What inspired you to write The Last Resort?
I’m watching the business I’ve been in throughout my career slide toward oblivion. We take radio for granted, but commercial over-the-air broadcasting has been with us less than 100 years and many old businesses have decayed or died in that time. Not many stagecoach drivers or telegraph operators wanted these days. There are serious questions as to whether the commercial radio business model still works. When I wrote “FM”, it was a lament about the demise of progressive radio. Now the AM band is in deep trouble and FM may not be far behind.
Why?
Debt, largely, plus new technology. When these huge conglomerates were allowed to buy virtually as many stations as they wanted, they took on tremendous debt. It’s like buying a house with a huge mortgage, figuring your paycheck will increase by ten per cent a year to cover your nut. When it doesn’t, you’re underwater.
Does The Last Resort offer any solutions?
It’s fiction and the solutions that work in Riley King’s world may not work in the real one. But yes, many have speculated that if the big companies go under and sell for pennies on the dollar, small owners could make a go of it with responsible management. It’s possible, but a lot of things would have to fall into place.
Many of the radio characters in the book seem based on real people you’ve worked with.
That will be the fun of it for readers, trying to figure out who is real and who is totally a work of imagination. I do refer to Mike and the Mad Dog, real people, but the duo in this book is not based on Mike or Chris. I know some will suspect Sid Rosenberg is Wally, but that is not the case.
There are many continuing characters from Something of the Night and Indian Summer. Does the reader need to read those to understand who they are?
Obviously, I would like them to read those books but I’ve been careful to make each novel in the series stand on its own. It’s tricky because you can’t burden the new reader with too much back story, and even if one has read the others, it may have been a year or two prior and you can’t expect the reader to remember every detail. Hell, even I can’t. But new readers to the series can pick up The Last Resort and if they like it, they can go back and read the others.
What’s next for King and Stone?
The Punch List is the next title. It originally was going to be out before The Last Resort, but my friend, the great writer Reed Farrel Coleman, made the case that I should do a pure radio book first and this one fit the bill. The Punch List will be re-edited as a result but it’ s nearly done and I’m almost through with the one after that, tentatively titled An American Storm.
You must enjoy sprinkling rock references through the book.
Very much. There are obvious ones, actual quotations, mostly from Stone. But there are also a whole lot of subtle ones. The Last Resort is a great Eagles song, and there is one character whose background tracks almost exactly with that song. I think readers will enjoy figuring out who that is.
And finally, dog lovers will find Bosco, the golden retriever, a hoot.
Bosco will always be part of Riley’s life. Women and friends may come and go, but his loyal canine will stand by him through thick and thin.
