Timothy Louis Baker, Author of “Crime and Drugs on Trip City Street”
December 23, 2011 — Pat Bertram

What is your book about?

Crime and Drugs on Trip City Street by Timothy Louis Baker is about a crime syndicate headquartered on a fictitious city street in futuristic New York City. The leader of the crime ring is the most powerful criminal on earth and his crime syndicate extends into every country. He plots an assassination attempt upon the President of the United States so that the Vice President would take office that could be bought and would enable him in his plans for a world takeover. To take over control of every country on the earth by waging war with each nation until every government is conquered so that the world would be in anarchy ruled by him. Finally when that WW III is over even and the world has a chance to recuperate he would launch an assault of all people who were not of the white race to be slaughtered so there would be an totally white racist world and he would rule it until he died.

How long had the idea of your book been developing before you began to write the story?

This story was unique in that the idea came to me immediately before I began writing it and I just sat down to write it. It went through many twists and turns, me moving from one location that circumstances didn’t permit me to continue writing it, then moving again to another area that permitted me to pursue writing again. I only had a quarter of it written and that needed editing but I managed to add to it here and there until it was finished, except for the publisher’s editor who helped me put the fine-tuned edges on it and it was completed and then published.

What inspired you to write this particular story?

I have lived much of my life involved in criminal activity and using drugs so when it came time to actually create fiction books on that subject, I had a good wellspring of savvy of my own to draw upon. I had never been to New York City but I had lived on the roads and in the streets, at least partially in some larger cities. So I wasn’t writing about something I had totally no knowledge about.

How long did it take you to write your book?

Actually it took years for me to write the entire work of Crime and Drugs on Trip City Street. However I wrote some of it then wrote some of other books and then returned to this one and back and forth. All the while I kept forming the ideas for this work and adding to it, taking parts out, moving bits and pieces around, polishing up on it until it was acceptable with a publisher. I had the book edited and then it was ready for publication and immediately for the press.

How much of a story do you have in mind before you start writing it?

When I began to write this title I only had a bare necessity for the idea that the book eventually turned into writing. However those ideas by trial and error among other methods eventually became shaped and molded by me as the author until I had the entire idea constructed and from there merely had to add the words until it was a work in full. That process of writing and experimentation before the final decision on how I wanted the book to turn out took many months of a few years because I was distracted by the complicity of the topic and as a result of other work I need to do also. Sporting seven books trying to write or rewrite them all in a period of a few years made this task monumental.

How (or when) do you decide that you are finished writing a story?

I know my story is completed when all is said and all is done in the book that I as the writer would have no further requirement in putting down as the reader would have reached the end of a complete idea. Just like a sentence, a paragraph and a chapter are supposed to be. When it’s time to begin writing another idea then it’s time for me as a writer to go on and continue on the next best thing to be done.

Is there a message in your writing you want readers to grasp?

Yes there is a message to my writing but because I have been so many places and seen so much there and because I have written so much there is always the knowledge inside me as an author that no two points of view may be exactly identical. What one reader will interpret my written work another will invariably see something at least a little bit differently because there is that little difference between everybody. However my main message in the mystery novelette world so far has been that of crime and drugs, how the characters are involved and around that what both the characters and the story is constructed on. Crime and drugs can be looked upon as a place setting but what the characters actions within this realm is where the meat of the story is contained. In the case with Crime and Drugs on Trip City Street I was trying to impress not only on how bad the world of this kind of life is, not only how it can be and in fact always is and always will be but additionally what developments took place can be utilized to derive how things would really be if it were a true story.

What was the most difficult part about writing the book?

The most difficult part of the story as I wrote it was to keep the entire plot together as one central idea. It became so complicated and complex that I continually needed to weed out parts here and there to get it right like I thought it should be. I don’t think it was a lack of concentration on my part but instead the multitudinous amount of ideas always going through my head that I had to keep going through the story and deleting parts out with typing new ideas to take their place until I had it exactly right as I wanted it so it would all fit together and read as a book should.

How does your environment/upbringing color your writing?

As far as my life’s environments have been concerned and to a lesser degree my later upbringing being my teenage years affected the tone of my fiction writing by the additional amount of crime and drugs that I never knew before that period of my life. At the age of 16 years old I was introduced to crime and drugs heavily. That meant also hatred, jealousy, envy, violence and all of the other vices associated with the life I led that I had minimum contact with before that. So when I finally got into writing, the genres I choose to write of were much adorned with these facets because it was what I knew about and not what I had to make up totally from the research of others because I choose not to write anything that way. I have lived this way principally ever since my mid-teenage years and that affected everything I write or have ever written as an author.