Q&A with Nonfiction Author Dan Morse

Dan Morse is the author of “The Yoga Store Murder,” the true crime account of the lululemon athletica killing in Bethesda, Md., in 2011. Dan is a staff writer at The Washington Post, covering criminal justice in Montgomery County. Prior to working for The Washington Post, he worked for the Wall Street Journal and Baltimore Sun.

What’s the funniest/scariest/best interaction you’ve had with a fan?
The best: An email from a reader in update New York who said my book was the best book she’d ever read, and she sounded totally sane.

The worst: Inside a bookstore, a woman walked by my signing table, looked at my true-crime book about a murder and said, “No! No! No! Not on a beautiful day like this!” She darted away – deeper into the store, farther away from the beautiful weather, to look at other books!

What do you do when you have writer’s block?
I settle into the sofa with a fine-tipped Sharpie and a legal pad. I try not to concentrate too much on what I am writing, but instead try to appreciate how amazingly efficient ink can flow out of one of those things. I just let the Sharpie go, and don’t mess with it. And if the sun is down and the Sharpie would like me to get up to pour myself a cocktail, then by all means I listen to it, and return to the sofa. Then, an hour later, or the next day, I go back and see what the Sharpie produced. Sometimes, there’s OK stuff in all that ink — sentences and scenes and thoughts that I may not have formed if I had been in front of a keyboard with ready access to the backspace key.

What one book do you wish you’d written?
“The Poet” by Michael Connelly. It’s about a newspaper reporter who covers crime, like me. So in one sense I could have written the book, because I come across great material all the time. But in another sense—the one governed by reality—I could not have written the book, because it has lines like this: “My room was small and when I sat on the edge of the bed it sank at least half a foot, the other side rising by an equal amount with the accompanying protest of old springs.”

Why should people come listen to you talk about your book?
Two questions raised in my book are subjects that people seem to like talking about:

• What halts people from calling 911 even as they’re hearing screams and crashes next door?
• How do people who appear totally normal erupt in unimaginable violence?

My best book discussions have involved a lot of interaction with the audience.