The Murder Mind
by Brian Drake
Season 2 Ep. 3

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.