Becoming a writer

Richard Condon had worked as a film publicist before he became a writer. In this interview he is asked if his transition to becoming a writer was easy...

"Oh yes. I put everything else out of my mind and that's just what I was going to do. We had a big apartment at the old Apthorp in New York, which was a square block from West End Avenue to Broadway and it had a big courtyard in the centre and a kind of a garden. A really old-fashioned, marvellous apartment with fourteen foot ceilings and all that.

And way in the back of the apartment was a maid's room, so we just transformed that into an office and I stayed in there all day. In those days I would do twelve pages a day. Well, I did a book in five months, and I got really lucky; I got a hard cover publisher and immediately sold the paperback rights. The Book of the Month Club took it. And it was sold to Hollywood, so I never had to look back."

That was The Oldest Confession."