The start of the interview:
Elmore: Peter it seems to me that by the time you were in your 20’s, you and I were reading pretty much the same novels . I tRead the full Q & A.hink at that time you really began to read very seriously. Did any of those books influence you that you read, you know, over the last 20 years or so?
Peter: Yeah, absolutely. John D. McDonald. Ernest Hemingway of course. Robert Parker to a certain degree., His novels, were fun, I liked his main character. Charles Williford, James Lee Burke. Cormac McCarthy. Certainly influenced me.
Elmore: When did you start thinking about writing fiction?
Peter: I thought about it but never did anything about it. 10 years ago or so, I ended up writing a few scripts. Movie scripts. In fact, Quiver was originally written as a movie script. And I think when I was doing this, you said to me, “Why do you want to be a script writer? Being a script writer is like wanting to be a copilot. “ Which I think was a good smartass answer. And you were right, though. Because you’ve got to get in the head of the character. That’s what it’s all about. So I stopped writing scripts ‘cause nothing happened. It was kind of a dead end for me, even with your connections, and 5 years ago I started writing Quiver. Even after writing a few pages of it I realized that I liked it and I wanted to get good at it. And it was a fun, energizing experience.
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--Marshal Zeringue