Andrew Bourelle
Shot Clock
Basketball star Garrett’s brother has been kidnapped – and if he doesn’t fix the NBA championship, Jake will be dead before the final buzzer in this edge-of-the-seat thriller set in the dark, criminal underbelly of Sin City
The Writer’s Dossier 5/6/2025 – The Andrew Bourelle interview
Reporter to writer to baller
DOSSIER: Former journalists turned novel writers often take advantage of lessons learned like hitting deadlines and cutting unnecessary words. Did you benefit from those things or were there other skills you attained as a journalist that make you a better novelist?
BOURELLE: Absolutely. I was a newspaper reporter for a big chunk of my twenties, and I think the act of writing every day, no matter whether I felt like it or not, was instrumental in helping me become a novelist. I remember taking stock in just how much I’d written over the course of a year and thinking, “You know, if each of these articles was a part of the same story, I’d have more than enough for a whole book.” It was several more years before I would attempt a full-length novel. I needed to hone my craft when it came to writing fiction. But the discipline I developed writing all the time, on tight deadlines, certainly helped me grow as a writer.
Pick-up game legend
DOSSIER: With your new novel, SHOT CLOCK, the basketball theme is something that got you out onto the court in an adult intramural league. What’s more thrilling—your story where a pro basketball player whose brother is kidnapped to coerce him into fixing the NBA Finals … or watching you split defenders at the top of the key and drive through the paint to slam on some accountant who was just looking for some fun on the weekend?
BOURELLE: Ha ha! Yeah, when I was working on SHOT CLOCK, I figured my days of playing pickup games were as over as my days as a journalist. But when my kids’ basketball leagues were wrapping up this spring, there were flyers in the rec center saying they were starting an adult men’s league. So some of us dads started talking, “Hey, should we put together a team?” In one of the early text threads, someone jokingly called us “Team Squeaky Knees” and that’s what we put on our T-shirts.
To answer your question, as much fun as it’s been to play on Team Squeaky Knees, reading SHOT CLOCK would definitely be more thrilling than watching one of our games. I can’t promise reading the book will inspire you to grab a ball and join a team, like it did for me writing it, but I can promise an action-packed crime story that thriller fans will enjoy whether they care about the sport of basketball or not.
Sandia Mountain view
DOSSIER: Where and when do you like to write? You’re a professor at the University of New Mexico so … somewhere with a desolate view of the desert?
BOURELLE: I write mostly on the couch, with my feet kicked up. I can write in coffee shops or at my school office, if I need to, but mostly I like to write from home. We do have a decent view of the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque from the sliding-glass window at the back of the house. Where I sit, I can see the mountains reasonably well over my laptop. Sandia means “watermelon” in Spanish, and at sunset the mountains light up with a pretty amazing red hue, making them kind of look like a slice of watermelon. But, of course, I do a lot of writing after the kids are in bed or before they wake up, so most of the time when I’m writing the window is just black.
Las Vegas vs Cincinnati
DOSSIER: You’ve lived in the two states that have fictional basketball teams in your book. How much of Las Vegas or Cincinnati might we find in SHOT CLOCK? We’re really hoping there’s some reference to an Ohio accent by at least one of our characters.
BOURELLE: SHOT CLOCK takes place during the NBA Finals, which meant I needed two cities where the seven-game series would be played, one in the East and one in the West. Rather than pick two real NBA teams, I decided it would be more fun to create fictional ones. Thus the Las Vegas Lightning and the Cincinnati Sabertooths were born. I have lived in both Nevada and Ohio, and I feel pretty good about capturing the essence of those places—from the lush farmland of the Midwest to the surreal spectacle of a gambling mecca in the middle of the desert. Sorry, no mention of Ohio accents, but I do mention the mud-brown waters of the Ohio River.
That writer guy … James Patterson
DOSSIER: Fellow Dossier members Bill Schweigart and Duane Swierczynski have also written with James Patterson. (Check out their stories!) What was your experience like being in the Patterson universe
BOURELLE: I had a lot of fun working with Jim. And it was a great learning experience as well. My wife has joked that me working with James Patterson was like having the opportunity to get an MFA in writing commercial fiction. When it comes to writing thrillers, I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor.
The Last Word
DOSSIER: Is there anything else you’d like to reveal in your Dossier today? (We like headline-making breaking news and it gives our graphics department something to do other than play video games all day.)
BOURELLE: Well, I do have some breaking news, but it’s probably not the kind of “break” you mean. In our second-to-last basketball game of the season, I dislocated/broke one of the fingers on my right hand. Not sure yet just how bad it is. I’m really hoping it doesn’t require surgery. At the very least, though, it’s going to keep me from writing for at least a month. It’s almost funny. In my new book, the prologue contains a scene where the main character is injured playing basketball. And as SHOT CLOCK is coming out, my hand is in a cast from playing basketball. Life imitating art, I guess.
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