The Human Pool

TWENTY-NINE PALMS, CALIFORNIA,

THE PRESENT

Here's the problem. I wrote this book once the way I was told to, as fiction, to a formula: sex by page such-and-such, with guns to follow. 'Tell it like it was,' my then editors urged. 'Make the reader stand next to you.' The thing is, nobody else's description, or the movies, prepare you for what it's like when it happens to you, and as for the one-liner that sold the story -- My Trip to Genocide Hell -- it belittles the facts and leaves me feeling ashamed. What they wanted was unimportant compared to the near invisible details which do the real damage.

The first time, I wrote it in the third person, cutting out the history and the shuttling between different characters. Unfortunately, it meant losing most of Hoover's diary. Being both old and a messy organiser, Hoover was ... read full excerpt from The Human Pool ebook