The latest issue of the ASJA newsletter includes an interview with Stephen Fatsis, the author of the Scrabble book Wordfreak. Fatsis' story is an interesting one for anybody who thinks they can turn an interest into a marketable book:

BDB: How did your second book, Word Freak, come about?

SF: Very organically. I had played Scrabble casually all my life. I decided, as a journalist, to look into the world of competitive Scrabble because I thought there might be something bookworthy there. But after about 30 minutes of exposure I realized I wanted not only to write about this world and its inhabitants, I wanted to become part of it and one of them. As a book idea, the characters and story line took a while to develop in my brain; judging from the bewildered looks on the faces of people I told about the project, it wasn’t obvious this was a natural story. I was asked the "How is this more than a magazine story?" question many more times than once.

Read all of it here (page 6: PDF File.)

By the way, if you were a fan of the film Wordfreak, check out an interview I did with Scrabble champ "G.I." Joel Sherman here.