Mark Rubinstein's Blog, page 21
November 15, 2014
"Flesh and Blood" A Fascinating Talk with Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author of 33 books, the most famous and widely read being the 22 novels of the “Kay Scarpetta” series.
In Flesh and Blood, Kay Scarpetta notices seven shiny pennies, all dated 1981, placed on the wall behind her Cambridge house. She soon learns of a shooting death nearby, where copper fragments are the only evidence left at the crime scene. Scarpetta links the murder to two other deaths in which the victims were killed by a serial sniper. The victims had nothing in common, but seem to have a connection to Scarpetta herself.
You were a technical writer and computer analyst for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia. Your Kay Scarpetta novels are so richly detailed in medical forensics, it’s hard to believe you’re not a physician. How did you learn so much forensic pathology?
People mistakenly call me ‘Dr. Cornwell.’ I was an English major in college. For thirty years, I’ve been a self-educated student of medical forensics, ballistics and all things related. It’s my avocation. I constantly cruise the Internet looking for new information. I have consultants on whom I rely for the latest technologic advances. I also do field research. For Flesh and Blood, I went to Texas firing ranges to test high-tech assault rifles and ammunition, the things you’ll read about in this book. That’s how I continue to learn. While I would not qualify as an expert witness in court—I don’t have the pedigree—there’s nothing to stop me from educating myself.
Did you ever want to become a physician?
No. I’d rather write about a Scarpetta or Lucy or Marino than do what they actually do. I’m a writer first and foremost. Before writing fiction, I was a journalist. My background puts me in a good position to write about and let the world see what these really cool professionals do.
Your Kay Scarpetta novels have influenced TV programs such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and Cold Case Files. Do the television writers ever ask for your advice?
I don’t really want to be a consultant on other people’s shows. However, I’m writing a pilot for a CBS show called Angie Steele. It’s about a woman investigator who went to MIT, but decided to become a cop. So, I’ll be a consultant for that show, but I don’t have an interest in consulting for other shows.
Your writing style has varied in the Scarpetta series—from past to present tense, from first person to omniscient narrator, and you’ve gone back and forth. What brought about those stylistic changes?
I think a writer looks for different ways to explore abilities and skill sets. You always want to evolve, and my goal has always been to get better at writing. I’m constantly exploring different ways to do it. In writing a series, there’s a lot of latitude for experimentation, opportunities to stretch your wings. In 2003, with Blow Fly, I switched to a third person point of view. The fans didn’t like that. They wanted to be inside Scarpetta’s head. I write these books for my readers. So, I switched back to the first person point of view. I’m quite sure I’ll continue writing in the present tense. I’ve always thought of writing as a glass window pane through which the reader enters a new world. I try honing my writing style to be as immediate, physical and tactile as possible, almost like the reader is watching television.
For me, the present tense lends immediacy to the work, makes it almost cinematic. The great challenge for writers is to draw the reader into the novel, as though it’s a movie. When you’re reading, the brain must translate printed words into sights, sounds, smells and taste; whereas you don’t have to do that as much in movies. That form gives you an immediate emotional response. The limbic system is on fire when you’re watching a movie or when you’re at a rock concert. When reading a book, the brain has to do the work of getting the reader to that place. So, I do whatever I think is necessary to help the reader make the transition to those emotional responses. In a sense, you can call me an emotional facilitator (Laughter).
Conflicts between Scarpetta’s associates—in Flesh and Blood, between Marino and Machado—often occur. What’s the reason for this?
Police are people. They get competitive. I often see investigations where detectives don’t collaborate well. You’re dealing with human beings, so this sort of thing happens. The biggest bear trap in police work is having multiple jurisdictions working on a case. It’s not always the seamless collaboration you wish would occur. But that’s true in non-law enforcement workplaces, too—in the academic world, hospitals, law firms—actually, it happens anywhere. It’s like any family: there are rivalries.
What do you think so fascinates readers about forensic work?
I think it’s the same thing that’s so fascinating about archeological excavation. Or, your own discoveries when you find an object like an old arrowhead buried in your backyard. You start recreating the scenario of how that object got there. Why is it here? What happened? Did someone live or die on this very spot? Our human nature demands that we be intensely curious about these mysteries and try piecing together our surroundings so we’re better informed. That’s what forensics is all about.
To me, this goes back to our tribal survival instincts. If you can recreate a situation in your mind about what happened to someone, how that person died, there’s a better chance it won’t happen to you. I think it’s part of the life-force compelling us to look death in the face. We’re the only animal with an understanding that someday we’ll die. I think we all want to make our temporary stay on this planet less mysterious, more knowable. We want to learn what happened here, so we’ll feel less vulnerable about the same thing happening to us. It’s the kind of curiosity that propels us to study monsters.
More than 100 million copies of your books have been sold; they’ve been translated into 36 languages and are available in 120 countries. After all this success, what has surprised you most about writing?
What’s surprised me most is the very process of creativity. I’ve been fascinated by where ideas come from. I feel when we really open ourselves up to our urges and get our conscious brains out of the way, we’re almost channeling things from areas we don’t begin to understand. It’s both a scary and amazing experience. I’ve been repeatedly surprised how secret parts of my mind are creating something without my conscious knowledge. Hemingway was very aware of this phenomenon. He had an ironclad habit: when he had written a very good sentence and knew where he was going next, he would quit writing and not think about it until he went back to it the next day. He wanted to give his sub-conscious mind enough time to work on the story. That continues to surprise and amaze me: this ability the human mind seems to have. It even goes to the issue of genetic memory. We channel things creatively that really come from someplace that’s part of our genome, our primal heritage.
What do you love most about writing?
I love the way it keeps me company. I find no matter what’s going on in my life, I don’t have to wait on somebody else to fill my time or give me satisfaction. If I have an hour or two, I can sit at my desk, open something I’m working on and be transported to the same world I want to take the readers. I probably developed that ability for a very good reason. As a child, writing was my best friend. If I wrote a poem or an illustrated short story, or described the scenery while I looked out over a valley in North Carolina where I was brought up, it made me feel less by myself.
I think being on this planet is a lonely experience and without imagination, it’s very isolating. For me, writing has been a gift. Creative expression is a great coping mechanism. If you’re sad, scared or lonely, much as I was as a child, writing was my retreat. I played sports and all that, but the thing that healed my soul and touched those parts of me nothing else could, had to come from within myself. If you can reach inside yourself and create something—a painting, a drawing, a book— it can be healing and very life affirming.
Who are the authors you read these days?
I’m an eclectic reader. I read a lot of biographies. I love non-fiction, especially history. In fiction, I enjoy reading Lee Child, Dan Brown, Michael Connelly, and Harlan Coben. It has to be something very engaging; otherwise, my attention will wander.
If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, from history, politics, or literature, who would they be?
I’d love to have dinner with Dickens. I’d love to have dinner with Agatha Christie. I’d love to have met Lincoln. I’m so sorry I never got to meet Truman Capote. I think In Cold Blood is one of the greatest true crime books ever written. I think dead people might be my specialty (Laughter). And then there’s Harriet Beecher Stowe. She’s supposedly a relative—allegedly, an ultra-removed aunt of mine. It may be part of my genetic heritage, because she and I write basically about the same thing: abuse of power, whether it’s slavery or anything else. I visited her home in Connecticut and can honestly say I felt a kinship, something almost akin to channeling something from her.
What would you be talking about at dinner?
I’d be fascinated about their writing processes. I’d love hearing how they started their days and the things that compelled them to write what they did. I know Dickens was influenced greatly by his childhood—working in a bootblack factory by the age of twelve. It would be fascinating to talk with Agatha Christie. I understand she was incredibly shy and introverted. Becoming a celebrity was difficult for her because she was happiest staying at home and writing. Also, both Dickens and Agatha Christie were heavy into research, so we’d have a great deal in common. If she were writing today, who knows? Miss Marple might have been a medical examiner.
What’s coming next from Patricia Cornwell?
I’ve started the next Scarpetta book. I’m finishing the remake of my Jack the Ripper book. I’m also writing the pilot for the CBS series, Angie Steele. It’s about a woman investigator who has a fraternal twin brother who’s a sociopath, and she’s very worried about having a child because of what her genetic heritage might entail.
Congratulations on penning another Kay Scarpetta novel, Flesh and Blood. It’s certain to keep your fans very happy.
In Flesh and Blood, Kay Scarpetta notices seven shiny pennies, all dated 1981, placed on the wall behind her Cambridge house. She soon learns of a shooting death nearby, where copper fragments are the only evidence left at the crime scene. Scarpetta links the murder to two other deaths in which the victims were killed by a serial sniper. The victims had nothing in common, but seem to have a connection to Scarpetta herself.
You were a technical writer and computer analyst for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia. Your Kay Scarpetta novels are so richly detailed in medical forensics, it’s hard to believe you’re not a physician. How did you learn so much forensic pathology?
People mistakenly call me ‘Dr. Cornwell.’ I was an English major in college. For thirty years, I’ve been a self-educated student of medical forensics, ballistics and all things related. It’s my avocation. I constantly cruise the Internet looking for new information. I have consultants on whom I rely for the latest technologic advances. I also do field research. For Flesh and Blood, I went to Texas firing ranges to test high-tech assault rifles and ammunition, the things you’ll read about in this book. That’s how I continue to learn. While I would not qualify as an expert witness in court—I don’t have the pedigree—there’s nothing to stop me from educating myself.
Did you ever want to become a physician?
No. I’d rather write about a Scarpetta or Lucy or Marino than do what they actually do. I’m a writer first and foremost. Before writing fiction, I was a journalist. My background puts me in a good position to write about and let the world see what these really cool professionals do.
Your Kay Scarpetta novels have influenced TV programs such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and Cold Case Files. Do the television writers ever ask for your advice?
I don’t really want to be a consultant on other people’s shows. However, I’m writing a pilot for a CBS show called Angie Steele. It’s about a woman investigator who went to MIT, but decided to become a cop. So, I’ll be a consultant for that show, but I don’t have an interest in consulting for other shows.
Your writing style has varied in the Scarpetta series—from past to present tense, from first person to omniscient narrator, and you’ve gone back and forth. What brought about those stylistic changes?
I think a writer looks for different ways to explore abilities and skill sets. You always want to evolve, and my goal has always been to get better at writing. I’m constantly exploring different ways to do it. In writing a series, there’s a lot of latitude for experimentation, opportunities to stretch your wings. In 2003, with Blow Fly, I switched to a third person point of view. The fans didn’t like that. They wanted to be inside Scarpetta’s head. I write these books for my readers. So, I switched back to the first person point of view. I’m quite sure I’ll continue writing in the present tense. I’ve always thought of writing as a glass window pane through which the reader enters a new world. I try honing my writing style to be as immediate, physical and tactile as possible, almost like the reader is watching television.
For me, the present tense lends immediacy to the work, makes it almost cinematic. The great challenge for writers is to draw the reader into the novel, as though it’s a movie. When you’re reading, the brain must translate printed words into sights, sounds, smells and taste; whereas you don’t have to do that as much in movies. That form gives you an immediate emotional response. The limbic system is on fire when you’re watching a movie or when you’re at a rock concert. When reading a book, the brain has to do the work of getting the reader to that place. So, I do whatever I think is necessary to help the reader make the transition to those emotional responses. In a sense, you can call me an emotional facilitator (Laughter).
Conflicts between Scarpetta’s associates—in Flesh and Blood, between Marino and Machado—often occur. What’s the reason for this?
Police are people. They get competitive. I often see investigations where detectives don’t collaborate well. You’re dealing with human beings, so this sort of thing happens. The biggest bear trap in police work is having multiple jurisdictions working on a case. It’s not always the seamless collaboration you wish would occur. But that’s true in non-law enforcement workplaces, too—in the academic world, hospitals, law firms—actually, it happens anywhere. It’s like any family: there are rivalries.
What do you think so fascinates readers about forensic work?
I think it’s the same thing that’s so fascinating about archeological excavation. Or, your own discoveries when you find an object like an old arrowhead buried in your backyard. You start recreating the scenario of how that object got there. Why is it here? What happened? Did someone live or die on this very spot? Our human nature demands that we be intensely curious about these mysteries and try piecing together our surroundings so we’re better informed. That’s what forensics is all about.
To me, this goes back to our tribal survival instincts. If you can recreate a situation in your mind about what happened to someone, how that person died, there’s a better chance it won’t happen to you. I think it’s part of the life-force compelling us to look death in the face. We’re the only animal with an understanding that someday we’ll die. I think we all want to make our temporary stay on this planet less mysterious, more knowable. We want to learn what happened here, so we’ll feel less vulnerable about the same thing happening to us. It’s the kind of curiosity that propels us to study monsters.
More than 100 million copies of your books have been sold; they’ve been translated into 36 languages and are available in 120 countries. After all this success, what has surprised you most about writing?
What’s surprised me most is the very process of creativity. I’ve been fascinated by where ideas come from. I feel when we really open ourselves up to our urges and get our conscious brains out of the way, we’re almost channeling things from areas we don’t begin to understand. It’s both a scary and amazing experience. I’ve been repeatedly surprised how secret parts of my mind are creating something without my conscious knowledge. Hemingway was very aware of this phenomenon. He had an ironclad habit: when he had written a very good sentence and knew where he was going next, he would quit writing and not think about it until he went back to it the next day. He wanted to give his sub-conscious mind enough time to work on the story. That continues to surprise and amaze me: this ability the human mind seems to have. It even goes to the issue of genetic memory. We channel things creatively that really come from someplace that’s part of our genome, our primal heritage.
What do you love most about writing?
I love the way it keeps me company. I find no matter what’s going on in my life, I don’t have to wait on somebody else to fill my time or give me satisfaction. If I have an hour or two, I can sit at my desk, open something I’m working on and be transported to the same world I want to take the readers. I probably developed that ability for a very good reason. As a child, writing was my best friend. If I wrote a poem or an illustrated short story, or described the scenery while I looked out over a valley in North Carolina where I was brought up, it made me feel less by myself.
I think being on this planet is a lonely experience and without imagination, it’s very isolating. For me, writing has been a gift. Creative expression is a great coping mechanism. If you’re sad, scared or lonely, much as I was as a child, writing was my retreat. I played sports and all that, but the thing that healed my soul and touched those parts of me nothing else could, had to come from within myself. If you can reach inside yourself and create something—a painting, a drawing, a book— it can be healing and very life affirming.
Who are the authors you read these days?
I’m an eclectic reader. I read a lot of biographies. I love non-fiction, especially history. In fiction, I enjoy reading Lee Child, Dan Brown, Michael Connelly, and Harlan Coben. It has to be something very engaging; otherwise, my attention will wander.
If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, from history, politics, or literature, who would they be?
I’d love to have dinner with Dickens. I’d love to have dinner with Agatha Christie. I’d love to have met Lincoln. I’m so sorry I never got to meet Truman Capote. I think In Cold Blood is one of the greatest true crime books ever written. I think dead people might be my specialty (Laughter). And then there’s Harriet Beecher Stowe. She’s supposedly a relative—allegedly, an ultra-removed aunt of mine. It may be part of my genetic heritage, because she and I write basically about the same thing: abuse of power, whether it’s slavery or anything else. I visited her home in Connecticut and can honestly say I felt a kinship, something almost akin to channeling something from her.
What would you be talking about at dinner?
I’d be fascinated about their writing processes. I’d love hearing how they started their days and the things that compelled them to write what they did. I know Dickens was influenced greatly by his childhood—working in a bootblack factory by the age of twelve. It would be fascinating to talk with Agatha Christie. I understand she was incredibly shy and introverted. Becoming a celebrity was difficult for her because she was happiest staying at home and writing. Also, both Dickens and Agatha Christie were heavy into research, so we’d have a great deal in common. If she were writing today, who knows? Miss Marple might have been a medical examiner.
What’s coming next from Patricia Cornwell?
I’ve started the next Scarpetta book. I’m finishing the remake of my Jack the Ripper book. I’m also writing the pilot for the CBS series, Angie Steele. It’s about a woman investigator who has a fraternal twin brother who’s a sociopath, and she’s very worried about having a child because of what her genetic heritage might entail.
Congratulations on penning another Kay Scarpetta novel, Flesh and Blood. It’s certain to keep your fans very happy.
November 9, 2014
Naming Characters in Your Novel
We’re familiar with Shakespeare’s famous lines from Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet says the names of things don’t matter; the important thing is what they are.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
While that’s very true in botany, in fiction, characters’ names may matter a great deal. A name can become a device by which a reader visualizes, hears, and even senses a particular character. The name hopefully becomes the essence of a character as the r...
Naming Characters in a Novel
We’re familiar with Shakespeare’s famous lines from Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet says the names of things don’t matter; the important thing is what they are.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
While that’s very true in botany, in fiction, characters’ names may matter a great deal. A name can become a device by which a reader visualizes, hears, and even senses a particular character. The name hopefully becomes the essence of a character as the reader traverses the story’s arc.
Certainly, the name “Hannibal” makes one think of Thomas Harris’ malevolent character in Silence of the Lambs. Similarly, “Stingo” summons William Styron’s callow protagonist from Sophie’s Choice. “Garp” brings to mind the idiosyncratic man from John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Think of other characters in literature: Ahab; Hamlet; Ishmael; Raskolnikov; Scrooge; Achilles; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These names evoke thoughts of compelling characters and their traits.
Novelists, including me, are often asked how they come up with characters’ names. There are many ways.
Many writers choose names readers will easily recall—those that will resonate in the reader’s mind. And, many writers agree the names should have some acoustic quality making them memorable.
Most writers choose dissimilar names for different characters so the reader doesn’t confuse one character for another (as may occur in Russian novels). A writer doesn’t want to force a reader to backtrack through a novel, trying to clarify is speaking or acting.
So, how does a writer go about picking characters’ names?
Some writers go to the telephone book, perusing lists of names appropriate names. Others listen to the names of people they encounter during the course of everyday life, while some may describe a character to friends or relatives and ask for name suggestions.
Harlan Coben sometimes offers to name characters after people who bought his current novel; submit proof of purchase; and thereby become eligible for a character to have the buyer’s name in a subsequent novel. A writer as popular as Coben, garners a cascade of names, and engages readers in his efforts. It’s also a great promotional idea.
There’s the old standby: naming characters after relatives, friends and acquaintances. I do this frequently with secondary characters. I’ve occasionally named a major character after someone I know—using the person’s full name. In one instance, I thought a physician-friend’s name was perfect for a villain’s, and used it—but only after conferring with my doctor friend, who not only understood, but agreed and wholeheartedly endorsed my using his name.
In some novels, I’ve made mention of a friend in setting up a protagonist’s background or back-story. One psychiatrist friend telephoned me after reading the novel. He was delighted to learn that in his novelistic iteration, he was not only a shrink, but owned a Blimpie franchise in Westchester County, New York. We laughed together about his fictional investment and managerial acumen.
But by whichever method a writer selects a name, it must fit and become emblematic of that character. Reading or even mentioning the character’s name should bring to mind an entire set of personality traits; a certain look; sound; and feeling tone. The name should evoke a strong image in the reader’s mind, and have an audacious ring of authenticity.
After all, no writer wants a rose to evoke the scent of a chrysanthemum. Or far worse, the smell of a stinkweed.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
While that’s very true in botany, in fiction, characters’ names may matter a great deal. A name can become a device by which a reader visualizes, hears, and even senses a particular character. The name hopefully becomes the essence of a character as the reader traverses the story’s arc.
Certainly, the name “Hannibal” makes one think of Thomas Harris’ malevolent character in Silence of the Lambs. Similarly, “Stingo” summons William Styron’s callow protagonist from Sophie’s Choice. “Garp” brings to mind the idiosyncratic man from John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Think of other characters in literature: Ahab; Hamlet; Ishmael; Raskolnikov; Scrooge; Achilles; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These names evoke thoughts of compelling characters and their traits.
Novelists, including me, are often asked how they come up with characters’ names. There are many ways.
Many writers choose names readers will easily recall—those that will resonate in the reader’s mind. And, many writers agree the names should have some acoustic quality making them memorable.
Most writers choose dissimilar names for different characters so the reader doesn’t confuse one character for another (as may occur in Russian novels). A writer doesn’t want to force a reader to backtrack through a novel, trying to clarify is speaking or acting.
So, how does a writer go about picking characters’ names?
Some writers go to the telephone book, perusing lists of names appropriate names. Others listen to the names of people they encounter during the course of everyday life, while some may describe a character to friends or relatives and ask for name suggestions.
Harlan Coben sometimes offers to name characters after people who bought his current novel; submit proof of purchase; and thereby become eligible for a character to have the buyer’s name in a subsequent novel. A writer as popular as Coben, garners a cascade of names, and engages readers in his efforts. It’s also a great promotional idea.
There’s the old standby: naming characters after relatives, friends and acquaintances. I do this frequently with secondary characters. I’ve occasionally named a major character after someone I know—using the person’s full name. In one instance, I thought a physician-friend’s name was perfect for a villain’s, and used it—but only after conferring with my doctor friend, who not only understood, but agreed and wholeheartedly endorsed my using his name.
In some novels, I’ve made mention of a friend in setting up a protagonist’s background or back-story. One psychiatrist friend telephoned me after reading the novel. He was delighted to learn that in his novelistic iteration, he was not only a shrink, but owned a Blimpie franchise in Westchester County, New York. We laughed together about his fictional investment and managerial acumen.
But by whichever method a writer selects a name, it must fit and become emblematic of that character. Reading or even mentioning the character’s name should bring to mind an entire set of personality traits; a certain look; sound; and feeling tone. The name should evoke a strong image in the reader’s mind, and have an audacious ring of authenticity.
After all, no writer wants a rose to evoke the scent of a chrysanthemum. Or far worse, the smell of a stinkweed.
November 7, 2014
The Burning Room & Bosch: A Fascinating Talk with Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is the award-winning bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Harry Bosch detective series and the Mickey Haller novels.
His latest Harry Bosch novel, The Burning Room, has Bosch setting his sights on a cold case that began a decade earlier when the victim was shot. With the victim having just died, the act is now considered murder, even though the case is ten years old. Bosch has been assigned a new partner, rookie detective Lucia Soto; and with retirement just around the corner, Harry does his best to teach Lucia the ropes of detective work and solve this ten year old case.
Harry Bosch is nearing the end of his career. Is this the last novel in which we will see him?
No. I think developments in the The Burning Room give me some opportunities to take Harry in a new direction.
Will we now also be following Lucia Soto’s career?
I really like her and will bring her back. I always ask myself if I’ve said all I want to about a character, and with Lucy, the answer is ‘No.’ There’s unfinished business with her. She and Harry connect with each other as dedicated detectives. That was one aspect I really liked about her.
Bosch is a police procedural television series produced by Amazon Studios and scheduled for release in 2015. How did this project happen?
Harry’s had a checkered history when it comes to Hollywood. Early on, there was interest in him. I sold the rights for a film in the 1990s. It was a long-term deal. Even though nothing came of it, I don’t regret it because it was Hollywood money that permitted me to become a full-time writer. It allowed me to focus on Bosch’s character in the books, which is a big part of why I’m still able to write about him. It was something of a deal with the devil, but I would do it again.
Years went by, and I finally got the rights back. By that time, I’d written many books about Harry Bosch. It seemed clear that if I went back to Hollywood, the best way to tell the story would be in a television series. You know, in Hollywood, word leaks out and Amazon came calling. A partnership was formed. From my standpoint, it was easy and painless. I wasn’t drifting around Hollywood, trying to sell Harry Bosch. It all kind of fell in my lap.
Beyond the connection to book-selling, Amazon wanted me involved in the TV series. That’s quite unusual in Hollywood. Normally, they take a book and say, ‘Be a good little fella and run along. We’ll take care of this.’ But Amazon wanted my involvement to help nurture the visual recreation of the character with whom I’d spent twenty years of my life. The prospect of participating was very attractive to me and it was a no-brainer. The first season of Bosch will be ten episodes which can be streamed on television. It will premier in February of 2015. It’ll be a binger’s delight, filled with Harry Bosch.
What’s your involvement in the television series?
I co-wrote the pilot with the show-runner. In television, the show-runner is the creative boss. I don’t have experience with television, so we wanted to get someone who did and whose creative mind-set was similar to mine. We went to Eric Overmyer who’d worked on The Wire and Treme, and who’s worked on other shows I’ve loved. So, he’s the boss—the show-runner. I’m his lieutenant. He runs stuff by me to get my take, and make sure we’re on point with Harry Bosch’s stories.
Harry Bosch is played very effectively by Titus Welliver. I don’t recall elaborate physical descriptions of Harry in the novels. How do you feel about this physical representation of Bosch?
First of all, you’re right. There are nineteen Harry Bosh books and someone told me if you add up the descriptions of Harry from all of them, it would come to less than three pages. He’s very elliptically described over the two decades during which the novels occur. I did that by intention. I write the way I read. I like to imagine and build characters in my head. I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that’s part of the wonder of reading.
But, with television, we have to apply flesh and blood to the character. I’m glad I had a say in the decision about depicting Harry on the screen. I’d seen Titus Welliver in a few shows and felt he had some inner demons in his portrayals, as does Harry Bosch. That’s a key trait for Harry. The few physical descriptions of Harry in the books are mere window dressing. The real challenge is for an actor to portray a guy with the inner demons of Harry Bosch. In Titus, I saw the ability to do that. After all the auditions, we decided to go with Titus, and I’m very happy with him. We’re six episodes into the filming of the first season, and Titus really owns that part.
In the pilot, I noticed flashbacks implying that as a kid, Harry was beaten and abused. I don’t recall that from the novels.
The novels don’t hit it on the head as much as the pilot does, but they do contain references to Harry’s growing up in foster homes. It can be inferred that there was physical abuse in his childhood. In writing on the page, you can be a bit elliptical; but on TV, you can’t dance around stuff. You either show it or you don’t. We decided to show it in the series.
In the shift from page to screen, were there any important changes made to Harry Bosch and his world?
Yes. Basically, the novels provide a twenty year palate from which to choose. In the books, Harry ages in real time. If we’re lucky and have a successful show, we might have a five or six year run. We have more information in the books than we need. We’re picking and choosing what we want for the series. For example, the books begin in 1992 with Harry being forty-two years old. In The Burning Room, he’s sixty-four. He has a seventeen year old daughter in the book. In the show, Harry’s forty-eight, and has a thirteen year old daughter. We move in time for what we need. The first season of the series hits heavily on two books and touches lightly on a third book. To develop the best first season possible, we take a bit from here and there in the novels. And we can create new stuff with our cadre of writers. So, we’re not going to have a rigorous adaptation of the books. We’re using the novel City of Bones as the mainstay for the first season. That story is the ninth or tenth in the Bosch series, so we’re not conforming to the order in which the novels were written. We chose the story for the first season that we thought best showed what Harry Bosch is all about, what draws out his inner demons.
Will Harry age in real time, assuming the series continues for six years?
Yes, he will, because Titus will age (Laughter). But, it’s a smaller microcosm. My books are always set in the year they’re published, even in the month they’re published. Every subsequent novel involves Harry one year later. With television, it might not be that linear. In fact, we incorporated some later books into this first season in order to transition right into season two and hit the ground running.
I understand you’re participating in writing the TV series. As a seasoned novelist, how does co-writing screenplays differ from writing novels?
It’s hugely different on at least two levels. The first is what you lose when you go from writing novels to writing for television. In the books, Harry’s a very internal guy. One reason he’s been around for twenty years is that people like the way he thinks. In a television depiction, you can’t go inside his head as you can with a novel. Everything on TV is about what he says and does, which is how a viewer determines whether or not he’s likable. I think Harry has a kind of “Everyman’s” sensibility with which people connect. In the books, it comes out in his thinking process; but with television, it’s really all about what he says and does. That’s a big transition for me.
The other aspect is for twenty-five years, I’ve been in a room by myself, writing these books. Of course, I get edited when I turn a book in, but for the year during which I’m writing, it’s me against the machine. For the television series, I’m in a room with writers, and all four walls are covered with 3x5 cards showing every scene from each episode. It’s very much committee work until everything’s nailed down and plotted out. Then, different scripts are assigned to various writers who go off and work on those episodes. It’s very different from the way I write. I don’t even use an outline. Now, I can go into a room and see every act and each beat of a scene, an episode, or the entire season right there on the wall. By the time I go off to write a script on my own, I pretty much know everything.
How are you adapting to this sea change in circumstances?
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But for me, it’s been a real breath of fresh air. I feel that after twenty-five years in a room by myself, I’m now writing differently. I’m having a great time with it. I think it’s going to carry through in my writing future books.
In the pilot episode, Harry seems to be a more edgy guy than in the novels. Was that done as a concession to today’s TV audience?
In writing a book, you have to connect quickly with your readers. You also have to instill a momentum in your story. In TV, you have to hit the ground running because there’s so much else going on. You’re right, in the TV series, Harry’s edgier than in the books. This was our choice. We chose a story we knew would have Harry connecting with a case at the very beginning of the series. When a homicide detective gets involved with a case that resonates with his own past—that taps into his inner demons— he’s going to be more on edge because he really wants to find who did this.
Dumb question. In The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller is driven around in a 1986 Lincoln Town car. In the pilot episode of Bosch, Harry drives around in an old model Cadillac. Does this reflect your preferences in cars?
No, but I do like the idea of wisdom coming from experience and age. In the opening scene of the pilot, Bosch is sitting in an undercover car—that old Cadillac. I didn’t choose the vehicle, a props person did. But I’ll take your question further and say that Harry would never drive a sports car. He’d drive an old, reliable machine.
How do you now apportion your writing time while working on a novel and television series?
I don’t know if it’s going to work, we’ll have to see. The production company knows my priority is writing books. When we went into pre-production, I wasn’t around a lot, and was able to finish The Burning Room. When we started production, I was totally dedicated to the series. We’ll finish the last episode of the season before Thanksgiving; and after that, I’ll be starting my next book. So, I’m hoping things won’t interfere with each other.
So will the next book be a Harry Bosch or Mickey Haller novel?
Right now, I believe it will be both. The story will have Bosh, Haller, and Lucia Soto in it. But as I said before, I don’t outline. Right now, I have an idea for the novel, but won’t begin writing until December, so who knows what will come of it? Things change, and I might get hit by the lightening of another idea and just go with that.
Mickey Haller is my favorite fictional character. Is another Mickey Haller novel coming?
I think what you connect with is that Mickey’s more of an outsider. Harry carries a badge and represents the State, but Mickey’s outside that rarified coterie. In some respects, he’s almost an outcast, and that can make him very likable. Recently, I’ve found myself more fascinated by Mickey’s stories, and I want to get back to him.
I don’t know how long I’m going to keep writing, but I see my writing life as orbiting around Harry. There’s still a great deal more I can say about him. When I look back at the nineteen Bosch books, at about every sixth one, a curve ball comes that resuscitates and sustains the series. I think that happened with The Burning Room. So, I’m excited about the possibilities for Harry Bosch’s next decade.
Congratulations on another Harry Bosch novel, The Burning Room, and a television series that’s sure to be a streaming blockbuster and binger’s delight.
His latest Harry Bosch novel, The Burning Room, has Bosch setting his sights on a cold case that began a decade earlier when the victim was shot. With the victim having just died, the act is now considered murder, even though the case is ten years old. Bosch has been assigned a new partner, rookie detective Lucia Soto; and with retirement just around the corner, Harry does his best to teach Lucia the ropes of detective work and solve this ten year old case.
Harry Bosch is nearing the end of his career. Is this the last novel in which we will see him?
No. I think developments in the The Burning Room give me some opportunities to take Harry in a new direction.
Will we now also be following Lucia Soto’s career?
I really like her and will bring her back. I always ask myself if I’ve said all I want to about a character, and with Lucy, the answer is ‘No.’ There’s unfinished business with her. She and Harry connect with each other as dedicated detectives. That was one aspect I really liked about her.
Bosch is a police procedural television series produced by Amazon Studios and scheduled for release in 2015. How did this project happen?
Harry’s had a checkered history when it comes to Hollywood. Early on, there was interest in him. I sold the rights for a film in the 1990s. It was a long-term deal. Even though nothing came of it, I don’t regret it because it was Hollywood money that permitted me to become a full-time writer. It allowed me to focus on Bosch’s character in the books, which is a big part of why I’m still able to write about him. It was something of a deal with the devil, but I would do it again.
Years went by, and I finally got the rights back. By that time, I’d written many books about Harry Bosch. It seemed clear that if I went back to Hollywood, the best way to tell the story would be in a television series. You know, in Hollywood, word leaks out and Amazon came calling. A partnership was formed. From my standpoint, it was easy and painless. I wasn’t drifting around Hollywood, trying to sell Harry Bosch. It all kind of fell in my lap.
Beyond the connection to book-selling, Amazon wanted me involved in the TV series. That’s quite unusual in Hollywood. Normally, they take a book and say, ‘Be a good little fella and run along. We’ll take care of this.’ But Amazon wanted my involvement to help nurture the visual recreation of the character with whom I’d spent twenty years of my life. The prospect of participating was very attractive to me and it was a no-brainer. The first season of Bosch will be ten episodes which can be streamed on television. It will premier in February of 2015. It’ll be a binger’s delight, filled with Harry Bosch.
What’s your involvement in the television series?
I co-wrote the pilot with the show-runner. In television, the show-runner is the creative boss. I don’t have experience with television, so we wanted to get someone who did and whose creative mind-set was similar to mine. We went to Eric Overmyer who’d worked on The Wire and Treme, and who’s worked on other shows I’ve loved. So, he’s the boss—the show-runner. I’m his lieutenant. He runs stuff by me to get my take, and make sure we’re on point with Harry Bosch’s stories.
Harry Bosch is played very effectively by Titus Welliver. I don’t recall elaborate physical descriptions of Harry in the novels. How do you feel about this physical representation of Bosch?
First of all, you’re right. There are nineteen Harry Bosh books and someone told me if you add up the descriptions of Harry from all of them, it would come to less than three pages. He’s very elliptically described over the two decades during which the novels occur. I did that by intention. I write the way I read. I like to imagine and build characters in my head. I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that’s part of the wonder of reading.
But, with television, we have to apply flesh and blood to the character. I’m glad I had a say in the decision about depicting Harry on the screen. I’d seen Titus Welliver in a few shows and felt he had some inner demons in his portrayals, as does Harry Bosch. That’s a key trait for Harry. The few physical descriptions of Harry in the books are mere window dressing. The real challenge is for an actor to portray a guy with the inner demons of Harry Bosch. In Titus, I saw the ability to do that. After all the auditions, we decided to go with Titus, and I’m very happy with him. We’re six episodes into the filming of the first season, and Titus really owns that part.
In the pilot, I noticed flashbacks implying that as a kid, Harry was beaten and abused. I don’t recall that from the novels.
The novels don’t hit it on the head as much as the pilot does, but they do contain references to Harry’s growing up in foster homes. It can be inferred that there was physical abuse in his childhood. In writing on the page, you can be a bit elliptical; but on TV, you can’t dance around stuff. You either show it or you don’t. We decided to show it in the series.
In the shift from page to screen, were there any important changes made to Harry Bosch and his world?
Yes. Basically, the novels provide a twenty year palate from which to choose. In the books, Harry ages in real time. If we’re lucky and have a successful show, we might have a five or six year run. We have more information in the books than we need. We’re picking and choosing what we want for the series. For example, the books begin in 1992 with Harry being forty-two years old. In The Burning Room, he’s sixty-four. He has a seventeen year old daughter in the book. In the show, Harry’s forty-eight, and has a thirteen year old daughter. We move in time for what we need. The first season of the series hits heavily on two books and touches lightly on a third book. To develop the best first season possible, we take a bit from here and there in the novels. And we can create new stuff with our cadre of writers. So, we’re not going to have a rigorous adaptation of the books. We’re using the novel City of Bones as the mainstay for the first season. That story is the ninth or tenth in the Bosch series, so we’re not conforming to the order in which the novels were written. We chose the story for the first season that we thought best showed what Harry Bosch is all about, what draws out his inner demons.
Will Harry age in real time, assuming the series continues for six years?
Yes, he will, because Titus will age (Laughter). But, it’s a smaller microcosm. My books are always set in the year they’re published, even in the month they’re published. Every subsequent novel involves Harry one year later. With television, it might not be that linear. In fact, we incorporated some later books into this first season in order to transition right into season two and hit the ground running.
I understand you’re participating in writing the TV series. As a seasoned novelist, how does co-writing screenplays differ from writing novels?
It’s hugely different on at least two levels. The first is what you lose when you go from writing novels to writing for television. In the books, Harry’s a very internal guy. One reason he’s been around for twenty years is that people like the way he thinks. In a television depiction, you can’t go inside his head as you can with a novel. Everything on TV is about what he says and does, which is how a viewer determines whether or not he’s likable. I think Harry has a kind of “Everyman’s” sensibility with which people connect. In the books, it comes out in his thinking process; but with television, it’s really all about what he says and does. That’s a big transition for me.
The other aspect is for twenty-five years, I’ve been in a room by myself, writing these books. Of course, I get edited when I turn a book in, but for the year during which I’m writing, it’s me against the machine. For the television series, I’m in a room with writers, and all four walls are covered with 3x5 cards showing every scene from each episode. It’s very much committee work until everything’s nailed down and plotted out. Then, different scripts are assigned to various writers who go off and work on those episodes. It’s very different from the way I write. I don’t even use an outline. Now, I can go into a room and see every act and each beat of a scene, an episode, or the entire season right there on the wall. By the time I go off to write a script on my own, I pretty much know everything.
How are you adapting to this sea change in circumstances?
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But for me, it’s been a real breath of fresh air. I feel that after twenty-five years in a room by myself, I’m now writing differently. I’m having a great time with it. I think it’s going to carry through in my writing future books.
In the pilot episode, Harry seems to be a more edgy guy than in the novels. Was that done as a concession to today’s TV audience?
In writing a book, you have to connect quickly with your readers. You also have to instill a momentum in your story. In TV, you have to hit the ground running because there’s so much else going on. You’re right, in the TV series, Harry’s edgier than in the books. This was our choice. We chose a story we knew would have Harry connecting with a case at the very beginning of the series. When a homicide detective gets involved with a case that resonates with his own past—that taps into his inner demons— he’s going to be more on edge because he really wants to find who did this.
Dumb question. In The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller is driven around in a 1986 Lincoln Town car. In the pilot episode of Bosch, Harry drives around in an old model Cadillac. Does this reflect your preferences in cars?
No, but I do like the idea of wisdom coming from experience and age. In the opening scene of the pilot, Bosch is sitting in an undercover car—that old Cadillac. I didn’t choose the vehicle, a props person did. But I’ll take your question further and say that Harry would never drive a sports car. He’d drive an old, reliable machine.
How do you now apportion your writing time while working on a novel and television series?
I don’t know if it’s going to work, we’ll have to see. The production company knows my priority is writing books. When we went into pre-production, I wasn’t around a lot, and was able to finish The Burning Room. When we started production, I was totally dedicated to the series. We’ll finish the last episode of the season before Thanksgiving; and after that, I’ll be starting my next book. So, I’m hoping things won’t interfere with each other.
So will the next book be a Harry Bosch or Mickey Haller novel?
Right now, I believe it will be both. The story will have Bosh, Haller, and Lucia Soto in it. But as I said before, I don’t outline. Right now, I have an idea for the novel, but won’t begin writing until December, so who knows what will come of it? Things change, and I might get hit by the lightening of another idea and just go with that.
Mickey Haller is my favorite fictional character. Is another Mickey Haller novel coming?
I think what you connect with is that Mickey’s more of an outsider. Harry carries a badge and represents the State, but Mickey’s outside that rarified coterie. In some respects, he’s almost an outcast, and that can make him very likable. Recently, I’ve found myself more fascinated by Mickey’s stories, and I want to get back to him.
I don’t know how long I’m going to keep writing, but I see my writing life as orbiting around Harry. There’s still a great deal more I can say about him. When I look back at the nineteen Bosch books, at about every sixth one, a curve ball comes that resuscitates and sustains the series. I think that happened with The Burning Room. So, I’m excited about the possibilities for Harry Bosch’s next decade.
Congratulations on another Harry Bosch novel, The Burning Room, and a television series that’s sure to be a streaming blockbuster and binger’s delight.
November 6, 2014
The Burning Room & Bosch: A Talk with Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is the award-winning bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Harry Bosch d
edetective series and the Mickey Haller novels.
His latest Harry Bosch novel, The Burning Room, has Bosch setting his sights on a cold case that began a decade earlier when the victim was shot. With the victim having just died, the act is now considered murder, even though the case is ten years old. Bosch has been assigned a new partner, rookie detective Lucia Soto; and with retirement just around...
October 29, 2014
Don't Knock Thrillers
Thrillers are often viewed as “lesser” literature than other genres. But is this a fair assessment?
Have you considered that Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare were thriller writers? Let’s step back for a moment and define a thriller.
A thriller is a novel involving a threat to the life or well-being of the protagonist, the community, or even the world. Catastrophe will occur if the protagonist doesn’t act decisively, and if necessary, with violence. There’s a crushing urgency in a thriller—the clock is ticking—and the stakes are high. Reading a thriller may be described as a “heart-pounding” experience.
A thriller is not a mystery or whodunnit. The two genres are often lumped together to the detriment of both.
The bestseller list is often dominated by thrillers. Many have been successfully adapted to the screen. Think of Gone Girl, The Day of the Jackal, Reacher, The Bourne Identity, The Hunger Games, The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Silence of the Lambs, and many others. The ease with which thrillers become movies and embed themselves in our culture, may help explain why they’re often viewed as “lesser” works by the literary establishment.
Would we apply the popularity criterion to the world’s most esteemed authors?
Keeping in mind the definition of thrillers, we see that Shakespeare, Homer and Virgil penned them. The plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were unrelenting thrillers. Their works brimmed with danger, fear, and blood-letting. Included in the ranks of thriller writers would be Robert Louis Stevenson, Victor Hugo, Miguel de Cervantes, James Fenimore Cooper, Earnest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Dumas, Defoe, Melville, Hawthorne, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Tolstoy, Vonnegut and many others. Many of their novels have been adapted to film. For centuries, their writings have been immensely popular, suspenseful and pulse-pounding forays into every aspect of human nature, including fear,paranoia, violence, guilt, and retribution.
In short, these literary masters often wrote thrillers.
Have you considered that Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare were thriller writers? Let’s step back for a moment and define a thriller.
A thriller is a novel involving a threat to the life or well-being of the protagonist, the community, or even the world. Catastrophe will occur if the protagonist doesn’t act decisively, and if necessary, with violence. There’s a crushing urgency in a thriller—the clock is ticking—and the stakes are high. Reading a thriller may be described as a “heart-pounding” experience.
A thriller is not a mystery or whodunnit. The two genres are often lumped together to the detriment of both.
The bestseller list is often dominated by thrillers. Many have been successfully adapted to the screen. Think of Gone Girl, The Day of the Jackal, Reacher, The Bourne Identity, The Hunger Games, The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Silence of the Lambs, and many others. The ease with which thrillers become movies and embed themselves in our culture, may help explain why they’re often viewed as “lesser” works by the literary establishment.
Would we apply the popularity criterion to the world’s most esteemed authors?
Keeping in mind the definition of thrillers, we see that Shakespeare, Homer and Virgil penned them. The plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were unrelenting thrillers. Their works brimmed with danger, fear, and blood-letting. Included in the ranks of thriller writers would be Robert Louis Stevenson, Victor Hugo, Miguel de Cervantes, James Fenimore Cooper, Earnest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Dumas, Defoe, Melville, Hawthorne, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Tolstoy, Vonnegut and many others. Many of their novels have been adapted to film. For centuries, their writings have been immensely popular, suspenseful and pulse-pounding forays into every aspect of human nature, including fear,paranoia, violence, guilt, and retribution.
In short, these literary masters often wrote thrillers.
Don’t Knock Thrillers
Thrillers are often viewed as “lesser” literature than other genres. But is this a fair assessment?
Have you considered that Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare were thriller writers? Let’s step back for a momen
t and define a thriller.
A thriller is a novel involving a threat to the life or well-being of the protagonist, the community, or even the world. Catastrophe will occur if the protagonist doesn’t act decisively, and if necessary, with violence. There’s a crushing urgency in a thriller—the clo...
October 27, 2014
October 20, 2014
A Talk with James Wesley Rawles about Survival in the Coming Global Collapse
James Wesley, Rawles, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and present-day survivalist, is the author of the novels, Expatriates, Founders, Survivors, and Patriots, all of which deal with the possibility of a coming global collapse.
His new novel, Liberators, is the fifth in his Coming Global Collapse series. When looting and rioting overwhelm the major U.S. cities, Afghanistan War veteran Ray McGregor leaves Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and makes his way to remote western Canada, where he meets his friend, Phil Adams, a counterintelligence case officer. Lightly populated Bella Coola is spared the worst of the chaos, but order is restored by a tyrannical army of occupation. Ray and Phil become active in a resistance movement, fighting for their own personal survival and also for the future of North America.
You’re a survivalist, also known as a “prepper.” Tell us what this means.A survivalist is someone who foresees a disruption of modern society and makes preparations in anticipation of that event. It’s both a hobby and a lifestyle. For me, it’s a lifestyle. I live in a lightly populated area. We’re surrounded by national forests. We have a river running through the back end of our property. It’s idyllic and we enjoy our life here. We homeschool our kids and live fairly self-sufficiently. We’re not completely unplugged from the grid, and we’re certainly not hermits, but we do enjoy living a wilderness life.
When and how did you become a survivalist?
I grew up in the bomb shelter era and lived in an unusual place—Livermore, California, the home of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That’s where design nuclear weapons are created. So, a lot of my childhood and high school classmates were the sons and daughters of physicists. In fact, my dad worked in experimental physics. Growing up in that environment put us at the forefront of the bomb shelter and preparedness culture. I also come from pioneer stock. My family came out West by covered wagon in the 1850s. That pioneer spirit never wore off through the generations. We’ve always lived a fairly self-sufficient lifestyle.
As a prepper, this means you are prepared or are preparing for some kind of catastrophe?
That’s correct. All of my preparations center around being able to live independently. The lynchpin of modern society is the power grid. There are three in North America: an eastern grid, a western grid, and a Texas grid. Our society is very vulnerable because we’re so dependent upon grid power and everything attached to it. We have incredibly long supply chains and a technologically complex society. We have one percent of the population feeding the other ninety-nine percent. We’ve essentially built a “house of cards.” If the power grids stay up, things may continue normally. If they go down, all bets are off.
What are some of the likely scenarios you feel could lead to a global collapse?
Because we live in such a technologically dependent society, anything that would disrupt the power grids could cause socioeconomic collapse. An electromagnetic pulse from nuclear weapons or the wave form created by an X-class solar flare could cause massive disruption of the grids. They would probably stay down for a long time if the pulse was powerful enough to knock out the transformers at substations in the system. Those transformers are massive, very vulnerable, and difficult to replace. The power utilities keep very few spares on hand, and the lead time to order new ones is about two years.
A few years ago, I wrote about pandemics and people thought it was far-fetched. But with Ebola, we’re now on the cusp of what may possibly be a global pandemic. We’re looking at a disease with high lethality. The transmissibility is still questionable, but even if it isn’t easily transmitted now, it would take only one mutation to make it go airborne. This isn’t limited to the realm of fiction and imagination. With global air travel, it could encircle the world very quickly.
In your opinion, which are the possible catastrophic events most likely to lead to a collapse of the global order?
I would say the greatest threat is an international credit crisis or derivatives crisis. At any given time, hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives are in play. Fifty times more derivatives are in play than all the world’s currency units combined. With normal interest rate fluctuations, derivatives are a wonderful form of insurance the investing community uses to hedge its bets. But if things go really sideways all at once, we could see a huge risk, where counterparties cease to exist. Imagine fifteen Lehman Brothers failing in one day. Or imagine interest rates spiking three, four or five percent in one day, which could happen if a major Western nation’s debt was repudiated. A number of economic spasms could occur, and cause an immediate meltdown of the stock markets and collapse the bond markets. The cascading effect could topple governments. If that were to happen, we could see entire currencies and governments falling.
If we have a credit, banking and currency collapse, normal commerce would be very difficult. People might have to revert to bartering, or scramble to alternative currencies like bitcoin. Right now, we see that in Greece where they’ve adopted bitcoin because their currency unit is questionable. We could see enormous market fluctuations and massive unemployment following a huge round of corporate layoffs. There could be civil unrest, riots—primarily in cites—and a panoply of crises spurred by a global economic crisis. A key factor in modern societies is the speed of information transmission, and the lightning-fast speed with which markets react. Markets for commodities now operate twenty-four hours a day. So there would be no time lag or lull during which governments could make policy changes. Things would simply fall apart in less than twenty-four hours.
Liberators, in addition to telling a chilling story, details many survival tactics. It seems to be almost a manual for preparedness. Do you purposely do that when writing a novel?
Yes. Actually, my novels are essentially survival manuals dressed as fiction. When I began my writing career, I intended to write a survival manual. I then realized most people don’t want to read a three-hundred page manual, but they will read a novel. So, I decided to dress that survival manual as fiction. It’s a formula that’s worked pretty well. It’s captivated a lot of people, and gets them reading and thinking. Many of my readers find themselves reading my novels twice. The first read is for fun because it’s an exciting, roller-coaster of a read. But they go through the novel a second time, with a highlighting pen and notepad, taking notes.
The back flap of Liberators says you live in an “undisclosed location west of the Rockies.” Why so secretive?
Well, because as a quasi-survival guru, I don’t want to be seen as the go-to guy for the entire nation when things fall apart. I don’t want to wake up one morning and find my barnyard is filled with RVs and campers. So, I’m very circumspect about my location.
Either from history or present times, who are your heroes?
Most of my heroes date back to the 18th Century. Our founding fathers were of heroic stature because of what they accomplished, and the risks they undertook signing the Declaration of Independence. It was at great personal peril. In fact, many of them had their homes burned. They would include Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and George Washington; basically, all of them. Their accomplishments were astounding. Our constitutional form of government is fantastic. It was a grand and noble experiment. The Constitution has shown great flexibility. The separation of powers we enjoy in this country has actually worked fairly well. At times, it’s been abused, but when I look at the alternatives, I’m thankful to our founding fathers.
Any contemporary heroes?
Personally, I’m a great fan of the late Colonel Jeff Cooper. He was a firearms instructor, political commentator, and something of a Renaissance man. I’ve chosen to raise my children following in his footsteps. He felt that every young man should be able to fell a tree, ride a horse, and fly a light airplane. He thought people were capable of great things.
What do you enjoy reading?
I don’t have much free time. I intentionally do not read fiction so I’m not unintentionally echoing the writing style or phrasing of other novelists. I read all sorts of non-fiction; but mainly, I read books on practical skills. I’m a student of the Bible and read a lot of history.
As a student of history, do you feel history repeats itself?
It doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes.
If it rhymes, how do you see the future?
The history of the Twentieth Century, doesn’t bode well for the Twenty-first Century. The frequency and ferocity of global war in the Twentieth Century is cause for worry. We live in a sinful and fallen world, where nations go to war. Human nature dictates that people have ambitions beyond their own backyards. Our world has increasingly scarce resources, whether they’re oil or water. Over time, there will probably be more wars. The last century showed that civilian populations really suffer in modern warfare. In earlier times, civilian populations weren’t as heavily affected by warfare. Modern wars are fought everywhere. That’s one of the themes in Liberators: there are no front lines. Given the nature of modern warfare, it’s in people’s best interests to be prepared, to batten down the hatches and find safe refuges because the war will come looking for them.
You sound realistic and pessimistic.
I try to be realistic, but have hope for the future. I hold out hope for our political process, as well as for economic and scientific developments over the long term. While men can be barbaric, they are also creative. So, my long term hopes are positive. Cold fusion may be perfected, and our energy problems solved. Who knows? All I know is that there are men of genius in the world, and despite an increasingly crowded planet, there may be solutions to make life more livable. So basically, I’m optimistic.
Congratulations on writing another entertaining and thought-provoking novel, describing steps people can take in the event of a global collapse.
His new novel, Liberators, is the fifth in his Coming Global Collapse series. When looting and rioting overwhelm the major U.S. cities, Afghanistan War veteran Ray McGregor leaves Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and makes his way to remote western Canada, where he meets his friend, Phil Adams, a counterintelligence case officer. Lightly populated Bella Coola is spared the worst of the chaos, but order is restored by a tyrannical army of occupation. Ray and Phil become active in a resistance movement, fighting for their own personal survival and also for the future of North America.
You’re a survivalist, also known as a “prepper.” Tell us what this means.A survivalist is someone who foresees a disruption of modern society and makes preparations in anticipation of that event. It’s both a hobby and a lifestyle. For me, it’s a lifestyle. I live in a lightly populated area. We’re surrounded by national forests. We have a river running through the back end of our property. It’s idyllic and we enjoy our life here. We homeschool our kids and live fairly self-sufficiently. We’re not completely unplugged from the grid, and we’re certainly not hermits, but we do enjoy living a wilderness life.
When and how did you become a survivalist?
I grew up in the bomb shelter era and lived in an unusual place—Livermore, California, the home of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That’s where design nuclear weapons are created. So, a lot of my childhood and high school classmates were the sons and daughters of physicists. In fact, my dad worked in experimental physics. Growing up in that environment put us at the forefront of the bomb shelter and preparedness culture. I also come from pioneer stock. My family came out West by covered wagon in the 1850s. That pioneer spirit never wore off through the generations. We’ve always lived a fairly self-sufficient lifestyle.
As a prepper, this means you are prepared or are preparing for some kind of catastrophe?
That’s correct. All of my preparations center around being able to live independently. The lynchpin of modern society is the power grid. There are three in North America: an eastern grid, a western grid, and a Texas grid. Our society is very vulnerable because we’re so dependent upon grid power and everything attached to it. We have incredibly long supply chains and a technologically complex society. We have one percent of the population feeding the other ninety-nine percent. We’ve essentially built a “house of cards.” If the power grids stay up, things may continue normally. If they go down, all bets are off.
What are some of the likely scenarios you feel could lead to a global collapse?
Because we live in such a technologically dependent society, anything that would disrupt the power grids could cause socioeconomic collapse. An electromagnetic pulse from nuclear weapons or the wave form created by an X-class solar flare could cause massive disruption of the grids. They would probably stay down for a long time if the pulse was powerful enough to knock out the transformers at substations in the system. Those transformers are massive, very vulnerable, and difficult to replace. The power utilities keep very few spares on hand, and the lead time to order new ones is about two years.
A few years ago, I wrote about pandemics and people thought it was far-fetched. But with Ebola, we’re now on the cusp of what may possibly be a global pandemic. We’re looking at a disease with high lethality. The transmissibility is still questionable, but even if it isn’t easily transmitted now, it would take only one mutation to make it go airborne. This isn’t limited to the realm of fiction and imagination. With global air travel, it could encircle the world very quickly.
In your opinion, which are the possible catastrophic events most likely to lead to a collapse of the global order?
I would say the greatest threat is an international credit crisis or derivatives crisis. At any given time, hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives are in play. Fifty times more derivatives are in play than all the world’s currency units combined. With normal interest rate fluctuations, derivatives are a wonderful form of insurance the investing community uses to hedge its bets. But if things go really sideways all at once, we could see a huge risk, where counterparties cease to exist. Imagine fifteen Lehman Brothers failing in one day. Or imagine interest rates spiking three, four or five percent in one day, which could happen if a major Western nation’s debt was repudiated. A number of economic spasms could occur, and cause an immediate meltdown of the stock markets and collapse the bond markets. The cascading effect could topple governments. If that were to happen, we could see entire currencies and governments falling.
If we have a credit, banking and currency collapse, normal commerce would be very difficult. People might have to revert to bartering, or scramble to alternative currencies like bitcoin. Right now, we see that in Greece where they’ve adopted bitcoin because their currency unit is questionable. We could see enormous market fluctuations and massive unemployment following a huge round of corporate layoffs. There could be civil unrest, riots—primarily in cites—and a panoply of crises spurred by a global economic crisis. A key factor in modern societies is the speed of information transmission, and the lightning-fast speed with which markets react. Markets for commodities now operate twenty-four hours a day. So there would be no time lag or lull during which governments could make policy changes. Things would simply fall apart in less than twenty-four hours.
Liberators, in addition to telling a chilling story, details many survival tactics. It seems to be almost a manual for preparedness. Do you purposely do that when writing a novel?
Yes. Actually, my novels are essentially survival manuals dressed as fiction. When I began my writing career, I intended to write a survival manual. I then realized most people don’t want to read a three-hundred page manual, but they will read a novel. So, I decided to dress that survival manual as fiction. It’s a formula that’s worked pretty well. It’s captivated a lot of people, and gets them reading and thinking. Many of my readers find themselves reading my novels twice. The first read is for fun because it’s an exciting, roller-coaster of a read. But they go through the novel a second time, with a highlighting pen and notepad, taking notes.
The back flap of Liberators says you live in an “undisclosed location west of the Rockies.” Why so secretive?
Well, because as a quasi-survival guru, I don’t want to be seen as the go-to guy for the entire nation when things fall apart. I don’t want to wake up one morning and find my barnyard is filled with RVs and campers. So, I’m very circumspect about my location.
Either from history or present times, who are your heroes?
Most of my heroes date back to the 18th Century. Our founding fathers were of heroic stature because of what they accomplished, and the risks they undertook signing the Declaration of Independence. It was at great personal peril. In fact, many of them had their homes burned. They would include Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and George Washington; basically, all of them. Their accomplishments were astounding. Our constitutional form of government is fantastic. It was a grand and noble experiment. The Constitution has shown great flexibility. The separation of powers we enjoy in this country has actually worked fairly well. At times, it’s been abused, but when I look at the alternatives, I’m thankful to our founding fathers.
Any contemporary heroes?
Personally, I’m a great fan of the late Colonel Jeff Cooper. He was a firearms instructor, political commentator, and something of a Renaissance man. I’ve chosen to raise my children following in his footsteps. He felt that every young man should be able to fell a tree, ride a horse, and fly a light airplane. He thought people were capable of great things.
What do you enjoy reading?
I don’t have much free time. I intentionally do not read fiction so I’m not unintentionally echoing the writing style or phrasing of other novelists. I read all sorts of non-fiction; but mainly, I read books on practical skills. I’m a student of the Bible and read a lot of history.
As a student of history, do you feel history repeats itself?
It doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes.
If it rhymes, how do you see the future?
The history of the Twentieth Century, doesn’t bode well for the Twenty-first Century. The frequency and ferocity of global war in the Twentieth Century is cause for worry. We live in a sinful and fallen world, where nations go to war. Human nature dictates that people have ambitions beyond their own backyards. Our world has increasingly scarce resources, whether they’re oil or water. Over time, there will probably be more wars. The last century showed that civilian populations really suffer in modern warfare. In earlier times, civilian populations weren’t as heavily affected by warfare. Modern wars are fought everywhere. That’s one of the themes in Liberators: there are no front lines. Given the nature of modern warfare, it’s in people’s best interests to be prepared, to batten down the hatches and find safe refuges because the war will come looking for them.
You sound realistic and pessimistic.
I try to be realistic, but have hope for the future. I hold out hope for our political process, as well as for economic and scientific developments over the long term. While men can be barbaric, they are also creative. So, my long term hopes are positive. Cold fusion may be perfected, and our energy problems solved. Who knows? All I know is that there are men of genius in the world, and despite an increasingly crowded planet, there may be solutions to make life more livable. So basically, I’m optimistic.
Congratulations on writing another entertaining and thought-provoking novel, describing steps people can take in the event of a global collapse.
Why I Write Crime Thriller Fiction
I’m occasionally asked why I write crime-thriller novels.
They say write what you know, but I prefer to write what I love. And they always say, write the kind of book you would love to read. So, I write crime-thriller fiction.
But as a psychiatrist and novelist, I think there’s more than that when it comes to crime thriller fiction.
While the range of human emotions and experiences can be tapped in any genre, there’s something about crime novels—something elemental about villains and victims—tha...
