maybe you could if you are john updike orjohn irving, but not david baldacci.t. so i became a lawyer and i did very well. i practised for ten years in washington. i was writing the whole time. high school, college, school, ten years of practising law, i wrote short stories, novell is, screenplays and then finally novels. absolute power was really the turning point for me. and then you were able to commit to it full—time. fast forward now, dozens of novels later, to your latest novel, the fix and this tells the story of a man who shoots a woman outside the fbi headquarters and then turns the gun on himself. it is a whydunnit, rather than a whodunnit. what inspired the story? this is the third instalment in my amos decker series. we first saw him in memory man. he has synaesthesia from a brain injury. here's an unlikely hero. he is a big soppy obese guy who has no personal skills, no one really gets along with him. i thought he would be a great series guy. people love him. his motivation is simple, he wants to find out the truth, no matter where it takes them. he

david baldacci, iwould david baldacci, i would like to start by rewinding the clock back to your childhoodou've always wa nted write stories. had you've always wanted to be a writer?|j write stories. had you've always wanted to be a writer? i was a big reader back then. i was a kid who never shut up. i was telling tall tales all the time, usually to get out of trouble at school. my mum bought me a journal. she said, why don't you write down some of the stuff you have been talking about? my stuff you have been talking about? my pen hit the paper and there was an epiphany. i can take my imagination, put it on paper and people can read it. i thought, this is so cool. years went by, and i thanked my mum for the gift that changed my life. she said, i'm so glad it worked out, but frankly, i just wanted to shut you up. mums need a bit of peace and quiet but you never stop talking. there you 90, you never stop talking. there you go, it worked out in the end. but in the interim, you became a lawyer, not a writer. how did that happened? i wrote short stories for 15 years, and you can't make a living