The Hawk Enigma
by J.L. Hancock
Season 2 Ep. 2

TPP Season 2, Episode 2 with J.L. Hancock

Mark: [00:00:00] Jim, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

JL: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Mark: I have your book with me here. We’re gonna be talking about it today, the Hawk Enigma. Thank you so much for sending me a copy.

JL: Yeah. Thank you for taking it.

Mark: Let’s get right into the pitch.

JL: Yeah. So the Hawk Enigma is a book I wrote based on some of the work I used to do for Naval Special Warfare Command, which is the headquarters of the US Seal teams. And the main character works on something called the Directorate, which is a, an advanced research and development group. Uh, he also suffers from kind of a traumatic past, and he’s been having these reoccurring dreams and starting to hear some prophetic voices, and he believes that he’s actually losing his mind at the same time across the ocean in Japan to scientists working on something called the God algorithm have disappeared. He’s about to find that the disappearance of these scientists, the form of artificial intelligence they’ve been working on, and potentially his past, may have something to do with each other.

Mark: Nice. So [00:01:00] where did it all begin? Where did this idea originate from?

JL: So the concept of the Hawk Enigma actually started at a symposium at Caltech. I was with a friend of mine who was giving a lecture on aspects of artificial intelligence for the military back in 2019. And one of the professors at Caltech, her name was Viviana stepped up and started talking about something called optogenetics, they were using machine learning algorithms to identify specific proteins to treat people with like, uh, Parkinson’s or vision loss. the thing that’s crazy about this particular type of technology is it uses. to manipulate synaptic activity in the brain after injecting proteins into the fat and the lipids inside of your, your brain cells. so the concept was completely crazy. And it’s almost

Mark: Yeah.

JL: sort of hit me, I’d think, been thinking about writing [00:02:00] for a while, and some plots were not really there and I just didn’t know what I wanted to write about.

And then I went to that symposium and it was almost like, and I, I, this almost sounds cliche, but the plot literal, almost quite literally just popped in my head and was like, this is the kind of story that you want, you should dig into. And then I just, for there, I started writing and about six months later, I’d finished my first draft.

Mark: Six months. That’s very cool. I didn’t realize how much of, um, what you wrote certainly sounds authentic because of how you write about it, but I didn’t realize how close to reality it actually was. That’s amazing.

JL: Yeah. Outside of the application of some of the technology, about 95% of what I wrote in there is real,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: but, which

Mark: Wow.

JL: kind of crazy when you think about some of the topics that I get into in the story.

Mark: Yeah. How did you juggle so many things? You, I mean, you had the military, you have the rafting, you have the ai, you have like, it just, there’s so much going on.

JL: So there, it’s, it’s inevitable that an author puts a lot of themselves into the story. Uh, and initially it was, I just had this idea of braiding several stories [00:03:00] together based on certain topics that I knew really well. However, it also became a for exploring the characters in a use in a useful way.

And so I just wrote what made sense to me. I had never written a book before when I wrote this, and so

Mark: Wow.

JL: I wanted to create structure and I wanted to, so I, I spent a whole bunch of time really focusing on story, process and story structure and story. Character development and digging into what needed to work with the story, and then eventually committing to a full editorial process of getting, you know, a editorial assessment done to basically make sure the plot’s good and the developmental edit and all those other things that you gotta go through.

And the painful process of putting something out there that makes you feel vulnerable, and then allowing somebody to just completely rip it apart.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And, uh, humbling myself to being willing to accept that criticism. But at the same time, it allowed for me to explore a whole bunch of topics that I, one, I understood well, but at the same time, I, I, I gave me a, [00:04:00] uh, an avenue for exploring the characters themselves in a way that I felt was, extremely important. Not just important, but exciting at the same time.

Mark: Were there a lot of changes between your first draft and the editorial, and when you did the editorial how did you find an, you almost must have needed an expert to even really comprehend a lot of the things that you were talking about in order to put it together for the end result.

JL: in some respects, yes. In other respects, no, because at the end of the day, you need to have the average reader under able to understand the story.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: if you make it complicated and they don’t get it, you failed, right? If it’s, was that balance between giving them the information they need to understand the plot and be and tr and read and what you’re writing as as authentic, at the same time, balancing that against what moves the story along.

And so there were moments where I was being too technical and it actually wrote me into corners because I was so technical that I couldn’t [00:05:00] hand wave certain parts that needed to be hand wave for the purpose of speed. So the editing process really just came back to, does this make sense for this character?

Or less about, does this make sense technologically? And

Mark: Okay.

JL: that’s what the editors really came in, and I actually took, I chose editors that were, did not understand the genre, but enjoyed the genre, if that makes sense. I didn’t

Mark: Okay. Okay.

JL: expert. My, my editor isn’t a technical expert and she writes, a lot of the feedback she would get me is she would say she things like, you’re too smart for your reader. Not as an insult to the reader, but

Mark: Yeah.

JL: an aspect, if you’re being too technical, just calm this down. Focus on the plot. Accept at, at the same time, give them nuggets that make it exciting and realistic.

Mark: How did you balance that? I guess it was just in the editing process. ’cause you could have told the story by being very, I, it’s a techno thriller, which people expect a little bit more of the information on the technology size and that’s, and you know it, so that’s great. But how did you [00:06:00] decide to balance just plain action with going deeper into the technology?

Because you could have, granted it would be a shorter book, but you could have kind of glossed over a lot of the explanation of the actual tech and how the proteins work and everything, and just told the story.

JL: There’s a, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of things I could have cut outta the story, but there’s a lot of things that I think that are critical for understanding, not just the way that the scientists chose to do the things that they did in the story, but embedded within the technology itself is the motivation of the individuals, and you can’t break the two apart.

I wanted to try and

Mark: Okay.

JL: in that when people are focused on technology like that, you, it is, it is a part of their entire personality. And the way that it’s not just that person likes computers, so they’re

Mark: Hmm.

JL: person. You know that it’s way beyond that.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: thing is, even in the, the third chapter of the book, the, the main character something called A [00:07:00] PFM Box. And that was a PFM, I say pure fricking magic in the book, but they use a different word in real life. But A-P-F-M-A-P-F-M is a term that we would use to people when they didn’t understand what the technology was inside of it. We just say, Hey, it’s a PFM box and it does its thing. And that way you don’t have to explain all the technical jargon to it. And so there’s a point where my character has to do that with the seals he’s working with. ’cause they don’t care about how the technical stuff works. They’re

Mark: Yeah,

JL: finds the people. And you’re like, yes. It finds the people. And they go, how do they do that? It’s like, it’s PFM, it’s, you know, it’s called a PFM box. And they go, oh, okay, great. I got it. And they don’t wanna ask questions ’cause they don’t wanna sound stupid, but at the same time it’s like,

Mark: yeah,

JL: it. the same time, I had to do that for two reasons. Had to do it for one, I needed to obfuscate actual real world technol technological capabilities that are sensitive while exploring the concept with the reader so it’s still exciting.

Mark: yeah,

JL: so I used, I, I used my experience with the seals to do that by hiding what I was [00:08:00] actually doing,

Mark: yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned, are you a big reader? You mentioned it took you six months to write this book, and this was your first book, which was very impressive. Are you a big reader of the genre prior to writing the book, I.

JL: I read some, I used to read a lot of Tom Clancy and a lot of, uh, some I read a bit of, of Jack Carr, but I, I read a lot of nonfiction and to be honest, when I started writing this is just what came out.

Mark: Okay.

JL: just picturing like a movie. I was like, if I were to write this, how a movie plays, what movie would I wanna watch? And so I wanted, I want, when you’re reading the book to feel like you’re watching a movie,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: It to be at the speed of a movie. And that, that was more or less what I focused on, but the technology and the operations, I just focused I literally was like, how would I conduct this mission? How would, how long would it take for me to get from point A to point B? What kinds of things would be going on? And I, I just planned it as if it was a real world situation.

Mark: Okay.

JL: I, and driving off of the real world [00:09:00] aspect of it, it just turned into a thriller is more or less what happened. But if you ask about the reading that I do, I, I did read in the genre four, but I’ve also read a lot of other genres at the same time.

Mark: A lot of authors I interview have either had books that they would never show anyone, or this is, you know, book number five or something. But for you to go book one off off the bat and write a book this good is, is very impressive.

JL: Well, thanks. It hurt that,

Mark: Yeah, I bet.

JL: as book two. I think Book two hurt more, but Book one was. Book two hurt for different reasons. It hurt because it was, it was like, uh, you know, just, it was like squeezing oil out of a, you just, you’re just, the pressure and stuff to make it just was much significantly different than the first one. The first one was just exciting and fun,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: but not knowing what you were doing was the part that was pressure. The pressure was on. You know,

Mark: Yeah. What’s your support network like at home when you’re trying to write this book? Do you have people that are reading it for you or is it [00:10:00] just people that are kind of like cheerleading to say you can do it? What’s that like for this book?

JL: I have some close friends who are good beta readers of these for me, as I, careful about what beta reading sections, but I had people that were willing to be honest with me about what they liked or didn’t like. I have a friend of mine who he probably crushes two thrillers a week easily, and so I was like turning to him like, does this fit? And in my first book, he, he said that it worked, but it could, he’s like, it was very much, it was different. It had its own voice. In both good ways and in bad ways because he was like, this doesn’t fit the traditional thriller. There’s a lot more character development than you would get, I think in a, a lot more show and less tell that you would get and sign of like, not to knock on a Clancy novel, but Clancy is, you don’t dig really deep into the characters in a Clancy novel.

You,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: some depth, but you don’t get a lot, and a little bit more tell and show because it’s focusing on the technology. You’re more interested in what the aircraft are doing and what the jet and what the ships are doing than you are. The characters are fun, but I was more

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Into that. So I had friends that, my close [00:11:00] friends would do that. I also had technical experts that from national laboratories and from industry that read a lot, and I would throw it back at them and I would say, is this working? And they would come back and say, uh, you got this part wrong. This measure was, measurement was incorrect. However, at the same time, they would say they, they would look at it technically and be like, this doesn’t, these two things don’t make sense. You’re adding in a dynamic here that wouldn’t work and as you’re writing, you don’t realize you’re doing. You just, you’re just writing what you think makes sense.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And, it’s when you step back and can see the forest for the trees that you go, oh, I see that misstep. And then, then that happened after my editorial assessment. I ended up dumping like through, up dumping a lot of it and having to rewrite big sections. And I’m significantly happier with the way it played out. ’cause it was really bothering me the way that it was certain plot points that, my buddy was referring to it as the magic blood. it, it, it was, it was a, it, it, the magic, there was an element of blood in the story that, wasn’t well tied off and it was bothering me [00:12:00] and then several people said it didn’t work, and then suddenly it clicked.

And I, I dumped several chapters, got rid of certain characters and simplified it and suddenly it made way more sense. And it, that whole problem and that narrative went away completely.

Mark: How painful was that?

JL: Well, you know, I, I, the hard part is when, it, the. It’s hardest. I mean, that there’s a very famous Stephen King saying, you know, that you, don’t be afraid to kill your babies.

You know? So I, that was hard when you’re, when you’ve put a lot of effort into it and it’s a really good chapter and then you just completely dump it. But

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Had, that’s, it’s become so common now that at the time it was really hard because I wasn’t used to doing that. I wasn’t used to saying, I don’t need this chapter. I’m gonna get rid of it. And now I’m at the point where I’ll, like, in my current book, I wrote 30, 40 chapters and I recently just dumped 20 of ’em

Mark: Wow.

JL: That’s not gonna work. It, it won’t work. So I can’t be emotionally attached to it and be, and hold myself back by clinging to it for too long. It’s okay to completely [00:13:00] shift. ’cause in current book I’m writing, for example, it, I didn’t like the place where it was taking place.

Mark: Okay.

JL: And because I, I had a bad emotional connection with that setting, I knew it would come out in the writing. ’cause I can’t make a place I don’t like, seem magical or exciting to be in. Or an interesting place as a whole, unless I’m being extremely negative about it. But then I don’t want that to be the vibe of the story. I had to completely change the setting and dump it all because, and plot wise, it didn’t make sense for any of the characters to be in this other location that I moved it.

So I had to change everything. And that’s, as a reader, that that’s just the mature in the beginning, having to do that it was tough but after I had a professional editor come back and say, you gotta get rid of these things. You could do what you want, but this part doesn’t work. And they’d give me such great advice in the other parts of the book that it just made sense so I ended up dumping them and it worked out.

Mark: So do you plot or outline the book prior to writing it [00:14:00] or do you just go with it as you, as the ideas come, like you’re saying, playing do you just write it like a movie in order to have to cut that many chapters.

JL: The first book I outlined to an extent. I had a very strong idea of how it would end already.

Mark: Okay.

JL: the vision I have for the ending of the story. The second book started off with me trying to outline it, it, it wasn’t working. So I, I, it’s like if you’re asking me if I’m a, a pants or a plotter, I dunno, whatever term you want to use,

Mark: Yeah. Sorry.

JL: two where I have to create some structure, but I don’t know how it’s gonna get there and I just kind of go as it goes along.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Um, I have found that it, I, I also can’t write quickly if I’m, there’s certain things that I probably should do that are better and I, I just want, I’m okay with giving myself grace with being patient with it if I want to enjoy the writing. to be honest, [00:15:00] most writers don’t make money doing this. I don’t.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: you do, if you’re doing it because you’re trying to make a lot of money, then you’re in the wrong industry. If you’re doing it because wanna write a good story, give yourself the grace of taking your time.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I would ask that because with the first draft, I always try and make the first draft as fun as possible and just write it and not worry too much about it. So I’ve never, I’ve, if I’ve cut chapters, I cut chapters. In revising, did you end up cutting chapters? It sounds like you cut chapters because it wasn’t working for you, so you were like quite a ways into the book and then just cut a whole chunk, almost like starting over.

JL: The only time it hurts is when I have a, what’s the best way to put it? The flow of the story and the way that it, it, feel, because I feel like there’s a rhythm in a good chapter. Like you could physically feel a good rhythm as the story goes along. Not to say that I’m, it, it, [00:16:00] it’s falling into an iic pentameter type, you know? Like it’s, but at the same time, you can tell when it’s off. flow isn’t right. It doesn’t hit right. I can physically feel it. It’s weird, but I physically can feel it when it’s not correct, and I don’t like it.

Mark: Okay.

JL: what’s hard is when I, I read a chapter and that rhythm is just right, and then I’ve gotta get rid of the chapter. And I’m like, can I take pieces of that and put it in a new chapter and have the same rhythm? I can’t, but I’ve gotta accept it, the fact that it’s not gonna be that way. Like I, I wrote another book that I ended up just dumping and not, I don’t know, it might come back up later on, but it was very, it was an emotional reaction, more or less, to a time that was going of our history and I felt that if I wrote it the way that it was right then, it would feel very trapped in that moment rather than kind

Mark: Okay.

JL: of a, a timeless writing. But there’s a couple chapters in there where I’m like, oh man, that is so good. it’ll never be read because it just, and I just have to accept the fact that I was just proud of the fact that I even wrote it to [00:17:00] begin with.

And that was it. That’s, that’s okay. I.

Mark: Yeah. So what research went into the Hawk Enigma, given your background and knowledge already?

JL: So I had lived in Japan before, but I’d never been to Tokyo. So I had to do a lot of physical mapping of that environment without having been there.

Mark: Okay.

JL: There’s some technological research, but that was, that was just something that I already, was just building off of things, something I already knew. I had to call, I called some people to physically interview to actually personally interview them to make sure that what I was doing was correct. Uh, sometimes I’ll, like, I’ll, I’ll reach out to people at National Laboratories or other individuals that I’ve worked with professionally in the past to say, does this chapter make sense? But the biggest one was getting the setting correct in a way that made sense for my story. I was at Voucher Con in New Orleans and I was on a panel. The other panelists were [00:18:00] adamant about not writing a story about a place you’ve never been to. And I said, well, my second book takes place on the Kazakhstan China border. I’m not physically gonna be able to go there. At the same time, I thought it was a very interesting story to write.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: how do I write a story with authenticity about a place that I can’t physically go to? And there’s certain levels at which, because they were asking, they said, well, what, how much does it take you outta the story if you’ve been to that place? And you know, the author’s getting it wrong. And I said, well, do, I said, by show of hands, who’s seen or likes the show Breaking Bad? And pretty much everybody raised their hand, you know, ’cause everybody’s, it’s a great show, right? I

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Up in Albuquerque. they will set things in their, in parts of the city that makes absolutely no sense, where they’re doing some of these deals. I’m like, dude, I. I know exactly where that is, and I would, that’s the last place I would do a drug deal or that would happen literally on the corner of this street. And so there I was like, does it take me out of the story? I [00:19:00] just kind of chuckled to myself and let it go because the

Mark: Yeah.

JL: good,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: good, it doesn’t matter. But I did have the chance to go, going back to the question about researching in Japan, I was able to go back to Japan for work a couple times this past year and I was pleasantly surprised at how relatively accurate searches allow and, and YouTube video allow you to be when understanding those environments. ‘Cause it was still, it was pretty accurate to what I thought it was gonna be. So I was pleasantly

Mark: Cool. Yeah. When you do re, when you like created Voodoo and his team, were there any moments where you adjusted the story to be more authentic to the reality in your experience because you have that background of knowing. There must be a line where you think, okay, I need this to happen for the plot. Even if it’s not plausible in, in a real life situation verse, but still be as,

JL: yeah, there were a couple situations where I combined two locations slash exercises or whatever into one thing because I needed the story to go [00:20:00] in that direction. Like there is a, there’s a section where they’re on a mountain in Utah, and there then they, they found a, a, a private range to do shooting. was me combining desert based land warfare with cold weather training. You would never go into a shooting environment on a mountain like that.

Mark: Hmm,

JL: real. However, for the plot, I had to combine the two.

Mark: okay.

JL: But individually they both were completely true. It’s just the environment changed. So when people read it, they’re like, why the heck would they be doing that?

And somebody who knows the community well will be like, that doesn’t make sense. But there’s a level of disbelief. Suspense and disbelief. ’cause one, I can’t be exactly accurate to the community ’cause I wanna protect the community. At the same time, the plot has to move at a certain speed. I can’t have you jumping from location to location to tell these little minuscule parts of a story when I can combine them into one fluid event.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: So that has to happen.

Mark: Okay. And the white [00:21:00] water rafting, was that something you have experienced before or was that all research? ’cause that felt really real as you were describing it. Okay.

JL: I was a river guide and I lived in, I didn’t

Mark: Okay.

JL: I didn’t use the same names, but there was, I used to live in an abandoned steakhouse called the, I forgot, I’m confusing between them. The, we called, it was called the, uh. Oh my gosh, I can’t remember the name of the real one. we landed an A Bandaid Steakhouse next to a Days Inn, and it was literally just wooden overhead in a big stake pit. And three of us lived in tents in there. And I’d wake up, walk across the street to the C if i’s on the trip for that day, running what was called the daily running Westwater, or running the cataract, running Cataract Canyon.

And if I wasn’t, I’d just grabbed my kayak and then I’d I’d go boating and all day long until my friends got back and then we’d go, then we’d go rock climbing. That was like my life for

Mark: Yeah. That’s awesome.

JL: Yeah, it was amazing. It went from that straight into bootcamp. So it was just, yeah, it was a huge shift.

Mark: Yeah, that would’ve been a huge shift for sure. Yeah.

JL: Yeah. So yeah, the rafting part is it definitely part of, uh, some people felt that I [00:22:00] shouldn’t have left it and I should have got rid of it, but I felt that it just gave, I thought it combined a good backstory and it, it tied in. I, I love it when stories feel like something is completely irrelevant and then it’s critical to the plot,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: but you’re just watching it play out and knowing it’s gonna pay off eventually.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And I love that feeling when it finally pays off and you’re like, oh, oh. And then you realize there’s other things about the way that was playing out that, that you weren’t picking up on, and then it was all right in front of your face. I love that feeling.

Mark: Yeah,

JL: It’s like the, a lot of shows do that nowadays, and especially when they play with time. And so I wanted to incorporate that in the story somehow, which also made it more complicated than maybe it needed to be lesson learned, but it, it was still fun to put it in there.

Mark: It felt really authentic, which is, I think the difference between the fact that you had done it and experienced it before and the way he was doing it. And then I just [00:23:00] trusted that it was gonna pay off in the end, that it was all gonna come back together. Had it not come all, you know, full circle by the end, then it wouldn’t have been as good. ‘Cause it’s just like a plug. But it was, obviously it did. So it was, it was fun to read. I liked it.

JL: Good. Appreciate it.

Mark: The boot covers, where did you have. I love the book covers and it, I was, I was, it’s always interesting to think of when you have like military and you have ai, ’cause I have a book, I wrote a book sort of like that too. Not techno so much, but, uh, how you combine like the, the army with the tech to try and make it so that someone who’s looking at it will sort of know the genre or try to know the genre. ‘Cause it’s a tricky one. Did you come up with it? Or was that someone else For

JL: I had a different cover before that was done. Okay. And then I actually hired the guy that did Jack Cars covers

Mark: Oh, okay.

JL: and I collaborated and bounced some ideas. And then I got him some stock photos that I thought were interesting and then we just eventually [00:24:00] landed on this design. He did a lot of it, did a great job at it.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: So yeah, the, um, but at the end of the day, like I, I wanted it to feel, I wanted you to immediately know what you were getting yourself into. When you look at the book, you’re like, okay, it’s I, but at the same time, being careful about it, feeling overly military,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: That’s something that also people like, okay, I’m reading this ’cause it’s another Clancy novel. And then I’m, I’m delving into more post-traumatic stress. And my second book I get really into the dynamics of the team and how the wrong or right person will it, it just. It, it makes the mission what it is. that may not be what people are expecting sometimes in, in that book ’cause it’s, it gets kind of heavy.

And then at

Mark: Yeah.

JL: time it gets really goofy. ’cause I like, I like to balance humor

Mark: Yeah.

JL: with intensity. And it’s not that I run around shooting all the time. Like there’s, like, I almost like it when the shooting part isn’t as [00:25:00] intense as the internal struggles within the team.

Mark: Yeah,

JL: like there’s a chapter in the Hawk Enigma after this major event in Tokyo and they kind of feel like it’s, that all, all is lost kind of feeling in a moment. That chapter of them recognizing the weight of their problem to me was more fun to write than a lot of the action scenes. It just, I loved dealing with that because that’s reality. That’s more what you’re facing a lot of the time.

Mark: yeah. I like depth of character and that’s hard to find in this type of book because a lot of it is that Tom Clancy action stuff where you’re, the plot is Dr. Driving the story, not so much anything to do with the character, so,

JL: You get like a chapter in the beginning. He’s got a home life. Got it. Moving on.

Mark: yeah.

JL: then

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

JL: trying to knock on that genre. It’s like

Mark: No. Yeah,

JL: some people just want that. They just want, and so when they, they pick up my book and there’s a little, there’s like more meat to it. surprises them. Some [00:26:00] people love that and some people

Mark: yeah,

JL: be not, may not be their cup of tea. have a hard time when I pick up a book and it’s just a bunch of action, but the action doesn’t mean anything.

Mark: yeah.

JL: And so I’ve read several books where, like I’m I, IDNF, a lot of books just because I’m like, is this worth my time?

Mark: Hmm.

JL: And that’s not because, and I never write a review saying, I dnf this. That’s, I just think that’s a jerk move. Like, if you don’t like a book, you don’t like a book,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: If you like a book, let everybody know. If you don’t, then don’t. But there’s probably books that I’ve read where they jump right into the action without giving me any stakes. And, and then every time they have action, they’re very similar. And I never wanted to go through a, another same, an action sequence where I felt the stakes were even remotely the same or the, or the intensity was the same. There’s different layers to it. So, and every single time you have a combat evolution, you have to learn something about your character and, and recognizing that the action has to show something [00:27:00] or lead to something, it makes the story significantly better.

Mark: yeah,

JL: you’ve watched a movie where there’s been action that does, that, you find yourself connected to it in a different way.

Mark: yeah.

JL: And that’s, that’s what I was going for.

Mark: You had so as something as simple as Stu Bear, which was hilarious at the same time, brought a lot of realism and likability to that character just by calling him Stu Bear. And that’s not something you would really see necessarily in an action book like that, which, just a nickname like that. But it was, it was perfect because it brought him, made it so real.

Yeah.

JL: Yeah. That’s also, that’s reality though. I mean, you go into a team, they have stupid nicknames for each other they, um, or somebody made something up and then it won’t let go. And then it just, I mean, that’s the same thing with any real call sign. ’cause it’s the same thing with pilots. Pilots don’t name themselves. Somebody names them that because something happened.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And sometimes it’s a cool name. Most of the time it’s stupid, you know? So,

Mark: Yeah,

JL: They, they don’t wanna be completely insulting. But it, it’s the same kind of thing, [00:28:00] like the, um, I wanted to not go crazy with the cool guy nicknames, you know, but at the same time just it’s, it’s reality. So Stew Bear was a funny one.

Mark: yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, obviously Voodoo is the main character, so that he also had a, I liked the backstory in that with, with how you also plugged all that in there and why he was voodoo, and I won’t talk about the reveal. Of course. Then don’t I spoil it yet? We’ll talk about that after.

Riding the villain. Which was it? I, I don’t know the pronunciation. I would, I just thought I said ru in my head, but I don’t know if that’s how you, he’s essentially the main villain of this story, who we meet. Uh, in that respect, were you trying to write someone who we felt somewhat empathetic for, or almost like his own mission, trying to understand his mission and his goal within it?

JL: Yeah. So with the, without giving spoilers away of the background of and in Japanese, his name is pronounced Yu. [00:29:00] It’s

Mark: Okay.

JL: a Japanese R is like an LNNR kind of mix. So dew is how you pronounce it. But Dew is he, what I wanted out of the villain wasn’t just, once again, he can’t be moti. I, I, I like Dan Brown’s perspective on this.

Dan Brown and his masterclass talks about villains and how motivating them with greed just kind of two dimensional and empty, right? motivat, but also motivating it by just, just vengeance is another one that doesn’t make sense because it’s limited in what it is. So I, I wanted him to you to see him as he has facets to how he is taking advantage of situations, but there is motive behind every single one of them that you aren’t expecting.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: By default, you look at it and say, oh, he’s this, he’s just a bad dude who wants this particular thing. He’s doing this for money. And then you look under it and he is like, oh, oh, he is doing it for power. And you look under it and he’s like, oh, oh, he is doing this for something else.[00:30:00]

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And then that point in time, you’re, you’re never conflicted. You know who the bad guy is all the time, but there’s a moment, I want you to have a moment where you empathize with him, where you’re like, what if we told this story from his perspective? Would voodoo be a villain?

Mark: Yeah.

JL: know, would it, there’s a po I want that to be a possibility and not one that you would think of because I, your perspective at a story immediately assumes the protagonist is the one that you’re telling the story from. And that’s, I want you to question that. Now, it may not, may not have succeeded and gone far enough, but at the same time, it gave, helped me thinking that way, helped me give better perspective. Also, if you go back to the original motivation of that character and where they’re from and how they ended up there a lot of things led to that.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: they think. I’m sorry, I’m being really vague about

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. For the spoilers. Yeah. Yeah,

JL: but where he’s from really drives his motivation and his loyalties

Mark: yeah.

JL: and then what happened because of that. And then you [00:31:00] also realize what he was told versus reality versus all these other things have led him to this point where he himself may or may not be manipulated by the situation.

Mark: Hmm.

JL: this, that’s tragic and it’s tragic. He ended up where he was

Mark: Yeah.

JL: and so, and what the decisions that he has to make. And so that, that’s what I wanted outta that character. I didn’t want him to just be like, the villain.

Mark: Did you ride him that way from the beginning or did he, did you flush him out after?

JL: Yes and no. In the very beginning, I actually had a hard time with him because I wanted him to be one thing and I knew he’d be something else. But articulating that is what took more time to

Mark: Okay. Yeah. A question from Wesley Smith, who is our last guest on the show. We have a, a pay it Forward with the guest questions. He wants to know what is your writing?

JL: So I try to, when I’m in a good rhythm, I try to put down [00:32:00] something every day. But I don’t, I used to be real hard on myself. Like, if you’re not putting down this many words every day, then you’re, you’re wasting your time or beating myself up. I have too many goals in my life to beat myself up for not beating those, like, am I playing an instrument enough?

Am I working out enough? Am I writing enough? Am I, am I studying enough for my day job? Am I, am I paying enough attention to my kids? Am I paying enough? So all those things are just gonna rack on your head at all times.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Has to be a release for me. It can’t be yet another box I need to check for the day. So I do one of two things. I put my, I give myself a realistic limit of what I’m trying to, uh, get out of the writing for that week. I try to sit down and commit myself to writing, not just when I’m inspired, but when I’m not inspired as well, and getting a routine of writing something. what I’ve noticed with a lot of my books is inspiration strikes in places that I’m not expecting. So I’m always open to that strike of, of [00:33:00] inspiration. So I use Scrivener on my phone, syncs with my computer through Dropbox. And so if I’m talking to someone, watching something, reading something, anytime I get inspiration, I open Scrivener, I write down my thoughts immediately right then and there.

Mark: Okay.

JL: And then when it’s time for me to write, I go back to that note section and I say, okay, what were the things that were going from there? And I have like thousands of different things that I’ve come across throughout the day, or like an Instagram post that said something that I was like, it was witty in a way that I liked a lot, but I wanted to tweak it to make it work in my book. I would write those things down and then I’d start from there, like saying, okay, where am I at my plot? What’s the story? Can I incorporate one of these things into it? And then sometimes just as a writing exercise, I’ll force myself to figure out a way to get that to fit in, and then that inspires other things. I use prompts a lot too, where, I don’t use AI to write anything that I write. However, I like to use AI to sanity check whether or not I’m going in a good direction. And the way I do that is if I know [00:34:00] AI already has models of expectations in writing, I will write in, Hey, this is gonna happen in this story. What should I expect to have happen next? And then AI gives me its recommendations, and I do none of those. Because it’s modeled off of other writing, and

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And so that speeds up my normal process where I’ll write something and be like, are they expecting that James Patterson says if you write three potential answers and use the third one, because people have already thought of the other two, well now we have GPT to say, what are those other three things?

And then you just ask it for it, it gives ’em to you and you go, great, moving on. Not using those. Sometimes I don’t have those problems. But being open to using tools to do things some authors are just purists and they’re like, I don’t wanna touch any of that stuff. I think you’re losing the resource. You talk to people to give their opinion. Using AI to ask for its opinion on something is, there’s nothing wrong with that, as

Mark: Yeah.

JL: as a, as a writing purist, as long as it’s not doing the writing for you.

Mark: Yeah,

JL: and so you’re still, you’re just bouncing ideas off of somebody. It’s just another, somebody.

Mark: yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:35:00] How do you know when you’re forcing yourself to write? Because it should be part of your routine and maybe forcing is the wrong word, versus you. You need to write.

JL: That’s one of those things kinda like, it’s kinda like when, you know you’re supposed to go to the gym to lift weights when you don’t want to be in the gym. You just, you gotta do it. Right. And sometimes just the forcing function, sometimes I’ll just, it, there are lots of times that I don’t feel like writing because I’m not feeling the inspiration or I’m not, I’m not excited about what’s coming out. Or sometimes my just my hands hurt.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: All kinds of random things, you know? So I, me there’s a mixture of, there’s a difference between the difference between discipline and habit. Discipline is you’re doing it even when it’s hard, right? It’s, it’s, it’s keeping to those things. have a hard time with writing because it is a [00:36:00] creative outlet, and then forcing myself on timelines with a creative outlet almost counterintuitive. And so some people, if you’re a writer, you’re trying to meet a deadline gotta work through it it’s a matter of setting aside time and saying, I’m gonna set aside these four hours to do this writing, and then just write. Sometimes I’ll, instead of writing, I’ll just go back and I’ll reread other chapters and just slowly edit those. However, that becomes the default then where you’ve just reread

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: like 14 times haven’t read anything

Mark: Yeah.

JL: you feel stuck.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: So once again, that becomes a crutch. So it’s a balance between feeling inspired feeling in the, in the note, but finding ways to prompt yourself. To do new things. Sometimes just as an exercise, I’ll have a chapter and I’ll say, what if I wrote this? Uh, I like to, I like to write chapters from the perspective of the person most vulnerable in that chapter. And so that person usually has the best perspective of what’s, of what’s happening in that scene. But, [00:37:00] but I also find that I can’t do that all the time because then you’re confusing who the main character of the book is.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: main character? My main character is my main character. I gotta follow them more than other people, and I gotta balance that out. So if I’ve written it from somebody else’s perspective, just as an exercise, I’ll be like, okay, I’m gotta write it from someone else’s and just see what happens.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: Or I’m gonna follow them leading up to this moment and see if that gives me something different. And a lot of times I’ll find that I’ve discovered a different avenue, a vehicle in the story that I want to execute.

Mark: Yeah, I was thinking about when you were talking about the check boxes and you’re like, you know, I, I, am I spending enough time with my kids? Am I, doing enough of this? Am I doing, dedicated enough to work and all this research? And I think when you say you’re trying to balance that with writing, that’s what stuck in my head because I was, I, I always struggle with that when I sit down to write and it’s like, should I be writing right now or should I be spending more time with my son or should I be, doing this or doing that? But if you have, always have those excuses, you never end up writing.

JL: Committing yourself to a certain period of time every day. And that, that’s the [00:38:00] other thing about having a schedule is if you say, I’m gonna do it during this period of time, and everyone else has agreed that that’s an okay time for me to do it, then you’ve, you’ve worked through that. That’s why a

Mark: Okay. I see.

JL: that write, they wake up really early in the morning to write,

Mark: Yeah.

JL: I can’t do that. I just can’t. I travel a lot. And so what makes it nice is I write, when I travel,

Mark: Okay.

JL: I don’t feel guilty about writing when I’m on the plane ’cause I’m just on the plane

Mark: Yeah.

JL: or in my hotel room. And so that makes it easier.

Mark: Okay. That makes sense. What advice would you give someone who just published their first or second book?

JL: Your first book. So every author’s first book is their baby and they’re, they’re proud of it and they’re scared of it to being let it go into the world. And they want all these magical things to happen for it. And they’re gonna learn that reality is a different thing. They’re gonna check their reviews on a daily, on a, on an hourly basis to see if another one came in. They’re gonna be sad when they don’t [00:39:00] arrive, or they’ll get some random momentum and then suddenly it’ll stop and they don’t know what they did. And then they’ll be chasing after all of these marketing options and then they’re gonna be inundated in their email from random people that aren’t real from Gmail accounts that don’t exist. So. The writing world, world stepping into. Is you’re, you’re, you’re opening yourself up to an entirely different market and business situation. But you as an author, don’t think about those things when you’re writing the story. So my recommendation is you recognize the fact that you’ve started another business. You want that business to succeed. You wanna be effective at it. remember why you initially did it. Did you do it because you wanted your books to sell so you could become an author? Or did you write the book because you felt the book needed to be written? Usually it’s a combination of those things.

You don’t write a book ’cause you don’t want any, want. No one to read it. Nobody does that. However, also like balancing that with why you want the reviews [00:40:00] and why you want the sales, you want those because you wanna feel successful in something that you love. And so, but you can love it with or without the success. And if you can find, you’re gonna find after the first book that.

When you’ve associated the, or rather disassociated your desire for success your desire to write, and you can find a balance between those two things, you’ll suddenly find that the, the reviews and those other things only matter really when you release the book at first. And then as you go in between books, you care less and you’re, you find more peace with writing again. But that initial release of whatever book, indie published or traditional is going to be a flurry of emotions. And some of that’s gonna be a mixture of imposter syndrome, a mixture of why not me? Very few of us become that 0.1% that becomes dramatically successful. And, [00:41:00] and so in light of the fact that you most likely will feel this crippling failure of becoming an author, you’re gonna realize why you actually wrote the book to begin with, and that you will find an audience as long as you keep pushing, and so that, that is really, as a, as a new author, you’ve gotta realize once returning back to why you write, and that has to be enough. It has to, otherwise you won’t.

Mark: Yeah, that was great advice. Thank you. Thank you for being so frank with that too. It is a very challenging process and yeah, there’s not a lot of that. It’s 1% for a reason, so Yeah.

JL: It’s soul crushing and, and like, dang it. I forgot it was another masterclass, but it was a great one about screenwriting and it was like, there’s four types of books. There’s good books that sell, there’s bad books that sell, good books that don’t sell, and there’s bad books that don’t sell. really two categories in there. You wanna be in. And the goal is just to figure out, just to get into those two.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: I, I, I would not

Mark: That’s great.[00:42:00]

JL: book that sells really well and be famous for having, being a terrible writer. I’d rather

Mark: Yeah.

JL: with having written good books that don’t, people haven’t found yet.

Mark: Yeah, that’s, I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Where can listeners find your books?

JL: So my book Audio Wise is available pretty much everywhere. So whether it be Spotify or any major audiobook, audible, anywhere like that, narrator is Kirby Hayburn. I will be honest and say that Kirby is an incredible narrator. Is he the best narrator for a military techno thriller? I don’t know.

However, he was the narrator for Gone Girl, and he has done a bunch of other great books. He’s an incredible actor, and he’s a, he’s a great narrator. And so I think he did, he did a really good job. Is he like a, uh, Scott Brick or a, some of the other ones? No, but he also doesn’t cost a stupid amount. So he was, he was the perfect, happy medium for me, a well-known name, good voice actor, and he told the story well enough to [00:43:00] where I was happy with what came out of it. And so you can find him. You can, I, I wanted to make sure that you could find my book pretty much anywhere that audio books are sold.

Mark: Nice.

JL: Yeah.

Mark: All right. Well, thank you so much. We are gonna now dive into a couple extra questions. The spoiler full section. So if you do not want to know the answer to what happens at the end of the book, for listeners listening to this right now, you can pause the episode and come back after you have read the book.

So that is your spoiler warning. So, question, when you wrote the end, did you envision that it was gonna happen that way in the end, how it was gonna wrap up?

JL: So yes and no. I had a picture of. A ball of light and someone standing in a ball of light. Don’t know why I was fixated on that, but I loved the idea of just this big old ball of light. And it was actually a real world thing. My buddy and I were gonna build. We started researching it and we could, the thing that we called the white dwarf [00:44:00] at the end of the story, like we did the math on that, that would work. So I wanted to have that scene. it was all about getting to that scene, getting to a scene where there’s this massive ball of light. And I was like, well, how would that work? How would that make sense? How would they get there? And then I had to work backwards of what Intel would lead them to that point. Why was the God algorithm relevant? And then I was like, well, how is Voodoo the linchpin? Then I was like, oh, well Voodoo’s gonna discover how he’s relevant to this story at the same time as he figures out what he needs to do. And those two things have to come in the fact that he has to confront his darkest fear. So. that whole aspect of him those moments in his dreams is actually a, a, a treatment part that ties back with post-traumatic stress where people get stuck in a moment and they can’t get past it. And they have to things like take, MDMA or some other type of psychedelic drug so that they don’t have the emotional trauma associated with reliving experience so they can complete the experiences.

So their brain [00:45:00] is no longer trapped in a loop. Voodoo was trapped in a loop and something had to break him through. And so the actual God algorithm, the very thing that was, they were manipulating the entire time was the thing that had, he needed to get through it. had to confront his problem head on, which is what he was doing.

The entire book. Entire book. He’s avoiding his problem. He’s, he’s running away from it. And so now he has to run headlong into it, but he doesn’t realize he’s running straight into his past as he is doing the entire time. So I needed those things all happened and somehow get to a ball of light. So

Mark: Yeah.

JL: that’s why I wrote it that way.

Mark: Okay.

JL: the part that surprised me was what happens with the villain after that scene. That was what I had not anticipated when I started riding it. That kind of just was a happy accident. ’cause I was like, I’ve gotta have some better with this dude.

Mark: Okay.

In the next book, does the, I guess I’m kind of, this is almost a forward thinking question, but the, the girls that died as a [00:46:00] result of him making that decision when he knew, well, I guess he kind of didn’t, he didn’t really know what the impact was gonna be when he, when he killed the

JL: Taro the guy that he hit with the, the,

Mark: Yeah, the sniper.

JL: battery bomb. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So he didn’t know what the repercussions of that would be, but they were, they were quite intense and sad. And that was a big emotional moment.

JL: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Is that something that is gonna haunt him in the future.

JL: That specific incident? No, but his past doesn’t leave him. So he has, I mean, it just gets compounded with other things that he’s gotta deal with, you know? So the sad part is when you’ve experience, when you’re not, that is like coupled with the, the, the kid in his in his memory is way worse than what those happened with those girls.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: never saw the girls. He just knew what happened to

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Right? So the kid is the one that has been constantly messing with his

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: because he doesn’t forgive himself for [00:47:00] doing that. And if you notice in the book, the only time Voodoo actually pulls the trigger on a gun is when he accidentally kills someone.

Mark: Yeah. Okay.

JL: other time in the book. ’cause that’s not his job. That’s

Mark: Yeah.

JL: and Stew’s job.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And so there’s, he uses other things to get his job done, but it’s the reader will never pick up on the fact that Voodoo never actually shoots a gun,

Mark: No, I didn’t think of it. Yeah.

JL: Yeah.

Mark: Did you ever think about killing one of the main characters? I thought one of the main characters was gonna die. I thought Stu was gonna die or Fresco.

JL: Yeah. You always do. But then you realize that if you’re writing more books, this kind of a, it’s kind of unforgivable, you know, when you do

Mark: Okay.

JL: you gotta, I gotta make you really love him and then kill him.

Mark: Okay. Okay. That’s fair.

JL: Martin does. He’s like, oh, you love this

Mark: Yeah.

JL: here. Watch. I’m gonna kill all of ’em at once.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: But like, it also, it, it, it [00:48:00] gotta make sure it fits the genre, some genres that doesn’t make sense. And this is kind of one of those genres where me killing all the main, like really good characters that you’ve created. Like, it doesn’t make sense in, in the first book. I can do it later. So readers don’t be surprised if that happens later. But

Mark: Yeah.

JL: When they, when you get into the spear and the sentinel, you know, so that one may something, other things may happen in book two, but the yeah, that, that, it’s a debate for every, every so it’s, it’s kind of like killing dogs. You don’t wanna do it, you know, it’s

Mark: Yeah.

JL: So, but I wrote it in like in my first book I put that in there because that was reality. When we went on target in Iraq, there were these wild dogs that would come at you. And we always had somebody with a silencer on their gun that would shoot ’em.

Mark: Wow.

JL: It was horrible. But it’s just like, you’re trying to, like some of these people that we were going after were just horrible people. If we were gonna capture them, we had to sneak [00:49:00] up on ’em. We couldn’t have this early warning system of dogs everywhere barking and screaming at us. These are some gross dogs. It’s like they didn’t even look like dogs anymore. I’m not happy about the fact that that was one of the guys would do that, but I’m trying to paint a real picture, and so there’s certain things I don’t do in the book, and then there’s some things I’m just like, I, I had to, I couldn’t cut all of ’em out because then I’m, I’m writing a PG book about Navy Seals, which is boring.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. I mean it’s interesting when you get into gun fights like that and in the end that ’cause that, which is why, I mean, anything goes right that’s the whole point. But you must try to avoid like a John Wick moment where it seems like everybody’s shooting at your characters and nobody’s hitting anybody, but they’re all professional soldiers.

JL: right. There’s a certain level of realism that doesn’t make any sense when you’re, if you have a John Wick moment. I couldn’t. Yeah, no, the characters are gonna get messed up. Like that’s what happens in war especially. [00:50:00] I mean, in my first book they get particularly messed up in the beginning, you know, because of what the, especially in the, in the, in the, in his dreams, you know? ‘Cause that’s a memory. In

Mark: Yeah.

JL: They’re getting super screwed up.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: They, I mean they all get screwed up I think kind of towards the end. But the, in my second book it, I take it at a completely different angle. It’s funny ’cause some, a friend of mine was reading the second book and they’re like, how did this part happen and they didn’t get hurt. And then they finish the book and they’re like, oh, okay. I take everything back.

Mark: Okay.

JL: I was like, yeah, at a certain point they’ve gotta get messed up. That’s just reality. But also

Mark: Yeah.

JL: have ’em get messed up and then heal too quickly and you gotta figure out these plot

Mark: Yeah.

JL: But you’d be amazed at how many firefights my friends have gotten in and they didn’t get a scratch on ’em because of how incompetent their enemy was.

Mark: Okay. Oh, that’s good to know.

JL: It’s hard to shoot people. Yeah.

Mark: That’s an interesting fact. You wouldn’t know unless you were actually in it. Yeah.

JL: No, there’s, some of my friends came back from stuff and I was like, dude, y’all should be dead. Every single one of you. I don’t not understand how that happened. And then there are other cases where [00:51:00] simple stuff like the one case where a really close friend of mine got killed and he was the only casualty in the entire combat. And everybody looks back and they’re like, we don’t know how this happened. It was just,

Mark: Wow.

JL: He got hit with a round from a distance that didn’t make any sense, it got him right in the head, you know? And then that was it. So it, it, anyway, so that’s, you wanna, you wanna tie some of that realism in there, at the same time not overwhelm the reader with too much.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Wow. Did you have to end this on a lighter note now? Is it the dead hooker metaphor that you have to read the book to kinda understand where, where that comes from? Did you make that up or is that something that Okay. I assumed it was, ’cause it sounds very, very military brotherhood, but

JL: yeah.

Mark: I had to ask.

JL: was always the joke. I’d bury a dead hooker for that guy.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: And so I wanted to add that in there as like a dead hooker moment. And then I flip it on its head in the second [00:52:00] book.

Mark: Okay.

JL: Yeah. I use it again. But you’re like, and then when you hear it the second time, you’re like, Ugh, I don’t like that now, in the first part, it’s like kind of just a crude way of explaining something and the second time you’re like, I don’t, that’s messed up.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: because, not because the analogy is crude, but because the way that it’s being thrown back out.

Mark: Yeah.

JL: You’re like, dude, you’re, you’re missing the spirit of that statement. Not that that’s spirit of that statement was any good to begin with, but it, yeah. Anyway,

Mark: Okay.

JL: which was my point. I wanted to

Mark: Yeah.

JL: for you to, as a reader, to come back and be like, have mixed feelings about it. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time.

JL: Thank you. It’s good.

Mark: If you don’t mind we have, if you can have a couple more minutes for the after show, we will when we wrap up here and we’ll get right into that for our Patreon members.

JL: Okay.

Mark: Thank you.

JL: Thank you.