Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Bill Fitzhugh now lives in Woodland Hills, California. He spent a transitional phase of six years in Seattle, Washington rinsing the red off his neck.

Bill is married without children -- unless you count (1) Spud the Wonder Horse, a teenage thoroughbred which his wife brought to their marriage (Spud now lives in Northern California); (2) Romeo, a teenage warmblood-thoroughbred mix (currently for sale); (3) Ava the shepherd mix and (4) Caleb the malamute mix. Bill doesn't ride any of these animals.

After moving to Southern California Bill made ends meet as a paralegal for litigation attorneys, all the while writing television and film scripts "on spec," i.e., for free.

Bill doesn't credit any single person or event as his inspiration for writing. He just writes.

Bill recalls the first thing he wrote without being instructed by a teacher or parent: Bill had been sent to his room by his father for some minor transgression and, frustrated at his inability to explain his position orally, he resorted to writing a tale of a lone (badly misunderstood) wolf who needed only to be left alone so that he might become the nonconformist he desired to be. It was a valiant attempt at allegory that did not reduce his sentence one whit.

Bill gets up every morning, makes tea for his wife and coffee for himself. He then sits in front of the computer and writes. Or reads, or does some laundry, or plays solitare on the computer. Morning is his most productive time of the day, but not necessarily the most creative.

Bill has no favorite place which particularly inspires him or helps ideas flow. Ideas just happen.

Bill chose the subject for "Pest Control" because he knew it was a great story. Bill and his electronic-media writing partner, Matt Hansen, had written the story as a screenplay several years earlier. And though no one in Hollywood seemed to care, Bill was convinced it was a story people would enjoy, so he wrote it in novel form.

As to private connections to insects: Bill had the typical boyhood interest in creepy things like snakes -- and at one point had a pet tarantula which he named "Frances."

Growing up in Mississippi, which is nearly tropical in the summertime and is populated by encephalitis-carrying mosquitos as well as cockroaches the size of flounders, Bill and his siblings enjoyed playing in the huge white billowing clouds of DDT that the State "vector control" department trucks sprayed nightly during the summer. Bill never worked as an exterminator, but while writing the novel, he did write a television script on insects for the BBC series "Eyewitness."

Bill didn't have a particular audience in mind when he wrote the book; he was primarily trying to amuse himself.

The title "Pest Control" came part of the way into creating the story with Matt Hansen. At first it was simply going to be a story about an unemployed guy in serious need of money. He jokingly considered committing some small crimes but realized liquor store robberies wouldn't be lucrative enough for the potential trouble. Then he thought that being a professional assassin probably paid pretty well, but how does one get the job? Soon the story began to involve real assassins and then it occurred to Bill that perhaps the protagonist should be an unemployed exterminator -- the title followed naturally from that.

Bill's five tips on writing a book:
(1) Come up with an idea you love.
(2) Outline the story to see that it works -- but be willing to let things evolve differently than originally conceived.
(3) Do research if you don't have extensive experience in the area you will be writing about.
(4) Write.
(5) Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite.

The only thing Bill would tell anyone about to set pen to paper is: Don't expect to get it right the first time.

Bill has many horror stories about how he got to where he is today. He is, in fact, considering forging them into a story, albeit one that is quite hard to believe.

It is difficult to say how many attempts it took before having the manuscript accepted by the publisher. Bill suggests you speak to his handsome and brilliant literary agent about that one.

Bill would like to have written "A Confederacy of Dunces" because it is the funniest, most perceptive, novel ever written and because he'd have a Pulitzer Prize already.

While writing the screenplay version of "Pest Control" Bill and Matt envisioned Tom Hanks or Billy Crystal as Bob and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Klaus.

Bill would like to see "Pest Control" on TV, on the "big screen," in book stores, as a CD-ROM interactive game, and as a breakfast cereal.

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