Dave’s Comments (group member since Jun 01, 2009)

Dave’s comments from the Q&A with Dave Cullen group.

Thanks for all that, Kathy. It's great to hear Frank's work was highlighted in the ASBJ. And thanks very much for passing the copy of the book around so much. The more people who read it, the happier I am.

(I heard JK Rowling tell a story once about a kid who approached her at a signing with an incredibly beat-up copy of the book. He was embarrassed about it, but she was thrilled. This book has been READ! She said. And read and read and read. That's the best compliment you can pay an author. I could not agree more.

I think you're right that we can stop a lot of shooters--especially the more than 80% who TELL us they're going to do it--but we can never stop them all. No one can predict human behavior. People will always surprise us, some in terrible ways.

Kathy wrote: "Do you think communication between agencies is any better now? "

My sense is that yes, there has been a lot of improvement in a lot of cities and towns--they were shocked into the need--but each locality is different
That's mostly anecdotal information, though. I have not studied that, so I can't give you a solid answer.

Hi Martha. I'm glad to see people are finding it on the TWELVE site. Thanks for recommending it to your reading group--and for starting that program. We need more people encouraging reading.

Martha wrote: "Did you consider other voices such as using a reporters voice or one of the victims? Have you considered writing fiction next?..."


I tried out several voices before I got it right. I restarted it from scratch about five times. Maybe "tone" would be a better word than "voice." They were all my voice, but the tone and pace were very different. I'm not sure how to differentiate them.

I did not seriously consider using the victims' voices. I'm not sure what a reporter's voice is. If you mean like AP wire copy, blech! I hate that--I hate reading it--and don't even write news stories that way. One thing I loved about writing for Salon was that they encouraged me to write in my own voice, so I built on that.

Martha wrote: " how you were able to live with this for all these years? Did you ever think - No I do not want to live with this?..."

I think I should have said upthread that some of what got me through was finding joy in other places. I have a lot of good friends, and for the most part, made sure I kept an eye on keeping up those friendships. They really helped me. And I kept going to the gym, mostly, getting outside on my bike, and going dancing, which I love. You have to find joy other places. And writing also gives me great joy.

Yes, in the early years, I thought about stopping several times, and thought I had stopped. But in April 2004, I recommitted to doing the book, and never looked back since then.

Martha wrote: "And a publishing question - who found who? Did your publisher ask for the book? Did you find them after you decided to write a book?..."

Kind of both. I have a chronology upthread.

Denise wrote: "are you surprised that Dylan and Eric did not hurt/kill more people? ..."

Very. Eventually, I started hearing that even the victims' families. The plan was to kill hundreds, but they really blew it with the bombs, thank God. Then, they were apparently flummoxed. The could have just advanced on the building and opened fire, but they didn't. We can't be sure why, though with a more aggressive partner, I think Eric probably would have. The physical evidence is that Dylan was slow to get involved.

Second, would you say that Dylan and Eric were academically gifted? ..."

Yes. Dylan was in the gifted program (CHIPS) in grade school, and both were A students when they tried, but they often didn't make the effort.

what advice can you give parents and teachers who may be thinking that they know a potentially dangerous child? ..."

You can read the FBI report, which gives you very thorough criteria to evaluate in risk assessment. I have it linked on this page of my Columbine Guide, under #1:

http://davecullen.com/columbine/colum...

It's complicated, though, and I agree with the FBI that every parent and teacher is never going to get fluent in this. I agree with their rec that every school should get one person trained (beyond reading the report), who others in the school can turn to for help. Do you have someone like that designated in your school? Ask. You might.

I'm sorry about a few days away. I'll try to catch up today.

It also looks like it's easier on you guys if I repeat the question, so I'll go back to that format.

---

Shanna wrote: "I was surprised that it hadn't affected me very strongly when it happened, but was affecting me so strongly now, 10 years later. ..."

I've seen a lot of that. It seems like a lot of things, we deal with them when we're ready. Sometimes my mind isn't prepared to deal yet, or I'm just not that interested. But later, new experiences force me to reckon with it.

Thanks, Ryan. I've been thinking about them, too.

I owe you guys several answers, and I'll be back tomorrow with more.

Keiley,

Dylan got a prom date (Robyn asked him, though they went as friends). Eric did not. He joined them at the afterprom party.

They did not plan the attack for prom. They chose April 19, but then couldn't get all the ammo in time.

(There are various references to them mentioning other times/places as ideas for when they might conduct the attack, but they had lots of ideas. Sometimes they just batted ideas around. You have to be careful when your read/listen to their stuff to separate out the passing thoughts from the recurring themes, and the ultimate plans that gelled. Staging the attack at prom is not an idea they ever settled on.)

Jennifer wrote: "What are your thoughts on the way that Michael Moore has documented the story and focused..."

I mostly enjoyed the film, though I was surprised that it didn't have a lot to do with Columbine. What was related seemed a little silly: like the idea that (is it Martin Marietta) dominates employment there (it did at one time, when the area was mostly horse ranches) or that that somehow enters the kids' consciousness and makes them pro-war or pro-violence or something. That is sort of sitcom level thinking. His films are good as entertainment, I think.

But yes, the idea of returning the bullets inside the kids to Kmart was a wickedly funny stunt. Brilliant entertainment.

---

I'm glad you got something out of the PTSD stuff. I'll post more. Someone asked up upthread about it. I basically got in way over my head emotionally, with no idea what I was getting into. I was naive, and ignorant. I learned the hard way.

And I should point out that I love writing and I love the writing life. That's why I do it. I feel lucky to be able to do it. (I am not one of those writers who says I like having written, but hate the process. I kinda love the process. It's a struggle sometimes, but that's not always a bad thing. There are patches where every night I feel like I've spent the day wrestling, and still have not wrestled it down, but oh, when I do finally get it. And when I'm on, and it's flowing--there's nothing like that. I also love rewriting. The satisfaction I get from making a sentence sing . . .

On balance, I'm a very happy person, and I'm happy now--and frankly, relieved to be done writing the book. I felt a great weight float away in Nov and Dec of last year, after it was going to press and I had to let it go. I wouldn't give up what I've learned/experienced the last ten years for the world.

I hope I'm expressing that balance: it was a rough ten years, but rewarding. I would do it all over again.

I have the Oprah links I referred to Wednesday. The "Summer Reading List: 25 Books You Can't Put Down" is now the cover story at Oprah.com.

She picked Columbine as one of the 25 (it's #7, if you scroll through the list). You can get to it directly here:

http://tinyurl.com/n92kyr

We gave her exclusive rights to an excerpt--the first chapter--now on Oprah.com, which you can read at the link above, if you're interested. Her site also features new Book Club Discussion Questions for COLUMBINE.

They gave it a terrific review. A taste:

". . . Dave Cullen's spectacularly gripping account of the Colorado school shooting that shocked America a decade ago. But Cullen's chilling narrative is too vital to miss, as are his myth-busting revelations."

Thanks, Oprah.

I don't know how GoodReads people feel about Oprah, but I was very impressed by her and her staff this spring. (Despite them pulling the show we taped. I didn't like the outcome of that, but they were still classy all the way.)

If your friends are Oprah fans, do let them know. There are Send & Share buttons at the link. There is also a place to discuss any of the 25 books):

http://www.oprah.com/community/commun...

I may turn up there at some point, but I'm not sure it's appropriate for authors there. Another site where I don't really know the ground rules.

Ed,

I have such mixed feelings on ebooks, but mostly good.

I doubt paper books are going away in our lifetimes, but they may (possibly) start to become more collectors' items, like vinyl with music. That will likely be a few decades, at least, though.

But if ebooks help expand the readership of books, I'm all for that. It looks like they will be a lot cheaper than paper books, and there are scary implications for writers and publishers getting even less and that impacting quality in lots of ways. (I sure saw all the ways the publisher made my book better. An entire army of people are part of the process, and not in a bad way.)

I'm not sure I personally will ever feel comfy with the conversion, but if kids growing up in an e world are more receptive to books they can access easily (and/or try out or whatever) and more cheaply, great.

As a writer, I don't care if people read it on parchment, paper, iphone, or listen to a narrator while they're driving. Reading is what matters.

---

(Jennifer, I'll get back to you. And I still owe responses upthread. Sorry.)

I'm glad libraries came up. I have been itching to comment about them the past few weeks, so this seems like a good place.

I have really started to appreciate them this spring. A running theme on libraries in the culture is that they are dying, and I'm afraid I bought into that. Maybe they are, but man, I can't tell you how many people I've heard from using them to read my book. And I've heard many reports of long waiting lines, so it's not just one or two anecdotal incidents.

That is wonderful. I admit that I get a little discouraged whenever I hear how few books make a bestseller. I think, "Is that all the people that are reading?" But truthfully, a book may be read many times, and those library books, countless. That's the main thing. Readers. (Of course, in honesty, I want people to buy the book, too, because it pays the rent, but there are enough of those.) What I want most is readers. I had no idea that libraries were still so vibrant, and supporting lots and lots of readers.

And long after it has had its run and it's off the store shelves, it will still be on the library shelves, for people who want to read it. (For years? How does that work? Do they cull the shelves every year of books that don't get checked out much? Yikes, I never thought about that.) I just want it to be there when some dedicated student like Keiley comes looking for it in five years.

Thanks, Ed. I like your approach, and let me know when you review it--I'd like to hear what you think.

I wasn't sure how to respond. (Let me be frank about one thing: this is my first book, and a lot of it is new territory for me. I've written lots of magazine pieces over the years and a few have been controversial, and/or generated some angry responses here and there, but that's a whole different animal than a book.)

I should have responded to your summary, though:

. . . she basically accuses you of making things up to fit your thesis?

I didn't go into this with a thesis. I have no vested interest in any explanation. I just wanted to understand. I dug for the first year, and talked to a lot of people close to the case, and got a lot of responses that didn't explain anything. When I finally got access to the shrinks, and learned about their analysis, it was the first time it all started to make sense.

I wasn't satisfied to take their word for it; I started reading. I read the classic books on psychopathy and reams of scholarly articles, and debated the finer points and behavior that didn't fit perfectly over the course of several years.

I followed the same basic approach as Dr. Fuselier: attack the hypothesis from every angle and try to disprove it. It stood firm, in my opinion. It was a very convincing case.

The Psychopathy Checklist reads like a checklist of Eric's personality. (With a few items on the list where we don't have sufficient data to assess.)

Hi Ed. It's a frustrating review, and I am tempted to argue each point, because I believe she is mistaken on each, but have been advised that it's really poor form to debate bad reviews.

I will say generally, that there is a lot of cherry-picking of Eric quotes in there, which I have seen a lot of over the years, and it's frustrating. (It's also one of the chief complaints of investigators on the case.) You can pull a line or two from Eric or Dylan about jocks or Marines or what have you and base an argument on that. But Eric left hundreds of pages, tens of thousands of lines of text, and you can find him ranting on nearly everything, including slow drivers in the fast lane. But very few of those lines, in isolation, explain what drove him.

I spent years with the journals, and writings, and many more years consulting with some of the top psychologists and psychiatrists in North America. None of us agree with this reviewer on her assessments of Eric, and there is a very strong consensus that Eric was textbook psychopath.

If there are specific concerns of yours, I'll address them more specifically.

Hi Keiley.

It's very impressive to see you here, and to be doing such an in-depth research project in eighth grade. I'm really happy to see that.

Those are great questions. With the boys, it's hard to know for sure what was cause and what was effect, but I see the writings more likely as symptoms of what they were feeling--an outlet for those feelings--than creating the feelings.

At one point, Eric did write that working on the research paper on the Nazis was revving up his feelings of hate (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but I think I have the quote in the book). But he chose to write the paper on Nazis long after he had these ideas and urges. He was gobbling up all sorts of literature and writing angry/violent stuff, dreaming up violent fantasies, acting them out in video games, etc. But what I see is him having these urges and then finding outlets for them. It's possible that some contributed early on, too, but there's no clear evidence of that, and we see the angry vicious fantasies coming out in all sorts of different forms.

I do think, however, that there may be one major exception to that: Dylan's famous creative writing story in Feb 1999. Somewhere around that time, his thinking on the attack seems to have shifted. (Unfortunately, he stopped dating his journal entries around that time.) We can't know for sure how or exactly when or why that happened, but the strongest surviving evidence is that story, where he seems to take the idea out for a test drive, and likes what he sees. (And the end, he describes how the narrator, which seems to more or less be him feels about watching the attack/attacker, and he is highly impressed.)

I'd be careful about blaming the writing, though. Dylan seems to be thinking things through, and getting his thoughts down on paper. Dylan is to blame, so I wouldn't blame the writing.

We can never know what would have happened if the two had not met, but I think it's a safe bet they both would have had a lot of anger. Whether they would have done something like this, is very hard to know. They probably would not have done this specific thing separately, but it seems likely that Eric would have done something awful. He seemed headed that direction regardless of Dylan. Dylan is much harder predict, there is very strong evidence that Eric was the driving force behind this, and so without him, it's much less likely that Dylan would have done something like this.

I hate to speak in such generalities, but when we're speculating on what might have happened in different scenarios, there's no way to be sure.

Steve. Yes, I came to empathize with Dylan, and that was really unsettling for awhile. I wrote an essay about that and my personal struggle with PTSD covering this story, which Borders published online. I'll find the link to it and post it.

With Eric I never did, and I wonder if I should have, but it was hard to find anything there to empathize with. And it's so dangerous with a psychopath: we're all tools to them, they want to suck us in to believe their lies.

Dylan was deeply conflicted, and allowed himself to be drawn astray, down a terrible path. There was hope for him, and he spent much of his life trying to do the right thing, wanting to, wanting to find the right path. There's much there to admire, love and hope for.

With Eric, I wish I could have spoken to his parents and gotten more of a picture of the early Eric, because there probably was a lot there to love, too. I'm not sure we'll ever know with Eric how much was an act, and how much was real, though.

Jack, thanks. Ask as many questions as you like.

I'm not sure on my next project. I'm still working on promoting this one full time, but getting restless and starting to carve out some time to work on other things.

I've got a few magazine stories I want to do, on completely unrelated topics, and a few fiction short stories I want to write--a welcome relief.

After that, I do have an idea for my next book, which I have toyed with, but I'm not sure that's where I'll end up, so I'm not discussing it yet. It will be awhile before it gells and I can talk about it. (Meaning at least a year or two.)

I am really looking forward to getting on to other subjects, though.

I've got occasional speaking engagements lined up through the fall and spring about Columbine (orgs that have contacted me since the book came out), so it will be with me for quite awhile, which is fine, as long as it recedes to less and less part time.

Michelle & Tara, I really appreciate those posts.

Tara, I know what you mean about the overload coverage. When I was rethinking the book in 2004, and hashing out ideas with my agent, many times I questioned what the hell I was doing, and what the focus should be. I was nervous about the fact that it lacked a single protagonist, which 99% of all narrative works have. I didn't even have two or three, I had ten. There are some ensemble pieces out there, but even those usually have 4-5 leads, max. Would ten hang together for a reader?

I eventually settled on the idea that I wanted it to be a comprehensive account, and yes, it would have to be way more than five to do that. No one could ever do the "complete" story, because that's more than 10,000 people and would run hundreds of thousands of pages. But I would take my best shot at getting a comprehensive look at the event between the covers of one book, so a person could see the breadth of the story unfold in one place.

---

Michelle wrote: ". . . when I did cry at the end (which for me was at the time of the killers suicide), I felt that I wept for the magnitude of the loss they created as well as the loss of the killers lives . . ."

Michelle, I think you captured something really important there. I've had many people say they didn't cry until the end, which puzzled them a little, because they didn't feel the ending wasn't the saddest part. I think they were crying for the whole thing.

Emotions are funny. They well up inside us often, and finally spill out when it's too much. The thing that sets us off is not always the biggest thing, just the last straw.

The first time I ever cried at Columbine, I was taken by surprise. I think it was Thursday, during that scene I included in the book surrounding Rachel's car. I heard the scream, and was among the people who turned and ran like crazy in that direction, afraid something terrible had happened. I was stunned to find the scene of the girls around the car. When I saw the car and they started holding hands and singing it all just socked me: the enormity of what had happened, and what it meant to individual girls at the school.

I lost it. I held it in long enough to duck out and run for cover so no one would see me crying. I was suddenly embarrassed that other reporters or students would see me unable to handle it. It was in a parking lot near all the media, and I found a semi-trailer one of the networks had brought in just a short run away. I plopped down against one of the big wheels and sobbed uncontrollably. It was oddly deserted back there. I remember one or two tech guys wandering back there, pretending not to notice me.

There were a whole rush of feelings. I felt embarrassed for letting go, and ashamed that I had NOT cried until then--contradictions, yet both intense.

Until then, I had not actually thought about the fact that I hadn't cried. I had been thrust into a work situation, and you just shunt that aside and work. (I've since talked to all sorts of people about it. A cop or an EMT or a reporter or a doctor doesn't cry when they encounter a victim: You plunge in, stay steady and do your job. You cry later. This turned out to be later.)

I stayed about ten minutes, because I realized I had to get it all out, and then buck it up and not cry again while I was at the park that day.

That worked. Several moments made me mist up or even tear up while I was out in the field over the next several days, but I don't remember ever losing control like that again.

Bottling it up isn't really healthy. In retrospect, it would have been much better to talk to someone each night about it after I was done for a few minutes, and/or see a shrink or someone at least once a week, to drain some of it out of me.

I didn't really understand that stuff yet. I didn't know much about PTSD. The Dart Center has taught me so much about that. But I still make dumb mistakes in not getting the help I need, or recognizing it.

---

So I was wondering about the process of reading this book. I don't know what that's like, really, because I came to know this stuff over ten years, and I don't know what it's like getting hitting with it all at once.

I'd love to hear more about what it was like for you all emotionally, reading it.

Did stuff well up inside you sometimes, and then it would hit, or . . . I don't know. Just tell us what it was like--anyone--if you're open to that.

Thanks, Joanne. At the gym I was fretting that I had blabbed way too much and should have edited. I guess the bright spot is maybe a window into my process: It's sort of a rush of thoughts spilling out, kind of a mess, often on first draft. Then I have to sort through it, look at it and pare it way down, keep the best parts. For me, it's all about the rewrite.

I think that's pretty standard. (I think) Henry James had a famous quote that I'll paraphrase: that he had to write 100,000 words to get 10,000, every time. It's a very inefficient way to work, but no matter what he did, it came out that way.

I will try to be a bit more concise, though.

On libraries, I really have no idea, unfortunately. I've just gotten anecdotal reports from lots of readers about x library system having five or ten copies. I assume it's a small percentage, but I've never asked, or been told.

That's another thing I've learned: they don't tell the author a whole lot about sales--particularly any kind of breakout. (For years I read Publishers Weekly regularly, to get up to speed on what to expect, so it wasn't a surprise.)

I learned most of what I did about my sales by being on bestseller charts, because those are published. I did about equal at the chains, independents (tracked by the IndieNext or is it IndieBound list), and Amazon. (That's actually kind of unusual, I'm told.) I did a little better at B&N than Borders for some reason. And I seemed to show up on regional lists pretty comparably, though higher in Colorado. (I was #1 in Denver for about a month, I think. This is the only place I know of where I hit that.)

My publisher would probably tell me a lot more if I asked. Jon editor and publisher at Twelve, and he has been great about answering my questions, but his time is a scarce resource and I try to avoid being a pain in the ass. I've learned one thing over the years: No matter what you're doing in life, you get so much time and resources, and you have to pick what's most important to you. Jon is a really gifted editor, one of the best in the business, and I want to use his time that way on my next book: both editing it and probably advising at different points along the way advising. He's always got books in the pipeline, and right now he's got Ted Kennedy's memoir teed up for fall, and I'm sure they have their hands full giving that the full tilt launch. When my book was coming out, he and Cary, my publicist devoted massive time and energy to it, and I appreciated that I was getting their time, so I don't want to use it up now unnecessarily when it's someone else's turn. So I choose my questions judiciously.

---

To my knowledge, Tom & Sue Klebold talked to one psychologist for a book, and David Brooks. My memory is that with the shrink, he agreed not to quote them directly, but to use their input as background for understanding.

The David Brooks thing actually came when David summarized my 2004 Slate piece in his NY Times column. (He credited me fully.) Tom read it, and was frustrated by it, and emailed him. They exchanged emails and eventually agreed to talk. David wrote a follow-up column about it. David was also generous with me about that, and talked to me by phone about what else they said, and his impressions.

That's it, I believe.

Through their attorney, Tom and Sue fact-checked about three pages of material I sent last fall for the book (I pulled all sorts of bits together into a Word document for them to look through.) They corrected/clarified a few things and added a few tidbits. That really surprised me, and was helpful. I greatly appreciated it, but of course I would have loved to talk to them about it.) There may be other cases like that out there that I'm not aware of.

Both sets of families also sent letters to the victims, and released statements through their attorneys from time to time.

Let me pause for a sec and thank you guys for so many kind words. It really makes this all worth it.

Thanks for the questions, too. This is quite lively. I hope I'm doing them justice.

---

OK, another quickie (this is the same why I write, BTW--rarely in a logical order. An idea for one thing I need to address pops into my mind, or sorts itself out and I take care of it while it's ripe):

Greg:

what became of all the living victims in the library... meaning, when did they escape the library.

As soon as Eric and Dylan got bored and walked out of the library, kids started calling out to another. Some wanted to stay, others suggested they get the hell out. Some braves ones went for it, and others followed. Pretty soon nearly everyone made a run for it, out a back entrance.

(I describe in the book how Patrick's injured friends tried to get him out, but he was not comprehending and they could not move him.)

When they killers returned roughly half an hour later, and eventually committed suicide, there were only two people left in the library proper: Patrick Ireland and the young injured girl whose name escapes me at the moment. They both went in and out of consciousness and recall nothing of the suicides.

A handful of staff were hiding in adjacent and semi-adjacent rooms further back, and stayed there until the SWAT team arrived hours later.

Dee:

I am sure you agree, there is a fine line between reporting and exploiting. So, I have to ask...Did you ever experience an inner struggle in writing about the incident, especially in regards to garnering financial gains from the book sales?

I'm not sure I do agree. I definitely felt a lot of ethical dilemmas covering this story over the years, but I don't think really in the realm of exploiting. How do you mean that--making money off it? (The end part of the question seems to suggest that.)

That's something I hear a lot from people in the general public, but it tends to baffle reporters and writers. I'm not sure where this idea comes from of writers getting rich off this stuff--off anything, actually.

Now at the corporate level, media companies make a lot of money--or at least they did, though the media industry is in a panic right now, wondering whether the whole thing is crumbling. Is that where you mean the question?

On writers, I sense that the public gets a skewed sense of our field when you hear about famous people getting paid, say, $8 million for a book deal. That's a handful of celebrities, politicians and performers, who are generally rich already.

I know a lot of writers, and most are struggling to cobble enough work together to pay the rent. Hardly anyone does it without some steady paycheck. Journalists on-staff have that, or did, but there are so many papers and mags closing and laying off, nobody feels safe.

I'll come back to that in a sec, but first some of the inner struggles I did feel:

1. Giving more attention to the killers, which we can talk about more if people want.

2. Getting the truth straight.

3. How to write about victims/survivors ethically.

On #3, I had lots of conversations and thoughts about how the press was mucking up the situation and driving people bonkers. I dealt with that by trying to steer clear of the bad stuff, and by listening to the survivors, victims advocates, etc.

There as a media summit, eg, which I mentioned briefly in the book. They were pretty up-front about what stuff bothered them the most. I listened and took it to heart.

Being a freelancer is tough to pay the rent, but the good part is that you can pick your own stories, for the most part--as long as you can find an interested editor, the hard part. I didn't face the dilemma that I think a lot of reporters do: where the editor wants something the reporter feels is bad. My situation was different, so I didn't have that. I did not want to be that guy knocking on doors or staking out victims, so I just didn't pitch those stories.

One big thing in particular I was also spared. As time went on, a lot of the people involved got most frustrated with the over-coverage at the local level, and I since I was writing mostly for a national outlet, that wasn't an issue I had to grapple with much. (I did one piece for the D Post, and at least one for 5280, Denver's city magazine. But those were in-depth pieces I thought were really warranted.)

I eventually became part of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, which is focused on better reporting on victims/survivors of trauma. That taught me a lot about how to do that part of my job better.

---

So back to the exploitative idea. I think that's a big question for media companies and news orgs--which we can talk about if you want--but I have rarely seen it become an issue for an individual reporter.

Personally, I never worried about financial gain from covering this story; I worried about financial loss. I got mild panic attacks sometimes trying to calculate how long I could keep going and still cover the rent.

I spent much of these ten years going in and out of debt. The most humiliating moment of my adult life came about 6-7 years ago, when I was forced to go to my parents to borrow money to pay my rent and get me through the year. I was in my 40s. My mom begged me to give up writing, and go back to a corporate job. Eventually I did have to go back to work a corporate day job part-time. (They were flexible and very supportive of me working on the book.)

I have sobering news for aspiring writers. You better love the hell out of it, because it's hard to make a living. If you expect to get rich off it, I have two pieces of advice: 1) spend the money on lotto tickets: your odds are much higher; 2) Invest some of the money in counseling to address those delusions.

Nobody is in this for the money. Or they're a moron.

In the end, sales of my book shocked everyone. It peaked at #3 on the NY Times list and spent eight weeks on the list. (Actually, I got an email about an hour ago that it's going to fall off (to #21) next week, so eight weeks will be its run.) I think you might be suprised at how modest the numbers are, though. Books don't sell in mass numbers like movies or music. There are 165,000 copies of the book in print, but a great number of those will likely be pulped or remaindered. (It has been widely and accurately reported that Hachette went back to press with a large run after Oprah announced they would feature the book for an hourlong episode. Then came the anniversary controversy, and it was pulled.)

It looks like I will earn enough to pay off my writing debts and live modestly (ie, way below the median American income) for a couple years working on my next book. I'm OK with that.

---

Now if I missed the idea entirely, let me know, and clarify how you mean it.

Jack: I found myself wondering about how you came to be so involved; what lead you to first become involved in the case? and when abouts did you decide that you were going to publish an accurate account of what happened?

I'm going to give a really long answer to Jack's question, which will also lay the foundation for Michelle's on structure, and Dee's on ethics:

I happened to turn on the TV while sitting down to lunch a bit before noon on April 20. It was just hitting TV. Within about two minutes, I called the editor I'd worked with at Salon.com in San Francisco, and left a voice mail.

When I drove out to Columbine, I didn't think anyone would be killed, or that Salon would even want a story. I just drove out just in case. I wasn't sure where the school was, but I drove out Highway 6 and then I saw the choppers circling. I gasped. I drove toward them until I hit the police barrier. I parked my car in a lot nearby, got out and ran. I got to the Columbine Library in Clement Park, where I saw lots of people. It had been set up as one of two rendezvous points.

Most of the scenes in the book set there are from what I witnessed and recorded that day. (I brought a notepad and a videocassette recorder.) Some was filled in by the accounts of other parents who I would not meet for months or years. (We probably all saw each other that day, but were just strangers to each other.)

Getting to know the survivors out in Clement Park is what really kept me coming back, though. That chapter called Vacant describes the morning after, and it did a HUGE number on me. I was terrified for those kids. The first day I was focused on the dead, but starting that second morning, and for a long time after, I was thinking about the living. What was going to happen to them? There was still time to save them.

That was the first of two big drives to write the book, though I was not thinking of a book for a long time. But looking back, that's when I was hooked. April 21, around 10 a.m.

After the first week, my editor and I agreed I would dive into an ethnographic piece on the religious fervor in the area, by attending the churches, enrolling in bible study at Cassie's church (with permission from her minister), etc. Nobody seemed to be telling that story either.

Later that summer, I got really frustrated that we didn't know what had driven the killers. So I started going back and investigating that. That was the second driver of the book, which never went away.

I first attempted this as a short ebook (maybe 75 pages) in July 2000, when Jonathan Karp, an editor at Random House called me and asked to write a book for his new ebook imprint there called AtRandom. He had emailed me in I think fall 1999 about my writing for Salon, and we'd stayed in touch. In 2000, he said I could write the ebook on anything, so I suggested Columbine, and he liked it.

It was a very small advance, and I was just supposed to spend a few months summarizing my previous reporting, but by then I felt I had a bead on the killers but only a faint one, and just had to know. So I spent a couple years, Random House gave up on ebooks, folded the imprint, and the book didn't really work out. It was too soon.

I kept at it on the killers, though, and in 2004, I published the shrinks' account as "The Depressive & The Psychopath" in Slate. That led to a book deal with Dutton in July 2004, I think. I completely reconcieved the book at that time, as being about both the killers and the community. I chose the ten major characters/storylines it would cover, and I stuck with those to the end. But at that time, did not anticipate the alternating chapters for several more years.

I signed an 18-month contract with Dutton, but it took much longer. I was not close to satisfied with what I had. My agent negotiated a couple one-year extensions, but then my editor left Dutton before I finished the full draft, Jan. 15, 2008.

The new editor was lukewarm, so last spring, we decided to ask Dutton to release us to try another publishing house that would really get behind it. We showed it to Jonathan Karp, who was now at his own imprint at Hachette (called Twelve, because they only do one book a month), and he loved it and bought it.

From Jan-May I edited it heavily in two separate rounds with my agent, Betsy Lerner, who is a great editor (used to be Exec Editor at Doubleday). Then I started over with Jonathan and went through it again and tightened it much more. Then with his assistant (with Jonathan's comments on his comments). All that lasted until about 4th of July.

Then we went through copy-editors--who are also fact-checkers, and had all sorts of continuity issues and just a massive review. Then legal and another round with proofreaders. All the while, I kept honing the prose. All that finally ended right around Halloween of last year, when the Advance Readers Copies went to press. After that, we were only able to fix typos, and it went to press for the hardcover in January.

---

That's a bit more than Jack asked, but I had a feeling you guys might be curious about the whole process.