By Simon Mulligan New author, Jim Cartwright has previously written film reviews for local newspapers, magazine articles on subjects ranging from autograph collecting to tattoos. He has even admitted to writing “trashy adult fiction,” as he calls it. He is currently busy with promotion for his first novel, “Las Vegas Bandits.” I had the opportunity to sit with the scribe for a few minutes and ask him about his book. Q: Your book, Las Vegas Bandits, has been called “engaging,” “a page turner,” and has overall good reviews. Do you attribute this to the story, the characters, or good writing? A: I think it’s a combination of all those elements. I’ve been living with these characters for thirty years so I’ve had the time to fully develop them and make sure that they are not just one dimensional figures saying their lines. Their exploits are part real and part fiction. I’m not telling what’s real and what’s not. I leave that for the reader to decide. Q: How did you prepare for the writing process? A: Every writer has their own way of preparing to tell a story. I think that being able to tell a good story in person is a great gift. I like to think that I have that ability and use it in my writing. As I wrote the book I envisioned it as a movie in my head. I went through the emotions that the characters experienced and tried to put that emotion onto the page. I also tried to write it in a way so the reader could see the same movie that I was seeing. Q: I understand that the book originally began as a screenplay? A: Yes, it did. I conceived and wrote the screenplay during the summer of 1982. After several re-writes, I shopped it around to the studios and various production companies and directors. It was a lot easier back then to contact those people. Q: What was the response? A: It was good. The majority of the letters I got back basically said: It’s good but not what we’re looking for at this time. Well, at that time, the studios were looking for the teenage sex comedy romp film with women flashing their breasts. This was not that type of story so they all passed on it. Q: Where did you go from there? A: I tried not to get discouraged, but I ultimately put it aside and went into other projects and life kind of took over. Every once in a while I would come across the screenplay, in my files and think about resurrecting it. Once I decided to do that, I began to think about the characters and had to make some changes to reflect my current state of mind and my place in life right now. Q: You eventually did novelize it with a few changes. A: I still thought it would make a good film or at the very least, a television movie. Even with the change to Sam and Travis. In the original version, Sam and Alex had girlfriends. I decided that I didn’t want to pander to the straight world so I made the change to Sam and Travis. I also got rid of Alex’s girlfriend so I could focus on the friendship of Sam and Alex. Back in the Eighties, a romance between Sam and Travis would never work. Nowadays, who cares? I feel that as long as the characters and story is good, it doesn’t matter who is kissing who. Q: Doesn’t that make the book a tougher sell to the general public? A: It only makes it a tough sell to the closed minded. Most people are open minded and intelligent enough to accept others for who they are, not who they sleep with. It is the open and intelligent reader that I have reached. I have fans in different age groups, walks of life, men and women. There is something about the characters that strikes a chord with people and I think that’s great. Q: What do you hope will happen as the book becomes more popular? A: The same as any other author, to see the novel get turned into a movie. It seems that a lot of film projects are based on novels, so I figured I had a better chance at novelizing the screenplay and having some one at a production company read it and say to their