Alan Furst is the bestselling author of Midnight in Europe, Night Soldiers, and Spies of the Balkans. His latest book, A Hero of France, is out now and available by clicking here. Today, Alan discusses how he first came about creating his own fictional world in the tradition of William Faulkner and William Kennedy (2:00), the question he asked himself which opened him up as a writer (10:30), and the idea of a certain kind of heroism in his books (24:00). Plus, Alan talks about why he hasn’t returned to France in years (34:00) and the creative routine he established to become a master of historical spy fiction (44:00).The Moment is brought to you by Open Account, a podcast that gets personal about making, losing, and living with money. Created by Umpqua Bank and hosted by SuChin Pak, download and subscribe to Open Account wherever you get your podcasts.And by FreshBooks. Small business owners, FreshBooks wants to make dealing with your day-to-day paperwork ridiculously simple and quick. For your 30-day free trial, and all the simple and quick cloud accounting you can handle, go to FreshBooks.com/Moment and enter “Moment” in the “how did you hear about us” section. Shownotes: Slate.com/TheMomentTwitter: @BrianKoppelmaniTunes: itunes.com/themoment To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices