The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tom Clancy Executive Power (A Jack Ryan Novel) by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Tom Clancy Executive Power (A Jack Ryan Novel) by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson An international incident may fracture the Ryan family in the latest entry in this #1 New York Times bestselling series. Even in a family of strong individualists like the Ryans, Kyle has stood out as a lone wolf. For years he's gone his own way, joining the DIA rather than the CIA, and disagreeing with his father's politics. Now he's missing in an African country on the brink of a coup. His last message to his handlers, "We're on the wrong side of history." His father, the President of the United States, is about to discover which is more important to him: the interests of his country or the life of his son?

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Today we have two returning amazing guests on the show. We're going to be talking about kind of an unknown book series that most people have never heard about. The Tom Clancy series on Jack Ryan. and different things. I'm sure you've never seen a movie or seen the multitude of books or some of the authors and their own streams of books like these gentlemen have. But we're going to get into it today and talk about the new book out. Tom Clancy, Executive Power, a Jack Ryan novel out November 25th, 2025. Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson joins us on the show again. Welcome to the show. Gentlemen, how are you? Yeah, it's great to be back, man. I mean, you know, how can you

complain about being on the best podcast in the world. We promise to try really hard not to make anyone's brain bleed. We give the best brain bleed. You have the best intro, Chris, of anybody. It's like awesome. I appreciate that. I know you guys need a lot of shows.

Brian, dot coms for you? What's that? Dot coms, any dot coms you want to know? Oh, I mean, the main, there's only one that really matters. It's Andrews-Wilson.com. Go there. It has everything. All of our books, all of our photographs, all of our musings on whatever we muse about.

Lots of the musings. So give us a 30,000 overview, guys. I'll give you each a shot at this on what's inside you guys' a new book. Yeah, well, it's right here. Tom Clancy, executive power. It comes out on November. Tuesday.

All right. Well, thank you very much for coming by, guys. Appreciate you being with the show. That's a wrap boy. No, Jeff, you want to give a longer version for me? At least five more words, come on. Yeah, next Tuesday. No.

So this is a fun book for us. This is our third book in the Clancy series of 26 Jack Ryan novels. So, you know, you're always struggling when you come into this series. What the hell else can I possibly tell? What's the next story? And you remember from before the act of defiance book, our first one, two books ago, the first of our three. We introduced new characters, Katie Ryan, who was Jack's daughter, who last time you saw she was six and being kidnapped by the IRA. And we grew

her up now that Jack is the president and her brother, Kyle. And when we first did that, we were worried a little bit, like, is everyone going to be okay with this? And people loved it. So those characters were embraced. The next two books, the Act of Defiance and Defense Protocol, people loved Katie. In this one, we get to bring Kyle. her brother, a little bit more forward. I'll let Brian talk about how cool that was to do and why, but he is now in a Western African nation doing what he does, which is something that the president and his sister had no idea about. And as a result, there's a coup in this country. And because of that coup, he is caught in the middle. Him and some other Americans are captured, and it's on the American

forces to get him out. We also got to focus on the Marine Expeditionary Unit for the first time. So we got the amphibious ready group out there doing their thing we get a big amphibious assault on this this country so it was a lot of fun big geopolitics but a lot of family and relationship too it sounds like there's going to be a tom clancy daughter and junior series maybe coming out of this man i don't know you never know we're we don't have control over all of the universe yeah yeah it is really exciting to be able to you know bring characters of the Ryan family to the forefront because really that's what this story is about or at least our contribution to the series is that you know we tried to bring the family element back to the

series you know like Jeff said it's been 30 years since we last saw Katie Ryan a lot has changed but what has not changed is the fact that Jack Ryan is a father and a husband and a patriot and so it's as such a role model you can only imagine that the other members of the family would sort of want to get into the family family business and the family businesses protecting America. So Katie followed in her dad's footsteps almost sort of identically. You know, she's an analyst. But Kyle is different. You know, Kyle, he's not the black sheep of the family per se, but he is doing his own thing. And we even mentioned in the book that the family members are like, what is Kyle up to these days? So because he works for this secret task force and

he's deployed, nobody's seen him, nobody even, even his dad, who's president of United States. that's been compartmentalized to the point where he's not being briefed on that his own son is in Angola when this coup happens. And so it really creates this fascinating dynamic of, wait, there's a coup, wait, my son is there, wait, oh my gosh, he's been kidnapped. So Jack Ryan is maybe caught unaware for one of the first times in his presidential life. And that was fun to play with. That would be, I mean, I don't think we've ever had that in American history, in reality, where, where, uh, a president maybe had to start a small war or something, skirmish because his kid was caught in the middle of it? I don't think that's ever been done, has it?

I don't think I've seen it, but it's a cool premise, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why we named, that's the reason for the name, this idea of executive power. As a president, you have enormous power, not just over America, but over the whole planet, right? Like, it's the most powerful position in the world. And with it comes incredible responsibility like Spider-Man. So, you know, Jack Ryan has always been the Boy Scout. He's always the guy that does the right thing.

And I don't think we've seen him challenged to the point of what will I do with this executive power when I'm choosing between world stability, national stability, and my own child. And so we do flesh that out a little bit in the book, his awareness that, hey, man, am I biased, am I unbiased? Am I doing the right thing? Or am I doing the right thing for me? So it does add another tension to the story. Yeah.

And then they have to save them, too, because life is probably under the thing. So got to love it. Well, was it, you know, you guys come from two different backgrounds on your guys' thing. I think one of you was a submarine officer, nuclear engineer, the other combat surgeon and Navy Reservis. Does that sound right? Do I have that right? Yeah, close.

We were both active duty. I was a combat surgeon with the teams for 12 or 14 years. But, yeah, so different communities. But that's what's cool, right? We bring it all together, and we've got all this rich stuff to draw on. So you've got pretty distinct backgrounds that you can use to write together. What strength do you guys feel that you each bring to the table when you guys sit down to write either your books or the Tom Classies? I think, you know, probably the most important thing.

We might have said this before on your show, but I mean, as veterans, you know, and especially guys who worked with high-performing teams, I mean, they don't call the steel teams the team. teams for nothing, right? There's a reason. And same with the submarine community. So as different as the communities are, what they do share is that this idea that their high performance teams working under incredibly stressful environments where you have to depend on and rely on each other to get the job done. And so we've brought that same sort of approach, not with the same operational tempo, although you could make an argument that we have a pretty high opt tempo with four books a year. We try to bring that mentality to the writing.

And so I think it's tempting to ask, what are Jeff strengths, what are my strengths, what do we each bring the table? And I would say, we kind of bring the same things, which is we bring our curiosity, we bring our effort, we bring our intentionality, and we bring a willingness to compromise and communicate on a daily basis. And so it's really hard to sort of pick apart the book and say, what did Jeff write, what did Brian write? because the truth is we write in every point of view,

we share character point of views, we're writing in multiple chapters at the same time. And so we kind of gave each other free license to edit each other's work that happens during the DE process. And so what happens is we've both touched every page. We've contributed every page. So it's impossible to sort of say where Jeff begins and Brian ends and all that sort of stuff because we're just all mixed together throughout the book.

That was a really good answer. That was way better. I was going to say I bring really good adjectives and that was going to be done. But your answer, dude, your answer was way better. We should use that next time. I would be the one who'd be like, I know where to put the commas. And then I suppose do you, I mean, that's kind of an interesting way to work because are you both technically, have you learned to write in the same voice to make that indiscernible?

Or does it become indiscernible because you're constantly adding each other stuff and writing and yada, yada, yada. At this point, it's probably a little bit of both. We've been doing it. We've got two dozen or so books as Andrews and Wilson. But for sure, the secret to it has always been from the very first book, what Brian was describing. We both touched everything, right? So he writes a chapter.

I write a different chapter. But then we swap him, and I rewrite his, and he rewrites mine. And so we've really both touched everything. Then it goes to editing, and we're editing the whole book, and both of us are doing it. It sounds like something you just say on an interview, Chris, but I swear to God, this is true. There are times when my wife is like, oh, chapter 37, that was all you. That's so good. I was like, I don't, I literally don't know.

I'm not sure if I wrote the first version of that or not, because eventually it just all so melded together. But I do think that results in that single voice that we were going for. Do you think that maybe that's, you guys are like a pre-editing team almost because you're editing each other's maybe, you know? it kind of gives you an extra filter of quality maybe i think so and i think it's we both want to be writers and what i mean by that is the writing is the fun part so if one person was the full-time writer another person was the editor i think that'd be as fun and so neither one of us wants to do that so because we both collaborate on the brainstorming and the plotting and the character arcs and then we get to write i mean we we even share points of view so it's not like jeff writes all

the Jack Ryan chapters. I write all the Katie Ryan chapters. We're switching as we go. And that lets you spend time in that character's headspace. And that's what's fun. I mean, that's the creative part of being a storyteller. Now, you guys mentioned you've, you've done two dozen books. You write four books a year. How did you guys meet? And how do you keep up that pace? And what are these other books for maybe people in the audience that aren't familiar with your guys' lines of stories? Yeah, so we got a bunch of series. We have the Tier 1 series.

We actually just, this is the first time, I think, maybe ever, that we've had two books drop in the same month. So the adversary is the ninth book in the Tier 1 series. It came out last week. And then Executive Power, our third installment in the Clancy Universe, comes out next Tuesday. So it's been a pretty frenetic couple of weeks, Chris, to be honest with you. But yeah, so we write the Tier 1 series.

There's a spin-off series called Sons of Valor. The fourth book came out last spring. We have a series called The Shepard Series. The fourth book came out, I don't know. When was it, Brian? Last winter. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. And now we're writing screenplays because we have the opportunity to adapt some of our own work

with some of the partners we have in Hollywood. So the film and television stuff is growing very rapidly. So, yeah, it's a full-time job. I think I did it so that I wouldn't have to work. Somehow I'm working like 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week. So my wife feels like she got ripped off here, I think. Well, I was just going to ask you, has your family seen you? Do they know what you look like still?

Yeah, they see me. They open my door and I go, get out, I'm writing. So, yeah. There's a, there's a funny, I don't know what you call it, a thing that we have in the gaming community called, you need to touch some grass. Yes. But basically it implies you need this go out.

side, you're spending way too much time gaming, touch the best, see the sun, get some reality. So, yeah, I mean, four books a year. I mean, that's pretty, we have a lot of great authors like yourselves on the show. In fact, we do need to have your PR agency get with us because we need to have you guys on for that book you just profile, but any of the books, I guess we're not getting the Pings for that. The, I mean, that's, that's pretty prolific. Four books. How do you guys maintain, how many years has it been going on again? We started writing in 2015, so it's 10 years. 10 years, four books a year.

Yeah. How do you guys maintain it and keep it fresh, like drinking, alcohol, hookers, booze? I mean, that's something that you, it's funny, we had gotten advice from some other successful authors that I think we tried to take to heart, which is make sure every book is your best book. We've nothing off the table or on the table. I guess. So we took that approach and you would think that you would use up all your ideas like by book three. And I think that does happen to some authors.

But that's the beauty of, you know, our bios and our backgrounds. When you've been around as long as we have and you've done as many different things and you have a curious mind, I think it provides us with a lot of creative fodder to like dig into. And also we kind of keep lists of like interesting things that we read and we like talk them away like, okay, this could be a story. And so we're always sort of like maintaining our garden of ideas, you know, cultivating that garden of ideas because this is our job, right? And we plan to do it for as long as people will buy our books.

And I think that if I could pat us on the back, I'd just say, you know, the adversary, it's got a 4.9 rating, you know, with five. hundred reviews so people really like it so we you know we never want a phone in a book and they're like wow that was a real stinker from these guys that you know the day that that happens is probably the day that we should hang it up yeah keep it fresh the uh and and it sounds like where you guys plum for your ideas so you mentioned some resources maybe you used do you guys read other novelists you guys read the newspaper uh maybe do you read any military uh reports on what's going on around? Yeah. So for the, for the geopolitic aspects, we're, you know, being Navy veterans and

having served in the communities we did, we're still huge, you know, devourers of geopolitical stuff. So we keep in the loop and follow that stuff. And every now and they'd be like, oh, that would make a good story. I wonder if this happened. I wonder if that happened. But to be honest, to sort of tie that question to the last one, there's a power in, in the partnership. There's two of us. You know, I'd be a liar if I said there weren't times when we're like, okay, we're going to start on this next book and I knew exactly what we're going to do. There are times like, like, shit, I don't know what we're going to do. But that's okay because Brian knows. Like, so, you know, and we've been, you know, God has sort of shepherded us here, we believe,

because, you know, every time I'm at that stumbling block, Brian is at his peak and he's like, I got this great idea. And so maybe it'll, it'll happen one day where both of us are stumbling, but so far, the partnership has been standing in the gap for each other when when one guy doesn't have the idea. And then the moment that partner says, what about this? Then you're lit up, you're on fire again. You're like, oh, that's a great idea. You know what else we could do? And it just builds and builds and builds. It's a lot like if you've ever watched two seven-year-old boys play in the backyard with sticks pretending their guns. That's sort of our method. It's just like, dude, what about this? No, no, no, no. Dude, you know what else? And so that keeps it

fresh, but it also is constant new ideas. And we're just curious people. Like we write, as I think you're aware, we write in some grounded near future sci-fi spaces, you know, with four minutes and with sandbox. We write in more dramatic spaces. We have books that are not military characters. We're just curious people. So we're constantly thinking and imagining what could happen next. But yeah, without Brian, I don't think I could do it. And in fairness, full humility, we are pulling back to three books a year beginning. Oh, really? I mean, you know, it is a hell of a pace. keep up and with editing and and all the things but uh yeah i mean you know it's it's a it's a it's a

wonderful process you guys can maintain that pace and maybe between the two of you it helps avoid burnout you know if you're doing it as one author you know it might get burned out but i mean we have a lot of prolific authors in the show you look at oh who's the stephen king you know i mean i don't know how many books he's put out but it seems like he's always got something going on yeah but yeah the the stuff that goes into it So what's the future for you guys on what you guys are going to do for writing? Let me put it that way. So we're going to continue the Tier 1 and Sons of Valor and Shepard series.

So sometimes we get emails of people saying, please don't end this series. I don't know why people think that the latest book is the last book. Sometimes you'll see a review. I'm so sad this is the last book. And you think, what makes you make it's the last book? We didn't say that on the book. And so I'm just putting it out there. Like, you know, as long as people keep reading and buying books,

then we will keep writing Tier 1, Sons of Howard and Shepherds. That's in the cards. But like Jeff was saying, we got lots of other ideas and things that we're cooking up. So we have a standalone coming out called Dark Horse, which is, you know, exploring a different idea than we've done before. And then the other thing we have, which is really exciting is we, We've started an imprint, a new publishing imprint with Blackstone. You can see our little logo there, A-W-E-A-W-E-A-O.

That's Anders and Wilson Entertainment. I don't know, Jeff, you want to tell them about that? It's kind of cool. Yeah, it was Josh Stanton, the CEO of Blackstone approached us. You know, they're growing rapidly in storytelling, and they're amazing. Like, we would not go. I would never leave and go anywhere else. But part of that is Josh.

But he approached us and said, you know, as we grow, we're thinking we're should start to compartmentalize into imprints that reflect each brand. And so they've launched a where they're about to launch a faith-based imprint. And then he approached us and said, what about an imprint for thrillers? Would you guys be interested in heading it up? And of course, you know, we're not doing anything else between screenplays. We got only four books a year. Oh, good, man. I was ready to come out of retirement. But, you know, all joking aside, he said, look, we'll structure it in a way that it's manageable for you. But what we're want is to be how to have a landing place for books that fall under that same ethos, that same

team and mission before self, morally based characters, a hero's journey. So that's sort of how it came to be. And we've been really blessed. We reached out to some friends and we've got some heavy hitters, Jack Stewart, Don Bentley, Joshua Hood. They're all coming over to write books under the imprint. All of our books will be under the imprint, of course. And then we have some some up-and-coming writers that will be excited to announce in the near future that are also writing under the imprint. So that's been a really cool, exciting, flattering, a little overwhelming thing that we have going on. But one thing we're doing that we're real excited about on the writing side is, to celebrate that, Blackstone has launched this initiative where, beginning next month,

we're going to release one short, novella-length short story per month, every month that we're not releasing a book. And that'll start next month with our first installment, First Ranger. I'll let Brian tell you about First Ranger, but here's what's really cool, Chris. All of these shorts, people are always like, oh, where did you get that idea for this or that or, oh, this TV show that you're doing? Where did that come from? It's not one of your books. These are all shorts that were developed as treatments to sell in Hollywood. And I'm not, I can't swear this is true, but I think all of the ones that are in the release schedule are things that are in development with someone somewhere at some stage of development. So it gives, it's going to give our readers and fans a little

peek behind the curtain of how the creative process works. And it's eclectic. This first one, First Ranger, set in 1775. So it's very, very eclectic mix of stuff. You guys are going to be all over the map with that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think it gives readers and listeners, especially our audible audience. I mean, they're always asked, I mean, the comments we always get are, can you guys write faster? Can you get your books out soon? And so, hey, you know what? We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to get you something every month, okay? You might get sick of us. It's a little appetizer every month. A moose, bouch. A moose, you know, I mean, what you guys are doing is a great formula.

I mean, it's, it's, you know, what you see with, you know, I think, I think Netflix was the one who really started this sort of binge thing where people loved to binge stuff. Yeah. And, I mean, you know, I've been guilty of it, too. You know, I remember there was a few different things on Amazon that I really liked. And as soon as it would come out, I'd sit and, you know, I'd be up at 4 a.m. in the morning. You don't need to go to one more episode. One more.

I got to find out what happens. Just one more. It's only 30 minutes. You know, and you're just like, you know, then, you know, the sun's up. And you're like, my God, I've made poor choices with my life. You know, we found with the podcast, we do 48 shows a month. We found three shows a weekday, Monday through Thursday. I can, that's about all I can handle.

By Friday, I'm just in a fetal position. But we found that being the Netflix of podcasting, where we bring every sort of topic to the, to the show, every type of author, and pretty, I mean, just uplifting stuff. We don't bring conspiracy or negative shit to the show. But putting out that sort of volume, I mean, they can. assume like 96% of the show each show and I think the 4% is they hear me rounding out the show and they skip to the next but we're gonna do that's incredible Chris that's amazing dude yeah it is it is kind of because I'm like and they'll tell us you know the it's the energy of the authors on the

show so we prep them we send them notes and say you know bring energy to the show because that's what sells and they'll listen to people that they probably wouldn't you know I've had people say to me you know we're not we're not interested in this topic but you know we'll listen to it because it's you're funny and there's energy and the author seems great and uh and so they consume it and so they binge the hell out of it it's just it's just shocking to me so we give them so much stuff i mean you can you can go on the chris voss show and binge several hundred psychologists for you know i don't know everything for self-provement to trauma uh authors like yourselves that do nonfiction military style there's probably a few hundred of those uh there's hundreds of romance novelists

I mean, anything you want to binge, but they just suck down everything, and they consume it. And if you give that to them, they'll stay on meth's point. Like, I've had podcasters go, like, we publish once a month or something. I'm like, your audience has left and come to me, man, because they've got material. So that's kind of what you guys have with three to four books being put out every year. And then, of course, you know, you're getting more demand from your consumers. And that's really great. I mean, we call ourselves the, what is it, the Netflix of podcasting?

Because you can just binge anything you want. And with you guys, what your guys are building with Blackstone, that's even, that's even better, you know, so tons of, tons of consumption. Yeah, I think there's this maybe, I don't know, like this idea when you first start that, you know, everybody, you want, maybe it's a little naive. It's a little naive, a little hopeful. It's this idea that you want everybody to love every book that you write. But the fact of the matter is, like, people have different interests and different opinions and different. focuses and so that's why you know when we look at our different series we're not afraid to take chances and put something else out we know that not every reader of tier one is going to like shepherds

and every reader of shepherds is going to like first ranger and that is okay it's okay right it's okay for us to have a variety like you said and books in different lanes and i think you have to have some confidence to do that and a little bit of a thick skin you know there's going to be some people that say, well, I expected X, Y, and Z, and you gave me A, B, and C. Okay. That's fair, you know, but you maybe you learn something new and maybe, you know, for every one of those, you've got three other people that said, I didn't expect to like this, but I did, you know, and that happens sometimes too. Well, I need to get you guys out for a hard out so we can get to the next show. Give us your final pitch out for people to pick up the book. I'll give you each a shot at

in your dot coms. All right. Well, we hope you're going to check. Check out Executive Power, the third book, our third installment in Clancy series, obviously. Check us out at Andrews-Wilson.com. That's where all our stuff is. And if you like our Clancy books, if you've been reading those three and you think they're special, you're going to find the same kind of stuff in all of our other books. So check out the Shepard series and Tier 1 and Sons of Valor. So we have plenty more for you.

Thank you for coming on the show. Brian, anything more you want to add as we go out? Nope, this is great. Just have us back so we can do this again. please do it again we want to have gone for and wilson to the adversary that's the new book so we can make a show for that if you want to book it thank you guys for coming the show we really appreciate having you thank you very much and thanks for having us thanks for tuning in order up their book wherever fine books are sold tom clancy executive power a jack ryan novel out november 25th 2025 you can pre-order it down and get it as soon as it comes out and check out brian andrews and jeffrey wilson's multiple series they have on their

thing as well. Thanks so much for tuning and go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Rizfoss, LinkedIn.com, Fortezs, Chris Foss, Chris Foss won the TikTokity and all those crazy places in it. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. There you guys go.