Imagine you’re forty years old. You’re married with a teenage daughter. You’ve been at your job for eighteen years. And one day, you come home to a message on your voicemail: you’ve been fired (“downsized”) and shouldn’t come back in to work.
For many, this would be the first step down a path of defeat, desperation, and despair. They’d find themselves in a dark room curled up in a ball — or in a dark bar curled up in a bottle.
But not Lee Child.
In the mid-1990s, he received that call — the third message on his voicemail after returning from vacation. Child’s career as a British television director was over. His response? He went to the store, “bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils,” and sat down to write his first novel, KILLING FLOOR. It was about a man who had been downsized from the U.S. military, who wanders the American landscape righting wrongs and dispensing justice. His name was Jack Reacher.
Today, nearly two decades later, Child is one of the most successful writers in the United States, if not the world, selling more than 50 million books. And Reacher, well, he’s one of the most celebrated characters in fiction. The millions of Reacher fans (“Reacher creatures”) soon will see the beloved character immortalized in ONE SHOT, a film starring Tom Cruise as Reacher. Paramount Pictures is so confident in the film that it recently moved up the release date.
On March 18th I met with Child in a “mentor forum” hosted by the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Program, where he dispensed his wit and wisdom to a small group of the newest generation of thriller writers seeking to learn from a master. Participating via Skype, writers from across the country spent over two hours peppering Child with questions about writing, book promotion, and the publishing industry. To his credit, Child agreed to answer “any question at all.” And he did so, breaking only to fill up his mug with coffee and to give an occasional longing glance at his computer where he is putting the final touches on his forthcoming Reacher book, A WANTED MAN.
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Doug Preston, current Co-President and a founder of ITW, began writing books in 1985. Twenty of his novels and five works of non-fiction have been published. Fourteen of his books were best sellers including his latest, COLD REVENGE, written with Lincoln Child, which reached number one on the NEW YORK TIMES best seller list. Doug’s thrillers contain suspense, intrigue, danger and a fascinating cast of characters. Ironically, Doug experienced an international real life thriller that included many of the elements of his fiction and gave him the unique perspective of being his own protagonist. He recently shared his adventure with me.
Your real life thriller took place in Italy. Why were you there?
I went to Italy with my wife and two children in 2000 intending to stay four years. I planned to write a murder mystery set in Florence involving an art historian who is murdered, his body found by the side of the road with his eyes gouged out.
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Special to the Big Thrill by Andrew F. Gulli
It was hot and humid in New York, not many of you will remember the 2005 edition of BEA, but I will for many reasons…
For starters it was the first BEA I attended (and so far the last) and also, I was so damned tired from talking non-stop, shaking hands, and being stuck in that sauna of germs the Javitz Center, that on the airplane journey back home, I was struck with a flu which was biblical in its severity. Being on a runway for three hours and for another three hours on a flight that usually took 90 minutes didn’t help.
A distant memory from that stifling trip that today shines brightly was welcomed by the ITW. I had arranged to see my friend Joe Konrath at the Javitz, “Hey, Andrew you’re coming to the party right?” he asked.
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ThrillerFest VI delivered four days of non-stop action, setting new attendance records and gracing the Grand Hyatt with the best of the best in the genre. The eye-catching banners on the bustling streets of NYC caused a buzz, enticing both locals and tourists to join us and meet their favorite authors. People came from around the corner and from around the globe–including Australia, England, and Qatar–to celebrate the sixth year of ThrillerFest. Click through to read the full story.
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During the 2011 Thrillerfest, authors from the YA anthology, FEAR: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror, edited by R.L. Stine, crowded together to support Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.
R.L. Stine, Heather Graham, Jon Land, and F. Paul Wilson posed for photos with the Be Book Smart Car and tested their nursery rhyme trivia in support of RIF’s “Be Book Smart” 2011 fundraising campaign with Macy’s, a longtime supporter of RIF.
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By Dan Levy
Imagine you’re at ThrillerFest attending one of the many social events. You turn, and just out of earshot, Steve Berry, David Morell, Lisa Gardner, Tess Gerritsen, and Lee Child are talking. You can tell by their faces, the discussion isn’t current events or cocktail party chitchat. They’re discussing something deep…some element of writing thrillers, you’re sure.
More than knowing, you feel the burn that tells you just two minutes with this group would unearth some huge nugget. The kind of intel that would send your own protagonist charging into Act III, and put your novel in the homestretch. Mentally, you begin cataloging the body parts you would give just to be able to stand there, to hear what topic has the thriller elites so rapt.
Then one of them turns to you, “Do you have a minute to join us? We’d really value your opinion on…”
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Not many of us listened to our parents when we were growing up, but we always listened to the words we read in books. I remember my own childhood through the novels I read—Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case; The Secret of the Old Clock; Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret; Flowers in the Attic; Gone With the Wind.
The one thing all of these books have in common is that they were suggested to me by my local librarian. With a stealthy hand, she directed me toward choices that fostered a lifetime love of reading.
I am hard pressed to find a successful writer who doesn’t have a similar story to mine—transformation through the public library. This is why I am beseeching all ITW authors and thriller fans to support the Save the Libraries program.
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You may have never heard of Neil Russell, but if you’ve ever been to the movies or turned on a television, chances are that you’ve seen his handiwork. He is currently the president of Site 85 Productions, a company engaged in the creation and acquisition of intellectual properties for entertainment media. But he is also a former senior executive of Paramount, Columbia, MGM/UA and Carolco Pictures (producers of the Rambo movies, Terminator 2, and Total Recall), where he also founded and headed Carolco Television Productions. On top of all this, he is a novelist who the legendary Clive Cussler described as “one of the finest, skilled, and accomplished writers in the country, a true master of intrigue.”
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Imagine a literary jam session with 22 of your favorite masters of pulse-pounding fiction and you have WATCHLIST: Two Serial Thrillers in One Killer Book. Jeffery Deaver conceived of the characters and put the plot into motion and Jim Fusilli leant a sharp editorial eye, finely orchestrating this chorus of suspense that includes such top writers as Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, Gayle Lynds, P.J. Parrish and many others. Dramatic tension ties the novellas together as each thriller titan leads the reader down dark alleys and around blind corners, saving the fireworks for the climactic endings, also crafted by Jeffery Deaver.
To celebrate the paperback release, Watchlist contributors Lee Child, David Hewson, David Corbett, John Ramsey Miller, Brett Battles, Ralph Pezzulo, James Grady, Gayle Lynds, Jim Fusilli, James Phelan, SJ Rozan, David Liss, John Gilstrap, Erica Spindler, PJ Parrish, Peter Spiegelman and Joseph Finder, along with MJ Rose (who wrote the introduction) will answer the question, “What’s it like to write a serial novel?” Be sure to read their observations in the comment trail!
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By Brett King
Twenty-two thriller masters. Two masterful thrillers. One fascinating experiment in creativity.
It was a bold idea. Gather many of the world’s finest thriller writers and challenge each one to compose a chapter during a two-week window before handing it off, no questions asked or advice given, to the next author. Based on an idea by New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver, Watchlist blends two novellas, The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet, into a single book, available in paperback on December 7th. Brimming with explosive twists, one novella deals with a mysterious manuscript containing a deadly secret while the sequel centers on an international terror plot that threatens to escalate into the next world war.
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By Hoyt Hilsman
After a decade as a screenwriter and journalist, writing scripts for the major studios and networks and articles for national publications, and several more years in the world of politics, including running for Congress in California, I decided to write my first novel, a political thriller. While I never aspired to be a novelist, I was not eager to return to screenwriting – with the endless pitch meetings, rewrites and other disappointments.
More importantly, I had an idea for a series of political thrillers based on a strong central character, and drawn from my knowledge of the world of intelligence and politics (My father had been head of intelligence for the State Department under President Kennedy, and I had grown up in that world). So I launched enthusiastically into writing 19 Angels, a political thriller set in the Middle East. Nine months later I had produced what I believed was a strong debut novel — fast-paced, well plotted and full of detail and texture.
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“Moving from room to room, hearing their stories…we writers of invented action were humbled by meeting warriors who had lived the real thing, examples of heroism far beyond anything we could imagine,” says David Morrell. For Morrell and the other thriller writers (Steve Berry, Andy Harp, Douglas Preston, and James Rollins) who participated in the recent Operation Thriller USO Tour, the tour was a life-changing experience. It brought them face-to-face with wounded military personnel at hospitals in the United States and with personnel stationed in Kuwait and Iraq. This was the first time in the USO’s 69-year history that authors visited a combat zone, and it was a huge success for both the authors and the men and women they visited.
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By Aaron Brown
With his new novel, Narrows Gate, author Jim Fusilli has blazed a path that may open up a bold new outlet for writers to share their stories. He’s done so by becoming the first writer to sell a book to Audible (a large audiobook publisher and distributor) without the book first appearing in print. And it’s fitting that the book treading this new ground is one described as “outstanding in every way” and “a big, broad-shouldered novel, equal parts Ellroy, Puzo and Scorsese.”
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The much-heralded ITW project Thrillers: 100 Must Reads is scheduled to be published by Oceanview this July during ThrillerFest. To whet your appetite for this essential book, The Big Thrill is going to feature a series of short interviews with various essayists in upcoming issues. In our first interview, Hank Wagner, co-editor of the collection, chats with Douglas Preston, who contributed a fascinating essay on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, hailed by many in 1860 as the first “novel of sensation.”
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The much-heralded ITW project THRILLERS: 100 MUST-READS is scheduled to be published by Oceanview this July during ThrillerFest. To whet your appetite for this essential book, we’re going to feature a series of short interviews with various essayists in upcoming issues. This interview by Hank Wagner, co-editor of the collection, is with Tess Gerritsen, who contributed a fabulous essay on Ken Follet’s masterpiece, Eye of the Needle.
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The much-heralded ITW project THRILLERS: 100 MUST-READS is scheduled to be published by Oceanview this July, debuting at ThrillerFest. To whet your appetite for this essential book, we’re going to feature a series of short interviews with various essayists in upcoming issues. This interview by Hank Wagner, co-editor of the collection, is with ITW co-founder Gayle Lynds, who contributed a heartfelt tribute to Helen MacInnes in her essay on MacInnes’s classic, Above Suspicion.
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Special to the Big Thrill by Hank Wagner.
The much-heralded ITW project THRILLERS: 100 MUST-READS is scheduled to be published by Oceanview this July, debuting at ThrillerFest. To whet your appetite for this essential book, we’re going to feature a series of short interviews with various essayists in upcoming issues. This interview is with James O. Born, who contributed a piece on Joseph Wambaugh’s seminal police procedural,The Choirboys.
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“Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.” Carlos Castaneda
If there is one author who has transformed himself into a literary warrior, it’s David Morrell. David published First Blood in 1970 and he has now written over 30 books. With 18 million copies in print, our current ThrillerMaster has been published in 26 languages.
Perhaps the best word to describe David is indefatigable. Relentless in his pursuit of excellence, he has been a trailblazer in the publishing world for four decades. As Jon Land (Strong Justice, June 2010) says, “David is a true warrior who sets trends and doesn’t please anyone other than himself. He creates molds, and then breaks them.” One only has to look at the variety and volume of books David has written to see he has always been ahead of the curve.
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Ken Follett is an inspiration. Yes, he’s an internationally acclaimed, bestselling author with 21 blockbusters to his name, and that is definitely inspiring, but it’s his honesty and generosity in sharing his experience and knowledge that is a true inspiration.
Upon visiting his website, the reader will find a wealth of information including a “Masterclass” for writers and a lecture on “The Art of Suspense.” In an age when almost nothing is free, Follett offers a step-by-step guide to writing a novel, without charge. It’s concise and dense with fabulous information.
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By Matthew Dunn
ThrillerFest forecast: Gayle (force) Lynds . . .
Gayle will readily tell you that her first attempt at writing was dreadful. It was a poem–one of those feared school assignments that culminated in three minutes of torture standing in front of the entire class. But it rhymed, as only a grade-schooler’s could, and garnered an “A” from her teacher. She was eight years old at the time, living in Iowa, and though the years have passed and she has had countless short stories published and filled her mantle full of awards for her many spy novels, Gayle can still recite the piece line by line. (Due to copyright law and Gayle’s modesty, I cannot reprise it here.) One could venture to guess that the wind starting blowing that day; one that has only gotten stronger. But then one of things Iowa is known for is tornados.
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By Keith Raffel
Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I’ve followed the master’s advice and concluded that-improbable as it may sound-Linda Fairstein has cloned herself. How else could the 2010 International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Winner have accomplished so much?
Hell Gate, her latest novel, is the twelfth in the series featuring Alex Cooper, head of the Manhattan DA’s Sex Prosecution Crimes Unit. And these books are not just run of the mill. The Daily Beast made Hell Gate “a hot read” and called it “superb, intense, gripping” and “frighteningly realistic.” As is customary for a Fairstein thriller, Hell Gate zoomed on to The New York Times bestseller list when it came out in March.
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By Jeff Ayers
When a person thinks about Brad Meltzer’s career, it’s hard to remember that he has only been publishing books since 1997, when he burst onto the thriller scene with The Tenth Justice.
He started writing after a job fell through. He finished that first novel and started looking to find a home for it.
“I got twenty-four rejection letters on my first novel,” Brad said. “It’s still sitting on my shelf, published by Kinko’s. I had twenty-four people tell me to give it up–that I couldn’t write. But the day I got my twenty-third and twenty-fourth rejection, I said to myself, ‘If they don’t like this novel, I’ll write another, and if they don’t like that one, I’ll write another.’ Why? Because I fell in love with writing. A week later, I started the book that became The Tenth Justice. And then, I got lucky.”
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Harlan Coben has more than 47 million books in print worldwide. He’s a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author who has won just about every thriller award imaginable.
But when I asked him which of those awards was the coolest, he answered:
“The Dagger.”
Why?
“Because, well, it’s a dagger.”
And immediately I liked him! Often we imagine authors to be bookworm-types or stuffy, especially when that author is also a journalist who writes for such magazines as Parade and The New York Times. But Harlan, creator of the Myron Bolitar franchise and numerous stand-alones, is vastly interesting, with a wonderful sense of humor. If you follow him on Facebook, you already know that.
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Lisa Scottoline has just one rule when it comes to telling stories: tell them from the perspective of a real-life woman. That tenet has served her well in her author career as she’s enthralled us with tales of women up against danger. She weaves wit with suspense to create award-winning and best-selling thrillers.
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Special to the Big Thrill by Hank Wagner.
The much-heralded ITW project THRILLERS: 100 MUST-READS is scheduled to be published by Oceanview this July, debuting at ThrillerFest. To whet your appetite for this essential book, we’re going to feature a series of short interviews with various essayists in upcoming issues. This interview is with the delightful Christine Kling, who contributed a piece on Erskine Childer’s The Riddle of the Sands.
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Special to the Big Thrill by Hank Wagner.
The much-heralded ITW project Thrillers: 100 Must Reads was published with much fanfare at ThrillerFest early in July, and has since received a lot of favorable attention from critics (we were especially pleased with Michael Dirda’s review in The Washington Post).
To further whet your appetite for this essential book, we’ve been featuring a series of short interviews with various essayists in past issues of The Big Thrill. Here is the final interview with Grant Blackwood, who contributed a piece on Clive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic.
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Fittingly for a master of intrigue, John Sandford (1944- ) really isn’t John Sandford. He’s John Camp, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter who created one of the most memorable cops in fiction: Lucas Davenport of the long-running Prey series. (Dual-name fun fact: Camp debuted two thriller series–Prey and Kidd–for two different publishers in 1989. Prey’s publisher asked for the pseudonym so Kidd’s publisher couldn’t benefit from Prey advertising.) Sandford was trained as a reporter by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Korea to work for the base newspaper.
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During a gala banquet and celebration held on Saturday, July 10 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of the 2010 Thriller Awards.
They are:
Best Hard Cover Novel:
THE NEIGHBOR, Lisa Gardner
Best Paperback Original Novel:
THE COLDEST MILE, Tom Piccirilli
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