White Tiger by Andrew Warren
TPP EP 21

TPP Episode 21 with Andrew Warren

[00:00:00] Coming up on the Thriller Pitch podcast.

Andrew: I envisioned the scene where the white tiger fighting someone. But as he’s fighting this guy and doing these martial arts he’s also calling out these numbers and you’re not really sure what’s going on. Why is he calling G eight and G nine. And then when the scene’s over there’s this reveal that the whole time he is been fighting this other guy, he has also been playing this very complex chess like game with a computer.

​Mark: What makes a great thriller tick, and what does it take to write one? Welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, where bestselling award-winning and emerging thriller authors share the craft research and real world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories. I’m your host, mark p Jay Nadal.

Whether you’re writing thrillers or can’t get enough of reading them, this show takes you inside the minds of the authors, behind the twist. Characters [00:01:00] and moments that keep us turning the page.

This week I’m joined by Andrew Warren, the author behind the Thomas Kane Action thriller series. We dig into how he created the white tiger, a villain who’s both physically dangerous and tactically intelligent. We talk about balancing action with strategy, writing fights that are fast, yet informative, and the challenge of keeping a long running series fresh without repeating yourself.

If you write thrillers or wanna deepen the way you handle action and antagonists, this is a conversation you’ll want to hear.

Andrew, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: hey man, thank you for having me. It’s always, always a pleasure. Excited to, to be back.

Mark: You are officially the first guest to be a repeat guest, and you were the first guest on the epi on the podcast. So you are hitting all the All the check marks. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Andrew: Alright. You know, that’s actually really funny because some of my readers may know, and some of your viewers may know, like I signed a a with a publisher for my Thomas [00:02:00] Kane book. So they’ve been re-releasing the series and when I first came on, they had just rereleased the first one, and now that I’m back, they’ve, we’ve published the first brand new one. So it’s, that’s sort of interesting that that’s the way the timing worked out. So.

Mark: Yeah. And we are here to talk about it. Have it over the camera. A white tiger. Thank you for the copy. We both have our copies here. Yeah, thank you. I’ve, really enjoyed it. I haven’t been able to finish it as always it’s can be challenging to read a book in a week or less between guests, but I have halfway through or so a big, pretty intense car chase, long car motorcycle, intense chase about halfway through that. I absolutely loved. It was a lot of fun.

Andrew: as long as you’re enjoying the ride, that’s all that

Mark: I am. Thank you. So let’s get into the pitch before I talk too much about your book.

Andrew: Right on. Well, like I said, so we’ve been republishing the original series all leading up to White Tiger, which is the first brand new book in the cane series in a while. So I wanted to do something a little bit different. And so White Tiger is actually kind of a [00:03:00] spiritual sequel to Tokyo Black, the first book in the series.

So in White Tiger Cain has kind of come full circle. He is come in from the cold, he’s working with the CIA and he is working on a mission in South Korea that goes sideways and things go pretty disastrously wrong. So he’s recalled to the United States, but before he can leave the country, he gets a message from a character that we met in Tokyo Black.

And I don’t want to give anything away, but you know, it’s a very sort of vague message. But Kane knows this person well enough to know that this is a, a call for help. So he sort of goes rogue, ignores his orders, and travels to Japan to help this old friend of his, where he becomes embroiled in a much larger conspiracy, dealing with a rival yakus, a clan, which connects back to what was happening to him in South Korea.

Mark: Awesome. So where did this idea come from? And this is book six. So this is a series. Let’s talk about not just where this, like where this idea came from first, but then how you build this entire [00:04:00] series because there’s so much that goes into an action thriller series like this and keeping readers interested and motivated.

Andrew: man, it’s, it’s tricky and I don’t think, I’m gonna say this a lot in this interview, but I don’t think there’s any one answer, there’s no, like, I’m sure if you ask 10 authors, you’re gonna get 10 different ways of approaching it. But for me, the way I kind of looked at it was I always knew I wanted it to be a series.

I didn’t know if readers would take to it, but my intention from book one was that it would be a series, but I, kind of always tried to do two somewhat contradictory things in a way. So when I was writing Tokyo Black when I got to, maybe midway through, I would start to think, okay, what could the next book be about?

How could this series continue? And, Tokyo Black was set all in Japan and another country that I visited and was really fascinated by was China. And it just seemed like a natural fit. Well, okay, maybe at least for the first few books, maybe there’s a focus on East Asia, which isn’t something I thought had been done to death.

There’d been a lot of books set like [00:05:00] in the Middle East, or a lot of books set domestically. And I thought Asia, which was a con, an area that I’ve traveled quite a bit. I was like, maybe that’s kind of, could be sort of my niche.

So that was the first thought so as I was writing Tokyo Black, in the back of my mind. Was like, okay, well if the next book’s in China, what could that be about? And I knew that there was this partner character that had been mentioned. I was like, well, maybe his partner needs help or something like that.

And that idea morphed and changed quite a bit by the time I got to book two. But those were still kind of the basic seeds and you can see it there. However, one thing that I always try to do, no matter what book I’m working on, and I’ll get a quote. I, have you ever seen the movie Gatica?

Mark: I don’t think so. I may

Andrew: It’s a, it’s a, yeah, it’s an older. movie. It’s like from the nineties. It’s a sci-fi movie. The story of it isn’t important, but there’s a line in it where there are these two brothers that always race. They swim out to rock and swim back. And the swim back is really treacherous ’cause it gets very foggy and the water’s rough. And so the one brother who is like [00:06:00] physically superior, but he always loses the race. And he is like, why, how did you always beat me and the other brother’s? Like, I never saved anything for the swim back. He just like all out both ways. And if he lost his energy and drowned, that was that.

And so I feel like when you’re writing, you can’t save anything for the next book. You’ve gotta put all your love and all your ideas and all your attention into the book you’re working on. So don’t hold anything back and be like, oh, this is a good idea. I’ll save it for a later book. Put everything you can into that first book, and then when you get to the next book, you’ll have new ideas and fresh ideas. But obviously something, like a location, I wasn’t gonna suddenly shift Tokyo Black to China so I felt that was fine. I just wrote that down, wrote down a couple things, but that’s kind of the way I do it.

The things that really inspire me for books are usually either locations or characters so for instance, the Red Phoenix that was inspired by the location, I was like, okay, I’ve written about Japan, now I wanna write a book set in China. White Tiger though was very much inspired by the characters.

Both Cannes Allies and the villain, I thought it would be [00:07:00] cool, since this was the first brand new book since we’d started the re-release, I thought it would be interesting to circle back, to book one and maybe revisit some of those characters and see like, how have things changed for them?

How are they the and Kane himself going on this journey of being like a kind of rogue outsider at the beginning to being back in from the cold and working for the agency. And I wanted to see how other characters we had met had changed. So that was part of it. And then also the character of the White Tiger himself came about I was, just researching ideas for a villain, and I came across this condition, the cat’s eye syndrome, where a human being’s eyes can have cat-like pupils. And I just thought that was such a fascinating physical quirk. I’m like, that’s gotta be a, that I gotta use that for a villain.

How could I make this work? And so originally White Tiger wasn’t planned to be the next book. I was, the book that I’m finishing now was going to be the next book, but as soon as that villain came into my head and I just pictured him I couldn’t, I was, [00:08:00] I just was off and running. I couldn’t drop that idea. It was just, I loved it so much. And that’s where White Tiger came from. As a long answer to your question.

Mark: So when you’re building this book six, do you have a wall of everything that’s happened in all of the people or is this in your brain?

Andrew: No.

Mark: How do you keep track of all this? Because I think staying true to this story, like staying true to the characters must get hard over time. The downside to a series to me is that you don’t get to start fresh.

You have these people that have, you’re trying to develop them. You’re trying to give them a story arc every time. That’s how do you keep track of it all?

Andrew: It is tricky and honestly, up until White tiger, I would say most of the cane books, there’s a, kind of background through line, but they are all standalone stories. Even White Tiger, I think is a standalone story. The main plot is wrapped up at the end of each book. So the connecting tissues are little things like there’s only a few characters that go through all the books, so for White Tiger, for example, going back to [00:09:00] those, the characters from Book one, a lot of those characters had not been seen since Tokyo Black? So there wasn’t a ton of stuff to go into, but it is tricky like characters like Rebecca, who are in every book, and how her and Kane’s relationship, where’s it at, what stages it at, how are the pressures that they’re both under affecting them? How to make that both dramatic but also kind of natural and realistic, that is very challenging. And in fact, on the book I’m working on now, I’m sort of looking at that, like how much should Rebecca be involved in this story should I dial her back a little bit? That part is complicated. But for a white tiger, it was actually really fun because the characters you’re spending most of your time with haven’t been seen since book one. So I of had a free canvas, like what would happen to all these people and so I was free to play around and some of them are very similar to last time we saw them, but some of them are very different. That was kind of a blast to come up with the different trajectories that they went off on.

Mark: And someone like Rebecca how are you building her arc throughout all these stories from someone who, ’cause it’s like [00:10:00] she’s a love interest. In the first one we’re kinda like a former love interest. And then now we’re, now they’re, well, I don’t wanna give away my, should this, I guess you could, yeah.

I don’t remember. Hasn’t read the stories. I don’t wanna give it away, but

Andrew: Yeah. They’re together in a book before this, so that’s not new.

Mark: How do you make that Because one of the things about action pillars that, or I guess I think more like James Bond, where he’s a ladies man, right? Whereas Thomas Kane is he is almost conflicted, even in this book where there’s moments where he’s conflicted about that, where he’s oh, I don’t wanna do this.

I’m not into this. And then there’s a moment where he is like, well, I can get into, you know, why not? Yeah.

Andrew: Like he’s, he’s a human being, but he is definitely not a ladies man. And one of the things I kind of tried to do with Kane when I, when I envisioned the character was I definitely did not want like a kind of cookie cutter copy of James Bond. Even though I love Fleming’s writing, Fleming’s writing is a huge influence on me. But that character’s been done and I didn’t want to do that character. And Kain to me, when I imagine someone like Kain, when we first meet Kain, he’s been betrayed. He’s very [00:11:00] bitter. He doesn’t trust anybody. He’s paranoid almost there’s hints that he may even have PTSD from what’s happened to him. That is not a guy in my mind that is going out and hitting on chicks at bars, or like trying to sleep with every woman he meets. It’s almost the opposite. He’s suffering massive guilt. He kind of subconsciously sabotages all his relationships in my opinion, in those early books. So I just tried to approach everything from that lens. So when he would hook up with somebody in an earlier book, it was more like, these are two people who are both damaged in a similar way. It’s not a fun fling. It’s more like, this is the only little bit of solace these two individuals are gonna get for a little while.

And really all he wants, like in those early books is to, to rekindle his relationship with Rebecca and get back to that, you know, that’s kind of what he’s craving. So that was sort of the arc up till then. But I kind of feel like any of these things, you can only keep them going for so long and then you have to introduce a spin or a new element, so the book that I’m working on now, kind of, and I don’t [00:12:00] wanna give it away ’cause it’s new, but it throws a new kind of wrench into, you know, the relationship starts out. They’re former lovers, they’re not together. There’s some bitterness there.

They come around over several books, they’re able to rekindle that relationship. But the, the job and the demands of the job and the two different sides of the jobs that they represent, where Kane’s like out in the world, in the field, and Rebecca is in a more kind of political bureaucratic side of it, that puts stress on the relationship.

And then this new book I’m working on now, there’s a new instant that happens that twists that wrench a little bit and sends things in a new direction. So I don’t, I, I don’t have a like, grand plan of here’s where they’re going to end up. It’s more just what’s believable. You know what? I don’t wanna just like change things for change’s sake, but you also need to kind of keep things developing in an interesting direction.

So I, it’s, I just play it by ear, like book by book.

Mark: And with your characters, how do you avoid repeating personalities when you go from book to book?

Andrew: Oh, wow. Hmm. You mean [00:13:00] like in terms of secondary characters or

Mark: yeah. We know, yeah, we know Cain and Rebecca and they’re, let’s say the villain of a book one versus the villain of a book six, it’s easy to almost fall into what are their motivations and what are like, there’s a lot of villains later. How do you avoid oh, this villain sounds a lot like villain six books ago.

Andrew: I mean some of that, I think some of that just comes from their personality. Everyone’s got their own backstory and that kind of colors their personality. So, for instance, for this book for the White Tiger, I kind of thought, when I looked at the other villains in the past that I’d put in the books, they were all either physical challenges for Kane or intellectual challenges for Kane. They tended to fall into those two groups. And so I was like, what if there was a character that was both? And so when that idea came into my head, I instantly, for whatever reason, this is just one of those writer things.

I hadn’t outlined it. I don’t know where it actually, I do know where it came from. We can get into that later. But I, I envisioned the scene where there’s this guy, the white tiger. ’cause I already had a kind of physical idea of what he looked like, fighting [00:14:00] someone. But as he’s fighting this guy and doing these martial arts and he’s defending himself and blocking, he’s also calling out these numbers and you’re not really sure what’s going on.

And I thought that would be a kind of cool just visual and audio scene. Why is he calling G eight and G nine and all this stuff. And then when the scene’s over. There’s this reveal that the whole time he is been fighting this other guy, he has also been playing this very complex chess like game with a computer. And he’s so intellectually superior, that he’s able to keep this game in his head and play it well also fighting this guy and being a martial arts expert and to me I was like, that is a powerful villain. Once you see that, you’re like, oh man, this guy could actually threaten Kane someone with those physical abilities and those intellectual abilities. And then once you have that idea, their personality derives from that. So, this character, he plays this game called Oggi, and he sees his plots and sees the people around him as pieces in Oggi game, and that’s how he relates to the world, I don’t think there’s an easy answer and sometimes when I’m revising, I [00:15:00] do look at dialogue and say, this sounds too much like a generic villain, or, this sounds like stuff I’ve done before, and I’ll try to change it up or introduce a little more personality into it to make it different.

So it is something I think you have to be on the lookout for, but I don’t think there’s no one set way to do it, in my opinion. You just try to come up with the most interesting character you can. And then when you’re doing your revising and editorial, just be honest with yourself, is this as unique and interesting as I can make it, or does it feel like I’m kind of settling into a familiar pattern?

Mark: Okay. I wanna take a second. I didn’t know this in our last interview, but you also write in a different genre, right? Science fiction. So you have a whole other thing going on over there.

Andrew: I do. Yeah.

Mark: I’m curious about the differences between the two. When you consider the Thomas Kane series, you consider a spy thriller action thriller, right?

How do you move from that spy thriller, action thriller where we’re always moving very fast? Kane doesn’t spend a lot of time in his head. He is often more [00:16:00] reactive that’s just the genre it’s not like a psychological book where they spend a lot of time like, oh, why is this happening to me?

And stuff. So you write things move fast as the action thriller, but then you go to science fiction and now you have world building and it’s almost, I wouldn’t say it’s opposite, but it’s very different. How do you wear

Andrew: Well, my, well, first of all, my science fiction is, I mean the one commonality I would say with all the things I write is they are all fast-paced, action kinds of books. Those are just, what I enjoy writing and that’s my style. I was thinking about one of the other, you had sent me some questions you might ask, and I was just trying to think, because, a lot of my process is more instinctive.

It’s not like I’ve ever really sat down and be like, here’s how I approach things. And I realized, I think I look at the role of author. So I have an entertainment background and I’ve, I’ve done screenwriting and other kinds of production type stuff. I actually look at the role of an author as closer to a director than a screenwriter because when you’re a screenwriter, the screenplay is really more equivalent to an outline than a finished [00:17:00] product.

And then when you’re a director, you make the movie and the movie is the finished product. So as an author, I look at the books I’m writing, almost like movies I’m directing in my head, and I love fast paced action packed movies, so my sci-fi is much closer to something like Star Wars or Guardians of the galaxy than something like 2001.

In terms of the pacing and the, the action that’s not very different. But what is different is that, whereas I think someone like cain it’s much more grounded. It has to take place in a plausible world, and certain books may stretch that, and other books are more gritty and realistic, and other books get a little bit bigger and more bombastic, but they’re all still taking place in the real world.

So there’s research and trying to make these real locations come to life. Whereas for the science fiction, it’s much more like, that’s where I like, get all my crazy ideas out on the page. Whatever I can think of it, you can, if you can imagine it, you can make it, you can make it make sense in this kind of world.

So that’s sort of my chance to just really cut loose and kind of vent all my just [00:18:00] insane, crazy ideas.

Mark: Do you find yourself like taking one half off to put another hat on when you go between, or they’re just close enough to not have to

Andrew: just different. Not, I know it’s not, it’s not really hard for me to switch because they’re just, like I said, the process is still the same. I’m still directing the movie in my head. It’s just that what I wanna see in a spy thriller movie is different than what I wanna see in a space opera sci-fi movie.

And so there’s just different, just different ideas that can come into play, but I don’t find the process much different between them. Like, and I don’t really have any trouble switching between, so the sci-fi, there’s two sci-fi series I have. One is the Talon series, and that is kind of like a Conan and the Barbarian space is the elevator pitch. And, much like I love Fleming’s writing, I also love Robert e Howard’s Sword and Sorcery Conan writing. And so, that series was sort of a exercise in how could you take these tropes of sword and sorcery, but apply them to a more like space opera, [00:19:00] sci-fi world, and that was just a lot of fun for me to experiment and play around with.

Mark: Okay. So when you go from now you’re setting, when you’re in the Cane series, and I guess we’ll get back to writing this book, how do you go about setting and building, constructing the setting in the world that you have for Cane?

Andrew: It just, there’s, I mean, there’s two, I’d say there’s two like kind of subsets of locations in the world of Cane. There’s the places that I’ve actually traveled to and that I have my own kind of thoughts and impressions of. And then there’s places where I have to depend on research. So for the places that I’ve been to, like a, a big inspiration of White Tiger was my trip to Hokkaido.

I’d been to Japan several times I love Japan. But when I went to Hokkaido in the north, I was like that was a whole different area that I’d never been to. And I was really blown away. Sapporo is probably now my favorite city in Japan.

I really just love that location. And White Tiger was the first book where I actually was able to, sorry, let me back up. So I knew after that [00:20:00] trip that, okay, I gotta set a book here someday, so I kind of, I had photographs, I had ideas, and I filed that away. White Tiger is unique in all the books because it’s the only one where I actually had a chance to, go back to one of these places, like when I knew for a fact that I was gonna write a book there, ’cause so, so I, I signed this deal with Bold Wood and we were going through the RERE releases and I was like, all right, I’m gonna do White Tigers the next book.

And I knew I wanted it set in Al-Qaeda. I’d been there, I had a lot of ideas, I had my own impressions, but we were also about to take another trip to Japan. So I asked my wife, Hey, I know you want to do like new spots, but I’m about to write this book. Would it be cool if we also spent a few days in Hokkaido and went to these places?

And she was totally down with it. So I got to go back and actually look at these locations through the eye of an author about to start a novel. And as soon as we got back, I was gonna start writing. So I was able to do things like go into the Sapporo underground and use my iPhone and measure the corridors. I’m like, okay,

Mark: What vehicle?

Andrew: fit down here? And like, and then, okay, well like a [00:21:00] Mustang can, but, this little cake car could, and so all those spots in the book everything from, I don’t know how well you remember it, but when he is running from the gangsters in the club, he ducks into this little cocktail lounge that’s on this abandoned floor of a building.

That’s a real lounge that my wife and I just stumbled upon. We’re walking through in Japan, because space is so limited, they build up, so a lot of times when you’re looking for something, you’ll be looking for a bar or a restaurant, you can’t find it, but it’s because it’s on the third or fourth floor of a building, like right above you.

And you don’t, you wouldn’t even know it was there unless you already know. We had went to a restaurant in this building and then we’re like, what else is in this building? We just started walking around floor by floor and it’s just very weird. It’s very different than here. ’cause a lot of businesses and offices are closed and the lights are dark.

But then you’ll see this one door and you open it up and there could be anything, like a restaurant or a bar. And in this case it was this very chic kind of jazzy cocktail lounge with this bartender who when he made the cocktails, he would like close his eyes and it was almost like he was doing a ritual and he was really into it.

And so I was like, this is a [00:22:00] cool location. So all those things I was able to find and put in the book, are there, they’re my own experiences. But then sometimes, for instance in Helen Dice, which is the book published right before this one, the second half of that book takes place in Siberia, which of course is not a place that I’ve traveled to, but I just, for whatever reason, I just found it really fascinating.

I would read about it. I saw a documentary about Siberian, I can’t remember if they were hunters or like log like lumberjacks, but they would go, they would lead, they would, there’s like a few towns and when the season for their job comes up, they go into the forest and they build these like cabins or shacks and stay there for the season and then they hunt or cut down timber, whatever they do.

And then they leave when the winter hits and it’s just impossible to survive there. And I was like, oh, what if Kane was, you know, on the run in Siberia and he could stumble across one of these cabins and take shelter there and I just was fascinated with it. So for someplace like that, I just have to do research and you know, I try to find a way to take that research and relate it to [00:23:00] something that I do know.

So for instance you know, I’ve never been to Siberia, but I’m from New Jersey and it gets really fricking cold in New Jersey. And so I’ve been on ski trips and I’ve been in blizzards and so I tried to take that sense of being cold and like that, trying to do all this stuff while you’re freezing and you don’t have proper winter gear and your teeth are chattering and your muscles are seizing up and pick that as something that, okay, I’ve never been to this place, but I can imagine what this must be like. And then I try to bring that detail out in the story, you know? So those are kind of the two ways that I approach building the world.

Mark: Have you ever played music in the background to try bring that to life, like listen to a

Andrew: Oh, I always, yeah, I always, well not a snowstorm per se, but

I always write to music and certainly the music that I choose, I make a playlist for each book. And so obviously of course you can’t like time what track comes up when you’re writing what scene, but I try to pick music that relates.

So for instance, the third book, fire and Forget, which is all set in East Africa. There’s some soundtracks on there from movies that are set in Africa, like out of [00:24:00] Africa is on there. And, blood Diamond is on there. But then I also, I wanted to highlight like the kind of wild savage beauty.

There’s a scene in that book where there escaping this like war Ravage town, which is an awful, terrible place. But then they’re running through this, game reserve and it’s like a kind of unspoiled wild nature, and they’re floating on a raft. And to me like that, I pictured that scene very beautiful in my head.

So I had some music from Avatar on that playlist. And so whenever I picture Cain and, and the, the woman in that story, like on this raft and this river and this natural game preserve in Africa, I always picture the tracks and avatar when the main characters first experiencing the beauty of that planet, and like that world, it’s a very kind of mystical music, you know.

Mark: One of the things I love about your writing is how you can build the place yet, keep the story moving. When Kane, like, let’s say with a, with a photo. So you’ve done your research and you’ve actually been there and you have these pictures, and when you’re doing your [00:25:00] research, Kane walks into a room.

What’s going through your mind in order to keep him moving? Tell us the details that are interesting enough to set place, but not bog us down with the color of everything in the room like an epic fantasy might spend three pages doing it. You’re, we’re always moving. Yet I still feel very grounded in place.

How do you do that?

Andrew: Man, I, and of this also goes back to what you’re asking about the science fiction too, because I do think authors tend to do that more in science fiction. Right? Because your, your thought process is a lot, what I’m describing doesn’t exist so I have to like, describe it in exhausting detail or else they’re not gonna see it. But for both of, for both. I try really hard to, I, again I just don’t think there’s a simple answer, but I think that you have to be, you have to be cognizant of the fact that there is such a thing as too much, right?

You’re not trying to, you’re not writing a technical manual, you’re not trying to describe every facet of what’s there. You’re just [00:26:00] trying to give readers enough for them to build their own impression. Have you ever read Stephen King’s book on

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: So that example he gives where he’s like, I’m, I am gonna describe like a rabbit on a table with a red tablecloth in a cage. And there’s the number eight on his back.

You can picture that, that’s enough detail for you to imagine that in your head, but he’s like, I didn’t describe like what kind of tablecloth it is and what’s the cage made out of and how, what are the dimensions of the cage? Unless those things are critically important, like if the cage is going to then be used to like wedge open a door and the size of it matters, maybe you want to give a little more info.

So I try to just think like, what’s important, what details would make the place come alive. And then the other thing I always try to do, I don’t always succeed, but I really try to make sure that I’m bringing in multiple senses, you know? So a lot of times I’ll, when I write something, I’ll go back and I’ll be like, oh, all I did was say what it looks like and I’ll try to like tweak it and be like, and it what does it feel like?

Or what does it smell like? Or what does it sound like? And I think a little bit of that can also go a [00:27:00] really long way into bringing something to life without going into exhaustive detail.

Mark: Do you find it easier when you don’t know the place and you’ve done research, or when you do know when you’re looking at this photo? ’cause I could imagine looking at a photo and being like, this is such an awesome room. I need to talk about it, but I can’t.

Andrew: I, well, I think actually when I’ve been there is when I’m more tempted to go, ’cause I feel responsible to really convey, like, ’cause usually nine times outta 10, I’m writing about places that I found interesting. And so I feel this responsibility, like, oh, I gotta like really capture the reality of this place and do it justice. But, I just think you just have to, again, a lot of times I will go back when I’m revising and be like, you know what, I can cut this down a little bit. I went a little bit overboard here and just trying to keep that in mind that there’s a point where there’s diminishing returns. Right. You know, so it’s like if you can get a few details in that are relevant, if you can couch those details in action if, rather than just describing something, if [00:28:00] Kane walks over to something and picks something up like I think that if you’re keeping the description married to the action, like that can help a little bit too. Just look at everything you do critically and ask those questions like, is this too much? Is it not enough? And just try to find a balance. I, It was an interesting experience republishing the original books because they did a new edit on all of ’em.

And so I had to go back and go through everything to approve their edits. And so I had to kinda reread all the books in rapid succession, and I did see my style has evolved. When I first started, I would describe fight scenes extremely intricately, and I still do, but my older ones, I’m like, okay, that’s probably too much detail.

I think I could have made that a little bit more impressionistic, but it’s a balance, right? Because the readers tell me they like that, they like the elaborate fight scenes. But I do think that you can get that across a little bit more efficiently. if I look at a fight scene I right now versus a fight scene in Book one, I do think I’ve evolved a little [00:29:00] bit to where you get the same effect, but with less words in essence. And so that it keeps it moving faster.

Mark: Can you talk about a fight scene for a minute? When you say it’s improved, what does that mean? Is it a difference between like right fist to face, left foot comes up and kicks in the nose and

Andrew: Again, like I looked at these scenes like I’m a director, so I wrote those. My, I write my fight scenes as if I’m directing an action scene. So it’s very blow by blow, and, and to some extent, like I said, I, the reader, my readers have told me they like that, but I do think that, now I, it’s hard to explain, but I feel like if you read one of my fight scenes now, it’s just a little bit more natural.

It flows a little bit more, it’s a little bit easier to envision because I’m dialing back just a little bit of the detail, and letting it be a little bit more impressionistic versus like left fit, pivot, right leg, weight back on heel, but still keeping that sense of because like if you read. Like every author approaches this differently. You might read one book where the author’s like they traded blows on the edge of a waterfall. That’s one [00:30:00] way to do a fight scene. That’s way more general than I would ever get I would definitely get more specific. I might say they traded blows for a few seconds, then came through a right hook knocking the salan off balance.

I, I would put in a little bit more specific detail, but I do think there’s times when if you dial back on the detail a little bit, you can speed it along and just put in the key beats that actually change the outcome, of what you, of what’s happening.

Mark: And you blend the

Andrew: But everyone’s,

Mark: environment too.

Andrew: oh, thanks. Yeah, that’s something I think that’s just something I like from movies, right?

If, like a Jason Bourne movie, I love that scene where he’s fighting the guy and he is using everything in the apartment, like the toaster and the newspaper and a pen. So I feel if you can, if you set up your location properly, then you can pay off all that stuff. When it comes, comes time to use it.

Mark: Yeah. It at its core. What kind of story would you say White Tiger is?

Andrew: White Tiger is a thriller. I mean, its primary purpose is to entertain and excite the [00:31:00] reader in my opinion. But I do try to put in character and themes and I think all that stuff is there. And also, if you like reading about interesting locations, I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

A lot of my readers are people who like to travel or people who wish they could travel. But at the end of the day when I write a book, I always try to remind myself the primary purpose of this book is to entertain the reader. I’m not trying to. Make any, all the thematic stuff is, which I like, is great, but if, if the reader’s not excited, if the reader’s not entertained, if their pulse isn’t racing and they’re dying to see what happens, then I’ve failed.

So that’s what, whenever it’s like, comes into a conflict between well, like, should I spend more time on this idea, or more time on this action scene I’m gonna lean towards the action scenes because that’s what readers are buying the ticket for, to use the movie analogy.

Mark: Okay, so when a reader puts the book down, what are you hoping they’re gonna feel? Is it just they’re sweating and then wipe their brow and like, whew, I gotta go?

Andrew: I’m hoping they’re gonna feel I can’t wait for the next, Caine novel. [00:32:00] You know, like, no, I mean that, but also I think, I, a big part, like I said, because I’m driven by the locations, I always hope that the reader feels like they’ve just taken a really exciting trip. Obviously a kind of a vicarious action kind of thing. You don’t, you wouldn’t want those things to really happen to you, but vicariously you can kind of read through and feel that excitement, but also feel, the sense of beauty and the, the fascination with these places and the different cultures. And I always include, I try to include cultures and the way the people there think, and the way they express themselves. ’cause I find those things fascinating. I try to strike a balance, right? I don’t think you can write wall to wall action because that gets very stale quickly. But I do think that the action, the excitement is the primary thing that keeps people coming to the thriller genre.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Especially the action spy thriller. Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. But within that, there’s plenty of room. I’ve never had a problem in my opinion, like expressing the ideas and themes [00:33:00] that I wanna express while keeping that action, like really fun and exciting and, and propulsive.

Mark: Do you ever find yourself com comparing, ’cause you have like comp titles for all your books with like Trigger Man. Do you ever find yourself asking, am I too close to a Marini trigger man?

Andrew: Oh, the gray man.

Mark: sorry, gray Man? Yeah.

Andrew: No, I, I mean, I, all those things were influences on me. Of course, I loved the Gray Man books too. I haven’t read all of them, but I think that, when I developed a Kain character, I think I developed him to be just different enough.

Are things that in my mind, clearly separate Kain from the Gray Man or from James Bond, or from other characters. And I just try to keep those things in mind. And because of that, I’ve never really felt that, I’ve certainly never copied any of their plots or anything like that I haven’t read enough of them to really do that.

I’ve only read, I’ve read maybe three or four of the, of the Gray Man books and they’re great. Like, I love them. And, and actually I would say that the gray man to me. [00:34:00] Was a great, inspiration for like, ’cause I wanted to write books that were very action packed. And I felt like a lot of the thrillers I’d read were more about the suspense than the action.

And suspense is great, but I had never felt like you could just take one of those books and translate it to an action movie. You’d have to add a lot to make it really exciting visually. But when I read the Gray Man, I’m like, all right, now this is like an action movie in book form.

And I, I really love that. So that was sort of an inspiration to me. But I think we definitely do it in very different ways, you know?

Mark: Okay. So last time I asked you this question, what advice would you give someone who just published their first book? This time I want to focus on, ’cause you talked a little bit about the marketing side and planning ahead. This time. I, if you can answer to the craft side. So what advice would you have regarding someone who just published their first or second book from a craft perspective as in developing more as a writer?

Because the one thing that comes up, especially in the indie world, [00:35:00] is you have all these hats. You have social media, you have marketing, I mean, you still have to do that too. How do you build craft? How do you develop as a writer?

Andrew: I think it goes back to two things which is probably an answer a lot of this is if there’s anything I’m gonna say that I think is universal, this is probably it. Like I said before, I asked 10 different authors, you’ll probably get 10, 10 different answers. I bet you 90% of authors will say this same thing that I’m about to say. You really get better by reading more and writing more. And that’s it. I mean, I just don’t think there’s anything else. And when I say reading, like yeah, you can read a lot of craft books and those can be useful and I certainly do, but I don’t think that’s a replacement for just reading fiction.

If you’re writing fiction, like reading fiction and fiction in your genre fiction out of your genre, the more you read and the more you write. I think that it’s really important, of course, to finish books, but I do think that one of the reasons why Tokyo Black worked when I wrote it was because I had, although I hadn’t finished [00:36:00] any other novels, I had written a lot, I’d probably had like five or six, half finished novels and a bunch of short stories and a bunch of screenplays.

So it’s not like, like Tokyo Black was my first published novel, but it’s not like it’s the first, you know, big chunk of words that I’d written. I’d probably written close to half a million words before I wrote that. And, and still, and then even then, like I was just saying, when I go back and read it now I’m like, oh wow, like my style has changed six books later.

Like I can see the differences. So I think that you just have to keep writing, keep reading, like that’s really how you improve. And, but I also think, a phrase I constantly remind myself of is the perfect is the enemy of the good, right? So, like, if you’ve, if you’ve put your book out, and if it’s, if people like it and you’re getting good reviews, keep reading, keep writing, but don’t, like, it’s a, you don’t need to be perfect.

It’s like you’ll never be perfect. So look at things you might wanna do better, but don’t let it hold you back from just get the next book out and the next boy keep writing. Like, just keep doing it and don’t beat yourself up too much if, for the faults that you see, like you’re [00:37:00] always going to see flaws in your writing, but if overall people are entertained, if that’s, if you’re writing popular fiction and people seem to be entertained, like then you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing, keep going.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you. That’s great advice. I can attest to that with the podcast and even, I read, obviously all thriller, but even in the sub genres of thrillers from the domestic to the action to the supernatural and everything else that I’ve read, it’s been eye-opening as to how all these different authors approach the

Andrew: Totally like

Mark: And plot and speed and all these things even among

Andrew: A huge, a huge, side of my writing actually comes from a non thriller author. His name is Haruki Murakami. He’s a Japanese author and he writes these sort of surreal, I don’t even know how, what you’d call them. They’re sort of, sometimes he gets lumped into the mystery category, but I think that’s like really desperately trying to pigeonhole him. ’cause I, I don’t know that I’d call these books mysteries per se. They’re just very surreal, strange stories. But they’re all set in Japan. ’cause he is a Japanese [00:38:00] author and I’ve read translations of his books and I really loved them. And, and I, when I was writing Tokyo Black, I thought I wonder if there’s a way I could incorporate like some of this element of surrealness, without going overboard and without it diluting kind of the action.

And so that’s why I think in a lot of the Kane books, you’ll, there’ll be, Kane has a lot of dreams and nightmares that sometimes come up. And I think that side of them is me thinking like, oh, I wanna bring in a little bit of this kind of strange off kilter feeling from these other books. Like, that’s where I got that from. So you never know, like what you’ll read that inspires you or triggers new ideas.

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: So if you can pick one thing you felt led to your success so far, what do you think that would be?

Andrew: I mean, success is a relative term, right? I’m not, I’m not buying a yacht on the Riviera anytime soon. Honestly two things, what I just said, reading a lot and writing a lot. I was a huge reader as a kid. I mean, [00:39:00] as long as, as far back as I can remember I was just devouring books I love to read. I read everything I could get my hands on, and I do think that that is a big part of being a writer. Write and reading and then writing a lot but then the other thing I’ll say, and I think some of it is luck. I mean, I do think that. But some of it is luck, in the sense that you never know what’s gonna connect with readers.

You do your best. So we talked about my sci-fi stuff, I love those books, but I’ll be the first to say they’re not as successful as the came books. You know, like for whatever reason, the readers that read them leave really good reviews. They seem to really like them. I think they’re a lot of fun. I think the third talent book, maybe the best thing I’ve ever written, honestly. But they don’t sell, they don’t connect with readers. I think a lot of it just comes down to luck, like what, people just happen to be in the mood for lots of, I mean, it’s, it’s like a cliche, right? Lots of artists and writers don’t become famous until years after they started, and sometimes things they wrote decades ago suddenly explode in popularity randomly. You just never know. But I will say, even when you take luck into [00:40:00] account, the more stuff you write and put out there, the more spins at the wheel you’ve got. If you just write one book, put it out there and it doesn’t become successful, and then you stop. Like you’re, you’re the one cutting off your opportunities at that point.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. A question from our previous author that was on the show, ’cause we have like a ask the author a segment that moves forward. Joe Loveday asks, how many characters does it take to write a book?

Andrew: how many characters does

Mark: Yeah. Well this came up because she had her audio book done and because the audio narrator had to try and challenge by knowing all these different voices, that’s where the inspiration for the

Andrew: Had a lot of

Mark: Hearing came from. Yeah.

Andrew: Well, okay. I think maybe my answer might be a cheat. Maybe I think you could, I think you could write a book with only one actual character. Like you could have a person sitting in a room thinking, and I do think you could write a book about that, but their thoughts I think are inevitably going to include other people. you know.

So [00:41:00] are those other people characters. I don’t know I don’t know where the line is, but I do think you could write a book with just one actual physical character but, but of course their, their thoughts and reflections are gonna be intertwined with someone else. Or, I take it back, I think you could write a book like, what’s that movie, Castaway, right?

You could, you could have a guy shipwrecked on an island with no other people, no other characters. And, you could write a story about that. Like just him trying to escape or. Like there’s a, there’s an old, this isn’t quite the same thing, but there’s an old, I think it’s Ray, I think it’s Ray Bradbury’s story about this like planet where the people there only live for a week.

That’s their whole lifespan. They’re born and die in a week. And the whole, the whole story is this guy like, and then a, there’s a crashed spaceship. And I guess if they can get into this spaceship, then they won’t die at the end of the week. Like somehow it changes their biology or whatever.

And so the whole story, I can’t remember if it’s only one person or a couple people, but it’s certainly not a lot of characters. And because their lives are so short, they [00:42:00] don’t really have time to interact with a lot of different people. So it’s mostly this kind of internal journey of this character. A trying to like come to grips with growing up in this rapid accelerated pace. And then B, trying to get to this place where they won’t die. I, I wouldn’t say there’s no other characters, but there’s definitely not a lot so I think it is possible but it’s gonna be a strange book.

Mark: Well, for White Tiger, do you ever stop and ask yourself, do I need another character, or should I bring somebody else in? Like, where’s that? Where do you draw that line for yourself?

Andrew: actually I think I tend to go the opposite. Do I really need another character or can one of the characters I’ve established serve this role? Because I tend to, the characters expand pretty quickly, especially when you’re dealing with books set in foreign countries with lots of foreign names.

It can get confusing for a reader, if they don’t understand. I remember with Tokyo Black, one, the reviews was like, I could, I just couldn’t keep all the Japanese names straight. And too many of them start with K, which is true. There were a lot of K names. So I actually almost as a joke in this book, I did give a character a K name ’cause I’m like, I just remembered that [00:43:00] quote. I’m gonna give this character a K name just for fun for me. But yeah, I think that. I don’t, again it’s not six characters is the perfect amount of character, but I do think you kind of get a sense of, okay, this is starting to get unwieldy not only in the sense of a lot of characters for the audience to remember, but also how many characters can you invest and make them unique and memorable

And when I start to feel like that, that focus is getting just split up too much, that’s when I’ll try to be like, okay, like instead of inventing a new character, how can I have this other character I’ve already created fulfill this role?

Junko in White Tiger was like that originally there were more kind of loyal Yakuza like that were with working with Koichi.

But I just felt like, you know what this is, I’m just splitting up the actions randomly among these different people. I should just make it all this one guy. And that way it’s easier to keep track of and easier for the audience.

Mark: Yeah. And sometimes I think even in this book, you also had like vague references to like the man and stuff, right. To just avoid naming a character where it’s like, this guy’s kind of coming in and out. If I give him a name now I’ve given him agency, so to [00:44:00] speak,

Andrew: Right.

Mark: That because I don’t want

Andrew: The audience is gonna think, oh, I have to remember this guy. When really they’re not, those characters aren’t important,

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So they get those vague, the man, the guy in the suit. I do

Andrew: Yeah. The men in the suit smoking cigarettes,

Mark: Yeah. All right. Well last question for you. Where can listeners find out more about you and your books?

Andrew: Andrew Warren books.com.

Mark: I’ll link. Yeah, I’ll link to that in the show notes so the people can look you up and check out the, check out the books. Well, thank you so much for your time. This has been great. I loved having you on a second time talking a bit more about,

Andrew: Yeah. Man.

Mark: And, you’ve written another great book. So I look forward to the continuing these series. it’s

Andrew: I really appreciate that. Well, yeah, so I’m finished with the rough draft of Book seven and I’m actually in my revisions phase on that now. And that’ll come out early 2026.

Mark: Awesome. Well, we’ll probably have you back on the show again then next year if you wanna be. Yeah.

Andrew: [00:45:00] Anytime, man.

Mark: All right. Well, thank you so much. If you don’t mind sticking around, we’ll, we’ll hit the after show with our rapid fire segment.

Andrew: Let’s do it.

Mark: All right. Thank you.

Thanks for listening and make sure you follow the show so you don’t miss next week’s conversation with Melissa Miller. We talk about cutoff from Sky and Earth, the real life encounter that sparked the story and why she stepped away from her usual legal and medical thrillers to write something more personal.

Melissa also shares how she handles three points of view, builds tension without outlining and keeps emotional weight on the page after more than 50 novels. If you want the after show with the rapid fire questions, it’s free right now on Patreon, that’s where authors open up about their writing rituals, the scene they’d never wanna survive in their own book the weird stuff they Google and a lot more the links in the show notes.