TPP Season 2, Episode 5 with Robert A. Adamcik

Bob: [00:00:00] Hey guys, how would you like to be brutally murdered? And they’re like, okay. They end up victims of, the bad guys with their permission. One of the characters in my fourth book grand Prix Affair, the character did not meet a pleasant end. So i’m like, sorry, you had to go. He’s like, I don’t know how to take this.

Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. I’m your host, mark Nadal, and joining me today is Robert Adamic, author of the Espionage Thriller, the Wave Force Affair.

Mark: Bob, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Bob: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Mark: I’m excited to talk about your book, the Wave Force Affair. Let’s start with the pitch

Bob: All right. Well, white Force Affair is a thorough and espionage novel, and this particular one has a bit of a family twist as my team of agents [00:01:00] led by the epitome of the gentleman’s spy. Charles Bryce Acts where the attempts to find a missing husband that’s a friend of a friend of theirs.

He encounters something that he shouldn’t have seen and nefarious forces are after him.

Mark: All right, so where, what sparked the idea for this story?

Bob: Well, this particular addition of the martini squad adventures was based on a lieutenant. I used to support. I’m a my day job. I’m a uh, defense contractor. I’m a test engineer. And one of my lieutenants who I support is named Molly’s, like the character in the book. And she told me how she met her Costa Rican husband at the Naval Academy.

They were he was one class behind her. He was an exchange student, and he’s one of those classically handsome Latin American, dark skinned and you know, tall, dark, handsome kind of guys. He was, brown-eyed, blonde, All-American looking girl, and I’m like, oh, this could be interesting. So I kind of took that and ran [00:02:00] with it for this particular book.

Mark: What about the tech and stuff that, that you had in the book?

Bob: Oh, that’s, that’s lots and lots of research. I’m like you know, weapons, cars, especially the cars. My previous series the Guard Oil series, I was notoriously hard on my cars. I, I, well, my second book, I dropped a, a body on top of a Bentley Continental GT Speed. Ouch you know, things like that.

But yeah, all, all weapons, everything else. Researched extensively. And also Google Maps. You, you asked a question about rabbit holes. I get on rabbit hole on Google Maps between tracing routes for potential car chases and things like that. And also I find hotels, I could, I could tell you the best hotels and the best restaurants Andorra right now based on the research for this particular book.

Mark: Okay, so when you wrote this book, this is book two what was the process like writing this book? You,

Bob: once I got the idea from my conversations [00:03:00] with Molly, I just sat down. I was like, okay. Her husband’s job is actually a aviation consultant in this case for the real company. That’s so, which is what way force is based on and like, okay, what would, what, what would the so have that would interest a adversary party?

And I’m thinking, okay. Drones because that’s the the big thing right now and took that and just ran with it.

Mark: And the process itself, do you. Are you just writing? Do you wake up in the morning, particularly with this book and just start writing to figure out, or are you doing research at the same time? How does that whole process build for this

Bob: Oh, I, I write, and then if I’m like, okay, I need to, you know, research a weapon, or I need to research, you know, someplace for the team to stay, then I’ll stop, do the research, take some notes, and then get back into the writing.

Mark: And was this book like it has a kind of classic spy thriller because you’re talking about the cars, the feel, the characters, and the [00:04:00] jokes they tell. It has a very classic feel in a modern environment with modern technology. How did you balance that when you were writing it?

Bob: I said one of my favorite authors is Ian Fleming, and one of the things I learned reading his books is the sweep, and that’s what I attempt to recreate with my books. Very fast moving, but also very detailed as far as the, the who’s, the what’s and the wheres. And I just keep writing and, that’s ba basically until I’m done.

Mark: okay. What kind of challenge did this particular story present for you? If at, if you felt challenged along the way?

Bob: Making sure I got the technology right for the uh, for the drones. ’cause my background in the navy l was a ship driver, surface warfare officer. I wasn’t an aviator or anything like that. And the programs I support now. Are more on the command control, communications information technology types of thing.

So doing all the research for the drones and things of that nature was probably the biggest challenge for this book. Plus my. [00:05:00] Publisher was like, Hey Bob, you may not wanna mention people’s real last names and the company’s real names. I’m like, okay, fine. I had to come up with new, a new last name for the characters and the new name for the company.

’cause the original title was the Dasso Affair and the publisher’s like, oh, you better not use that name. I’m like, okay, fine. But other than that. I think this is one of the funnest books. I of the, of the five I’ve written so far on, on my fiction side. Obviously because the characters are based on friends of mine and all that.

But I think this one’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book.

Mark: Do your other books also bring in real world characters and people, or was that unique to this book?

Bob: It, it depends. One of the characters in my fourth book grand Prix Affair, he, the, the name was based on somebody I work with and the, the character did not meet a pleasant [00:06:00] end. So I gave, I gave the gentleman a copy of the book. I’m like, sorry, you had to go.

Mark: Yeah.

Bob: And he’s kind of he’s like, I don’t know how to take this.

Hey, don’t worry. Just just friendly. And he, he was, he was good with that. But yeah, I like to use names of people that I know and I like met the character Angel. She is based on a person I worked with when I was uh, supporting Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic. Her name was Angel Brown. Yam.

And in her particular case, she was a retired navy lieutenant commander like me, but she was a administrative what we call a limited duty officer. She rose up through the enlisted ranks as a yeoman and got her commission and then retired as a senior administrative officer, and she received her call sign Angel when she was a admin officer for a fighter squadron.

Mark: Squadron.

Bob: And I’m like, Ooh, that sounds cool. So yeah, I borrowed her name and put it second in command of my team.

Mark: And how do you approach [00:07:00] telling someone, or I guess you ask them, is it okay if I use your name, which I would assume you do. What about the likeness? Are you thinking about their personality and what you know of their personality, or is it just I’d like to use your name. I want you to know that I know this is not you, the person. This is just you, your name.

Bob: Again, except for that one character I just mentioned, all the characters I base on real people are really nice characters. So, none of ’em have had ever had a problem with me using their particular name. But yeah, if, I can, I’ll say, Hey, I’d like to use you in a book. Okay,

Mark: I’ll

Bob: may I? He was like, oh yeah, sure. Uh, in fact, um, my sixth book I’m writing right now that is tentatively titled The Incel Affair two of the victims are two lieutenants that I work with, and I approached the bro. I’m like, Hey guys, how would you like to be brutally murdered? And they’re like, okay. So yeah, they then they end up victims of, the bad guys in this, in this expert with, with their permission [00:08:00] and black wise, yeah. Pretty much describe ’em as as they’re in real life.

Mark: Awesome. So fans of this show will recognize if they read The Way Force Affair. A few people that have been on this show, Andrew Warren, Brian Drake uh, Aiden bailey, who uh, met an unfor, or I shouldn’t actually, sorry, I won’t include spoilers, but poor Aiden.

Bob: Yeah, I’ve used, I’ve used Andrew, I used Andrew’s name in, my third book, which was the, let’s see, final Strike was the third book of my guard Girl trilogy. He promoted me to ameral in, code Green, so I returned the favor and made him a aircraft carrier commander in that book.

Mark: Awesome.

When readers finish the book, what do you hope they’re thinking or feeling as they, as they

Bob: I just, I just hope he had fun. As much as I love Andrew’s, Thomas change series and it really exciting, sometimes can be a bit of a downer ’cause he, you know, Logan Wolf kind of guy, you know, same with Aiden and trigger [00:09:00] Man and Brian and you know, Sam Raven. You know, they’re all lone wolf lone wolf guys.

And uh, I’m like. Okay, that’s cool. But I want, you know, I might be able to have fun. I want the characters to, you know, like the end of the classic bond movies bonds with a girl having a drink. Good to go next. Bring it, bring on the next guy.

Mark: Is that part of all, is that how you write with all your books is bringing that like team environment, that fun,

Bob: Yeah, that’s, that’s the, at least these first five that I’ve written, the current one, it’s a little darker. Just because of the subject matter. So, you know, readers, if they pick up my, my next book, I’m about halfway done with it right now, and, and they’re gonna notice a slight tone shift only because of the nature of the, the criminals, the nature of the threat and is just a little bit darker.

Mark: Do you feel like your military experience and having that, you know, that team dynamic from the [00:10:00] military is what kind of pushed you to, in these books, not pushed you to, but inspired you to create that team dynamic from

Bob: No, absolutely. I served on six ships in my 20 years of commission service of the Navy and all the wardrobes i’ve worked with the Chief Petty officers, mass, all the enlisted crew. Everybody I’ve worked with was just awesome and I tried to, you know exemplify that spirit of, you know, you’re a crew, you’re a family in, into the into my books and like what the expression says, write what you know. So I know how to be part of a team and part of a crew.

Mark: Were there any points in the book that you changed uh, in in later drafts?

Bob: No, not really. The way I write, I tend, you know, I, I write, I start thinking, okay, okay, well what next? What do I need to do next? And I might have a two or three courses of action running through my head, but I’ll decide [00:11:00] on the course of action that I wanna use before I put finger to keyboard. So, unless there, unless my publisher wants me to make, any serious changes, like in my first book nautical Strike. The two ma, the two villains are father, daughter, and I had their relationship a little bit more intense than what is acceptable in the general mass market book. So I had to kind of tone that down a little bit. But otherwise I run the potentials through my head and then I put it down on paper.

Mark: paper. After this book, there’s an afterward at the end where you or you think a number of people, when I see like family members or wives or kids think, I always like to ask what their role was ’cause I think it’s so crucial that people crucial and interesting how different people are supported in this author journey from wives and children and how that experience plays out. [00:12:00] So what was that ex, how was that, did that play out for you? Is your wife, let’s say your biggest cheerleader. Is she reading your books? How is that play?

Bob: I’m not sure if she reads my books ’cause she’s not a big thriller, espionage person. But, she definitely indulges my, this particular hobby of mine. And, pretty much along that line, my siblings are always awesome. They read everything. I write,

Lot, lots of encouragement on the siblings side, both my siblings and my in-laws.

In fact, my late, brother-in-law was always a fan, and I dedicated my second book to him, personal strike, just before He passed away back in 21. So, yeah, de definitely the encouragement helps. And of course, a lot of my friends out there, not just thriller writer, friends, but you know, high school acquaintances, old shipmates, they’re they just love my work.

Mark: Do they ever, when they read your, do they read late stage work or early stage work? The people that your family.

Bob: Oh, I’ve never had any a family member actually look at a draft.

Mark: Okay.

Bob: It was, it [00:13:00] was always after, after it’s been published and out in the world.

Mark: What was the hardest part of writing this book from the idea to publication?

Bob: Well, like I said, this is one of the EAs funnest and, and actually one of the easiest, I, again, I think just the idea of trying to figure ’em out to the geography of where they’re gonna be. Because I’ve never been to endra, which, and after my research, it would be a really cool place to visit, but I had to figure out, okay, how do I, how do I get the, the heroes from the states to endra?

What’s, you know, what’s the roads and all that? And also part of the book takes place in Tokyo. So I had to do a little bit of research on hostess clubs. ’cause that’s where, where big portion of the story takes place. And it’s because I’ve never been to one of those before. So I’m like, what’s, what’s going on here?

Okay. And, so yeah, basically it’s just, just research, making sure I get the details right. Because if I don’t, I know I’m gonna hear about it. ’cause that’s how I, I kind of hooked up with Andrew and Brian. I’m like, Hey guys. Yeah, I’m retired [00:14:00] Navy. By the way, if when you did this, this was wrong and if you please have any questions about Navy stuff, let me know.

And, that’s how I got to be friends with Andrew and Brian.

Mark: Awesome. That’s helpful to have a team like that behind you, I imagine.

Bob: Oh yeah.

Mark: So research was one part. What about characters? How do you build characters? Because now you, instead of the lone wolf, you actually have a team. I imagine they come back throughout this series. How do you separate their voices when you’re writing them? How do you start a character and build them into the story?

Bob: Let’s see, four Grand Prix affair. I had two characters, the last name of Vaughn, McKayla, and Connor. One of them was the IT guy and the other one was the team sniper and like, okay. They got the last same last name. Obviously their call sign’s gonna be the twins, but what’s gonna make them a little different?

Well, the way I made it different was the computer guy was tall, blonde-haired, blue eyed, and the sniper [00:15:00] was a petite African American woman. So the, uh, call sign twins is obviously something very, very oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Senior moment here. Sorry. Yeah. Something very contrary.

All and, you know, you know, little inside puns like that. Again, when I created Angel, again based on the very nice person I worked with, but her background was okay, what if I took one of the Dora Mage from the Black Panther movies, made her a Navy Seal and put her in here, and that’s what I based angel’s appearance and demeanor on.

I can’t remember the actress’s name, but she’s one of the not the lead dorm, but like the number two person with the really intense eyes. I can’t, I can’t remember.

Mark: I’m not good with names.

Bob: Yeah. And I saw her in, in Black Panther, civil War and I’m like, Ooh, she’s kind of cool. What, what could I do with that? And I put Ya’s name to that actress and [00:16:00] the background of her being the first, woman to graduate from Buds. And there you go.

Mark: you go, do you do this before you start writing the book or do you do this as you’re writing or as need characters? You develop them?

Bob: As I need as I need ’em. I’m, I’m not gonna, you know, spoilers for our Grand Prix affair, but the computer guy doesn’t survive that particular book, so I needed a new guy for way forest affair. And I, I have this great website I go to that helps generate names if I’m not using somebody I know know and I’m like, okay, I’ve got African American characters, white guy Puerto Rican. Okay. And looked up Puerto Rico name and there you go. And his, this computer guy is not exactly our average guy in the chair with the glasses and the energy drink. He’s a former Air Force PJ pair of rescue guy. Guy The team doesn’t know that at first, they just think he’s another guy in the [00:17:00] chair and all of a sudden he starts, you know. Showing marksmanship skills above and beyond what a normal computer guy would have. And it reveals that, yeah, he’s a Air Force para rescue, which is, for those who don’t know, there’s, that’s the Air Force contribution to the JSO that’s Air Force Special Operations and some of ’em are pretty close to tier one operators for their particular mission.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Bob: So I, I went ahead and did that, and that idea came to me based on a conversation I had. Wow. About 20, over 20 years ago. my my wife and I were in Nassau at sandals Resort and one of the people we had dinner with one night, he was a, the guy was a pj and he mentioned that during dinner, and I’m like.

Whoa. Because I, no one else around the table knew what an Air Force PJ did, but I did. So I figured, okay, let’s have that same sort of reaction drop the course of the book.

Mark: what, what about their characters in the backstory? Do you build a backstory for the [00:18:00] character, things that they’ve been through? And

Bob: Yeah,

Mark: personal side.

Bob: Yeah, like for Charles, my, lead who also is by the way, based on a real person fellow bond fan who I’ve actually met in real life. Great guy. Again, the epitome of the, gentleman’s spy and he, he has you know, a sibling and things like that. So I kind of incorporate that into the story and eventually I’m building to a point where that background is gonna be become part of, if not the main story for one of my books. Further down the line.

Mark: Okay, so you’re already, you’re already well ahead.

Bob: Oh yeah.

Mark: How far ahead do you plan your, like ideas are, you just like jot down ideas and you’re like, Hey, book five, book six, book seven.

Bob: Yeah. Yeah. Actually there’s I’m working on jotting down ideas for book six. Let’s see, I think I actually answered that, question. Let’s see. Oh yeah. I heard about this place called Bohemian Grove. It’s this retreat [00:19:00] where the rich and powerful the world hang out for, for some form of retreat every year. Heard about that on some YouTube video I saw. I’m like, Hmm, that could be the setting for my next book. You write, wrote that down. Think, you know, things of that nature. So, so yeah, if something strikes me that could be potentially be interesting for a book, write it down, file it away, and, try for the next one if it, if it doesn’t relate to anything I’m working on right now.

Mark: Do you feel yourself as you’re going, like for a walk or something where you just see something you’re like, that makes a good idea, that makes a

Bob: Yeah, yeah, unfortunately I don’t have anything to write it down with, so I, I gotta make sure I remember it because I’m, I just turned 59 last week and my memory is not the way it used to be, so I, I gotta make sure I get, get home and jot it down before I forget it, and then remember it for next time.

Mark: Alright. I have a question from Susan Walters who was the last guest on the show. She asked, do you have any unsold novels sitting in your [00:20:00] desk and is there a plan for it?

Bob: Um, Hi Susan, and no, I don’t because I pretty much, since I’m, I have a day job, I just basically write one book at a time. I, I don’t have, you know, a, a draft, you know, halfway done, and then another draft, like, you know, 10% done or anything like that. I write a book, get it to my publisher, get it out the door. Did I start working on the next one? So at least for my particular case today, Susan, no.

Mark: And this book is the second book in the series, but this is the fifth book that you’ve published. Are there books that you’ve written prior to all that?

Bob: Actually before I started doing the fiction thing about, 10, 15 years ago, I was doing the nonfiction thing ’cause my degree’s in history and I have a a big interest in the space program. So my first two books I ever had published were Histories of the Space Shuttle, orbiters, discovery, and Endeavor.

And it, when those, when those first [00:21:00] books came out, it was just at the right time. It was right at the end of the program, especially the one on discovery. After I released a book on the Endeavor in 14, the interest in the program was to the point of no one was really interested in, the third book. I, I had started on the the history of the Atlantis. So my writing kind of took a backseat for a while. Then during the pandemic is when I picked it back up again, ’cause had a lot of time on my hands and I was reading a lot of books. That’s how I started with Andrew and Brian during the pandemic and like, well, wait a minute.

Maybe I, you know, I’m reading a lot. Maybe I should try writing one. And actually the one turned into three. The the Gargo Trilogy and the characters of the Martini squad, I spun off from those first three books.

Mark: Do you approach research when, because you mentioned research, you mentioned you do Google.

Bob: Oh,

Mark: Is that, are those like the main, do you, is it like, is it just a Google rabbit hole of research that kind of goes from website to Website to website?

Bob: That’s where I start. I’ve also [00:22:00] found some great YouTube videos on like the Mark six patrol craft that I use in the final strike. Found some great videos on that. Also, the, in my first book I used the sock sock car boats that, the riverine boats that the what we call the dirty boat guys.

The swix use for riverine. They carry a crew of four and eight seals. And found some great videos on that and also some my, personal connections with the Navy. For final strike, I had two mark, six boats in the well deck of a, LSD 41 class of wood be island class, amphibious, ship. And one of the per people I work with.

In my day job was First Lieutenant on one of those, and he turned me onto the Well deck manual that explained how those boats are stored in A LSD class, well deck and how they’re tied up and how they, exit the well when they launch and all that. and I took that information that he provided and put in the book.

And then I also included him as another [00:23:00] character. He was the ship’s boon you know, on the I think it was Carter Hall. It was the ship I used for that book, and he was the guy who actually controlled the weld deck and launched the, launched those craft for me. So,

Mark: How do you balance when you’re, when you talk about these things in your book, making it clear to the reader what it is without overwhelming them with the technicalities? I know part of the genre is the technicality, so there is an element of that in the genre.

Bob: That, that’s a balance. And if if somebody’s doing a beta read for me. I’ll get the feedback back, Hey, you may wanna tweak down, turn down the, the technical jargon of a little bit. ’cause I always prided myself in that I could write these things and in a way that the average person could just can understand it.

Even with my nonfiction work on the shuttle, I tried to scale back the the, acronyms and the the lingo and everything else as best I could.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Bob: But you know. Somebody, if I have it a little too much, my beta readers will tell me to back off a little bit. I’ll, I’ll do a little tweaking and I’ll carry [00:24:00] on.

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

Bob: Beware of marketing scammers. I’m serious. My inbox gets flooded with them. I usually tell ’em to bugger off and block ’em and carry on.

Mark: Yeah, you’re talking about the book club. Well, Book clubs, I guess are the most, currently the most popular

Bob: and people like, Hey, we can help you boost your good read score and things of that nature. Just give us money. I’m like, no, I’m not. You know, if you, if you don’t wanna do it, you know, help me do that for free. Don’t, don’t bother. Get outta here.

Mark: What about on the advice on the creative side?

Bob: again, just write what you know. That’s, that’s the best advice I can give anybody. Don’t try, don’t try to do something, out there. Unless you really wanted to spend the time in doing the research, you just write what you know.

Mark: If you can pick one thing that you felt has led to your success so far, what would it be? [00:25:00]

Bob: Oh, wow. Just persistence. Sometimes, you know, I read my, I read the reviews. All of ’em are great, and some of them are not so great. And I just put the not so great ones behind me. Take the lessons learned from ’em and apply ’em as necessary. But just, Just just keep going.

Mark: Just keep writing the next

Bob: Just keep writing.

Mark: And where can listeners find your book and hear more from you?

Bob: Oh, okay. Well, all my books are on Amazon. The Barnes and Noble, both the hard copy and, Eco available, all the various outlets. And I have a Facebook page. It’s Robert, a Adam check dash author. That’s, I can find me on, on Facebook and my if you want to email me regarding book stuff, it’s gargoyle.Morgan@gmail.com.

Gargoyle was the call sign for my protagonist in my first three books, James Robert, Bob Morgan. And he got that call sign because of [00:26:00] a conversation I had with my commanding officer on the baton. Captain Howard was an one, an amazing captain. Probably the best COI ever worked with, and I worked with over a dozen.

In my career, he was a former F 18 pilot, so eight six intruder and F 18 pilot went from the intruder to the Hornet, and I’m on the bridge. I was his navigator and I’m on the bridge. I’m wearing a set of gargoyle wraparound shades. Of course Captain Allard being the aviator. He was, he was, you know, RayBan guy, and he sees the, the brand of sunglasses I’m wearing.

He is like. I said, call you guard oil. I’m like, skipper, that’s an outstanding call sign. Thank you. And he’s like, ah, nevermind. I was just calling you a gator because I was just not a gator. So, but I remembered that conversation and used that for the call sign for my the hero of my first book. And so hence carvilleMorgan@gmail.com is the, email Addie for all my book stuff.

Mark: Okay. Thank you. [00:27:00] That’s great. You must look at like, if you reread some of your own books, even like 10 years from now, it must be like a blast from the past where you think you get to think like you have an experience and nobody else has when you read your books. Because of the way, I love that, because of the way you’ve added these, you know, people and

Bob: Oh yeah.

Mark: Where you, you just, you can remember these people. They’re like

Bob: Yeah, there, there

Mark: in time.

Bob: Yeah, people I’ve served with the Deputy Director of operations for CIA, or excuse me, deputy Director of Intelligence for CIA in both my first three books. And the first book of the Martini squad was, based on an actual, Marine Corps retired Lieutenant General. I served with when I was navigator on Baton, he was then Colonel Bailey, commanding officer of Second Marine Regiment. And we, we took him and his, marines to Iraq and back in 2003, and again, one of the best, finest officers I’ve ever served with.

When I heard he retired a Lieutenant General, I’m like, Hmm, not surprised. [00:28:00] Right guy, smart guy. Guy. And I remember him really because one day just out of the blue, I’m walking, walking by his cabin and he’s like, Hey commander amk, come on over here I go, yes, sir. You know, not often. I get called into a marine colonel’s cabin and he presented me one of his regimental, t-shirts, had the regimental logo on the front and on the back was a task force. Tara Iraq, 2003 on the back. And he is like, Hey, commander, I think you’re a really professional guy.

Love working with you. He’s a memento of our time onboard the ship and it, it just struck me as like, wow, nobody’s ever really done that before. Yeah. So in fact, I still have that t-shirt, it’s framed in my office. And so when it came time for a very senior agency person, yeah, general Bailey was top of my list to make, make that character. And of course I actually tracked him down and talked to him on the phone and sent him a copy.

Mark: That’s awesome. I [00:29:00] love that story. I love how you do that.

Bob: And also same with the deputy director of operations was named for my commanding officer on John F. Kennedy Dennis Fitzpatrick, who is now a retired wear admiral and again, outstanding commanding officer, and I’m like, okay, I got, I got put him in the books as well.

Mark: Yeah. Well, Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. For those who are listening, we are about to go into the spoiler section. So I am going to ask a couple of spoiler questions. So if you don’t wanna know what happens at the end of the book, you may not wanna listen to the next the last yeah, yeah, yeah, You can pause, read the book, come back, and then you won’t it won’t spoil it for you. So was there any inspiration to one of the, at the end of the book, essentially what the main conflict ends in this ma in this big kinda airplane, stunt airplane, parachuting the PJ comes out and this whole stunt sequence. What was the inspiration behind that?

Bob: I just, the idea just came to my head. It [00:30:00] is like, what would be a great set piece in a movie? What would I wanna see in onscreen to happen to, to rescue, poor, uh, Rafa from the Russians? And I’m like, and of course again, I got a PJ working here. I’m like, and a seal. I’m like, okay, let’s do a little air to air. Plus, Molly she is a former naval aviator and she flew the P three Orion, maritime patrol craft as a large multi engine, prop, maritime patrol plane. So I’m like, okay, let’s get Molly into the cockpit. Now. Why would I want Molly in the cockpit for something skydiving? Okay. And then I just kind of progress progress that way.

Mark: I don’t know a lot about planes and, and, you know, aerodynamics and the, and the odds of things. Do you look at like the plausibility of, I kind of see Tom Cruise doing the end of the, the end of this movie, so to speak you know, That Mission impossible jumping plane to plane. Do you think about the plausibility of such a thing? I don’t even [00:31:00] know how plausible it is or isn’t what happened there, but do you consider those things or are you just this is a thriller, this is fun.

Bob: yeah. This particular case, I tried to get it, keep it as real as possible, but yeah, there’s, there’s some dramatic license I, I took. On that one, I have no idea. If you, if you’re jumping from one plate to the other, could you actually hold onto the side of the f fuselage, long enough to plant the little baby explosives to blow the door so you can actually climb on board? I have no idea if that can happen. If it can’t, sorry. If it can’t. Outstanding.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. I, I’m, I do, I rock climb. So I’m trying to think of some, how hard it is to hold onto things. ’cause people sometimes underestimate when I see Tom Cruise do it, I’m like, yeah, there’s no possible way he’s holding something like he does in some of the situations that he does. ‘Cause you know, he has this rock climbing stunts. But

Bob: Yeah, well, RO Rogue Nation, when he took off on that Airbus, a 400 he was definitely holding onto that to the side of that aircraft. But they had a shield in front of him to help deflect the wind. So he wasn’t quite getting buffeted as hard as he would be if he, if it didn’t have [00:32:00] that.

Mark: Yeah, true enough. Yeah. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing her name. Zena. Is it Zena? Is that how you pronounce Zena? Zena the, the, antagonist in the book.

Bob: Oh,

Mark: I said Xena when I was reading it in my

Bob: no, that’s, that’s, that’s cool. I,

Mark: okay.

Bob: you are good.

Mark: Okay. When she dies. At the end, Bryce reacts by saying he mourned the loss of his former lover ’cause they have that history together. Then he’s quoted as saying, burn in hell, more or less. Was it always written that way? And in your view, what does it say? Were you trying to say something about Bryce’s as his character

Bob: Yeah. I mean, when Bryce first met the later Russian agent, he, he knew her as somebody completely different. She was Polish, not Russian, and she was an engineering grad student at USC while he was in in school. So that’s the person he mourned. But the person, he later found out she was [00:33:00] and, you know, turned out to be, that’s the bit she was burning in hell.

Mark: Okay.

Was there any moments that you found hard to write in this, book?

Bob: In this, in

Mark: Like any scenes that were like emotionally impactful, I guess would be a better question.

Bob: Yeah. The stuff about Bryce Discover first discovering that his former girlfriend was actually an SVR operative. That was a little bit, hard to write because, I mean, he knew her forever. As you know, this hot Polish girl at, you, you know, came close to actually marrying before she went back to Poland.

And then all of a sudden he’s on a, he’s on an op in, Slovakia, and brought to s Slava and he sees her on a monitor, shooting a guy in the head. I mean, that’s, that’s, that doesn’t make give you pause. Nothing Will

Mark: yeah. I can’t imagine what well, I guess I can’t imagine what was going through his head because you talked about it in the book, but it’s still hard to imagine how I might react to seeing someone you were just, you were in love with at one time. Suddenly assassinate [00:34:00] somebody.

Bob: Yeah. In cold blood then steals his, take, takes the money back that he she just gave him. And then her, her thugs steal his wallet and his watch. I mean, like I said, that’s VR very, very cheap.

Mark: Well, Thank you so much. That’s all the questions I had for the show. If you don’t mind sticking around for a few more minutes for the after show the rapid fire questions for our Patreon

Bob: standing by

Mark: All right, thank you.

TPP Season 2, Episode 4 with Susan Walter

Susan: [00:00:00] the biggest challenge they’re in a enclosed capsule and they’re up in the air and it’s just them, and once I put ’em in the seats and they have seat belts on, like people don’t really move around on a plane, so we have the murder and then I cut into the real time action and everybody’s in a seat. How do you make that interesting?

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. Today I’m joined by bestselling author Susan Walter, and we’re getting into her locker room mystery murder at 30,000 feet. And I love this conversation. It was like talking to a friend instead of hosting a podcast.

It’s honestly hard to pick just a few takeaways from this one because it’s filled with such good insights into her process and her mindset. But what really stood out to me was Susan talking about how she built this [00:01:00] enclosed capsule of a thriller she had to navigate the hurdles of a story where the characters are physically stuck in their seats in an airplane. We also get into why she never takes no for an answer, at least not the first time. It was a lesson from her father who was a pilot, and it really helped define her career beyond the mindset we talk about character over pace, why she chose a slow burn build to create deeper stakes for the reader rather than just all action. We even get into her naming convention and she shares how she keeps her characters straight in the reader’s mind.

There’s a lot here, so let’s get into it. Susan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Susan: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Mark: I have your book Murder at 30,000 feet. I just put it up on the camera. Thank you so much for sending me a copy. I absolutely love this book. I devoured it in a couple of days. Uh, and we’ll talk about why. I’ll let you pitch it [00:02:00] first, but very, very good book.  I loved it.

Susan: Well, thank you very much. Yes. Murder at 30,000 feet as the title implies, is a locked room mystery on an airplane. So it’s basically many people’s worst nightmare. Get on the plane, you’re going over a body of water. When massive turbulence hits the plane, shakes, the lights go out, and while the lights are out, somebody’s murdered in the lavatory.

So lights go back on. We’re meeting all along the way, the cast of characters, there’s a high school baseball team, there’s a wedding party. There’s a woman from a small town who recently lost a son and might be out for revenge. And there’s a jilted air marshal who, um, may not be paying as close attention as he should have been.

So all of this is happening while they’re over the water. Um, no place to land. [00:03:00] Somebody’s dead and you gotta figure out first who’s dead. ’cause there’s a lot of people on that plane and we don’t know. And then who done it? So, um, I don’t wanna give any spoilers, but things get pretty wild up there. Imagine literally your worst nightmare at 30,000 feet. Yes, that happens and things go off the rails.

Mark: Awesome. Wonderful pitch. Thank you.

Susan: Yeah. Thank you.

Mark: So let’s talk about where the idea came from.

Susan: Ooh. So I’ve been wanting to ride an aviation thriller for a long time. My dad was a pilot and I grew up in planes, so I always felt pretty safe in a plane. ’cause when you’re in a little plane, which is like a Volkswagen bug with a propeller and wings, you bounce around a lot. And it just kind of never seemed like a big deal.

But, um, I kind of had a fascination with flying because of my dad and, you know, listening to him talk on the radio. And it always felt like they were talking in some secret code. It was like [00:04:00] secret spy agent kind of talk. And then as I grew up, I was like, why haven’t I written a murder mystery on a plane?

I mean, I write murder mysteries and planes are fascinating and there are a lot of, uh, plane aviation thrillers that involve a hijacking. And I was like, I don’t really wanna do espionage and hijacking. I feel like it could be simpler, like. Thank Agatha Christie or Ruth Ware more character driven. It’s all about these people and they have connections to each other and someone’s out to get someone and opportunity strikes.

So I thought that would be really fun to do is do this sort of murder on the Orient Express style thriller, but put him in the air.

Mark: So did you have to do research in order to make it as real as you did with the, with the pilot and the talking that they did to each other? Or was that already ingrained because of, of your background?

Susan: Oh Mark. So much research. I grew up [00:05:00] flying with my dad in a little plane and I only heard his side of the conversation and so I, um, that was a long time ago. And commercial aviation is a whole other beast.

So I started, um, listening on YouTube. You can go on YouTube and listen to air traffic controllers talking to pilots and sort of start to, I would take notes on their kind of secret code, like they had little code words and abbreviations and ways they talk about things. So that was like my, my primer. And then I wrote the dialogue as I thought that it would be based on those conversations.

And I sent it to a friend of mine, his name’s Rafael Nario. He flies for JetBlue and he flies the same airplane that I put the murder mystery on.

And I said, look at all my dialogue. He wrote, he rewrote all of it. God bless him. He is like, no, we wouldn’t call it that. And we say, you know, we don’t ever say thousand.

We say, oh, 300 or whatever it is. And um, I’m very grateful to him. He helped with the dialogue and he also helped with some of the technical stuff. So, you [00:06:00] know, I, I didn’t know, for example, like, how does a pilot talk to his flight attendants? Like is there a, is there a phone in the cockpit? Turns out, no, it’s just all in the headset.

And little things like, how do the flight attendants know when a passenger called them? Like, did they, did they get a bell? Is there a panel? All the things. So yeah, it was a lot of research, but I really loved doing it. And now every time I get on a plane, I’m like looking around, I’m like, Ooh, there’s that.

Ooh, there’s that. Ooh, I know how that works. So it’s fun.

Mark: Now when you jump on a plane, are you looking for air marshals?

Susan: I’ve always been looking for air marshals, so turns out sadly, there aren’t as many as there used to be. They cut way back. Although who knows this new administration, nobody knows what’s going on ever anywhere. Um, but yeah, I kind of do. Don’t we all, I mean, don’t you.

Mark: Uh, I don’t fly very much. So no. I guess if I did after reading your book now, if I, if I jumped on a plane, I probably would start [00:07:00] looking around.

Susan: Yeah, I mean, there’s things, you know, that was all internet searches, like how do you find the air marshal? But, um, I don’t know. I made a lot of that up.

Mark: So were there any challenges that presented itself as you were writing this book?

Susan: I would say the biggest challenge as a writer, and you’re a writer, so you know this, like they’re in a enclosed capsule and they’re up in the air and it’s just them, and we’re moving through time and they’re all in seats. Mark. Like, once I put ’em in the seats and they have seat belts on, like people don’t really move around on a plane, so I commit the crime, right?

We have the murder and then I come into the, you know, cut into the real time action and everybody’s in a seat. Like, think about that as somebody who writes. You know, mysteries and thrillers as you do, like, how do you make that interesting? Like, everybody’s in a seat. They’re not really interacting except with the person who’s sitting next to them.

So that was like, you know, I got to that point in the book and I’m like, [00:08:00] oh, now what do I do with them all? So I had to get super creative, and this is the, the, the teaser that I gave you that I don’t wanna spoil it, but I gotta get those people out of them, out of their seats and talking to each other.

And there’s really only one way to do that when you’re on a plane and it’s not, while it’s in the sky.

Mark: Yeah. When readers put down the book, what are you hoping that they’re going to be thinking or feelings? Do you write it with a theme in mind, or is it mostly writing? For feeling like you want, um, you want them to be entertained.

Susan: Oh, thank you for asking that. You know, I feel like a lot of the action thrillers I read are kind of all about the action, but if the action’s not grounded in characters that you care about, then it can be kind of exhausting. So I spend a lot of time in the early chapters really getting to know the characters on the plane.[00:09:00]

And for me it’s more of a character study than necessarily like an action thriller. Um, so that was really important to me. I mentioned that we have a character, Francesca, and she recently lost a son, and she’s grieving, but she’s angry. And you know, I want you to think while you’re getting to know her, like what is she capable of?

Um, and then there’s people who may or may not have been involved in the death of her son and they’re going through their own feelings about that. Should I have done more? Am I partly responsible? Um, are they mad at her? Are she mad at them? You know, in creating this sort of interconnected web of people who deserve to die, people who wanna kill, I, I really had to go deep into backstory and character.

And so even though there is a lot of action, especially in the second half, I’m hoping that the reader will go away having experienced some of [00:10:00] what that is, to feel loss and, and to feel, um, guilt and what it is. All the things that the characters are going through, there’s also a wedding party, right? And so I wanted to kind of capture like the thrill of being in love, but also having insecurities and wanting things to go just right.

But also, um, the groom has some baggage that he doesn’t want to come out. So kind of, I’m hoping that the reader will become invested in the character’s backstories and what they’re going through emotionally, and that will make the action resonate that much more.

Mark: Yeah, I think that you did that very well and it worked very well because that’s what connected me with Francesca, who lost her son. And, and the reason, you know, all the things I’m spoiled the book, but the things behind that, like that connected me instantly. ’cause I have a son, so I’m like,

oh my God, if that happened to me, how would I feel? And then the wedding, like all the things that you interconnected, weaved. Pulled me through the story. [00:11:00] It was actually, and I love character stories, so that’s like also my thing. I’m not, I don’t like act. Well, I would, I don’t, I wouldn’t say I don’t like action thrillers, but characters definitely pulled me through the story, which is why I devoured this book.

And there was a theme that I thought about as I got, as I got into the book, and it was kind of mentioned by one of the characters in the book. There’s the death of her son, and I

don’t want to, and the justification behind that death

Susan: Ah,

Mark: is that, are we, is it okay to hide something in order to protect something else?

Susan: okay. I know what you’re talking about now. So, yes, Francesca is a central character in the book, right? She’s the one who boards the plane. She kind of, she, she’s kind of. In a way, sorry for the term, but she’s kind of already dead, right? She’s dead inside. Her marriage has fallen apart because of the worst tragedy that a mother can imagine or a father can imagine, right?

She lost a son. [00:12:00] She lost a son in a devastating accident, and we don’t know the details of the accident. So that, that’s part of the backstory that unfolds as they’re on the plane, as she’s thinking about it. And then there are other characters on the plane who were either directly or tangentially involved in that accident.

And yes, um, you are correct to identify that there’s a, there’s a end. Do the ends justify the means? Right? So this terrible thing happened to the boy and there’s no undoing that, but outing how it happens, the details of that. Could cause immeasurable damage to a large group of people.

So this secret is being kept, um, for one might say honorable reasons, right?

So if I reveal this truth, if I reveal there’s a character who has the opportunity to reveal what he knows about the accident, he was an [00:13:00] eyewitness. But he has suppressed his knowledge because he thinks that if it gets out a lot more people will get hurt. And I thought that was a really fascinating thing to explore.

And I love characters that are, that are not necessarily, um, so clear cut, good or bad. Like he did a bad thing, he witnessed an accident and he has a moral imperative to go to the police and tell them what he saw. But also he cares about his town and the community. And if he exposes what he knows, man, things could get really bad for a lot of people who maybe, you know, it truly was an accident.

There was no malice. So he grapples with that. And does that make him a good character or a bad character? And, and I love the, I love the central question that pulses through his, uh, sub narrative, which is like, what would you do? [00:14:00] What would you have done? And there are people who judge him harshly, and there are people who will come to understand why he did it.

And maybe think that, yeah, I would’ve done the same thing.

And what a terrible burden to carry, right? Like, I think that makes him largely sympathetic as it as it unravels.

Mark: absolutely. What comes for you first, the characters that you’re building or the plot?

Susan: So what comes to me first is the situation. So I take, I would say not just the situation, but the conflict. So what’s the conflict? So I think about like constructing a novel and the conflict is someone’s gonna die on this plane. We don’t know who did it. And I have to have a myriad of suspects, um, and a myriad of potential victims.

So what happened? And how can I construct this kind [00:15:00] of spider web of interconnected people, um, in which the reader will be truly curious and confounded to know who did what to whom. So I started with that central premise like, and it, it appears in my brain, kind of like a spider web, right? And all these people have to have connections to each other.

And the more you read, the more connections. You discover like, oh, she knew him and he knew her and they were married and like all the things. Right. And, and it makes sense, you know, they’re getting on a plane. I picked San Diego as the origin because it’s not a huge metropolis, but it’s also like there’s one airport that services a lot of small towns around there and it’s not implausible that there’d be groups and they all know each other and groups that interact and, and intertwine.

So I take the situation and then I build out the characters from there. And I try to, I start with the characters each with an inner conflict. So [00:16:00] for example, the character that we did not name who witnessed the accident, you know, I wanted to put somebody in an interesting moral conflict. Should I tell or should I stay silent?

And what would you do? And then I construct the character around, um, like how is he connected and where can I put him? This, you know, um, conglomeration of characters, how can I construct relationships that serve that, moral quandary that I wanna present. And then sometimes the characters, they just come from people I know.

Shh, don’t tell, but I, I do base them on, on people that I know. Um, like somebody, there’s a very brash character named Penelope, and yeah, she’s kind of an amalgamation of people I know and I wanted to kind of write about her, but I, even though she’s brash, I do try to explore like how she came to be that way.

Right. And things have happened to her and she has pain. And [00:17:00] Francesca, obviously, she’s the one who lost a son. I mean, she has pain, but she’s also at the end of her rope, right? With nothing to lose. Like would she murder somebody maybe.

Mark: Yeah, it, what’s your writing process like, especially, well, let’s talk, this is book six for you. So you’ve, you’ve written quite a few books. Has your process changed from book one to book six and then in, in this book, because it’s such a web of, of characters and things happening, do you outline the book first or do you just start writing and then figure it out as you go? How do you do it?

Susan: I love that question because I’ve grappled with that a lot. My very first book is called Good is Dead, and I, it was the beginning of the pandemic and I had been working as a screenwriter and a movie director, and the movie industry just sort of dried up overnight and nobody was shooting, nobody was scouting.

I was supposed to go scout a movie in New Mexico and everything [00:18:00] was put on hold and we had no idea if the movie was ever coming back. So I was like, oh, I’m gonna write a novel ’cause I need to create. And I wrote this book just from my heart, not even thinking that it would ever get published. Um, so that book I wrote in 2020, so like March, April, May, 2020, I just sort of didn’t know where I was going.

I didn’t outline. I just kind of woke up every day and took my characters, made a step forward with them, pause, and then thought, okay, what is the most interesting, impossible, scary, fun, surprising thing I can do next? And literally just took it one step at a time. It’s like, imagine you’re like going through the woods with your flashlight and you can really only see the ground in front of you.

And then like, what’s the scariest thing or the most fascinating thing that could happen next? And that’s how I did it. And then when I was about 80% through the book. I had this [00:19:00] crisis, I was like, oh, well I backed this character into such an impossible corner. I’ll never get her out. I’m gonna throw this book away.

Like, it was very irresponsible to go forward in this way because I just didn’t know. Like, I’m like, there’s, she’s damned if she does, she’s damned if she does it. You’re not gonna root for her to do a, you’re not gonna re root for her to do B. Like I’m done. Okay. I guess I’m not finishing this book, but it kept me company during the pandemic, so I was fine.

And then the situation came to me like the, the resolution of the situation came to me and I wound up introducing like an external complication, right? So like just something. Like it, just imagine like a tornado sweeps through, like, oh, that would get her out of it. Right? So just something kind of crazy.

But it totally worked. And that book became a bestseller. Like I, it sold like hotcakes. People love that. And that was my process, like really not knowing. And then spending that three or four days thinking I was just gonna throw the, the 80 whatever did I have at that point, 60,000 words into the bin? Like, I’m like, well, I can’t finish this book.

There’s [00:20:00] no way to do it. So when I sold that book, I was offered a two book deal. They’re like, yes, we’re buying this book, but we want you to write another one and it’s due in nine months. And I was like, oh, okay, sure, I can do that. I think. And I thought, since I’m on a deadline, I should outline, right?

Because that’s the responsible author thing to do. You should know where you’re going. ’cause I have to turn the book in now. It’s not, there’s no, like, throwing it in the bin is not an option. So I did, I wrote an outline and it seemed to work, and I followed the outline pretty much to the letter. And then maybe two months before the book was due, I gave it to a couple of beta readers, including my husband.

He was the very first, and he read it and I could just tell from his expression like it was trash. He is like, you know, I don’t know what to tell you about this book. I don’t think it works at all. And now I’m like, maybe eight weeks from my deadline. And I was like, okay, screw it. I’m just gonna go back to my original process.

The thing I [00:21:00] did on Good is Dead, which worked for me the first time. And I’m taking one step at a time and I threw away of the 85,000 words. I threw away 75,000 of them. I lopped off. Like I love the setup. I lopped off the like 75,000 words mark like you’ve been there, you know? Um, and I just did it one step at a time.

And the book, it’s called Over Her Dead Body. It’s super twisty. It’s super fun. It’s incredibly honest. ’cause I just came from character. So I took a character and I’m like, instead of like working from an outline where I have to build a bridge for her to get from A to B, ’cause I already decided what B is.

I put her at that situation, at that nexus, I was like, okay, well I thought I wanted her to go do this thing, but that doesn’t feel in character. What would she do and what’s the most interesting thing that she could do? And it was moving in a totally different direction. And I did that. I think I was writing 2000 words a day ’cause I had to, to meet my deadline just in that way, like pushing forward, [00:22:00] pausing.

And so I’ve directed movies, right? And so when you’re a director, you have to do this thing that you don’t necessarily do when you’re writing is you have to put yourself in the vantage point of the audience. So you always have to ask yourself, am I giving the audience? Um, something to root for in this moment.

Am I dangling enough questions for the audience so that they’re gonna stay engaged? Am I revealing just the right amount to keep them engaged, but without giving too much away? So I had that sort of skillset for my directing of, of stepping outside of it and being in the, in the chair of the reader or the audience and saying, how much can I give them to, to hold them, but what do I need to hold back to make them wanna keep reading?

So that’s my process. Now I become the director of my own novels and I take one step at a time. I come from the most honest place I can with the character. What would she do? Who would she call? Um, would she fight back, whatever the question is. And I, and I try to do it honestly and try [00:23:00] to get her into trouble and then pause, step outside and say, okay, what does the audience want her to see?

Does she need a win here or do I need to knock her down a little bit? ’cause we we’re not quite sympathizing with her enough yet. I just go through that chapter by chapter and you know, my books are between what, 60 and 75 chapters. So I do that 60 to 75 times and I’ve done that. Now I’m actually on book nine ’cause we’re always two years ahead.

And that’s a process that still works for me. People are like, publisher says, do you have an outline? I’m like, Nope. Not giving you an outline. I mean, I could give you something, but the book won’t match that and I’m gonna throw it away right after I give it to you. So they stopped asking,

Mark: I love that process. I don’t think I could do it, but I love that process.

Susan: are you an

Mark: more outlining, more so than that

Susan: Yeah. That works for you, man. Did not work for me. I tried. I.

Mark: How do you keep it all in your head with the web that you create? So are you creating notes with characters as you go and you’re creating these scenes, or do, are you just [00:24:00] able to keep it all in your mind?

Susan: Honestly, I think that’s my one special skill that I can hold a book of between 75 and 85,000 words in my head at the same time, like some people can do computer programming, some people, um, are really good at surfing. I can’t do either of those things, but I can’t as I move forward, not in the beginning, like I have no idea where I’m going in the beginning, but as I’m moving through, I’m getting to 50,000, 60,000 words.

I can hold the whole book in my head at once and you know, you start kind of on the edge of the spider web sometimes, and I’m building in multiple directions. I’m building, you know, I’m building up, I’m building down, I’m building toward the middle,

and I can, it’s just, um, how my brain works. I can’t do calculus.

My daughter comes home with her calculus homework and she’s like, mom, can you help me? I’m like, there’s no way. I can’t, I can’t balance an equation. Don’t ask, but I can hold a book of that length. [00:25:00] I mean, I, I got a book recently that was like 700 words, like, I mean, 700 pages, sorry, not 700 words. That’s a, that’s a micro story.

I got a book recently that was 700 pages, a Stephen King book. It’s over there on my coffee table. Like I don’t know how he does that, but mine are like 300, 350 pages that I can hold in my head.

Mark: So you having the ability to hold all these characters in your mind is great. As you’re writing the book, do you think, how do I pass that information on to the readers who like, like for myself, I maybe not so much in my writing, but definitely when I’m reading, if I’m introduced to so many characters at one moment or chapter after chapter, I start to get very confused. What are some things you did in this book to avoid that confusion?

Susan: So I have this, um, little mantra that I constantly recite. Like, are you keeping all the necessary characters alive? Keep them alive. In fact, [00:26:00] sometimes I put a post-it on my monitor that says, keep them alive, right? So if I haven’t heard from a character for a while, I have to make sure to like, make sure you didn’t forget.

That’s my responsibility. Um, and I think. I do that because the characters in my book, they’re, first of all, they’re all connected to each other, right? So I’m not gonna introduce a new character except for maybe in chapters one, two, and three, when you kind of have to introduce characters. But once I get into the narrative, everybody has a relationship to each other.

That’s why it’s a book, right? So I’m not jumping around. I have a rule that if I’m introducing a new character in their sort of point of view and how they’re moving through the world, you had to have met them before and know their relationship to the other characters. So I’m very mindful about making sure, A, that I’m keeping all the characters alive and b, um, that, that you feel the connection to them, to the other characters, right?

You feel the connection to the new character, to the other characters. And they’re [00:27:00] constantly in other characters, inner monologue. They’re never gonna just. Come at you from out of the blue. I’m also really deliberate about naming characters. I do these like cheap party tricks where like sometimes I do couples with the same, they have the same, um, their letter starts with the same name like Jim and Jane or whatever.

So like your brain will connect Jay. Oh, they’re Jay and Jay. They’re a couple. Or in this one I have Billy and Jill. Billy and Jill are gonna get married,

right? And so I made their names rhyme. I mean her name is Jillian, but everyone calls her Jillian now ’cause it’s Billy and Jill, right? You’re not gonna forget who Jill is ’cause she’s marrying Billy and their name’s rhyme.

So I do kind of stupid little tricks like that, but I’m very deliberate. Um, I have one character, Penelope, with a four syllable name like Penelope. You’re gonna remember Penelope, right? It’s the only character with a four syllable name and it’s a very memorable name. So, um, yeah, I do alliterations, I do rhyming, and I try to make [00:28:00] each name distinct.

Like I won’t have in my books. Two characters whose name starts with the same letter unless they’re like sisters or mother and daughter, or like have an intimate connection to each other. I just think it’s not fair to the reader. And I, and I do think your brain clocks stuff like that, so I think it’s easier to remember.

Did you have any trouble remembering who the

Mark: I didn’t know. I also liked. That on a couple of, A couple of ’em had job titles. So it started with when you came back to them, it had their job title as the first

Susan: Oh, that’s right. So there’s a,

Mark: my mind

for a couple of the characters.

Susan: his name is always Coach. Coach Cal. Coach Callahan.

Right. So you’re always know, oh, it’s the coach. Yeah, that like, honestly that seems kind of maybe a little bit cheap. But I do think your reader deserves to have little naming help. Especially if you’re gonna outline, I mean, I have like, what, like 12 characters.

So it’s not fair to ask you to track all those. And I hate that there’s books that I put down that are like New York Times [00:29:00] bestselling. I’m sure they’re wonderful, but if I’m in chapter 10 and I’m like, wait, who is that? And I have no reference point. And especially if I’m reading, I read a lot of books on Kindle, and I can’t flip back through pages easily.

I’m like, forget it. I, I, I, my brain is not, is not programmed to keep track of that many unless I invented them. And then I can remember,

Mark: Did you learn that trick somewhere?

Susan: I think I stole it from screenwriting because movie producers and studio executives are notoriously lazy. And like, if you don’t hit them over the head with obvious naming tricks and like, you can’t do, you can’t be subtle with them. Like you need to be like. In their face about who these characters are, and, and you just assume that they’re overworked and they’re gonna read it quickly.

So yeah, I think I, I got a introduction to how to help studio executives remember your stories and characters, um, from working in the movies for so long.

Mark: Okay, that makes [00:30:00] sense. Was there a character or a moment that you felt particularly attached to in this story? Like when you wrote it, it hit you on an emotional level or a personal level?

Susan: There’s a super difficult situation between the bride, the groom, and the maid of honor and the maid of honor. And the groom used to be a couple and they broke up, but the groom is still in love with his maid of honor. But they had a somewhat troubled past, and I wanted to handle that super sensitively, but also there’s violence.

So that was one that I wanted to be very careful with the maid of honor to make her, I don’t know how to, how to describe it without giving too much away. But I mean, I reveal [00:31:00] it early in the book and you’ll see that, that she had a very good reason for breaking up with that groom. And he’s still in love with her, but he treated her very badly.

And how to handle her feelings about being the maid of honor at her. It’s her best friend’s wedding to her ex-boyfriend and her, the, the bride, you know, it’s her, it’s her wedding weekend. She’s so excited. The maid of Honor character, her name is Angie, is kind of sitting on a bombshell and she wants the bride to know this thing about the groom and what he’s capable of. And I’ll just use the word violence ’cause he is capable of violence, but also she doesn’t wanna ruin the wedding. So that was a very tricky tightrope to walk because again, you know, you asked this question earlier and it’s a great question. Like at what, maybe that is a theme of the book, like [00:32:00] when is silence better or when do you have a duty to tell even though you’re gonna cause more pain?

Mark: Yeah.

Susan: And so Mark, thank you. I just learned something about my book. Thank you so much. Um, it’s kind of about, gosh. Yeah, it is. It’s kind of about what would you do? Again, I love that’s, I feel like that’s really sticky to, to do for a reader is put them in this situation of like, well, what would you do in the past week you found out that the man, your best friend is marrying is potentially kind of dangerous.

And do you tell her and, and ruin her destination wedding? I mean, it’s like her special day and all the things, or do you just hope that he’ll never, you know, that he’ll change or that’s not really who he is, or, you know, you have an obligation to support her. This is what she wants to do. So, yeah, I, I want it to be very careful with her because there are, you know, [00:33:00] kind of feminist issues wrapped up in that.

And do you protect your, your fellow woman? And how do you do that? And that was, that was deliciously complicated.

Mark: Yeah. Do the other books that you’ve written, is that a theme, not that particular theme, but of people going through really hard times as part of the, as part of the conflict.

Susan: I think there’s a sort of a trope, especially in these female driven thrillers where you take a, a woman character, I mean, honestly, Disney invented it, right? Like Disney started with like the, all the Disney characters, they lost their mom, right? So like Belle in Beauty and the Beast lost her mom, Cinderella lost her mom.

I mean, you could go through all the Disney characters and you take this young, and for Disney it’s young women, right? And so it’s appropriate that they lost their mother. I mean, what even like Bambi loses their mother. That’s just the trope in Disney. And [00:34:00] I think for the thrillers, these mystery thrillers written by women targeted toward women in which you have a, now, not a teenager as in Disney, but a grownup female character.

The trope is to put them through some sort of loss in the beginning, right? Or I kill a lot of husbands, like women who were, were married and lost a husband and find themselves, alone for the first time, and having to do things they’ve never had to do by themselves before. And starting the novel with a broken heart and a, and a big loss.

So, yeah, I, I think that that’s kind of a prototype that I lean into and this book is more of an ensemble. But yeah, I mean, you take Francesca, who’s the woman who, she lost a son and she lost a husband. He didn’t die, but the loss of the son was so catastrophic their marriage couldn’t survive it, which is a thing that I researched that that does happen.

They just didn’t know [00:35:00] how to process their feelings and, and drift it apart. So, and I do it kind of with this woman. The bridesmaid, well I should call her the maid of honor more accurately, is that if she tells her best friend that the man she’s marrying is not the man she might think, she think he is, she’s gonna lose her best friend.

Right? So putting women are the strong female characters. Kind of on the edge of something really scary is a trope, sorry for the word, but I do think it’s a trope that I think is really propulsive and also puts the reader, which is my favorite place to put a reader in a what would you do situation?

Mark: Yeah. Awesome. Any, have you had any hair trauma in your, uh, in your life, or was that just a trope of the character to have? I chuckled when she had, at the beginning, Kathy keeps talking about her blue hair, how she dyed her blue hair and she’s very [00:36:00] conscious of it.

Susan: Oh, have I had hair? I mean, I did accidentally. For your podcast listeners, I am blonde and I used to do it myself. And when you tone blonde hair you use blue I put too much blue and I was blue for about three days and, um, I had to go get professional help. yes, I had blue hair very briefly and I didn’t look good with, some people look fantastic with blue hair, but it’s intentional. I did not look so good with blue.

Mark: Okay.

Susan: Actually, she has purple hair. Doesn’t she have purple hair? She has purple

Mark: it purple? Oh, I thought it

Susan: Yeah. Kathy has purple hair, but she’d also gone through a divorce and started her life over and just like radically reinvented her physical presence.

Mark: Yeah. I have a question from Brian Drake, who was the last guest on the show. We have like a guest asking a question for the

Susan: I love it.

Mark: you prefer to write inside or outside? [00:37:00] So he, he likes to write outside a lot, which is why he asks the question.

Susan: Oh, inside, always inside I try to write outside and first of all, it’s very hard on a monitor to see, I dunno, maybe he’s younger and has eagle eyes, but I, I don’t, there’s too many reflections and then the sun moves and you can’t see. So I tend to write inside and I like it quiet. Some people write to music. I like to write early in the morning, like 5:00 AM five to nine are my golden hours for writing. I like it quiet and I like it inside.

Mark: Okay. He uses a typewriter, actually, which

Susan: Oh my goodness. I love

Mark: yet, but yeah,

Susan: He’s confident in his words. Um, oh my goodness. I changed my words so much. There would be so much paper to be like this mad. I’d be surrounded by paper with

Mark: I couldn’t

Susan: discarded sentences. Yeah.

Mark: I imagine myself with just a case of whiteout constantly,

Susan: my gosh. Wide out.

Mark: white out those [00:38:00] papers.

Susan: Hilarious.

Mark: would you give to someone who just published their first or second book? Either Indie published or, or traditionally published?

Susan: Okay. That’s a great question because I think it’s super important to form a community of writers in whatever way you can because as you move through your career, so I’ve been doing this for five years now. I’m on my. Well, I’m actually writing my ninth book, but my sixth one is Murder at 30,000 feet, which comes out in February.

And I’m just now after five years of doing it, realizing how important my community is because as you are trying to get established, like what we’re doing now, mark, you mean you’re a writer and you’re supporting me through your podcast? And my, my hope is that I will in some way be able to support you.

And when your book comes out this April, is it April? The treatment room is April. That I can return the favor in some way and, and [00:39:00] read your book, and review your book. And you need to grow a community of writers because we become, not only our, our own cheerleaders, but the way that other readers discover your books.

So I’m gonna post about your book. I’m gonna read your book, and I’m gonna say, you know, for fans of these books, as you are doing for me, and five people maybe. We’ll, we’ll read your book because of me. But then that five people becomes, 25 people becomes 250 people. Right? So building a community of writers and supporting those other writers, even if you don’t know them.

Like I have made friends through social media. I, I read a book. I love it. Like, okay, Mary Ika, who has got a, it’s not her coming out like any day now. Absolutely love her books. And I just started reviewing them and posting about them. She follows me on Instagram now, and now she’s reposting, you know, about my books because I genuinely like her books.

[00:40:00] And I think that she might like mine if I like her, she might like mine. I don’t know. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. But just start by supporting the authors that you love by shouting out when you love a book and it takes, I mean it takes months or years. Then pretty soon, this whole sort of organic ecosystem of writer supporting writers, it just lifts us all up to a place where readers are, are discovering writers that they love.

I mean, when is the last time, I don’t know, you read a lot of books, but for anybody who’s listening or watching, like, you open your Libby app or you go into a bookstore and you’re like, Ugh, I don’t know what to read. Well, wouldn’t it be great if you like, okay, you like my books for example? And I’m saying, Mary Kika, do you trust me?

’cause you like my books? Maybe you’ll buy her book. Or vice versa. So start, it’s easy to, to think. We need to ask other people like, Hey, will you read? Can I can, can you talk about my book? What, what I think is more effective? And actually more [00:41:00] sincere is just talk about them, read their books, get on good reads, review their books.

They will eventually notice you and they will in time, if you’re a good fit, say something kind about you and that’s how readers find you. It’s all about, you know, it’s really noisy out there. There’s so many books.

But we trust the authors that we love. So authors supporting authors is everything.

Mark: I absolutely love that answer. Thank you so much for saying that. Yeah. It does mean a lot. Yeah. So if you can pick one thing that you felt led to your success so far, what? What do you think it would be?

Susan: Okay. So I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was 18, my dad told me I needed to get a job, to help like pay for ancillary things that I wanted, like skis. He’s like, I’m not buying you skis. You’re 18. Go get a job. And I was like, okay, that makes sense. I mean, respect. Okay. And I, and he’s like, where do you wanna work?

And there was this comedy club in Harvard [00:42:00] Square, I lived in Cambridge, and I wanted to work at this comedy club called Catcher Rising Star. And so I applied and they didn’t hire me like I called and they’re like, no, the position’s been filled. And I was like, okay. And so my dad asked me at dinner that night, like, so did you apply for that job?

I was like, yeah, I didn’t get it. He’s like, tomorrow you’re going in there with another copy of your resume and you’re gonna ask them. What you can do to position yourself to get that job, the next job opening that happens at that place where you wanna work. And I was like, dad, they already said, no, I’m not going back there like an idiot.

I’m gonna make a fool outta myself. But he made me do it. So I go in there with my resume and I’m like, hi, the manager’s name was Rick. I go, hi Rick. So we talked on the phone yesterday and you said that I wasn’t getting the job and I just wanted to know. And it’s a waitressing job. Okay? It’s not like some like paralegal or job where you actually need, you know, specific business skills, whatever.

Like what I can do to make myself a better candidate next time an opening happens. And he looked at me like, [00:43:00] for real? You want it that bad? Fine. You can have it. I’ll hire you. We can always use an extra waitress in the pool. And I was like, seriously? And I think that was an incredible lesson in just keep asking, like find another way to ask if you ask and you get a no.

Find another way to ask, like, so I’m doing a book tour and a bookstore passed on me ’cause I’m gonna be in an area and I wanted to appear at this bookstore and I thought it would be really great and it fit exactly in my schedule. And they were like, they ignored my publicist. And I, I was like, I’m just gonna ask again.

And I called them up and I was like, Hey, so this is crazy and sorry for the cold call. I know it’s super obnoxious, but I’m gonna be in your area and I have an amazing conversation partner lined up and she raised about your bookstore. And if there’s any way that you would invite me, I would die of happiness.

And I’m just gonna send you my stuff. Give me your email, send you my stuff. You can review it on your own time. And like, I just asked again and they said yes. Sometimes [00:44:00] you just wear people down or they’re just so they’re like, if you really want it that bad, then yes. Right? Like, like you can’t have an ego about it. I have been, I go back after people have said no to me so many times and sometimes it’s still no but. Sometimes it’s, yes. So just like, leave your ego at the door. Ask again, ask again.

Mark: Awesome.

Susan: Ask in a different way. Ask saying, you already said no and, and I respect that you said no, but if it’s not this year, what about next year?

Can I call on you next year? And then they’ll look at their calendar again and they’ll be like, okay, you can have that date for this year. Right? Like, you just never know. Catch people off guard by asking again.

Mark: Yeah. I love that. So where can listeners find your book?

Susan: Oh, well, murder at 30,000 feet is being released, by Blackstone. And it’s gonna be hopefully everywhere. I mean, where, wherever you buy your books. [00:45:00] Barnes and Noble Indie bookstores. We love our indie bookstores. It is also available on Amazon if that’s the way you wanna go. That could be super easy. And my audio book is being narrated by Scott Brick and I don’t know if you know him,

Mark: I do.

Susan: Is unbelievable. So, audible for the audio book. I’m Soci, I haven’t heard anything from it yet. I’m actually gonna go to his recording studio and get some pictures with him ’cause I’m like, fangirling totally. And he invited me ’cause he lives not far from me. So I would say like pretty much anywhere. Just Google it and go to your local bookstore and if they’re not carrying it, request it.

Mark: Yes. Awesome. So, well, thank you so much for being here, for taking the time outta your schedule. I, I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and I’ve learned, I’ve learned a lot. Definitely your naming convention. I’m gonna go back to the treatment room probably and start thinking about my naming convention ’cause I love it. It’s brilliant what you do.

Susan: Thank you so much. You are a great interviewer. I’m so excited to read [00:46:00] your upcoming book and I’m sure we’ll talk more about it, about it in, did you say April?

Mark: April.

Susan: April what?

Mark: April 14th. The book comes out.

Susan: April 14th. That’s my daughter’s birthday. I have two reasons to get excited.

Mark: All right, so we are gonna hit the spoiler section of the show. So for those listeners who do not want to have the book spoiled, they have a couple of questions that will spoil the book. So now’s the time to pause. Go buy the book, read the book, promise. You’ll probably be done in a couple of days, and then, or sooner and then come back and listen to, to the spoiler section. Did you know when you started writing the book that Penelope was the killer? Or did you kind of discover that as you went?

Susan: Oh, should I tell you the truth? Because it’s a really, it’s a really scandalous story. Okay. Yikes. Okay. My publisher’s gonna kill me, but here it goes. I’m not telling anybody else. You’re the only one. Originally, [00:47:00] Penelope was not gonna be the killer. I had a totally different idea that I wrote for my 85,000 words.

I constructed the narrative with, okay, so there’s a character called Marco. He’s a, he’s described as a, as a rockstar.

And he’s sitting in the back, oh, tattooed, rockstar. He’s sitting in the back and I, and I was putting him, he was just I don’t know. I just had this idea that Marco, who, who is sitting in the back and he is like this little unknown guy, was going to emerge and have killed this person for, he’s transporting money.

So it’s unrelated to all the drama in the small town. And it’s just gonna be like a surprise. This guy, he’s actually, he’s actually a drug runner and he, and he killed somebody on the plane and it’s not related to any of that drama. And so we sold the book to Blackstone and she’s like, I love your writing. I love the characters. She’s like, you can’t have this guy Marco [00:48:00] kill, you know, one of the people from Crestwood, the town that’s heavily featured and where a lot of these characters on the plane are from. It’s like, she’s like, that’s just unsatisfying. You need to change who the killer is. So Mark, you know, you can’t just like change the ending of a book.

I had to totally reconceptualize this is where, okay, I told you before about like, I have my flashlight in the woods and I’m taking one step at a time. Okay. It failed me a little bit, I confess, but I also, she was 100% right that it would not have been satisfying. Like, if you’re gonna have a killer and you’re presenting this web, you want somebody in the web. You don’t want somebody like from over here. It’s like, what? No, that’s, that’s cheating.

Mark: yeah. Yeah.

Susan: So I did, it took me, she told me like around Thanksgiving, that she’s like, and, and I needed in like first week of January, just do that little rewrite, that little tweak. She called it a little tweak and I was like, oh my God.

Okay. And I worked every day, like my, my, like every day, even on Christmas, I was up at 5:00 AM [00:49:00] writing for five hours. Whatever I was able to do on that day to reconstruct the narrative, totally reinvented Marco. He’s no longer a bad guy. He’s actually a good guy, right? He, he, he’s, a DEA in the end. And I was like, I didn’t wanna lose him entirely.

I thought there was value to having somebody in the narrative who’s not from the small town where a lot of these characters, how they all know each other.

But, so I didn’t wanna lose him, but I had to repurpose him. So, to answer your question, no, I did not know Penelope was gonna do it. And it was, it was a total, like, it was there the whole time though, right?

Like, because I, I went back as I was reconstructing to say like, who’s it gonna be Chapter, I think it’s chapter seven, Penelope and the air marshal, Carlos Ronaldo meet in the lounge and it’s prickly. And I was like, oh, I was feeling something and I just didn’t know how to pay it off. Like, I didn’t know where I was going.

I got lost with my little flashlight in the woods. I was like, I took a wrong turn. It’s her. [00:50:00] It took quite a bit of doing. As you know, as a writer, that is not an easy task, but we did it and the book is so much better for it. I’m so grateful for my editor for asking me to make that little tweak.

Mark: yeah, yeah. That little tweak. Yeah, yeah, definitely stronger for that. Yeah.

Susan: Yeah.

Mark: So following that question then, the idea of the drugs on the plane and how the plane ends up crashing and the fuel that gets lost, Was that part of your original idea as you were writing it or as you were putting these characters into situations, you thought, I gotta get this plane on the ground, and then the money and the drugs came into the thought process?

Susan: Yes, that, that was always part of the plan. I knew I had to crash the plane. Like I said, you know, I put the characters in this little flying tin can and they’re in seat belts. It’s not like a train. Okay. Agatha Christie did one on a train, but you can move around on a train. You can’t move around on an airplane.

So I knew, and I also, I read a book called The Pilot’s Daughter by Audrey j Cole, which if you like aviation thrillers, it’s a must [00:51:00] read. And she has this such a dramatic, like, I cried, it was so good how she creates this air disaster. And hers is a hostage situation and very different in that way. But I’m like I gotta crash a plane. I, I, that’s to me, like, look, I want it to be a movie.

Mark: Yeah.

Susan: And you gotta have this cinematic moment, like nobody’s gonna do a movie about 132 people in seat belts on a plane. Like, that’s not cinematic. Nobody wants that. So I always knew I was gonna crash the plane and that it would have to do with something bigger than the small town People, like small town people, they might hurt each other, kill each other, do things to each other because of longstanding grudges, but they’re not gonna crash a plane with 131 other people on it.

Like that has to be someone truly evil with high stakes drug cartel, huge ramifications. Like, not only are like they gonna die, but their families are gonna die. You know, when you’re dealing with a cartel, [00:52:00] nobody’s safe. So I had to make the, the stakes much higher in order to do that. So I always knew there would be drug running and cartels and other things.

Mark: Okay. Awesome.

Susan: That’s a great question, by the way.

Mark: Any plans to turn this into a series? Or a book two with Carlos. ’cause he’s offered that FBI job at the end and I liked him. So I’m curious, is there any plans to, to bring him to the FBI? I don’t know if he’s on planes anymore, but he’s got a lot of potential to do something

Susan: Oh, thank you. Not at this moment. I sold two more books to Blackstone. They’re kidnapping thrillers and they’re um, related to each other. So they are I dunno if you ever read The Family Upstairs, and The Family Remains by Lisa Jewel. There’s two of my favorite books. So they’re like two books with the same characters that go together. But you, they are also standalones. I wanted to do that next with the book that I sold after that. So I thought [00:53:00] about bringing Carlos Ronaldo into like a series type environment, but to be honest, like police procedural, FBI, procedural is not really my wheelhouse. I think I do other things better, so unlikely. But thank you. Like if they wanna, if Netflix calls and they’re like, can you write a second one? ’cause we want a season two, I’ll be like, yes. Done. And I’m calling you and you’re gonna help me.

Mark: I was, I was thinking more like, was it die hard? You know how he’s always just in a bad situation, so it’s not like police procedural. He just like, oh, the first book he was on a plane. The second book, this happens, he’s on a train. Why does this keep happening to this guy? You know, like that diehard thing where there’s like, this guy just jumps into the situation.

What?

Susan: you. We’ll do it together.

Mark: Okay. Well this has been great. Thank you so much. If you have a few more minutes we have gone over, I apologize for that. If you have a few more minutes for a quick rapid fire for my Patreon guests, I would really appreciate that.

Susan: Oh sure. You bet.

Mark: Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to go a little deeper with [00:54:00] Susan, there’s a short after show available right now on Patreon. It is where I ask Susan rapid fire questions about thrillers that inspired her to write some of her weirdest Google searches, guilty pleasures, and the note she’d leave on your nightstand. You can access it for free. You’ll find the links in the show notes. Thank you. I will see you in two weeks.

TPP Season 2, Episode 3 with Brian Drake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Well, thanks for having me on.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Hmm.

Mark: If it was challenging at all,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: What was the productivity like for this book?

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

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

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

Brian: Three to four. Three to four actually.

Mark: Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Well, well, thank you. Um,

Mark: for me. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Mark: I.

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

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

Brian: What do you mean by support?

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

Brian: Oh, oh, okay.

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

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

Mark: Wow.

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

Mark: That’s awesome.

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

Mark: That’s true.

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay. Yeah, that’s fair. But

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

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

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

Brian: Well, it, it,

Mark: at least I cared about.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Well,

Mark: thank you for sharing that

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

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

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

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

Brian: Okay.

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

Brian: oh,

Mark: I, I don’t do a good

Brian: no, but that

Mark: prefacing

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

Mark: Yeah. Yeah,

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

Mark: yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: [00:35:00] Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

Mark: yeah,

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

Mark: yeah, yeah,

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

Mark: yeah. Cool. I love that.

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay. That’s cool to know.

Brian: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.[00:45:00]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JL: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

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

JL: Yeah. Thank you for taking it.

Mark: Let’s get right into the pitch.

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: but, which

Mark: Wow.

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

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

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

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

Mark: Wow.

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

Or less about, does this make sense technologically? And

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Okay. Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

I wanted to try and

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Hmm.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

Mark: yeah,

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

Mark: yeah,

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

JL: Well, thanks. It hurt that,

Mark: Yeah, I bet.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

You,

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

Mark: How painful was that?

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Wow.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah. Sorry.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: good,

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

Mark: Hmm,

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

Mark: okay.

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: So that has to happen.

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

Mark: Yeah. That’s awesome.

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

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

JL: Good. Appreciate it.

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

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

Mark: Oh, okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

And then at

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

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

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

Mark: yeah.

JL: then

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

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

Mark: No. Yeah,

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

Mark: yeah,

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

Mark: yeah.

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

Mark: Hmm.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: yeah,

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

Mark: yeah.

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

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

Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

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

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

Mark: yeah.

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

Mark: Hmm.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah,

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

JL: like 14 times haven’t read anything

Mark: Yeah.

JL: you feel stuck.

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

Mark: Okay. I see.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: I, I, I would not

Mark: That’s great.[00:42:00]

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Mark: Nice.

JL: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: that’s why I wrote it that way.

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

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

Mark: Yeah, the sniper.

JL: battery bomb. Yeah.

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

JL: Mm-hmm.

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Mm-hmm.

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

Mark: Yeah. Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: and Stew’s job.

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: No, I didn’t think of it. Yeah.

JL: Yeah.

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

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Okay. Okay. That’s fair.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Wow.

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: Yeah,

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

JL: They’re getting super screwed up.

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay. Oh, that’s good to know.

JL: It’s hard to shoot people. Yeah.

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

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

Mark: Wow.

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

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

JL: yeah.

Mark: I had to ask.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

Mark: Okay.

JL: which was my point. I wanted to

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

JL: Thank you. It’s good.

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

JL: Okay.

Mark: Thank you.

JL: Thank you.

TPP Episode 26 with Joel Nedecky

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

Joel: it is a story about redemption. When you’ve made mistakes for a long time, when you’ve lived a certain way for a long time, is it even possible to come back from that?

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

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

This week I’m joined by Joel Nki, author of the Broken Detective. We talk about crime fiction that resists easy redemption, writing protagonists who don’t get clean arcs, and why some stories are more interested in understanding [00:01:00] people than in saving them.

Joel shares how he approached writing addiction consequence and moral uncertainty, how place shapes character, and why he believes not every story needs to offer comfort at the end. If you’re interested in crime fiction, that asks hard questions and lets the answers stay unresolved this is a conversation worth hearing. Joel, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Joel: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Mark: I am very excited to talk about your book, the Broken Detective. Let’s get started with the book pitch.

Joel: Okay, so the broken Detective, is about a private investigator named Jake Jolson and the book is for fans of people who love, mysteries, thrillers, noir, crime novels, people who love to read the books of Dennis Lehan, George Pelicano, people like that. And the story is about Jake and how he is going to prison.

[00:02:00] He knows he’s going. It’s just a matter of for how long. And thanks to a suspended sentence, he has two weeks to earn as much money as possible so he can support his mom, who is, not very well while he’s, while he’s inside. And during those two weeks, he gets hired to find a missing woman. So he takes the case.

The story is set in Winnipeg, Manitoba, my hometown. And I, I think it’s a story that fans of thrillers will enjoy.

Mark: Thank you. And why set it in Manitoba?

Joel: Well, I, I guess the main reason, well, there’s a couple, but the main one is that’s, that’s where I’ve always lived. Well for the, for the majority of my life anyway. And I also think, you know, I, I read books from crime authors, people who read, uh. Who, who reads stuff like, James Lee Burke or Michael Connolly, you know, and, and the settings in those places are so important.

And I’ve read other Canadian authors who have [00:03:00] set their books in other Canadian cities, but there’s not very many, crime thriller books set in Winnipeg. So I, I thought that, you know, gimme a chance to write about my city and, and then as a, as a third reason, I guess I, I always find it fascinating just where people are from and how.

You know, a city has so many good things, so many positives. But then at the same time, there’s these like problems, issues that people who live there seem to always come back to. And Winnipeg has a few, few very particular ones that people, always talk about when they talk about Winni.

Mark: How do you balance in your story telling place with moving the story forward at the same time? Because you did spend chunks of space to describe it and it was well done, but I’m just curious how you chose that. Okay. Here’s an exposition where I want to talk about Winnipeg to bring it to life versus moving the plot forward.

Joel: Yeah, I think, [00:04:00] I think one of the things I tried to do it is just not be heavy handed with it. Like try to layer in the details about Winnipeg, either like you said, during short passages of exposition or even even from characters in dialogue. There’s one conversation I can remember right now where Jake is talking to sort of like his mentor figure, I guess a character named Katz and Jake is telling him how he how he hates Winnipeg, how there’s so many things about this city he doesn’t like, from the crime to the cold, to the poverty, and just all these, these things he doesn’t like. And then in that conversation they, they start talking about, you know, some of the good things about the people who, who live here and some of the things the city has going for it.

And I think through dialogue is maybe a, a way to get setting across to the reader without, like I say, being too blatant about it.

Mark: How much of Winnipeg ended up in the book as far as like you mentioned, like some of the problems and things that happen, there’s obviously a lot of problems that happen in the book as well. [00:05:00] How many things correlate between what you know of Winnipeg versus what was been put in the book?

Joel: You know what I, I, what I tried to do with that, um, I tried to make it like, I don’t know if it’s necessarily an accurate reflection of Winnipeg, I think. I think parts of it are, but I also think, you know, a person’s perspective on a place depends on who they are, where they live, what they do for a living, what their family’s like, where they’re from, maybe originally.

So I, I think it’s, I think it’s the character the protagonist Jake’s, I think it’s his version of the city. But at the same time, there are some details that have played prominently in the news here in the last probably 10 years for sure is just how, you know, Winnipeg in Canada anyway, had the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of Canada.

So. I believe we’ve lost that title. I, I think another city a little bit to our east has that title now, but, I, for a long time [00:06:00] we, we had the most murders per capita in the country. So a detail like that is something that’s, you know, taken right from, from real life. Uh, As far as the communities and such, most of the streets, most of the neighborhoods are, are true to, to reality. With a couple businesses and places like that. I just made up just to, sort of fit the story.

Mark: Yeah. Okay, so if I, if I look at the streets and stuff, I could take your book down to Winnipeg and find my way around.

Joel: To a certain point. You probably, you probably could, but a couple places, you know, I, I changed details and that, but yeah, there’s, there’s definitely, many, many real, real streets and such. I,

Mark: So what did the idea for the broken detective come from?

Joel: You know what, that’s a good question. I was looking at your like your your introduction for the guests before I came on to just see what the questions are gonna be like and, and whatnot. But, so I, I thought that one was coming. Um, I think for me, I, I usually start with character and I’m interested in this, so I read a lot [00:07:00] about, you know, how people create stories and whether they start with a plot and then they get to the character later or however it works.

And I was just reading an interview, or No, I was listening to a podcast with a guy I think his name’s Brad Inglesby, who has done two really good shows. The first one was Mayor of East Town, and the second one just came out this year, a couple months ago, called Task, starring Mark Ruffalo. And both are sort of crime thriller stories.

Awesome, awesome, awesome writing. And he was talking about how he starts with character and I, I think that’s exactly, you know, what I do is I, I have an idea for, for a, for a person who is probably down and out in some way. And I didn’t know exactly what that was gonna be for Jake, in particular, but I started with that idea and then I, I wanted to, to take him through the process of of changing, you know, whether it’s for the better, whether it’s for the worse, I guess people will have to read the book, but, maybe it’s a little bit of both, you know, maybe, like all of us, we. Uh, [00:08:00] we have things in our life that are hard and we start somewhere, and where we start brings us to you, you know, a certain way of living. And for Jake, he struggles with, with alcoholism. His mom is an alcoholic as well. I think I just started with that, idea and then, and then it came from there.

Mark: So do you consider yourself a plotter or a pants when it comes to having put the story down? You had the character in mind. Did you start the story with just that character and then you went to see how, what happened from there?

Joel: I would say I am a little bit of both. I heard the expression planter one time, which is a terrible word, but I, I write out one sentence for each of my chapters, and I, there’s a certain structure I stick to as well, like a three act structure. And then it changes as I go. So I, I need to have a little bit for each chapter. I, I, I find it sometimes it’s just an image or like a phrase or a, a sentence or, or something that I, I come up with. I see. And then I start with that. But no, I, I don’t just sit [00:09:00] down and write. I, I have a plan, but the plan does change.

Mark: Okay. How much did this plan change as you were writing it?

Joel: A lot from the very beginning of writing this thing to where it is now. I’d say quite a bit. It took me a while to figure out what I, what Jake’s backstory was gonna be like. I had the mystery in place. I, I. I hope it’s a compelling mystery that, you know, for people who like reading mysteries, there’s, there’s clues, and Jake is a detective, so he follows the clues, but his backstory, I, I went, you know, in so many different directions I had him.

At first he was gonna be a former athlete, like a, somebody who may be retired from playing pro hockey or something like that, and had nothing to do with his life. At one point, he was going to be. Oh, what was the other idea I had? I forget. But there’s a couple other ones before settling on you know, his current backstory, which is that he grew up like in and outta foster care. He, [00:10:00] he had a mom. His, his dad disappeared when he was younger, but he lived with his mom until he got to be a certain age when he fell into the care of, of the province.

Mark: At its core, what would you say? What kind of story this is?

Joel: I think it’s a crime story. I think it’s a mystery. I also think it is a story about redemption. At its core, I think the question is asked, you know, when you, you’ve made mistakes for a long time, when you’ve lived a certain way for a long time, is it even possible to come back from that? And that’s the question that, that I, I hope gets answered at least somewhat in the, in the book.

I also think at its core, it’s a family story. I think we all have. Families, you know, I mean, most people do. And even if you, you don’t know your biological [00:11:00] family, you’ve probably, you know, been in a family of, of sorts or adopted or on a team that it’s like a family or a workplace that’s like a family.

So I think, I think it’s also a story about family and just why we need people around us who have our back.

Mark: Do. Do you think about these themes as you’re writing the book as themes that you wanted to aDD, or this just came as part of the back figuring out the backstory.

Joel: You know, I, I think it just comes as, as I write. I honestly don’t know if, I mean, I, I guess some writers can start with a theme that they want to communicate, like an idea of sorts. F for me. I, I have questions I think be before I write, and then I think as I write, I sort of figure out what the theme is.

But I, I don’t write with the intention of sharing a specific message or anything like that. I, I try to tell a good story first. I try to make it [00:12:00] exciting, interesting, fun for readers, but also thoughtful. I, I hope there’s parts of the book that make. People stop and think about themselves, you know?

So, no, I don’t write with theme in mind a topic. I definitely have topics and questions, but not a message.

Mark: and this is your debut thriller. Is this the first full length novel you’ve written?

Joel: It is, yeah. It’s my first book. So it is, it is my debut, it, I actually wrote it a number of years ago. So the, the book came out just in October, but. I wrote most of it probably 2021 and 22 I would say. And then it was nominated for best unpublished manuscript for an award, from Crime Writers of Canada and, crime writers as a group.

They include like noir and thriller and mysteries all in that same category. And then after that, that was 2023 when I was nominated for that award, it took me, it took me a while to find a publisher, [00:13:00] so a few months to find someone, you know, willing to publish it, to work with me. And then it just came out this year with a small publisher, a small press.

It’s, it, it takes a while just for everything to line up. So yes, it is my first book.

Mark: Oh, congratulations. That is a big accomplishment. I think I had wrote like four or five books before I had one that, that I felt was actually deserving of going, even considering publication. So to do it on your first one is very impressive.

Joel: Well, thank you. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

Mark: You’re a you, you mentioned you’re a teacher. What subject do you teach? Do you feel like that has helped you with the skill at writing?

Joel: I think it has, like I teach high school English, so I’m always like, my, my day consists of a lot of reading and, and writing and just talking about books and movies and TV shows those are areas that I, I love. So I think in talking about something and just working with it all the time, I think you do get better at it.

Has it helped my writing? Like on a prose level? I, [00:14:00] I don’t think so, but I, I think I’m around a lot of people and talk to people from all walks of life. That’s, that’s for sure. Teaching a very diverse high school, so I think that can help but broaden your horizons a little bit and just open you up to I don’t know. Different ways of looking at things.

Mark: Nice. I feel like you’re live, you’re living the dream that I wanted to live at one time before I

Joel: Oh yeah,

Mark: decisions. yeah,

I wanted to teach, I wanted to teach English and then and then I eventually published books, but

Joel: yeah. Absolutely.

Mark: Oh, oh, that’s awesome.

Joel: And you, you run a business now as well, right? In addition to the podcast, you have

Mark: Yeah. Fitness. Yeah. Yeah.

I got into fitness instead of, I got into teaching coaching fitness instead of. F instead of English. So

Joel: it’s similar in a way. I mean, I, one of my one of my kids, the father of one of my son’s buddies, they’re just, they’re young. They’re nine years old now. But, he, he is a personal trainer and he owns a, a business too, and he really is, it’s funny ’cause we talk about this [00:15:00] stuff, but he, he really is a teacher.

That’s what he is. He’s always showing people what to do. He’s always trying to build rapport with people. He’s, he’s got an expertise in the area. Like, so there are a lot of, I think, similarities in the fitness world. I think people who are really passionate about it, I think there are similarities to teaching in a school.

Mark: yeah. When readers finish this book, what are you hoping they’re gonna be thinking or feeling as they put it down?

Joel: I hope that, I hope they’re surprised. Okay. I hope they’re surprised ’cause I did work hard to to make the ending strong. But on a deeper level, I guess maybe maybe it puts them in a in a spot where they’re forced to think about people who they, write off, you know, people who they, uh, who we all, I shouldn’t say they, but we, we all, sort of judge, I guess, right?

Like, you, you meet somebody and it’s within a few [00:16:00] seconds you’re sort of making all these interpretations and that’s fine. But I, I also think it’s, it’s, it’s a good thing for a person just to go back and, and think about the people you meet and what their lives are like and where they come from and what their, what their motivations are, and, and then, you know, look at yourself as well.

I, I think it’s a book that can keep you entertained, but also at the end of it, I hope it, it has made you, made you think a little bit as well.

Mark: I just finished it yesterday and it did, it did have that effect on me. I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed the story, really enjoyed the ending. And there were some deep messages we’ll talk a little bit about too during the story that certainly had me thinking at the end, and it reminds me of that you never know what someone else has been through when you see them you know, you can see someone at a grocery store who’s really upset, but you don’t know why they’re upset or what their day was like. And I think this story it helps reflect that in a way because of what [00:17:00] he’s going through and, and everything and, and the perspective of all the different characters in their lives and even to the very end, which we can’t talk about right now, but what we’ll get into a little bit later.

Joel: Sure. Yeah, no, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. I, I, I think what you said is absolutely true. It’s, it’s, everyone has a story and you know, when you get to know someone’s story, I think you, you maybe, you maybe don’t like something they’ve done. And I, I also think that’s okay as well. You know, you don’t have to like what somebody’s done to maybe empathize a little bit or understand them a little more. You know, I think that’s that’s maybe where fiction and, and stories in general, whether it’s a thriller or a different novel that I assign to some of my students in high school. Maybe the that’s where stories can help a little bit with that empathy piece.

Mark: Yeah. What research went into this for you?

Joel: I had to learn a lot about like extremist groups and just the [00:18:00] thinking. So I’ve, I’ve read a couple different books, along the way Under the Banner of Heaven is one I can recall by John Krakauer, just to try to get into that mindset and understand a little bit more about fundamentalism. By no means do I think I’ve covered it all or anything like that, but I, I think during the writing, it put me in the head space to try to understand the characters. I also did quite a bit of research and, and spoke to people about, like group homes and foster care and just what some of those, experience of experiences have been for people and, and how, I mean, there’s, there’s no one experience for any of this stuff.

People have their own, you know, situations, but I think there are some common threads, that people do experience when they go through something like being removed from their home, taken from their parents. And when they grow up in a foster care system, I think it’s, Uh, like I say, I think the experiences are different, but I do think there are some, some similarities as well.

[00:19:00] So yeah, I did did research on those two areas most. And then just tons of reading, like I love crime thrillers, I love reading. In general, to be honest, and just reading some of my favorite authors work is I think one of the best ways to figure out how you want your own stories to be.

Mark: When you’re creating these characters, even the side characters, do you have like a chart or something of their names and like the traumas they’ve been through and how they’ve dealt with those traumas? Because there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of overlap in traumas kind of a theme throughout the book. The different types of trauma, whether it was sexual or through with the church or or with alcoholism. Like there’s a lot of trauma and everyone has dealt with it differently.

Joel: No, that’s a good question. I think, um, I do keep track of the characters. I, I don’t put everything in, in like, it’s a Word document where I have [00:20:00] a picture of what I think the person looks like, on the one side, which is some details, their name some of the stuff they’ve been through, like you say. I, I also think that during the process of writing it, I’m, I’m a very routine person so I write every day, even if it’s for a very short amount of time. So I think when I’m in the process of writing, I live with the characters enough that I can usually remember, you know, who they are. What I found to be a major challenge is after not having worked with the book in a while in between, like my award nomination in 23, and then revisiting it this year to do the final edits with the editor from Runamok.

That was a, a new experience, having to reread it and, and just remember and learn the characters again. It did feel like a little bit of. I don’t know if a challenge, but it, it definitely took me some time to get back into it and, and just to keep everything straight, just from one scene to the next, from one character to the next. [00:21:00] Trying not to repeat the same, the same story or the same, background, although some of them are definitely similar.

Mark: Why first person point of view instead of third, instead of telling us. ’cause in, I mean, I guess I don’t read a whole lot of detective stories, but I’ve read some, and a lot of times you get a chapter from the villain’s point of view or you get a chapter from someone else’s point of view, but that’s usually a third person told story. You went with first person. Just curious how that decision came and why.

Joel: I, I think because it’s my first book and for whatever reason, I was actually talking to somebody about this the other day too they messaged me and just kind of asked about it. But for me, it’s easier. And honestly, that’s the, that’s the real answer, is I just find first person easier. Since I’ve written a book in third person, like with multiple points of view and such, and I, I think, I think it’s harder, I think it really is harder [00:22:00] to, to, for me to write in third person.

The person who I was talking to said the opposite and said they just can’t write in first person. They feel like they’re being pretentious or something, like always talking about them, but they said third person is just more natural. And for me, I think first person is even though. I, I, I really enjoy reading third person.

So in the future I’ll probably do both, but that’s how it came about. Honestly, it was just my, my first, I guess, book. So that’s where I went with it. I didn’t even think about it to be honest. I, I thought, you know, I, I, so many detective novels, so many crime novels, thrillers, I’m trying to think of a good thriller that’s in first person. I, it’d probably take me a while, but I, I think a lot of crime novels are in first person, especially the first book of a, of an author.

Mark: I was thinking, I think that Michael Connolly in that has done a lot of third right

Joel: Yeah. I think Connolly probably has with his Harry Bosch. He’s actually done both. I can remember he switched like Mider, then he went back [00:23:00] to. The original, which maybe was third person, but yeah, he’s, he’s definitely used third.

Mark: yeah. Okay.

Joel: Okay. Yeah.

Mark: When you were crafting Jake’s character as a broken detective, how did you not make him unlikeable? Balancing the line between, ’cause there were moments in the book where I borderline didn’t like him, but then he kinda redeemed himself almost immediately after. But it was like, it was a struggle at times. It was real, which is what I liked about it. ’cause I was, you know, those struggles were just real coming across. But at the same time, there’s a risk of this behavior is borderline unlikable the way he’s acting.

Joel: Yeah. I, I think what I tried to do with that, I, I tried to, with the character, with his mom, I, I tried to make the scenes between Jake and his mom show that he, he is a kind, loving person, and [00:24:00] even though he does some things that are unlikeable, you know, whether it’s his drinking or just some of the, the violence that’s in the book and, and things like that, I hope that what shines through more is the fact that this is a loyal character who if you’re on his team, if, if he cares about you, he’s, he’s gonna go through anything for you. And at one part of the book he says something like I, if you, if you hurt people I care about, then I will hurt you basically. And I, I think there’s always been kind of this idea, you know, I’m thinking about for some reason John Wick just popped in my head right now, the mo the John Wick movies of how, you know, at the beginning of that first movie, anyway, you can, I think it’s his dog that gets killed at the beginning, right? And he goes on this [00:25:00] like rampage, but. I mean, I, I like him, I like the character, even though some of the things he’s doing, of course they’re, it’s terrible.

Now that’s a, an action movie where you can see the character and you get more of that, like the actor’s performance, of course. But I, I think characters can do unlikeable things if, if the, the baseline of the character is, is still good. And I, I hope Jake reads like that. I, I think he does. That he is a good person.

The way he grew up living in survival mode for a good chunk of every day of his life, I think hardened him and I, I think he had to do things that, he felt were necessary for survival. And sometimes when people cope with, with, with life, they don’t do it in the right way. So I think there’s some of that in there too. But I hope at the end of the day he still is somebody that you see as, as if not likable then, then maybe. Understandable,

Mark: Yeah. Relatable for [00:26:00] sure.

Joel: perhaps. Yeah, in some ways.

Mark: Yeah. I have a question from Karen Osborne, who was the last guest on the show. She wants to know how your book cover came together.

Joel: Interesting. The book cover came together because I wanted to have and I was allowed input too. I, I have to say, I had quite a bit of input. I wanted to have my f my first idea was a character w was like, not the silhouette, but just somebody sitting at a bar and you see their back straight on with the bottles behind.

And then the yellow, I wanted the yellow on black. I thought that would be good. The, the person who did the cover at trouble lights, sort of came up with some photos and it, it has the same idea with the character or the image. Just slightly turned just a little bit. So you can see how you, you get, he’s not directly, it’s not straight on, but it’s just from the [00:27:00] side.

But that’s how the, the cover came to be. And I, I think it fits the genre, the crime, thriller, noir, mystery type genre. So I was very mindful to try to make it as. Not unique as possible, to be honest, but I wondered when you look at it, you know, okay, that’s, that’s a, a book in, in this particular genre.

Mark: Yeah. Cool. Thank you. What advice would you give someone who just published their first or second book?

Joel: The advice I would give somebody who just published who that’s, I would say that the the best thing you can do or my, I guess advice, my advice would be not the best thing, but my advice would be to, make sure your perspective is playing a long game so that if you come into this thing thinking you’re gonna sell, 10,000 copies or [00:28:00] make a million bucks or something you, you should probably, you should probably rethink that and try to build an audience slowly with every novel, with every book. And if I had to give a second piece of advice, it would be to connect with other writers. I think one of the best things for me about this whole writing gig is just like meeting people from all over the place, usually on social media, who after a few years, you know, we edit each other’s work. We communicate by email or we help each other out with blurbs. And you, you do have a little community where it doesn’t feel like you’re doing it on your own. And I, I think those would be the two pieces of advice. Just make sure we have like the right mindset. Like go into this thinking, you’re gonna write 10, 15 books and build slowly. And then the second one is just connect with people. Try to help them. And if, if you help somebody, they will definitely pay it back. At some point,

Mark: Yeah, thank you. Your long game. Have [00:29:00] you started another book and is it gonna be a series from the broken detective or are you going somewhere else?

Joel: I, I’ve written a couple since, since I wrote the Broken Detective, so the second one in the series is done, but it’s, it’s just a first draft, so there’s a lot of work that would still need to go into it and that, that I hope to have out. It’s probably gonna be a little bit of a weight, but, at, at some point in the next year to two years, I think the sequel will be out.

I’ve also written another standalone that’s the one that’s in third person that, I think is, is probably a, a thriller. It is more of a, it, it happens in a, a shorter period of time and. I’ve really tried with the different perspectives to push the speed of it and to try to just get that momentum with regard to, to, the characters trying to s solve the problem.

I guess the, the the conflict in that story. So, yeah, I’ve written a couple books since then. Um, [00:30:00] and I’m always working on something where they’re gonna come out or when is, is the question? It’s, it’s a very I think, interesting time in publishing because there are so many, so many books out there, there, there are so many authors, there’s so much content in social media and, and streaming services.

So it really is I think a challenge and it’s, it’s probably harder than ever to find readers. Right? So that’s, that’s really what I’m trying right now, is just to find people, to get the book in the hands of, of podcasters like yourselves to try to get on to talk about it and just to, you know, kind of build that, that audience one person at a time.

Mark: Yeah, I will happily be talking about it. It was a great book. So

Joel: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Mark: where can readers find your.

Joel: You can go to, if you go to my website, which is j the letter j neti.com, there’s links to the different places you can buy it. I mean, there’s, there’s always Amazon, which [00:31:00] is, which is, which is probably the most convenient place to get it. In Canada, you can also go to like a McNally Robinson, like a local bookstore.

Like that, we’ll have it. Or some of the indie bookshops will be able to order it for you. In the states you can get it from Barnes and Noble as well. It’ll be available there as well.

Mark: All right. That’s great. I’ll link to that in the show notes. Thank

Joel: Okay, thank you.

Mark: Thank you for your time. This is the end of the main show. I really appreciate you taking the time. If you don’t mind sticking around, we’re gonna do a quick spoiler, full section, ’cause I wanna ask a couple of questions about the end of the book so listeners know. Stop here. This is where you don’t wanna listen. If you wanna read the book first and then have a couple additional questions, and then we’ll get into the after show.

Joel: Yeah, absolutely. That sounds good. Thank you.

Mark: right. Thank you. So spoiling the end again, listeners, if you do not want to know how this book ends, do not, do not listen to this part of, of the of the show. The ending was quite sad when you crafted it. [00:32:00] The was, it told this way the first time with. I was almost expecting the judge to almost give like a leniency or something to, to come back and say like, oh, you did all these things i’m so impressed maybe we’ll give you a few months and, and your, you can be with your mom or probation or something, but you didn’t, you didn’t go that route. You went, you went with like, okay, here’s what I mean. Here’s what you did.

Joel: I, I had a couple people comment on that. Like I, I had an agent actually contact me talking about the book. Like this is before I signed with Run Amuck even. And they wanted me to change it to to a story about how. The character Corey Francis, who is not really in the book at all, but that’s the person who Jake assaulted, you know, who he has to write this letter of apology to, just to get the suspended sentence and the shorter sentence.

The, the agent thought that it would be a better story [00:33:00] if, if that guy had had come back to sort of try to get revenge against Jake and if, if something happened with that at the end, or like, if I would’ve earlier in the book, had Corey Francis be a character, then he could have come back at the end and maybe it would end on some kind of a showdown between these two.

Mark: yeah.

Joel: And the other thing I could have done is, like you said, let the character off and, and not send them to prison. The reason I didn’t do that is because book two opens. I thought it would be interesting to open book two, like 13 months down the line where he gets outta prison and now he’s got all this money because he, he was forced to take the money at the end of the broken detective as well.

And I just think that’s interesting. You got this guy who, who, is trying to get sober. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t after prison, and then he’s now got all this money. He’s got no job, he’s got very little family. And I, I just thought that was interesting to see what he would do with the money. So as far as it being sad, I, I think, I think I think that’s [00:34:00] true to life.

I think a lot of things are sad, but I also, what I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that sometimes I feel sad, sometimes I feel sad, but I also kind of feel good at the same time. And it’s a weird balance where I think, Jake, I think it is sad, man, he’s going to jail. I mean, that’s one of the worst places a person can go. But at the same time, if it gets him to, to stop drinking and to try a different way of living, then I, I think there’s some, some joy in that as well.

Mark: Yeah. Well also at the end, ’cause I’ll, I’ll add more sadness to the,

Joel: Okay.

Mark: Question is cats. Cats losing it and, and crumbling in the end. And that killed me too. ’cause seeing it, I know he lost his, he lost his wife and he’s at the funeral and I get it. So you set it up. To make total sense and be within the book, but at the same time, I was like, damn, really? Why cats? Why did you do it?

Joel: I, I think why, the, why I did it is. [00:35:00] I always like things when they get reversed, like in a story, like what I try to teach students too, and they have these ideas and a lot of them, like they’re smart people, but they, they come in with like a almost a cliche idea or an idea we’ve sort of seen, and I’m like, okay, like flip this around.

So the idea for me that I thought was interesting is like, okay, you got this character Jake, who’s a drunk, who, he is not been sober for very long. And then you have his mentor, who is many, many, many years sober, who is smart, who has found a good way of living for like 20 years or whatever it is.

And now you have the newly sober person mentoring the older, like that’s interesting to me. So I really try to take the idea and just like flip it for the ending. And also, I like the idea that, that you never get there in life. Like we’re never gonna, like fitness for example too, right? To get back to that. Like you could be in the best shape [00:36:00] of your life one day. And I know many actors talk about getting in shape for a role, and then I think it was Jake Gyllenhal who said something like, you know, he did that boxing movie and it’s like two weeks later he hadn’t worked out or whatever. And it’s al already, his body is so different in two weeks, and I think you have to keep doing the thing. And that’s just like being sober is the same. If you want to keep living sober, you gotta sort of put in the work, I guess you could say. And I, I think that’s interesting,

Mark: I, I also like that it humanized cats in a sense

Joel: right?

Mark: That it’s like even though he had gone 20 years, that doesn’t mean all our demons are gone and everything is fine and happily ever after. That was a, That was good too. I was still sad, but it was good.

Joel: No, I agree. I, I think you’re, I think you’re, it’s like all of us, like it’s, it’s. Life is awesome. It’s very exciting and it’s, it’s interesting and some days are boring and everything else, but it’s hard and there are sad things in the world, and I think that maybe the book taps into that a little bit.

Mark: Thanks for listening to the Thriller Pitch Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you’re following the [00:37:00] show, and if you can leave a rating and review, it helps the podcast reach other writers and readers.

In the next episode, I’m talking to JL Hancock, author of the Hawk Enigma. We talk about grounding high stakes thrillers in real world detail, balancing technology with character and how much research actually makes it onto the page.

If you’d like to go a little deeper, there’s a short after show available right now on Patreon. It’s where authors answer rapid fire questions they don’t get asked anywhere else. Questions like thrillers that inspire them to write their weirdest Google searches guilty pleasures, and then note they’d leave on your nightstand. It’s free to listen to and you don’t need anything to access it. You’ll find the link in the show notes

TPP Episode 25 with Westley Smith

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

Westley: Stories are my fuel. They’re my therapy. They’re my outlet. You know, it’s just, that’s what I do and that has got me through so many hardships in my life.

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

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

Before we get started, I wanna say thank you to everyone who’s been listening since the show launched this summer. Your support, the messages, the enthusiasm has kept the show alive and it really means the world to me. This episode wraps up the [00:01:00] podcast for 2025.

This week I’m joined by Wesley Smith, author of They Came At Night. We talk about blending psychological thriller in action building characters shaped by trauma and why some stories aren’t written for research, but from lived experience. Wesley shares how personal loss and resilience inform this novel, why dark fiction can be a form of survival and what he hopes readers carry with them after the final page.

If you’re interested in stories that explore trauma, endurance, and what people are capable of, when everything is on the line, this is the conversation you want to hear.

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

Westley: Thank you for having me.

Mark: I’m excited to talk about they came at night, which is your latest book that we are here to talk about.

Westley: Yes.

Mark: So let’s, let’s hear the pitch. Let’s get into it.

Westley: they came at night as about a traumatically injured woman who sequesters herself at a place [00:02:00] called the Compound. And then she decides she wants to rejoin society, and when she does, she’s going to a retreat with her family and she’s trying to rekindle her life with her family. And what, what she had lost in this traumatic ex because of this traumatic experience.

And they go to this small little town and this town’s kinda weird. The house they’re gonna be staying at, it’s kinda has these weird little things about the house. She starts noticing all this stuff going on around her. And things go from bad to really bad, very fast.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you. So where did this idea come from?

Westley: The idea actually came from a true crime story called The Watcher, which happened a few years ago. There is actually a, there’s a Netflix movie about it, I believe now, but that was the case where this, the, this couple had bought this house [00:03:00] and this, this, someone kept sending him a note saying, I’m watching your house.

And they just kept, they don’t know who ever was doing this. So that’s kind of where the idea percolated from. And then it just kind of grew from there because I knew I couldn’t, I, I knew when that would, when that happened, I couldn’t rate that story because somebody else was gonna be on it who had much bigger clout than me to be able to do that.

So I was like, no, I gotta tweak that idea. But that’s, that’s actually where it came from.

Mark: And how did it grow from there?

Westley: It just. always wanted to do kind of a home invasion type story, but I wanted to put a twist on it and not do like just a home invasion story. I wanted to twist that, that screw a little bit. So that’s kind of where I was kind of looking at it from and not having a protagonist, your normal protagonist in those kind of stories

Mark: are, do you consider yourself a plotter or a pants? Do you, you [00:04:00] write it as you went or did you outline the whole thing and then build

Westley: I, I do a little bit of both. Um, I like to have kind of my character back stories down. Because I find when I’m writing, if I don’t have that, I have, I start to have problems with the plot. The plot is usually, I’m usually pretty good with, ’cause I know what I want to do in the plot, but like when the backstory start to come in and needs to be interwoven, that’s where I start to struggle.

And if I have all that figured out upfront, I’m pretty good to go. So I do both. I do a little plotting, little, little work on the upfront, but I’d leave, I always like to leave myself a little wiggle room so I can, you know, do some fun stuff and not have to be so locked into the the plotting of it.

Mark: Yeah. So how long does it take you? How long did it take you to write they came at night.

Westley: Two months.

Mark: Oh wow. That’s a good, that’s a short time.

Westley: I started in June of 2023, and I was done by September. I’m sorry. I started in July of 2023 and was done in [00:05:00] September of 2023.

Mark: And what’s the process like for you from there?

Westley: From there, it’s like extensive editing. When I’m writing, I usually do 3000 words a day. Now with they came at night, I was, I put myself on a deadline because we were going on vacation in September and I wanted that book done before I went to on vacation, so I didn’t think about it. So I was up to like 10,000 words a day to, if not more than that, just pounding that book out.

After that, I usually give it about a month, month or so break because I need to walk away and just let everything’s settled down, calm, you know, get away from it so I can come back and read it and with fresh eyes. And then I start my editing process and I’m a pretty vigorous rewriter and editor. So I’m, I’m pretty critical of myself.

So I start, I start chopping stuff and taking it out. And then after I get to a point where I’m comfortable with it, where or when I read it, I don’t see the errors. [00:06:00] there. I just don’t see ’em. So then I send it to my editor and then she reads it and then gets back to me, and then this process starts all over again for another round.

Mark: And then after that, you’re going to publication

Westley: I usually, yes, I usually take it around to, to publishers to see if anybody’s interested. I had already pre-sold, they came at night to my publisher who I did worked on. They came at, or I’m sorry, in the pale late with, so they already wanted it, so I had already pre-sold that one to them. So I was already, I was already good with this one.

Mark: Nice. So at its core, what would you say this story is about? When I read it, and I’ll do my best not to give any spoilers, there’s. It almo, it starts almost like a domestic thriller with kind of that, you know, the, I know something’s coming vibes, and then it turns hard. So what, at its core, what, what would you say is this genre that you feel it is, and how did you go about nailing

Westley: I would [00:07:00] say it’s psychological thriller action hybrid,

Mark: Okay.

Westley: because I don’t, I, I did definitely wanted to blend two, two genres together. I love movies and books like that that do that really, really well. And that was something I really wanted to do with this one. And, I knew if I could pull off the first half, the second half of the book ’cause it’s, it’s, it right in the middle of the book’s the book changes it, it’s psychological thriller for the first half of the book and then action, suspense, whatever you wanna call it for the second half. ’cause it completely changes because tone and, you know, just the way everything happens. So it was just so I wanted to just capture, capture that kind of feeling and really dig into this just a different way to tell a psychological thriller. ‘Cause you know, I, I, I, I read those and I was just like, I was kind of bored with reading the same kind of psychological thriller. So I really wanted just to do [00:08:00] something completely different. So that’s what I set out to do.

Mark: Did you see it happening the way it did from beginning to end? Or did you have the domestic, or not domestic, the psychological side kind of mapped out and then it turned? Or did you just have that whole thing from beginning to end in your

Westley: Now I had it, it was always the, the, the whole thing was in my mind, the whole way. The only thing I didn’t have down while I was writing, and I never even had it in my, in my outline of the book was what the reason actually was. The whole, the whole story in a nutshell and why it was happening. I never, I never settled on that until the very end.

Mark: Okay, so it’s kind of like you, you’ve discovered the

Westley: Yeah, I had a couple different ideas in mind of where I wanted it to go, but I didn’t settle on any of those right ways. In fact, I left, the ending kind of opened when I did my first, my first draft. ’cause I was like, nah, I don’t know if I want to go that way. And then, you know, I, I just didn’t, I didn’t [00:09:00] settle on it.

And then, you know, I finally did settle on something so.

Mark: To you, what makes it go that way? Is it, is it like the characters, you just feel this is the situation that characters are in? Or is it the environment coming together? Like how did you know when you wanted to make that final decision? Is this is the way I want it to end.

Westley: True life happened. The how, how it, where it actually went. I, ’cause I don’t wanna spoil it for people who haven’t read it. But real events in the real world is what actually convinced me to go with the ending that I have.

Mark: Yeah, I guess without going to a spoiler, we can’t

Westley: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Okay. That’s fair. And when readers put this book down, what are you hoping they’re gonna feel?

Westley: I really hope they walk away with the feeling that the main character really loved her family and was willing to do what she had to do for them, especially her niece. know, ’cause my, the [00:10:00] book is dedicated to my aunt, who I was very close to. And, and in the story, it’s, it’s an aunt and niece relationship.

I had an aunt and nephew relationship, but my aunt was very, I was very close to my aunt, so I wanted that kind of relationship in my, in the book. And I wanted to show that an aunt can be just as, just as much of a mother figure to someone as their mother actually can be. So I, I, that’s, that’s what I want people to take away from it more than anything. And that trauma, trauma, how, and, and how trauma affects not only the person that it happened to, but those around you.

Mark: Which was well done. Which was well done in the

Westley: Thank.

Mark: I was gonna ask about that dedication, because at the beginning I, I noticed it to your end. What is the support structure for you in your writing when you’re putting a book like this together in the background?

Westley: My [00:11:00] wife is always very supportive of my writing. I talk stuff out with her sometimes, if I, if I’m particularly stuck on something, I’ll be like, I need to run something by you. I need to talk this out. ’cause it’s just like you get stuck in the wheels, get spinning up here and you can’t get off that hamster wheel to try to figure it out.

And, you know, I’ll talk to her about it. I talk to my editor Kristen, a lot about problems that I’m having, especially when I’m in the editing part of it. She’s very good at helping me figure out, figure out problems that I’m having with the story. Yeah, just basically that, you know, I do a lot of walking.

For like any, every, every hour I work on my writing, I go out and walk for 10 minutes. And that actually really helps me work out stuff. ‘Cause I’m, I’m big into believing physicality equals really good creativity. So I like to do a lot of physical stuff with, but with my creativity. So going out and walking or chopping wood or something is really, really gets my, thoughts going.

Mark: Okay, so you’re a physical, your physical break, [00:12:00] it’s not a break. It’s not a mental break. You’re actually getting, by being physical, you’re getting more active in almost a creative way in the backgrounds.

Westley: yeah. I can’t just sit at, I have trouble sitting in the same spot for hours at a time. ’cause before I was riding full time, I worked in factories and you know, I slung steel for eight to 10 hours a day. So I’m used to moving all day. For me to sit here for 10 to 12 hours a day is extremely hard.

And my back started bothering me and stuff like that. And when I was doing it and I’m like, I can’t, I can’t keep this up. So I got up and started walking and moving around, and then I just noticed the change in me and I was like, oh, that’s the ticket. I gotta get up and do something. So I just started doing that and that, that’s been a lifesaver.

More or less, you know.

Mark: Is that time based for you where you’ll write for an hour and then. On, almost on a timer, or is it just a feeling, oh, I’ve, I’ve done so much now I’m going at it.

Westley: No, no, I don’t usually use a timer. I [00:13:00] just, you know, I have the clock in the side of the computer here. I just, I watch that. I’ll look down every once in a while and be like, okay, it’s about time. ’cause you know, the time gets off and, you know, I’ll get into writing and be like, oh, I miss my miss my hour.

I don’t, I’m not that strict on it. But like I try to get up and do it every hour or so.

Mark: Nice. I have found sometimes when I, when I stop, so when I get to the, to the page, so to speak, and I start writing, sometimes it’s 15, 20 minutes before I can really get into writing ’cause my head has to get back

Westley: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And then once I’m into it, if I step out, like for that physical activity, my brain just goes completely somewhere else and I sit back down. I have to try and find that space again. So that’s really interesting that you’re able to process while you’re doing the physical and then come right back to the

Westley: Yeah, because when I walk away, it’s usually the, that’s my point. To think, to stop, to stop the actual writing and actually think about how I wanna continue or where I want to fix stuff or, you know, it’s, it just gives my brain that moment [00:14:00] to pause and, and actually think, ’cause I gotta, I gotta focus on something else.

I gotta focus on walking, you know, I gotta focus on whatever I’m doing. And then that is like. I can, I can finally think, because I’m not typing and thinking of the, the actual words that I need to put on page to the pros and, you know, how good did this sound? How bad does that sound? I’m not thinking about that at that point.

Mark: In writing this book, what would you say was the most difficult part of that journey from from initial thought to publication?

Westley: Probably for me, just trying to get it done on my personal deadline,

Mark: Okay.

Westley: You know, just 10,000 words a day was a lot of words, and I was tired after those days. That was probably, you know, and that was my own, that was my own doing. But I, I just really did not want this book hanging over me going on vacation. ’cause I would’ve thought about it all vacation and my wife would, wouldn’t have liked that. So I was like, nope. Getting that out of the way.

Mark: do [00:15:00] Future books that you are writing. Do you give yourself more time to give yourself more breathing space, or are you still able to output that kind of words in order to get that and book out it?

Westley: I could, if, if I want to. I, I honestly could. I don’t do that all the time. That is an unsustainable, way of writing in my opinion. I’ll burn out doing that kind of work every day, and I, I don’t. I don’t know if like every day, every day I do try to sit down at the computer and write 3000 words.

That’s my daily goal to get 3000 out. Monday through Friday I take the weekends off ’cause I like to think about stuff. But most of the time I hit that goal and then I’ll walk away. If I go over that, I’m even, I’m happy, you know, I always try to have the first draft of a book done in about three months. So depending on what size it is if it’s getting a little on the longer end, you know, it might take a little bit longer, but most of the time I try to [00:16:00] keep it to about three months so I can have this book done in that point so I can have it at least ready to go out to wherever it’s going within eight months or so.

Mark: Do you find pressure from day to day if you don’t hit 3000, like you get 2,500 ’cause you’re just not having a great day, or you get interrupted by something. Do you feel pressure the next day to do 3,500 or do you stick to 3000 a day and hope for the three month deadline?

Westley: No, not, not really. I’ve dealt with a lot of things that are unexpected in my life and I don’t, things happen, you know, it’s just things happen. And I think to put that kind of unneeded pressure on you is, is, now I will say if I had a deadline, like a, or strict deadline for a publication, I would probably put the extra work in and it wouldn’t be a problem.

But when I’m just, when I’m working on a new book that has no publisher yet, or I am just still, you know, in the early stages of it, no, I [00:17:00] won’t do that. I do have the weekends off, and if I want to come back, I can catch up on the weekends. That’s why I write Monday through Friday.

But most of the times I’m gonna write over 3001 of those days. So I’ll catch up anyways. It’s going, it’s bound to happen, you know like if I only did 2,500 on Monday, I’m definitely doing 5,000 on Wednesday or something. It’s gonna happen ’cause I can’t help myself. So that’s why I don’t worry about it too much.

But, you know, I try to get to that 3000 majority of the time it’s kinda like working out you, you can’t hit the gym every day, but you want to hit the gym the majority of your days out of the month. It’s kind of how I look at it.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really healthy approach. I like that. Let’s talk about research a little bit. What research went into this book from the trauma to. Well, I don’t know how much we can talk about the second half of the book as it [00:18:00] materializes, but I guess let’s talk in general about research and how much went into it.

Westley: So the trauma aspect, I, I get asked this question a lot. How did you research the trauma aspect of the book and the trauma aspect. I didn’t do any research. That’s just lived experience. Now my trauma is completely different from Sandra’s trauma, which I won’t go into. I won’t go into Sandra’s trauma, but my trauma, I’ll go into it a little bit of, I lost my dad when I was 12. I helped him through a lot of medical issues. He had diabetes, he lost his legs, he had gangrene. I was running IVs at 12, catheters at 12, insulin shots. And then my mom got sick in 98 or 90, 97. She fell ill, I took care of her at 18 and then had to shut her off of a ventilator.

At 18, I was still in high school, so I deal with a lot of trauma from all these lived experiences, and I just kind of brought all that into [00:19:00] Sandra and just how, how I felt people viewed me. You know, after, after I went through this experience, I was a different person than what I was before the experience, especially after shutting my mom off a ventilator. So people viewed me differently. I viewed the world differently. And it was just this, this something that I wanted to share with people and how trauma does affect affect yourself and affect those around you. And how, how it, not only it hurts you personally, but it hurts other people too. And how they want, they want you to be the same person you were before this, but you’re not the same person you are you are a changed person. And that’s really what I wanted to write about and talk about. And again, going back to your earlier question, that was what really excited me about this book. Not everything that happened in the book, but talking about Sandra’s trauma and how everybody around her just views her now.

Mark: I imagine that’s quite [00:20:00] therapeutic to get out onto the page as well, even when it’s fictionalized from someone else’s

Westley: Yes. Yeah.

Mark: I from a character. ’cause I have found that too. Yeah.

Westley: Yeah. It, it was a, you know, a long time coming of just things I have dealt with over the years, and it was like, I need to get this off me and let it be lived, you know, in a, in through a character, which is mostly how I deal with everything through, through writing.

Mark: Wow. I’m glad you have that outlet. That is a lot to take on for a young person in high school now. And all good for you for, for finding writing in books and, and having

Westley: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been my lifesaver, stories just in general, you know, whether it’s coming from books, movies, comic books, audio books. I don’t, whatever stories are my fuel. They’re my, they’re, they’re my therapy. They’re my outlet. You know, it’s just, that’s what I do and that has got me through so many hardships in my [00:21:00] life.

Mark: That’s awesome. I want to talk about characters a little bit, and I’m curious with Janice, which is the mother who comes on the scene and is almost our first antagonist, was she meant to be almost the villain of the story until we meet the villains of the story.

Westley: yes, she is absolutely meant to be the villain of the story. Yeah, I don’t wanna say too much that I’ll get myself in trouble.

Mark: Okay, because I found her quite a difficult character to, to almost process in what she was saying. And it was just like eating me up and I’m like, oh, how could you say that? And then her poor daughter

Westley: Yeah.

Mark: just trying to cope with it. I mean, she had her reasons, I suppose in the end. Like, well, we discover her reasons for sort of, but I still, did you try to build empathy into that situation? Because I could almost feel that we were trying to understand her mom, but at the same time I [00:22:00] couldn’t feel like what she had done was the right thing.

Westley: No, I did not try to build em empathy in for her because I wanted you to hate her. As much as you could. No, I didn’t. I didn’t want her to redeem herself at all. Because I know people like her and that’s why I didn’t, I did not want there, there is a little redemption arc for her, and it’s really, it’s really subtle.

But it does happen but I didn’t want it to be, I didn’t want it to be like this. Oh, everything’s great now. We, we, we talked, we’re, we’re happy. ’cause that’s, that’s not real life And that most of the, most of the time that’s not how things are resolved, you know? And I, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted her to be what she was just as nasty as she was,

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that’s fair. She was. Did you at any point, adjust the [00:23:00] trauma that Sandra had been through, given the trauma that she eventually went through? When you’re looking at this, almost like a scale of trauma, because halfway through, like you mentioned, halfway through the book, things get really dark and she still uses her original trauma for processing what she’s going through then but at the same time, what she’s going through at that moment is so much

Westley: Mm-hmm.

Mark: or it seems like it, even though we don’t, you know, have a exact play by

Westley: Yeah. Y Yes and no. I knew she could only have so much trauma in what happened to her originally. Like, you know, I couldn’t go too far with it because if I went too far, I felt she wouldn’t have ever come back because she’s on the verge of coming. You know, she’s, she’s like, when she goes to, she goes with her family she’s, she’s still on that, she’s still walking that tightrope of where she’s at in life. And I, I had to keep her there [00:24:00] for as long as I could before, when the event happens and things get really bad, she needed to have a complete collapse at that point. So I wanted her right on that tight rope the whole time until then, because when everything goes down, she almost becomes animalistic.

There’s the scene in the kitchen where she’s eating and she’s not tasting anything. She’s just eating for fuel. And I was like, she, when I was writing it, I’m like, she’s an animal. She is, she’s, she. That’s all she is now. And I had to, I took her even further and my editor is like, you have to pull this back a little bit you have to pull it back because she’s too far gone. And, you know, like I, I was losing her humanity and like that that’s still in there she almost still loses it as the second part is going on there’s a couple quotes in there where she’s, she’s, she doesn’t care about anybody else.

And it’s only about the niece. And that’s her mission. That’s what she’s gonna do. And there’s nothing else. And my editor was on my butt about that. She’s like, you’ve got [00:25:00] to back this up. She is, she’s completely the void of humanity. And so I was like, okay. So it was just a little bit of a tweaking there.

Mark: And the compound she visits where she gets a lot of that care after her trauma. Is that based on anything

Westley: It is not. No, it is not. It was, it’s all a fictional place. I didn’t go and do any research on compounds or anything like that because I wanted it unique to this story. So it’s all just completely made up. There is no, there is no place like this that I’m, that I’m aware of. Yeah.

Mark: Okay.

Westley: Because I, like I said, I wanted it completely unique to this story, and so I did, I didn’t do much research.

Mark: Okay. I got a question from you from Joel Ecky, who was the last guest on the show. Technically, he’s the next guest on the show, but because I was sick and we ended up postponing this, he was, I had talked to him two days ago, even though you’re up at this episode, comes up first, but I, anyway, it all got kind of mixed up in the order.

[00:26:00] So his question for you. Is, has getting older helped you become a better writer?

Westley: Yes. Yes just lived experiences has helped me become a better writer. Yeah, because I, most of my stuff is set in, pretty real circumstances. The, this book gets a little, a little a little farfetched at times, but it’s, it’s supposed to be. But like my, my previous two books in the Pale Light especially, is about a cancer patient someone who’s dying of cancer trying to solve a murder. So that was a really heavy book to write about.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Westley: So I, I would, a lot of people say, when they ask me about they came at night, was, was how was this to write? And I said, oh, it was great. I had a lot of fun. They’re like, you had a lot of fun with this. I was like, my last book was about a person dying of cancer who was trying to solve a murder. Yes. This was fun in comparison to talking about dying of cancer. [00:27:00] Yeah. This was fun.

Mark: Are these the kinds of stories that you plan to tell like you enjoy telling you and you plan to tell these darker psychological where people are really testing their personal limits?

Westley: I love, I love dark stories, not, not horror stories per se, but just really dark, nasty stories. I love getting into why people do things, how people react to situations. I love anti-heroes. That’s like one of my favorite tropes is an anti-hero. I just, I, I love that kind of. That kind of grittiness and just getting into like what makes people do certain things. So all my books are really dark like that. They all have wounded. Traumatized protagonists, you know, that that’s just it, I guess. Kind of like me. That’s what I like. Hey, you know, I, and I like movies like that.

I like books like that. That can do it. Well, you know, I, I love like the Matt Scutter series. ‘Cause he’s, [00:28:00] he’s a recovering alcoholic and I just, I eat that stuff up. I just, I just like that, that, ’cause it’s like there’s personal demons that you’re working through, but yet you’re going to do the right thing and it’s just like, ugh. It’s just that. I just like that.

Mark: yeah. It feels very

Westley: Yeah.

Mark: As you’re, you’re doing all this writing and reading. Is there anything you do to build your, your pro skills as you, as you get older or do you feel that just the reading and this and the act of writing and the editor, I guess

Westley: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much what you just said. The reading, active writing, and the editor. Between those three has been my, the, the best thing that’s, that’s helped me, you know, and I do a lot of rewriting, so like, I might, you know, the first draft, I’ll write it down and it, it’ll be fine. It, it’s serviceable.

But then I go back and I really like to punch it up and give it more than what, what I had originally. And I do that all the time, you know, it’s just like, oh, I can do this better, I can do this better. And it’s just like trying to make it better [00:29:00] without making it wordy.

That’s the thing I try to avoid. ’cause I don’t wanna be too wordy. So I try to, I call myself a, to the point writer. I like to give you just enough, but not so much that it’s becomes just all these words on the page. I, because I don’t like reading stuff like that when it’s really wordy like that.

I just find it really hard to concentrate and I don’t, I don’t care for it, so I just, I, I write to the point and like try to get what I’m trying to say across, in as few as words as possible, but, you know, to make it still enjoyable and well written.

Mark: Do you find in your editing process that you end up cutting like the 10% that a lot of people talk about? Or do you find yourself almost putting things back in?

Westley: It depends. This book they came at night. It’s pretty much how I wrote it from the beginning. There. There’s minor changes. There’s some stuff that I did take out but I had a, the book I have coming out next year. That was almost a page one rewrite [00:30:00] just because of what I did.

And then the editor caught me on it and she’s like, no, no, no, no, no. And I went back and had to almost do a page one rewrite. I had too many characters. I had too many plots going on, too many of all of everything happening at once. And she’s like, you’ve got to take some of this out. So that was almost the page one rewrite. So I’m gonna say it depends on each book.

Mark: Do you find when you’re writing, there’s something, I don’t know if I would wanna say a weakness in the writing, but almost like something that you look for in the rewrite that, you know, you have a habit of like, not doing enough. Like for me, when I write, sometimes my characters spend a lot of time in their heads. So I know when I go through, I have to cut a lot of that internal dialogue because it just starts to bog down. Or I know I don’t, may not describe the scene enough. ’cause like you, I like to think, keep things moving. So I only want, you know, I might say a thing or two and then I’m out. But I, I could use more.

Do you find anything like that with your writing in this book?

Westley: I have a tendency to stop what’s going on To tell you what something looks like [00:31:00] instead of intertwining it with the action.

Mark: Hmm.

Westley: that was just something I learned through the editor. I didn’t know I was doing this, which is, this is a great thing about having really good editors.

Mark: Yeah.

Westley: I didn’t know I was doing this, but she’s like, you, you described this town. I did it in my second book into Pale Light. I have this the town is part of the story, so I wanna describe the town and what it looks like because it’s so integral to the story. But I just stopped the entire story just to tell you what the town looked like, and she’s like, wrap that around the, the story.

And like, I didn’t understand what she, what she meant at first. And like that, you know. And then like as I’m working on the Rera, I’m like, the light bulb goes off. I’m like, oh. Have them doing something so it doesn’t seem like you’re information dumping. Yeah that’s probably my biggest fault is that I’ll end up doing that and I can catch myself now doing it, but I, I couldn’t before having her help.

Mark: Nice. So you actually catch it in your first

Westley: Yeah. [00:32:00] Yeah. And they came at night, Sandra gets outta the car and she sees the town. But I was able to wrap that and I wanted just to get the town, what the town looked like, what she was seeing. I think I did it in one paragraph and kept moving. So you know it, but I got, I did it with her getting out of the car with, all the other things going on and, at the gas station and all that, and had the kids walking up the street. So there was all these other things going on, but I could quickly describe the town.

Mark: Yeah. Nice. What advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book?

Westley: It is a lot of work. Be prepared for a lot of hard work and self-promotion. No matter, even if you’re traditionally published, independently published, self-published, be prepared to work your butt off because it’s never ending. It’s, it’s a lot of work to, to the, when you’re done writing that, isn’t it, you, you’ve gotta promote, which is, I feel the hardest part of this

Mark: [00:33:00] Yeah. Absolutely. Is there anything you’ve found that has worked best for you so far?

Westley: for promotion.

Mark: Yeah.

Westley: I’ve never went viral or anything like that. I just, I try to be in all, all the groups I can be in, try to post my stuff when people are asking for suggestions. You know, like, Hey, I am looking for a new author, or I would like a new book. I always like to throw my hat into the, into the ring.

Just, you never know. There’s some people who will see that and be like, oh, great, I’ll give this guy a try. That. Works. Sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s all up in the air. You, you can never really tell. I do do a tour with a group called Partners in Crime when I release a book and they always get me out there.

They help get readers and our reviewers and get me booked on podcasts and blog interviews and stuff like that so that it gets my name out there. It gives me a little extra help [00:34:00] that I wouldn’t have the reach for just being a independent author.

Mark: Is that for thrillers mostly? Is that why It’s called

Westley: Partners in crime. Yep.

Mark: they help promote, they help promote thriller

Westley: Other writers, they, they do a little bit of horror, a little. They do, they do just a bunch of different stuff. They’re, they’re really good. Gina’s great. I’ve worked with her all, for all three of my books. And I’ll be working with her for my fourth, so she’s great to work with and they hook you up with all kinds of different things and places and it’s pretty awesome to have that little extra help in your corner to help get you out there and find places that you can promote your work to other readers and stuff that you wouldn’t have a reach to.

Mark: Yeah. Nice. Oh, cool. I’ll have to check them out. Last question. Where can listeners find your books?

Westley: You can find my books on Amazon, at my publisher@watertowerhill.com, Barnes and Noble. All the links to these places are on my website, wesley [00:35:00] smith books.com. If you wanna follow me, I’m on Facebook and Instagram at w Smith Books.

Mark: Great, thank you. I will link all that to the show notes. Thank you for your time. This has been

Westley: Thank you.

Mark: loved learning about this. Thank you for sharing all

Westley: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on.

Mark: If you don’t mind taking a few minutes, we’re gonna jump into the after show for our Patreon members, ask some rapid fire questions. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Thriller Pitch Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you’re following the show. The next episode features Joel Nki, author of the Broken Detective. We talk about writing morally complicated protagonists, using place as character, and why some stories are less about redemption and more about understanding who people really are when the pressure doesn’t let up.

If you’d like to go a little deeper, there’s a short after show available right now. It’s where authors answer rapid fire questions. They don’t get asked anywhere [00:36:00] else their favorite thrillers, creative habits, uncomfortable choices, it’s free to listen to and you don’t need to support anything to access that. You’ll find the link in the show notes. Thanks again for being here. Happy New Year. I’ll see you in 2026.

TPP Episode 24 with Karen E. Osborne

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

Karen: And so I whip at my notebook and I write down the way she looked and the way she stood and the way she spoke, because I know that’s what my character looked like or sounded like.

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

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

This week I’m joined by Karen E. Osborne, author of Justice for Emerson. We talk about writing dual timelines, how she builds characters by observing real people in their everyday [00:01:00] life, and how some of her personal history, including her husband’s Vietnam experiences helped shape Emerson’s story.

If you’re interested in writing characters who feel fully alive and managing multiple timelines without losing clarity, this is a conversation worth hearings.

Karen, hello. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Karen: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here.

Mark: I am pumped to talk about your book, and I have it here for those who are watching the video, justice for Emerson. I love this book and I, I cannot wait to, to dig into it. So

Karen: Thank

Mark: let’s start with the pitch.

Karen: Yeah. So could the murder of a 77-year-old Vietnam vet beloved volunteer be somehow tied to a murder in 1968? [00:02:00] Hmm. So this is a dual timeline murder mystery. Present day. And Aria comes home, comes to work. She runs a not-for-profit. She’s 50 years old, she’s five foot two. She has a real issue about her height.

She comes to work and she finds a beloved volunteer, 77-year-old, cow Emerson murdered in the basement. The murderer sees her and she sees the murderer, and we are off and running. The book one 2025 Best Mystery of the Year by best thrillers.com and, and that’s my pitch.

Mark: Thank you. Congratulations on that award. I saw that. That’s awesome.

Karen: Thank you.

Mark: And well deserved. ’cause this was just so well done in so many ways. So let’s get [00:03:00] into that start. Let’s start with just where the idea came from. How did you form this?

Karen: So all of my books, this is my fifth book, and all of my stories start with characters. So characters talk to me, and then I figure out how their story is gonna evolve. I’m not a plotter. I write, you know, I think and solve as I go. When, when I was about three quarters of the way through Justice for Emerson, my husband, who’s helping me with the research because of all the Vietnam stuff, so he’s a Vietnam vet.

So he was helping me with the, with the, you know, all of the things that were going on in Vietnam. That’s the dual timeline part. And he’s three quarters of the way reading it. And I, and I, ’cause that’s where I was in the writing and he says, Karen, this is so good. I can’t figure out who the murderer is. I said, I know I can’t either.

I keep waiting to, I want the murderer to reveal [00:04:00] himself. Like he said, you don’t know who did it. I said, I don’t. So I start with characters and, and I wanted, you know, the experience, the whole Vietnam experience. And I read the women from Ha by Hannah, Kristin, you know, she wrote about the women in Vietnam.

And so I wanted to do something that honored the black Vietnam vets who, who faced a lot of extra, a lot of extra. And, and then I also, aria just, you know, said this was really her story. So I had to do a, to a dual timeline.

Mark: So when you wrote this, I guess you wrote it then in order, ’cause you didn’t outline it, you would’ve written Emerson’s story and then just switched the next chapter to Aria’s story back and forth. Wow.

Karen: cause I don’t outline, you know, it’s, it’s, I had a, a book that I’m writing [00:05:00] now. I actually had a character yell at me and say, no, I am not a middle class on my way to college person, because this never would’ve happened if that was the case. I am poor Karen, I am poor. And I thought, oh, she’s right.

I had to go back and go back and change it. So, yes, I just, I follow, I mean, I’m, I’m always thinking of the plot, you know, as I’m writing, I’m thinking about what could, what’s gonna happen next? What could happen next? What if this happened next? But I don’t outline all the way. Do you outline, are you an outliner?

Mark: I am in between. So I have a good idea where the story’s going. I have the book blurb. I have an idea of the book cover. ’cause I like to do that as like an inspiration. But I don’t do chapter by chapter ’cause the stories never follow. I’ve tried it and the stories never follow that path.

Karen: I love that you think of your, your book cover first. That is so cool.[00:06:00]

Mark: It’s fun. It brings it all to life for me.

Karen: Yeah,

Mark: So when you were building these characters, like you said, they talk to you. Are you writing, taking notes as they talk to you so you can keep track of them and their story?

Karen: I do with when I was writing my first book. I actually would have to like, pull over in my car and blow on the side of the road and like, oh my goodness. Or I’m sitting on an airplane and I see somebody and I realize that that person looks just like, you know, one of the characters. And so I whip out my notebook and I, I always, I always, always, always have paper with me no matter where I am.

And so I whip at my notebook and I, and I write down the way she looked and the way she stood and the way she spoke, because I know that’s what my character, you know, looked like or sounded like. So yes, always, you know, pieces come to me. Pieces come to [00:07:00] me and I try to keep track. You know, I keep notes about what I said somebody looked like, but they’re, they’re so alive that I rarely get mixed up.

I really forget that this one had a certain color eyes, and now she, you know, I can’t remember what color her eyes were because. You know, they’re, they’re living, breathing people.

Mark: So do you find you go through life in the world through a writer’s lens, where you’re constantly looking at people in situations and asking those what if questions all the time. Just through?

Karen: that terrible? Yes.

Mark: Yeah.

Karen: I mean, every time somebody tells me, tells me anything, they’re telling me something that happened to them in their life. And I’m thinking, oh, you know, like I could use that. Maybe not in the book I’m writing now, but I don’t wanna forget that. And I also sometimes I struggle with humor, you know? ‘Cause you need a little, especially when you’re writing really intense suspense, paint turning stuff. You need a little, you [00:08:00] need those light moments. So when somebody tells me something that really strikes me as amusing, and I think that would work, that would work. And but sometimes I don’t know where it’ll work.

And so I just have to keep it in my notebook until sometime comes around. So yes, beware. Don’t talk to me because I will

Mark: Watch

Karen: watch out.

Mark: When you crafted this story justice for Emerson, do you ask yourself if you’re writing a darker, deeper story, or is that just the way you like to tell your stories?

Karen: No thank you for asking that. That’s such a, that’s, that’s so important to me. So all of my stories have behind them social issues that matter to me. I don’t want the book to be about that in the sense of, you know what, I want you to learn about this. But I, I weave them in. I weave in moments when [00:09:00] somebody will realize what it means to be unhoused.

What it means to be a 13-year-old girl that doesn’t have access to you know, sanitation, you know, um, products, what it means to a, so this one has addiction in it. It has, you know, parents who are not together. It has stepfather. Is that a real father, poverty. I, I just, I try to lift every book I have.

I try to lift social issues that I think are important and weave them through, you know, a suspenseful page turning.

Mark: How do you decide what weaving is versus talking too much about it because, I think you did an excellent job of weaving it in because I noticed them all. I’m reading to notice as well, [00:10:00] but I noticed it all and it was all just very well done. It was just enough to give me an insight, but not overdone. So to pull me from the story.

Karen: Yeah, it’s a balancing act and I have to correct myself sometimes when I’ve gone too far. I, you know, I, I, I realize that when I’m reading, when I’m rereading, you know, I love to rewrite. Matter of fact, you can’t be a successful lawyer, successful author if you’re not like up for rewriting. You know, those beta readers will slam you and tell you what you need to fix.

So I really look, so when I’m doing my rewrites, when. I, I’m constantly asking myself, did I play that too heavy? Is that okay? Is is it the right balance? But the, the characters help with that because Aria, who is 50 years old, she’s the mother of a college age student, a freshman in college, [00:11:00] and she’s a widow at 50, and she cares deeply about the unhoused.

She cares deeply about people who are hungry and marginalized. So as long as I keep her true to her character, while her story is going, it’s easier to get the right balance because, because it’s her life, you know? Yeah.

Mark: I appreciated her also that little romance love story with Jax in the middle of the book because she’s older. But it was so nice that she’s feeling those feelings and finding that love for herself again. And she’s obviously doubtful and been through a lot and am I too old and stuff. But yeah, it was, it was great.

Karen: You know, I have, I had a, somebody bought my book and a link on LinkedIn. He’s a contact on LinkedIn, and so, he sends me a note on LinkedIn. He says, [00:12:00] Karen, I’m just bordering up a bordering a plane. I’m on my way to Atlanta, but I’m just telling you, if you kill Jax, I’m never speaking to you again.

And then the next day he says, okay, I’m leaving Atlanta. And Jax is cool, he’s good. Okay, but oh, what you did to Wally, poor Wally. And he’s giving me this commentary all the way through. So, yeah, I like Jacks a lot. I, I wanted her to, I hoped that she would find her way to him. You know, I mean, he’s, he’s just a good, good guy and she had all these things that he was to this and to that and to this and to that. And you know, it’s not okay, but he’s just a really nice guy.

Mark: Yeah. And speaking of that support for her, at the beginning of your book, you have a dedication to your husband, and I have always found it in all [00:13:00] these conversations I’ve had with authors, that there’s a big support network behind successful authors. And I’m curious how he supported you through this journey. It’s not necessarily just for this book, but the journey of becoming a writer as well.

Karen: You know, so we met when I was 13 and he was 14 years old, and we met at a party. I don’t actually remember the party or meeting him, but he says that he met me at a party and at 14 years old, he decided he was gonna marry me. He told his 15-year-old brother who said, what whatcha talking about?

He said, no, that’s her, that’s her, that’s the one. So he, he has been on my side. We’ve been married for 57 years and he has been on my side for the whole time. And he’s believed in me when I didn’t believe in me, you know, when I would like, is this any good or Will I ever, ever be able to get published or is, is [00:14:00] there just, you know, another book in me.

I don’t think there’s another book in me. He was always, always on my side, he would give me honest feedback, you know, he would, he would tell me if he thought something was off or, but he has read all of my books at least five or six times because he’s one of my paid readers. So he’s been a wonderful a wonderful support and never lets me get discouraged for long, long.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We always have that voice in our head.

Karen: Yes.

Mark: So let’s go to research a little bit. When we were you, you had mentioned the, some of the historical facts that you like to put in there. You have Vietnam. What kind of research went into all the book?

Karen: So I, first of all, I lived through Vietnam with Bob, so I knew it from [00:15:00] my wife Lee. You know, perspective. I mean, we, we would, he and his mom and dad would sit and watch the TV and watch the name scrolling to see if, if his plane went down and if his name was, I mean, it was a terrible time. When you, you, that, that’s one of the ways you found out people were dead, you know, on the news.

So, I, I had you know, feelings about the time and, but I had to ask him so many questions, but, and I asked his brother too, ’cause his brother had been in Vietnam. They, they weren’t allowed to be there at the same time. So his brother was there first, and then his brother came home and Bob went next.

But then he doesn’t, no, like, he’s an old guy. He doesn’t remember everything. So I had to, I had to go and, and check and see, like, I asked him questions like. You know, I said in, in Kristen Hannah’s book, the Women, the Dust she said was orange. Do you remember the dust being orange? Were like in, in ua. [00:16:00] Was it orange?

He goes, Karen, I don’t remember that. I said, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go and research and see what color the sand was, or the dust was at UA, Vietnam in 1968, and it turned out it wasn’t orange. So, it was a combination of asking questions, remembering things, researching things. And and I thought I didn’t like research Mark, I I, but until I wrote true Grace, which is my historical novel, I always avoided anything that I had to research.

So my first three books were all contemporary, so I could just draw on my own experiences and stuff. But then I found out research is so fun. You find out like the coolest, coolest things. So that was the other thing. After writing True Grace, which is set in 1924, I wanted this book to have some historical part of it since I, I enjoyed writing [00:17:00] for the first time, historical fiction.

Mark: Were there moments in this book that your husband had mentioned, things that he wanted you to put in because they were more authentic to the experience that he had?

Karen: Hmm. You know, it’s interesting, he never only true Grace. Did he ever, ’cause he knew my grandmother and it was inspired by my grandmother. Did he say, well, how come you’re not putting this in? Or how come you’re not putting that in? But with Justice for Emerson, he was just, you know, he just made sure he read it and said, yeah, that makes sense.

I remember that that’s how it felt. You know, for example, addiction became, people came out heavily addicted. Many people, not everybody. Not Bob, but lots of people came out heavily addicted. And he said to me, you know, it cost a dollar and a quarter to buy a whole bottle of scotch. They made it, the, the, the services, the armed services [00:18:00] made it so easy for these men to purchase and drink alcohol. That alcoholism, you know, when you’re, you’re in a war, you’re scared you’re,

Mark: Yeah.

Karen: You know, and, and it’s dirt cheap to, you know, to grab a, to grab a bottle. So I’m very, very grateful that Bob came back sober and, you know, okay, that he, that he didn’t get caught up. But, but I did want Emerson to experience and overcome

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Karen: He could, it was such, and go there for a while. Right. You weren’t sure that Emerson was gonna make it.

Mark: No. How hard was that for you to write? I was, I mean, Emerson probably impacted me emotionally the most for the roller coaster that he went through from losing his fri [00:19:00] well, sorry, I won’t try not to get spoiler, spoiler From what, what happened in the book to him to like the addiction and the back and forth and everything that he’d lost, and I just felt so bad for him. How do you write that? Like, you must feel terrible as you’re writing it.

Karen: Yeah. You know what I tried to do is not judge. So I wanna make sure that my readers see people as whole human beings and they’re not, they’re not judging.

Mark: Hmm.

Karen: And I did. I do have somebody in my life who went through two people who went through, that journey, that addiction journey. And I loved them both so much and watched their struggle and watched losing ground.

And then and they weren’t, you know, Emerson’s age. And it wasn’t Emerson’s story, but I saw that path, [00:20:00] and I wanted to make sure that my readers didn’t judge Judge Emerson, that they, you know, I, or if they did, they did, but not because I wrote it in a way that, that I was judging here. Here’s the story. And so many of the reviews say that they so respected how I, how I handled that without it being, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, it was, it was touching. ’cause it was, I, I was really rooting for a moment and I, I don’t give spoilers, but

Karen: Even though we know he’s dead.

Mark: Yeah, That’s right. Yeah. We know the end result. Yeah,

Karen: opens with Emerson dead in the, in the basement, and so many people said to me, you know, I just put that outta my mind. I was just rooting for him

Mark: yeah,

Karen: the whole, the whole time until we got to the end and like, oh, that’s right. Emon is dead and we’re trying to solve this murder.

Mark: yeah, [00:21:00] yeah. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, okay, he’s, he’s gonna get to a good place where everything was just great and then he dies tragically, and I can handle that, but I don’t want it to go the other way.

Karen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted him to get to that good place where he was living a good life, and Aria really cared. Everybody at the Way Station really cared about him.

Mark: Yeah. When readers put down this book, what are you hoping they’re gonna feel, or what are you building toward at the end?

Karen: Yeah. So one of the things that I love that readers have, have said to me is that the plight of the unhoused, even though there was just moments in the book, not whole, you know, heavy duty handling, that it got them thinking differently, thinking differently about and so Bob and I with our church, we [00:22:00] volunteer every week.

We go out and we feed folks. We, we at the church, we pack up the food, hot, hot food, and we bring sandwiches to, for takeaway, and we drive to seven, eight places where they’re living and hiding in a town that’s north of us. And so this is something that matters to me a lot. And, and I hope that when people put down the book they’ll look, you know, ’cause we walk past people sitting on the street wrapped up in cardboard and, and judge or ignore or don’t even see, don’t even notice.

So that was one of the things I was hoping that people would have a, a different thought about that. And then I also wanted them to be happy for Aria, you know, to, there’s a splat for your listeners and viewers. There is a big SP splash of romance in this book.[00:23:00]

But that was my hope that they would have empathy for people who struggle ’cause so many of the unhoused also are struggling with addiction. They’re not all, but that’s one of the things that often comes together and. So I hope that people would, would care a little bit more, see a little bit more, think how they might help a little bit more.

Mark: Yeah. That’s awesome. So the protest that was being staged in the food that they fed, was that like kind of almost your, almost like reliving that moment of your own life then when they went out and gave sandwiches and went a little differently for them than you? I am, I hope, but.

Karen: Yes. And it’s interesting, you know, because back in the Vietnam War, I was a pro peace marcher, you know, with the black armband. And, [00:24:00] and, and you know, I was in high, we were in, I was in college and so we were young and protesting the war that Bob was out fighting. You know, he said, you can’t get arrested, Karen, stop it.

You know, it’s gonna affect, it’s gonna affect my future. So I did wanna capture some, some of that, some of the, the activism,

Mark: Yeah,

Karen: That yeah, that was happening.

Mark: it’s so impressive how many things you packed into this book and managed to do it so well.

Karen: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mark: listeners definitely pick up and read this book. It is so good. One of the interesting things you did was switching point of view, and I hadn’t seen that. I didn’t think I had seen it very much until recently, where you also switched point of view, but tense, or, sorry, not tense.

First persons third

Karen: First person. Yes. Yes. So that the first time I [00:25:00] always wrote in third person, my first three books. We’re, and then when I wrote True Grace, I decided to write it in first person. And so Grace is telling her story when I did. And, and I’ve often done different points of view, you know, switching back and forth.

When I wrote this one, I thought, you know what? This is, yes, this is Emerson’s story, but this is also Aria’s story. So I wanted her to tell her story. But then the other points of view are, are not in first person. And I like trying new things and learning new things. And so one of the lovely, lovely reviews that Best Thriller did when they gave me the, you know, when they made the award for best mystery was they said, I often find the right, the reviewers, and I often find multiple points of view annoying and dual [00:26:00] timelines never, you know, one timeline doesn’t live up to the other, but not so in this case, Karen Osborne pulled this off seamlessly, so that made me feel very, very good because I was, I was experimenting, I was trying something, something new. ’cause it’s fun.

Mark: It did work very well. I hadn’t seen it very much until recently. There’s been a few authors I’ve seen that, that have gone from first person to third person in different chapters

Karen: Yeah,

Mark: But yeah, you did pull it off very well. I have been confused in the past with, with what was happening and, but the titles, the dates at the beginning, the chapter titles of characters when appropriate really helped with that

Karen: yeah. Like grounding the reader where we are, whose point of view are we in? What year is it?

Mark: yeah.

Karen: Yeah. I

Mark: it’s not enough to just start with a sentence that you think makes perfect sense, but the, the reader is trying to understand

Karen: Who is this? Where [00:27:00] are

Mark: Yeah. Who is this again? What am I doing here? Yeah. And where am I? Yeah.

Karen: and where am I?

Mark: What advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book?

Karen: Wow. So marketing is a bear. It’s a bear. Writers. I know, I know writers who love the marketing part of it, but to me it’s, you have to make some real decisions about how much time you’re going to spend marketing, the two books that you already wrote, or the one book that you already wrote, and how much time are you gonna spend writing the next book?

And then of course there’s the rest of your life. There’s all the other things, you know, in your life. And, and so I, I think really making some decisions about time and money because [00:28:00] no matter who, like I’m traditionally published with a small press, my cousin is self-published with a hybrid press. I have a good friend who’s published with Simon and Schuster, so one of the, you know, the Big five.

All of us have the same problem because unless you’re a big fish, you know, unless you’re, you know, you’re Connolly or Grisham or the, they don’t spend a lot of time helping you promote. I have a friend who is published by a big house, but she’s rich and so she has a publicist, and so her publicist is just getting her on every podcast, every show, every, you know, and getting her out there. So you really have to make, you have to decide, you know, about your budget, your time budget, your money budget, talk to other writers, figure out what works for you. ’cause what works for you might be different, you know, for what works [00:29:00] for, for them.

And I mean, and you, that, that was the biggest like, aha for me after, especially after the second book, because the first book, I was still working. And so I would, people would invite me to come speak and teach and I’d say, oh, may I bring my books with me? And they’d say, oh, absolutely.

And, you know, we’ll set up a table for you. So they’re paying me to speak, they’re flying me to where I am, and I got to sell my books. Well, the second book, I wasn’t working full-time anymore. And so. Now I had to make real decisions. Like for example, I flew all the way to San Francisco from Florida to speak at a winery.

Now it was a real market. It was such a cool gig. They bought 30 books. They had a wine pairing with the book. This is the wine that goes with it, but 30 books does not cover [00:30:00] airfare, hotel food, rental car.

Mark: no.

Karen: you have to make, just, you have to make decisions, even though it was really a cool gig.

Mark: How do you balance when you’re writing versus when you’re marketing? Do you go hard at writing for a while and then switch like to marketing mode after you’re done writing almost like periodical throughout the year, or are you always kind of trying to do both?

Karen: I’m always trying to do both. You know, my son is a very gifted literary writer. He writes short stories, and he gets into really good magazines, like probably two, three a year. And he’s working full time and he has a family, and he said, mom, just find at least 15 minutes a day when you can write, maybe it’ll end up being three hours, maybe, you know, but if you promise yourself 15 minutes a day, you’ll be so surprised at how well, you know, you’d, [00:31:00] how you could keep, keep going.

I tried the novel writing November Nano Rmo, you know, writing your novel, and I was doing it with my grandson, and he said, Grammy, you are behind. Do the math, you won’t make it. So I know that, that, so 15 minutes seems reasonable. Doing 1600 words a day didn’t. And so I have to find the right, you know, the right blend for me.

Yeah. And, and you do have to get the marketing and don’t you, I mean, I know, I know you know this. Yeah.

Mark: The interesting thing about what you say about 15 minutes is I have found the stress of sometimes sitting down at the keyboard and thinking I need to put out 2000 words today can be a lot. The stress of sitting down and saying 15 minutes is not so bad, and sometimes we, I can spend 10, 15 minutes and almost get nothing, and then the words flow because I’ve [00:32:00] taken the time to get into, into, the world, into the moment, into the people, and then all of a sudden that 15 minutes can turn into two hours.

But the first 15 minutes were not productive. It was the next hour and a half that we’re the most productive. Yeah,

Karen: Yeah, but it’s right. It’s less, it’s less daunting. I’m gonna do 15 minutes. The other thing with the marketing is if the person can sprinkle in, in person, you know, don’t just rely on social media, don’t just rely on podcasts as wonderful as they are. Know I have my own as well and promote authors.

But when you meet readers, there’s no, it’s, it’s like the best, best part of it. And it reminds you why you’re writing and, and it reminds you what this, what a gift this is gift to you. It is that you have the privilege that you’ve, that you’ve been published. So I find that if you just can find ways that that in [00:33:00] person, you know, the local library. A local bookstore go to a fair, you know, a fair, that’s not even a book fair because book fairs you’re competing with, you know, I don’t know, 50 other writers. You go to a, you know, a gr a market, you know, a green market, what is it? Market, you know what I mean? The, the, you know, like a ve you know, the fresh market or whatever it is when you’re going out to, when people are out there selling their vegetables and there are other kinds of vendors and you are the only bookseller, that’s great. ‘Cause people will come up to you, they’ll ask you about your books, you know, and I’ll say, are you a reader? No, no, but my mother is. Which one do you think my mother would like? Well, tell me about your mom. You know, it’s, it just, it, it, it gives you really great, connection meeting, meeting readers. It’s, it’s a beautiful thing.

Mark: that’s a great idea. I’ve never thought of going to a non author event to promote, or non-book event to promote a book, [00:34:00] and I’m gonna have to give that a shot.

Karen: You should I sell, I sell more books in non author events than I do in author events.

Mark: Okay. And do you have a table with a banner and all your books laid out and is

Karen: I have a tent, I have a beautiful tent, and, and then I, you know, have all the books displayed. And I have my square, you know, on my phone so I can do credit cards and I can, and I have my all singles. I can do cash and I have all my bookmarks, you know, that we give away free bookmarks and then I, I make sure I’m standing and not sitting, I see a lot of people just sit behind their table and wait for somebody. I’m standing in front of my table. Hey Mark, how are you? Are you a reader? Can I show you something? So

Mark: Oh, I love that. Okay.

Karen: it’s, it’s all, it’s all good. And if you sell, usually they only cost like [00:35:00] $35 for a table, you know that they charge you to be there. So if you sell two books, you’re at least on your way.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And you never know if you’re gonna have a, your next great fan outta super fans, right?

Karen: That’s the other thing that’s so cool is to have, I was at a local event and at least five of the people that came by and bought another book were people who’d read who of my other books. And so they came over and said, oh, you know, I just love this one. And, I’m, I’m thinking about the new one, but I haven’t read this one. And so that’s cool too, to meet people. And, and I always take, pictures so, you know, with the reader holding the books. For social media, I can post it and so people can see that, you know, that somebody likes them.

Mark: yeah, yeah. Are all your books standalones?

Karen: [00:36:00] Yes. I am writing my first sequel ever. ’cause I like trying new

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Karen: So this and that’s, it’s tricky, right? Do you write sequels?

Mark: I did a trilogy that was, that was a lot of work.

Karen: Yes. Oh my goodness. I have to pick your brain later because trying to keep up with, you know, with all of the things and all of the characteristics of the people before and keeping things true to who they were. And, but bringing in new people and it’s, it’s been really, it’s been fun. I’ve been learning a lot and, and I think I’m gonna try it again. I think I’m gonna do a sequel to . To Justice Emerson. I think I’m gonna do an Aria Jacks story.

Mark: Okay. Another thriller.

Karen: Yes. How much trouble can two people keep

Mark: I was just thinking

Karen: you know, [00:37:00] but, but I’m thinking about it, but I, but I gotta get this other one and this one. How much trouble can these two people get into? But here they are once again in trouble. So.

Mark: Where can people find your books?

Karen: So first of all, they’re sold every place you buy books, right? You go, you go to the library. If they’re not on the shelf, just ask for them. You can go to Barnes and Noble, you can go to Amazon. You can go to your independent bookstore. Please do, you know, ask for them. If you don’t see them, chances are you won’t see them, and you should ask for them.

And then, and then you can come to my web website. I’m www.kareneosborne.com. And the e is like, super important because there is a lovely, amazing writer whose name is Karen Osborne, and she got the name first. So I had to add my, you know, she got published before I did. [00:38:00] So I had to add my e She writes mystical and dystopian and I actually interviewed her.

We met.

Mark: Oh wow.

Karen: yeah, she, she saw that I was speaking and it happened to be in a town that she lived in. This is an upstate New York. And this woman walks in and she goes, Hey Karen. E I’m Karen Osborn. She shook my hand. She brought her mother and her daughter. It was so fun. ’cause if you Google Karen Osborne, we both show up.

Mark: Okay. Karen E. Osborn. I’ll link to that in the show notes to make sure I don’t get it

Karen: Thank you. Karen e osborne.com. All my books. Are there links to the places that you can buy them? Are there discussion questions are there. If you’re doing a book club there’s a trailer book, trailer for Justice for Emerson. You can, can watch and then all of my podcasts are there.

Mark: Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. I’ve, [00:39:00] I’ve loved learning more about this book. I’m excited for the next book that you’re writing. And I have four other books to go back to because I will have to read more of your books. This one was just so good. I have to, I have to read the other ones you’ve written. Thank you for sending that copy is a, a real pleasure to read.

Karen: Thank you so much.

Mark: If you don’t mind sticking around for a, a few extra minutes, we’re gonna get into a rapid fire question for our Patreon members. Thank you.

Thanks for listening and make sure you follow the show so you don’t miss next week’s conversation with Wesley Smith, author of They Came At Night. We talk about blending psychological thriller with action thriller writing from lived trauma, and how he balances outlining with discovery writing to keep tension tight on the page.

If you want the after show with the rapid fire questions, it’s free right now on Patreon, and we include with that some novellas and short stories from guests on the show. The after shows where authors [00:40:00] open up about their writing routines, the scenes they’d least wanna survive, and the strange things they’ve Googled.

Links are in the show notes.

TPP Episode 23 with Adam Roach

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

Adam: I entered this flash fiction horror contest about a guy who is walking through Bryant Park in New York, gets attacked by a demon, and then the demon flees, and he goes chasing after the demon and watches him transform into a person. And so then the question was, was he actually a demon or was it all in the guy’s head? The judges liked it, but they even said it doesn’t work as a short a hundred word story. It would actually work better as a full book.

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

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

This week I’m [00:01:00] joined by Adam Roach, author of the Ritualist. We talk about how his entire thriller series began with a 100 word flash fiction horror entry. How he expanded that into a series, why he writes scenes by visualizing them like a movie playing in his head, and how he shifts between outlining and discovery writing.

If you’re interested in how a tiny spark becomes a full thriller, this is a conversation you don’t wanna miss. Adam, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show

Adam: Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Mark: and thank you for your book. I’m gonna show it on the screen for our YouTube watchers, the Ritualist. Thank you for sending me an autograph copy. Really appreciate that.

Adam: Yeah.

Mark: So let’s get right into the pitch. Pitch me the ritual list.

Adam: Yeah, so the Rich list is my debut thriller. I launched on June 10th this year, and it follows my main character, Vince Tanaka creating a series similar to Alex Cross and James Patterson. [00:02:00] And it follows him. He’s transitioning from the NYPD to the FBI. He’s in San Diego getting ready to start the FBI when he gets a call that he was not expecting and not wanting from his old captain.

And it simply said he’s back which means the rich list has returned. Three years ago, the ritual list dropped three bodies in three days across churches in Manhattan. And now he has resurfaced and the first body has already dropped. And so Vince knows he now has just a little over two days to get back to New York and to catch this killer before he disappears again for another three years.

And so the story takes up of him going to New York and he and his old partner Leo Alvarez, go on a hunt to find this killer. And you realize very quickly that. There’s a lot more than just this killer at play. And it’s, like I said, it’s the, it’s the opening book. It’s the first book in a series that’s following this character. There’s definitely a bit of a cliffhanger. The story is complete, but there’s a subplot that definitely leaves a cliffhanger for book two, which is gonna be launching here in just a few weeks, actually called the [00:03:00] Architect. So, it’s coming out here December 16th, it should be launching. So, yeah, excited for that.

Mark: Oh, awesome. That’ll be close to when this is live. Actually. It’ll be available when we’re, when this episode actually airs. Awesome. So what sparked the idea for this book?

Adam: Yeah, that’s a great question. And so that probably kicked off originally a handful of years ago I did a flash fiction contest, and so I know you’re an author as well. And it, it’s way easier to write a 70,000 word book than a hundred word story.

And people might not think that’s the case, but it’s extremely hard to write a story in a hundred words.

I challenge anyone to try and go do it. So I entered this flash fiction horror kind of contest about a guy who is walking through Bryant Park in New York, gets attacked by a demon, and then the demon flees, and he goes chasing after the demon and watches him transform into a person. And so then the question was, was he actually a demon or was it all in the guy’s head? The judges liked it, but they even said like, it doesn’t work as a short a hundred, a hundred word story. It would actually [00:04:00] work better as a full book and so when I had finished wrapping, my co-author book, with JD Barker that I just finished I knew I want, I knew I wanted to start the story and I’d already been thinking about the idea and I knew I wanted a main character. I knew I wanted a big series. And so I thought, Hey, let me take this short story and use this as kind of the catalyst to launch into this new series that I’m gonna launch.

Mark: Do you consider yourself a plotter or an outline or a answer as I guess is the more popular term?

Adam: My answer to that is yes, both.

Mark: Okay.

Adam: What I found for myself is that it really depends on the story. I’m constantly evolving. One thing I’ve learned as an author I haven’t been doing this forever. I’ve only been doing it for a few years now, and one thing I’m learning is neither is right or wrong for each book that you do. So like with the Ritualist I kind of did an outline, but then I very quickly threw it away and just went at it like I’m a very impatient person and so to outline a full book is very hard for me because I just wanna start writing the story.

I get really excited about it. And then I’ve tried doing like outline 10 chapters and [00:05:00] write those and then outline the next 10.

And then by that point, then I just keep writing. I don’t really continue that strategy. But like the book I did with JD Barker, it was a full outline. The full book had to be outlined, everything from start to finish. And then with the new one I’m launching, it was a little bit of both again, like did some outlining, some writing, some outlining some writing, and just kind of went in that direction.

So I think it depends on the story, and what book you wanna write? A brand new one. I’m running right now. I’m doing, I did a full outline, just because it fit better with this story and where I wanted it to go.

Mark: And when you outline, are you outlining characters? Obviously we’re looking at the plot in the chapters, but are you also outlining characters? The world, the situations?

Adam: Not really. I find for myself that’s all just kind of in my head. I typically have spent before I start a new book when I get about three quarters of the way through a book, I’m thinking about what’s coming next. I’m starting to plan in my head what the characters are, what the stories are, how’s it gonna work. And I typically, my wife and I’ll go on walks every week and I’ll typically just kind of talk through it with her to kind of [00:06:00] formulate how different, strategies are gonna work. So the outline itself really only comes with the overall plot the character arcs and the character storylines are just kind of in my head. I let them evolve on the page and let the characters tell me what they want to do.

Mark: Do you find it hard to keep track of that over time when it’s in your head and not written down? And you have a, you have quite a cast of characters too, so you have a lot of personalities to switch between.

Adam: Not really. And I don’t know, maybe that’s, I need to go get my brain checked or something. I don’t know. But it’s not, not, not really. ’cause every time I write a book, all I’m really doing is telling the story that, of the movie I’m playing in my head. And so for me, the characters just are who they are. And I think every character that anybody writes, there’s a little piece of you in every character in, in some way, shape, or form.

And yeah, so I, I haven’t yet, right, so this, but this is book one, so ask me again, like four books from now if I’ve changed my mind.

Mark: Okay. At its core, what would you say this story is [00:07:00] like and what challenge did it represent? As for writing it.

Adam: That’s a good question. I would say at the core it is a battle of good versus evil. My goal in writing this book, in this series is, I always love the dichotomy of good and evil, yin and yang of a Batman and Joker, Holmes im Moriarty. I really like bad guys that you almost can understand, and you almost feel a little bad for in a certain ways. I just, I love to challenge people’s thinking in that way. And so that’s what I’ve done with Rich List. I’ve tried to deal with the architect, and really just creating that dichotomy of I said good versus evil. That, that challenge of really smart, good guy, really smart, bad guy and how’s it all gonna play out in the, in the long term.

Mark: And did that present challenges for you in this book?

Adam: To a certain extent, yes, because I always wanna make sure that the bad guy isn’t too good also. Right? Because if [00:08:00] he’s always got a reason, sometimes you don’t want them to have a reason or you want them to be more evil. And so you gotta find that balance. And with this book, I don’t think I found as big of a challenge.

I did definitely a little bit more of a challenge in the next one to do that. ‘Cause it’s a different story, but this one I think, ’cause it was my first one, I was excited about it and I kind of had been thinking about it for a while, that it was just living in me for a while. I just needed to get out on the page.

Mark: Okay. The structure of this one, you, interestingly, you started with a character that at the prison, and then we go into our antagonist and then we go into our protagonist. Why that start to a book where. I liked it because it’s, I have like an inside that as a reader I have like an inside edge that, you know, it’s fun to let the detective try and figure out what’s happening. On the flip side, it’s trying to keep track of everyone I’ve just met.

Adam: Yeah. I would like to say it was [00:09:00] intentional, and that I, I was some genius and had this all planned from the start. But in reality it’s the exact opposite. I had written about, I. Half to almost two thirds of this book, thinking in my head that Vince had three days to catch this killer, when in reality he had like 48 hours, if not a little bit less. And what I realized, the way that I had structured the book originally it was thinking like he’s got 72 hours. I can pull things out, I can draw things out a little bit. I can slowly introduce characters. And then when I realized about halfway in that, oh no, he’s got like 48 hours at the most. All of this drawn out stuff I have to make happen in the beginning. So all that character introduction that’s kind of thrown at the reader, initially was because I completely had messed up my timeline and so I had to put it all in the beginning and figure out a way to make it work. So it, it seemed to work as well as it could. I definitely got from a few people that like, man, there’s a lot of characters. In the very beginning I was like, yeah, I know. Sorry.

Mark: Did you do [00:10:00] a whole first draft, realize that, and then the second draft was like a fairly big rewrite, or did you realize it during the way, on the way

Adam: I realized it during the way, but I was so deep in along the way that I would had to completely redo the entire book and restructure the entire architecture of it. And even like the three days. Mantra would, might have disappeared at that point. So with everything happening the way it had to happen in terms of them even catching the bad guy, all those things had to be lined up in that certain way to make that happen. And if I didn’t do it like I did it, it would’ve been almost a complete different book.

Mark: Okay. When readers finish the book, what do you hope they’re thinking or feeling after they’re done?

Adam: I have to get the next one. I mean, truly, that’s what it is. My, my goal with every book I write is I want to do two things. One. Make people so glad they read it. There’s [00:11:00] nothing worse in my mind than reading a book and you’re like, I just wasted my time.

And when you feel let down by the twist at the end, or you feel let down by this, the big buildup to the end, and you almost feel like the writer wrote themselves into corner and just said, up, here’s my way out. My goal is every reader, when they close that book, they feel satisfied. They’re super excited to read whatever’s next, and there’s some twist at the end where they’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that happened.

Mark: How do you structure a twist? Do you, for this book? Well, we’re not gonna talk about the twist itself, obviously, because that would be a giveaway, but did you have it in your head the whole time? Because you’ve been thinking about this, or at three quarter mark, you’re like, oh, that’s what we’re gonna do with that.

Adam: No. With this one and subsequent books, I had a pretty good idea of what it was gonna be for a while. ‘Cause like I said, I love the dichotomy of like a Batman versus Joker, Holmes versus Moriarty, where you’ve got that big bad mastermind kind of character. I love movies like that too, where it’s like, you think [00:12:00] it’s this and it’s this. Right? My favorite movie of all time is The Usual Suspects. That twisted the end when I was 13, 14 years old and saw that, it blew my mind. So yeah, I think so far of the books I’ve written, I typically know what the twist is going to be and how it’s going to hit for people so far. And I feel like for me, in the books that I’m writing I almost have to know that ’cause that’s the ending, right? Like you have to know the end before you start writing it. If I don’t know what that twist is, I’m kind of like, why am I even writing this?

Mark: Yeah. Okay. In the making of this book, the dedication to your wife, I’m always curious about the support network behind the making of a book because the, a lot of the great books I read have a strong support network. Behind the scenes and it was nice to see that you, you put that into your dedication. What was that support like for this book?

Adam: Unending. It’s, her [00:13:00] support is absolutely everything. Like I said we do a walk every, we, I live in San Diego, so, it’s Sunshine, 364 days a year and so we do a walk every Saturday at the beach. And typically those walks are talking about whatever I’m currently riding. And she’s kinda my sounding board.

And she, she’s always asking the why’s, like, well, well, but, but why? But why, but why? And I, and most time, ’em, I hate it. ‘Cause it makes me think,

But it’s, it’s everything. And she knows that this is the path that I’m on. This is the goal is that this becomes the only thing I do. And with that comes a lot of work and effort.

I spent the entire last weekend with my head and computer trying to get book two out to my arc reader. So yeah, her support is absolutely everything. If I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t have the drive. I have for sure.

Mark: Does she read a draft of your book before it goes to your ARC readers or.

Adam: No, she doesn’t, mainly, I mean, she does a ton of audio books, but she doesn’t sit down long enough to really read a lot of times, so she’s, she’s still working through the ritual list as we speak. She’ll read it like as we’re going on [00:14:00] trips or whatever was we’re driving. She’ll, she’ll read and stuff like that. But we’re always talking about the story, so she knows what’s happening. She knows what’s coming. And it’s a little scary, and I don’t recommend this for everybody, but I’ve been sending my books out. So the ritualist just, it just went out to ARC Readers and I didn’t have beta read, no one had read it. I just sent it out to ARC Readers. And I did the same thing with book two. So we’ll see how it goes. I don’t recommend doing that all the time, but at least for these first two books, it’s just kind of how I did it. And we will, we’ll adjust as, as time goes on, for sure.

Mark: Are you hoping ARC readers give feedback and then there’s time for change, or I should say in this, the ritual list, was there time to make adjustments if an ARC reader brought anything to you? If they did.

Adam: I guess there could have been, yes, but they didn’t which I was pleasantly surprised by, I’ve got a solid, I mean I pay for a very solid editor. Lemme say that up front too, that he does copy line edit and a little development in certain, in terms of, he calls things out like, this doesn’t make sense. You might wanna change this. This doesn’t fit with the storyline up here. So he’s almost a pseudo alpha beta reader for me in the editing [00:15:00] process. But there would’ve been time for the arc. Sure, there always is, in my opinion. But I didn’t have to, it all made sense. So yeah.

Mark: Okay. What research went into this, into the creation of this book?

Adam: To be honest, not a ton in the sense of I have been reading thrillers and this type of book for decades. So I feel like I know the genre really well. I love thriller movies. I’ll read or watch almost any kind of thriller that’s been out there. And so I definitely studied James Patterson a lot over the years and how he does story and how he writes books and how, and just not just reefer and joint, but like I would just say, oh, that’s why he did this and that’s how he did that. And so over time there’s always been that research, but I didn’t necessarily sit down and like start researching I PD facts or FBI facts. What I try, I don’t, I don’t try and make my books police procedural. I try and put just enough in it to make it real, but it’s more about [00:16:00] the overall story than it is about the details of how a police as investigation goes.

Mark: Okay. What about the church and the cults and all that, that has kind of steamed throughout

Adam: Yeah, I did a little bit of research for that. So as I was wanting to find the right churches and stuff, none of those churches are actual churches, but they’re very close to an actual church sort of thing. I always try to be just off. Of an actual location in New York.

But, I spent quite a bit of time in New York over the last couple years also, myself, so I, know the city a little bit enough to know like the sounds and just kinda all that side of the storyline, and the cold aspects. I did do some research into that and just making sure that things were accurate and how cults operate and such and such.

Mark: Okay. Were you ever worried that given like the church and almost the self manipulation of religion, that would come back with people saying anything?

Adam: I don’t think so because it wasn’t necessarily, I mean, I’m a religious person myself. I go to church every Sunday. And I wasn’t necessarily [00:17:00] bashing a religion per se as much as it was a deranged person’s safety spot. And like he thinks in the book, he’s saving people in that sense. So I know a lot about religion and spiritual side of things I felt like I was coming from a place of understanding and not trying to denigrate any religion specifically is more a disturbed individual.

Mark: Yeah. A question from Melissa Miller, who was the author from the last episode She asked did you relate to or have empathy for your antagonist? I ask it now because it kind of fits where we’re at.

Adam: There really tough empathy for my antagonist. I feel like a little bit, yeah. Empathy, not relate, but empathy. And like I said earlier, that’s my goal is that I want to build antagonist that’s you almost feel a little sorry for, you’re almost a little empathetic for it. Like you, you almost understand why they’re doing [00:18:00] what they’re doing. I’m not saying it’s gonna be every bad guy that I ever write, but at least right now, I’m having fun trying to find that balance between, that good versus evil and that anyone can go bad potentially in certain ways. So yeah.

Mark: Who is the most fun character for you to write?

Adam: Oh, that’s a great question. I love writing Vince. I love writing Vince and his wife Liz. I think that that’s a fun dynamic and I pull a lot from my own personal marriage for how they interact and stuff like that. Vince has been a super fun character to write so far. I was just like writing the dynamic between Vince and Leo and it was funny as I was writing this book obviously Leo’s not gonna continue in the series wholly because Vince is going to the FBI and he’s gonna be on the other coast. But I found myself almost wondering, like, do I change the whole mantra here and keep him in the nipd so they can keep working together? Because I had so much fun writing these characters and I was like. I’m not writing these characters, I’m gonna have to write all new characters for book two. But yeah, so I, I say Vince is [00:19:00] probably my favorite character to write. And then there’s a antagonist I won’t say, but has been super fun to, to work with and to write in that storyline.

Mark: Okay. Was there a scene or a moment that was the hardest to write in this story, creatively or emotionally for the impact?

Adam: That’s a great question. I don’t. Nothing comes to mind off the top of my head. Maybe a little bit of the scene with the antagonist in the park with the demon. Just a little heavy to write that, thinking about like, because again, I tried to visualize everything that’s happening and to put yourself in that position, it’s, a little freaky in that sense.

Mark: One of the things I really appreciated, I don’t possible, spoiler alert, I don’t think so though, but it’s at the end, but I’m not giving away. What happens is, in the final moments with the final victim and the girlfriend and her the realism of her having to decide whether or not, because it was almost a [00:20:00] casual relationship or early relationship stage, whether or not she was gonna continue in that relationship. And that was, I thought that was a very powerful thought, because usually it’s sacrificial, you know, oh, I have to, I’ll be with them. But she actually stopped to say, I don’t know if I can do this.

Adam: Yep.

Mark: How is that to write?

Adam: yeah. I sat in that scene for a little bit, ’cause the question was. Does she stay or does she go? And I thought about it and I went back and forth. And then I thought to your point, you know, it being a casual relationship, that it made sense that she was gonna go, and also because of other things that happened with her, previous to this book that kind of has alluded to previous to this book. She’s had some trauma and she wasn’t really in a place to be able to take on more in that sense. And so it was an interesting scene to write and it was a little bit difficult to make that decision. ‘Cause as a [00:21:00] writer you’re realizing based on this choice, it’s gonna completely change how other things happen within the storylines moving forward even.

And so it was a, it was a powerful, impactful moment to make that decision. And how Vince interacts with her and almost acts as a big brother of sorts. A little more mature, a little more grounded. And, I sat also in her question back to him. Again, not to get into spoilers, but, I sat in that response, like, how is he gonna respond to this question? And again, I just kind of put myself in the shoes of Vince. If it was me being asked this question, how would I respond? And so that’s kind of what I, that’s why I responded how Vince responded the way he did.

Mark: In book two, does that play out more without spoiling book two? Yeah. Okay.

Adam: Yes. Yeah. And I’ll, what I will say about book two and I don’t, one of my ARC readers, I don’t even know if they have finished it yet, but they had asked me a question in an email. And because of that question, it created a whole storyline [00:22:00] in book two for me. If you never know, if you read my books and you ask me a question, you’re, you might create big, creating a storyline in a future book. So,

Mark: Nice.

Adam: yeah.

Mark: What advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book?

Adam: I’ve heard it said many times and so true. Write the next one.

Mark: Yeah.

Adam: Yeah, I mean, you’re not gonna get wealthy off one book, that’s for sure. I think any established author knows that 100%. And just treat it as a learning experience, one book doesn’t mean the end. One book is just the beginning and there’s a lot to learn for sure. Especially if you’re trying to be self-published and you’re trying to make a career out of it, but you don’t need to learn it all in a day. And really it’s about patient and working on the next one. Those are the biggest thing I’m always having to remind myself is be patient. I’m trying to get there as fast as possible and you just can’t do that with one book. You need a lot. And so the only thing you can do is write the next one. Just keep living life and just keep enjoying the process. Keep enjoying [00:23:00] learning.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you. If you had to pick one thing that you felt has led to your success so far, what would it be?

Adam: It’s funny you say that ’cause I obviously don’t view myself as successful by any means. But everyone’s got d different definitions of success. But for me, I would say believing in myself, knowing that I can write, knowing that I’m a good writer has really helped me just push forward. I think in this industry especially, which is funny, I say that because every time I’m writing a new book, I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever written in my entire life, and it’s absolute crap. But then I remind myself, no, and I would say what’s the word I’m looking for? As a writer, I can remember the words once when I’m talking. A fortitude of the mind, meaning that like even in those moments where I’m like, wow, I really suck at this. Even that’s the front of my mind, the back of my mind. I’m like, no, you don’t Keep going. Just push through. And just having that fortitude of just not listening to your own internal critics [00:24:00] and just keep your head down and keep moving forward even if it’s only a hundred words a day, it’s a hundred words a day.

Mark: Is telling yourself that how you built the confidence in yourself and in your writing.

Adam: So the way that I built the compass in my writing is a few years ago, I wrote a book for my son. That’s a whole other storyline that if I don’t have time for on this call. But I wrote a book for him, and I, my goal was to get it published for him, and that was it. And I did that and, but at the same, I was like, let me see what the world thinks of this. And so I threw some books to grammars and some for some review copies and stuff like that. And I was like, if they all hate it, that’s fine. I wrote it for him. I did that. I mean, I’ve, I, I’d always loved writing even before that. But they came back with amazing reviews. They loved it. They thought it was great. They thought it was new and invented and innovative, and they thought it was, you know, fantastic. And so I was like, that gave me that initial boost of confidence to be like, oh, okay, strangers think this is decent, let’s go. And that’s [00:25:00] kind of all I really needed because like, I knew I was a decent rider for a while, but hearing strangers say that I’m good, I’m decent, was all I needed.

Mark: Hmm. So you have that book for your son. You have, the one you did with it was JD Barker, I believe you said. How long did it take you to write this book? Is this the third, essentially your third book, but the first in this series.

Adam: No. Technically it is my four fifth book that I’ve written. I had a few y fantasy books that I did in COVID 2021, 2022 that I’ve since pre-published. Because I’m, I’m focusing on thrillers in, in that genre, mystery, suspense. So I’ve written a handful of books. I think JD Barker says you have to write 500,000 words to a million words to really get to the point where you’re like you, you know, what you can do kind of thing. And I think I’m kind of at that point, to be honest. Like if each book’s around 60, 70,000 words, three, four books in, it’s, it’s getting [00:26:00] close. The Ritualist is my first main one in the thriller genre.

Mark: Okay.

Adam: I dunno if I answered your question at all or not.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And then the question being, so now that was there a difference with this book and how long it took you to write and, and we talked a little bit about the process, but whether or not, the length of time from initial thought to a published product was faster because we didn’t really get into how long it took you from beginning to published.

Adam: right. No, it’s, it’s definitely the speed is picking up for sure. And I think that’s because I’m starting to find my rhythm. I’m starting to find my flow of when I write every day how I write, how often do I write, how fast I can write. I kind of know all that now. And so my goal is to put out between three to four books a year. I haven’t done that yet. That’s why I say it’s my goal. So 2026 is my first real year where I try and make that happen. We’ll see if it, if it holds true.

Mark: Do you have the plot developed for or ideas for the next three books? Is that how [00:27:00] you’re gonna, because it’s a se I imagine you’re doing the series the next three books.

Adam: Yes and no. So I’m not doing the series the whole time. My, my plan next year is to so the architect is gonna be booked two in the Vince Naka series. Then I’m, I’m working on a standalone also right now ’cause the architect’s done right? So I’m working on what’s next, which is gonna be a standalone. My goal is to alternate moving forward. So Vince knock a book, a standalone, Vince knock, a book, a standalone, just to break it up for myself, so I don’t get too burnt out in the series world. And so my goal next year would be to put out, two standalones and a Vince Akaka book, if not two Vince’s. But we’ll see. And then in terms of your question, I know the general premise for the next two after the architect for the Vince knock book, I know the next two. So the books three and four, I know the very vague general idea. And I typically don’t start thinking about what the actual plot until I’m about three quarters of the way through whatever I’m currently writing. And then my brain just starts kicking in like, okay, we’re almost done here. Let’s [00:28:00] focus on what’s next.

Mark: That’s a very ambitious goal to do two or three books in a year. I had the same goal, and that was quickly packed away from, because you realize, well, for me, I, I also, I use beta readers, but when you have the beta readers and the editor and then the readers, I mean, if you go back to your editor for a second time for proofread or like that whole process, it takes a lot of time even when, even if I can write a book in two months, it’s still six months from release kind of thing.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s where I haven’t used beta readers yet, honestly, partly for that reason because I’m just trying to cut out some time if I’m starting to find that my books are starting to wane a little bit and maybe they need a little bit more like other eyeballs, I’ll do that. But I haven’t needed to yet. But again, I’ve only done a few, so I’m, I’m still newer in this world, so I, I, I acknowledge that. Yeah. But you’re right, there’s only so much time and there’s some of that time is not in your hands at all.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My last question for you, where [00:29:00] can listeners find your book?

Adam: Yeah. So it is in KU on Amazon. So if you’re looking for the ebook version, that’s where you’re gonna find it. If you’re looking for paperback, you can find on Amazon, you can find sign copies on my website, Adam Roach books.com. And yeah, those are the two main places you can find it.

Mark: Oh, that’s great. Thank you so much for your time. I will link to that in the show notes. And thank you again for the book. I really enjoyed this read, so I’m looking forward to book two when it releases. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Adam: Thank you.

Mark: If you don’t mind sticking around, we’ll, we’ll hit the after show for, for our Patreon members.

Adam: Sounds great.

Mark: Thanks.

Thanks for listening and make sure you follow the show so you don’t miss next week’s conversation with Karen Osborne. We dig into the dual timelines and justice for Emerson, how her husband’s Vietnam experiences help shape Emerson’s story and the way she pulls character details from real people she encounters in everyday life.

If you want the after [00:30:00] show with the rapid fire questions, it’s free right now on Patreon, that’s where authors open up about their writing routines, the scenes they’d least wanna survive, and the strange things they’ve Googled. Links are in the show notes.

TPP Episode 22 with Melissa F. Miller

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

Melissa: A couple years ago, our family rented a spot in the outer banks of North Carolina. The owner’s husband came and was showing my husband where to set up well, I walked our dog and when I came back, my husband said, oh, the owner grew up in the same very small neighborhood that I grew up in. And when she came over I said, Hey, we grew up in the same neighborhood and her face just went white. And she made it a point to get out of there as fast as she could. And so I’m thinking why would somebody, someone’s hiding from their past? And I said, what would happen if somebody rented an Airbnb and someone from their past showed up and brought danger with them?

​Mark: What makes a great thriller tick, and what does it take to write one? Welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, where bestselling award-winning and emerging thriller authors share the craft research and real world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories. [00:01:00] I’m your host, mark p Jay Nadal.

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

This week I’m joined by Melissa F. Miller, the powerhouse behind more than 50 novels across legal, medical, and psychological thrillers. We dig into cut off from sky and earth. It’s a story inspired by a real life encounter that sparked the question, what happens when someone from your past suddenly reappears and brings danger with them? Melissa shares how a little known grim tail became the backbone of her. Why she stepped away from legal and medical thrillers for something more intimate and how she balanced three points of view, layered memories, and a book within a book to create a slow burn psychological thriller driven by [00:02:00] resilience, trauma, and self rescue.

If you’re interested in multiple POV structure, subtle tension, writing, emotional stories, or evolving your process after dozens of books, this is a conversation you’ll want to hear.

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

Melissa: Oh, I’m so happy that you’re having me, mark. Thanks.

Mark: I’m very excited to talk about your book Cut Off from Sky and Earth, and the title and the cover and all those good things. But before we get into that, let’s hear that pitch.

Melissa: Okay. Cutoff from sky to earth is the story of a feminist fairytale retelling that becomes a real life nightmare for two women who are trapped in a remote cabin during a storm and they have to face the traumas of their past to survive the danger in their present. And the book is a psychological thriller told from three points of view, and it has [00:03:00] flashbacks and my main character’s an author writing a story, so there’s also her stories woven into my story. So there’s a kind of a lot going on.

Mark: Awesome. So let’s get into what came first. I’m curious if it was made maim the title of your book or the idea for the cabin and the women in the cabin.

Melissa: right? So what came first was the idea I. A couple years ago, our family was, we have an rv and we were doing a trip and we rented a spot, sort of like Airbnb, but it’s for RV spots in the outer banks of North Carolina. And when we got there, the owner’s husband came and was showing my husband where to set up well, I walked our dog and when I came back, my husband said, oh, the owner. Grew up in the same, so I’m from Pittsburgh, but she grew up in the same very small neighborhood that I grew up in. And I said, oh wow, I bet I know her. And when she came over I said, Hey, we grew up in the same neighborhood and her face just went [00:04:00] white. And she just like made it a point to get out of there as fast as she could. And so I’m thinking why would somebody, someone’s hiding from their past? Because you know, a thriller writer, I’m sure you know, like my, that’s where my mind goes. And I said, what would happen if somebody rented an Airbnb and someone from their past showed up and brought danger with them? So that was where the idea came from.

Mark: Awesome. So how did it get mixed with made Moline in the fairytale retelling?

Melissa: Okay, so I decided that my main character was going to be an author dealing with writer’s block. Is that autobiographical maybe? So she went on a retreat, and I have done this a couple times when I really needed to write, I go somewhere where my kids and my dog and my husband aren’t there. So I thought, okay, she’s going to this remote location and so I knew she was a writer, and I thought, wow, if her story somehow thematically was tied to my story, that would be really [00:05:00] kind of interesting. And I knew she was gonna have to rescue herself. So there’s a whole theme of sort of self rescue and resilience and relying on other women in my story. So I thought, okay, well, she could be writing a fairytale retelling.

And then I just looked for fairytales that. So there are different, not tropes, but there’s, there’s one called the Entombed Princess and there are fairytales that fit that sort of, or I’m just gonna call it a trope. So I found, made me lean, which is not a very well known, well, not well known to me fairytale. And I read it and then I read some academic papers about it, and it just completely fit my story. And then it also informed my story because I didn’t originally have my two main characters sort of working together, but they ended up because of the way the fairytale and my story, kind of intertwined. [00:06:00] My, Alex is another one of my viewpoint characters. She took on a bigger role than I had initially thought

Mark: Okay,

Melissa: have.

Mark: So when it comes to the cover and the title, where did those come from? Because when I first saw the cover, which was cut off from Sky and Earth, I was like, huh, that’s an interesting psychological thriller title. Once I read the book, I very much got where it came from and it’s like a brilliant idea.

Where did it come from? How did it come about?

Melissa: so there is actually part of a line in the original fairytale when the princess and her lady in waiting get put in the tower, they are cut off and it’s not exactly cut off from sky and earth, but it’s something similar. And I really, for me, this was very different. I normally write legal thrillers or medical thrillers, and this was a psychological thriller, but also like a little more [00:07:00] literary for me. I wanted it to have a ton of French feel like the hunter or the searcher, if you’re familiar with those books.

Mark: not, no.

Melissa: And so they’re more atmospheric than pulse pounding, I guess.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Very Dr. Character driven.

Melissa: Yeah. And the cover I really because it it doesn’t deliver sort of a, like a Freedom McFadden experience or it’s not like an Alice Feeney. It, it’s just not that kind of thriller. I didn’t want readers who are expecting sort of really fast paced adrenaline thriller to be disappointed. So I wanted to lean toward a more, I don’t wanna say literary because I’m a genre writer, but. More atmospheric cover. And,

Mark: sense.

Melissa: And so I, you know, the front, I, I [00:08:00] like plenty, but I really like the back because it’s got the tower in the back.

But my designer told me that it didn’t really work with the text on the front, and I trust him so.

Mark: Oh, I haven’t seen the full cover. So seeing that wrapped around. Yeah, it’s a, I mean, it is a beautiful looking cover. Oh, yeah, that

Melissa: Oh, that’s right. You have the ebook. So,

Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So at its core, what kind of story would you say this is, and what kind of challenge did it present to you as a writer?

Melissa: I think at its core it’s a story about resilience and dealing with your past and not letting it impact your present. So it is a very psychological thriller, more psychological maybe than thriller. Although there’s, my readers are used to a certain kind of story for me. So the challenge was to write what I wanted to write and make it accessible to the people who read my work.

[00:09:00] If that makes sense. So I, I knew I wanted to write about these women, ’cause I, most of all of my series books except for one series have female main characters. I have one series with a Buddhist pathologist who is a man. But usually I’ve got women and I wanted these women to be sort of the natural evolution of those women, but they’re sort of, it’s a little darker, it’s a little more raw.

They both have some trauma in their past, a lot of trauma. And that ultimately, and this is what I always struggle with writing thrillers I want them to feel hopeful and optimistic because I think like hope is a weapon and I really believe that. So I always try for my books to be affirming, which kind of sounds strange for someone who writes thrillers maybe ’cause they can be about justice, but they’re not usually supposed to be about feeling optimistic, I guess. So that was a challenge. And then [00:10:00] also, I do not personally like an un unlikeable narrator or an unreliable narrator, and I do have unreliable narrators because of their own trauma and their forgetfulness and their anxiety but as a reader, when the main character lies to me, I get so mad and I, some people love it,

Mark: Yeah.

Melissa: but I chose to write in a genre where there was a lot of unreliable, narrators, a lot.

Mark: Yeah. Why did you make the switch from having done so many others in the legal and taking a chance to tell this one?

Melissa: So I write all different genres and I have on occasion, like I’ve started a rom-com series when I just needed something lighter and, I needed something darker. I was just in a place where I, was feeling a lot of, of sort of more just, it was a little raw and I’m very much like, there are [00:11:00] mood readers.

Mark: Yeah.

Melissa: I’m a mood writer, so I needed to write something darker and I thought about trying to shoehorn it into one of my existing series, but it just didn’t have the right feeling like it, it was just different.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. And so when readers put down this book, what do you hope they’re still thinking or feeling?

Melissa: That really, really terribly bad things can happen, but they don’t have to define you and that you, like my characters really can sort of, if you’re willing to face reality save yourself or thrive, I guess.

Mark: Yeah, that’s great. So after 40 books. What has changed in your process, if anything, when you started writing this book. [00:12:00] I know for a lot of authors, the first few books are very, can go all over the place because you’re sort of learning what your own process is. 40 books later are you still learning your process or do you have that process kind of pinned down?

Melissa: So I’m still learning and I think I’m actually now up to 50 books. And the last, the, no, no, I mean, that’s, you used what I have on the back, but the last book I wrote that just came out last week, I wrote the whole entire book then scrapped it. That was book 50. So obviously I’m still learning, but every book is different for me.

Some of them are easy to write and some of them take longer and some of them are shorter. But this book that I rewrote is the third book ever. I’ve just start like, stop. I wrote the whole thing and, and scrapped it. The first time I did that was my second book. [00:13:00] Because I had written the first book and I just wrote the book. I didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t have any readers. I was just writing a book and it was really fun. And so that book was easy. It wasn’t the first book I wrote. The first book I wrote we will never talk about, it’s like in a drawer, but the first book I published and then I had expectations for book two. So I thought, oh, I should be a real writer and I should plot this book. I should outline this book. So I did that and I got all the way to the end and it wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. So, I scrapped it. And some books, I completely am a discovery writer and some books I know the end. Some books I know key pieces, but I have never successfully plotted a book like the way you’re supposed to if you’re a plotter. [00:14:00] long answer to the question, my process is always evolving.

Mark: Okay. What was the process like for this book? How long did it take you to write it?

Melissa: Okay? So this book took longer than any book for me, but in part that was because this was my guilty pleasure. My side project, right? I had pre-orders for my series books up that I had to work on, and so sometimes in between books, when I was waiting for edits to get back, I would write part of this book and then I put it down. And so this book probably, might have taken me two years in between projects. And really the only reason it ever got done was that I am. I give my family a book as a gift on Christmas Eve, we, we stole it from Iceland. We celebrate yellow, Buca flat. And my husband said to me, I don’t want a book from the bookstore this Christmas, [00:15:00] last Christmas. I want to read your book. So after I finished my last book last year, I just locked in and finished it. So that book, my last book last year came out. Well, it came out in December, but I started writing this probably in October, November, and it was a perfect time to write a dark book because my mother had just died. She died on Halloween, and so I was in the right place to write my dark book, and I had a looming deadline of Christmas Eve. Otherwise, it still probably wouldn’t be finished. Mark.

Mark: A looming deadline for a first draft, or did you feel pressure to put something together that was better than a first draft?

Melissa: no, it was the first draft. He’s my first reader before he goes outside. So he knows

Mark: Okay. So you

Melissa: he knew what he was

Mark: draft. That’s, that says a lot. Yeah, I find it very hard to trust anyone with the first draft. It’s like no one can see how bad [00:16:00] this first version.

Melissa: No one but him could ever read my first draft. He’s the only one.

Mark: Okay. How many books do you typically write in a year when you’re talking about squeezing in books? Between books?

Melissa: So it depends between four and seven. Usually but this year, this year, it’s only gonna be three. No, well, four. ’cause I didn’t count this one. Four. And part of it is I am, keeps me outta trouble, but I was a lawyer for 15 years and I am really good at writing to deadlines, so I just give myself a lot of deadlines.

Mark: Okay. Still super impressive though, even with those have gotta be crazy deadlines. ’cause with your editor, I mean, editor readers gone, coming back, gone, coming back. Do you always have a project in between projects?

Melissa: [00:17:00] no. I like to, but I don’t like, sometimes I don’t. But also, well, I guess, do you mean am I writing something while it’s with the editor?

Mark: Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah. Yes.

Mark: Okay.

Melissa: But so this was between those things, you know,

Mark: Yeah.

Melissa: dribs and drabs.

Mark: Yeah. I’m just trying to understand how you can put out so many books, like that’s incredible to have to write four to seven books in a year. What does your day look like? Is it like a lawyer day from, well, I guess I don’t really know what a lawyer’s day is. Typical. Depends what kind of lawyer you are, but is it like early morning you’re just writing 5,000 words a day kind of thing?

Melissa: So my lawyer days were sort of like, you know, 18 hour days and they kind of every day was a very long day. So I can, I do have the muscle memory to do those sorts of days. But the thing is, and I really wish that I could be a person who wrote every day and wrote a reasonable number of words every day, [00:18:00] but I’m not, in part because I don’t plot.

So at the beginnings of my books are slow, I might get up, I sometimes get up especially when my kids were little, I would get up before the sun rose and I would start writing, and I would write for several hours, like before anyone else in the house was awake. But now I have two at college and one in high school so I sleep a little later, but I can write, I can write all day long. I don’t until, so particularly in the beginning of the book, I might write two, two or 3000 words a day. Like for me that’s a good day. In the beginning of a book, and then the middle of a book is kind of a slog. But at that point, I am putting in longer hours just to get some momentum. And then the last quarter of my books, I mean, I, I’ve written 13,000 words in a day. Like I just, that I pick up speed, right? And at the end it just all comes out fast. Then I have to put it aside [00:19:00] like, well, my hus I’ll, I’ll spell check it. My husband reads it and then it sits, but while it’s sitting and I’m thinking about it, I’m probably doing edits on another book, right? So there’s always something moving. But also in this process, which I said I don’t have a process, but it normally works out that way. It’s slow in the beginning I have longer days in the end, in the middle, and then the end it’s just like, I just can’t write fast enough to keep up with this story.

Mark: Wow.

Melissa: That’s how it, and I think in part because it’s, I’m learning the story as I go along. And once I get to that end, I know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know who the killer was when I started the book necessarily.

Mark: Yeah. Do you find yourself having to go back and insert more clues during second or third drafts?

Melissa: Not usually. And that’s the part, this is the part of my process that I really kind of love. [00:20:00] And the example I always use is I have a book in my legal thriller series that I wrote during COVI and I did not wanna set it during COVID. So it goes back 20 years and then it’s 19, or it’s 2019, so it’s 19, 10 years, 1999 and 2019. And the flashback in 1999 my main character’s roommate is sick. Like she’s getting sick. And when I’m writing it, I think, oh, well they’re in college. They must have been out partying. And then I was in the middle, and this is a spoiler if anybody reads this book, but I’m writing it, and there was something else that happened with her friend and her roommate, and I didn’t know why it was happening as I wrote it, and then when I got a little further, I’m like, oh, that’s because she’s pregnant and that is really important to this plot. And I did not know that when I wrote it. So I wrote the clue that I needed. But I [00:21:00] didn’t know I needed it and I know how crazy I sound. And that happens a lot. When I go back and I read it I think that is why that happened. In this book, this book, I did go back. I changed the beginning to be from Tristan’s point of view instead of his wife’s. And when I did that, I said something in that scene that made me realize the person I thought was the killer was in fact not the killer.

Mark: Wow. Did you have to go back and change the end?

Melissa: I hadn’t gotten to the end yet. ‘Cause I, because I wrote this, because I wrote this one, so, choppy, like putting it down, picking it up, I would often, I’d have to go back and remind myself where I was. I don’t normally do that ’cause I’m writing straight through, but since this one took two years, it was one of the times I went back to read the beginning. I thought, no, it needs to start from a different point of view. And then when I did that, I was like, I know who [00:22:00] the killer is now.

Mark: Well off air i’m gonna have to ask you who you, who was the original killer,

Melissa: Okay. Yeah. I’ll tell you when we’re done.

Mark: because I would love to know. How do you keep all these characters in your head between when you have all these stories going on who this person is, as a person.

Melissa: So when I am, when I’m writing my series books, I have an amazing brother who made a wiki for me that has. He’ll, he reads all of my books last. My husband reads ’em all first, and then after everyone who’s been paid to touch them is done. My brother reads ’em and he makes a series bible for me, and so he’ll tell me this person is afraid of this, and this person’s allergic to that. And so in my series books, I can just say she left-handed. And then I go and I search for it. And then when I’m writing a new book, usually I’m just living with the characters. So much that I [00:23:00] remember them, but again, for this one, since I was putting it down, they weren’t in the Wiki yet, so I kept notes. I don’t normally keep like a character sheet while I’m writing, but I did for this.

Mark: Wow, that’s impressive to keep, to keep those in your head. Is your brother available for, for work or,

Melissa: I don’t know. He really likes doing it. I could ask him, but it’s, it’s so helpful because you know, especially my legal thrillers, there are 16 novels and six novellas, and so he’ll read it and he’ll send me a note and he’ll say, did Sasha get a new car? Because she had a passade in book eight.

Mark: Wow. There you go. So have you had to go back and change things because he was, he was able to point things out for you.

Melissa: I’ve never changed anything, but I will tell, I will tell you. This is kind of a funny story. I have a series where I have a podcaster. She’s a true crime podcaster and her name is Maisie. [00:24:00] But my most of my thrillers are in the same universe. So Maisie appears in my legal thrillers and she appears in some of my medical thrillers ’cause she knows those characters. And when Maisie got her own book, I started to write it and I pulled up the Wiki and I said, okay, what color are Maisie’s eyes? And because it was in different series, we didn’t notice that she had green eyes and she had blue eyes and she had violet eyes. And I was like so in Maisie’s first book she started out, she was an on air TV reporter and investigative journalist, and she lost her job and that’s why she started the True Crime Podcast. But she’s starting the opening scene, she’s losing her job and she’s putting in her context. Her producer comes in and he says, wait, I thought your eyes were blue. And she said, color contacts there any there any color I want them to be, but my eyes are really brown. So I rec conned that one because I was like, I can, I can’t [00:25:00] go change all these different books, but

Yeah,

Mark: That’s a great story. How do you keep tension throughout this book? Given the type of story that it was? I mean, you’re, you said you’re a pants, so do you think about pacing in tension as you’re writing it, or is it just playing out as a movie?

Melissa: A little column A, a little column BI think I, I tend to write almost, I think all of my thrillers are multiple point of view. And this one only had three. A lot of times I have more, and so one of the things I always do is I end a chapter from one character’s point of view with an unresolved question, and then go to another character’s point of view. So that, like you wanna know what’s gonna happen, but now you’ve got this other person having an issue and then I leave that. Right. And so then by [00:26:00] following the different characters, you’re always kind of, wait, what’s going on with this other person? I don’t know if I’m explaining this well.

Mark: Yeah.

Melissa: By switching points of view, I try to keep the tension up, but also I write short chapters. And I think that keeps them pacey even when it’s sort of a more slow burn kind of book. And in this book in particular, I had three point of views. I had three people having flashbacks in memories. I had the Made May Lean Fairy tale, and I had Emily’s book that she was writing called The Tower. So I. I didn’t like have a system for when I would put one, but they were all getting woven in, so I felt like they were all moving the story along, but keeping it sort of open questions the whole time.

Mark: Do you think as you’re writing about, here I’m gonna tell a lie or, when Tristan is questioning he knows [00:27:00] he’s lying or hiding things and then we go to her point of view, we know she is, are you thinking about that and their history and how that is gonna carry a reader onto the next chapter as well?

Melissa: Yes. Because, because my role for myself when I started this book was they can lie to each other and they can lie to themselves, but they can’t lie to the reader. And so because the reader knew Tristan was lying and that Emily didn’t know, I knew that that was. I knew that right was going to be on their mind. So then the next scene I thought, well, well, she’s gotta lie, and then Alex has to lie. And so we know everybody’s lying and eventually it’s gonna catch up to them. So I did think about that as I was writing.

Mark: I thought it played out very well. I mean, it was a very good book. This one really kept hold because of that tension where I was always like, oh, when are they gonna find out everybody’s [00:28:00] lying? And when are they gonna find out what did happen all those years ago and who was responsible? And that really held me right to the end. So it was a, it was a really good read. I liked it a

Melissa: Well, I’m glad to hear it ’cause it’s not the kind of book I usually write either. And I just I felt like I just wanted to do it. So I’m glad that, I mean, some of my readers, my readers are funny. Some of them were like, it was so scary. It was so scary. But I finished it ’cause I knew I could trust you. And then I think people who read darker thrillers would be like, hardly any body count, right?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Do you find yourself processing trauma in your stories? Kind of as your characters are processing trauma in their stories.

Melissa: Uh,

Mark: You have, you have Emily who is writing a story, but she’s also using the maid Moline story as a way to process her own thoughts, just like, because there’s moments where she pulls from that made million fairytale [00:29:00] to be like, I can do this too. I’m strong too. Do you find when you’re writing it does that process things for you as well?

Melissa: It does. And I think that’s why I hope that it does for my readers because when I’m reading, I process things too. And so this book like I finally finished it because well, Emily has anxiety and so do I, but I finally got on medication and I felt like I could, I could see the difference between living in my anxiety and living with it, and I wanted that for her. So in that way I process that for her. But even my rom-coms, I process emotion through my characters. Definitely. And it’s not like every character, but I have my, Buddhist coroner. He’s very centered and he’s very calm, and sometimes when there’s a lot going on outside, I’ll say, I need to write a Bodhi book right now so [00:30:00] that I can feel centered and calm.

Mark: Oh, I love that. How do you make people care about characters when you’re writing them? You said you don’t write unlikable characters. How do you make sure that they are likable or at least people can relate to them, I guess would be another way of looking at it.

Melissa: Right. I think that I try to make my characters empathetic. You might not like them, but you understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because I try to have them be open about it. If I have a character who’s burnt out, like she’s tired and she doesn’t feel like going to work, and like she doesn’t even really wanna make breakfast for her kids. She’s honest and you might be like, that’s not good, but you understand why she’s doing it. And for my antagonists a lot of them are fairly nasty people, like my thrillers usually have a killer and sometimes [00:31:00] psychopath. And in their point of view scenes, I just think why is, is this person like this. what is causing this pain? I don’t even know who said it every, everyone’s the hero of their own story. So if I were telling this story from my killer’s point of view, what would his story be? So I just try to make them understandable. Even if you can’t, like, they might not be huggable, but they’re palatable. I don’t know.

Mark: Do you

Melissa: So much this book.

Mark: Do you sometimes write from the point of view of the killer in a hidden way? Where we don’t know who it is, but they’re feeling or thinking. I don’t, you didn’t in this book,

Melissa: No. I yes, I nor not normally. I often do, and I sometimes a thriller where we know from the very beginning who the bad guy is.

We know, I don’t hide it. [00:32:00] Right? In my, my very first legal thriller, there’s a man who has, is selling the technology to blow up a plane from an app on your phone, and he does a demonstration for buyers.

That’s all on the back cover. That’s not a spoiler. We know who he is from his first time on page, we don’t know who he’s working with. We don’t know what his next move is gonna be. We don’t know how my character’s gonna outsmart him, but we know who he is. And then sometimes I do the thing you talk about, like we don’t know who this person is this killer and like we don’t know, but, and then sometimes I don’t, but this I think is the only thriller that doesn’t have anything from that person’s point of view.

Mark: Do you find it when you’re doing that? It’s like a icky feeling as you’re writing these terrible feelings from their point of view. ’cause you’re trying to justify whatever insanity that they’re performing.[00:33:00]

Melissa: Right. And that’s probably why um, I have sort of, since I’m trying to be empathetic to them, I sort of have some limits. I don’t write any like I wanna say I don’t have any serial killers, but I don’t have any traditional serial killers. They don’t have a Hannibal Lecter character who I’m following around. Right. In detail while he’s killing people. ’cause I couldn’t,

Mark: mm-hmm.

Melissa: I don’t have any sexual assaults or rapes of my characters. Because I don’t wanna write from a rapist point of view. Right. So I don’t necessarily wanna write from, you know sociopath’s point of view either, but I, there, I guess for me there are just limits to what I can write,

Mark: Yeah, That’s fair.

Melissa: Not what I can read so much, but like what I can I, ’cause I don’t wanna embody it,

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

Melissa: Self-published or [00:34:00] traditionally

Mark: Let’s say self-published.

Melissa: Write the next book. I think although self-publishing has changed so much since I published my first book, which was in 2011 for a really long time I really think just writing in series was the way for a self-published author to build an audience. I mean, I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of energy on promoting my first book. Like you want it, right? You want your first book outta the gate to just take fire. But there’s, it’s a lot of, if particularly if you’re self-publishing, it’s a lot of money. You’ve already spent the money to get a cover and get it edited and get everything in place to then spend a lot of money to promote it particularly now it’s hard ’cause I’m a dinosaur like in 2011 there weren’t all these services, so you couldn’t spend that much money to promote your book. Oh. [00:35:00] Oh wait. I have one more piece of advice. Start a newsletter. Start a newsletter when you write your first book.

Mark: Okay.

Melissa: That would be my advice.

Mark: How did you get people to join the newsletter when you started your book?

Melissa: So I didn’t have a newsletter yet, but I had an email address in the back of my book. And the, I had a reader who I’ll never forget, like his mind is, his name is etched in my mind, and he emailed me just like an email and said, well, when’s the next book in the series? And I thought, there’s no next book. I wrote a book, yay me. And then I thought about it and I said I could write another book. So I started, I think I had at that point i’ve gone through so many mail providers. Let’s just say it was MailChimp. I don’t know what it was. I got on the free plan and I said, put, and then I upped. And this is a thing as a self-published author that you can do, you can update your file. So I updated my file to say if you wanna connect and know when the next book comes out, join my newsletter here. And [00:36:00] I’ll only email you when you have, when I have book news. And I just started collecting names.

Mark: Okay, so, it was like organically they found your book and then when it got to the end, we assume that they want to read more of from you, and then they follow that link and go to

Melissa: Right. And again, it was, it was a, it was a different time, it was a different age. So now I have, I will have a free book. If you sign up for my newsletter, you get a free book. I do that now. I’ll put it on social media, but in the beginning it was just at the end of my book, there was this link and if you wanted to sign up, you could.

Mark: Okay. If you can pick one thing that led to your success so far, what would it be?

Melissa: I think. I was going to say not staying in my lane, but I think I write the book. I don’t write to market. I write the book I wanna write and then find a market for it. And I think because of that I’m able to really, I’m able to love my book and I, I’m sure [00:37:00] people who write to market love their books, but it feels so intimate with the reader, like this story is very personal to me. So I think, I write a very personal story and the readers who it resonates with that resonate with it, they can tell. And there’s sort of a, a mutual understanding there, I guess, that I’m gonna tell a story that might speak to them if they read another one. So I guess my success comes from not always obeying genre convention and not always like I just find the market for it. I don’t think traditional publishers would publish most of my books. Be like, oh, there’s not a market for that.

Mark: Use your same name for all of them, right? You haven’t

Melissa: I do, I haven’t.

Mark: [00:38:00] Mm-hmm. Okay.

Melissa: All my babies. So I didn’t wanna make any of them feel like second class citizens by not, not claiming them.

Mark: But your readership carried through. So the what you’re writing and what, yeah. I think it resonates with people, obviously, if they’re still following you from the different genres.

Melissa: Yeah. I guess my voice is my voice no matter what I’m writing, right? So.

Mark: Yeah, that’s great. So I had a question from Andrew Warren, which technically we already answered. If you’re a blog or a dancer, how do you think it impacts your writing? I think we may have already answered that, but if there’s anything else you want to add.

Melissa: I mean it clearly impacts it on the speed, right? Like slow in the beginning. And I think it also gives me a little more freedom to because the three books that I had to scrap that I tried to plot [00:39:00] well two of them. I tried to plot the last one. It was just I didn’t plot, but I had this idea like what it was gonna be and I stuck to it. And I don’t normally do that. And I think being a discovery writer or a Panther, if you really embrace it and you just go where the story takes you and you listen to your characters. But just, you can’t fight it. Trying to grab the story and bring it back onto the track that I thought it was on never works well. So I just have to follow the story.

Mark: That makes sense. I outline a lot I have the book blurb ahead of time. I have the summary when I’m writing and I know what my book’s gonna be, but often I go right off the rails. I don’t do chapter by chapter or, very much at all in the actual story because I do that all the time. It goes off the rails. And when I’ve tried to stick to a firm outline, it’s the same thing i’m like, I had, I end up either pulling the story where it’s not meant to go or I just give up on the story. ’cause I’m like, this isn’t, isn’t working.

Melissa: Because it’s not the story. It’s not what the story wants to tell you. Yeah. So you [00:40:00] just, yeah. Yeah, resting one, one back on the rails is, I think possibly the worst thing I can do for, it’s clearly, for me, the worst thing I can do.

Mark: yeah. Where can listeners find your book or any of your books?

Melissa: All of my books are available on all of the retail sites. And they are in Cobo Plus, and I sell them direct through my website too, so pretty much can find me everywhere except brick and mortar bookstores except for a couple of indies. But amazon Burns renewable, Cobo, apple Google, melissa miller.com.

Mark: All right, I’ll drop that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. This has been great. I love learning about this book. I really enjoyed the book. So thank you for provid me a copy and I will have to read more of your books and get into those medical legal thrillers that you’re writing. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. If you don’t mind sticking around for the after show. We will can get [00:41:00] right to those rapid fire questions.

Melissa: All right.

Mark: Thanks for listening, and make sure you follow the show so you don’t miss next week’s episode with Adam Roach. We talk about the Ritualist, the flash fiction story that sparked his debut thriller and how he built smart antagonists, tight timelines in the twist driven plots while writing a series design for long-term escalation.

If you want the after show with the rapid fire questions, it’s free right now on Patreon. That’s where authors open up about their writing rituals. The strangest research rabbit holes They’ve fallen into the thriller scenes that stuck with them, and the moments from their own books that they’d least wanna survive.

The lengths in the show notes, ​

TPP Episode 21 with Andrew Warren

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: I don’t think so. I may

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: I do. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: What vehicle?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you do that?

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: And you blend the

Andrew: But everyone’s,

Mark: environment too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Oh, the gray man.

Mark: sorry, gray Man? Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Totally like

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Andrew: how many characters does

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

Andrew: Had a lot of

Mark: Hearing came from. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Right.

Mark: That because I don’t want

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Andrew Warren books.com.

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

Andrew: Yeah. Man.

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: Let’s do it.

Mark: All right. Thank you.

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

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