Goodreads asked Dale Wiley:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Dale Wiley The Intern came out of my realization that as much as I wanted to be a "Writer" in the sense of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, what I actually enjoyed reading were thrillers and the mysteries. I decided to try my hand at that.

What I didn't like about thrillers was the breathless tone they all had, where you couldn't have any fun or do anything but speak in a whisper and be very, very serious. I thought it would be fun to write one where it actually HURT when people got hurt. And from a little more first-person point of view. Thriller characters seem to never experience anything except pain and sex.

As for the DC setting, I worked for the National Endowment for the Arts in late 1994. It was a fun and smart place to work and I enjoyed it. But I have to say I didn't love how everything turned political in DC. You went to a punk rock show and somehow it immediately became about politics. I chased a girl there but she didn't chase me back, so I left after a while. But I always thought it would be fun to write about.

I actually wrote most of The Intern a long time back. But completing my second novel, Sabotage, made me dust it off and realize it could be fun. So here we are.

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