QUESTIONS FROM READERS

Polishpen@aol.com: How and why did you choose this particular title for the book?

Joseph Finder: Good, tough question --- I don't know, it came into my head when I was starting the book. It evoked the mood I was trying to capture, the feeling Adam has when he doesn't know who's on his side and who's out to get him.

john@lightingcontrolsales.com: Early last year I suggested to a friend of mine that he buy as many signed copies of the first printing of THE DA VINCI CODE that he could lay his hands on. He took my advice and for six months now he's been selling them at a 300% mark-up. I've been kicking myself in the butt ever since. Will you be signing copies of PARANOIA that I can buy from the publisher?

Joseph Finder: Really? Even despite the fact that Doubleday did 225,000 copies in its first printing of DVC? Amazing. Sure, John, if you want to buy copies of the first printing (a lot, but a lot less than that) directly from the publisher, I'm sure you can --- check on their website. And I'm happy to sign them all for you!

Remacom@aol.com: 1) Which branch of American Intelligence did you work for? 2) Have you ever been involved in corporate or industrial espionage? 3) How long does it usually take you to complete a novel? 4) Did you like the film that was made from HIGH CRIMES? Were there a lot of changes from your original plot?

Joseph Finder: I didn't work for American intelligence.

No, I have not.

About a year, between research, plotting and writing. The writing itself usually takes only 4 months or so.

I do like it. There were a number of changes, including the fact that in the movie Claire doesn't have a daughter, and her husband Tom is not a money manager (as in the book) but a carpenter. I wish they'd kept the daughter, but most of the changes made sense to me. After all, they had to collapse a 400-page book into an hour and a half of screen time.

robert.muir@allianceoneinc.com: Having only read PARANOIA from your body of work, I note, with some interest, the use of technology and, in particular, emerging trends in the field (the optical chip). Do you have an interest or background in technology and can we expect to see technology woven into future novels?

Joseph Finder: Yes, technology has been a big part of my novels since THE ZERO HOUR and will no doubt remain a part of them going forward. I think technology is increasingly interesting and important, and is transforming our way of life. So it should be part of our fiction too, I think.

shuwanna@cswnet.com: How many of these characters have you actually met in corporate America?

Joseph Finder: Ah, interesting question. Practically all of them. They're all based on real people I've met.

Newcrain@aol.com: 1) Have you worked inside a corporation? 2) Did you have the whole plot worked out and outlined in advance, or do you create the plot twists as you write? 3) Do you really believe everybody in Corporate America is a crook?!!!

Joseph Finder: No, never. That's maybe why I was so fascinated by it. People who work in corporations would ask me, while I was asking them questions, what could possibly be so interesting here? But I was an outsider, functioning almost as an anthropologist.

See my answer in the Bookreporter.com interview. I work out most of the plot in advance. But rarely --- as happened with PARANOIA --- a great plot twist comes to me while I'm writing.

No way. No more than John Grisham believes everyone in the law profession secretly works for the Mafia or is a scam artist. But gosh, seems to me there have been a couple of recent cases that make you stop and think --- Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Strong Funds, Computer Associates, Merrill Lynch, to name just a few. There's a lot of bad stuff going on in corporations these days, or maybe it's that there's always been bad stuff going on but no one was paying attention. That said, lots of friends of mine work in the corporate world --- many of them helped with the research. A friend of mine who's the CFO of one of the biggest high-tech companies in the country has read PARANOIA and loves it. Most of my readers from corporate America understand that the story I've told in PARANOIA is not reality. It's exaggerated. That's why they call it fiction.

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