PW: What made you decide to move the Burke series to the West Coast?

AV: Because of the circumstances under which Burke had to leave New York in Dead and Gone, it wouldn't make sense for him to return right away. And he still doesn't know if it's safe to return. Despite his attempts to put down roots in Portland, it becomes clear to him throughout the book that, for better or for worse, he's only got one home. And because his family, which is the most critical thing to him, is not exportable at all, there's no possible way for him to live anyplace else.

PW: What inspired Pain Management's plot?

AV: I wrote a short story called "Dope Fiend" that specifically dealt with the issue of the way we manage pain in this country. The response was staggering. I had no idea of the number of people who are suffering intractable pain and whose pain is not being addressed because of bizarre-to-the-point-of-insane policies that we have on this subject. On top of that was the number of people who were affected by their loved ones being in such pain—that's what kicked it off. And since one great source of pain is the theme of virtually all of these books, I thought they intersected perfectly.

PW: Are you or Knopf doing anything special to promote the book in light of its subject matter? Crossover medical discussion or promotion, links to sites describing the pain management debate, etc.

AV: My Web site has this monstrous section called "resources." We're putting together what we hope will be an absolute compendium of such resources on the subject of pain management. But essentially what happens in terms of promotion of a theme or topic is that when you do the tour, between media opportunities and dialogue with the audience, the chance to promote becomes much more personal and much more direct.

PW: How do you view the challenge of keeping a series alive over many years?

AV: That's a really good question, because who has the ego when they sit down to write a book to believe it's going to go this deep? Most series don't survive this long. So one of the ways was to literally give Burke a new face, hence Dead and Gone. That, and the attempt to introduce new locales and challenges and—I don't want to say growth opportunities because Burke's not a person who necessarily grows with these opportunities—but new things to face in such a way that Burke stays in them himself.

PW: Do you see a difference between having your books backlisted in trade paperback (like Vintage) as opposed to a mass market paperback publisher?

AV: I sure do, and that was a conscious decision. I used to be published in mass market. What you give up when you give up mass market is, bluntly, number of sales. You're not going to sell as many trade paperbacks, if for no other reason than they're not going to be airport purchases. But what was presented to me and what I accepted was that if I went with Vintage, and they acquired the rights to all the books (which they did), they're not ever going to go out of print. They're going to be there forever. That struck me as more valuable than the immediate sales that one could get from mass market.

PW: Who and where is your largest audience?

AV: With my books, there's a real difference between sales and readers. I get a ton of mail from prison, and those aren't purchases. One guy gets hold of the book, and he runs his own lending library. I've had guys write to me from prison who've been very upset because they've borrowed such-and-such a book and paid so many cartons of cigarettes and the last three pages are almost unreadable because the book's been thumbed through so much, could I please Xerox those pages and send them? It doesn't measure library usage, either. If I sold as many books proportionate to the amount of fan mail I get (in comparison to other writers with whom I've spoken), I'd be Stephen bloody King. I don't know why that is. But it seems that I have a very large audience that gets my books on some sort of pass-along basis.