Dick Belsky has an extensive news background, having been the metropolitan editor of the New York Post, managing editor of the New York Daily News, news editor of Star magazine and managing editor for news at NBCNews.com.
“I tend to write about what I know,” Belsky admitted. “Number one because I think somebody can read my book and say they don’t like it, but I don’t think they can say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Belsky has created three series that feature journalists as the protagonist. Under R.G. Belsky, he has published the Gil Malloy series – The Kennedy Connection, Shooting for the Stars and Blonde Ice – about a newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News.
Under the name Dana Perry, he has written The Silent Victim and The Golden Girl that feature reporter Jessie Tucker.
The series that introduced me to Belsky was the Clare Carlson novels – Yesterday’s News, Below the Fold and The Last Scoop. Also written under R.G. Belsky.
I asked Belsky to describe Clare Carlson:
“She basically personifies so many women in the media that I worked with over the years at the New York Post, New York Daily News and Star, and even at NBC,” he shared.
“She’s really smart. She’s very funny and sarcastic and got a big mouth. She’s totally dedicated to her job. She’s has tremendous integrity and all these wonderful things,” said Belsky.
“But in terms of her personal life, she’s kind of a train wreck. She’s been married three times, she says the wrong things to people, her life’s kind of a mess.
He said she proves the adage that it’s difficult to have it all.
“A lot of those people don’t exist,” said Belsky. “Most people, you give up something- you give up parts of your career for your personal life, or in what I’ve found a lot, people basically sacrifice their personal life for the job. And that’s really an awful lot of what Clare does.”
“Now, having said that, that’s important when you’re writing it, because let’s just say Clare could do it all, she had a wonderful, happy life and she was a great journalist and all this stuff. She wouldn’t be a very interesting character, because we don’t really want to read about that.”
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