Caribbean Harvest by Steve Stratton
TPP EP 12

TPP Episode 12 Steve Stratton

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, where thriller readers discover new, bestselling, and award-winning authors and stay for the story behind their story. If you love finding your next read or hearing how your favorite books were written, follow the show and stick around.

I’m your host, Mark P.J. Nadon, and this is episode number 12. Today’s guest is Steve Stratton, author of the Action Spy Thriller Caribbean Harvest.

Steve, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Steve: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mark: I am very excited to talk about Caribbean Harvest, which is your book four in your current series, I believe, and to dig deep into your experience writing the book. We’ll just get started right with the pitch.

Steve: Sure. So if you could imagine America’s most [00:01:00] relentless drug, Lord El Chapo is getting pressured in Mexico so hard that he decides that he’s gonna check and see if Cuba is a great, good place to grow opium. That’s essentially the backstory of the book. He’s looking to expand his empire, uh, right.

The Sinaloa cartel is multinational. But there’s always other places to go, other places to grow crops. And, he teams up with Cuban intelligence and their Chinese partners, uh, to start working this without the Cuban government knowing. My protagonist, Brigadier General Lance Bear Wolf. He’s Crow native by birth and his wife Ellie Parker end up going to Cuba to try and, uh, drop a dime as the saying goes on El Chapo, they don’t have to arrest him, right? It’s a, it’s a police state. That’s not gonna happen. But if they can get the government to see what he’s doing, they’ll arrest him and put him away, which would be a great win for [00:02:00] America, right? And so they infiltrate Cuba it’s treacherous waters on the infill. It’s burning, uh, sugar cane fields when they get there, and soldiers everywhere. So they’re navigating through this police state while they’re trying to connect up with some CIA resources and eventually take down his plans for Cuba. And there’s a, there’s, uh, elements of the love story there. At one point, Lance has to actually, at multiple points, he’s gotta make decisions about do I chase after El Chapo or do I save my wife, my friend? Things like that. It’s going on. And then, um, the book continues and they well, I should, I don’t wanna say any spoilers, but let’s say, let’s say, you know, there there’ll be another book, right?

Because they, you know, it’s a, it’s a job. Drug cartels are a job that’s never done. So I add, [00:03:00] techno elements of technology that they can use. It’s not a techno thriller, but I add that and I keep it fast paced. And if you like Vince Flynn, Brad thor. Brad Taylor, Mark Greany. I think you’ll like my book.

Mark: Awesome. Thank you. And where did this story idea come from?

Steve: Well, I do a lot of, I do a lot of research, also known as going down the rabbit hole sometimes. And, uh, literally got onto cartels and, and fighting drug cartels been part of my history. And so I’d gone down some rabbit holes about changing environmental, uh, aspects in Cuba. What’s it, what’s it like to, you know, try and grow pot on ground for 30 years and uh, chemicals issues and things like farming issues. And a lot of reports out in the last 10 years of the cartels changing their crops. They’re still [00:04:00] growing pot ’cause it’s still a big seller in the United States. But there was more and more conversion of those plots of land to, uh, poppies and opium because heroin and heroin derivatives had come further down, actually grown further up into the ecosystem of, uh, rich American users, drug users. And so they were saying rapid growth, sort of stagnation with pot and marijuana and growth in heroin use. And so being good businessman El Chapo and the kids now adapt to the demand from the US and so they’re growing more opium. So that was sort of the emphasis of that. And it’s like, wow, Cuba is a cool place. Let’s do this. It’s a, you know, it’s a, the, it’s the, it’s like the East Germany of the Caribbean, right? Back in the day in the Cold War, right? It’s a police state, things like that.

So all elements which make it much [00:05:00] harder for my protagonist, his wife, their small team, and the CIA assets to operate, so it’s, uh, combines that kind of spy thriller and story in there.

Mark: And does this all build off of one, two, and three or your stories when you hit book four? Is this like a story all on its own compared to the 1, 2, 3, like is it like a Jack Reacher where you can jump into any book really at any point and kind of get the idea?

Steve: That’s how, yeah, that’s other than the. The three primary books. The, the third book I wrote, which is probably the first one people should read, is a novella called Warrior, a Warrior’s Path. And it’s Lance from the time his father dies of a heroin overdose on the reservation until he’s really in the middle of the fight as a military member working down in, in Columbia and South America, things like that.

So, yeah, they are, they are standalones, they jump years. So it’s not a, it’s [00:06:00] not totally sequential my stories.

Mark: Okay. And just going into your experience and how that impacted the book… you have military experience as a Green Beret, you have White House experience. How does all that impact the book and the authenticity that you’re able to bring, which other authors not necessarily can, ’cause they don’t know what it’s like to actually be on the ground.

Steve: Yeah, it does help. I have to be careful not to get into giving you an info dump about how it, in, in the middle of August, you know, and, and, uh, or, or, uh, I’m sorry, get the seasons wrong since you’re south of the equator. But it that the jungle really sucks and it’ll, it’ll rot the clothes off you if you’re in the jungle too long. It’s just crazy. So, yeah, having that experience lets me add these little elements of authenticity without dumping on the user. And that, that goes all the way from interactions Lance has, Lance Bear Wolf has with the president to [00:07:00] being out in the field.

Mark: Yeah. Cool. Have you been to Cuba and dealt with, I can know the cartel specific if you’re allowed, if you’re allowed to say anything. Does. Is there any like real life experience from that cartel side and the Cuba side that comes into the book?

Steve: Not, not in Cuba, because I had a, a still have a pretty high clearance and I’m do still doing consulting. So, no, I’m not allowed to go to Cuba at this point. I have some friends that, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re, uh. Yeah, I talked with who had been in Cuba, their security clearance has laps. They’re in commercial business now, that kind of thing.

And so, I, I did a lot of research so that I could portray Cuba, off in, in an authentic way without once again overdoing it. So.

And research being some of those friends that whose clearances have dropped, so they’re allowed to talk essentially and research. What other kinds of research would you get to?

Well, certainly, watching videos, you know, I go to sites that like offer tours of [00:08:00] Cuba. One of the easier ways to get into Cuba, if you’re interested going to Cuba is to team up with a charity, oftentimes a religious charity that will go do work down there and they can put you on a team that’s gonna go do work.

And get you into the country for a week or two, that kind of thing. Like that. So that I, I do everything from, you know, state Department economic research. The CIA has their country books. I just, yeah, I go all out for a couple of weeks to do a lot of research and use, you know, six, six line, six things from all that research.

You know, it’s a very steep funnel down to what you put in the book. So.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. The thousands of hours you might spend doing the research and then the one line that gets in there that’s very authentic and maybe, you know, you hope people get it, how cool that is, but yeah, you don’t necessarily know. Yeah.

Steve: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Was there any point where you almost gave up on the book as you were running, and this is book [00:09:00] four, so you have a good amount of experience now because generally by book four, you have the good stride. And was there any point where you, you were gonna give up on this?

Steve: No, there was a, there was a spot. I’m like, where, how am I going to, I’m a, I’m a plotter by the way, and I have it pretty well plotted out, but I’ll pants in the middle and change things and Oh yeah, that’s cool. And to do this and do that. And it weaved the story together. And I was like, wow, how are we getting out of that? Let’s see. But no, you’re right. It took me from 1993 to 2019 to write my first book. So I used, I I had all that time back then. Now, now I write, yeah, I’m so I didn’t have any hesitation writing this book. It was a lot of fun. It was more like flow, oh, wait a minute. I need to get up, stretch my legs, go work out.

Tell I had to get away from the computer. I was having that kind of fun writing this book.

Mark: Oh, that’s awesome.

That’s a good feeling to have when you’re, when you’re having that kind of fun. [00:10:00] Was the, was the plotting of it. do you go into like character I saw on your website? So I guess you do go into like heavy character details where you’re like breaking down the individual characters and who they are as as a person and some of their back history and things.

Do you do all that prior to writing the book? Is it that extensive of an outline and a plot before you start writing or is that something as you get the feel, the voice of the story and the character, you build it then?

Steve: Well, yeah, so my characters carry through, it’s, it’s my protagonist, his now wife, Ellie Parker, they carry through, El Chapo, carries through, but that, like, I had to create a, a former Cuban Intelligence colonel that is now doing intelligence for El Chappo. So I had to create a few people, and, and it used to be, my first book, I did two page personality outlines, you know, profiles.

Now I’m more like, like the FBI, I’ve got six pages, 250 questions. If the sun’s here and this is happening, how, how are they [00:11:00] gonna respond? I get that, that deep. So that I get to know them and then I can put them on the page and they, I, sometimes I go back to it. I’m like, wait a minute, did I just say she has green eyes instead of blue eyes or Hazel?

You know? But yeah. So I, I like doing that ’cause I, I like that profile creation is also fun and creating a character, that has some of the traits you want and is needs to grow in other places, things like that. So yeah, that’s always, that’s, that’s a fun part of it by, by this book and the one, the book five that I’m editing, which will be an Ellie Parker focus book, I know the characters pretty well and, and, it’s that, let, that frees me up to do the writing and get the story. Done.

Mark: Okay, so you don’t find it harder. Instead, you find it easier instead of harder when there’s an expectation of who this person is and a story arc each time. It sort of like a character arc each time you write the story.[00:12:00]

Steve: Yeah, I, I wanted to have Lance go from pure revenge in the first book where his parents are killed and he’s thinking, you know, I, I joke that my first book was so easy to write. What’s he thinking? He’s thinking about revenge. And then, then my, then my mentor, I was lucky enough when I first started writing to get a mentorship with Jerry Jenkins, who wrote the Left Behind Christian Service and bakes books about baseball, everything. Jerry, and he’s super good editor and it’s like, well, I, I don’t want him to be perfect. At the end of the book, I’ll have. No growth for him to have in the second, third book. And so, you know, it’s, if you’re writing single books, you can do things a little bit differently than if you wanna write a series.

And my hat, I tip my hat to Brad Thor and Brad Taylor, Mark Greaney, right? They’ve got, you know, Pike Logan, Harth, the gray man, and they’re 13, 14, 16, 20 books in and still trying to make things happen that are [00:13:00] interesting to their character. So,

Mark: I heard a podcast with, Mark Greaney recently and it was funny that he was talking about how his characters never really get older, even though he’s written 13 books, he kind of ignores the question of how old they are. ’cause you can’t have like a 45-year-old operator in the field. But technically if you follow, if you follow the, the age range, they, they’re getting that old.

Steve: Oh yeah. Yeah. By the time I hit 45, I was I was leading the team, not, not kicking the door down, so, yeah. Yeah.

Mark: So sticking with characters, you made an interesting choice of changing not only do you have a lot of characters in this book, and viewpoints, but you changed point of view from third person to first person, first person being, I guess you would say, your main character. Although they, it does share a lot of the book with other characters, with, with Lance as the main character and his being first person voice versus the others that are third person. What made you make that decision?

Steve: It’s uh, Brad Taylor’s fault. [00:14:00] So, so he writes Pike Logan, and the task force, his task force stories that way. And I thought it was in, first time I read it, it was jarring having read third person, you know, and omnipotent. And I can never keep all those different versions of how they explain that straight. But I read that and I’m like, wow, this gives me the ability to really be inside of Lance’s head and, and talk about what he’s thinking and seeing and stuff like that. And so yeah, that’s, that’s where that came about. And I enjoy it. A series on, new series I’m working on now, I started off with the first draft that way and they’re like, yeah, no, go back to third. And it’s like, oh, you know, all the is, becomes was, and you know, you make the changes,

Mark: Yeah,

Steve: And, and it can be a little bit of a mind shift. ’cause I’ll find myself falling back into first person. I’m like, God darn it, I’m gonna either finish that up. But, uh, yeah, so that was, that was the impetus. I mean, like I said, it was [00:15:00] discordant or whatever the term is. It just was, didn’t feel right. Then I just, all of a sudden it was like I broke through reading his books and it was like, oh yeah, I like this. So that’s why I attempted it. And, and the first two books are in third and, the novella and the fourth book are in first person. The next one for Ellie is gonna be in third, just because that’s what I’m writing the other series in so I’m trying to keep my head in my place so I don’t use myself and have a lot of, have to do rewrites.

Mark: Yeah. What did your, assuming your, your book is edited, professionally, do you have, did they come back to you and say, why?

Steve: Well,

Mark: I’ve had, I’ve done that myself. I asked because I’ve done that myself with like, one of my thrillers. I, I wrote like a couple scenes when he was in the machine, essentially. ’cause it’s kind of a tech based anyway, he’s in the machine. I wrote first person, my, my first person. My editor [00:16:00] came back and was like, this is no, there’s almost no reason to do this in first person, stick with third person. So I got that pushback and went to third person for the whole book.

Steve: Yeah, well, I never, I never got any pushback from my editors. What happened was I got a traditional deal. I got my, you know, I got the, I got the advance and I was all excited. And then two years later, my publisher was out of business. So, great guy. He gave me all the rights back one January a couple years ago i’m like, what is KDP? Hello, help. I’m trying to figure out how to make second, second editions of my first two books. Then I did the novella and, and this last book myself. My wife and I are Pratt Media and so, um, I don’t have, you know, I’ve got full control, editorial control and that kind of thing.

But now that I’m writing another series, for War Gate books, uh, that’s where I got, I delivered a first person short story in an anthology [00:17:00] first, and they’re like, nah, everybody else is writing Third, do you mind doing this? I’m like, no, I don’t care. You know, if that’s what you want, you’re paying me to be in the book, you know, to write that kind of thing.

Whatever you want’s good for me. I, you know, I’m not, I’m not well established enough or well known enough to go, no, this is how I write. You know, it’s like. Yeah, what you need, what you’re expecting. So yeah, so I did get pushback based on their readership and, what they were expecting to do with my, my follow on to another series, so, and so I’m, I’m okay to do that. It’s, it’s, I just don’t wanna start writing first person again while I’m in the middle of doing third and have, have those brain cramps along the way.

Mark: So when you wrote this one, did you write all third person point of view and then come back and fill in first, or did you just go back and did you write it like in the order that it was written? I guess.

Steve: Yeah, when I decide when I, if it was a POV of somebody else other than [00:18:00] Lance, it’s gonna be third. And you know, I caught myself a couple times in there mixing it up, and all of a sudden, you know, I had el Chapo or the Cuban, intelligence officer talking in first person, it’s like, okay, but, uh, you know, not, not too bad. I’d say maybe 10% of the time I catch myself before I had enough coffee for my brain to

Mark: Fair.

Steve: Yeah. But, yeah, so not bad at all. And, and once I’m, once again, when I’m in that flow, it just flows because I know if it’s a Lance, POV. Lance Bear Wolf that’s gonna be first person, everybody else, third, you know, that way I’m not shifting around and going, okay, what did I do here and do there and, ’cause I’ll take, not only will I outline, I’ll take, I love sticky notes.

My wife has a wall, 1600 cookbooks on a wall. And I use those, I use those bookcases to put like on the top, top level bookcase of the [00:19:00] bookcase will be the Lance Bear Wolf, thread down will be Ellie then it’ll be the antagonist and stuff like that. And so if I had to not only figure out the plot and the flow, then having to figure out who’s in first and who’s in third, you know, I, I, I’ve probably exploded my brain, so, yeah, so good question though.

Mark: And how do you go, so this being book four, how do you decide how much information and is this in your outline, how much information to bring readers up to speed? Because we assume that readers are gonna read one to four, but it does happen that people pick up four and we want to give ’em a reminder who knows how long it’s been since they read, you know, the others. How do you, how do you balance an info dump? like little pieces at a time. And is that part of your outline?

Steve: Well, it’s funny, I was just on a panel at Bouchercon on avoiding the info dump, and I, I, I’m a former IT guy, so I call it, I [00:20:00] often call it the data dump, but yeah, what I, what I said there is oftentimes I’ll just write the data dump and then I’ll just cut it up and put it to the side and hold onto it.

And actually, I, it was a data dump on Lance’s, early years that actually became a no, a 40,000 word novella. But, uh, once again, if you’re a, if you’re a new writer out there, one of the best things you could do is find a book that you really like. You like that style of writing, you, you wanna write in that style, not emulate, but write in that style, buy the book and literally tear it into pieces and tear it apart.

Don Bentley mentioned this one time and I’m like, oh yeah. So I got one of Brad Taylor’s books and took it all apart and my wife’s like, you just destroyed this plan. $15 book. I’m like, yeah, but I’m, look at what I’m learning and learn, take it apart and learn from it that way. Uh, and how, how [00:21:00] the, you know, the bestseller folks, men and women organize their books, their flow, their plot lines, things like that.

And so yeah, I. I, I will plot, like I say, I, I will plot, but I will pants and get new ideas in between. I’m lucky that I’ve never considered, when I do an outline, I don’t consider it done until the book is done ’cause it, right. I might have a spark. Usually the spark comes from external. I’ll, I’ll read something else it’ll be like, oh no, I need to do this, that, that, and then it changes a whole, you know, it changes the downstream book in some way. And so, being flexible like that just makes it, I never, I never get upset, distraught. It’s like, eh, okay, we’ll figure this out. Just keep moving forward. And, yeah, that’s, that’s worked for me.

Mark: Did you ever, have you made any big changes in this book as a result of pantsing a section and then realizing, oh, maybe this is what I’d rather have Lance do than what I had planned, and [00:22:00] now the whole like chunk of his story is been shifted.

Steve: Yeah, and, and once again it was, I was I was looking around, I was doing research and so a lot of Caribbean Harvest takes place in Santiago d Cuba, which is at the Southern, and you might call it at the other end of the island from Havana. Right and there’s a big beautiful bay and I’m like, how am I gonna get Lance down in that area and into a safe house?

How are the CIA assets going to get, get ’em there? And I researched and I found out number one, that like Cuba is got a really old power generation system, electrical system, and they actually lease boats, Turkish made boats that actually have generators on ’em and sit ’em in the harbor. I’m like, okay, that’s nice, but I’m not gonna have Lance hide in one of those boats. That doesn’t really help. And then I found out that one of the more profitable businesses, if you can call it profitable, ’cause being a communist state, you know, there’s not really that idea in [00:23:00] theory. That there’s cement, there’s cement plants that make cement. And then there are plants that make the products like our dividers.

We have here in, you know, our highway dividers, things like that, that we have here in America. And I’ve connected a cement plant with a product plant that was at the top of Santiago, Cuba Bay, next to a warehouse. And that warehouse became their warehouse where they were moving things with a narco sub.

So it just, you know, one of those kind of research things. Oh, good. Well, the CIA asset, his, his real life, his real life is owning some concrete plants around Cuba, which gives him the ability to travel, move, right. Take Lance and Ellie covertly to different places. So it, it’s that kind of cascading, do research. A little idea how that, that works for the, the CIA asset kind of idea, and it, it fit right into [00:24:00] the story and yeah, the, as you, you probably notice, I think I’ll, I’ll criticize myself a little bit here. I think my prologue in the book with the purchase of the sub is a, maybe is a little too ambiguous at the start, but you know, people, people get it. Like

Mark: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And El Chapo was, it was an interesting that, ’cause I, in my research after I realized that he was, he’s a real person. ’cause I thought, you know, this is fiction. And that is a really interesting thing to do because I mean, I’ll consider whether or not I even want to use a business name because if I say something about the business name that isn’t true or you know, like, do you know, say something wrong about a business name. You’re like, oh. I get the lawsuits or whatever. ’cause you said they, did this or did that. So you choosing to use El Chapo, as a character when he’s actually a real person was very interesting. How did that all play out?[00:25:00]

Steve: Well, it’s worked so well, well, so far and I was always hoping that they would come visit or they would do something that would increase my social marketing awareness,

Mark: That’s a great idea.

Steve: Without me dying in the process, uh, or my family getting hurt. But, yeah, I am, you know, by the time in 2019 that I started to write, write we were on the hunt again. We were trying to put him back into prison, things like that. And then of course, now that he’s in the Florence Supermax prison here in Colorado, Florence, Colorado, you know, I, I joke that I want to go see him, but they won’t let me talk to him. You know, unfortunately, I get, didn’t sign a book, you know?

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: But yeah, the, the the inciting incident for the story of the very first book took place in Mexico, and involved the Sinaloa cartel in my family. So that went a long ways to, you know, my first book I wrote helped me exercise some demons. Excise, [00:26:00] exercise, pushups, demons. Let’s do some.

Excise. I wish I knew the English language. The excise, some demons about the event and things like that. And so I, I’ve carried on with it, you know, the Chapalitos, his sons and other people have, you know, I, in, in the grand scheme of things, I’m a nobody. They, you know, they got bigger fish to fry things that now they got Delta and Seal team six breathing down their neck so that’s exciting.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Well, very unique take. That was enjoyable. And when I found out about El Chapo being real, it almost brought the story even more to life. I hope people listen to this podcast and then go and read the book, because when you get the context of everything that’s gone into this and your experience, it even brings the book more to life and then you might just passively reading it.

Steve: No, thank you. Thank you. I will tell folks too that I, the technology I used in the book, my very first book I sat way back in 1998. And so I’ve been able to leapfrog some technology and get [00:27:00] closer to today. But uh, yeah, everything I put in the book is, is technology we used, I have used and or could be used, you know, against, in the fight against the drug cartels. And, and you know, then, then there’s a whole bunch of other things that still having that clearance I can’t talk about. The DOD review board would never let it go out in the book, so, yeah.

Mark: Awesome. So we are going to wrap up with a couple more questions for people listening who are authors, and what advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book?

Steve: Wow. Number one, keep writing. Number two, you, you, we don’t get a, we don’t get a choice today. We need to be on social media.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Try and conquer your fear about talking about your book too much and, you know, those kinds of things. But, really get onto social media. One of the best things I did, and it was [00:28:00] advice from Jeff Wilson of Andrews and Wilson who write The Sons of Valor and a bunch of other great, you know, bestselling series was Create a Community.

Create a tribe, a team, find other like authors in your genre, get into critique groups, those kind of things not only will help you with your craft, but also give you connections to other people maybe who have already, you know, have done indie things that you haven’t or traditionally published and no agents and things like that.

So, networking. Networking. I was pleasantly surprised having been used to it in the civilian side. Networking really plays a, a, a big role. And like I say, we’ll help you with your craft, your social media, your awareness of your books, those kind of things.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Community community’s ever more important, especially when you have your own imprint or you’re an indie author. Yeah.

Steve: Absolutely.

Mark: Where can people find your books and, and hear more about you?[00:29:00]

Steve: Sure my books are for sale on Ingram Spark and, via their distributors and Amazon. And my website is www steven S-T-E-V-E-N Stratton, S-T-R-A-T-T-O-N usa.com. I should have made that shorter. Yes.

Mark: I’ll link to it in the show notes, so all you have to do is click.

Steve: Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. I’m also Stratton books on, on X and Steven Stratton on Facebook and Instagram.

And I’m like, most authors, I’m still trying to figure out Instagram. Have a good friend Tracy Abramson. She’s a pro at it, so I keep stalking her and getting advice and things like that. But, yeah, that’s where you can find me.

Mark: That’s great. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate this. It was just a great conversation, really enjoyed it. And if you don’t mind sticking around for a few questions after the show, for the after show for our Patreon subscribers, just a few more questions there.

Thank you again.

Steve: Thank you [00:30:00] for having me. Appreciate it.

Mark: Thanks for listening to episode 12. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to follow the show so you don’t miss episode 13 with Joanna Vander, author of The Spy, thriller Spy Girls. And if you’d like to go deeper with early access bonus content, the after show with rapid fire questions and the chance to ask future guests your own questions, join me on Patreon links are in the show notes.