This question comes from a community discussion on a website called Goodreads, which is an interesting website for anyone interested in books, whether you are an author or reader. Specifically, the thread began with the question, “Are we writing for the wrong reason?” The thread’s author was wondering if writing for the sake of making money was a “wrong” motivation. My answer to that is, It depends.

Throughout my career, I have written for documentary film productions, television news, television magazine-style shows, magazines, newspapers, information-based websites, and commercial websites. This is how I made my living. My primary motivation has always been to inform my viewers and readers in an accurate and unbiased way, but yes, I did this work for money. I make no excuses or apologies for that. Everyone does their job for money. It is the very definition of a job.

But now I find myself in a different place in life. The words I plunk out on a keyboard these days are not aimed at generating income. The books I write will and do make some money, but that’s not even part of the motivation for me now. I write because I have to. It is the very essence of what makes me, well, Me.

By virtue of my career as a journalist, I have had a front row seat to the human condition around the world under nearly every circumstance imaginable. From war zones, to massive celebrations, to the remorseful pain a birth mother feels years after having given up a child, to the callous disregard of a man who just killed five people. I have been in the company of the greatest of the great and the worst of the worst. I have recorded their stories, and shared them with the world. I have preserved their moments for generations to come. I have been very lucky to have had the most amazing career imaginable, and managed to live long enough to tell this story.

There’s an old saying in newsrooms that goes “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” It is, of course, said in jest. It is a fact-tellers lament that their story-telling is constrained by the truth. But now, after decades as a journalist striving to preserve that truth, I have a different story to tell. I am breaking away from the facts in order to let my imagination wander.

That’s not something a journalist gets to do, but a novelist does. It is a wonderful freedom of expression that I have denied myself all these years. I’m still beginning my stories with a true story, perhaps because that’s all I know how to do. But after providing a brief synopsis of a true story, I let that story take over and tell itself in the direction it wants to go.

In Murdered For Nothing, I wrote about a true series of crimes that happened in Rochester, New York when I was a young journalist there. The Prologue and Epilogue tell the true story. The body of the book is purely a story told because I had to get it out of my head.

In the book I am currently writing, a couple of the characters from that book return to explore another true crime. This crime took place in New York City a few years ago, and the armored truck robbery netted nearly two-million dollars without the truck’s guards even knowing it had happened.

So, Why am I writing it? I am writing it because, out of that moment of opportunity, I saw an entire story unfold in my mind, and I want to share it with you. No longer fettered by fact, but still inspired by it, I have a tale to spin. And, wow, you’re gonna love it!