All posts tagged interview

Flying High with Thriller Author David Freed

David Freed is a screenwriter, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, pilot, father and dog lover with a passion for Mexican food and “virtually all things with wings”. He’s also one of my new favorite authors. David’s debut thriller, Flat Spin, is a witty, entertaining tale chock-full of captivating characters that never lets go. The Library Journal called it “a delightful romp” and “highly recommended.” Kirkus Reviews said it’s “full of interesting episodes and feels authentic…” TRUE THAT, says me.

Flat Spin overview:

Based in sunny Rancho Bonita – “California’s Monaco” as the city’s moneyed minions like to call it – Cordell Logan is a literate, sardonic flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist with dwindling savings and a shadowy past. When his beautiful ex-wife, Savannah, shows up out of the blue to tell him that her husband has been murdered in Los Angeles, Logan is quietly pleased. Savannah’s late husband, after all, is Arlo Echevarria, the man she left Logan for.

Logan and Echevarria were once comrades-in-arms assigned to a top-secret military assassination team known as “Alpha.” The only problem is, the LAPD can find no record of Echevarrias ever having toiled for Uncle Sam. Savannah wants Logan to tell the police what he knows. At first he refuses, but then, relying on his small, aging airplane, the “Ruptured Duck,” and the skills he honed working for Alpha, Logan doggedly hunts Echevarria’s killer.

His trail takes him from the glitzy Las Vegas Strip to the most dangerous ghettos of inner-city Oakland, from darkened, Russian Mafia haunts in West Los Angeles to the deserts of Arizona. But that’s the least of his problems. It is his love-hate relationship with Savannah, a woman Logan continues to pine for in spite of himself, that threatens to consume him.

Sounds thrilling, right??? Well, I have more good news. David is here with us today, in the form of his insight. Grab your favorite beverage and take a seat. I suspect you’ll want to take the time to savor what he has to say. 😉

AM: First, congratulations on your book release! How does it feel to have your first thriller published? What was launch day/week like for you? 

DF: Thanks, August. The experience has been thrilling, no pun intended, and surreal. As you know as a writer yourself, you spend many months or even years in a room all by your lonesome, filling one blank page after another with words conveying fanciful ideas from a world you’ve concocted in your head. Then, one day, if you’re incredibly fortunate, some publisher says, “I like the way you’ve arranged those words enough that I’m going to pay you—though not very much–to put them in the form of a book.” A year or so later, your friendly UPS delivery driver dumps a cardboard box on your doorstep and there you stand, hefting in your hand that very book, many copies of which you hope will find favor across the land.

All hyperbole aside, opening that box certainly rated as one of the great moments of my life to date. However, my ego balloon was quickly shot down by the handful of good friends I invited over to help me celebrate what a huge honking success I am. They quickly reminded me that I’m still the same guy who picks up the dog poop in his backyard, prefers turkey burgers over fine dining and wears his T-shirts into the ground.

AM: Not to re-inflate that balloon or anything, but I think all of that makes you cooler. What inspired you to write Flat Spin?

DF: I’m a journalist by background, and I don’t think there’s ever been a journalist born that didn’t secretly aspire to write a novel. My goal, having reported more than my share of stories exploring the dark side of humanity, was to write a book that would be fun to read while incorporating into the plot subject material of which I was at least somewhat familiar. I also wanted to write something that I could claim at the end of the day was truly mine. When you’re hired as a writer in Hollywood, which is another hat I’ve worn, you sign a contract that literally states the studio is the author of your work. I cannot tell you how my scripts I’ve cranked out that ultimately and absolutely bore no resemblance to what I wrote.

AM: You really put the reader in Cordell Logan’s head. I felt like I was the secret military assassin turned Buddhist flight instructor. (I mean that as a compliment.) How similar is Logan to you?

DF: Thanks for the compliment. Hey, I’ll take all I can get! You’ve asked a tough question. In terms of life’s experience, I’d say that I’ve traveled on the periphery of where Logan’s gone—though, certainly, he’s led a much more bombastic life than me. For example, I didn’t played football for the Air Force Academy, as Logan did, but I did play football. I never flew Air Force A-10s during Desert Storm, but I did help cover Desert Storm for the Los Angeles Times. Like Logan, I’m an instrument-rated pilot. Unlike him, I am not a flight instructor. Nor am I an aspiring Buddhist, though I am intrigued with the religion. One more thing: Logan is a former member of a covert, since-disbanded government assassination team. I can assure you I have never worked for such a team, though I have done work in the intelligence community. If Logan and I share any undeniable similarities, it is that we both really enjoy flying airplanes and eating really good burritos, though not necessarily in that order.

AM: Nice. I liked the fact that you didn’t go overboard in describing characters’ appearances. I envisioned Savannah like Anna Nicole Smith for some reason… Way off? 

DF: Waaay off! [*August laughs, LOUDLY.*] But that’s cool. As a reader, you should have the right to imagine fictional characters however you wish. If you see Savannah as Anna Nicole Smith, you’re not gonna wreck my day, even though I may have conjured her with a completely different image in mind.

As a screenwriter, I learned that movie casting options dwindle proportionately to the degree of description you write into a script when it comes to your  characters’ physical attributes, or lack thereof. The perfect dilemma of too much detail can be found in the upcoming Jack Reacher film. Author Lee Child describes Reacher, a former military police officer, as a big, brawny guy, well over 6 feet. Who’s purportedly going to play Reacher?—5’-7” Tom Cruise. Not that Cruise wouldn’t do a great job with the role. But fans of Child’s books are already grousing about how casting Cruise will absolutely ruin the franchise. I’ve heard that author Sue Grafton refuses to sell the film rights to her wildly successful Kinsey Millhone series simply because she doesn’t want her readers equating Kinsey with the likes of a real life actress.

AM: What was the toughest part of the process, from beginning your first draft to publication?

DF: With Flat Spin, it was having no choice but to set aside the draft to work on gigs that paid. By the time I’d get back to the novel, weeks and sometimes months would have gone by; I would’ve forgotten major plot points and even characters’ names. It’s much easier to build a head of steam and maintain a daily momentum, writing a book start and finish without distraction.

AM: I imagine many writers can relate to that. Anything you’ll do differently next time around?

DF: I already am. I’ve turned down or postponed several other writing assignments to devote myself full-time to Flat Spin’s sequel.

AM: Love that. Your career background is extremely  intimidating impressive. How does thriller writing compare to your work as a journalist?

DF: They’re two distinct animals. A journalist is married to facts. In both reporting and writing a news story, you go where those facts take you. Writing a fictional thriller can be vastly more exhilarating and intimidating if for no other reason than the immensity of the potential creative landscape you, as a novelist, look out upon. You must make myriad creative choices that you don’t typically make in a news story. The process can be analogous to feeling your way through a minefield: every step bodes potential success or disaster.

Writing a thriller versus a journalistic story is also different because of the much more subjective nature of the final product. When you’ve published a first-rate piece of journalism, there is usually broad agreement you’ve accomplished something significant. With fiction, a writer rarely achieves that kind of consensus, if only because of the disparate tastes of individual readers. It’s like a Jackson Pollack painting. Many people will see genius in it; others will see it as one huge paint splatter.

AM: How many secret sources have you met in smoky bars? Has the work put you in danger? Do I watch too much crime TV? (If yes to that last bit, feel free to make up something saucy.)

DF: Meeting sources in bars is not nearly as sketchy as meeting them in underground parking garages or empty parks at night, where there are fewer witnesses to identify your body. I’d be lying if I said there haven’t been a few occasions when I felt like things got a little gnarly in such places. I remember once making arrangements to rendezvous in a bar with a really sketchy dude who’d called me, claiming to have direct knowledge of the alleged second gunman in the John F. Kennedy assassination. He insisted after we met that I come with him to his apartment where he had all of the “evidence” in safekeeping. I went to the men’s room, called my editors, and gave them the address, so that if I didn’t show up for work the next day, they’d know where to send the coroner. Turns out the guy, who proved to be a totally harmless whacko, had devised some theory that the second gunman was secretly hidden in the trunk of JFK’s limo. Yeah, right.

On another occasion, I was working on a series of stories targeting members of organized crime in a major land fraud scam. I came home late one night and my phone started ringing immediately. The anonymous caller proceeded to spent about 30 seconds telling me where things were in my cabinets and drawers that you wouldn’t have otherwise known about unless you’d been inside my apartment—and I lived in a secure building. The next morning, I went out to my car and discovered somebody had put a screwdriver through the fuel tank. There were was gas all over the parking lot. I carried a pistol for several weeks after that. For the most part, however, investigative reporting is incredibly tedious. You spend vast amounts of time interviewing boring bureaucrats, and hours sifting through government archives where you are much more likely to catch some obscure respiratory disease than you are a bullet.

AM: Yipes. Aside from staying healthy and bullet hole-free, what’s next in the pipeline? 

DF: I’m hard at work on the next Cordell Logan mystery. If all goes well, it’ll be out next year. I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed this!

*****

He’s GREAT, right??? To purchase Flat Spin, zip over to Amazon.com or David’s website for more options. In the meantime, or after, any thoughts or questions to share with David?

26 Comments
by August McLaughlin on May 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogging, Pinterest, Publishing, Wellness
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Posted by August McLaughlin on May 29, 2012

https://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/flying-high-with-thriller-author-david-freed/

Marc Schuster on The Grievers — A Hilarious, Inspiring Must-Read

Sometime during high school, I watched The Dead Poet’s Society on VHS. I remember thinking, “This’ll be good,” before watching it, and “Holy crap, that was awesome!” at the end. Watching the two-ish hour film felt more like living years within the character’s lives. I laughed, cried, wondered and learned along with them. The story made me examine my own life and decisions, and has stuck with me since.

Marc Schuster’s The Grievers reminds me of The Dead Poet’s Society, only slightly because it involves a prep school. The relatively short book felt as rich as a series. I laughed, ached and learned, thanks to the main character, Charley. (Did I mention laughed?) He had me pondering my own life and changed the way I look at the dancing chickens on Hollywood street corners…forever. Though it’s not been long since I read it, I have no doubt I’ll think of The Grievers again in the coming years. In a word, I found it inspiring.

Synopsis:
When Charley Schwartz learns that an old high school pal has killed himself, he agrees to help his alma mater organize a memorial service to honor his fallen comrade. Soon, however, devestation turns to disgust as Charley discovers that his friend’s passing means less to the school than the bottom line. As the memorial service quickly degenerates into a fundraising fiasco, Charley must also deal with a host of other quandaries including a dead-end job as an anthropomorphic dollar sign, his best firned’s imminent move to Maryland, an intervention with a drug-addled megalomaniac, and his own ongoing crusade to enforce the proper use of apostrophes among the proprietors of local dining establishments.

Desperate to set the world right and keep his own life from spiraling out of control, Charley rages through his days and nights, plotting all the while the ultimate eulogy for his deceased friend and a scathing indictment of a world gone wrong. (The Permanent Press, 2012)

The Grievers officially releases today. (CONGRATS, MARC!) I’m so thrilled to bring you insight from the author himself…

 

AM: You’ve called The Grievers “a coming of age story for a generation that’s still struggling to come of age.” What did you mean by that?

MS: There’s such an emphasis upon entertainment in our culture that we’re losing the ability to take things seriously. We’re really into melodrama, into quick laughs, into anything that amuses us. Look at The Daily Show for example. I love watching it, but there’s something mildly disturbing about the fact that I get a lot—if not most—of my news from John Stewart. It’s like I can’t digest serious information without a heaping teaspoon of humor to help me get it down. What does this say about me? About people of my generation? When am I going to start taking things seriously? Questions like these were in the back of my mind as I was writing the novel, and they’re also the kinds of questions that plague its narrator.

AM: Tell us about the main character, Charley Schwartz. How similar is he to you?

MS: It’s probably fair to say that he’s an extremely exaggerated version of myself. What separates us, I hope, is that I think before I speak, whereas Charley is a lot more impulsive. As a result, he puts his foot in his mouth far more frequently than I do. In terms of biography, though, we do have a few things in common. We both went to prep schools in our teenage years, and we are both the products of our respective educations. Perhaps most importantly, Charley and I have extremely patient wives who let us know when we’re making fools of ourselves. The difference, again, is that I usually have the good sense to listen, whereas Charley doesn’t.

 AM: The Grievers presents numerous lessons. Was that intentional?

MS: I don’t think I set out to teach specific lessons as I was writing. Had I done that, I’m pretty sure those lessons would stifle the novel, or it might come across as preachy. Instead, it’s probably a matter of having certain values, beliefs, and assumptions in the back of my mind as I was writing, and they crept into the finished product on an unconscious level.

AM: You came close to self-publishing The Grievers some years back. What prompted you to consider that option and then change your mind? 

MS: I’d written a few novel-length manuscripts by then, but The Grievers was the first one that I thought really had potential for publication. Unfortunately—or so I thought at the time—agents and editors didn’t agree with me. So I imagined self-publishing might be the way to go. At about the same time, I wrote a fan letter to Chuck Palahniuk in which I told him about the book and my plans to publish it on my own. He wrote back saying that he liked the idea for The Grievers, but he urged me not to self-publish. His point was that instead of putting my efforts into publishing the novel, I should start working on a new one and then return to The Grievers with fresh eyes. In the end, I decided to take his advice, and I’m glad I did. Setting the manuscript aside for a couple of years gave me the perspective I needed to do a thorough revision, and having another novel published in the interim taught me a lot about publishing.

AM: You’ve shared some great deleted scenes from The Grievers on your blog. How did you decide what to cut and keep? 

MS: In many cases, the cutting had to do with the pacing of the novel. I might, for example, realize that I’d already established an idea or theme and cut a passage because it was redundant. In other cases, I was striving to make the novel as much a work of fiction as possible. The germ of the story started with my own life and observations, but for the novel to work as a piece of fiction, I felt I really needed to make Charley his own person. So I cut anything that struck me as too autobiographical. The final thing that helped me decide what to cut and what to keep was input from other readers. I’m fortunate to have a lot of avid readers in my life, so I had a lot of very strong, very informed opinions to draw upon. If someone I respected enough to show the manuscript told me that something wasn’t working, we’d talk a bit about why and whether or not it was something that could be fixed or simply didn’t fit. If, in the end, we decided it didn’t fit, I’d cut it.

AM: Any chance we’ll see it on the big screen someday? (Spielberg might read this. You never know…) Who would you cast as Charley?

MS: I could definitely see Jason Schwartzman as Charley. I loved him in Rushmore, and to an extent, I see an affinity betweenThe Grievers and that movie. Charley could conceivably be described as an adult version of Schwartzman’s character, Max Fischer.

AM: You’ve received some awesome praise from reviewers. (Congrats, by the way.) Do you have a favorite? Any nail your book on the head or surprise you?

MS: Thank you! I’ve been so flattered by all of the praise that the book has received. A blogger named FP Dorchak made me smile when he wrote, “To be utterly blunt if not politically correct, this book had me laughing my ass off.” But I’m also glad that reviewers are picking up on the balance between humor and tragedy that I tried to bring to the novel. Robin Black is an author I admire immensely, so her praise also meant a lot to me: “The Grievers is a an extraordinary weave of humor, insight and intelligence. Marc Schuster has written a perfect comic novel, one that never strays far from either poignance or hilarity.” He book If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This is one of my favorite short story collections.

*****

For more information, check out Marc Schuster’s blog and follow him on Twitter. To purchase The Grievers, zip over to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.

Any thoughts or questions to share with Marc? I’m sure he’d love hearing from you!


45 Comments
by August McLaughlin on May 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Authors, Books, Publishing, Writing
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Posted by August McLaughlin on May 15, 2012

https://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/marc-schuster-on-the-grievers-a-hilarious-inspiring-must-read/

“Top Crime Writer” Roger Jon Ellory: A Peek Inside His Life

Roger Jon Ellory is a British thriller writer who will knock your socks off. (Trust me—I’ve read two of his works and both times, up and away…) His international bestseller, A Quiet Belief in Angels, is a lyrical, haunting tale about a boy growing up in the midst of a serial killer during the 1950s—a story I doubt I’ll forget. His recent release, A Quiet Vendetta, is the only mafia-centered book I’ve enjoyed—okay, or finished. I wanted to race through it and savor each page at once. Mystery People, USA said it “solidifies him as one of the top crime writers today.”

 

Here’s what others are saying about A Quiet Vendetta:

“The kidnapping of 19-year-old Catherine Ducane, daughter of Louisiana governor Charles Ducane, and the brutal murder of her driver set the stage for this absorbing crime novel from Ellory (A Simple Act of Violence) covering more than 50 years of mob violence and American history.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“This is a sprawling masterpiece covering 50 years of the American Dream gone sour. Real people and events are mixed in with fictional characters in this striking novel that brings to mind the best of James Ellroy.”— The Good Book Guide

“Beautifully written, this is a novel to get lost in and one that is a long ride into the darkness, and if you recall reading Mario Puzo’s The Godfather as a teenager (as I did), then this is a powerful book that will make you relive that memory – masterful, but beware of the brutality, because it comes out of the most literate prose I have read in many years.” — Deadly Pleasures

I’m thrilled and honored to share Roger Ellory with you today.

AM: What inspired you to pursue a writing career?

RE: I was always creatively minded, right from an early age. My primary interests were in the fields of art, photography, music—such things as this. Not until I was twenty-two did I consider the possibility of writing. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine about a book he was reading and he was so enthusiastic! I thought, ‘It would be great to create that kind of an effect.’ That evening—back in November of 1987—I started writing my first book, and over the next six years I wrote a total of 23 novels. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I think it just took me those first twenty-two years of my life to really discover what I wanted to do. Now it seems like such a natural part of me and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

AM: How is your career different than/similar to what you expected? 

RE: I think the main difference between what I expected and how it actually is, is the sheer quantity of self-generated promotion and travel that’s involved. The year before last I went to forty-nine cities in eleven countries in seven months. During that time I was home for a total of seventeen days, and there isn’t a great deal of writing that can be done while you’re on the road like that. I’ve just returned from ten days in France, and have already done a US tour this year, along with Norway and a couple of other places…

It is great to meet readers, and really gives you a chance to get some feedback, but it isn’t writing. John Lennon once said, “Find something you love and you’ll never work another day.” I love doing this, and I do enjoy the travelling, and I have no complaints. But I never figured that learning another language would be necessary!

AM: What’s your typical writing day like?

RE: I start early in the day. I try and produce three or four thousand words a day, and work on the basis of getting a first draft done in about twelve weeks. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes shorter. I buy a new notebook, a good quality one, because I know I’m going to be carrying it around for two or three months, and in the notebook I write down ideas as I go. Little bits of dialogue, things like that. Sometimes I have a title, sometimes not. I used to feel very strongly about having a good title before I started, but now—because at least half the books I’ve published have ended up with a different title—I am not so obsessive about it! Also, with the travelling commitments, I have to be more disciplined, so I aim to write three chapters a day. Then I practice guitar for two or three hours and handle all my e-mails and admin stuff—all the things that go along with the public aspect of being a writer.

AM: What value do you see in conferences and other literary events?

RE: I think you can’t avoid it these days. I think you have to do it, regardless of whether or not you want to. The attention of the literary press is overwhelmed with new books all the time, and you cannot hope for reviews. Besides, awards and reviews tend not to sell books, but word-of-mouth does, and the only way to get that kind of thing started is to go out there and meet people. Also, if you turn up someplace for a festival, the press tends to be there. And that’s when your name and the name of your book wins up in the newspapers and magazines.

AM: Why did you write A Quiet Vendetta?

RE: I’ve  always possessed a deep and profound interest in the Mafia—a deep fascination with organised crime, with the way in which a family can become an empire which can control a city or a country for years and years. Additionally, there is the issue of the family itself. The Mafia was all about family, loyalty to family. I am always looking for the emotional connection in a story, and with this one it was easy—the sense of loyalty engendered in people for no other reason than blood.

Also, I wanted to write a novel about the worst kind of human being I could think of, and yet write him in such a way as that when the reader comes to the end of the book they have almost forgiven him, they perhaps have some understanding of why he was how he was, why he did the things he did and perhaps even wish him to evade the law. That was the idea behind the book, and from what people have told me I seem to have accomplished that.

Vendetta holds a special place for me. It was written very quickly, in about eight weeks, and I worked at it for many hours every day. I wanted to write it quickly. I knew it was going to be a big novel, and I knew that if I took months and months to write it then it would perhaps read very slowly. I wanted to get the work done rapidly so as to keep some of the energy and immediacy that comes from working that fast.

AM: A Quiet Vendetta is based on real events. What was your research process like?

RE: I researched the factual and historical aspects of the book as I went. I ‘lived’ in that world for all that time. I spent all my waking hours thinking about the story, about the characters, about what would happen. I do not work out books before I start them. I do not do outlines or a synopsis. I just start with the first scene and a basic idea of what I want the book to be about, and then I think about it and plot it as I go. It is often the case that I do not know how the book will end until I am thirty or forty pages away from completing it.

Research-wise, I wound up with many hundreds of pages of notes, books, biographies, documentation from court cases, dozens and dozens of photographs. They all played a part in trying to recreate that world within which these characters lived.

AM: You’re a talented musician—which seems to be a common thread among my favorite authors. What role does music play in your writing? Is there a correlation between the two?

RE: I have always been passionate about music, and just as I found a great empathy in American literature, I found a great empathy in jazz and blues and country music. Someone once told me that music was the way in which one person translated their emotions into sounds, and then gave those sounds to someone else who translated them back into emotion for themselves. I agree with this.

I think good literature works on an emotional level, and I definitely feel that good music works on an emotional level. As far as long improvisations are concerned, I am not so much this kind of musician.  I like to conceive of a song that I write as delivering an emotional message, and when the message is delivered the song is done. The response from music is so much more immediate than from literature, so a novel—taking months to write, and the another year before it is in print—is a much slower process than writing a song in two hours and then going down to a bar and playing it for people that same evening. There is a great pleasure in both activities. I say that music is my religion and writing is my philosophy, or maybe it’s the other way around!

AM: If you could speak to your younger self, before your career took off, what would you say?

RE: Not a great deal different from the things the younger me said to the younger me! Stick with it, persist, persevere, don’t ever quit, don’t change what you’re writing because you think something else will be more commercially successful. Maybe I would tell myself to be a little less anxious about the future, but then I think that the anxiety I felt about failure gave me a lot of drive, and without that drive I would not have persisted.

AM: What are your top tips for up-and-coming authors?

RE: I believe the worst kind of book you can write is the book that you believe other people will enjoy. I believe the best kind of book you can write is the one that you yourself would like to read. I don’t think they should look for a barnstorming opening. I don’t think they should look for anything as a kind of ‘magic paragraph’ or opening line.  Write the book that interests you. Your own enthusiasm for the subject will come through. That enthusiasm will then be contagious.

I think that a lot of truly extraordinary and very successful books don’t work as ideas on paper, but because of the way in which they have been written or constructed, they have worked, and worked wonderfully. Books that tell you how to write a bestseller in thirty days…well, I don’t know what to say. I think great stories come from people and their experiences in life, not from formulas.

Beyond that, you have to persevere, persist and never give up.  Keep sending that book out. Get an agent. Get someone working with you who is as enthusiastic as you are about your work. And then just keep going! One quote that kept me going was from Disraeli: “Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose.”

AM: What do you hope readers reap from your work?

RE: Well with me, a book always begins with the emotion I want to evoke in the reader. I think the books that we love the most, the books that define our lives, the books that we always recommend to people, are those that have touched us emotionally. If I am trying to do anything with my writing, I am attempting to connect with people on an emotional level. For me, the most important thing is that once somebody has finished reading my books they might not necessarily remember the name of the book, even the plot details, but they will remember how it made them feel.

Some of the greatest books ever published, the ones that rightfully regarded as classics, are books that have a very simple storyline, but a very rich and powerful emotional pull. It’s the emotion that makes them memorable and special. I think that’s the key with great books, as far as I am concerned—to always be emotionally engaging. That is what I am always working towards, and what I think makes my books a little different.

AM: What’s next in the pipeline for you?

RE: I have a new book out in the UK in May called A Dark and Broken Heart and I have just completed a book called The Devil and The River which will be published here in June of 2013. Today, I am about to begin the novel for 2014, as yet untitled, but once this interview is complete I will be starting that new work.

Music-wise, with The Whiskey Poets, we have just posted a little video that someone shot at one of our gigs on YouTube, we are selling the EP we recorded, and we are working towards getting a tour together. That’s exciting for me, and I am looking forward to being on a musical road as well as the book tour road! I have some upcoming books events, and I will be in Toulouse, France and Knowlton, Canada and also at Bouchercon in Ohio. I am also going to Florida to do some workshops for the Florida Writers’ Association which will be great.

For more information, check out Roger’s website and follow him on Twitter.

****
He’s terrific, right? I know he’d love to hear your thoughts, so please, share away. Also, the first person to email me (august at augustmclaughlin dot com) will receive a free copy of A Quiet Vendetta. All I ask is that you post a review in return. Thanks, gang!
25 Comments
by August McLaughlin on March 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Authors, Books, Writing
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Posted by August McLaughlin on March 29, 2012

https://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/top-crime-writer-roger-jon-ellory-a-peak-inside-his-life/

Author Interview: Kyle Mills

ON WRITING, GEEKING OUT & HIS LATEST WORK

What do you get when you pair fascinating characters, a devastating disease, masterful writing and real life experience as an FBI kid? The Immortalists—one of the fastest-paced, intriguing thrillers I’ve read in some time.

Today I’m honored to bring you New York Times bestselling author of twelve books, Kyle Mills. (If you haven’t read The Immortalists or others of Mills’ work, you’ve got some serious reading to do… ;))

Description: Dr. Richard Draman is trying desperately to discover a cure for a disease that causes children to age at a wildly accelerated rate–a rare genetic condition that is killing his own daughter. When the husband of a colleague quietly gives him a copy of the classified work she was doing before her mysterious suicide, Draman finally sees a glimmer of hope. Its stunning conclusions have the potential to not only turn the field of biology on its head but reshape the world. Soon, though, he finds himself on the run, relentlessly pursued by a seemingly omnipotent group of men who will do whatever it takes to silence him. (Thomas & Mercer, Dec. 2011)

AM: You’re known to hit up hefty issues in your work, from the tobacco industry to terrorism. Why did you decide to focus on “anti-aging” in The Immortalists?

KM: The myth of the fountain of youth is one of the oldest and most widespread in history, with writing on the subject dating back before Christ. The one thing that all those stories and elaborate quests had in common, though, was that they were nonsense—just another example of our superstitious nature.

With all the recent advances in genetics, though, the myth is becoming reality.  There may be children alive today who will never get old, and that brings up a lot of interesting issues that are perfect fodder for a thriller novel. Change can very easily turn into chaos and chaos makes for great stories.

On the other hand, it could just be because I’m getting old…

AM: Beats the alternative, right? 😉 Speaking of aging, progeria, the genetic disease featured in The Immortalists, is a real disease. What was your research process like?

KM: It was pretty extensive with this book—a lot of genetics and evolutionary biology texts. Thank God I’m actually interested in that stuff or it would have been brutal.

I wanted to really understand the current state of the science and where it’s heading because it’s a story that hinges on believability.  Having said that, I didn’t want to go overboard.  I made a pact with myself that I’d put all the science-geek stuff I wanted in the first draft and then take exactly half of it out in the second.

AM: The ending surprised me, in good ways. Do you plot your stories and endings out from the get-go? 

KM: Absolutely. I’m a fanatic for outlining. In fact, the outline for the book I’m working on now is already 35,000 words long.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t surprises in the actual writing process, but I like to keep them to a minimum.

My goal is to make sure everything is tied up at the end—but sometimes in a more messy way than people expect. Life rarely provides neat, painless endings.

AM: Your father’s career as an FBI agent has been credited for making your stories and characters so “real”—along with talent, of course. What other factors influence your writing?

KM: It sounds a bit clichéd, but the world around me. I do an enormous amount of reading on history, science, and politics to come up with concepts that inspire me.  And often the idea doesn’t come from just one of those categories, but a combination of all of them. My favorite themes are simple (if brutal) solutions to seemingly intractable problems and the power of the individual to change the world.

AM: One of the greatest attributes of thrillers, that last bit. What if your dad was, say, a plumber or gym teacher… How different might your stories be?

KM: Probably very. When I wrote my first novel, I chose the thriller genre not only because I was a fan but because of my family history with law enforcement. They say write what you know and I took that to heart. If I’d come from a plumbing family, I may well have written about that.

AM: Was your upbringing as exciting as movies and our imaginations make it out to be? (If not, please less us down gently…) 

KM: It might be close. I was having dinner with my father in London when his deputy came in and told him that a plane had gone down and they needed to get to a little town called Lockerbie right away. I’ve had drinks with a guy who, by law, can’t be photographed. I’ve heard first person accounts of gunfights that actually involved monkeys.

AM: I hope the monkeys weren’t hurt! Wait—don’t tell me… What do you enjoy most about writing?

KM: It gives me an excuse to completely geek out on subjects that interest me.  I’m not sure that expertise in areas like the tobacco industry, oil extraction, and the genetics of aging are very useful in the real world, but I love that stuff.

AM: And the downsides?

KM: It’s an industry in constant turmoil and that turmoil is getting more violent every day. I’ve written a lot of books and there’s never been a single one that I didn’t think would be my last. It’s a little nerve wracking if writing is how you pay the mortgage.

AM: Yes, I’d prefer such danger stay on the page… What are you most proud of career-wise?

KM: That’s a tough question. I think maybe the effort I put into each book. I tend to sweat over every line, every fact, and every character. Hopefully, it shows.

AM: It absolutely does. The Immortalists is your twelfth novel, correct? What’s next in the pipeline?

KM: Somewhere around there—enough that you wouldn’t want to lift them all at once.  Next up is a new Ludlum book. It’s an opportunity to explore the progressing science of man/machine integration, something that’s accelerating quickly and will have a lot of impact in the next quarter century.

AM: Any advice for up-and-coming novelists?

KM: I don’t know, it’s hard to even keep up with what’s going on in the industry from one day to the next. My best piece of advice is to not get into the business with the idea that you’re going to make a million dollars or even a living. Write because you love it.

AM: (Note to self: Stock up on Top Ramen. Er, rice, bananas and beans…) Great advice. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. On behalf of my friends and readers, I wish you all possible success.

Support fantastic authors! To learn more, visit www.kylemills.com. To purchase The Immortalists, visit Amazon.com or your local book store.

*****

If you’ve read The Immortalists, what did you think? Any thoughts to share with Kyle? What do you love most about writing?

24 Comments
by August McLaughlin on January 12, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Authors, Books, Thriller / Suspense
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by August McLaughlin on January 12, 2012

https://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/author-interview-kyle-mills/

Author Interview: Marc Schuster

I’d just finished reading Marc Schuster’s fantastic blog series, A Novel Approach, when I jumped over to Amazon to check out his work. Man, this guy’s smart, I thought. I hope he writes thrillers!

Nope. But my preference turned out not to matter. Marc’s breakout novel, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, takes off with thriller velocity and supports my belief that all great books maintain page-turner momentum, keeping the reader enthused. His prose are so fantastic they’d intimidate, if not for the pull-you-in nature of the story and characters. I wasn’t sweating through pages at the gym, but in the mind and life of Audrey Corcoran, a middle aged divorcee who’s swept up into a world of addiction.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Marc Schuster’s colorful debut novel paints a riveting portrait of a divorced mother whose quest to be everything to everyone exposes the dark secrets of America’s suburbs.

Audrey Corcoran never dreamed she’d try cocaine, but a year after a bitter divorce, she meets a man named Owen Little who convinces her that a little buzz might be exactly what she needs to lift her spirits. And why not? He’s already turned her on to jazz, and no one in his circle of friends ever thinks twice about getting high. Soon, however, her escalating drug use puts a strain on Audrey’s relationship with her daughters, and she begins to sell cocaine from her home in order to subsidize her habit. By turns horrifying and hilarious, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl offers a scathing indictment of American consumer culture and the wildly conflicting demands it makes upon women.

On the surface, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl is about overcoming addiction. At the same time, however, the novel examines society’s conflicting expectations of women. Consumer culture constantly tells women to be fun, smart, wild and sexy, but at the same time, this same culture also demands that women be dependable, reliable, sensible and safe. In short, women are expected to do it all. Against this backdrop, protagonist Audrey Corcoran discovers cocaine and thinks she’s found the product that will allow her to be everything to everyone. Her struggle with addiction, then, is also a struggle with her sense of identity, and her essential dilemma is whether or not to buy into the myth of the perfect woman or to accept herself as flawed and imperfect, yet no less worthy of love. (PS Books, May 2009)

Interested??? I thought so. Today I’m THRILLED to bring you one of my new favorite authors, Marc Schuster:

AM: I laughed so hard reading the first chapter, I nearly fell off the elliptical. What role does humor play in your writing—this novel in particular?

MS: Thanks! I’m glad my sense of humor struck a cord with you. It plays a huge part in all of my writing. One reason is that I come from a family of very funny people. Our go-to method of communication is joking with each other. Or teasing, depending on how you look at it. This makes communication with the outside world difficult at times. Even when I’m discussing serious topics, my instinct is always to go for the punch line or the easy laugh. It’s something I learned to do when I was very young. I was a very bookish child, which made me an easy target for bullies. The only defense I had was my sense of humor. If I could make people laugh, it meant that they weren’t punching me. Now whenever I’m nervous or in a tense situation, my gut tells me to make a joke out of it. With practice, though, I’ve managed to rein in my jocular tendencies, especially when I write.

With Wonder Mom, the humor is there to leaven the heaviness of the subject matter, but it’s also there because life in the twenty-first century can be so surreal that it’s hard not to see a funny side to it. The novel is about a woman dealing with addiction, which isn’t a funny subject at all. But the world she lives in is so full of contradictions, and places so many ridiculous expectations upon her, that the humor came fairly easily. I guess I’m trying to say that I didn’t have to inject humor into the story. Telling it straight—in essence, holding a mirror up to our world—provided all the humor I needed.

AM: Wonder Mom also inspires I’m-so-touched chills, heartache and serious thought. What inspired you to take on such heavy issues? 

MS: The idea for the novel came to me years before I started writing it. I was working on a paper for a course I was taking in graduate school. The paper was called “Laughing Gas Theatre: TS Eliot and the Numbing of the Masses.” Though it was about drug use and other modes of self-medication that were becoming popular in the first half of the twentieth-century, some of my research turned up first-hand accounts of contemporary drug use. One book I read included a case study of a divorced mother who tried cocaine because her boyfriend said she might like it. When she was interviewed for the study, the woman had only tried it once, but she said that she would definitely try it again because she liked the outgoing and confident person she became when she was high.

I could be wrong, but I think the book was called The Steel Drug. The last time I looked at it was probably in 1997, but the idea of this mother experimenting with cocaine must have stuck with me. A couple of years later, I was in a writing group, and every month we’d come up with writing assignments for each other. One month, the assignment was to write about someone with an obsession, and I immediately thought of the woman in the case study. Where was she now? What had become of her? This line of questioning led to a short story that eventually evolved into the novel.

AM: If you can do it without getting arrested 😉, please tell us about your research. 

MS: I really only buried my nose in books—nothing stronger, I swear! For the most part, my research consisted of reading case studies, though for some of the more technical details of drug dealing, I turned to the US Government for help. The National Institute on Drug Abuse website offers plenty of information on things like the going rate for a gram of cocaine and the kinds of ingredients that drug dealers use to cut their product. Once or twice, I drew on experiences that friends of mine offered when they found out what my book was about, particularly the more visceral experiences like Audrey’s description of the acrid drip in the back of her throat. But overall, my research hinged almost entirely on print sources like the aforementioned Steel Drug and another excellent book on the subject titled Cocaine Changes.

AM: You wrote Wonder Mom/Party Girl from a woman’s perspective—and quite well. Did you find “writing female” different than writing from a male standpoint? Was it more challenging?

MS: Once I started writing from Audrey’s perspective, it wasn’t difficult at all. Obvious differences aside, she’s not too far removed from me. I’m highly sensitive to criticism, as is Audrey, and I’m the kind of person who strives to keep other people happy, just like Audrey does. The big difference between us isn’t so much that I’m a man and she’s a woman but that she turns to drugs to deal with stress, whereas I just curl into a ball and hide under the table. Which isn’t to say the fact that Audrey is a woman doesn’t matter. It just matters in a different way—in terms of the social queues she’s always receiving from the world she lives in.

Part of my research into Audrey’s character was reading through magazines that are traditionally geared toward mothers. The ads in these magazines tend to create a mythical perfect woman that mothers everywhere are supposed to strive for—at least as far as the ads are concerned. One thing in the back of my mind as I was writing from Audrey’s perspective was that in addition to all of the other pressures in her life, she also had the added pressure of knowing that she didn’t measure up to the myth of the “perfect mom.” On one level, a purely intellectual level, she could tell herself that it was, indeed, just a myth, but on a more emotional level, she still wishes she could be the perfect mother she sees depicted everywhere she looks.

AM: You wrote much of the book in present tense, which I love, by the way. Why?

MS: There’s an illustration of sorts that appears somewhere in the middle of the book. It’s a black square that takes up most of the page. On the page before the black square, the narrative is in the past tense, and on the page after the square, the narrative moves into the present tense and three months have passed. What I want to convey here is that a distinct shift has occurred in Audrey’s life and that decisions from the past are finally catching up with her. I also like the immediacy of the present tense.

AM: Without preaching, you managed to convey valuable life lessons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the book changes or even saves some lives. Have you considered this? Was it a goal?

MS: The big thing I was really trying to do with the novel was to humanize addiction. It’s a misunderstood concept in our culture, and one that’s highly maligned. We tend to see people who fall into addiction as weak or, worse, morally corrupt. But there are so many complicated factors that lead to addiction, and, in some ways, the impulse to self-medicate is a highly sensible one. As thinking creatures, we recognize that we’re in pain, that pain is bad, and that getting out of pain would be a good thing. It’s a perfectly rational train of thought. That’s what happens to Audrey, and to some extent it’s what happens to many people who struggle with addiction.

One interesting thing that’s happened since the book was published is that some readers have told me that I was, in fact, telling their story. One woman approached me after a reading and said, “This is my story.” She went on to explain that she had gone through a rough divorce and that some friends had turned her on to drugs. She eventually stopped using, but she was glad to see someone talking about her experiences in a sympathetic way.

AM: Your next novel, which I can’t WAIT to read, The Grievers, comes out in May, 2012. What’s it about? 

MS: I’m calling it a coming of age story for a generation that’s still struggling to come of age. It’s about a group of friends who attended a fairly prestigious prep school in their teens and are, in their late twenties, finally coming to terms with the fact that the world won’t be handed to them on a silver platter. At the same time, they’re dealing with the tragic death of a classmate and their alma mater’s efforts at using the tragedy to turn a fast buck. As heavy as the material may sound, there’s also some levity in there. I was lucky to get some advance praise from a few of my favorite writers, including Beth Kephart who wrote, “Raging cluelessness has never been this funny or, in the end, this compassionate.” That about sums it up.

AM: What books do you most enjoy reading? Can you read and enjoy your own?

MS: I love everything from the paranoid futures of Philip K. Dick to the magical realms of Neil Gaiman and the twisted present-day reality of Chuck Palahniuk. I’m also a big fan of Don DeLillo and Kurt Vonnegut. Lately, though, I’ve been reading short story collections. Two of my recent favorites are Steve Almond’s God Bless America and Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This.

On occasion, I might look at a passage or two from one of my own books, particularly when I’m gearing up for a reading, but for the most part, my books just sit on the shelf like neglected houseplants.

AM: Ha! I have a few of those. (Neglected house plants, that is.) What do you hope readers will gain from your writing?

MS: To me, a good book is a friend of the mind. I want readers to feel at home in the worlds that I’ve created, to pick up one of my books and enter a mental space where they’re completely welcomed and never judged, a place where they can be human and see what it means for other people to be human, too—to revel in the glory of our shared imperfection.

AM: Any tips for up-and-coming novelists?

MS: Read a lot, and read a wide range of books. On occasion, I meet would-be authors who tell me they don’t read much because they don’t want other people’s writing to influence their work. This is a ridiculous position to take, and writers are the only people I know who tend to take it. Graphic artists, musicians, and standup comedians all steep themselves in the work of those who’ve gone before as well as the work of their contemporaries. Why? Because they recognize that they’re part of an ongoing, ever-evolving dialogue. And the better writers recognize that, too. Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Also, keep at it. I wrote four novels, each incrementally better than the last, before I wrote The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl. There were many points along the way where I thought I should just stop writing. Usually these points coincided with rejection letters. But I kept at it largely because I couldn’t keep away from writing. I’d have an idea, and I’d have to start playing with it, developing it. If you have stories to tell, then keep telling them and keep working on them. And do it because you love writing, not because you think there will be some kind of major payoff somewhere down the line. Writing itself is the payoff.

AM: Brilliant. Thanks again for doing this, Marc. Best of luck in all of your ventures!

For more information, visit MarcSchuster.com and his blog, Abominations: Marc Schuster’s Random Musings and Ephemera.

To purchase, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, visit Amazon.com.

*******

Have you read Wonder Mom and Party Girl? Any thoughts to share with Marc? I always love hearing from you.

37 Comments
by August McLaughlin on January 5, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Authors, Books, Writing
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by August McLaughlin on January 5, 2012

https://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/author-interview-marc-schuster/