Andrew Croome chats with Jessica Au about his novel,

Tell us about the research process for

Before writing the book I travelled to Las Vegas, where I visited most of the poker rooms and spoke to a lot of players. I deliberately went alone because that was what my protagonist was going to do. One of the poker’s upsides is that it puts you at a table with people you’d never usually meet. But the game is also an enormously disconnecting experience – for the people who take it up full-time, it’s essentially a withdrawal from society and from anything productive. The poker world is an amalgam of various myths and stories, but I also wanted to write about this inner experience, the player’s experience. Playing far too much poker myself also helped.

The eventual idea for Midnight Empire really came from the fact that – 35 miles up the road from Las Vegas – US pilots are flying unmanned aerial drones over Afghanistan and elsewhere. Like Vegas itself, it’s something that seems both remarkable and completely banal. I wasn’t able to visit the base in any official way – the Air Force was not supporting journalists or writers at the time – but I drove out to take a look.

What was the best (or worst) part of the publishing process?

Best is always that first copy of the book arriving in the mail. Before that, I’d nominate the editing process. It gives you extra distance on the work and the chance to cut and reshape to make a better book – often in ways that you might not otherwise have considered. No book is perfect, of course, and not all troubles can necessarily be fixed. But there is something about a long-form letter from an editor, on actual paper, that helps.

Which literary character do you secretly wish you were?

Secretly: Detective Lester Freamon from The Wire. He’s wise, analytical, and quite often profound. He keeps his principles, drinks enough, and knows how to get after the corrupt and powerful. Good police.

What’s a question you’d like to be asked in interviews? (And your answer to it?)

The question I most like is when I’m asked why I did something in my work that I haven’t realised I’ve done – about a metaphor or a meaning that was unintended. Usually, it’s something a reader has liked and so I nod sagely. Afterwards I’ll go away and think about whether I did that or not. With that, I seem to have successfully avoided both answering and asking this question. Sorry.

If you were a bookseller, what’s the one book you’d want everyone to buy?

The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy – only because it retails for $4,388 and probably has quite a margin. If people wouldn’t buy that, I’d say Solzhenitsyn’s In The First Circle. just because it’s a favourite.

Midnight Empire is out now in

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