Archives for December 2017

Robert Crais is the award-winning author of twenty previous novels, sixteen of them featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Before turning to writing novels, he wrote scripts for various television series including Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Quincy, Baretta, and L.A. Law. His novels have been translated into more than forty languages and are global bestsellers.

The Wanted features a worried mother, Devon Connor, who contacts P.I. Elvis Cole because she thinks her teenage son, Tyson, has been dealing drugs. Actually, Tyson, along with two friends, has burglarized more than a dozen homes in wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods. But they’ve stolen the wrong thing from the wrong man who will stop at nothing to retrieve the purloined item. Two professional hitmen are on Tyson’s trail, murdering witnesses. Cole calls his longtime friend and partner, Joe Pike, to take steps to protect Tyson and his friends before more death is meted out.

“The Wanted” begins with a prologue written from the points of view of two hitmen, Harvey and Stemms. They recur throughout the novel and are almost likable characters. What about villains can make them interesting?

To be interesting, they need to be complex and not cardboard cutouts. They also have to be accessible. The reason I open the novel with them is that while they’re actually horrible people, as that first scene develops, the reader doesn’t yet know how horrible they truly are. They seem like just a couple of regular guys. They have their affectations, but they’re presented as people you might bump into on the street. They’re friends; they relate well to each other; and little by little, I draw the reader in until there’s the revelation of just how hideous they are. It should be unsettling for the reader as the hooks gradually sink in, and the reader is compelled to read on to see what they’re going to do next.

All writers, including me, are readers first. I was a voracious reader before I became a writer. I’m still a reader and love to be entertained. Hence, I’m my own first audience. So, when I wrote that scene, I was doing so to make it funny and entertaining, and then to make it intriguing and horrifying for me. If I’m entertained, hopefully the reader is entertained. If the reader finds Harvey and Stemms compelling, it’s because I find them compelling.

Throughout “The Wanted”, there are alternating points of view. What are the advantages of this kind of storytelling?

The advantage is that the reader gets to see the entire world of the story from multiple perspectives. When I started writing the Elvis Cole novels, I did so with the classic Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlow paradigm—the entire book is first-person point-of-view from that of Elvis Cole. While that was fine, and I enjoyed it, over time, I began to feel constrained by that technique. I felt it would be so much more interesting for me to show scenes from Joe Pike’s point-of-view or from that of the victim, or from the bad guy’s perspective. The different viewpoints are like colors on a painter’s palate, and the more colors I use, the more interesting and vivid the book will be. I’m a completely self-serving writer. I do these things because they appeal to me. It’s what I want to read.

The dialogue in “The Wanted” is crisp and realistic. Talk to us about a novel’s dialogue.

I wrote a lot for television. It was my good fortune to have worked with and for some of the most talented people on television at that time—actors like Jack Klugman, Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless; and producers and writers like Steven Bochco. Working with them, day-in-and-day-out, on such character-rich shows taught me how drama should unfold; and actors like Tyne Daly and Jack Klugman gave me an appreciation of how dark dialogue should sound. Those lessons became ingrained in me, and have infiltrated the books.

I usually don’t think about dialogue. It just happens in my head. It unfolds. Of course, I revise it many times and always speak it aloud to myself. I constantly read my work aloud, which sometimes draws odd looks when I’m writing in a Starbucks. [Laughter]. I find hearing it helps me make it more precise, and more real.

Which character in “The Wanted” was most challenging for you to write?

Probably, it was Elvis Cole because so much is at play in this novel. The books in the series are ultimately about Elvis’s search for himself. Yes, there’s a bad guy, a story, an unfolding mystery; but I realized a long time ago, that the detective’s primary job is to discover himself. As Elvis’s creator, it’s my job as well.

In The Wanted, Elvis has an obvious longing for a family. He finds himself becoming a father figure for a troubled teen-ager. He’s at a point in his life where he realizes he doesn’t have children of his own, something he would have really liked. Despite the murders and brutality in my novels, there’s a subtle context to many of the scenes. Elvis’s feelings about lacking a family, and how much finding this boy means to him, are ultimately the engine driving the story.

So, the novel is very much driven by Elvis’s character?

Yes, I think of myself as mainly a character writer. While reviewers have always spoken highly of my plots—which I want to roll along—all the stories derive from the protagonist’s character. Above and beyond the excitement and energy of the plot, the moments that bring a tear to the eye are the primary motivating factors for me.

Is there anything about your writing process that might surprise our readers?

While the books are fast-paced, and things seem to happen quickly, it might surprise readers to know the end result comes only after months and months of writing, rewriting and revising the original script. I can spend twelve to fourteen hours a day, for months on end, writing and revising.

If a book is three-hundred pages long, I’ve probably written fourteen to sixteen hundred pages. I once actually kept the print-outs from all the chapters in a novel.  I kept them in a stack on the floor. When the book was finished, I took a side by-side photo of the finished manuscript: it was four inches thick, with a three-foot tower of the drafts standing beside it.

If you could meet any fictional character in real life, who would it be?

Elvis Cole. [Laughter].

Absent Elvis, anyone else?

Joe Pike. [More laughter]. You have to understand; these guys have been in my life since 1987. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are in my head every day. I spend so much time with them because I find them fascinating. I wish these guys were my friends. I’d love to drive over to Elvis Cole’s A-frame, sit out on his deck and have a beer with him and Joe. Maybe Elvis will grill some steaks. Believe me, these guys live a far more interesting life than I do. [Laughter].

Will you complete this sentence: Writing novels has taught me___________?

Patience. I’m an impatient person. I’m always in a hurry and on the edge. Novel writing is a slow motion endeavor. It takes about ten months for me to write a novel. And I haven’t found a trick that allows me to speed up that process. For me to stay focused on a project for that long is enormously frustrating, and challenges my temperament. I’m just not cut out for it. [More Laughter]. I’ve learned to corral my impatience, so the book can unfold.

What’s coming next from Robert Crais?

A Joe Pike novel, co-starring Elvis Cole. Every once in a while, I flip them around and write a novel from Joe’s point of view, and Elvis comes in to help.

Congratulations on having written “The Wanted,” a nail-bitingly suspenseful novel, pitting Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in a race against time and against two of the most frightening and compelling assassins in contemporary crime fiction.

Jon Land is the prolific USA Today bestselling author of more than forty books. His thriller novels include the Caitlin Strong series about a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, and the Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea books featuring a Palestinian detective and an Israeli chief inspector of police. He also has penned the Blaine McCracken series, many standalone novels, and non-fiction books. Jon was a screenwriter for the 2005 film Dirty Deeds. He is an active member of the International Thriller Writers Organization.

Strong to the Bone is the ninth installment of the critically acclaimed Caitlin Strong series. Caitlin, a third generation Texas Ranger, unearths the residue of a deadly plot rooted in 1944 and the Nazi regime of Germany. The planned chaos of the present day is spearheaded by a neo-Nazi movement determined to destroy America’s way of life. To stop a cataclysmic rewriting of history, Caitlin must fight and win a war the world thought was long over.

“Strong to the Bone” has some of the most compelling action scenes I’ve ever read. Talk to us about writing them.

My action scenes are very visual. I’ve always been something of a writer who novelizes non-existent movies. In Strong to the Bone, the action scenes aren’t just visual, they’re visceral. They’re emotional. The pivotal action scene in the book is only three-and-a-half pages long, yet it feels like it’s thirty pages. It’s the scene where the family is attacked by five gunmen with automatic weapons. According to many people, the definition of heroism is the willingness to sacrifice yourself for others. In this scene, the gunmen have come to kill Cort Wesley’s son, Dylan. Caitlin and Cort Wesley are outnumbered and outgunned and they’re taken by surprise. That creates a gut-wrenching sense of action—something that hits the reader in various ways. Caitlin knows she’s in a gunfight with young men and she doesn’t want to kill them. But, does she have a choice?

“Strong to the Bone” challenges Caitlin in a way she’s never been tested before by having her deal with a traumatic incident that has haunted her for years. Tell us about challenging your characters.

If you don’t challenge your characters in a series, the series risks falling flat, getting dull, and being repetitive. I would ask readers how many series they’ve given up on because they got bored. What makes James Lee Burke’s book different? What makes Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books fresh and vital, no matter how many of them there are? I think the answer is these authors challenge their characters by asking them to do more and to do something different. Reacher’s set-ups are always different. Jack Reacher gets dragged into situations in ways he could never have anticipated, and he’s challenged in each book.

Caitlin is challenged by a demon from her past. It appears that the man who attacked her eighteen years ago has returned. She must struggle with this development because it’s a two-edged sword. She wants to overcome this dragon, but in a sense, she’s afraid to catch him. She fears if she is successful, her core inner-being that has fueled the edge making her ‘Hurricane Caitlin’ or the ‘Dirty Harry’ of the Texas Rangers, may be lost. It’s almost as though she wants to catch him, but then release him—a catch and release scenario. How she deals with and overcomes this problem may not be resolved until the next book.

Among other things, “Strong to the Bone” deals with timely issues of today: among them are drugs, and nationalistic populism. Will you talk about them?

Drugs are the cash crop of organized crime. Drugs fuel hate, which is the link to these white nationalist movements. These groups exist on hate. They define themselves by hate and are the antithesis of everything America is and has always been.

The drug distribution network is among the least violent of the crime industries. Violence is bad for business. And these guys are businessmen. The Hells Angels out of Canada are among the biggest drug dealers in the world, pushing drugs across our northern border. They also own an office building in Chicago. Some of them go to work in suits. They’ve civilized the drug distribution business.

In Strong to the Bone, Arman Fisker, the white nationalist biker villain, abhors violence only because it will bring attention to his nefarious activities.  He’s a despicable human being who was willing to do something unimaginable to his own son; and of course, he seeks out Caitlin to exact revenge for something she did.

How did you develop your interest in the Texas Rangers?

Three reasons:

First, I wanted to write about a female action hero. It’s very difficult to find one.  Lisbeth Salander is one, but there are very few of them.

Second, a female action hero can’t be a Navy SEAL or a member of the Delta Force. Women don’t serve in forward operating situations. So, she’s a Texas Ranger, and is defined by the mythos of the Texas Rangers and by the gun she carries.

Also, I’ve always been a fan of westerns. Sci-Fi and westerns are the creative roots of the modern-day thriller. They grew out of quest stories, which is what thrillers really are. At their heart, all great thrillers are basically westerns. They involve a hero with a dark past he cannot shake off. At their core, thrillers involve heroes discovering their true natures.

If you could meet any two fictional characters in real life, who would they be?

I must give you a few more than two. I’d really like to meet Jack Reacher. I’d like to meet Danny Torrance from The Shining. I’d also like to meet Huckleberry Finn because he’s such a dynamic character. I’d love to meet Lisbeth Salander; she’s so odd, that in person she’d be incredibly sexy and also quite scary. I’d also like to meet John Rambo, though I don’t think he’d be much of a conversationalist. [Laughter]. And here’s another one…I’d love to meet Hannibal Lector, but I wouldn’t turn my back on him. And I certainly wouldn’t lie down on his couch. [More laughter].

Will you complete this sentence: Writing novels has taught me_____________.

Writing novels has taught me humility. I appreciate and love the process of writing, but the fact that it’s so hard to reach the level to which I aspire, is a humbling experience and it makes me a better person. I think the only way to get to where I would like to be is to stay passionate, and humility keeps me passionate. It makes me hold on to the right perspective.

What’s coming next from Jon Land?

Strong as Steel will be the next Caitlin Strong novel. It’s more of a James Rollins-type thriller involving speculative fiction and some science.

And, a new development has come about for me: I’ll be taking over writing the Murder She Wrote series of novels, written by Donald Bain, who died recently.

Congratulations on penning “Strong to the Bone,” a high-octane tale that blasts out of the gate, never lets up, and is the ninth book in a series Nelson DeMille called, “One of the best female thriller series written today.”

 

 

 

 

James Rollins, known to millions of readers, has written bestselling thrillers that have been translated into more than forty languages. His books are noted for their originality and scientific authenticity; as well as for being rich in historical facts and in revealing secrets ranging from findings far beneath the earth’s surface to those deep within its seas.

His new thriller, The Demon Crown, describes the unearthing of a cache of bones preserved in amber and buried more than a century earlier. The scientists, led by Alexander Graham Bell, were safeguarding a wonder unlike any other: the secret of life after death. But the marrow of those bones contains a horror from the ancient past, one that has remained dormant but alive, and is now free to wreak havoc on the world. The Sigma Force, led by Commander Grayson Pierce, must solve a deadly mystery that began with the very origins of life on Earth. But the menace is spreading, growing and adapting, and will reconquer the world it once ruled. The novel both tells a compelling story and examines the greatest peril to the world’s future.

“The Demon Crown” details, among other things, that a comet wasn’t responsible for the death of the dinosaurs. Will you tell us about that?

I’ve always been a big Michael Creighton fan. One of the authors he researched when writing Jurassic Park talked about the role of insects in the demise of the dinosaurs. I must confess I’d never thought of insects as being capable of taking down those huge lumbering beasts. For a long time, I stowed that away in my idea box. After having read that Homeland Security is concerned that someone might attempt to weaponize insects, I decided it was time to write this novel.

It’s not at all far-fetched when you think about various current ecological concerns: pythons infesting the Everglades, and carp now swimming in the Great Lakes. Homeland Security is concerned someone might create environmental havoc by releasing certain flora or fauna that would be terribly difficult to combat. So, after reading about the role insects played in the extinction of the dinosaurs, I thought it would be interesting to pair up these two phenomena—insects and environmental havoc, and that became the crux of the novel.

All your novels, including this one, seem to deal with ‘what if’ scenarios.

Aside from looking for interesting ideas for plotlines, I’m always looking for interesting scientific possibilities—the ‘what if’ situations.  With all my Sigma Force novels, I’m playing with the edge of the future, looking at technology and where it might be headed. As a writer, I’m interested in how technological change might pose a threat or challenge our moral values, whether we’re talking about cloning or gene manipulation in unborn children. These have all become realities in our world. In a real sense, technology has caught up with my books. This presents me with moral and scientific quagmires I integrate when writing novels.

Speaking of technology and the future, are there actual threats to our national security such as those described in “The Demon Crown?”

Yes, there are.

Homeland Security is now investigating these threats and trying to find ways of thwarting them. Of course, these threats can come from many different directions—whether they be foreign invasive species accidentally carried into the U.S. on a ship or airplane; or the result of a nefarious plot. Right now, one of our biggest concerns is the possibility of something entering our country that would be capable of devastating our national breadbasket. How would we be able to stop a pest that’s been modified in such a way thus making it potentially impossible to eradicate? Some pest that would be able to adapt to our environment to the point where it overtakes our indigenous species and becomes supremely dominant.

Speaking of those possibilities, “The Demon Force” describes indestructible organisms. Tell us about Lazarus microbes and the secret of ‘life after death.’

I’ve read about scientists’ ability to move genes from one specie to another. There’s a specie of animal called tardigrades, which are water-dwelling microscopic animals. They’re virtually indestructible. They can survive high temperatures, high pressure, and radiation. They’re capable of entering into a state called cryptobiosis where they become almost indestructible. In May 2017, an issue of New Scientist described the astounding ability of Lazarus microbes to survive for hundreds of millions of years in salt crystals. Their lives are suspended in what’s called ‘a twilight zone between life and death.’

Various species can ‘borrow’ advantageous genetic codes from others, especially following viral or bacterial infections. So, there’s the distinct possibility that someone could take the advantages locked into the DNA of Lazarus microbes and tardigrades and transfer those properties into other species, thereby wreaking havoc on the environment.

Alexander Graham Bell and James Smithson play important roles in ‘The Demon Crown.’ Will you talk about them?

I’ve always loved putting historical facts in my novels. The Sigma Force has its base in the subterranean chambers of the Smithsonian Castle. The Smithsonian was essentially founded by James Smithson, a British chemist and geologist who never set foot in the U.S., yet left his fortune to this country

Smithson died and was buried in Italy. Alexander Graham Bell and his wife took a steamship to Italy and returned to the U.S. with Smithson’s bones, which are buried beneath the lobby of the Smithsonian Castle, near the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

We’ve talked about this before, but I’m again struck by the fact that your Sigma Force novels often predict scientific advances, so that even as you’re writing them, you must sometimes revise a manuscript because your predictions have come true. Tell us about that.

It takes a while to write a novel. Sometimes, science catches up with the novel as I’m writing it. I keep my finger on the pulse of new findings, so when a scientific article comes out that might alter the storyline, I have to go back and make revisions, even if a novel is ready to go to press.

What’s coming next from James Rollins?

I’ve written a number of short stories that have appeared in various publications. These are being collected and put into an anthology. I’m also writing a novella about the Tucker and Kane series that will appear in that anthology. I’m also about to start writing the first chapter of the next Sigma Force novel.

Congratulations on penning ‘The Demon Crown,’ a terrifying novel combining history, scientific concepts about the ‘dark matter of life,’ and high-octane action, guaranteed to keep readers awake late into the night.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest novel is ‘Mad Dog Vengeance.’