Don't Waste the Days

by H. B. Berlow

Please welcome H. B. Berlow to the Window today. The author of the Ark City Confidential Chronicles and the Wichita Chronicles has interesting answers to the interview questions.

What is your favorite thing about yourself? And your least favorite?

My sense of humor. Also, my off-beat sometimes dark sense of humor

Is there a particular line you won’t cross in writing, even to satisfy a trend

or—possibly—to make a story more compelling?

Since I don’t write erotica, gratuitous sex are not necessary in my work.

What do you do on those days when you’re pretty sure the muse has died and

you’ll never again write a publishable word?

Never happens. I don’t believe in writer’s block. To that end, I have other creative pursuits such as bread baking, sausage making, and cooking in general.

What would you want to be if you weren’t a writer?

Bite your tongue. Okay, a teacher.

Looking back, what do know now that you wish you’d known the first time you

opened a file and typed “Chapter One”?

I am grateful for the journey. To have known something at the start would be analogous to a reader of my books knowing how things are going to turn out from page one.

What was a best day of your life? A worst?

The best day of my life is the one yet to come. I’m recently retired with a world of opportunities before me. I’m excited. As for the worst, there is no single day. Until I got older and realized the preciousness of life, the days that were "wasted" are the ones to regret the most.

Do you have a favorite quote? Feel like sharing it?

From Ingmar Bergman: "If I don’t create, I don’t exist."

Who are your heroes / heroines? Have they made a difference in your writing?

I come from the hard-boiled school, so Chandler and Hammett are right up there. Cornell Woolrich for his darkness; James Ellroy for his scatological approach; and for contemporary, Michael Connolly and Dennis Lehane for their storytelling.

When you are choosing a book to read, what do you look for?

Uniqueness. Uusually something that I am NOT working on as a writing project.

What writer would you like to spend the afternoon with?

Dennis Lehane. He’s from Boston, I’m from Boston. We could pull out our accents and confuse people around us.

Character-driven or plot-driven? Where does your writer’s heart lie?

Character driven. I write historical crime fiction (30’s, 40’s, 50’s). There is no technology to deal with, just a protagonist using his mind and experiences to solve a case. That right there is about character.

The Crop of Wickedness

Harold Bergman, Jewish shamus and WW II vet, is ready to settle down with his high school flame.

When a society lady offers a job too simple, Harold winds up neck-deep in a 25-year-old murder tied to a dead gangster and secrets no one wants unearthed. Just as the dust settles, a regular job with an insurance outfit drags him into something darker and more sinister.

Now the dead are whispering and the living are lying. He’ll need the strength of his five-thousand-year-old religion to survive the wickedness of the past.https://a.co/d/7ILcQHV

H.B. Berlow studied film-making at the University of Miami in the 80's; was involved in the Boston poetry scene in the 90's; and is a former president of the KWA (Kansas Writer's Association). He has concentrated largely on historical crime fiction, having been inspired by such writers as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. He has delved into various elements of experimental fiction and verse. He discusses his passion for writing at tikiman1962.wordpress.com. He is co-host of Tikiman and The Viking podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/5R3wY5THZtBGI08JX7yJn7).