When you first begin writing a new book, is your focus on the characters or the plot and what was the inspiration behind this story?

I like to read and write character driven stories. I start with a general idea of a couple of characters, put them in a simple setting, and let them talk. As they get to know each other, I get to know them. I begin to see how their lives have evolved and where they might be going. In Greed and Deceit, I wanted some obvious built-in conflict and what better source would be two siblings. That morphed into two brothers, then two half-brothers, then one was illegitimate and from another country. Their conversations (which isn’t in the book), their ways of thinking and what they think about guided me. I early on found out that their father was very wealthy, that the mother of the illegitimate son had a genetic disease that would kill her while he was very young. And so on. There was no “inspiration” for the book. It developed out of the needs and wants of the characters that arose on the page.

Tell us something funny about one of your characters.

I’d been working on the book for about 2 years and knew the characters very well. One of them, Murray Applebaum, is an attorney with some personal legal and ethical dilemmas. One evening my wife and I were at a cocktail party where we were chatting with two or three other couples. One of them started to tell her story of an attorney friend of hers who had troubles with the law and his profession. I started to say, “I have a friend like that,” when I realized it wasn’t a friend I was thinking of. It was my character, Murray.

Were you surprised by the behavior of any of your characters or the direction of your plot at any point while writing?

This answer is about Murray, too. To escape his troubles, he heads off in his sailboat. He encounters terrible storms, the death of a crewmate overboard, problems with Haitian privateers and more. But after all, it didn’t fit in the book and had to be cut.

Is there a time of day or night when you’re most creative?

I’m an early bird. By early I mean about 4AM. The ideas seem to flow from then until about 10AM when I take my first nap of the day.

A weekend camping in the woods or in a luxury hotel with a spa?

Neither. For five winters we lived aboard our sailboat, Second Wind, in the Bahamas and the Caribbean. I’d prefer time sailing on her for at least a month.