In this exclusive interview, Jack Carr joins No Limits: The Thriller Podcast to go behind the scenes and break down the creation of his upcoming thriller novel, The Fourth Option. Get ready for a conspiracy, Western-inspired story featuring former Navy SEAL, Chris Walker, and his K-9 companion. From early story ideas and research to character decisions to differentiate from James Reece and The Terminal List universe, Jack takes us inside the process of co-authoring one of the most anticipated thrillers of the year.
Whether you’re a longtime fan of Jack Carr or a thriller reader curious about how elite-level novels are crafted, this is a must-listen conversation.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 – Welcome & episode setup
02:00 – Who is Jack Carr today?
06:00 – Origin of The Fourth Option
12:00 – Building the new protagonist
18:00 – Differentiating from James Reece
24:00 – Worldbuilding beyond The Terminal List
30:00 – Research, weapons, and tactics
36:00 – Co‑authoring process & collaboration
42:00 – Crafting high‑stakes action
48:00 – Themes, morality, and consequences
54:00 – Advice for aspiring thriller writers
59:00 – What’s next for Jack Carr
1:03:00 – Final thoughts & sign‑off
---
#JackCarr #JamesReece #EspionageThriller #TheFourthOption #ThrillerBooks #ThrillerPodcast #BookPodcast #BookReview #MilitaryThriller #PoliticalThriller #AuthorInterview #NoLimitsPodcast
00:00:15
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm not Mike, I am Tyler
00:00:19
Buer. And welcome back to this week's
00:00:22
and No Limits the Thriller podcast.
00:00:25
How you doing today Tyler? Doing great.
00:00:27
How are you? I'm doing good.
00:00:29
We just had an extensive hour with hour and 15 minute hour and
00:00:34
10 minute conversation with with Jack Carr.
00:00:37
It was great. What do you think?
00:00:39
Thought it was pretty good, good revealing conversation for the
00:00:42
most part. Gave out some a couple of new
00:00:44
new details and tidbits for his new novel.
00:00:47
Curious if it'll turn into a lengthy series like the Reese
00:00:51
universe, but it's it's completely separate and it's own
00:00:55
thing and it comes out May 12th. Yeah, May 12th got you got
00:00:59
pre-order this. I'm excited about this one.
00:01:02
You know, the it's interesting to you know, I don't want to
00:01:06
spoil the too much of the pod, but to to hear like the writing
00:01:09
process of this and in order to be able to get more of of a Jack
00:01:14
Carr style book, you know, it needs to go down this route or
00:01:18
else, you know, it's going to be 1 a year for him.
00:01:20
So, you know, I'm excited and I, I hope you guys, you know, enjoy
00:01:25
our conversation. Yeah, So what are we talking
00:01:31
about tonight? I was like I reached out because
00:01:32
I was when I was listening to you guys, I I forget you had the
00:01:36
questions about Co written thriller and process and stuff
00:01:39
and I was like, why don't I just jump on and and and talk about
00:01:42
it? So yeah, but anything we can
00:01:45
talk about anything. I just love talking books,
00:01:46
movies, TV shows. Whatever.
00:01:49
You know, it's interesting, right?
00:01:51
We were talking about this, but yet we've known somewhat about
00:01:56
like at least the the nerds like us have known a little bit about
00:01:58
this book, mainly because Simon Suster and Amazon kind of kind
00:02:02
of spoiled the bag. So we have a question about that
00:02:05
later, but I guess I just wanted to ask you, you know, why?
00:02:08
Why a Co written book? Why this book?
00:02:10
Why now? Like what?
00:02:11
What is your thought process? Yeah, so I have a strategic plan
00:02:15
and it grows every year as I come up with different ideas for
00:02:20
other books or TV shows or other things like a graphic novel or
00:02:24
whatever else. So I have this thing, this this
00:02:26
growing living document. That's my strategic plans, like
00:02:30
what I label it anyway, And it also it's also like a running
00:02:33
resume. So I have like the books when
00:02:35
they came out TV show, like when it debuted, like all that stuff
00:02:38
is having in there too, just in little little blocks.
00:02:40
So I can go back to it and be like, Oh, when do we finish
00:02:43
filming? When do we wrap dark wolf?
00:02:44
When do we wrap terminal list? When did it premiere?
00:02:47
Like we'll show all those things in there.
00:02:48
So it's like a you know, I like the word resume, but it's like
00:02:50
AI don't know. It's just running running list
00:02:52
of post military. Achievements.
00:02:57
I guess I was going to use that word as we're searching for
00:02:59
something else. Just four months events, events,
00:03:03
I guess in the the publishing world of my post military life.
00:03:08
And and so eventually on that list, I have Co written Co
00:03:12
written thrillers on there because really, I mean, it
00:03:16
sounds terrible to say this. I'm trying to think about wait
00:03:18
enough to not to sound awful about it.
00:03:20
So I when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a seal and I wanted
00:03:22
to to write and I wanted that book to be a New York Times
00:03:24
bestseller and then wanted to turn into a, you know, time as a
00:03:27
kid. I'm thinking a movie, but you
00:03:28
know, we forgot to 2018-2019, 2020, you know, the mindset kind
00:03:31
of shifts so you can tell the story longer so on on a screen.
00:03:36
And so I got those things. I did those things and I feel so
00:03:41
honored to serve as long as I did 20 years in the seal teams
00:03:43
and then to have the these books that resonated and hit the list,
00:03:46
New York Times list and then get them made in ATV show.
00:03:48
Like it's so from here on, like all of life goals accomplished,
00:03:54
you know, as far as like, you know, I don't want to be a good
00:03:57
for your father. Good, good, good citizen, you
00:03:59
know that stuff and get better at those things every every day
00:04:02
hopefully. But but so now it's about do
00:04:05
even better to have the next book be better than the current
00:04:09
one. The next TV show will be better
00:04:10
than the current one and then add things that that interest
00:04:14
me. So I was very aware of Tom
00:04:16
Clancy branching out in 1992, four or five when he did OP
00:04:21
Center and it launched for the TV show, I think it was on NBC.
00:04:24
It was a couple part or at least two parts and then they launched
00:04:28
the the Op Center series. So from the fan perspective,
00:04:32
like not that that age, I wasn't thinking I was going to do a Co
00:04:35
written thriller at that age, but I was very aware of Tom
00:04:37
Clancy building an audience through through the books,
00:04:41
through the flagship novels and then a couple movies that have
00:04:44
come out by then. And then branching out in the
00:04:47
early 90s into COVID and thrillers and into the non
00:04:50
fiction with the the guided tour series and the study and command
00:04:54
series. So and then of course I'll wear
00:04:55
the video games or some aware of a a growing empire, I guess in
00:05:00
Tom Clancy's case. And I wasn't thinking of that as
00:05:03
a model back then, but now that I'm in this world and I did
00:05:06
those things that I wanted to do from an early age.
00:05:08
Now it's about building. And I think at this stage, I
00:05:12
only have one book in me that I can do a year.
00:05:15
Like maybe when the kids are older and maybe there's not the
00:05:18
TV shows and I'm not writing those.
00:05:20
And so involved in that side of the house.
00:05:21
If I was just writing, I eventually I can probably do 2A
00:05:26
year, I think as I get older. But right now with so much going
00:05:28
on, like 1A year is a struggle with everything else.
00:05:31
Like it's deadlines and crazy chaos and crazy late nights and
00:05:36
no exercise and no, great, not, not not great food, just
00:05:39
stuffing in my face. And it's so, so I have one in me
00:05:44
right now a year and I'm going to focus.
00:05:46
I thought I would focus on the terminalist James Reese
00:05:49
expanding Universal Tom Reese, maybe go back a little further
00:05:53
in the future. But my plan was to kind of jump
00:05:55
from James Reese to a Tom Reese to a James Reese to maybe the
00:05:58
grandfather to a James Reese and then maybe a Hastings family
00:06:02
back to they do like every other year with James Reese to give
00:06:04
him a break and then another book in that universe.
00:06:08
But that's still won. It won a year.
00:06:11
So I have all these other ideas though.
00:06:13
And so I thought, OK, Tom Clancy did that after, you know, book 6
00:06:18
or 7, early 90s saw him expand that way.
00:06:21
Why don't I give that a try as well?
00:06:23
So that's where my my mindset was and and is so so I can focus
00:06:29
on the one a year and I think still do any, but I kind of
00:06:35
failed already right out of the gate because it was supposed to
00:06:38
be this book coming out in January, my my strategic plan.
00:06:42
And when I pitched it to Simon and Schuster, I said, let's have
00:06:45
this book come out Co written thriller in January, February,
00:06:48
and then I'll still have my James research terminalist
00:06:51
universe come out in May, June time frame.
00:06:53
So that was my initial idea. It didn't work out that way
00:06:57
because Cry Havoc took so long, so much research, so much more.
00:07:04
Just took longer than I thought, like we talked about before took
00:07:07
yeah, so much longer than I thought to get all those details
00:07:09
in there and I think. We'd argue for the better, but
00:07:11
Zach, we would argue for the better.
00:07:13
Oh. Thank you, Thank you.
00:07:14
I think I think some, somebody in when I was listening to the
00:07:17
podcast was talking about maybe there's too much detail and that
00:07:19
sort of a thing. And I was listening to you guys
00:07:21
and I thought, yeah, maybe there was.
00:07:22
But at the same time, I I was maybe hyper aware that some
00:07:27
people would be. I didn't want to shortchange
00:07:30
anyway. I didn't want anyone to say,
00:07:31
hey, this is just a James Reese book dropped in 1968.
00:07:34
And all the same, the character traits are the same, but it's
00:07:38
jungle and you change the name James to Tom.
00:07:41
Like I did not want that. I wanted this to be a different
00:07:44
character in a different era, and I wanted to capture the
00:07:47
feeling of that era. So I really went deep on those
00:07:51
details. I wanted someone from 1968 who
00:07:53
lived through that to say, hey, you captured the feel.
00:07:55
Or at least I recognize that you put in the effort to try to to
00:07:57
capture the feel. And that just took so much
00:08:01
longer than I thought. I thought it was just going to
00:08:02
be kind of like a regular book. And it was probably, my gosh,
00:08:05
was it maybe it was close between my most detailed outline
00:08:10
before I jumped into the narrative.
00:08:11
And it was pretty tight, too. But then it's just expanded.
00:08:15
And I also hadn't about in my head that I wanted this to be an
00:08:18
espionage thriller, like my first true espionage thriller
00:08:21
that doesn't just have like a spy here or there and is really
00:08:25
a political thriller, but one that really leans into the
00:08:27
espionage side of things. And try to capture not only an
00:08:32
espionage thriller in tone, the way one would write one in
00:08:35
2024-2025, but the way one would have been written in 1968.
00:08:39
So you're getting that feel of a 1968 book as well as those
00:08:43
details at the same time. So, so hence all the, the spy
00:08:47
stuff and, and all of that. So that was the goal.
00:08:50
That was the goal. So I think I, I accomplished
00:08:51
that, that goal. But was it necessary to do that
00:08:55
for me? It was for me, it was because I
00:08:57
did not want to shortchange anybody.
00:08:58
Like I said. And just, you know, I, I dropped
00:09:01
just wrote 1968, you know, at the beginning of this chapter
00:09:04
and everything else is the same. So so anyway, that really put me
00:09:09
behind on everything and and to include the next James Reese and
00:09:13
this 1/4 option. So so yeah, it's all about
00:09:16
expanding, telling these different stories that I just
00:09:18
don't have time to do on my own unless I wait a decade.
00:09:22
But you know, who knows how long any of us have?
00:09:24
So I'm just going to continue building and a Co written
00:09:29
thriller is a is a part of that part of that build.
00:09:31
So ideally, I'd like to have something one a quarter, I'd
00:09:34
like to build up to doing something 1/4 ambitious one like
00:09:38
a project, whether it's a project, yeah, I mean, a book
00:09:40
would be great, One book a quarter would be great, but
00:09:43
slowly. Book TV show premiere like.
00:09:45
Project each, each quarter I think especially as I move
00:09:49
forward here in life. So, so yes, that's where it came
00:09:52
from. But then the idea for fourth
00:09:54
option came. I mean, it was a long time
00:09:57
coming. And it's this right here.
00:09:58
I had to because I was making a little video about it from
00:10:01
watching this TV show with my dad back in the day, have gun
00:10:04
will travel and old Western from the late 50s, early 60s.
00:10:08
And my dad loved it and he wanted to share it with me.
00:10:11
And so I loved it as well. And it was just the character
00:10:14
was so, so cool and so different from all the other Westerns that
00:10:18
I was had seen up to that point when I was a, a younger, younger
00:10:21
kid. So so then when I got to 2014
00:10:26
and I wrote down all these different ideas for my first
00:10:28
novel and some of them have become other novels in the James
00:10:31
Reese Terminalist series, but I had a whole bunch of them 678910
00:10:34
some something along those lines and laid them out on the kitchen
00:10:36
table. And the fourth option was one of
00:10:38
those. But with the terminal list that
00:10:41
one was I knew I had to start with that one that was just
00:10:43
visceral and primal and hard hitting out of the gate.
00:10:45
I was drawn to that one. But fourth option never, never
00:10:49
left me. And then I dove it, just immerse
00:10:52
myself in the terminalist universe.
00:10:53
But then in the summer of 2021, we're filming in LA, wrapping up
00:10:57
the last couple weeks of of filming the terminal list.
00:11:00
And we had a couple days off. Usually we only had one day off,
00:11:03
but in this case I think we had two for some reason.
00:11:06
And I started thinking about projects outside the James
00:11:09
Reeves Terminalist universe that I could write for as a novel or
00:11:14
for television, for film. And so I had a little time.
00:11:17
I just took a breath and started writing some of those things
00:11:20
down. And of course returned to the
00:11:21
4th, 4th option and took that initial executive summary and
00:11:24
then expanded upon it, 'cause I just had time.
00:11:26
There's no family out there with me and I was just typing away.
00:11:29
So, so put that kind of expanded on that as much as I could and
00:11:33
then put it in the queue for for a future TV show.
00:11:36
I was thinking TV show at the time for this, this one in
00:11:38
particular. So that's how I wrote it up.
00:11:40
And then a couple months later I turned it into this and I put if
00:11:43
I put AI put a duct tape over the over the face of the actor,
00:11:47
because I was thinking of it as ATV show.
00:11:48
Because if I show that, then everyone will always ask me, are
00:11:51
you disappointed that so and so didn't get it if we made it?
00:11:53
A show or something? Gotcha, gotcha.
00:11:55
Well, I had it turned into like a PowerPoint so I could pitch it
00:11:58
in Hollywood Tribbles. And so I had that like the
00:12:01
actors, the story, the like tone and stuff like that from little
00:12:05
from different TV shows and movies.
00:12:07
So you can get the the feel for for what's going on here in New
00:12:10
Orleans is the the backdrop. I was wanted to to set a novel
00:12:14
in New Orleans as well. Went there for the first time
00:12:17
when I was in the SEAL teams back in gosh, 97, I think his
00:12:21
first time. I went there and then with my
00:12:23
first platoon went back a couple years later and SEAL platoon and
00:12:27
and on on Bourbon Street. So that was kind of crazy back
00:12:30
in the day. But so I have this whole this
00:12:33
whole thing ready to go for for Hollywood.
00:12:37
And then I had another project to get going to early stages of
00:12:41
development in Hollywood outside the James Reese universe.
00:12:43
Also something that I was writing that summer when we had
00:12:46
that time off in, in summer of 2021 when I was thinking of
00:12:49
things outside the universe and I was with, with Skydance and,
00:12:53
and then I was able, I didn't like the way that, like having a
00:13:00
book that changes for me anyway is fine 'cause you have that
00:13:03
thing that's pure. So seeing that get turned into
00:13:06
whatever it gets turned into, like for me, that's fantastic.
00:13:11
Like that anybody wants to make anything based off something I
00:13:13
wrote is, is amazing. But but when I saw something
00:13:17
that wasn't a book that was like, I don't know, 20-30 pages
00:13:20
of kind of executive summary slash outline slash treatment
00:13:24
and see that change knowing that no one's ever going to see.
00:13:27
It hit you differently. It was very different and I did
00:13:31
didn't really love it and so I clawed this one back because
00:13:35
both were out there. So I was able to claw this one
00:13:38
back and and then I thought, OK, clawed it back.
00:13:42
I will turn this into the first Co written thriller and it's
00:13:45
Simon and Schuster on. They gave the green light right
00:13:47
away. They didn't even ask what it was
00:13:48
about it. Was crazy.
00:13:51
But what about Woodward? How did you meet him?
00:13:54
Yeah, so I, so this was 2023. I pitch it to Simon and
00:13:59
Schuster. I think 2023 pitch it to Simon
00:14:01
and Schuster, maybe 2022. But anyway, get the green light
00:14:04
right away. And now it becomes OK, how do
00:14:07
you find a a co-author? And I was like, oh man, how do
00:14:11
how do I do this? OK, I'm just going to start
00:14:14
reading a bunch of books by people who I think would say yes
00:14:17
if I asked them. Like they have really good
00:14:20
books, but for whatever reason haven't haven't blown up yet or
00:14:25
whatever. Maybe they haven't hit the New
00:14:27
York Times list or for whatever, whatever reason.
00:14:30
So I started reading all these different, different books and
00:14:33
and then I found The Handler and I was like, Nah, read the hands
00:14:36
on. I'm like, OK, I really like this
00:14:38
book. This is this is really cool.
00:14:39
This sounds like somebody I could I could work with.
00:14:42
I'm reading it right now. Nice, nice.
00:14:44
Yeah. So I, so I saw that and at the
00:14:46
time he hadn't signed on to do the Clancy stuff because one of
00:14:49
my one of my things was like, I wanted to work with someone who
00:14:51
hadn't done any Co written thrillers before.
00:14:53
And so so I read the Handler and I say I ask my agent and and she
00:14:58
reads it too and she agrees with me and then she reaches out.
00:15:01
But in that time, then it's announced that he's writing the.
00:15:04
He took over for Don. Right for yeah, for the, the
00:15:08
Jack Ryan junior. And so I was like, oh, well, I
00:15:11
guess that's OK, you know, because I really did like the
00:15:13
the handler. And so I reached out and he
00:15:15
wanted to want to jump on board right away.
00:15:18
So I sent him this that this 40 page thing that I just showed
00:15:22
you right here, sent that to him.
00:15:23
And then he went through it and they wanted to see if it
00:15:25
resonated. You know, if it doesn't like it,
00:15:27
then, you know, that's not going to work.
00:15:29
But it resonated with him. I sent him one other option too,
00:15:32
because I had another option in mind.
00:15:34
So I sent him two different, different things like what do
00:15:36
you think of these? And he said this one resonates
00:15:39
the most with him. So, so I said, all right, let's
00:15:42
let's do this. And then we went back and forth
00:15:44
for a good few months on the outline.
00:15:47
So probably from February, March, April, May even of last
00:15:51
year. So it came together pretty
00:15:53
quick, but it was it. Was like you using a shared
00:15:55
Google doc or something like that or?
00:15:57
No text emails I can't use shared.
00:15:59
OK, it always happens that's for for some e-mail that I don't use
00:16:02
anymore or something I cannot use Google Docs for the
00:16:05
likelihood it's just brutal. Well, anytime someone shares
00:16:09
something on that, I'm just like that and I'm out for that
00:16:10
reason. I'm out.
00:16:12
But but yes, we had this, slept on it and we went back and
00:16:16
forth, zooms, emails, texts. I don't know how the authors do
00:16:20
it by the way. I have no idea how you know an
00:16:22
author that does 1A1A month. I don't know how that would be
00:16:25
possible, but or if you just put your name on something, I guess
00:16:30
you can do that. But that was not this.
00:16:33
So that went back and forth for quite a while.
00:16:35
I think maybe longer than it took took him to do the rough
00:16:40
draft because we went through that back and forth, emails,
00:16:43
texts, zooms, got this thing, you know, the outline pretty saw
00:16:46
pretty robust just doing that together.
00:16:49
And then then he went off and took a couple months to do the
00:16:52
rough drafts, turning that because it was so, so robust.
00:16:56
And then sent that to me in August.
00:16:58
And then I've been turning on it ever since saved for book tour
00:17:01
and and finishing up filming True Believer in Morocco.
00:17:07
And I did some work on it over there, but but save for those up
00:17:10
and just deep, deep, deep in it. And I'm so happy with where it
00:17:14
is. It's it's it's awesome.
00:17:16
It's awesome. But once again, it's kind of
00:17:17
like with with cry havoc. I didn't want it to just be
00:17:20
James Reese with a different name because.
00:17:23
He has a. Background.
00:17:24
And I never want anyone to say, oh, you're just trying to, I
00:17:27
don't know. I want to make a new story, new
00:17:29
character, new feel to the whole thing.
00:17:32
I was going to ask you about that because, you know, just if
00:17:34
you read the Amazon tagline, there's this one line that
00:17:37
sticks out, right? Someone who takes justice into
00:17:40
his own hands, exposing corruption, issuing long
00:17:43
forgotten brand of lethal outlaw justice.
00:17:45
You know, you could read that. And it definitely resonates to
00:17:47
me, at least with, you know, like the terminalist.
00:17:50
So how do you different? Like how are you differentiating
00:17:54
this with what you've done in the past?
00:17:57
Yeah, a ton of different ways because it has that similar
00:17:59
element. So that means that every other
00:18:02
element around it has to change and be different, have a
00:18:05
different feel and have a different tone because that
00:18:07
element of revenge, it's not really, I guess it is it's, but
00:18:11
it's very, it's very different. It's not a revenge type of a, a
00:18:13
list. It's it's a little different in
00:18:16
that respect, but it's that stranger comes to town.
00:18:20
Sure, the one it's the western. It's it's it's it's have gun
00:18:24
will travel. But a my modern interpretation
00:18:27
of that and to include shows like Shane, like High Plains
00:18:32
drifter, like magnificent 7. I love that all those all those
00:18:40
stories that have that kind of mysterious stranger who shows up
00:18:45
and rights are wrong. Pale Rider was a big, big
00:18:49
influence. Pale Rider's fantastic, yeah?
00:18:51
Exactly, Pale Rider. That was one of my questions on
00:18:53
my list was like, what are some other of your favorite Westerns?
00:18:56
I was going to say my number one is Once Upon a Time in the West,
00:18:59
and then Pale Rider's probably #2 and then maybe like Tombstone
00:19:03
Unforgiven after that, probably. Yeah, yeah, Pale Rider grows on
00:19:08
you, especially when you take it for.
00:19:09
Sure. I always like this since I was a
00:19:10
kid. My dad showed it to me.
00:19:11
I loved it. It's good.
00:19:13
With. With with have have gun will
00:19:17
travel being your being your main influence for this or you
00:19:20
know the the thing that got you into westerns maybe I know how
00:19:24
you like to put magnum Pi references and Easter eggs and
00:19:27
stuff in the in the Reese series.
00:19:29
I was curious, is there going to be like a Richard Boone named
00:19:32
character or something named Paladin or anything to do with
00:19:36
like white Knights or anything as far as Easter eggs go so.
00:19:41
There is a paladin, OK certainly that was my kind of on the nose
00:19:47
not to tap gun will travel to have a paladin in there and.
00:19:52
Mine were always the spaghetti Westerns, but I watched all the
00:19:55
Sergio Leone's with my grandfather.
00:19:57
So that and Bonanza. We actually bought a lot of
00:19:59
Bonanza that's. Fantastic.
00:20:00
Yeah. The grandparents like Bonanza.
00:20:02
I've ever, Yeah. Yeah, my grandparents watched
00:20:04
Bonanza and Gunsmoke with me when I was a kid, but I loved my
00:20:06
favorite when I was a kid was was Zorro.
00:20:09
Zorro so good, so good. Love Zorro too.
00:20:12
So great. I watched a ton.
00:20:13
A ton is already grown up. Lone Ranger ton a Lone Ranger.
00:20:16
Yeah. But yeah, these these ones were
00:20:18
more like the I guess it would be more the like, I guess no
00:20:21
darker is the right word. But but but definitely those
00:20:26
westerns that have that mysterious stranger like that
00:20:28
was kind of element I wanted to bring to this.
00:20:30
That's different from a James Reece novel.
00:20:33
And this is a like modern rendition.
00:20:35
So instead of a horse, he's got AVW bus camper, you know, and
00:20:39
he's I kind. Of you love your cars.
00:20:41
I do has to have. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:43
But he can't have this canopy. Aliac is your guy, 'cause yeah.
00:20:46
And I love VW vans and so, so he's got that and this is how it
00:20:51
kicks off. And so he's got.
00:20:55
So there are some similarities because they have similar
00:20:57
background both seals because I want to bring that authenticity
00:21:00
to that. It's your background too, right?
00:21:02
Yeah, and this guy has more background in the CIA and I did
00:21:05
not touch point with the the CIA when I was in in 2006 being
00:21:08
assigned to A to a unit in 2006 in Baghdad that influences a lot
00:21:12
of the terminal list. But then this guy's younger, so
00:21:15
he wasn't in like the whole War on Terror.
00:21:17
So I want to make him have an age differentiation as well with
00:21:21
with James Reese. This is someone who experiences
00:21:23
the the the withdrawal from Afghanistan and in 2021, so in,
00:21:29
in August of that year. So that plays heavily into the
00:21:32
the story. But but yeah, it's so it's so
00:21:36
it's different in so many respects.
00:21:38
It really is influenced by the stranger comes to town narrative
00:21:42
and that old school Western, but a modern rendition of it.
00:21:46
But because I'm a child of the 80s, I can't just I can't stay
00:21:48
with the westerns of like the 40s, fifties, sixties, 70s.
00:21:51
I got to have a there's AI couldn't help.
00:21:53
But there's a drop of Magnum Pi in there for sure Equalizer 80s
00:21:58
version. So there's for sure a little
00:22:01
A-Team action for you know, you'd probably do that.
00:22:03
Me Mack Bolin series probably influences this quite a bit.
00:22:07
The old school Mack Bolin Don Pendleton series of books and
00:22:11
then Lethal weapon. Lethal Weapon plays in there's
00:22:15
some direct people haven't aren't Lethal Weapons.
00:22:18
Fans won't notice, but those who are will be like.
00:22:21
Yes. Nice.
00:22:22
Those are my favorite, my dad's favorite movies, Yeah.
00:22:25
My dad raised me on 80 stuff. I was born in the early 90s,
00:22:28
early 90s, so my dad raised me on 80 stuff and I'm a huge,
00:22:31
enormous movie buff to send and TV buff, so all that stuff
00:22:35
resonates pretty good. Another one I wanted to ask is
00:22:39
does Chris Walker have a Winkler Tomahawk equivalent?
00:22:43
And if so, is it the canine? It's not the canine, but it's
00:22:48
his Winkler knife equivalent and I just actually put it in a bag
00:22:52
to go to to film the trailer. So it's cool putting all that
00:22:56
stuff together to to right before I ran up here.
00:22:59
So he's got a special blade that's that he uses that I
00:23:03
haven't seen anybody write about.
00:23:05
I haven't seen it in movies. It's pretty, pretty unique.
00:23:08
And so I'm, I'm, I didn't want to just say, oh, he's got a
00:23:12
different kind of acts. You know, he's he, he definitely
00:23:15
has his totem on and, and his his weapons and but he's more of
00:23:20
a you'll see he's a got some old school stuff going on.
00:23:24
So he's got some, some older, like Cold Peacemaker, you know,
00:23:30
that'll nod to those. That's cool.
00:23:32
The old 3030, he's got the old like the World War One trench
00:23:35
gun. He's got the old school 1911,
00:23:38
like that sort of thing. I'm guessing the thirty 30s of
00:23:40
Winchester. Yeah.
00:23:42
Oh, that's, that's an, that's another good one is Winchester
00:23:45
73. My dad loved that one.
00:23:46
So nice night. Mapleman, you know, like those
00:23:50
sorts of shows. So, so I thought it would be a
00:23:53
different take, you know, a different to really firmly root
00:23:57
this series in the in the westerns that I liked growing up
00:24:02
because that's not something that I thought about when I was
00:24:04
writing the the genie, the James Reese books.
00:24:06
I never thought about that. I had different books that that
00:24:08
influence the different ones. And I talk about that in the
00:24:10
like author's notes and prefaces and stuff like for, for Cry
00:24:14
Havoc, it's the Quiet American and Tears of Autumn and the
00:24:19
Honorable Schoolboy. So those are the the three.
00:24:21
And those are all pretty old books, obviously.
00:24:23
But, but none of the James Reese stuff was firmly rooted in like
00:24:27
that Western tradition. And so this is definitely firmly
00:24:31
rooted in that, in that tradition.
00:24:33
So, so that from the outset allowed me to, to not worry that
00:24:37
it was going to be like just a different character that is
00:24:41
exactly like James Reese, but with a new name, because all the
00:24:45
foundational elements are all totally different.
00:24:47
So I'm super proud. And just from the way you're
00:24:50
describing it, you know, it's like it's giving us or the fans,
00:24:53
you know, a, a Jack car feeling, you know, you all your
00:24:56
inspirations, but you know, giving us something completely
00:24:59
new and it's exciting. So like I'm, you know, we David
00:25:03
is the one who reached out to us or through you, you through
00:25:06
David reach out to us. And we were like, I, of course
00:25:08
we got to talk about this. We we had just, you know,
00:25:10
started talking about this book and I can't wait.
00:25:13
May can't come any faster. So I know can't wait for the ARC
00:25:16
to get here. So yeah.
00:25:18
I got it right here. So this is, yeah, this is the
00:25:21
one I'm working on right now. Work out this copy.
00:25:23
So I'm a little over halfway through on this pass and this is
00:25:27
just, I'm trying to get those little inconsistencies, the
00:25:31
little things that maybe a, a copy editor or somebody's not
00:25:34
going to catch any little mistakes like someone's a
00:25:37
corporal, another Sergeant, like because of something, even names
00:25:41
that are misspelled that are just so close, like there's that
00:25:44
stuff happens all the time. So, so that's the the stage I'm
00:25:48
in right now. And I did this one first.
00:25:52
So I do it twice and I'll do it to this stage and I'll do it
00:25:55
again when I get it back from this one, back from Simon and
00:25:57
Schuster. But I do this one, take all my
00:25:59
notes, apply those to the to the Word document, and then when I
00:26:04
do that, print it again, then send it off to some beta reader.
00:26:08
So I think in the acknowledgements of each of each
00:26:09
book. And then this one I sent to an
00:26:11
FBI buddy, a canine handler buddy from the SEAL Teams and an
00:26:15
EOD buddy. So they can go over those
00:26:17
sections and make sure that it's, if someone who's an EOD
00:26:20
guy is reading it knows that I put the effort in to try to
00:26:23
write for what it's like. And a canine.
00:26:25
I, I captured that relationship between the dog and the handler
00:26:28
in a way that someone, if the law enforcement or military, but
00:26:31
works with, with dogs, they'll know that I put it in there.
00:26:33
I didn't just take something from a movie I saw or, you know,
00:26:36
whatever, then then, then make it up.
00:26:38
It's like it, it's comes from a real place.
00:26:41
So, so did that. And then my editor gets back to
00:26:43
me with her notes in there at some points.
00:26:47
This is hers right here. And she was through her red pen.
00:26:50
And so I incorporate my notes from that first print out, her
00:26:53
notes from that print out. And that becomes this one that I
00:26:58
am on right now. So go through here, catch a
00:27:01
bunch of stuff and and then incorporate those into the next
00:27:04
pass. And then do that a couple more
00:27:05
times here before the end of the month or early February.
00:27:07
And then it's it's off and any mistakes, you're in there
00:27:10
forever. And so this is still like you
00:27:13
and an MP what like where can it or is it now just?
00:27:16
No, it's back in my. Yeah, it's.
00:27:18
Back in your hands. Yeah, So it's been in my, my
00:27:20
hands since I got that the rough draft.
00:27:21
And and so he did, did his did his work on it based off our
00:27:26
outline. And then I did, I send it to him
00:27:28
though and get his input on all the changes that I've made over
00:27:33
the last few months. And so I'll look at that just
00:27:35
like I'll look at the stuff from the canine handler, from the FBI
00:27:37
buddy, from my EOD buddy, and then any of those 5 beta
00:27:41
readers. I guess anything that they have
00:27:43
to say also, and I don't incorporate all the anything
00:27:47
that they say it's, but they do point out they do catch things.
00:27:50
And I like that they each catch something different.
00:27:52
Like they never catch the same sort of thing, but they'll catch
00:27:55
something. And every time I'm like, how did
00:27:58
I not see that? Of course, what happened to the
00:28:01
car keys or what happened to the, you know, like something
00:28:03
that you know, because you're so in it.
00:28:05
Yeah, sure. That you just have a made, made
00:28:07
an assumption about. I think it's probably the best
00:28:09
way to put a made an assumption about as you've been writing it.
00:28:11
And then it takes somebody else to say, you know, did they, why
00:28:15
didn't they lock the door behind them?
00:28:17
Something like that, You know, So up at that stage now, it's
00:28:19
all those little, little refinements at this at the stage
00:28:22
of the game. Yeah, I saw in the, you know,
00:28:26
the little blurb that you have a canine Belgium Alamoia.
00:28:31
So you're trying to go with a new audience, try to capture all
00:28:33
the dog, all the all the animal lovers.
00:28:35
I didn't think of it like that for me, Yeah, I thought of it
00:28:38
more of, hey, this guy needs a companion.
00:28:40
He's gonna be. Oh, it's great.
00:28:41
I'm so excited. I love.
00:28:42
In this way. I had AI, had a Belgium Alamo.
00:28:44
I had a Alaskan Husky growing up.
00:28:46
So nice. Nice.
00:28:48
Yeah. I didn't think of any of those
00:28:49
terms, but I like thought, OK, this differentiates from
00:28:52
terminalist stuff because there's not really, I mean,
00:28:53
there's some dog stuff in there, but it's not like a main
00:28:55
character. This is like a main character.
00:28:58
So it differentiates it in that in that respect.
00:29:01
And also I thought this guy needs, he needs something.
00:29:03
He's he's hurting and you'll see why when you check out the book.
00:29:07
But he he needs a companion. And and so it's so it's it
00:29:12
definitely makes made sense for this, for this character.
00:29:15
Yeah. Awesome.
00:29:18
Yeah, and you want to ask about Simon and Schuster?
00:29:21
Like why it came out earlier? Oh yeah, I was going to.
00:29:23
I was going to. How hard is it to keep things
00:29:25
secret? I mean, it's not really secret.
00:29:27
It's more like coordinating effort.
00:29:29
It's about that. And so you know it, they put it
00:29:34
up a little early and that's just what it goes and you know
00:29:37
whatever. But it's I think it is about
00:29:39
coordinated plan whatever together and then announce at
00:29:42
the same time and all the rest of it.
00:29:44
So I think that's helpful, but it didn't work out that way this
00:29:47
time. It's just more about
00:29:48
coordinating efforts than anything, anything else.
00:29:51
So. But going forward I will double
00:29:54
check on all of these. Last time you were on, we talked
00:29:57
a little bit about some novella stuff, specifically about the
00:30:00
Savage Sun epilogue, but I was curious between that and like
00:30:03
maybe Rhodesian conflict with the Hastings brothers.
00:30:07
If either of those are on the horizon or I'm sure you can't
00:30:11
confirm or deny anything, but I those are two specific ones that
00:30:15
I know we've chatted about in the past.
00:30:18
Yeah, it's they're on a list in the other room right there.
00:30:21
I have a list of so fourth option edits James Reese 8.
00:30:25
And so I'm going back and forth on those for the next couple
00:30:28
weeks, like I said. And then it's all in the James
00:30:29
Reese 8. But after that's done, so it's
00:30:31
like a list of priorities, I guess.
00:30:34
And that's the same question my agent asked me yesterday,
00:30:36
actually the same 1 you asked there.
00:30:38
Hey, where's this novella? I'm from Savage Sun and as soon
00:30:44
as I'm done with, as soon as I'm done with James Reese Eight, I'm
00:30:46
not because I'm not sure how long it's going.
00:30:48
I never know how long it's going to take.
00:30:49
That's my thing, that I'm not good.
00:30:50
Exit. For me, it's all about the
00:30:51
story. Hence Cry Havoc being so late.
00:30:55
I'm just not going to turn something in just to turn it in.
00:30:58
Like I, I could have got that, but I wouldn't have been as
00:31:01
good. It has to be as good as I can
00:31:03
get it. That's what I owe any reader
00:31:05
who's just going to spend time on those pages and never going
00:31:07
to get that time back. So that's something that really
00:31:09
weighs heavily on me and something I take extremely
00:31:12
seriously. So right now my goal is to be
00:31:15
done with James Reese 8 by Midsummer.
00:31:18
You know, I had plans like that for Cry Havoc as well, but that
00:31:21
didn't work out, you know, timelines, the book worked out.
00:31:24
I'm so very proud of the book and it, I felt my my best effort
00:31:27
at historical what turned into historical fiction.
00:31:30
But my plan is to be done with James Reese 8 Midsummer and then
00:31:34
roll into one of these other projects.
00:31:36
And one of those is possibly the novella that, and I think I've
00:31:41
told you this before, but in the outline, he's supposed to have
00:31:44
this whole journey through Siberia in the outline for
00:31:47
Savage Sun. And then I got to that stage so
00:31:49
near the end. And I thought, oh, man, this is
00:31:51
going to take people out of the story for a significant amount
00:31:54
of time. And then they're going to have
00:31:56
to hop back in to this story. And I got to that point and I
00:32:00
thought, yeah, the right answer here is very natural.
00:32:04
Don't force this. This is another story at some
00:32:07
point in the future. And so I put that kind of poetic
00:32:10
chapter in there that bridges his his months long journey
00:32:14
across Siberia to get him to those final chapters.
00:32:18
But I wanted to go back to that because last of the breed, of
00:32:22
course, is a huge influence on me growing up.
00:32:25
And so I want to do something that's a that's a nod to that
00:32:28
because it was so influential growing up.
00:32:31
So it's it's one of the things that's on my little list in
00:32:33
there. There's a couple other things on
00:32:34
there as well. So I'm not sure depends on when
00:32:36
I'm done with James Reese 8, how I rack and stack that list.
00:32:39
But once again, that strategic plan has short stories in it.
00:32:42
It has Nobel's in it. It has mysteries in it.
00:32:44
It has different novels with different whole universes and
00:32:49
characters in it. It it has graphic novels in it.
00:32:53
It has all sorts of things that'd be fun to do.
00:32:55
It's just just kind of figuring out how, where, when and
00:33:00
continuing to get James Reese in hopefully on time.
00:33:04
That's that's my my goal this year.
00:33:05
Start turning things in. You're always busy.
00:33:08
Well, have that then we have the shows and I don't know what's
00:33:10
happening with the shows because we have a a big turnover at
00:33:13
Amazon and the executive branches I guess.
00:33:17
And so not sure about what's going to happen there when time
00:33:19
a new executive team comes in, you know, who knows what they're
00:33:23
gonna do, but we're does. This mean will we get season 2?
00:33:27
We'll see. Like I, I don't.
00:33:28
Oh well, I don't know the. Filming's wrapped, though the
00:33:31
filming's done right. Oh sorry, aren't true believer.
00:33:34
Sorry, I think it meant dark wolf.
00:33:35
So. Yeah, sorry.
00:33:36
True. Believe Yeah.
00:33:37
Season 2 of Terminalist. Coming out, I don't have any
00:33:40
dates yet, but I'll suspect this summer and I I hope that I would
00:33:43
really like them to drop it 4th of July weekend all at once.
00:33:48
That's what I pushed for for for Dark Wolf, but I didn't didn't
00:33:52
quite work out that way way either.
00:33:54
But I think this audience wants vengeable stuff.
00:33:57
They want to watch it as a movie.
00:33:58
Perhaps the option to and also I think people get distracted if
00:34:03
you drop something that's is coming out every week because
00:34:07
your main marketing push on something is that initial like
00:34:11
we and then guess what? All these other hundreds of
00:34:15
other marketing pushes that are come up in there.
00:34:19
And so you're eventually you're taking your kids to school and
00:34:21
you're making dinners and you're like, oh, wait.
00:34:23
And all the marketing is coming in for something new and you're
00:34:26
like, oh, let's try that or something.
00:34:27
So. Does Amazon share any of that?
00:34:29
Like I'm sure they had no the data of like drop off of like
00:34:32
who finishes the series. Right.
00:34:33
All the data. So they don't, they don't share
00:34:35
any, any data. But yeah, we expect, I mean, I
00:34:38
knew it did really well. I know that.
00:34:40
OK. Yeah, yeah.
00:34:41
But you never know when people, new people come in, who knows
00:34:43
what they what's, what's going to go, go on.
00:34:46
But I hope we get another dark wolf season.
00:34:48
I see that as like a three season arc.
00:34:49
I was talking to Taylor about that today and the three season
00:34:52
arc and what we want to do with a, a season 2.
00:34:54
So that's, we're all excited about it.
00:34:57
Everybody wants to do it. Just we don't know if we're
00:34:59
going to get a chance. We'll see.
00:35:00
Cause any of these things can derail at any point in time.
00:35:03
Oh yeah. And so I don't want to, you
00:35:05
know, get out over the skis, but but we're hopeful.
00:35:09
But who knows. And True Believer's looking so
00:35:11
good. I've seen every episode except
00:35:13
for the final one except for episode 8, and they're all
00:35:16
looking so, so good. And eight should come in next
00:35:19
few days. So I'll watch those.
00:35:20
That's my favorite book, so I'm I.
00:35:23
Heard you say that. Yeah, I am so excited for this
00:35:25
series. Well, you'll like because I
00:35:27
think, and I wrote this to, to Emily the other day my, my
00:35:30
publisher and editor, Emily Bessler and just thanking her
00:35:33
for taking a risk on me as a, as a new author and then taking a
00:35:35
risk for me with that first third of true believer.
00:35:38
Oh yeah, most editors and publishers.
00:35:40
I think that's the best part. Thank you, thank you.
00:35:42
I think most editors would have just taken that out completely
00:35:46
that she might and she never even didn't look in the eye of
00:35:49
it. So that was cool because I I
00:35:51
don't think they're there probably are very few editors
00:35:54
that would have left that in said, hey, started here with the
00:35:56
action stardom in Africa. Yeah, especially your your book
00:35:59
too, your new author, right so. So yeah, exactly.
00:36:02
No trusted track record. You know they don't, you know,
00:36:04
you don't have much pull or whatever.
00:36:06
But she was all in. So she trusted you on that.
00:36:09
Took a risk on me with that. Took a risk on me with the with
00:36:12
the Beirut series, with the non fiction side.
00:36:15
Took her another risk on me with co-author stuff here, but Amazon
00:36:19
also a risk on us as a team putting this thing together.
00:36:24
Chris Pratt, me, David Digilio, the showrunner, Jared Shaw,
00:36:28
everybody that's involved in this thing, Max Adams, former
00:36:31
Army Ranger, like all this, this core team, Antoine Fuqua, they
00:36:35
could easily have said, no, don't do this thing across the
00:36:39
the book is the Atlantic and the show it's going to be the
00:36:41
Pacific. But don't do that.
00:36:44
That's too expensive. Or do we really need, you know,
00:36:47
this sailboat thing for a full episode?
00:36:50
Just get to the action, you know, and they went with us.
00:36:52
They took the the risk and and it is a big risk.
00:36:55
It is definitely a big risk for them to to do that.
00:36:58
But they trusted us. Got the gutting scene in there
00:37:00
in the first season, you know, let's say.
00:37:02
So we have we have a couple wins in in there when it comes to to
00:37:05
taking risks, killing off the family in the first episode of
00:37:08
the first season. That's typically not something
00:37:11
that's that's done. So, so we have a good track
00:37:14
record with the risks, but this one's a big one.
00:37:16
I mean, this is not a scene. This is an entire episode going
00:37:20
across the Pacific and it's awesome.
00:37:23
Chris Pratt battling storms and fishing and battling demons and
00:37:26
all that. And then having these terrorist
00:37:27
attacks like in the book that are taking place that are kind
00:37:30
of like the some of the more explosive action that propelled
00:37:34
forward. But I I think it looks great.
00:37:36
I think it's awesome. Oh, I'm so excited.
00:37:39
Really cool. And then anything Mozambique.
00:37:41
I mean, they could have said, Nah, just to like a scene in
00:37:44
Mozambique or something like that.
00:37:46
But we have a full Africa episode and so it's.
00:37:51
Nice. That's what me and Mike were.
00:37:52
We're guessing. We were guessing.
00:37:53
We're not guessing. We were hoping for at least one
00:37:56
scene on the water, 1 scene in Africa, and then, you know, the
00:37:58
rest can be the action. So yeah, it's good to hear.
00:38:01
That episode in the ocean, episode in Africa and then boom
00:38:04
up to Europe from there. Just just like the book, some
00:38:07
things have to change obviously, because you're telling a story
00:38:09
visually. And then also things sure, old
00:38:11
stage changed with with Russia invading Ukraine.
00:38:14
So that yeah, this is well, but but a lot of the other stuff is
00:38:18
really is quite true to the book, much more so than the
00:38:22
terminalist, I think. OK, I cannot.
00:38:24
I think I know it's looking good.
00:38:27
I mean, it's looking really good.
00:38:28
It's an amazing fight scene, incredible torture scene.
00:38:32
Yeah, I mean the first. You make a cameo in Season 2.
00:38:36
Yeah, you can keep your eyes appealed.
00:38:38
It'll be. My eyes appealed.
00:38:39
It's it, it's it's I was actually talking to Taylor about
00:38:42
this today too, because we're like, hey, if we get a season 2
00:38:44
of Dark Wolf, how do we want to, you know, how do you want to
00:38:47
have your cameo? And the true believer cameo is
00:38:50
good. Like it's, I mean, we got.
00:38:52
So you got a top top. It's yeah, we have, yeah, we
00:38:55
have helicopters and blowing Range Rovers blowing up and, and
00:39:00
automatic weapons fire. And like, it's, it's a good,
00:39:03
it's a good scene. So I'm like, let's go back to
00:39:06
something primal. If we get a dark Dark Wolf
00:39:07
season 2, do something where you like, you know, we go hand to
00:39:10
hand and and then you like drown me in a puddle or something, you
00:39:13
know, like, I don't know, something, something, something
00:39:16
cool, you know, I don't know, like last seen a lethal weapon
00:39:18
or something like that in the in the rain.
00:39:21
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's a good scene.
00:39:23
Fire hydrant, but but yeah, yeah.
00:39:26
So it's a good, it's a good cameo and the show, you know how
00:39:29
they're going to land, you know, you might, you know, we might
00:39:31
all love it and it comes up and it doesn't hit or whatever.
00:39:34
But I think it looks great. I think it looks really, really
00:39:37
good. And it's emotional too.
00:39:39
I believe it's really emotional, I think more so than the first
00:39:43
season, but it's got heart, you know, and every but they're
00:39:46
everyone put their heart and soul into the into the
00:39:48
production of it. And Chris is totally on board
00:39:51
and the the Landry scenes are fantastic and it's it's good.
00:39:56
It's good, man, I'm I'm fired up.
00:39:57
Can't wait to see this final on an episode when it hits the
00:40:00
inbox over the next few days. It's nice that we got like a
00:40:04
little bit of Landry, like the, you know, the primer with, with
00:40:06
Dark Wolf in between, so. Yeah, I get to know those
00:40:09
characters a little bit. Don't have to waste any time in
00:40:12
terminal list setting them up, creating some sort of connection
00:40:15
between characters, between viewers and the character.
00:40:17
So so it worked out really well in that respect as well,
00:40:20
introducing those characters in Dark Wolf and then off to the
00:40:23
races in in True Believer. And then and fingers crossed, we
00:40:26
get to go on from there and do a do some savage sun action.
00:40:29
But we'll. We'll see.
00:40:31
Tyler's favorite book? Yeah.
00:40:32
That's that's my favorite. I I was going to ask you about
00:40:35
that. I know you I know you just
00:40:36
mentioned about the executive team changing.
00:40:39
And so you it's kind of up in the air at the moment at least.
00:40:42
But I know last time we had talked about, you know, perhaps
00:40:46
doing a film instead of a series for for savage son.
00:40:49
And I was curious. I I noticed that that Jack Ryan
00:40:54
series did that. They did three seasons and then
00:40:56
they they they have like a movie on the way.
00:40:58
I think I'm curious if that'll be like a theatrical release or
00:41:01
not, But I was curious. I'm, I know you had mentioned it
00:41:04
was mainly because of Chris's schedule, you know, instead of,
00:41:07
you know, number of months, it's, you know, probably 1/3 of
00:41:10
that for, for a, for a filming. But any more details on if
00:41:15
that's a possibility still? It's a possibility, but once
00:41:18
again, we don't, we don't know. We're kind of in a waiting game
00:41:21
here and see what the new executive team comes up with and
00:41:24
what they want, what they ask for what, and then what Chris
00:41:28
wants to do and all that. But I know at this stage he'd
00:41:31
he'd love to do it. And but you know, there's all
00:41:33
sorts of talks, I mean, things that need to align for, to be
00:41:36
the case. But but also, I think of all the
00:41:38
books, Savage time is probably the one that lends itself to a,
00:41:41
to a feature more so than the than the others.
00:41:44
So for that reason and Chris's time, I think it'd be of all the
00:41:47
books, that's the that's the one that would probably be the most
00:41:50
well suited for a for a feature. So I think it'd be awesome.
00:41:53
I think we could totally pull it off a shorter amount of time for
00:41:57
for Chris and and also just have it just role just action-packed
00:42:01
and and awesome and keep building on these characters.
00:42:05
And and also it's not, it doesn't jump all over the world
00:42:08
like like true believer was, was a lot.
00:42:11
And for cast and crew to be in South Africa, to be in Toronto,
00:42:15
to be in Morocco. And for as long as it took to to
00:42:19
shoot this thing, we had another country we're going to go to
00:42:21
that that we ended up we couldn't go to because we as
00:42:25
often happens, you run out of money.
00:42:27
So yeah, we, we didn't get that in.
00:42:28
We had to to make some, some changes.
00:42:30
But it's it it I think with Savage Sun, you could do it in,
00:42:36
in a place that would double for some of every.
00:42:39
We wouldn't need to travel much. Yeah.
00:42:42
Be cool for the, the, for the executive to see as far as a,
00:42:45
you know, an investment standpoint.
00:42:47
So, so we'll see. We'll see.
00:42:49
I'd love to do it. You know, Trish would love to do
00:42:51
it. And we'll, we'll, we'll find
00:42:53
out. We'll find out in the coming
00:42:53
months. Any other so you mentioned the
00:42:57
the new editions of the first three books coming out.
00:43:00
I was curious what those are like.
00:43:01
And then you also had mentioned in the past about actually with
00:43:04
us. I think it last time you
00:43:06
mentioned about once an Eagle maybe getting a a reprint with
00:43:09
you doing the forward and I didn't know if that had any
00:43:12
progress since we spoke last, which I think we talked in early
00:43:15
November, late October, but. You know, I, I went back in my
00:43:18
emails because I, I called my agent yesterday and I'm like,
00:43:22
what's the status of this? When did I send that e-mail to
00:43:24
ask about doing this? I was scrolling.
00:43:26
I was scrolling and I saw that I sent it in October.
00:43:29
And so I asked her about it again yesterday.
00:43:31
So she's it's on her list and and we shall see.
00:43:35
We shall see. But it's it would be forward and
00:43:38
afterward because I used to put this letter in the beginning of
00:43:41
the book when I give it to people in the SEAL teams that
00:43:43
were just starting off their time and uniform.
00:43:46
And I have another one at the back and the first letter in the
00:43:48
front. It kind of set up why I'm giving
00:43:50
you this book. Here's the why.
00:43:52
And then I would say in that letter, there's another letter
00:43:56
at the back. It's sealed.
00:43:57
You have to read this whole book before you open it because I
00:44:01
don't want to essentially poison your reading experience with my
00:44:04
take on what you're going to read.
00:44:06
You figure it out for yourself. And if you're curious, open that
00:44:08
letter at the end on what my take is on this book.
00:44:11
So that's what I would do. If we get to do a reprint of of
00:44:15
once an eagle, I'd love to do that.
00:44:16
I think it'd be fantastic. But because I want more people
00:44:18
to read it, it popped up on Amazon like to number 2 and one
00:44:21
one of the the category is probably like military moral
00:44:25
history, maybe even though it's historical fiction.
00:44:27
It's more, yeah, more fiction. Probably after it was in the
00:44:29
gift scene in Dark Wolf, probably.
00:44:32
But. From dark wolf so I'm like it's
00:44:35
simple. Let's get more people reading
00:44:37
this book and get my forward and afterward in there then I'll
00:44:39
push it and so it's more like a fun project, but I hope we can
00:44:42
do it. I hope we.
00:44:43
Can do it, I have an older copy and man if I ever have an
00:44:45
intruder I'm grabbing that thing first and they're fucking
00:44:47
getting a warp. Very blunt impact weapon.
00:44:51
Yes, I think that might be the the biggest book page wise on my
00:44:55
shelf. It might be mine. 1 monster.
00:44:58
Yeah, I actually have a couple of big ones, but yeah, it's it's
00:45:01
up there. It's up there for sure.
00:45:02
Yeah, it's a good one. That would be cool.
00:45:03
I'd love to. I'd love to do.
00:45:05
That mine's is Guns, Germs and Steel.
00:45:06
That's that's the biggest book I own.
00:45:07
Yeah, I'll get that in here somewhere.
00:45:10
I need to re. I need to redo this library.
00:45:12
So it's not quite how to move things around doing like video
00:45:16
shoots and stuff in here. And so you have to like move the
00:45:18
books behind you or whatever. And and so now it's kind of
00:45:22
disorganized. So I need to get it back on back
00:45:24
on track. Do you do it like Dewey Decimal
00:45:26
or by author or? You went by.
00:45:29
Genre. Well, it's genre in the other
00:45:31
room, so the other room is all I was.
00:45:33
Gonna say don't act like that's your only room.
00:45:36
Other it was all the fiction or that was the idea.
00:45:38
It's the other one would be all fiction.
00:45:40
So I have all my like all the books that I've read growing up
00:45:42
that I've read paperbacks and I some of them I still the
00:45:44
paperbacks I still have when I'm collecting all first edition
00:45:47
signed of all those books. So I have all the Vince Flynn's
00:45:49
in there. I have all the Nelson Demille's
00:45:52
in there, the Clive Cussler's in there, the Tom Clancy's in
00:45:54
there, Stephen Hunter's in there, John Le Carre's in there.
00:45:57
I don't have a full collection look for a first edition sign,
00:45:59
but it's close. What else do I have in there?
00:46:02
Steven Hunter, I think I said so I have all those those in there
00:46:05
and then a bunch of other all the other fiction.
00:46:08
But this was supposed to be all non fiction except for this side
00:46:11
right here, which is all Fleming right there and then my stuff.
00:46:14
So it's organized and then all the books like the the the other
00:46:18
Bond books and then books about Fleming and Bond there and then
00:46:21
everything else is is non fiction in this room.
00:46:25
Anyway, wow. So, but I but I like
00:46:29
Afghanistan, Iraq, terrorism in general, insurgencies in
00:46:33
general, Vietnam, World One, World War 2, Civil War, Korea.
00:46:38
So I have it broken down like that CIA, like the NSA.
00:46:42
So I have it. So I generally know Vietnam over
00:46:44
there. Actually, Vietnam is multiple
00:46:46
now after Cry Havoc said so much research like this is supposed
00:46:49
to be this bar. That's, that was a bar there.
00:46:53
And now it's all books. Wow.
00:46:55
And that's all one of those is all Vietnam books.
00:46:59
And, and there's other places in here that are Vietnam books as
00:47:01
well. But I added so many doing the
00:47:03
research for, for Cry Havoc. It took up a whole shelf in the
00:47:06
bar. And then the other one up there
00:47:07
is mostly Soviet Union stuff from the the 50s, sixties, 70s.
00:47:12
So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's impressive, Chris.
00:47:16
But I outgrew it already. So now I don't know what to do
00:47:18
now. You need another room, Yeah.
00:47:20
Yeah, yeah. So.
00:47:22
A bigger house. As you wrote real quick back to
00:47:25
cry havoc as you as you laid the groundwork for Tom Reese
00:47:28
throughout the the first, you know, six and six or seven
00:47:32
novels. I I think up to 6 is, is really
00:47:35
like picking up all the bread crumbs and and figuring out what
00:47:39
what Tom had left for, for James.
00:47:41
I, I noticed in in Cry Havoc, you start to leave a couple of
00:47:45
little bread crumbs for Thomas for World War 2 era type stuff.
00:47:50
I'm sure it's on a sticky note somewhere, but I was curious if
00:47:55
you, I know you say you shuffle the priority list of what what's
00:47:58
going to get made whenever you shuffle that priority list?
00:48:01
Is it more like on like what kind of mood you're in or what
00:48:05
you think people are ready for? Or maybe do you have like half
00:48:09
of a story for this character for like Thomas, you might have
00:48:11
like half of it settled, but maybe the Savage Sun novella,
00:48:15
you're ready to go. So you pick that because it's
00:48:17
the most flushed. Or what's your process for that?
00:48:20
I'm ready to go on multiple fronts.
00:48:23
And so it's more that's a good question because I'm without in
00:48:26
those terms specifically before, but I think it it's just the
00:48:31
feeling of when's the right time to do something?
00:48:34
When's it appropriate to do something?
00:48:37
Because I thought about doing cry havoc after only the dead
00:48:41
and I'd started red sky morning. I was into those first chapters
00:48:45
doing all the research on that, the, the submarines and then
00:48:48
the, the plane in chapter chapter 1 and, and, and the
00:48:53
prologue. But even then I was like, you
00:48:56
know, what should I stop? This is this is a lot of work
00:48:59
right now in this submarine and stuff and this plane stuff.
00:49:01
I feel like I can actually fly this thing even though I have no
00:49:03
idea really how to fly. I just felt I had Tom Reese
00:49:08
thought out already like pretty well new beginning, middle end.
00:49:11
I know what I wanted to do with it and I thought is now the
00:49:14
right time. And then I didn't.
00:49:17
I jumped back into to to red sky morning and then I got to the in
00:49:19
that book. It was just very clear, like,
00:49:21
OK, this was a great. Part makes sense.
00:49:23
Reese it's a good time to get let it get have a little give
00:49:26
him a break for a year. And now is the time to jump in
00:49:30
to to cry havoc. So it's more of a feeling.
00:49:32
It's not anything that's like analytical or anything like
00:49:35
that. It's like, OK, when does when
00:49:36
does this feel right and appropriate to add something
00:49:40
else? So so it felt appropriate to
00:49:42
start adding Co written thriller and then it felt right to do the
00:49:49
the nonfiction when that came up.
00:49:50
Probably could have started a couple of those earlier on.
00:49:53
But regardless, it's so it's more of a feeling really.
00:49:57
So I have all these things that I wanted to do and now it's
00:49:59
like, OK, what's good? What?
00:50:00
So it'll depend on when I finish James Reese 8, but I'll jump in
00:50:03
next. Like if I'm late again and I'm
00:50:04
like it's not ready, I'm still going, still going and it
00:50:07
pushes, then I probably won't do the novella.
00:50:09
I probably have to jump into the next James Reese or Tom Reese or
00:50:13
Thomas Reese. So I'm not sure which one, but I
00:50:15
have I and IA really an idea that I'd love to explore with
00:50:18
Thomas Reese just post World War 2.
00:50:22
And so that's in there and percolating and but but we'll
00:50:27
see. We'll see.
00:50:28
So I'm not it all depends on when I finish James receipt.
00:50:30
So it's not like never I'll finish next then this.
00:50:33
No, it's like OK, now if I finish in June or July or August
00:50:38
or September, that will change the calculus of what's what I
00:50:42
prioritize next. Got you.
00:50:44
Did you have TomTom? I'm sorry, Thomas Reese, Does he
00:50:47
fly? He is he an Army Air Corps in
00:50:50
World War 2. I think in the first book I have
00:50:52
him is AI think I have scouts and Raiders on something in the
00:50:55
office when there's the detective that goes into James
00:50:57
Reese's house after he's arrested and he's looking at the
00:50:59
books and looking at the plaques and all that stuff.
00:51:01
And he's the plaque, Vietnam plaque thing in there or the
00:51:05
lighter. There's a couple couple little
00:51:06
hints there, but then there's a scouts and Raiders in there as
00:51:09
well. So that's the first kind of a
00:51:10
drop, a little hint about about Grandfa.
00:51:15
So, so he's a scouting Raider, but he that might morph into
00:51:20
like maritime branch OSS or something.
00:51:22
I don't know. I, I, I left it also vague.
00:51:24
All these little things that I leave, I try to leave vague
00:51:28
enough where I'm not backed into a corner because I'm not
00:51:31
thinking them all the way through, especially at that
00:51:33
stage in the terminal list. I just, yeah, put in there that
00:51:36
I knew I wanted to explore one day like.
00:51:38
Stephen Hunter, you don't have to retcon.
00:51:40
Yeah. But I didn't want to like, you
00:51:41
know, it's just more like I'd love to do this one day.
00:51:44
Probably inspired almost all by Stephen Hunter on that wanting
00:51:47
to do something we'll type generational.
00:51:50
And so I wanted to put things in there because I think I might
00:51:53
have mentioned this to you guys before.
00:51:54
I've asked Stephen Hunter about some of those stuff that's
00:51:56
almost like JFK assassination type stuff in point of impact.
00:52:00
And I said, did you do that so that you could write What what's
00:52:05
the sticks bullet? The the anyway, the the JFK book
00:52:09
that he wrote years, 15 years later.
00:52:12
And he said, no, I had all this JFK stuff in in point of impact.
00:52:18
And then my editor and I decided to take it out and I just missed
00:52:21
a few things because back then he was writing that before like
00:52:23
word and word searches the third bullet.
00:52:26
Bullet. Yeah.
00:52:27
And so, so, so, so I'd, so I'd, I wanted to leave things like
00:52:33
interesting enough where I'd be interested in writing about it
00:52:36
and readers would be interested in in it a little more.
00:52:38
Same thing with Rafe. I'd put Rafe Hastings at the end
00:52:40
of the Terminalist more to make him more mysterious so that
00:52:44
readers would be like, I mean, who's this guy?
00:52:46
I want to know more about him. And then in the next books, drop
00:52:50
a few things about his father and grandfather and give me
00:52:53
options to go explore that part of the world which most authors
00:52:56
have pretty much ignored. OK, Yeah.
00:53:01
Oh, we don't want to, you know. We know you're busy man, but we
00:53:04
can't let you go without you know.
00:53:05
Can you give us any recent things you've watched?
00:53:09
Anything you would recommend your reading outside of your or
00:53:12
OR to do with your research? Oh man, it's I don't even know
00:53:16
where to where to start right now.
00:53:20
I'm trying to go through all the licorice from the beginning
00:53:22
because I missed it in there. So I've been doing that.
00:53:25
What's? Your favorite licorice?
00:53:26
Well, I haven't read them all, that's the thing.
00:53:28
Oh, OK, OK. If you went there, I read like
00:53:29
the I read like growing up all the top, like the each decade
00:53:34
seems to have one that stands out.
00:53:35
You know, obviously Spike cold it's people think it's his first
00:53:38
book, but it's really his third. And and so so each decade seems
00:53:43
to have that book like Tinker tailor and then perfect spy and
00:53:49
then probably the night manager, Constant Gardner and then
00:53:54
probably the most wanted man, maybe anyway.
00:53:55
So each decade like has that one, even though there are
00:53:58
multiple books per decade. So if I, if I, if I am pushed, I
00:54:04
might say honorable schoolboy, but that's only because I was so
00:54:06
deep in it for cry havoc and I would have said this is the spy
00:54:13
game of the pool, probably with perfect spy, but I haven't read
00:54:17
all of them, so I haven't. So I have you're actually in
00:54:19
front of me. So I I haven't read.
00:54:22
Then I even sent him a lover. So I haven't read.
00:54:24
I've read that. So my that's on my list.
00:54:26
So I missed a few in there. What else here I got a secret
00:54:30
Pilgrim right here, our game Taylor Panama.
00:54:32
I've read that one are kind of traitor.
00:54:34
So these are just like some paperbacks right here in the
00:54:37
hardcover signer in the other room.
00:54:39
But, but I'm working my way slowly through these things and
00:54:43
it is very slow because I have to jump out and write the books
00:54:45
and then doing the research for the books and and all of that.
00:54:48
So, but right now, yeah, working my way through the the Le Carres
00:54:51
in order, not just not hitting the ones that I missed, but
00:54:54
reading the ones that I read probably at times when I didn't
00:54:57
understand what was happening, like Gardner Berbick Spy when I
00:55:01
read those. But now going back having this
00:55:04
little more time on earth and I think I'm appreciating them a
00:55:09
lot more now than I I did when I was let's say 1617181820 time
00:55:14
frame. So.
00:55:15
Perfect. That's perfect.
00:55:16
All those. But yeah, it's it's I want to
00:55:19
get back to, I'm trying to get back to London to go see the
00:55:20
stage play of the fight that came in from the cold.
00:55:23
I think it runs for a few more months here and then get out to
00:55:27
Oxford to see the Lecrae exhibit out there.
00:55:29
They overlap for a couple months here, I think in like February
00:55:33
timeframe or something. So that sounds cool.
00:55:35
Yeah, it's on the list, the short list.
00:55:38
Before we let you go real quick, going back to the fourth option
00:55:42
topic, do you have the business card handy still?
00:55:45
I do, I put it when I see it. Yeah, you want to grab it and
00:55:48
tell everybody about it real quick back to.
00:55:51
Your room here. Yes, just imagine him going into
00:56:00
a whole other library. I know it's.
00:56:03
Crazy. I should have like I it's right
00:56:05
it's I'll show you right here. I should have cleaned it up a
00:56:08
little bit because it's like it's over there.
00:56:10
So that's a desk that has a glass top.
00:56:12
And so there's a lot of bunch of special stuff in there in that
00:56:14
underneath that glass top. And one of those things is this
00:56:19
so yeah, it's the card that I made in we're in Guam at the
00:56:22
time right after September 11th. And so I had these cards made-up
00:56:26
from point of impact, Stephen Hunter.
00:56:29
I learned about it there. But the Paladin right there was
00:56:32
from the Paladin right there. I've gone will travel.
00:56:37
So even though it's a black one and it's a white knight here and
00:56:39
it's a, it's a, it's a black knight on our cards for Delta
00:56:43
Platoon. So I, I thought, I mean, that
00:56:45
was right after September 11th and we're all still pretty
00:56:47
young. No one's really been to combat
00:56:50
yet. And so we thought, or I thought
00:56:52
anyway, we make these up. These are going to be something
00:56:54
like our snipers would leave on like, you know, dead enemies
00:56:57
scattered across the battlefield or something like that.
00:56:59
And we never never used them like that.
00:57:02
But I still have the the cards. It's it's a little blurry on our
00:57:06
end. What's the, what's the top line
00:57:07
is my favorite part of that card.
00:57:08
Well. That great?
00:57:10
How about that? We deal in lead friend.
00:57:13
Nice. Yeah, Steve Mcqueen's line for
00:57:16
Magnificent 7, which is in in Point of Impact and then SEAL
00:57:19
Team 5D Platoon Scout snipers. That's like a, that's a really
00:57:23
cool challenge coin, like tight challenge coin thing, yeah.
00:57:26
Yeah, if you do a challenge coin for for 4th for the fourth
00:57:30
option, that would be a good idea right there, Chris.
00:57:33
It's I can't believe we deal with lead right down on it,
00:57:35
because it's you know, I don't want to miss attribute it, you
00:57:37
know, and you and you only have so much space on those on those
00:57:41
on those things. So if it's like something that
00:57:43
knows, you know, it's like you can get away with that, but I
00:57:46
don't know, I don't people think that I came up with that.
00:57:48
You know you. Could do the paladin at least.
00:57:52
Yeah, put the Paladin on there, but I don't know.
00:57:53
We do on LED friend. That's pretty, pretty cool.
00:57:56
I don't know. Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
00:57:58
Seven, they know, is it not to make a difference?
00:58:00
7 anyway, we'll see. I'm sure on the coin.
00:58:02
I haven't put my thought into the coin yet, but I'm sure it
00:58:05
will have the the knight on there.
00:58:08
So I'll make it the white knight.
00:58:10
I'll probably do a white knight, or maybe not.
00:58:12
Maybe I'll make it black. Who knows?
00:58:13
We'll see. We'll see.
00:58:14
Early pages. I'll have to figure it out over
00:58:15
the next month because you have to place those orders early and
00:58:18
this thing's coming out in May and those dates sneak up on you.
00:58:21
So yeah, it'll be some cool, cool.
00:58:23
And I'm not going to do any shot throughs this time because I'll
00:58:26
save those for the The Terminalist universe.
00:58:28
But I'll do something that supports independent bookstores
00:58:32
that's only you can only get through independent bookstores.
00:58:34
I like to help them out as much as I possibly can.
00:58:36
It won't be shot through, but it'll be something.
00:58:38
I don't know exactly what yet, but be something.
00:58:41
Maybe bit by a dog? Yeah, that's a good one.
00:58:43
I might take for my dog. Yeah, our dogs, yeah.
00:58:49
I don't know. Not, not doesn't have that
00:58:51
killer instinct that I'll take. But yeah, we'll figure something
00:58:54
out. Maybe paw prints.
00:58:55
That'd be good. Yeah, a little bit.
00:58:56
Yeah, that'd be cool. Like.
00:58:58
That it might take a while, but man, yeah, I love talking to you
00:59:02
guys. I mean, I love, love talking
00:59:03
books and and films and and all the rest.
00:59:06
But if being a fan of Lethal Weapon and, and some of these
00:59:10
westerns and some of those 80s TV shows, I think I think fourth
00:59:15
option's good. You know, you never know until
00:59:16
he gets out there, you know, But sure, I'm, I'm pretty fired up
00:59:20
about, about this and where it's where it landed.
00:59:22
So it's. I'm excited to, I'm excited to
00:59:25
see somebody get shot with a like a six shooter and then
00:59:27
people go to investigate and there's no shell casings and
00:59:29
they don't know why. Oh.
00:59:31
That's good. That's good.
00:59:32
I had to do. I did a little different in
00:59:34
this, but but yeah, yeah, I'll have to hold on to that for the
00:59:36
next one. Yeah, it's, it's, it's yeah, I
00:59:41
can't wait to get this thing out there.
00:59:42
So, but once again, it was supposed to be 2 bucks this
00:59:45
year. It's going to be 1 because it
00:59:46
took so much Cry Havoc. And also this took a lot more
00:59:50
out of me than I than I anticipated.
00:59:52
And but it's but I'm super that's the most important thing
00:59:56
is that it's the best effort and the best story there can be.
00:59:59
So I think it's it's there. Cool.
01:00:01
All right, We're excited. Yeah.
01:00:04
Maybe we'll talk to you if you're not too busy closer to
01:00:06
pub day. See how everything's going?
01:00:07
Let's do it. Well, let's do it.
01:00:09
Yeah. What are you guys reading next?
01:00:11
Are you reading a bunch of different?
01:00:12
Are you in series now? Are you going through?
01:00:14
No, we kind of like we finished all of Brad's.
01:00:18
Their most recent book was we read Chris Howdy's JFK re
01:00:21
Imagination Dead Ringer. We also read The Persian by Dave
01:00:26
McCloskey. And then we're jumping into we
01:00:30
just me and Mike. Oh, I have a list right here.
01:00:32
Me and Mike, we just finalized our first half of 2026 reading
01:00:37
list. So A.
01:00:42
Certain number, is that right? Yeah, we we tend to like each
01:00:46
bring in like some. So we we have Cole 0 coming out.
01:00:49
We're going to be covering that Brad and another Co written Brad
01:00:53
and Ward Larson's book the Killer by Tom Wood and we want
01:00:58
to go back and do some of the Gray man stuff.
01:00:59
We've only covered two of the Gray man books, so we're going
01:01:03
to do book three. We've been diving into a little
01:01:06
bit of Dan Brown, so we're actually going to cover Angels
01:01:09
and Demons. Daniel Silva's Book 2 we want to
01:01:13
do. People have been begging us to
01:01:15
do Lee Child, so we're going to do The Killing Floor because
01:01:18
that's also what the first season was done off of.
01:01:20
I can come back on that one. I've read that.
01:01:23
We have the fourth option slotted in right for, you know,
01:01:26
right there in May. We want to do nuclear war
01:01:30
because Andy Jacobs, Andy Jacobson is coming out with a
01:01:33
biological war in July. And so as a biologist, I want to
01:01:38
read that one. So, but we we're definitely
01:01:40
going to read a nuclear war, so. Very cool.
01:01:43
Yeah, Nuclear war is fantastic. All the all the Daniel Silva's
01:01:47
in there. Signed.
01:01:48
I love, love Daniel Silva love that character.
01:01:49
So unique. You know, Gabriel in that in
01:01:52
that yeah, I think he's fantastic.
01:01:54
Love how how he writes. But yeah, that's that's I guess
01:01:59
Stephen Hunter, get some Stephen Hunter in there.
01:02:01
But I love what you guys are doing.
01:02:03
It's awesome. Anything that's you know, I can
01:02:06
do to help and promote books and reading generally, you know, I
01:02:10
love to, to, to do that. It's just so hard.
01:02:12
I saw something the other day that said the average 18 year
01:02:15
old is going to spend 27 years of their life on a screen.
01:02:18
And I was like. Well, for the first time, I
01:02:20
think we dropped below an average of one book per year.
01:02:24
Like people are reading less than one book per year.
01:02:27
Like, it's pretty sad. Excuse this.
01:02:28
So I, I, I want to do this in the 80s when I'm a little kid.
01:02:31
And then so my, my, my vision for this is 80s and 90s
01:02:35
essentially. And then I stepped into it at a
01:02:37
time when reading is on a sharp decline from like 2003 onward.
01:02:41
It's like a Cliff. And then it, it kind of starts
01:02:45
going down 2003 and then 2006. I think it just drops off like
01:02:48
that. But the rise of the iPhone and
01:02:50
then social media after that, so it's like, Oh my gosh, this is
01:02:54
what a time to be a publishing. It was not what I envisioned.
01:02:57
I envisioned being able to write up here in the mountains and
01:03:00
send more to New York and maybe do one interview and then go on
01:03:03
to the next book. I did not anticipate all these
01:03:05
other things that are supporting efforts to the book to just get
01:03:08
people aware of it because you have to breakthrough all of
01:03:11
these other options. That eyeballs.
01:03:16
From the most powerful companies in the history of mankind whose
01:03:19
only job is to keep them from reading.
01:03:21
So very interesting time to try to step into publishing and and
01:03:28
do it in a way that's that if you envisioned it in the 80s and
01:03:31
90s and and build something that's that you envisioned at
01:03:35
that early age. It's it's a very interesting
01:03:37
time and who knows what happens with AI and all the rest of it.
01:03:41
Haven't even I'm not doing anything with AII have no idea
01:03:45
how to even sign on to a ChatGPT thing like I've done nothing on
01:03:49
that spawns and I want to I want to go analog.
01:03:52
I'm I just got my own I switched over from trying.
01:03:56
To stay away from Alice. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
01:03:58
But I I switched over to a regular 1980s nineties day
01:04:01
planner like on your desk that I write and I just ordered a
01:04:06
because I love it so much. I just ordered like a travel,
01:04:09
you know, whatever Book 1 that's coming in the next couple days.
01:04:12
I'm going as analog as I possibly can.
01:04:15
No AI, no, no. Cal, my wife wants us to go back
01:04:18
to like foot bounce. Like I'm going to flip phone
01:04:21
too. Unfortunately, I think I'm still
01:04:23
built in the building phase where I'm still, you know, I'm
01:04:25
trying to convert people and that means I have to be on
01:04:28
there. Yeah, you need your Instagram,
01:04:30
Yeah. Need to do that, but ideally I
01:04:32
would love to go to a flip phone at some point.
01:04:36
I'm not quite there yet, but but the calendar, writing those
01:04:39
things in is has been liberating.
01:04:42
Jen, I've only been doing it since January.
01:04:44
Just a few couple, you know, a little over a week or whatever
01:04:47
it is. And I love it.
01:04:49
I love it. It's just, it's, I feel, I feel
01:04:51
like I have more control writing things in there rather than like
01:04:55
putting it on a calendar and then wondering if it's sunk, did
01:04:58
it sync with my wife's or my whatever.
01:05:00
And it's yeah. So I'm going old school, going
01:05:04
old school. Awesome.
01:05:06
Yeah, well, thank you for your time, Jack.
01:05:08
This is great. Good luck with everything.
01:05:10
And yeah, we can't wait for the fourth option.
01:05:14
Thank you. Guys will be in arcs.
01:05:15
I think there's the limited number of arcs.
01:05:16
So we're doing so you'll be getting those, I'm sure.
01:05:18
So. All right, cool.
01:05:20
If not, we'll we'll complain to David.
01:05:21
Yeah, yeah. David will send them.
01:05:22
He'll send them. Awesome.
01:05:24
Hey, thanks so much, guys. Really appreciate all the work
01:05:25
for not just for authors, but for readers.
01:05:28
And I really appreciate what you guys doing out there.
01:05:30
So keep, keep at it. And I'm a fan.
01:05:33
Awesome, awesome. Thanks.
01:05:34
Thank you. You guys take care.
01:05:36
You too have a good night. All right, we have to thank our
01:05:42
patrons, including our deputy director, Sherry F, Brad E,
01:05:46
special Agents Adam, Mike, Ben, Darryl, George, Matt, Dawn and
01:05:50
Chris. Thank you to Tyler being on this
01:05:53
episode. Great Co host filling in for
01:05:55
Mike. Thanks, I appreciate it.
01:05:57
Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite as always.
01:06:00
Always a good time with our resident Jack Carr expert.
01:06:05
Please subscribe, rate and view to all three seasons of No
01:06:08
Limits. You can find us@thrillerpod.com
01:06:11
or on Twitter and Instagram at Thriller Podcast.
01:06:14
And as always, just let Jack be Jack.