Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 8, ISSUE 4 | Page 23

publisher with a large number of authors
each selling a small number of books. By
now, 2010, self-publishing was catching
on, so I thought I'd go in that direction.
I didn't see a lot of sales, and I became
discouraged. Around 2013, an opportuni-
ty presented itself to get into audiobook
narration. I tested the waters, then
bought some equipment, and next thing
you know, I'm narrating real novels by
real authors.
WTT: Another career? What kind of
books did you narrate?
MD: I did some good ones, like Mickey
Spillane's I, THE JURY. I narrated four
books for Lawrence Block. I did novels by
Jim Thompson, James M Cain, Jack Kerou-
ac. Heck, I even did JD Salinger. My voice,
it turns out, was well-suited for noir nov-
els, so I did several old novels that were
made into film noir classics.
WTT: What about your writing? Did
you give it up?
MD: No. In 2016, the narrating was slow-
ing down, so I turned my energies back to
writing. I wrote a trilogy of noir novels set
in Miami, and they sold quite well. I even
had some interest from a Hollywood
agent regarding a TV series, but nothing
came of it. It did tell me, however, that my
writing has value. I've started a new se-
ries of noir novels set in Miami Beach in
the early 1950s. I've completed two of
them so far. We'll see what the future
brings.
WTT: Thanks for your time, Mike. Best
of luck to you. By the way, I'm looking
forward to reading the new series. I
don't know if you know, but as a kid I
actually lived in Miami in 1950.
“The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious,
as a rule, is the motive.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
W INTER 2019
P AGE 18
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE