The Joe Rogan Experience - #1942 - Mark Greaney

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Mark Greaney is the New York Times bestselling author of the "Gray Man" novels. Look for book 12 in the series, "Burner," on February 21, 2023. www.markgreaneybooks.com

the Joe Rogan experience so Mark don't worry nice to meet you man this is very nice to meet you I've read I'm on the 11th book oh wow yours now yeah so the whole gray man series I'm in I'm on Sierra 6. Yeah, the new one comes out immediately. Yeah, they sent me the new one.

Good. Yeah, so I have a copy of it. That's awesome. I appreciate you reading. You write some fucked up books, man. It's true. You seem like such a normal guy. I was always wondering, I'm like, how does someone write like this and not be a total psycho?

Like the fact that you have those thoughts in your mind and you can envision and create these scenarios in your brain. Yeah, that pops into my head a lot when I'm talking to people like my aunt who's passed away, but she was 93. And, you know, it's like, hey, Dorothy, here's my book about sex trafficking. I hope you enjoy it. You know, she read it. Because she would, my aunt, if I joined the Taliban, she'd be like, well, you know, they have some nice clothing or something. She'd never find a positive. She'd find a positive.

So she never complained about anything. But, yeah, I do run into people all the time, you know, kids, parents or, you know, on my soccer team, my kids' soccer team or whatever. And I'm like, I wonder what they think of me. I wonder if they know. How many of them have read your books? Yeah, it's the ones that say they've read my books. And then I kind of go like, ah, crap. Yeah, I get that with parents when they say they've listened to my podcast.

Oh, I really love your podcast. I'm like, shit. I'm like, what kind of psycho stuff do we have to talk about now but your your books are so violent they're so it's like for me it's uh i really i listen to them uh on um on audio when i'm in the sauna all the time oh great because the sauna is so a torturous you know because i've been at 190 degrees and I'm in there for 25 minutes It's fucking rough. Yeah, and it's like that kind of like The kind of insane Narratives that you create the kind of you know situations that you create in your mind

They're they're very good when you're suffering. Yeah Yeah, I have a blue collar like philosophy about writing like i like generating a product that people can use if their flight's delayed or you know they're snowed in or whatever and i get people emailing me all the time it's like hey i read your book when my mom was sick and i was at the hospital and you know i like that you know that it serves a sort of physical purpose you you know, like it's an instrument. It's not just an idea. It's a great instrument of escapism because it's so compelling and because the books are so interesting. And by the way, shout out to Jack Carr because Jack Carr is the

guy who turned me on. That's fantastic. Because I had read his first book and I was like, this is great. Do you have any other authors that you recommend? Like who are you into? And then he told me about you. Yeah, yeah. We've been friends before his first book came out. We were connected with one another through a guy in the firearms industry. And I was like, yeah, I think this guy. I read his book. I was like, yeah, he's going somewhere.

Little did I know. I think he'd already had it optioned for TV. Yeah, he's just an awesome person too. Just a really great guy. I met him a few years back in elk hunting camp. Oh, wow. That's actually where I met him, in Utah. And I didn't know who he was.

I hadn't read any of his books. He gave me a copy of his book, just seemed like a really nice guy. And I'm like, this book is fucking great. Yeah, yeah. He did great with the series too. I was impressed with it. I was really impressed. Yeah. I did great with the series, too. Oh, yeah. I was impressed with it. You know, I was really impressed. Yeah, I enjoyed the Gray Man movie, but it was not as good as your book. Well, thank you for saying that.

I appreciate it. It just wasn't the same story. Yeah. Like, they Hollywoodized it. Absolutely. And, you know, I liked it. And what I say, and I don't know how this makes me sound, it's like the movie is the best possible commercial for my writing.

And if you're a writer, you want eyeballs on your work. And so I love the movie. And, you know, there's bits of dialogue in there and things they did with the plot that I really liked. But, you know, it's not as gritty. It's not. Not nearly. Yeah. And they do things that they have to do shorthand in a movie.

I get 100,000 words to write a book or 150,000 words to write a book. So I have some luxuries that they don't have putting something on the screen. But I like the fact that they're different because there's still a reason to read my book. If you saw the movie and enjoyed it, hopefully it turns you on to the book and then you see something different in there. No, I definitely think there's that element to it because it is – it's for sure a Hollywoodized version of these gritty books that you write. Yeah. But it's also good. Yeah. Like if you didn't know about the book and you just saw the movie, it's good.

Yeah. They're two different things. But the book is so much fucking nastier. Thank you. And also – I said thank you. I don't know if that's what fucking nastier. Thank you. And also, Court Gentry. I said thank you. I don't know if that's what I should say. You should.

It's good. But Court Gentry in your books is just so much different than Ryan in the movies. It's just like. Yeah. I mean, they did a lot without dialogue, which I appreciated and I liked. You know, he'd do a lot with a look. But I mean, in a book, you're able to get into the character's head quite a bit more. So it's a different experience.

If you could pick a person, like an actor, if you could start from scratch, no disrespect to... Is it Ryan Reynolds or Ryan... Gosling. Gosling. Why do I always fuck that up? I always fuck that up. I couldn't pick either one of them out of a fucking lineup to save my life. Gosling.

Ryan Gosling. I really like the guy, too, by the way um who would you pick if you were if you know just like if you could just like say any actor like who do you think you would go with you know that's it's a tough question because that thing has been in hollywood the gray man's been in hollywood since two months before the little paperback came out in 2009. So it's been bouncing around. And I've heard every actor. At one point, Brad Pitt was signed on to it. Really? Yeah, yeah, like back 2011 or something.

And then it fell apart and it came back. And each time they would send me a script or whoever was doing it. And at one point, Charlize Theron wanted to do it. What? Yeah, they rewrote the whole script. She wanted to be the girl? No, she wanted to be Court Gentry. Oh, my God.

So they wrote a script for it. and it was good screenwriters. And I remember reading the script going like – Was it the gray woman or the gray non-binary person? It was still the gray man. Her name was still Court Gentry. What? But everything was different. They never really explained, is that short for Courtney or something?

Oh, my God. But it was just a completely different plot. Thank God they didn't do that. I thought if they changed – and I love her because she had just done Fury Road. So, I mean, I'd love to write something for her to be in. I didn't see Fury Road. Oh, the Mad Max. Oh, Mad Max. Yeah. OK. She was so good. But as an author, you couldn't put out the gray man novel with her face on it. And they opened the book and it has nothing to do, you know, with a woman.

And as much as I love her, like I was like, well, this isn't going to sell books or get eyes in my work. The screenplay was actually really good. But I remember thinking if I went to the theater and saw it and had a different title, I would not even know. There'd be like one scene where I'm like, oh, yeah, I did a thing on a plane too. You know, it was so different. It was a completely different plot. It was good. I wish they'd make it and call it something else.

Yeah, make it and call it something else. You don't call it The Gray Man. That's such a weird choice. Yeah, yeah. At one point, like real early on when it first got optioned, people were asking me who should play the character. And I thought it would be somebody who's not like, you know, Rambo or anything like that. So I was saying like Casey Affleck or somebody like that. Oh, interesting.

That you wouldn't expect, you know, in a big action film. But wouldn't you need someone who's like physically formidable? You know, I don't. The thing is, is I've written 12 books and I've never once had him working out. I've never shown him working out. Or even really training because – You talked a couple of times about him doing like calisthenics or something. Yeah. I've thrown it in a little bit because I'm like, all right, how does this possibly happen?

How does he keep these perishable skills and his fitness up? But, you know, there's actors that I really like like Max Mart skills yeah and his fitness up but you know there's there's actors that like i really like like max martini i don't know if you know that is um you know him if you saw him he's he he was in 13 hours it was a really good movie and um the michael bay film wow look at that that's amazing um and so he's you know he's like a formidable dude and a really good actor but but I like the physical presence of him. Yeah, he might be good too because even though he's kind of recognizable, it's not Brad Pitt. Every time Brad Pitt's in a movie, it's Brad Pitt.

If that guy's in a movie, you could say, oh, I think I've seen that guy in something before, but he's court gentry. Yeah, exactly. Well, I got a ton of people mad that ryan gosling was in it before it came out and they were like you need to get some unknown guy because nobody recognizes the great man and i'm like you probably don't understand how 200 million dollar movies work they don't what we're gonna do is we're gonna get this guy out you know find the guy at the mall and make him that you know it's it's just not how it works. It's too bad because I don't really know if it makes a difference. I think they think it makes a difference.

But I think if you have a movie that has an amazing plot and a great like trailer and it looks wild and like people, I think people get sucked into it anyway. Yeah. And honestly, like one of the best films I've ever seen in my life, which is an action film. It's a Korean film called The Man from Nowhere. And it's also – fortunately, it came out after The Gray Man did. Otherwise, people would think I'd ripped off The Gray Man because it's about a former assassin who's trying to lay low and he ends up having to rescue this girl. Well, the book, though, came so much earlier than the movie.

Like how many years was it between you writing the book and then the film coming out? I wrote the book in 2007. It came out in 09 and it, and the film came out in 22. And so it's like 13 years. I was still lucky. You know,

everybody's like, I bet you hate that you had to wait this long. And I'm like, if, you know, if I was an 85 year old man and they, and they made a film out of one of my books, I'd be thrilled. So. Yeah. It's a, it's a rare thing, right? Especially a big blockbuster film with Ryan Gosling. You're getting it.

There it is. Chris Evans is great in that too. Yeah. He was terrific. Yeah. He, he really played an awesome version of the character you wrote in the book. Yeah. And that's an example of a difference in the film that I liked. Yes. My Lloyd in the book is not like a physical presence. He's more of like the asshole mastermind of the whole thing. Right. But, I mean, obviously if they can get Chris Evans in their film, they're going to beef up his role and make it a more mano-a-mano thing. And I thought that was fabulous.

Yeah. And Chris Evans just really nailed it. He played the perfect douchebag, asshole, cocky, confident psychopath. Yeah. It looked like he was having fun. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great.

It was great. You've written a lot of books, man. And you're super prolific with these books. It's very impressive. You're basically banging out one, what is And, you know, like you're super prolific with these books. It's very impressive. You're basically banging out one, what is it, every like 10 or 11 months? Yeah, almost two a year, but not quite. So my first book came out in 09. And Burner, my new one, is my 23rd book.

So 23 books in 12 years, something like that. That's incredible. It's because they've asked me to do it. And, you know, I have these opportunities. It took me 20 years to get published. And so I've been trying to catch up. I didn't get published till I was 42 years old. And so I'm desperately trying to like, you know, make up for lost time, I guess. So what were you writing in all those years when you were a publisher? Were you just trying and just? Yeah. I mean, honestly, I was lazy. I never believed anything could happen from it.

But I like to write and I like to think about books and stuff. So I spent 15 years writing my first novel. I started it literally in 1990 and finished it in 05. Wow. And never showed it to anybody. I mean, you know, like three friends probably read it. And I put that aside. And I wrote my second book in seven months because it's like there's something about, you know, I always say everything in this world is cheapened by my ability to do it. You know, it's like I always wanted to learn a foreign language.

And, you know, I don't I'm not super fluent in any foreign languages, but I speak some German and some Spanish. And it's like once once I learned to do it, I'm like, oh, it's not that impressive because I can frickin do it, you know. Right. And writing a book was the same way for 15 years. It was this big albatross, you know, just hanging on me. And I didn't know that I could ever do it. And once I finished it, I was like, yeah, how hard did I really work? That was mostly talking about, you know, writing a book and not actually writing books. So then I went out and wrote a book.

And Gray Man was actually my fourth completed novel. Really? It was the first one to get published. Yeah. So all those years of 15 years, it was you just sort of not being fully committed to writing or? Yes. That's it in a nutshell. 15 years for that first book. And then I got some momentum. Like once I finished it and I thought, hey, you know, it's the internet was invented while I was writing the damn thing so I like looked up like how do you get published because I never even looked at that you know right and then everything I'd done in the book was wrong as far as like it was too big there were too many characters you know they're just things they'd recommend again so I um you know I tried to write

something a little bit more mainstream and I got that in front of an agent and he said it wasn't mainstream enough but I was a good writer so trying. So it was this continually falling on my face, but falling forward, you know, and, and, and there was, I've had very few epiphanies in my life. I'm not one of those navel gazing people, but, but I had this epiphany one day that like, okay, nothing. Yeah. I was in my late thirties. I was not successful in my job. I worked in a cubicle and I was destined to do that for the rest of my life. And I was frustrated about not going anywhere. And there was just this point where I said, I like to write. I like to, you know, walk down the street and think about, you know, some espionage theme or something.

And I like to do research and I like to type stuff out and fix it up. And it's like, okay, nothing's going to come of this. But the thing that's going to come of this is you're doing something you enjoy to do. And honestly, that just let a lot of steam out of the kettle. And suddenly I wasn't like, I'm a 39 year old man who's, you know, has no success. And I just became this guy. It's like, oh, you know, I like writing books. And I think each one's getting a little better and maybe something will happen someday. And really quickly, I mean, within a couple years, I was published. That's amazing.

So what was your job? I worked for a company called Medtronic. It was a medical device company. And it wasn't a dead-end job, but I was making it a dead dead end job just because it wasn't really where I wanted to be. I wanted to be a writer. What were you doing for them? I worked in international customer care. So we had subsidiaries.

It's a medical device company. We had subsidiaries in other countries. And I would sort of get the supplies to the subsidiaries and go to trade shows and that sort of thing. And so when you left that job, did you say, hey, guys, I'm a published author. Got to go. Yeah. So there's a story to that, that it's it's my dad had passed away in 2005. And my dad, he had a kind of a white collar job. He ran the NBC affiliate in Memphis where I'm from. But he was a very blue collar mindset. And you had to have a job. And there was no way my dad would have let me quit my job. Even though I, you know, my first book was

just a paperback mass market paperback. It wasn't a big release. It was gray man. It turned into something, but when it first came out, it was not a big deal other than the fact that Hollywood was interested. But I had this, you know, it wasn't quit your job money at all. And then they asked me to write two more books and make a series out of it, which I never even had considered. I was just trying to hold something in my hand with my name on it and a title and a cover. I wanted to be, you know, that level of a published author. I had no higher ambition. And they asked me to continue it as a series. And I said, yes. And then I realized it's like, oh, my God, I've got to crank out three books in the next whatever number of months. It's like I have to quit my job. And it wasn't quit your job money, as I said. And this was before the Hollywood money

came in. So I went to my boss. I've been at the company for like nine and a half years. I went to my boss and I put my notice in on a Wednesday. And the next Monday, they brought everybody in to the auditorium for a meeting, you know, 800 people there. And they're like, hey, listen, like sales are down or the economy, you know, this is 2009. So, you know, the economy is not doing well or whatever. So we're offering voluntary separation. If you quit your job right now, we will give you a month's pay for every year you've worked here. We will give you insurance for a year. We will do this, this, and this. I'd quit my job four days before. And so you think like, oh my gosh, there's this black cloud over me. And I was scared about quitting my job, obviously. And I remember my boss came

into my cubicle right afterwards. She's like, I'm going to talk to HR and see if they will allow you to come in. I'm like, why the hell would they do that? I'm like, I'm the best thing that's happened to HR in a while. You know, this dummy quits three days before they offer you a ton of money to quit. So for about six months, I just felt like I had this cloud over my head and I'd done the stupidest thing in the world. And then the film rights got optioned for Gray Man and it still wasn't quit your job money, but it was like, I can eat for a year money. And, you know, within a couple of years I was working with Tom Clancy and things started to really go in the right direction. Wow. That's an amazing story, man. I love it. It could have gone either way. But isn't that like always how it works with some of the best

stories that could have gone either way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a sad version of that story too. And I'm lucky that I didn't have to experience it. That's my problem when people start talking about like manifesting your reality and the secret and stuff like that. Like, yeah, you know, talk to people that win and they'll tell you that story that I knew it was going to happen. I made it happen. I had a vision board. Talk to people that tried and failed and are homeless. Yeah. And they have a different version of this manifesting reality story. And I've fallen on my face in so many ways in my life that like I recognize how lucky this is.

And I would not, you know, grab some kid and go like, quit your job, be a writer. Man, it's going to, you know, just because it worked for me in that one instance doesn't mean it would, you know, work in any instance.

Yeah, I think the best inspiration you could give to someone is just your own success. Yeah. For you to tell people to do what you did, it's almost irresponsible. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I feel like everything I've learned, I've learned by doing it wrong a few times, you know? And so like when I, I'm not, I'm not like Yoda. I'm not this guy on a mountain, like, you know, telling them it's like, yeah, no, I've done a lot wrong. And what I might tell you could be totally wrong. But learning how to do stuff, that's a part of the process.

You do stuff wrong. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You can't be scared to do things wrong. Right. You just self-correct. Yeah. And keep self-correcting and hopefully something good happens before you die.

Yeah. It's a tricky process and it doesn't always work out. But the problem is you're only hearing from the people where it does work out. Yeah. You out. Yeah. You know, and some people, look, there's a hard reality about talent, too. Like some people just don't have talent and some people just aren't good writers. Yeah. There's a lot of people that go like, you know, if it's your dream, never quit, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I'd love to be a Formula One driver.

I would not ever be a Formula One driver. I would not ever be a Formula One driver. You know, it's like, I think you sort of have to like play into your strengths and obviously work hard and get better. But it's, it's not a, it's not just, you know, follow your, your, you know, your wishes. It's a balance. Like everything in life is a balance. Yeah. It's not fair. And it's, it's very tricky. Yeah. and the idea that all you have to do is also like want it bad enough you know yeah and i used to um sort of give advice to people based on my own problems um you know like earlier in my career so like a young person will be like what do i need to do and and i was like i wish i believe in myself more because i was very half-assed about everything because it's like i never thought anything would come from it but i wanted to write write a book, so I'd pick at it here and there. So I used to tell people, you know, believe in yourself, believe in yourself.

And then you start learning a little more about these people. And it's like, yeah, self-confidence is not this person's problem. It's lack of talent. It's writing or it's editing or it's something like that. And it's like they're very, very confident. So, you know, there's not one size fits all for like helping people. Well, there's also confidence versus confidence

that's based on an understanding of your competence. Yeah. And your work ethic and confidence that's built up over time with effort versus delusional confidence. Absolutely. And my work ethic came slowly, but by necessity. And it's good now.

And, you know, I am a prolific writer. It has to be as much as you're writing these long-announced books. Yeah, although I don't do much else. Although I have a family now. But, yeah, there's so much that I've learned along the way that's made me a little bit more disciplined because it's like, okay, if I don't average 1,200 words a day or something, I'm going to be really far behind by July and the books due August 1st. So, you know, it's like I got to go bust it out. Yeah.

The first time you gave someone one of your books to read, like, were they all like the Gray Man, like the early book? Yeah, always the same genre different variations of the same genre yeah yeah so did is this something that you've been interested in in terms of like the way you read like yeah 100 i mean i was just a reader like i don't have military experience i'm not jack carr or brad taylor or any of these other guys um you know i bartended till i was like 31. And I had other jobs, you know, like I always had a couple of jobs. I got my degree in international relations and political science, but didn't do anything with it for 20 something years, you know, other than 10 bar with it, I guess.

Wow. So I read, but I read every espionage novel, military stuff, fiction. I actually tried to get in the Air Force at one point and didn't get in. And I was sort of fascinated by that world. And I'd read The Economist when I was 17 years old. I had a subscription to The Economist and U.S. News and World Report. Really? I was just interested in that, foreign policy and that sort of thing.

So I loved it and i and i loved thinking up you know kind of like wild crazy stories and big action set pieces and um geopolitical this and that so i clancy the first book i ever bought my life was or thriller i've ever bought was patriot games which was a tom clancy novel i was like 19 years old and uh and how wild is it for you to now to be writing that? A quarter century later, he and I were, you know, I'm in his house, you know, sitting there in his office talking to him. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, yeah. It probably could have happened faster if I worked a little bit, if I worked harder.

But maybe it wouldn't, because I think some of what comes out in your writing is actual life experience. You need some of that. 100%. That's what I keep telling myself. So I don't get depressed about not getting published at 25. Well, how can you get depressed? You're very successful now. You can't, you know, it's funny how people are, right? Yeah, exactly. I was looking at like the things that are wrong with what you've done.

What could I, what could have been, but now it's worked out really well. It's really interesting to me because you seem to be like a very like mild mannered sort of a guy, and you write for such a psychopath. It's like, do you know about Robert E. Howard? Robert E. Howard is the guy who wrote the Conan books. Oh, yeah. And he was kind of like a real quiet guy who lived with his mom and committed suicide in his early 30s but he wrote the most

savage fantasy novels yeah about conan the barbarian yeah and he did you know all of them while he was this sort of quiet soft-spoken guy yeah and yeah i mean there's there's not necessarily a correlation you know between one or the other i i know you know guys that were delta force and they're as mild-mannered uh as possible i mean they weren't then i'm sure when they were downrange but um you just never know and then as far as writers go you know there's there's guys that write pretty um you know accurate you know military or stuff like that i what's different about my character to some degree i think is like he's a very empathetic pretty, you know, accurate, you know, military or stuff like that. What's different about my character to some degree, I think, is like he's a very empathetic guy.

I don't want to make him like this square jawed, you know, like total badass. He definitely has a screw loose. He doesn't, his moral compass, you know, doesn't point true north or whatever, but he wants to do the right thing at the end of the day. And he's empathetic and he's vulnerable in some ways that some of the other characters aren't. And I think that's helped the series over the years. Yeah, no, I think so too. I mean, he's got a compass.

And it's kind of a fucked up compass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, in one of the books, I think it was Gunmetal Grey, it was the sixth book. I remember near the end, I was like, I'm going to have him do something that makes sense to him. But it's actually the readers. It's not what the readers are going to want him to do. And that had never come up before.

And I was like, OK, if I'm reading this book, I'm going like, don't be an idiot. Don't do it that way. It's basically the outcome of the story, what he was going to do with this guy that he rescued. And I was like, but it makes sense to him. So am I okay with having a bunch of readers mad at me? And I'm like, you kind of have to go with your gut. And I was. And I said, all right, I'm going to have him do what makes sense in the story for this character the way that I built him up over six books.

And I never really got much negative pushback from that at all. So I guess that was the right decision. No, I like that one. It's just, it's always interesting when you're, reading is so fascinating to me, reading fiction, because someone is creating this world and you're trusting them with all these people in this world for it to not mess with your... It doesn't... There's a suspension of disbelief that's involved in any reading literature or watching a movie

or anything like that. And you just don't want to mess with it to the point where someone's reading it going, ah, come on. Yeah, yeah. That's what you... You don't want an, ah it to the point where someone's reading it going, ah, come on. That's what you, you don't want an ah, come on moment. And you do a great job of avoiding ah, come on moments while you're navigating this impossible world of this elite assassin who somehow or another never gets killed. Yeah. Thanks for saying that. And I really know where that came from. It came from a very specific place. So I had an agent interested in me. He turned me down on a couple books, but he kept saying, you know, you're good.

Write me something else. And I wrote the opening for The Gray Man. And it's a sniper thing, and an American helicopter gets shot down. And this guy that has nothing to do with the operation with the American soldiers is just trying to get out of the kill zone where he's killed somebody. And he takes a sniper shot and kills some of the people that killed the Americans. And so I gave that agent the first 50 pages of the book. I'm still an unpublished author. I'm like, will you tell me what you think?

He's like, yeah, it's great shooting those guys from a mile away. That's really badass. But he needs to save somebody. And I'm like, wait, how's he going to save somebody? He's a mile away. And it's like Al Qaeda, you know, since 2007. And, um, and he's like, I don't know, I'm not the writer, but he needs to save somebody. So I went back into the story and I was like, well, shit, that doesn't really, you know, that that's so implausible. But then I'm like, all right, I guess it's my job to sell that. And the whole series was informed by that early thing because what I do is I create pretty outlandish things and then work my ass off to sell them to the reader. You know, put in the real world stuff, the geopolitical stuff, put in all these, you know, explain the hows and the whys to the best of you can and then at some point you know

the bad guys have to miss their shots a lot more than the good guys miss their shots yeah yeah so you know it's it is it's fanciful some people call it gun porn but at the same time yeah that's what they call it um and but but at the same time you know know, there's like a heart to the story and all that. And I'm trying to like pull the reader into where they don't go. This is just way too out of left field. What is your writing process like? Do you have ideas before you sit down and write them? Do you have like little notes of maybe that would be fun or maybe he could do this and then sit down and try to piece them all together?

Like, how do you do it? Yeah, I write sort of by the seat of my pants, but I do come up with some little, even if it's three pages of what the story is about. You know, this book is about artificial intelligence and robotics and the bad guy, you know, wants to destroy America or whatever. And then you flesh that out a little more

and a little more. And then at some point, and this is what I always recommend to writers is just sit down and start writing and you'll figure what your story is about. And if you, if you don't have any blueprint, then I think you're going to get yourself in trouble. But I mean, everybody's different. I know some authors that they have every chapter completely plotted out and everything. And then they just go and write a chapter a day because they've spent months plotting it out. And I kind of have to find the story in the story. So I'm writing and, you know, the dialogue, two characters talking to each other.

And I'm like, well, there's no tension here. I have to create some tension. And you come up with some reason there's tension between these two people. And then that informs another part of the story. And then sooner or later, you've got a book. Every book, I'm not a super confident writer, so every book, you know, spring, early summer is the biggest piece of crap in the world. And then somehow by August, I get it turned in and edited by October, and I'm happy with it and proud of it. My friend Ari has a little piece of paper on his laptop. It's a quote by Ernest Hemingway.

It says, every first draft is shit. Yeah. Yeah. I have said – that's good. I've said if I died when one of my books is like 98% done, it's unusable. Like they wouldn't be able to fix it. I don't know if that's true or not. But like, you know, as a writer, you know where all the bodies are buried in a 160,000-word book.

And it's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. And this connection here isn't there. And so like it kind of like weighs on you until you get everything cleaned up to the best you can. Yeah. Stephen King said he doesn't really have an outline. Yeah. I believe it. He just sits down and starts writing.

Yeah. He's amazing. He is just another species. Yeah. I'm so impressed with that guy. Well, certainly in the early days of his career, right? The early days of his career, to me, it's the most interesting. And this is not to disparage people that are clean and sober.

It's not to disparage the idea of getting clean and sober. You definitely should do that. Your health is more important than anything. But when that guy was fucked up, he was writing some amazing shit. Yeah, yeah. And he didn writing some amazing shit yeah and he didn't create a genre but he created a genre kind of did and the output was so much

but even in his later years I don't know if you've ever read 11-22-63 no it's a magnificent book it's about a high school teacher who goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. Wow.

But, you know, chaos ensues. It's a Stephen King novel, so you can imagine. And it's probably 700 or 800 pages. Really? And it's really fascinating. And it's a recent book. Yeah, it's been like eight or nine years. They actually made a TV series, I think on Hulu, with James Franco.

Really? Which was actually really good. But, yeah, that book is fabulous. The series is good too. No, I mean, some of his early stuff like The Shining or Cujo or Pet Sematary or The Tommy Knockers. Like, my God. Yeah. I remember getting late to the theater for Pet Sematary and sitting in the front row and just regretting that decision.

It was like so intense. But yeah, Cujo and Carrie. He said he doesn't even remember writing Cujo. Because he was so fucked up. Was it cocaine? Cocaine and booze. Yeah. Just getting lit.

His book on writing is really inspirational. Yeah. Because he didn't have instant success. Even though he got published when he was really young, he's trying really hard for a long time. And then, you know, he had to feed a family and all that stuff, too. Yeah. The story about when he got the first check, like how crazy that was. Yeah.

Yeah. He realized, oh, my God. Yeah. I have incredible respect for him. Because, you know, a lot of authors have co-authors or whatever as they get older. And, you know, it's just harder to come up with new stuff something you haven't done before well as you get older too you lose your juice yeah you know you lose your physical juice you lose your vitality you lose your energy you're you're yeah

sadly my um my my concentration levels at this point in my life is not what it was 15 years ago when the only thing competing with me writing my book was my Xbox, you know, when I was off work or whatever. And, you know, now it's kids and dogs and, you know, travel and, you know, other obligations. And so when I do have like a three hour pocket of time to write, it's real easy to kind of lose focus. And I'm like, wow, I remember going to Starbucks at 830 in the morning on a Saturday and staying till nine at night, you know? And I was like, I can't do that anymore. I wish I could.

If I did that for a couple of weeks, I'd have a book now. Yeah, you just don't really have that. My friend Steve Rinella talks about this as well. Like he was at the peak of his writing when he was a single man before he had a family. And you know, when he was alone, he could do whatever he wanted to do.

He could just like literally just sit in front of a computer for 16 hours in a day Yeah, drink coffee and just get it done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that was me, you know, I lived alone I didn't get I've been married on my second marriage, but I didn't get married the first time till I was 47 so You know, I was in my I was published and that had several books out before I got married And so the first marriage, you were 47? Yeah, yeah. You look like you're 45 now.

How long ago was this? How old are you? I'll be 56 in July. Really? You look fucking great, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. How do you look so young?

What are you doing? It's probably because I didn't have kids in my life until about two years ago. I have three wonderful stepkids. What am I doing? I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of it's What am I doing? I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of it's genetic. I mean, I exercise.

I don't do dairy or gluten, but that's pretty recent. Well, whatever it is, you're on to a good thing. Or you've got great genes. So what is your process like? Do you have a daily routine where you start every day? Do you go for walks before you write? Like, I know a lot of people do things like that. Yeah.

Charge the brain up. Yeah. I like to start writing as soon as I possibly can when I wake up, which used to be five in the morning. I wrote my first book, you know, when I had a full-time job and I wrote it between like 530 and 730 at Starbucks over a six month period. Um, now, you know, there might be carpool or something else where I don't get started, but I have a detached, we have like a pool house. That's my office and my house. And so it's 30 steps out my back door and it's a completely different experience. It's, it's like being in, you know, it's like being somewhere else and nobody bugs me or whatever. And so I like to get in you know, it's like being somewhere else and nobody bugs me or

whatever. And so I like to get in there as, as quickly as possible, look at as few emails as possible. I mean, you've kind of look and see if things are, you know, there's chaos that you need to attend to, but if there's not, and I like to start writing and I will write in the mornings. I, it's only when I'm like way on deadline and I'm going to be overdue where I will write in the afternoons too. So I, I try to write seven or eight till noon or something like that. And then that's done. I'm done with my writing for the day. I'll do other stuff. I'll take the dogs to the park. And I think about the books when I'm doing that. And I'm always jotting stuff down in files, um, for the book. So, you know, there's a lot of, you ask anybody in my family, there's

times where I'm just sort of not 100% there at the dinner table for a minute because I'm thinking about, well, wait, what if that all happened in Singapore? You know, so my brain resides there even when I'm not working. But I try and like right now, writing goal is 1,500 words a day. Didn't hit it today yet. But that's going to get me a book by the summer. And I have two books to write this year. So then the next book should be done by December. And hopefully that works.

And so a lot of guys do that same thing that you're talking about. Like there's a process after you're done writing where you're thinking about the riding of the day and then you just sort of jot stuff down. Yeah. And a lot of guys like to, like I said, go for walks or you like to take the dogs to the park. Yeah. We have a big 100-acre off-leash dog park where I live a few minutes from my house. and those 40 minutes or so where I've got the dogs out there, if I'm by myself, I will usually be really focused on the book or doing some sort of audio book research for the book or something like that.

And then you're always thinking of the next book you have to write. So I have another book to write this year, and so I'm trying to plot that out just in my head for now, not write anything down in the downtime when I'm not thinking about the book that i'm writing now do you drink coffee i drink a lot of coffee yeah yeah yeah that helps yeah i had a buddy of mine who started snorting adderall to write and his wife was like what the fuck are you doing does it work i gotta get this done look at me i'm like does it work apparently it does yeah i don't know but his wife had a real problem with it yeah i i guess it was the snorting i think he just took the

adderall but it's like i want it to work quick yeah i've i've tried adderall because some people told me it was you know i got a prescription for it and um it just made me feel kind of wacky and uh and i remember one time i took addderall. I'm like, yeah, I was really focused. I took all of my fire logs off the fire log holder and swept that thing up and put all the fire logs back. It's like, meanwhile, I've got to write a book. Yeah. People say it makes you clean. Yeah. It makes you want to clean things. That's what it made me do. And so it was not, I'm always looking for something, you know, like B vitamins. I've tried that. And, you know, I'm always trying to something that'll kind of keep me in the game a little bit more.

You ever try marijuana? No. No. Uh-uh. No. It might help your creativity. Really? Yeah.

Oh, it puts you in a wild state of mind. Yeah. But for this kind of book, like the only time I ever really had it, this is kind of embarrassing. I don't know why I'm saying this in front of so many people, was when it was like put in like lime squares and I didn't, nobody told me. Oh no. I ate like half a tray of lime squares. So I had the paranoia thing, like an absolute freak out paranoia. You don't want that. I didn't want that. First of all, that's a different drug. When you're eating it, it's very different than when you're smoking. When you're eating it, your body produces something called 11-hydroxy metabolite. It's like five times more psychoactive than THC. So it's processed by your liver. It's called a one-pass. And when that happens,

you trip balls. That's why when people eat edibles, they're like, oh, it doesn't, I think it's laced. That's why they think that. It's because it's a completely different drug than smoking it. When you're smoking it, you're getting THC. But when you're eating it, like the 11 hydroxy metabolite, it's not, you don't get it from smoking it. So it's a totally different experience. That's wild. Yeah. That was my only experience. And I was down. That's not a good experience. It wasn't a good one. I was down in Florida at the time and I'd gotten jellyfish that day, like in the leg and went back to the room and ate all these lime squares that somebody else has made.

And then I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to die from a jellyfish sting. Because I felt like I was dying for like all night. I mean, it lasted like hours and hours and hours. Can jellyfish kill you in America? Do we have jellyfish that can kill you? I don't think so. But I wasn't working on good information at the time. I know when I was in Australia, they'll warn you. They're like, that box jellyfish will fucking kill you.

I bet there are. There's those blue bottles in Hawaii. They won't kill you, but it's so painful. They have this string that's like five or six feet long. And I was in Hawaii, and I had one wrapped around my leg and my arm. And it hurt so bad. Yeah, my daughter, when she was really young, got stung in Costa Rica. We were swimming in Costa Rica, and she got.

What do we got here? Box jellyfish can kill a person within minutes. Yes, but I don't think they're in the United States, are they? I typed in Florida. Some jellyfish in Florida. No shit. Wow. Florida has several species, including those pictures that stink.

Yeah, but breathing difficulties, shock, and even death. Oh, jellyfish in Florida can kill you. I need to use that in the book. So maybe you were almost dying. Maybe it wasn't the lime squares. Really? Like it was probably the lime squares and the poison that was in your system. Yeah.

I didn't know that Florida jellyfish can kill. How many people die? Let's Google how many people die a year from jellyfish in Florida. It's probably only Florida, right? You're going to ruin my family vacation. I'm going to guess three. Three people a year. I got to get Florida.

It's not showing Florida. Three people die from jellyfish in the United States. I think it's 100 overall. In the country? I don't even know if it's the country. 100 people overall die from jellyfish? Yeah, I don't think it's that common that jellyfish kill people. That's more than sharks, you know.

Right. My wife is totally – I scuba dive, and I got two of my kids certified. And my wife is deathly afraid of sharks. I'm like, I swim with sharks all the time. I mean, there are certain sharks that if it appeared next to me, I'd crap my pants. My buddy Duncan was in Hawaii, and the week he was there, a woman got killed by a shark. Yeah, this year. Yeah, right?

Yeah. Like last – Yeah, the guy and his wife were scuba diving, and apparently a guy pops up for air. They were snorkeling. A guy pops up for air, and they're yelling, get out of the water, get out of the water. So he runs to get out of the water and then realizes it was his wife Oh my god Yeah

And looks back and they apparently they saw just blood in the water and thrashing and they never found her body No body. Yeah, they found part of her bathing suit or something. I think it's horrible. It's so rare You know, it's fuck rare If you found out that there were werewolves that werewolves were real would you ever go in the woods at night even when it wasn't a full moon you'd be like fuck that but meanwhile sharks are real and everybody's like whoa it's so rare yeah well i mean a dog can kill you but i'm not afraid of dog i don't know it's that's true i haven't seen the the right shark maybe you know i've been around a bunch of know, like reef sharks and mostly stuff like that.

I feel like you can give a dog your arm and then cut its neck. You could kill a dog. Yeah. You know, you'll get fucked up, but you can kill a dog. Yeah, shark, you're on their territory. So you are limited. If a dog's got a collar, I'm going to strangle him. Yeah.

But if it's a shark, you can't even move good. Yeah. Like you're like. Yeah, yeah. First time I went diving on an actual shark feed and I was, it only had 15 dives or whatever. Everybody else was a lot more experienced than me that I was just on a dive boat with. And right before that, they were like, okay, you know, sharks are fine. Just don't provoke them.

I'm like, cool. I jump in the water and you're down underwater where you can't talk to anybody and ask any questions. And I was like, I should have asked if eye contact was a provocation. It's like, God, I wish I could get back up there and ask that question. But I was not making eye contact. I think sharks are so simple-minded. I don't even think they understand what eye contact is. I think they're just like, they're zombies, man.

They scare the shit out of me. Yeah. Because they're just feeding machines. That's all they're doing is just the cleanup crew of the ocean. Yeah. Anything weak, anything that's fucked up, anything that's slipping. Yeah. Time to go.

Anything that dies. You're down there at one of those shark feeds where they have all this chum and a big ball and like hundreds of sharks. Cool. And there's times where like they're above you and there's the boat and then there's like 50 sharks and you're kind of down in the ocean floor going like, I'll wait for them to move on. We played a video the other day, Jamie pulled up, of this guy that's in one of those shark cages. Yeah. And this great white just bursts through the bottom of it. Bangs through it.

Literally almost takes his leg off. Yeah. I have no plans to dive in South Africa or wherever those things. Those people are crazy. Those are some big, big sharks. Like, I know you like thrills, but please. One of the cool things about sharks, though, is you get your picture in the water with a shark, and you can't tell if the shark, if it's behind you, you can't tell if it's three feet long. Right.

It still looks like, you know, this big, massive thing. Yeah. To be a three-foot-long shark, it's like, Jesus. Yeah. Mark's so brave massive thing. It could be a three-foot-long shark. It's like, Jesus, Mark's so brave. Exactly. Yeah. So do you do anything else that's like kind of psycho like that?

No. I train with firearms a lot. Have you always done that? No. That was really to get involved with the writing, to learn about the writing. And I started training probably in 2005, four or five, something like that. Where do you train?

Do you train at a tactical place? Yeah, it's been at different places, but I've done most of my training at a place in Middle Tennessee called Tactical Response. And back at that point, they were training a lot of civilian contractors. And so I took a, you know, you take pistol and advanced pistol and rifle and advanced rifle and this and that. And then there's these things called like, you know, HRCC, high risk civilian contractor classes.

And I took a bunch of those. And they're like a week long and you stay in the bunkhouse or the team rooms with the guys. And I learned really quick that like it's cool to learn about the guns and the gear and stuff for your books, but it's so much more impactful to sit there in the team room and drink scotch with SWAT guys or special forces group dude or whatever. It's just like,

he's been there, done that guys, contractors, Blackwater guys back then. And so I feel like I kind of became a mascot of that school I probably took 50 classes probably spent some close to you know a couple hundred days there in Tennessee and I've done some other training I own a bunch of the firearms that are in the in the books and and like to train when I can it's less and less as you you get older and busier and more family and all that kind of stuff. But I really do want to get back into it even more.

So when you were talking to these special forces guys, did you let them know that you're writing, that you write The Gray Man? Yeah, yeah. Early on, I mean, I actually heard the term the gray man at one of these classes from from a guy. I think it was a contractor, which is just they would say, you know, be the gray man, which is like not wear the tactical gear and the 511 pants and the YLAX glasses and the Luminox watches or whatever, because they're traveling into the Middle East and, you know, the airport in Dubai or something like that, Al-Qaeda would have like watchers there, you know, seeing who was coming in and things like that. And if you're there with Solomon boots on looking practical. Yeah, exactly. You got your Solomon's on.

Black rifle coffee t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. You're kind of self-identifying. Yeah. So it's all about like not doing that. Yeah. So it's all about like not doing that. And that's kind of my character guy who's like constantly involved in gunfights and knife fights and people are throwing knives at him he's jumping out of fucking buildings and it's like there's so much chaos yeah yeah i always there always has to be a kernel of some reality in it you know and um in sierra six the book that you're writing now there's a big scene that takes place on scaffolding.

Yeah. Several. I got through that already. Yeah. And so I was in, you know, Hong Kong. I wasn't in India where it took place because this was pre-COVID. I was in Hong Kong researching a Clancy novel. And I saw the scaffolding and I went up to it and I climbed up on part of it and I looked around, you know, and I was like, OK, if you cut this, then this ought to do this.

I wouldn't do it, you know, because it's six stories. But in the first Gray Man book, he has to have basically surgery or he has to get sutured up while he's driving, get his gut sutured up. And I talked to, you know, a special forces medic and talked about doing that and plausibility of that and going into shock and all these other things. And a lot of people kind of complained about it and said, that's so impossible. That's so impossible. And I'm like, yeah, but if you read the book again, he passes out while it happens and crashes the car. It's like it was not perfectly successful. You know, it is like he didn't come out.

It wasn't like he's just like, yeah, sew me up while I drive. People can do wild shit under pressure. Oh, yeah. He's just like, yeah, sew me up while I drive. People can do wild shit under pressure, though. Oh, yeah. Like, to say that that's not possible. I read about a guy, I believe it was in Antarctica, who was a doctor who had to take his own appendix out. Unbelievable.

And I think he might have done it with no anesthesia. I don't. Find out that, because there's video of it, or photos of it, of this doctor, like, literally on the operating table cutting himself the man who cut out his own appendix so unbelievable yeah so there's photos of this gentleman on the operating table doing his own append there right there like look at that unbelievable how i like how he gave himself a mask like hey bro it's bro, it's you. That's a good point. He intended to use a mirror to help him operate, but he found that it's inverted view too much of a hindrance,

so he ended up working by touch without gloves. How crazy is that? I feel like I'd talk somebody else through it before I do it myself, but I don't know. I mean, I guess he didn't trust anybody else. I wonder what finally here it is. The cursed appendage. Wow. With horror, I noticed a

dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst. My heart seized up and noticeably slowed. My hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it's going to end badly and all that was left was removing the appendix

Wow for a two-hour operation Down the final stitch Tom Clancy had a saying that the difference between fiction and nonfiction is Fiction has to make sense And like if I'd written that in a book people would just laugh laugh me off and you know there was the Navy SEAL that was shot 18 times and would just laugh me off. And there was the Navy SEAL that was shot 18 times and survived. And if I had my hero shot 18 times and survived, no one would ever read me.

Wasn't Tupac shot like nine times? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. 50 Cent. 50 Cent, but Tupac was two. But he was shot a bunch of times.

Yeah. But he died. Not from that time. He survived one of those shootings. Right, but he wasn't shot like nine times. Or is he? Ah. I don't think he was. You he died. Not from that time. He survived one of those shootings. Right, but he wasn't shot like nine times. Ah. I don't think he was. You're not.

Both are correct, I believe. Yeah, there was a guy, I think, in New York that was shot 20 times by the police with .40 caliber pistols. Jesus. And he survived. They used.40s in New York? They were then. Wow.

Yeah. Isn't it funny? There's some talk on that, like why they use such a high caliber. Are you trying to shoot somebody or not? Yeah. I don't understand. Do you want to give the cops all 22s? Yeah.

What are you saying? Yeah. With 22, they're going to shoot them 12 times. What do you want? It's the same amount of lead. Yeah. You're trying to stop a threat, whatever tool you need. Yeah. It's, do you get people that are upset that you are doing gun porn or that you're doing these?

Yes. Sometimes, yes. You know, just people that read the book and say, you know, it's too violent, blah, blah, blah. And it's just not what they were looking for. And so I'm always kind of scratching my head at these reviews. I'm like, why did you read 350 pages of a book that was not what you liked? I might not want to read a book about butterflies. I wouldn't be like 293 pages going, I'm going to write a scathing review about a book I don't want to read. That is a problem with people that write reviews on almost anything. Because when someone will enjoy something and they want to go see that something that's their genre that's the thing they're interested

yeah then they're going to write a review based on someone who actually enjoys the genre yeah but you get a lot of reviewers who are just reviewing things that they have no interest in at all yeah and they write these horrible negative reviews and it's like what who are you trying to convince people to think exactly like you weren't going to like it anyway? Yeah. It's such a weird way to write things. Jack Carr and I had this conversation on his podcast once where we were talking about the viewer reviews of our shows, Terminalist and Gray Man. Yes.

And then the professional reviews or whatever. Yes. And the people that watched it loved it overall. The reviewers hated it. But I mean, they're going to hate stuff like that. Of course. I mean, to a large degree. Not everything.

There's some things that somehow universally love. But I said to Jack, I was like, which would you rather have? The 23 reviewers all love it or the 100 million people that watch it watch it? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. That's a great way to look at it. You know who's a good example of that? Who's that?

Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler's movies all get destroyed by the critics. Yeah, yeah. But I think they're fucking great. I love his – they're so silly. And I love that I watch them with my kids yeah and they're like they're easy to digest like even the zohan which is like a little racy hilarious yeah yeah it's torn apart by the critics yeah and i think his stuff does really well and of course

it does and and he's just doing something different than what the critics i remember david lee roth once said the reason that critics all hated him and they all loved Elvis Costello is because all the critics look like Elvis Costello, which I don't know if that's true. Well, that is a part of it, right? Elvis Costello was like the nerdy guy with the glasses and he wasn't the good looking guy

who had all the chicks with him with his open shirt. David Lee Roth was the stud, who's doing karate kicks on stage yeah there's there's sour grapes involved at certain places in certain places i mean people can hate my books for a million different reasons and that doesn't make them wrong but but it's also the narrative of the critic was always so much more important than it is now because now the narrative of the critic gets drowned out by the narrative of the fans yeah Yeah, absolutely. For better or worse. I think it's for better.

Yeah. Because you get people that aren't professional critics. You just get informed readers who enjoy it or don't enjoy it. And then they share that. Like whenever I go to an Amazon book review and I click on the reviews, I just read the reviews. Like some of them are remarkably well written. Oh, yeah. You see people that are passionate about your – even if they're criticizing something.

Yes. You know, I've always had this philosophy. It's like if you read my book, if you spend the 12 hours to read that book or whatever it takes, it's like you get to share your opinion with whoever you want. Yes. You know, it's like I can't begrudge that. Sometimes I'll disagree with what they say. Sometimes I'll agree with it. The worst negative reviews are the ones where it's like, oh, this guy, this guy, he's got it.

You know, I like it when they're just assholes. You know, they're just like, oh, this guy's just, this guy's nobody. But then sometimes you're going like, oh, he sees me. He sees the dark underbelly. Those guys are really good because, like, if someone who can really see it and they expose something that makes you uncomfortable that gives you an opportunity to get better yeah yeah to think about it yeah that does happen to me for sure yeah i feel like the real problem with critics is that most critics wish they were writers but they just don't have anything to contribute. They're just not good.

And so they try to tear down other people's work, whether it's film critics or movie critics or even standup comedy critics. They're just, they just, they don't have anything to contribute. So they're bitter and negative. They don't want to be critics. Like nobody sits out and says like, I really want to be a critic of other people's work. No, most people that are critics, like when you're writing an article, a criticism article or writing an editorial, you are a creative, you're being creative, but the predominant creativity involved in criticism is like this negative, bitchy, creative energy that's not attractive if you're trying to make something. Yeah, it's only attractive when you're tearing something down So the energy these people have this like bitter shitty energy Yeah, it sucks for writing something unique and individually creative like coming up with your own book

Yeah, but it's good for tearing apart other people's stuff and it really likes snarky way Yeah, I've been saying that for years and years but never as eloquently I'm gonna I'm gonna watch this later and write down what you just said because i i have said like you you'll read a review and just to make the review a better little piece of writing for them they basically change the story you know like you know there's basically really disingenuous stuff in there right not every review obviously but um but that happens sometimes and i'm going like oh okay as a writer i know how you wanted to make these two paragraphs like like really impactful here so you just told some bullshit about my story that it's not even in

the story right yeah they're just not good yeah it's what it is you're you're you're getting it's it's like non-athletes talking shit about athletes. Yeah. Like you get that in the sports world. You get like these basketball commentators online and then like doing podcasts and doing these shows where they're just talking crazy shit about these players. Right. And they can't fucking play. Yeah.

Yeah. They're not players. Yeah. You get that in the fighting world too. You get these people that are talking shit about fighters. I'm like, you can't fight. Yeah. Shut the fuck play. Yeah. They're not players. You get that in the fighting world, too. You get these people that are talking shit about fighters. I'm like, you can't fight. Yeah. Shut the fuck up.

Yeah. They can be proved wrong a lot faster than somebody could prove a critic wrong about writing. Yeah. The writing thing, though, it's a human nature thing. It's a tall poppy thing. You know, it's crabs crabs in a bucket tearing down people that are more successful than you if you're especially if you're a critic you are a writer you're involved in the genre of writing don't tell me you don't want to write something unique

and creative because you certainly do yeah like i remember roger ebert um well who's you know siskel and ebert classic he wrote one of the worst fucking screenplays. Really? It's so bad and so crazy that you read it and you're like, oh. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Now I get it.

Now I know why you're a critic. You're this, like, frustrated creative type who didn't have the juice to write something that was actually good. What is the screenplay that Roger Ebert wrote? It's really weird. I read, like, many pages of it. I'm like, this is crazy. And you can just sort of discount everything that he says after that. It's horrible.

It's so bad. He says he co-wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which I don't— Yeah, but what did he write? He wrote something by himself. Valley of the Dolls, which I don't... Yeah, but what did he write? He wrote something by himself. I mean, I wrote Robert Jude Ebert's screenplay. It says there's a couple screenplays.

Yeah, so why don't you Google Robert Ebert terrible screenplay? I mean, this says it'll give me four answers. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Up. Who Killed Bambi. Softcore sex comedy. Maybe that's it. There's one of them that's kind of perverted.

Well, I mean, that would be it. That's probably it. Yeah. A man named Adolf Schwartz, Adolf Hitler in hiding. This is it. Oh, my God. Was living in a Bavarian-style castle in Northern California after an orgy in the dungeon with three women and a man.

He is murdered when someone places a ravenous piranha fish in his bathtub. This is a fucking dumb joke. A voluptuous woman named Margo Winchester appears later in the nearby town Miranda and is spotted by local sheriff Homer Johnson. He tries to make advances, but Margo rejects flirtatiously. At this point, after that, she is picked up by Leonard Box, a known troublemaker and son of a sawmill operator. An argument breaks out, the result that Leonard subdues and rapes the unconscious Margo

after she accidentally kills him. What? Sounds, oh, okay. Based on an original idea by. Yeah, he's out of his fucking mind. He was out of his fucking, it was, apparently it's so bad. It's beyond parody. People have read it and like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Yeah. But it makes you understand like, oh. Yeah. Okay. This is why you're so snarky when you're chip on your shoulder yeah yeah yeah it was it's a strange thing to be a critic of stuff yeah you know because it's like it is a kind of unfocused energy like yeah and it's it's so much stuff is subjective i mean that doesn't mean i don't have it we all have opinions right so it's like even though something's subjective i can go, that doesn't mean I don't have it. We all have opinions, right? So it's like, even though something's subjective, I can go, wow, I don't like that at all. But I don't, it's not that I objectively don't like it. It's not like it's like these four words should not

be, you know, usually if you're published, you're able to write a sentence, you know? It's just, it's subjective. People are very much entitled to their own opinion. Don't get me wrong. But what I think is that the model of the professional critic, I think it has so many problems with it. And I'm sure there's people out there that are professional critics that are very good. And this is not a blanket statement. But I think we're better served by the unprofessional, by the actual person who's just an intelligent person, professional by the actual person who's just an intelligent person who is a fan of the work, who reads the book, and then can write a little Amazon review or some other critique about it.

That's where, or a tweet about it. That's what I think is more valuable. And in the aggregate too. So you say like, well, you know, this many people liked it, you know, and each individual review, you can sort of like maybe throw away the top and the bottom ones. Yes. It's like somebody tells me that I'm the best writer since Frederick Forsythe or whatever, and I go like, all right, I'm discounting you. But somebody that says, hey, I really loved your book. It was fun.

You know, I'm like, okay, that I'm accepting. And then somebody that says you're, you know, the worst thing that ever lived, you know, I'm like, I can discount you. But there's levels of criticism where I'm like, crap, I can't discount that. Yeah. Well, those are valuable though, right? Yeah, sure. It's like if you crowdsourced all the opinions, the problem is you can game that, right?

If a person's problematic, like if you're going to crowdsource a J.K. Rowling's book today, well, the thing about the criticisms, it would be overrun by people who are like trans activists who are angry at her for her stance on women being women. That becomes a problem. And I've said that often about fights, that maybe we should crowdsource the scoring instead of having these people that are professional judges because some of them they get it so wrong

Yeah, yeah And some some scoring is so some like you'll see like 49 47 49 47 And then you'll see one that is just like 50 45 like watching a different fight. How are you watching the same fight? Doesn't you're so different than everyone else that scored it. Yeah How are you watching the same fight? You're so different than everyone else that scored it. But then the crowd thing is like then you could game the system and have your fans vote and say you won the fight when maybe you didn't.

And I'm sure that happens. I have a lady that – I won't go into the whole story, but I have a lady that makes an Amazon review every year when my book comes out because she hates me. Oh, boy. She used to be like my number one fan. And then she told another author, it's like, I heard you wrote, you're writing Mark Graney's books now or whatever. And then so I emailed her. I was like, hey, I write my own books. And authors don't love it when people are saying they don't.

And she just came at me with this rage. And this was seven, eight years ago. And I still hear from her and it's F off and die and stuff like that. And she'll send me emails and she's, she says a review, a one-star review on every one of my books is from this woman named Cheryl. And, and it's just sort of like, you know, he's, he lives in a mansion now, which I don't, and you know, it's like at one point in one of the reviews, she's like, I understand why his first wife left him, which she didn't. But, you know, and you're going like, all right, I guess I'm always going to be skewed. I mean, you can get 15,000 reviews. But, I mean, it's just funny that this person, like, has a beef with me and they're going to take it to their grave.

And I guess I just got what I wanted. He lives in a mansion now. It's hilarious. What are you supposed to do when you get successful? Stay in your shitty fucking apartment. I don't want to hear from you. Drive that Volvo. Yeah.

Yeah. It's kind of funny that people just want you to be like if you become too successful, they want you to be out of touch. Yeah. Or they see something in the book that they think is political, which I don't think is political at all. One of the Clancy books, these people, and I think they were like militia people, started emailing me. And they kept saying like, you know, you West Coast liberals don't understand, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I live in Memphis. I'm sitting in a Starbucks with a gun on my hip and a gun on my ankle.

And it was sort of like, you libtard West coast liberals don't understand anything. And I'm going like, okay. All right. Well, people want to have a narrative that suits their, their, their ideas of what you are and what you should be and who they are and who they, yeah. So it's like, you're not going to make everybody happy. It's absolutely impossible. And some people will get you totally wrong. Yeah. They just, they'll just come up with some complete false narrative of who you are and what you're doing and why you're doing it. And the fact that you're faking it, are you being paid off? Right. Yeah. You're a propagandist. Oh yeah. I've gotten the emails where people are essentially saying I'm, they think I'm in the Illuminati or something. And I'm like, I barely got through high school. I went to public school and got crappy grades and I went to,

you know, like state college or, and you know, it's like, I'm not trying to sell myself out as anything bigger than I am. I'm just trying to write the Illuminati. That's hilarious. Yeah. That's a big one. You're in the Illuminati. How do you get in there? There's an inverse correlation between how well there's positive correlation between how long someone's email is and how crazy they are. So it's like, oh, it's a manifesto. Okay. It's like the quick ones are like, hey, I really enjoyed your book. But then the non-quick ones are the ones that are like three pages of like –

Yeah. Ipsofacto. That's a good tip off when someone writes that. I've never used that word in my life, that phrase. Yeah, well, you know, it's part of the beauty of dealing with the general public. You're gonna get a certain amount of crazy people. I appreciate them.

It's okay. Some people like that though, if you do somehow another get in contact with them and you communicate with them, they realize, oh, you're just a person. Yeah. It happens to me all the time. Isn't that weird? Like, have you met people that were famous and you freaked out and you were, like, weirded out around them?

Yeah. I mean, but, you know, kept it to myself. But it takes a while before, like, one of the people that I met that I was, like, really weirded out was Anthony Bourdain. Oh, wow. I'll never forget. This is hilarious. Yeah. Because I used to love that show No Reservations that show. No reservations to watch it religiously. And my

wife was like, Oh, you're watching your boyfriend. She was always joking around. And so I meet him and I'm starstruck. Right. And I say, my wife says you're my boyfriend. And he's like, what the fuck? I'm like, Oh no. He thinks I'm a fucking idiot oh no and I eventually became good friends with him and it was cool it was nice it was like you know it was one of those things where it was like okay like I have a phone that I'm never gonna get rid of

because it was like the last phone that I texted with him on he sent me stuff it was just one of those things where it's like I had to get over the fact that it was just one of those things where it's like i had to get over the fact that it was this guy that i admired right and then here he is yeah and now i'm friends with him yeah you know my eating with him and stuff we're drinking like this is crazy yeah you know it's just it's weird like famous people are weird it's it's a strange thing but

as as a famous person i realized like we're just all the same right we're all just people right it's just something weird happens when so many people know about you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and what I used to think, um, before I had any, you know, people knew who I was, I used to think like the really successful people turn to assholes because they're not, they're not as friendly. They don't reach out, you know, but now it's like, I'll get like, you know, 90 people a day sending me some sort of thing on social media or an email or something like that. And there's people that if I don't respond to them immediately, they're like, oh, I guess you're too good. And it's not me being an asshole.

You get a little bit protective because one out of 100 of them can ruin your life. There's a guy who – he'll watch this. So who knows? He'll probably wear my skin as a suit now. It'd be all your fault. But no, he thinks that he is the gray man. And he tells me about how we had met. And he gave me the idea for the story.

Oh, Jesus. And it's been going on for years. And I replied to him the first couple of times like, yeah, I don't think we met. But he saw something I said publicly about where I got the idea for the story. And I was down in El Salvador when I got the idea. And he's like, I met you at a bar in El Salvador. It was like right out of an interview, you know. And he's been doing it for years. And I'm not sure.

He's like, I don't want money. I just want you to tell me that it's me or something. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people that are schizophrenic. Yeah. I mean, there's a certain percentage of the population. I think it's like 1% or something like that, that it's just schizophrenic period. No matter what you do. Yeah. It's just the wiring of the brain. I had a guy call my then like 90 year old aunt at five in the morning looking for my number

because she was in the phone book in Memphis and I wasn't in the phone book in Memphis. And she's like, I need his number. I need his number. And so I figured out who it was because there's a short list of people that were like being a little weird. And I figured out who it was. And I was like, look, man, you, you know, I'm going to the cops. You do this again.

And he said, instead of him saying, sorry, he's like, I hope you see that the links that I went to to reach you shows you how intense I feel about this project that we can work on together. It's like, no, no, I, it, what I see is that you called my aunt at five in the morning and tried to berate her into giving me a phone. Well, I think there's also a thing that people don't understand if they're not doing what you do, where you are so busy, you're so involved in your work. And this idea that another person who's not busy, who is obsessed with doing something with you, somehow or another

can talk you into that. You're like, I don't have the bandwidth. There's no room for you. There's no time. There's no nothing. There's no way. I don't have any time for anything. Yeah. People want, you know, they're like, oh, I've got a story for you. You're going to want to write this book. And it's like, and my pat answer, I don't usually reply to them now, but my pat answer was like, just as you are passionate about that idea, I have ideas of my own about which I'm passionate. And that's what I'm working on right now. But even people, you know, they're like, will you read my book or, or whatever? And I blurb people's books all the time.

But I'm like, is it the same for you where it takes a couple weeks of your free time to read a book? Are you asking for a couple weeks of my free time? And it's like I do things to help people, you know, if there's some sort of connection or personal. But, like, you just can't. You can't. I can either be the guy that publishes 300,000 words a year or I can can be the guy that reads the books when, when people, you know, have, have ideas. Well, I don't think anybody who is not in this sort of public sphere has any understanding of how many people are coming at you with projects and ideas on any given day. Like I can't keep up with the text messages from people that I know. Yeah.

Like your friends. It's impossible. Yeah, I'm missing out on opportunities like with people that I've been friends with my whole life and I feel like a jerk. I don't even mean opportunities. I mean, I can't respond to all the text messages I get and then I have to answer emails. I can't respond to those. There's fucking too many. It's like I don't have that.

I would literally have to have another life right to just interact clone yourself Yeah, it's like a separate me Yeah That just interacts with people on social media interacts with people and email interacts with people in text messages Yeah, it's just not after a while. It's not possible. So I just changed my number every now and again Yeah, yeah, I just lose people. Sorry do what you can disappear. Well, yeah Stay in contact with the people that you really want to be in contact with. Yeah.

It's not even really want. Like some of the people I really do want to be with. Yeah. Same. But I can't. Yeah. I just don't have the time. It's like you get to a certain – there's like a certain number of interactions that are just untenable.

Yeah. And it just gets – And it's not that I'm more important than anybody else. No. I was just as important when I was working at Burger King, you know, a long, long time ago. It's just literally hours in the day. And, you know, it's like I have they have the cover for my book on Amazon for preorder before I write the first word of it. So, you know, it's coming out next.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I talked to Jack about that. I think it's like, you know, like he he's ready go and he's like, okay, time to lock myself up. Yeah. Because it's just, you have a deadline. Yeah. And then also you want it to be the best fucking thing you could do.

Right. Because you've done so many great books already that this has got, you got to nail it. Yeah. So there's so much pressure and there's so much. And then I'll, what about this, Mark? Mark, how about me what about me Mark Mark Mark Mark Mark I love your work

Mark I'm your biggest fan it makes me think of Misery yeah you know oh my god another Stephen King amazing book oh gosh

I mean what was the woman's name that played Kathy Bates Kathy Bates is amazing we went to the same high school she's amazing in that movie

yeah she's so good that was one of those castings where like, oh my God, she nailed it. Oh yeah. She fucking nailed it. Like her career was made.

She got that role and she just made a meal out of it and it was so good. Yeah, that was great. Yeah. That was a great adaptation and she was perfect and James Caan was perfect too.

Yeah, he was really good. Like, oh my God, she's so good. I gotta watch it again. She's so good. I've seen that 10 times and I'm gonna watch that again. she's so good. I gotta watch it again. I've seen that 10 times and I'm gonna watch that again. She's so good. Yeah.

There's some people that just like, and Charlize Theron's like that in Monster. Yeah. Oh my God. When she played Eileen Wuornos. She's a different person. She's so fucking hot. She's hot as the sun.

And then she gets fat and shaves her eyebrows off and she looks like this psycho. And you're like, oh my God, that's not even prosthetics. You did that to your body? That's insane. Yeah. she looks like this psycho. You're like, oh my God, that's not even prosthetics. You did that to your body? That's insane.

Yeah, she looks like a killer. And also for a woman who's a gorgeous woman, who's like this A-list actress, to do that to her body. Yeah. And, you know, probably hard to bounce back from that too, you know? I bet it was hard. I mean, look at her. Look at how fucking, dude. Yeah.

She fucking nailed it. But I wonder if there's something liberating about totally changing your identity for something like that. I bet if you're a sex symbol like her, because she's so fucking hot. Go to a picture of her just looking hot as fuck, Jamie. Go to that one with her, the Oscar right there. The one there, the blue dress when she's wearing it. Yeah, that's perfect right there. Make that one bigger her the oscar right there the the one there the blue dress when she's wearing yeah that's perfect right there make that one bigger like come on son how are you going to say that that that lady's going to be an ugly serial killer it's impossible

but she nailed it and then she bounced right back like it's crazy yeah like people like that that's a rare person if you can get that person like a christian bales willing to starve himself for the machinist yeah yeah you can get someone like that to do your role like god yeah there's a lot of examples of that and that's just a lot of work yeah they just become a different human being yeah yeah but kathy bates god damn was she perfect yeah she's so good but that's the fear it's like this fucking crazy person is completely obsessed with your book. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, thankfully that had, you know, in the book, um, he gets his leg chopped off and the movie it's hit with a hammer. Yeah.

But hit, I mean, which is almost more violent, right? Like the way that it happens. Yes. And she's so nonchalant about it or whatever. She's just kind of like setting it up and, and he's so helpless. It was just incredible. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, that's, uh, I guess this comes with the job, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a very small part of it. Yeah. It's a very small part of it. But when you finish a book, is there like an apprehension? Like, what does it feel like when you're done? Do you feel done or do you feel like, how many times do you have to go over it after you're done? Do you feel done? Or do you feel like how many times you have to go over it after you're done with it? I feel like I ran out of time. I never feel like this couldn't be better. And I hate to say I'm a perfectionist, because it sounds like you think you've done something perfect before. And but I'm a perfectionist in the sense that it's never, you

know, like it is, at least this aspect of my life, you know, it's like, it's never right. It's never good enough. And you just run out of time. So I do go over it. You know, it's like it's never right. It's never good enough. And you just run out of time. So I do go over it. You know, I'll turn a first draft into my editor. It comes back to me. He reads it and gives me his ideas. And I'll do a second draft. And then he'll read it again.

And then we'll go to a copy editor and I'll get it. And then we'll go to a pre-preter and I'll get it. And still there'll be some mistake and it makes it into the book, you know, at the end. Last book, Burner is 165 000 words so i always say like yeah in 160 000 words there's probably five words i wish i could get a do-over on you know when you finish your book do you read it from the beginning to the end in the editing process yes um but i mean like once it's turned in for the final you know like once i'm the last

one that looks at it before a proofreader goes and like make or a copy editor goes and fixes the little things that i and i kind of have a bad reputation at my publishing house for making a lot of changes at the end um i crammed 14 pages into into a clancy book once um after tom had passed away and i was writing the Jack Ryan books. Like literally the last go around, I was like, you know, I really feel it needs to see. And they came back to me. They're like, we've already measured the spine. And I was like, did not know that was the thing.

But to their credit, they made changes and they got it in there. But I never read the books again. I do listen to the audio books or at least part of the audio books because I think I have a good audio narrator. That gentleman, Ray, what is his name? Ray Porter is fantastic. This is Jay Snyder is the guy that does. Oh, the Tom Clancy books. No, the Gray Man is Jay Snyder.

Ray Porter does Jack Carl. Oh, that's right. He does. That's right. He does Don Winslow and he does a lot of really, really cool. So Jay Porter? No. No, Jay Snyder.

Jay Snyder. Jay Snyder's very good. Yeah. Ray Porter, Jay Snyder. Yeah. Yeah. They're both fantastic. They're both very good.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a hard job to do the audio. I can't imagine. Because you have to do girl voices. Yeah. And then you have to do accents, and your books have a lot of accents. Sure.

Yeah. Gosh, Ray Porter, and Jay Snyder's probably my favorite, but Ray Porter is right up there. He did the Don Winslow cartel series. Oh, I never read those. There's one called The Border. It's the cartel, The Power of the Dog. It's three books. They're fantastic.

And I listened to the Ray Porter thing, and there's like six female Mexican, you know, women in the story and I could tell them all apart. And I'm like, how do you do that? I wonder if they do it. Like, do they have, can they really go from character to character as they're doing it?

Or do they have to like set up for each individual character and like practice the voice a little bit before they read the dialogue? Like, I wonder how they do that. I do too, because there must be some sort of cues to where they can – because sometimes in writing, you don't identify who's speaking until after the sentence or whatever. So somehow – I don't know how they reverse engineer that to do an audio book.

The worst at it, unfortunately, is Stephen King. He's the worst at reading his own books. Oh, he's done it with Reddit? They're terrible. Oh, no. It's terrible. That's terrible. Don't ever get an audio – I don't want to say this because I love Stephen King. He's the worst at reading his own books. Oh, he's done it with Redd? They're terrible. Oh, no. It's terrible. Don't ever get an audio. I don't want to say this because I love Stephen King, but he's just not good at writing.

He's great at writing, but when he reads it, it's like he's reading it. It's not like he's acting it. Whereas like Ray Porter, it's like he's acting out or Jay Snyder. Yeah. I mean, if I'm Stephen King, I've got enough to do. I know. I don't understand why he did it. I mean, if I'm Stephen King, I've got enough to do. I know. I don't understand why he did it.

I would farm that out to somebody else. I think he did The Gunslinger or he did, he's done some of them and I start listening to them like,

I'm just going to read this. I can't do this. Wow. Yeah. Like nonfiction books a lot of times the narrator is the guy that wrote it

and it's really good. I love that. Did you read The Rob O'Neill, The Navy SEAL Guy? good. I love that. Did you read the Rob O'Neill, the Navy SEAL guy? No, I didn't. Is it called The Operator? It's a Navy SEAL book.

And he read it. And I was like, this guy could be a professional audiobook guy. Because there's an intensity to him and all that. It just totally worked for the story. That's great. Yeah, I love it when an author reads their own book, especially when it's someone who has done a lot of podcasts and knows how to communicate. He's already got a distinctive, recognizable voice, like a Malcolm Gladwell or someone like that. Yeah.

I love when they read their own stuff. Yeah, same. Yeah. It's such a tricky world, though. I mean, to hire a person to read your fiction audio book. Like, you got very lucky having an amazing guy do it. But it's got to be like to read someone, bring your characters to life. Like, when you first heard the voice of the Gray Man, what did you think? So they did a tryout.

I got to choose Jay Snyder, but I only got to choose between two audio book narrators. And I actually liked them both. It was really cool. Last year I did an Audible original audio drama. So it's not a Gray Man story, this other book that I have called Armored. And I wrote an audio play. So they have sound effects and music and actual actors instead of narrators. Oh, wow. And it was like 600 pages, 618 pages for the five and a half hour, I think, audio play. And it was so fascinating to hear these things that you write, you know, like audio cue. It's like M249 going cyclic, you know, and this guy says says this and this and that was that came out before the film too uh came out like six months before the movie came out and so that was the first time i like i heard actors like acting out something that i'd written and it was it was just mind-blowing that's a really interesting way to do it to have audio in it yeah like gunfire yeah or screeching

yeah it's like an old-time radio play if you think about it. And I think it worked pretty well. I ended up writing it as a 150,000 word book, so there's things in the book that aren't in the audio play. But I think it's a fun way to spend five hours, you know, listening while you're doing something else. Well, I really enjoy fiction. Like I said, specifically in the sauna when I'm suffering because it's just it's a nice escape yeah just concentrate on the characters and just deal with the suffering yeah but it's um it's a such a unique way to express yourself to create these scenarios and scenes and things that just they're not

real yeah you're making a world you're making like a whole little environment but with you this environment is a very specific genre so do you have to be careful of not like overusing tropes not reusing ideas not like and keeping it fresh. How do you stimulate your creativity in terms of that one particular genre? Yeah, you're exactly right. The first few books, you're pulling off the low-hanging fruit. You have your whole life to think of these cool ideas and these interesting scenarios, and then you get a little bit more and a little bit more, and then you get to a point where it's like,

okay, I've taken all the parts off of the cars that I have in the back of my house, you know? And so you just have to go out and get more information, go to, go to other places. I think I've been to like 38 countries doing research and, um, talk to a lot of people, read a lot and try and bring stuff in the The macro level, I'm great. I've got ideas for 20 more books probably. The micro level, it's like, okay, this guy has got to get on a private jet and fly to Malta. It's like, okay, I've done that. How does he do it differently?

Or this guy is following another guy down a street. Or this woman is going to kill her husband or whatever. It's like those things that you've done. And I used to joke, I'm like, there's going to be a point where I'm going to be writing like a knife fight in a hot tub and go like, ah, this is my third knife fight in a hot tub. It's like, how many times can you get away with that?

Do you feel like there's going to come a time where you can't, like it strains credulity to keep the gray man operational i mean look at james bond that's 60 years you know and everybody's going like yeah you know how can you get excited in a book where you know the guy's going to win or survive and i'm like it's all superhero novels no nobody goes to a james bond film thinking he's going to die eight minutes in and then that first you know sure, they go for other reasons. And in my books, there is other skin in the game.

Like there's some big geopolitical thing that's really happening in the world. A burner involves Russia and Ukraine. None of it takes place in Ukraine. It's not about the war, but it's about Russian foreign intelligence. And so I had to do a year ago when I was writing the book, I had to really sort of prognosticate where we would be a year from now to get all that. So it took a lot of work and a lot of research. And it will, there will be a time where, you know, America doesn't have that many peer enemies, you know, obviously, there's China and there's our near peer enemies, China and Russia and North Korea's nukes, otherwise, they would be on anybody's radar. So when I was doing the Clancy books, I was going like,

all right, who's left? You know, we can't bring in people from outer space. You know, it's like, what are we going to do? But there's just there's different ways to skin a cat. But I mean, I think, yeah, ultimately, it's it's going to just get harder and harder to do. It's harder to write my 24th book than it was to write my fifth book. Really? Yeah, way, way, way harder. That's crazy because you've covered so much of the ground. Exactly.

One of the things to me that's been interesting about your books is going from the original Gray Man to Sierra Six, where I'm at now, where you have to deal with the new technology and you have to deal with new surveillance technology. You have to deal with the internet. You have to deal with the fact that someone's going to be a known factor. Yeah. When you've got a guy like the Gray Man that's been involved in so many operations and so many different missions, at a certain point in time, people are aware of him.

They're going to be able to recognize him. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at it literally, but I'll go back to James Bond. He'd walk into a place and say, my name is James Bond or Bond James Bond. I'm like, he actually uses his real name. That's kind of funny. Right.

You know, it's like I'm an MI6 guy using my real name out there in the field. And, yeah, you know, you just try and sell it as best you can. Like The Gray Man really hasn't aged in the past 10 years or so. He aged maybe in the first couple of books. But I didn't know it was going to be a series. I had no idea. And so there's Daniel Silva. I don't know if you've read him.

He's a fantastic thriller author. He actually ages his character, Gabriel Alon, who's an Israeli former Mossad guy. And his books are fantastic. I mean, I look up to him very much, but that's not what I'm doing. I mean, my guy's going to need to be able to climb that fence and, you know, jump off that scaffold and, you know, land on a tuk-tuk or something. You know, it's like, that's not going to go away as long as I'm writing the series. So if each story on its own stands on its own and is fun and is exciting and has something,

some kernel out of what's really going on in the world, hopefully to make it current, then I'm probably okay. As long as I can keep doing that. I don't ever want to phone it in. My career, my ambition isn't anything other than writing a good book. And if I'm not writing a good book, I will do something else. Do you feel like there's going to come a time when you have to come up with a new gray man? I have another series.

It's Josh Duffy's series, which is only one book right now. But I'm working on the other one today. So I like bouncing around. But, you know, as far as exchanging the gray man out in a story, like someone younger comes and takes a role, probably not because I'm really not aging him. You know, it's like I mentally I'm going like, all right, so he'd be he'd probably be by this story. He'd probably be about 46 now or something like that. So he could still do a lot of the stuff and a lot of the stuff he couldn't do um yeah uh i remember you know when i

wrote the first gray man like the the older guy who you know was like his boss hanley i think was like 44 or 45 or something i was like yeah it's this old fart you know and now i'm 55 and you're going like god what an asshole um but yeah it's uh i think it i think that the books are always going to sort of stand on their own and stand alone like a mac boland like like a james bond or something like that and um probably i want there to be story arcs and i want there to be psychology of interpersonal relationships and all these things in the story but i'm not looking to make the reality have anything to do with time. Right. That's tricky.

Yeah, it is tricky. It's tricky when you're dealing with someone who's physical too, right? Yeah, yeah. That's the big issue. Yeah, and I've had complaints. People go, yeah, but you said 12 years ago he was in Iraq or something. And I'm like, yeah, I did. Wish I didn't.

If you'd like to buy the new book, I'd love to sell it to you. But if not, shuffle on. You're going to have to forget about that part. Yeah, exactly. That's tricky. That's why I was saying, like, is there going to come a time where you have to phase them out? Because if you're doing these things in chronological order and we get to 10 years from now, you're dealing with a 58-year-old gray man. Unless you're still saying he's 37 and people are able to – they'll either buy it or they won't.

That's tricky. I mean I guess James Bond would be about 130 because the first books came out in the late 50s. Right. That's interesting. I didn't think about it that way. Right. But I think we're dealing with a totally different James Bond every time, just like we're dealing with a totally different Spider-Man. A few, yeah. I mean, that's true. That's true. They reboot.

Yeah. And that was a thing that didn't used to happen, but now it happens and it works. Well, they've rebooted Spider-Man like five times. Yeah, I know. How many times? I know. How many Spider-Mans have there been? At least four, right? Yeah.

Yeah. They're making a new one know. How many Spider-Mans have there been? At least four, right? Yeah. Yeah. They're making a new one. There's nothing to do with it. Oh, a new Spider-Man? Spider-Man Noir. It's like a TV show. It has nothing to do with it. It's been set in the 1930s.

Oh, wow. My favorite was the animated one when they did the Spider-Verse. They just completely changed the world and made it a multiverse thing and had a young kid do it. It was great. Yeah, it's clever. I love that one because also with animation, you can get away with so much more.

Like physically, it makes sense. Like you can enjoy it. The suspension of disbelief is so much easier. Yeah, and you're not trying to look through the CGI and see if it's legit or not legit.

Yeah, exactly. I saw an early version of the Gray Man film and they hadn't finished all the CGI. It was really, I mean, it was fascinating. I didn't know what I was looking at. Basically, it turns to a cartoon for a couple of seconds almost. It's like that aha video take on me. It sort of looks like that to a degree. Just for a second, you're like, what just happened?

The process of watching your work become a film has got to be very weird. I wasn't closely involved with it i went out and met the russo brothers when they were going to write the script and spent a few days with them talking about the story and where the future story because they wanted to be a french franchise from the beginning but i wasn't involved in the day-to-day but i was sent scripts jo Joe sent me the script that he wrote. Um, and then I saw the, the shooting script, like right when they were shooting. So that was my involvement with it. And then I would be on Twitter and I'd see Ryan Gosling dressed up as a gray man on Twitter. You know, I didn't see it any way. Any, anybody else would have seen it. You know, are they doing a

series? Are they going to continue doing a second one? Yeah. Yeah. And they're right. And they're writing a spinoff series, which I know nothing about. But the guy who wrote Deadpool, Rhett Reese, I think. They're writing a spinoff based on who? Someone in the series. And I really don't know. I'm not being cagey. Really?

Yeah. I just know that that's happening. That's even weirder. So now someone's like taking your world and it's almost like the Spider-Man thing. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what they do. If they take a character like Zoya, who's this Russian, former Russian foreign intelligence officer. I love that character.

Thank you. Thanks. If they did something with her, that would be cool. If they did something with Zach Hightower, who's kind of like his on and off again sidekick, that would be cool. But I don't know what it is. But they are doing a sequel with Ryan Gosling in the role. Have they started that yet? They're writing the script, or Steve McFeely's writing the script,

one of the screenwriters on Greyman. And is it based on any of your books? It's going to be based on one of the books. Which book? You don't want to tell? No, I don't know. I didn't ask permission. If you're allowed.

I didn't ask permission. I get it. My whole point in coming here today was to walk out of here and not go, oh, my God, I can't believe I just said that. I think we're good so far. That was close. Well, you know, you did a good job. You navigated it. Is it a weird thing to watch someone change your script and to change the plot and change how the characters interact?

It is really weird. I think I went into it with the right mindset that, you know, this was a film representation. And I know that the directors are like really creative people and the screenwriters and cinematographers and actors. And they don't look at it as their job that they're engineers that are going to take a piece of paper and turn it into celluloid with everyone doing exactly the same thing. So I never expected that. There are places in there where I think I really like what they did. And there's places in there where it's like, I think my line landed a little bit better. And that actually made me happy.

I wasn't mad that they didn't do it my way. It's more like, OK, I think i have something to offer still instead of you know all these big shots with all this money come and make something so like you know vastly superior to the little paperback that i wrote you know it's like i think there's places where my stuff holds up and there's stuff in there that i think is fantastic too but it is really strange the toughest thing is the complaints from fans that aren't happy because of the changes so yeah people just pigeonhole me all the time at a conference or something. And they'll be like, in the movie, they did this. And in the book, they did this. And I was like, yeah, I wrote the book and I saw the movie.

So this whole interaction is like, I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's like I can't speak for them. And people will email me and they're like, you've screwed up. You gave it away. You know, it was all for the money or whatever. you're like i didn't have any creative control i'm not stephen king or john grosham or one of these guys you know i had this little paperback that i got a little bit of money advanced to put out and they offered you know to option in hollywood and my answer was yes it wasn't like let me look at page 94 of the contract where I'm going to come back and say,

I want creative control and I want to play the gray man in the movie or whatever. It's like, that's how you don't get a movie made. Well, Stephen King famously didn't like The Shining, which is wild, right? Because it's Stanley Kubrick and it's Jack Nicholson and it's an amazing movie. But the movie was very different than his book.

In his book, the character Jack, it takes a long time before he goes crazy. And he starts out sane. He starts out just a troubled former alcoholic who's trying to get his life together and do right by his family. And he gets this opportunity to look over this hotel and he's going to write this book. And then along the way, he goes nuts. Yeah, that's the difference between a book and a movie. I like that added stuff um i think tom clancy didn't like harrison ford um in in the jack ryan films and i think it was just an age thing because in his

head he was pretty literal about you know he's he's at this stage when i wrote this book he's a young cia analyst who or whatever and i think har think Harrison Ford was older and I'm not a hundred percent sure about that. It's, but, but I, I do know that, you know,

I've read places. He, Tom never told me this, but that, um, that he wasn't a big fan of those. And I think those are the best ones. I don't know.

Red October was good. I never saw any of his, what, what ones was. Patriot games, clear and present danger. And those were all Harrison Ford. Yeah. yeah no kidding yeah yeah and i think he did a good they did they did a great job alec baldwin was great in red october yeah and too bad he didn't stick with it i forgot about red october

yeah yeah i forgot about patriot games too yeah yeah well it well, it's so interesting when you get a known commodity, like a famous celebrity that comes in and takes over a role that you've created. Yeah. Yeah, I was happy with Ryan Gosling. As I described the gray man, the look is pretty similar. And he didn't overbake it. I feel like the scenes with the, the girl and the, that he's protecting could have turned schmaltzy and cheesy and they didn't.

And I like that in my book, I like it a little bit better because the, the girl actually has some agency in her own rescue. She does some things to help herself. Whereas this one, she's just sort of like protected, you know, by, by Gentry. I mean, she, she sort of like protected, you know, by gentry. I mean, she kind of saves the day to some degree, too. You know, you can pick little things.

The very first scene in the movie, Billy Bob Thornton is a CIA guy sitting in a prison with a dude saying, here's the name of our secret CIA program, and here's what it does. Would you like to join? I think that's how that works, you know? And there's a, the funniest part was that there's a scene, a big action scene in Prague. It takes place in Prague and gray man is handcuffed to a, to a bench and he's shooting bad guys and he can't get away. And there's cops and dead cops around him. And then the bad guys, Chris Evans sending the bad guys in from all directions. And at one point he reaches over to this cop and pulls a frag grenade off the guy's utility belt. And I'm like, the cops in Prague

carry frags? That's some hardcore cops. And he throws it, blows something up. And I'm like, but it works in the movie. You know, it's like nobody's spending that much time looking at it, unless you're the idiot that wrote it. Well, that is the problem. You're the guy who wrote it. Exactly. Exactly. That's why it's got to be weird i would imagine yeah when do you have any um ambitions to completely change genres to do something that's outside of the realm of success that you found yourself in yeah i've been asked that a lot and i do have a bunch of ideas for books they're mostly in the genre there's some stuff that are a little bit pushing away there's a kind of a romantic suspense uh story but it involves cia that i'm

working on um working on it slowly amidst other things and just kind of like plotting out and someday i'm like someday i'm going to write this book, you know. But it's still a thriller. It still sort of brushes against espionage, but it's more, it's got like a romance angle that my stuff doesn't really have. Is that what you've always gravitated towards, like what you consume, the kind of books you read? No, I mean, the kind of books I read are the kind of books I write. And I wrote a military thriller, co-authored a military thriller in 2019 called Red Metal with an then active duty Marine Lieutenant Colonel, a good friend of mine, Rip Rawlings. And because I always, even though I wasn't in the military, Tom Clancy wasn't in the military. It's like, I always thought that I had one of those in me, like a big military thriller, like an old Tom Clancy one.

And so I wanted to do it forever. And I met Rip at the Pentagon when I was researching a Clancy book. And he wanted to be a writer. He was a writer, but he hadn't been published. And he and I became friends. And for like four years, we would just bounce ideas off each other. And one day I just said, hey, Rip, I think I could go to my editor or my agent and I can get us a book deal if you want to do this together. So we did, and he and I went to Poland and to Germany and to France,

and we went to Nellis Air Force Base, and we did research and research, and this book came out in 2019. It was like Russia of War with NATO, and it did really well. It hit the Times list, and we're doing a sequel. But the idea was I wanted to do something that was a little bit out of the spy novel thing. This is big troop movements and aircraft and all this stuff. And I wanted to write something big like that.

And I did it and I was really happy with the experience. It was a ton of work, but it was also really fulfilling. So I may get a little bit afield in what I write. It's not always going to be like the assassin walking down the street chasing a guy. But I probably won't go that wide. I'm not going to be writing a Bollywood script or anything like that anytime soon. Do you have time in between books where you just read or just research and just try to like to fuel your creativity? Yeah, I didn't. But now I realize how important it is. And so last year, I had two books come out and the film came out.

So I had all these things that didn't involve writing a book. And I wrote Burner, which went to several countries to research and took probably eight months to write the book. And I was supposed to write something else last year. And both my agent and my editor, who are both great guys, they both said, why don't you just take the rest of the year off? Because you've really been burning the candle at both ends and, and start fresh next year. And so it was hard, you know, to get up one day and not feel like you have to be on your laptop in four minutes, you know. But I use that time to kind of come up with this year's book to where I have a pretty more fleshed out outline than I usually do. It's significantly more. But, yeah, it was just days of, like, going to the park or working out.

I have a little home gym and listening to podcasts about stuff that would be, you know, in the next book or reading stuff and slowly taking notes. And I don't really have the luxury of doing that every time. When I finish the new Gray Man book, I've got to get right into the second Armored book, which is the one that will come out next year. And I better have a plot to figure it out on the plane as I'm on book tour or something. Is that good to have that kind of pressure? If I didn't have it, I'd probably still be writing my second book, honestly. So I hate it, but I need it. It's just I've never been able to, like, straighten out my work-life balance the way I would like to.

I'm insecure as a writer, so I hate what I'm doing 95% of the way I would like to. I'm insecure as a writer. So I'm just, I hate what I'm doing 95% of the way through it. And then tweak, tweak, tweak. And my wife could tell you, like the last couple of years, you know, it's like, I hate the book in July. And then beginning of August, I'm like, well, I mean, there's something in there.

There is a heart to this thing. I just, it's got a lot of mistakes. And then by the end of August, you know, it's kind of like, all right, I think this one's actually OK. And then by the time it comes out, it's like, all right, this is done. It's as good as I can make it. I'm proud of it. Let's get it out.

I think that feeling of never having a good balance is part of the creative process. Yeah. I've never met anybody who does great work who's like really happy with the whole process yeah but it's fun to fan fantasize about just like getting up in the morning with a big smile on your face and going like man i'm kicking ass you know right it's always like i'm just flailing yeah i have really bad imposter syndrome and i always have and i guess i always will and and um so you know it's this whole like i hope they don't find me out i'm glad you said that because i think everybody who's good has imposter syndrome.

I've talked to great comics. I've talked to great musicians. I've talked to great writers. And almost all of them have this thing like they're going to find me out. Yeah, exactly. You're like why am I here? Right. It's like – and I've even – I used to have really, really bad social anxiety.

And when I was trying to get published, like I literally had appointments to talk to agents and I never left my hotel room because I just chickened out, you know, and that happened. And then so once I got published, it was still sort of like this. I don't belong here thing. And now, you know, like when I first was asked to write with Clancy, I was like, oh, my God, why are they asking me this? You know, it's like, oh, crap. You know, it's like, how do I get out of this? Especially Clancy, right? Yeah, exactly.

Because you're such a huge fan. Yeah, and I was like, can't I go to the next level above me and not way up there? That's scary up there. But then I was, after we did three, he passed away right after we, I mean, a couple days after we finished the third book together. And then his family asked me to continue the Jack Ryan series. And if they'd asked anybody else, I'd have been really upset. Like by then I felt like I was the right guy for the job. And it was the first time in my career I felt like I was, you know, I was like, why are they letting me write for a living?

I get to go to other countries and talk to people and then write fun stuff about shit blowing up. You know, it's like, how cool is this? And it took me a few years to where it's like, OK, there's there's something I bring to the table here. Oh, you most certainly do. Yeah, that's great. I'm really proud of you for you. If I was your friend, I'd be proud of you. Let's be friends.

Let's be friends. But it's I think that's an amazing story to go from a guy who's a giant Tom Clancy fan to be writing those novels. Yeah. That's amazing. It's great. And to know the language and to know the characters and to keep it true to the original work. Yeah. So I'd only had a couple of paperback books out when they asked me if I was interested in being his co-author.

But we had the same editor. Did he know your work? Was he a fan of your work? I don't know. I mean, I think ultimately, know. I mean, I think ultimately, yes. I mean, like we met. But when they first reached out to me, it wasn't a job offer. It was more like, would you be interested? Do you want us to put your hat in the ring for this? And there was this kind of back and forth where no decisions were being made. And as scared

as I was at first, I also knew enough about the publishing world to know that that book was going to be due whenever I started writing it, that the due date wasn't going to change. So it's like beginning of February 2011, they asked me if I was interested. End of February, I still didn't have it, the job. And we're into March and I still didn't have the job. And I was like, I bet this book is due on a certain date no matter what. So finally I said, listen, I am a huge Clancy fan. I know these characters. I know these people. Let me write 50 pages as if I was writing a Tom Clancy novel and do that as a tryout. And so I don't think anybody else did that. And so I just wrote 50 pages, like in the middle of a book that never existed. You know,

it was just like, I didn't worry about plot. And I was just like, there's a scene. And I gave them them that and then they had me go up to Baltimore and meet Tom and then I had the job. Wow. It was amazing. I was terrified to meet Clancy. Why did they want someone to collaborate with Tom? Do I even know the answer? I really don't know the answer to that. It happens with authors as they get older.

They – I mean I'm'm already don't have the focus that we were talking earlier you know it's like i used to be able to write six eight ten twelve hours do you take any nootropics i don't know what that is so really i guess not i'll get you have any yeah i was kidding i do i was kidding i have some right here can we take it on camera and see what happens yeah see if i get interesting? It'll take a few hours for this to kick in. This is Alpha Brain Black Label. This is my favorite. But I take a bunch of different nootropics.

What they are is essentially building blocks for human neurotransmitters. It's just nutrients. Okay. Here, take six. Is it legal in all 50 states? Yes. All right. 100% legal.

You can buy it on Amazon. Here, take six of these. Thanks, man. There you go. I appreciate it. I'll take them, too, so you know I'm not poisoning you. Do you take all six? Yeah, I take all six.

Seriously? Yeah, it's not going to mess with you. All right. Here we go. Here we go. But I take a bunch of different ones. They started taking a new one that they sent me called Magic Mind. And it's nootropics along with lion's mane and a bunch of functional mushrooms. Wow.

And I like that one too. There's another one. I got found out about nootropics because of Bill Romanosky. He was a former football player, great football player, and developed obviously some neural issues post-concussions and impacts and stuff like that. So we created something called Neuro One, and I really like that. I started taking Neuro One because there was a show called Alice in No Name. Was that Alice in No Name?

It was on San Francisco. It was the morning radio show, and the dude, they would call him No Name. And his trainer was Bill Romanowski. And Bill Romanowski got him on this stuff. And this was quite a few years ago. And I go, what is it? And he's like, it's nutrients that help you think better. I was like, well, what do you do?

And he gave me some. And I started taking them. And I'm like, this is interesting. It helps you form sentences better. It helps your verbal memory. And that's one of the things we've done with AlphaBrain, because this is a company that I owned. We sent a bunch of it,

and we funded two double-blind placebo-controlled studies at the Boston Center for Memory. And they showed increase in verbal memory, increase in reaction time, increase in peak alpha flow state. So it enhances your ability to think. And that's the thing. It's not going to make you smarter. But what it does is it provides your brain with the nutrients it needs to function at

its best. There is nothing I need more. Yeah. Like, last year I was worrying that I was having some kind of cognitive decline because I was forgetting things. And it's like, wait, did I just do that or was I about to do that? And I think it was because I was just really overloaded, just busy and family and stuff. And, you know, it's like going from two dogs and no family to three step kids and four dogs and um you know the movie's out and two book came out and right i had to write a book and i

just really felt like like something was going on in my head and yeah and once i turned that book in and took a couple months off or whatever and things have you know recharge recharge to some degree but yeah as you get older you need that well there's also a thing with the vitality of your body like the the more vitality you have the more robust your body is the more you can function at a high energy level for longer periods of time which is i think cardio is very important for anybody who's creative you know i mean there's a lot of like brilliant creative people that never work out ever. And 100% you can do it. I know some brilliant comedians and writers, and all they do is they force themselves to sit down and they create amazing work.

But I think if you looked at it comprehensively, the overall robustness of your physical body, your body's ability to generate energy, function at a really good pace, and to just be overall healthy, I think is very important for creativity. And I think cardiovascular fitness in particular seems to really enhance creativity. I know a lot of people that get very creative when they run, very creative when they'll do something that has a high tax rate on the body like yoga or CrossFit, something that's like just – it keeps your body functioning at a very high level. Yeah. I think that can enhance it too. Oh, I've had the best – I work out regularly and it started in 2019.

I had just gotten divorced and I lost a ton of weight and I wasn't sleeping. I still have trouble sleeping but like I was kind of freaked out. So I went to a psychiatrist, like what's wrong with me? And talked to him for a while. And he said, you are as healthy as anybody's ever walked through my door. You just have these chemicals firing in your head right now because of your divorce and how you're feeling. And he's like, I could prescribe you some crap, but you should probably just work out.

That's a great psychiatrist. Oh, he's fantastic. Thank God you found that. And so that was July 1st of 2019. And so I'm coming up on five years of, of keeping my weight. Like I lost 40 pounds. Um, and I, I exercise and when you first start doing it, it makes you really tired, but when you keep doing it, it's like, it keeps you from being tired. And so I'll so I'll work out every afternoon, like three or four in the afternoon and I sleep better. And the next day is better. And until I do it again. And if I don't work out for a couple of days, I feel really lethargic. Yes. I'm with you a hundred percent. And for me, it's, I have this thought that I think that human

beings evolved with, with anxiety and fear because of actual real threats. Sure. Because of threats of animals, of predators, and of neighboring tribes invading and war and chaos and violence. Defense mechanisms. Yes. And then we also carry that same anxiety today, but there's no threats. Right. So your body is like, it's the same chemicals as, as,

as was explained to me that, that fire out through your brain. If you're, you know, having some crazy relationships, stuff going on as if a tiger is chasing you or whatever. It's like your brain doesn't have different chemicals for different things. And I think that there's a real physical requirement of taxing your body that comes with that

sort of anxiety that if you don't meet that physical requirement your body's just like yeah cuz it just looks like we got a run man yeah there's something going on there's something attacking us we got to get the fuck out of here and unless you meet those physical requirements like wear your body out so that it can get back to a normal baseline yeah it doesn't burn off all that shit. I mean, I'm obviously not talking about it like a scientist, but there's something to that.

For me, in times of peak anxiety and peak stress, nothing makes me feel better than a hard workout. A hard workout, hard sauna session, cold plunge, I'm back. Yeah, I agree with that. I got hurt playing soccer in my 30s and had a back surgery and the surgeon botched it. So I have permanent nerve damage in my left leg. Oh, no. And I had since then had four surgeries to try and correct stuff. And two of those surgeries didn't go well. And so I've spent an entire year and a half of my life on crutches or on a knee

scooter and not able to, I mean, barely able to work out. Like my gym in my old house was, you know, just a playroom and it was a wooden staircase and it's like I'm crawling on my calf. Oh, wow. And I was literally just doing like Turkish get-ups and I'd do like four on each side and be crippled the next day. But that was all the exercise I could get. be crippled the next day. But that was all the exercise I could get. And I was getting depressed and, you know, gain weight and just feeling really just tired and lethargic all the time. And now that I'm able to do, I wear a little brace on my ankle and I'm able to do most anything that I want to do. And the more active I stay, just better I feel in 100 different ways. Did you get your disc fused?

So I have two levels in lumbar discs. I have artificial discs. So it was something that they were – it's approved in other countries, but it's not FDA approved in the U.S. for some reason. Or maybe it is now. I know quite a few people that have artificial discs in their neck and their back. They do in their neck. There's a lot in cervical. But lumbar was, at least then.

What year was this? 2004 when I had that surgery. Oh, very early on. Yeah, yeah. So yours is not an articulating thing. It is articulating. It is. Yeah.

Is it titanium? It's two levels. Yes. Interesting. Yeah, it's called a Maverick. It was actually the company I worked for made spinal implants, and it was their device. I actually got it. Yeah.

And it's done great for me. I still have like kind of chronic back pain, but it's so much less. Did you have stenosis? Um, yes. So when they put this in, what, what were you experiencing before they put that in? Was it a bulging disc? Was it herniated? Was it pushing against nerves? So the first surgeon went in to clean up a one-level bulging disc and left sequestered disc material, so the jelly inside the jelly donut that is the disc, in the foramen, which is the joint area where the nerve root goes. And it crushed off my nerve root, my L4 nerve root, which means I can't dorsiflex my left foot. At all? Uh-uh.

Still? Still. But if it was my L5 nerve root, another doctor told me, he's like, look on the bright side. If it was the L5 nerve root, you'd never be able to evacuate your bowels or have sex or anything like that. And I'm like, okay. Suddenly, you know, the glass is half full. And so what have they done to correct that?

Well, so I had a second surgery to kind of get that disc material out. And then I had a third surgery because I just had so much discogenic pain. So just midline back pain. I was walking with a cane when I was 34. And I had been an amateur, but like a very intense soccer player. And the third surgery, they went in through my front and they moved the whole stomach the whole peritoneum the bag that holds the stomach and they put like these like shoehorn in there and then they took out the discs and then they put in these joints that look like kind of like an oreo cookie but they

have two levels of that and And my back pain, 65% of my back pain went away immediately. And with therapy, another 20%, I still have. But then in 2017, I went to have a surgery to fix my ankle and give me the dorsiflexion back, they can move a tendon from the inside of your foot behind your shin and attach it to the top of your foot. And after a while, your body learns how to use that tendon, right? And so that surgery failed. They did it again. It failed again. And the second time I got a, it got infected and just bad doctor, honestly. And I almost lost the foot. I had to go and be hospitalized. Was it MRSA? What does that mean? Staff, staff infection? Yeah, it was some kind of a staff.

Osteomyelitis. It was a bone infection. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, so I had to do this. That's scary. Yeah, I was on crutches and going through the rain to the infusion clinic every day. But I had the right mental attitude. I was like, hey, if I get past this, I can get past anything. It's like, don't let yourself get depressed about this.

And all the while you're writing, too. Yeah, I did two books that year. Yeah, yeah. A Gray Man and a Clancy. And it was about a year and a half process. But I won't be getting another surgery. But still the foot is not functioning properly. Yeah.

I just can't dorsiflex. If I wear the right brace, I can cram a soccer cleat on and play soccer with my kids and that sort of stuff. And I can go to the park for a few hours a day or whatever, a few miles, and no big deal. But if I'm standing, just standing there at a cocktail party or something like that, it's excruciating. I have hydrocodone. It's the only thing I do. Wow. It's excruciating. And I've done all the, anybody that says you should

do physical therapy. It's like, I know all the exercises cause I've been to like 10, 12 bouts of physical therapy and I, and I do them and it probably makes it somewhat better. But, um, yeah. Have you done any stem cells? No, I've never done that. You should really look into that. Yeah. And I even, I haven't even had an MRI on this back in like 15 years. I mean, it's because it feels the same. But yeah, I probably should find a doctor. I'll connect you with some people. Stem cells.

Well, there's some places that you can go outside of the United States where they can do some pretty phenomenal stuff with stem cells because they don't have the same regulations that we have here because of the FDA. Yeah. But I know a bunch of people that have had neurological issues and some serious injuries that they've helped recover from. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll connect you when we get out of here. It's a great parlor trick though. With my kids, I've actually gotten a pair of pliers and pinched my toe, which is not recommended, you know, you don't feel anything in your foot at all. Not in that part of my foot. Wow. That's gotta be crazy. Well, that wasn't that isn't Hulk Hogan say that he can't feel his legs now. Isn't Hulk Hogan say that?

He can't feel his legs now? I think Hulk Hogan said that because of his most recent back surgeries. Hulk Hogan's had a series of back surgeries, and I guess he can't feel his legs. That's the nerve roots that go down your legs. Yeah, but back surgery is a crazy one, and I wish I had known you before you had gotten it because there's stuff that you could do with bulging discs now that you can really repair them with stem cells and with there's some decompression exercises that they can decompress the spine. And there's a machine called reverse hyper that's particularly good at the lumbar area. It was created by this uh louis simmons who was a famous power lifter

who uh fucked his back up compression yeah yeah and uh they were going they wanted to fuse his back and he was like well why can't i figure out a way to decompress it there's got to be a way to decompress it yeah so he invented this machine called the reverse hyper and what the reverse hyper is we have one out here in the gym i I'll show it to you after we're done. But you lay your stomach down on this flat bench and you hook your ankles up to this thing that's sort of like a leg curl. And you lift up and then you lift your legs up,

which strengthens the back. And then as you let it down, it swings and it's actively decompressing your back. So it's like traction. This is it right here. So that's the machine. I actually use that today. That's the Rogue version of it, which I think is the best version of that machine.

Yeah, that would definitely decompress things down there. Yeah, so as it drops down, you're pulling the back. So as it drops down, you're pulling the back. So you're strengthening it on the up, on the concentric, and then on the eccentric, you're lengthening. Yeah. And it allows the spine to like slowly get stretched and pulled apart. And it's been amazing for me. Yeah.

It strengthens that area and it's alleviated any issues that I had. I used to get the occasional sciatic pain. I don't get any of that anymore. Oh, that's fantastic. And my back is all fucked up. From the top of my neck all the way down to my lower back, I've had issues from jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is the worst. Jiu-jitsu and wrestling, it's like people are constantly shoving your neck into the ground. You're getting stacked.

Where literally all your weight is on your upper back and your neck and someone's got a hold of your legs and you're trying to pass and you're you're resisting and moving and it's so much strain on the spinal column yeah and unless you strengthen all the tissue around that right to keep it stable yeah it's you're going to get injuries absolutely so i do something for my neck i have this thing called an iron neck where I put a halo on and I have a bungee cord that's like 50 pounds of pressure to pull it back. I've seen that. Yeah. So that's how I keep everything strong and functional.

And there's ways around the surgery. Yeah. Yeah. For some people, for some injuries. I mean, it's not for all of them, but for bulging discs, I had a bulging disc in my neck to the point where it was causing ulnar nerve pain, where I'd have this pain in my elbow and my fingertips were getting numb. Yeah. And it was pretty fucked. And I fixed all that with no surgery.

That's awesome. Yeah. Back in 2002, I basically went to the ER because I blew a disc playing soccer. And the surgeon was this British guy who knew all about soccer and he's like you know you might be have to sit out the rest of this season but by the fall you'll be able to play again if we do this surgery and i'm like okay and i woke up and couldn't feel my leg that's the problem with when you're dealing with nerves you're dealing with the spine is such a delicate place it really is uh my friend boss rootin who's the ufc heavyweight champion

i've got some of his tapes and stuff. He's great. Boss had his neck fused and one of his arms shriveled. He had atrophy because of nerve damage. And so he's got what he calls baby arm. So his right arm is like half the size of his left arm. His left arm is just jacked. And it's not fixable?

It's a slow recovery process. Like every year he'll gain like a little bit more movement, a little bit more strength. But here he was, former heavyweight champion of the world. He couldn't hold up a gallon of milk. Oh, God. Yeah, which is crazy. Yeah. I don't know how long it's been since I've seen him, but he looked in good shape.

I saw him the other day. He looks better. He's getting better constantly. But that one particular area because of the fusion. And he fucked his neck up, believe it or not. Well, he had fucked his neck up many times in his career. He actually fought for the heavyweight title when he, or was the heavyweight title? No. When he fought Toshiko Saka, which was like, I think the first fight that he had in the UFC, he couldn't do any wrestling because his neck was so fucked up. So he just kind of had to like

spar and condition himself and get in shape without doing any wrestling. his neck was so fucked up so he just kind of had to like spar and condition himself and get in shape without doing any wrestling and he still won the fight but then he was doing sons of anarchy he was doing a stunt scene and uh he fell on his neck in this stunt and just fucked his neck up and then wound up getting it fused but now they're doing these articulating discs in the neck that have been very successful. In fact, Aljamain Sterling, who's the UFC bantamweight champion, he actually had that done. So he had a

disc replacement in his neck where he fought Piotr Jan, fought for the title, got illegally kneed in the head and won the title on a disqualification, which a lot of people are like, boo, you can't win a title like that.

Then had to get this operation. So it was a long time before they had the rematch and they came and dominated in the rematch with a fake disc in his head. So he had the disc. Yeah. Wow. He went back to it. Yep.

Not only went back to it, went back to it better than ever. Wow. So they can do it now. Yeah. If you get the right doctor and it works out well. So with Aljamain, it's worked out amazing. Yeah. But he tried a bunch of different things to try to heal it without that and they weren't successful and so he had but again you're dealing with a guy who's a high level wrestler a brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt a world champion mma fighter i mean the kind of pressure and strain it's on his

body this is extraordinary yeah and it works for him He's got a fake disc in his neck. It works. That's awesome. Yeah. Mine and my low back, definitely better than it was before. My back's never going to not hurt, I don't guess.

Yeah. But it's a lot better than it was. And you look at the, I remember feeling sorry for myself at one point and going at some place to get fitted for a brace. And there was a little child in there that had no legs. And I was like, okay, you need to get your brain right. You know, punch yourself in the face right now because you've got it.

You're fine. Yeah. This poor kid. Yeah, it's all perspective. Yeah, that's so important. It's so hard when you get injured because you just – it's amazing how vulnerable the human body is. It really is extraordinary. And then when you do difficult stuff and then you put all these different stresses on, everything seems okay until one day –

Yeah. And then it's not. Yeah, yeah. And then you're fucked. Yeah. I do squats now just on a Smith machine, but like, but like there was a, you know, I was walking with a cane in my thirties. I was like, it's kind of like the fountain of youth is to be like really fucked up when you're younger and then, and then feel better. You know, it's

like, Hey, I've never felt better. Right. Right. And there's also, there's this perspective that comes from having been debilitated, haven't been really injured and then recovering from that. Will you really appreciate your ability? appreciate it yeah yeah and I told myself with my low back you know it's like if I can just get functional I'm gonna appreciate every day and it's been 20 18 19 years since the third the surgery that helped my back where they went in through the front and I so lucky to have had it yeah it's like you think the same thing that happens when you're really sick right when you're really sick you're like god I'm so lucky to have had it. Yeah. It's like a thing, the same thing that happens when you're really sick, right? When you're really sick, you're like, God, I can't wait to be healthy

again. God, I appreciate it. But when you're healthy, you're like, yeah, normal day, whatever, everything's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Until you're sick again and you're going like, Oh, I had a good, and I still, you know, like sat around, watch TV or something. It's just so hard to keep perspective. You know, it's so hard to realize how fortunate you are. Like when you're saying you're looking at the child that doesn't have legs, like you could see how lucky you really are. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, that kid is a lot luckier than somebody else too.

When you're injured like that, do you, does that sort of aid your writing in a way? Because a lot of times when you're dealing with uh characters you know you're dealing with characters that are involved in combat yeah you know and especially the gray man yeah like he's always injured yeah i've i've worked all that stuff in before i've done a lot of like sort of like gunshot wound management and training and stuff like that so that that works itself in there but injuries. Um, at one point he had a hydrocodone addiction or he had some kind of, uh, pill addiction. Yeah. Some sort of opioid. And, um, I don't, and it's funny cause at the time everybody's like, does it, do you have, do you have a drug? And I'm like, nobody's asking me

if I'm an assassin, you know, they're only asking me if I'm popping pills. But I can understand how somebody could get on, you know, because I was taking them for pain and when the pain got, you know, low enough,

I didn't take them regularly but I still, like, I would have a panic attack if I didn't have some access to hydrocodone because when it flares up, I mean,

there's nothing that makes it go away that I know of. I have a good friend who was an MMA fighter who had his nose smashed in a fight and got his nose fixed and, like, crushed all the bones and he got hit with an elbow, Brendan Shaw. And he fought this guy, Mirko Krokop, who's, like, a legendary assassin, like one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, and he got his nose smashed. Brendan wound up winning the fight by KO. But then afterwards, his nose was fucked.

And then he had to get it reconstructed, like literally rebuilt. And he got hooked on pain pills and he didn't even realize it. And he was just popping them all day. And then finally, one of his friends was like, hey man, how many fucking pills are you taking? Like, what are you doing? And then they took the pills away from him. he just went cold turkey and got off of it and he's never been back since but yeah he said it was scary yeah he's like he's like i didn't realize i was hooked but then the fear is is he gets some other injury and he needs you know it's like you hear about these people like i don't give me anything yes because i'm addicted it's like oh my god that's that's probably stressful for the doctor too to have to do some procedure without giving somebody. Well, I'm not addicted to painkillers, but I don't like them.

I had one knee surgery. I've had three knee surgeries, but I had one of them in 93. And they gave me, I can't remember if it was Percocet or Vicodin, but they gave it to me. And I remember sitting on my couch feeling so stupid. I was like, oh, my God, I'm never taking this again. I'd like, I'd rather be in agony than, than deal with this. But that's just me. Like my, my chemistry doesn't work with those things. I don't like it. Yeah. If I, if, if I'm really in pain, I don't even really notice I take it. I just have less pain, but there's, there's been times where I've been

like, all right, I'm going to be standing for a long time. I'm going to take one now, like preemptively or whatever. And I feel dopey. And so I do get that dopey feeling. But like when you're really taking it to deal with pain, somehow it goes to another part of your brain or something. And I don't feel dopey at all when I take a hydrocodone unless I take one when I probably shouldn't. Well, that's very fortunate that you haven't had problems with addictions with them because it is pretty common. Yeah, I mean, I will go six weeks without taking one, and then I'll take two a day for three weeks if I hurt myself or whatever. And then are you aware?

You're like, hmm, I've been doing this a lot. Yeah, and you want to – it's funny. I don't feel like anything's different, but my wife will be like, what's wrong? And I'm like, nothing. And she's like, she's got hydrocodone. I'm like, yeah, but I'm sitting here with this mom. You know, like, everything's fine. And she's just like, I guess I just.

Your frequency's a little different. Yeah, a little glassy or something. I don't even sense it myself. But, yeah, no, if I've been taking it for a while, it's just kind of like, all right, really, you know, assess whether I need it. But, yeah, I probably take 12 a month or something. Do you know Diamond Dallas Page, the pro wrestler? Mm-mm. He had a series of pretty horrible back injuries.

Obviously, he's doing crazy pro wrestling. Yeah. He's a big giant guy. Other giant guys are smashing him and throwing him to the ground. And he developed a yoga program to sort of deal with his pain. And he's got, you know, like his entire back is arthritic, but because of the yoga and because he does it every day, he's pain-free and super flexible and very agile. Pretty amazing. And his program, I know a lot of grapplers have utilized his program because it's very specific to those kind of dynamic movements.

Cool. It's really good. He's got his own kind of yoga. Every fourth day, I just do stretching. I don't do weights. But I don't have anything organized. I'm just doing what I think I should be doing. Do you do it by yourself?

Yeah, yeah. Do you find you like doing it by yourself because it's sort of meditative and it sort of helps you think about the stuff you're writing? Yeah, I'm usually listening to an audio book or something when when i work out i don't i don't even think about working out when i work out i'll sort of write down what i'm going to do and i try and do a little bit more than i did last time or another rep or better form or you know some little improvement on the line and i because i can see what i did when i did whatever back and biceps three days ago um but like when i stretch it's it it is meditative

because i don't know it's it's kind of like i hate to use that term me time but you know it's it's so like it's so like this i go in there and nobody's in there and i'm just kind of doing my thing and it makes me feel good afterwards and i'm happier doing it than not doing it and i'm able to you, sort of multitask and get some work done listening to audio books. Yeah. That's how I feel about it too. I do. I think of it as me time. I like working out by myself. I've worked out with trainers before, especially with martial arts. But when it comes to weight training, especially because I don't do stuff where I need a spotter. I don't lift heavy weights. Yeah, same either. Yeah.

Me either. Do you do cold therapy, like ice baths? You do? Yeah, I do it first thing in the morning every day. That looks like the hardest thing of all. It's not. It's not? Nah.

You get used to it. Wow. It's like everything else. I did it today. But they say it's really good for you. It's great for you. People that I respect say, oh my God, you've got to do this. And I'm kind of like, ugh.

You should read or listen to or watch YouTube videos from Andrew Huberman. He's a professor out of Stanford. He's done a fantastic job of breaking down the benefits of cold and heat therapy. And it ramps up your dopamine by like 200% and it lasts for hours, reduces inflammation, produces all these cold shock proteins that are fantastic for your body. And in heat and cold together, the contrast therapy is also very, very good for you. But just heat alone, they did a study out of Finland that showed that four times a week

of the sauna for 20 minutes had a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality. Oh my gosh. Everything, strokes, heart attacks, cancer, everything, everything because the heat shock proteins because you're you're first of all it's a static uh cardio because you're sitting there and your heart is jacked you know your heart rate because they hate your heart rate yeah i mean when i'm in the sauna i wear a chest strap i wear a polar strap so i can see what's going on and my heart rate regularly be in the 150s oh my god 40 God. High 140s, 150s. Yeah.

Especially when it gets to like 20 minutes. Yeah. 25 minutes. Yeah. Because, you know, I've got it to 190, 195 degrees. And I'm sitting there sweating. Wow. Just suffering.

And I generally do it post-training. So I'll go in high heart rate already. Yeah. Just got done with the workout I try to go in with my I want to go in at on like a 99 hundred beats per minute as I enter yeah then I enter into this fucking sauna that's just hell it's perfect it just keeps keeps that heart rate somebody like looking out for you checking you know yeah no no I'm not smart I went in the cold plunge once for 20 minutes With no one around me

You need an ejection seat The cold plunge is the worst because you can't get out With the sauna you can kind of open the door And just get out of there But the cold plunge, you're underwater up to your neck If something went wrong and I had to get out of there If I blacked out, I'd be kind of fucked You're going to Jim Morrison

I don't recommend doing that But three minutes is nothing Three minutes is normal Kind of fucked. You're going to Jim Morrison. Yeah. I don't recommend doing that. But three minutes is nothing. Yeah. Three minutes is normal. It's like I don't like it, which is why I do it. Every morning I'm like, maybe today I should just not do this on. I'm like, shut up, pussy.

Yeah, yeah. Just get in there. Maybe today I won't wake up with a cold plunge. Shut up, pussy. Yeah. So I have this one part of my brain that tells my body what the fuck to do. Yeah. But my body is like sending all these brain that tells my body what the fuck to do. Yeah. But my body's like sending all these signals like today, maybe we do.

Maybe today would be a nice day to relax. Yeah. Like I have all those little games that my brain plays on me. I just don't listen. Seven days a week with working out. Like when it's about time to work out, it's like, ah, this might be a day. You know, I'm a little tired or I can think of nine other things I need to do and blah, blah, blah. And now it takes a while to like discipline is like a muscle. You know this. And because I wasn't when I, you know, I wish I worked out when I was 25 as hard as I do now.

I'd probably you'd see it to be jacked. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, I probably don't take it. Eat enough protein. And, you know, I'm 55. So it's but but i am definitely there's definitely benefits but every day it's it's starting from scratch going like yeah it's like yeah this might be the day and always and i'm always happy i did it i call it your inner bitch yeah yeah you got to conquer your inner bitch i have a t-shirt that i sell it says conquer your inner bitch with a kettlebell on it i think that's what it is it's like there's a thing that everybody has and this idea that these people that are like super disciplined don't have that feeling like david bill on it i think that's what it is it's like there's a thing that everybody has and this idea that these people that are like super disciplined don't have that feeling like david goggins who's

the most disciplined fucking human being to ever walk the face of planet earth i love his book his first book he's amazing second book's even better he's amazing yeah and david says sometimes i look at my sneakers for a half hour put those motherfuckers on. He procrastinates. He'll think about it because he knows he's going to push himself through hell. Yeah. So he'll be honest about it,

but he never lets that inner bitch win. Yeah. I mean, if he's hearing that every day, then that's pretty inspiring. This is how crazy David is. David sent me a photo

of his toe yesterday. I'm going to send this to you, Jamie, because it's so crazy. Because he was just telling me, he was just sending me some stuff about things he's been doing. And he thinks of it as like, he literally says that it's like

he's gaining knowledge from these suffer sessions, from these marathon runs that he'll do on a regular basis. And whatever he's getting out of there,'s like i'm getting like like he thinks of it as like that's his toe oh my god yeah i told michael bro that belongs in a fucking mummy's mummy's foot in the zoo any of those other toes would be or in a museum rather That's like a mummy. Like that looks like something in a museum. Let me see that again, Jamie.

That looks like something on a mummy. Like that's something in a museum, right? Or that's something that doesn't look like a human toe. That looks like something different. Like what is that? What is that toe? That's crazy. And this guy does that to himself all the time.

I mean, he runs on those. His toenails to himself all the time. I mean, he runs on the, his toes fall, his toenails fall off all the time. Like he never keeps toenails. They just fall off. But that thing is so disgusting. How crazy is that? And David doesn't give a fuck. He's like, tape that bitch up, keep running. Like he just doesn't care.

He's so crazy that he had bone on bone on his knee where it was so bad that the bone was starting to deform. Oh, my God. And so you know what he did? What? He went in for an operation. They literally saw his bone, cut it down, and move it so it's parallel. Look at his other toe. His other toe.

Insane. How do you know Look at his other toe. His other toe. Insane. How do you know that's his other foot? Yeah. Look at it. Insane. Look at his toes. They're insane. Is that just from my life?

I mean, surely he knows something about footwear. He doesn't. It's just the amount of hours and miles and the pain, and it's his mind. It's all in his mind, And that's what he works on. I mean, what he's doing when he's running like that is just he's extracting the maximum amount of human potential out of what his mind and his body is capable of doing it. And then he goes to sleep and does it all.

This is probably back when it started, 2016, when he had almost a full nail. Well, that's after 70 miles. In the snow. Minus five degrees, eight inches of snow with standard running sneakers. Feet pay the price, obviously. Yeah, I think. He was in a reasonable position there. Jesus Christ.

So that's no nail. That's his nail fell off there. Yeah, his nails fall off all the time. And he's doing a photo shoot. Like, I would be like, give me to the hospital. Well, he wants everybody to know that this shit doesn't come free. And the knee, if you see his knee, find that image of his

knee. Do you have that? I can find it if you don't have it. But the image of his knee post-surgery is so gnarly. And I met him in Vegas. He's walking around with no limp. And then he pulls up his pant leg to show his leg. And he can take his fingers and just he's got so much edema in his legs that he can just, look at that.

Oh, that's his handprint. Yeah, that's his handprint. So he can grab and like smoosh all the tissue around his shin. So that's what his knee looked like. Oh, my goodness. Look at all those screws. So they see that, you can see that line. That line, they took like a wedge out of his knee and then had to cut it so that it was parallel.

I see, yeah. Because one side of it had overgrown because he's just bone on bone. Yeah, osteophytes is the way the bone grows. That's the mind. I mean, that's just the mind forcing the body to do what the mind wants it to do regardless of it. It's amazing what humans can do if they have to. Properly motivated. But the thing is, he doesn't even have to.

No, he doesn't have to. Yeah, he's trained that muscle to an incredible degree. He's so interesting. He's wealthy, but he doesn't even have a car. Really? Doesn't even own a car. Really? Doesn't buy a car. No. It's like, fuck it. My wife has a car.

Wow. Like, it's like, he just has all this money from his book. Yeah. He's like $20 million. Yeah. Just runs every day. Tortures himself. Lives Spartan. Yeah. And just can't stop, won't stop.

Yeah. It's super inspirational for other people. That's the thing. It's like, you don't have to be that to to get you know benefit from what he's going through exactly that's the thing it's like what he's done is provide millions of people with this unstoppable fuel right like this fuel for the body yeah and for the mind like you see like if david goggins can do it and he talks openly about how he used to be 300 pounds and he was lazy and then became this unstoppable force. And he's just like you. He's just like me. He's just a person.

And he talks about his fears. He talks about his anxieties. He talks about his procrastination. He just doesn't let it get him. Doesn't let it get him. Keeps going. It's wild. It is amazing.

What the human body can do if the mind is on the same page right and that the fact that those people are out there i mean that kind of understanding of human potential yeah that's got to fuel your work too right that's got to like fuel your creativity like when you're talking about a guy like court gentry this is like insanely exceptional person yeah knowing that there's insanely exceptional people that are out there that are just like one of one like a david goggins yeah yeah no i you know there's there's a farmer that a tree fell on his leg and he had to cut his leg off we're talking about stuff like that earlier and and crawl you know like a mile and you you see these things and you go like, don't, don't tell me what, and people say that like, it's this, it's unrealistic. It's like,

it's improbable. It's not unreal. You know, it's not impossible. And, and, um, you know, it's like, I don't think there's anything in my books medically that, that doesn't make sense if you had the mindset to get through it. And even in the first book, like he's shooting himself up with, with like veterinary drugs or something. I can't remember what to, to, you know, get his heart rate back up for this final fight, even though it's going to make him bleed more, you know, it's just like, he's so goal driven that that's the only thing that matters. What comes after doesn't matter, you know? And, and you get that from seeing people that are just that committed. And you've read books. I'm sure you've know about like Hell Week and, you know, selection and assessment at Delta Force and stuff. And they just put you through stuff that, you know, I couldn't do it, but I can talk about it.

Yeah. Is that a weird part of the imposter syndrome? It's like because you're writing, you're kind of embodying this character. Yeah. And then you have to kind of compare yourself to who this human being is. Yeah, and the fact that I don't have military experience, you know, I tried to make up for

it by, like, learning specifics and stuff like that. And honestly, people in the military love my books, but people on I've heard from people on FBI hostage rescue team that love something when I wrote about them and I don't know any of them. You know, it's just like, I hear about it after the fact. I think I was a ghost writer for a book of a guy that was a military dude early in my career. and he's a brilliant guy and I'm really proud of the book but he uh he would just be telling me stories and the thing that he might have been focused on in the story

wasn't the interesting thing to me I'd be like wait what did you say about how you took Makarov's off of dead Taliban guy and didn't you know or just some little ancillary thing so it's kind of like what I bring to the table is I mean fanboy or whatever it's just it's some sort of like um a buddy of mine who's a swat um officer he was showing me pictures of some breaching they were doing and all this other stuff and then i was like wait why did they why did you blow a hole in that wall there he's like oh we're just making a gun port because there was an angle and then he starts talking about something else i was like go back to the gun port and explain that to me you know and then it's just like that works its way in his book because it's like there's the there's

the nugget that i've never heard of that i need to know details and why that would do that and it's like that's what i want to incorporate in the book so you know asking the right questions i got to fly in an f-18 last year um which was an amazing experience, obviously very rare for a civilian, but every little thing about it, you know, like what the air smelled and tasted like, and, you know, like what it felt like to fly a little bit. And, you know, just every little bit of that, you know, works its way into the books. And, you know, sometimes it's mundane stuff, but sometimes it's really cool stuff. How difficult is it to, when you're writing stuff about international policy and you're writing stuff about how people would be deployed and how a special operations group would be deployed, how difficult is it to kind of even get a read of what would go on? Some of it is, I'm sure, classified.

Yeah, a lot of it's classified. Like some of it is, I'm sure, classified. Yeah, a lot of it's classified. And so there is this point where I just make stuff up, but I try and build with as much detail as possible. I mean, I have this book called the U.S. Intelligence Committee. It's like onion skin paper and it's like that thick. And it's like every unit, everything that's not denied are sub rosa. What's sub rosa?

Just denied, you know, like black ops or, you know, like things that they don't admit. I don't know why they call it sub Rosa, but it's like under the red. I don't know what that means. But anyway, it's things that they don't, you know, admit to doing. And, you know, there there's secrecy.rosa literally means under the rose in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Hippocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus. Hippocrates. Interesting.

Yeah, it's just a term they use in the government a lot for something that's, you know. You have to learn all those terms, too, which is interesting in Sierra Six, where court who doesn't have a military background gets integrated with this group that does. Yeah. When you go back 12 years. Yeah. And, you know, he's got to kind of learn all those phrases. Right. And they're all frustrated that he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he literally doesn't know what they call the, you know, the mess hall or whatever, you know, these different names for different things and because he wouldn't, I, when I, when I wrote him in the beginning, like the wars were going on and I knew that, you know, there's going to be a lot of really good authors writing this stuff that are downrange right now. And I ain't one of them sadly but you know I was like I want my guy to be

different everybody was a Navy SEAL at that point and this was before bin Laden you know everybody was a Navy SEAL and in every book and I wanted somebody that not only wasn't a Navy SEAL didn't even really have that background so his backstory is is that his father was a police officer that ran a firearms training school in Florida. And he, Cort, as a child, was in these shoot houses with these people. And then he, you know, grew and grew and grew, fired, you know, tens of thousands of rounds a month and all this other stuff and just turned him into something else. Yeah. It's a very interesting storyline. It's a very interesting storyline.

It's a very interesting origin story. Thanks. Cause it's very different. Yeah. I just want a different, you know, and, um,

and then I, I do think it, it narratively, it adds to the story that he's not, you know, seal team six and doesn't have a bunch of buddies, you know, that are team guys and the guys on his paramilitary team in Special Activities Division in Sierra 6, they don't

like him at all. They don't get why he's there. But he's there because he's been an assassin for the CIA since he was 20 and had done some operations in Russia. And they needed a guy on the ground that had a certain level of tradecraft abilities that these former SEALs didn't have. So he's forced into the team. He doesn't want to do it.

They don't want him to do it. But he's also a guy that's not going to give up. He's going to die before he gives up. Do you ever run plot lines and things that you're writing about past people that may know the way those things are handled and done and see if you're doing it correctly? Yeah, yeah. I've talked to CIA guys regularly or military people. And, you know, I always hear, you know, here's the non-classified version or here's what I can tell you. I've been sitting at the Pentagon and I've asked a question.

You went to the Pentagon? A few times, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah. So they bring you in? Yeah, I've been there. They say, hey, Mark, come on down. We want to talk to you.

Yeah, the first book I did with Tom Clancy, I wasn't allowed to say that I was working with Tom Clancy because they didn't know if the book was going to be good or come out or whatever. So it was so frustrating because it's like, I mean, they're going like, hi, I'd like to talk to somebody about something. And they just meet with you?

I've written these paperbacks. Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm talking to the generals or anything like that. But, I mean, there's people. I've been on, gosh, I've been at Camp Pendleton in California and the Navy Base San Diego, got on the destroyer, got to go out to the A-10 thing at Nellis Air Force where the warthogs. And I've had some like really amazing experiences and it's all kind of non-classified. There's public information officers, you know,

with each thing in the military and you go through them. Or in some examples, I've just known a guy like my buddy Rip that I wrote the book with, who now incidentally has his own foundation in Ukraine and is supporting a battalion of foreign fighters in Ukraine. He's spent his entire career as a Marine Corps officer, retired, and then this war with Russia kicks off, and he's over there trying to support, you know, the war effort. But, you know, he was just a guy I met at the Pentagon. Wow. And he came from there. But yeah, no, I didn't even

how's that conversation even get like, how do you get in the Pentagon? I mean, it's happened a few different ways. I had a guy, a friend of my brother's was a Marine at one point, and he he put me in contact with a Marine aviation guy, and he was going to be at the Pentagon. And I went up there and saw him. And Rip was a guy that liked my books. And we were talking and he just said he worked at the Pentagon. And I'm like, I'm in D.C. all the time. You know, I'd love to come up there. And and and we did it that way. So I've met CIA guys, former CIA guys. I've met people that say there's something and you kind of figure out after a while. No, they're not. You know, they're kind of like, oh, no. Yeah.

It's funny. There's a term for it that a buddy of mine used. It's called, he calls it institutional puffery. It's like these guys actually are somebody, but they're making themselves out. Like, you know, they're the one that killed bin Laden. They're the, you know, they're the guy that, you know. Institutional puffery. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that term. Yeah. Scott Swanson. It's like people that are legit and they're badass, but they're not badass enough for themselves for this story. Right. My buddy Brad Taylor, who's a fantastic thriller author, a former Delta guy or Army Special Mission Union guy, he's like, you know, you never meet a parachute rigger for Delta Force. Like everybody you meet is an operator for Delta Force.

You know, it's just like there's just a lot of baloney about what people say. You know, he's like, yeah, we loved our parachute riggers, but no one ever says that's what they did. They're always like, yeah, I'm using Delta. It is an interesting thing, like the motivation that people have to puff themselves up. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah and i'm i think one of my real talents is that i like to be the least interesting guy in the room because i like to just learn from from other people and and you know it's just fascinating to me i don't need anything and so if somebody was a parachute rigger for delta fours that would be the most fascinating person that I could talk to, probably. It is interesting. Yeah, it's every job in that regard, especially in that space. It's very

interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I have such respect for the men and women that, you know, go and serve their country, because I've met 20 year old female on a destroyer who her job to bring the helicopters in, you know, and, and you're just like, wow, when I was 20, what was I doing? I was not doing that. You know, I wasn't, you know, like responsible for a, for a ship and a, and a airframe, you know, meeting up at the same place at the same time on a, on a, on a deck, you know, moving deck.

That's one of the things that the military and special operations, special operations in particular does is it makes extraordinary human beings. Like those people that can do that job and who have been there, they're just very different than most people that you meet. They're very unique and very – they're just strong. They just have a different kind of character. There's a different level, a requirement of them that's so different than the average person that to not know them, to not know that that's even a thing, it's really unfortunate for a lot of people. They don't know the potential that some humans have and that they have, oftentimes this potential only arises out of extreme need. Out of those kind of jobs and those kind of requirements.

I mean, the whole point of Hell Week for Navy SEALs is to get you to believe. Because it's like, you know, we're going to give you every reason. So what's left are the people that are like, you can kill me and I'm not going to quit. And I have such respect for that. I don't think I could stay awake for five days. That's the thing that, like, out of all the stuff they do, I'm going like, man, I'm tired, I'm tired. Yeah. But, I mean, you know, it's incredible what they go through. Yeah.

It's, do you feel like a responsibility when you're writing to sort of reflect that, that, you know, you have such a deep respect for these people that you have to write that in a way that sort of portrays that in an accurate sense. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I've had villains who are U.S. military or U.S. government people or stuff like that. And I've had people like complain about that, you know, like they want all the bad guys to have accents, you know, like can't be Americans, but I mean, it's just like, you know, there's, there's, there are all walks of life all over the place, you know, there's, but I, I do feel a responsibility to, again, it's sort of the fan boy in me. It's like, I have such respect for, for these people and what they do and, and, you know, the responsibility they have often at very young and, you know, the responsibility they have, often at very young ages, you know. And it's a fascinating thing to me to write about and to talk about. And, again, it's just I like to build stories around reality

and then at some point go off, you know, where the guy's jumping off an airplane without a parachute and finding a way down. When you're researching villains and corruption, have you ever met with people that are corrupt? Have you met with real villains? Are you just getting this from your imagination? No, I haven't. I mean, a lot of reading. You know, my new book involves Russian mafia slash Russian government, which are one and the same, in my opinion.

And so I'm looking at real cases. I actually had finished the book, and it involves Americans who are being influenced by Russia or taking money from Russian foreign intelligence and Americans in government. or taking money from Russian foreign intelligence and Americans in government. And just a couple of weeks ago, this guy, FBI guy in New York, who was like head of counterterrorism at one point, but he was also involved in the sanctions, Russian sanctions. He just got indicted for taking money from Oleg Deribovsky, which is one of the oligarchs that, you know, Putin supports or supports Putin or both. And, you know, these things happen. And they just caught a Russian GRU guy that was about to intern at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And they just caught a German BND, the German Foreign Intelligence, Bundesnachrichtendienst, guy who had been spying for the Russians

for a long time. And all that stuff's really fascinating to me. So I want to learn about it as much as I can and then write a fictional version of it. And I'd actually written this book before these three things came out, but I mean, the Russians have been doing stuff like that for a while. yeah it's disturbing when you find someone like that yeah you know like there was is this the same guy the guy that was a part of um uh going after trump for russiagate where it turned out that he was actually and he got indicted for conspiring with russia um the american guy no that yeah do you know that guy yeah yeah most recent one um indicted for conspiring with Russia? The American guy? No, that...

Yeah, do you know that guy? Yeah, yeah. The most recent one? Yeah, not Manafort. Jamie, see if we can find that guy. Do you know what I'm talking... You know it. I'm not quite sure what you said.

There was a gentleman that was involved in Russiagate, involved in going after Trump for his ties with Russia, and it turns out that he was colluding with Russia and that he was either colluding with oligarchs or there was something involved and he was recently indicted. That might be the same guy because it was an oligarch connection. Yeah, probably the same guy. That's the people that have the money outside of the US. I mean, outside of Russia. So those

are the people that are going to be paying you off. Yeah, that was one of the more wild things about the beginning of the Ukraine war where they were going after the oligarchs and taking their yachts. Yeah, yeah. I was like, well, that's fascinating. Well, my book, Burner, opens with Cort blowing up Russian yachts just as something to do, just as a side gig. And then he gets pulled into the main part of the story. Yeah, I was down in St. Lucia researching it,

and these people came ashore in some kind of a tender from a big yacht. They were all Russian. I don't know anything about their story. They could have been totally on the up and up, but I'm like, that's fascinating. The war had been going on for a few months, but those boats are still out there. Well, the Russian thing is so fascinating in general. You have Putin, who's this former KGB guy who's in charge of the entire country, and all the oligarchs have to be with him. Yeah, they're 100 percent with him.

They hold his money, and he allows them to do what they do, and they allow him to do what he does. And the war isn't affecting their children or anything like that you know it's the kids from the urals or the the stands or you know like somewhere out in siberia those are the ones that are getting thrown into the meat grinder or prisoners or things like that that they're doing and so you know putin knows how to protect his you know the people that support him and he supports and it's you know it's a mafia it's a kleptocracy he's an autocratic

you know kleptocrat and it's just it's a criminal enterprise and he doesn't care how many people die you know he will continue they're just putting waves of people through with no training.

They had this mobilization last fall, and tens of thousands of them are just running across fields getting killed. It's World War I stuff. It's awful. Not only that, they have a crematorium, a traveling crematorium. So they're literally just throwing these bodies into the burner, and they're not giving any sort of an account of how many losses. There's a report that some Wagner troops were stacking their dead guys up as basically sandbags.

And, you know, that's pretty awful if you think about it. This is a horrible war, and Putin really miscalculated. This is a horrible war. And it was Putin really miscalculated. He people in FSB told him what he wanted to hear. And they'd been they were supposed to be setting up influence operations in Ukraine for years and years. But they've been stealing the money. And then when he said, you know, this is now the right time to do it. And they basically said, sure, it is.

And things went really bad. Their fifth fifth service in FSB does the foreign stuff. They really dropped the ball and not dropped the ball. I'm glad they dropped the ball, but I mean, they told him what he wanted to hear.

I mean, if you're an autocrat like that, you value loyalty over competence and you've got to have loyalty. People don't have to be competent, but they've got to be loyal for you to survive. And so as these incompetent people that were all stealing from the government And you've got to have loyalty. People don't have to be competent, but they've got to be loyal for you to survive. And so he has these incompetent people that were all stealing from the government, and they were also telling him.

It was kind of this feedback loop. He was hearing what he wanted to hear. That's part of the problem too, right, that they're hearing what they want to hear because people are terrified to tell them bad news. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't want to go to Putin and say, yeah, we can't do this. They say it's the same thing with Xi Jinping, that nobody wants to tell him the bad news. He doesn't even find out about things that went wrong until quite a while later. Yeah, and I imagine that's throughout history.

It's always been the case for those type of leaders, sadly. When you're writing about all this stuff, it's such a complex and nuanced landscape that you're interacting with like um how that's got to be one of the most difficult parts of the job is like incorporating these fictional narratives in with this sort of very realistic world of espionage and crime and yeah finding out what to use and what to leave out is is really really hard because i will be very fascinated with something and i'm like it really doesn't push the narrative forward and early in my career i would read these like really dry government documents about this thing and i wanted to prove that i read it by throwing stuff into the story and my editor would save me

from that now i'm now i'm self-correcting in that matter. But, yeah, you do. There's so much information. And but but what really makes me enjoy my books is while I'm doing the research by myself, I come across something and I go like, holy shit, people need to know about this. And I'm not trying to preach. I'm not trying to give anybody a political view or anything. But it's like this happened. And so I'm going to do a version of this. And I've actually had people complain about my books and they'd be like, well, there's no way a liberal, liberal female lawyer would support this, an Al Qaeda guy in prison. And, you know, and I'm like, okay, here's a picture of her I changed her name I changed a

couple of details but the actual real person that was doing that is you know is now in prison so I like to take as much from reality as I can because it's that's all interesting to me and then again fictionalize it get wacko with it at some point and then try and rein it back in a little well Mark you do a great job. They're very captivating books. I enjoy them very much. And I just want to say thank you for coming in here. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you.

Looking forward to your next books. I appreciate it. This is a great opportunity for me. My pleasure. My pleasure. So anybody who wants to get these, they're all available. How many books do you have now that are Gray Man books? The 12th. The 12th one,

and it comes out? It comes out February 21st. Oh, so real close. Next week? Yeah. Oh, nice. And so I got an advance copy, but... And you're probably already working on the next one? Yeah. How deep are you in the next one? I'm about 40,000 words into the next one. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I keep coming. Well, again, congratulations and thanks for coming, man. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. My pleasure. All right. Bye, everybody.