TPP Season 2, Episode 11 with Brittany Butler

TPP Season 2, Episode 3 with Brian Drake

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

Brian: if you don’t keep the churn up, the machine forgets about you, and now I have to retrain the machine by releasing more material. if you wanna be successful, you gotta write a lot and you gotta write fast. There was a brief moment where I was doing them every four months and then my publisher was like, look, we need ’em faster. And it’s like, okay, well, you know, let’s go back to 90 day.

Mark: Hello, welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast. I am your host, mark Naau, and today I am sitting down with Brian Drake, author of The Murder Mind and 35 Other Novels. He is prolific. He is trying to put out four books a year, and in today’s episode we talk about how the Amazon algorithm will forget you if you are not publishing often enough, and how that impacts the number of books that he’s writing a year, aiming for four, sometimes three, sometimes less, and we get into all of that. We also talk about his use of a typewriter, which is [00:01:00] very old school, and how he finds satisfaction from putting more ink in and resetting the paper.

I thought that was really cool. It also helps keep him focused on the work that he is doing rather than jumping on social media or getting distracted by other things.

One of the biggest takeaways from this episode for me was when Brian talks about just hanging in there, that hit home for me because he talks about how difficult this industry is, and I know we’ve heard that from other authors on the podcast.

I like the way Brian words it, and of course, sometimes it just comes at the right time. When someone says, Hey, hang in there, you’re doing your best. Keep going, so that is something you’ll wanna listen to. I apologize we had some connection issues, so the sound quality is not that great but the insights Brian brings about the industry and his writing process and how he’s accomplished so much in so many books is worth the listen.

[00:02:00] Brian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Brian: Well, thanks for having me on.

Mark: I am very excited to talk about your book, the Murder Mind book number 11, which is very impressive.

Brian: Yeah, I didn’t think we’d get this far. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s out . It’s, uh, it’s there.

Mark: So let’s get into the pitch. Pitch me your book, the Murder Mind.

Brian: All right. Well, the Murder mine features my, uh, series Zero, Sam Raven. He’s a former spy who’s involved in a personal war against predators, wherever he finds them. This particular book is about a young, a, a group of young terrorists who have been sitting at the feet of an old terror master and kind of taking notes and, and they want to continue what he started. The twist is the mentor is not approving of this. So he would rather, you know, [00:03:00] after spending time in prison, et cetera, et cetera, he would rather bring about change peacefully. But his students are not so inclined, and Raven and the mentor have to team up and stop them. There is a character not unlike Elon Musk, who’s building his own rockets and maybe using them for nefarious purposes. And it’s, it’s, an exciting story.

Mark: Awesome. Yes, it was. I enjoyed it. To anchor this conversation. I did read it. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Yeah,

Brian: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well,

Mark: so. So to anchor this conversation, because some of the questions I have relate to writing a series, can you give me just kind of a quick rundown of when you started writing, maybe what year it was in the books you’ve written? Because I was looking up your bio and it like, you have written a lot of books, you’ve been working really hard.

Brian: Yeah, I think, uh, I’m finishing up my 35th, book right [00:04:00] now, uh, which I’ll be turning in in a couple of weeks. But boy, I started way back in my teens. I started out drawing my own comics and then that eventually became, short stories, which eventually turned into novels. Started reading a lot in, boy, the seventh grade, which would’ve been 1988 ish, 87, 88, and it’s all Ian Fleming’s fault.

You know, I started reading the James Bond books and, just got very excited for that. The espionage subject matter and then just began reading everything else I could get my hands on. And I read somewhere along the way that Stephen King had signed a contract for a great deal of money to write books.

And I was like, oh, you can get paid for this. And that says, well, you know, maybe this could be a job. So that’s kind of been the one constant effort in, in my life, is to have some sort of writing career. [00:05:00] And so far, far, so good . I mean, it took, it took a long time to get here, though, mostly ’cause I started so young.

Once I hit my twenties and I was actually writing stuff that was publishable things picked up quite a bit. I, I was able to, sell or place a lot of short stories and that got me going. And I just never stopped after that.

Mark: Okay. Thank you. So let’s talk about this book specifically. Where did this idea come from?

Brian: It came from one of those random research moments. My wife and I went to the local library and they have a bookshop there where they sell the old books that they’re trying to clear out. And I found a book called The Terror, the Terror Network, written in 1980, written by a lady named Claire Sterling.

And it was an overview of how the, terrorist groups of the sixties, seventies, and into the eighties, started operating. And it was [00:06:00] fascinating because what you had was a bunch of, fascists and communists left over from World War II that wanted to keep the fight going. And they’re like, well, we’re, we’re kind of old.

What do we do? It’s like, well, we need to hit young people, we need to recruit them. We need to start visiting the college campuses and spreading the word about the revolution. And that’s how they got their first recruits and started building their various networks. One fact of the story of the book that was interesting, you know, later in the eighties we knew that the Soviets were financing a lot of the European and Middle East terrorist groups, but they didn’t start out that way.

It started with Cuba. So these guys went to Cuba and said, can we have some money and some training, et cetera. And Castro thought it was a great idea. He tried to get the Russians involved in early on, but they’re like, you know, we’re busy invading Czechoslovakia. Come back later. You know, they weren’t interested.

But as, as Castro and several [00:07:00] others, in the Middle East mostly, started building these various networks and preparing these young people for this fight, the Russians were like, hey, we should get into this. And then they kind of became the dominant force, and, and that’s how modern terrorism began.

Mark: And how did that relate to the concept of your book? Did you just, when you read this, I imagine you read this book ’cause you know a lot about it. Did you read it and then just drop Sam Raven into a situation to see what he, well, I guess you open with Tracy, so not necessarily Sam Raven, but did you just drop characters into a situation to see what would happen? Or did you outline it? Having written so many of these books,

Brian: Well, it didn’t, it didn’t start as, as a story idea. I was just gonna read the book and add it to the research and I thought, you know, I’ll get something out of it. But seeing the parallels to today where the, you know, where the university campus is still a breeding ground for [00:08:00] revolutionary thought, I thought, well, this is stuff applies as much as today as it did in 1980 and before. And that’s what gave me the idea. So that, yeah, that’s when I thought, well, let’s have a group of young terrorists who have, you know, learned stuff from the old masters and, and now they’re carrying on the fight, and then, well, how Sam Raymond fit into this. So I just kind of dropped him into the plot and it just went from there.

Mark: At this point is that how a lot of the books go in a series for you where you’re, you have an idea and then it’s kind of like, how do I get Sam or even to mess with with these people and mess with

Brian: well, I guess, I mean, I don’t really think of it that way. Raven is the, my focus right now. So it’s like everything I’m planning to write, I’m, I know ahead of time that he’s gonna be in it and yeah, I, I guess I just get whatever the idea is, it’s like, how does he [00:09:00] fit into it?

How can I realistically get him involved? That’s usually the tough part is like, what’s the, you know, motivating factor for him to be on scene. So he has to, there, there has to be a way in for him. And once I figure that out, then it’s just, you know, the bad guy’s caper, what are they doing? And then how does Raven stop it?

It, it’s always easier for me instead of starting with, how does Raven stop X, it’s how do the bad guys accomplish X? And then I can get Raven in to the middle of that.

Mark: Okay.

Brian: yeah, if that makes any sense. But yeah, I always start with the caper first and then figure out how Raven gets involved.

Mark: Okay. And do you track Raven as a character from, these are the things I’ve done to him and that he’s been through, and then in this next book I have to remember, he’s had this trauma, he’s had these relationships, he’s had this happen,

Brian: Not really. Each book is written as a standalone, [00:10:00] so you don’t have to read the whole series from the beginning. You can just pick up anywhere. So there’s always, usually some reference to things that have happened in the past, but nothing specific. Unless I’m burning back a character or a situation from a previous book, which I, I’ve only done a couple of times, I really try not to then I could tie it in that way.

But when you meet Raven, it’s always, you always get a background on, on his fight and the crusade and what, what, you know, what he does. But each book is kind of written as if it was the first one. So you kind of meet ’em fresh each time.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. What kind of challenge did this story present you as a writer?

Brian: Hmm.

Mark: If it was challenging at all,

Brian: Well, it, it, I mean, there weren’t any specific challenges. It’s usually figuring out the plot points and how do you get from beginning to end. That’s usually the challenge. I did have to do [00:11:00] a lot of research on, the nuclear stuff that’s involved in the book several people I spoke with actually did not want me to use their name or mention them in the acknowledgements or anything.

It, it’s not that they told me anything secret. They just didn’t want it known that they were talking about this. But the McGuffin in the book, the device that everybody’s chasing after, in the beginning started out as, as one thing, and then as I learned more about how nuclear weapons work, it became something else.

And that was a tough part because my original idea for the device, when I talked to somebody about it who knew his business was like, yeah, that’s not gonna work. You know, and this is how your plot is falling apart page by page, because what you’ve selected here is, is not realistic. And it’s like, okay, tell me more.

So he helped me figure out a more realistic device based on his experience as a scientist. And that was a great help. And I mean, the rest of it is just, [00:12:00] you put a lot of thought into it, a lot of trial and error. What if we did this? What if we did that? And eventually it all comes together somehow.

Mark: Yeah. At at what point in the process. Did you reach out to an expert in the field to look at the book, and then how much rewriting did you have to do in order to accommodate, like just what you were saying about the nuclear

Brian: Uh, very, very good question. It came about by accident. When I was writing the opening, there’s always, whenever I, I know something is wrong, when I end up with a nagging doubt in the back of my mind where it’s like, I don’t know why this isn’t working, but something tells me this isn’t, isn’t right.

And that’s when I just happened to send a note to somebody and I said, here’s what I’m doing. What do you think? And that started a phone conversation and then he sorted me out, you know, and then the, the rewriting wasn’t tough. I just had to change [00:13:00] the name of the device because it, it wasn’t specific in the, you know, it wasn’t specific enough in the opening to require a lot of rewriting.

I think I changed the name of, of what was in the case, and a couple of paragraphs about what it does or what it, you know, what, what the device is used for, which wasn’t in the opening to start with. So that really wasn’t rewriting at all. I was just adding to it, and it was a very simple process to get it going. But, and after that, the doubt went away and it’s like, I, I had enough information to understand what I was talking about, and it worked much better after that.

Mark: Do you feel like that nagging feeling you got after this many books is something that you’ve learned over this many books? Or is that, have you had these nagging feelings in the past? In earlier books

Brian: All the time. It, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t happen with every book, but it’s usually when I have some sort of technical [00:14:00] thing to, to talk about, whether it’s a weapon system or even even something as simple as, a city infrastructure, you know, how the sewer system works or something like that.

And I always go to, you know, you read a lot of stuff, but sometimes it doesn’t always answer the questions. And then that’s when I start wondering, well, do I really have this right? And I, if I don’t have someone to talk to who I have to read some more and look up. YouTube is great ’cause you can find all kinds of stuff there. And people talk about it in very general terms that are easy to understand. And I mean, especially if you’re not a scientist, or a city engineer. And usually if I have that nagging feeling, it just means I don’t know enough and I have to go learn some more. And that’s served me well. I mean, nobody’s complained about those things. They complain about other things, but, you know, but nobody’s told me I got my nuclear stuff wrong. Or there was one book I did, one of the stiletto books that had to [00:15:00] do with radar that could detect stealth aircraft and which is a thing that some countries are working on.

And the science behind that was pretty tricky. And I, I did manage to get it into some sort of understandable language that I could communicate to the reader. And no one ever dinged me for that. So I must have done sun, right.

Mark: Yeah. When people put this book down, they finish the book, what are you hoping they’re gonna be thinking or feeling?

Brian: It’s just that they’ve read something exciting and wanna read the next one. I don’t, I don’t set out to have any big message in each book. Each book does have a theme. Something that’s important to me. It doesn’t necessarily matter to me if the reader gets the theme or not if they do great. But mostly I just wanna put out something exciting then that gets people reading something else, hopefully something else in mind.

Mark: Have you ever been bogged down after reading all these books? Like moments [00:16:00] where you’re like, I need to take a year off, or I guess you could use the term burnout might be the right term if you felt burnout.

Brian: For sure. My normal schedule is 90 days, you know, for a book, and you put out enough of them at that rate that it does kind of wear you out. Murder Mind is my first new release in two years mostly because I needed it a break and then also because my publisher was making some changes and the Murder Mind and the Next Raven, which is called the Dark Passage, were actually turned in almost a year ago.

And then they were held back until the publisher made their new arrangement and now they’re coming out. It was not supposed to be a two year gap, but it turned out to be, and it was a good time to recharge and read other people’s books and going forward, I expect there’ll be, the level of productivity will be much higher than it has been.

Mark: What was the productivity like for this book?

Brian: yeah, I try to do about 2000 words a day. That [00:17:00] doesn’t always work out. The minimum is a thousand, and at that rate, I can do about a chapter a day. And I mean, it usually takes, you know, if I’m on a 90 day schedule, it’ll take maybe a month to work out the plot and the outline and then two months to write it and edit it.

And if there’s time left over, I give it to some beta readers who check it over and look for errors and just gimme some general comments. There’s not a lot of time for rewriting, so it kind of has to be right the first time. And there have been some moments where, in several books where it’s like, well, I wish I had more time to, to do this part better or that part better and I’ve just kind of learned that, you know, good enough is good enough and, it’s not parts, it’s whole. If they, if readers enjoy the whole, the whole book, they’re not gonna ripe about certain parts that might not be as good as they could have been. And, that’s kind of proven true.

Mark: [00:18:00] That’s a really fast turnover. Do you normally try and turn over three books? Is it three books a year, I guess? No, you could do four books a

Brian: Three to four. Three to four actually.

Mark: Wow.

Brian: And it, it, it was great in the early days, like when I was doing stiletto in the early, in the early Ravens because I had so much material already pre-planned. So I could just go from one to the next to the next. Once I had to about midway through the Ravens after maybe book five, I, I would’ve to take time before to work out the plot and then do the writing. So that kind of cut the writing time down to two months and made for some pretty tight schedule issues. But man, I managed to get them done. It’s, you just gotta sit down and work every day. It’s really the only solution.

Mark: Yeah. Wow, that’s impressive. I cannot put out that kind of, that kind of production.

Brian: It’s, it’s tough. I would rather have a little bit longer. There was a [00:19:00] brief moment where I was doing them every four months and then my publisher was like, look, we need ’em faster. And it’s like, okay, well, you know, let’s go back to 90 day. They even wanted to argue with 90 days. And I’m like, no, I can’t do 60,000 words in less than 90 days.

And that’s, and there have been moments where I won’t sign a new contract until I have some ideas worked out. I don’t want the stress of having to come up with new stuff when the clock is tick.

Being prepared as much as possible ahead of time has really helped out there.

Mark: When you are writing your books, do you think about the balance between, between geopolitical description between character and action and how that all plays out? One of the things I really liked about this book, which is why would probably why it sat well with me, is that. I felt like the characters and the action [00:20:00] a lot, and even though the geopolitical and all that stuff was there, it, it wasn’t heavy handed, and I really enjoyed that about it.

Brian: I know doing a lot of geopolitical stuff is popular now. So much of it that I don’t understand, and it takes so much to read and there’s so little time to get it organized. I actually try to avoid it. And in this case, in this one, I don’t remember having a lot of it. There was the Elon type character that was involved with the president and we had a few pages of that background. But yeah, I really, I really do do try to avoid it unless I can’t, you know, and, and I can’t think of any specific books where it was there, where there was a greater amount of it. But also, you know, the temptation is to use stuff that’s actually happening right now. And then by the time the book comes out, the news is old. And so it’s just, there’s just so much to keep track of. I just really try to avoid it.

Mark: Okay. [00:21:00] Well, I, I really enjoyed not not reading it, regardless of if it is popular. I like, I liked your I really liked this book, so I was, it,

Brian: Well, well, thank you. Um,

Mark: for me. Yeah.

Brian: very good. I’m glad to hear that. Our next book is called October Blood, which starts a three book series with a new character. That book in particular is a little heavier on politics , and stuff. Um, but it, it’s, it describes a situation that has happened several times in recent years.

So it’s not anything that’s gonna be immediately outdated. But it, it’s also, I don’t think it’s too heavy. I think there’s a pretty good balance there where it’s mostly just a support structure for the action. But we’ll see what readers think.

Mark: Yeah. Is that something I guess if it’s a popular thing to do, then it’s not something you’re concerned about.

Brian: Well, not really, but if it’s important to the story, yes, then I’ll do the work and try to figure something out. But for every [00:22:00] book, no, I, I don’t think it’s necessary. Usually when you’re reading somebody else doing those things, it’s a bunch of people in suits in a room talking about stuff in,

Mark: I.

Brian: Really isn’t interesting to me. So I really try to leave that stuff out.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. is your support network like while you’re writing these books in the background to balance it all?

Brian: What do you mean by support?

Mark: If you have like someone asking you how it’s going, bouncing ideas off

Brian: Oh, oh, okay.

Mark: like, you know, a publicist or somebody that’s what’s, how does that all look for at this point for you?

Brian: well, it’s mostly other writers. We will talk shop when we’re working on something, or if we’re having problems, we’ll discuss plot points and, if I’m stuck on something, usually those conversations are enough to shake things loose. But no, mostly it’s just me in a room. I got some music [00:23:00] going and I use a typewriter, manual typewriter.

Mark: Wow.

Brian: so it is just, it’s just, yeah, it’s just me and the, and me and two fingers, you know?

Mark: You’re following the old Stephen King method then?

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I got into typewriter a couple years ago. I inherited a few from grandparents, and I just thought, I’m gonna start writing books on these. My publisher scoffed. He’s like, I’m not taking, I mean, a stack of paper and extra manuscript is done. It’s like this thick

Mark: Yeah.

Brian: And he’s, and he’s like, no, we’re not, we’re not taking a big stack of paper from you. They gotta be submitted electronically. So, I look at the type typewritten version as like a first draft, and then when I’m typing it into the computer, that’s when I can take the time to improve a few things, and do like, make it the second draft. And it, it’s been a pretty pretty good process for me.

Mark: That’s very cool. I didn’t know anyone, anyone used a typewriter anymore.

Brian: A [00:24:00] lot of authors do actually. There, there’s, I mean, well, Frederick Forsyth was the one that jumps immediately to mine and he passed away recently. Jack Higgins, another one who, who died a couple years ago. So there’s still a few of us around.

Mark: That’s awesome.

Brian: Well, you can’t hack a typewriter, you know,

Mark: That’s true.

Brian: you know, it’s, it’s, uh, I, I, I just have to make sure the pages don’t catch fire or blow away in the wind. It’s not a bad process.

Mark: I imagine that’s good for avoiding the social media clicking too. ’cause I know when I’m on my computer I could be writing and something pops into my head and then I go to look it up and then next thing you know, I’m somehow on social

Brian: It’s a rabbit hole. Yeah. I, I, I get it. Yeah. If I, if I have to look something up, I have a computer that I can research something very quickly. Uh, but again, most of my research is done before I start, so I usually don’t have to do that.

Mark: Okay.

Do you set out to make your characters likable? Do you [00:25:00] think about the process of are people going to like this person and care about them? And the reason I ask is because when I was reading, this is not really spoiler, ’cause it happens in the first chapter too. I’m reading Tracy and what’s happening with her and she leads this, this team, and she, as I’m reading and she gets into some trouble, I won’t spoil it.

I’m thinking that I actually care about what happens to her. And in a lot of action thrillers, I’m more interested, like it’s all about the action. I don’t, you know, like if the end, if the character dies at that point. So early in the book, I don’t necessarily care. So I actually went back and read the first couple of chapters to try and find what you did that made me actually care about her character.

And there were two things that stuck out. And the first one was she admitted that she makes mistakes. She was, she had an earpiece that she was, uh, thinking about and she admitted like, she makes mistakes, just not rookie mistakes. So [00:26:00] that was one line. ’cause that was, she, she became then, not just this, you know, team lead, super spy, she became human.

And then the second thing was when she mentioned how tall she was, six feet. And then she said, but men, a lot of men don’t like tall women. I don’t remember exactly how you put it, but I think those two things really humanized her. And I thought it was, I had to go look it up to see like, why did I care?

What did I read? So I’m just curious, coming all the way back now, full circle to the question, did you, do you put those things in there intentionally or does it, you’re just kind of writing the scene and, and you, you just, that’s what you do?

Brian: boy, that’s, that is a good question because I don’t remember putting that much thought into it. Um, this, this book is actually Tracy’s second appearance. Uh, she was in book four called The War Business, and I had to go back to that book to remind myself how I described her. And [00:27:00] it’s okay. She’s tall and yada, yada, yada.

Um. So then I thought, you know, and then I just, well, I knew a lady who was tall and was having trouble dating, so I just kind of dropped that in. And I mean, the other stuff you just, you just make shit up. I mean,

Mark: Okay. Yeah, that’s fair. But

Brian: um, yeah, yeah, I, I, I just, I, I wanted to give her some sort of a description so you could visualize her and, the lines about mistakes. I don’t remember them. But I, I do recall something about having to learn from this instructor or that instructor about this, that, and the other.

So I, that, that, that’s, it’s, again, I wrote this a year ago. So it, it’s just me trying to, to build the character and hopefully yeah, you do like them. But I, I’m not, I don’t sit there thinking, gee, to make this person likable, I’m gonna do X, Y, z. It usually doesn’t come out that way. I should take that back because with Raven it [00:28:00] did. But with the other characters, not so much. I just look for one or two things to one or two traits or motifs to hang on them and then, uh, and, and go from there.

Mark: Okay. And I guess that just shows your skill and that you’re doing it without, without thinking that you’re building

Brian: Well, it, it,

Mark: at least I cared about.

Brian: it’s, it’s nice to hear you say that because really when I was learning, being able to create a character in that fashion and be able to get that reaction was the biggest challenge for me because one of the most repeated note or lines in a rejection letter was the characters aren’t synthetic.

The characters are flat, you know? It, it really took a lot of effort to get around that and, and learn how to put a character together. There was a writer named Michael Bracken that I will champion for the rest of my life. He bought one of my short stories for an anthology and, invited me to submit more to some others that he [00:29:00] was doing.

But then he turned down every other story I sent. So finally I said to him, what worked in the first story that’s not working in the second? And he says, well, the characters are flat. I said, well, here we go again. I said, okay, I get that a lot. Can you give me, you know, what am I not that I should be doing that would make these characters better?

And that turned into probably one of the best writing lessons I ever had over a series of emails. And from that point forward, I’ve been able to at how other authors characterize and bring their people to life and have apparently succeeded in duplicating that.

Mark: Yeah, ’cause the one thing I struggle with when I read, I don’t read, I’m more of a psychological thriller. So character matters more as for me as a reader. As far as like my first go-to, I like the action spy, but I’m usually anticipating that I’m just getting a lot of action and guns and I’m probably not gonna care. So that is why I ask, because in your book, [00:30:00] I did care. And that’s, and then when I do care, I always ask myself, ’cause I write too. I ask myself, how did he do that? Because that is something that I wanna make sure my readers feel as well.

Brian: Well,

Mark: thank you for sharing that

Brian: characters are, oh, you’re very welcome. Me, the characters are more important than the action because the action doesn’t mean anything without the characters. It’s a, it’s a point. Dashell Hammett made decade, time ago. Where if you just kill off a cipher, there’s no emotional reaction to it.

But if you, if a character dies, then yeah, people are gonna react to it. So you have to build a strong character and then put them in danger. And if you like the character and you’re anxious to see what happens, you’ll be more involved. But I mean, if I, back in the old days, you know, before I learned how to do a bit better Tracy just would’ve been a name.

There wouldn’t have been much of a description. I had the idea that, oh, you’ll build the description in your mind. It’s like, well, [00:31:00] the result of that was your characters are flat. And so yeah, there, there, there was a time when that would’ve just been not in those descriptions, wouldn’t have been included at all, and you wouldn’t have had that reaction. It just would’ve been the shoot ’em up stuff and you wouldn’t have cared.

Mark: Yeah, a question from JL Hancock. He’s the last author that was on the show. So we have an author ask an author, a question you get to ask the next author one

Brian: Okay.

Mark: he asks, how do you balance when you’re telling story, giving too much technology information and, and bogging down the story, which is kind of what I had asked you

Brian: oh,

Mark: I, I don’t do a good

Brian: no, but that

Mark: prefacing

Brian: that’s okay because, no, I understand. We can, we can, we can riff on that. You never want to show too much research, at least I don’t, I mean, some authors have a different point of view and that’s fine. But for me, when it, when it comes to that if something is of a technical nature, I only want to explain it so [00:32:00] much that you can understand it. And then the rest of the time I’ll just show you how it works. I’m not writing a technical manual on, sorry, Tom submarines, you know,

Mark: Yeah. Yeah,

Brian: the hunt for red October, for example. It worked, but it was a real, it was a little too much on the, the technical stuff which of course was fascinating at the time, but for me, it, you know, it’s just enough to get the point across and then let it go.

Mark: yeah.

Brian: ’cause really, the, well, you’re, you cat’s outside, so he’s now roaming around. He might make a guest appearance, but, yeah, j just enough so the reader understands what’s happening and then show how it works and, I don’t try to get bogged down too much into it. I’m really more interested in how the characters interact with it, how they feel about it, and, yeah. So, yeah. So for me it’s, it’s keep it to a minimum and then make it understandable.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. What advice would you [00:33:00] give to someone who just published their first or second novel?

Brian: There, because it’s a tough racket whether you’re going traditionally published or with a small press or independent, it’s tough. Um, I know with self-publishing everybody thinks it’s great there’s no more barriers. We can, you know, no more rejections, uh, sort of, you know, ’cause now your rejection is coming from readers and people who are either buying it and, and leaving comments or not buying it and getting your work out there and circulated is tough and just hanging in there. It, it, it, it can pay off. But you, you have to learn it like a business and that, that’s been a tough lesson. To where I spend a lot of the time doing business stuff like this and social media and running, paying for ads is almost more than I do writing. And that’s [00:34:00] what you have to do.

You can’t, you, if you just wanna write stuff and put it out, and if they sell, great, and if not, then it’s a fulfilling hobby, well then do that. But if you’re trying to make some sort of a living at it, then you’ve gotta work it like a business.

Mark: Yeah. Is that why the desire to have your publisher to have four books from you a year, does that come from producing books that they can continue to market?

Brian: Well, that has a lot to do with Amazon and their algorithm and how Amazon will sell stuff to people. For example, this two year gap has actually hurt the murder mind quite a bit where sales have actually been pretty low. And then that’s because if you don’t keep the churn up, the machine forgets about you, and now I have to retrain the machine by releasing more material.

Mark: [00:35:00] Okay.

Brian: So yeah, so they’re, so, they’re like, if, if you wanna be successful, you gotta write a lot and you gotta write fast. I envy the guys who can do a book a year, Brad Thor, Jack Carr, that crowd, but they’ve gone on a different route and you know this is where I’m at. So it’s,

Mark: Yeah.

Brian: But yeah, you gotta learn everything about, or everything you can about the publishing business and what works, what doesn’t work, and there’s all kinds of resources for it. And then you just gotta apply yourself to it.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you. Hang in there. I like that. I like that advice a lot. ’cause there’s a lot of readers, especially book one and book two, where hang in there even for me is, is really, really, I feel that advice,

Brian: Well, there’s, you can blame who’s the Game of Thrones guy? George Martin. Yeah. For not completing a series and making excuses about it. The unintended consequence of that [00:36:00] is some readers will not start a series until they know there’s a certain amount of books and they want to know the series will be finished, or if it’s gonna be something ongoing that they can come back to often. So usually by book three, they’re willing to give somebody a chance, and then, but then you have to keep the, you have to keep the production rate up. To keep them engaged.

Mark: Yeah.

Brian: So it it, I mean, the days of a one book bestseller, okay, if you’re going trad, you might, you might get that if you’re going through the independent route and going through Amazon or going wide with other sellers, you’ve really gotta feed the machine.

Mark: Yeah. Where can listeners find your book and what do you have coming up next?

Brian: Well, Amazon, of course, we, my publisher keeps us in the Kindle Unlimited program. So you can, so it’s Amazon exclusive. You can buy it or rent it [00:37:00] through ku. We have another Raven that’s actually out today, the Dark Passage. And then in the coming months, I’m not sure when yet, there’ll be a three book series featuring a new hero named Jack Slayton. And he’s a CIA guy. It’s the usual nonsense. But three, three books there that I think are, are pretty good. And, and after that we’ll see.

Mark: And that’s a three book series or a three book trilogy.

Brian: It’s a three book series. The each book stand is a standalone. But there’s, yeah, there’s, there’s not gonna be any anymore after that. I think I’ve pretty much used that character up and so we’ll see what happens after that.

Mark: Okay. Thank you. All right. We’re gonna go into the spoiler section of the show, which is new in season two of the podcast where we are now gonna talk about the end of your book. So if you are a listener and you wanna read [00:38:00] this book and do not wanna know how it ends, now is the time to pause and come back later.

Or of course, if you wanna listen to it, you can, it will be spoiled for you. So, well, my first question, I think you answered right at the beginning when I, I was gonna ask was Harrington Hunt meant to be Elon Musk because of our current political climate and everything.

Brian: Yeah. Yes, he was, because I was looking for a big bad guy. It’s like, who, who is in charge of these young people that are doing these things and who’s, who’s paying them and who’s organizing everything. And I, and I, I didn’t have that right away. And at the time, I mean, my goodness. See, the November, you know, the election had just happened. Elon was doing his thing,

Mark: Yeah,

Brian: with the president, and everybody was upset. It’s like, we didn’t elect this guy. Why is he so involved? Why is he doing these things? All the controversy.

Mark: yeah,

Brian: And then I thought, you [00:39:00] know, Elon builds rockets.

Mark: yeah, yeah,

Brian: What if he gets, you know, got kicked out of Washington but still wants some influence? What would he do? Oh, he could be, we could have the first individual nuclear power, and that’s how that came about.

Mark: yeah. Cool. I love that.

Brian: It’s a ridiculous concept, but I mean, because there’s, the, the nuclear scientists I spoke with, I didn’t tell him that part of the idea because the details he gave me about how nuclear parts are relegated and, and whatnot there’s no way that that scenario could work in reality, but it was, so, it’s a little over the top, but I liked it too much to ignore it.

Mark: Well, hey, you know, when I was reading it, it was, it, there was close enough to reality to be very scary because of what just happened. So [00:40:00] it, it, it doesn’t seem that far. I mean, I don’t know anything about nuclear, nuclear, anything but I still felt that, you know, there’s this character who’s trying to regain power after losing that political position or political influence. And yeah, that was, you

Brian: Well, I, I can guarantee you, I can guarantee, that the, the security and regulation of nuclear components is very strict and you just, you can’t build a bomb in your garage. It’s, it, it will not happen. There are some parts that are easy to get. The main parts are not, and if you are attempting to acquire them a load of bricks is gonna fall on you so fast. I’m actually quite impressed with what I’ve learned about nuclear security.

Mark: Okay, well, it makes sense. You would hope, but then when you get enough money involved, you never really know.

Brian: It’s not so much the money. I mean, there, there’s, there’s [00:41:00] a reason why we haven’t had, an Al-Qaeda type try to set one off. ‘Cause you can’t stay undercover and stay in secret and try to acquire these components at the same time. It’s not just one country policing this, quite a few countries around the world are policing this to prevent exactly that. I don’t wanna go into too much detail. I’m not sure what I can say based on what I was told. But yeah, it is, it is, it, the security is very tight.

Mark: Okay. That’s cool to know.

Brian: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So did you naturally write the knife fight into this story, or did you have to come up with it as a new way to kill the villain in the end?

Brian: That’s a good question actually. I think I was looking for a new way because usually it’s a gunfight and, you know, a shot to the head or whatever. And I had done that [00:42:00] actually in the previous book, blood Mist, which was book 10. And yeah, I think I wanted to do something different and, part of that actually is, as I recall now, came from a video that somebody sent me a, about knife fight training. And there was some exe or whatever it was who was on YouTube and, and going through his routine, this is how you hold it, it, this is how you, you know, all, all the stuff. And I remember thinking, oh, well that’s nice. Oh, I might use that somewhere. And then it just, stuff like that sits in the back of your subconscious and then you get to that ending point and it’s like, why don’t we have a knife fight? Let’s watch that video again and describe the describe the motions and do something different than we did in the last book.

Mark: Yeah. Cool. Okay. And my last question in the, in the dark tunnel, when they’re in the dark tunnel, they’re armed [00:43:00] and they know, I think it was hunt that comes on the speaker or something to say you’re in trouble, surrender essentially, and they choose to surrender. Was there a moment where you wrote that they didn’t surrender and that they went into, into a gunfight? Or did you just have them choose to give up their weapons from the get go?

Brian: Oh, I don’t remember. I probably thought about it, but based on where they were at and what they didn’t know about the other side, about the, the opposing force, I probably would have rejected that idea very quickly. Just as not being realistic. And I made the choice. I did because I thought it was the best one. Also, it got them into the enemy’s lair to do their thing, and yeah, I guess that’s how it went. It’s like a, I don’t, I don’t think I put as much thought into this stuff as you think I do.

Mark: What goes through my [00:44:00] mind probably from just, being invested in, in like the whole Delta Force Navy Seal thing is when they talk about speed and violence of action, and when they’re winning gun fights and they’re in, a line and they’re winning the firefight and keeping an enemy head down, and that’s their objective. Go fast, go hard, fire lots of bullets, enemy can’t fire back, and then that’s usually how it goes. And that’s what I was expecting. So when you decided to get to surrender, I was like, oh, wow, that’s very interesting because I, that’s not common in these, like in these, in those kinds of situations. To me, I don’t read a lot of it. I’ve read most of it recently with the podcast

Brian: No, I, I, I, I can understand Yeah, why, why you would say that, but I, I was, I, I really had to get them into the layer to show the missiles and then have the final battle. And I still have, or there is still too much of a James Bond influence in my work. So, there has to be that moment where the bad guy explains everything and,

Mark: Yeah.[00:45:00]

Brian: it’s, it was, it was like that.

Mark: yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, it was good. I liked it and I like when things happen that I don’t anticipate. That was fun. Thank you so much for your time. I, I really appreciate you taking the time to be on here. If you don’t mind sticking around for a little bit more, I’d like to jump into the after show rapid fire questions.

Brian: Well, well, I enjoyed this very much so, so thank you for, for having me on.

Mark: thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed hearing that conversation with Brian and I. I know one of the big takeaways for me is that production time of four books in a year, which I think is amazing. I’ve wanted to be able to produce that many books, but I haven’t written enough books in order to put new books out that quickly.

So I love hearing how he does it. I love hearing how other authors do it. I don’t think it’s for me at this point in time, but I do hope one day I may be able to get up to three books in a year. But man, is it [00:46:00] tough with my process to try and turn around books that quickly.

Next week I sit down with Susan Walter, author of Murder at 30,000 Feet. Not only is that just a fantastic novel, I really enjoyed it. But we also get into how she uses naming conventions. ’cause she has so many characters in this book and we get into how she helps readers remember all the different characters.

So things like rhyming the names so that it helps readers remember who’s together. Or using more consonants in one name, so it’s easier to remember that the person with a consonant is this person. So really fascinating conversation. Of course, we get into a lot about her book and the history and her love of planes and all that coming up next episode.

If you’d like to go a little deeper and support the show, there’s a short after show available right now on Patreon. It’s where I sit down with a guest and ask [00:47:00] rapid fire questions. Things like what thrillers inspired them to write. The weirdest Google searches, their guilty pleasures, and the note they leave on your nightstand if they had the opportunity, you can access it for free and for the price of a cup of coffee, you can support the show and get many authors novellas and short stories for free. Link is in the show notes.

TPP Episode 21 with Andrew Warren

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: I don’t think so. I may

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: I do. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: What vehicle?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you do that?

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: And you blend the

Andrew: But everyone’s,

Mark: environment too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Oh, the gray man.

Mark: sorry, gray Man? Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Totally like

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Andrew: how many characters does

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

Andrew: Had a lot of

Mark: Hearing came from. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Right.

Mark: That because I don’t want

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Andrew Warren books.com.

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

Andrew: Yeah. Man.

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Let’s do it.

Mark: All right. Thank you.

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

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

TPP Episode 13 Joanna Vander Vlugt

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast where thriller readers discover new bestselling and award-winning authors, writers get to pick up insights by hearing how others build their stories, and authors get to pitch their next release and share the making of it. If you love finding your next read or hearing, how your favorite books came together, follow the show and stick around.

I’m your host, Mark P.J. Nadon, and this is episode number 13. Today’s guest is Joanna Vander Vlugt author of the spy thriller Spy Girls. Joanna, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you

Joanna: Thank you, mark. There is a lot of work I know that goes behind producing these, so I really appreciate it.

Mark: I have your book here with me, Spy Girls. Thank you for sending me a copy. I [00:01:00] realized actually as I was thinking about this, I think I’ve had books come from more places in the world than I’ve been able to travel.

I had, yours is another one I’ve always wanted to go to BC I think I was born to go in BC ’cause I like to run distances and stuff in the mountains. But here in Ottawa there’s almost no mountain. You can kind of go to like hills, ski hills, but not really mountains. So I’m envious of your end of the full world.

Joanna: Well, we don’t know how to handle snow when we do get it. Okay.

Mark: Fair. So let’s get into the pitch. Pitch me your book. Spy Girls.

Joanna: Okay, Spy Girls. So my heroine Jade Time, she’s a lawyer, and after her sister’s partner has been kidnapped, she is coerced into finding an elusive double agent. She navigates. Political agendas, and she escapes sticky bombs while trying to outplay a [00:02:00] psychotic Russian assassin as she tries to find this double agent. That’s I made it short.

Mark: Yeah, that is short and sweet, but it does summarize that very well. What happens. So thank you.

Joanna: Well, I, I kept thinking about, uh, some of these pitch fast dating, not fast dating sites, but you know what I mean. When you have 10 minutes and you need to pitch to an editor, like a, an agent, so it’s like, okay, do this in one sentence.

Mark: Very good. So where did the story idea come from?

Joanna: Oh wow. Actually, it, you had another guest on, I was listening and we both had similar story ideas. It was, I wrote her name down here. Is it Ox Devere?

Mark: Yep the Yeah. Devil’s Eye.

Joanna: The Devil’s Eye and, I wrote this in, so I published it in 2024. You know how long it takes to write a book? I started it in 2022, [00:03:00] so it it had, at that time, I ugh, I don’t even, I wanna mention this man’s name. Jeffrey Epstein, the human trafficking that was in the news. And then combined with, we had a criminal matter in British Columbia involving a judge being charged with I can’t remember all the charges, but basically what I can what I can vaguely remember is he was going down to the downtown east side and, um, involved with women Okay. And being abusive. And I I think as writers we also try to, in our, in our fictional world, try to bring about justice. And so then that’s [00:04:00] where those two ideas meshed.

And, uh, we had, you know spy events happening in Canada where different, as soon as I started to dig, I found out about how there was a Cissus agent who was selling secrets and I’m just, you know, so it, it’s almost like a serendipity. All these ideas kind of came together and they meshed into Spy Girls.

Mark: How long did it take from, from these ideas into the novel before you started putting like pen to paper? Was it like months of thinking and trying to put it together in your mind before you put it onto paper?

Joanna: Well, kind of you have dogs and I have dogs. So every morning when I’d be walking those dogs, right, thinking be thinking about this story. And at the time when I started writing it. Yeah, I’d say [00:05:00] at least a year of the I ideas coming together. And I wasn’t a plotter when I wrote Spy Girls. I have since become a bit of a plotter and it was just writing the story and fleshing it out. And I even had a third storyline in there, which my editor said, this is going nowhere. So either you work on this storyline, or we gotta get rid of it, right. So, yeah, it, I’d say a year before and during the writing process, I started to refine the refine, the storyline.

Mark: Did you pants this book? Did you just get down and start? And just start writing the book rather than having all the notes and the characters kind of prebuilt.

Joanna: I have notes but I did not plot it. I was a pantser was I have, which from listening to previous [00:06:00] episodes, I’m not the only pantser who has learned. Okay, you gotta save some time here.

Mark: yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And why in Canada? For, for the plot. I know a lot of, and I’ve been guilty of this myself as I set it in the US a story because I know most market is US for purchasing books, so I try and build it there. But you chose, you chose Canada and I’m just curious as to why.

Joanna: It’s because of of my heroin. I worked in the prosecutor’s office for 13 years and then I worked in the office of the police complaint commissioner for another 10. And you’re always told write what you know. So I wasn’t going to try to learn the American justice system. Like I, I, I know what it’s like to work in a prosecutor’s office. [00:07:00] I have a connection in the prosecutor’s office so she can, because laws change, she can look, she read what I had written and made changes saying, oh the law has changed. It’s not this section number or, you know, this is our new process. We don’t ref refer to judges now as his honor is his honor or his worship anymore. Right. So the last thing I think a writer wants is someone to pick up their book and say she’s got her facts wrong, you know, so that’s why I kept it in Canada. I kept it in a Canadian, with a Canadian criminal justice system. Just ’cause I thought I, this, I, I, yeah, I, I didn’t want a mistake. I, you know, of trying to figure out the American justice system. So that’s, that’s why I kept it in Canada. Yeah.

Mark: And how true to life was the setting throughout the book? That they’re, they’re going through and exploring [00:08:00] like the streets, the boats…

Joanna: yeah, so Victoria, I lived there for 22 years, and that setting is so legitimate because how Jade walks to work in the morning. That is how I walk to work, going over that bridge. Going down the galloping goose. All of that was legitimate. And I’m, I’m serious. That galloping goose, you walk on one way, ’cause you’ve got bikes zipping past.

Right. And when you come, you came home, you walked on another side because you’ve got bikes zipping past. Right. So, and the Chinatown in Victoria is so cool. Fanan Alley, all of that is legitimate. And, um, yeah, that, that’s all very true. You know? Very true. ’cause [00:09:00] that, like I said, that was my neighborhood.

The boat scene, I remember I was kind of, I was kind of doing like latitude and longitude, and I thought, okay, they went out here and you know, and looking at those locations, what would be the latitude and the longitude, right? Just to make, again, thinking about wanting it to be accurate. Right. So when they go out into the ocean area, that there’s a bit of fiction. Okay. Yeah.

Mark: And what about the motorcycle gang? Is that because that’s very unique to your story? They’re used as like a security force. They’re the motorcycles in general. You don’t usually see that or don’t read that a lot, so that was very unique and fun. Where did that come from?

Joanna: I like bikes. I don’t own, I do not. I own a scooter. I don’t own a motorcycle. And during [00:10:00] like I illustrate motorcycles. You know, I’ve, I’ve done commissions and I enjoy illustrating motorbikes. In a few weeks I’m going to actually illustrate a boat. A boat. And what I mean by illustrate is I have it’s marker paper and I use what’s called copic art markers. And that’s how I do the illustrations, like the illustrations in the front of Spy Girls. That’s one of my illustrations. Right. And, it was,

Mark: I’ll just hold that up for views. We’re actually watching this. This is the one here? Yeah.

Joanna: yeah. Yeah. And I remember like, again I think it was T.D. Severin who I was listening to him where he was saying how he had written his book about 30 years ago in the nineties.

Mark: Yeah. And

Joanna: And I had a bit of a similar path where I stopped writing and I was creating these illustrations. So when I came back to writing [00:11:00] and I was thinking about Jade and I was thinking about these characters and I just, I remember looking up once at one of my illustrations and I thought she rides a motorcycle.

You know? ‘Cause there are a lot of women out there who ride bikes who aren’t necessarily in a gang. And I thought, okay, let’s take this up a notch. Right. So that’s where that came

Mark: That was fun.

Joanna: Yeah.

Mark: And you mentioned, you mentioned like the facts and getting the facts right, and you also brought in CSIS in the RCMP, which is Canadian. But you brought in the CIA or ex-CIA. Why, where did that come from to bring in a, a US spy agency?

Joanna: Well what was fun with that is again,, I think of writing and serendipity because I was interviewed, oh, while I was writing Spy Girls and there were two, there were two men [00:12:00] on the interview and I had made, oh, it was this embarrassing joke because the one interviewer didn’t know exactly where I was from. He knew BC, but he didn’t know. Okay. Vancouver Island. And I just, I was joke. I thought, God, don’t try to joke. I thought I was being funny. And I said, yes. I live on Vancouver Island, just kinda lying, laying low. I said, who knows? All I I, I could be a CIA agent, you know, just laying low. Well, what. I didn’t know was the second man on that interview who was interviewing me Joe Goldberg was a resigned CIA action, off, not officer operative. He and I started talking and he had said that If I wanted to, he would review Spy Girls specifically [00:13:00] for when I mentioned about any sort of CIA operations.

Mark: Oh, cool.

Joanna: So, uh, yeah, so after I kind of like took my, you know, put out of my mouth in my comment right. I was very happy and he’s an author too, Joe Goldberg, and, you know. Yeah, it, it, I remember, ’cause I had originally written that, um, the character Jan Hoffman, that he had retired right from the CIA and I remember Joe saying to me, no, we don’t retire, we resign. And I went,

Mark: okay.

Joanna: okay. Noted. Right. So, yeah.

Mark: Oh, that’s very cool.

Joanna: Yeah.

Mark: So we’re gonna jump through a little bit, talk a little bit about characters, and one of the things that struck me in this novel is that you chose to go from third person to first person. First person with, with Jade, which, who’s your main character, and third person with, with pretty much anybody else. Why that [00:14:00] choice? I had never seen that. And I just recently did an interview which hasn’t come out yet with Steve Stratton who also did that, and it was the first time and he shared his inspiration. But I’m curious to know why you chose to switch that point of view. ’cause it’s not something you see very much.

Joanna: Yeah that was a risk. and so your listeners know. I do it in parts. Okay. So I, when I do the big switch into first person with my heroin, that is a, it’s like, it’s a different part of the book. So you open the book and it’s part one and that’s where it’s in third person. Right. And, what I want, what I love doing as a writer is I almost like when the reader is reading, I want to almost give them information ahead of time of the heroine. [00:15:00] So it’s, it’s whether it’s the fores, it’s not even foreshadowing, but when they get to the heroin and she’s starting to investigate and get pulled into the scenario, I want them to be thinking, oh God, when are the paths gonna cross? Going to cross, right? Because you, you kind of know what the bad guy, what his plans are, and I just, want the reader to, when they get into Jade’s head to be wondering, okay, when is she going to, when, when are they going to collide? You know, when, when is the bad guy’s motives and the heroin’s motives going to collide. Okay. And that’s why I did that. And, it was fun for me, and I hope the reader found it fun. You know, it’s, it, it’s definitely a little different. Mm-hmm.

Mark: Well, it wasn’t completely like, there was a little bit of back and forth, but it wasn’t as jarring as happening, [00:16:00] like every chapter or something, which was nice.

I liked it. I didn’t find it. It, oh, I guess because I just read Steve Stratton, who. I, it did jar me with his book, but now that I kind of got a feel for it and then I went to yours, I was like, oh, okay, this is fine.

Joanna: Yeah. And I think as long as you’re fair with the reader, you know, ’cause I thought, okay, I, I don’t want them to be thinking. Okay, where are we now? Who am I now? Who am I reading whose head I’m in? So that’s why in the beginning there is part one and it’s third person, and it’s this one character’s point of view. And then we have part two, and then who the most of it then is in the heroine’s point of view. But I definitely separate it so the reader knows Okay, we’re we’re, we’re in someone else’s head right now. Yeah.

Mark: Was that pre-planned? Did you wanted to do that to set up the character? Yeah. Yeah.

Joanna: Yeah, yeah. And it’s, one reader said to me, she summarized it perfectly. [00:17:00] She said, reading Spy Girls is like watching a, a, snowball. Just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Right? And I thought, yeah, that, that’s, that’s it. Right? Yeah.

Mark: And with Jade, as her, as the story continues, and I’ll try not to give any spoilers, and there are moments where big things happen to her. So things are revealed probably, but like the three quarter of the mark is kind of where I’m referring to from the book. And instead of, ’cause there’s, there’s essentially, there’s two ways you can go about it. You can spend a lot of time in the character’s head, which happens a lot where writers will say, you know, oh, I can’t believe this. Or, you know, this is happening to me, or what do I do now? Or, there’s a lot of that and there’s action where you just, the character’s reactions and, and actions kind of help you understand how they’re processing their trauma and you went with that route, you went, the action route you spent, [00:18:00] to me anyway, you spent less time, she wasn’t in her head so much worried about herself or everything. She was just go, go, go. It was, it was just constantly action, which I also don’t see a whole lot, but I liked it.

Was that, is that your, do you feel like that’s your writing or was that a choice to just spend less time in her head and show that? Oh, she’s, when there’s a moment where she’s like, teach me, teach me where she wants to, self-defense. Like, no, teach it now. I, I need it now. And that’s like you showing that there’s this trauma that she needs to process, but it was through action. It was alive and fun, which was different than her and her brain saying, or her, to the reader in her mind saying, this is terrible. How do I survive this kind of thing.

Joanna: Yeah. But I wanted the urgency. That’s I think that’s the biggest thing. I wanted the urgency and like you said, teach me now because, she’s, there’s a lot at stake for her. And I also like writing action [00:19:00] scenes. It’s, there’s a scene in, in the beginning, involving a judge, and there’s a young, like you, you learn about a young female, and that scene was much harder to write than any of the action scenes. Like there’s an action scene on a boat involving Jade, where she’s just about harmed. And that scene was easier to write than anything involving the judge. And, yeah, and I remember the fights, like s the, without getting anything in away, a fight scene near the end involving Jade and that was, I don’t wanna say fun, right? ’cause it’s a, it gets a bit brutal. Okay. You know, but it’s, it’s basically, you know, you know, you’re sitting there and I’m thinking, okay, if I’m fight, like literally I remember thinking [00:20:00] if I’m fighting for my life, what would I do? Right? So,

Mark: Yeah. Was that the hardest moment to write? That departs with the judge for you? Yeah. Yeah.

Joanna: Yes. And it was, again, it was Ox Devere who you interviewed.

Mark: Yeah. I think that’s how you

Joanna: Yeah. And

Mark: Yeah.

Joanna: yeah, where she had said with some of the scenes she had written, she needed I am, I’ve gotta quota. ’cause it was perfect. A brain bath, you know? And I thought, yeah, I, I get it like that. You ask good questions and it’s, it’s been fun listening to your podcast ’cause you know, I’m, I’m like, Uhhuh Uhhuh. Yeah.

Mark: Was there research you had to do for the villain? Like for how you portrayed the justice and, and what he had done? Like you mentioned, Epstein. [00:21:00] Was there any research behind that and, and things that had happened that kind of came together to make that scene?

Joanna: I don’t believe I did research for that given what we would’ve seen on the news. And yeah, and given some of what I’ve been exposed to when I worked for Crown Council. It’s almost like I hate to say this, but it’s almost like I’m gonna need a brain bath. Like, Ox said, almost like letting your mind going to the worst possible areas of human behavior. Okay.

And I don’t think there is anything a writer can imagine that hasn’t happened in real life. Okay. So I wouldn’t say that there was [00:22:00] research. I could not research that man. Right. I drew upon more of what I’ve been exposed to when I worked at Crown Council.

But having said that, now when I think about it, it was more the judge and looking up articles and reading articles about what this judge had done. Okay, so there there was some research, tiny bit of research.

Mark: Okay. Did that judge also have an accomplice like you had? Was that part of that story or that was, you made that up with the, I mean, I don’t, no spoilers, but yeah. Okay. You made that part up. Okay. Listeners will have to have to read the book to know what I’m talking about there. Okay.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Did you ever consider writing, when you started that book, writing his point of view at all? Like the justice’s point of view? Like a moment in time where to almost set up a very dark moment, or you [00:23:00] didn’t want to?

Joanna: Oh God. Not at that time. No. No, it’s, but it’s weird, Mark, because I have just written a short story for an anthology. A call out for an anthology and there’s a very bad character, in that book. And he not in that book, in that story. And he, how he treats people is just so despicable. And I drew upon, let’s just say some, some politicians in our current current world. It’s, it was weird to go down there and I, I, I wonder now if, now the reason why I went that route is because the motivation is different. Okay. With Spy Girls it’s more about my heroine, [00:24:00] you know, getting justice. Whereas in this other short story I had just written, it was trying to.

Show what this despicable character in this short story was doing.

Right. So I guess, yeah, my, my motives were different. Did I answer your question? But

Mark: yeah, yeah. So you probably needed a brain bath after that one as well then. Yeah. Yeah. Because writing villains can be gross like that. Absolutely. And trying to justify their dirty deeds. Couple more questions for you. Go. Moving to kind of a writer focused couple of questions to finish this interview off with. What advice would you give someone who just published their first or second book?

Joanna: Keep writing. Keep writing. Yeah. Uh, there’s a few things I’d say to someone who’s just published. It would be, start your next one. Like So I remember after [00:25:00] I first published the first book, the Unraveling, when I was coming near the end, I had an idea already for the second one, but I told myself, give yourself a month’s break. And actually that’s pretty much what I do. And usually by the end of the month I’m just like, I’m. I’m like, okay, I’m ready. Right. Okay. I wanna do this. So just give yourself a, a month’s break or give yourself a little bit of a break, but be, we’re thinking about the next book. Okay. Definitely writing notes or you know, just keep writing, keep writing. And don’t look at stats. That’s the other big thing I’ve found is don’t look at stats with regards to if you’re going traditional, how many traditional, like how many traditional publishers pick up new authors? Don’t, don’t the, the stats will make you not want to write. I do not look at writing stats.

Mark: That’s fair

Joanna: Yeah. And, what would, I had one more, [00:26:00] which I can’t remember right now, but, yeah, keep writing. Definitely keep writing and and pick whatever path you want. You know, if you self-publish and then decide you wanna try traditional publishing, that’s okay. Like you don’t have to stay on the same path, you know?

Mark: yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of hybrid now that are, that are kind of moving back and forth between the two. That has made it acceptable in this day and age. Yeah. And where can readers find more about your books and purchase your book or find more about you?

Joanna: Well, more about me would be joannavandervlugt.com. That’s my website. And the easiest way is just going on Amazon. That’s the easiest way. Whether you’re an American listener or a Canadian listener, if you go on Amazon, you will see my book. Yeah.

Mark: Okay. Well thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. I really appreciate it. This has been a lot [00:27:00] of fun. If you don’t mind sticking around for the after show, we’re changing it up a little bit, so we’re gonna be doing a rapid fire round for the after show, just, to change it up and have a little bit of fun. Thank you.

Joanna: Well, thank you, Mark. Like I say, I know the work behind work involved behind the scenes.

Mark: Thank you. Thanks for listening to the episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to follow the show so you don’t miss episode 14 with Melissa Roos, author of the Romance Thriller, Tennessee Wishes. 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. We do have some free tier, giving away free things. The link is in the show notes.