Byline: Neasa MacErlean
ROBERT CRAIS has lived the American dream. The
working-class
son of an oil worker and a police officer,
Crais left the city of Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, at the age of 22 'with a few
dollars' to become a writer
in Los Angeles. He knew no one in LA and had
no contacts in Hollywood
but became a prime-time TV script writer and
then an extremely successful
writer of thrillers. UK publishers Orion plan
a major publicity campaign this
summer when his ninth novel, Demolition Angel,
is published here.
His own story even sounds like a tense novel.
To pay the rent, he got a job
in an office mail room but spent his breaks writing.
To teach himself the
scriptwriting trade, he bought second-hand scripts
and spent nights analysing
TV programmes looking at plot structure, scene
length and characterisation.
He broke through very quickly, and his second
script was accepted for the
Seventies cop show Baretta. Over the next nine
years, he was a well-known
TV writer, producing scripts for Quincy, LA Law,
Hill Street Blues, Miami
Vice and others. But, finally, he realised that
he found TV work 'unsatisfying'
and he wanted the deeper, more complicated challenge
of full-length novels.
'I took the year off, 1986, and went to the mountains
and wrote. I was
terrified. I didn't know if I could write 400-500
page novels. The most I had
written before was 60 pages. And I had a family
too a wife and daughter.'
They had just enough money to last them a year.
'We had enough money
if we were frugal but after a year we'd be out.
It went right down to the
wire. It took me the entire time to write
The Monkey's Raincoat. In the
last month, we were in dire straits financially
and I had to scramble around
for TV script work before the book came
out.' It was an artistic success
but did not provide immediate riches. But
Crais, now 46, earned enough
to keep going.
He is now eight books on and more successful with
each of his LA-set stories
involving private investigator Elvis Cole.
Many writers find the gap between creative writing
and management of their
finances too big to jump and most are rather
bored by money. So Crais is
unusual in taking a keen interest. While his
wife manages their cash flow, he
deals with the investments. 'On my stock portfolio,
I look for excellent
companies that I can expect a good return on
and I buy them for the long
return. I concentrate on mutual funds. I think
I'm a sensible investor.
I'm not a penny stock person. And I'm not a day
trader.'
He and his wife are also collectors of Disneyana
(a symptom of his film
fascination), art works and books. 'Most of it
has appreciated in value,' he
says. 'But I don't see a time when we will be
selling them for profit.'
Fans have a surprise in store this summer when
Demolition Angel appears.
After 15 years of writing from a male perspective,
Crais has chosen a female
heroine 'bomb victim and tenacious detective
Carole Starkey'. He says: 'Every
day was an adventure, trying to think as she
would think.'