Q. When did you start writing fiction?

A. In 1997 while I was in working in a nursing home. I became a voracious reader during this period and just loved what I was reading. I began scribbling back then, and my first novel, Presidential Donor, started to take shape.

Q. How do you develop storylines and ideas for your novels?

A. The books I write are not about realism; they're about nightmares, not literal nightmares, but nightmares I feel about the world.

Skin Deep is an interesting book because when an author writes a series like the Scarpetta series or the Grafton series, one is always faced with this obstacle that one is doing the same book over and over again. So I challenged myself to do something really adventurous. To that end, I tried to make each of my books very different, and with Skin Deep I did something completely different by making the protagonist just as twisted as the villian. It really got me pumped up about what I can pull off in a work of fiction. And, readers are coming back with a very positive response to it, so obviously it worked.

Q. It gives you a whole new perspective —

A. Yeah, it's a surprise for readers, it's not the same old, same old. It refreshes them when a writer is trying to stretch and break a little new ground.

Q. So getting back to your ideas for stories, you talk about dreams, are these actual dreams that you've had?

A. No, they're just general feelings. I mean, nowadays, it can be frightening just to go out and take a walk. Anything that scares me a little can seed an idea for a story. I can feel it when it's working, and I know that I am in touch with something that is very exciting or romantic or whatever it's supposed to be.

Q. When you're working on one of your novels, do you have a set of routines or rituals you follow or go through?

A. I have an evolved series of routines. Over the years, at least with respect to thrillers, I've become very confident. I know that somehow I'm going to get it right, that somehow the ending is going to come to me. I guess a little of that is, yes, I have developed some rituals.

One thing I do is work on two or three projects at a time. If I see I'm getting nowhere with a certain storyline, I'll put it up and work on another. On each draft, I work on something in particular. For example, I might work on a couple of characters who I don't think are rich enough or I might work on plot twists, and then on a couple of drafts I might just work on the writing itself. Early on, I just work on the story.

Q. How long does it take you to write a book start to finish?

A. About six months, it depends, it might be a little less, it might be a little more.

Q. Did you create the character of Holland Carter first or develop the plot of his first case in Diencephalon?

A. I was at the movies, where they show these little factoids on screen before the movie starts, and they had a thing about H.H. Holmes, a notorious seriel killer from Chicago during the last century. And that started me thinking about sending Carter to Chicago to battle a serial killer. With my medical background, it just mushroomed from there.

Q. Will you ever create a new series protagonist?

A. At some point I'd like to develop another hero figure, but it's hard for me to top Carter in a lot of ways because he's extremely human and very sensitive. He is raising his daughter by himself, he has this terrific relationship with his sister. He chooses to live in a tough part of town, even though he doesn't have to. He's raised himself up and has gotten a very good education. He's also larger than life in being this swashbuckling heroic kind of guy, and he's genuinely a good person, too. The idea of creating a larger than life heroic detective, to me, was interesting. And as I created Carter, I explored the question of can I do it and still put enough humanity in him that even though the character is larger than life, readers will be able to identify with him and his family.

 

Q. Why did you chose Washington, DC as the backdrop for Skin Deep?

A. I like Washington. It's a very interesting, humorous, and exciting city. I'm originally from there, so it felt familiar to me, which made setting the scenes easier.When you think about writing, there are so many things that can realistically happen there.  There are so many possibilities, and they're all credible out of that locale, so that was attractive to me. Plus, I personally really like Washington, it's an interesting, cool city.

Q. How was your first book, Skin Deep, published? What was the process you went through?

A. I sent it to one publisher, and they held it for six months, which at first I thought was sort of hopeful, but then they turned it down. Then I read about a publisher who had taken on some first-time writers. I sent the manuscript over to them, and two days later they called back. My first thought was, they're rejecting the book already, but they said they loved it. Actually, Presidential Donor was the first novel I had written, but I submitted Skin Deep before it because I thought it might sell easier. Once Skin Deep started selling well, they wanted to publish Presidential Donor.

Q. Let's talk about Presidential Donor a little bit, how do you compare it to some of the other Bill Clem novels?

A. The big thing was taking the chance of writing something with political intrigue. If you think about it and really analyze the book, it's extremely complicated in terms of the structure. And yet it reads very easily and reads very simply. I'm really happy that I could take something potentially complex and messy and make it so clean. I think it really pumps along, it's fresh. I might like it the best of all of my books, and it definitely is the most romantic. To write a book that's a big thriller, and scary a lot of times, and yet be able to incorporate the romance where people aren't sort of wanting to skim ahead, is great. I think the romance works real well, and I think readers are extremely involved. 

Q. Will you tell us a little bit about the editing process you go through?

A. One of the things I'll do when I submit a manuscript is ask the editor to send me his notes and criticisms before we do the final edit. This allows me time to read them over, get really angry at the editor for being so insensitive and missing everything. Slowly over the next 24 hours, I'll start to think "Well, that was a good point, and that was a good point," and along the way you get to be more objective about it. But some of the things I'll look at and say, "That's true. That may not be the solution, but the criticism is valid. And I find it really useful to get the criticism and then decide over time which part of it is valid, and which parts can be incorporated to make a better book.

Q. What kind of research do you do for your books?

A. Very little because I try to write about things with which I'm familiar. I like to write fiction as fiction. In other words if I'm writing about a bizarre disease in one of my medical thrillers, it might be a real disease or it might be something I made up. The trick though is in the details. To make it so convincing that you don't know whether it's fact or fiction.

Q. Do you feel you've established a certain style in your writing with shorter chapters and quick cutting action?

A. Yes. A lot of readers like the shorter chapters.  People are really busy and they come home at night and are faced with a forty page chapter and think, "I can't do that right now." Whereas with my thrillers, they'll think, "Oh, 3 pages, I can do that," and then they go on to one more chapter then another and so on. I think the shorter chapters are conducive to that sort of reading experience. When I sat down to write the first book, I consciously set out to make it the fastest-paced thing I could ever put on paper. I wanted to differentiate it from what was already out there, and the short chapters are something I decided to do consciously. They really are addictive.

Q. In terms of influences on you as a writer, who or what do you count as your influences?

A. Ernest Hemingway because of his terse style. Steinbeck, any of the greats.

Q. What do you enjoy reading?

A. I read a lot of fiction, I don't read as much non-fiction. I wish that more non-fiction was told from a storytellers point of view. A lot of people read non-fiction because they want to pretend they're smart because they have all of these facts. But most people don't want to read a story that way. I dislike reading nineteen pages about a person's grandmother unless that part of the book is really germane to how that person turned out. This pushes me away from a lot of non-fiction. Occasionally I'll read something like Barbarians at the Gate or Angela's Ashes which were both so well-written.

Q. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

A. Every once in a while someone asks me, "Can you give me any ideas on writing or how I may write a better book?" One of the suggestions I make is to take the best story you have, that you know works for you when you tell it, and write it down. Chances are it has a really good beginning, a really good ending, and you've weeded out all of the extraneous stuff. The detail that you have is really relevant to the story and makes it work better. For the kind of writing that I do, that's how I do it. I don't want the extraneous stuff, I just want to mainline to the heart of story.

Q. If you had to sum up the Clem medical thrillers for new readers, what would you tell them?

A. The real story with these books is what moves them. They're very fast reads. When someone reads one, a very high proportion of readers goes on to the next. The books are somewhat addictive. I think it's a lot of different compelling reasons as to why a lot of readers really like them, I think they grow on people.

Q. If there was anything you could change about the trajectory of your career what would that be?

A. I would like it all to have happened when I was 33, I would like to be 35 right now instead of 52.