TPP Season 2, Episode 7 with Luke Richardson

Luke: And he told me this amazing story of an ancient manuscript that had been lost for thousands and thousands of years, A pre delian manuscript that had then become published in the 18th century as a Victorian novel published under the guise of fiction. But the rumors were, it was actually real. It had been discovered by these group of archeologists, in Lebanon, in sort of the Holy Land area during a dig sanctioned by the British Museum paid for by the British Museum.

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. Today I’m joined by Luke Richardson, author of the archeological thriller, the Ark Files.

Mark: Luke, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Luke: Oh, well Mark, it’s wonderful to see you. Thank you for inviting me.

Mark: I am very excited today to talk about your archeological thriller. I’m putting up on the screen for your, our audience. Yeah, the arc files. I’m really excited to talk about this, especially how facts and fiction are intertwined. But before we get into that, let’s hear the pitch for the book.

Luke: Absolutely. So the Ark Files is the first in my Eden Black archeological thriller series. And Eden Black is someone who goes around finding artifacts and returning them to their rightful place. She’s the person that, uh, that undoes the wrongs of these, of these wealthy people or these people that steal things or take things that, that they shouldn’t have and, and keep them to themselves, and she puts them back for the benefit of humanity. Now, the bene the Ark files, the story of the Ark files follows her. Uh, when people start dying, right, and all these people start dying when they were present on a dig 20 years ago until she is the only one left. The difference was she was only 10 at the time of the dig. And the people who are going around, often people about the location of this secret archeological site don’t realize she was there and don’t realize that she remembers. Where this place is. So the story goes on that she has to retrace her steps back to her childhood to solve these murders and stop the people that are trying to cover up the truth of the thing that lies inside that tomb in Lebanon. In fact, it is, uh, based the ARC files, but the series goes on. It’s all about that. There are, uh, seven books. Now. The Sahara event is the most, the most UpToDate one, but the recent one that’s just behind my shoulder there. And they’re all about ancient artifacts, uh, lost civilization, secret societies, curses, all of those sorts of things that I absolutely love talking about, writing about am researching as well, which I know we’re gonna talk about in our conversation today.

Mark: Yeah. That’s so much fun. I love that.

Luke: It.

Mark: So let’s talk about where the idea, what came first, the, what you knew of the history of, of this particular book and the tombs or Eden as a character and that I wanna put this girl through these things.

Luke: Uh, it’s a bit of both really. It’s a bit of both. I’ve always loved this sort of story. I’ve always loved adventure books. I’ve always loved travel myself and going to see these places. I’m not really an adventurer in the terms of, you know, I don’t do long treks single-handedly across deserts or, or glaciers or mountains, but I’ve always loved being in different situations and, and exploring different cultures and stuff.

And that definitely comes through in my writing. The previous series I wrote is about a group of international detectives that go and solve, uh, go and find missing people who go missing all over the world. So, so it sort of leans into that. And then this one, this, this, this book came to me in quite an interesting way actually.

Have you read the author’s note of this? Mark, did you read the, I know you read the book so you, so you know, you, you know where this goes in and this isn’t the spoiler. This bit isn’t the spoiler. It was, it was, it was funny because, a friend of mine phoned me up years ago and, and he said, you are, you are writing a book, aren’t you?

And I was like, yeah, yeah, I’m, yeah, yeah. I’d written a couple at the time and he said I’ve got a story. And I, and I think you’ll like it. And, and often, you know, as a writer, when people say that, you tend to sort of roll your eyes and go, what you don’t realize is coming up with the story is actually the easy bit, right? It’s the sitting down and writing the words, you know,

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: the perspiration at the keyboard. That, that, that is the challenge, making it all stack together. Stack together. But he said, just hear me out. Just hear me out. And he told me this amazing story of an ancient manuscript that had been lost for thousands and thousands of years, A pre delian manuscript that had then become published in the 18th century as a Victorian novel published under the guise of fiction. But the rumors were, it was actually real. It had been discovered by these group of archeologists, in Lebanon, in sort of the Holy Land area during a dig sanctioned by the British Museum paid for by the British Museum. The story goes that these guys found these clay tablets, these cuni formm tablets, and one of the guys there could read, could read the tablets and he quickly realized that what they were dealing with was so explosive ’cause it, it completely rewrote history and of about pre de Lian societies that they decided they couldn’t give this to the museum. Because at the mo at the time, that was a very sort of religious, traditional organization and they knew it would just get lost in the bureaucracy of, of, of that thing. So one of the guys faked his own death, got the, got the tablets out of the place, fled to America in fact, and translated it, then handed it onto another person who he knew, who was a writer, who published it as a, as a, as a work of fiction and all of these things. There is a, there’s a lot of things that stack together, a lot of evidence that stacks together that I was like, this is a, this is an amazing story. So he said. Write it off you go. And I did, and I did my own research and pulled out some other bits myself and whatever. And that just gave me the sort of seed of the idea. And, and then I created Eden and, and her sort of relationships with her father and with, the other people that she meets throughout the adventures and changed quite a lot of the places.

Well change the places in the sense where she comes from and, and where the scene that isn’t, the scenes that aren’t specifically to do with, that that tomb are, are, are located. So yes, there are, there is some evidence to suggest that the, the story behind the arc files is true, although I do hasten to add that it is a work of fiction.

Mark: What’s, are you an, you must be a bit of an outliner then, or do you consider yourself an outliner or, or a panther As far

Luke: No, no discovery writer. Make it up as I go along yet. Discover the story. I’m the story’s first reader, So and.

Mark: do you, how do you balance the coming up with a story? With like if you’re discovery, writing the story, but then you have all the research that you’re trying to put in, especially with this particular book, because this is all based on things that actually happened. So you almost like, how do you do that?

Luke: You it is based on things that actually happened, but in a way, it is not, because what’s in the, the story that’s in the, in the tablets is not really in the book. It’s all about the discovery of the tablets and what would happen if the tablets should be discovered. Now, I list a book, I list the name of the novel.

It’s called The Diary of a Loma in the in the author’s notes, which talks, which tells you if you want to go and read that book that was published in 1830 or whatever it was, I think a bit later than that, 1880, something like that. You can go and buy it on Amazon or wherever. But because I’m not actually focused on that, I’m focused on things in the present day, I, I can take a bit more sort of poetic license with, with how things work.

Mark: Do you ever get concerned that something like you said, or, or did in your book was like wrong historically and people come back and say. Why did you misrepresent this? Or,

Luke: oh, people do. Yeah. People do come back and say things like that and it’s ultimately, it’s fiction, right? I am, I am basing, I’m, I’m making a work of fiction with the intention to entertain people with the, with the intention of taking them away from their surroundings and immersing them in a, in a world of fun and adventure and you, all of these things. So actually I, I think that if the history isn’t spot on, that’s okay.

Mark: yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I think that’s the same with, well, a lot of different thrillers because I think if we wrote books that were realistic, they would be very boring because most of our lives are quite boring. Like with FBI agents or whatever, if we wrote what an FBI agent would actually do in this specific situation, it would not be any of the things that are interesting that happen in real, like in fiction that happened in real

Luke: yeah, that’s it. If you, you think about archeology, right? Which the, I call them archeological thrillers, but they’re not there sort of excavating a skeleton with a paintbrush for hours and hours and hours. That’s not what these books are about. And the people who are frustrated, uh, on the history, I feel like that’s what they’re sort of expecting and that’s cool and that, and that’s great.

And that’s perhaps my failure for according them that, but I, I. I think that is, that’s a different sort of style, isn’t it? This is a, this is an action adventure thriller in which they’re chasing up, they’re running away from bad guys. You know, there are, there are archeological sort of artifacts involved, but there, there, there’s more action than sort of piecing together the, the history and the way that an archeologist might.

Mark: Yeah. I always think of like Indiana, when I hear archeological thrill thriller, I think of like Indiana Jones where he was like, it was a fun action. You could call it archeological, but. We all, you hope to understand the difference.

Luke: And I sort of think that something like Indiana Jones, and I wonder, I don’t know have any evidence to back this up, but I wonder how many actual archeologists or historians saw that as a child and were like, I wanna, I wanna be that. I’m interested by that. And, and that was like their in, that was like their understanding of what exploring history was like, and of course it’s really different to the life that they no doubt went on and led, but, but it just sort of, it’s intriguing, isn’t it? It’s, it sort of, you know, it sort of could awaken interest in you, I suppose.

Mark: What kind of challenge did this story kind of present for you as a writer?

Luke: Mm, that’s a good question. I think it was challenging because a lot of it takes place in Lebanon, which is a place that I was not able to visit in order to, to write this book going forwards i, I, I have been able to choose stories that either have fitted into places that I’ve been to before and have enjoyed visiting, or those that I’ve been to since, or, or places I can go to and research the books specifically. But I wasn’t able to go to Lebanon at this time. In fact, I wrote it 20 21, 20 22. So the, the events of around that period of time that that stopped us easily traveling. And then, still to this day, unfortunately, that part of the world isn’t a particularly easy place to travel to one day. I would love to go, but that to me, presented a challenge ’cause I’m the sort of person that loves to go and explore a place on the ground, speak to the people, hear the sounds, eat the food, especially eat the food, uh, explore the culture and, and understand that grassroots level, the, the, the place that I’m writing about.

Mark: Oh, that’s so cool. I wish I could travel to all the places that I write about. you, You mentioned you’re a discovery writer, but when you’re traveling to these places, presumably before you start writing the book, or maybe after, I guess you could explain that. Is it like, are you traveling? You’re like, oh, I could do that here. And then you see this and you’re like, oh, that would be a great place.

Like especially with Eden now, is it like, oh, Aiden Eden would do this and she would do that, and then you’re just kinda like, almost the story comes to life pretty much like a movie, right? As you would like be exploring this, taking pictures and all that stuff.

Luke: Yeah, absolutely. That, absolutely that, and sometimes it, it works in two ways. Sometimes I know the story or I know a bit of the story. Like at the moment I’m working on the eighth book in the Eden series. It’ll be set in Paris, and we are going to Paris in a couple of weeks to just get, get boots on the ground and, and sort of work out some of the places I want to include. Now, I’ve already started writing the story, so, and I sort of know what it’s gonna be about a bit, but there’s enough wiggle room enough. I’m only, I’m not even halfway yet. So there’s a lot of, a lot of space to still sort of work things around when we are there and we discover things that we like. On the other hand, there are stories that just emerge and I, I’m traveling in a place that I have no intention of sitting a story, but they just appear, for example, with the Lotus Key, which was the last book, we went to Morocco to Marrakesh last year, last January. And we are in, a madrassa there, which is a, an Islamic university. And I was looking at the tile work and they’ve got these fantastic tile. You, you’ll have seen it. The sort of Arabic tile pattern. It’s, it almost looks like a kaleidoscope the way that it’s designed, and it’s called quasi crystalline tiling or something.

I think I may have said that wrong, but it’s something like that. Anyway, I was researching this afterwards because I, I’m a, I love to go down these sort of research rabbit holes of the places I’ve seen, and this quasi crystalline tiling is a specific pattern that never repeats. It can be, it can be filled with as much space as it possibly can, but it never quite repeats in terms of the colors and the, and the, and the shape that was used. This particular madrassa was from like the 14th century. It’s about 700 years old. The, the mainstream scientists only discovered this pattern. They only realized this pattern actually existed. In the 1970s, it was discovered by a guy called, called Prose, a British guy who won a, won a Nobel Prize for it, who won a Nobel Prize for this discovery. And I love the idea that this, that, that there’s this thing that mainstream science is discovering recently, and yet it’s been on the wall of a, of a madrasa for 700 years. And no one has sort of connected the two.

But even more interestingly, it’s a molecular structure that is only found in intense heat. So they, it was, it was never found on planet Earth before the nuclear era. So before the 1950s, it never existed on planet Earth or in meteors that have come, that have crashed down to the earth and come from outer space.

So even more to that, this idea, and I know it gets you a bit, sort of

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: this, this idea that the, that the. And this is where the fiction part comes in, right? This, the idea that these, that these, mathematicians in the 14 hundreds realized and knew about this, this nuclear molecular structure that wasn’t discovered until the late 20th century and this, and this, all of these things. I’m just like, that’s so cool. That has to be in a book. And that inspired the Lotus Key, which was the one that came out towards the end of last year.

Mark: Uh, I love how passionate you are when you talk about this. Is this all, is this just like a hobby or is there this, is this like what you do full time? Is the, the research and the book writing.

Luke: This has become the job. This has become the full-time thing, which is wonderful, uh, and a privilege and an honor, and I love that. But there’s also like the, the thing I, the, the, the hobby becoming the job has, its, has its problems as well when you, you know, when you’re still plotting stories at 11 o’clock at night and then getting up first thing and doing it again.

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: it’s a real honor and I love it. But yeah, it’s, it has become the job too.

Mark: So when people put this book down, when they finish, let, let’s talk about the Eric Fowl specifically when they finish this book and put it down at the end, what are you hoping that they’re gonna feel or that they’re taken away from this story?

Luke: I, there’s a few things here. I, on the surface level, this is, an adventure story that I want to be a real escapist. A real bit of escapism for anyone who wants to pick it up. I’ve, I’ve had great feedback from this really meaningful feedback about people who’ve been waiting in the, in the doctor’s office for, for relatives or whatever they’re doing, you know, getting, getting through difficult times, and the books have brought them some solace.

And I think as a writer, that’s always a, that’s always a really wonderful thing to be able to do that right. On the second level, I, I love the idea that my books allow people to travel in the way I enjoy quite so much. Some of my favorite memories have been when I’ve been completely out of my depth in Egypt or India or wherever I’ve been, and I, and I’m just the, just wandering through this market, seeing things that I’ve never seen before or, or on a taxi ride through some area of where, you know, and, and those things that just take you out of your comfort zone and show you something completely new and, and are very, very exciting and inspiring to me.

And I hope the book. My books in general can provide that and give people that sort of childlike wonder that we’ve all experienced, we’ve, we’ve all experienced before. And, and it’s a real honor to experience again, isn’t it? When you, when you get into your, your adulthood as well.

Mark: Yes it is. How do you balance, so when you’re writing this, then how do you balance for yourself if you’re thinking about as you’re writing, the bringing the place to life. So setting place with the description and the action and, and some of the fights and, and things that are going on and building character moments.

Luke: Good question. I always say that the story has to be the main thing. And whenever people ask me things like this, I talk about the story being like the engine of the, of the book, right? The setting is wonderful and I’m absolutely for the setting. I love that. That’s a really important thing to me, and I work hard for that. But I feel like if you forget the story. If you, if you ignore the story, you do that at your peril, right? You can’t just say, or you, you can, but you, you, you shouldn’t just say, I’m just gonna pause the story for a minute to tell you about this really exciting place the characters are in.

You have to combine the two. And when I write my first book, I didn’t quite get this. And I went back and rewrote it years later. And for an example, I’d written a scene in a market in Cat Mandu. Cat Mandu Killers. The book is called. I’d written this scene in the market and in the, in my first version, the character, Leo was the character in that book.

He’s walking through the market and he’s looking at all the things. So he looks at these piles of, um, tomatoes that are stacked up in a pyramid shape. The market’s seller next to them, sort of counting out the money of the person who’s buying them, another person selling incense or, or selling meat or selling whatever. That was the first version. In the second version, I changed it. So there’s a chase scene through the market and the bad guy slides through the pile of tomatoes, you know, smashing them all over the place. He gets a, he gets sort of accosted by the market seller who LOBs one at him and chases after him as well, and then they’re kicking over the incense stall guys little stack of coals and they go everywhere as well. And it’s, you’re just finding a way not to, not only to show the read of the scene but to immerse both the reader and those characters in that scene and, and make that a part of the action as well.

Mark: Having written as many books as you can, do you, as you have, have you found that that gets easier to do as you continue to write more books as you develop as a, a writer? You notice these things almost in the first draft, so there’s less work later on, or, or do you still kind of, you know, second draft is, is a, is a fixing of all the things that you played with in draft one.

Luke: Certainly, yes, it is, it is. I tend though not to think about the stages of the writing process, like. Like you’ve described there, there’s not really draft one, draft two, editing, dah, dah, dah to me now, it just feels like writing. It’s all sort of, it’s all sort of one thing, you know, because, uh, in one few hours of work, as I’m sure you do the same in one few hours of work, you might write a few new words over here, then you’ll skip back and edit a bit over here then you’ll go and expand or develop a, a scene over here, and you’re just sort of, it’s not always that constant forward motion. There’s a bit of, sort of back and forth as you, as you work through the book, I think.

Mark: That’s an interesting process. No, I actually don’t do it that way. I am more linear as I describe it, which is probably why I asked the question that way. So for me, I will write, I won’t even look back at what I had written for the entire book until I get to the end and finish that first draft and

Luke: all right.

Mark: Back. ‘Cause I want to know, especially for me, I want to know who the characters are right up until the final moment. And then I know how I, if I need them to be a little bit different or to make different decisions early on, that’s when I go through. So that’s really interesting that you, you jump all around. I don’t know if my brain could handle that. I

Luke: But, and also I’ll, I’ll come up with a scene as sort of as I’ve described in that, for example, that madrassa in, in Marrakesh. I’ll know I wanna do a scene there, but I won’t know exactly where it fits in the story, but I’ll see it sort of in my mind’s eye. And I’m like, right, that’s where I’m gonna start writing and I’ll write that scene. And I, and I like that. And then I’m like, right, well, what comes before that? What comes after that? Where does that sit in the story?

You know? And it just sort of spiders out in this, in this way. I also tend to, sometimes I also tend to write the protagonist scenes first, and this is what I’m doing at the moment. And then come back and put the antagonist in when I’ve sort of worked out exactly where they, what they, what they, need to do. You know?

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: So it is a bit of a messy way to write, but, um, um, but it, it seems to work and, and. I think I have tried doing the, doing the plotting before, and I, I got about a quarter of the way in and made one little change, and then of course the rest of the, of the plot has gone completely outta the window. It, it doesn’t work in that way. It doesn’t seem to work in that way for me,

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Well I admire you for being able to do that. My, yeah, that’s very cool. So what happens after the, the draft that you do? You said it goes to who’s the first reader of like one of your finished books?

Luke: So I will. Probably read it through three or four times over the course of that writing process that I, that I just call nebulously writing. Then it will go to my editor, who’s been with me now for several, several years, and he will read that through and do, it’s really a copy edit. But he’s also looking, I’ve said to him, if anything doesn’t make sense, if I haven’t, if I haven’t sort of expanded on something or whatever, do point me out on that as well. Then I’ll take it back and do another pass myself along with those edits. And then it goes to a, to a team of, of, of beta readers. So they will, they will spy out any any little mistakes or, or just sort of give me an, an idea after of how the story flows at that point. And occasionally I make changes by them but generally speaking, by the time it goes to the editor, I’m, I’m quite solid on, on how I want that story to look.

Mark: Did you get any feedback with the ARC files here from page readers or your editor where you had to change a scene?

Luke: Good question. Not that I can remember. Although it has been a little while since I, since I wrote that. That was 2022. It was published and then it, but I wrote it the year before. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been a while. Maybe four, four and a bit years. I’m not saying, and I’m certain you, you know this, when you read back through something after years, you are like, what is this? Who wrote this?

Mark: yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Luke: There are certainly bits like that, but, uh, I’m just, I, I’m really pleased with it. I love the way the story stacks together. It explores, yeah, I, I, there’s lots of things I’m really proud of in that story, so I’m leaving it alone now.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. So when it comes to fight scenes, how do you process a fight scene on the page? There’s a lot of like action and, and fights and chases in here. How do you process that a fight scene on the page? Are you thinking about like the emotional context? We talked about the environment ’cause you kind of went into how you interact with the environment there and, and do you think of it as like a play by play? And this is mostly for people who haven’t read the book yet. I guess I have any idea of how you structured this.

Luke: Sure. Now I’m not really an expert fighter. Um, so I may get things wrong in, in, in the fight scenes, but also I try not to make them too serious. They’re, they’re a little bit slapstick, they’re a little bit funny. There’s generally, um, they’re not very gory. None of my books are gory or, or violent in the sense that people. People really get hurt. Of course they do. But you know what I mean? It’s violence in the same way, like a James Bond film or the Indiana Jones, um, films, as you’ve spoken about already would, would happen. You know, someone will get shot and they’ll go down or they’ll, they’ll get hit on the head and they’ll, and they’ll go down. And that’s, and that’s the end of that. There’s not sort of the gr gratuitous violence that you might get in in some other books, although of course I want there to be menace menacing there as well. But yes, for me, I try and make the fight scenes quite entertaining. There’s generally a couple of people at the same time so that they’re, they’re, they’ve got a bit of sort of banter and a bit of conversation that’s going on whilst this, whilst this action is playing out, I, I also tried to make it in an interesting place, so that sort of lifts it as well on the roof of a train was one of them.

Um, they building site I think was in the ARC files. They were, they were fighting on a, when in a construction site.

Mark: Yeah,

Luke: So, so yeah, just, just, just making these interesting, um, trying to, trying to lift it with some humor as well that the characters might have, they have that sort of relationship together, so, so allowing them to, to, to bounce off each other whilst they’re, whilst they’re doing this, doing this serious thing, lifts the book I think it makes it a bit less, a bit less gruesome.

Mark: yeah. And there are deaths early on in this book. How do you, I don’t think this is a spoiler. How do you decide who deserves a point of view seen rather than just like Eden could have read on the news or saw on the news, or any one of these characters, you know, in the timeline that you established early on could have seen or heard or you know, rather than the actual point of view until the end.

How do you decide like how many characters you’re going to put on the page so that for one, as a reader. When I jump into a book, I, I wonder, I mean, obviously it’s called the Eden Black Series or Thriller, so I know

Luke: Yeah, yeah,

Mark: but then I start reading a book and I’m thinking, okay, is this another main character that’s being introduced?

Oh, okay. No, they’re dead. Or, you know what I mean? Like, like who’s, who’s, who’s sticking around in this book, you know, and, and, and trying to balance overwhelming readers with characters versus kind of like telling, I guess, a quick summary. Then this person died.

Luke: Yes, that’s true. And I remember the scene that you are speaking about in, in the, in the first part of this, I felt like I wanted to do that because it. Well, I think it’s, I think it’s something that I’ve seen in a lot of similar books, and I think it works really nicely because you, you, as you said as an example, seeing that on the news I, there, there’s no real drama there.

This particular scene, this guy’s running through the streets of Sarajevo in, in Bosnia, hus Covina, and he thinks there’s someone on his tail and it’s a great sort of, um, medieval market town. and and these big guys are after him. And also that’s the introduction to the, to the sort of heavies that will, that will, that will do the, that will be on their case throughout the, the story as well. It’s obviously, we, obviously, that guy doesn’t have a point of view after that first bit, but it sets up quite a few things within that, that scene. We know that it’s gonna be quite exotic in the, in the places that it goes. Hopefully we know that there’s gonna be some action. It’s gonna be quite exciting.

And also we’ve got the threat, right. I think. I think if you had a book like this where no one died, you’re sort of not in the right genre. It has to, there has to be threat, there has to be real life and death threat in there. Otherwise it just, there’s no, there’s no sort of, um, do you know what I mean? There, there, it isn’t the page turning thing that you’re promising. If it’s just like, this guy, he was really embarrassed to be caught by, to be caught by the bad guys.

Mark: yeah,

Luke: gonna have to have some stern words with his employer afterwards, you know? Yeah. For me, I just, yeah, I, uh, I, I, maybe I’m being a little bit flippant about killing a poor, a poor archeologist in the opening pages, but there we’re.

Mark: yeah. No. Hey, it works. So that’s good. So I wanna ask about one of the character’s names. You named one of the villains of this Croft, and I’m the name Croft, of course. If you, if you’re, you know, Indiana Jones, video gamer movies, Laura Croft, was that like a And this character has nothing to do with, with Laura Croft for

Luke: No, it doesn’t.

Mark: not even remotely, but did you put that name in there just for fun as like a, have a croft in there.

Luke: And you know what? I can’t even remember. I can’t even remember, but I think I probably did. I like to put little sort of homages to, to various, um, to various different, to various other authors in there. I like to do that. I also named, um, uh, the ship, the Martha Anne, which is, um, from Clive Cossler’s. Nuer files is their, is their boat.

And uh, so I was like taking these little things and you know, and, and, and just sort so people in the genre are like, oh yeah, I know that. I know that. But yes, as you say this, this guy is this absolute meat mountain h Huey, sort of brute of a man who, who, who goes around bullying people throughout the book. So he is nothing like the

Mark: yeah. Okay. So when you built Eden as a character, did you know you were going to do a series and, I mean, I have, I’ve only read the arc files, so every, a lot has been published and I don’t want to give, you know, too much away about or have you give it away, but all the things that she may go through as a character in her previous life.

Did you know that you were gonna create this many books and that you would have to kind of build her character over time and reveal information about her, her history and and stuff over time? Or did you just start write this book and then realized after that this was a lot of fun? We’re gonna bring her back.

Luke: I think it’s probably more the second one, although had I have thought it through in a little more detail, I probably should have, should have, uh, considered that a little more. I certainly wanted it to be a series. I certainly loved the idea that it was, ’cause I’ve always loved stories like that. I have always enjoyed the traveler aspects and the history aspects. so so that, that worked for me. Yeah, I, I, I definitely wanted it to be a series for, for lots of reasons. But as you say, I didn’t necessarily think about all of the reveals that I might have to have done. And speaking to other authors who’ve approached series writing, very consciously thinking about sort of character arcs over a five or six book span. I didn’t do any of that, which perhaps was a, was an error at the time, although I think. It does, it certainly has that, it certainly has that character arc, um, that, that you, that you’ll see when you read the rest of the series, that you’ll see that she has changed and developed over the course of the books.

Mark: How do you keep track of it?

Luke: Uh, it, that, now that’s a very good question and I certainly, I feel like I should do more of that. I’m only eight books. I’m working on book number eight, so I don’t think it’s, um, I don’t, I haven’t done that many to make it sort of like 20, 20 books or something like this. I also, I also, don’t. She’s not gonna change too much. Right. Is what I’m, what I’m saying here, I’m thinking about the way the, the James Bond films work right now whilst there’s a, whilst there is some change in the character of Bond, you, you almost love him for what he is. Right. And in the same way, I don’t want Eden to change too much. She’s always gonna be a bit of a, a sharp witted outsider.

You know, she’s always going to be, have this real strong moral compass. She’s always going to like to put things right that she, that she sees that are wrong in the world. And of course pe different people will, will, will join and, and, and leave the, the group as as she goes on. But I think if I keep those main things, the main thing actually that’s great. What I’m trying to say is I’m not gonna come back and all of a sudden she’s 10 years older or 20 years older or whatever. I’m, I’m going to, I, I like the idea that she lives in,

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: Lives in this impossible sort of age where she never, she never really ages in any way or things don’t, things don’t change in the way that they do for us in the, in the real world.

Mark: Yeah. It’s like the Jack Re, it reminds me of Jack Reacher with Lee Child Series that he does the same thing. I, I mean, a lot of thrillers do with, with book series. He’s like, how old is your character now? And that’s the kind of running joke. But I think

Luke: that’s right.

Mark: Jack Reacher when it comes to that. He doesn’t change like every book you’re just kind of getting that, even though the plots are different and the situation he gets himself into is different, which is very exciting him as a person is not like, he’s not changing. They’re just like these little slow reveals of things once in a while.

Luke: Yeah, that’s true. And also you think about the length of time, and I do do some thinking about this, the length of time that spans within the book in one of mine, it’s probably around a week from page one to the end. Um, obviously there are the various flashbacks where we look back at things that happened a long time before.

But I mean, like within that main story, probably similar with the Jack Reacher books as you’ve mentioned. You know, so we’re not talking, if you are thinking about you could have put all these books end to end, you know, in terms of a timeline, uh, actually not as much time has passed as perhaps you think as a, as a reader, you know? So maybe there’s, maybe there’s, uh, only a couple of years over the course of six or seven books.

Mark: She finds a lot of trouble in a very short period of time.

Luke: Yeah, this is one thing I am conscious of, you know, she needs a break once in a while,

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: As do i, to be fair.

Mark: down. Yeah.

Luke: Yeah.

Mark: How long does it take you to write a book? Roughly? These days?

Luke: For the first four or five, I did two a year. I’ve now slowed down to one a year because, uh, I just found that quite exhausting there. They’re quite long books. They’re about a hundred thousand words, 300 and something pages and they’re intents. They’re, because we are dealing with the history, we are dealing with, the research of the place and all of the things that we’ve talked about, I feel like to do it right, takes a, takes a bit of time.

So, yeah, I’ve, I’m committing now to one a year going forward, which gives a good time to, for, for the editing and the pre-production things and all of that other stuff as well, and to write some other books in other series, which I’m, I’m enjoying doing too.

Mark: So is what else is out there for our listeners who may appreciate other series that you have going on.

Luke: Sure. Yeah. So my first series is called the International Detective Series. I’m trying to think if I’ve got them on the back shelf. Uh, here’s one of them, Istan Istanbul. The first one’s called Katmandu Killers. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of that. Um, that is a guy who, who gets, uh, drawn into finding missing people around the world.

He’s very much sort of an anti-hero in every man. Um, and he, he off, he goes to Istanbul or Berlin or Katmandu or Hong Kong to find, to find someone who’s, who hasn’t come back. Really love writing those books. I’ve done six every so often I get an email saying, when’s the next one coming out that as yet, haven’t committed to it. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. Never say never. I’m also writing a book with a series with a guy called John Hopkins, which is this one. It’s good wear on camera actually, ’cause you can see them all.

The shadow of the sunstone that was book one in the series, it is set around a lady called Nora Sierra Bird, who is a character in the Eden Black Series. And John and I were talking and, and we said, oh, we should write something together. I’ve known him for quite some time. And I said, well, I’ve got this idea about this, this retired Air Force pilot who sorts of gets embroiled in all sorts of, uh, missing artifacts and, and nefarious goings on in her, in her Caribbean, her Caribbean flight school. So yeah, so that’s the first one. The second one, which is called the Curse of the Jade Idol, is out this year. So we are doing about one a year there, and I’m working on another series on my own.

Mark: Wow.

Luke: Yeah, that I’ve started writing the first book all but have had to put down, but I’m not mentioning anything about that yet. ‘Cause it’s, it’s, it’s it’s something that’s gonna come out later in the year. So Yeah. I’ll, uh, I’ll, I’ll talk to you about that next time.

Mark: Yeah. So when you say one book a year, do you just mean one Eden, even black book a year? How many books are you actually writing in a year?

Luke: Probably maybe two or three. But then the John, the one with John Hopkins is co-writing, so that takes some of the, some of the lift off my shoulders ’cause I’m not writing every single word of it myself. Uh, like the, the Eden books.

Mark: It’s still a furious schedule, though. That’s still a lot of, even three, like three books a oh year is a lot, especially when you have as much information and research as you do packed into your books. It’s not like you set it in a cabin in the woods, you know, where, where someone’s like, you know?

Luke: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Well, it makes for a faster, right. As far as like, well, there’s only so much to explain, and then we just get the action going and you’re in the woods and you know,

Luke: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s true.

Mark: you write.

Luke: That’s true. But I love that. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change that. This was always, the dream was to, was to travel and write and, and research while I was in the process. So for me, that’s a, that’s a key part. That that is the process. That’s the, that’s the writing process itself too.

Mark: Uh, you are living the dream. I love it.

Luke: Thank you. Yeah. Feels like it. Yeah. It’s a good one.

Mark: I, so I got a question from James Rosenberg. He was the last author on the, the last guest on the show. He’s gonna ask you a question. You’ll get to ask your question for the next

Luke: ah, nice idea.

Mark: So he asks, what is your favorite novel, this is that you have written, and why is it your favorite?

Luke: Oh yeah, I have to say the first one, cat, Mandu Killers. In fact, I have got a copy of the first version. Um. From 2019. Here it is. It’s changed the cover. Now I’ve got a new cover, new title. It’s been rewritten lots of different times, but I think there’s something about the first book turns you from being a non-writer into a writer, doesn’t it?

You’ve, you’ve soldiered on, you’ve labored on that first book. And I remember the moment, this one, it wasn’t exactly this one, but one of them arrived that first copy, uh, that I hadn’t seen. I’d never seen it before. And I rushed to the post box and ripped it open and was ah, um, you know, and then opened the first page and saw a spelling mistake. Ah,

Mark: Oh no.

Luke: I, that’s, I made that up, but, uh, maybe I

Mark: Okay.

Luke: Um, but yeah, so yeah, it, that for me, I think is it continued ’cause it set me on this journey, right? It set me on this process of, of writing books. And it was a long way from writing this book to it becoming a, a living, but I am, I’m, I wouldn’t have done it without, without this book and all of the people that, that helped me produce it and read it and gave me wonderful comments about it, and inspired me to get on and write the next one and take the next step and all of those things.

Mark: Yeah. That’s awesome. What, what is the timeline, if you don’t mind sharing, between when you released this book, which would’ve been like when you started publishing, let’s say, bef, until you were able to do it on your own? I think it’s remarkable, and there’s so few authors that are actually able to do what you do right now that you’ve accomplished this.

Luke: Hmm. So this one came out spring 2019. I think it was April or May, so that’ll be six years. Wow. In a, in a couple of, in a few weeks time. Then I resigned. I was an English teacher in a high school, in a secondary school at that time, and I resigned in 2020. I left my job. I knew that. I needed, I wanted to make this, uh, a real thing, right? I’d loved writing that first book, and I was working on the second one and so on, and I wanted to make this a real thing. And I knew that a job like teaching is so all encompassing. It, it, it occupies your mind so fully that you just can’t concentrate on anything else fully. You can’t really have that, have that opportunity to dive into anything else.

So I left that and then did quite a lot of freelance work writing and various other freelance jobs for about three years. I think it was 2023 that I was, I, I started tapering that off in 2023. Did my last, finally finished that 2024. So it’s been about 18 months now. Just, just the, the, the book income, which is really good and, and very grateful for that. But yeah, it took, it took a while, right? It was, there was a transition period from, from one to the other. It wasn’t just sort of, I’m off, see ya,

Mark: yeah,

Luke: you know?

Mark: yeah. That’s an important message. Thank you for sharing that. ’cause I think there is a, the belief that, oh, I, I got my book out there. Now I’m ready to make my millions and, and take off like a rocket. And for most 99% of authors, that’s not the way. But you stuck with it. You followed your dream and here you are.

Luke: Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. That I, I needed to stick with it. For me, this was, this was something I love doing and I still do to this day. You know, I, I write for pleasure as much as, because now people want to, are waiting for the book, which is a, which is a wonderful place to be. And as I said, I’m, I’m, I’m very grateful of that. But, uh, and, and don’t take it for granted at all. Of course. It’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s really important to, to, to think in that way. I think.

Mark: What would you say at this point was a key to your success

Luke: In what sense? In like the se the sense

Mark: publishing? Like book one? Yeah, from book one to like being able to be a full-time author. Was there anything along that journey where you thought, oh, this is the moment, or This worked and really helped push me to, to this full-time author journey.

Luke: Yeah. I think the main change came when I, the main thing that I realized, I, I did that first series. I wrote six books in that series. I loved them. They didn’t sell as much as I wanted them to. And the reason for that now is really obvious to me, is that it’s quite hard to explain exactly what they are. And you may have noticed that in the podcast during this conversation, I’ve said, these books are a, they’re a bad a guy who goes to find missing people around the world. And you are like, huh, what, what books? Like, like who, who writes books like that? I’m like, yeah, but he’s not like a hard man. He is like a, he’s like a every man sort of irregular guy sort of character. Okay. But, and the problem with those books is what I love them. They’re just diff if, if it’s difficult to tell you about, it’s difficult to sell.

This is the point. Whereas the Eden Black Books, I can just say ancient curses, secret societies, lost civilizations. And you are like, I’ve got it. You know, I’ve got it. I, I, I, I’m with you. I either like it or I don’t like it. Fine. You know, and you can tell in five seconds whether you like that book or you don’t like that book. Whereas, as I say, the other series, you’d need a bit more explanation. You’d have to read the blurb. You’d have to, we’d have to have a conversation. And I think just that idea that I drilled down into finding something because I wanted it to be a job. And there’s a definition, there’s a distinction there between someone who writes the book of their heart because they really want to write that book. Or someone who writes because they want it to be a business. You need to think, right, how am I gonna sell this thing? How am I gonna communicate what this thing is to someone? How am I going to, um, market this to someone?

And for that, you really need to think about that at the, at the writing level before you even put pen to paper. Not when you’re sitting there thinking, ah, you know, I’ve got, I’ve written this book. How am I now gonna sell it to someone? Which of course is, is what I did first. And I think what most people go and do the first time,

Mark: yeah, yeah. Well, that’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that’s great.

Luke: I hope that’s, I hope that’s useful and inspiring. That’s sort of

Mark: It is.

Luke: what I’d like, what I’d like these things to be.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, it’s inspiring for me to hear, to hear you talk about that, to hear about your successes. I’m on that same journey, not writing full time, but that’s ultimately the goal is to end up where you are too.

Luke: Oh, fantastic. Oh, I, I, yeah. I, I wish you good luck with it, man. I think that’s, that’s a great thing. Yeah.

Mark: What advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book? So they have, you know, they have, they experienced, they’re beyond just writing now ’cause they’ve written, you know, the book, ones out there, they’ve written to, let’s say they have that behind them. What’s, what’s a good thing for them to know in your opinion?

Luke: I think to be really conscious about what you hope from it, as I said a minute ago, there’s a distinction between people writing the book of their heart and people writing to, to be a business, to, to make, to make money from this. And that’s really important to understand. You can’t compare one to the other.

It is like comparing, you know, apples and oranges. If you say, I. You, you see this a lot in the communities, right? You’ll see someone saying, oh, I’ve just sold a million copies of my really popular genre. And someone goes, why can’t I sell my memoir about growing up in small town wherever? And you’re like, they’re, they’re really different books. This one has been designed to sell as a product to people in a market that has proven to be hungry for it. This is a book that you love and your family will love, uh, in the years to come and all of those things, and that you are, it’s amazing that you’ve done it, but the expectations should be completely different. I think that that’s really important to, to understand. So I would say if you want it to be a business, then you go into your market research and you look at what the hot. The hot tropes are you look at what the hot genres are. You look at how people are packaging and selling and writing those books. You look at how often they have to produce them or, or how they’re selling them.

Is it through Amazon? Have they got their own stores? Are they doing it in a wide sort of platform? Are they audible, uh, TikTok, all of these things, right?

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: Um, and by doing that, you can understand the path that, that, that works for you as opposed to just being that frustrated person who’s writing the books that you love and then wondering why other people don’t resonate with them. And when you look at it from an outsider, it seems quite obvious, doesn’t it? You’re like, there are thousands of books people aren’t in need of books to read, right? We do this because we love it, because we want to, um, but we need to have the reader in mind as well during that process.

Mark: Oh, thank you. I love that answer. Yeah, that’s great. So where can people find your books? You just talked about going wide versus exclusive. Where, where can people find your books or find more about you as an

Luke: so Luke Richardson ortho.com is where you need to go for all of my books, my podcast, which is the Adventure Story Podcast, and also information about my travels and my adventures, and my inspirations is there as well. Luke Richardson ortho.com.

Mark: Awesome. I will link that on the, on the show notes.

Luke: Fab. Thank you,

Mark: So I got a few questions for you. Spoiler alert. For those who are listening, we are going to the spoiler section of the show, so you will want to pause here? Yeah, exactly. Pause, download, read you’ll, you’ll be done no time. And then come back and listen to the last few minutes of the show. If you can remember. Then now we’re talking about how long ago

Luke: I was just thinking that, yeah,

Mark: Yeah.

Luke: you’re gonna ask me some really granular detail. What was he holding on the scene?

Mark: Was this the way, the way it ends with, essentially, with the way it ends with the fight scene and the, the boat and the explosion and her in the water, is that the way it originally ended or was that ever changed at any point?

Luke: No, that’s always been the end and that, uh, to this story. Yeah.

Mark: Okay, quick answer.

Luke: Yeah,

Mark: that was it. Yeah, yeah. No, I was always curious if that’s, ’cause some people, sometimes you write like a first draft of the version of the story and then, and then you know, you, you just like, nah, that sucked. I’m gonna have to go change this ’cause it just didn’t strike with readers. Or, I

Luke: Uh,

Mark: the way, the way I said this the first time. So you go and change it, you’re like, nah, I don’t wanna be on a boat, we’re gonna be on a helicopter or whatever. I dunno.

Luke: That is quite an unpopular scene, mind you, for, for, for reasons you, you can understand. Not because I don’t think people like it, but because they they’re, they’re annoyed that Baxter has to, has to drive into the, to save himself in order to, to, to sacrifice himself in, in favor of Eden. I know this is, people have read it now, so I can say these things, but there are surprises to come, so don’t lose faith.

Mark: Okay. And what, you know why? ’cause it was like the beginning of a love story. The, and knowing that it’s a series, and then at the end you’re like, oh, for all, for all the romance people out there, you know, in a romance, you can’t, you can’t leave it on, on like a bad ending, right? Like with romance, they say it has to be a happy ending somehow so that you wrote the romance bad ending, even though you’re

Luke: I wonder that about books like this. I think what I was keen to do, and as I say there is more, I don’t wanna give a spoiler for the next book, but things aren’t quite what you seem, quite what they seem. I’ll, uh, I’ll, I’ll put that out there to you now. Um, I think I, I wanted that, that romance trope. I like that. I love that in, in this sort of genre. I think that’s really cool. But I think that can’t be, that shouldn’t be, or I didn’t want that to be the main trope. I wanted that to be a backseat thing. So I, I like the idea that it’s there on the edge. It’s peripheral, but it’s, but it’s not like they’ve fallen in love. Uh, but because the problem is once that happens, the sort of, it’s sort of over, isn’t it? There’s there’s nothing, there’s not more, there’s not much more you can do with those two characters once that’s once that’s happened. So i, I wanted that to, to become un, to not be resolved during the book purposefully.

Mark: yeah. How do you handle this might be a spoiler too, maybe you don’t have to answer it for future books, but how do you handle a relationship in a series? Is it like you maybe in a relationship and then she just like flies away and does these things and comes back to her boyfriend and wherever she’s, wherever she’s

Luke: I, I’ve never dealt with that, but, um, I know other authors who have, and they’ve had the characters get married and, and, and whatever through the series, and, and they do exactly as you’ve described. Yeah. Their lives, their lives change and the, the sort of di the, the relationships between the characters change and evolve, and that’s just the way it is in life, I suppose. Right.

So there’s there’s nothing wrong with that. I haven’t done that yet, but maybe one day, maybe one day I will. Although as I say, I sort of feel like it, um, yeah. I sort of feel like it releases the tension slightly. I, I, I like the idea that that hasn’t happened.

Mark: yeah, yeah. I wonder how that impacts the reader knowing that there’s like someone back home. I mean, you think of like Alex Cross, but even Alex Cross, the James Patterson trilogy, like killed his wife at, you know, some point in the story and then he suffered from all that tragedy and then he’s in and outta relationships.

I wonder if James Patterson thought like, okay, this is know, this relationship got dull or people got used to it. Now we have to throw this entire tragedy into the, into the book and change, almost change the character. ’cause now Alex Cross is this like, bro, almost brooding tough guy who’s just really pissed off at the world kind of thing.

Luke: I, yeah, that’s right. And I, I’ve seen this in books and I, I, I sometimes think writers can lean a little bit too much into it, in, if it’s, of course, a romance book that’s, that’s different, that’s the genre. But when it’s not specifically in you, you dedicate all these pages to this, to this particular element of their relationship. I’m, yeah. Sometimes I find that you, it can be overdone slightly, I suppose is what I mean.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. If you could change anything about this book or the way you wrote it, was, is there anything that you would wanna change?

Luke: Huh. I’d say no now, but I’ll pre I’ll sort of caveat that by saying if I open it now and start reading it, I will certainly, I will certainly find things. Um, I also know that the problem with a story is that it’s really finely balanced. It’s, it is very, you change one thing and the whole rest of the thing falls out of, out of sort of balance. You know, you, there’s no such thing as a simple, a simple switch of course, like punctuation and grammar and stuff is different, but I’m talking about is plot and characterization and the, and the story and whatever. Um, so if you, if you start tinkering under the hood, you’re there for, you’re there for a long time. There’s no sort of easy change with these things. So

Mark: No.

Luke: I would say no at this point, it is what it is and I’m, I’m pleased with that.

Mark: Okay. Awesome. Well this has been so much fun. Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. This has been a, just a fantastic conversation. Uh, really enjoyed the Ark files. Look forward to, to reading the rest of this trilogy. ’cause I really enjoyed, uh, Eden and I’d like to certainly like to read more about her.

Luke: Thank you so much, mark. It’s been great.

Mark: So if you don’t mind taking around for a few minutes, we have the, uh, a quick after show some rapid fire questions for our Patreon members. Thank you.