A Word on Words; 2205; Steve Womack

lowenstein associate a word also delving into the world of books and their offers this week steve womack song were wrong your host for a word on where he has precisely hit on her once again welcome

to world wars visiting i'm heading back an old friend of an author of jack lynch mysteries seawall boulevard or the word thank you great then you back to talk about her software bomb computer science not science fiction computer science fiction software bomb we begin with the radio royale water navy won a woman from haiti earlier i had a lot of fun with her you begin with it wouldn't talk about well she sort of where a border all in the book except that you make so with excellent odds of an audience it sort of little subplot on through and i became fascinated with the notion of the slightly larger venue royale is about a sixty five year old woman who has a taste for college undergraduate boys and she sees she said this is young man and her husband is dead and she's getting by on on a couple hundred bucks a month social security and

as a result of the computer espionage that takes place in the book she opened her bank statement one day to find that she's got something like six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the bank the only thing that i could have made that morning happier for her know that some of the only thing that could have made the night before a happier for her skin was to wake up the next morning found out she was six of them both richard and it worked and it worked it worked for and he thought he might be overblown when job in a bank statement but she worries about that every month not anymore she is she at the at the end of the book out on is giving away too much on the sides not to do the right thing but a lot of it a crime pays yes and mr kessler well very well yet but i mean she committed no crime she took she simply took the money that wound up in a backgammon where she closed her checking account that's right and left the country now let's talk about jack lynch

quote fugitive close quote not really running away from from the war and then california comes back home and to reestablish himself problems with it an apartment and use an interview with trivia of life again re establish with vested in and bombs and come on the health care in gets back into his life if you and i thought you were going back into that environment now jack we should say to our audience is no fan of your i mean you've written about jack lynch for this talk a little bit about jack background a white collar professional public relations consultant who used to work for a bank the first interstate bank of louisiana or the failed as it's called in the book a couple of times and at that the jack lynch books that this is the third one this fairly dark jack serve ajax a person is haunted by his past he's handsome sum some

bad things happened to him in the past has had a lot of heartbreak a lot of failed relationships a lot of people that he's that he's loved and been close to him and wound up either being not what he thought they were or where they've met know a sad and tragic end and he comes back to new orleans in the software bond after nursing his dying mother in california and is trying to pull his life back together and what i wanted to do with this book of come in a circle with jack in the first book which was murphy's for jack sort of on top of the world and at the end of the at the end of the book he sees his world fall apart continues to the next book is trying to put itself back together and then the software bombed i think of these kind of completing the circle so there wont be a sequel to the two siegel well when i thought when i was in the middle of the software bomb i kept thinking that there's no way i could do another jack lynch book because i felt like i was just drowning in the character now that i've had some

some perspective and a couple of talks with my literary agent my editor i think will eventually we will eventually see another well i think it will i think you're gone by and the only way you get rid of it and he wanted to kill if you kill you will be able to write about a minimal but i can tell you like an idea as megan i'm intrigued by he's in a lot of ways the dark side of me i think all fiction writers on the hottest the characters come out of them when he was a much darker energies for many years in the sport he skis in this book is almost word shining armor and those are in a couple places year and i know now but what about in a moment they may have an interesting relationship if they were the same age that probably would've wound up being lovers and sang together there's some kind of a connection they have i think it's probably a connection that jack has been unable to make with with the

other women in his life in a sort of transcend romance and transcends attraction they are of their time locked together at the cut despite themselves when you did you love life he meets of all things a phd as frank no psychiatrist and gone it i had a number of readers and and several friends who said if you're going to write another jack lynch book could you give him a love interest this time a dozen die in the book and she doesn't in fact they are there together and give on their way to having a fairly normal relationship that's the implication will stay on but he did finally sees it will say i know i mean you just tell me you're coming back to jack eventually is going to be a sequel and we'll find out whether jack and shrink pursue his love life all in this quite lovely at this point were great and in this book he

solves a lot of problems not the least which are his financial problems and it would kind of be interesting for me to find out what happens to a person like this who does find some success well yes to the mayonnaise is true at a royale the vernon were her carrie henn over pj campbell pj being the shrine the shrine publisher of bar where the names come from i just i think i have a lot of trouble naming care is a lot of pro ally gupton before for a bank vice president in charge of data processing somehow harald gupton said data processing and i'm a royale said sixty five euro a nymphomaniac and ma ma i don't know love

i don't the royal navy and the new orleans saints and i i just i'd added burden were marine vernon warmer so being a bit it's almost unanimous the way we use it was kind of a joke you're actually a warmer of course been a computer or technical term but also vernon warmer was a character in the movie animal house and the house are played around with that connection one of the characters in this book is obsessed with the movie analysts talk about the strike talk about those problems of naming characters and books and you know i talked about this once before i was always a great fan of robert penn warren and and i've i like to think sort of and not do with politics in the dynamics of relationships have have been influenced by him a lot of realignment of his work and especially all the king's men wear his character's name was jack burden and that's almost a subconscious

that the burden as an anchor i did nobody believes mean when i tell this but i was well into the second jack lynch book before there's this subconscious implications of the main village it came up in fact lynch was the last name of my roommate in boarding school and it are a good job and i can i borrow that island and never i struggle with names that character sometimes wind up with two or three different times before they finally settle with one but there always seems to be in a significant characters in the book some time a weird psychological connection you must worry i would think as of his office to where the arrows name has visibly heroic rein in weather of villains name might not give away is really before you raise the curtain on the crop you must worry that names of characters not be sold a lot of names

for fear of confusing the reader rob jackson and johnson sample two different places in the book might be mistaken his route as one of them actually many things i worry about in the process of writing fiction i find it a tremendously anxiety inducing grossness the names picked well writing fiction in general but taking names on a lot of times i'd i soak i don't catch similarities between characters names and sometimes that they have one of with the same initials are similar sounding names i have to go back and rewrite and heading to work on the cost well let's get back to jack and to find his way through these days maybe you know the lawyer in and as one hell of a problem yes the problem is that the bank is being shaken down by a person who has planted a software bob and

matt talk about research it must've taken i know because i know you that you are user friendly with technology well and to put it mildly and i die i'd like to work with computers and ten for do a lot and i did do a lot of research i've been collecting articles is in effect for several years on the problems of commit computer espionage and i think that whole area of white collar crime is something that the other that the public as one of the characters says the polish not really aware of it because you can't see it it's not you're not being the moderate held at the gun point there's nobody burbling your house but in fact the problems of that kind of theft in this in this country are our tremendous and and it's a it's a big unseen terrible black thing on this one scene in there where you have that you're going to visit a friend of his who was a prosecutor and says you know what you all do mummies is fussing up what what his real mission is avocado ask about what you all

do and prosecutors said nyet much not much they can do much and parlay is that the prosecutors themselves quite often i like many people in the public view of the computer and that part that that whole process that scene in the courtroom with the prosecutor was also my ongoing love hate affair with new orleans when i started writing software bomb i have not been back to new orleans for fifteen and i decided that i could write another book set in the worlds of not going someone gonna do well as a writer one of them breakfast for three weeks and just live down there and tried to get to know the city again and probably twenty five or half actually added of our house where i had mentally picture living but new ones is a very troubled city it's the

last few years have not been kind to it that the crime rate down there is just terrible the perception among the people who live there is that it is that was always sort of in a state of decay that's reported strong but it's in iowa state of real deterioration in some respects and the economy down there being as tough as it is a lot of the government officials are really depending on the state lottery legalize gambling in the really the world's largest casino at the foot of canal street and they're really depending on on this to tint to infuse new blood into the city and the moral implications of depending of states depending on the advice of its citizenry in order to survive it was something i wanted to play with as well they carry into the story you have the american gaming company headed by carrying an hour that's the company that's designated to run the lottery

and that ends another element the chemistry or devolve well louisiana is unusual in that it it it doesn't run its own lottery they subcontract of the operation a lottery to a private company and there was a tremendous amount of political wheeling and dealing and who got contracts and the lottery commission members how much they were going to get paid at first they were going to do the job for free but that is they signed on that wound up being the highest paid lottery commission members in the country and there were some there were some i we talking real life old rely not just not those awkward on the right and when i was down and in the two one universe online donate edwards louisiana yes exactly long of louisiana it's not exactly exactly so when i was down in the tulane library or rolling for years' worth of microfilm of the times picayune at it and researching articles on the lottery i got a sense of how how how convoluted this was going to be and of course the convoluted us and the complexity of it

makes the pickings all that much better you know i'll remember one of the great alliance the girl along and he was talking about himself and one of his opponents in the race for governor and said my fear that it would be going in and because both you know when i was a newspaper reporter new orleans we used to joke that she can run for public office and the wheezing analysts are under federal indictment know what it is but when that when edwin edwards ran for governor this last time he and i'd i'd heard this i didn't believe it until i read it and we can a monthly in a speech that he made while running for governor he said if you elected this time but what was it this arm on the left is sort of invest and i thought that while most revealing moments in politics this country with a knife and larry romo was elected and gareth edwards said in a

moment of almost abject confession in conceding victory with a wonderful television drama the real life drama said i remember when i was like buddy roemer i remember the days of my young idealism and i congratulate him an eel have my elderly was a wonderful speech from a problem from a former dublin for a moment of contract will and he's he's cured of that however by the ensuing four years yes yes and of course buddy roemer was was chewed up in the politics of the poor that just was not going to get back again to ensure the american gaming commission and the software bomb that buried in how the plants by one one morning i guess jack isn't the shower scene and pj is close by with a towel and he hears that move but only a true he hears the

one of the the vice president in charge of the process in whom he suspects of being involved in the politically corrupt system that were the lottery contract has been murder of the pain and i guess by gunshot he has he has met met his doom fifth and that opens up a whole different level of violence in the novel a whole different level of it criminal activity a part of it frankly on it in the just the technical writing of the book i was three hundred and fifty manuscript pages into a murder mystery and i realize no one had been killed yet so i had to do something about that as one at a public relations and once again is forced to sort of his own private detective and that's what jack really turns out to be in this huge more particularly as a late night he doesn't know where he's going but he just knows that he's going to enter the p johnson and starts pulling friends lucinda and is trying to see where they lead and in the process he is

so against saints may define himself the main he's four years old he won a fallen loved them won iowa human relationships wise hughes is a man on a violent emotion while his as allusions are shattered and his aspirations are gone and he he just wants to melt back into the city and can't find that level of security and comfort that it once had their court can't do it nothing fits for let's talk about this whole area a computer bomb i said that i knew you were a user friendly but it takes a good deal more knowledge about the technology to create this sought the sort of fictional what the challenge was that for any body writes fiction about computers

is to to have enough detail on enough technical information to lend to lend an air of authenticity but not so much that he wore or lose a reader because law people have a passion for this stuff they're not interested in the technical aspects the way i die do this case was that my editor and new york is it is not a computer person she she's told i thought a typewriter and so i kind of bounced the copy of her and an end what's a thin line between if i had friends who work and data processing departments they would pick it up and go with yeah that could happen that would have been but it isn't and not lose people when it's really up almost of the technical aspects of it are almost a side issue you know i know i do the very very upset those different money more water is by asking

about me bobbing in the names of people oh i i know i've got a new now but martin and their people on the bike thing marty as the culprit in what is he was an interesting characters well and it is his role is basically sort of at the data prices are one of a several data processing rooms that that an end and he's so have the many strikes me some dough the figure in the eyes of the bankers and at that market has their and of martin mcdonagh's enough to pay for it maybe it's a glitch in the system but really look like martin has been part of for what is a bad at war has added to the bed and they go on and they tell us that he doesn't he's the he's a smart alec that he's got a very quick short mouth and he's in he's an angry young man he doesn't like that he has no business working for a corporation he he's a he be much better off as when these lunatic eccentric

software designers who goes on to make eight billion dollars microsoft and that's really where he should be but for some reason rather he felt like he should get a legitimate job a nine to find that tie job and he doesn't fit in all he has had any business being there and builds up a lot of resentment within the people in the prisons doesn't fit into corporate ski up at all know the other thing that i think i thought about it but he wasn't he wasn't could a manatee what if he had been more eccentric and more doll and that's what i was sort of i didn't dislike him in the choir was not suspicious of i'm a little suspicious i mean you write me a little bit suspicious but i but i knew that there were some where we're going to find the villain some world and then he had to be he had to be somewhere else on it would have been martin really as a

character i didn't have the capacity to pull this off and get away with it he doesn't really have the ego he's basically angry and insecure and a little neurotic and consequently doesn't heed he doesn't have that faith that he can pull it off the person of course in the book it does return to have planted this this notion of a software bomb i really thought of italy and he's getting away with it you did you did tremendous ego involved in that level of car ride last day to share with the audience the crime because it's it's quite a concert where the idea come from hamlet evolve well our people this gets into some of the technical aspects of it but there are there people to see here there's a lot of talk about computer viruses and it actually their computer viruses there are computer worms and an trojan horses they're called and they're different technical terms terms

for ways that software designers can build a little side access is and they're programs it into the software that that the user doesn't know about and doesn't have access to its just little things they know that you don't and the way that that software programs are are damaged sabotaged i'm this way is is for someone who can break in for one of these little sideways and a warm for instance is something that duplicate itself and doesn't really can't doesn't really destroy software as much as it starts eating up the computer's power is innocent technical stuff with the notion of a soft word bomb that it's hidden and planted actually in data files not even in soft it's hidden in a checking account in the checking account of a dead person is where the bombers actually is actually hidden i don't know their work i make it up in your hair and eyes of accessing

for discovery which is sort of what what a good jacket martin ultimately can see marty's jacket and to make that up too i mean he had a bomb and to find out yet to make up a way to get to get here yet to find jacqueline moore because jackson a computer literate i know a lot of the ways that i was able to keep the technical side down as is i would have characters explain things to jackie in terms that he understood the readers would learn as well would pick up on what's going on jack uses more his his old skills as a reporter to sort of figure out how this was done and he did he's again he's not a technical person so now buford comes in you don't want there was a confrontation with jacquie says you

will and you know you're not cleared ryan get out here and i will tell you it's much much less let the audience by the software bomb us even while mug and then find out and find out about joe buford but but i i would have to say not knowing that you made a concept up is quite believable good right and ed ferrara know it's a perfectly valid concept and it in fact is has been done for we know that they are for all that is by those avenues of access to the computer on financial institutions or tell the time hackers get in hackers transfer everybody's worried about and an n and the transfer of funds has resulted in a number of criminal prosecutions experts estimate the billions of dollars lost each year about

this is that maybe the camera could come in on the comedy little closer maybe you like that color do i like it here i was finally it's a fairly new orleans in time i like it too but it didn't say software bug in a way that some on the ground the bottom but it didn't say so horrible and i wondered how knowing how publishers sometimes and i was right in one of the opening as eva no as a matter fact i i didn't see the cover until it impinges on they sent me on a comp of it as a courtesy but i thought that for me it works because he had the notion of a computer on the frog well that's the other point of the idea of the arch you see new orleans there that's it says it wants the thing you must look a little

closer to realize that you're really looking out on as a computer terminals green and that the keyboard is there in front of you what's the next book i've got as you know i've got another series of books that i'm working on that set in nashville and seventies nashville and fact and the next one in that series will be out in november of the sheer and it's called torch tambo the port town booty and it's it's loosely based on the essential arsonist if you remember that fellow a couple years ago was running around is natural setting fires everything i do remember it so that that set off these are software bob has been our guest on a word on words your host has been dancing and all of this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville fb