Peter Blauner is the author of nine novels, including Slow Motion Riot, winner of an Edgar Allan Poe award for best first novel from Mystery Writers of America, and The Intruder, a New York Times bestseller and a bestseller overseas. He began his career as a journalist for New York magazine in the 1980s and segued into writing fiction in the 1990s. He has been a staff writer for several television shows, including Law & Order: SVU and Blue Bloods. His new novel, Picture in the Sand, which spans sixty years and the distance from Hollywood to Cairo, was published in January, 2023 and is his first work of historical fiction.

Among other things, Peter and Carter discuss writing for television and how it differs from writing novels, the transition from journalism to fiction, and complications when writing historical fiction. At the end of their conversation, they make up a suspenseful story using a line from John Grisham’s The Rainmaker.