Mark: it felt kind of built into this one that there was a question of, of likability at times, but then relatability came in because you didn’t like something they said or did, and then all of a sudden you understood why they did it.

Ava: I thought how interesting to see things from different people’s perspective, like the different sisters’ perspective, and that it doesn’t feel unlikable or you feel like you can’t relate to it, and then when you get the deeper picture, it is something you can relate to where you understand where they’re coming from.

For me, just part of trying to make them feel like real characters and real people, because sometimes that can be a little bit missing from the thriller genre. And I think that just makes it more compelling really when there’s layers of their personality or what they’re doing and their motivations.

Mark: Welcome to the Thriller Writer Lab, where every thriller goes under the microscope, one book at a time. I’m your host, Mark Nadon, and this is where best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors share the craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories.

Joining me today is Ava Roberts, author of the domestic thriller, “The Summer House Murder.” Ava, thank you so much for being here today

Ava: Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here

Mark: And I have your book with me here. I was just putting up on camera, “The Summer House Murder.” I love the cover, by the way. Very,

Ava: Beautiful. Thank you. I love it too

Mark: So I’m really excited about this. I really enjoyed this book, um, and I know you’re a clinical psychologist, so I’m very curious about how that all applies to these characters and all the decisions that you made. But before we get into that, let’s jump into the pitch. So pitch me the book, “The Summer House Murder.”

Ava: So The Summer House Murder starts at a beautiful idyllic lake house. Three sisters, Esme, Piper, and Regina, have to go every summer in August. It’s a requirement of their inheritance that they go for two weeks, and the sisters don’t get along. They wouldn’t normally go on a vacation together. And, uh, Esme is the oldest sister.

She’s sort of judgmental and tries to be the perfect sister, and she’s reeling from finding out that her husband had an affair. And the middle sister, Piper, is a new mom, and she’s got a lot of anxiety, and she’s got a lot of self-doubt, and being back at the summer house brings up a lot of, you know, memories for her and, and old feelings.

And then Regina is the youngest sister. She’s kind of, um, a rule breaker and sarcastic, and she’s funny, and she has her own really big secret that she’s hiding that could ruin everything for her. So a- the sisters come together, and they a- they all have their own issues going on, and it’s kind of a pressure cooker in the house.

And by the second night, they get into a huge fight, and, uh, they think, you know, “Okay, in the morning we’ll, we’ll make up. We go our separate ways.” But in the morning, they wake up, and there’s a body in the lake. And as the police investigate, what we find out is that the sisters are all tied to the body, and all of their secrets and lies and betrayal all starts to come out, and we have to figure out which sister is responsible for this body in the lake.

Mark: Awesome. Love it. So three sisters, three husbands, a mess of family history. Where did all this come from? Where did the idea start?

Ava: The idea started, I knew that I wanted it to be set, uh, in a family vacation in some place remote where they couldn’t escape and couldn’t get away, and just having been on many family vacations, I just thought this is not something I had seen in an idea for a book before, and I thought it would be something a lot of people could relate to and just a really good setting.

And the three sisters, their personalities just sort of came to me, very different and distinct individuals, and that part really was just an organic sort of thinking about who they were and their characters and letting them develop.

Mark: What kind of challenges did this story present for you?

Ava: Challenges were, um, I think in any story, the challenge is always just to, I want it to be a, a combination of really twisty and fast-paced and interesting, but I also want it to feel like you’re exploring real relationships of, like, real people and real sisters with real problems. So I try and balance making it a thriller that’s gonna be really exciting and interesting with something that feels like you can relate to it, and that there’s a real story there, um, and that people can kind of see themselves in the sisters, in, in each of them, or one of them sometimes more than the other

Mark: Were there moments where you’re writing this book where you really had to, like, do a lot of research or you felt like something wasn’t working that you struggled with because of what you knew you needed to set up?

Ava: That’s a good question. I don’t know that I had to do research per se. Sometimes I had to look up the, um, you know, the, the type of trees and things like that ’cause I wanna get the details right. But other than that, I think in terms of making sure something’s working, I just, I write what I think is gonna happen in the moment based on sort of my intuition and what feels right.

And then if I go back and it doesn’t feel right, I’ll kind of change it. But there’s nothing that really stands out in terms of that I got stuck on. I think in every point when you’re writing, sometimes you just need to take a break and come back to it, but there was no point where I thought, you know, oh, this is just completely not working, you know?

Mark: Okay, so at a, at a higher level then, do you, are, do you outline the book or do you write as you go?

Ava: So I, I have tried to outline before, and it’s just, it doesn’t work. It’s not how my brain works. Um, I always start with the idea. Like I know, okay, this is what I want the story to be about in general, um, and I know where I want it to end, meaning I knew that there was a couple of twists that I hadn’t seen before, and I wanted the story to include those twists because I thought, “Okay, this will be a really good broad idea.”

But in terms of how I get there, um, you know, I really just write, and I just have to sit down, and I sort of see it as I’m writing it as a movie. And, and when I get it out, usually the next chapter comes to me then. So as hard as I’ve tried to do outlines, because that seems to make more sense logically, but that’s just, it’s just not the way it works.

And, um, and it makes it interesting for me as an author because then I get interested when I sit down to write. I wanna know what’s gonna happen too. I really don’t always know. And, um, it always comes together. You know, I write something and I’m not sure why, or it just sort of is there, and then four chapters later, I- it- I tie it in and it comes together as, “Oh, well, that’s why that was there.”

Um, and it’s not even intentional. It’s sort of like a subconscious process that happens

Mark: And this is your seventh book, right? You have a, a Thistle, the Thistle Thrillers, I think. You have four books in

Ava: Uh-huh. The, the, uh, that one is three books, so this is my sixth one. Uh, sixth book, yep. And then, um, there’s also Juniper Isle and Vanishing Neighbor that are two standalones also

Mark: And is your approach the same with every book, or have you changed your approach as you came to write this one?

Ava: It’s really been the same for every one. , The approaches that I always write the be- you know, the beginning what I think will be kind of the blurb, and then I try to outline it, and then I can’t, and I say, “Okay, I can’t, I can’t do the outline. It’s not working.” And then I say, “Well, I think I’m just gonna have to write it.”

So that it really happens almost the same way every time, and I’ve had to learn to just say, you know, “Go ahead and just write the book, and just let the words come out and see,” you know? And, um, and I, I really do enjoy the process.

Mark: Do you find as you’re out and about that you’re thinking about scenes to come and scenes that you’ve written? Or is it really when you sit down to write that it all comes to life for you because it’s like your place to focus on it?

Ava: Yeah. I, definitely I think about it. It’s there in the back of my mind. So when I’ve just written a scene, and then I go and I have some quiet time, like if I’m in the car or walking the dog, I really have to have some quiet, and then it comes to me. And sometimes it’s when I’m trying to fall asleep, or in the middle of the night I’ll wake up and the idea’s there, and I have to make sure that I can jot it down before I lose it.

But in terms of how it will play out, I usually have, like, the, the general idea comes, like I know what I want to happen, but then when I actually write it, it’s always a little bit different, you know, how it comes out versus the idea. But yeah, definitely when I’m in writing mode, it’s, it’s everywhere I go.

It’s like, it’s always in the back of my mind, and it’s sometimes when I’m not expecting it that the idea is there. Um, and I get very excited when that happens.

Mark: Do you have big takeaways as you’re writing or, or at the end or not at all? Because I wonder if when people put this book down, like what is it is that you think they will take away from it, and whether you see that going into it with your– the way you write, sort of just going as you, as you feel it out, uh, versus like an outline where sometimes those, you know, they become preachy. Not, not that I mean every book is, is its own process, but it can become preachy at times where you feel like the theme is being, you know, kinda shoved down your throat in some books.

Ava: It’s being really, really hammered in there. Yeah, y- I think as a theme, if I, I try to usually start with an emotion that I think is really interesting or I think is relative or it’s gonna be something that people relate to in the main characters. So it might be kind of a theme of like jealousy in this one, with sort of jealousy and envy and to some extent pride and greed.

So I have these sort of emotions as the out, the sort of, um, main theme, but I don’t have an intention in what I want people to feel about that, other than let’s explore what happens when these people are struggling with those feelings or emotions, and let’s see what happens when they make decisions based on those emotions.

And then you get to kinda decide how you feel about it. It’s not my place to tell the reader, how to feel. And that’s what’s interesting is people have such different experiences reading the book, especially this one, The Summer House Murder. People relate differently to the different characters and like some who others don’t like. So it’s, it’s not the same necessarily for each person.

Mark: Yeah, it feels, it felt kind of built into this one that there was a question of, of likability at times, but then relatability came in because you didn’t like something they said or did, and then all of a sudden you understood why they did it. How, how do you approach that when you’re writing these characters and you’re like, well, you must know that people are probably… Well, everyone’s different, but there are things like I know what I’m writing that, that make people unlikable. Like Greg is not gonna be likable ’cause he’s the one that had the affair, we assume. Like how do, how do you, uh, approach all these characters and you’re, and you’re trying to write it and you’re thinking, “Okay, these are the negative things, but here’s why, and then this is what I need my reader to feel so that they can, you know, relate to the story and actually get into it and care about these people,” rather than just like, “I don’t care about these people at all, and I don’t care what happens to them.”

Ava: Exactly. Well, that’s, what you just described is really one of the intentions that I, I do, I did have, especially with this book, is I thought how interesting to see things from different people’s perspective, like the different sisters’ perspective, and that it doesn’t feel unlikable or you feel like you can’t relate to it, and then when you get the deeper picture, it is something you can relate to where you understand where they’re coming from.

And I, I don’t know why I find that interesting, but I just do, and I, I did have that intention without maybe thinking about it over… You know, when you described it, I thought that was exactly what I was trying to do. So, um, I think that that’s, for me, just part of trying to make them feel like real characters and real people, because sometimes that can be a little bit missing from, you know, the thriller genre.

And I think that just makes it more compelling really when there’s layers of their personality or what they’re doing and their motivations.

Mark: Yeah. How do you keep track of it? Do you have like a family tree of who’s who and, and who they’re related to and their, and their kind of strengths and weaknesses, I guess we could say?

Ava: You know, I don’t do that because I figure if I can’t keep track of it, if I need a family tree, then the reader is gonna need a family tree, and I don’t want it to be, I don’t want it to be hard for people to follow. So I have to make the characters easy for myself to remember, and then write about it in a way that the reader’s gonna remember it so that we’re all on the same page, ’cause I don’t want people to feel like they’re lost or they’re trying to figure out, “Wait, who is this?”

So even with, um, with Paul and Piper and their son with all the P names, I kind of did that intentionally, both as a personality thing, but also just to, to help, um, keep their name.

Mark: Yeah, I love the name tricks.

I’ve heard some name tricks. I had, uh, oh, who is it? Oh, Susan Walter was on the show. She wrote, uh, what is it? “Murder at 30,000 Feet.” And she, she talked about some of her, her naming tricks and things that she uses. I thought it was very, a lot of fun.

Ava: Oh. Oh, fun. Yeah, definitely. So, and I think making them different enough that the characters, you can remember them based on their personality, and then kind of like reminding the reader what, you know, what that is that makes them unique and different.

Mark: Yeah.

Ava: Yeah.

Mark: That’s fascinating that you can keep that in your mind. I have such a terrible time doing that myself. If I had to rely on my memory, the poor reader, uh, they would be lost.

Ava: I, um, yeah, when I’m in it, for some reason I have sort of this hawk-like memory for, for those details. I don’t have to write them down too much. But, um, but again, I try to keep it fairly simple

Mark: So when you’re done this– when you finish this book now looking back, is there anything you can, you think of that you hope people take away from this story other than the entertainment?

Ava: So I think that, I think if it makes you think about your own life and your own relationships, that’s always an interesting takeaway that, you know, hopefully it can affect you and make me think about things differently in your own life and your own relationships, and hopefully for the better. But yeah, I think entertainment is definitely the number one, you know, purpose of it, is to be entertaining and fun, and thrilling obviously.

Kind of it’s, it’s a dark story, but I do think that I, I just want people to think a little bit ’cause I think, um, sometimes in thrillers, again, you don’t want it to feel like it’s completely just a popcorn thriller that’s totally surface level. So I like to have people have something to contemplate a little bit.

You know, like what would I have done differently? Or does this remind me of my sisters? Or oh, you know, is this like my parents? Was I labeled like this? You know? So the… I always think that’s interesting to have takeaway.

Mark: Yeah. In the acknowledgments, you thank your husband for his support, and you thank Carol Willis for being an early reader and reading the first several chapters to encourage and offer suggestions. This is your wording that I’m taking from it. Can you talk about what that process was like? And I have– I found that really interesting when I read it, because I know when I write a book, like first draft, nobody’s reading.

Second draft, nobody’s reading. It’s the third draft that I’ll actually let my, what I call the beta readers, but my very early readers, people I trust, actually get to read some of it. So you giving a few chapters to someone early on by the sounds of, of this is, was fascinating to me, so I’d love to hear more about that.

Ava: Yeah, I was the same way. The first two or three books, I didn’t let anybody see it, and I don’t, I, I don’t really, as funny as it sounds, I still don’t like to think about too much people reading it because it’s just so, it’s so personal that I feel like I like to write it and that I want it to be out there, but I don’t really wanna think about anyone reading my words.

So, um, I think we… Lots of authors feel that way. But yeah, so I definitely never sent anything to people, initially. But then, I got to know Carol and, um, there was another author that we were working with and just kind of talking about being on submission with ano- another book. And, um, I forget how, it kind of happened just naturally.

We talked about maybe sharing a few chapters, because I had heard from other authors that they, they do that, and I thought, you know, let’s, let’s try this out. And there was a couple questions I wanted to work out. I can’t remember what it was. Oh, I think I just wanted to know if it was easy enough, if the sisters were distinct enough, ’cause like we were talking about earlier, like, can you keep them straight?

There’s three of them. So I said, “Okay, just give me feedback kind of specifically on that, but I’m curious anything else, too.” And, um, yeah, Carol had great feedback. She had a couple of comments that really helped me figure out, okay, this would be a really interesting direction to go. And so yeah, I’m very thankful that I did that.

But it’s gotta be somebody that you, that you really trust and that you really, you know, feel like, okay, this person is gonna be super helpful.

Mark: Do you feel yourself moving in that, in that direction again, like giving someone something, a little early snippet?

Ava: Oh, I just did. I just did. And I love it. It happened again. I was like, “This is amazing. If only I had had this my first, my first several books.” Um, yeah, I g- I gave it to another author friend who, you know, she’s a, a best-selling author, and she just gave me s- part of it was just some confirmation that she was, she really was liking it, and it was interesting, and then she had just a couple details that she suggested.

Um, and it was just… I, I… It gave me an idea for, okay, maybe I’ll include this later in the book, ’cause there’s a character that’s really unlikable, and, um, she felt it too. So it was nice to know that I was coming across. ‘Cause sometimes it’s… You, you wanna be subtle, but you don’t wanna hit people over the head. Like, it’s, it’s kind of a, a fine line for making somebody unlikable villain.

Mark: That inspires me. Maybe I’ll consider doing that in the next book that I start.

Ava: Maybe so. What’s the worst that can happen, right?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I always– The worst to me would be if someone is saying like, “Oh, I want it to go– I think it should go in this direction.” It’s like that feedback that you fear of like this isn’t working or, you know, it’s not doing very good. Yet so many authors, like there are famous authors who have stories like that, that they shared their books and had terrible feedback but then wrote it anyway and then it became like one of the greatest novels of…

Ava: How

Mark: You know what I mean? So it’s one of those things where y- I guess it comes with trust, right? You have to trust who it is that is giving you the feedback and

Ava: Yes. Yes. And I guess, I mean, if that were really the feedback, I guess I would wanna know they thought it wasn’t working or why. And then yes, you get to decide, like, okay, well, do I agree with this or not? Yeah, so that’s interesting. But I doubt you would get that feedback. That would be my suspicion, you

Mark: Well, well, you know what? In my last book, I had a bunch of beta readers, and you know, with beta readers, when you get enough of them, they all give different feedback, and that was one of the challenges. One of the challenges was trying to figure out what I want to change for the next draft because it’s so– there are so many different people giving different advice,

Ava: Different. Right. Well, and that’s where I don’t always do as many beta readers, because I do feel like once I like a story, I’m pretty set in it. And it’s not that I don’t care what other people think, it’s that I know that, like you said, they’re gonna have so many different thoughts and feelings that it’s almost, you can’t please everyone.

So at this point, if the book is written, I like it, I, I more use the beta readers to say, “Okay, was something unclear? Was there an inconsistency? Like, was, is there, you know, a hole that I need to fill?” But not really to change what I think should happen. That happens more, you know, with my editor. If there’s something that my editor is saying, “Okay, this needs to change,” or, “I think this part would be better served,” then I’ll move things around.

But, um, you kind of have to be pretty selective about what you’re gonna change, I think. Yeah.

Mark: So this book has a, a story that feels like, , almost generational trauma, uh, without giving away… I don’t wanna give away spoilers or anything, so I’ll be very vague about it. Do you believe even without the knowledge of events, people find themselves in those kinds of situations?

Ava: I mean, I think, I think it definitely is true because you can’t, you know, you can’t control your parents and your upbringing and what they bring into being parents, and it’s almost inevitable that they’re gonna bring in their family history and trauma. And, you know, in the case with these three sisters, what happened when they were younger, they didn’t have any control of it. They were part of it, but, you know, of course, that’s gonna sort of bleed into the rest of their lives, you know?

Mark: Yeah. Do you find with this story, were there any moments that hit you personally where you wrote them and it felt like this was like a piece of me on the page or a piece of something I know or like was close to me?

Ava: Yeah, I think almost a- all three of the sisters I can relate to in some different way, ’cause they’re so different, but each of them I feel like, “Okay, I felt like that before.” And I think, and even with Alexis too, I mean, I think that I would never wanna write a book or a character that I couldn’t relate to. I think what makes it interesting is it’s obviously things that you can relate to, but then in a book you make it a thriller. It’s, like, larger than life. It’s things, situations I’ve never been in, and they’re much more, you know, they’re, they’re more extreme. But, um, yeah. But I, I hope that everybody can relate to kind of each of the, each of the characters and each of the relationships they have with their sisters and their husbands and their kids even, and their mom. So there’s a lot, a lot of different relationships in there.

Mark: Do you think being a psychologist has impacted the way you write books?

Ava: I definitely think it is. Like, people will sometime… I remember my first writing teacher, James Thayer, he has a podcast too, an amazing podcast on writing, and he, um, he has a podcast now. Back then at University of Washington, it was just, it was a class I took, and he said, you know, I can tell…

Something about, he could tell that I was a psychologist or it came through in my writing, and I’ve definitely had that feedback before. Um, just because I can’t help but, uh, you know, I wanna have, you know, some of a deeper understanding or meaning to what’s going on, and kind of give insight into what the character’s going through

Mark: Are you still practicing now?

Ava: I’m not practicing anymore, no. I, um, I haven’t been for probably for quite a while now. When I had my second child and we moved, and I had written my first book, and I got some really good feedback from… I sent it to Writer’s House, and, Al Zuckerman, he called me and he said, you know, he, he had an R&R.

He wanted to give me some feedback, um, for The Vanishing Neighbor. And he said, “I think you can make a living on writing,” and it was really encouraging. And, um, I, I didn’t end up working with him ’cause he retired shortly thereafter, but I always really appreciated that he took the time to talk with me and be so encouraging.

And, um, so it sort of all fell into place where I did not practice anymore, um, and I wanted to really focus on being a mom and being a, an author. That was always what I wanted to do. It was just a matter of timing and I had taken, you know, a writing class like 10 years before, and I was always writing little things here and there, but I, I finally had sat down to write, you know, my full book, and that’s when I thought, Okay, I’m gonna keep, I’m gonna keep doing this.

Mark: That’s awesome. That’s the dream, right? That we’re all hoping to, to get to full-time author dream. So with, with the family and how do you carve out time for writing? What does your day-to-day look like?

Ava: Well, my youngest is finally now in school full time, but it used to be… I mean, I wrote books I when, you know, during nap time, during, you know, after they would go to bed at night. I just kind of found time, or sometimes I would have my, um, you know, my laptop with me at, you know, school eve- or not school events, but like after school activities and things like that.

So I, I would just find the time and, and you really, uh, just get good at sort of carving out the time, and I’m a pretty fast writer in terms of when I sit down to write, I’m able to, you know, produce the words. So, um, but now that my youngest is in kindergarten, he- they’re, they’re in school, and so I really have a, a lot of time to, to write.

Mark: Nice.

Ava: Yeah

Mark: Do you, did you find for this book you write like, do you write by time? Do you write by words or

Ava: Yeah, I tr- yeah, sometimes I get on a roll, but mostly I try to have a goal of, it used to be 1,000 words, and if I’m really trying to, if I have a deadline or if I’m really, ambitious, I can do 1,500, sometimes 2,000, has worked. And I really do like writing more words because I feel like you can kind of get into it and get into your flow.

But realistically, even if if I’m tight on time, even if I can get 600 or 700 words, I say, “Okay, that’s gonna be my goal for today.” But I always try and write out what my number goal is, and I, I write down the number goal before I start, and that way I know what it is be- as I go into it, and I can see if I’ve made that.

Mark: Wow. That’s like not even outlining your goal for the day. You just go in with a number and, and go to hit that number. I love that

Ava: I do. Yeah, I do. I hit that number because then, I feel like otherwise I- I- I’m … Now I’m curious how other people do it. I mean, I, I wouldn’t know how else to do it. Do other people have like, “I wanna finish this scene,” or, “I wanna finish this idea”?

Mark: I do by time, so I have a timer that I set. So I’ll write for at least an hour and a half, and I try and end mid-scene or mid-action so that when I come back the next day, I’m kicking off an action ’cause I don’t wanna end at the end of a chapter and then have to think about, start the day thinking about how, what am I gonna talk about now in the next chapter kind of thing.

Ava: Yeah.

Mark: It in the middle. I try to leave it in the middle of action, but I do it by time, so.

Ava: Oh, so you help yourself by leaving it in the middle where it’s an easy place to start, and you give yourself a time. I mean, I always have, like, time blocked out. Like, I know, like, okay, I have these three hours, or I have these four hours, or I have one hour. But then, Okay, interesting. Yeah

Mark: Yeah. I find for me, obviously, like every day there’s a different amount of words, but getting into it could take 45 minutes one day before I’m really writing, and then I could write– Some days I can write like 2,000 words after that initial push. So if I don’t use time, if I used words, I may just, for me, I might force out words that just aren’t very good to get them on the page rather than knowing like, “No, I can settle into this and just… it’s, it’s okay that I only wrote 200 words in a half an hour because I know I have another hour when it’s actually gonna hit me.” Like my muse hits, I guess you could say.

Ava: Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. I like that. Yeah, I feel like I, I do sometimes give myself permission to say, you know, these– this part, I can get rid of it later, or I’m just gonna start and see where it goes. Because otherwise, yes, if I try and make it too, too perfect or th-this is gonna be the final version, I’ll just never write.

So I have to give myself permission to say, “Okay, this can be, just good enough to get the story moving where it needs to go.” And then usually it ends up being it, it’s fine. , But trying to kinda take the pressure off of yourself, I guess, is what I try and do.

Mark: Yeah. Are you aiming for a book a year, two books a year? Do you have a goal for how much you write?

Ava: Yeah. I think for a while I was really putting a lot of pressure to do… I, I think I did, yeah, at least a couple books in a year. And I don’t have a, a book goal so much as I just think short-term, when do I wanna finish this next one? So like, I know I wanna finish my next one in the next two months, and that’s my next goal.

And then I don’t, I don’t do well… I take a little break between books, but not too long because then I start thinking like, “Okay, I, I… The idea is there, and now I just wanna get going.” So I think knowing me, it definitely is usually more than one a year. But I had so many coming out this past year that I wasn’t able to write one until… the one I’m writing right now, I’m like halfway through, so

Mark: And with “The Summerhouse Murder,” do, is it beginning to end that book and only that book mostly that’s in your mind?

Ava: Yes, definitely. Yeah, I focus on one at a time. That would be, that, that would be impressive if somebody could write more than one at a time. But for me, I definitely have to be, like, all in on the one that I’m writing.

Mark: Oké The setting for this book is at Lake George in the Adirondacks. How did you decide that that was gonna be the location, if it has any personal connection with you, or if it was just a location that you picked?

Ava: I just wanted it to be someplace really beautiful, but really sort of majestic and remote, at least in this, this part of Lake George. And I wanted it to be something where, there’s a little bit of a, um, sort of just this feeling of… lake George is known for being really clear water, but it’s really deep, and I just thought it’s so symbolic, and it’s just so atmospheric.

And, I don’t know exactly how I chose that other than it just sort of felt right. I, I thought of a different, you know, a couple different places, and that one just sort of felt like, okay. When I thought of that, it being set there, it just kind of felt right.

Mark: How much of what you wrote on Lake George is factual and how much did you have to make up?

Ava: I made up, I took quite a few liberties in terms of making up, none of that is real about sort of there being an easement and being, no houses were being allowed to build there, but I just did that because I wanted them to be isolated where you couldn’t too easily get to neighbors. So yes, I, I’m not sure if any place like that specifically exists in terms of their actual house.

Mark: Oké

Ava: Yeah

Mark: Are there any favorite vacation spots that now feel different because of the story?

Ava: No, I don’t think,, I, I, I love going on family vacations, and I usually… The places we go, they don’t feel, like creepy or haunted at all. So, um, it’s funny because the next book that I’m writing is set, in, well, it was gonna be Martha’s Vineyard, but now I’m thinking Nantucket because I’m doing the Nantucket Book Festival.

There’s a local author signing, and I’m gonna go stay with an author friend, and,, our family is gonna go, and I feel like now going out there, I’m like, “Oh, that’ll be interesting to see if, since I’m writing a book right now that has kind of a thriller element, like how it feels.” But usually it’s so far removed from reality in terms of your actual experience someplace versus writing a book that’s totally fiction and all in my imagination. So I think it’s, it’s different enough.

Mark: So you don’t go to all the sites to look at, like to look around the lake. I imagine that you were on, I mean, this is just me imagining, that you were on Lake George at the middle of the lake on a boat and just looking around at what you were gonna do and how you were gonna do it.

Ava: Yeah, yeah. No, I’ve always been to every place that I write about, but I don’t really, I don’t go scout it out before I write, you know? Yeah.

Mark: Okay When you were writing the book, did you, as you were writing the characters, did you go from point of view to point of view writing it just like it was in the final draft? Or do you find yourself writing like Esme’s story and then coming back to write Piper’s or, or mixing it up?

Ava: I usually just try and write in the order that I think it’s gonna most logically flow for the reader. So I s- I kind of stick with if I know… For these ones, for the, for these sisters, I want to be, take a turn each time, and then intersperse their background and Alexis’s story too. So I just sort of stick with the order.

I know some authors write different orders, and they kind of piecemeal it together. But for me, I want to write it in the order that I think the reader is gonna read it. And then when I go back and I edit it, I can do it that way if I wanna change things. But that’s how I usually approach it

Mark: Okay. Did you ever change anything in the way you wrote this one, or it just went, it just went the way you intended it?

Ava: , Let’s see. I know there was a couple s- parts that I definitely changed with my editor, who, she had some really great insights, and it was really exciting to get her feedback. I’m trying to think of which parts that we changed. Something about the hotel was different and how that scene went, and then, well, I can’t give too many spoilers.

But towards the end, we changed quite a few things, and that, I really liked those changes that she had suggested. And then she had her suggestions, and then I kind of did my take on it, and then I thought it made it even better, which is really what you want from an editor, is that they give you suggestions that make the book so much better, and that’s why a great editor is invaluable.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna hold that follow-up for the spoiler section of the

Ava: Okay, ja. Hold, hvis du er færdig.

Mark: Okay. So as we start to wrap up a little bit, what advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second novel?

Ava: Ooh, , advice to someone who just published their first or second novel. Well, I would say come on the Thriller Pitch Podcast and talk to someone because it’s a great… You know, I think the more you can talk about your work and, , you know, be out there and tell people your story and network, I think that’s always really important.

And sometimes authors we’re, you know, by nature we’re kind of wanna be private and just writing our stories and not talking about it so much. But I think, you know, talking about it and promoting it, . and I would say to keep writing because, you know, it’s a, it’s a long-term career, and one or two books is great, but to, to try and know that the more that you write the better you’re gonna get at your craft and the more readers and fans that you’ll have. So I think to keep going

Mark: Yeah. Did you ever think about changing genre or the type of story that you write? Or you just, this is what you knew you wanted to do?

Ava: I, I always knew that this was the genre I wanted to do, and I’ve thought about, I’ve thought about changing genre, and I have not so far. I don’t think that I will at this point just because I’m really enjoying it, and I feel like, once you kind of get to be sort of an expert in what you’re doing, why change a good thing? But yeah, someday I may change into doing a different type of genre

Mark: Yeah. You mentioned community too. What, are there like any events that you attended that you, like was your favorite event? I heard Thriller Fest, everyone’s talking about Thriller Fest probably because it’s coming up or did it just happen? I can’t remember, but do you have a favorite?

Ava: know. Yeah, I was pl- I haven’t been to Thriller Fest yet. I was planning on being on a panel there, and I really wanted to, but it just didn’t work out the timing-wise. It’s, um, that weekend was not… I wasn’t able to. But yeah, I, there’s always, local, you know, there’s the Nantucket Book Festival.

There’s all types of, conventions and, like, thriller authors where readers and authors come together. In terms of community, I think, you know, you can join writers groups, and you can join classes. And, I think finding, you know, people that you can trust, and whether it’s even just reaching out to someone who’s not in your area, and maybe it’s via online, but you’re a fan of theirs it’s just nice to have other authors that you trust and can talk to and commiserate and give each other blurbs and cheer each other on, their successes. Like, that’s been a really fun part of being an author, is I really enjoy my author friends. Like, ’cause they’re people that I look up to, and I read their books, and now I get to be… I get to talk to them. I mean, it’s amazing. It’s like this is really exciting that I get to know you personally, so

Mark: Yeah, it is. It’s a special thing, yeah.

Ava: Yeah

Mark: A question from Amanda Reynolds, who from a guest on our last show. She asks, “Do you have sisters, and why did you decide to write a book about sisters?”

Ava: Ah, okay. Well, I may not answer that one just because I don’t know. I, I feel like if I, I wanna leave some of the mystery about, like… I feel like when authors, like, overshare with too much of who they are or their personal background, sometimes it takes the mystery away, and that almost makes it less compelling than if you sort of are left to wonder and not know. So that one, Amanda, I’m gonna have to just, may have to wonder.

Mark: Okay, we’ll leave her wondering then. We’ll all wonder. And where can listeners find your book and know what– find out about what’s coming next for you?

Ava: Well, the best way to reach me is my website, authoravaroberts.com, and there is a contact form there, and it has, uh, links to all my books. Um, and yeah, you can get it in any format, hardback, paperback, um, audiobook through Spotify and, Kindle. And yeah, it’s available, and, um, I always welcome people to reach out and contact me if you have any questions or just wanna tell me what you thought about the book

Mark: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been great. This is the end of our regular section, so for listeners, you know we are headed into the spoiler section. So if you do not wanna know how this book ends and hear about the, the editor’s changes that we just talked about, you’re gonna wanna pause now, go get the book, read the book. I promise you will be back in no time at all. I blew through this novel. I, I really enjoyed it. And, and then, come back and listen to the rest of the show. So we are moving into the spoiler section

Ava: All right.

Mark: So we know in the end the, the body who belongs to Bridget and how Alexis killed her and, and, and the whole setup. Did you always know that was gonna be the end? As I was reading the, the book and I was we didn’t know who, we didn’t know who the body was for a long time. That was the mystery, like who’s dead? Could’ve been

Ava: Exactly. Yep

Mark: we did know, it was like, oh, who did it? And then, and then we found that out. So I wonder if, since you mentioned you, you, write as you go, you don’t have, you don’t outline. So did you know who the body was and who the murderer was and all that? Or was that like, did you experience it with us as you wrote it?

Ava: Yeah. I’m trying to remember. I am, I’m pretty sure I knew, I knew the concept was, I thought there’s always one dead body. I want there to be two dead bodies in the lake, because I just thought that that was something that I hadn’t seen as much. So I knew that it was gonna be, um, Bridget first, and I knew that it was gonna be Alexis.

So that part was, I remember kind of knowing c- I, that was there. And that it was gonna be sort of set up to seem like it was Esme or her husband or, you know, Greg and, or, or any of the sisters really. But in terms of the parts that were more… I didn’t know how I would get there really, in terms of h- how she would murder her, that part was sort of fuzzy and yeah. But I did know that that part was kind of just there all along

Mark: Okay. Who do you think the main villain is of your book? There are, there are so many things, right? Because y- you could look at– When you’re done reading, you’re, you’re kind of… Well, this is how I was left thinking, was like, Greg could be the villain because without him b- doing the, the affair and everything, none of this ever happened. Mom, their mother could be the villain because had she not treated Alexis this way, a lot of these things wouldn’t have happened. And then of course, Alexis herself, who could be the villain, and then for all the things that she set up and the deception. H- who do you think is the villain and, and how did you kinda go about that?

Ava: Well, I do think that, that sort of all of the above are true, and that’s why I thought it was so interesting because in real life there’s not always just one villain. And I think that Alexis, I feel like she was a villain, but then you could also understand where she was coming from, and it doesn’t justify what she did or make it right, but you understand how damaged she is and where that came from.

And then, um, I do think Esme was very unlikable and she made a lot of decisions that people, you know, it, it’s hard to understand, you know, where she, why she did that. , So I kind of think that all of the above in some ways, but then they’re all relatable too. So it’s kind of an interesting juxtaposition.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, it is. That’s what– When I put the book down, that’s what left me wondering ’cause now I’m answering the question at the end of the show for how do you want people to feel on how I felt was like I couldn’t decide who I thought was the villain because… And what, like you were, like you said, it’s so, there’s so much human in that because you could point to anyone, so many characters and say that’s the villain and not the villain, and yeah. It’s so very fun.

Ava: Yeah. Yeah, it is fun. And other people, from what I’ve heard so far from readers, is they have… Some people have less problems knowing who… People have strong, like, feelings one way or the other. Sometimes people feel like, “Oh, Esme, I couldn’t stand her. I’m so glad that she got what was coming.”

Other people feel like, “Oh, Alexis was terrible. I can’t believe she, she was the villain and she, she get, you know, get away with it too mu- too easily, get off too easily.” And I said to that, you know, I think that in the end we can assume that, you know, things are not gonna probably end up really well for her long term, because she has this pattern of getting into trouble, so I assume that she will, you know, get what’s coming in terms of that.

But yeah, I do think that, that’s what’s so fun, right, is everyone gets to, to read it and feel how they feel about it and make their own conclusions. And, I think that’s, you know, a good novel is when it makes people question things and feel differently and have some kind of, you know, thoughtful experience and emotional reaction.

And whether it’s, you know… Hopefully, it’s also satisfying, ’cause you feel like, “Okay, I feel like the story ended. I feel like I got, you know, the answers I wanted to know, and it’s satisfying, but it also leaves me feeling something,” you

Mark: Ja Do you imagine a Summer House Murder 2 where the kids all come back and they have to stay at the house for two weeks together, like all their kids, and then something happens with those, with their kids? ‘Cause if we’re talking generational trauma, which we kinda do, right? From, from mom and what happened with her trauma, which is how it got reflected on the other, other sort of, we don’t know the whole story, but… and now the kids have been through all of this. Have you thought about, like, a book two set in there?

Ava: Yeah, I’ve definitely thought about a book two, and I’ve had so many different ideas for what that would look like with that, the next generation or continuing on their story, and then having that be flashbacks to sort of where it ends off, and then also being the next generation. So I would, I would love to write that because these characters were so fun for me that I would love to revisit them and see if, you know, a book two is in the could happen

Mark: Yeah, I would read a book too.

Ava: Yeah, I would read a book two too. But it’s not to say that I don’t want people to feel like it leaves on a cliffhanger because I was really intentional that you should feel like, okay, there was an ending to it, and it, you know, was satisfying as it is. And then, but a good book, you always wanna read more about the characters, right? That’s hopefully, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. When, when a reader wants a book two, that’s a good sign. Yeah. I wanna know what becomes of them and

Ava: Yeah, like you feel like you, you could hear more. That’s how I always feel whenever I finish a good book, I feel like they’re, I get to know them as people, and I’m kind of sad that it’s over, and, you know, I wish I could keep reading, so

Mark: Yeah. There are some books where I wish I could forget so that I could reread them again.

Ava: Yes. Wouldn’t, wouldn’t that be great? I think about that a lot, wishing I could reread books. But there’s so many good novels out there that you say, “Okay, you just have to move on and read new ones.” But yeah, sometimes especially, you know, when you’re younger and you’re reading those books for the first time, you think, “Wow, if I could just go back.”

Mark: Ja So let’s hear the, the answer to the editing question. What, what did your editor suggest for changes that, that ended up being adjusted a little bit?

Ava: Okay, so I know that there was something at the hotel, the way that happened that where, when, , when Regina went to the hotel, that we changed that pretty significantly, that scene. And then, we changed the ending was going to initially be Alexis was dead, and then she had this great idea that what if she’s not?

And I had, I initially had kind of, um, more of a happy ending with the sisters kind of coming together. Um, but it wasn’t resonating as much as like feeling like this is a realistic ending for these sisters given all they’ve been through and their history and kind of their personalities. So I think sometimes you want to wrap things up in a happy bow, and then you realize, okay, this is maybe not the most natural conclusion of what would happen.

So how can we give some of that, coming together and then also have it be, consistent and then, um… And also Alexis is just such a compelling character that it’s hard to wanna let her go, I think is what we decided. So that’s why we made it sort of a, um, a teaser. We think she’s gone, and then she’s not. So I, I love that. I’m glad we changed it, and that was all, that was her idea.

Mark: How do you balance that when you– Do you think about that when you’re approaching stories, balancing that happy ending? I mean, there’s, it’s, you know, psychological domestic thrillers don’t necessarily have happy endings all the time like romance does. But sometimes you want that feel-good ending, and I’m with you my endings are never very happy or I don’t end on very happy notes, so I get that. But I also wonder about ending a book on a happier note so that readers are like, “Yes.” You know, like when you’re watching like Avengers or something, and at the end they just kick all the butt and, and then you get pumped up.

Or “Lincoln Lawyer” comes to mind when I was watching “Lincoln Lawyer” on Netflix, and when he wins the case even after all the things that he’s done, and you’re just like, “Yes, he won the case.” You know, like those

Ava: Yeah. Like, yes, it’s so satisfying when they get what they deserve, and the ending is … Yes, I love that, too, and I think it’s important to give people that. And so it doesn’t have to be a perfect ending. It doesn’t have to be in a bow, but, you know, wrapped up in an unrealistic way. But yes, I think that’s why a lot of people felt like, okay, yes, Alexis, after all she’s been through, she does kind of get the last word.

She kind of wins, and Esme is sort of brought, brought down, you know, in terms of having to deal with, okay, now she’s building a house right there. So I definitely think that that was satisfying for a lot of people. And the fact that Regina was doing so well, um, off and her, you know, back with her family, and that Piper was really doing well, I think that was the satisfying part. And then, but how you give that to people can look a little bit differently, right, in terms of I have multiple endings, right? Of how you … Yeah

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. My last question for you: what’s one question you’d like me to ask the next author who comes on the show? And the next author is Cleo Ballard. She wrote “This Is a Lie” about a woman who uses, a woman who uses AI to create the perfect friend and finds herself trapped in a cat and mouse game.

Ava: Yes. I, okay, I know Cleo. I did an inter- uh, podcast with her. She’s great. She’s fantastic. You’re gonna enjoy talking with her. So my next question for her would be, so sh- her book is about AI, and my series of Thistle & Thrillers was about AI. So I had some kind of creepy AI things happening to me when I was writing my book, and I want to know, did anything happen to you that was creepy from AI or that you felt like, seemed odd to you when you were writing the book, as if the AI was aware that you were writing your book?

Mark: Okay. Great question. All right, so if you don’t mind sticking around for, uh, a few more minutes for the after show with our pa- for our Patreon guests, that would be awesome. Thank you so much for your time. This has been great.

Ava: Oh, thank you so much. It was great talking to you.

Mark: Ava Roberts, “The Summerhouse Murders.” You should have read it if you’re at this point in the podcast because we gave it all away. But if you haven’t anyway, get it, read it, review it, because that really helps authors. Thank you for listening and/or watching. Have a wonderful day.

Amanda: So I then went completely the other way. I did a ton of research. I explained it in kind of minute detail, how the tech would work, and of course that was dreary and that was far too much. So then it was a case of distilling that down. So it was very quick and easy to pick up how it could work as a concept rather than a sort of a technical manual of how you would be strapped in the chair and how it would all work. So for me, it was that balance between this being a story and absolutely story led, but at the same time feeling like it’s very high concept.

Mark: Welcome to the Thriller Writer Lab, where every thriller goes under the microscope, one book at a time. I’m your host, Mark Nadon, and this is where best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors share the craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories.

Joining me today is bestselling author Amanda Reynolds, writing Under the pen name, Amanda West for the book we are talking about today, the speculative thriller, the Memory Foundation. Amanda, thank you so much for being here today

Amanda: Oh, thank you for inviting me. It’s really exciting to be talking about the book with you.

Mark: and thank you. I have received a copy of your book and was able to read it, so I am excited to talk about it. Thank you.

Amanda: Fantastic.

Mark: So let’s start with the pitch. Pitch me the Memory Foundation.

Amanda: Pitch you. It’s always so hard, isn’t it? When you, someone says, pitch me your book. You know, mark as an author, so I, forgive me, I’m gonna read. The pitch to start with. So, um, four guests, one genius scientist, his wife, a mountainous secret facility prone to avalanches. Would you go to the memory foundation to experience the ultimate in destination travel, a chance to relive the best moments of your life, but you might not come back.

So that’s my, my hook,

Mark: Nice.

Amanda: which, which I just worked on this afternoon actually. So you are the first, the first to hear that. Um, so that’s kind of the memory foundation in a, in an elevator pitch. Um,

Mark: Great.

Amanda: my, my new book. Yeah.

Mark: So if we take a step back a little bit from this book, just ’cause I’m curious about you’ve, you, this is not your first book. Even if people look under Amanda West and they’ll see that this is like Amanda West’s first book,

Amanda: Mm.

Mark: many others. This is book seven I believe.

Amanda: Yeah, it that’s true.

Mark: Why the switch from domestic thrillers to taking a chance on a speculative thriller like this one.

Amanda: Yeah. Um, great question. I mean, I, I love all kinds of thrillers and there are so many different sub genres. And the one I’ve kind of concentrated on for my first six published books is Amanda Reynolds, has been very much psychological suspense, which is my first love, my continuing love. I read psychological suspense. I coach it at the novelty where I work as an author, coach, and I love those kind of books. You know, it sort of started with a girl on the Train and Gone Girl and all of those. And my first psychological suspense thriller was published back in 2016, I think it was. So, you know, 10 years, 10 years of, of writing those and loving them and really enjoying them.

But I wanted to do something a bit different, I think for book seven I really wanted to take a step back, reassess the kind of things that I’m interested in reading and writing. And I love reading speculative, high concept realism. I love watching them. You know, they’re sort of Netflix, Netflix binges that you just can’t stop watching and I’d always wanted to write a time travel book and I knew it would just absolutely do my head in if I tried to write a time travel book because they’re so difficult and they’re so complicated. So I thought, what’s a kind of a time travel? Oh, going back in your memory, what if you could go back and you could kind of relive the best, you know, cherry pick the best moments of your life and just re-experience them.

And I suppose that was the germ of the idea. And I had that a really long time ago, probably three or four years ago, and I sort of put it away because I couldn’t quite work out how I would write it. But every now and then, I would talk to people about it as if, if I spoke to other authors or I spoke to my editor or somebody, they would say, yeah, you should write it.

And of course everyone’s, oh, that’s a great idea, but no one’s gonna tell you to write something. No one’s gonna tell you to do something different. So

in the end, I thought, well, I’m gonna take some time and actually properly have a go at writing this idea. And I suppose it was around the time that we all started thinking about the metaverse and AI and the possibilities beyond kind of, uh, own thinking at the time of how we could live other lives and maybe go back.

And there was also a lot about destination travel, kind of really wealthy travelers paying extortion amounts to go to the bottom of the ocean or, you know, go into space. There was all of that going on and I thought, yeah, there’s, there’s two things. There’s like this. Yearning that we all have for nostalgia and going back, but then there’s also this push forward with tech and taking us into new spaces and people who are really wealthy, wanting to be the first, wanting to do something so different.

And I suppose that’s, that’s when books for me, I dunno about you, mark, but when, when I get two things come together, that’s when I think, ah, I think I can write this now. And I wasn’t ready before then. Um, so I did take a year probably even to, to get to that first draft once I decided to do it, and then another year or so before it was ready because it was so different for me and it was such a challenge, but I absolutely loved writing it as well.

And I was glad to have finally done it because with speculative, um, ideas, if you don’t do them then they just happen and they’re not speculative anymore. So you’ve gotta try and get on with it and. And, and, and be a bit forward thinking because as soon as you start doing any kind of research, you discover that it’s already, it’s already happening somewhere, probably anyway.

Mark: Was it, was it like nerve, nerve wracking or scary for you? Jumping into a different genre? Taking the chance, I suppose, with a pen name, which was helpful ’cause it separates your, your

usual name from, uh, you know, from speculative thrillers. But it’s still, it’s still a risk for any author to, to change genres and some do it successfully and some don’t. was that, what was that like as you’re writing it? Does it impact, like how you’re telling your story when you think, well, people who read Amanda Reynolds enjoy this type of story, so I kind of wanna make sure I don’t get too far away from my brand? Or did you just kind of go with like, no, this is the story that I’m ready to write and I’m gonna go with that.

Amanda: Yeah. I think that word brand is really interesting because when you’ve had you know, some, some bestsellers and your kind, you are kind of a brand author and people know you and they’re kind of waiting for the next one that they feel familiar with and you’re doing something different. Yeah. You do feel a bit like, will anybody like this?

Will anybody want to read it?

But I also felt that I, I will definitely go back to psychological thrillist, but I felt that I needed to step away because I didn’t wanna be repeating myself. I wanted a new challenge. I wanted to really push my writing and push myself in a completely different. Direction to make sure that I was producing something that was a challenge to me, but also new and fresh and different.

It was also a little bit market led because the market is constantly looking for new, fresh ideas. So you feel like you want to come up with something that will really appeal to the market as well.

But also book seven, you know, and they’re not, it’s not seven books I’ve written. I’ve probably written 10 or 11.

’cause there were some that didn’t happen. So, you know, you get to a point in your career where you think I really want to be brave and challenge myself but I loved it. I absolutely loved doing it. I really did. And I think in terms of the name change, that was really up to my publishers Crooked Lane. And I said, you know, I don’t mind being Amanda Reynolds.

 I don’t mind being somebody different. And they said, well, we’ll keep the Amanda because then people who know you as Amanda Reynolds and also for me, like promoting it. It’s nice and easy enough to think about another name. Um. But we’ll go with a different surname. So I went with West because that’s my name before I was married many, many years ago. So that is also my identity. So it didn’t feel that strange.

Mark: Oh, that’s a great connection. I hadn’t even thought that about doing something like that. Uh, what kind of challenge did this book present to you as a writer, having written this many books, and you would’ve been in your lane for psychological thrillers, what kind of challenge did this, did this one, like what’s some of the more specific challenges as you’re writing this particular book?

Amanda: Um, for me, one of the challenges was, um, getting the kind of high concept element across to the reader in a way that’s really clear and very. Um, straightforward to kind of take on board as a reader and at the same time make it feel logical, make it feel like it could work. So I think it was the, there, there’s something in the memory foundation called memory flights.

And you go on a memory flight, you don’t ever leave the chair, but you go on a flight, um, back to a memory and it feels entirely authentic and entirely realistic. And for a lot of the writing, I was just like, oh yeah, I’ll work that out later. That’ll be something to do with this. You know how it works. And, uh, I actually submitted a draft where, um, I kind of skimmed over the tech side and I didn’t really explain it all.

I said that it happens, you know, and quite rightly the feedback was, well, we need to understand, you know, we need to feel that this could actually happen. We kind of need to, to know what the process is. So I then went completely the other way. I did a ton of research. I explained it in kind of minute detail, how the tech would work, and of course that was dreary and that was far too much.

So then it was a case of distilling that down. So it was very quick and easy to pick up how it could work as a concept rather than a sort of a technical manual of how you would be strapped in the chair and how it would all work. So for me, it was that balance between this being a story and absolutely story led, but at the same time feeling like it’s very high concept.

But yes, I, I can understand that that could. That could happen. And that was a balance that I was looking for. That took me a little while to work out because in psychological suspense it’s very rooted in the ordinary and the domestic. Um, and this is not, this is very different.

Mark: The technology to cure dementia, which was, was part of the pitch. It’s a fascinating to talk about that, what, what research went into when you’re talking about the tech side and how the tech might work, but not just the tech, but the idea of what research went into, like trying to cure dementia.

Amanda: Um, yeah, for me it was a very natural thing to pair with the idea of a book about retrieving memories, because obviously the devastating loss of memory is the main initial problem with dementia. You know, people can be physically okay for years, but it’s the loss of their memories and loss of memory has always been a theme of my writing, right from my debut close to me, which was about a woman who lost a year of her memories by falling down the stairs.

Um, this has been, um, something that I just keep coming back to and I am fascinated by. And in terms of, um, research, like I think almost every family, our family has been touched by it. So I had that personal experience of it, but also did my research because you don’t ever want to present a caricature of a person living with dementia or a person who has a relative who has dementia.

You want to honor that as a individual character, because everybody’s different. Everybody’s experience is different. So for me, it was about, much more about, the daughter of person who has dementia, which is not me, but is the character in the book and how that profoundly affects her as her mother becomes less and less of the person that she was, and how that kind of robs that person bit by bit in a very cruel way of their memories.

And then I thought, well, if you were offered the opportunity as that daughter, as Tash is, if you were offered the opportunity for your mother, just to have that brief moment of lucidity again, just to look at you and see you and understand who you are again. How would that be? Would you want to do that?

You know, if it’s risky or if it’s so transient, is it worth it? So that was where I was going with kind of the memory foundation. Not only offering this destination travel, sexy, exciting week to these millionaires, but also that what they’re really trying to do and why they do that is because they’re trying to find a cure for dementia.

And I think that’s a very relatable thing for so many people these days.

Mark: Yeah. In writing, Natasha, she has like a very kind of heavy emotional, uh, start to the book because she not only has her mother, she has, a newborn, she has, trying, she wants to reestablish her career. How much of that emotional weight is kind of like rooted in you and in in your life experience?

Amanda: Yeah, I think, um, I’m, I’m a mother. My children are adults now. I’m about to become a grandmother actually for the first time in a few weeks time. Thank you. Very exciting. Um, but when I started writing the book, my, my daughter wasn’t pregnant, so it wasn’t anything to do with that. It was more to do with the idea, I think, of the guilt of Natasha being sort of sandwich between, um, losing her mother who has dementia and unexpectedly finding herself pregnant and alone. Because as you’re discovering the story, you know, the, the dad is, is not about, and she’s got this incredibly rewarding, demanding career as an investigative journalist. She travels all over the world and she hunts down stories without a thought for her safety or how she’s gonna do it.

She just kind of picks up her bag and goes, and then she can’t because she’s pregnant and because she then has a newborn and she really fights the guilt, she fights this kind of, should I be an example to my daughter and still go out there, still have my career, or should I sacrifice that? And if I do.

How long for and will I resent it? So there’s that push pull constantly for Natasha.

And I think whatever kind of story you’re writing, however speculative the elements of that story are, it’s that connection to very relatable human issues that I’m trying to get across as well. Because readers really wanna feel seen, they wanna feel that the kind of things that they struggle with or their friends or their moms or their daughters struggle with, that they can recognize that too. They can see that in Natasha. So whatever choices she makes, and I’m sure not every reader will agree with them all. She does it with, with the best of intentions and a lot of love.

Mark: When you’re building a character like her, who’s that complex, with that much going on, you’re trying to get on the page, how do you do it? Do you, did she start as someone who like mother had dementia? I would assume perhaps that’s how it started, and then as you were writing, you kind of discovered these other things, or do you Natasha and then add these things and then she comes to life on the page after.

Amanda: Yeah, I’m, I’m not a planner. I’m definitely what I would call a discovery writer.

Um, I always say that you do the work, but when you do it, there is according to your own process. So I accept that I write a lot that probably won’t end up in the book, or if it does, it will end up in a different format but I kind of write to hear the character’s voice and as soon as I can start to hear the character’s voice, then I’ve got to work out what’s the structure, what’s the point of view, you know, am I gonna have more than one main character as I do in the memory foundation?

And how am I gonna get this story across? So I think Natasha came reasonably fully formed because I knew that I wanted her to be in this, um, this sort of struggle, this generational struggle of feeling quite isolated and alone, desperately wanting to do the best by her child, desperately wanting to do the best by her, her mother.

And I felt that was. There quite early on. Um, but then her backstory developed as, as I wrote, and I, and I knew that I really wanted something hopeful for her as well, however hard the journey was. I wanted her to have a lot of inner tenacity, but also come out of it, you know, um, hopefully with some hope at the end of her story as well.

Mark: As a discovery writer do, are you thinking about the story and you have that main plot in your mind before you go? How much of this story did you have? Sort of, I, I would assume in your mind if you’re discovery writing before you started writing.

Amanda: Yeah, I, I normally, um, I normally have my main character, um, and I have kind of a beginning, middle and an idea of the end. What I didn’t have for the memory foundation, which is really weird now because now I think about it. ’cause if you come look at the cover, it is so integral. This location, I did not have that.

I didn’t know where the memory foundation was. Um, I live in the UK and I sort of thought it might just be on, in like an industrial unit somewhere in the middle of the country or something. I literally had no idea where it was gonna be. And I wrote some sections where it was just like off some kind of spur road on the outskirts of London or something on this gray concrete industrial estate.

And then I thought actually it would be so much more exciting and so much more challenging if it was in the mountains. And I started to think of this kind of James Bond que glare in the middle of the Alps. Um, and that became quite a lot of fun then. ’cause I thought, yes, I’m gonna have ravines and bridges and tracks and snow and mountains and avalanches and it’s gonna be just so much fun to write.

Yeah.

Mark: How was the research for that? Because the weather in this book, the, the location and the danger, it, it does a lot of heavy lifting in the book because it’s sets up a lot of things that go on.

Amanda: Um,

Mark: location and then put the, the, the building there and the suspension bridge at that location. I looked up Mount, Mount Dunk. I think dunker was the mountain that it was called in the book. I couldn’t find real mount dunker, so I’m assuming

Amanda: no, it’s made up. It’s all, all of it is entirely made up. It’s completely made up out of my head. All of it. Yeah. I have been to the Alps. I mean, I live in the uk. I’ve been to, you know, various French Alps and Austrian Alps in my time, so I guess it’s an amalgamation of some of those trips and some of the things that I’ve seen, but it is completely invented the whole thing.

Yeah.

Mark: Okay. Do you ever draw a map, uh, as you’re creating the story? Do you have an idea of like what it looks like? Do you draw your note? Okay.

Amanda: No, if you knew me, mark, you would know. I would not draw a map.

Mark: Okay.

Amanda: I am not a map person. I love a map like in the front of a book. Um, but no, no, there’s no map. Only in my head. And, and the weird thing is that it just feels so real now that I can see the drive. See the mountain, I can totally see the walk into the forest and the ravine and the bridge and the laboratory. I can see all of it. Totally see it. So when my, um, lovely publishes Crooked Lane sent me a couple of different options for the cover, which I absolutely love.

Um, one of, one of them I said, no, it doesn’t look like that. And then you think, oh, I just made it up. Whatcha you talking about?

Mark: Yeah.

Amanda: But it does look like the one that’s on the cover. Yeah. In my head.

Mark: Oh, that’s awesome. How many, how many versions do you get before you, you kind of get to pick I’m look, taking a closer look at it now. How many versions do you get to go through to,

to

Amanda: They, sent me a couple. Yeah, they sent me a couple. So, um, the, the kind of main idea of the cover and, and all of this was exactly the same. The only thing that, um, was a variable was the building. So I think there were two different, two different buildings and I picked the one that matched the real one in my head, so that that’s how I did it.

Yeah.

Mark: the cover, that’s why I ask. Uh,

Amanda: Yeah. It’s a great cover. It is a really lovely cover and I haven’t always loved my covers, um, but I absolutely adore this one. Yeah.

Mark: so when people finish this book and they, and they put it down, are you hoping are some of the takeaways perhaps beyond just an entertaining getaway? What other takeaways might there be for a reader when they put it down? What are you hoping they’re gonna feel?

Amanda: I hope that they’re going to understand the struggle of the two women in the story. So there’s also, aside from Natasha, there’s also, uh, Lydia, who is Dr. Wade Hunter’s devoted wife. And, um, Wade and Lydia have set up the memory foundation and done lots of years of work together. And the reason that they bring people in these wealthy millionaires for, you know, this frippery of this destination travel is because their ultimate aim is to find a cure for dementia and be able to help people with memory loss.

So. Whatever might go down during the story. And there’s a lot, um, I hope that it makes them think about the idea of there being some hope. You know, that tech is at times a bit scary. We worry about ai, authors worry about ai, but at the same time there’s an awful lot of positive things that can come out of it.

So I hope they think about some of that that’s in the book. And I also hope they think about how people try to, um, get on with their lives in, in terms of a struggle against, with Tash, you know, what we’ve talked about. But also Lydia, she’s got her own traumas in her past and, you know, she really, she’s a real fighter as well, and she, um, I, I like both the women in my story and I do think women, particularly kind of women who are a little bit more mature, like Lydia is a little bit more mature, just a little bit um, I think that. It’s really nice to see them represented and be strong women, you know, not be victims necessarily, but be very, um, strong in the choices that they make and the lives that they, they lead. So, um, yeah, as I say, I, I, I want to give hope to my characters at the end, and I want people to feel that they’ve been on a journey with them, but ultimately there is a hopeful ending for them as well.

Mark: Yeah. Very nice. Was there ever a time that Wade, our scientist, was a point of view that you wanted to show the reader? I, I mean, you, you didn’t in

Amanda: Oh,

Mark: but was there ever a time where you wanted to

Amanda: interesting.

Mark: through

Amanda: No, he wasn’t actually. Um, I mean, I, I have a, a fondness for Wade. He’s a complex character, but you know, he doesn’t always get it right, but he’s a trier. Um, uh, yeah. I’m fascinated by Wade and I’m really interested in his difference. He’s so different to me. He’s very singular in his story.

He’s incredibly focused. He’s very clever. He achieves incredible things, huge developments. But I think like anybody who is very, very focused on one thing, he can sometimes not see the bigger picture, and he can come across quite emotionally closed off. So I. He loves his, his wife Lydia. He adores her beyond anything.

And at the same time, he exists in this kind of bubble of singularity, which I think anybody who is of genius level as Wade is, um, and trying to do something so pioneering is going to have that kind of, um, element of their personality that appears to be quite almost cold and focused and on one thing. So I, I wasn’t ever gonna have him.

I, what I was gonna have was some of the guests points of view. So we’ve got these millionaires who arrive, um, and I was going to have, um, maybe the Bentley’s point of view. There’s a really rich couple. She’s kind of younger than him and I was toying with the idea of having them, but in the end, I just wanted it to be the two women, Lydia and Tash.

Mark: And did you, so building on that, did you ever think of about showing one of the flights and how intense a flight could be?

Amanda: yes I did. Um, one of my plans originally was to have for each of the guests, so there’s four of them, um, was to show their flights. And I did actually write most of them, I think. And it was interesting and I think it would’ve been fine, but it worked better not to have those in there and kind of work with the imagination of the reader as well to see where that would take them.

Because I want people to think about where they would go if they went back and what the effects of that might be. So that’s something I was really playing with in terms of the reader bringing their imagination to that as well.

Mark: And when you’re writing Lydia, how did you approach her to be, if you see her as a strong character, yet devoted wife, sort of complicit what is happening there,

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: Her husband, but at the same time as things going wrong.

Amanda: mm

Mark: you know who she is as a person to either put a stop to it or, or whatever.

Amanda: mm. Yeah, I, I think, um, I really wanted that in Lydia that she would. Absolutely be in love with her husband, and in many ways it’s a really great marriage, like they do adore one another, but at the same time, there’s a compromise in that and there’s a lot of compromises as the book goes on, and I think that’s quite realistic of a relationship where one person is perhaps subjugating their talents, their genius, their brilliance because the other person is so bright, and is so focused and is a natural leader.

I don’t think that’s a judgment necessarily on Lydia. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being that kind of woman. And I think it’s quite interesting as I’m 60 now, my daughter’s 30, 32, those different generational views of what we expect women to do and how they should behave. And I don’t think you necessarily have to always conform to those to be happy to, to be content.

So I guess I’m pushing that side of things as well for, well, what’s wrong with being the wife? What’s wrong with what the choices Lydia has made? And there are some things wrong with it, absolutely. But you know, a long-term relationship like that is about compromise. So I guess that’s what I’m exploring as well. But of course, as you say, things do go a bit wrong. They go a bit awry.

Mark: What was the hardest part of this book to write for you? emotionally or just from a, a craft perspective?

Amanda: Um, I think this is probably my most action packed book, particularly towards the end. I really wanted to write, I suppose going back to the James Bond que idea of this mountain top, something’s gonna have to happen. You know, I’m talking about avalanche is a lot. I’m talking about a dodgy bridge across the ravine, you know,

so, um.

Yeah, those took in terms of craft, quite a lot of thinking about to write them in a, in a, I hope, a really exciting way. And my editor Marcia Mark, Linda Crooked Lane, was also brilliant in terms of like, pull back a little bit here, a bit more there because you get to the point where you’ve written something and you know it’s so, well, you can no longer see it that clearly.

So, um, her notes came after many drafts, but they were really, really helpful because by that point she could see the whole thing and she could see at what point we needed to reveal things and at what point certain points of action needed to be ramped up or, or just have a quiet moment. So that perspective was great, but I enjoyed doing it because that was one of the challenges of doing something new.

Mark: Yeah. And the acknowledgements, you thank your agent, one of the first things you do and you say, and I’m gonna quote here from the book, her enthusiasm and commitment have restored my faith in so many things, not least myself.

Amanda: Mm,

Mark: quote. you speak to that a little bit? ’cause it feels, it feels like there’s a, uh, you know, there might be a story there or some.

Amanda: That’s very insightful. Lucky Mark. Um, yeah, I had a really tough time actually. Um, both kind of personally and professionally. Publishing’s quite a tough game. Um, it’s quite hard to be around for a long time and, um, I’d taken a reasonably brave decision in stepping away from a potential deal for more psychological suspense.

Books to try and do this, which was very much supported. But a few things happened and I ended up having to change agents. And that happened at the point that the book was supposed to be going out on submission and it all just kind of crashed down. And then my wonderful new agent, she was representing somebody I knew.

I contacted her and explained my situation and she said, send it over. And within I think three days, she had read it, marked it up, returned it to me, and we didn’t even know that we were gonna definitely be working together at that point. Said, I adore this, here are my notes, shall we have a chat? I mean, it was just like, wow, how much did I need that after I had been pretty let down by someone?

So. She has just been unbelievable and as I say, restored my faith in publishing in people and myself because I was kind of at the point where it’s like, okay, this just isn’t gonna happen because it’s all just going wrong. And it also came at a point where my mother had passed away. Um, I finished the book the day before her funeral, so it was all wrapped up in that as well. So it was a really tough time.

Mark: Wow.

Amanda: um, yeah, that was, that was what was behind that, that comment, I think. Yeah.

Mark: Wow. That’s a great story. I’m glad, I’m glad it worked out and you found the right agent for you. That’s

Amanda: Oh,

Mark: that that, that you were able to do that.

Amanda: yeah. Yeah. She’s been fantastic. I mean, your agent is so important in. Somebody in your corner, somebody you can talk to, somebody you can be honest with. Um, it’s a very, very important relationship, um, to an author. So I’m super lucky that I have Joanna. She’s just wonderful. Yeah.

Mark: Do your books normally go, like in your writing process, do they go from, you finish the first draft to your agent? Is that how you typically do your book and your agent gets back to you with how they feel about it?

Amanda: Um, well this one had, had been developed with a different agent and had gone through multiple drafts, so I’ve sort of told you what happened there. So now Joanna and I are working on my next book and, um, again, just to kind of like speak to her incredible generosity. I said, I’ve got a hundred pages of my next book.

And she said, send them over. And again, she read them really quickly, came back, said. I love this. Keep going. Which is exactly what I wanted to hear. Um, I don’t normally work like that. I normally would never share. I just want, how, how about you? Do you share stuff when it’s still kind of form forming?

Mark: No draft. Not even the first draft, the second draft. I, I need to go through the whole thing again

Amanda: yeah,

Mark: set up anything that I did and yeah, definitely

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: yeah.

Amanda: Yeah. I think that’s a very sound approach. Um, the only reason I did it with the next one is it’s even more out there. And I just wanted to make sure that more kind of as a concept than anything else, that she was happy with it. But she was incredibly generous and she really liked it. So that was great ’cause it’s like, brilliant, I’m gonna keep going. And that was quite a few months ago because as you know, it takes ages, doesn’t it, to, to kind of, um, finish your first draft. And now I’m going through a second draft and I will not share, um, until that second draft is done. Um, but yeah, it was just nice to get that endorsement at that stage. Like yeah, just, I I love this. Write this. Keep going.

Mark: Mean a, yeah, see that there’s both The fear for me, there’s like both the fear of, of sending it and then someone like being like, ah, and then like the whole story dies for you, even though it could have been really good and that they read the one section that

Amanda: yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s really hard to judge. But, um, I suppose I just like trusted her to the to, to be honest, but also to be, to be very kind. She’s a really kind person, so I was able to do that with her. Um, and she also shared it with somebody else at the agency who also said how much they love it. So fingers crossed, you know what publishing’s like, there’s no, there’s no guarantees, but we’ll see. We all like it at the moment.

Mark: Great. Is that another speculative thriller that we can look forward to? Okay.

Amanda: oh it is. Yeah.

Mark: So as we wrap up a bit,

Amanda: Um,

Mark: someone who just published their first or second book?

Amanda: what advice would I give? Um, I would first of all say congratulate yourself because it is an incredible achievement, first and foremost. So I would say just give yourself a pat on the back and also look back down the road because it’s so easy. Um, I think when you are an author to always be thinking of the next thing.

I need to do this. I need to do another book. I need to get another deal. I need to, I need to get a best seller. I need to get the TVs. All of these things, you know, whatever you’ve had you want again, or you want more, you want better, or you wanna keep going and it’s it. Really important to look back. I’m not saying I’m good at this myself, but I would definitely give that advice to say, look how far you’ve come.

Look, what you’ve achieved is amazing what you’ve done. So many people want to write a book and don’t write the book in the first place.

A lot of people write a book and it doesn’t get published, or they don’t do the work to get those drafts into shape, or they don’t take the notes or whatever it is.

You’ve done all of that and it’s been published and people have read it. It’s just phenomenal. And then I would say, keep going because you know if it’s worth it to you personally and you enjoy the writing, because that’s the main thing that you need to do is enjoy the writing. That’s all we have control over.

Then keep going and and do more because you are validated. You are. You are a great writer. You’ve been published.

Mark: Yeah, I love that advice. Congratulate yourself. Do you find yourself doing that? Do you find yourself stopping? I have had a hard time, like you said, because it gets so busy. Like, I’ve done the book, okay, now it’s gotta go to the editor. Now it comes back to me. Now

it’s gotta go here. Now I gotta prepare marketing. And now

Amanda: mm

Yeah.

Mark: That I forget to look back and see it as an accomplishment. I love,

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: yourself. Do you find

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: Do you do that for yourself?

Amanda: No, but I’m really fortunate because I work as a coach at the novelty. I dunno if you’ve come across the novelty at all. Um, it’s a writing school, um, and I constantly get that from people that I coach who are like, you are amazing. You’ve been published, blah, blah. So I’m really fortunate that I get that feedback from people who look at what I’ve achieved and remind me of that, which is really lucky because I’m terrible at doing that.

I am so bad. I’m so dramatic. I’m so, like, I’m never gonna have another book published, and if I am, everyone will hate it, and all of those things. So I am terrible at taking my own advice on that.

Mark: Yeah. I guess, I guess that’s the, that’s the thing. Readers, hearing readers that love our books, and that’s a, a very powerful thing. Yeah.

Amanda: Very, yeah. So grateful to people who review and read and share, you know, bloggers and book reviewers who share on Instagram. I always thank them and I always, you know, if I find it, I will always share it because, um, it makes such a difference and it’s so appreciated.

Mark: Yeah,

I don’t know if readers know. I certainly do now, but I don’t know. When I was reading before that I knew how, I didn’t really understand how powerful that is, and I think some people who are friends that have become like readers of mine, it’s the same where they didn’t realize how powerful it was

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: And to say something nice. Just to be like, I love this book. That means the world. Even if

Amanda: Oh yeah.

Mark: second comment

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: it’s like it’s, I could, I could be set for the day with energy on something so

Amanda: Oh yeah, yeah, exactly that. Yeah. And I do read my reviews. I dunno about you. Good, bad, ugly. I read them all. Um, I had, I had, I had one reviewer who um, absolutely adored their pink hole punch and absolutely hated my book. So the pink hole punch got five stars and I got one.

Mark: Wow.

Amanda: So there we go.

Mark: I guess that’s another part of it is that. We know that not everyone’s gonna love our books for whatever reason, and not to take it personally, and which might be another piece of advice for writers that we

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: It personally because someone may just not connect with the characters that we write. And that’s just

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: life experiences, were not anywhere near these characters or whatever it might be.

Amanda: absolutely. I mean, you know, you might have someone who recommends a book to you and for you, it just doesn’t work. And it doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with the book. It’s because you’ve come at it at the wrong moment, or it’s just kind of not what you need to, to be reading right now. It’s just not connecting with you for some reason.

It’s often, I think, more to do with us and the timing. You know, we might pick up a book years later and, oh gosh, why did I not read this? I love it now. Um, it is hard, I think, not to take it personally and it’s of course it’s much nicer to get the lovely reviews than the ones that, oh no, this is a bit more.

But, um, yeah, I think definitely, um, you know, you’ve published, um. Multiple times as well. I think, you know, it get, it gets, does get easier. I think you develop a bit of a, a muscle that kind of like shakes it off and you’re like, okay, move along. Somebody didn’t like Pride and Prejudice, somebody didn’t like Cloud Atlas, somebody didn’t like all of these amazing books.

That’s fine.

Mark: Yeah, question from Jon Lindstrom, who was the last guest on the show,

Amanda: Oh,

amazing.

Mark: Payback.

Amanda: Fantastic.

Mark: What made you want to spend all this time with this group of people and characters?

Amanda: Oh, that’s such a good question. Thank you. Well, they’re quite a disparate group of characters. Um, they’re, I hope that people like them, but they may not, they may not like them. Um, I love. One character in particular that I spent time with, which was Zoe, because Zoe is, she’s kind of the, the freebie on the destination travel to the alp.

She’s got a a, a place, a scholarship. So she’s gone along for free and she wears like fluffy jumpers with penguins on and cowboy boots. And she says exactly whatever is in her head, she has no filter. And I loved writing her because you know, in life you can’t be like that. You have to be nice, you have to be a good person.

And Zoe, she just doesn’t give a down. She just says whatever she wants to say. So I loved writing her. She was a really good fan and I kind of liked that. Um, my characters came from lots of different places. So there’s a New Yorker, um, and I actually adore New York, so I really liked writing him. And I sort of imagined him in New York what kind of person he would be.

Um, yeah, so it was good fun to spend time with them. Yeah.

Mark: Awesome. Where can listeners find your book?

Amanda: Um, so the audio is currently, I think, being done. Um, so they, um, they sent me the person who’s doing it and she’s amazing. And it will be, I believe, available at all good audio outlets. So that will be coming along, I think at the same time as the publication of the hardback and the paperback and the ebook,

Mark: And if people wanna hear more about you or find more about you, social media follow you, where can they find you?

Amanda: so they can find me on Instagram. Um, Amanda Reynolds. Amanda Reynolds. JI forget, I’m rubbish at social media, but I am there. I am on Instagram. I am also occasionally on X, although that’s not what it was. Um, and I am on Facebook, so if you look up Amanda Reynolds or you look up Amanda West, you should be able to find me on social media.

And what I am good at doing is interacting with people. So if you find me, I will always kind of respond ’cause I love that.

Mark: Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you so much. This is, that’s the end of our regular show, so thank you so much for,

Amanda: Thank you, mark.

Mark: here. And we’re gonna jump into the spoiler section. So for those who do not want the book spoiled, go out, get the book, read the book, and then come back and listen to the end.

’cause we are headed for spoilers. So you have been warned. So when you wrote the dual point of view structure, was the reveal always gonna be the destination or did it emerge through during the writing process?

Amanda: Um, that is a great question and I’m trying to cast my mind back to where it came because as I said, I am a discovery writer, so I know there wouldn’t have been a great plan in place because that is just not the way I do things. I’m a bit kind of like, I’ve got my, um, you know, my pad next to me and I’ll scribble a few things and that will be the extent of it.

And the rest of it is in the muddle of my brain, which is why I’m such a terrible insomnia. ’cause I’m trying to hold so much information in my head. I think that I. Knew that there was gonna be a twist. I love a twist, you know, I’m old school on that. There will always be some kind of a twist. There will be a twist in the middle, and there will always be another one at the end in my books, pretty much.

Um, and it sort of came to me partway through that. Um, and this is a massive spoilers, so read the book first.

It, it came to me that what if they are the same person? And I loved that idea. So I then started to bring that, um, together through the two points of view. And interestingly, although I had already written both women kind of as separate entities, I was okay with that because I knew that tash was a different person than Lydia was because Lydia had been so changed by the trauma that she went through. So what Wade did to her, what the mountain did to her, what the accident that she went through did to her, and the fact that she was robbed of all of her memories prior to going to the mountain, and even the reason why she went to the mountain and the trauma that she believes happened to her on the mountain, all of those things absolutely changed her into a different person and she would never be the same.

Even when we get to the point where we understand that Lydia is Tash and Tash is Lydia, and then the point of view changes to be Tash when the truth comes out and only Tash, there is still the element of Tash being the Lydia version now of Tash. So if that makes sense, it kind of grew organically from that.

Mark: Okay. So was the, was the ending always the plan ending?

Amanda: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It wasn’t a plan. No, I, I did know, first of all, no baby or dog or any other animal will ever be harmed in any of my books, so that is another big spoiler. But that is always true. You can read my books with impunity knowing that that will not ever happen. So I wanted to implant, kind of threatened worry, but ultimately things were gonna be okay things.

Well, they’re not all okay. There’s quite a lot. That’s not okay, but there’s, there’s a lot for, for Lydia um slash Tash that will come out okay. In the end when the truth comes out. Although obviously she’s devastated by the betrayal.

Mark: So I just wanna come back to Wade for a second because at the end of the book we realize he’s more of a mad scientist who did very bad, manipulative things to a lot of people.

Amanda: Yes.

Mark: It like, what was it like writing him, or how did you build him in order to, I would imagine you’re almost have like an icky feeling where you’re writing these scenes he’s almost like, you don’t hate him ’cause he hasn’t really done anything wrong until we know the truth. So like throughout the book, we’re almost. I mean, I don’t know if I’d say I liked him, but I was just like, okay, I get it.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Just a passionate person trying to do this thing.

Amanda: mm

Mark: to write, knowing that he was actually like a real bastard in the end?

Amanda: It’s a complete psycho that, uh, yeah. Um, no, I loved it. I loved it. I, I sort of had in my head, have you watched Maniac with Justin Thru?

Mark: No.

Amanda: Okay. It’s, it’s quite old now, but, um, maniac has got Jonah Hill and Emma Stone and Justin Thru. And Justin Thru is Wade to me. That’s who Wade is. Um, and he has the singularity of purpose that I think makes its own logic in his head.

So when he comes to the point of exposure at the end and he’s justifying himself, he totally believes still in everything that he’s done and why he’s done it. He still thinks that the end justifies the means, which it clearly does not. But for him, that’s fine. You know, the greater good, that’s how he sees it.

So I think when you unlock the logic that drives the character, the motivation for that, you can absolutely write ’em on point because then it’s like, well that just makes sense, total sense to him. He did that because ultimately, he thinks it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t have any compunction about it at all.

Mark: Yeah. That’s, I guess that’s kind of the scariest kind of villain that, that you can write one who just completely believes in what

Amanda: yeah,

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah,

Mark: believes in it, and it’s just like all Okay. No.

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: in that sense. Yeah.

Amanda: Absolutely. Yeah.

Mark: Do you have any thoughts, because you kind of wrote that vir virtual reality and you have, like you mentioned earlier, the push and pull. Do you have thoughts the push and pull of, of good versus bad in the virtual AI environment? Do you have any thoughts like virtual reality and, mental illness and,

Amanda: Um.

Mark: and because we see at the end how it was pretty much used bad with the potential for good. I’m just curious if you were touching on something there.

Amanda: A little bit. I think we’ve all, we all have, well, I don’t wanna speak for everybody, but I, and a lot of people I know have a certain amount of fear about what’s coming. I always thought that my, the big thing in my generation would be the internet. I always thought, well, we weren’t best. That, you know, that’s such a massive change in our lives.

You know, when I was my kid’s age, um, I didn’t have a mobile phone. And now everybody has a mobile phone. And I thought that’s gonna be the big thing in our lifetime, you know, that and maybe we won’t have to do ironing anymore. That was what I thought. And, um, that’s my predictions. And um, and of course then AI comes along and AI is a construct.

It’s not a real thing. It’s always been around. It’s just that it’s grown and we’ve started calling it ai, but computer, um, kind of sentient, um, learning is, is, has always been around for probably five, six decades now. It’s just that it’s so good now that it’s starting to impact everything. So I think I want to, um, just touch on that.

I don’t think as an author we should ever, um, answer the questions. We should just open up the debate. So I want to be able to think about.

Mark: Oh

Amanda: It’s nuanced. There’s, there’s, there’s good that’s gonna come out of this. We don’t have to be completely negative about it. And also there’s obviously potential as in any kind of development, um, for it to be used for evil as well.

So it’s, it’s all about, um, going into things with our eyes open and being careful, but at the same time embracing the things that it will massively help. And one of those health, which is what I talk about in the book, you know, the opportunities for, um, massive leaps in healthcare are gonna be there as well. So there’s, there’s both sides of that.

Mark: yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah. My last question, what’s one question you would like me to ask the next author Who comes on the show? And my next guest is Ava Roberts, who wrote The Summer House Murder. It’s about three sisters on vacation at their family’s lake home, which turns into a nightmare when a body’s discovered in the lake forcing their buried secrets in to the surface.

Amanda: Oh, that sounds really good. That sounds very up. Mystery. Okay, so I would like to ask Ava, does she have sisters and why did she decide to write a book about sisters? What was it that fascinated her about sisters? And I ask this as an only child because I often invent siblings because I don’t have any. So I’m fascinated by that too.

So, yeah.

Mark: question. I love it. I can’t wait to hear her answer. Thank you. So if you don’t have, if you have a few more minutes to stick around for the after show rapid fire questions, I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. This has been, this has been amazing.

Thank you

Amanda: Thank you. Thanks, mark.

Mark: Amanda Reynolds. Everyone writing under Amanda West, the Memory Foundation. Go out and read it if you haven’t already, which you should have if you’re at this point in the podcast. ’cause it’s been spoiled. Thank you for listening and watching. Have a wonderful day.

Amanda: Thank you.

Jon: It’s like one of those few moments where you can just be yourself without, you know, nobody’s watching you, you’re not performing for anybody at its very best. You’re not even really writing, you’re just trying to keep up with your fingers because something’s coming through you and you’re trying to get it down fast enough so that you don’t forget it.

Mark: Welcome to the Thriller Writer Lab, where every thriller goes under the microscope, one book at a time. I’m your host, Mark Nadeau, and this is where best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors share their craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories. If you’re looking at your podcast feed right now and wondering if you clicked the wrong button, do not panic.

You are in the right place. We were the Thriller Pitch Podcast, but as this show has grown, we found ourselves going deeper and deeper into the actual mechanics of storytelling. We aren’t just pitching books here anymore, we are dissecting them. So we’ve updated the show to match the mission.

Welcome to the lab

Joining me today is actor, filmmaker, bestselling author, Jon Lindstrom, author of the Crime Thriller Hollywood Payback. Jon, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Jon: Thank you very much for having me. This, uh, you’ve got a good format going on here, man. I’m glad to be a part of it.

Mark: Thank you. And here is your book, I’m throwing, showing it to the camera, Hollywood Payback for those

Jon: I have the hard cover.

Mark: nice.

Jon: Well, I know people.

Mark: So let’s get into the pitch. Pitch me your upcoming book, Hollywood Payback.

Jon: Well, Hollywood payback is the follow up to my book Hollywood Hustle, which came out about two years ago um, that one focused on a, on on an over the hill actor who, uh whose life blows up right when it shouldn’t. Hollywood payback. I like to think of as kind of the anti Hollywood hustle. Have you seen the movie Jake Kelly?

Mark: I’m not sure.

Jon: Well, it’s with George Clooney who plays an actor, you know, kind of getting to the, not the twilight of his career, but things are the slowing down a little bit. But there’s another character in the movie played by Billy Crudup, who is his friend from acting class, who never got anywhere. And my main character in Hollywood payback, Jake Ferguson, was in the acting class with the guy from the first book named Winston Green. Jake was frankly modeled on several people that I knew in my early days in Hollywood who eventually cracked and broke spiritually and emotionally. Um, just because trying to break into Hollywood and not getting anywhere really takes a toll on someone, especially if they want it that badly. And uh, so that’s, that’s the premise for the book. He falls off the rails, does some very stupid things, makes some very bad choices, and ends up going to prison. That’s one timeline of the book and that’s told, juxtaposed with the contemporary story of the book, which picks up right when he gets out of prison and sets out to try and redeem himself and find some sort of deliverance for all the harm and hurt that he caused all those years before

Things don’t go quite as planned.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Understatement.

Jon: Yeah. Of the year. Right.

Mark: Yeah. Very good. Thank you. In the opening to this book, there’s a dedication that says to all those friends who never hesitate to help. I’m curious with this book, what that meant to you with the people that helped build this book, if that’s what it was referring to.

Jon: Well, you know, if you read the acknowledgements, uh, it’s all right there. But I was also talking about the broader sense. Um, one, I one thing I realized when I was writing this book, and I, well, I, I think I was aware of it, but, but I became a acutely aware, is that by the time I was 30 years old, I was the only one who was still even around from my earliest days.

No one from my acting classes or early theater productions and in and around Hollywood, uh, they had all given up. They’d all moved on to other lives, couple of guys, and I would say moved on to absolutely wrong lives. But, um, I also realized that the friends that I’ve had, I’ve had virtually my entire life. And there’s a few friends that I have that I made since I moved to LA from the Pacific Northwest, uh, that I also consider very, very tight friends.

But man, it’s a small group, and those folks will step up for me and I for them, anytime they ask, they could call me at four o’clock in the morning and I’ll be there. Now, when you read the acknowledgements of the book, I say that because what I found in the writer’s community, and somebody told me this many years ago, and I, I was reluctant to believe it, but a, a friend of mine named Lynn Marie Latham, who’s also mentioned in the acknowledgements, she was a television showrunner for many years, created I think 12 different TV series.

A really good friend and she always said to me, Jon, she’s from Texas. Jon writers are the most helpful of any of the creative arts. They are there whenever you need them. I said, yeah, having been an actor for a long time and I’m like, sure they do. Uhhuh. I know how this goes. Well, she has proven me wrong and herself right more times than I can count. And when I have turned to another writer for advice, for research, for anything, they are without question the fastest to help of any of the creative arts. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because we spent so much time alone in a room and we’re happy just for some interaction. I don’t know, but. But, uh, you take, uh, James Lato, fantastic writer, lives in Sacramento, was a lifelong penologist and since I was writing a book about a, an ex-con, he was there with more information than I knew what to do with. And he didn’t have to do that but he knew I wanted to get it right, and he also wanted to help me write a better book. So that’s what I’m talking about when I say to all those friends who never hesitate to help.

Mark: Yeah. It is a wonderful community. It really is.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I’ve found my tribe finally.

Mark: So that brings me to why novels, you’ve had a successful acting career, filmmaking now novels. I’m overwhelmed thinking about what your schedule might look like.

Jon: Yeah. My best friend, um, who I wrote my first screenplay with, uh, an actor named Tom Shaley I saw him a few weeks ago in la I’m in Atlanta right now working, but, uh, I saw him in LA a few weeks ago and he said, you know, Jon, I’m feeling very unproductive compared to you right now.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: Um, oh gosh. Uh, why novels? I had been through the whole, I’d been through everything else and it was kind of a natural progression for me. It seemed like the next logical step. However, it was a step I had always wanted to take ever since discovering, uh, Ray Bradberry when I was a kid, and Ian Fleming when I was a kid.

In fact, I should show you, um, I just read that article about how, how the, uh, pocket paperbacks are going away, that they’re not going to exist anymore. And I couldn’t help but think of my. My collection of James Bond paperbacks, that’s all of Ian Fleming’s, Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, including the James Bond dossier, written by Kingsley Amos. Um, it’s one of my prize possessions and those are all gonna disappear now. But to your question, being in Hollywood and being an actor, you tend to sit around a lot. And if you’re not careful, you can kind of atrophy creatively speaking.

Um, and I tried a lot of things, you know, I was a drummer and we’ve had a band for a while, which is made up of a bunch of unemployed actors. Um, funny thing is we got signed and actually cut a record and had a couple of hits.

Mark: Wow. Congratulations.

Jon: Yeah. Nobody saw that one coming, but, but, um, like a lot of other actors and storytellers. I started to write screenplays and, uh, partly because I really wanted to break down what it is I did for a living already. Um, but the best way to do that is the same way you write a book, write a movie that you wanna see. So my friend Tom and I wrote a script called The Hard Easy, what Do You Know? It got made. So I suddenly, I was in the movie business, um, that led on to writing more scripts, TV ideas. You find yourself in an awful lot of development meetings or at major talent agencies in these big conference rooms with these huge tables, and there’s all these people around it, and they’re all peppering you with ideas and questions, and you realize this has nothing to do with the movie I wrote. And so you get a little tired of it.

Um, and you end up kind of banging your head against the wall, just like you do as an actor when you’re trying to break in. Trying to break in as a screenwriter or as a director is really, really difficult. So I did make some headway. I did direct, uh, a script that I, uh, co-wrote with a couple of guys called How We Got Away With It, did it Independently, got it out, it did fine, did quite well at the festivals and won some awards. But ultimately it was a fairly unsatisfying experience. Uh, and I love directing. I absolutely love directing. Uh, it’s, it’s telling stories visually and composing shots and creating sequences, working with actors, which I turns out I’m pretty good at. Um, uh, it’s, it’s a wonderful experience, but at the end of the day, there’s so much pushing the boulder uphill. By yourself often that, uh, the payoff can be kind of just ungratifying. So I had this strange turn when not too terribly long before the pandemic, maybe three or four years, uh, I suddenly had an opportunity to try narrating audio books.

Mark: Oh,

Jon: it was through a, a gentleman named Dan Musselman, who’s become a friend.

He’s now retired, but Dan was running the Penguin Random House Audio Studios out in Woodland Hills, California. So I started making the drive out there to record the occasional book. Then the pandemic hit. Audio books kind of got me through the pandemics, I’ll tell you that, you know? Yeah. I had to build a studio in my home, you know, which means you’re in the closet with a bunch of

Mark: Yeah, that’s right.

Jon: You hang a drape over the door so the sound doesn’t bounce, you know? Yeah. That’s, that’s recording audio books now. So, but the, there, it, I had two great benefits from that one, narrating a book instead of just reading. It brought me that much closer to how a book is constructed

Mark: Okay.

Jon: To how the writer wrote it. Now, I had already been kind of going down that path, and that’s why I say this was kind of a natural progression. Each step building on the, on the one before it being an actor, learning to write scripts, learning to make films, narrating audio books. Suddenly I was there narrating and some really good writers like Don Winslow, Blake Crouch, uh, Alex Finlay, I mean these are all New York Times bestseller guys.

Mark: Yeah, I know them all. Yeah.

Jon: yeah, yeah, they’re, these guys are good. And uh, I also read some not so good books, you know, and I did have a moment there in the booth out there in Woodland Hills where I was looking down at the iPad and I’m reading the line and I just went, oh, I think I really could do better than this. You know, it’s not true of all of ’em. That was only a few.

But, um, I, uh, I got inspired and I started to write and I had nothing in mind. I just sat down early one morning on a blank screen and started to type away and it became my first book, Hollywood Hustle. But I was probably. Two thirds of the way through and I realized, you know what, those guys, Winslow, Finlay, Crouch, they were the ones that really kind of inspired me to finally take that leap. And so they all have websites. I wrote to them all. I am still waiting to hear from Winslow, though he does follow me on Twitter. I can’t call it that other name.

Mark: Okay,

Jon: But Blake wrote me back and Alex wrote me back in five minutes, and we’ve since become very good friends. But it was Alex Finlay who really gave me the lowdown. Jon, if you’re serious, this is what you have to do. You have to put yourself in the chair every day. You have to do something every day, even if it’s just research. But if you’re gonna be a writer, a novelist, this is how you have to go about it. He also advised me on the book conferences, which I knew nothing about. I had never heard Voucher Con or Thriller Fest, or Left Coast Crime, or you know, any of those things. And he’s the one who said, you know, look, you should go to Thriller Fest. It’s the biggest of its kind. It’s all about the writers, and they also have all these other programs around it for people who are looking to get published. Now, I go to Thriller Fest and I meet all these authors, some of whom recognize me. You know, I do have that in my corner, you know, I’m on television. So, um, some of them recognize me, which really surprised me. I’m gonna get to the end of this story soon. Um, but I, I do recall being surprised not when, uh, the female novelists would recognize me.

I kind of expect that from just doing daytime dramas. But when the men would come up to me and say, Hey man, I watch you all the time. Okay. I normally don’t get guys coming up willing to admit that they’re watching a soap opera, but why do you watch? Because now I’m curious and um, oh God. It was Reed Ferrell Coleman who said to me, because I like the way the stories interact and intersect with each other, and I went, ah, maybe I know a little more about that than I realized. ’cause I’ve been doing this for a while.

So anyway, so I go to Thriller Fest, I went to Kraft Fest and I took masterclass every, I signed up for everything. I even went to the banquet and I had no business being there. But I signed up for Pitch Fest and did my research and took the Virtual Practice Pitch Fest sessions where I got coached on how to pitch for a novel. Luckily, I’ve pitched a lot of screenplay, so I already kind of knew how to do this, but through that process, I found my agent, the incredible Liza Fleisig out of New York at the Liza Royce Agency. She worked with me as I finished the book. I hadn’t even completely finished the edit on it yet. Um, and we did another edit on it and she submitted it and I had a publishing deal within a few months.

Mark: Wow,

Jon: So

Mark: there you.

Jon: All of that to say that process was very clean, all of it was very clean. And I realized why I wanted to do that because I was pretty tired of all the people with all the ideas and all the, the questions and the suggestions that had nothing to do with the script when it came to doing the books first it’s just you. Only you writing that book and when it gets to the point where it can go out in the world through a publisher, through your agent, I never had anybody say, change it or else change it. If you don’t change it, we’re not gonna make it.

And I’ve heard that a lot, this kind of ultimatum way of doing business in publishing it’s never been like that. It’s only been I have an idea and if you don’t like it, you can just say so and don’t do it. It’s your book. But when I heard these ideas, they were always so well supported and so well thought out, I followed their advice and I would make the change to help them do their job because I realized these are professionals.

Let the pros do what they do. And I would suggest that to anybody. Now, if I had 50 books under my belt and they were all bestsellers, I’d probably say, nobody’s telling me how to change my, you know, but I was very new and I wanted to learn, so I was happy to take the suggestions.

Mark: That’s awesome. Well, congratulations. I

Jon: kind of the, yeah, thank you. It’s kind of the long way around the barn. I know, but it’s not a simple answer.

Mark: yeah. Well, it speaks to if there weren’t a lot of big changes and things, I mean, it just speaks to the quality of the books that have come out. It became a best seller when it came out

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I, I’ve had a lot of great support, um, but I also love writing. I absolutely love the process of writing books and, um, and I hope that comes through. I really hope that does, because I know that as an actor or even as a filmmaker, but especially as an actor, if you love what you’re doing in the moment, people do pick up on it.

It translates through to the audience somehow. And I, I would like to think that that is the same for a reader, that they can tell this person had a lot of fun writing this and now is passing on that fun to me. You know? And that’s our kind of collective enjoyment.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So what, speaking of ideas then, where did Hollywood payback idea come from? What sparked the story for this book?

Jon: I, you know, well, I mean, Hollywood Hustle was definitely inspired by, uh, a lot of people that I had known and come across, maybe not known well, but you know, I can say specifically the career and life arcs of people like Tom Sizemore or Michael Matson, you know. You know, they passed on so we can talk about it. Um, but they, they there, those, they were brilliant guys who shot up like a rocket and then they kind of crashed and then by the end of their career they were just kind of stable. And that’s the career and life arc of the main character and hustle, winston Green. Like I said, Jake Ferguson was in class with Winston Green and he’s the guy who didn’t get anywhere. For every one of those Tom Sizemore that I’ve met, for every one of the, the Colin Farrells that I’ve worked with, there’s probably 20 to 50 of the guys that I’ve come across who are no longer around. I mean, the attrition rate in showbiz is absolutely astronomical. And I thought. There’s a story there. I mean, we all, we all, you know, we all talk about the successes.

That’s easy. They’re right in front of us. You know, it’s easy to notice the Tom Hanks of the world. It’s not so easy to notice the guy who wanted to be Tom Hanks and never got past a couple of one-liners. Now, maybe they didn’t have any talent, but I knew a lot of guys who had a lot of talent and just didn’t have the psychological makeup that is required to be a Tom Hanks, a Colin Farrell, a a Meryl Streep. You know, those folks are able to function in a very, very bright light. And even in the audition process when you’re just walking into offices and there’s, you know, maybe two people, maybe seven or eight or nine in there waiting for you, that is a bright light in and of itself. And I just thought, you know what, these guys, these guys have a story and it has value as well. And I think, I don’t know, maybe I just write these books to pull back the curtain.

Um, because I know still, I, you know, even with social media and everybody documenting every me minute of their lives, it’s never really quite authentic. You know, it’s an act still. You notice when the, when the lighting’s really good. Oh, here I am. Just waking up in the morning. No, they’re not. No, but I just felt like they’re are, there’s, there’s a million stories in the naked city and you know, the guys who inspired this book are one of them, is one of them. And it was worth telling to me, you know? Um. I don’t know, maybe it was just time to, maybe it was just time to start, uh, reviewing my life. You know, I, I will say my editor at Crooked Lane Books, uh, Jess Verde, um, she read the first draft or the first, you know, I, I guess third or fourth draft, ’cause I went through it a few times. But she was amazing at finding every single pothole that needed to be filled. And one of them, the biggest one was Jon, you’re kind of glossing over Jake’s decision to give up on showbiz and therefore himself.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: I think you need to dig deeper. And so I was down here in Atlanta. I had a week off coming up, so I, I booked a hotel room in Savannah and I drove over there and locked myself in a hotel room with a view of the river for five days.

Really didn’t do much, but Savannah’s a lovely town though, if you ever get there, it’s really beautiful. Um, and I started finding all those reasons why I would’ve given up and I started reviewing those humiliating experiences that I had and applying them to Jake Ferguson story. By the time I was done, I remember just being so angry. So this, this old moldy anger was still hanging inside of me. And now I really don’t have it. So if there’s any truth to the idea that writing can be cathartic, you know, maybe I’m a really good example of that because I bear no ill will towards any of those people anymore. I just wonder if they’ll recognize themselves.

Mark: Yeah. The book, it opens with a very strong image of la including the depiction of the Holly Shrub, which is not a tree, a shrub, how beautiful it is, and seen as good luck yet the berries that grow from it are poison. Why start with that imagery?

Jon: Well, you know, even, even on its surface of the sunshine and the palm trees and the beach and the hills and still being the only place, and I’ve done it where you can go skiing in the morning and surfing in the afternoon. I actually did that a couple times. Um. It, it does hide a very dark, uh, criminal element, if you would, or even a criminal propensity. And I think that exists because along with a, the sunshine it, it, it la and Hollywood specifically as a kind of state of mind is a place of spectacular potential and possibility. And the thing is, when you step into it, you find that it attracts all kinds. You know, we say moth to a flame probably too much, but there’s a reason people like why you don’t see Tom Hanks just kind of walking down the street. You know, these folks really need to protect themselves from those moths and insects and snakes that are always trying to get close to them. For no other reason. If they’re not trying to get money, they’re trying to get something. Um, I feel that the Holly was just a good metaphor, um, one because it, it is the name of the place, but because you look at it and you go, wow, that’s so pretty, especially at the holidays. But if you do reach into it, if you reach too far or don’t know what you’re doing, you’re gonna get cut. You’re gonna bleed and it’s gonna hurt. So I, I guess I say that as a bit of a cautionary tale. Um, you know, it’s just, you know, Los Angeles is an amazing city, don’t get me wrong. It is full of an incredible history. Despite our propensity for wiping out history along the way, it has an incredible history there that’s still kind of palpable and uh, but it just, it hides something underneath what everybody wants, that, that unbridled ambition of the people that come there. Um, that really is a bit of a snake pit, you know? I’m sorry to say, you know, and those friends that I was talking about, they all live there. I still live there, you know, but I know how to move there now. It took me a while.

Mark: Well, it was, it was an excellent foreshadowing for the book as an image, and I wasn’t, of course, when I started reading it, I wasn’t sure how it would tie in, but it, it really tied in beautifully to

just the

Jon: have to say too, I, I did steal the idea a little bit. Um, SA Cosby is, and I has become kind of friendly. I’ve met him at the conferences and, and he and his wife actually watched the show that I’m on right now beyond the gates, and I think Sean is, I, I just think he’s the best crime writer in America right now.

I just think

Mark: he is.

Jon: Killing it, you know? Yeah.

Mark: It’s brilliant. Yeah.

Jon: Brilliant. Yeah. Um, but I read, um, oh God, I wanna say, I think it was all the Sinners Bleed, and he had this wonderful forward about the place that, where the book took place. And I thought, God, that’s a great way to open a book. Wonder if I can do that with Hollywood. I wonder if I can do that for my next Hollywood book. And that’s actually where I started. Was that was that prologue? Yeah.

Mark: Okay,

cool.

Jon: a forward really is what it is. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah,

Jon: Yeah.

Well, I’m glad I, I’m so happy to hear that it worked for it.

Mark: Oh, it did, yeah. Yeah. Even throughout the book though, you really bring LA to life in all its glory and not so much glory. What was that? What was that research like? Like how much research did you have to put into the the place and bringing this to life, or is this all just memory? You just knew, well, if you go here, these are the kinds of people and things that are gonna happen and when you go travel this part of la these are gonna happen.

Jon: Well, I think, um, you know, no, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of research. Um, at the time I wrote it, I was, I was in LA when I did the first draft, so, and I was, I, I was living kind of between, uh, Hollywood and downtown LA and my gym happens to be in downtown Los Angeles, so I was making a lot of trips to downtown and I would kind of wander around down there and it just kind of, it was in my mind.

So I thought, you know, nobody writes about this. Everybody wants to ride around the beach or, you know, Malibu or Beverly Hills, or you know, something. It’s one of the reasons I chose Wrightwood for Hollywood Hustle. Nobody goes to Wrightwood, nobody even knows where it is. You know, I could have said I the wild, you know, but, you know, ’cause people have heard of that, but I didn’t want do that.

So the only research, I mean hard research that I did, um, is that there’s a robbery in the, you know, about halfway through the book, kind of a big set piece of this big robbery. And, uh, it was based on, it was inspired by a huge robbery that took place, I think just in 2023. I mean, it was very recent in, in, out in the valley, uh, what I call Sylmar area. And I thought, wow, I think I’ll drive out there and take a look around. And I was amazed, nobody, they, they’d been robbed of like literally $30 million in cash. And I’m driving around the place like I’m casing it and nobody’s coming out to talk to me. You know, it’s like no wonder that got hit, but by driving around and taking a look at it and then researching the area and the infrastructure and the subterranean built, uh, the way the, the whole subterranean uh, structure of drainage and all of that is built in Los Angeles, I was able to come up with a way to pull off this robbery.

Mark: Yeah. Okay.

Jon: So, so I mean, you know, the rest of it, yeah, a lot of it is memory. Um, and a lot of it is just, I, I don’t know, I would say experiential, you know, I’ve just been there a long time, so it’s kind of easy for me to describe some of the things.

Mark: What do you find the hardest to do? Like when you look at acting screenwriting and writing a novel, which do you find like writing a novel is actually easier for you creatively than the other two skills that you’ve court mastered already?

Jon: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Um. I, I think there’s probably a multitude of reasons why, but you know, acting is just hard. It’s very hard to, to, to master. Um, uh, I suppose it’s easier for some, but it, it was hard for me. Uh, screenwriting is just, it’s very, it’s very technical. You know, you can find some places where you can, you can get across some very heartfelt things, but honestly, those things happen on set. You know, those moments go through the lens of the camera. They don’t necessarily happen on the page of the screenplay. Having said that, I, you know, I’ve read some really great screenplays that we just go, wow, I really understand this character. I really feel this place that they’re trying to evoke in it. And so I’ve had some practice with that. But you’re always aware of all these kind of moving parts that have to happen. You know, when you’re writing a book, boy, I’ll tell you, it’s like, it’s like the, it’s like one of those few moments where you can just be yourself without, you know, nobody’s watching you, you’re not performing for anybody at its very best. You’re not even really writing, you’re just trying to keep up with your fingers because something’s coming through you and you’re trying to get it down fast enough so that you don’t forget it. Which unfortunately that happens sometimes. Um, usually it comes back. But I mean, yeah, in a nutshell, uh, I think it is about the easiest thing, but it’s part of it is only easy because I’ve been around, you know, literature my whole life. You know, even if people don’t want to, uh define acting this way it is at its core, a literary profession. It’s all built on words. Certainly screenplays are as well. Um, but boy, I’ll tell you, just doing the novels, and I have to say it probably is because of just my background, my path to it, but it is the easiest of them all. I would happily give up everything else just to do this.

Mark: When you’re writing this book, having been in film and knowing all these actors do, is there, does it play like a movie as you’re writing it? And if so, have you cast Jake and the characters from people that you’ve met in real life?

Jon: Um, I to answer your. First part of the question, you know, yes, I, I do see it kind of cinematically. When I’m describing something I see it out in front of me as if I’m, uh, as if it’s on a screen. Um, and that might just be because I, ’cause I’m such a movie nut and I really am a movie nut. Um, I, I watch something every night. I watch either a movie or I watch, uh, the best TV that I can find. I mean, last night I revisited, uh, the Long Good Friday, the Great Bob Hoskins, uh, Jon McKenzie film from 1980 with Helen Marin in one of her earliest starring roles. Uh, to me, and I love The Godfather, I think it’s one of the greatest films ever made, but to me, the Long Good Friday might be the best gangster movie ever made. And if you don’t believe me.

Go

Mark: Go

Jon: It’s on the cri, it’s on the Criterion Channel right now. So, um, um, uh, so yes, I, I, I write visually I see what’s happening right down to the, the physical altercations that happen. I see it as if I were watching it happen, you know, um, have I cast it? No,

Mark: Okay.

Jon: No. You know, my, my book Hollywood Hustle is being adapted for film right now, um, by a company in LA and, uh, you know, they’ve talked about Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I didn’t expect it. I, you know, when I started doing this, I had no expectations or even ambitions towards it. Um, I just thought, whatever happens, happens, my job is to write a book, which is why I didn’t want to do a, um. I didn’t want to do the adaptation. A lot of people ask me, why aren’t you writing the script? I’m like, my job’s done, man.

Mark: Yeah,

Jon: I’ve written scripts. I don’t wanna write out a script. So, you know, get somebody really well known that will attract the kind of talent that you want to get. You know, that, that’s how you make a movie. You know? So that’s why I say, when you’re writing a script, there’s all these moving parts that you have to think about. How do I attract talent? How do I attract money? How do I attract producers or studios or networks or a Netflix, you know, or any of that stuff. Write a book you don’t have to worry about that. They’ll find it if it fits their bill. You know what I mean? Because that they’re looking, trust me. The, the company that’s doing Hollywood Hustle, they, they’ve, they’ve bandied about some really big names. Um, you know, I mean like really big movie star names. I’m I’m just like, well I hope you got the money. Apparently they do, but it means it’ll be a couple of years before we’ll see that hit the theaters, you know, two to three years. Yeah. So, I don’t know, I don’t really think about that. I, I get a picture in my mind of somebody as I think any writer probably does. That kind of embodies the character that you’re talking about and you kind of go from there, you know?

Um, and then it’s up to somebody else. I, uh, I have to wonder what, um, oh gosh, uh, Philip Dick would think of total recall. ’cause if you read that story, he’s, he’s described more like a Woody Allen than he is Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, you know, it’s almost like, sure, you could think about casting, but in the end it’s not gonna matter anyway.

Mark: Yeah. So you’re pretty hands off on Hollywood Hustle. Then just let them do their

Jon: I am, you know, I am, you know, the, the writer will call once in a while and ask me some questions about what do I think of this? What was I trying to get across? And I’m, I’m there to help as, as a, you know, a, a producer on the project. I’m there to answer as many questions as I possibly can. I’ll help in any way that I can, but a book and a movie are two very, very different animals. And I think I might even fall into that trap of thinking somehow that they might be the same thing, and I don’t want to do that. I think that would just slow everybody down.

Mark: Yeah. At the end of the book and the acknowledgements, you thank the readers and you say, and I’m gonna quote, I did everything I could not to waste your precious time. I hope you got what you came for. End quote. What do you think are the big takeaways from people who, like, for after they put this book down, what do you, what are you hoping they’re gonna get from it, or what do you think they might get from having read the book?

Jon: Wow. That’s a big question. Dude, you really showed up for this. I, you know, I, I wasn’t really sure. Nobody’s really sure what they’re writing or why they’re writing something when they’re doing it. I think, uh, they might have an idea when they start out, but by the time they’re done and they go through all the process, I think it, I think that evolves into something else. I think for me, I mean, one, I would, I would just hope that they enjoyed a, a, a solid tight crime thriller. You know, I, I, for me uh, Elmore Leonard is, is the North Star. Nobody did it better than him. And, and I hold up all the OGs like Chandler and Hammond, you know, Kane, those guys I keep and still the highest regard as well as Elroy and Connolly and Chris.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: Um, you know, these guys just tell a story like nobody else. They do it their own way. I hope somebody would say, you know, he did this his way. I like the way he did this. It’s different than the other people. Uh, the story held me, the story satisfied me at the end. I didn’t feel cheated or like I wasted my time. But I think having written, really spent all this time with Jake Ferguson and what Jake means to me when I think of all those people that I used to know I hope people come away with a little more understanding and patience of what broken dreams can feel like for someone if it’s not you.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: Yeah. I have a little more empathy.

I,

Mark: Yeah, that’s powerful. And I felt that throughout this book as I, it was,

Jon: bless you.

Mark: Yeah, it’s true. It was, it was such a wake up call. ’cause I’ve never really looked into Hollywood or acting or anything like that and reading this book, it was such a wake up call to the tragedy in the spiral from being so hopeful, being seen like, oh, here’s my opportunity i’m about to get it. And then just being shot down again and again for Jay and Jake’s case. And I was just like, wow, this is what an awful situation that he ended up when in as a result of just these, uh, almost like you said on like a normal turn of events for actors. It’s crazy.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I didn’t describe anything that doesn’t happen to everybody, but not everybody can handle it. Not everybody can withstand it. I don’t know why I did. I don’t know why anybody can. Um, but I do know that there’s a lot of people who can’t and rightly so. Um, I mean, I would say if you’re gonna, if you’re going to go after a big dream like that, you know, be honest with yourself. You know, are you really cut out for this? And I would say that, you know, if you want to be a jet fighter pilot, I know I could never do that. I’d barf before the plane even got off the ground. You know, know.

But be honest with yourself. Be realistic about your expectations and what it is you think you can do. If you’re that ambitious to, to go for the very top. If you have that kind of talent, then man, go for it. You know, we need those guiding lights in the world, I believe. Um. But if you’re just kind of spinning your wheels and wasting your time, you’re only wasting time that you’ll never get back. That’s another thing. How do you live your life and not waste your time? I, I wanted to get into that in the last chapter, uh, the very last chapter of the book. Um, just what that, what time means, especially to somebody who’s been incarcerated. You know, he’s not a bad guy. He did a bad thing,

Mark: yeah,

Jon: you know, he made a stupid mistake, but he wasn’t a bad person. He was capable of it, as we find out. But, uh, you know, but you had to push him.

Mark: yeah. And the book jumps from past and present with Jake, so we’d learn about his history and how he got to the point of the crime that that got sent him to prison. How did you decide, like what scenes to set in the past versus the present? Did you find one of them harder to write than the other?

Jon: Yes, the, uh, the, the past story was very difficult to write. Um, uh, that, that really required me looking back and opening up doors that I just didn’t wanna reopen. Writing the contemporary story was just like writing a, a novel off the top of my head. It was very much like writing Hollywood hustle, um, in in terms of the story, you know, uh, there’s a, there’s a heist and a guy, you know, falls into the wrong crowd again, you know, and so I just kind of followed that muse. But yeah, writing the, uh, the previous story or the then story, um, yeah, that was hard. That was very hard. Took me a long time to do it. People have said, oh, Jon, second book it is always the hardest one to write, and I think they’re, they couldn’t be more right. Um, but I don’t know why I made this one even harder on myself.

I don’t think I expected that, you know, I didn’t expect to feel the things that I did. Like I was saying, I was so angry at one point. Um, and I mean, there were times just, I mean, people that I would come across back then that it’d just make you want to take a shower, you know, whether it happened to me or not. Um, they would just see me unseemly experiences that, uh, that I, I could have gone my whole life without knowing about.

Mark: Yeah, that’s the right what, you know, stuff that really landed for me in this book. And I’m glad you decided to go as dark as you did. ’cause that did make it very powerful. It may not be for everyone, be be because of that, but it’s the truth of, in the reality of, of what

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so far I haven’t gotten any pushback really. Um, uh, I’ve seen a couple of questions like, you know, is this noir? No, it’s not noir well, yeah, half the book is noir, you know, it’s like the, the, the, the, the then story is noir,

Mark: yeah,

Jon: you know, that ends, you know, in a bad way for our main character. The now story I see as a redemption story.

Mark: When you created the love interests, both past and present in Angela and Carla, essentially, when I say past, I mean Angela, how did you balance who you wanted the reader to root for?

Jon: Well, boy, um. Ha, that’s a really good question. ’cause I’m not sure myself. Um, you know, Carla, Carla was, you know, we meet her early in the book and, um, you know, we reference Angela, but you know, we, we don’t really meet Angela for a little bit. But Carla was kind of a spot creation, and the more I wrote her, the more she grew on me. Uh, you know, these brassy chicks that, that are in, they’re obviously really smart and way overqualified for the work that they’re doing, but due to social and economic circumstance, this is what they’re doing. And they’re not taking a dime of charity from anybody. They would refuse it. And I just really kind of fell for Carla. So I guess I would root, you know, I guess I would hope people would root for her. ’cause she also seems kinda like the underdog girl in this, in this story compared to why Jake comes back. ’cause you know, like Angela is top of mind the day he steps out of prison, you know, that’s what he wants to fix. You know, not necessarily get back together with her after all those years, but he does want to do something to alleviate his own guilt and the hurt that he believes that she must feel. And, you know, so I, that immediately, that puts Carla at a bit of a disadvantage

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jon: Jake’s affections.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I was torn.

Jon: Well, good.

Mark: We’ll, we’ll give spoilers as to how it ended up and Yeah, and, and, uh, what direction he ended up going in. But yeah. So as we wrap up, what advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second novel?

Jon: Whew, boy. Um, do everything you can to help, uh, either your publisher or yourself. You know, I know Indie Publishing is a, is a thing now and people have been very successful at it. So whether or not you’re working with a publisher or you’re self releasing, or indie releasing, um, I say do everything you can to help get your book above the noise.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: Yeah. Uh, you know, there are thousands upon thousands of titles that get published every year. Like there’s thousands of movies that get released every year. Um, and they’re all, there’s a lot of similarities between movies and television and books that I’ve learned. Even music, it’s all about, you know, what’s the genre?

Where do you find your audience, how do you talk to your audience and, and let them know that it’s there. It’s, uh, it’s a lot of work that can be done. I do a lot of social media and not that I want to, but I just see it as, you know, this is part of the gig, man. You gotta do it. And if you’re not willing to help yourself, then, then how can the book help you? you? Know, it depends on what you want to do. I mean, I know people too that have just put books out because they just wanted to get it out there and they didn’t care what happened to it once it, as long as it was there for someone. And I get that. I understand that, you know, I say, man, you know, that’s as good an ambition and as a clear a goal as any other. Um, I wanted my books to, to be bestsellers. And I’m doing everything I can in the hopes that Hollywood payback becomes a best seller. We won’t know until April 14th,

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: or even after, you know, but, um, but I think you just have to, you know,

believe in your, believe in your effort, believe in it. You know, you sat down, you made this thing happen, and now you’ve got this thing between two covers that counts for something. So believe in yourself and believe in what you’ve created, what you’ve wrought, because it was worthwhile. And there is somebody out there who probably benefit just by ha having the opportunity to read your work. So I say do everything you can. Put some copies in your car, hand them out as gifts. Make sure that you, you, you hand them to people that you think would appreciate it. Um, get some honest feedback. You know, give it to people that you respect that maybe not be writers, but they’re readers. You know, I give my books to people that have never written novels, but I respect their opinion. ’cause I know they’re good storytellers, or I know they’re at least really smart, you know? But I think the most important thing is really, is believe in what you’ve done. You know, believe in the all those hours and all that effort you put into it, you did it for a reason. And I say, do whatever you can to, uh, to let the world know about it.

Mark: That’s wonderful advice. Thank you. I love that. To believe. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah.

Mark: And that is hard to do as, as a writer, especially as we publish and feel the nerves and

Jon: yeah, yeah. Oh my God, somebody’s gonna see this now, you know? I, you know, listen, I, that’s kind of old hat for me. You know, I, I, you know, I’ve had to walk in front of people and give them myself for so long um, and that’s part of Jake Ferguson’s journey there too, is that that rejection that becomes part of it, be ready for it. It’s okay to get some rejections. That doesn’t mean it’s not good, it just means that it didn’t land with that person. You know? I mean, social media’s full of all these, these brave people behind the keyboard, you know, who are probably in the basement with a coffee stain t-shirt. You know, who cares? Who cares what they say? The only people that matter are the people that like it. The people that get something out of it, that respond. Yeah.

Mark: Wow. That’s awesome. Thank you. I love that

Jon: Okay.

Mark: Question from Britnee. Brittany Butler, who was the last guest on the show, she wrote the Patriot’s daughter, and she asks, and I think I stole this question already, accidentally if your book gets made into a movie, who do you see playing the main character? What actors, so let’s say Hollywood payback. You could choose anybody who might you throw out there, and this is probably a lot for you.

Jon: Yeah, I haven’t, you know, I, I don’t know if they exist. Um, uh, because, you know, he’s described as, you know, a bit of a, a, you know, they say, Hey, you know, you were our Clint Eastwood. You know, Jake Ferguson is a big guy. He is six foot four. He lifts weights. He’s not somebody you’re gonna mess with. Um, you know who, who is that?

But 50 years old. You know, I, I honestly don’t know. And I think that might be the case where you’re gonna have to find somebody who’s relatively unknown to play that role, who doesn’t have the baggage. Because the fact is, you know, let’s remember he’s the guy who didn’t get anywhere and never had that, that big break that was going to put him into the public mind and therefore create an image of himself. So I would say maybe the perfect cast is the result of a nationwide talent search. You know, a guy who’s, who’s that, you know, fits the bill physically, but he’s been doing theater all of his life and maybe.

Mark: And

Jon: toiling away. Yeah. He’s, you know, he’s, he knows how to suffer. He knows the commitment, but he is also got some skills and some talent so he can pull it off. You know, when it comes to Hollywood hustle, you know, I, I hear everybody from Matthew McConaughey to Vial Mortenson to Kevin Bacon, to, you know, to Sean Penn, to e you know, I mean, it goes on and on and on. But, but then again, that character was a movie star. You know, he’s on the tail end of his career, but he, he can have that kind of charisma, you know, that kind of riveting persona that when he walks on screen, you look at him, you know, you wanna watch that person. Um, you know, but Jake Ferguson, I think that’s a, that’s a much taller order. So I say we don’t know who that is yet.

Mark: yeah. Okay. No, I love, that’s a great answer though. ’cause I never thought of it that way until this conversation.

Jon: Yeah. Well I do know this about Hollywood. If, if you were ever to hire an unknown in the lead of a movie, like at the time they did with LA Confidential in this country, Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce were not known entities, but they did put a lot of famous people around them. Kim Inger, Danny DeVito, you know. Yeah, yeah, James Cromwell. You know, I mean, some real heavy hitters were cast around. Now those guys were stars in Australia, but that’s just one little part of the world, you know, of the ecosystem globally speaking. Um, so I do know that all those other roles that, uh, that exist in Hollywood Payback, all those other characters would have to be filled by basically name, talent.

Mark: yeah.

Jon: Yeah. That’s how you get movies made.

Mark: so where can people find your book?

Jon: Everywhere. Everywhere books are sold. Uh, you can go to my website and order it. I’ve got links to everything from Barnes and Noble to books A Million to Powell’s, to Amazon, to, you know, all over the place. Um, I hope you’ll go to your local bookstore and pick it up there. Uh, it’s also available in ebook, you know, Kindle, whatever you use on, um, and audio, which I just listened to the final, uh, narrated version by yours, truly.

Mark: Okay. I was gonna just, that was my next question. Okay.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah, it was kind of part of the deal. I had to, I’ve had to narrate both of my own books. Thankfully I have some experience with that ’cause, boy, I’ll tell you, that is one hard job. I have some friends who only do that. Um, and I swear their, their neck muscles look like Bruce Springsteen. I mean, it’s iron, you know, but yeah, I narrated Hollywood payback. So you can also get it on audio.

Mark: Awesome. right, so we are, oh, before we get into the next thing you wanted to, you have a short story collection coming out as well,

Jon: Oh yes, I do. I do wanna mention this because, um, this is available now. Hollywood Kills.

Um,

Mark: kills. Great.

Jon: I know, right. Uh, edited by my friends Adam and, and, uh, Adam, uh, Alan and Adam. They, uh, they put this together. Everybody who contributed a story to this anthology has a professional background in Hollywood, whether it’s writers, producers, actors, you know, whatever. My story is called Stalker. I’ll leave you to figure out what that’s all about. But, uh, the reason we’re all trying to take time to, to let everyone know about it is because collectively all the authors decided that we would give all of our proceeds to California Fire Relief. So there you go. Hollywood kills also available everywhere except audio.

Mark: Okay, that’s great. So we’re gonna jump into the spoiler section. Uh, just a couple more questions. Listeners, if you don’t wanna have the book spoiled for you, now is the time to hit pause, go get the book and then come back after you’ve read the book.

Jon: Okay.

Mark: Was there ever a version of the book where Jake chose to go to Carla and just run off, or was the violent end of Eric and Rudy always going to happen?

Jon: The violent end of certainly Eric was always going to happen. I wasn’t certain about Rudy, um, uh, until I had the chance to kill him, basically. I, and I can tell you I disliked that guy the second I wrote him. Um, no, the actual, actually the ending of the book would not have been Jake and Carla running off the a the first ending, which I wrote, was a full noir ending where Jake does everything that he does, kills these people, gives the money to, um, to Angela, and ends up going back to prison. Being picked up at Langer’s over his number 19 pastrami sandwich and the LAPD comes in and he’s got his bag of money at his feet, so he doesn’t even get that and has no way to give any to Carla, but he goes back to Folsom Prison and, um, it’s in Folsom. And at the time I envisioned an ending like a, the movie Body Heat, which is one of the great kind of semicon contemporary noir films where William Hurt is in prison. And he realizes that Kathleen Turner has engineered this whole thing and now his life is gone because she fooled him. And I had Angela come and visit him in Folsom as she’s on her way to the airport and she lets him know that she’s, that she’s worked him since day one and set the whole thing up into motion and she leaves as Carla is coming in to visit him. And she’s going, they pass each other and, uh, Angela and Carla pass each other. And carla’s like, where, who, why do I know that woman? You know?

And, um, and so I leave the book a little, I I was going to leave it rather ambiguously that Angela makes it out of the country with all of her booty. And Carla may or may not, uh, plot with Jake to somehow catch up to her and make her pay for what she’s done to him. But then I thought about it and I went, you know what, that’s two noir stories in one book. And I, I just felt like, you know what? This is too much. It’s too much. You know, this is, I, I want people to come away with something to look forward to,

Mark: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Jon: So, you know what I mean? So that’s why I, I decided, you know what? I’m gonna have him sneak out of town. Take advantage of the political situation because it is a lot easier to leave the country than it is to come back right now and, um, and let him get away and send word to Carla and figure it out on his own. And realized what Angela has done and his light at the end of the tunnel is Carla. So she won the battle over who, who you would root for.

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: Yeah.

Mark: yeah. Did you ever feel bad or did it surprise you? Maybe is a better question the level of violence that Jake had in his retribution or his revenge against Rudy and Eric. ’cause it gets pretty violent.

Jon: It does. Yeah, it does. Um, I, at the end of the day, no, no, I don’t, I don’t think that violence is, I don’t think any kind of violence is off limits as a, as a plot device or as a storytelling tool, unless it’s just plain gratuitous. And I, I felt, you know, at the end of the day, at least people are saying to me who have read the book that the violence, especially that what he inflicts on on Eric, he doesn’t really inflict it on Eric.

But what he does to Rudy and the couple of guys that are in that hotel room, um, it’s earned, you know, they had it coming. They tried to kill him and they didn’t care. They killed other two other people in the course of that robbery that they didn’t have to kill. And as far as I’m concerned, and I think it is, uh, at least anyone who’s told me, um, the world is better off without them. And there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t be taken out like that.

Mark: yeah.

Jon: So I hope that answers your question. I, I really, I don’t have a problem with it. I, I shy away personally from writing about violence, um, because I don’t like violence and I don’t really like guns even though I own them. Um, and I’m a crack shot. But, but I, you know, I think violence is, it’s the lowest form of human endeavor and, uh, I think we should only resort to it if we have to. And I think Jake reaches a point where he has to,

Mark: Yeah.

Jon: yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Between his dark past and what we learned of his now violent present, do you think he deserves Carla, like as a writer? When you think about his person, he is been through a lot, but he is also done a lot of bad things. He does bad things right up until the end, even though we know that there’s that justification. Does he deserve in your thoughts to get away and have Carla in the end as a sort of a happy, we hope happy ending.

Jon: You know, I’m not sure any man deserves somebody like Carla.

Mark: Okay.

Jon: Um, you know, she, she is the catch, you know, she is the great catch of, of womanhood for, you know, virtually any straight man. Um, she’s smart and she’s honest, and she’s strong and she has his interest at heart. Now, does Jake deserve to ride off into the sunset? I think yes, I do. I think that. Uh, you know, even, even in California, you know, and I went through this with, with Jim Laal, um, in the research, the only reason that Jake sat in prison for his entire sentence is because of the laws at the time he was convicted, the felony murder rule, which made him just as culpable as, um, as Damon when Damon pulled the trigger. Um, Jake and Bill are just as guilty of first degree or aggregate aggravated murder. I forget how it came down. Uh, as, as Damon is. Along the way, you know, he, he’s not from a rich family, no public defender is gonna take that case. He doesn’t know anything about the Innocence Project and his parents die and his sister won’t talk to him. And, uh, while he is incarcerated, he has no advocate.

He can show up for a parole hearing, but it’s up to them if they’re gonna say yes or no. But given the facts of the case, the DA or someone from that office is gonna show up and say, don’t let this guy out. That’s what they do. And, um, so that’s the reason why he stays a lot longer than he should have. I didn’t bother spelling that out in the book. I thought, you know what? People can figure this out for themselves. Nope, nobody has questioned me about it, so I’m assuming it’s it’s supported in the story. So I, I do think that anybody else, even five years later if they, if, if, if Jake had committed this crime five years later, if he was five years younger and he commits the crime five years later, um, no matter how badly hooked on Coke and messed up he is, he would never have spent that time in prison. They would’ve let him out you know, if he had an advocate, he would’ve gotten on that list of people that will be let out just for no other reason than overcrowding. So yeah, I think because of the incredibly bad luck of the draw he got when it came to that, yeah. I think he deserves some time in the sun. You bet. With a woman who cares about him in a country with good beaches.

Mark: Yeah,

Jon: Yeah.

Mark: made a great case. Yeah,

Jon: Oh good. Okay. I was wondering.

Mark: yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely agree. Now you made a great case for that. Yeah. Finally, my last question. What’s one question you’d like me to ask the next author Who comes in the podcast and the next author is Amanda West who wrote The Memory Foundation. It’s about a wealthy people looking for the cure to memory loss at a secret retreat, and they get trapped at the retreat.

Jon: What made you want to spend all this time with this group of people, or specifically this main character and this villain, if that applies? I asked that question because I asked that question of Paul Thomas Anderson after I watched There Will Be Blood. ’cause on my first viewing of that movie, which was moderated by Michael Mann, by the way, it was a screening. I asked why, why would you wanna spend time with this guy? You know, and making a movie, that’s two years at least you’re gonna spend with that guy, you know, and he’s a jerk. Um, and you know what? He couldn’t answer the question. And I think Paul Thomas Anderson is like our generation, Stanley Kubrick. I think he’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

And I think one battle after another is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life. But it’s interesting that he couldn’t figure out how to, um, answer the question of why he made a movie about playing field, you know? So yeah, I would ask that question. Why would you, why? What made you wanna spend that amount of time with these people?

Mark: All right. Great question. I will ask her that. Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been an incredible conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Yeah,

Jon: Oh my God, that went by so fast.

Mark: if you don’t, if you have a few more minutes. Yeah, well, it’s, it was just a great conversation. If you have a few extra minutes and you don’t mind, stick rounders some rapid fire for the after show for my Patreon members. That would

Jon: Yeah, I’m having a blast. Let’s do it.

Mark: All right. Thank you again. For everyone listening, it’s Jon Lindstrom Hollywood payback.

Go read it. Thank you for listening and for or watching. Have a wonderful day.

Brittany: I just feel like that makes it more authentic. I feel like anytime I can bring in, in a fictional way, an experience that I had, or a moment that I was feeling during my time at the CIA, especially when I was operational in the Middle East and waiting for sources and meeting with terrorists and all that like what it felt like in my body and what it felt like in my mind and everything I try to really hard to kind of put myself back in that place and put that out there in my novels because yeah, I mean, that’s the whole goal, right? Is to make the reader feel like they’re totally immersed in the world you’re creating.

​Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world, where we talk to best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors about the craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories

I’m your host, mark Naone, and joining me today is former CIA Target officer Brittany Butler, author of the Espionage Thriller, the Patriot’s daughter. Brittany, thank you so much for being here,

Brittany: Thank having me on Mark. I appreciate it.

Mark: and thank you for the book. I have a copy of your book here

Brittany: Oh, great. Wonderful.

Mark: the camera for people. Thank you. I’ll add it to my shelf very soon of all my guest books out there.

Brittany: Wonderful.

Mark: So let’s get right into the pitch. Pitch me the book, the Patriot’s daughter.

Brittany: Yeah, so the Patriot’s daughter is a geopolitical espionage thriller with the emotional intensity of a love story you can’t walk away from. At its core a, it follows this character named Ava Anderson, a CIA targeting officer who is sent to infiltrate Russia’s intelligence service. After a wave of cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns begin destabilizing the United States, but what starts as a mission quickly becomes personal when she realizes the operation is tied to her mother’s disappearance. Someone she was told to forget. At the same time, she’s paired with this counterintelligence officer named Ben, who doesn’t trust her and has reason not to. Their relationship is built on suspicion, control and connection. Neither of them can afford, but also they can’t ignore it. The story sits at the intersection of national security and emotional vulnerability.

It’s about what happens when trust becomes a liability and love becomes leverage. It’s basically for readers who love high emotional stakes, thrillers like Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, but also want the emotional depth of something that like Kristen Hannah would write in The Nightingale or something even darker, a darker romance. That’s just without the fantasy. Everything in this world could happen tomorrow, which I think is what makes the book really exciting.

Mark: Yes. And scary.

Brittany: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And what’s so funny about this book is that I wrote it at a time where like none of this was really happening yet in our, like, just kind of in terms of the political environment with the, kind of go the federal government and the state government kind of being at odds.

And that was something I like fictionalized in the book. And so I, it was an un accident that it’s so timely. So yeah, I think that’s really interesting to write a book and then it kind of happened a couple years later. Interesting and scary kind of. But as a, as a CIA officer, I mean, part of my job was to predict what’s gonna happen in the future.

So, maybe that just kind of came into play there.

Mark: Yeah. That’s fascinating. So let’s talk about, I want to talk about the dedication first for a second. ’cause you have a beautiful dedication. I’m curious to see how that fits into the, the book and then you personally, because it feels like it could be a lot of both. I’m just gonna read it here.

The dedication of this book says to the girls who were told they couldn’t, but did anyway.

And to my sons who remind me every day why courage matters. I mean, I love that

and I’m curious how that fits into, into this, the book.

Brittany: Yeah, so it’s, it’s a personal book. It’s, I’ve never written something this personal. My first book, the Syndicates Spy was, you know, at a time when like I had just lost my dad and so I was grappling with that void in my life. And so a lot of it kind of was around this, this woman who loses her father.

This book was all about what happens when this woman, Ava loses her mother and she lost her at a really critical time in her life when you know, she’s a young girl and she’s,

What?a lot of young people go through in terms of like, they grappling with a sense of identity. Who am I? Where do I come from?

What am I gonna become? And her mom leaves on this mission for the CIA, she goes to Moscow and she’s gone for several months and Ava just never hears from her again.

And I, I wanted to, to write about, you, you know, just like the, the inner workings of a young woman and kind of what we are up against, especially in the world of espionage.

I spent 10 years at the CIA and before I joined the CIAI was told by those closest to me that, I would never survive in that world. That I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t tough enough. And

so I, I was kind of just always told like, you’re not good enough. And so to go and do that kind of work and be successful at it. It’s something that, you know, I’m really proud of, but then I also want to talk, talk about it with, you know, young girls, that, that dedication is for the young women who are told, you’re not good enough, you’re not strong enough to do this kind of work. When in reality the women that I worked with and espionage were some of the strongest women, smartest women I’ve ever known. And they had to work twice as hard a lot of times because in my case, especially working counter-terrorism, we worked in the Middle East primarily, and we weren’t seen as equals and that culture especially with Islamic extremists. And so not only were we trying to build trust and rapport with our sources and in some instances detainees to obtain information on behalf of the US government.

But we were also working against these ideas that women are not equal to men. And so we had to work. Even, you know, doubly as hard. And so, you know, that took a lot of courage. And that courage is something that I’m hoping one day, you know, ins that inspires other young women thinking about a career in intelligence. But then also, of course, my sons. I hope that they realize and appreciate how hard women have to work. You know, in order to become successful in that industry, it’s, fairly difficult. So, yeah. So that’s kind of behind the dedication. Thanks for asking that.

Mark: I love that. Did you know that this was going to be a theme going in? Like when you started this writing, were you thinking, I wanna tell this story about my life and how and how, you know, this moment impacted me and what I had to work to get to here?

Brittany: Yeah. No, it did not start off like that. So when, so Crooked Lane, my publisher, they actually contacted me to write this book for them, and they wanted to make it a modern day homeland type of book. And so they were very concentrated on the geopolitical side of it. Um, you know, your typical espionage novel that it’s got all these geopolitical themes and you’re racing against the clock to save the world kind of a thing, which I love. I love that kind of backdrop. I think that’s really exciting and I, I love writing in that space, because of course I’ve experienced that life.

But I also wanted to touch on some of the deeper issues of, you know, an intelligence officer’s world and what, what you’re up against in terms of some world dilemmas in espionage, right? You’re, you’re working alongside these men and women that are risking their lives in order to provide you with information that could save uS citizens. And so that comes with its own moral dilemmas, moral questions. And I’m not sure that that’s, I think it’s being talked about more like just the toll that takes on the men and women that are doing that type of work.

But I think that it, it is especially, is an, it can be a really great drop off background for a novel, right?

Like exploring those deeper issues of espionage work, what it really takes to do that kind of work and how you have to really compartmentalize almost like your humanity in order to do that job really well.

And that it, it’s, it’s really difficult, right? So like you’re meeting with these men and women and you’re saying I’ll protect you. I’ll give you the tools and trade craft that you need in order to not get caught in spying on behalf of the United States. But ultimately there, there’s a lot of times where we can’t do anything to save them.

If they get caught doing that the threshold is very, very high for the US government to say, we will come in and, and we will, you know, basically rescue you from this, this awful situation. So that can weigh on a person, right? Like you go to sleep at night thinking, oh my gosh, did I do everything I needed to do today in order to tell my source you know, how to navigate the dangers of espionage and am I, am I teaching them enough in order to protect themselves?

That’s your responsibility as the case officer. That’s your responsibility as a targeting officer is to make sure that those individuals that are risking so much. Are protected. And so yeah, so that really was something that I wanted to explore more deeply. But then also my own story kind of crept in to Ava’s story about, you know, these feelings of abandonment about her mother kind of leaving and what that created within her.

And then just this overall sense of she wants to become a. She wants to be part of a family, like she was an orphan in the sense that her dad was not a part of her life early on. He was kind of a mystery to her always. And then her mother leaves and you know, what that does to a young person who’s searching for who they are and their sense of belonging.

And so I love that I was able to kind of weave in that very personal story with something that’s, you know, exciting and flashy and whatever with the geopolitical background. And then I also feel like it made the love stories so much more believable and that you have these really flawed characters navigating this this world. And I think it makes them as people more believable. Like I think they did a great job, which the last James Bond where Daniel craig, you kind of get more into his psyche of like. Why he becomes the way he is with women, right?

It’s because, you know, the, her, I forget, I, Ava Green, I forget what her name was in the, um, the movie Casino Royale. But you watch her kind of take down his walls and she betrays him, and that affects him for the rest of the James Bond movies and how he treats women and how he navigates relationships. And so I thought that was a really beautiful job and how they created depth to a character that I think, and prior depictions of James Bond, he’s just like kind of, one dimensional, a little bit more flat.

And so with my characters and the Patriot’s daughter, Ava and Ben, I wanted to make sure that they had this backstory that was really well developed that you’re like, okay, this is a real person. This is, I can really get inside this person’s mind on this mission because they’re flawed and they have these traumas that they’ve been through in their personal life.

And so I can relate to this. And I pulled from people that I worked with at, at the CIA and experiences that I had of people who you know, were in some really bad situations and had to make some really tough calls and, and they were traumatized by that, and that affected their relationships with those closest to them.

Mark: How do you build or how do you decide when to be authentic with an experience and when to fictionalize because you have pacing to consider. You have, and then you have your real life experience to consider.

Brittany: Yeah. So I think an editor always is helpful with that. So my up editor kept me very honest on, um, the pa the places where I wanted to go deeper with some charact, you know, some, maybe some of the romance, maybe some of the, you know what she was going through personally. And she kept me honest about, okay, we gotta keep going, we gotta keep going with the plot.

We gotta keep going down the, and so that was really good to like have that check in and have that accountability there. Um, I think I, for me it’s, it is relatively easy. So I would say it’s one of my strengths as a writer that I’m able to keep up the pace. Like I don’t, I mean, you tell me you read it, so I I need to get your, your thoughts on this, but I don’t feel like it was slow at any point, maybe initially.

And I think, and all stories you have to build up, you know, kind of the world and you have to establish the characters and everything. And that takes some time before you can like really push yourself into the action. And so maybe, you know, that might be something that I feel like other thriller authors can relate to is that balance between, okay, I need to establish the setting the world and who these characters are. But then I also need to make it that inciting incident come earlier and earlier. Let’s, you know, start, start moving with the plot. So yeah. And then as far as like my personal experiences, I just feel like that makes it more authentic. I feel like anytime I can bring in, in a fictional way, an experience that I had, or a moment that I was feeling you know, during my time at the CIA, especially when I was operational in the Middle East and, you know, waiting for sources and meeting with terrorists and all that, like those feelings and what it felt like in my body and what it felt like in my mind and everything.

I try to really hard to kind of put my place, put myself back in that, that place and, and put that out there in my novels because yeah, I mean, that’s the whole goal, right? Is to make the reader feel like they’re totally immersed in the world you’re creating.

Mark: Yeah. You wrote very viscerally, and I was wondering if that’s what it’s like being an agent, is it really like you have a lot of like tight chest kind of moments, written various ways, and the heart pumping

Brittany: Yeah,

Mark: raw, raw emotion. Is that, is that like real to what it’s like to be a target officer or, I mean, is

Brittany: yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like you are numb to a lot of it as you go through it. Like it’s something that’s so normalized at the ccia. So like, for example, like there was a time where I would just pop over to Iraq for like a weekend and like help with something. So like, and my husband, my, it was my boyfriend at the time, I was like. So there was, we had like planes, we called it the air bridge at the ccia A, but unmarked planes that flew out of Dulles Airport that we would take to Baghdad or Kabul for a period of time. And we would just pop on that plane and we would just go over and then we would come back like it wasn’t a big deal.

And I told my, my boyfriend at the time, I was like, oh, okay, so I need you to drop you off at the airport. I just have to go for this quick work trip. And, you know, he knew I was in intelligence, but I don’t think he really knew, like, to the extent or whatever. And or that I was in operations at this point. And I, we, we pull up to the do international airport and in the front and I’m like, no, actually you need to go like around back. And he was like, what? And so we like go kind of like around back and there’s like these warehouses and these big white unmarked planes and it’s dark. And there’s just like a bunch of guys and girls just like headed into this airplane, on a tarmac and there’s no Id check or any, like, we, we had like passports but they weren’t real, you know?

And like we’re you know, we’re just headed into this plane and he’s like, this is really not normal. You know this right? Like this is like really crazy. And I was like, no. It’s like no big deal. Now if you think something happened to me and if I die, if you think I died or something, like just like set it really casually, this is my agency identification number. So we have something called an A IN at the CIA and that’s how you would identify me like you would call into and I gave him a phone number. I’m like, you call this number, give them my a IN and they’ll tell you what my status is. And um, I think that was like really weird for him to you know, but it was like very normal.

Like, I was like, oh yeah, like so and so came back from Afghanistan, so and so blah, blah. So you’re like, it’s very, so there’s not that heart pounding moment all the time because it’s so normalized. But now looking back on that kind of work, I’m like, I cannot believe that I just like popped over there and like, they just like gave me a machine gun and then like, I’m like in the middle of the desert.

Like, it’s just like so crazy. It, to me, it looks like a fictional world at this point, like as it seems so far removed from my life now. But at the time it was just like kind of part of what you did. For me it wasn’t so much as like going into the war zones. It was more like the missions I went on when I was like deep undercover and the US government did not. Have control over that country. So like in Iraq and Afghanistan, it like wasn’t so big of a deal that like I was there because we could, we controlled the the country essentially. Right? But like when I was going into other Middle Eastern countries that we didn’t control and, you know, there wasn’t all the, like the guards in place.

And ’cause whenever we would move around in meetings, in the war zones, we had GRS, which is like our security de details that would go with us everywhere. And like we had bulletproof vests and everything. So I felt pretty secure and then I would, I was carrying too, right? And the middle and the other countries, I didn’t have all those. Different layers of protection. I had to just kind of like be really aware of my surroundings and I was trusting the I was usually working with a foreign intelligence service and I trusting them that they would have my back because they were the ones carrying weapons and we weren’t. So I think those were the really heart pounding moments that I was trying to you know, really make sure that my characters felt, but also like Russia is this whole other different space that I actually never worked in. And so I had to do a little bit of research there and talk to people about what that operational environment is like because it is so different from counter-terrorism and the Middle East and the areas that I worked. But You know, a lot of the same, well, I mean, it’s the same way that we recruit and run spies in Russia as we do in the Middle East. It’s much more difficult in Russia, I will say that. But yeah.

Mark: So having left the CIA, do you ever get scared anymore or nervous about anything? Or does it feel like, I always wonder because you’ve experienced such big stakes in things now that you come back and I wonder if you just kind of brush off the little things ’cause you’re like, yeah, in the world, this is just nothing.

Brittany: Yeah, I do. I mean, I, I think I look at things maybe with like a little bit more of a critical eye and for whatever reason I’m able to, so like right now, the things I do right now is I provide commentary about the war in Iran on the national news, and I’m able to talk about it like just very calmly and because that’s like just such a familiar world to me. I’m just so used to using the names and I have such a familiarity with that area of the world and that culture and understanding Islam and everything that I could speak to those things. And it’s not that big of a, like, it, it’s just something I’m so used to.

And then, but like as far as sweating the small stuff, just like anybody else, I, you know, I’m a parent, right?

So I get really worried for my kids, but not, not necessarily me, I’m like, I’m fine. Like I’ll, I’ll be fine with anything, but it’s really my kids that I’m more sensitive about. And then also that, kind of played into why I left the CIA because I worked in Afghanistan. I, I sup supported Kandahar base for a period of time and I had some really close friends die in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. And one of them had a little girl who was three years old and, that really, that really stayed with me, that experience of knowing him and knowing that what kind of like father he was and how he was trying to juggle everything. But then it really brought home the severity of the work, the risk involved in the work. And once I started having children, I was like, I gotta get out of this. This is not something that I can sustain. So I left after I had my second son. I have, I have three sons. And that, that ended up being the right decision for me. But I, totally respect and the people that are able to keep up with the work, I just couldn’t, it was just too much on my family and me emotionally and psychologically having done the counterterrorism mission and the war zones for 10 years.

So it was time for me to get out, but, yeah. And then also like, I think too yeah, I’m not as scared, I don’t think ’cause I can protect myself pretty well, so that helps.

Mark: Oh, that’s, that’s crazy. Well, I have a lot of respect for you choosing to actually leave the CAAI think that that’s another balance thing that can be, that can be very challenging. That people often

Brittany: Yeah.

Mark: over family. So that’s,

Brittany: Sure. Sure. yeah.

Mark: Do you feel like Ava, how much of Ava feels like a reflection of you? She’s a very strong character. She goes out there and gets after it kinda so to speak. Is that, how much of her do you feel like when you wrote her is like you Yeah,

Brittany: Yeah. I think a, a lot of her is like me. I think that, like those feelings that I was talking about before, the, her sense of wanting to feel a part of a, like a big family to belong. I, I, that’s something that I’ve always struggled with personally, like wanting that, wanting to create that. I didn’t have that kind of growing up. And so I really wanted to create that, within my own, immediate family and like really have a strong foundation and stuff for my kids to grow up in and everything. So like that, that very much is me. As far as her experience in trying to navigate love within espionage I definitely had some experiences where I, I had a lot of the same questions she did about is this gonna detract me from the mission? I mean, they make you feel like at the CIA, like you really are saving the world. Like if you don’t show up to work, the whole world’s gonna end. So like you feel like this

immediacy and this importance that is really cool, right? You feel like what you’re doing is like super important, but then it also makes you wanna choose the work over everything else.

And then also, like, if you happen to have feelings for someone that you work with, that can feel some, that can sometimes be something that you have to really, that you’re struggling with. Like, Ava struggles with her feelings for Ben because she knows it’s gonna detract her from the mission. And likewise, Ben as the counterintelligence official, like her, his job naturally is to go against, not go against, but question what Ava’s doing constantly. So Ava’s the operational officer, right? So she’s, she’s meant to drive the mission forward. She’s there to get a job done. But then Ben, the CI guy, counter intelligence guy, he’s there to make sure she doesn’t get caught, right? And so he’s constantly like, are you sure you should be doing this? Are you sure you should be trusting this guy? Let’s take a step back. Let’s look at the, the mission more objectively. And and that happens, that happens at the ccia a where you’ve got, like, I had operations that I, well, almost every operation had to be signed off by counterintelligence CI and I, I had, I had a really good working relationship with this guy.

I mean, nothing romantic or anything, but like, we were just friends and he would call, he would call out stuff and be like, well, are you, have you thought about this? Do you make sure that this blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so, you know, that happens. And I thought that would be a really cool conflict to write about.

That relationship kind of deal between an operational officer and a CI officer and how they can, how they’re naturally just kind of at odds and how that can create this kind of like enemies to lovers trope where you know, they’re having to navigate, you know, some really important issues like the piece within the United States alongside their own personal feelings of, Hey, do we really wanna see what’s here?

So, yeah.

Mark: How did you balance writing all this? Because you essentially have like three major plots. You have the romance plot, you have the family plot, and you have Save the World. So save the United States, I guess, in this case plot. So how do you balance that as you’re writing it to try and be like, oh, I need to, I need to make sure I touch on this and I need to make sure my reader didn’t lose track of that, and I need to make sure that all these little things, that’s a lot. It seems like a lot you have going on.

Brittany: It, it was a lot. You have to tell me if it like, really like, resonate if it did. Okay so yeah, the three different, like plots. So for me there were easier things to write than others. I kind of made sure during the editorial process to go back through and connect some dots if, you know, it was easier for me to kind of step away after I’d written the entire book and then go back through it and say, okay, like I need to probably flesh out more of this you know, the, this part of the plot.

Or I need to like, dive deeper with the characters in our backstory in order to make the romance plot make sense. But I, I feel like that you can do all of them. I’ve read books that they do a great job of having a romance element, having adventure, having action, I don’t necessarily think stories need to fit in one little one shelf in order to be good or in order for people to be able to follow it. I think that thriller readers are actually like pretty smart bunch. And I think that, , they’re good at following those type of, you know, plots. My goal with this book was to respect the reader, respect that, they could follow everything. And and, and, and for it to be more like real life, which is real life and real life. You have romance, you have the action, you have, the family stuff all occurring at the same time. And I think that makes it a more well-rounded experience for the reader to be able to touch on those different things. ’cause if you’re just like this very flat, one dimensional James Bond going to this facility and killing this guy and blah blah and killing this guy and whatever, and saving in the world.

Like, it’s just like, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s as interesting as if you get in that guy’s psyche and you’re like, okay his backstory. What happened to him in the war? How does that affect and influence how he navigates espionage? Let’s get in this guy’s mind and his psyche. I think that that makes a more compelling story.

Mark: Absolutely. I have the characters definitely bring them to life. And I’ve read both. I’ve read a lot of thrillers where it’s just action, action, action. And they’re fine. But I also, because I write psychological, which is also very character driven, I loved the, that whole character side.

Constantine was actually one of my favorite characters and he’s very interesting in that he loves his country. He was a, a very dangerous guy. At some point in assassin,

Brittany: Mm-hmm.

Mark: He sort of betrays his own country to he for his, because he believes in what, I guess, what Russia should be or what he knew it to be, and now it’s not that anymore. Is that something that happens in real life as well when you’re trying to turn someone, so to speak, against their own country where you’re like, no, no. This isn’t the country you believed in. You’re a patriot by doing these things for us.

Brittany: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll make the comparison to what’s going on in Iran right now. Right? Like a lot of the people who are in Iran right now. They disagree with the government, the Iranian regime, and they, but they believe in their country, right? They believe in what it means to be a Persian, and their sense of identity is something very different from the government. And I think that that happens a lot of times. You know, and as espionage where the people in power, they do, like the people that are living there and that are navigating everyday life, they don’t agree with who is in power currently. And so because of that it’s relative, not, I won’t say easy to turn them, but they’re already there, right? Ideologically they’re already there. They already wanna see a change and they’re looking for someone to help them do that, right? So that is largely what it is to to recruit a spy is to, to, to make that connection. And then also, because they have to, it’s not, a lot of it is driven by money, right?

Like 90% probably, I would say is driven by money. You know, they just want to, they want more money and that’s why they work for us. But then there’s also this ideological component. You have to have that, you have to have a motivation or motivational factor there, because otherwise they are gonna be turned by the highest bidder, right?

If they’re just there for the money and they don’t really care about what they’re working toward, they’re, it’s not gonna work out. So, that’s where the Ava developing the rapport with Constantine and this book comes in her questions about, Hey, but do you, do you see that? Like you could be part of the solution here, you see what’s happening in this country you disagree with it. I know you’re a patriot, and what being a patriot actually means is doing something to better your country. And right now the opposite is, is happening. And, and so that’s the conversation that, oh, I’m sure like 90% of case officers have had with their sources is let’s work together we have a common goal here. And that’s, that’s how espionage happens. And so that’s what I want. I wanted you to see in the book how it really plays out in the real world. And that’s, that was Ava and Constantine.

Mark: So when people put down this book and they’ve read the whole story, what are you hoping that they’re gonna feel or what kind of emotional reaction they’re gonna have as they close those final pages?

Brittany: Yeah. I feel like. That wounds don’t have to define us. That the wounds that Ava endures at the beginning of the book they don’t have to be something that defines her life. It’s okay that she wants answers. It’s okay that she wants to dive deeper on what happened to her mom. But that Doesn’t mean that that’s who she is.

She’s not defined by who her mother was. And I think so often us as humans, sometimes we fall into the trap of feeling like we’re defined by our circumstances or defined by our wounds. And I want my readers to come away thinking, yeah, this person had these, these experiences. Like you can have these awful experiences of abandonment and losing your family, gaining your family, whatever, but it’s really Ava who ends up saving herself.

It’s not Constantine. It’s not Ben, it’s. It’s her and it’s, it’s these wounds. It’s these what she goes through early on in life that makes her stronger and makes her able to save herself. It gives her the strength to do that.

Mark: I love that. What was writing this book? Like if we take a step back now, you mentioned that your publisher kind of came to you with an idea and you took that idea and sort of ran with it. How did, how did it come about from there? Like from the, are, do you create notes and create characters first, or like, did you create Ava first or the, I mean, or if the plot, I guess, was sort of given to you, however that worked out.

Brittany: Yeah. So I, it was really up to me to write the outline and the character. I mean, everything, they just had to like, kind of approve a lot of it and they they just kinda gave feedback, you know, about, oh, did you think about this? Did you think about maybe doing this? So it was great. It was great to have that. Especially as a writer, you know, sometimes you’re operating in this like very lonely space of it’s, you’re bouncing ideas off yourself and it’s not always good thing you need somebody to bounce ideas off of. So it was like having a great friend that, you know, I could bounce off things and like say, oh, does this make sense? Or what, what are your ideas for this? So that that was a really fun experience with my, with my editor. But what I do before I write a novel, and actually this is the third one I’ve written, my second one didn’t get published, but I write the GCs for each character goals, motivations, and conflicts for each character. And I build that out. And then once I have those defined, then I go in and I start sketching out the outline of like what I want, how, how they’re gonna achieve. What they’re working towards. Right. So the motivator is like that driving kind of, force for everything that they do. And so I know once I’ve hit my midpoint and once I’ve reached the end because of what they have, achieved.

Right. And then like, also like the conflict is what’s driving the plot constantly. So that’s how I kind of begin. And then I’ll also, at the beginning stages, I’ll just write out scenes that like ideas for scenes. Like, Hey, this would be really cool. They’re like in Riyadh and like they’re having a meeting there and, ’cause that happens too, we have a lot of third country meetings where, ’cause it’s too dangerous to have the meeting inside Russia. So I like really wanted to write this third country meeting. And so I found a way to like integrate that into the plot. And so, yeah, sometimes I like going to sleep at night, of course is like always the time.

I have the most ideas. And so I’ll just get my phone out and I’ll like write in my notes section, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? And then i’ll incorporate that the next day. So so yeah, the GCs outlines and then Crooked Lane was really good. I, it took me a fraction of the time to write this novel because they forced me to write chapter outlines. And while very painful, once I started writing, I was like off to the races and it was really relatively easy to write the story. But I found, like my first try at it, I did not outline my first book. I did not, I was like, I think I called it a cancer. I kinda like went for it. And what about you? Are you a pants or a plotter?

Mark: Uh, I’m in between, so i’ll, I’ll have a good idea of the story before, and then, and then I kind of run with that, like I have the outline and then I run with where I’m with the outline.

Brittany: Yeah. Yeah, it’s an interesting, and I think, um, it’s okay. Like if one book your process is different for, you know, different books, sometimes it comes more easily. And I’ve definitely done the thing where like, I’m having a really hard time. I had a hard time with like my second book, I think at the, towards the end. And I had to gotta go back and outline once I’d written the end to say, to make sure that everything made sense. So whatever works for you. It’s like, I don’t think there’s one right or wrong way.

Mark: So when you’re outlining chapters, is it playing like a movie? Do you feel like it’s a movie script? I get that sometimes where you feel like you’re just kind of writing a movie, essentially.

Brittany: Yeah. And I, I, listen, I have to be listening to like movie soundtracks, so like instrumental, no words in the music, but I always, I have to have my earbuds in and I have to be like. Totally immersed, like in the sounds and whatever of what I’m, you know, writing. And I do, I feel like I’m writing a movie and it’s playing in my head.

Mark: Do you write? Do you change your music based on the scene that you’re writing? One thing I’ve done is like, have rain playing in the background when I’m writing like a scene and it’s raining or

Brittany: Oh,

Mark: gunfire. You like play gunfire in the background. So as a writer you never stop thinking that, oh yeah, this is going on in the background. ‘Cause it’s easy to lose yourself and get right into the action, or the character starts talking to their head. But when it’s playing like gunfire in your background, you’re like, yeah, I don’t know if this person’s gonna stop and think about this with all this racket in the background.

Brittany: Right, right. Yeah, no, that’s a great idea. I, I usually, I’ll be so engaged in when I’m writing, like sometimes I’ll just forget to change out the music, but if I’m having trouble with like a particular scene, I’ll like switch it up, you know? I’ll be like, all right, time to switch up the music. This ain’t working. Lets. Let’s move to something else.

Mark: How long did it take you to write the Patriot’s daughter? Do you, and do you write like every day? Like what’s

Brittany: Yeah. Well, so I am really not doing well right now. I have a lot of personal things going on, so I’m not writing currently. I hate it. I love to write but usually I’m writing every single day, and especially when I’m on a novel right now. I did write the outline for the next book in this series, and it’s with, it’s with Crooked Lane now, so we’ll see what they think. Um,

Mark: this Ava? Is it an

Brittany: this is AVA

Mark: Oh, good.

Brittany: Yeah, yeah. It’s a, it’s a homeland. They want it to be a whole Homeland series. So

we’ll see where her mission takes her next, but yeah, I’m really, I’m really wanting to get into that, but there’s also this part of me that’s like, okay, well if they don’t like the outline, I don’t wanna start too. Too much into that book. And, um, if they have a totally different vision, you know, it’s, it’s such a wonderful place to be at that I don’t have to think about, sending, going out in submission. You know, I don’t know if you, I’m sure you’ve been out in submission. It’s horrible. So I would love to just like, have a publisher write the book, make sure it’s gonna get into the hands of my readers. Like That’s awesome. But then I also want to write what I wanna write. So there’s, there’s a balance.

Mark: yeah, yeah. A delicate balance.

Brittany: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So as we head, as we kind of wrap up a little bit what advice would you give someone who just published their first or or second book?

Brittany: Hmm. Just continue to write and be true to yourself in that I feel like you can get pulled in all sorts of directions with what’s popular right now or what, you know, I know romantic is like this big thing right now. And I love romantic. Like I love reading it. I think it’s so great. But I don’t know if it’s my strength, you know, so I’m not gonna like start writing a romantic. , So stick with what you’re good at. You know, like no matter what the trends are saying or what people say you should write, just write what you’re passionate about, write the story that you wanna read. That’s, I think, universal. I think you’ll hear that from a lot of different authors. Is, is right the story you wanna read and, um, continue to build your platform with your voice.

That’s something I have tried really hard to stay consistent on, is building that platform. Because, and right now that looks like social media, that looks like Substack which can feel like a lot, but it’s kind unfortunate, but it’s kind of what publishers are expecting this these days. If publishing is like something that is really important to you I would stay, I would say try to make that a priority. You know, even if it’s just like 5, 5, 10 minutes outta your day that you just like put your favorite reads out on social media or talk about a recent book launch that you went to and you, that was really interesting. You loved the talk. Doing those little things every single day, it’s gonna really pay off whenever it comes to publishing your next book or promoting your next book because you’ll have an audience that’s already in place and publishers want that nowadays, so they kind of require it, unfortunately. Yeah.

Mark: Great advice. Thank you.

Brittany: yeah, of

Mark: if you could pick one thing that led to your success, then what? What would you say it has been so far,

Brittany: I think I hate to repeat myself, but it’s like just staying true to what my background is. And as much as so when I got off of, at the end of the day, out of my job at the CIA, the first thing I wanted to do was like turn on like friends or Seinfeld or something completely different from what I did, did for a living. And now I’m at a place in my life where diving back into the world of espionage is that different place from my normal everyday life.

So the fact that I have been able to do that is I, I, I know is a privilege to be able to have that time to write and to dedicate to something that I love. And I think staying true to what you’re passionate about is what it’s all about, right?

Like, and and be happy within the process. I think we’re all kind of racing, like, can’t wait till I’m a bestseller. Can’t only when I’m a bestseller will I be happy, will I be fulfilled? Or whenever I sell a million copies or whatever that might be. But it’s really the journey, right?

It’s the sitting down with your imaginary world and being able to lose your, lose yourself in a story and have people like connect with that story, even if it’s like five people. Like for them to read your writing and connect with that. I think holding onto that is essential. And, and in terms of feeling like a success, a success is enjoying the journey. It’s not, I don’t think, becoming the bestseller. That’s great if you can be that. ’cause we all need to make money. We all need to live. But it’s the journey. It’s, it’s the process itself. That is the gift.

Mark: yeah. If you’re in it for the money, I think you will not be in it for very long. This is just too, it’s too hard.

Brittany: it’s way too

Mark: Way easier

Brittany: And like it’s so funny ’cause before I was a published author, I totally thought that everybody was a millionaire that wrote a book. And now I know that everybody writing a book is poor.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Brittany: You don’t make anything. If anything, it takes money from you.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, it does a lot too. Yeah.

Brittany: yeah.

Mark: Question from our last guest on the show, and you’ll get to ask a question for the next guest. This is, uh, Michael LA alone. He wrote The Canadian Front which is a mil Canadian military filler with our, uh, joint task force special operations soldiers here in Canada. And he asks, you may or may not be able to answer this, but how do you get into a country like Russia to be a spy when there is so much surveillance and video? Like where do you begin?

Brittany: I can’t really say.

Mark: Okay.

Brittany: I mean, I know the answer to that. I know how we’ve done it before, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to like, mess up anyone’s operation, you know what I mean? Or go to jail. Like, Yeah. I, I, that’s a great question. And I wish I could answer it, but it just, I don’t know how to answer it and not reveal something I’m not supposed to.

Mark: No, that’s fair. And that’s why Yeah. I

Brittany: Sorry about that.

Mark: We, oh no, not at all. We joked about it. But he thought he wanted, he wanted to try. See what

Brittany: I love it. You gotta, you gotta ask, you gotta ask. Give it a shot. Yeah.

Mark: So where can listeners find your book and hear more about what’s coming next and everything you have going on?

Brittany: Yeah, so the Patriot’s daughter is available anywhere the books are sold. You can do go on Amazon right now and pre-order it. It’s gonna be out on April 21st, but I highly encourage you to pre-order, you can pre-order the audible version, paperback or hardcover for updates on, where I’m gonna be going on my book tour. I’m really excited. Go to brittany c butler.com, or you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok at Brittany Butler books. So,

Mark: Awesome. That’s great. So we’re gonna head into our spoiler section. For those who have not read the book, go buy the book, read the book, and then you can come back and finish the last few minutes of the episode here as we jump into the spoiler section.

Brittany: Great.

Mark: So first question, did you know in near the end of the book, they’re in the control room and there’s a guy wearing a mask, pulls the mask off, it’s Nathaniel Cray. When you first wrote this,

Brittany: Yeah,

Mark: did you write like the guy with the mask and then when he revealed himself, you were just as surprised as everybody else, or did you know it was gonna be him?

Brittany: I knew, I, I knew I wanted Nathaniel Gray to literally be this morally gray character that someone can almost relate to. Like, you get it, you’re like, okay. He wants to, he wants freedom of speech. He wants, he feels like, you know, the social, the fact that the government is trying to regulate what’s on social media is a crime.

And this is like his, he comes from a good place, right? Like he’s trying to do something that is good freedom of speech and everything, but he doesn’t realize like that he’s playing into the Russian’s hand, Russia’s hand.

So he’s being his vulnerabilities are being weaponized against him. So I knew I wanted that to happen ’cause I wanted people to see how easy it can be to turn someone to, to fall into the dark side to let your own ambitions kind of take over what is right and what is good.

And so, I knew I wanted to make him bad. That particular scene I had not orchestrated already that, that he was gonna like be the guy with the ski mask and the one that had recruited everybody at that facility to betray the United States. Like he, I wa I didn’t get that far in my line of thinking until like we got back to the United States and I was trying to work out, okay, Nathaniel Gray, like, how’s he working over here and how’s he the bad guy?

And and I needed that kind of like person between the the bad guys in Russia. And the bad guys in the United States, I need, okay, what’s gonna bridge that? Who’s the, the intermediary there and naturally Nathaniel Gray fit that bill.

Mark: Yeah. He has almost like a wealthy every man feel vibe for sure. Like I could see a lot of tech millionaires or you know, playing that exact role if they haven’t.

Brittany: Yes, Yes,

Mark: How did you decide who would get revenge on, and I might butcher his name, Abramovich because they all had their reason to kill him. And in that scene i’m like, Ooh, who was gonna be the one to plunge the dagger into his heart? ’cause I feel like everybody should, you know, they all need a turn, you know, having that guy.

Brittany: Yeah. So it’s funny, like my mom, she really wanted me to write a character that was her. And my mom’s name is Theresa, and of course that’s Ava’s mom’s name. And I wanted to create this love story that you really feel for Constantine and Theresa and the life that was stripped away from them., And I wanted that moment to be about Ava, of course, getting revenge on Abramovich, but then also more so about Constantine because he took the love of the love of his life away and their daughter a chance of being a father to his daughter early on in her life.

So I feel like that was, he was, he was the, the right person to, it was that final blow. Yeah.

Mark: yeah. I agree. And i, I love that scene ’cause I was, I just wanted everyone to finish that guy up.

Brittany: I know, right? Just kill him. Kill him. Yeah.

Mark: There’s also a moment near the end of the book where Constantine says, if a moment comes, you have to choose between family or mission, choose wisely, or you might lose both. That was really powerful too.

Brittany: Yeah.

Mark: Did that, was there a meaning to that? Adding that line? It feels like there was personal meaning to that line. ‘Cause it just, I don’t know, just read so personal.

Brittany: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So the, you know what I talked about a little bit earlier in the podcast with losing my friend his name is out in the public, Darren Labonte died in the suicide attack on Coast Base in Afghanistan. And him and I had a conversation about a month before he died. We were working together in Amman, Jordan, and he and I were working together in operation it, we ba like he was a brilliant case officer and basically turned this one guy around where it was a very successful case, but it, it was very hard to do. And he was really masterful in how he did it. And him and I were meeting afterwards after this one up and I was like, dude, like you’ve gotta teach me like how you do what you do. Like you are so good at this. I respect your work so much. And he was like, don’t be impressed by me. I am not a good father. I’m not a good husband. I have given my life over to this job. Don’t, don’t think Kylie of me. And that was like a really weird answer for me. I, you, I was used to case officers being like, well, I am the most badass ever, and let me teach you. You know, but he was like really humble and was like, this is nothing compared to what really matters. And I don’t think I really the, those words resonated with me enough until I had my first son. And I looked at him and I was like, nothing else matters. Like the biggest impact I can have is on my sons and who they become. And I remember I, I was talking with like a very senior, he was a former chief of station, really senior, um, CIA guy right before I went on maternity leave with my second, I was working Afghanistan and I was really fighting with. Like, I mean, I was so sick then I was so like run down and tired and pregnant and all the things.

And I was like, I just don’t know if I can come back. I don’t know if I can come back. I’m so exhausted. I don’t have the energy for my first son. I don’t know how I’m gonna navigate two sons. And he was like, Brittany, listen, there’s always gonna be a bad guy. There’s always gonna be a bad guy pop up and people are gonna need to go chase him.

Whatever. The biggest impact you can have is on your sons. You’re you. Kill one bad guy, a new one pops up an even worse guy than the last one. So do what’s significant to you. You’re gonna have the largest impact on your little world. And um, and yeah, that resonated with me too. And I was like, you know what?

You’re right. And I, there they’re wonderful people that work at the ccia A and I hate it that we get such a bad rap rap all the time. I feel like a half people think we like kill JFK and like we’re doing all these bad things. I don’t know.

And no, I’m not saying like we’re all good and we’ve always done the right thing, but there’s, there’s so many like loyal patriots that care so much about the United States and they give up so much to protect our country. And, you know, and, and it’s, it’s. It’s wonderful what they do and what they sacrifice, but I’m totally fine and comfortable with the younger generation taking the helm and taking, I’m tired. And I think there’s a reason why a lot, there’s a high turnover and that line of work because it does take a lot outta you.

And I think once you reach a certain age, you’re just like, I’ve got other I’ve got things I need to focus on and I can’t, I can’t continue with this life. And in my line of work, especially, you had to sign up to do overseas deployments in order to get promoted. And, I just, I’m not willing to be away from my kids. So that kind of made the decision for me.

Mark: Yeah, Yeah, good for you.

Brittany: Thanks.

Mark: So, so what part hit you the hardest writing this, is there something in this book where like, it just hit harder? I know you mentioned family, so that wanting family that Ava goes through what, hit hardest?

Brittany: Yeah. I feel like her learning about the truth about her mom. And like, I think part of the story, I wanted to almost like bring her mom back. I wanted her mom to like be resurrected. I, I wanted the, her, like her story to come out, what really happened to her, but I thought it would be too easy to just be like, oh Yeah she’s alive and she’s well in Russia and they have this hug and, you know, whatever, whatever. I didn’t feel like it was as realistic as, you know, what happened in the book of her kind of I’m, I, I can’t remember what, what word am I thinking of? What her, she’s been redeemed, right? Her mom has been redeemed and that she is not the Russian spy. That we, you may or may not have thought she was throughout the whole story and that she really was the patriot and Ava is the Patriot’s daughter. Right? So I wanted to tell like a story that you felt like could be a possibility. And that was a little bit devastating in a way.

Because a lot of times these stories don’t end well. Right. And so but then there can be something beautiful out of it, right? Like meeting who her father really is, is, you know, and, and for me personally, like I I connected a lot with the relationship between Ava and Constantine, her father so I lost my dad, right? And so I kind of modeled Constantine a lot off of my father. And so getting back to having that father-daughter relationship between Ava and Constantine was really fun. And it was like bittersweet too. So it was a harder scenes to write but also like really beautiful because I could revisit that relationship.

Mark: So final question, what’s one question you’d like me to ask the next guest who comes on the show? And the next guest is John Lindstrom, who wrote Hollywood Payback.

Brittany: Oh, okay. Do we know what the book’s about? Like,

Mark: It’s a noir thriller about a guy who comes basically gets outta prison and ends up being, ends up in this like murder conspiracy, I guess would be the easiest way to sum it up.

Brittany: Hmm. Okay. I I always like this question. Who do you see playing? If your book gets made into a movie, who do you see playing the, the main characters. Like what famous people.

Mark: good question. ’cause he is actually a, he is an actor and a director of movies, so

Brittany: Oh, awesome. That’s super interesting.

Mark: Probably has a great question for that. He probably has a great answer for that. Yeah.

Brittany: Great.

Mark: He may know exactly who’s gonna be in his

Brittany: Oh, that’s so cool. I love the movies. That’s so cool.

Mark: well, thank you so much for your time. This has been absolutely wonderful.

Brittany: Thank you. I appreciate you reading the book and having me on and it’s been a great experience.

Mark: So if you don’t mind sticking around for just a few more minutes for the, uh, rapid Fire After Show, we will get into the after show.

Brittany: Okay,

Mark: All right. Thank you everybody. Brittany Butler, the Patriot’s daughter. Go read it. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.

Michael: the Canadian military, up against this threat. They have no idea who he is. They don’t even know that he’s there. They don’t know he’s the bad guy. They don’t know that they’re fighting him, right? But they are fighting something and they’re winning their battles. They are winning every single battle and losing the war in the process.

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. I’m your host, Mark Nadon, and joining me today is Michael Lalonde, author of the Military Thriller, the Quiet War, and I have your book with me here. I’m putting on camera. Thank you for sending me that. Welcome to the show, Michael.

Thanks for being here.

Michael: Thank you for having me.

Mark: I am very excited to talk about this book and for readers who think a military thrillers may not be for them, this one really gets into character, which is what I loved about this book is that we get to know these warriors before we’re sent directly into combat, and I love that about it because it gave me a reason to care about what’s happening in this battle, and I’ve found a lot of military thrillers don’t do that. So that was really good. Before we go into all that, let’s do the pitch itch.

Michael: Yeah. So, uh, basically, uh, it’s a, it’s a Canadian military thriller. It’s the first of its kind and it’s, uh, book one of a wider series. So the Quiet War is actually the name of the series. And the name of the, the first novel is Canadian Front and I say it’s the first of its kind not because nobody’s written Canadian military fiction before there is actually one author one more author in Canada also located in Ottawa by the name of Ra Flanagan, who wrote the Kuck at War series, which is Canadian military fiction, uh, but a speculative fiction in a near future sort of scenario.

So it’s a little bit different, um, whereas mine is, you know, current real world, modern day stuff. And so I tie this story as closely as I possibly can to what actually exists in the world around us. It is fiction, it’s not nonfiction. But I don’t just make things up and say, well, we, we already have, you know, 200, uh, F 30 fives to play with.

We don’t, right? So if it’s not a capability that we have, then it’s not in the book sort of thing. I’m working with what’s real. I spent 23 years, uh, in the Army as a military intelligence officer. So I had a lot of background and experience, um, in military operations and the planning that goes into them and, and all that wonderful stuff.

And so I, I took that experience along with, you know, a, a, a creative imagination to say, well, what kinds of missions could we do if we had to? And how can I wrap these up in a story that would be fun to read and, and be engaging? And then, you know, so as I, I got through that process then, then I was left with that problem. Well. How can I justify the fact that we have a Canadian military thriller, not an American one, or a British one, where, you know, because in the real world, those two countries are maybe not the British anymore, but certainly the Americans, are engaged in this kind of stuff all the time, right? And, and people might think, well, you know, we don’t do that stuff and so why would there even be a book about that? And that’s not true. We do engage in military operations. The big difference between us and the Americans is that our our politicians will not take public accountability for these types of things. So they really like, uh, clandestine operations and, and they like relying on special operations forces and things that you’ve never heard about.

So again, everything in the book is fiction, but I base that on what kind of operations can we run if the political will existed and if the threats were dire, what would that look like? And so, uh, the first book introduces us to JTF two, which is Canada’s, um, tier one special operations forces. And, uh, so to put that into comparative parlance, that puts us right on par with Delta Force, SAS and SEAL Team six or Dev group. And so it’s a tier, it’s, it’s every bit a, a, a tier one group. It’s done, uh, joint operations with both the SAS, and Delta and, SEAL Team six. Uh, so that’s the type of caliber that they operate as. Uh, they don’t get the, uh, the accolades that they deserve, uh, or the, or the recognition. A lot of Canadians don’t even know that, that this unit exists, but it does, and they are some of the very best in the world.

And so I took, I introduced this unit, and then I create a problem that they, that they basically have to solve. And in this one, we set the stage for the series. I introduced the antagonist, which is, uh, basically, he’s not a terrorist, he’s something far more advanced. He’s brought together a cabal of global conspirators, so Russia, China, Iran, all the typical, you know, bad guy countries. And, and he masterminds a plan to take down the west. And his argument let’s start with Canada. Everybody, of course is, you know, all the other guys, the bad guys of the council, if you will, are wanting to go out for the us ’cause that’s just, you know, that’s just the default, right? And, but my main bad guy says, well, why would we do that?

Right? Like, these guys are already tearing themselves apart. Why would we go and give them a common enemy to unite around by attacking them directly, which is exactly what happened with nine 11. Let’s not do that. Let’s go and take apart the western alliance brick by brick, and we’ll move against the US last, not first the easy target canada shall be the first target. So we get caught in the story with our pants down. And as you can imagine, Canadian politicians have to grapple with this and in the first book, you don’t really get a sense for the political dynamic because it’s just a short book, right? And it’s very much on the military side. But in book two, all the political dynamics come into play.

All those frustrating elements that Canadians understand, innately because we pay attention to, to that stuff, we’ll be very much front and center in our face, uh, as, as the threat to Canada increases and becomes more complex. Uh, and, and it sort of evolves from there, right?

So that was the, that’s the idea. And so what we have in the first book is an opening move against Canada. It’s, it’s just the opener and you don’t really get a sense for what this is, until the end, right? And then you’re like, oh, oh, wow. Okay, that’s not good. And then the book ends, right? And, and then when book two starts off, we’ve got the next plank, right?

And, and so this guy, the idea behind our main bad guy is he understands Canada. So it’s a different kind of country, right? So chief, of Paramount for Canadians, and I, I find this frustrating, but it’s a reality, is that our self-esteem is the most important aspect. We have to have our symbols and our national pride, and they have to be differentiated from the Americans.

And if we don’t have that, we, we don’t really feel like we’re Canadians. We don’t feel like we’re special. And so one of those icons, of course, is our healthcare system. We love to brag about that. We love to talk about how it’s the greatest thing. It has its problems, of course. And then we, you know, we, what’s our favorite thing to do is to compare that vis-a-vis the Americans, right?

So we, we have free healthcare. They don’t, they have to pay. Everybody’s kind of familiar with that dynamic. So ultimately the bad guy starts by taking out a major plank of Canada’s national self-esteem. Just destroys it, overwhelms it, and, and brings it crashing down. And it’s done in a very realistic way, uh, in a way that we’ve seen happen already before, uh, with, with COVID, except it’s not gonna be COVID.

And then in the next book, he says, now we’re going to go after Canada’s reputation. We’re gonna go after how they feel about themselves, how other people perceive them on the world stage. And then the third plank will be, now I’m gonna destroy you. I’ve set you up, I’ve done all this stuff, and now I’m gonna take that one last piece and and whatnot.

And so, so in this story, you’ve got our, our heroes, the good guys, the Canadian military, up against this threat. They have no idea who he is. They don’t even know that he’s there. They don’t know he’s the bad guy. They don’t know that they’re fighting him, right? But they are fighting something and they’re winning their battles. They are winning every single battle and losing the war in the process, right? Until they’ll eventually get an intelligence coup that tells them, oh my God. And, and now once we start to realize the game that we’re playing, we can start to fight back. And, and then it goes from there.

Mark: yeah. Awesome. So when you’re writing a Canadian military thriller to you, what are moments in this book that separate Canadian special forces from any other special forces other than, I mean, I love seeing Griffin Helicopters in our own weapons and French Canadian foul language, which I loved but what else in this book do you feel like separates our special operations from theirs?

Michael: Not much, to be honest. And, and so, you know, the big takeaway here, and this might sound a little bit disappointing, especially right now in our given political climate and context, but the takeaway is that we have far more in common with our American allies in the special operations military world, than we don’t. Right? We are very, very close, intimately close, and the same can be said with the British and, and to some degree are, uh, the rest of our NATO allies. Um, we, you know, originally JTF two was created in 1993, uh, when the government of Canada decided that. Terrorism was becoming a bit, bit too much of a big deal, um, globally.

And, and it wa was that capability was housed with the RCMP. And so they decided, uh, that they would move that capability from the RCMP to the military, and hence the creation of JTF two. And so they were, you know, in the very beginning, it was like a glorified homemade, you know, SWAT team on steroids, if you will.

But it very quickly evolved from there to become a full military tier one unit. And so in the beginning, we, we took a lot of lessons or, or they rather took a lot of lessons from the SAS and, and the unit was very much modeled after the SAS and it grew from there, today in many respects whereas we were reliant on training from our allies in the beginning, um, now we’re able to provide training to our allies, right?

So if you’re familiar with special operations units, you go through really brutal, very challenging selection phases before you go into train to be a special forces assaulter, which is, you know, a tier one type of guy, which is hell on Earth, right? And it’s very challenging. Once you get through all that, then you get sent to a squadron in your unit and selection starts.

Anew selection is every single day, which means you have to be at your, at your very best every single day.

So I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve had the benefit of some colleagues that have been there and have been able to sort of, you know, read me in and things like that. But, but I couldn’t get more nuance there. So I think, you know, to long story short, I think the biggest difference is that you’re gonna see it’s not in the unit and how it fights and, and the culture of it and, and the weight that these people carry, and how seriously, and how professional, they take the, or how seriously they take their jobs and how professionally they are. The differences you’re gonna see is in the national command elements, right? Uh, how do we authorize a mission? Um, and you know, in our situation, it’s just so ridiculous that I, you know, in book two, I literally create a fic fictitious method to make it work. Because there’s a story of this kind would, is not be believable without that.

And I, I spell that out very clearly, that in real life, this doesn’t exist, guys. But in the book it’s here. And so it’s here to make the story work kind of thing. But that’s where you’re gonna see the differences, right? Because we typically do not have the political will to act.

Now that’s a generalization. There will be some times that we do and, and, and that sort of thing, but overall, that is the big difference. Whereas our allies, not just the Americans, but our allies writ large, do have the political will to act. And so, if you were to talk to, I think any one of our, our guys on the ground, they would be very frustrated to say, you know what?

We, we do do a lot of really good, really cool stuff, and we make a difference every day, but we can do a whole lot more.

Mark: Okay, so a little bit of suspension of belief in the politics and the kind of rules of engagement in Canada being seen as a, as a nation of peacekeeping in your books.

Michael: So well. The idea of this nation of peacekeeping is just a fallacy. First of all, that’s just not true in real life, let alone in fiction or whatever. And I, I, I say this to anybody that brings that up, right? So if we want to go all the way back to the beginning of our history or roughly therein the boar war, 1899 Canada sent an ex expeditionary army unit to help the British fight in the Bo Wars. Then we fought in the First World War, and we were arguably the most effective combat force on the face of the planet in World War I. One Canadian core, in, in the latter year of the war in 1918, I think we had, what, four or five divisions and destroyed 45 to 47 divisions with five. That’s unheard of.

Nobody else has come close to that sort of thing. We’ve won battles where people just couldn’t touch things like Vimy Ridge, of course, we’re all familiar with. What we’re not familiar with is why we invented the modern system of force employment on the battlefield in Vimy Ridge, and a lot of those principles of land combat and, and fire and movement, cam and concealment, all that kind of stuff are still used today because they’re, because they’re so timeless, right?

In the second World War, we played a huge role. We were Britain’s ranking ally for the entirety of the Second World War until the United States came into the war. And as we know, they came in quite late.

Right? We have been involved in almost every single military, uh, every single major conflict in the world, since then up until now, and have fought ferociously in all of those things, right?

That is demonstrably true. It is an undeniable fact, and it is a fact that we don’t talk about, right? Because we like to talk about peacekeeping. Peacekeeping is easy. It’s different. It’s not something the Americans do. That’s the most important thing, as you can tell when I say that, I’m quite bitter when I say that I, ’cause, I, I really, it, it irks me to no end.

That we define ourselves in spite of somebody instead of simply because of who we aspire to be and, and that sort of thing. But that’s a, a whole other conversation. You look at the cases of PTSD that came out of the nineties that we’re just learning about now because of having to standby and watch those atrocities, that’s not a legacy to be proud of. That is not something that we want to be touting and, you know, and, and whatever. Right? In my books, there is no room for that. I’m not even talking about it other than to quickly dismiss the myth. Yes, we’ve done peacekeeping, but, uh, I really think that it’s a disservice to the country and to all of the, the soldiers that have come and gone before us and the ones that, that are currently serving to, to label it that way.

But to answer your question more specifically, the suspension of disbelief, if you will, for the second book is simply, we have a threat that’s gonna basically destroy our country. And we need we’ve started to cue onto this and we need to react and we need to do it quickly. That’s not something the Canadian government would probably do in the real world right? In the real world, we would not act quickly and decisively, we would get our butts kicked horrifically. And after a great tragedy, questions would get asked, fingers would be pointed, blame would be shared, and then there would be commissions of inquiry and, you know, and then eventually we might start, you know, like, you know, doing that.

And I don’t think that that’s particularly fun to read about. And so what I did is created a mechanism, um, that will allow the Canadian military to respond in a very uniquely Canadian way. So it’s, it’s, and, and the book will explain it as I lay it out, but to anybody who’s Canadian, when you’re reading it, you’ll go, okay, yeah, this would probably be the only way we could actually, you know, respond fast enough to a dynamic threat like this is if we had something like this set up and so, uh, so there’s that one little tweak there that just allows the story to keep moving. It allows the ball to keep rolling without falling into, you know, bureaucratic ditches that last years and, you know, whatnot, uh, and stuff. I, I keep that stuff to a minimum ’cause I, I, you know, one of the things with my books that I pride myself on is the realism. Um, and, and I stick to that as much as I possibly can, but like all authors, um, you eventually will come to a fork in the road where you’ve got. Reality and the need of the story.

And when those two things run in conflict, you must go with the need of the story. Otherwise you kill your story and it’s just not a fun read after that. Right. So there, there are some, you know, those, those elements are extremely rare. And so far, the, the only one that I’m aware of so far is that one that’s coming up in, in book two. And it’ll be pretty obvious to anybody that’s, uh, that’s reading it.

Mark: So where did the idea for Book one come from? And I remember I read in the back of the book 250,000 words down

Michael: Yeah.

Mark: to what we have now.

Michael: So it’s a long story. But, so I, so the idea for the Quiet War had been building for 15 years, right? I’d been thinking about it for a long time. I hadn’t sat down to to write it, but it was just something that was on my mind. I was in the army, so, you know, trying to write about that stuff while serving didn’t make a whole lot of sense, I got into politics right afterwards and stuff.

So there’s always something, right? And, and now I’m a law student and I’m about to graduate hopefully in a couple of months if I don’t screw anything up. And, and, you know, and then suddenly in my second year of law school, I decided, okay, I’m gonna finally sit down and write the damn thing. Don’t ask me why I did that to myself.

I just like to, you know, make my own life harder for some reason. But I did. And so I thought I was gonna have a simple three book series. I was gonna have the Quiet War Book one, which was all about Canada. And then I would have a book two that was about the uk being drawn into the quiet war. And then book three, which would’ve been the US and then a final book to ha to bring ’em all together to topple this great big threat. And, and so that was always the idea all along. And when I finished, you know, most of a book, essentially, I had 250,000 words written, and I hadn’t even gotten into book three or, or the, or, you know, what would have to become book three, right? Because I, I just thought it was all gonna be one book.

And I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Because I’d never written a book before. And I was like, okay. You know, and I had to shave off so much stuff, even from that monstrosity to get it to 250. And, you know, I sent it to, to a professional editor and she was like, yeah, that’s just not gonna work. Right?

This is unwieldy for a first time out. Like it could be done, you know, if you, you know, maybe a little later in, in the author career and stuff. But, uh, she was like, you need to cut this, cut this, cut this. And I was so demoralized. I was like, I don’t wanna cut all these things. And this one particular arc, uh, which was the Belize arc that we see in Book one, was one of those things.

And I was like, no way. I can’t cut that. Right? That’s a key key story to Matt Lyon, who is in fact, the protagonist of the series, right? It’s not Rocky, it’s not Nathan, it’s Matt lyon. And it’s his story, right? And, and, and the Belize story, although he’s not in it, is a big piece of him, right? And so I was like, how the hell do I cut that and then still do this?

And then I had a deadline because I’d put the book up on pre-order on Amazon and I was like, I can’t miss this, or I’m gonna get banned for a year, and so I need to figure this out. And so I decided to take that cut Belize Ark and repurpose it as its own story. So almost like a prelude to the quiet war in a sense. So I took that prologue of the series and I moved it out of the main book. I put it into the front of this new book. I expanded on the story and, and built it up so that it could be its own story. So it, it came out of sort of like a last minute panic. ’cause I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Because there was no way, the main book, the main book was gonna be titled Canadian Front. Uh, there was no way I could have that ready in time. So I was lucky because. The way the story came out, the cover art still very much worked for the story perfectly. And the title still worked. So I was like, okay, I can still meet my deadline, but I’m pushing out a different book than I thought I was pushing out.

And so I took a month and a half, uh, in the fall of 2025 to repurpose just that little section, right? And now the rest of that 250, I’m, I’m working on shrinking and, and reworking the story to make it fit with some of the new things that I brought into the first book. And that will be the, that’s that main book that I had been working on all along, which is, which is now titled Alpha One, which is where we get to see Matt Lyon for the first time, uh, on the page instead of, you know, through, through memories and flashbacks and, and that sort of thing.

And so that was kind of the genesis of it. And, and so,

People say, well, what about, what’s your writing process like? It’s like, so picture, there’s a top of a mountain, right? It’s a really big ass mountain, and I’m on the very top of this thing, and I get an idea and I’m gonna start writing a book. And my first step turns into me falling down the goddamn mountain, right?

And I come crashing into every tree trunk. I’ve slammed into every ditch, come smashing through every river and tumble all the way down the mountain, and somehow smash across the finish line. Lucky to be alive. And what just happen? Oh, okay. I’ve got a book that’s, you know, so I’m a great example of how not to write your first book. It was, uh, it was a mess. Because structurally and strategically from a writing perspective, I had no idea what it was doing. So, so that was, that, that proved quite challenging. And so that the challenge for me moving forward, you know, with these other books is to learn from those mistakes so that I can condense the writing period, make it go a little faster and ha ensure that the books are longer, right?

The first one was only 60,000 words, so it’s fairly short for a novel. Um, the other ones are all gonna hover it around 150,000. So they’re, you know, bigger, but more complicated, which means that I really have to not fall down a mountain while I’m trying to put them together.

Mark: Yeah. What was your writing process like for the Quiet War? I guess I should say the Canadian friend. Sorry. Now I got the quiet war in my mind.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s the series, right? So you, you have to kinda look at it as I started writing a series and not a book, because I thought that all that is the series to date was actually gonna be Just one book. right? And, and it just, of course I was wrong. But, um, so I didn’t have a, a process ’cause I didn’t know what I was doing.

I’d never written a book before, right. I just had an idea. I had a story and I thought, you know, that it was a great story and I thought that I’d be able to tell it fairly well. And so I just, you know, pulled out my, my, my computer and, and started rattling away. But I, I really didn’t know what I was doing.

And so I was like, maybe I should try to figure this out, right? And, and so I’m, now, I’m on YouTube and I’m, you know, googling or, or doing a YouTube search of people that are, you know, talking about writing process, what you should do and all this other stuff. And,

you know, the, the funny thing about doing that is especially for when, you know, when you’re a male writing military thrillers that usually are historically have been a very male sort of dominated industry in terms of the readership, right? But that’s not normal for book writing and publishing writ large, right? I think what the last stat I saw was 85% of books were written by women for women. Right. And so, so that makes me kind of a little bit of an anomaly. So what I was running into was a lot of outstanding women on YouTube that were authors that would share tips about how to write. And a lot of them were writing romance novels.

And so there I was learning that. And so you can imagine, you know how that affected the initial writing stages for me because I had a lot of that stuff in my mind. Not romance per se, but the things that kind of underpin it and stuff and, and the characterizations and stuff. And I was like, you know, after a while I was like, okay, I, this is take, this has given me something, right. That was valuable, but I feel like I, I need more and something different because I don’t know that all of this will be particularly useful for what I’m trying to do. And so I signed up to a creative writing pro, uh, creative, a creative writing program at the University of Toronto.

And I, I started taking courses, you know, formalized that way while I was writing this book. Uh, and started trying, you know, to fill in the gaps slowly but surely. But the really funny thing was that I had, at that point, I think I had about 10, the first 10% of the main book written. Which is not anything that you have seen, in the first book that’s come out.

And so I sent that to a friend of mine from that same creative writing class. I asked her to read through it, and she’s like, that story’s kind of cool, but she’s like, why are all your characters romancey? Like, like, why do they all feel like, oh, I was like, oh God. Right? I was so embarrassed. And I, I was like, okay.

She’s like, you know, you know, every every male character is an Adonis, you know, and, and every female character, I was like, oh, God, help me. And so I, you know, went back and started fixing that and refining it and stuff. And so all of that is to say like, it was messy, right? I didn’t have a process, but so I don’t outline.

I did write an outline and I never followed it. It wasn’t worth the paper that was written on, like, the outline and the story and the outline was just so awful. And, you know, ’cause it’s like, for me it was a forced process, right? I was like, I don’t really know. I know where it’s gonna start and I know where it’s gonna end, but I don’t know how I’m gonna get there. Right? And so what I ended up doing is I spent a lot of time on characters. And I think that’s reflected in, in what you were saying at the beginning of the show, characterization. So we’re not just seeing a plot, a plot, forward moving story where, where it’s just nothing but action. But there’s people that are perpetuating this action and the insights that they have, what they’re going through or what they’re not going through is all important, right?

And so I built all these characters. Uh, their personalities, their, their world background stories, all of that kind of stuff. I had that all laid out very meticulously. And then, so I’m writing a chapter and I’m like, okay, I know in chapter one, I need this to happen. Right? And so, for example, when we look at Canadian Front, we know that Nathan is meeting Kira in, in this chapter, right?

And, for, for those people that have read it, for those that haven’t, I’ll try to keep it fairly bland, but so I know that I know what I want to have happen, but I don’t know how it’s gonna happen, right? And so, so you have these two characters collide. And I know now how Nathan would behave. I know how he would feel.

And the same thing for Kira. And so, as I put them in this scenario, I’m like, okay, well no. If she says that he’s gonna react this way, right? And if he does that and so it starts happening. So I don’t really know what that chapter’s gonna look like until it’s done. And it’s really fun because it’s almost like watching tv, right?

I get, I get front row seats to the story unfolding right before my eyes. It’s, I don’t think the most efficient way to write because it’s very disorganized, right? And so what’s happened is I, you know, I’ve created things in chapter one. Now I need to move on to chapter two to follow that up. But those things that I hadn’t planned on, that popped up because of what I just described well, they need follow-ons, right? So that could be a chapter that I didn’t think I was gonna be having to write, and then I write that and I do the same thing, and then that will create more things. And you can see how I get into these 250,000 word monstrosities pretty quickly if I’m not very careful, right?

And I think, you know, there’s inherent strengths to that, because I’m not bottlenecked, right? Like, I’m not like, okay, well I’ve got this little box on a sheet that says this, so I have to stay within that. But wait a minute, I, now that I’m in it, right, and I’m actually writing, I’m coming up with really cool stuff, at least I think right there and then, well, I hadn’t thought of that when I was writing an outline, maybe, right?

Well, does that mean well too bad, right? Like, no. And so I, I put that in there. But what it does mean is that after you’ve got a draft, there’s a lot of work that goes into it after the draft to scale it down, to trim it down. Shit, I’ve written four books by accident. I gotta split them up. I get, you know, and, and all that kind of stuff.

So that, if you could call it a writing process that has been mine thus far, I think I’ll still keep using it, but I want to try to adapt it in a way that makes it a little bit more wieldy so that the post-production part of, you know, the, all the stuff that comes after the first draft is not as laborious and time consuming. So that I can be a little bit more efficient in, you know, my, my output that way. Otherwise, I’m only ever gonna write a book a year at this rate, so,

Mark: Or four books a year by accident. Yeah.

Michael: well, yeah, but only one will see the light of day,

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. How many, how many drafts do you, do you go through from, I mean, this might be an anomaly in that you just learned with your first book, but how many does, does it go through between, this is my first draft and now

Michael: Yeah. So I was, I actually just answered a question like that on threads and, uh, and, and I’d said, well, this one was just kind of a one draft wonder and it worked out, but that’s not really true in a sense. So if you look at, you know, what I’ve already described, right? So the book that just came out, like a lot of the, the premise of the sort of arc of that story was written in the main novel. It got cut now I have all that. I didn’t copy paste that right. I, I rewrote it all from scratch, expanded upon it and, and made it bigger and put a beginning on it and an end, you know, to make it its own thing. But it was a, it was a shorter book, right? At 60 to 62,000 words. And so the structure of the novel, which I think that’s where a lot of your drafts really come in, you know, as a, as a new author is because you totally mucked up your structure and you have to go fix that and fix it and so on. I didn’t really have to do that. So, because I had already written that bigger, you know, monster and within that monster in a lot of those chapters, it’s not like I have draft one of the whole manuscript and draft two of the whole man, that’s not the case.

But that the prologue, for example, I rewrote that about 20 times, just the prologue, right? The first chapter of the book that you just read, I wrote it and then I went back and I was like, I think I can enrichen this and sort of add to it and make this a little more fun. So I didn’t really change what was there, but I just sort of put more into it. And so that chapter, I nailed it on the second go, right? Some chapters nail it on the first go, right? So it’s, it’s hard to say, you know, like in, I guess in a real sense, I sent my editor a draft and she looked at it. She’s like, okay, yeah, good. There’s only a couple of things we really need to sort out here. So I sorted that out. It took a couple hours worth of work to do that. I sent it back to her. Is that a second draft? I don’t think so, because I haven’t rewritten it. I’ve just tweaked a few tiny little things.

Right? And then now it goes into copy, edit and all that kind of stuff. It comes back to me to look at, I find a few more little dinky errors, typos, or just some sentences where I’m like, what the frick was I trying to say there?

That doesn’t work. And so I, you know, just retweaked the sentence and send it back again. Is that a third draft? I don’t think of it that way because, because the changes are relatively minor at that point.

But there was sending it back and forth as we and then in, into the proofread stage, right?

It’s just like, shit. Okay. There’s yet another typo that we didn’t see. Well, are we on draft five now? Because we fixed one typo. Right. So, so I would say having that understanding it was a one draft sort of project. Alpha one though will not be I am already half of the way through the second draft.

I am rewriting it. I am a much better writer today than I was, what well say about two years ago when I was writing. The core of that story. So even the chapters that are staying as is, are being rewritten from scratch so that it’s, you know, like when George Lucas had his original Star Wars movies in the seventies and eighties, and then later in the nineties, he went and redid them, re remastered them to make them look better.

You know, it’s like I’m doing that now. But I also have to tweak the story to account for the new add-ins that I had put in the first one and stuff. So it very much will be a second draft because by the time I’m done, it will be a, a slightly different story, um, than what it originally started as. And I would imagine, because it’s a bigger book in the structural role, structural edit, now my editor will say, okay, there’s more than just a few tiny things that we need to tweak. So I would assume that would put me into a third draft. And so I, I, I’m anticipating that I would probably be at least five drafts for this.

Mark: So when people are done with this book one, what are you hoping they’re gonna feel or want when they close the

Michael: That’s actually a great question, and maybe what I, what I’ll do is try to turn that around on you by answering it with a question since you’ve read the book. Right? So when, when you’re done reading the book what is going through your mind vis-a-vis Matt Lyon? Because as you know, there’s, there’s a lot put into that book with regards to him, right?

So as a reader, you’re you finish that book, what’s on your mind in here, and we haven’t had this, discuss this discussion before, so I, I have no idea what you’re gonna say, right? So we’re literally making this up as we go,

Mark: Yeah, great question. I about Matt Lyon specifically. I think it’s just curiosity as to what happened to him. I mean, I don’t wanna guess spoilers. We could save that for the very end of the show, but I think there’s a curiosity about, you know, what happened to him and, and what is gonna be his role in this, in this bigger picture.

I think I was curious about Kira as a character, like I don’t know how this plays out, but Nathan and Kira, ’cause they started the story. So for me that was like, I wonder what role they will continue to play, if any, in the bigger story because she has that intelligence officer role and like, is she using him or you know, or who? Who’s using who? And that kind of.

Michael: yeah, yeah. So, so essentially your answer is is exactly what I wanted from a story perspective, right? So, because the main character of the series is Matt Lyon, and because of the nature of the story that I wrote to push out first, he’s not in that book in, in like in his presence, right? But we know about him, we’re introduced to him, and he’s the main character, right? And so the takeaway from a story perspective is what I wanted was. Who is Matt Lyon, right? I wanted to develop a sense of nostalgia for this guy, like a longing for him like, I want to see this dude. We’ve talked about him, we’ve said all these great things.

We’ve seen a couple of, you know, possible avenues for darker things and I didn’t know that Book two was even gonna be book two. I thought book two was book one and whatever, right?

And Matt Lyon’s call sign, and, you know, that’ll be revealed very early in the first book is Alpha One, right? And so by calling it Alpha One, I’m hoping that I’m just playing right into that. And people are gonna be like, okay, yeah, I’m reading this. I want to see who this dude is and you know, what, what the heck is going on?

Matt Lyon in, um, the first book, even though he, he’s not in the book, is portrayed as the master of war, right? And only a true master of war can manage chaos and, and make chaos bend to its will. But even then, the master of war has but a fleeting chance, right? And so the, the whole idea, and I don’t make it painfully obvious, but, but that’s what I’m trying to create, is that I’ve created this really powerful bad guy and there’s really only one dude at the end of the day that’s gonna have all the different little pieces to put the puzzle together to take him down. And, and so that’s kind of how that’s happening. And so you’ll see a very, very much a continuation of that idea into Alpha one. But Alpha one starts. In a way that I think people are not going to anticipate and it’ll punch you in the gut. At first, you’re gonna be like, oh, I don’t really like that. This sucks. Right? And, but it’s real.

From a, you know, non-story perspective, the big takeaway for Canadians first is that we have a, a special forces and intelligence capability. They kick ass. They’re very good at what they do.

They are some of the best in the world. We don’t get to hear about them, but we have every reason to be proud of them and we can stand toe to toe with the best.

Mark: Yeah. Moving into characters a little bit, one of the things that I don’t see explored a lot, but I hear about in the US as far as like the darker, I’m a psychological thriller, mostly writers, so I think about the psychology and we don’t see a lot of sort of the darker side of the military and like things like drug abuse and, and special operations and things, which is kind of a darker story.

I have no idea what happens in JTF, but I don’t know if, I’m curious if you chose not to include that, just to stay away from the PTSD and, and the how, the coping mechanisms, because that’s not the story you’re trying to tell.

Michael: Yeah. So, I didn’t actually choose to stay away from it. I, I, I did the opposite. It’s just that you don’t get to see it yet because it’s coming in alpha one. And so, but with that said, you know. Drug addictions, alcoholism, things like that you do see, you definitely see that in militaries.

There’s no doubt about it. , And it exists in hours two. Does it exist in JTF two? I couldn’t tell you that. I, I honestly don’t know. The handful of, uh, JTF two operators that I’ve interacted with, I just, it, knowing what I know about them, it, it would be very difficult for me to imagine them being that way. But I don’t, you know, it’s not like I’ve known these people for 20 years and stuff, so I don’t know that. But that said, um, what, what we do know is a very real thing is mental health, right? And PTSD and all that kind of stuff, it is in your face, right? One way or the other. It’s hard to get around it. And again, we come back to that theme that I mentioned earlier, which is to say every day is selection all over again. It doesn’t matter that you saved the world from nuclear destruction last week. What can you do for me today? Because if you can’t do your best today, I don’t care how much of a hero you were yesterday, you’re in some trouble, right? And. Now, if you wanna look at a parallel, you look at Delta force in the US right? And, uh, there’s a lot of operators that have talked openly about this. They say the same thing every day of selection. All the tier one units are gonna say that, right? Canadian ones are saying that too, right? And in Delta force, um, it doesn’t happen often, but guys have talked about this, right?

If you’ve been found lacking, right? You show up to work, you’ve got a security card that you gotta use to get through the gate, then another gate into the building, into the team cage, whatever, right? This is, this card is your life. You don’t exist without this little card cause you can’t get into secure environments. And if you’re found lacking, you know, the next day you show up to work, your card doesn’t work. That’s it. You’re done. Goodbye.

Mark: Okay.

Michael: No one’s gonna come and talk to you and worry about your feelings or whatever. It is brutal. When you think about what these men go through and how much they give to get to that point, nobody’s infallible, nobody’s perfect. And anybody can find themselves in a situation like that for any number of reasons, right? And knowing that that’s your fate, think about what that’s like as a motivator.

Well, first, I mean, it’s a very effective motivator, right? You’re going to, you know, do your job and kick ass and take names because you don’t want that to happen to you, right? Like, you lose your whole life, your identity, your brotherhood, everything. So you don’t want that to happen. But at the, so, so it’s a very effective motivator, but it comes at a cost, right. And those costs are significant, and you will see those costs in Alpha One. They are inescapable and it’s tragic, right?

And when I say that, I’m not saying that as an activist who’s trying to say we have to do it differently. Because if you were to ask me, how do we do this instead? I don’t know. I mean, ’cause I understand why you have to have these people at that level, right? I understand it, but I mean, do we really have to break them? We don’t see it, uh, in the first book just because we’re, we’re just not there yet. You see the beginnings of it, right? Rocky is struggling because because of Matt. Right. And the team is too. And is that PTSD? No. It’s understandable. It’s just a normal human reaction to, to, to what’s happening at that time.

But. So what? It doesn’t have to be a formal P-P-T-S-D diagnosis to say, Hey man, there’s something wrong and these people are struggling and, somebody needs to give a shit and, and whatever. And you see a little bit of that. Now the question for me will be after Alpha one, am I gonna keep dragging it with the story everywhere I go? I don’t know yet because, you know, how often do I need to do it?

I can sort of get it out there and it’s, it’s a, it’s a very real and valid part of the story. So it, it’s, and that was always designed that way from day one. And, and so that stays that way even through the revisions. But then it’s like when we get into book three and book four, um, you know, maybe there will be different challenges and different aspects that we, that we look at. Or maybe, you know, that now that the characters have been established in a lot more depth. Do I, do I just go more plot heavy and stuff? So I, I, I don’t have the answers to that, but, um. What I can say is Alpha one will, if you thought that there was a lot of good characterization in this book, you’re gonna see even more of it in alpha one. And unlike this book, like everybody, you know, when you look at the reviews, there’s, it’s a page turn or very fast paced. Can’t put it down. That’s not alpha one. Alpha one’s gonna start slow and heavy, right? Uh, before it gets fast and hard. And a lot of that is because of what we’ve just been talking about, right?

There there are things that, you know, need to get sorted out before you can go down range. Uh, and in popular fiction you will have a retired operator who is all kinds of screwed up in the head for whatever reason. And he doesn’t fix himself ’cause he doesn’t have to. He’s a badass and he’s gonna go take on the world by himself. And he might take things a little too far because of his struggles might freeze up here and there, and at the end he’ll kinda learn a lesson and then move on and then rinse and repeat. That’s not realistic, right?

That’s just not how it goes. Might be a fun read, not at all realistic. And that’s not the style that I’m presenting in the quiet war. There are examples of bad leaders, there are examples of good leaders everywhere. Alpha one’s gonna show you what it is to be a good leader, and not just from one character, but from many characters. And then that’s one of the reasons why, like a guy when, you know, he’s struggling hard, he’s not going down range, right?

And if he’s got integrity, and most of these people do they’re going to stick their hand up and say, I’m not good to go, because then they’re putting everybody else at risk, right? And you can’t really have that either. So I’ve written this chapter a very heavy duty chapter, and it’s like, I don’t write it, I don’t write a thing again for another month, right?

I’m like, I’m done. I, I don’t wanna be an author anymore. And it, like, it literally like, you know, it can take a while before I’m ready to get back in there and stuff. And this book. Has more than one chapter where, where that’s in your face, right? if I’m successful, you might feel the same way when you’re reading it, right? And so then, then that would be an interesting question is did the reader have to put that down and take a break and before picking it back up and, and stuff, because it, you know, it can get pretty depressing, right? But there’s some bright shining stars as much as there are the not so bright parts that basically pull one out of the darkness and stuff.

Mark: Are you gonna put a content warning in your book for the next one with those deep chapters? Or you

Michael: no, uh, c it’s not necessary ’cause, uh, we’re not most of it is not necessary because you’re not gonna be introduced to anything new, uh, in the sense that PTSD is out there, moral injury is out there, right? And pe people know about these things now. In the author’s note i’ll have a blurb on mental health to, to sort of set the stage right. And, and stuff. And so I don’t know if maybe that serves as a trigger warning, but I don’t think it’s necessary. ’cause we’re not, it’s like I don’t tend to go for super graphic details. Right. Uh, because I don’t think it’s necessary, just like if there’s gonna be a romantic scene, right. Like, you know, yeah. Okay. So they hop in the sack, we know that they did their stuff right. But we’re not gonna get front row seats to that sort of action. Right.

Typically in a military thriller that that part is, is is very obviously implied right. And stuff, but, but we’re not writing, we’re not writing explicit sort of material. I’m trying to think of how I can frame it without giving too much of it away because the central problem behind the darkness there is, is not something that gets, you get bits and pieces of it throughout, but you don’t really get the full idea until we’re deep into the story. And uh, for anyone who’s read book one by the time we get to you know, book two in that full reveal, it, you know, it, it’ll hit you hard, I think hits me hard every time I look at it and write it. But maybe I, I don’t know, maybe I’m just a sap, God help me.

Mark: Was hangman your version of comic relief and kind of taken a breath in

Michael: a little bit. But the comic relief, and you don’t see this, maybe you see it a little bit is Mark Trombley he, you see a bit of it with him, but, he really comes to life in, in Alpha one. He is, he’s quite something. And you know, and, and a lot of it is just, you know, the language thing, right? You know, the, the, the ability to, to to swear, you know, voraciously in both languages and, and stuff, right. And so these are, you know, he’s a, an, he’s a, you know, a senior colonel who starts off as a private, right? He works his way up through the ranks. He, he’s, he’s the first alpha one. He’s the godfather of jtf too, right? Uh, he’s, he’s, he’s a, you know, a gruff dude, and he commissions and he’s very smart, very strategic and, you know, as good of a leader as you’re gonna find. But he is not sensitive to things and doesn’t give to flying Fox the things that come out of his mouth are very you know, authentic, let’s say for him. And, uh, and they’re quite, I think they’re quite funny. And so, and that, I think what makes it work with him is that he’s really not meant to be a jokester, right?

He’s a serious character. He’s a deadly, serious character, but he’s still fucking funny. Uh, just because, and, and I’ve met so many people in the military that were exactly like that for the same reason, right? Like, they were not clowns, but they just were hilarious just because of their, you know, some of their mannerisms and stuff.

So, and Hangman was meant to be, he hangman is representative of a young man in the army who is having a blast doing what he does, right. But he’s also a JTF two operator, so he knows when to shut the shut up and get serious.

And we see that that happens, right? In c certain instances it’s go time and, you know, the clown is gone and it’s, you know, mission focused and whatever.

But this is your, this is your quintessential very young man with energy. And, uh he’s, you know, he, not to say that he’s not disciplined because you don’t get to be there without being disciplined, but he’s creative, right? And he’s, you know, sometimes he gets himself into trouble, but you can count on this guy to deliver at the end of the day, right?

He’ll piss people off too along the way but, uh, he gets the job done. And the original version actually in the jungle sequence, uh, he had even more heroic moments and very different ones than what you would’ve seen in this book. And it was quite something, but I just had to take them out because I had to redo this to make it. A bigger story. Uh, so for example, Seesaw was not part of that operation in the first iteration when it was, when it was part of the larger novel, fast roping through the jungle canopy in the middle of the night, that wasn’t a thing right. In the original version. Uh, and so, so when I brought all that in, then Ma Hangman was busy doing other things, so he wouldn’t be in a position to do some of the other stuff that I had him doing and, and, and whatnot. But yeah he definitely is that, but, and, and, and by design a bit of comic relief. But not only that, but the funny thing was, like I said, with Mark Troley, he was never meant to be comic relief, but he, but it just turns out that way. But you never know what you’re gonna get from him, right?

Because in one chapter, you know, you, you could be pissing yourself laughing, right? And, but in other chapters you’re just you won’t, right. It’ll be, you know, very much down to business. And I think that is very real because like. Soldiers are like anybody. Right. You know, like they goof off.

They, you know, they get bored. They say dumb things, they do dumb shit, and not seriously dumb shit but you know, everybody’s got a softer part of that personality for entertainment’s sake because it’s a rough job. It’s hard, It’s stressful or whatever. And so everybody’s got that, that version, right?

And, but then everybody switches it on when it’s go time too. That’s one thing I would say to people is, um, when you’re reading a guy like Mark Trombley he’s very, he’s very uniquely designed, but in a more broader general sense, it’s a very realistic portrayal of what a guy who spent his entire life in that universe might look like,

Mark: Yeah,

Michael: maybe not on tv, uh, but, but you know, when he is giving an interview, but, uh, in a different kind of setting.

Mark: yeah, yeah. Leading to the final wrap up, what advice would you give someone for the writers that are listening, what advice would you give them if they just published their first or second book?

Michael: Well, I am just there myself, so, you know, uh, I’m not an expert by any means. Um, so if we’re talking advice for people that have now published a book as opposed to in the process of writing it. ’cause I would’ve said for writing, just my biggest piece of advice is don’t be like me, don’t do what I did. But, um, after you’ve published your book, and, and really I think this advice is honestly and frankly too late for after you’ve published your book. ’cause you have to think about this beforehand. I’ll bring you back to the, that old adage, if a tree falls and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? And you know, people, that, that question’s been around for a long time. And I can tell you when it comes to books if you write a book and no one knows that it’s there, it does not make a fucking sound. No one’s gonna buy it, no one’s gonna read it. And you are not entitled to free advertising. You will not sell your books if all you do is post about your books on social media. And here’s why. So social media does not let content about your books go out there. So case in point, I have 7,300 followers on my Facebook. That’s a lot of followers, right?

If I make a post and it’s just about my book, I’ll be lucky if a hundred people see it. Facebook will not show it even to my own followers.

It just won’t. It will not. I’ll get maybe 10 likes and a couple of comments and that’s it. 7,300 followers, right? And so if, but by contrast. I’ve made a couple of posts on my Facebook page about the Iranian conflict particularly before the war started. And those went viral. They went all over the place.

I had a post that got, like, it was the, the biggest post I’ve ever made, and I never thought it was going to be, but it got like, what? 12,000 likes? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments. And oh my God, it just, I couldn’t, I was like, what the hell have I done with this thing? Right? But no one’s gonna buy my book because I expressed an opinion on the Iran situation, right?

Nobody’s gonna like, that ain’t gonna happen. They don’t even know I’m an author. Right? It, it gets shared to the whole Facebook stratosphere now, and, uh, they just see some guy named Mike with an opinion and then, then they’re responding to it, and that’s that, right? But you’re not gonna sell any books because of it. So I’m on these platforms in author communities, and every day I see authors whine and cry all day long. I put my heart and soul into this book. Nobody’s reading it. I shouldn’t have to be performative.

I shouldn’t have to do this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I’ve got news for you. You want people to read it there how many books are being published every single day, especially in the self-publishing universe, right? If you don’t stand out and people don’t know that you’re there, they’re not gonna know to go buy your book, and they’re not gonna know that you’re there unless you put some money into it.

And it’s a sad reality. I know that a lot of authors don’t have that money. They just don’t and that sucks because if you don’t have a lot of money and you don’t get lucky with some viral post on TikTok or something like that, and there are people that do, but like. There’s like 99% that don’t, right?

So you’re only seeing the ones that do, when you’re on TikTok, you don’t see the fails, you only see the ones that go. So a lot of people are like, why can’t I do that? Well, ’cause most people don’t do that, right?

So, so you need to go into that with your eyes wide open and be prepared to spend. And there are people that will disagree with me there and say, no, I didn’t have to.

And that’s wonderful if you found a way, but just because you found a way doesn’t mean that I can copy you and do it exactly that same way and I’m gonna be successful, right? Because every book is different. The genres are different, the readers are different, where they hang out are different and and that kind of stuff.

So that would be my advice is be, you know, have, have some spending capacity and self-educate on how best to do this because it’s not easy. Like it’s, it’s not straightforward and simple to run an effective Facebook ad. Most of mine were not at first, and I wasted, uh, outrageous amounts of money for no particularly good reason. And I’ve, I think I’ve figured them out now for the most part. Amazon ads are still a mystery for me. I hired a company to do that for me because I just could not figure it out. And they did it. And they did it well and it worked. So my book hit number one bestseller in multiple categories within a week of it being published, right?

It did very well and it, I’ve sold over 4,000 copies, uh, as of a couple days ago. The revenue I’ve brought in, yeah, thank you. And so the revenue I’ve brought in has been astronomical to be quite frank, but the amount of money I’ve spent to advertise has been more astronomical. So I’ve spent more on advertising than I’ve received in royalties, right? So I’m still in the hole. Most people are in the hole with Book one, and that’s normal, right?

so so that’s the other thing is don’t be surprised if you’re gonna be in the hole. But if you publish a book and you publish book one, it only has three reviews and you might sell one or two books a month or so, or whatever. Something’s gone terribly wrong. That’s not it is normal because people have no idea what they’re doing. Like they might know how to write a book, but once they put it out there, they dunno what the hell to do with it to get it out there. So it is the norm, but it’s a norm. It’s a normalcy of failure.

And so if you’re in that universe, you have to say something’s not right. It can’t be that your book sucks because no one’s read it yet, so nobody can possibly know that it sucks. Right. So, you know what I mean? Like, like let’s say you sold a bunch of books and you were getting really terrible reviews. They all really hated it. Then you might say, okay, well maybe, maybe I didn’t write a great book but if it’s not even selling right it can’t be because of that. Uh, it just cannot be because there’s no way to know that it’s no good until until people start to read it, right? So that’s the advertising part I think for most authors is, is very difficult you know, I was fortunate enough to be in a situation where I could put money into advertising and I, honest to God, I don’t, had I not spent on advertising, that would not have been a, a bestselling book and it wouldn’t have sold 4,000 copies.

So, so I know that’s like a long-winded answer, but that’s the thing, right? And even if you’re traditionally published, and I’m not so, take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. This comes from research, not from me being an expert. It might sound that way ’cause my opinions are forcefully presented but the bottom line is from what I have learned is that, you’re some. Guy or gal you wrote, you wrote a book, you sent it to an agent. Most of ’em are gonna tell you to get lost. Eventually someone says yes, maybe, you know, and then they take it to a publisher. They’re gonna tell that agent to get lost. And then eventually the agent lands a deal. And now you, bravo, you’re traditionally published, right? But they’re not gonna advertise for you. They’re not gonna spend any money. ’cause ad you know, like, look at the money I spent, like, I spent a lot of damn money, right? So they’re not gonna do that. If they did that for every single author, they would go bankrupt, right? So they’re not gonna do that ’cause most of, most of their new authors fail too, right? Traditionally published authors, right? And I know it, you know what I’m saying, can sound fairly harsh in the way I’m presenting it. And it’s just because I really believe that you gotta know this, and if you don’t know this, you are gonna find out the hard way. And that’s gonna be worse than listening to a jackass like me being direct in a podcast, right?

Mark: the truth. Yeah, yeah, definitely the truth. I have a question for you from, cam Torrance, he was the last author on the show. He wants to know what’s the most important characteristic of the Canadian military that we don’t know about? Other ti militaries around the world, or they don’t know about us.

Michael: The most, so, okay, so the most important characteristic about our military that other people don’t know.

Mark: Yeah.

Michael: I’ll draw back to my experience with NATO here I was in the, the military for a long time, right? And I didn’t have my first experience interacting with NATO personnel from NATO countries until at least halfway through, right? So I’d spent years just being a Canadian, working with us and, and whatever, right?

And I could see everything that goes wrong. Everything that we sucked at, I bitched and winded and complained just like every other soldier does. It’s like every soldier’s God-given right? To complain, right? And, you know, uh, I was no different. Uh, when I became an officer, I, I, I did a lot less of that for obvious reasons.

 so when I started working with our NATO allies. I had no concept at the time for just how big of a deal we are within nato. Because when you think about it, in nato, you’ve got the United States, you’ve got the Brits, the French, Germany, and now Poland, you know, to a big extent, right? And these are big budgets, big players and, and that kind of thing.

But, um, then you’ve got all these other NATO countries, right? And, and they’re, they’re tiny, uh, or tiny budgets, even smaller than ours or, or whatever, right? And so when I was working at the NATO school in Ober, ergo, I was, uh, blown away by how far advanced we were as, as the Canadian military, certainly within the realms of intelligence, military intelligence, compared to, uh, our NATO peers who, many of which didn’t even have a milita military intelligence discipline at the time, Germany did not have a military intelligence discipline.

It wasn’t an occupation in the German army, which really surprised me. ’cause they’re a major landmass army. And I don’t know if that’s still the case or not. That may have changed that. So, ’cause we’re talking circa 2012 maybe and, and stuff. And so that was kind of an eyeopener, right? And the other thing that I, you know, that. Is different about us, say from, at least from the American perspective, maybe not everybody else, but is because we’re smaller we can’t afford to train exactly the way everybody else does, right? So if you look at, say an American artillery unit on a Howitzer say a, we’re talking about a towed gun, and maybe we don’t use a lot of those anymore, but in my day we did.

I started off as an artilleryman. Uh, you might have seven positions on a gun, on a Howitzer to operate this giant canon that launches bombs out of it, right? And as an artilleryman in Canada, you would be trained on all seven positions in your, in your basic artillery qualification. That wasn’t the case.

Americans would would say, okay, well you’re gonna be a number three band on the gun and we’re gonna train you that and, and whatever, but there’s enough of them to do that, right? And so, that’s something I think that’s unique. But again, my information might be dated, right? Because I, I’ve now been out since 2017. But the other thing I would say that comes across as a surprise to just about anybody I’ve had experience working with internationally is how decentralized we are. And what I mean by that is that a corporal in the Canadian army has an infinitely. Um, higher level of responsibility, um, vis-a-vis an equivalent rank of another army.

Right. And, uh, and, and equivalent is important because a corporal in the UK army is not a corporal in the Canadian army, right. A corporal in the UK army is much more of a, like a senior NCOA corporal in the Canadian army is a very, it’s like the second rank.

So there’s an example that I cite, like when we had some guys working with the British, or not the British, sorry, the Brazilian army uh, when we were, doing a lot of op peacekeeping operations in Haiti and, you know, they, they were just flabbergasted that we would have, you know, very low ranked ncms managing a vehicle park and where to park vehicles and how to organize them all and stuff, right? Whereas, like, you know, in a, in a very large army, from a different nation, different cultural background, they, they would need a senior captain in that vehicle park. To make those decisions. Nobody else was allowed to make a decision like that, right?

Mark: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. can listeners find your book about you?

Michael: everywhere right now. If they wanna learn more about me, the best place to go is my website. So it’s the easy website to remember. It’s michael j lon.com, and it’ll bring you to my website. It’ll have all about me, all the books that are, you know, either out or coming out very soon and or planned.

So you’ll get to see a lot of the type of stuff that I’ve been talking about here in terms of buying the book. So Amazon, of course, uh, uh, is, is a primary point and it’s available in ebook audiobook. And it’s been professionally produced by a professional narrator paperback and hardcover.

So it’s available in all the additions. If you are inclined to Cobo, then you can get the ebook in the audiobook, on Cobo, in the Canadian sphere. If you want to buy the physical book and not go through Amazon, then you can get it through Indigo’s website. It is not available in Indigo stores.

 

Mark: So we’re gonna jump into a, a couple of spoiler questions. For those listeners who don’t want to have the book spoiled, go grab the book. Now you know where to get it. You can check the, the show notes for the link and then come back and listen, uh, to the rest of the show. The ending of this book, was this the original way that you wrote it, where Rocky tells Nathan, go find Matt. Essentially the collapse of the Canadian healthcare system is this, the vision in the first, the first way it was written.

Michael: Well, yes, in so far as. When I was writing it, knowing that it was gonna be its own smaller book. Right? But when I, when I was writing that main novel, like I, I discussed, uh, Nathan and Kira didn’t exist. They were created to make this story work, uh, on its own. And, uh, and, and there wouldn’t have been any go find Matt Lyon stuff because, um, chapter one starts with Matt Lyon very much there.

So the reader knows where he is. Alpha team does not know where he is. That was always the case. And they’re upset about that. But in the main book, um, you know, he’s not very far away, basically. Right? , He, so, so I changed that around afterwards. So when I, when I repurposed, uh, the Canadian front to be, the, the Belize arc, Nathan and Kira got brought, got conceived.

And uh, you know, as I mapped that story in my mind, I knew that that was gonna be how it would end. Because again, the, because I know that my protagonist is Matt Lyon. The whole purpose, other than writing a good book, was to ensure that you want to read more about matt. Right. Um, and now that’s created a little bit of a problem, right?

Because what do I do with Nathan and Kira? Right? ‘Cause they don’t exist right in, in the new, in in Alpha one. Uh, they do Now I’ve, I’ve, I’ve written them into the story, but, uh, I’m still at a point where I’m trying to decide how big of a role that they play

and, uh, you know, they may play a big role, maybe they won’t, and they’ll get sort of in the story shuffled off so that we, we were setting them up for book three where they’ll become front and center again because it’s a bit more of a British, book, uh, if that makes any sense.

So, so there’s a, you know, so, so there’s a couple of things there, but, but in terms of the ending and the healthcare stuff, yes. Or, or, sorry.

No, uh, and the healthcare thing wasn’t a thing, uh, when I wrote the original book, because I already have a big premise and stuff. And, and so in Alpha one, the, the big inciting incident, and, and this will will be in all the promo material, is that a Canadian ambassador gets kid kidnapped in broad daylight. Right. Well, that’s a, that’s a very. Textbook JTF two operation, right? Like if there ever was one is to go and rescue this woman. And so, so the book opens with that happening, right? Uh, and then it’s like, well, why, why the hell did you know somebody abduct her? This doesn’t make any sense. Like, why would you abduct a Canadian ambassador? And, uh, you know, that’s, that’s more for the book that’s coming up, but the logic that’s built around that is, well, you wouldn’t unless it was part of something much bigger, right? So is it really about her or is it about something bigger?

Right? So that was very much the case. So when I had to repurpose the Belize Ark into being Canadian front for the book that just came out I don’t have a kidnapped ambassador anymore.

Right? And the original intent for that Belize mission was simply to introduce Alpha team. Uh, while we have Matt going through his stuff, we, well it means more to be, to understand Matt if we understand Alpha team too, right? And so that, that was their whole purpose in, in that part or act one of the main story. And so, so their mission to Bel, to Belize was actually to go and it was a kill capture mission to take out Khalid Al Rashid, right? And, uh, that was it. That was the mission. And in I had to repurpose it all to make it more interesting. So now we have Nathan and Kira who are getting the, of the story going, if you will, because reading about JTF two could be exciting, but well, why are we deploying them?

What happened? What’s, what’s going on in the world? We have to have all that context. Otherwise it’s not very interesting, right? So I bring them into being, and then I was like, I could have them killed off, or, you know, that I could keep the mission just the way it was, or I can keep them alive, and then they get kidnapped and let’s rescue them.

And then I decided with the ladder. Uh, and so they, so it starts off as a rescue mission, and then when we see them interacting with the cartel, and that was always gonna be part of the original scheme, then Rocky makes the call to say, okay, well we’re gonna, instead of killing the sky as a secondary objective, now we’re, we’re gonna capture him. So we’re doing a hostage rescue and a capture, which is a big deal, right? That, that, that’s, that’s a, like, you know, that, that’s not, that’s no easy to ask even for the, for the best of them. So, yeah. So some of, some of that was in, some of, uh, was in the original scheme and, and a lot of it was not.

Mark: What about bam, bam, getting his, the, the frag he took and his injuries?

Michael: that’s

Mark: set up? Was that set up for a moment for Rocky as a reader to know that he’s like taking, okay.

Michael: No, no, not really. It was, it, it, it be careful because it’s a, it’s more of a spoiler for alpha one now, but, it’s, it’s more of a reality, right?

You, you’re gonna take casualties, right? And, uh, and to, to, to present that as such, uh, even though JTF two has never lost a guy yet, thankfully it’s still a reality. So, but bam, bam, we don’t really get an idea or a sense of who bam bam is and why he might be important, right? And he is important. We just, you just can’t know that yet. ’cause Alpha one hasn’t happened. And in Alpha one, you’ll see, uh, how he does have, you know, a little bit of a, sort of a backstory that will endear you to him, which will make learning about, you know, his, his difficulties, all the, you know, all the worse, right?

I don’t think that I’m giving away any massive secrets by saying that a bam bam does not die. Because the entire premise for Vanguard Ranger, which is already on my website, and it talks about that, is an old Army ranger going into the hospital while bam, bams in a coma and telling bam, bam, his life story while bam, BAMS in a coma trying to, you know, coax him out of a coma and eventually he will succeed in, in, and whatever. And that’s the, that, that’s very much a side story in the quiet war called Vanguard ranger. So that’s coming later, and you’ll get introduced to the Vanguard Ranger in Alpha One, who is a very small character.

He, he doesn’t play a big role, a very important role, but not a big role in Alpha one. And so, you know, I, and when I created that character, it was just some old washed out ranger that was feeling bad about not being a Ranger anymore and lonely and all that kind of stuff, right? so Jason and Bam bam are coming together, uh, essentially, uh, in Vanguard Ranger. You know, because of, you know, I, I basically foreshadowed a lot in, in terms of by saying, Hey, this is the premise of book three.

This is the premise of that Vanguard Ranger. A lot of authors don’t really do that, but I did that and I put my website. I filled that with stuff so people would realize and know that I’m a serious author, that this isn’t gonna be just a one hit wonder that there are books all along the way and at various stages in development. And so that I made that strategic decision. And so it, to some degree. A little bit of spoiler sort of gets leaked, but I think overall it, it, it kind of works out. So, but bam, bam is important. Not for any of the reasons I just said. Uh, I mean, he is important for that, but you wouldn’t know that because that happens in a later book. He will be important in alpha one, uh, in alpha one. It’s a small thing, but, but, but still, it, it, it makes everything matter more. Right. And it’ll just make what he’s going through it a lot harder, especially for the characters who, who don’t have the benefit of knowing how things are gonna turn out the way, the way I do.

Right.

Mark: yeah, yeah. You’ve certainly set up a series with, even with the, with the answering of the questions that you could tell, how it all links together and how much thought that has gone into all. This is very well done. I’m, I’m looking forward to it.

Michael: Thanks. Yeah. I just have to survive long enough to put all the pieces together and stuff.

Mark: So finally, what’s one question you can ask the next author you’d like to ask the next author who comes on the show and the next author coming up next on two weeks is Brittany Butler. She is a former CIA who wrote the Patriot’s daughter. It’s an espionage.

Michael: oh, wow. So, I mean, I’d have like a million questions I’d want to ask a, a former CIA officer. So, uh none of which she would be able to answer either. Right. Uh, I’m just trying to think like, ’cause I, I would really like to understand how a CI, a officer or anybody, you know, be it, uh, you know, MI six or Mossad or whoever, gets into, you know, a nation that is, you know, denied territory.

For example, you know, Russia, China, not Iran now, but before the war. Right. Like, like how do you get in there and, you know, stay there and do your stuff. And especially now with, you know, the, the, the surveillance state, where, you know, especially China, you know, has got like video cameras on like in every single facet of society.

So they, and they’ve got facial rest recognition, right? So how the hell do you, can you even be a spy

Mark: Yeah.

Michael: And operate in a place like that? ’cause your face is gonna be picked up. Right. And, and to what degree has that, you know, changed things? And I, I would not be surprised if she can’t answer that, uh,

Mark: She may answer it in context to her book. ’cause I’ve, I’ve already started her book and there are, you know, those kinds of things come up. Well if you don’t mind sticking around for a couple more minutes. I know we’ve gone well, well, well over time. I appreciate you not just cutting it

Michael: That always happens. I’m long-winded, but yeah, no, I’ve got some time.

Mark: yeah, I’ve got a couple after, uh, after rapid fire after show questions for you.

Michael: Sure.

Mark: Thank you so much for being here and for taking the time. Michael alone, everyone, the quiet war. Check it out. Thanks for listening, and have a wonderful day.

Michael: And thanks for having me.

Cam: All my books, start with either a real world search and rescue mission that I’ve been on, or a place where there’s been a real world search and rescue mission. And then I figure out how do you insert the bad guys? Because in real life search rescue missions usually don’t have criminals involved. Every once in a while we might come in after the fact for something criminal, but not normally.

​Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. Today I am joined by Cam Torrens, author of the Adventure Thriller havoc. Cam, thank you so much for being here today.

Cam: Thanks, mark. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

Mark: I’m very excited to talk about your book, havoc, this series, really, which we’ll get into in the Colorado Trail. Before we do that, let us get into the pitch. So pitch me your book Havoc.

Cam: Great. Well, when Tyler’s on a retired Air Force veteran and now Search and Rescue Volunteer and Deputy Reserve Sheriff finds out a helicopter has crashed in the Colorado Rockies, he’s not overly surprised. It’s happened three or four times in the past 30 years. When the radio call comes in, that one of the people in the helicopter’s been shot in the back of the head, everything changes. His daughter and his girlfriend are hiking on the Colorado trail just miles from where the helicopter went down. Tyler’s on duty to try to get out there and find out who was doing the shooting. Comes a point where he is gotta decide which is more important, doing his duty, saving the woman he loves, or the daughter he loves just as much or more.

Mark: Hmm. That’s awesome. Thank you. So let’s get into the making of this. Before we jump into this particular book and where the idea for this particular book come from. I’d like us to take a step back at slightly bigger scale because this is book five in this series where did the idea for this series come from and like the Colorado Trail and your background with it? If you can get a kind of get into all that.

Cam: Okay. Yeah, I spent 30 years in the Air Force myself as a, mostly as a C one 30 pilot, hauling trash around the various places around the world and flying with plenty of times with Canadian pilots out there when we were doing, uh, NATO operations. Uh, so big respect there. But I’ve always been a lifelong reader. And after I retired from the Air Force in 2018, I took a couple years trying to figure out exactly what I was gonna do, and, and I decided, oh, I wanted to give riding a shot, maybe try to emulate, all these authors books that I’d enjoyed, you know, through the years. And, uh. I got into it and, uh, found out there was a heck of a lot more to it than, uh, having read a lot.

Mark: Yes.

Cam: As you probably know, with all the books you’ve written, it takes, takes a while to figure out what the heck you’re doing and, uh, they say, write what you know, but I wasn’t overly interested in writing military thrillers. I like them. Okay. I tend to read other thrillers more than military thrillers, but military is what I knew and when I settled in Colorado, I also had joined Search and Rescue out here and I’m still a member of Search and Rescue and so I decided to write more about thrillers that happened with Search and Rescue as kind of a b story and have my character be a retired veteran like I was. And uh, that was kind of the genesis of the character. And then the setting was all around me. You know, we moved out here in 2019. We spent a year in a motor home looking around for the right place to live. And, uh. When I got out here and I started doing these search and rescue missions, there was no shortage of places to set the novel. And basically I had my protagonist, Tyler Zan. He came out of the military after a hard go. He had some bad stuff happened, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, and he didn’t leave the military on good terms, and he wants a fresh start out here in Colorado. And he’s all about trying to find a place where he can be useful. He’s really not too excited about being in charge of anything.

He’s had enough of that things didn’t go well the last time he was in charge in the military. And that, that opens up for the prequel of the series damaged. And we progress through the stages to it, to the book that, um, that you read, book five, where Tyler at first is kind of finding himself. Uh, the second book is, uh, trying to reconnect with his daughter. The third one, he, there’s a search and rescue member that disappears, that he was close to, and they’re trying to figure out what exactly happened to her. And then the next one is a locked room mystery and, and a love gone bad for Tyler Za trying to get a restart on romance. And, uh, and then that rolls right into havoc where, uh, he is been a little bit lucky in love and now, you know, she’s in jeopardy. That’s kind of a, a nutshell of the, the series and where we’re at. I, I try to write ’em all where they can stand alone. There’s a little bit of a thread going through the last three or four with the missing search rescue member.

Mark: How do you decide what you’re gonna do with the history of the character in a book five? Because you don’t necessarily, and I haven’t read the other four, but you don’t necessarily want to rehash all the trauma, but at the same time realize that he has been through all these. And it was interesting reading as I was reading the book, I was wondering, I wonder what was in book four and what was in book three, as you’re putting these little hints in and it’s very standalone, which was great, but how did you balance that between like, oh, I, I can’t just retell four books in this book.

I have to kind of hint it here and there and, and especially with the character, how you not have him constantly thinking about all his trauma and things that he would’ve experienced in the military.

Cam: Well, mark, it makes my heart go good. When you say that, uh, you thought of red walls as a standalone, as you know, I mean, it’s always a learning process on the writing thing, and so the first book I wrote on the second one. You know, I made sure I had a sentence to mention the incident in the first one. And , and as I got going I realized that I, you know, you didn’t have to do that right away. And so one of the things I learned was, you know, not to do the backstory dump at the beginning,

Be patient because as long as you got pacing intention, the reader’s gonna stick with you. So you can dribble stuff that happened in the back into dialogue, you know, a third of the way through the novel. And the reader will pick up on it. It doesn’t have to be narrative in the first page or two, you know? And so, took me a little bit to catch on to things like tricks like that, you

Mark: Yeah. What about the trauma of that Tyler had been through? How do you decide what to carry through and what to be like? I think he’s processed this in a different book, and it’s okay to not keep bringing this up because there’s that balance between, in reality, he may fight with that the rest of his life, but in, in fiction, we can’t just keep hashing, you know, that he’s going through this or do you?

Right.

Cam: Yeah. So you know, what happened to him in the military was a combination of a tragedy in his family and a tragedy with, uh, one of his air crews. And I find that I just bring it up in the follow the later books if it directly correlates. So in most cases it’s been family type stuff because he’s concerned about family.

And, and so I’ll bring up the, the fact that, uh, that he’s a fa had a family member in trouble before. But if I recall in book five, I might have mentioned the air crew because we were dealing with, air crew that went down. And I’ll also mention that, you know, I don’t, I said I don’t, uh, wasn’t really interested writing military, but the most fun I’ve had in writing was when I took havoc and decided to go with the dual timeline.

I didn’t originally. When I added in that military stuff, that was the most fun riding I think I’ve had in my riding journey. I’ve spent a lot of time in helicopters over Iraq but as a passenger and, uh bringing back the memories of the shadows, the plateaus, the desert, the villages, and then getting it down on paper. You know, I won’t say it was cathartic, but it was fun to be able to write something outside of the Colorado Mountains, which I’ve been writing in the first four books, and, uh, actually know what I was talking about a little bit, you know? So that was neat for me.

Mark: yeah. There’s definitely a level I felt. I’m not a pilot, so I, but I felt a level of on authenticity to the Colorado Trail and to the, the plane and the pilots and the problems that they have without giving away plot, the problems that they have while flying and all that felt so real. Uh, yeah, it was great.

I really enjoyed that.

Cam: Thanks.

Mark: So the dual timeline and let’s say the plot for this story, where did that idea come from? Like, how did you, how did you come about that? Did you just decide, or did you start writing and then kind of jump right into history? Or how did you do it? What came first?

Cam: you know, all my books, start with either a, a real world search and rescue mission that I’ve been on, or a place where there’s been a real world search and rescue mission. And then I kind of figure out how do you insert the bad guys? Because in real life search rescue missions usually don’t have criminals involved.

You know, every once in a while we might come in after the fact for something criminal, but not normally. And that’s how I worked those. In this particular one, they’re, I’ve been out by the black Hawk training. They run out in Eagle County called hats that I mentioned in the book.

And there’s been four black Hawk helicopter crashes in the peaks around the town that I live in, be Vista, Colorado in the last 30 years. Real world crashes, a couple that folks walked away from, but others that involved some long search and rescue missions. So I’d already knew a little bit about those, and I did some more research and, I thought that would be an excellent plot point to, to have another crash. It would be something that wasn’t impossible or required a suspension of disbelief because it’s happened before. So that was what inspired the opening scene. And I tell people, I’m not giving you a spoiler on the book because it opens in chapter one with the crash and that the dual timeline, uh, was inspired because when I wrote the book that I wanted to write. I got done and it was 45,000 words long. It wasn’t long enough. And I was like, wait a minute. I, I’m convinced, I know I have a good story here. It was a good 45,000 words, but it’s not long enough for a book. And then I realized I can have a whole nother plot line going along to, to take us up to the crash. And, uh, that, and that really came out quick, quickly.

I, it takes me usually longer to, to write that, that much writing. But of that, that timeline with the 20 15 16 uprising in Iraq.

Mark: Wow, that’s very cool. So you’re, you wrote a 45,000 word full story and then inserted this whole thing and re you obviously reworked the end. Maybe we’ll get into that in the, at the end of the show, the spoiler section. But you worked that in. That’s a lot.

Cam: Well, I, I tell you that the dual timeline, going back and writing the helicopter stuff, that was quick integrating, it all actually took longer than writing either of those sections. It still takes me a good year to write a book.

Mark: Okay. Do you have beta readers that. Read the book, like people who have other like pilots or people who have, or people

on the Appalachian Trail,

Cam: I do. I so I write for Black Rose writing and there there’s a cohort of authors there that we read each other’s work. And so I have five or six beta readers that I can count on for early, early reads when it’s in really rough shape. And then I also have friends and family they say. You know, never use your family for beta reading, but, , I’ve got tough family.

Uh, they don’t, they don’t hold anything back.

Mark: they’ll tell

Cam: The only one that compliments me, no matter how good it’s is my mom, and by the time my other beta readers are through with me, I need my mom to be telling me how good it’s,

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: But I, I’ve got, uh, high school friends, you know, that that aren’t authors, but they’re avid readers.

And no, I find that, that I have to have beta readers that are readers first, as well as fellow authors to get the, the full scope of things. So, by the time I’m all said and done, I probably had 20 beta readers for each book.

Mark: Nice. How do you decide what they say for feedback? Because often I’m just going through the beta feedback from my upcoming novel and there’s a lot of contradiction where one will say, this was my favorite one will say this is my favorite spot. The others will be like, that took me right out of this story.

You know, with 20 beta readers, I imagine there’s a lot of competing thoughts. How do you put, how did how did you, I guess, with havoc put that, take that and then make the changes that were like, seemed like the right decision?

Cam: If one person’s says, oh, you’ve gotta change this. And I don’t have a history with that person, I’ll bring it up to a couple other beta readers. If I do have a history with that person, and I think, eh, that might be more your personality than mine. Oftentimes I’ll ignore it. But if I have two or more beta readers point something out, I look really hard at whether I’m gonna keep it or not. Because I, I’ve found that I could be pretty blind when it comes to my own writing. I can get wrapped up in what I think sounds right.

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: Uh, and I’m wrong, and more often than not, if I get 2, 3, 4, say the same thing, that’s something I change.

Mark: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Were there any challenges that this particular story presented for you and maybe as far as the research we could talk about First?

Cam: I, I have written a lot of the, uh, the helicopter scenes, first draft through without any knowledge of helicopters except for what I was fighting on the internet and my sitting in the back as a passenger time. And, uh, I realized that sometime before I put this book out, I was gonna have to talk to some people.

And, and I know, I knew two Black Hawk pilots, and so I reached out to them. I just didn’t realize how much I had gotten wrong until I got ahold of ’em. So in the acknowledgements of the book, you can see those two guys that I called out and thanked them and sent ’em books because they really saved me from some big mistakes, although they missed one, and I don’t know whether they didn’t notice it or not. But this is kind of an interesting anecdote. I still read and listen to a ton of books, you know, 10 or 12 a month. And

Mark: Oh wow.

Cam: I was listening and I had all kinds of genres. And I was listening to this romantic comedy by Catherine Center called oh, I can’t even remember, but it was about a Coast Guard rescue guy, you know, little Romance down in Florida, whatever.

And he drops outta choppers and saves people out in the ocean or, and, uh, they had this sing in there where, uh, they were, there was a military thing and somebody called it a chopper. And the guy goes, now you don’t call ’em choppers in the military. And I’m like, what? And I went through and looked and I had used chopper. You know, you can call a police helicopter a chopper, but not a military helicopter. And I asked my, Black Hawk guys. I go, is that true? And they go, oh no, we would never call it a chopper. I didn’t tell ’em that. Well, you let it go by 23 times in my book. You know, fortunately I was, I was on the last, like, round of edits or whatever and I was able to go in and fix it. I had a couple other helicopters in there that I kept the choppers, but that was like a last minute saved from a romance author. I tried to send her, I tried to get ahold of her email address and thank her, but no luck yet.

Mark: I can almost visualize you running the search through the manuscript for the word chopper and just being like, no. Too many times.

Cam: right. And what are the odds that you get saved by a romance novel when you’re writing a thriller? Huh?

Mark: Yeah. What are the odds? Yeah. So when people finish this book and they put it down, what are you hoping that they’re gonna get out of it? What are you hoping they’re gonna feel when they’re done?

Cam: Well, one of the things, that I didn’t, I don’t think I wrote to this, but when I was done with it, I was like that thing where he is trying to, my main character’s trying to compartmentalize what he needs to do next. And he’s got this duty as a reserved deputy sheriff, and he is got, uh, two people who loved, who may or may not be together anymore at this point in the book. And he’s got this conflict between duty and family,

which, you know, as a military veteran is not an unusual conflict to be in, in the military. Whether it’s something as simple as they want you to go on a deployment, you know? Right. When two of your kids are having their birthday party or struggling in school or something, you know, not necessarily life and death. Up to do your duty when they told you, go do your duty. But you know, there’s also this unspoken, sometimes spoken duty, to your spouse and your kids if you have them. And they don’t always line up. And you know, I think sometimes the general popula who hasn’t been in the military doesn’t see that in the military.

And so I hope that highlighted it. But I also wanted to bring it up because it’s something that first responders deal with. You know, in the civilian world every day, firefighters search and rescue EMTs, you know, same type thing. They some, sometimes just because your 12 hour shift is up, you don’t get to go home and when when you’re needed at home, you know? And so that resulted out of this book. Well, it wasn’t something I went in thinking about but that’s something I hope people take away from it.

Mark: Do you feel like you, process some of the things you’ve been through in your life through the book and some of the challenges that you’ve had through the characters in the book?

Cam: I, I do to a degree. I often talk about, my protagonist, Tyler Zn. When he self-reflect, he knows sometimes that he comes across a little bit stoic or unemotional it’s because he is so good at compartmentalizing, and that’s how I was in the, in the military as well. You know, this is, this is work and when I’m done with work, I’m gonna put that in a box and go home.

So I’m not taking that type of work home with me. And that can be useful for something like that. It’s been useful. Uh, this year in search and rescue, we found, we found a, a lost hiker deceased and ended up spending eight hours with them in a ditch until. The CO could get in and there was several of our team that needed to talk that out, and I wasn’t one of them because I’d been in this situation before. But to answer your question, I do find that when I’m putting it out on paper, it actually impacts me a little bit more than it did at the time when I just dealt with it, tucked it away. I guess it’s just still back there somewhere so, you’re right. A little bit of the reflection comes out and it can’t be a bad thing for me, I’m sure.

Mark: no, no. I think it makes the story stronger and more relatable because it’s sometimes, it’s just those little moments and those little things that he says, or the little things that he thinks that actually brings the character the most to life than anything that he does in a, you know, active response to things.

Cam: Yeah. I think you’re right. I think you’re right.

Mark: So what was your process like for this book, from Beginning Idea to a published book? Do you have an outline that you create and then you, you work with that outline? It sounds like you, whether there’s an outline or not, you definitely added it in a whole other timeline. So that answers a little bit. But what is that process like for you from the day to day to the, the big picture for the book? Havoc.

Cam: Yeah. So I’ve already talked you through a little bit of what happened in havoc, and I, I could tell going through the outline, oops. What scene by scene I could tell about halfway through the outline. Oh, this isn’t gonna work out because all these scenes are gonna have to be, you know, 4,000 words long, and that that just doesn’t work. But, uh, for the other books, pretty, pretty straightforward. Uh, I tried one without an outline and I won’t do that again.

And then, uh. ones pretty much I go, I make an outline. When I say outline, it’s, it’s a one or two sentences per chapter that I envision it going through, and then I just take it, take it from there. Then it’s kind of seat of the pants for those scenes after I got the sentence of what I want to happen.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Cam: And of course, then I have to adjust the outline because sometimes the scene will turn out different than I expected. But usually I’ll try to, uh, write a thousand words a day for four months, and that’ll end up being actually three and a half months of actual writing, because it was gonna be at least two weeks mixed in there, 14 days where I just couldn’t write for family reasons or stuff going on.

But it comes out to, around a hundred, 90 to a hundred thousand words. And then I spend the next, six to seven months. I overwrite.

 

Mark: So this might be a little bit of a, spoiler for readers, but there’s a scene where essentially there’s law enforcement who are being held and they still have their weapons, and I thought that was fascinating because I’ve never, I’ve never read a story where you have law enforcement and everyone still has, everyone still has their weapons.

How did you come up with such an almost, it was just a cra like it was crazy and I, by the end you completely understand, but it just, it was so, it was so, interesting of, of a, a way to go

Cam: Right.

Well,

Mark: taking away law enforcement.

Cam: so Sergeant Rescue in our county of most of the counties in Colorado administratively falls under, uh, the sheriff’s office. And so I have, we

have, uh, two of the members of our team, uh, work for the sheriff’s office as deputies. So they, they don’t always go out on a lot of missions ’cause they’re always working, but we have a lot of contact with the sheriff and so. I went down and I’ve got, I got a tour of the office down in Salida, which is 30 minutes south of Vista where I live because I knew I wanted to have this scene where the entire counties deputies, you know, they were all able to get ’em in pretty much in one spot, you know, except for the folks who weren’t on duty. And it’s possible with a county like ours, I mean, there’s only 20,000 people in our entire county, and, uh, Salida, the town has 5,000 people. And, but Vista, my town has 2,800 people. So we’re talking small town, Colorado out here. And I just, I tried to figure out after seeing their location, you know, what I could do with a with a locked room and, uh, how I could make it work. And, uh, that, that was where I got the idea, uh, when I ran it by, uh the deputy sheriffs that’s on the search and rescue team, he was like, there’s no way in hell I’d let those sons of bitches take us like that. So,

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I was wondering if there was like a moment from real life too, because you have such an intimate knowledge of that a like the area, like you said, that small town feel. There was a maybe a moment in your life too, where such a thing was plausible.

Cam: no, no, that one, that one came out of the imagination. My wife told me it took greater imagination to have a middle aged man get out of there than the rest of this does.

Mark: Yeah, true enough. I didn’t think of that, but that’s very clever. Yeah. So my last guest on the show had a question for you Luke Richardson. He was my last guest on the show, and he had a question for you, but I see, oh, there, it’s, I was scrambling to look for how do you balance the details of location with the story so you don’t make it a tour guide of the location, which is the Colorado Trail, that it’s not a tour guide, and that there’s still plot and story driving the story forward.

Cam: That’s a good question because I’ve been complimented before on my description of the Colorado Rockies, and I’ve also, uh, been told that, well, you know, sometimes it waxes a little too, too poetic. And so as I’ve evolved one, I’ve had to figure out how to describe it in different ways.

So I’m not you you know, winds blowing wisps of snow, like cotton candy in every single novel. But two, I, I’ve tried to, uh move it to good breaks, logical breaks in the pace pacing instead of inserting it between pieces of dialogue or action. And, I realized that a little bit of the description that I was doing in early novels, um, was while, while things were happening, and, uh, it was breaking the pacing up a little bit.

And so I, uh, I do more of it when I’m either, uh, opening up a new scene or when there’s just a logical break in the scene, uh, whether it’s, you know, sitting down for something, when I’m between two scenes of action or something like that. But I don’t, I try not to, to cut too much, uh, description of the scenery, rather just spread it out because I, I’ve gotten a, a, lot of compliments on the fact, especially locally in a small county like this, I’ve got a lot of, a lot of my sales are people right here in Chaffee County, you know, and so the books are a little bit of a love story to the place that we live. And,, so I don’t wanna leave it out because they like reading about places they know, the places they see every day. And to see ’em described in another

Mark: Yeah. How much of your book is you remembering being on the trail and the things that you saw, and how much is you, do you actually just go drive out there to where the scene is more or less and just look around and you’re, you’re just like, oh, look at that mountain, and look at that mountain and look at this.

Cam: Yeah. So a lot of the, the scenery on the books is, almost all of it is. I’ve been, I’ve seen almost everything and those parts that I haven’t seen, I, well, I usually rename those because I’ll only use the actual names of places that I’ve been to. Through, I’ve made up geography before for the purposes of my plot and the action that was gonna happen, but where I make it up, I change the name so that people will be like, what?

There’s not an antelope lake there, you know? But I’ve seen so much on these search and rescue missions. I mean, we do between 50 and 60 missions a year, we’re very busy. We have 14 peaks that are 14,000 feet or higher within a 35 minute drive of our town. And so most of our search and rescue missions are on those. And I generally, I do, uh, well over 50% of the missions a year. So, you know, I’m getting out there in the missions 20, 30 times a year to be able to see those things. And when you’re hiking up there to try to find somebody or somebody’s hurt or whatever, you got plenty of time to think because it takes, you can only go so fast. But the seeds on the Colorado Trail. So the Colorado trail’s almost 500 miles long. And I’ve hiked the first 300 miles of it already. I’ve been doing it, pieces of it every summer. And, uh, so I’ve hiked all the parts that were described in the trail in the book, except for the last chapter of the book where they hiked down to the end of the trail. I’ve, I’ve never hiked that, so that I will have, but I haven’t yet. And I had to, I actually had to talk to a couple people that had finished the trail to get that part right.

Mark: Do you plan to go there and, and finish the

trail?

Cam: do. I mentioned to you before the show, uh, my daughter and I are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in less than two months. We’re starting on April 5th down south of San Diego in the Mexican porter, and that’s gonna take all summer and possibly maybe first or second week of September. Before we finished a tour country, uh, at the border there on the, where the Cascades spill into Canada. But then the following summer I’m gonna get back on the Colorado Trail. I don’t, I have just under 200 miles left. I don’t know whether I’ll make it all the way to Durango because, especially one lesson learned when I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2018, I got off and within two or three hours I mentioned something to my wife about, well, I can’t wait till my next through hike, and it might have taken me two or three years to recover from that verbal faux pa there. She was not excited about me disappearing for another four month hike again anytime soon.

So, so between you and I and every listener, I plan on, uh, finishing that Colorado trail. Eventually I know how quick it’ll happen after that five month hike I’m doing with my daughter.

Mark: Yeah. Wow, that’s amazing. And it sounds like 20 or 30 rescues a year. That’s a, I would not have thought that many. That’s, that’s a lot. Like, that’s practically your pre-training. Like do we even need to train to be, to go with your daughter or is it just your life is search and rescue pretty much trains you for everything you need to be ready

for.

Cam: No search and rescue’s, uh, good training, but you can’t count on, even if you have 20 or 30 missions a year, you can’t count on them all being ones where you get a workout. Sometimes you go out there and you get, find somebody who fell off their horse and the whole mission takes less than an hour.

And sometimes it’s an all-nighter, you know, we have one where we pulled some Air Force Academy cadets off a mountain, but it was a scree evacuation and a letter with a bunch of rope systems, and it took 16 hours to get down. So you, you, can’t count on that. But I mentioned that what I have in common with you, you’re an ultra runner. So I run every day. I’m a streak runner and, uh, and so I do at least a mile every day, but I average about four miles a day. And then that won’t get you in perfect hiking shape, but it’s a good base for starting the PCT. You know,

Mark: Yeah. Awesome.

Cam: I guess the search and rescue is the best thing it does is give me a carrying a pack shape because I’m always carrying a pack and search and rescue.

Mark: How heavy is the pack do you figure in search and rescue or even your hiking pack?

Cam: So yeah, the search and rescue pack’s heavier than the hiking pack. So through hiking pack for me, uh, is usually 25 to 30 pounds depending on how much food I’m carrying. But, uh, search and rescue, I’m starting off with 35 pounds at least because of first aid materials and ropes and gear. And then depending on like if we have to carry. A litter up to somebody to pull ’em out on a stretcher. You know, it breaks in half and each person will carry a half and somebody will carry a wheel. Or the, or is the stuff we use to slide it down if we’re on snow? So it can get up to 40, 45? Sometimes 50, but hopefully not.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that would be tough. Uh, I may have to pick your brain at some point when I, when I go for my next hike,

Cam: Yeah,

Mark: the next, my next trail, like, I don’t know if I’ll get down to anywhere near Colorado, but I’ve done the, uh, Adirondacks and I, I absolutely loved it. ’cause they have trail’s, not the Adirondacks is right. I almost next to my home, so.

Cam: Oh, if you make it to Colorado, don’t come without looking me up.

Mark: Yeah, well maybe you can rescue me. You might be the one rescuing me. Yeah. Look for my name on the rescue list and make sure you take that mission and then I can meet you on the trail.

Cam: Hope not.

Mark: So when you’re writing a book, do you ever stop to think about the number of characters and, and if there’s a way that you intentionally try to help readers keep track of kind of who is who, if they’re jumping, especially jumping into a book five with the dual timelines. Now if, I don’t know. ’cause I, well I didn’t know, Tyler, is there anything that you try to do to help readers just keep track of, of the different personalities and things?

Cam: No. Well, so if I have too many characters, my editor usually points it out. Like, she’ll point out that, hey, unless these guys are gonna show up later on in the book, you don’t have to give ’em a name. And I’ve been guilty of, of, doing that. You know, they’ll, we’ll meet the server at the restaurant and they’ll never see them again. And, uh, my editor’s like, I can just be a, a server, you know, it doesn’t have to be Joe who did this, and he told us about their side hustle and well, so I don’t do that as much anymore. Um, and then I, I could just, I could do a word search and pass books, but I’ll tell you what, so, you know, there’s, there might be some controversy out there about, ai. And I don’t, I don’t use a ton of AI for, I do use some AI for research, like some of the helicopter stuff, but I end up having to, when it’ll point things out, then I have to go, like, look on websites to make sure it’s telling me the

Mark: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Cam: But one of the things, you heard of that an ca anthropic case where they were loading authors books on, AI and giving them out or whatever they were using, or they were learning, teaching their learning machines from authors books.

Well, all of my books were on that list. They got uploaded, you know, for AI to learn from. And so my philosophy is that I can ask AI questions about my books. And so I’ve loaded up my books before on ai and I’ve, I, if I can’t remember, if my character studied Chinese in college or whatever, I can ask ai what book did my character talk about his education or what school he went to, you know? And it’ll come back and then it’ll trigger me, oh, it’s that book. And I, that’s the spot, you know? ’cause word source doesn’t always work that well.

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: That’s one example where, uh, I’ve used AI as a tool and, and I don’t feel like any guilt or reason why I shouldn’t, you know, as long as if I’m not worried about AI getting a hold of my stuff, then

Mark: Yeah,

Cam: you know,

Mark: yeah,

Cam: work.

Mark: Yeah. I see a world pretty soon where we’re paying AI to read our books so that like a marketing scheme so that when people search for it, ’cause it’ll be a search engine, soon enough AI will actually talk about our books. Then it’ll be how much are you willing to pay AI to tell somebody to read your book? And that’s like, I’m, in my view, that’s the future of Of book search.

Cam: I don’t think you’re, I don’t think you’re wrong. I mean with the economy that they’re betting on it, you know, it’s gotta make money in the end.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You gotta bring all that money. Yeah. All that investment has to come

Cam: They gotta pay for all that energy.

Mark: Yeah. Building on the topic of them character names, you also have trail names and fun trail names and things of, and pilot names, like nicknames that they get, which is all, I mean, it’s all realistic. It all happens. So tell me about that, but the real life, for those listeners who maybe don’t know what the real life is like and, and how you decided to implement that into your book.

Cam: Was your question about real life trail names and,

and,

Mark: Like where does that come from and the heritage of it and, you

Cam: Yeah. So in the military, call signs for pilots are real common. They, they actually weren’t that common in, uh, in the transport and air refueling world, which I flew in. But the fighter pilots all had call signs and, uh, a lot of the army, uh, helicopters have call signs as well.

So that’s where that came from. The trail name is definitely a, a trail culture. When I hiked Appalachian Trail, I hiked the first two weeks with my, uh, sister and she quickly got the trail name, uh, pokey because, uh, she always told people she liked, horses and she always told people what a slow hiker she was. And pokey, if you remember, there’s claymation things back in the, well, you’re probably too young,

but they had claymation. It was Pokey and Gumby pokey was this yellow pony and Gumby was this green stick figure.

And, I happened to be wearing a green jacket. So as soon as they gave her the trail name, pokey, I became Gumby. And my trail, my trail name is still Gumby to this day, so I’ll be Gumby on the Pacific Crest Trail. And yeah, unless you’re out there with everybody, you don’t necessarily have an idea unless you’ve read the books about all these trail names. But it’s hard to find somebody out through hiking one of these long distance hikes that doesn’t have a trail name. And the rule is you’re not supposed to give yourself your own trail name. Somebody else has to give it to you.

Mark: yeah.

Cam: So in this book, uh, havoc, fainting Goat was a, uh, real trail name. From a hiker I met on the Appalachian Trail and her, uh, people she was hiking with gave it to her because he passed out on them.

Mark: Oh, it’s wild. I love it. Any other names that that have as history of the character trail names that you

Cam: Yeah. So, the, uh, I hiked with a guy on Appalachian Trail, young guy for about 10 days, and his trail name was Moldy Beans. And that was where, that was where that trail name came from in my book. So these, yeah, these were real trail names. And his moldy beans was because he tried to dehydrate his own food and take it on the hike, you know, and make it last the whole way with these mailboxes that he dropped. But he started getting mailboxes where the moisture had gotten into the boxes and the beams were already rehydrating by the time he pulled them out so he couldn’t eat them.

Mark: What a way to get a nickname. I may pronounce his name wrong. Is it Shavano? Shano.

Cam: Oh, uh, Chavin mount, uh, Chavin the trail the call sign for the helicopter pilot, and that was based off of the town of Salina, where the sheriff’s office is in the book is 30 minutes south of where I’m at right now. It’s got a peak that overlooks the town is 14 greater than 14,000 feet called Mount Chau.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Cam: And it’s the one that, it has a gully coming down the middle of it with branches on either side and when it fills up with snow, like right now, but it’s the last snow to melt and it forms the shape of an angel. So they refer to it as the angel of Shao from the town.

Mark: Cool. That’s such fun little pieces of like history and, and things that you add into your book. I thought I loved it and I had to look it up to see if it was a real mountain after I, I read it and then, and then I, I read about it and I was like, wow, this is so cool. Well done with all those little things that you put into your books.

Cam: it’s a, it’s neat and, uh, interesting story, the, all my books are available on audio. The first book, when it came out on audio, the publisher didn’t tell me that it was coming out on audio. I found out when it was released and, uh, when I went and listened to to it, the geography names were, weren’t what they were supposed to be.

They geography names sounded like they were spelled, but if you’re up from out here, they’re pronounced differently. And, I was a little disappointed about that. And I know a couple people said, well, it doesn’t matter. You know, you’re trying to sell your book nationwide. You just have a, you’re from a small county or whatever, and I’m like, but those are the people I care about the most when it comes to reading the book.

They’re the ones I’m gonna see in the grocery store. But fortunately my publisher was able to put me in contact with the narrator and then we established a connection. He lives in Baltimore and I, I send out a glossary before each book, before he starts working on each book, and we can go back and forth on the names. And so he’s got it all squared away now.

Mark: so you use the same narrator for all your books.

Cam: I do. I do. Uh, young black guy from downtown Baltimore does ’em all and I think he does a fantastic, uh, envoy, so I don’t wanna go with anyone else. So, yeah, his name’s Tim Morgan TMO Audio. He does a wonderful job.

Mark: Awesome. I could. Do you ever think that that’s part of his voice, is now part of who your character is and changing his voice? People would be like, who is this Tyler that’s now talking on the, in your book?

Cam: Yeah, I mean, I, I do you do a lot of audio books?

Mark: I don’t know. I haven’t moved into audio.

Cam: Yeah, I mean, I, uh, there’s a couple, I read a lot of, uh, CJ Box and, uh, Craig Johnson. They both write about, law enforcement in Wyoming. And I like, whenever I hear these audio narrators, the two people that do those books, you know, I, their voice instantly makes me think of that character.

Mark: What advice would you give someone who just published their first or second book?

Cam: The first advice I’d give is if you published your first or second book and you wanna be a writer, you should already be working on number three.

Mark: Hmm.

Cam: I didn’t know that when I started. I just assumed that you would kinda see how each book did, and then if it was looked like, like especially if you’re gonna do a series, if it looked like it was gonna do well then you’d start working on another one. But I didn’t realize that the turnaround time for a publisher, and this is the advantage of self-publishing, is that you’re in total control of everything.

But for my books by the time I get a, a contract, the book’s not gonna come out for 18 to 22 months

later. That’s a long time. And so by the time that you turn in a book for final edits your publishing company, you need to be working on another book already, I think if you want to be a writer. So that would be my advice. And as a follow onto that is if you’re trying to get published or, or you’re saying, oh, I’m gonna try to get published with a publisher, or Then I’ll self-publish while you’re getting rejections, if you get rejections, I mean, hopefully you just get picked up right away, right? But while

Mark: it works, isn’t it?

Cam: While you’re getting rejections, work on the second book, and while you’re getting rejections work on the third book. So the reason that I’ve got a prequel that’s number four in my series is because that was the first book I ever wrote, and it never got picked up by anybody. And the second book that I wrote never got picked up on any by anybody. The third book finally got picked up by Black Rose writing. And when they picked it up and I told ’em I had the second book, I didn’t tell ’em about the first book. They’re like, okay, we could do, you know, they looked at it. That was how those two books got going. And then I wrote another book, and by that time I was kind of established with the publisher and I said, Hey, by the way, I really had a really, really first book. Can I rewrite it?

And, uh, I pitched, I pitched it to him, and I, they took that because, you know, it could be that your third and fourth book before you get noticed, it doesn’t mean you wasted time on the first books. It just means you hadn’t gotten seen yet. So, so, right, right. Right.

Mark: Yeah. Did you know Tyler Song was gonna be a series when you started, like book one or was it, I’m just gonna write this book ’cause if I have this idea,

Cam: I went into it knowing that I wanted to write a series, again, uh, back to the CJ Box and the Craig Johnson, novels. I was deep into the middle of both of those series, which are both over 20 books long, and I was like, that’s what I wanna do.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. . If you could pick one thing that you felt led to your success so far, what would that be?

Cam: Back to your comment about beta readers, and it applies to editors too, and that is to, uh, recognize my blind spots and be willing to accept help from others. So, I mean, I, I really feel like I’ve gotten, uh, better as a writer. Because of the community, which I didn’t start with. I mean, I wrote the whole first book without being in a writing club, without having a group. Just thinking I was writing masterpieces day after day, you know?

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: And, uh, it wasn’t until I got the loving critiques of people that knew a lot more about what I was trying to do than I did, that I felt things started to improve. To me, it’s no surprise that the books didn’t get picked up right away. It was very surprising at the time because I just assumed with how much reading I did well, how hard can it be?

Looking back, you know, thank goodness they didn’t get picked up because it gave me the chance to, to improve. And I, I still feel like I’m in learning mode. I really do.

Mark: yeah, yeah. We never wanna stop learning, right? There’s always

that, that like, how do I become a better writer of all the things I still have to do, like marketing and everything else? How do I still improve as a

Cam: I don’t know how you do it. I looked at your production on books and you run this podcast, and then I saw that you’re also an editor and provide all kinds of author services. I was like, wow,

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: a lot. I’m impressed.

Mark: yeah. Highly organized. I guess that’s my one skill I would say, for

Cam: on you.

Mark: Thank you. So where can listeners find your book or find more about you?

Cam: Yeah. So all the books are available on Amazon and, bookshop. The, uh, hardbacks are available at, Barnes and Noble, Cobo, some of the traditional places. You find that they’re all available on the audio, but it’s through Audible, which is part of Amazon. And you can find me cam torn.com. All one word. And also I’m on Facebook cam torn writer. It’s my writing page.

Mark: okay.

Cam: And then like if you go into Instagram or LinkedIn I have count accounts on those as well. And good read.

Mark: Yeah. Awesome. Well that is great. So we are about to move into our spoiler section. So thank you for being here. The spoiler section’s, just a couple of questions. If you are a reader and you don’t want to know how havoc ends, now is the time to pause read the book, go download it, read it. You’ll be back in a couple of days or however long it takes you to read a book and then you can listen to the spoiler section.

Last couple of questions of the show. So you mentioned that you wrote 45,000 words and then added the dual timeline. I’m curious now, what was the ending like? How did the first book and

Cam: How did, uh, havoc end or

Mark: Yeah, the original story, that was 45,000 words. ’cause there must have been quite a difference in the stories, right?

Cam: So the, the conflict with the guys and the helicopter happening on the pass? I knew that was gonna happen, so, and I knew who the bad guy was gonna be, so that, that part didn’t, didn’t change. But in the process of writing all that backstory, I had all the information on, uh, the characters that I didn’t have. When I, when you’re just picked it up, you know, with a bunch of dead crew members, so I knew the bad guys better. The whole part about, about the Chinese American guy that was part of the original air crew back in Iraq, got developed on the rewrite, you know, so that really influenced the ending.

And, uh, and it really, like it wouldn’t have worked for sure, even if 45,000 words would’ve been enough, it wouldn’t have worked as far as getting the reader to suspend the disbelief and until they had more of that backstory, I think. And

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: so I don’t know. Did you enjoy, did you get thrown off on the dual timeline at all?

Mark: No, no, I loved it. Now, once I knew who everybody was and I got into the stories, uh,

Cam: There were a lot of, to throw in four characters like that rapid fire and, and make it, you know, five years in the past. A lot. So make sure your patience. Fortunately they were

Mark: the timeline started to close, you had me, because that was like, oh, like, and then you see the scene where, you know, she is the, the helicopter crash. So, you know, the crash happened. You find out who’s dead. You don’t necessarily know who’s alive, and then there you go back in time and you’re like, oh my God, how did this happen? Like, that just carried me right through. It was. I had to know how these timelines met and what happened. So it worked, it would definitely worked for me. So Ethan and, and Doubles and or Lisa, I think was her name. She was all, they were all part of the original 45,000 word story, or that was added later, like their history and relationship. Was that all added Later.

Cam: It was added later because, um, I didn’t have, I didn’t have them dating so that, that kind of all came to me as I was putting together the. Dual timeline. And so that, that’s another example of, uh, I just, he was gonna be the co-pilot and she was gonna be the aircraft commander with all I knew.

Mark: Okay. And is that the way you originally wrote? The end, the way that we see it ends, like with the, with the sheriff and the big, I guess the big reveal as we would call it, and why, how we become to understand how. How it was possible to keep, keep these police

Cam: Yeah. That, that,

Mark: room is

Cam: I mean, the, the physics of it were the same. But, you know, I added in the, the part about the, uh, original crew member who we I’m trying to remember his name now. I’m working, I’m working on book seven right now.

Mark: Yeah, no problem. I get it. I can sometimes I don’t remember my characters that I’m working on ’em right now, so.

Cam: Yeah. But, and also the bear and the cub were a late ad. You know, throughout, throughout the book, the Bears in the Cub,

I’d, I’d kind of got the idea. I wanted a, I had a bear in the book prior to this that got into the dumpsters, the, on my book Scorched. And I wanted an animal, and then I read this book, uh, the Frozen River by Ariel Lahan. She had this silver fox, and the way she had it is like this, not, not a b story, but like a C story or a D story just showed up every now and then. I just thought, oh, that was neat.

And it kind of related to the story, you know? And so the, the idea of a, of a mama bear protecting his cub was supposed to be Tyler’s aunt and his daughter a little bit, you know, so

Mark: Yeah. Do you write this stuff down as you go? Like you just come up with the ideas and then it just all ends up in one book? Because

Cam: you’re gonna love this. You’re gonna love this. I get, the best ideas from listening to writer podcasts. Like what we’re doing right now. I don’t listen to as many as I used to ’cause I’m reading so many audio books now, but, there, there’s oh, this guy named Alex that does thriller writers.

There’s a couple of podcasts that I was listening to a British guy and they will talk with an author about books and something they’ll say will trigger, inevitably, will trigger something that has in my mind has to do with the book I’m writing right now. And, uh, it’s not like I’m stealing ideas, it’s just like a technique or a twist or something. And, uh, I, it happens to me all the time, but especially on these podcasts and it that.

Mark: Did you ever consider a different ending where maybe Z made a different decision or Ethan was killed? The aftermath of that, well, I guess I would’ve made it a longer book, but the emotional aftermath and the cost of his relationship, which would’ve, I guess, twisted it into a whole other epilogue of who knows what.

Cam: No, I never did. I never considered a different one. And as a matter of fact, Ethan’s making a comeback in book seven,

Mark: Oh, nice teaser.

Cam: Like a cameo, not, not an integral part, but

Mark: oh, that’s fun. That must be fun to sneak in things like that too, right? You get like little pieces of things for readers who have read all your books and

Cam: Yeah.

Mark: little, little piece, little candies along the way kind of thing. They, they only, they know if you’ve read all the books.

Cam: My editor thought of it. She was like, she knew I was working on books. She goes, when are we gonna see Ethan again? You should put ’em in book six. And I book six is, I don’t know what she was thinking ’cause it’s already at the editor or at the publisher right now. And but I was right at a spot where there was a, uh, a helicopter in book seven just for a minor evacuation or whatever. And so I got Ethan working out in Colorado now.

Mark: Awesome. So after your, after a book is published, I don’t know if you look at reviews or not, that might be a separate question, and you get kind of mass market feedback. Is there anything that you’ve ever wanted to change in this book and in a fact or something that happened that you thought, I guess I could have written it differently? Or do you just, this is what it is. I’m on into books, you know? Well, now you’re book seven

Cam: I mentioned, uh, you know, I was frustrated with the pronunciation on the audio book, but that was a little out of my control. I don’t know whether, you saw this be because I’ve I’ve just read some excerpts of your books, so I’m not sure how you’ve evolved from beginning to end, but I’m sure there’s a lot of writers are like this.

But if I, when I go back and look at my first book, which the first in the series, which is stable, which I don’t go back very often, but what I do, it’s like, oh, I don’t know. There’s a style of writing and it’s my most popular book by far, because it’s number one. But I don’t know, I use a lot of filter words. There’s just some way that I put together senses that I feel like I say more with less now when I write, and I wish I had a chance to go back and fix some of that stuff.

But the number one thing would be that. And, uh, in my first book I wrote first book that got published, I wrote in four different POVs, and one of them was an 11-year-old girl. And I’m never gonna do that again. I just didn’t feel comfortable writing in a kid’s voice, you know, as a major POV. And I was like, well, that’s a lesson learned. I’m not doing it again.

Mark: Yeah.

Cam: But I haven’t.

Mark: is. It is different. It is a lot. Yeah. So my last question, what’s one question you’d like me to ask The next author who comes on the show and coming up next week is Michael La Alone who wrote The Quiet War. It’s a Canadian military thriller. So he actually tells stories with our, our Canadian Joint Task Force, which is our version of the Special forces.

Cam: Oh, that’s great. I guess, what’s the, uh, what’s the most important characteristic of the Canadian military that other militaries around the world don’t know about the Canadian military?

Mark: Ooh, fantastic question. Thank you. Oh, I look forward to that, him answering that question. Very

Cam: Yeah, I mean, and, uh, and I’ll say, I’ll, I’ll say right up front, you know, my experiences have, have all been, uh, fantastic. But, and I know about all the examples of the Canadians, fighting in our, in our wars with them, but with us. But, but I also know that I always associate Canadians with peace because they do so many of the United Nations missions and stuff.

And

Mark: Yeah,

Cam: you know, when I wa when I wanna know about Canadian war fighting culture, all I gotta do is pick up a good history book and I can find out about it. But if I wanna know about Canadian war fighting culture today, I don’t know, you know, because I don’t, I’m not in touch with any Canadian military. So,

Mark: yeah, yeah. Oh, fantastic question. I look forward to hearing his answer to that. , So if you don’t mind sticking around for the after show for our, uh, rapid fire round with our, for our Patreon members, which is free for anyone to just follow the link to our Patreon that would be awesome.

Cam: great. Thanks for, thanks again for having me on this section.

Mark: Oh, this has been great. Thank you so much. Cam Torrens, everyone, author of Havoc and, which is book five in his series. Go check it out. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.

Mark: Watching yourself almost descend perhaps into madness. ’cause it’s not me, right? It’s, it’s a story. But that part of me that knows what it’s like to, spiral outta control.

Todd: So was the writing of this therapeutic for you,

Mark: I think it is, I don’t, I don’t even realize until the end. I think every book I’ve written as I write them is my favorite because it’s like, it’s a part of me right now in my experience that I’m reflecting back on the page.

 Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. Today. I’m your guest, mark Naone because we have a podcast takeover to talk about my book releasing today, my psychological tech thriller, that treatment room. And joining me as my takeover host is Todd Sever, an author of his award-winning medical thriller, deadly Vision.

Todd, thanks so much for being here.

Todd: Oh, thanks for having me. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve, I’ve enjoyed reading the book and congrats on having it released

Mark: Thank you. And thank you for reading it and providing all that feedback that that meant a lot. It always helps make the book stronger, having all that feedback.

Todd: Oh. You bet. Anything I can do to help it. It didn’t need much from me, trust me. So let’s, uh, as, as the host of the show now, let’s move right into it, shall we? And give us the pitch for your new book, the Treatment Room.

Mark: Yeah, so the treatment room’s a psychological tech thriller, so think immersive virtual reality therapy gone terribly wrong. And it focuses on Lucas, who’s a psychologist, who’s with a patient when the police kick down his door and arrest him for, arrest his client for multiple murders. His client goes to the media and thanks him for, thanks Lucas, for guiding him on these, in these murders.

And overnight. Lucas is branded as a therapist who. Who guided a serial killer. So Lucas is freaking out. He’s suspended at work, he’s doesn’t know what to do, so he decides he’s gonna investigate himself to clear his name. So he looks at his case notes from earlier with his client, finds a link to a immersive virtual reality therapy clinic called Pinnacle Therapeutics.

And he goes there as a client, but finds himself very quickly addicted to the technology and the immersive therapy that he’s going through. And even though he’s a psychologist and he knows what’s happening to him, he’s practically powerless to stop. Because the more he digs, the closer he thinks he’s getting to the truth and the closer to the truth, the more he’s losing his.

His sense of self and his own autonomy. His sister Mara is an investigative journalist, so she’s one of the other main characters in the book. She’s also investigating a murder and she finds a link between that murder and also empirical Pinnacle Therapeutics. But instead of going in as a patient, she goes in as, uh, she ends up in a relationship with the CEO at the same time there’s a stalker in the background and she’s not sure if she’s in danger.

She’s not sure who she can trust, and she can see Lucas as the book goes on losing himself, and she feels like she has to be the one to solve it to, to help save her brother. So if you like the dark psychology characters of like a Karen Slaughter and the advanced, advanced technological manipulation of like a JP Delaney, you will love the treatment room.

Todd: I thought it was, uh, first of all, it’s, it’s a very good story. And the way you just described it sounds so complex, yet it doesn’t flow, as it’s a mixed bag. It’s a, it’s a very well told story. All of those seemingly disparate storylines I’ll do come together. Before we talk about that though, in the craft of how you created that, tell us what started this idea. I mean, a virtual reality, immersive psychotherapy gone wrong, where’d that come from?

Mark: Well, it’s actually started as the Genesis project, book two. So the, the Genesis project is one of the first. It is the first book I released. It has immersive virtual technology used to treat post-traumatic stress in soldiers. My original plan was to. Have a book two where we go from the military to commercial application and then that commercial application does its own terrible thing.

But I decided to stay away from the military background when I started working on the treatment room and pulled away from the Genesis project two, because it’s in a military background, it set in kind of a military environment. I didn’t want someone coming to the treatment room to feel like, oh, if I, if this is book two, then I have to read book one, which is military, and I don’t like military, so I’m not gonna bother.

I wanted people to come straight into into the treatment room. So I decided instead of Genesis project, book two, and there are hints, if you’ve read the Genesis project, there are hints in the book of how Pinnacle Therapeutics took that technology from the government, which is all the Genesis project, but officially it’s not connected.

So that’s where the idea it originally came from. I had already written that very concept with immersive virtual reality technology and then it from there, it was a question of what do I want it to do and how do I want it to to impact people and, and I find the question of autonomy and whether or not we actually, in the face of advancing technology, are still making our own decisions or still have our own opinions and how much of that we’re losing as it goes along. So I kind of touched on that in the story as well.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, it certainly does. It touches on, on quite a few ethical and philosophical questions relating to advanced technology. So thanks for your explanation on that. Relating it back to the Genesis project, which then brings up two very quick questions, and the first one is step back again now to the Genesis project. And how did you start thinking of this idea of immersive virtual reality as psychotherapy, and what was your fascination with it that is now spawned to novels?

Mark: Originally the Genesis project, I was reading a book by, I think it was jd JT Minick, JD Minick. He was a Canadian sniper, and during this book, it’s his biography, he was, it was called Canadian Sniper, I believe, and he was talking about how he, when he came back from war, he, he, how much he struggled with, with, PTSD and how it cost him his, you know, how his family and things and he was talking about how that all that trauma and how there was a lack of help and support for it. That’s what sparked the idea for like, what if we could help these soldiers? What if there was a way to do it? And then because I, I love the idea of advancing technology. I was just like, well, what if we could take their nightmares, the, the trauma that they went through and what if we could, through virtual reality, slowly shift what they thought that happened into something less traumatic so that they’re able to cope with it and then the nightmare stop. So they weren’t in the Genesis project, they’re not necess, they’re not removing the nightmare. They’re alleviating some of the worst symptoms by slowly manipulating the memory through the technology.

Todd: Oh, that’s very cool. I, I haven’t read the Genesis project, so, that’s very cool, uh, concept that you had there. And having read the treatment room, I will vouch for the fact that you do not have to have read the Genesis project to get into this book. And I find it interesting ’cause we, both, both of our novels, the treatment room as well as my novel Deadly Vision, we’re all focused upon virtual reality.

It seems to be kind of a endless avenue to explore different concepts. So even though the treatment room and Genesis project before that are based on this very high tech concept, the book isn’t really about the technology, is it?

Mark: No,

Todd: So how would you describe the book? What, how do you feel the, the through story of the book reads?

Mark: For me. Well, there’s a lot to it because the, this book and the characters were quite personal in many ways, but for me it was like the psychology of someone losing their own autonomy, someone slowly breaking down. So it has that, that mix. His sister also, which plays a key role. So the dynamic of of family in a situation where one member of the family is breaking down and the desperation to wanna, to wanna help.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, you really explore a lot of negative family dynamics. Starting with the father, going down through the children. What was your impetus to, to dig into those concepts?

Mark: Good question. I think it just came. It came as a result of sort of writing the characters themselves. When I started exploring the story, even though the prologue touches on well, the prologues a hint to what may be going on in the background, that’s not what I wrote First. I wrote the story, I learned who the characters were, and I knew I wanted a background of psychological, some psychological damage there in order to have the book work.

I guess the way that it worked out, I, I wanted the characters to have this troubled pass, but I also wanted them to have like a sense of hope that trauma from childhood doesn’t make us like, yes, statistically people who experience a lot of trauma in their childhood do end up being, you know, violent or things, but it’s not in every case.

In some cases, there is hope and this book plays with that balance of what is there hope or was there hope and was it lost because of the technology or not? And then his sister in that, even though they were both traumatized and they both went through all these things, they still love each other and are there for each other despite their both traumatic upbringings.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. In fact, it’s, it seems that because of the trauma or in spite of the trauma, it’s drawn these two very different characters into a world of understanding of each other, which really heightens the drama when, as you said, the main character Lucas starts to break down.

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. I thought that Amaras responses were very believable.

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: So then would you say that the through story of this is one of, um, by way of the technology characters learning the value of the family and of healing from trauma?

Mark: Yeah, for sure. And the question of, and the question of what happens when that is, is challenged, because it almost has a reverse, well, I don’t wanna give away spoilers, but it sort of has that reverse arc where they went from childhood where everything was horrible. And then they went, when we start the book, essentially things are fine and they’re adapted, normal people, and then things go in a reverse direction where they go back to the dark and it’s like how, you know, that’s, that was the different play.

It’s not bringing bad people to good or good to bad.

Todd: No. And that was, that was very well done by the way. So talk to us about the crafting of that. I mean, you, you tell the, you have these two main characters, Amara and Lucas, who really are the driving forces behind the story, and they each have their own separate story arcs that are intermingling and you tell the story through both points of view. That’s a lot to craft. How did you, how did you tackle that?

Mark: Mostly one chapter at a time. I use. I use Scrivener. I have a terrible memory ’cause I, I have so much going on. So I use Scrivener as my way of keeping track of things that are going on with the characters. For me, it’s like my filing system. It has, you know, every character, it has their strength, what they’re struggling with.

So when I develop a character and I have all these things through Scrivener, every chapter I write, I go back to that character sheet and I’ll read through who they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing, what their struggles are. And then I’ll write the chapter because I, otherwise I have a really hard time.

So how does Lucas not sound like a Mara? How is like his experiences and what he falls back on? Not the same as hers. It’s like, well, I have to go back and relearn my character with every chapter essentially, that I write. And then when I finished the book, I went through the book as Zamara and then I went through the book as Lucas to, to try and make sure that, okay, this voice is, is the same

Todd: so in crafting that, first of all, are, are you an outliner or are you a dancer?

Mark: I would say in between a planter, do they call it plant planning? And, uh, yeah. No, I would say I’m in between. So for this book, it’s different with every book. And it’s interesting ’cause the Genesis project went through many, many, many drafts. And that one, I, I was pantsed, I have no idea. Like I had the initial idea of virtual reality tech and I wanted the military.

And then I just went in and, and wrote what I, what I wanted to write with the treatment room. It was a mix of, I started with an outline. Well, I, you know, I had the Genesis project too. I had a vague idea of that. So I changed that outline to, to figure out what I wanted to do. For the most part, I had a good idea of the book and what it was gonna be, and a sort of 500 word synopsis, I guess you could say.

So it wasn’t very detailed. Then I created the, I had a mockup of the cover done. I just did it because I wanted to, I wanted to like have this visual of what, you know, this treatment room, it’s not the same as the cover is now. ’cause that was done for by an artist. But my, initially, I always, when I start a book, or at least I certainly do now, I’d create a mockup of the cover to try and bring the book to life and then I get it professionally done later.

So that,

Todd: cool. I like that idea.

Mark: So that’s how, that’s how I, start a book. And then I used to do a lot of outlining, like chapter by chapter and things. And then I found when I got to know the characters that everything just. Everything just changed. And this book was the same. If you, if you read the, the outline that, and I still have it ’cause I keep everything, the original outline for this book, you would be like, oh, that’s, that’s quite different than what it turned out to be.

And that’s because when I learn these characters and you get into these moments and these situations, the first half of the book is almost pretty, it’s pretty close to the outline. ’cause I’ve been thinking about the first half, but the second half, and especially the final third is completely done, almost completely done by, by feel.

It’s like, what, who are these people? And, and what could happen next and what’s gonna happen next?

Todd: You still have an an overriding story arc in mind though. You, you know where you need to get to. Do you have the conclusion already in mind at that point?

Mark: I didn’t, no. And then this one actually, I had to stop where I did because the original outline went quite a bit further, so I don’t wanna, we could always talk about that at the end of, at the end of the episode when we go to spoilers. ’cause I don’t want to give away the, the end of this one, but it actually went quite a bit further.

The outline. Uh, yeah, I guess I can’t really talk about more without spoiling it, but yeah, I, it was, it went further. So, no, I, I, I had to make this work ’cause I was already at like 105,000 words and I felt like, the biggest part of the story had been told. So if I, if I continue with my original outline, it was almost like I would have a whole other book, which I sort of could write a whole other book continuing what I just did.

So

Todd: you, we’ll, we’ll look for treatment room part two. That’s interesting. Uh, 105,000 words. It was that the finished word count.

Mark: it’s 98,000 now in the finished product?

Todd: Wow. I’m surprised it reads faster than that.

Mark: Thank you. That’s a compliment. Yeah.

Todd: Well, it does, it’s a huge compliment. Um, you know, a hundred thousand words, that’s a, you know, roughly 400 page book, and

it’s, that’s an undertaking, you know, and if it’s, if it’s not a riveting story with compelling characters, it’s, it can be a slog. But it doesn’t read like that. It reads much faster. It, it took me a little time to read it only ’cause I read before I go to bed. And that’s, that’s, so it’s, it’s indetermined how much I’ll be able to get through before the Kindle drops outta my hand, onto my lap.

Mark: And you get hit in the

Todd: But, no, it was, yeah, no, it reads much faster than that.

And it, it’s, it’s definitely, a page turner to the point that you always wanna know. What’s so that’s a, a testament to the craft that you did do.

Mark: Thank you. That was, that was intentional.

Todd: I hope so.

Mark: I.

Todd: I mean, that’s good

Mark: I tried to

Todd: that you’re supposed do.

Mark: I tried to keep every chapter to about 1500 words ’cause I knew I wanted that, even if it’s not action thriller and car chases and guns and explosions I still wanted, like you said, that feeling like you’re constantly moving forward. So short, slightly shorter chapters.

Trying to keep the 1500 didn’t always work that way, you know, I mean, how it is sometimes it’s a little shorter, sometimes longer, and, and ending each chapter with a little bit of a hook, which is, you know, the job I guess to, and a thriller to move, move you forward. So always looking for that hook. Oh, this is the perfect moment to try and string you along.

And then you’re in Lucas’s head and then you have to read Lucas in order to get back into Mario’s head. But now you wanna know what happened to Lucas and then you’re back and forth.

Todd: Right. And it, it’s really interesting when, both of their heads are kind of in the same place, but perhaps temporally they’re in the same place, but just staggered a little bit. So you’re really bopping back and forth a little, for example, some scenes when they’re both in Pinnacle and you’re, you’re getting two views at the same essential moments of time.

I found that was very effective the way you did that.

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: If there’s any new writers who are reading this or experienced writers who are, listening to this show, they’ll know that craft is a very difficult thing to master. To, to gather how you’re going to actually tell the story and you have an idea. So it sounds to me like your idea started with the technology. ’cause it’s an offshoot of technology that you already explored, reinventing it for a new commercial aspect rather than government, which is cool.

So then you had to create characters to tell the story, but at that point you didn’t have a through story yet. So crafting those characters actually became the narrative vehicle with which your own concept of how the story was going to be told came to fruition.

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: How did you craft those characters then? I mean, that’s a big deal. It’s not, you know, that’s a big deal. You can’t just under sweep that away that it’s like, oh, I have, you know, Lucas Amara and there are these people and, and blah blah, blah. It’s like. Craft is so important for a story to actually work. This could have gone off the rails in so many different ways,

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: know what I’m saying? So just talk to us a little bit about your character creation.

Mark: the often, you know, it’s interesting how we think about characters and how there are always parts of us within our characters. And one of the things that I do almost unconsciously, ’cause I don’t necessarily notice it until the book comes out, is that I take a piece of my, a known experience or something of mine, and I put that into the character so that I know that they, so they become even more real to me.

So like, as an example with Amara, like her lack of trust in, in that in people and in men and things. That like I know what that feels like to have a lack of trust in people because of things that have happened in my life. And so that, that brought her to life for me because from there it’s like, okay, and then I, once I picked her, her occupation as a, an investigative journalist, it was almost easy enough to, to bring her to life from there, just a piece at a time.

Because that was like, okay, that’s a big part of who she is as someone who’s trying to find trust and she’s not sure. And, and with Lucas, it was his, his rock climbing and his, I know what it’s like to have that psychological decline where you’re not, you know, things are getting so dark and so bad where you’re like, I don’t know if I can do this anymore or take this anymore.

Like that. Slow watching yourself almost descend in, in this case, perhaps into madness. ’cause it’s not me, right? It’s, it’s a story. But that part of me that knows what it’s like to, to slowly go. Spiral outta control. So really that with Lucas and that Amara, that’s where it started. It was like those two pieces of myself, and then I just kind of went from there.

Todd: So in any ways was the writing of this therapeutic for you,

Mark: I think it is, I don’t, I don’t even realize until the end. I think every book I’ve written as I write them is my favorite because it’s like, it’s a part of me right now in my experience that I’m, that I’m kind of reflecting back on the page. So I would say it is probably fairly, fairly therapeutic. Yeah.

To put

Todd: Yeah,

Mark: to put those characters out there and perhaps that’s what makes it, this book, for me, one of the most nerve wracking I’ve had to put out into the world because there is that reflection of myself in there. And even if people hate it, ’cause I know people will, it’s the nature of the business no one’s, there’s no one, no one gets a hundred percent love, but it’s almost that, there’s that but, but you know, the story is so personal to me.

Todd: Yeah. No, that’s, it’s, that’s a great point because anybody who writes has a, a full moment of being naked and just being completely exposed. Now, most of the time, just on the surface level, that’s based on the writing and the storytelling itself. It’s like, you know, you’re not a very good writer, you know, oh, this sucks.

You know, you or you, you know, you did it well, but there’s always the part of you that’s going to have the fear of taking something you’ve created and putting it out into the world and having no idea how it’s going to be received. That’s, I think that’s probably universal for all writers. But then on top of that, you have the emotional overlay that you’re really taking parts of you and opening them up. And even though it’s not you, it’s a character you still are exposing a part of you that you probably don’t tell people on a regular basis.

Mark: that’s right.

Todd: You know, this is almost your way of bringing to forth your ability to talk about something that you don’t tell the average guy walking down, Hey, by the way, did you, you know, I had this trauma when I was eight, you know, uh, and I know what that’s like.

I mean, deadly vision. I did, you know, there’s a, a lot of very painful moments, you know, in that book. And those all came from my childhood or my situation. And I know when you’re writing those, you have to find the way that you can express the reality of what it is that you are feeling and what you’ve experienced without dropping into melodrama or overreactions. For making it sappy and you just hope that it resonates with somebody you must have had a lot of feelings of exposure that way.

Mark: Yes. And I still do. It hasn’t, well releasing today, but even with, you know, with Beta readers and with, with my developmental editor, who was the first to, to read the book, yeah. It’s a very, it’s a very, uh, nerve wracking moment where you just hope that people, enough, people really enjoy, enjoy the story, you know how much work goes into it, right? It’s like months and months of, of thinking and writing and, and planning and it’s, it’s so much

Todd: Although having said that, don’t you find the best moments are when the writing’s happening without thinking.

Mark: the writing itself. Yes.

Todd: Did you get those moments where it’s like the story’s just going and you, you, it’s taking you places you never even imagined because it’s, it’s coming from someplace inside of you that’s being envisioned or, or embodied through these characters.

Mark: Yeah. I think that’s why the second half always does whatever it does, because I’m so into these characters in these moments. That’s why I never force an outline on the second half of a book, even if I have an idea because of that. Because the this, it just becomes so real and it’s like, I’m just telling, it almost feels like you’re just telling these characters stories, you know?

Like they’re just giving them to you through them, or through you, you’re passing on the story.

Todd: Right. Yeah. You know, I’ve never been somebody who’s believed in the, like the real, you know, touchy feely, oh, I’m an author and I, it, the muse speaks. It’s, I’ve just not been like that. And you hear authors talking about how the characters will reveal themselves or the characters will do things you didn’t expect them to do or I didn’t realize My main character’s actually the villain sort of thing.

It’s like, well, how did you not realize that you’re writing the damn book, but, but it happens. Can you speak to that? How, how do you think that process just evolves?

Mark: I don’t know. I, part of it is that, it’s like a movie playing as I’m writing the book, and sometimes I feel like I’m just watching the movie like everybody else, and I just happen to be putting it down into words. And it’s true. Although I don’t, I, it’s true that I think of it as like, when my characters are, there are twists or, well, not so much twists, but things that come up throughout the book that I didn’t see coming and those are things that I had to, to go back into the beginning and, and set them up because I was like, oh, that’s who, that’s who that was. So, because I go off, off the rails a little bit in the second half as I’m, as I’m feeling out the story, yeah, sometimes the, the, the a twist comes up and I’m like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t realize that’s how this was gonna go, but it feels like the right thing to do. I plan this, but now that I’m here, it feels like this is the right thing to do.

Todd: Well, for, for the listeners who haven’t read the book yet, just so they know, when you say going off the rails in the second half, that’s your writing The story never goes off the rails. The story always stay. So, but I get what what you’re saying. It’s like, it’s like what’s gonna happen and it’s a strange feeling when you don’t even know what’s gonna happen in your own book. Um, you know, dead Division did that to me. I had no idea how I was gonna end this. I had all these disparate storylines. It’s like, wh what, how do I, how do I get out of this? And, and so, um, it’s cool when that stuff all kind of just comes together for you.

Mark: Yeah. How do you find that comes together for you is it the same way where you’re here, where you’re kind of feeling characters out as they go? Is it playing like a movie for you in that sense?

Todd: Absolutely. I mean, and, and I think that I, I would say I’m pretty much like you are a plant, sir, if that’s a word. I think I outline a little bit more detailed than you do in the sense, but then I haven’t seen your outline. But I, I do try to bring my outline all the way through the end and with careful attention to what the critical points are gonna be and how I’m going to get there. But when you’re actually writing those scenes, um, I don’t restrict myself to anything I might’ve thought in advance. You, you go with it at the time. And that’s a, a question I like to ask you is, as you’re going with it, how have you learned to trust yourself, to trust your process with what you’re putting down on the page? Or do you trust it?

Mark: I trust that I can do whatever I want in the first draft. I, I hope that it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve rewritten entire second halfs of books before, not recently. ’cause I’m kind of gotten the hang of it, I guess you could say. I’ve written a lot of novels and only published some. But yeah, that’s what it is.

It’s just that first draft for me is I allow it to be whatever it’s gonna be. I just let the words go. Like I have that outline, but at the same time, like if it’s, if the writing’s terrible, it’s terrible, I’m gonna write 1500 to 2000 words every day. This is probably the quickest book I wrote. The treatment room as far as like, it just flows so well.

I think I wrote the first draft in three months and I never thought like, oh, I have to go back and do this right now, or I have to rewrite this, or This is junk. I need to start over. Or I need, like, it was just, no, the first draft is gonna be what it’s gonna be. And then in the second draft, that’s where sometimes most of the magic happens.

Todd: So you work with the developmental editor and you’ve, you had beta readers involved as well. So talk to us about that. There might be a, a new writer who wants to know what it’s like to work with a developmental editor.

Of course, you can only give your experience. But, um, how does this work? Do you start off by tossing ideas around? Do you turn in an outline? Do you start writing the draft and then work the editor on it? How, how do you do it? Mm-hmm.

Mark: For the developmental side editor side, I, I write the first draft myself. I write the second draft, or I fix it up in the second draft to make it as clean as I can. Then that’s the draft that goes to the developmental editor. She’ll go through it all and give me like a high level, like all that plot character, here’s what you need to do.

This doesn’t make sense, or this wasn’t working. And then in the manuscript itself, she also makes notes along the way about how, like, how certain things felt, things I may wanna change, ways I need to reword this. It’s all very high level stuff. So when you think of copy editing and line editing, which comes later, developmental editing’s, all, it’s all high level, it’s big picture.

One of the hardest parts of writing this book was probably the beta reader feedback because when you get beta read, I, I was lucky enough to have a lot of beta readers for this book and when you

Todd: What’s, what’s a lot? What’s a number?

Mark: I had 22 beta readers like offer to do it and I think I got 12 or fif 12 to 15, I’d have to actually count 12 to 15 responses on people who actually gave feedback.

But what happens is at my level, I don’t have a staff or anything, so I don’t have someone creating a spreadsheet and coming up with like averages and what everyone thought, which is what you hope to do, right? You, you bring together, the goal is to bring together, if five people thought this, then this is probably wrong.

If one person thought this, then who knows. Right? It’s just a reader preference. Yeah. But what happens when it’s all over the place and, and what someone, a scene someone loves is another scene that someone didn’t like and something that you love, like I loved about character. Another person thinks the pacing is too slow, even though for me it’s like, oh, but I love this person.

And it’s, it’s challenging and that’s the job of the author is to decide what am I willing to give up to tell the story I want to tell regardless of whether or not, you know, this is the story that X Person would prefer it to be. So that’s that, that process in itself can be quite challenging

Todd: and even with the developmental editor, right? I mean, you still had to learn to trust her, but also learn to trust you, and to be able to filter out those differences.

Mark: Yeah. A big part of that I think is while reading a lot because of this podcast, I read a lot of books, so I have learned a lot as I read. I think that helps a lot. So when, if I disagree with my developmental editor, which isn’t very often ’cause she, she doesn’t, she does a very good job and, and in the feedback that she gives.

So I don’t disagree very often on big picture stuff, but I know I read enough to have a good, especially now with every book that I write. The more that I read, the more that I kind of pick up on the things that I know I a, a way I want to tell this story. And then I’m just like, no, this is, this is what I wanted to do and I meant to do it and that’s just what I’m going to do.

And that’s part of the creative, it’s part of the creative joy of being the author and it’s part of the stress of being the author.

Todd: Yeah, it’s a great point though. ’cause you know, learning the craft is, is a process in and of itself.

I don’t think it can be under spoken, how much you can learn from reading authors whose work you admire and reading authors whose work you don’t and realizing what you don’t like about what they’ve done.

Again, personal preference. You know, I did work with a developmental editor on Deadly Vision and not to talk about my book, but you know, the history, it was a long gestational book. It took me, you know, 30 years from original conception to publication and at one point I’d gone to an editor who I don’t recall. I don’t ever remember having gone to whoever this person was. I don’t even know who it was. I could tell from the handwriting that I believe was a woman, but I don’t ever remember having worked with a female developmental editor on this story. And the comments I guess I had sent her an outline and, and the first few chapters and the comments were kind of as somebody who’s read Deadly Vision, it’s like this story should not escalate to murder. You do not need to get the politicians involved, they should stay in the hospital, and it’s everything against what I did. And so at that point I had to say, no,

Mark: yeah,

Todd: that’s not what I want to tell. That’s not the story. And so as an author, you had to believe in your story. Beta information, developmental information. The alpha readers now that are, are getting it all, you have to believe in your story. So What made it so compelling to you that you devoted a year of your life ish to getting that story out there and you never gave up on it. You never quit. You persevered. You suffered.

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: Why? What?

Mark: It was just the story I wanted to tell it that. It’s a good question, but it’s, it’s hard to put into words ’cause it was, it was just, I knew, I loved the idea of autonomy, especially like, I mean, I kind of already talked about with, with technology and questioning that, and I knew it was a, a topic I wanted to explore in, in the breakdown of a person.

And I just, I just knew that that was the right next story for me. So I, I went with it and, yeah, I don’t doubt myself during the process. I know some writers do talk about that, how they want to jump projects and things, but once I get started, I’m all in. I’m, I’m, I’m ready to go. I, at no point during writing this book did I think, oh, this is no good i’m gonna start another book with my next greatest idea. Even though I have ideas as we go along, as I went along, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen to me. I, I get locked into a story. I get locked into the characters and I’m just, and I just roll with it.

Todd: Well, you know, personally, I’m glad that you didn’t give up on it

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: ‘Cause I have a copy. Well, I, I only, by the way, I, only have a

Mark: yeah, I will send you a, a paper back. Yeah.

Todd: How much research did you do for this?

Mark: Oh, a lot. And there are rabbit holes. I’ll try to high level this. I, I mean from the, the simple thing of Boston. I’ve only been to Boston once, so in my mind I

Todd: You’ve only been to Boston once? ’cause it reads like you are, you know, standing on a street corner in Boston.

Mark: Oh, thank you. That was, that was research. I’ve been to Boston. Once I knew the seaside port, I knew kind of the high tech vibe, but that was, that’s all. Just that one time, that one memory from years back. So I went, I always pretty much Google mapped it. I went on Google Map, I went to Street View, and I walked around Boston via Google Maps.

A couple of beta readers have been to Boston, new Boston. Well, so they were able to like point the little things for me, which is nice when you have, when you have that.

So that was like the Boston side. And then there was of course the what is happening right now with VR tech, vr therapy because VR therapy is something that is being used, of course, not to the immersive extent that I get into, but I wanted to understand what they were doing, how they were applying it to, to real humans so that I could make it as realistic as possible.

There was research into what I, if we ever do get to immersive virtual reality, how do I think it would happen. Like what is the most likely way we are gonna get to immersive like that? Because right now we have walking treadmills and I considered using like walking treadmills and goggles and things, which is kind of at the peak of where we are right now, considered it but I wanted to go a step further into complete immersion, and then that was the, that was research into what would have to happen in the human mind in order for this to work. How do we get pictures into our brain? How do we get a human into a dream state in order to force, well force put pictures into the human brain as if, ’cause the idea behind Miek was that you would essentially lay down in a chair, you have this crown, which I, we call it a crown in the book and it basically, you basically with a cocktail of, of helpful drugs, you end up in a dream state and, and you’re fed these images through this machine. I say it a lot more technically in my research, in the book. I, I couldn’t tell you how I said it now, but you know that looking into like, what, what can we do right now? ‘Cause right now we can only do like, you know, I think spots is as is as far as we’ve gotten. They can force like dots into someone’s mind via, via this method. But we’re we’re very far from that level of immersive technology. So that was, that was on the research side. And of course there was also the psychological side.

Someone’s mental breakdown. Luke is being a psychologist himself. What is, what is, you know, what would his company, and there’s of course you have to understand it’s fictionalized. So not everything is realistic. Just like, just like in crime thrillers, everything the detective does is not realistic. We have to move the story a little bit. So, but the psychology of like what would happen in his clinic if he was in this situation, how would he think as a psychologist about his own situation? One of my beta readers is also a psychologist, which also. Has helped make the book a lot stronger as well ’cause she went through the book and said, no, this is what we would call it. Or this is what he would say, or this is what he would think. So that was helpful as well in the final product of bringing that psychology, his, his profession to life.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, having delved deep into virtual reality medical in my book I was with you, just, you know, where can we take this technology? Have you ever been inside of virtual reality other than just a video game?

Mark: Other than for a video game application. No.

Todd: Okay. Your, your sessions seem very real. I, you, you’ve mentioned the rock climbing. It was only a couple of sentences into the rock climbing experience and virtual reality where it’s just, this guy’s a rock climber. I mean, you know, you’re a rock climber. You, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got the details down, so I know you didn’t have to research that part.

Mark: No, not very now. No. That was pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. That all came naturally. Yeah.

Todd: So when the whole thing is said and done, and people have had a chance to read it, which again, congratulations on being published today, and we’ll talk a little bit about the publishing process in just a minute. With all things being said and done, what is it that you would hope your, your readers get out of this, out of their experience with this book?

Mark: I think number one is entertainment to just an escape from the normal everyday life. I think that’s why most of us write, that’s what got us into, like, when I first started reading books or when I got even more into books, I guess I should say it was the story, it was the escape. It was, it was that, you know, being there with those characters on an adventure that I loved.

So that’s like number one is what I want to pass on is just, you know, you, you went on this adventure, whatever’s going on in your real life, you had a break from it because you are immersed in this story. And then on the, on the slightly darker side, I guess I also would hope that people think about what they see visually and what they’re being fed and whether or not, you know, we’re losing that sense of autonomy like Lucas does, even though I go extreme in an immersive technology, which would be a lot more powerful in order to manipulate somebody I still think even with today’s technology, that there is the potential, if not outright manipulation of people, as you see with these big meta court cases and things going on, where people are addicted, they’re being manipulated via these algorithms. So I, I guess part of the book is that like part of the, you know, the story is when you put it down to think like, man, like this could go very wrong for anybody if they allow themselves to be, to just follow along without thinking, thinking clearly.

Todd: Sounds like it was just ripped out of today’s headlines with the lawsuit against meta, and you know how all the algorithms are intentionally, addictive and

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: trouble problematic.

Harmful, yeah.

Mark: yeah. When you, even when you look at, AI as we move forward and how it’s taking over and the new movie that just came out, I think it just came out a week ago, I can’t remember what it’s actually called now, because I was, I’ve, I’ve only just, doing my research for it. I knew it was coming out, but the sense of that, are we gonna, is AI gonna help solve all our problems, or is AI gonna destroy humanity as we know it? And

Todd: I have a pretty strong opinion on that one.

Mark: Yeah. Well, it’s, that’s it. Right? And that’s my next book. Who knows what’ll happen in my next book, with, as I advance this story of, of what, yeah, where is this technology gonna go?

Todd: For people who are writing, let’s just dig really quickly deep down into your writing process. When you’re working, how many hours a day do you, do you write?

Mark: Actually, right. Depends. Well, it would depend on how deep I am in the writing. So I spend probably two hours, probably two hours a day, every day for months until the first draft is finished.

Todd: Do you, do you have a goal per day what you wanna accomplish?

Mark: It’s usually time-based. So I, I force, yeah. So it’ll be like an hour and a half of writing. It really depends on what I have going on. ’cause I have, I have essentially a tracker and every day I have like, I need to do an hour and a half of writing, an hour of editing, an hour of marketing. And then of course I have my other businesses in the podcast.

So I have all these things. And I know if I don’t, if I don’t take time to do all these individual things that I’m gonna, you just, you just forget something and then it gets, you know, it gets delayed and delayed and delayed. So. An hour and a half is typically minimum, but then editing also goes into there so you could say two and a half hours, depending on where I am in the process.

Todd: What you just wrote or editing earlier stuff.

Mark: Could be either. Sometimes I, I’ll I’ll, write a short story or, and give it away to my Patreon members and so I might be writing and editing a quick, short story. I tried dictation for fun to see if I could dictate a story. And I did. I did. Well. Yeah. Well, you know what the funny thing is, so I dictated while I was walking dogs, but during the dictation as I’m reading this story that I wrote, I could tell when someone’s talking to me or when the dogs are doing something they shouldn’t, because you’ll, I’ll be reading the story that I’m talking and then all of a sudden there’s like this complete nonsense of like, what are you doing? Get back

Todd: Don’t poop there. Don’t poop. There

Mark: Yeah, yeah, So I have to like separate, wait, was I actually writing talking or was that like, was I socializing with someone because I don’t know what the hell any of this means.

Todd: is, is that the name of the story? Don’t poop there. It’s a.

Mark: No, no. It was a pretty dark, psychological, it was a Christmas one actually. Yeah. It was fun.

Todd: I can’t dictate creative writing. It’s the speaking process and the writing process for me come from two different parts of the brain and I need to actually see the words forming on the page as I’m writing it. ’cause that’s what kind of keeps me in touch with the flow. You know, that the drive to get the, the page to turn is, it’s, a lot of it is visually the way the page lays out for me. I, I just think if I try to tell a story, I, it, it taps into a different part of my brain. The adjectives that I would use the descriptors, the, it’d either be too flowery or not flowery enough. I just, I can’t do it. I need to, I need to write.

Mark: Yeah. I don’t think I did it very well. I think I rewrote that story several times and I haven’t really done it since because it’s, it’s a lot of work to try and figure out what I, I was talking

Todd: So when you finish your first draft or your second draft or, or what have you, do you do you put the story in the drawer, so to speak? And if you do for how long?

Mark: No, no. The drawer is, it goes into the next process. So I wrote the first draft. I don’t even think I took time. I knew what I wanted to do for the second draft and things I had to fix. ’cause I’m making notes along the way in Scrivener. So I go straight to the second draft. Then with a developmental editor, I get a couple of weeks of break or whatever because she’s working on it. Same with the beta readers. When they get it, I get a bit of a break.

Todd: And you don’t work on it while the development editor has it, you’re not changing little things here or there. You can actually put it away.

Mark: Yeah. Because I don’t know, because she, I’ve only worked so hard on it, especially with developmental editing, because she could throw a wrench in the entire system and say, this is terrible and here’s why. And then, ’cause it happened to me once, this is none of the books that I published, but one of the books that I wrote that will probably never be published, I sent it to a developmental editor, a different one, not the same one I have now and she came back with like, yeah, this story’s a mess. Essentially. And she, she listed like all the things that were wrong, and she was right the whole way. Like I can’t, I couldn’t argue, but yeah, so now I don’t, yeah, so now I don’t, I’m like, okay, my developmental editor needs to tell me, ’cause if I need to rewrite half this thing, I’m not gonna like try and make it perfectly polished and then pay to someone to edit it and then rewrite the whole thing because they thought it was drunk.

So I have that, even though she never tells me to do that anymore. There’s that fear because it happened once. There’s that fear deep inside that any developmental editor is just gonna come back to me at some point and say, this is awful. What were you thinking? Do try this instead. Right?

Todd: You know, but that, again, that’s a great point for, for writers to learn that balance between trusting your instincts and trusting the outside ear. You know, for for, for the writing, I, I, the hardest thing in the world is to put a story in the, in the, in the drawer. Because you’re in it, you’re on it. You want to get it done, you want to get it right, you gotta finish it. I know a lot of craft books will tell you, put it away for six weeks, which is beyond painfully impossible, I would think. Having said that, I put that division away for 15 years at one point. But it did gimme an interesting perspective when I finally pulled it back out. So I, I think it’s interesting how everybody’s crafting. I mean, the physicality of their crafting is, is so different.

Mark: My goal is to write two books a year. Not that I’ve ever, I’ve been able to pull it off very well, but my goal is to write to for two books a year, and when you look at my whole process from beginning to end, it’s about six months long, so there’s almost no room it can be done, but there’s almost no room for error, which creates.

Todd: for outside life?

Mark: Or Yeah. Well, yeah, we could get, we, we could get into that, but yeah. The, the second hardest part of writing this book was, was like burnout and complete exhaustion from trying to do so many things and running seven days a week.

Todd: Yeah. And, and, and balancing life. I mean, there are other commitments that you have to attend to or, or, or want to attend

Mark: yeah.

Todd: So the balance is always a tough thing, I think, for anybody who’s in the writing process.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah.

Todd: So today’s the publication. Yay. Confetti. Hey, I don’t have champagne. I got water here. Cheers. Tell us about publishing it. What, what obstacles did you run into? How was that process for you? It’s one thing to write it, it’s another thing to actually have the physical product in the world.

Mark: Oh yeah, it’s a good, I don’t know. It’s, it’s surreal, I guess. I am so busy for so long every day that I don’t even really get the time to stop and think about it. I don’t think I’ve really had a chance to stop and actually think about that, about the fact that it, it’s a, it’s, it’s alive now.

Todd: It

Mark: I’m so busy. You get so busy going from, from the readers to this draft to is this perfect as you, you know, you have to, ’cause I prepare the template like for the book to go into, so when you actually get the printed draft and everything, what it looks like, the afterwards and all that stuff, like, all that prep I do myself, the marketing, getting it on KDP and wherever, like all those decisions.

Yeah. It’s like, it ha it all happens right up until the very last moment. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually stopped to think about what I’ve accomplished. I’m not there yet. Maybe there’s be a good question for a couple weeks from now, maybe when I’ve actually had time to, to take a breath and think about the fact that I’ve accomplished putting another book out there.

But it seems to just be like, well, what’s next? This one’s out there. Now let’s go jump into writing, the next book.

Todd: And, and you’ve published several of your books on your own, so you, that process is kind of. Now you’ve gotten through the initial hurdles.

Mark: I think there’s so much to learn and the industry changes so fast that staying on top of it is still, i’m sure in public, in the traditional publishing, interesting world, that somebody’s full-time job when you’re doing it all on your own, as an independent author, it’s your job to stay on top of trends.

So in, in one sense yes, I’ve it’s not so hard for me to pick my keywords or I know how I go about picking keywords and categories, but at the same time, every time the industry makes a change, you have to kind of adapt to that. What’s popular, what’s the popular social media? Who’s saying what, what’s, what’s actually going on right now in the industry?

So I could promote my book in a way that people are actually interested, the most interested because of what’s trending. Right. And that changes all the time. So there’s still a lot to keep up with, you know, even when,

Todd: Marketing. Marketing is brutal. Yeah. Well we’ve been going for about an hour now, so we should probably wrap this up. So what advice would you give new writers?

Mark: I would say to be persistent, to be resilient, to know that your first book, if you’ve only written one book may not be the book that that makes you famous. 1% of authors write a book in, or, or less, probably statistically now, that write a book, put it out there and it becomes like a number one bestseller.

That’s, that’s a dream that’s winning the lottery. You probably have better odds of going out and playing the lottery and, and making millions off that than you do having a number one bestseller. The persistence and the resilience to know that if you can just keep writing books and, and keep marketing and keep trying different things and watch what happens with sales and watch how things progress in the face of a very difficult, a very difficult industry to be in because it’s a creative world that that you will eventually get there and, and you have to love the process as part of that resilience.

Todd: Yeah. I, I like that. Love the process. That’s in the end it’s, that’s what it’s gotta come down to. ’cause if you’re hating every step of this, it’s just misery.

Mark: Yeah, nobody finishes. Nobody writes multiple books who, who’s only trying to make money. You start off, you, you’re writing books for, just for the passion of it. That’s, you have to,

Todd: I agree with you. So should we get into a final wrap at this point? What, how would you like to, to go from here?

Mark: yeah, we can

Todd: I’m just.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Well, I can say where you can find my books. You can find the treatment room is on Amazon as far as the digital, and you can find it anywhere on paperback and hardcover. The best place to go is probably my website, ’cause you can find all my books and everything on my website.

Then we can if you have any questions, spoiler, full questions that you, a couple of those, if you want to ask, we can jump into those.

Todd: Okay, so these are real spoiler

Mark: Yeah. So a warning to the audience, now’s the time to hit pause. If you haven’t read the book, go buy it and read it. And it’s on sale today. If you’re listening today, it’s on sale for nine, 9 cents for a week before it goes back up. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it there as well.

Todd: Okay. So spoiler questions. I think one of the characters, which you did very well, which was always a nebulous character, forgive me, I don’t remember his name, but it’s the CEO of Pinnacle,

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: Talk to us about him and the, uh, the nebulous nature of his character.

Mark: I wanted people to think, oh, it’s gonna be the C. It’s always, it’s always the CEO, you know, he’s always the evil one. It’s gonna be him. And as Amara is questioning it herself as a reader, you’re also questioning that. So I wanted him to say things and do things where you’re never quite sure of his moral code.

And intentionally he, he’s a good guy doing some wrong things. He’s almost like an everyday, well you, maybe not in a CI don’t know that many rich CEOs. But what I would think of if he wasn’t a bad person was like, he’s kind of, he is, he is a wealthy person. He’s had success. He does morally, he does wrong things, but he’s still a good person and I think at, especially at the end of the book, a lot of people ask me, those who have read it, have asked me what, like how was, how did you intend for me to feel about Tristan? ’cause I’m not sure how I felt about him. Was I supposed to hate him because I didn’t hate him? Was I supposed to like him? ‘Cause I didn’t necessarily like him.

Todd: You, you, you didn’t know if you could trust your feeling about liking

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: And that was, that’s good writing, man. I mean, ’cause it’s too easy to make you hate a CEO. I mean, come on. They’re, they’re vilified ev every day for, for many wrong reasons actually. I mean, not that they’re not reasons to vilify them, but. Being successful in and of itself isn’t a reason to vilify somebody, not, not when you put it on the, the world scale of what perhaps they’re bringing to the world in terms of economic growth and jobs and et cetera, et cetera. Um, but in the end it is profit

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: And we all believe that any CE will do anything for profit to maintain their power. You did a really good job of the, the nebula nebulous ity of, Tristan. So I can see why people would say that because of course he comes across immediately as the slime bucket, you know? And then when you find that you’re kind of liking

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: you don’t trust whether you can trust yourself to actually like him. You don’t wanna invest that into somebody who’s just gonna turn around and betray

Mark: yeah. yeah. That’s,

Todd: So that was nice to.

Mark: yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Intentional the whole way and a lot of fun to, to create that nebulous nature of his whole character. And even in the end, I don’t, like, it almost comes down to the individual. Like, is what he allowed Lucas to do to go back into the machine when he knew there was something wrong?

Like, does that make him a bad person? Like some people may think yes, some people may think. All he was just trying to figure out what was wrong with his technology. Like both can be true. And you, I think he’s probably one of the most nebulous characters, I guess you could say of that I’ve written because you people are gonna you’re gonna have that. Did he do the right thing? Was is he a bad guy or is he not? It’s, it’s not clean cut with him.

Todd: Well, then there’s another character who still in his own worldview would be considered a nebulous character, and that would be Lucas’s father and Amari’s father and being the catalyst really for this entire story. So what were, what were your thoughts there? He’s

Mark: he would, I knew. Well, because this was a Genesis project too, originally. Patrick, if you’ve read the Genesis project, for those who have, oh, this might be

Todd: in Genesis project,

Mark: No, but it was, or his char like Blake, who is in the Genesis project was going to be, so he’s like the, the, the protagonist of the Genesis project. His name is Blake.

This book was gonna be, because it was originally gonna be Genesis project two. Blake was actually going to be Patrick, but I mean, the plot was different, but the idea of him having dementia and being in and out of who he is as a person was part of that intention. ’cause I wanted, yeah, he’s like you said, like I wanted, Patrick is a far more villainy than to me, than nebulous because of how he treated his kids.

Yes. You have the research angle, which was what his belief, and you have him coming in and out of dementia at the same time feeling bad for what he did. And we know in the end that he wanted to fix things and then he’s essentially the machine is what, you know, Vera is the reason why he can’t, he doesn’t end up, he doesn’t end up, he ends up with dementia in the first place with, with how bad it gets.

So yeah, he was always kind of a, of a villain to me. But at the same time, I, I think all villains need to have redeeming characteristics. Like villains are, even villains are the heroes of their own story, right? So even through in his, in and out of his dementia, I had to have, I wanted him to almost be the hero of his story, which he was. In his mind, he was the hero of his story almost the entire way through, right?

Todd: Yeah. And that comes through very clearly and it just brings up the whole ethical, you know, question of do ends justify the means? What is the morality of research which goes back, you know, hundreds if not thousands of years? What is, what is the morality of

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, that’s well

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: At this point, where do we go from here?

Mark: Yeah. Well, we can wrap up the main show and, uh, if you have a few more minutes, we’ll stick around for the after show for the Patreon members and for everyone who’s listening. Thank you. Thank you for being here, Todd. I really appreciate you, appreciate you

being the host. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was nice to, it was fun to get interviewed for a change and,

Todd: Am I, am I the first host ever on your

Mark: yes. Yeah,

Todd: Oh,

nice, nice. Do I get a badge? Like a

little

Mark: asked you about sending you a badge. Yeah.

Todd: Okay, good.

Mark: Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being the host. I really appreciate it. And to everyone listening, have a great day.

Todd: And congrats on completing a, a very, very remarkable achievement.

Mark: you.​