Writing Without a Net

George Pelecanos fills Robert Birnbaum in on the origins of Hard Revolution:

I got to the story by writing those three contemporary [Derek] Strange novels. The more I wrote about him, the more clues I dropped into those books about his past. I was trying to find out for myself where it was going to go. When I finished Soul Circus, I had a pretty good idea because I had worked that drug lord Randall Oliver for two books into the narrative and I knew that everything was going to hinge on the people that came before him – who were going to connect to Strange. It’s all an accident. I didn’t plan anything.