TPP Episode 1 with Andrew Warren

 [00:00:00]

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast where you come for the pitch and stay for the story behind the story. I’m your host, Mark P.J. Nadon, and this is the very first episode of the show. Well Not the first interview I recorded, but the first one I’m releasing because I think it’s a great place to start.

This episode is sponsored by…me. I’m always open to author sponsorships because I wanna spotlight as many great books and pitches as I can. If you’re interested, visit my website, markpjnadon.ca my own book, The Genesis Project follows Blake, a former special forces soldier who’s recruited into a top secret government program using immersive virtual tech to treat post traumatic stress [00:01:00] with a goal of sending soldiers back into combat.

But when participants of the program murder a US Senator and another kills his wife, Blake starts asking questions. The answers don’t add up, and his search for the truth puts his own family in danger. It’s a military psychological thriller available on Amazon, and everywhere, books are sold.

Today’s guest is Andrew Warren, author of the International Bestselling Tokyo Black and the Thomas Caine thriller series. A lifelong fan of spy fiction, thanks to a childhood of viewing Goldfinger, Andrew writes thrillers about lone operatives, navigating the shadows, never sure who to trust. With a background in film and television, his books deliver cinematic action, exotic locations (You may want to visit Japan if it wasn’t on your list already), and heroes walking the razor’s edge between right and wrong.

Andrew, thank [00:02:00] you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

Andrew: Thank you for having me, man. I’m excited to, to meet you and chat about the book. Yeah, I’m very excited.

Mark: So let’s just get right into it. Give me the pitch for your book. The CIA

Andrew: betrayed him. Now, he’s their only hope to stop a war. Thomas Caine was the CIA’s deadliest killer until the agency betrayed him and left him for dead in the deserts of Afghanistan. Now he survives off the grid in Thailand’s criminal underworld.

But when a feud with a local gangster lands him in jail, his old CIA Masters return with an offer he can’t refuse. Rot in a hellish Thai prison or accept one last mission In Tokyo, Japan. Forced to hunt the neon lit city for a CIA assets runaway daughter Caine soon crosses paths with a sinister faction of the Yakuza crime syndicate and finds himself drawn into a terror plot that could ignite a devastating war between the US and China.

But Caine knows a double cross when he sees one. [00:03:00] He’s convinced someone in the CIA is manipulating him from behind the scenes. Trust is a luxury Caine can’t afford, and as he seeks redemption for his bloodstained past, he must decide who has earned his loyalty and who deserves his vengeance. Tokyo Black is a high octane, fast-paced, spy thriller, packed with gun battles, car chases, fascinating characters and international intrigue.

If you crave the thrills of a Mission Impossible or James Bond movie in book form, take a trip to Tokyo with betrayed assassin. Thomas Caine in Tokyo Black.

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

Andrew: Oh, thanks man.

Mark: Very exciting. And it kicked off really strong.

Andrew: I had to turn the marketing brain up to 11 there.

Mark: Yeah, that was really good. And really solid start. I didn’t get to finish the story. Thank you so much for sending me a copy of it, and I didn’t get that. Oh, my pleasure. To quite finish it, but I think I’m far enough into it to ask questions without giving spoilers as we go along. So that’s probably the perfect dive in point

Anyway. So let’s get into what sparked the story. [00:04:00] What, where’d you get the idea from?

Andrew: You know, it’s one of those stories like. It’s like a classic author story where you’ll, you’ll hear and you’ll be like, there’s no way That’s true. That’s just something you made up for interviews. But I swear it’s true.

You know, I had always wanted to write a book for years and years and years. I, like many writers, I had tons of half finished, works on my hard drive and stuff. And, I was working at a job that I. Really didn’t particularly like, just wasn’t a good fit for me. And it wasn’t like a great point in my life.

Like I had gone through a divorce and I didn’t like this job and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And, I had been to Japan in the past and really enjoyed it and I really wanted to go back, take another trip there. But for all kinds of reasons, I just couldn’t do it. Like, at that time, like between, work and money and schedule, it just wasn’t gonna work out.

And one night. I just woke up at like three or four in the morning and I just had this like bolt of inspiration that I could write a book set in Japan. That would be sort of a virtual vacation for me. And I’m like, okay, I can’t [00:05:00] go, but I can project myself there mentally. And that’s kind of my escape, from this job I don’t like and all this other stuff.

And it instantly like just started brainstorming and all these things kind of came to me in a flash, like, well, what kind of book would it be? I’m like, well, a spy thriller just seems like a natural fit, and I love spy throwers. I love reading them. And for a location like Tokyo, it seemed like that would work well and.

All these details, like the character’s name and the, the, the title of the book and the basic plot, like I kind of scribbled down these notes and 90% of the book I think came to me like that one night. This flash of inspiration. Of course those were broad strokes, but that’s where it all started. So I started writing it.

In the mornings before work, I would get up an hour early and, and write as many words as I could before I left. And I got, I got pretty far, but I’d say I got maybe like halfway through and then like lost a little bit of steam. And then a couple years later I was working at a job that I really did like, and things were good and I, I had a new, girlfriend and she was in my apartment and she [00:06:00] picked up the manuscript, it was like on my desk and started reading it one day.

And she got really into it and started asking all these questions like, well what, what’s this character really thinking and what’s, what’s gonna happen to this guy? And I was like, I, I don’t know. I have to finish it. And I think that sort of enthusiasm that she had and the fact that she was engaged enough to like ask about it, kind of lit the fire again.

And I worked, I worked, at that time, I worked freelance, so I would have gigs that lasted a certain amount of time and they would end. And I was in a very unique spot where the gig I was on, I knew was ending. And I knew I had another gig two or three months down the road, already booked and lined up.

So I had this gap and I didn’t have to worry about, ’cause the two jobs were booked. And I was like, all right, I’m gonna use that time and I’m gonna finish the book and I’m just gonna pretend that this is my job. And so I would get up at like 9:00 AM write, take lunch. Write. And through that chunk of time, I, I finished the first draft of the book.

And then of course, , it was my first novel, so I had to go through a few more revisions and, and drafts and things. But that was [00:07:00] kind of how it all started.

Mark: Awesome. So from start to finish, you’re looking at like three years or so,

Andrew: probably for the first one. Yes. And most of that isn’t writing.

Most of that is just me procrastinating, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, you know, I think until it’s really, until you finish a book, like it’s kind of hard to know. It’s like, seems like this insurmountable mountain. Yeah. You can’t really see the end of it, and you just, it’s very easy to kind of lose your way or, or get disheartened now that I’ve done it, I if, if I’m having a rough day or if I can’t figure something out, I’m like, all right, just keep working at it, you know, you’ll get it, you know, and I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. But back then, I, I, you know, I, I’d never done it. I didn’t know if I could do it, so it was a, it was like a huge.

Thing like looming over me, but those little like bursts of encouragement would go a long way, and, and keeping me go.

Mark: That’s awesome. Hey, three years is actually pretty good, I think. I think so. It took me like 30, 30 years.

Andrew: Yeah. Like every, I [00:08:00] mean, I mean, I say three years, but like I said, I’ve been trying to write books my whole life. So you could say it was 40 years. It just depends if you wanna look at it. But, I think almost everyone I’ve spoken to, like their first book is like that. It’s a very kind of choppy. Thing broken up over these chunks of time, yeah. And then you do your next one. Now you know you can do it and so you can kind of go through it, start to finish a little bit easier.

Mark: So is Tokyo Black the first book you finished from start to finish?

Andrew: Absolutely. Yeah. First novel I’d written, screenplays, which I also think helped, like that was another, I was a film major in college and so, once I left college, I’d written some screenplays and finishing those. Also, I think kind.

Pushed me further than I had been previously. You know, like I think just completing things is really important as a writer. It really, the more things you finish, the more you kind of learn and the more you improve and the better equipped you are to tackle the next project.

Mark: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. ’cause it took me, I think it took me like 10 years to write my first one, which will never see the light of day.

But more recently it takes me about like four [00:09:00] months. So yeah, exactly. That’s roughly what it takes you as you start doing it. Yeah.

Andrew: And I think, you know, I used to, I used to be really bummed about all those half finished projects, but now when I think about it, I’m like, well, I guess those were the practice I needed, to get to the point where I could finish one.

So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And this book is traditionally published, right? It is now. I originally self-published it way back in the day, so around the time that I finished it, while I was writing, I really didn’t have know what I was gonna do. I hadn’t really decided like if I was going to, like, I don’t even know if I knew about self-publishing when I started it.

I certainly did before I finished it, but I hadn’t really decided what route I was going to take. And I worked in the entertainment industry and so at that point I had optioned a couple screenplays, which never got made, but I had optioned them and I had optioned some pitches for TV shows and things, none of which ever bore any fruit.

But I’d kind of been through that. Process and it’s a very long, frustrating process in its own way. And there’s lots of gatekeepers and lots of [00:10:00] dead ends and false starts. So by the time I finished the book, I kind of had decided that I didn’t want to go through that process again. You know, like, or at least not for this, I was like, I’m just gonna have this be a thing of my own.

Around that time, Barry Eisler had started self-publishing with Amazon for his rain books. And, he, I, I really liked him. He was one of my favorite authors. And so I was like, I’m gonna do that, and if nobody buys it, that’s fine. Like, I wasn’t really looking at it as a, a moneymaking venture. I was like, I’m just gonna put it out there and it’ll just be for me and that’ll be it.

And so. So I did it, and it did reasonably well. Not phenomenal. I couldn’t quit my job or anything, but it sold and people liked it. So I kept on writing. And the, the second or and third books were, were all pretty successful. And so I would always kind of drop in and out. Like I would work freelance for a little while and then I would stop and focus on writing for a little while and I’d go back and forth.

And then recently, like at the, around the end of last year, a publisher approached me, Boldwood Books. They’re a UK based publisher, but they also publish in the US and all over the world. [00:11:00] And they were starting a new division focused on thrillers and they had seen the books and were interested in them.

And so we had a bunch of phone calls, talked back and forth, and we struck a deal. So they bought my backlist and now they’re currently republishing it. And I just literally two days ago on my birthday, no less, I turned in the manuscript for the next like brand new book in the series. So they’re republishing the series all leading up to this new novel that’s coming out in November.

Mark: So what, how many have you, how many are they republishing? I think there’s like three out there, right? Is it three? Oh, there’s

Andrew: three now, but there’s going to be five. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. So the one that I, the new one I turned in will be book six. I’m contracted with them for several books after that. And the original series actually consisted of four novels and two novellas.

And the novellas were written at different points in time, but they actually were two parts of the same story. So we just combined those to [00:12:00] form one book now since we’re republishing everything, and it kind of made more sense to do it that way. Okay. So that’s the fifth book. So, so it’ll, it’ll be, they’re republishing one through five and then book six will be the brand new one in November.

And then there’s a couple more contracted after that that I haven’t even thought through yet. So we’ll get there.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, if you’re lucky, you’ll just wake up and have that, you know.

Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Hopefully I know that just hopefully

Mark: it just hits you. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s an international bestseller, right? This, Tokyo Black, it was

Andrew: so, you know, Amazon, you can earn those bestseller tags like basically. Their algorithm is constantly changing, but I, I believe the way it used to work, and I think the way it still works, is you have to hit number one in one of your categories and hold it for a certain amount of time.

Amazon’s very secretive about their system. Yeah. I don’t know if anyone knows exactly how long it has to hold it, but Tokyo Black, earned that tag in, in multiple countries and held it for a couple days. So it was a international bestseller. So. [00:13:00]

Mark: Awesome. Congratulations.

Andrew: thank you.

Mark: That’s not easy to do.

Andrew: It was really exciting. I, I was blown away when that happened, so.

Mark: Yeah. So was there a moment in your life that shaped the book, like a feeling or a memory?

Andrew: Well, like I said, creatively, a big part of Tokyo Black specifically was. How much I loved visiting Japan. Like Japan made a huge impact on me when I went there and so much so that if you like, as you read the book and, and you’ve started, so you know, like the character in the book has been to Japan in the past and is coming back.

I did it that way on purpose because that was kind of my headspace and I was like, okay, I think this would be the easiest way for me to get inside this character. ’cause that’s how I feel I was there and I wanna go back. In my research, even just researching the book, I saw how certain things had changed and certain places I’d been were different, or the businesses had changed, or things had been torn down.

And so I wanted to kind of convey that sense of time, you know, [00:14:00] like he’d been there in the past. And then I also wanted to make it kind of an important place for him, where something happened to him that changed the course of his life, and now he’s going back there and his life is changing again, you know?

Mm-hmm. All of those things were kind of feelings that I had, but then taken and fictionalized, and put into a much more exciting, context than, than my life. But that was really where it stemmed from. And, and since writing that book, I’ve been back to Japan, you know, many times. And in fact, the new book that I turned in is also set in Japan, and it’s him going back to help some of the characters that he meets in this book.

And it again, is kind of like a reflection point of all the things that have happened to him since Tokyo Black. Because as you go through the series h is life definitely changes and goes through some ups and downs,

Mark: so. Yeah, that’s probably the best research project of we have in discuss Right.

When you, you travel for research.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I’ve been lucky. You know, I, I do tend to, when I travel, I kind of view where I am, like through the lens of, oh, like what would a book here be like, you know, what would I do at this location? [00:15:00] And of course there’s a few books that are set in places that no one would wanna visit.

Like South Sudan in the middle of a Civil War is not a place i I plan to go, or Siberia, is in one of the books. But I, I enjoy the research and I’d say the two things that I, I always try to do with all the books in the series that are most important to me is to, A, make them cinematic.

You know, like, I often call them action movies for the mind. ’cause I, I, there’s all different. Levels of realism and drama in, in spy fiction. And I definitely lean more towards the melodramatic, high octane thriller versus like a realistic John LeCarre kind of thriller, and then the other thing is I really want the locations to come alive because I wrote that first book as a virtual vacation for me.

That’s the experience I want to give the reader. Like, I want them to feel like they’ve gone on a trip to this place. And it’s, and it’s not necessarily about hitting them with a bunch of details, it’s more about, for me, it’s more about capturing the mood kind of, and the vibe and just [00:16:00] giving them that experience, and so those two things I really focus on for each book.

Mark: Awesome. Yeah, I really felt that when, when I was reading the book, I was like, man, oh, I

Andrew: appreciate that man. Yeah,

Mark: yeah. So like to talk about research, how did you do that? Like when I was reading your book and I’m looking at these places and the different, groups that were involved and, and all these names and things, I’m like, wow, that it’s just amazing what’s all in here.

I’m like, what’s happening? Sometimes I have, uh, ’cause my brain is always going a million miles an hour, so I have time, a hard time sometimes keeping track and it’s just like, wow. There’s just so much.

Andrew: Some of it. I mean, like I said, a lot of it were, were things I remembered from my time there. And of course I had pictures.

I went, I immediately went back and dug up all my pictures and, and I jotted down the impressions that I remembered of those places. And then Google, I mean, Google just researching online you can do so much, and, and also, I watched a lot of movies. Like I watched a lot of Yakuza movies and Japanese movies because I kind of wanted to.

Bring a little bit of that vibe to [00:17:00] it. I even played, quite a few video games set in Japan. There’s a video game series called Yakuza, which is all set like in, in, Kabuki-cho, but they, they fictionalize and call it something else. But, so I played those games quite a bit and just anything I could find to pull in.

In fact, I even, I don’t, I’m not sure how far you’ve gotten, but there’s a. A piece of software, like a virtual character that a another person uses to, to mask their identity. And that all that came from. One of the very first things I did was I just googled weird things about Japan. Like that was what I typed in.

’cause I was looking for just odd details. And the first thing I found was this thing called Hatsune Miku, who is a virtual. Performer, like, so essentially this company made this software that if you’re a, a songwriter and you don’t have a singer to perform your songs, you can write the song in this animated character with a, with a digitized voice performs the song that you write.

And this character became so popular that [00:18:00] now. It’s like this huge multimedia empire based around this virtual singer, and she does concerts. And so I like saw this video of this hologram, like she looks like an anime character, but then there’s actual real musicians around her on a stage like performing this concert.

And there’s people in the audience like waving these sticks and I was like that. That’s amazing. So like I worked that in, I, I tweaked it and changed it, but I was like, I gotta work that in, and just finding these things that interested me and just putting them into the book.

Mark: What about like the prison and how this, the CIA functioned and all of that?

Andrew: Oh, well, funny, the reason why I made the character like a betrayed. Assassin and he’s like, kind of on the outside just ’cause I don’t have a ton of experience with the CIA. A you know, a lot of writers in the genre either were in the military or, or, worked in intelligence and I don’t have that background.

So I was like, all right, I’m gonna make this character on the outside so that I don’t have to dive too far, into that world. Like I can just kind of skim the surface of that world. And then from there, I, [00:19:00] I did do research. I reached out to people, online and, and who, who did have backgrounds like that and kind of asked them general questions.

There’s an author named Matt Fulton, who is like a research guru who just does everything about the CIA. So like, I’ll always hit him up like, Hey, do you know, like what this guy’s office would look like? And he’ll be like, oh, and he’ll have like pictures and like videos that he sent. Like he just, he’s just totally immersed in that world.

He runs a podcast too about, spies and actual, like spies and, and intelligence operations. So stuff like that. So I just tried to, I tried to make sure that I wasn’t really. Focusing on the stuff I didn’t know, like I, I tried to focus on the st the world that I knew and the world I was most interested in, which for me was the, the international location and the action and, and the pacing and that kind of thing.

And then the stuff with the CIA, I just tried to be like, okay, what’s like the, what’s the minimum I need to include in the story to make it work? And I’ll, I’ll just try to keep that, a smaller part of the book.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. No, that’s awesome. How did you, how did you find those [00:20:00] people?

Andrew: Some of them, I, I had just read their books.

I, I love reading and especially once I decided to self-publish. Originally I was looking at a lot of authors, who were doing the same thing just to kind of see, okay, well how did they do it? Like, what do their covers look like? What do their blurbs look like? How do they format their books?

It was, it’s, it, the self-publishing world is kind of a big community that you can definitely dive in and meet people and ask help. There’s tons of Facebook groups about it. So that was one way. And then the rest, a lot of times, like if you’re talking to one person, they’ll be like, oh, you should hit up this guy about this particular fact.

Like he’s, he knows a lot about that stuff, and so like you kind of start building this web of contacts.

Mark: cool. So going back to character, how do you balance a character? ’cause you’re writing spy thrillers, which like you said is high octane. It’s moving fast. How do you balance, building like character and, and having people I care about the character versus being all plot driven.

Because I’ve noticed in, in [00:21:00] a lot of high action like books or movies, sometimes you don’t like a James Bond, you don’t really care about the character so much. It’s Right. It’s the high octane, the action that you’re in there for. Yeah. It’s the surroundings. Right.

Andrew: Well, it’s interesting, so bringing up James Bond, I’m a huge James Bond fan, like, I don’t know if you can see, there’s an Italian Goldfinger over my shoulder. And so, but not, I’m not just a fan of the movies, although I love the movies, but I’m also a fan of the books and, Ian Fleming’s writing. And so I would say I. Ian Fleming is probably one of the two or three writers that influenced my style the most.

’cause I read him very early. My dad was also a big Bond fan, and he had all the original books, like on our bookshelf when I was growing up. And as soon as I started liking the movies, I, I was like, oh, there’s books. And I started all the books and I, I’ve read them all, many times. So I absorbed his style, like very young elements of his style.

And I, so when I was planning this. There’s, there’s kind of a theory that Fleming, when he created James Bond, created like [00:22:00] the prototypical, like post World War II British hero, at that time, England’s position in the world was sort of uncertain. The US was on the rise and Europe was on the decline in terms of political impact.

So he created this very. Like prototypical British hero that could kind of, allow the country to live out its fantasies. At that time, like back in the fifties when he wrote those books, like a lot of people didn’t travel the world, people didn’t get to go into a casino. Like most people didn’t have those experiences, and so he was kind of.

Projecting the fantasy of his countrymen at that time and writing books like to satisfy those readers. So I, when I started Tokyo Black, when I was in my outlining and planning phase, I very consciously tried to put myself through the same process. And I was like, okay, like for the United States right now in this point of time, like what do I think is sort of the.

Prototypical type of hero, and to me, I think the US is more, I always think of us as kind of rebellious. We, we formed by breaking away [00:23:00] from another power. And so like maybe this character is kind of fighting against the, the CIA, even though he works with them and he’s a betrayed guy and it’s more about.

He feels a lot of guilt and uncertainty about what he’s doing. ‘Cause we’re a post-Watergate, post Iraq Nation, and we we’re not always sure that we believe in what our government is doing and what the right thing is. And so I just tried to go through a thought process like that in creating this character.

And then in writing the books, I think it’s really important to just make sure that no matter how outlandish and how crazy the action gets. The hero isn’t perfect. You know that he has flaws. And so for Caine, he has a lot of doubts, a lot of introspection. He sometimes thinks about things and is like, I’m not, this is the right thing.

I don’t know if I should be doing this. Is this the right way to go? Or, or, I shouldn’t be doing this. This is crazy. Why am I helping this person? I should cut loose and run. I try to include those thoughts in his thought process. Which I do think comes from Fleming. ’cause if you read the [00:24:00] original Bond books, the character’s a lot more introspective than the character in the movies is, like the character in the movie portrayed most of the time, maybe recently this changed, but most of the time portrayed as just uber confident.

Uber competent can do anything. But in the books he’s a little bit more, he has doubts, and he’s a little bit more of a human character. So I tried to just include little elements of that and kind of what I always compare it to is, so when I was growing up in the eighties. The two big action stars were Stephen Segal and Jean Claude Van Dam.

So my favorite was Van Dam, because if you watch a Segal movie, like he would never take a hit. Like he just goes through wipes the floor. Doesn’t even break a sweat. Whereas Van Dam would kind of get the crap beat outta him and then come back at the end and, and for a finale. So I think audiences root more for the character that has to struggle a little bit or, maybe everything doesn’t always work out or takes some hits, gets hurt a little bit, like to me that that helps bring the audience in a little.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So did that come [00:25:00] as you were writing or did that come before, did plan it out?

Andrew: I mean, I, in terms of the thought process I was telling you about the character and what he would be, that came before the writing, but. I just always try to keep that in the back of my mind as I’m writing.

And a lot of it has just become internalized now. Like that’s his character, Caine is a very introspective character. His thoughts are part of the book. He’s sometimes, I, sometimes I portray him almost like he has these, like two sides. There’s this killer’s voice that’s always whispering in the back of his head that he can’t really decide if he should listen to or not.

He is not sure. Is that. Is that the better side of me, or is, or is that the bad side of me? And so those elements are, have just become woven into his character. So I don’t, I don’t necessarily like plot them out, but they’re just kind of there in my head when I’m writing him.

Okay. But the process of what kind of character will this be? Like, that was something I did before I, I wrote it out.

Mark: How much do you do of the outline versus just jumping in?

Andrew: It’s [00:26:00] changed as I’ve gone, so for Tokyo Black. I had a very, very detailed outline. Not, I mean, not as detailed as some, like for instance, I think like James Patterson’s outlines are like 20 pages long.

Like it definitely wasn’t like that. But I did have a scene by scene outline. It was maybe four or five pages, and it was extremely complete. I deviated from it. Quite a bit. I get at one point, I think I always say almost every character other than Caine in the outline died at some point. And I kept changing it, reversing it, and now most of them don’t die, but then as I went through the books, I would say I started to see okay, I’m writing these long outlines, but I’m, I’m. Kind of getting to this point, and then they all diverge quite wildly, so I started loosening up the outlining process a little bit. And I would say now I typically have maybe, maybe like the first act outline to that degree.

And then the rest I just write sort of general descriptions of what [00:27:00] happens, like a few paragraphs for act two, a few paragraphs for Act three. And I try to keep it a little bit looser because I think. For me now, I can get kinda lost in the outline and I kind of feel like it, that’s really putting off the work of the book at this point.

Yeah. So there’s certain things that I know I need to know, like I need to know, like why is the villain doing what they’re doing, and what is the villain’s plot? And if I have those key details filled in, I can feel out the rest of it.

Yeah, that makes sense. What about yourself? Are you, are you more of an outlier or more of a panther or.

Mark: I have also switched. I was pantsing. Mm-hmm. Well, I went back and forth. I went from an outliner, didn’t get very far right. I went to Pantsing and then have come back to outlining. But the same thing I have found when I write the characters or when I’m writing the outline, the characters take over and then when I actually write the book.

Like you said, it just, it goes right off the rails.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: So it’s like I didn’t know the character enough to have an outline, and then once I actually know the character well enough, [00:28:00] it, it changes everything

Andrew: as I, but the, the other thing I’ve found is a lot of the times the, you know, so for instance, like I’m on my sixth book writing Caine, so I know him quite well, but sometimes a background character will just.

Becomes something very different, you know, than what you imagine they would be. Mm-hmm. And that takes the story in a whole different direction. I remember on the second book the villain, I, I outlined the villain a certain way. And from the very first scene, he just was something totally different. You know, it just came out completely different.

I was like, oh, wow. Like, where’d this come from? And it, it utterly changed the book, you know, and, and for the better, I think. But like, a lot of times. You just can’t really foresee, the things that are gonna change the plot and change, like how things go. So,

Mark: yeah, no, absolutely. My characters always mess with my stories once I get to know them, it’s a good thing.

I think that’s where the, the best stuff comes from, you know? Yeah. It’s, it’s a lot of fun. I mean, I, I don’t mind it, I don’t mind ditching part of the outline, but that I just put less time into it now. Yeah. With still outlining, because Paning is, is [00:29:00] where. I would you, it’s easy to write like act one and then lose track.

It gets harder. Yeah. It gets where you’re supposed to go because I’m like, okay, you kind of write yourself into a hole. And I know some people are great at that, they don’t mind. But yeah, didn’t work for me. I need a little bit more guidance than did the straight pantsing so.

Andrew: Right on.

Mark: All right, well we’re gonna do some wrap. I can ask questions forever here. But we’re gonna wrap it up a little bit and, if you could give a piece of advice for someone who just published like book one or two, what would it be?  

Andrew: Wow. Okay. I think it’s, it, it’s really, I think it, I think the most important, well, it, it sort of depends like what your focus is.

But like, let’s say, I’ll, I’ll tackle this from the perspective of if you’re looking to make this either, either a full-time gig or like a significant side hustle where you know you want this to be like a business. I think the most important thing is to have a plan, because I talk to a lot of authors who, on [00:30:00] the, who are basically all they’re thinking about is the first book, you know, and getting it out there and, and they’re thinking that that book is gonna be enormously successful.

And the reality is that doesn’t often happen. Even, even the success that I had with my first book, I don’t think would be enough to build a, a career off of, so you have to. Plan, you, you have to like look at that as one brick, but also know you’ve gotta be planning other bricks.

So like, figure out, how can you turn this into a series or, or do you want a series if you wanna do standalones? Like how can you make all the standalones kind of fit together so that you could market them like, like kind of always have that marketing hat ready to put on so that you can build and build and build.

Because what I think what happens to a lot of writers that I talk to is they put out their first book. It doesn’t do like enormously well, like so well that they can, quit their job or something and then they get discouraged. And I, I kind of call that lottery thinking like, they’re like, oh, this book’s my lottery ticket, and it’s gonna [00:31:00] win and then I’m done.

And even for very successful authors, it just doesn’t usually work that way. It’s really more about building a body of work. So. Do you have a writing process? Like, can you, do you have time set aside whether you’re, if you’re working like another job, can you devote, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour a day to writing?

What will the books in this series be like, how can you keep this story going, and what other things can you do? What can marketing can you do, what do the covers in your genre look like? You know, if you’re self-publishing or if you’re. Plan on going traditional route, like what publishers would be a good fit for this material?

You know, I think a lot of authors just don’t think through all those details and they just put out the first book and then get discouraged. So I would say yeah, it’s great if your first book does well, but be planning, like, plan your next book and your book after that, and your book after that and, and look at it more like a business.

And don’t let temporary setbacks discourage you from moving forward.

Mark: That’s awesome. Thank you. Of course. What kind of time do you put into like marketing versus writing?

Andrew: When I was, when I was  [00:32:00] self-publishing, quite a bit. Well, I quite, to me it seems like quite a bit.

I’m sure there’s people who do more, but I would schedule, I would schedule time, basically I do like maybe an hour, two hours a a week. So like an hour on Monday and an hour on Friday, and I would like do like Facebook ads and Amazon ads, and I. Look at the ads, see how they’re doing.

Just make, do all that business stuff. You know, like, do I need to increase my bids? Should I launch more ads? Do I need to look at other platforms? Things like that. Also, I think building my newsletter, do I have a plan? What am I gonna send this this week? Am my newsletter, what am I doing to grow my newsletter?

Like, am I, am I signed up for group promos on book funnel or things like that? I think having a newsletter, actually, back to the question we were talking about before, I apologize. But having a newsletter is also a super important thing that a lot of authors, I think, kind of skip over or don’t realize how big a deal it is.

Because the reason I was able to launch my books as well is I did, is because I kind of plan in advance and had built up a newsletter of readers before the books came out, so I [00:33:00] had an audience already that I could. Blast. Like, Hey, the book one is out now, Hey, book two is out. So, I would say probably two, two to three hours a week I was spending.

Now that I’m with a publisher, I, they’re handling that, so I don’t do it as much, but I do find that that has freed me up to still use that time to pursue other kinds of marketing. So, for instance, talking to you or being on a podcast, that’s a kind of marketing . I would say now I kind of just focus more on marketing my brand versus like an individual book, like me as an author versus selling book one of this series.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Cool. And where can readers find you? Oh,

Andrew: I’m at Andrew Warren books.com, or of course I’m on Amazon. A lot of readers don’t know this, but on Amazon, if there’s an author that you like, if you, go to their author page, you can follow them. There’s a little button that says Follow.

And then Amazon will, send you emails when they have new books coming out, or when they have books on sale, or if they have a pre-order, like, and that way they’ll, they’ll kind of send it right to you. So yeah, follow me on Amazon. [00:34:00] I’d be, I’d really appreciate it. And visit me at andrewwarrenbooks.com.

Mark: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. If you don’t mind sticking around for, a couple of bonus questions at the end for, the newsletter subscribers. I just have a few extra for you. Yeah, happy to do it. All right, well, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, you can support the show and get early access to future episodes on Patreon, links in the show notes. Some guests are also sharing bonus content on our Patreon, like short stories, behind the scenes extras and more, so jump over there to get that content.

If you like the show, please follow, rate or share it with another Thriller fan. It really helps. I’ll see you in the next episode. I’m gonna be sitting down with Jenna Moquin, author of the Psychological Thriller, The Cemetery Spot