Rolls Royce. And then finally he says, I got to give this car away. I can’t drive it because I can’t be a detective in a Rolls Royce, which is kind of wonderful, I think, you know. But, you know, I’m just, you know, racism wasn’t invented along with the cell phone, you know, but the cell phone exposes racism and such interesting, you know, ways you can actually watch something happen because anybody can take a film of it, which is, you know, which is, you know, I mean, it’s a wonderful thing, you know, and it’s also a terrible thing because, you know, you’re watching people getting, you know, destroyed all over the place.

[00:09:01.555]
But no, I didn’t you know, I didn’t really need to do research on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:09:07.375] – Alan Petersen
I think that’s that’s a good point, too, because it’s always been there. But now because of social media and everyone’s got a got a camera in their pocket, it’s just not everyone’s seeing what’s been going on all these years that men have not known. And.

[00:09:23.245] – Walter Mosley
Yeah, and a lot of people you touched. And so, you know, it’s happening so much nowadays. And and I’m I don’t know. It’s happening every day for the last four centuries, every single day.

[00:09:35.035]
And, you know, and really, even when you said to it’s hard for them to believe, they say, well, then why didn’t I know? Because there were no cell phones. And it’s hard. People say, come on, it’s not just that. I mean, people could talk about it, say, yeah, people talk about it. And you didn’t believe it. You know, that becomes the thing, you know, so so me writing about easy all through, you know, through the you know, through the really until it starts in the 30s into the forties and all the way up now to the sixties. And I’m going to be in the seventies. You know, it’s it’s an important thing.

[00:10:08.365] – Alan Petersen
Oh yeah. And I’ve seen that not too with the lot to talk about from agents and about writing with more diverse characters. And you have that on voices, hashtag and all that stuff. And and you’ve been writing diverse characters for thirty years. Did you get a lot of pushback when you tried to publish that first book or.

[00:10:27.715] – Walter Mosley
Well, no, I didn’t get pushback on doing the the first mystery, you know, because, you know, mystery is a certain kind. Form that everybody reads and so a lot of open up, though, you know, I find a lot of people. Years ago I was talking to Jonathan Demme. He wanted to do a movie about the Leonid McGill series. And he says, you know, I’d like to do is he says, you know, but, you know, you concentrate too much on the racial conflict in there.

[00:10:52.545]
And, you know, and I can see, you know, because for him, this it’s overdoing it. It’s like the other day I’m writing a TV show right now and there’s a lovely young black woman in the hood in a big city. And, you know, she’s walking down streets now. She’s a lovely young black woman. Men are stopping her every block, every two blocks they’re talking and one guy said, you know, you’re doing too much of that.

[00:11:25.325]
And yeah, I said, that’s right, it happens too much, but it does happen too much. You know, the thing is, is that are you going to say what it’s like or are you going to say, well, you know, one guy did it, another guy did it and she didn’t like it, you know, said, no, it’s different. You know, one guy did it, another guy did it. The other guy didn’t. She stabbed him. You know, that’s like that’s where we want to go.

[00:11:48.275]
That’s part of the story telling process. Right? Like you always say, the right, what’s really happening, what’s really going on. And in the in that world, those things that are important, you know, the things that are really happening, they’re important.

[00:11:59.255]
I’m not going to sit and talk about how many people are talking on cell phones because that’s not important. But of course, that’s another thing that’s happening all over the place, you know?

[00:12:08.325] – Alan Petersen
And you mentioned the Easy Rawlins series that it’s now spending like 20, 30 years. And how do you keep track of all that is that they have like a big series Bible document.

[00:12:22.515] – Walter Mosley
No, you know, I know more or less, you know, what I’ve done and where I’m going. I’m not it’s not too repetitive. I’m not making too many mistakes, you know. But, you know, it’s true about everything. You know, you can’t be perfect. The idea of kind of worrying about perfection in film and writing and painting and any kind of art, you know, the thing is, hey, look, I’m creating an image that you’re seeing and imagining, you know, the fact that there might be a mistake here or there. That’s that’s being human and being human is what we are.

[00:12:57.315] – Alan Petersen
You’re such an influential writer, which is influenced you when you were because you think it starts with you’re in your 30s, right?

[00:13:04.005] – Walter Mosley
I mean, it’s true. I didn’t even start writing. You know, it’s interesting. You know, it’s such a it’s a complex question. Answer. Who are the biggest influences on me? Well, one of them, of course, is Jack Kirby and Marvel Comics. You know, I’m reading comic books and comics are telling me stories that excite me, that make me excited. And then, of course, I read a lot of novels, you know, Treasure Island, when I was, you know, maybe in my teens and then Winnie the Pooh when I was even younger.

[00:13:34.095]
You know, books, Tom Swift, with all of these kind of books the kids read that they’re so excited about. I mean, a child reading is is is actually the deepest reader because they pay attention to everything and they actually create that world. It’s less, you know, you know, I’m listening. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I love Langston Hughes. I you know, I love Mark Twain. I mean, there’s a lot of people that I’ve read that that I like.

[00:14:03.045]
But even more than all of those people, even more than Marvel Comics is it’s my father who’s a great storyteller.

[00:14:09.915]
And as a storyteller, you know, he would tell a story about something and people would laugh, you know, your family would get together. And one guy telling a story. And it’s just so amazing. People are laughing and laughing and you’re going, well, this is this is that what I want to do? I want to tell stories, you know, but it’s it’s not so much about literature. One of the one of the big problems, I think, that that people are having and if they’re having it now but in certain was 20 years ago and a little bit before writers writing about writers writing.

[00:14:41.205]
You know, I’m saying I’m not interested in writers writing. I’m interested in the world that I live in. I’m interested in, you know, in Los Angeles. I’m interested in America. I’m interested in men and women. You know, I’m interested in the in the conflict and the the the the the the even the dialectic between peoples and nations. And and so those are the stories that I want to tell. And that’s the world that I want to talk about.

[00:15:12.145] – Alan Petersen
And it doesn’t so you’re saying that, you know, sometimes it’s it’s good to start later in life because no life experience like, you know, for someone who’s 50 years old and think, oh, it’s too late now, I mean, it really is never too late to start start writing.

[00:15:26.015] – Walter Mosley
Yeah, right. It’s a it’s a bad time to start trying to be a gymnast if you’re in it. But writing, you know, and many are much of art, painting, sculpture is pretty physical. But even sculpture, you know, you the more you know, the more sophisticated you are in understanding it. You know, if you’re, you know, 18 and you’ve been having sex for two years and you want to write about sex, you probably don’t know that much about it. And, you know, and the things that you really know, you’re probably not going to write about and and you may not even know what you really know.

[00:16:01.855]
But as you get older, you have more experience as that experience deepens, you know, and some people listen. A good friend of mine is the the Haitian writer, Edwidge Danticat. And we just you know, she she lives through issues in Port au Prince and the worst part of Port-Au-Prince as a child. And her experience was vast, you know, but, you know, most young people in America, you know, they go on to school, they come home, they go to school, they come home, they get high, they have a little sex.

[00:16:31.555]
They do this and that. But there’s no. There’s no real there’s nothing really on the line, and you have to really have, you know, have some on the line to actually have something to say. You know, I really enjoyed.

[00:16:45.375] – Alan Petersen
You have a book about the writing process, the elements of fiction. And I’ve been enjoying your masterclass over there, your teachings on that masterclass. Yeah. And I’ve really been enjoying that. What’s what attracts you to to teach about the writing or try to help out others about writing?

[00:17:02.145] – Walter Mosley
Well, I think the two books, you know, this year you write your novel and elements of fiction. I often get to be someplace I’m giving a reading and some somebody will ask a question. It sounds one way. But really what they’re asking is how do you write a novel? And and I think, wow, if I only had like 40 minutes just to talk, I could I could explain it. But, you know, you never have 40 minutes to have that kind of talk.

[00:17:27.285]
And people get, you know, you know, they said, come on, let’s go, hurry up. We got to get our books on. We need to go home. And so that’s when I wrote the first one this year. You write your novel and this you write your novels, a book for anybody. Anybody who wants to write a novel this year can read that book and it will tell them how now they’ll decide whether or not they’re going to do it.

[00:17:48.105]
Elements of fiction goes deeper. It’s a deeper dive into what writing fiction is about and what character development is about and and what theme and and uses of poetry, all that stuff, you know, Masterclass. They invited me to do it. You know, they’re really nice. It’s a really nice thing. They, you know, they pay you. It’s it’s a good thing, you know, so, you know, and I’ve already done it. So I said, well, you know, I’ll come do it here. And, you know, people can listen. I know a lot of people aren’t so much, you know, don’t really learn that much from reading. And when they learn more from seeing something and and hearing about.

[00:18:24.375] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, they seem to have it down to a pretty good science. I’m kind of curious about the whole production process with masterclass did you do it in L.A.?

[00:18:35.025] – Walter Mosley
That’s interesting. You know, it’s the middle of covid, right? Yeah. And there’s hardly any place where they could get a crew because they do a real you know, they got a crew of like 80 people and they and they shoot this, they shoot you, you know, the you know, so they said, well, the only the only place really that we can do this with no trouble is Iceland. And I said, you know, I live in New York, but I’m in L.A. right now. I got stuck in L.A. with covid, you know, covid happening. And so they said, oh, no worry, we’re going to fly you to Iceland. So they put me in a plane and flew me to Iceland. I spent like a week doing this thing. And, you know, it’s really wild. And I came home.

[00:19:15.375] – Alan Petersen
Oh, that is crazy. Didn’t know you were in Iceland. Looks like you’re in like in the a study , like your little library.

[00:19:21.465] – Walter Mosley
Yeah, it looks like something else. But I was in Iceland doing this thing. It was it was very cool. I really enjoyed it, you know, and I’d never been to Reykjavik, so it was wild, you know, just to see it.

[00:19:33.015] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s interesting. And then, you know. Oh, I was actually I was reading every one of your reviews for Blood Grove on from Kirkus, and it mentioned that you actually had thought of killing Easy Rawlins off. Is that really true?

[00:19:48.645] – Walter Mosley
Blond Faith at the end of blond faith, he’s you know, he’s had a drink drink for the first time. He’s driving barefoot, you know, Highway one, you know, on the ocean. And there’s a car in front of me, so says I’m going to pass that car. We passed the car and all of a sudden the truck is coming. And so I really I, I was just writing. I didn’t know where I was going. And then the truck is coming. So he gets close to left even more. And, you know, there’s a, you know, a dirt, you know, kind of side shoulder. And then all of a sudden that gets out and he goes just goes off a cliff. And I went and I stopped running, I went, Wow. I guess he’s dead, you know, that’s what I thought and I said, well, OK, you know, I wrote it and I had been thinking, you know, my my books and not, you know, I mean, I like my books, but they weren’t new. They weren’t new stories. And I said, all right, these nuances that I’m like, you know, and so I had done that.

[00:20:48.375]
But then four or five years later, I realized it was because I had passed the time of my father, the stories, you know, telling my father’s story and his, you know, his people, his family. And and so then I know I had to tell my own stories. And when I realized that I started writing the new one, Little Green and the Charcoal Joe and, you know, like that. And so I was happy again.

[00:21:11.985] – Alan Petersen
You created such iconic characters. What’s your process for that, for or for like an aspiring writer that’s listening to this and creating a character like Easy Rawlins or, you know, this?

[00:21:21.315] – Walter Mosley
That is like a really hard question to answer vocally. And it sounds like it should be simple. You know, I’m just writing about people and, you know, and I and I come from a place in a culture where a lot of people have nicknames.

[00:21:36.915]
A lot of people are, you know, you know, like, you know, like any anything like in crime, like, you know, like, you know, everybody in the in the in in the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra and all different. They have names like, you know, a braless who was one of the major guys in Murder Incorporated.

[00:21:56.715]
They didn’t call him Abe, they called him Kid Twist because he used to joke people, you know what I mean? And it’s like low. You know, that’s just the way I think, you know, you don’t, you know, you know, call him, you know. Oh, John, enough.

[00:22:11.115]
John’s OK that I do have the John John the bartender, but he owns that name so perfectly that even there it’s it’s not John is John the bartender. You know what I mean?

[00:22:26.265] – Alan Petersen
What about your writing process? Because I know. I know I get asked this all the time, but I really love the the big thing that you tell people is write every day about that.

[00:22:37.605] – Walter Mosley
Well, listen, you know, I’m looking at writing the way that psychoanalysis worked when it worked. You know, psychoanalysis isn’t really a viable of a therapeutic system today.

[00:22:48.585]
But but back in Freud’s time, when people were having these hysterical responses to things, you know, sexual events in their lives or the war, World War One, what he would do is he every day you would come in and you lie down on our couch and you would free associate therapists would say a thing or two, but not too much. Then you go home and while you’re sleeping, all the things that you’re talking about connected things to your unconscious.

[00:23:15.585]
And when you wake up the next day, there are new things and you come into therapy and to a great degree that that form of therapy, you are actually healing yourself by talking. I was my therapist. I said, well, oh, you said this. Oh, you said that. But not so much. I think the same thing is true with most art. If you’re if you’re writing a story, if you’re telling a story about Easy Rawlins or you’re telling stories about Socrates or King Oliver or one of the people I’m writing about you while you’re you’re writing. You’re writing all of these new ideas that are happening in your head. You’re not thinking about them. You just think about trying to write. Then you put that away, go home, go to sleep the whole day, that night, the next morning, finally, you get back to the page again. And there are all these new ideas in your head. They came from what you were thinking yesterday. Every day you do that, you get deeper into who you are and what kind of story you’re telling.

[00:24:13.785]
You know, every day, every day, every day, every day. When you stop writing a day, things start to float away. Two days, they’re even farther. Three days. You got to start from the beginning again. If you’re writing a novel, you put off three days, you might as well just start from the first page and read and say, what did I do, you know? And so. So that’s why I think that.

[00:24:33.055]
Right. And, you know, there are a few people I know Simenon didn’t work like that, but so many people, I find it so useful for them to keep on doing it. It’s better to write twenty minutes every day than eight hours a day on the weekend. You know what I mean? That because you’re slowly building up the the the the fiction in your mind.

[00:24:59.255] – Alan Petersen
And it really catches up to you to stop writing all of a sudden, you know, you dig yourself in this hole and it’s been a month and you haven’t written anything.

[00:25:07.385] – Walter Mosley
Yeah. And you’re lost because you’re not because it’s not in your head. When you write every day, it’s it’s inside you. And when it’s inside you, you know how to you say, OK, is this like this mouse is like that. You know, these people are doing this and, you know, one day you wake up, oh, wow, I’ve been making a mistake for the last, you know, however long I got to do it another way. And it’s it’s a you know, anything that you do I think is worth doing all the time. You know, I listen you talk about boxers. A boxer, you know, hasn’t fought for a year. They get in the ring and the first thing that the announcer starts talking myself looks like he got some ring rust. Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Yeah, he did bring a rest because you get further away from from the important element of your life.

[00:25:59.975] – Alan Petersen
Do you ever get, like, false starts when you’re writing something or do you usually finish it through, see it through?

[00:26:05.615] – Walter Mosley
Well, you know, writing is rewriting. So the whole first first draft of a novel is a false start, you know, and that and then you go through it and then you go through it, you know, but it’s important to have that false start, you know.

[00:26:21.165] – Alan Petersen
And so what is your writing process? So you start writing to you like he seems like a word document. You start writing on that word.

[00:26:30.855] – Walter Mosley
Yeah, I do. I mean, and, you know, for me, I mean, I’m an older dude. I’m like sixty nine. But back in the 70s, the beginning of the early 70s, I became a computer programmer. So I had been working, you know, writing electronically. Most of my life was my adult life. And so, you know, I pull out the computer. That’s that’s what I write on.

[00:26:53.885] – Alan Petersen
So what’s next for you and for Easy Rawlins? I heard you say it’s going to the 70s now is more easy. Rawlins coming.

[00:27:02.075] – Walter Mosley
There will be and it will be in the 70s. However, right now, the next book I’m going to write is the you know, the character that I started with down the river onto the Sea. King Oliver is going to have a new case in New York. And then, you know, maybe I’m going to write about Socrates, which is not, you know, you know, classically and the crime genre. And then after that, easy again, or maybe Leonid McGill will say, you know, and of course, that made a novel might pop up, you know, somewhere in there.

[00:27:33.815] – Alan Petersen
All right. Well, looking forward to it. And your book BLOOD GROVE is out now, out February 2nd. But by the time they listen to this podcast, it’ll be out. So go check it out.

[00:27:43.425] – Walter Mosley
So this is great. Yeah. Thank you so much.

[00:27:45.185] – Alan Petersen
It’s a pleasure talking to you.

[00:27:52.055] – Alan Petersen
Make sure to check out Walter Mosley’s master class in his master class. Walter Mosley teaches you how to rethink genres and the rules of fiction and how to approach writing your own novel. The Master Class is broken into 13 sections, including Walter Mosley’s writing process, developing fictional characters, story versus plot, surviving the publishing industry and a lot more. To learn more, go to THRILLINGREADS.COM/MOSLEYCLASS.

[00:28:18.695]
That’s all one word, mostly class and just a full disclosure. I’m a member of masterclasses affiliate program, so I do receive a commission. If you order from that link, it’s a great way to not only access the wonderful master class from Walter Mosley, but it helps support the podcast. I do appreciate that.

[00:28:35.855]
And to access the show notes for this episode and to have access to more interviews, go to ThrillerAuthors.com

[00:28:43.505]
All right. I think for listening to this episode and until next time.