I also watched teams of employees struggle together to serve customers and solve problems and put their own agendas behind them to keep the company going and put food on everybody's tables. That is not to say that there aren't egotistical self-seeking vicious people in business. They're just forced, a fair amount of the time, to work together to accomplish clear-cut goals. Academics don't typically work as a team to produce measurable results. The desire to make yourself look brilliant drives the cocktail parties as much as the faculty lectures, where making the speaker look stupid and yourself look good is often a part of the general amusement.
Human nature is what it is.
There are obviously countless professors of remarkable ability and moral character who condemn all the aforementioned behavior. Several are still among my all-time favorite people, who've influenced me substantially as a person and a writer. And when I finished Publish , I started Pride and Predator before I had a contract. Another consideration in choosing to write a series about Ben was that he can travel anywhere because of the sorts of things he has to research, and the differences in setting and milieu would create very different stories and keep me amused while, hopefully, interesting Ben's readers too. I have a low tolerance for boredom, and I don't want to write the same book twice.