Warren, what is your newest book about? My latest book, Treadmill, is a political thriller. It was inspired by my own experience in the gym in Washington and the people with whom I exercised. The main character is an unemployed lonely depressed man who keeps body and soul together by spending a great deal of time in the gym. Odd strangers begin to show up in the gym. There he befriends another man who mysteriously disappears and he sets out to find him. Why has he disappeared? Was it foul play? In his search he discovers that he too is being pursued for reasons he cannot fathom. It takes place in the Washington area. There is a political context. Beyond that I can’t reveal any more as it will give the plot away.

What inspired you to write it? I have written numerous books about political Washington where I lived for thirty-five years and knew many of the important figures during the time I lived there. I had special access, especially through the magazine that we owned (and my wife and son ran), called The Washington Dossier. I knew Presidents, Senators, Ambassadors, Congressman, media types and all the important people during that era. My eight mystery books feature Fiona Fitzgerald, daughter of a fictional Senator and a homicide detective in Washington. It is being adapted to a TV series.

How does it compare to some of your previous books? Compare? It is one of my 40 novels. I never compare them. I treat them all as my children and I never have favored any of my children. I love my work and have been doing it since I was a teenager.

You love to write across many genres and themes. Is that unusual for writers? I suppose it is unusual although many writers cross genres. I can’t write to the rules of any genre. I write what interests me. If it falls vaguely into a genre format I don’t realize it. It is both a benefit and a curse, but I just keep writing and let the chips fall where they may. I have optioned or sold many of my novels to film and television. My son Jonathan Robert Adler has formed his own production company, Grey Eagle Films, which has the rights to my books. He currently has nine of them in some form of development for theatrical films or TV.

Did I hear correctly that War of the Roses, your book that became famous as a movie, will be a Broadway play? What is that all about? Yes, it has been optioned as a Broadway play by important Broadway producers. Based exclusively on my novel, it has appeared in other countries all over the world. We are hopeful it will be staged on Broadway sometime this year or early next.

What trends are you seeing in book publishing today? The shift to digital has been astounding as I predicted when I introduced the first viable reader at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2007. I am a pioneer in digital, having taken all of my book rights back in the late eighties. At that time I had twenty-seven novels published by traditional publishers, which were also translated into many languages. I have since published 13 in digital and POD with more to come. My company does not follow traditional patterns of publishing. My goal is to keep my authorial name alive beyond my lifetime. No one knows what will happen to the future of publishing and reading.

What did you make of the Amazon-Hachette dispute? A business ploy on the issue of how to split proceeds. It has been settled. The big question is how will the author benefit? We shall see. I wrote an article, The Fate of the Novelist: A Reality Check, that sums up all of my thoughts on it in full detail.

This Interview Originally Appeared on Book Marketing Buzz Blog