How did you become a writer?

I started writing as a college reporter at The Daily Tar Heel at UNC, and from there I spent the next twenty or so years meandering through various newspaper jobs until the winter of '94, when I began writing my first novel, shortly after returning from a reporting trip to the besieged city of Sarajevo. I suppose I'd finally concluded that even the long, narrative pieces I was writing for the Baltimore Sun could no longer encompass all the vivid material that had piled up in my notebooks, or the ideas that were tumbling in my head. It took a while for me to get comfortable with the idea of letting my imagination take the helm whenever I sat down to write, but otherwise the transition to fiction was fairly smooth.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

Carol Moloney, a high school teacher who turned me into a voracious binge reader by introducing me to the novels of Kurt Vonnegut at age fifteen; Claudia Stillman, a freshman English instructor at UNC who let me know right away that the bullshitting and imprecise writing habits of a lazy, under-achieving high schooler would no longer be acceptable; Jim Shumaker, a journalism professor who was an evangelist of clarity and simplicty; and, in one way or another, just about every writer I've ever read. And as long as you keep reading, the learning never stops.

When and where do you write?

Mornings are my most productive time, and as I move ever deeper into a novel my work days lengthen and become increasingly productive, increasingly absorbing. Once I'm past the halfway mark it's the last thing I think about before sleep and my first thought upon waking. My basement office has big windows that overlook woods that change with the seasons, and it's quiet and private.

What are you working on now?

I just finished what I think is my best book yet (and I'm not one of those authors who reflexively says that about each successive novel). It's called Winter Work, and it's set about four months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The main character is an East German spymaster who's about to receive his last paycheck, and isn't even allowed back into the office to clean out his desk. His life and his secrets -- and those of his colleagues -- are up for grabs. And their former friends and foes (chiefly the Russians and the Americans) are eagerly vying for both. It's a shadowy and chaotic espionage marketplace, with plenty of twists, turns and intriguing personalities, and there's no guarantee of safe passage for anyone.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don't believe in writer's block. I do struggle sometimes to settle on an idea for my next book, but once I've made that decision I have no trouble beginning or continuing the writing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Make writing a daily habit, even if you're not yet certain you have something worthwhile to say. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

See above answer. Also, read as needily as if books were food and drink. And by all means, get outside of your comfort zone to spend time among people who aren't like you, even if only in the name of research, and in doing so be a careful listener, an observant watcher.

Dan Fesperman is the author of a dozen critically acclaimed novels of suspense, including The Cover Wife, which the New York Times called “a sharp, smart novel that hits fast and hard, its reverberations echoing after the last page is turned.” Previous books have won two Dagger awards in the UK and the Dashiell Hammett award in North America. His work is drawn from his own travels as an author and reporter, experiences which have taken him to three war zones and more than thirty countries. His next novel, Winter Work, will be published in the coming year by Alfred A. Knopf. He lives in Baltimore.