R.G. BELSKY

Social distancing may have been common among working writers before it was a necessity, but not all members of that tribe adhered to the stereotype.

- John B. Valeri

“I’ve spent most of my life as a journalist working in loud, chaotic, busy newsrooms. So that’s the atmosphere I’m most comfortable writing fiction in too,” R.G. Belsky says. “I work in coffee shops, bars, on the beach, even on the subway. Solitary confinement—either in a home office or a library-type situation— just doesn’t work for me.”

And while the Big Apple’s streets may be uncharacteristically quiet these days, the customary hustle and bustle of the city has served Belsky—who counts Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Agatha Christie, Robert B. Parker, and Michael Connelly among his influences— well in the past. He has written 14 crime novels—including May’s The Last Scoop—and thrived in a business equally volatile to publishing: the news industry.

In his decades-long career, Belsky served as metropolitan editor of the New York Post, managing editor of the New York Daily News, news editor at Star magazine, and, most recently, a managing editor at NBC News. Despite the necessary fidelity to facts, this background has notably benefited his fiction.

“I think my journalism background helps me in many ways as a novelist. The two most important are: 1) writing clearly and straightforwardly for the reader and 2) meeting deadlines for my books,” Belsky says. “Both of these things are critical for a journalist, and they’ve helped me enormously in my career as a fiction author, too, I believe.”

Which is not to say that there aren’t obstacles when shifting from one realm to the other.