A. Almost certainly. The questions, really, are when and in what format? I've become rather discouraged by "big publishing"--part of the reason DRIVE-BY came from a regional publisher. That was a more satisfying experience, since small presses can give authors a lot more TLC than the conglomeroids; but there were distribution problems resulting in less-than-staggering sales figures. I'm closely watching this whole "e-publishing" business, trying to determine if it's a trend or merely a style. In the meantime, I plug along, and we'll see what happens--both with Nebraska and with other projects on the docket.
Of course, you can speed up the process a bit by scampering right out and buying a copy of DRIVE-BY, the latest Nebraska book. If you already have done so, good on you! Now you can make a short list of other people you know who should be introduced to Nebraska, and scamper out to buy copies for them. Click here for more information.
A. Ah, I see you wandered in by accident. All right, then: Way back in the dark ages--viz., the 1980s--I wrote a private-eye novel called THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT. It was published in 1984 by St. Martin's Press. It featured a "medium-boiled" PI known to us only as Nebraska, who involuntarily becomes involved in a complex skein of murder, blackmail, and dirty politics in his home venue of Omaha, Nebraska.
A. Why not Omaha? Seriously, when I began work on what would become THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT--some time in late 1979--I made a conscious decision to avoid locations like Los Angeles, New York, Boston, San Francisco--the big population centers that already had too many PIs chasing around. What I didn't know until later was that I accidentally was part of a trend to move PI series to "offbeat" locals--which is to say, not the big population centers that already had too many PIs chasing around. I chose Omaha because it's my home town, and because, when I started THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT, I had only just moved from Omaha to Minneapolis-St. Paul, and felt I knew the Gateway City pretty well.
A. What sort of first name would "Nebraska" be? Although, come to think of it, my daughter really does have a classmate named "Dakota." But "Nebraska" is out hero's surname--and it's explained in more than one of the books how he came by it. (That's known in the trade as a "teaser": You'll have to read the books to get the explanation!) Why doesn't he have a first name? He does! Everyone does! It just so happens that I don't know what it is--and I'm not being a wiseacre here: I really don't. I haven't yet come up with one I like. When I do--if I do--then I suppose it will become general knowledge.
I have gone on record as wishing I had given Nebraska a more prosaic moniker--Johnson, say, or Smith, or even Schiefelbein--but I don't really know if that's true. Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet?
Keep in mind that when I wrote THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT, I didn't conceive it as the first entry in a series. I was having a little fun with the PI genre--borderline parody, I sometimes call it--and so did things I probably wouldn't have done if I'd thought I'd be writing Nebraska books and stories ten years later. Like name him Nebraska. Like get rid of a supporting character that I really liked. Like give Nebraska a backstory that is sometimes difficult to cling to. And so on.
A. What, you got something against the printed word? So far, the Nebraska stories have not been transliterated to audio tape, videotape, CD-ROM, film, or cave walls. There is a persistent rumor that THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT is available on audio tape, but I have never been able to verify it--and, obviously, if it is on tape, it's without the author's knowledge, consent, or receipt of royalties. So if you've seen it somewhere, lemme know.
A. Yeah. Well. The first-name business has pretty well been explained away, I think, and I need add only that I hadn't discovered Spenser when I began THE NEBRASKA QUOTIENT. As for the psychologist-friends (I think both women would object to the term "girlfriend"), that's what we in the trade call a coincidence. Koosje appeared in the second book, MOVING TARGETS, which also introduced OPD cop Kim Banner. I had it in mind that Banner would be the romantic interest, and Koosje just a one-shot secondary character. But I was wrong. In the goofy way that stories have, it just worked better for Nebraska and Koosje to get together.
A. Sort of somewhere between KOH-shuh and KOO-shuh. Some years ago, Peg and I made a transatlantic crossing aboard Holland America's Noordam, and one of the social directors was named Koosje. English and American crew members pronounced it KOH-shuh; she pronounced it with a not-quite OO sound that we don't find in English. And I figure she should know.
A. Hey! How did you know that's one of my pet peeves--that and the expression "pet peeves"? All right, here it is: One Reynolds, two Reynoldses. Shouldn't cause much loss of sleep. The possessive calls for an apostrophe-s--Reynolds's latest book--unless you're writing for a space-saving newspaper, in which case you ignore the last s: Reynolds' latest book. Never would you render it Reynold's latest book, although I wish I had a peso for everyone who did. Oh--and never, ever "Reynolds's last book." We never say "last book" in the presence of authors.