A Glorious Time for Crime Fiction: PW Talks with Lou Berney

I wanted to be a writer since I was four or five years old-thanks to my two older sisters who liked to play school with me (whether I liked it or not). Not only did they teach me how to read, write, and love books, they encouraged me to invent my own stories and characters. I was hooked early and never looked back.

My first novel, Gutshot Straight, came out of the WGA strike in 2007. I was working as a screenwriter at the time, so all my projects were put immediately on hold. I had to do something during the bleak winter, so I decided to get back to my first love-novels. I had such a wonderful time writing Gutshot Straight, disappearing into the fictional world in a way you can't do with screenplays, that I realized this was it, fiction was the medium for me.