The Patriot's Daughter
by Brittany Butler
Season 2 Ep. 11

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Oh, great. Wonderful.

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

Brittany: Wonderful.

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

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

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

Mark: Yes. And scary.

Brittany: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Yeah.

Mark: over family. So that’s,

Brittany: Sure. Sure. yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Oh,

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

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

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

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

Mark: this Ava? Is it an

Brittany: this is AVA

Mark: Oh, good.

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

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

Mark: yeah, yeah. A delicate balance.

Brittany: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

Mark: Great advice. Thank you.

Brittany: yeah, of

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: it’s way too

Mark: Way easier

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

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

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

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

Brittany: yeah.

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

Brittany: I can’t really say.

Mark: Okay.

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

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

Brittany: Sorry about that.

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Great.

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

Brittany: Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Yes, Yes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah, Yeah, good for you.

Brittany: Thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Great.

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

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

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

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

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

Brittany: Okay,

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