Dan Pollock's Blog, page 2

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: T.S. O’NEIL

On his website, T.S. O’Neil reprints a review that describes his “action-packed crime novels” Tampa Star  and Starfish Primeas artful blends of “Fifties detective noir with modern-day high-tech suspense.” I agree, but when I speed-read the opening chapters of Tampa Star, I was reminded as well of Elmore Leonard—that is, I was hearing the unique voices, not of a writer, but of unforgettable characters. I was thus pleased to discover, as you will see, that O’Neil lists Leonard as one of the writers who have most influenced him.

Author T.S. O'NeilPollock: So what do I call you? T.S.?O’Neil: Please call me Tim. Pollock: Okay, Tim, let me start with a compliment. I was carried away by the unique narrative power in Tampa Star—the first book of the Blackfox Chroncles. It didn’t feel like reading so much as leaning back in a patio chair with a Corona or a Dos Equis in hand while listening to hilarious war stories told. In appropriate social circumstances, are you a natural raconteur?O’Neil: First of all, I don’t know what that means. Just kidding—and I sincerely appreciate the compliment. I’m an introvert with extroverted tendencies that are normally fueled by alcohol. They had guys in Ranger School they called “Spotlight Rangers” who were candidates who only performed while in the spotlight; otherwise they hung back and marshaled their resources. I guess you could call me a spotlight raconteur. In social situations, I try a few trial balloons to see if anyone gets my humor and take it from there. As for the humor in both books, I think that the military is full of frustrated comedians. If you think about it, they are often deployed to austere locations among a group of like-minded individuals and are often stymied by circumstances. Their frustrations are caused or fueled by the stupidity of the officers or NCOs above them, and because they are thrust into a truly shitty situation. Relief comes either from laughter or craziness. I have to say, though, that of all the services, I think the Marines are the funniest and usually the most politically incorrect as the ratio of men to women is the highest of all the services.  Pollock: To capture that conversational style, have you ever thought of just talking your story into a microphone, then transcribing and editing later?O’Neil: No, but I may give it a try. Pollock: Do you keep a file of choice and colorful anecdotes from your years in the military?O’Neil: No, I wish I had, but there are lots of stories out there. The anecdotes about snipers and Explosive Ordinance Disposal are the funniest as they are darkest. Sayings like: “Never start a fight with a man who can end it from another ZIP code,” referring to a sniper with a 50-caliber sniper rifle. Or, referring to an EOD technician failing to defuse a bomb: “If you see me running, try to keep up.” are just a couple of offhand So all of these amateur comedians in uniform have a lot of material to work with, based mostly on the stupefying ridiculousness of the huge bureaucracy that is the U.S. military. They are given lots of material, but little freedom to use it; hence the frustration. I try and imagine what would accurately be said in humor to mask the occurrence of a bad event. Someone once said that war is interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror. An active imagination is what keeps you in good spirits and helps you fill the void or salve your fear. I bet King Leonidas was an especially funny guy to be able to crack wise when confronted by hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers. His “Come and get them!” [in reply to the Persian ultimatum to lay down his weapons] is, if not the first badass line in history, maybe the best known. Pollock: Your impressive military and law enforcement background obviously makes you a natural for the techno-thriller genre. Who are your favorite thriller writers?O’Neil: I really can’t agree on the impressiveness of my military background. As a careerist, I was an abject failure as I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meaning wherever I happened to be, peace was breaking out like mad. I was supposed to jump into Omar Torrijos Airport with the Rangers during Operation Just Cause, but instead I went on to the MP Officer Advance Course. The invasion took place in December of ’89; as I drove home to Connecticut for Christmas break, members of my former unit parachuted into glory. Later, as I sat in Panama enjoying the new era of peace and prosperity, Operation Desert Storm took place. My luck finally caught up with me and I spent part of a tour in Iraq. Other than a couple of nights of rocket fire, the period in Iraq was relatively peaceful. Additionally, I’m a freedom-loving individual and although servicemen defend freedom, they have very little of it inside their ranks. And as you probably noticed by know, I pretty much say what’s on my mind, which is not particularly career-enhancing. The bottom-line is that I was just a guy wanting to see the world on the cheap, but… what was your question again? Oh, yes, favorite thriller writers.  Well, you’re certainly a favorite author as of late. I loved The Running Boy and thought Duel of Assassins was particularly well done. But having said that, I have some pretty esoteric tastes when it comes to thrillers. Laurence Shames is a favorite, because he has quirky characters and writes in the Florida Glare genre. I can forgive him for being a bit of a liberal because I like his writing. Elmore Leonard, may he rest in peace, is a personal favorite. His writing and success taught me to believe that you can and should try to write the way people speak. People are funny and they say lots of humorous things, even in tense situations. He famously said, “Try to write what people want to read and leave the rest out.” Leonard labored in relative obscurity for most of his career and finally found some level of acclaim after Hollywood discovered him by basing movies on Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma and Jackie Brown. Another great author I admire is Norman Mailer, but for different reasons. He managed to write a really twisted thriller called Tough Guys Don’t Dance and also wrote the script for the movie of the same name. The protagonist, played by Ryan O’Neal, is watching his world crumble all around him—his wife leaves him, he can’t stop drinking and lastly, there are two heads in a bag in the basement and he is left trying to figure out how they got there. I used to watch the movie when my life was at a low point and it would allow me to think, well, at least I don’t have it as bad as that guy. I believe the movie bombed, but the script closely followed the book and I liked that.  Pollock: You’re quoted as saying you “write about heroes with a few chinks in their armor.” In fact, your father-and-son duo, ex-Green Beret Char Blackfox and his Recon Marine son, Michael Blackfox, seem to function best just a half-step ahead of the law. Can you tell us a little about how you fleshed them out?O’Neil: Inspiration for the character of Char Blackfox, the main protagonist in Tampa Star and Starfish Prime, came from various places. I was looking for someone memorable and at the time I attended a Battlefield Walk on the Loxahatchee River in South Florida. In 1838, the Seminoles fought two pitched battles against the U.S. Army. By all accounts, the first battle was a rout of the federal troops, as the indigenous people occupied the high ground—including having talented sharpshooters among the branches of ancient cypress trees. The Seminole were also experienced warriors with access to comparable weaponry as their foes, who were the usual mix of conscripts and seasoned veterans. More importantly, the federal troops were exhausted after having spent months on the trail in a forced march from Georgia. So, after hearing about the fierce Seminole warriors, I decided to make them the inspiration for Char Blackfox. However, the incident that caused Char’s leg injury was based on a real event that happened to an old buddy of mine, a Korean American platoon sergeant I served with while assigned to a Military Police Company in the Republic of Korea. In Tampa Star, Char was wounded by a dead enemy soldier in Vietnam. This actually happened to the platoon sergeant in almost exactly the same fashion while he was serving in the 101st Airborne deployed to Vietnam. The platoon sergeant nearly lost a leg because he shot and killed the enemy soldier, who was trying to infiltrate the company’s defensive perimeter. My buddy then pulled the rifle away from the dead man while his lifeless but still flexed finger still enveloped the trigger. The platoon sergeant was shot in the leg and had to be reclassified as an MP because he was no longer fit enough to serve in the infantry.So—Char Blackfox is a composite character based on a lot of old soldiers and Marines I knew when I was first finding my footing in the military. His son Michael was introduced as a way to bring the novel into present time. I wanted them to play off each other—the old guy versus the young buck. I thought the unique father-son Semper Fi bond was a rich area to mine. Pollock: Among your many 5-star Amazon reviews there’s one 3-star that faults your heroes for stereotypical macho behavior and attitudes toward women. So—are you planning to send the Blackfox boys to politically correct reeducation camps and neuter them into Low-T metrosexuals?O'Neil: I think General James N. Mattis, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, said it best: “When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy.”If that particular reviewer wants to live in that politically correct world, she should go find that war protestor, as I heard he’s looking for a girlfriend. To quote someone else, “Life is hard and it’s harder if you’re stupid.” I believe that’s from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, but I digress. The most important thing to me is that I write realistically—if that makes some people, especially those on the left of the political spectrum queasy, that’s a bonus. Pollock: Glad to hear it! One of the things that makes your books so much fun is that they’re almost P.C.-free. In fact, Char and Michael Blackfox take me back to the door-busting pulp heroes of my youth—hard-drinking, skirt-chasing private eyes like Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer or Richard Prather’s Shell Scott, and Donald Hamilton’s randy superspy, Matt Helm. Nowadays, no doubt, Ian Fleming’s “M” would be pressured to send 007 to the first available sexual harassment workshop.O’Neil: Yeah, all of those authors and characters have been an inspiration to me, whether I knew it or not. I’m so sick of the new metrosexual action heroes and apparently so are a lot of other folks, as evidenced by the success of certain characters in film and literature. I mean Adrien Brody as the star of the last Predator film? John Wayne must be turning over in his grave.
The first James Bond played by Sean Connery was a case study in political incorrectness, and the character went downhill after he left, until Daniel Craig managed to redeem him somewhat. Another character that probably would not be such a success today is John McLane, the hero played by Bruce Willis in the Diehard series. Michael Blackfox does get a serious love interest in Mudd’s Luck, but he’ll stay largely the same as in past books. Char can’t change as he’s a dinosaur and necessary at certain junctures to shake up the narrative. I’m in the process of bringing back other characters because after I finish ML, Michael and Char deserve a little respite. Pollock: I like to ask techno-thriller writers how they stay current on military hardware and geopolitics. Do you have any favorite online sources you can share (without betraying too many trade secrets)?O’Neil: My final deployment allowed me to become current on lots of new weaponry and other hardware, and I included some of it in both books. I’ve also rubbed shoulders with lots of special ops types and actually served in a unit within that command for a while, although I’ve never claimed to be a true “snake eater.” During my time in the Marines and in Special Operations, I learned enough about how certain special ops units like the SEALs, Force Recon, Army Rangers and Special Forces operate and researched a lot more to write accurately and realistically about that particular subgroup. You can pretty much Google anything. As far as approaching special ops types, you really have to be careful. If they are still on active duty, you might as well forget talking to them, and the guys who have been out for a while may not be as in the loop as they claim. I look to websites and boards from time to time. There are lots of unofficial special ops bulletin boards that you can find through various search engines, such as Level Zero Heroes, which is about a Marine Special Operations Team.Pollock: What about experts you call on? Tom Clancy cultivated a grapevine that linked him to what he called the “Great Chain,” a network of military types, government employees and intelligence officers who fed him information. Do you have a similar brain trust of ex-military you check with?O’Neil: I have no grapevine at the moment, but then Clancy didn’t have the benefit of serving on active duty for a decade and another thirteen years in the reserves. I think that as my books gain in popularity, I’ll have service members contact me to tell me if I got something right, but more importantly, if I got something wrong. My next book will have very little military content, so it should not be a problem. Pollock: One of the pitfalls of writing a timely or even futuristic thriller is that the plot can be overtaken or invalidated by tomorrow’s headlines. Which means that, as far as world events, you need to stay not only current, but ahead of the curve. Is that something you think about?O’Neil: I used to. I was writing a book about a plan to blow up the Panama Canal, and I finished it, but it was never published. I’m sure it’s kicking around here someplace. I felt part of the problem was that it was overtaken by the handover of the canal to the Republic of Panama. Now, I just write a book and hope for the best. Pollock: Do you write from a plot outline or do you prefer to let your characters lead you?O’Neil: I have a rough idea in my head and constantly develop it as I write. For instance, Starfish was all about building a plot around the ability to hack into an insulin meter to control a pump. I built out from there. The McGuffin had to be important enough for them to want to parachute into the jungle to get it. I selected Venezuela because it’s currently operating under a despotic dictator, I’ve been there several times before and wanted legitimate bad guys to play off the good guys—in this case, the Colombians and Americans. I selected Colombians because I was impressed by their armed forces and police and thought I would pay them homage. Short war story: In a past life I worked as a trademark investigator and I was working with their federal police, roughly the equivalent of our FBI, set to bust several counterfeit apparel factories. A truck bomb went off at one of their offices in another city while we were planning the raid and scores of their officers were killed. I offered a few words of condolences in Spanish, and their commander basically thanked me, but suggested that we get back to work as they had a job to do. I thought that was a superlative example of their professionalism. Pollock: Do you have a set time to write each day? And an office?O’Neil: I have an office in a loft outside my bedroom; it’s a home office that I use for business purposes during the day and writing on the weekend. I have three or four computers; two laptops, a PC and a tablet scattered about and all my military memorabilia on the walls. I have not been writing every day, but I am looking for that to change, if and when we decide whether we are moving. We currently live in a three-level townhouse in a complex and life should be bliss, if not for the condo commandos that run the condo board. The kindest thing I can say about them is that any one of them could have served as a model for the Jack Clumpis character on Seinfeld, Marty Seinfeld’s rival on their condo board. Pollock: Do you give yourself deadlines? Do you meet them?O’Neil: I give myself a rough deadline. Right now, because I have a civilian job, so I like to keep it to one book a year. Pollock: How much time do you allot to marketing? What are your favorite tools?O’Neil: I don’t devote enough. Normally, I spend a few hours here and there doing marketing. I think the book giveaways on Goodreads are a great tool for getting reviews, however, since it’s owned by Amazon, they are book-ending authors by incentivizing them to hold giveaways and then selling them the books. I also participated in a review circle, where you review four books and others review your work. It’s not frowned upon as you are not doing reciprocal reviews, but I probably won’t do it again as other authors are not legitimate fans and can be very negative for silly reasons, i.e. the women who didn’t like that Starfish didn’t have strong female characters was from a review circle. I’m also a paid member on Authors Marketing Club, but the jury is still out on whether I would renew. You and I both use Twitter and tweet about our books, but I’m not really sure how effective that is. I’ve used Fiverr to do audio and video shorts. I think the value with that site is that it’s so darned cheap for the quality of what they offer. I’ve used Kindle Direct / Amazon for countdown pricing and free giveaways and I think they have been very effective in promoting new authors. Pollock: Do you write on more than one (fiction) project at a time? Can you juggle?O’Neil: Not at the moment. If I ever take up writing full time, I can probably handle that. Pollock: Do you jump around in your narrative or write straight through?O’Neil: I normally write straight through, then my wife and I revise at night and I move on. I’m a very linear writer. Pollock: You’ve done two volumes in the Blackfox Chronicles. How many more up your sleeve? And what’s the next one? O’Neil: The book I just started writing is book three, the final volume of the Blackfox Chronicles. It’s called Mudd’s Luck and it finds Char and Michael sailing to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas on their way back to Tampa Bay. The title refers to the doctor who was a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth. Dr. Mudd was imprisoned at the fort after being sentenced to a lift term.  Pollock: Are there other genres you’d like to explore?O’Neil: I was thinking of an apocalyptic novel along the lines of The Road but with a military protagonist, but we’ll see what happens. Pollock: Thanks so much, Tim, for stopping by.O’Neil: My pleasure, Dan.
* TAMPA STAR: I974, Char Blackfox heads to Florida in to rebuild a life shattered by the war in Viet Nam. He’s a Seminole Indian and former Green Beret who leaves the army and moves to Tampa Bay with the vain hope of a new beginning. He gets a job, meets a beautiful woman and life seems to finally be going his way; until reality smacks him in the face.   He throws in with the wrong crowd; a small time Irish-American hoodlum, a corrupt cop and an exiled Mafia Capo and his life spirals out of control. In 2004, a combat hardened Force Recon Marine is released from active duty and returns to Florida to find his estranged father; a guy no one can find but everyone is looking for. Amazon
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STARFISH PRIME: Book 2 of the Blackfox Chronicles. Marine Corps Special Operations needed Michael Blackfox for one more mission.  Do it and the government will go easy on his old man for a horrendous crime he committed a long time ago.  Fail and he would allow an apocalyptic disaster to befall the United States.  The risk is high, but the payoff is huge. Now available on Amazon. Amazon
Website: http://www.tsoneil.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/timbones.oneilTwitter: @tselliot3
About T.S. O’Neil : T.S. O'Neil graduated with Honors from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts with a Degree in Criminal Justice and graduated with High Honors from the University of Phoenix with a Master's in Business Administration in Technology Management. He served as a Rifleman with the Marine Corps Reserve, an Officer in the Military Police Corps of the United States Army, and retired from the Army of the United States (AUS) as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2012. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. T.S. is currently employed as an IT Architect and lives in Seminole, FL with his beautiful fiancée Suzanne.
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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: T.S. O’NEILL

On his website, T.S. O’Neill reprints a review that describes his “action-packed crime novels” Tampa Star  and Starfish Primeas artful blends of “Fifties detective noir with modern-day high-tech suspense.” I agree, but when I speed-read the opening chapters of Tampa Star, I was reminded as well of Elmore Leonard—that is, I was hearing the unique voices, not of a writer, but of unforgettable characters. I was thus pleased to discover, as you will see, that O’Neill lists Leonard as one of the writers who have most influenced him.
Author T.S. O'NeillPollock: So what do I call you? T.S.?O’Neill: Please call me Tim. Pollock: Okay, Tim, let me start with a compliment. I was carried away by the unique narrative power in Tampa Star—the first book of the Blackfox Chroncles. It didn’t feel like reading so much as leaning back in a patio chair with a Corona or a Dos Equis in hand while listening to hilarious war stories told. In appropriate social circumstances, are you a natural raconteur?
O’Neill: First of all, I don’t know what that means. Just kidding—and I sincerely appreciate the compliment. I’m an introvert with extroverted tendencies that are normally fueled by alcohol. They had guys in Ranger School they called “Spotlight Rangers” who were candidates who only performed while in the spotlight; otherwise they hung back and marshaled their resources. I guess you could call me a spotlight raconteur. In social situations, I try a few trial balloons to see if anyone gets my humor and take it from there. As for the humor in both books, I think that the military is full of frustrated comedians. If you think about it, they are often deployed to austere locations among a group of like-minded individuals and are often stymied by circumstances. Their frustrations are caused or fueled by the stupidity of the officers or NCOs above them, and because they are thrust into a truly shitty situation. Relief comes either from laughter or craziness. I have to say, though, that of all the services, I think the Marines are the funniest and usually the most politically incorrect as the ratio of men to women is the highest of all the services.  
Pollock: To capture that conversational style, have you ever thought of just talking your story into a microphone, then transcribing and editing later?
O’Neill: No, but I may give it a try.
Pollock: Do you keep a file of choice and colorful anecdotes from your years in the military?
O’Neill: No, I wish I had, but there are lots of stories out there. The anecdotes about snipers and Explosive Ordinance Disposal are the funniest as they are darkest. Sayings like: “Never start a fight with a man who can end it from another ZIP code,” referring to a sniper with a 50-caliber sniper rifle. Or, referring to an EOD technician failing to defuse a bomb: “If you see me running, try to keep up.” are just a couple of offhand
So all of these amateur comedians in uniform have a lot of material to work with, based mostly on the stupefying ridiculousness of the huge bureaucracy that is the U.S. military. They are given lots of material, but little freedom to use it; hence the frustration. I try and imagine what would accurately be said in humor to mask the occurrence of a bad event.
Someone once said that war is interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror. An active imagination is what keeps you in good spirits and helps you fill the void or salve your fear. I bet King Leonidas was an especially funny guy to be able to crack wise when confronted by hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers. His “Come and get them!” [in reply to the Persian ultimatum to lay down his weapons] is, if not the first badass line in history, maybe the best known.
Pollock: Your impressive military and law enforcement background obviously makes you a natural for the techno-thriller genre. Who are your favorite thriller writers?
O’Neill: I really can’t agree on the impressiveness of my military background. As a careerist, I was an abject failure as I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meaning wherever I happened to be, peace was breaking out like mad. I was supposed to jump into Omar Torrijos Airport with the Rangers during Operation Just Cause, but instead I went on to the MP Officer Advance Course. The invasion took place in December of ’89; as I drove home to Connecticut for Christmas break, members of my former unit parachuted into glory. Later, as I sat in Panama enjoying the new era of peace and prosperity, Operation Desert Storm took place. My luck finally caught up with me and I spent part of a tour in Iraq. Other than a couple of nights of rocket fire, the period in Iraq was relatively peaceful. Additionally, I’m a freedom-loving individual and although servicemen defend freedom, they have very little of it inside their ranks. And as you probably noticed by know, I pretty much say what’s on my mind, which is not particularly career-enhancing. The bottom-line is that I was just a guy wanting to see the world on the cheap, but… what was your question again? Oh, yes, favorite thriller writers.  
Well, you’re certainly a favorite author as of late. I loved The Running Boy and thought Duel of Assassins was particularly well done. But having said that, I have some pretty esoteric tastes when it comes to thrillers. Laurence Shames is a favorite, because he has quirky characters and writes in the Florida Glare genre. I can forgive him for being a bit of a liberal because I like his writing. Elmore Leonard, may he rest in peace, is a personal favorite. His writing and success taught me to believe that you can and should try to write the way people speak. People are funny and they say lots of humorous things, even in tense situations. He famously said, “Try to write what people want to read and leave the rest out.” Leonard labored in relative obscurity for most of his career and finally found some level of acclaim after Hollywood discovered him by basing movies on Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma and Jackie Brown.

Another great author I admire is Norman Mailer, but for different reasons. He managed to write a really twisted thriller called Tough Guys Don’t Dance and also wrote the script for the movie of the same name. The protagonist, played by Ryan O’Neal, is watching his world crumble all around him—his wife leaves him, he can’t stop drinking and lastly, there are two heads in a bag in the basement and he is left trying to figure out how they got there. I used to watch the movie when my life was at a low point and it would allow me to think, well, at least I don’t have it as bad as that guy. I believe the movie bombed, but the script closely followed the book and I liked that.   Pollock: You’re quoted as saying you “write about heroes with a few chinks in their armor.” In fact, your father-and-son duo, ex-Green Beret Char Blackfox and his Recon Marine son, Michael Blackfox, seem to function best just a half-step ahead of the law. Can you tell us a little about how you fleshed them out?
O’Neill: Inspiration for the character of Char Blackfox, the main protagonist in Tampa Star and Starfish Prime, came from various places. I was looking for someone memorable and at the time I attended a Battlefield Walk on the Loxahatchee River in South Florida. In 1838, the Seminoles fought two pitched battles against the U.S. Army. By all accounts, the first battle was a rout of the federal troops, as the indigenous people occupied the high ground—including having talented sharpshooters among the branches of ancient cypress trees. The Seminole were also experienced warriors with access to comparable weaponry as their foes, who were the usual mix of conscripts and seasoned veterans. More importantly, the federal troops were exhausted after having spent months on the trail in a forced march from Georgia. So, after hearing about the fierce Seminole warriors, I decided to make them the inspiration for Char Blackfox.
However, the incident that caused Char’s leg injury was based on a real event that happened to an old buddy of mine, a Korean American platoon sergeant I served with while assigned to a Military Police Company in the Republic of Korea. In Tampa Star, Char was wounded by a dead enemy soldier in Vietnam. This actually happened to the platoon sergeant in almost exactly the same fashion while he was serving in the 101st Airborne deployed to Vietnam. The platoon sergeant nearly lost a leg because he shot and killed the enemy soldier, who was trying to infiltrate the company’s defensive perimeter. My buddy then pulled the rifle away from the dead man while his lifeless but still flexed still enveloped the trigger. The platoon sergeant was shot in the leg and had to be reclassified as an MP because he was no longer fit enough to serve in the infantry.
So—Char Blackfox is a composite character based on a lot of old soldiers and Marines I knew when I was first finding my footing in the military. His son Michael was introduced as a way to bring the novel into present time. I wanted them to play off each other—the old guy versus the young buck. I thought the unique father-son Semper Fi bond was a rich area to mine.
Pollock: Among your many 5-star Amazon reviews there’s one 3-star that faults your heroes for stereotypical macho behavior and attitudes toward women. So—are you planning to send the Blackfox boys to politically correct reeducation camps and neuter them into Low-T metrosexuals?
I think General James N. Mattis, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, said it best: “When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy.”
If that particular reviewer wants to live in that politically correct world, she should go find that war protestor, as I heard he’s looking for a girlfriend. To quote someone else, “Life is hard and it’s harder if you’re stupid.” I believe that’s from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, but I digress. The most important thing to me is that I write realistically—if that makes some people, especially those on the left of the political spectrum queasy, that’s a bonus.
Pollock: Glad to hear it! One of the things that makes your books so much fun is that they’re almost P.C.-free. In fact, Char and Michael Blackfox take me back to the door-busting pulp heroes of my youth—hard-drinking, skirt-chasing private eyes like Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer or Richard Prather’s Shell Scott, and Donald Hamilton’s randy superspy, Matt Helm. Nowadays, no doubt, Ian Fleming’s “M” would be pressured to send 007 to the first available sexual harassment workshop.
O’Neill: Yeah, all of those authors and characters have been an inspiration to me, whether I knew it or not. I’m so sick of the new metrosexual action heroes and apparently so are a lot of other folks, as evidenced by the success of certain characters in film and literature. I mean Adrien Brody as the star of the last Predator film? John Wayne must be turning over in his grave.
The first James Bond played by Sean Connery was a case study in political incorrectness, and the character went downhill after he left, until Daniel Craig managed to redeem him somewhat. Another character that probably would not be such a success today is John McLane, the hero played by Bruce Willis in the Diehard series.
Michael Blackfox does get a serious love interest in Mudd’s Luck, but he’ll stay largely the same as in past books. Char can’t change as he’s a dinosaur and necessary at certain junctures to shake up the narrative. I’m in the process of bringing back other characters because after I finish ML, Michael and Char deserve a little respite.
Pollock: I like to ask techno-thriller writers how they stay current on military hardware and geopolitics. Do you have any favorite online sources you can share (without betraying too many trade secrets)?
O’Neill: My final deployment allowed me to become current on lots of new weaponry and other hardware, and I included some of it in both books. I’ve also rubbed shoulders with lots of special ops types and actually served in a unit within that command for a while, although I’ve never claimed to be a true “snake eater.” During my time in the Marines and in Special Operations, I learned enough about how certain special ops units like the SEALs, Force Recon, Army Rangers and Special Forces operate and researched a lot more to write accurately and realistically about that particular subgroup. You can pretty much Google anything. As far as approaching special ops types, you really have to be careful. If they are still on active duty, you might as well forget talking to them, and the guys who have been out for a while may not be as in the loop as they claim. I look to websites and boards from time to time. There are lots of unofficial special ops bulletin boards that you can find through various search engines, such as Level Zero Heroes, which is about a Marine Special Operations Team.
Pollock: What about experts you call on? Tom Clancy cultivated a grapevine that linked him to what he called the “Great Chain,” a network of military types, government employees and intelligence officers who fed him information. Do you have a similar brain trust of ex-military you check with?
O’Neill: I have no grapevine at the moment, but then Clancy didn’t have the benefit of serving on active duty for a decade and another thirteen years in the reserves. I think that as my books gain in popularity, I’ll have service members contact me to tell me if I got something right, but more importantly, if I got something wrong. My next book will have very little military content, so it should not be a problem.
Pollock: One of the pitfalls of writing a timely or even futuristic thriller is that the plot can be overtaken or invalidated by tomorrow’s headlines. Which means that, as far as world events, you need to stay not only current, but ahead of the curve. Is that something you think about?
O’Neill: I used to. I was writing a book about a plan to blow up the Panama Canal, and I finished it, but it was never published. I’m sure it’s kicking around here someplace. I felt part of the problem was that it was overtaken by the handover of the canal to the Republic of Panama. Now, I just write a book and hope for the best.
Pollock: Do you write from a plot outline or do you prefer to let your characters lead you?
O’Neill: I have a rough idea in my head and constantly develop it as I write. For instance, Starfish was all about building a plot around the ability to hack into an insulin meter to control a pump. I built out from there. The McGuffin had to be important enough for them to want to parachute into the jungle to get it. I selected Venezuela because it’s currently operating under a despotic dictator, I’ve been there several times before and wanted legitimate bad guys to play off the good guys—in this case, the Colombians and Americans. I selected Colombians because I was impressed by their armed forces and police and thought I would pay them homage. Short war story: In a past life I worked as a trademark investigator and I was working with their federal police, roughly the equivalent of our FBI, set to bust several counterfeit apparel factories. A truck bomb went off one of their offices in another city while we were planning the raid and scores of their officers were killed. I offered a few words of condolences in Spanish, and their commander basically thanked me, but suggested that we get back to work as they had a job to do. I thought that was a superlative example of their professionalism.
Pollock: Do you have a set time to write each day? And an office?
O’Neill: I have an office in a loft outside my bedroom; it’s a home office that I use for business purposes during the day and writing on the weekend. I have three or four computers; two laptops, a PC and a tablet scattered about and all my military memorabilia on the walls. I have not been writing every day, but I am looking for that to change, if and when we decide whether we are moving. We currently live in a three-level townhouse in a complex and life should be bliss, if not for the condo commandos that run the condo board. The kindest thing I can say about them is that any one of them could have served as a model for the Jack Clumpis character on Seinfeld, Marty Seinfeld’s rival on their condo board.
Pollock: Do you give yourself deadlines? Do you meet them?
O’Neill: I give myself a rough deadline. Right now, because I have a civilian job, so I like to keep it to one book a year.
Pollock: How much time do you allot to marketing? What are your favorite tools?
O’Neill: I don’t devote enough. Normally, I spend a few hours here and there doing marketing. I think the book giveaways on Goodreads are a great tool for getting reviews, however, since it’s owned by Amazon, they are book-ending authors by incentivizing them to hold giveaways and then selling them the books. I also participated in a review circle, where you review four books and others review your work. It’s not frowned upon as you are not doing reciprocal reviews, but I probably won’t do it again as other authors are not legitimate fans and can be very negative for silly reasons, i.e. the women who didn’t like that Starfish didn’t have strong female characters was from a review circle.
I’m also a paid member on Authors Marketing Club, but the jury is still out on whether I would renew. You and I both use Twitter and tweet about our books, but I’m not really sure how effective that is. I’ve used Fiverr to do audio and video shorts. I think the value with that site is that it’s so darned cheap for the quality of what they offer. I’ve used Kindle Direct / Amazon for countdown pricing and free giveaways and I think they have been very effective in promoting new authors.
Pollock: Do you write on more than one (fiction) project at a time? Can you juggle?
O’Neill: Not at the moment. If I ever take up writing full time, I can probably handle that.
Pollock: Do you jump around in your narrative or write straight through?
O’Neill: I normally write straight through, then my wife and I revise at night and I move on. I’m a very linear writer.
Pollock: You’ve done two volumes in the Blackfox Chronicles. How many more up your sleeve? And what’s the next one?
O’Neill: The book I just started writing is book three, the final volume of the Blackfox Chronicles. It’s called Mudd’s Luck and it finds Char and Michael sailing to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas on their way back to Tampa Bay. The title refers to the doctor who was a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth. Dr. Mudd was imprisoned at the fort after being sentenced to a lift term.  
Pollock: Are there other genres you’d like to explore?
O’Neill: I was thinking of an apocalyptic novel along the lines of The Road but with a military protagonist, but we’ll see what happens.
Pollock: Thanks so much, Tim, for stopping by.
O’Neill: My pleasure, Dan.
* TAMPA STAR: I974, Char Blackfox heads to Florida in to rebuild a life shattered by the war in Viet Nam. He’s a Seminole Indian and former Green Beret who leaves the army and moves to Tampa Bay with the vain hope of a new beginning. He gets a job, meets a beautiful woman and life seems to finally be going his way; until reality smacks him in the face.   He throws in with the wrong crowd; a small time Irish-American hoodlum, a corrupt cop and an exiled Mafia Capo and his life spirals out of control. In 2004, a combat hardened Force Recon Marine is released from active duty and returns to Florida to find his estranged father; a guy no one can find but everyone is looking for.
Amazon
*
STARFISH PRIME: Book 2 of the Blackfox Chronicles. Marine Corps Special Operations needed Michael Blackfox for one more mission.  Do it and the government will go easy on his old man for a horrendous crime he committed a long time ago.  Fail and he would allow an apocalyptic disaster to befall the United States.  The risk is high, but the payoff is huge. Now available on Amazon. Amazon
Website: http://www.tsoneil.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/timbones.oneilTwitter: @tselliot3
About T.S. O’Neill : T.S. O'Neil graduated with Honors from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts with a Degree in Criminal Justice and graduated with High Honors from the University of Phoenix with a Master's in Business Administration in Technology Management. He served as a Rifleman with the Marine Corps Reserve, an Officer in the Military Police Corps of the United States Army, and retired from the Army of the United States (AUS) as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2012. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. T.S. is currently employed as an IT Architect and lives in Seminole, FL with his beautiful fiancée Suzanne.
*

COUNTDOWN TO CASABLANCA���A List of Great WW2 Thrillers & My Attempt to Join the Club

In the movie Patton, George C. Scott (as George S.) confesses, as he visits the battlefield carnage in the aftermath of the Allied debacle at the Kasserine Pass, ���God help me, I do love it so!���
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of D-Day, let me make my own declaration: I love World War II thrillers. Not so much those big ballyhooed doorstop novels, like James Jones��� From Here to Eternity or Norman Mailer���s Naked and the Dead, or even Herman Wouk���s monumental Winds of War and War and Remembrance.
I���m talking strictly thrillers here. Espionage and special ops, lone wolf or ���Dirty Dozen���-type missions. Like Alistair MacLean���s Guns of Navarone or Geoffrey Household���s Rogue Male (about a lone hunter stalking Hitler, which was adapted into the film Man Hunt). And, yes, E.M. Nathanson���s Dirty Dozen.
I also relish the POW escape books (and movies thereof), like Paul Brickhill���s The Great Escape, Eric Williams��� The Wooden Horse and P.H. Reid���s Escape From Colditz.
In recent decades, WW2 special ops and behind-the-lines espionage tales have been in fine and abundant supply. There���s a gripping handful from Jack Higgins (or Harry Patterson), including The Eagle Has Landed (kidnapping Churchill), To Catch a King and The Valhalla Exchange. And several standouts from Ken Follett, preeminently Eye of the Needle and Key to Rebecca.

Before turning his considerable talents to the adventures of Israeli art-restorer and assassin, Gabriel Allon, Daniel Silva produced The Unlikely Spy. Greg Iles��� Black Cross and Spandau Phoenix are both well worth reading.

Many of these titles have apocalyptic ���thank God, it didn���t happen��� scenarios, without going the alternative history route of Robert Harri���s Fatherland (the the Nazis win!).
Among recent Kindle offerings I���ve particularly enjoyed Jack Hayes��� adrenaline-charged Blood Red Sea and Saving Hitler; and, because this is only an off-the-top-of-my-head list, I welcome readers��� recommendations of other recent (or not so recent) WW2 thrillers.
You'd be correct in inferring from the foregoing that I���ve badly wanted to try my hand at this historic thriller genre. But���how to pick a theater and concoct a plot?
As it turns out, my father Louis Pollock, a screenwriter, had worked up something suitable, fact-based and fictionally expanded. It involved German prisoners of war in America. The movie was never made, but I may yet develop his screenplay into a novel.
In the meantime, even before casting characters or weaving a plot, I settled on a place and time���North Africa, right after the Allied landings when Patton was military governor of Morocco. This was a brief interlude���two and a half months from the Operation Torch  landings in November, 1942, to the Casablanca Conference in January of ���43���in which ���Old Blood ���n��� Guts,��� in Ladislas Farago's phrase, took ���time-out of the war to play the role of an American pasha.���
From all accounts, Patton both gloried in, and agonized over, this delay in fulfilling his "warrior destiny." From a succession of Moroccan headquarters, each more sumptuous than the last, Patton reigned briefly as the modern equivalent of a Roman proconsul. He waded, fearlessly and often foolishly, into treacherous diplomatic waters, while being feted by the Sultan and his Grand Vizier and various regional pashas. (The boar hunt with the Pasha of Marrakesh, which opens Countdown, actually took place.) More to the critical point, Patton seems to have been politically seduced by the local Vichy power elite, some of them Nazi sympathizers, others outright spies.
His proconsulship climaxed with the assignment to organize a top-secret Allied summit conference. In the course of ten days in Casablanca, Patton played host to FDR, Churchill, DeGaulle, Marshall, Eisenhower, Clark, Bradley, Mountbatten, Montgomery, Alexander, Brooke and others. Characteristically, Patton pulled the show off with panache���and departed, shortly thereafter, into the Tunisian desert to commence killing Germans.

But the legendary general and his exploits hardly require fictionalizing. I only wanted to appropriate the exotic mise en sc��ne, with the general appearing as an occasional cometary presence in my story. With the background in place, I went looking for a protagonist and a suitably cataclysmic plot.
I found both ingredients, much to my taste. And now, after a delightful research trip and a couple of decades of writing and rewriting, editing and re-edting, I���m even more delighted that the damned thing is done at last.
I don���t know where, or if at all, Countdown to Casablanca might fit into the long list of WW2 thrillers. But, in all modesty, it seems to me that there���s always room for one more.
* [ Countdown to Casablanca /
 Published June 3, 2014 /
 Available on Kindle] 

COUNTDOWN TO CASABLANCA—A List of Great WW2 Thrillers & My Attempt to Join the Club

In the movie Patton, George C. Scott (as George S.) confesses, as he visits the battlefield carnage in the aftermath of the Allied debacle at the Kasserine Pass, “God help me, I do love it so!”
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of D-Day, let me make my own declaration: I love World War II thrillers. Not so much those big ballyhooed doorstop novels, like James Jones’ From Here to Eternity or Norman Mailer’s Naked and the Dead, or even Herman Wouk’s monumental Winds of War and War and Remembrance.
I’m talking strictly thrillers here. Espionage and special ops, lone wolf or “Dirty Dozen”-type missions. Like Alistair MacLean’s Guns of Navarone or Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male (about a lone hunter stalking Hitler, which was adapted into the film Man Hunt). And, yes, E.M. Nathanson’s Dirty Dozen.
I also relish the POW escape books (and movies thereof), like Paul Brickhill’s The Great Escape, Eric Williams’ The Wooden Horse and P.H. Reid’s Escape From Colditz.
In recent decades, WW2 special ops and behind-the-lines espionage tales have been in fine and abundant supply. There’s a gripping handful from Jack Higgins (or Harry Patterson), including The Eagle Has Landed (kidnapping Churchill), To Catch a King and The Valhalla Exchange. And several standouts from Ken Follett, preeminently Eye of the Needle and Key to Rebecca.

Before turning his considerable talents to the adventures of Israeli art-restorer and assassin, Gabriel Allon, Daniel Silva produced The Unlikely Spy. Greg Iles’ Black Cross and Spandau Phoenix are both well worth reading.

Many of these titles have apocalyptic “thank God, it didn’t happen” scenarios, without going the alternative history route of Robert Harri’s Fatherland (the the Nazis win!).
Among recent Kindle offerings I’ve particularly enjoyed Jack Hayes’ adrenaline-charged Blood Red Sea and Saving Hitler; and, because this is only an off-the-top-of-my-head list, I welcome readers’ recommendations of other recent (or not so recent) WW2 thrillers.
You'd be correct in inferring from the foregoing that I’ve badly wanted to try my hand at this historic thriller genre. But—how to pick a theater and concoct a plot?
As it turns out, my father Louis Pollock, a screenwriter, had worked up something suitable, fact-based and fictionally expanded. It involved German prisoners of war in America. The movie was never made, but I may yet develop his screenplay into a novel.
In the meantime, even before casting characters or weaving a plot, I settled on a place and time—North Africa, right after the Allied landings when Patton was military governor of Morocco. This was a brief interlude—two and a half months from the Operation Torch  landings in November, 1942, to the Casablanca Conference in January of ’43—in which “Old Blood ’n’ Guts,” in Ladislas Farago's phrase, took “time-out of the war to play the role of an American pasha.”
From all accounts, Patton both gloried in, and agonized over, this delay in fulfilling his "warrior destiny." From a succession of Moroccan headquarters, each more sumptuous than the last, Patton reigned briefly as the modern equivalent of a Roman proconsul. He waded, fearlessly and often foolishly, into treacherous diplomatic waters, while being feted by the Sultan and his Grand Vizier and various regional pashas. (The boar hunt with the Pasha of Marrakesh, which opens Countdown, actually took place.) More to the critical point, Patton seems to have been politically seduced by the local Vichy power elite, some of them Nazi sympathizers, others outright spies.
His proconsulship climaxed with the assignment to organize a top-secret Allied summit conference. In the course of ten days in Casablanca, Patton played host to FDR, Churchill, DeGaulle, Marshall, Eisenhower, Clark, Bradley, Mountbatten, Montgomery, Alexander, Brooke and others. Characteristically, Patton pulled the show off with panache—and departed, shortly thereafter, into the Tunisian desert to commence killing Germans.

But the legendary general and his exploits hardly require fictionalizing. I only wanted to appropriate the exotic mise en scène, with the general appearing as an occasional cometary presence in my story. With the background in place, I went looking for a protagonist and a suitably cataclysmic plot.
I found both ingredients, much to my taste. And now, after a delightful research trip and a couple of decades of writing and rewriting, editing and re-edting, I’m even more delighted that the damned thing is done at last.
I don’t know where, or if at all, Countdown to Casablanca might fit into the long list of WW2 thrillers. But, in all modesty, it seems to me that there’s always room for one more.
* [ Countdown to Casablanca /
 Published June 3, 2014 /
 Available on Kindle] 

AUTHOR INTERVIEW���CRAIG HURREN

(I can���t imagine my life absent the inspiring magic of good stories and good storytellers. In fact, this blog is largely devoted to making an appropriate fuss over the yarn-spinners of yore. Through periodic author interviews, I also celebrate contemporary practitioners of this most magical of arts.--Dan Pollock)
What would make a successful pharmaceutical executive suddenly try his hand at writing a techno-thriller? Well, as you���ll discover in the lively Q&A exchange below, storytelling was Craig Hurren���s first love, but one that had to take a back seat���for several decades���to the exigencies of earning a living.
But when he finally got around to it, his imaginative gifts, work ethic and wide-ranging expertise in technical areas resulted in a smashing debut thriller, THE KILLING CODE .
In the year since its release, Hurren's book has appeared on many Amazon Kindle best-seller lists. And I'm not surprised. It���s a read I wholeheartedly recommend. From the first chapter THE KILLING CODE accelerates like the latest-generation roller-coasters, and the whipsaw turns just keep coming!
How exactly did a pharmaceutical executive manage to launch a successful second-stage career as a thriller writer, and what lessons has he learned in the process? For the answers to these and other questions, let���s cut to the chase���my interview with Craig Hurren:
D.P.: There are shocks and surprises at the end of almost every chapter of THE KILLING CODE. Did you plot the story carefully in advance?
C.H.: I wish I was a planner, but I���m afraid it���s just not in my nature. I write spontaneously, then, if necessary, go back and fix anything that doesn���t fall into place properly. I know most authors will think my methodology impractical or worse, but that���s just what works for me. The great thrillers I grew up reading always had a hook at the end of each chapter, so that���s the style I like to use in my writing. Sometimes it���s not easy, but I firmly believe authors must give readers a compelling reason to move on to the next chapter. As a reader, I don���t like the modern approach of extremely brief chapters that end with no hook.
D.P.: THE KILLING CODE is apparently your debut thriller, but, frankly, it���s hard to believe it���s a first attempt at long-form fiction. When did you first get the urge to tell stories?
C.H.: Coming from such an accomplished editor and author as you, I consider that a real compliment ��� thank you, Dan! I guess I���ve always been a storyteller. When I was young, people used to love hearing me tell jokes ��� I was very good at mimicking accents and voices, so I���d draw the stories out to make a show of it. I enjoy entertaining people. I knew I wanted to write a book when I first read the late, great, Campbell Armstrong���s JIG. That was a real inspiration to me, and it was that experience, thinking back, that really got me started enjoying books. Of course, life is what happened while I was busy making other plans, so it wasn���t until about thirty-five years later that I finally put fingers to keyboard. It was a very interesting process, and thoroughly fulfilling to have accomplished something I���d dreamt of so many years earlier. If that writing bug is in you, I recommend you let it loose!
D.P. To get specific, you���re not simply a thriller writer, but a techno-thriller writer, and one who demonstrates an impressive command of weaponry, law enforcement, martial arts, etc. Without giving away trade secrets, how do you keep current in all these areas?
C.H.: I���m very fortunate to have a good number of close friends who have served in elite military units, and others who���ve worked in the more concealed services. When I can���t find enough information on the Internet, or through other means, they are happy to help with technical advice on application, usage, suitability, etc. of weaponry. For the martial arts components, I���ve studied several different forms since I was quite young, so I can improvise fairly well from my own knowledge and experience. Also, as a longtime executive in the healthcare industry, I have broad and intimate knowledge of most things medical and many things technical.
D.P.: Who are your favorite thriller (and techno-thriller) writers?
C.H.: As I said, Campbell Armstrong was very influential for me, and my other favorites are Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Robert Ludlum, and Robert Crais. There are many more I enjoy, but those are my go-to guys. Unfortunately, we���ve now lost several of these greats; looks like I���ll have to find some new ones.
D.P.: What books are you reading now?
C.H.: I���m sorry to say that other matters have been taking most of my time lately, so I���ve done precious little reading. I started a feisty and fun little number called, LAIR OF THE FOX, and was enjoying it very much, until the demands of life took me away from it temporarily. I���ll get back to it soon.
D.P.: As LAIR���s author, I have to insist you keep your word on that, or I���ll have to stop touting it as a ���can���t-put-it-down��� book. Next question: Do you have a set time to write each day?
C.H.: Until such time as I become independently wealthy, that is completely impractical for me. When I write, it usually happens in spontaneous, sporadic frenzies.
D.P.: How much time do you allot to marketing?
C.H.: I���m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I spend far too much time on marketing. It seems most efforts are minimally effective at best, and some are just plain futile. As the majority of independently published authors are well aware, book marketing is an extremely frustrating game. I���ve been fortunate enough to have sold over 13,000 copies of THE KILLING CODE so far, but let���s face it ��� that will not pay the bills. I should take the advice of wonderfully successful authors like Russell Blake and Jake Needham, who have both told me on more than one occasion to just keep trying and ���write more books.��� As most writers know, that���s easier said than done for most of us, but it is very sound advice.
D.P.: As of this writing, THE KILLING CODE has 74 reviews on Amazon, most of them 5 stars. Aside from obviously writing a crackerjack thriller, do you have any tips for indie writers on getting reviewed?
C.H.: Ugh, the dreaded review-getting question. Obviously my first few reviews were from friends and family, but no one has enough of those to make an impact. I still remember my first review from a total stranger like it was yesterday. It was only about two weeks after I launched, and it came like a bolt out of the blue. What a thrill ��� someone I���d never met had read my work, and liked it so much they gave it a 5-star rating and glowing review. I was over the moon!
Anyway, back to the question: I���m afraid I have no real answer for you. I���ve heard of authors paying PR companies for stacked reviews, and other forms of skullduggery. Some will trade reviews with other authors, but I know of no legitimate or effective way to induce unknown readers to rate and/or review a book. As I said, I���ve sold more than 13,000 copies of THE KILLING CODE, yet I only have 74 reviews on Amazon USA, 9 reviews on Amazon UK, and 49 ratings with 20 reviews on Goodreads. Those numbers make no sense to me at all, but there you have it. We all love hearing from our readers, but if you think about it, writing a review is an unnatural act for the vast majority of readers. They don���t buy a book thinking they���ll have to publicly express their opinion on the work. Before ebooks, the general public bought books from bookstores, and if they had a specific opinion about any title, they would have a conversation with friends or family about it ��� not splatter their inner thoughts all over the Internet. Some folks enjoy doing that, and we appreciate it, but in my humble opinion, most readers prefer to remain just that.
D.P.: Do you write in public (Starbucks, say) or strictly in private?
C.H.: I finally got rid of my massive and extremely powerful desktop computer in favor of a laptop ��� partly for that very purpose. Strangely enough, the laptop hasn���t left my desktop since I got it over eight months ago. So the answer is no, apparently I���m not a public writer.
D.P.: Do you jump around in your narrative or write straight through?
C.H.: I generally try to write straight through, but sometimes a bit of exposition is necessary. Backstory can be annoying, but since writing in a present timeline excludes previous events, readers need knowledge of certain events and history to understand character traits, motivations, etc.
D.P.: An obvious final question: Is there a sequel in the works?
C.H.: Yes! I���m currently on chapter 9 of THE KILLING CHASE and very happy with it so far. I���ve learned a great deal from my first book and all the wonderful people I���ve met through the experience. I believe my style and dialogue have improved ��� I just wish I could do something about the speed! ;-)
Thank you kindly for interviewing me and your interest in my work, Dan.
D.P.: Thank you, Craig! I can���t wait for THE KILLING CHASE to begin���
* THE KILLING CODE (from the Amazon book description):Detective Alan Beach discovers a tenuous connection between the apparent suicide of a prominent scientist and the assassination of a US Congressman. The suspense builds as he struggles to uncover the truth. When a team of mercenaries tries to permanently silence him, a mysterious figure intervenes. Beach and his deadly new protector discover a dangerous conspiracy running far deeper than they imagined. In this must-read thriller, the race is on to stop one of the most powerful business moguls in America from assuming the role of puppet-master over the entire nation.
��� THE KILLING CODE has a great premise, deft plotting, and a rock-'em-sock-���em ending with a twist in the tail. Heck, what's not to like?������Jake Needham (best-selling crime-fiction novelist)
About Craig Hurren: Craig Hurren has amassed many years of experience as an executive in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. A long-held passion for thrillers has driven him to aspire to the ranks of his favorite authors, such as: Campbell Armstrong, Clive Cussler, Vince Flynn, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and others. His clear and concise style, brisk pace, clever plot twists, gritty imagery and crisp action sequences reflect his interest in these masters, and his knowledge of medical technology makes his stories relevant and the science highly realistic.
*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW—CRAIG HURREN

(I can’t imagine my life absent the inspiring magic of good stories and good storytellers. In fact, this blog is largely devoted to making an appropriate fuss over the yarn-spinners of yore. Through periodic author interviews, I also celebrate contemporary practitioners of this most magical of arts.--Dan Pollock)
What would make a successful pharmaceutical executive suddenly try his hand at writing a techno-thriller? Well, as you’ll discover in the lively Q&A exchange below, storytelling was Craig Hurren’s first love, but one that had to take a back seat—for several decades—to the exigencies of earning a living.
But when he finally got around to it, his imaginative gifts, work ethic and wide-ranging expertise in technical areas resulted in a smashing debut thriller, THE KILLING CODE .
In the year since its release, Hurren's book has appeared on many Amazon Kindle best-seller lists. And I'm not surprised. It’s a read I wholeheartedly recommend. From the first chapter THE KILLING CODE accelerates like the latest-generation roller-coasters, and the whipsaw turns just keep coming!
How exactly did a pharmaceutical executive manage to launch a successful second-stage career as a thriller writer, and what lessons has he learned in the process? For the answers to these and other questions, let’s cut to the chase—my interview with Craig Hurren:
D.P.: There are shocks and surprises at the end of almost every chapter of THE KILLING CODE. Did you plot the story carefully in advance?
C.H.: I wish I was a planner, but I’m afraid it’s just not in my nature. I write spontaneously, then, if necessary, go back and fix anything that doesn’t fall into place properly. I know most authors will think my methodology impractical or worse, but that’s just what works for me. The great thrillers I grew up reading always had a hook at the end of each chapter, so that’s the style I like to use in my writing. Sometimes it’s not easy, but I firmly believe authors must give readers a compelling reason to move on to the next chapter. As a reader, I don’t like the modern approach of extremely brief chapters that end with no hook.
D.P.: THE KILLING CODE is apparently your debut thriller, but, frankly, it’s hard to believe it’s a first attempt at long-form fiction. When did you first get the urge to tell stories?
C.H.: Coming from such an accomplished editor and author as you, I consider that a real compliment – thank you, Dan! I guess I’ve always been a storyteller. When I was young, people used to love hearing me tell jokes – I was very good at mimicking accents and voices, so I’d draw the stories out to make a show of it. I enjoy entertaining people. I knew I wanted to write a book when I first read the late, great, Campbell Armstrong’s JIG. That was a real inspiration to me, and it was that experience, thinking back, that really got me started enjoying books. Of course, life is what happened while I was busy making other plans, so it wasn’t until about thirty-five years later that I finally put fingers to keyboard. It was a very interesting process, and thoroughly fulfilling to have accomplished something I’d dreamt of so many years earlier. If that writing bug is in you, I recommend you let it loose!
D.P. To get specific, you’re not simply a thriller writer, but a techno-thriller writer, and one who demonstrates an impressive command of weaponry, law enforcement, martial arts, etc. Without giving away trade secrets, how do you keep current in all these areas?
C.H.: I’m very fortunate to have a good number of close friends who have served in elite military units, and others who’ve worked in the more concealed services. When I can’t find enough information on the Internet, or through other means, they are happy to help with technical advice on application, usage, suitability, etc. of weaponry. For the martial arts components, I’ve studied several different forms since I was quite young, so I can improvise fairly well from my own knowledge and experience. Also, as a longtime executive in the healthcare industry, I have broad and intimate knowledge of most things medical and many things technical.
D.P.: Who are your favorite thriller (and techno-thriller) writers?
C.H.: As I said, Campbell Armstrong was very influential for me, and my other favorites are Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Robert Ludlum, and Robert Crais. There are many more I enjoy, but those are my go-to guys. Unfortunately, we’ve now lost several of these greats; looks like I’ll have to find some new ones.
D.P.: What books are you reading now?
C.H.: I’m sorry to say that other matters have been taking most of my time lately, so I’ve done precious little reading. I started a feisty and fun little number called, LAIR OF THE FOX, and was enjoying it very much, until the demands of life took me away from it temporarily. I’ll get back to it soon.
D.P.: As LAIR’s author, I have to insist you keep your word on that, or I’ll have to stop touting it as a “can’t-put-it-down” book. Next question: Do you have a set time to write each day?
C.H.: Until such time as I become independently wealthy, that is completely impractical for me. When I write, it usually happens in spontaneous, sporadic frenzies.
D.P.: How much time do you allot to marketing?
C.H.: I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I spend far too much time on marketing. It seems most efforts are minimally effective at best, and some are just plain futile. As the majority of independently published authors are well aware, book marketing is an extremely frustrating game. I’ve been fortunate enough to have sold over 13,000 copies of THE KILLING CODE so far, but let’s face it – that will not pay the bills. I should take the advice of wonderfully successful authors like Russell Blake and Jake Needham, who have both told me on more than one occasion to just keep trying and “write more books.” As most writers know, that’s easier said than done for most of us, but it is very sound advice.
D.P.: As of this writing, THE KILLING CODE has 74 reviews on Amazon, most of them 5 stars. Aside from obviously writing a crackerjack thriller, do you have any tips for indie writers on getting reviewed?
C.H.: Ugh, the dreaded review-getting question. Obviously my first few reviews were from friends and family, but no one has enough of those to make an impact. I still remember my first review from a total stranger like it was yesterday. It was only about two weeks after I launched, and it came like a bolt out of the blue. What a thrill – someone I’d never met had read my work, and liked it so much they gave it a 5-star rating and glowing review. I was over the moon!
Anyway, back to the question: I’m afraid I have no real answer for you. I’ve heard of authors paying PR companies for stacked reviews, and other forms of skullduggery. Some will trade reviews with other authors, but I know of no legitimate or effective way to induce unknown readers to rate and/or review a book. As I said, I’ve sold more than 13,000 copies of THE KILLING CODE, yet I only have 74 reviews on Amazon USA, 9 reviews on Amazon UK, and 49 ratings with 20 reviews on Goodreads. Those numbers make no sense to me at all, but there you have it. We all love hearing from our readers, but if you think about it, writing a review is an unnatural act for the vast majority of readers. They don’t buy a book thinking they’ll have to publicly express their opinion on the work. Before ebooks, the general public bought books from bookstores, and if they had a specific opinion about any title, they would have a conversation with friends or family about it – not splatter their inner thoughts all over the Internet. Some folks enjoy doing that, and we appreciate it, but in my humble opinion, most readers prefer to remain just that.
D.P.: Do you write in public (Starbucks, say) or strictly in private?
C.H.: I finally got rid of my massive and extremely powerful desktop computer in favor of a laptop – partly for that very purpose. Strangely enough, the laptop hasn’t left my desktop since I got it over eight months ago. So the answer is no, apparently I’m not a public writer.
D.P.: Do you jump around in your narrative or write straight through?
C.H.: I generally try to write straight through, but sometimes a bit of exposition is necessary. Backstory can be annoying, but since writing in a present timeline excludes previous events, readers need knowledge of certain events and history to understand character traits, motivations, etc.
D.P.: An obvious final question: Is there a sequel in the works?
C.H.: Yes! I’m currently on chapter 9 of THE KILLING CHASE and very happy with it so far. I’ve learned a great deal from my first book and all the wonderful people I’ve met through the experience. I believe my style and dialogue have improved – I just wish I could do something about the speed! ;-)
Thank you kindly for interviewing me and your interest in my work, Dan.
D.P.: Thank you, Craig! I can’t wait for THE KILLING CHASE to begin…
* THE KILLING CODE (from the Amazon book description):Detective Alan Beach discovers a tenuous connection between the apparent suicide of a prominent scientist and the assassination of a US Congressman. The suspense builds as he struggles to uncover the truth. When a team of mercenaries tries to permanently silence him, a mysterious figure intervenes. Beach and his deadly new protector discover a dangerous conspiracy running far deeper than they imagined. In this must-read thriller, the race is on to stop one of the most powerful business moguls in America from assuming the role of puppet-master over the entire nation.
“ THE KILLING CODE has a great premise, deft plotting, and a rock-'em-sock-‘em ending with a twist in the tail. Heck, what's not to like?”—Jake Needham (best-selling crime-fiction novelist)
About Craig Hurren: Craig Hurren has amassed many years of experience as an executive in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. A long-held passion for thrillers has driven him to aspire to the ranks of his favorite authors, such as: Campbell Armstrong, Clive Cussler, Vince Flynn, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and others. His clear and concise style, brisk pace, clever plot twists, gritty imagery and crisp action sequences reflect his interest in these masters, and his knowledge of medical technology makes his stories relevant and the science highly realistic.
*

MY ���COLLISION COURSE��� NOVEL

I remember as a boy reading a gripping account of the 1956 collision of two passenger ships off the coast of Nantucket, the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm. The book, Collision Course , was a best-seller, and deservedly so.
The author, Alvin Moscow, told his tale in a straight-ahead journalistic style (he was a former New York Times and AP reporter), shifting from ship to ship, bridge to bridge, explaining the fateful decisions, or nondecisions, that led up to the disaster.*
(* In doing so, Moscow was likely following the blueprint of Walter Lord���s best-selling Night to Remember, which details a more famous maritime collision, between the RMS Titanic and a Newfoundland iceberg. Night was published just a year before the Andrea Doria-Stockholm tragedy.)
Ever after, the phrase ���Collision Course��� was mated in my mind with Alvin Moscow���s riveting tale.
Flash forward many years. I was wandering the bookstalls of London���s Heathrow Airport looking for a paperback to help pass the 11 airborne hours from London to Los Angeles. I settled on a Jack Higgins thriller titled Solo about a concert pianist who moonlighted as a contract assassin. Seriously.
The choice was good. The pages turned in tandem with the great globe below, and Higgins��� climactic finale arrived just as we dropped into the LAX glide path.
What made Solo such sure-fire fun for me was the fact (obvious from chapter two) that Higgins had crafted a classic collision course story. Chapter one introduced the lethal virtuoso. Chapter two brought on a special forces bloke charged with hunting him down. Hero and antihero, both top-drawer assassins. And, as simple as that, the ���game was afoot,��� as Holmes would say. In reading terms, the hook was set and I was happily being played by an old pro.
Of course I���d read, and watched, the collision course formula applied a thousand times before, on TV, in movies and stories. Holmes vs. Moriarty, Superman vs. Lex Luthor, Captain Marvel vs. Dr. Sivana, Batman vs. the Joker, North vs. South, Cavalry vs. Indians. And in a thousand action movies���boxing, samurai, spy vs. spy, even understudy vs. leading lady. Always the formula worked, but it never coalesced in my mind as a story structure until Higgins��� Solo. When it did, it turned on a lightbulb thought: ���I want to write one of these!���
Reading The Virginian several years later sharpened that resolve.
Owen Wister, an Easterner and Harvard classmate of Teddy Roosevelt, is generally credited with creating the western novel���and the iconic western hero. His ���Virginian��� (played by Gary Cooper in the 1929 film) was the fully fleshed prototype of all those rangy, rough-hewn paragons later enshrined in the works of genre masters like Zane Grey, Max Brand, Luke Short, Ernest Haycox and Louis L���Amour.More to my point, Wister���s 1902 novel also contained a series of recurring and escalating duels between hero and antagonist���the Virginian and Trampas���each time with higher stakes until the final showdown, which marshaled all the signature elements of High Noon.
A collision course story, The Virginian, if ever there was one.



My turn at bat came years later, after a surprising run of good reviews for my first novel, Lair of the Fox. Publishers were suddenly interested in me. What was my next book? they wondered.
I didn���t have one. So I thought of Higgins and Wister. Why not update that plot, two guys on a Cold War collision course? White hat vs. black hat. Better yet, have them switch hats, defect to each other���s country. Cossack vs. Cowboy. Pitted against one another in a series of escalating showdowns, each time with different weaponry, all laid out in easy-to-follow symmetry, chapter by chapter.
A plot came together swiftly in my mind, set against a high-stakes political backdrop. I wrote a 10-page synopsis, followed by a 10-page sample chapter, and shot it off to my impatient agent.
That brief proposal, which would eventually culminate in DUEL OF ASSASSINS, was (and still is) the single most lucrative piece of writing I have ever produced. Those 20 pages landed me a two-book contract that exceeded even my fantasies. (Reverses of fortune in my writing career were lurking not far down the road, but that���s another story.)
I had the idea, I had the contract. I only had to write the book. Not a small matter. So I set to work. Well, not really. I quit my job and set off on a research trip.
But eventually it got written. More than a year later, I was able to hand an advance reading copy to a colleague, best-selling mystery writer T. Jefferson Parker (see my blog post, ���A Good Writer Who Keeps Getting Better���) and ask him if he���d be willing to read it and maybe give me a quote.
���Tell me one thing,��� Jeff said, staring at my title, Duel of Assassins, ���does it contain an actual duel?���
���Yes,��� I was able to answer, ���with fencing masks and sabers, and described play-by-play from en garde to touch��.���
Jeff���s generous quote appears on the cover of the current ebook edition, just out on Kindle. To read it, and all the many words that follow inside, I invite you to click on this Duel of Assassins link and give it a download.

MY ‘COLLISION COURSE’ NOVEL

I remember as a boy reading a gripping account of the 1956 collision of two passenger ships off the coast of Nantucket, the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm. The book, Collision Course , was a best-seller, and deservedly so.
The author, Alvin Moscow, told his tale in a straight-ahead journalistic style (he was a former New York Times and AP reporter), shifting from ship to ship, bridge to bridge, explaining the fateful decisions, or nondecisions, that led up to the disaster.*
(* In doing so, Moscow was likely following the blueprint of Walter Lord’s best-selling Night to Remember, which details a more famous maritime collision, between the RMS Titanic and a Newfoundland iceberg. Night was published just a year before the Andrea Doria-Stockholm tragedy.)
Ever after, the phrase “Collision Course” was mated in my mind with Alvin Moscow’s riveting tale.
Flash forward many years. I was wandering the bookstalls of London’s Heathrow Airport looking for a paperback to help pass the 11 airborne hours from London to Los Angeles. I settled on a Jack Higgins thriller titled Solo about a concert pianist who moonlighted as a contract assassin. Seriously.
The choice was good. The pages turned in tandem with the great globe below, and Higgins’ climactic finale arrived just as we dropped into the LAX glide path.
What made Solo such sure-fire fun for me was the fact (obvious from chapter two) that Higgins had crafted a classic collision course story. Chapter one introduced the lethal virtuoso. Chapter two brought on a special forces bloke charged with hunting him down. Hero and antihero, both top-drawer assassins. And, as simple as that, the “game was afoot,” as Holmes would say. In reading terms, the hook was set and I was happily being played by an old pro.
Of course I’d read, and watched, the collision course formula applied a thousand times before, on TV, in movies and stories. Holmes vs. Moriarty, Superman vs. Lex Luthor, Captain Marvel vs. Dr. Sivana, Batman vs. the Joker, North vs. South, Cavalry vs. Indians. And in a thousand action movies—boxing, samurai, spy vs. spy, even understudy vs. leading lady. Always the formula worked, but it never coalesced in my mind as a story structure until Higgins’ Solo. When it did, it turned on a lightbulb thought: “I want to write one of these!”
Reading The Virginian several years later sharpened that resolve.
Owen Wister, an Easterner and Harvard classmate of Teddy Roosevelt, is generally credited with creating the western novel—and the iconic western hero. His “Virginian” (played by Gary Cooper in the 1929 film) was the fully fleshed prototype of all those rangy, rough-hewn paragons later enshrined in the works of genre masters like Zane Grey, Max Brand, Luke Short, Ernest Haycox and Louis L’Amour.More to my point, Wister’s 1902 novel also contained a series of recurring and escalating duels between hero and antagonist—the Virginian and Trampas—each time with higher stakes until the final showdown, which marshaled all the signature elements of High Noon.
A collision course story, The Virginian, if ever there was one.



My turn at bat came years later, after a surprising run of good reviews for my first novel, Lair of the Fox. Publishers were suddenly interested in me. What was my next book? they wondered.
I didn’t have one. So I thought of Higgins and Wister. Why not update that plot, two guys on a Cold War collision course? White hat vs. black hat. Better yet, have them switch hats, defect to each other’s country. Cossack vs. Cowboy. Pitted against one another in a series of escalating showdowns, each time with different weaponry, all laid out in easy-to-follow symmetry, chapter by chapter.
A plot came together swiftly in my mind, set against a high-stakes political backdrop. I wrote a 10-page synopsis, followed by a 10-page sample chapter, and shot it off to my impatient agent.
That brief proposal, which would eventually culminate in DUEL OF ASSASSINS, was (and still is) the single most lucrative piece of writing I have ever produced. Those 20 pages landed me a two-book contract that exceeded even my fantasies. (Reverses of fortune in my writing career were lurking not far down the road, but that’s another story.)
I had the idea, I had the contract. I only had to write the book. Not a small matter. So I set to work. Well, not really. I quit my job and set off on a research trip.
But eventually it got written. More than a year later, I was able to hand an advance reading copy to a colleague, best-selling mystery writer T. Jefferson Parker (see my blog post, “A Good Writer Who Keeps Getting Better”) and ask him if he’d be willing to read it and maybe give me a quote.
“Tell me one thing,” Jeff said, staring at my title, Duel of Assassins, “does it contain an actual duel?”
“Yes,” I was able to answer, “with fencing masks and sabers, and described play-by-play from en garde to touché.”
Jeff’s generous quote appears on the cover of the current ebook edition, just out on Kindle. To read it, and all the many words that follow inside, I invite you to click on this Duel of Assassins link and give it a download.

THE KING AND I: HOW MY FIRST BOOK GOT SOLD

Side by side--in my dreams!
We’ve all heard stories about how celebrated best-sellers were repeatedly rejected before achieving their ultimate success and bringing untold pleasure to millions of readers.
The list of distinguished authors who struggled past initial rejections is surprisingly long. It contains legendary names like John Grisham, John D. MacDonald, Vince Flynn, Louis L’Amour, Tony Hillerman, Zane Grey, even J.K. Rowling—and a whole lot more.
A textbook case is that of Stephen King. His first novel, CARRIE, about a tormented girl with telekinetic powers, racked up 30 rejections; whereupon its disheartened creator tossed it in the trashbin. Only to have his wife fish it out and prevail on him to send it around again.
Shows you the value of a “Yes, dear” marriage.
These turnaround tales offer frustrated writers more than consolation; they are endlessly inspiring. They tempt us to construct a syllogism along these lines:
Many best-selling books were repeatedly rejected. My book has been repeatedly rejected. Ergo, my book will be a best seller.
Alas, 99.99% of repeatedly rejected manuscripts do not become best-sellers. (But maybe if they’d been submitted just one more time…)
Like CARRIE, my first book, LAIR OF THE FOX, was repeatedly rejected, yet ultimately—after I‘d abandoned all hope—was published. Alas, its sales trajectory and my writing career did not continue to parallel CARRIE’s and Mr. King’s. Not hardly.
And yet there are some additional and interesting parallels in the publication stories of LAIR and CARRIE.
I started my writing career with at least one advantage over the schoolteacher from Maine. When I began plotting and writing LAIR, I was working on the copydesk of the L.A. Times Syndicate, under a managing editor who had worked for some years as a successful book editor with a mainstream New York publishing house.
With some hesitancy, my boss agreed to look over my synopsis and three chapters—the accepted formula at the time for any book submission. It took several weeks, and a few followup nudges from me, to get her actually to open up the manila envelope I’d given her and read through my proposal, but in the end she was enthusiastic and agreed to send it, along with a cover letter, to a prominent New York agent.
This woman, head of her own agency, sent me an encouraging note several weeks later. I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars. Two savvy women in the book biz liked my novel—they really did! The New York agent even invited me to meet her for breakfast on her next West Coast swing at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
At that meeting, she gave me some good suggestions; I nodded my head vigorously at each one. “I can sell this,” she said, “but three chapters won’t do it. How soon can you give me 100 pages?” A month? Two months? I can’t recall what number I came up with. But, writing furiously before and after work and on weekends, I met the deadline.
Then I waited for the magic phone call.
What I got instead—every few days, it seemed—were No. 10 envelopes from my New York agent, each containing one or more Xeroxed rejection letters from big-time editors at big-time publishing houses. Not form rejection letters, mind you, but friendly notes to my agent, politely dismissing my book—for a puzzling variety of reasons.
How many major publishing houses were left? I wondered.
Then—hallelujah!—I got a Xeroxed letter from a publisher with an enthusiastic cover note from my agent. An executive editor at New American Library—a highly respected guy, she wrote—was willing to considerbuying LAIR if the author would make a certain story change—a pretty major change, with drastic ramifications affecting the rest of the downstream plot.
I telephoned her back and said yes. What the hell else could I say?
Then I set to work. Reconstructing my intricate plot proved even trickier than I’d imagined. The new structure kept collapsing. But, of course, it had to work. After several agonizing weeks I managed to cobble together a new synopsis and send it off to my agent, who forwarded it to the interested editor.
For days and days I didn’t hear a thing. Finally I called to check. “You took too long,” my agent admonished me. “He’s no longer at NAL, and his replacement isn’t interested.”
When the power of coherent speech returned to me, I asked her if she was going to continue to send it out to other publishers. Sure, she said, but added that there weren’t that many left on her list.
A few weeks and several rejection slips later my New York agent phoned to say that she was truly sorry, but she’d given it her best shot and there was nowhere else she could send LAIR.
“Write me something else,” she said.
So, just like Stephen King, weary of seeing his beloved CARRIE turn up in his mailbox yet again, I set LAIR OF THE FOX aside. Stuffed into a filebox, not the trashbin, but it amounted to the same thing—a quick burial without ceremony. Despair congealed around me like a straitjacket, but within a week I began plotting a new story. “Something completely different,” as Monty Python used to say.
Clearly I needed a new approach, a new voice, maybe a new niche. But my wife, like Stephen King’s, hadn’t given up on my firstborn. And she had an idea.
An interesting thing happened in book publishing just about then. The first in a brand-new genre, the “techno-thriller,” Tom Clancy’s THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, suddenly shot to the top of the best-seller lists. The book bore an unlikely imprimatur—the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, Md. HUNT, it turned out, had been roundly rejected by all the mainstream New York houses before finding its modest home.
Why not, my wife asked, send LAIR OF THE ROX to the Naval Institute Press? And if that doesn’t work, what about other second- and third-tier publishers, university presses, and so on? What have you got to lose?
Of course, she was right. When isn’t she? So I wrote my New York agent and politely inquired—since she’d run out of places to submit LAIR—if she’d mind if I tried to agent it myself. Starting with the Naval Institute Press.
Two weeks passed without response. Okay, I thought, so I’m chopped liver, I’ll just go ahead on my own. Finally she called me—to tell me she’d just sold the book.
“It's not a major publisher,” she cautioned, “and not a big advance.”
I didn’t care to whom or for how much, I’d finally sold a book! Well, she had, but it was my dream that had just come true at last! Thanks to my wife’s advice, which had apparently prodded my agent into flipping beyond her favorite section of her Rolodex.
At that point I was scribbling the details—a small independent New York publisher, Walker & Co., was offering $2,500 for LAIR. Would I take it? Yes, I would.
Walker was giving me six months to finish it—remember, I’d written only 100 pages. No problem, I told the agent. The rest would be easy. After several days of celebrating and telling the good news to everyone I could think of, I set to work.
I’m a slow writer. Sometimes really slow—a fact that had already cost me the NAL sale. Knowing that, my wife began measuring my daily output against my six-month deadline. “You’ll never make it,” she concluded. “Not even close. You need to ask for a leave of absence.”
She showed me the math, and I saw she was right (what else is new?). I went to my editorial bosses and begged; they understood what a big deal it was, bless them, and a three-month leave was arranged. Even then, working full time—and double time the last few weeks—I barely made it, rushing down to Fed-Ex on the final afternoon.
My editor was enthusiastic. He loved my writing, he said. There was only one slight problem. The manuscript was too long. It turned out that Walker & Co., after careful calculations of their manufacturing costs against pricing structure, was forced to limit all their books to no more than 80,000 words.
LAIR OF THE FOX weighed in at 120,000. So 40,000 of those words had to be removed.
I was stunned, but my editor was treating this as no big deal. “If you like,” he said in a helpful vein, “I can take care of it. I think I can find a couple chapters you could do without.”
“No, please, don’t do that!” I protested. “I’ll do it. Just give me a week or two.”
So I went through my precious, polished, perfect manuscript again—line by line and word by word—with a predatory eye and a No. 2 draughting pencil. (For hints about how best to do this, check out my blog post on Kipling’s “Higher Editing.”) The first pass didn’t come close; radical surgery was needed. The second time through I became reckless. Sentences vanished, then entire paragraphs; long scenes turned into vignettes. I stopped just short of excising whole chapters, as my editor had so blithely proposed.
When I got to the magic number of 80,000 words, I Fed-Exed LAIR OF THE FOX-lite off to my editor. “I couldn’t have done it better!” he generously conceded.
More importantly, he thought the book was the better for the reductive process. He was right. Rereading LAIR today, I don’t miss any of those well-chosen words that aren’t there anymore.
Now it was time to start marketing efforts, because my little publisher didn’t have any budget for this, it turned out. Walker & Co. sold mostly to public libraries.
So I crafted letters to various thriller writers I admired, hoping to charm at least one of them into reading, and favorably commenting on, an advance reading copy or galley proof, when they became available.
These were purely shot-in-the-dark letters, addressed to famous names in care of their publishers. But two of these celebrity authors—Clive Cussler and the late Ross Thomas—eventually wrote back and said they’d be happy to look at a galley. Cussler gave me his address in Colorado, Thomas in Malibu.
Weeks later, after I’d sent them copies of the first galleys, both these generous gentlemen responded with timely endorsements which I use to this day.

My editor was impressed with this, but told me that reviews were far more important than author blurbs. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he said after the review copies went out.
I’d be lucky if LAIR OF THE FOX got reviewed at all, I thought. Why would Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, the L.A. Times et al., bother with a title from little Walker & Co.?
But they did. Not only that, they actually likedit—that Sally Field thing again. Publishers Weekly gave LAIR a starred review and pronounced it a “classic can't-put-it-down thriller.” The N.Y. Times and the L.A. Times provided similar superlatives. Only Kirkus was snotty—“they always are,” I was told. “Nobody pays attention.”
LAIR OF THE FOX was starting to look like a contender.
Good news continued. Not long after the hard cover was published (if you could find it), reprint rights were sold to HarperCollins for its brand-new paperback line. It wasn’t a financial bonanza, but several times what Walker had paid for the hard cover, and I was now under the aegis of a prestige publisher.
As an “added bonus,” in the tautology of the infomercial, the editor who bought my book at Harper was the same guy who had turned it down when he was editor-in-chief at another publishing house. I had a copy of his earlier rejection letter and the original of his new congratulatory letter to prove it!
“But wait, there’s more” (another infomercial refrain). A month or so later the agent sold my second “book”—this time only a 10-page synopsis and a brief opening chapter—to another major publisher, Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.
This sale was a bonanza, at least in my world. “Are you sitting down?” the agent said over the phone, preparing me for her bombshell news. When I said I was, I heard those magic words I’d dreamed of for so many years:
“You can quit your job!”
Dizzy-making details followed, all about the hard-soft contract and schedule of payouts. And there was one final coincidence—the Pocket Books’ editor I’d be working with on the new book was the same guy who demanded I change the LAIR OF THE FOX plot back when he’d been at New American Library.
There aren’t many days like that, no matter what your profession. Considerable detours and reverses were lurking farther down my writing career path—remember, this is my story, not Stephen King’s or any of those other famous names’—but I’ll leave the dreary negative stuff for another post. The good news is that I did quit my job, and not long afterward my wife and I set off for a research trip to Europe and even splurged a bit.
Moral? One, for sure, is: Marry well—and listen to your spouse.
Postscript: Thanks to the digital publishing revolution, LAIR OF THE FOX and my other titles are now enjoying a second launching and are starting to build the kind of readership that I always hoped for. The last chapter has not been written.

THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS

For your writer’s bookshelf, I recommend you pick up (or download) a copy of Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. The work of a French academic and classicist, the slim volume (my well-thumbed copy runs to 180 pages) was first issued in Paris in 1895, translated into English in 1916, and has been reprinted continuously ever since.
I’ve never read it, mind you. I don’t think it’s meant to be read straight through. It’s more suited to skimming and sampling. Sometimes in a lazy search for ideas I find myself going back over Polti’s time-tested list,* which attempts to categorize every dramatic situation that might usefully occur in a story or drama.



(*Wikipedia offers Polti’s list here. And if you want the complete English text, the Internet Archive obliges here.)

In our days, of course, “list” titles are a glut on the market, from songs (Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”) to Cosmo headlines (“69 Shocking Things Chicks Do in Bed”) and quickie self-help tomes (“10 Power Secrets of Ruthless Leaders”). But, with the notable exception of Moses on Mt. Sinai, I’m thinking Polti might have been the trendsetter on catchy list titles.

He’s certainly had no shortage of copycats when it comes to how to plot. Google any number + “plot” and you’ll get oodles of competing lists—"7 Basic Plots," "17 Stockplots," "20 Master Plots" to name a few.

I was reminded of Polti’s old warhorse last year when I watched Saving Mr. Banks, the film about Walt Disney’s decades-long quest to bring Mary Poppins to the screen.

I realized, at some point, that the heart and soul of this touching tale was based on what Polti regarded as the most neglected of all the dramatic situations. Indeed, the Frenchman gave it pride of place in his list of three dozen:

No. 1 — Supplication
A Persecutor; a Suppliant; a Power in authority, whose decision is doubtful.

Modern writers, Polti laments, have evidently “found the First Situation too bare and simple a subject for this epoch.”



In the climactic scene of Mr. Banks, Tom Hanks, in a brilliant evocation of Walt Disney, gets down on his knees before author P.L. Travers (wonderfully played by Emma Thompson) and begs her to allow him to bring her characters to a wider world.

Coincidentally, in another of last year’s films, Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks entreats Somali pirates to spare the life of his crew, so he’s clearly mastered the art of dramatic “Supplication.” But it’s still novel to see a hero, or a male protagonist, on his knees.

The other way around, genderwise, is stereotypically quite common. Polti mentions the heroine of Sophocles’ Antigone, begging her Uncle Creon to be permitted to bury her slain brother, Polynices.


And in my considerable span as a reader, just about every tough guy hero—from Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher—can’t seem to get out of chapter one without closely encountering a damsel in distress. In Child’s Echo Burning, the seductive supplications go on for several chapters.


I do not complain, mind you. Nor would Polti, I’m thinking.