October 2004 :
McDonald: How is that going? Are you fairly deep into the writing of volume three now?
Ellroy: Yeah, yeah. I’m deep into it. I’m not promising a delivery date but you know, it’s huge. It’s bigger than The Cold Six Thousand.
McDonald: I know you’ve said you want the three novels, literally, to be successively larger. I’m wondering how you sustain your concentration and your interest across this many years.
Ellroy: The interest is easy. The concentration … you need a very very strong superstructure. And you need the outlines that you and I discussed when we were in Ann Arbor that day (May 2001). You know, you need a big big super structure and the determination to make it work. Now, one of the big revelations for me, early on as a writer when I was into writing The Big Nowhere, was that I realized I could execute whatever I could conceive of.
McDonald: That’s … amazing. That’s stunning. That puts pressure on you, though. If you have that ability, you’ve got to use it … not lay back.
Ellroy: Yeah.