Ken Rose
asked
John Clarkson:
the Jack Devlin books were some of my favorite all time books and I have re-read them several times. I was happy to see the pre-release date for Among Thieves because I've checked several times to see if you had anything upcoming. I'm curious, did you just tire of the Jack Devlin character?
John Clarkson
Ken,
Delighted to hear from a Jack Devlin fan. As to why I moved away from Jack...there were a few reasons, mostly business reasons. But none of them really had to do with tiring of Jack. This is a little bit behind the scenes stuff, but I'm going to lay some of it out anyhow. In no particular order:
1. Writing the Devlin books turned out to be more costly and time consuming that was practical. As I originally envisioned the character, he had to be a globe trotter. The locales were New York, my hometown which was easy. Then Hawaii, which required more travel than I expected. Then London. At first, I tried to coordinate with vacations, but it's not exactly fair to your wife and kid to be skulking about the seamy side of London while they're not. And Hawaii required more than one trip. And some of those locales were a little dicey. Don't get me wrong, I really had fun researching those books, but it wasn't very efficient.
2. The original editor at Crown moved on. The editor I ended up with for the next two books, in my opinion, didn't understand the books and didn't want to do the work required. An editor is key to the success of the book. Beyond working on the story, they have to marshal all the resources of the publisher for the book, and if that doesn't happen, you're in for problems.
3. I made a movie deal with Paramount for AND JUSTICE FOR OEN that didn't work out (in more ways than one no pun intended) which helped to sour me on the sequels. Hard to explain that. A real saga.
4. The first book in the series did very well. Subsequent two didn't do as well. That's a tough thing to overcome.
5. Wasn't so much tired of Devlin as eager to try something else. Both subsequent novels NEW LOTS and REED'S PROMISE were intended to set up new series, but I didn't follow through for a whole set of other reasons.
As it stands now, I really like James Beck and his ensemble of cohorts. I'll run with him for now, but you never know. Jack might come back. More than one fan has urged me to do another Devlin novel. We'll see.
Persistence will win out.
Thank you very much for the question, Ken. Spread the word about AMONG THIEVES. I need more readers like you.
Best,
John
Delighted to hear from a Jack Devlin fan. As to why I moved away from Jack...there were a few reasons, mostly business reasons. But none of them really had to do with tiring of Jack. This is a little bit behind the scenes stuff, but I'm going to lay some of it out anyhow. In no particular order:
1. Writing the Devlin books turned out to be more costly and time consuming that was practical. As I originally envisioned the character, he had to be a globe trotter. The locales were New York, my hometown which was easy. Then Hawaii, which required more travel than I expected. Then London. At first, I tried to coordinate with vacations, but it's not exactly fair to your wife and kid to be skulking about the seamy side of London while they're not. And Hawaii required more than one trip. And some of those locales were a little dicey. Don't get me wrong, I really had fun researching those books, but it wasn't very efficient.
2. The original editor at Crown moved on. The editor I ended up with for the next two books, in my opinion, didn't understand the books and didn't want to do the work required. An editor is key to the success of the book. Beyond working on the story, they have to marshal all the resources of the publisher for the book, and if that doesn't happen, you're in for problems.
3. I made a movie deal with Paramount for AND JUSTICE FOR OEN that didn't work out (in more ways than one no pun intended) which helped to sour me on the sequels. Hard to explain that. A real saga.
4. The first book in the series did very well. Subsequent two didn't do as well. That's a tough thing to overcome.
5. Wasn't so much tired of Devlin as eager to try something else. Both subsequent novels NEW LOTS and REED'S PROMISE were intended to set up new series, but I didn't follow through for a whole set of other reasons.
As it stands now, I really like James Beck and his ensemble of cohorts. I'll run with him for now, but you never know. Jack might come back. More than one fan has urged me to do another Devlin novel. We'll see.
Persistence will win out.
Thank you very much for the question, Ken. Spread the word about AMONG THIEVES. I need more readers like you.
Best,
John
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