The Team House - The Gray Man | Mark Greaney | Ep. 221

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

#1 NYT bestselling author Mark Greaney’s debut international thriller, THE GRAY MAN, was published in 2009 and became a national bestseller and a highly sought-after Hollywood property. Netflix released the film version of THE GRAY MAN, starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas, in 2022. Eleven subsequent Gray Man novels have been released to date, including his latest, SIERRA SIX. Book twelve, BURNER, comes out February 21st, 2023. Mark is also the #1 New York Times bestselling author or co-author of seven Tom Clancy novels, including his most recent TOM CLANCY TRUE FAITH AND ALLEGIANCE. He collaborated with Tom Clancy on three Jack Ryan novels before Tom’s death in 2013. RED METAL, a military thriller written by Mark Greaney and Lt Col Hunter R. Rawlings, USMC, became a New York Times bestseller in 2009, and ARMORED, the first book in the Joshua Duffy thriller series, was released in 2022. Mark’s books are published in nearly two dozen languages and are also available as audiobooks. In his research for the novels he has traveled to dozens of countries, visited the Pentagon, military bases, and many Washington, D.C. Intelligence agencies, and trained in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. Mark lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife, his three stepchildren, and his four dogs; Lobo, Ziggy, Winston, and Mars. Today’s Sponsor:  Vitamin 1 Water ⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED & OPERATED) Hydrate Your Health! https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln ELECTROLYTE AND B-VITAMIN ENHANCED / SUGAR-FREE / CAFFEINE-FREE / DYE-FREE / GLUTEN-FREE / NUT-FREE / KOSHER / 4 DELICIOUS FLAVORS / JUST 5 CALORIES PER 8OZ. SERVING Buy Vitamin 1 here⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #thegrayman #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park Hey guys, welcome to episode 221 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with David Park. And our guest on tonight's show,

we're really excited to have Mark Graney on the show. Mark is the author of the Greyman series. He's also the author of a whole slew of books in the Tom Clancy series. You did Armored. Yeah. What's the other one I'm leaving out? Red metal.

Red metal. Yeah, yeah, co-authored that one. And many of you, you know, probably out there, your first introduction to Mark's work is through big Netflix film, The Grey Man, which was done with the Russo Brothers directing and starred Ryan Gosling,

Chris Evans, Billy Bob Thornton. I mean, huge movie. Yeah, yeah. So we'll get in all of that. Sure. So Mark, thanks for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. I've been a fan of this show for a couple years. I probably was telling you,

I probably listened to 50 to 75 episodes. while I'm working out. I love it. We appreciate it, man. And, you know, the reason why I wanted to have you on the show for so long is because I've been a big fan of the Grey Man series since you started publishing it since, you know, book one. And I've been trying to get through as many of the later novels as I could before we did this interview. I made it up to book nine.

That's pretty good. So I'm not quite there. I'm getting there. Next time around, I'll have it. I'll be totally up to date. But let's start off. I'd like to hear a little bit about you if you could tell us about, you know, sort of like your origin story. sort of background that eventually takes you into writing.

Yeah. So I, there can't be that many people that have no prior military service that have been on your show. Also, real enforcement. Yeah, okay, there you go. So I'm neither. Yeah.

So I, born in Memphis, Tennessee, my dad, I think the thing that started to set me on this path was my dad was the station manager of the NBC affiliate in Memphis and worked there for 50 something years. So I grew up around the news. and I grew up fascinated by the news. My dad was also a Second World War Army combat vet. 33 days of combat in Germany, the war ended. He was on a boat in Manila Bay when the bomb, when the, so he was going over to the Japan.

And I think they declassified it in the mid-90s or whatever, but his army division, which doesn't exist anymore in the 91st, was going to be the first Army division in Tokyo behind the Marines or whatever. So, you know, that... If they invaded. If they had invaded, yeah. So they released the plans in the 90s of the invasion of, you know, the mainland. So anyway, so I grew up fascinated with the Second World War, reading a ton of nonfiction.

I also live in the South. I live in Memphis, Tennessee. Shiloh is a big Civil War battlefield, a couple of hours. hours away and we'd go there with scouts and stuff like that so I was really fascinated by the Civil War and I just read tons and tons of nonfiction I never really wanted to join the military when I was young young I did later but I was kind of interested in state department like I that was sort of like what I was very much interested in I got my degree in political science and international relations from University of Memphis and was just really fascinated with that kind of stuff. I would think I was 19. I picked up a Tom Clancy novel,

never read any fiction at all, and loved it. It was Patriot Games. So it was basically everybody had been talking about him since Red October. I had no interest in reading. You know, a submarine. Yeah.

I was just kind of, you know, dushy kid that I was like, you know, why read fiction? Because there's so much interesting stuff happens in the world. Well, I studied the IRA a lot.

I was very interested in the Irish Republican Army. And I've been over to Europe a couple times, just like class trips and stuff when I got out of high school. And then I saw this book Patriot Games Clancy. And it was about the Irish Republican Army. So I was like, I'll take a look at it. Changed my life in many, many ways. 25 years later, I'm writing books with him. But I read that book and I was just like, wow, you can have a lot of fun learning shit too.

You know, it's not just like nonfiction where you're reading, you know, more dry stuff, which not all non-fiction. fiction is dry, but I just became obsessed with thrillers and espionage thrillers and military thrillers. And so I read anybody you can think of that was around in the 80s and 90s. And yeah, so I was like 21 and I got an idea for a book and started piddling with it very sporadically. And I spent 15 years writing one book and I finished it, didn't do anything with it. Like, my joke is, like, the internet was invented while I was writing the book. And so when I finished writing the book, I could Google, like, how to be a writer and, like, oh, yeah, I did everything wrong. Yeah, great.

I should have done that. I should have done that. I should have bought a book on being a writer. So, but the other aspect of it was I had, I spent 15 years on that book. But when I finished it and it became this tangible thing, I was like, how much did I really work? I didn't work for 15 years, you know? I was lazy, 99.8% of the time or whatever. So I wrote my second book in like seven months.

And the Grey Man, which was my first published novel, is actually my fourth novel. So I got rejected, you know, several times. And then I got published in 2009. And it was just a paperback release. It wasn't like a big, you know, the Grey Man didn't come out like this big barn burner or anything. Although it did sell to Hollywood before it even came out. Oh, really? Before we get into the Grey Man, I don't want to gloss over, first of all, your hair metal days.

and also you were big uh you weren't really into soccer too right yeah yeah um so yeah i played soccer in high school didn't play in college but started playing in uh i moved down to miami to to work for a job and started playing um pick up games with uh all islanders so you know like jamaicans and dominicans i was like the only like cool big white dude in the back you know i remember uh i took a long shot and scored and then i tried another shot a few minutes later. I was a defender, so I wasn't the guy to take a shot. And I'll never forget this. I take a second shot and miss. And then the captain of our team comes up to me, he's like, Greene, Christmas come but once a year. So I was like, all right, no more shooting for the full

back. I didn't. I know how to take orders. So yeah, but even before that, I played drums. And this was the mid, I graduated from high school in 85. So, you know, as far as having photographs of me at a younger age, it was kind of the worst time in history to have photos, because I'll, I'll show my stepkids pictures of me in 1985, and I had like really long hair, kind of a mullet, a perm, you know, eyeliner. And we were playing, my band was, you know, playing shows and stuff. And so we were doing well locally. But, you know, it's kind of what I wanted to do. And it wasn't even military. And honestly, my like first experience at that age with military, It's probably self-defeating to tell this story,

but there is a bar in Memphis called Silvio Sullivan's. It's down in a basement, and the ceilings are like, you know, six inches taller than me, and it's a crappy little place, but my band would play there. Every time my band didn't have a show, we would play there because they would always give us a couple hundred bucks to play. So, you know, Millington Naval Air Station is the largest inland naval base in the world. It's right there in Memphis, or it was the largest inland naval base in the world, which is kind of a weird thing.

Inland naval base. Is that manufacturing ammunition? No, they don't manufacture. I know there's a lot of training and stuff. There was aircraft. They have the runway and all that. But anyway, so you got all these 18-year-old Navy guys that would go to these bars, you know,

and it's like I was this long-haired guy in a band. I always almost get my ass kicked every weekend. Or I'd be talking to somebody between sets and I'd hear somebody start playing my drums. I'm like, oh, damn it. This is going to be some like 18 year old kid from New York or Nebraska or something. He's like, you know, he's drunk on natural light. And, uh, yeah, right.

I was kind of like, yeah, I was going like, you know, it's like I totally respect the military. My dad was in the military, but I just, I just don't want to go sit in a dorm with these guys. Yeah. You know, it's like this thing. Later in my life, after I graduated from college, um, I did try and get into Air Force OCS and did make it um yeah went through the interview and all that kind of stuff but uh they didn't take me i think it had something to do i spoke german uh at the time don't don't test me on it now it's been a while but um i made good grades in college i this was Clinton had been president for

about a year you remember the big down sizing all that stuff and it's like all these bases were so it was a little bit tougher to get in there there was nothing on the horizon and it was the peace dividend you know soviet union is no more you know what do we need an army for uh that sort of thing yeah so unless you were a general officer had you been like somehow able to skip the line become a general officer they would take a heartbeat because that's what everybody was because they love general officer yeah yeah anyway yeah um i i i don't think we should move past your hair metal thing though because it's your time because the 80s but the 80s was like i graduated 88 like the 8 like the 80s was the prime like time for metal right yeah yeah big revolt from like disco and yeah

whatnot and and uh even MTV had the head bangers ball like who were your influence who did you guys like oh well so there's who we liked and then who we covered emulate yeah exactly yeah so we we love iron made yeah i love deep purple rainbow um that era stuff uh-huh zeppelin of course um even if you didn't like zeppelin you couldn't admit it but i mean i'm I'm a big Zeppelin fan. So I liked that kind of stuff. Honestly, Deep Purple was probably my favorite. Yeah.

But my band, by the time we were really playing things, it was probably like 87, we were really playing around a lot. It was more Bon Jovi. It was some Lamahawk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I think we journey,

but kind of like the, you know, any way you want it. You know, like the harder journey, you know, like those types of songs. Yeah. And we would do like some white snake, but kind of make it sort of, of funky, you know, I'm a big white snake fan.

Yeah. Or we would do like a Beatles song and do like a hard rock version of it. I remember we had like a heavy metal version of the Hawaii 5-O theme song. It was kind of fun. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, and it just kind of fizzled out, you know, it just became this thing where, you know, we weren't getting big enough. Two of the guys I was in a band with, I'm still good friends with, and they're both like

amazing musicians who play all the time. and my wife who I got married less than three years ago, she was talking to them and she was asking about some story that I told about, you know, some show or whatever. And they were just looking at her like, she had a third eye and I was like, baby, that was my heyday. That wasn't their heyday. You know, it's like that was a blip on the radar for those dudes.

I hadn't played drums, you know, in a long time. I've got an electric kit now, so I just play for like stress relief. But it really causes more stress because it's like, if there's something you used to be really good at and you can't do it. more. Same thing with soccer. I can't play soccer anymore. I hurt my back and leg. And I coached my stepson's team and I'll go out there and I'll play. But I'm like, yeah, age 12 is about where, you know, I'm competitive with these guys, a couple years older and I'm not. But yeah, I love playing drums and I like music and, you know, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Although I do have a lot

of really incriminating photos. and they're still out there. So, so you, you know, so are you still playing? So did your band start in high school and you played through college or how did? Yeah,

it started in high school and I was in college. I always say the reason I didn't ever join a frat was because we played frat parties and sorority parties like every weekend. It's like I had wanted nothing to do with those people. Which, you know, I've, mellowed and changed since then. but that was just that you might you guys must have been good enough if you were if you could just show like get a gig at the bar to pay yeah for a lot of musicians like even that is a dream especially in like in high school yeah no we it yeah it was really really cool and and and we won some like battle of the bands and stuff like that and uh we you know played in different states and all that which sounds really cool until it's like yeah you're the one driving the u-hall and you're falling asleep at the wheel and and uh

You know, the guy that sort of managed our band was like, you know, if you'd spent more than $2 on a meal, they were going to like rip your head. You know, it was real like fiscally like tight. Yeah. And miserable, you know, and it's, but it's cool that happened. Sure. I couldn't do it now. But A, is it true that every high schooler wants to be in a band to get chicks?

And B, did it work? Yes. And kind of. I was I was I did it wrong I always had a steady girlfriend at that point which was not doing it wrong I'm joking but yeah it was kind of to get chicks you know it's funny because like I love soccer so much and I played soccer in high school and now like I go to like my nephews soccer game or my stepson's soccer game and like the senior soccer players have these huge postage up and it's like you know granny number four whatever and I'm going like nobody gave it you know

it's like like that would get you some girls you know but like back when I played soccer it's like if you were a football player yeah yeah right and so I was like yeah we go out to soccer field and get like eight people to watch us and now they have you know they charge they have concessions and all this other stuff I'm going like wow this is this is when I wish I was playing soccer yeah so during this time frame you're also you know dabbling you're writing on the side almost as as like a hobby. Yeah. But not really sure where it's going to go.

What were the first that you said there were like three novels before you sold your first book? I mean, sort of like what were those three books about? What were you trying to do there? What were you trying to accomplish that? Yeah. So my first book, the one I spent 15 years on, I like it's a really good story and I really believe in the story. But it'll never come out because it's like the car in your backyard where all the good parts

have been taken out of it. You know, because anything that was cool in that book has ended up in one of the 25 books that I've had published. I totally cannibalized it. But it was basically a story about a young guy, because I was just like 20 when I started or whatever, whose girlfriend dies in a terrorist, kind of a locker bee type terrorist thing. And at the memorial, he's approached by some people that say they want to go get some payback, but the whole thing is a setup. And it's kind of like, looking at,

back on it it was like a lot of twist and turns it involved Israel in kind of a negative light which wasn't a political thing it was just sort of like cool the masad is able to like dupe these like young hayseed Americans into being at the same place where they're assassinating people that they can't you know they can't you know they can't be caught assassinating them so yeah they like a false flag type of thing exactly exactly and and so i that's that was my first book and i never even tried to get that in front of an agent or anything it's like when i've been it like I said I looked and I was like yeah this book's too long there's too many characters I can get away with that now but like when you haven't been published you

just can't go bring like you know a James Mishner novel to an agent and go like hey interested in this because I'm not gonna my war in peace yeah exactly and so my second book was called the last enclave and it was sort of a historical fiction about this Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and so I have a young American army who goes AWOL from the U.S. Army because he wants to actually ply his trade. And so he goes and he ends up working for the Serbians, but then he switches sides. And it's just kind of this thing. And then it shows him 20 years later in another conflict where he's older.

And I like that book, too. It never, I tried to get that one published. And I got a whole lot of like, you're a really good writer. you write action really, really well, but this book is like too ambitious for somebody that hasn't been published. And I went to see this agent who is my agent to this day. And he was the agent that I wanted because a guy named Ralph Peters, I don't know if you're familiar with the name, but magnificent thriller author as well as historical fiction. He writes Civil War historical fiction. Also, it was a big pundit on TV. I think a professor.

Him and Bob Adolf are good friends. Okay. Yeah. I've never met Ralph, but his agent was this guy named Scott Miller. And so I looked up like, who's Ralph Peters agent? Because it's like, that would be my dream, one, because I thought Ralph Peters is so good. And so I went and met this agent. And so he read that second book and he's like, okay, you know, you're a good writer, good action.

If you write something like more marketable and I'm like, tell me what's marketable. I don't have a clue. Right. So I wrote a whole other book and it was called Goose Squad and it had this character, the gray man. And it was about him, but it was a whole different story. And he, you know, that took me whatever, nine months to write, another six months for him to get around to reading it because, you know, he had real clients. And he called me up. And he's like, hey, I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear.

I think this is good. I think there's probably agents that would take this and, you know, get this published. But I think you could do so much, you know, you do so much better if you, you. took this one little subplot of the story and made that a whole other novel because it was like more interesting and uh and i remember going like to myself like can you give me the names of the agents that would take this because i do not want to go write another damn book right and uh and so i was really depressed for like a day and a half and i was like all right that guy gave me like five minutes of positive feedback on what he wants and it was like you know relentless action he wants a book where you just have a guy with a gun

in his hand on the cover. You know, it's like that level of, you know, just direct. And I'm like, I'm just literally going to choke this guy to death on what he just asked for. And so I wrote the gray man and the opening scene of the gray man is just this bonkers chaotic shit. And it just stays like that. And it was basically wrote that entire novel for this one guy. And he read it. And he's like, okay, I'll accept it.

And then he sent it out to 10 publishers and nine of them said no. And he said, okay, if this last. guy comes back with a no you'll need to write something else and the last guy um took it and he the last guy was tom colgan who's still my editor now 20 whatever 23 out of my 25 books um he's the publisher of and uh and then Scott is still my agent to this day so he's the first people I hooked up with are still who I'm with do I I'd like to hear tell for the folks out there who aren't familiar with your books I mean what that first novel was the back of I remember, I can't even remember how I came across it, but I remember reading it and, you know, like, anytime you go in with a new author, never read anything from this guy before.

What, what am I going to get when I, when I opened this book and I just remember being like blown away. Like, this is awesome what this guy came up with. Thanks, thanks. And like I said, I was trying to write something like really straight and as accurate as I could possibly make it. But my agent, I sent him the first 50 pages. is. And it starts in Iraq and the hero is an assassin with kind of a moral code. And he's just assassinated somebody in Syria and he's slipped back over the border into Iraq to get extracted. But he comes across a downed like American like National Guard helicopter. And he, the way I wrote it

at first is he's just got to bear it. And he's like a mile away. And he's like, I'm just going to get some payback for there's like al-Qaeda guys you know standing over the bodies and uh he just shoots some people and that was that scene and then he goes on to his thing but the agent's like oh that's really cool i love this opening um he needs to save somebody though i go what and he's like i need him to save somebody i was like well how's he can do that he's like a mile away he's like dude you're the author i have no idea yeah and i remember going like that's so phony and fake and i'm like okay but i got to try and sell it as hard as i can i'm writing this book for this guy guy and that like informed the whole series you know like going pushing the envelope and then just saying

fuck the envelope and just getting a little bit out there but but desperately trying to sell it to the reader anyway so you know the the gray man is injured like really really bad throughout this book and um you know i talked to a guy who was a former medic at fifth special forces group and he talked me through like you know where he could get shot and it wouldn't be a as debilitating and all these sort of work he could get stabbed and you know you know make it and all that and it was the novel itself is is just a spy thriller about this assassin it all takes place like in a two or three day period it's kind of like a spy version of die hard to a degree yeah yeah he has to rescue his they made a movie out of it last year as you said and we talked about that later but

the movie in the book are very different in some aspects and so that they hear The hero is trying to save two little girls who have been kidnapped by people that want the hero's head on a platter. And they know that he cares about these kids. So he has to run through this gauntlet of killers. And they all know he's coming. And they all know where he's going. And he's wounded 26 ways to Sunday. And I'm going to sell this book a little bit more for you, Mark, because the premise of the book to go a little bit further for people is that,

You know, he's a contracted assassin. These guys want him dead. And they put out like an open contract on this guy to kill him. Yeah. So there's all these players from these different nations. Yeah. Are at the table. All these different hit teams.

And they're all converging in Europe to try to kill the protagonist. Yeah. Yeah. And they get a bonus if they're the team that does it. And so that that's the setup. In the movie, it's a little different. There are definitely the different. teams of killers in the movie but the though i have to say one thing that i felt was missing from the

film was one of my favorite characters you came up with in that novel was the south korean assassin oh yeah yeah yeah he's always like in the shadows and the video teleconference yeah he's the guy that they would send in the north korea to do ops and stuff right he was he was like a very good nemesis for yeah yeah so like all the other kill team all the other countries sent like six guys 10 guys 12 guys and then this one country just sends one dude you know this Korean guy and uh you know he ends up getting closer than anybody else to to taking out the so John Wick three totally bit like they totally took your your international cobble of of assassins yeah I mean I don't I'm not gonna lay claim to

inventing any sure you know it's funny there's there's an amazing and if you haven't seen it you guys totally need to watch it you watch it free on YouTube a movie called the Man from nowhere it's a Korean action film. I think I've seen it. It's incredibly good. It came out in 2010. You will not see anything better on cinema as far as just bonkers action and balls

to the wall. I'm so glad that Grey Man came out before that movie came out and just by a few months. And everybody should see the man from nowhere. And give it a good 20 minutes to really get going. It starts out looking like it's going to be a little cute and funny. And then it

it you just won't believe where it goes i mean it involves like harvesting organs from uh kidnapped children so it's you know it's it's heavy stuff but at its core is this former government assassin who befriends this young girl and then she's in peril type of the thing so it has some similarities more than more than the john wick does but same idea so i'm gonna we're we're gonna have these are like some mild spoilers oh we want to do a promo for uh go ahead dave so first our sponsor tonight is Mike Taylor

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And if you're a podcast listener and you don't watch us on YouTube, please jump over on YouTube when you have a spare minute. and like and subscribe on YouTube even if you're never going to watch it. Anyway, back to you. So the gray man, when your first novel goes out, I take it that was a pretty, you know, rousing success for your writing career. I mean, that kicks it off, right? Well, yeah, that was the first one to get published. It came out as a paperback only.

It wasn't one of these books that went to auction and, you know, like the fabled stories. I got a very small advance for it. But the good aspect of that is the publisher didn't have to spend all that much money on me. And I overperform. So that was great. Yeah. And so it came out in 2009. I actually optioned it to Hollywood about a month before it came out.

And I remember when I got the book deal, I went to New York to see my agent, pretend like I had some other reason to come up here. But I didn't. I just wanted to deal. I was like, I want to go to New York and have lunch with my literary. Yeah, it's like a dream come true. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to be there anyway. He's like, hey, let's go to lunch. I'm like, yes.

And he's like, yeah, you know, I got a call from an agent in Hollywood who wants to read the manuscript because, you know, they like the log line of what the story's about. And I remember thinking like, okay, that's never going to go anywhere. And then like a year later, I had an agent in Hollywood and had a couple of studios offered something. and I just listened to him and he's like, let's don't take this one. I think we can do better. And New Regency was the studio

that ended up getting that first option. And at the time, I was like, this is never going to be made into a movie, but this is so cool because I'm this guy with this dinky little paperback and nobody knows who he is.

And at least I get to go, yeah, Hollywood picked up the rice to this. And that was going to be like my little commercial for it. Right. And that's all I needed, you know? Yeah, they gave me some money for the option. Yeah, but like the, The cool thing was it just gave me a little gravitas.

I'm a real author now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not just a paperback. Right. So, yeah, it was, I'm glad that it happened. Even though that first studio, they held it for about five years, and then I got it back, and then it went to another studio. So, you know, out of curiosity, because, you know, your books,

your first three books that, you know, you didn't publish were sort of thrillers, right? or had that feeling. And maybe we're not as intelligence or special operations focused. I don't know. But how did your research evolve from those books to the Gray Man? Yeah, that's a great question. Around 2004, so I wrote Grey Man in 2007. But my first book I finished in 2005, the one that took me 15 years.

1990 to 2005, exactly 15 years. I started taking, going to a firearm school in Middle Tennessee called Tactical Response, and I started taking like pistol classes there and then carbine classes and then, you know, you know, night stuff and then like five-day contractor classes. And I was just sort of like, it's like the mascot of that place. I was just there a lot in the team house. and and honestly I started meeting people there and so I wasn't it wasn't even literally I had like really really bad social anxiety into my 40s like really bad like the the thought of me

calling up somebody like you or whatever me like hey I have a question about a military thing you got a minutes of talks like couldn't do that you know 40 42 year old man I couldn't have done that um I started working with Clancy and then it's like you got to get these guys on the phone you just have to like suck it up it's like Like, you don't have to like it. You just have to do it. And now I'm fine. I don't have the social anxiety anymore.

I can reach out to people. But it was, it was super tough to, you know, find out information without talking to people. But I started going to these firearm schools. And there'd be a guy there in the class with me that was like a drone pilot at Creech or whatever in Nevada or, you know, a SWAT guy that was involved. in the um the Atlanta bombing thing not involved in it you know like involved in like you know going after the Rudolph in the woods and you know so like I'd literally be in the next bump for these really interesting people and and I would just pick their brains uh as friends you know and if it was one of those things where I had to reach out to somebody that was a pilot

at creature I was way too chicken shit to do that but you know it's like shoot with this guy for a few days you've come friends and then you just talk to them about things so I lot of the stuff I got up until doing Clancy, which started in 2011, all the Grey Man stuff was just stuff I kind of learned on my own and I'd taken like some long range shooting classes and one of my books that was not published was about a sniper. I'm not a sniper. I didn't even own, you know, like a like a Remington 700 or whatever, you know, it's like, but I'd shot them and I'd read like, you know, that John Plaster book on sniper, you know, like I read it cover to cover and I was just like oh you have it yeah and and so I just I'm a little bit obsessive about

certain things which helps you in some ways and doesn't help you in other ways and and so I you know I wrote like it as a sniper and I'm very empathetic I'm always thinking about the reader's experience and I'm always trying to make the reader believe something so like when I would write these first scenes about being a sniper and it's July in Bosnia and it's hot as hell and he's laying there and it's the sting of the sweat in his eyes and you know his you know he's got to move his nuts around because he's uncomfortable you know like you're looking for all these little things and it's like I don't know any of this stuff but it seems like it might be real yeah it seems like it might be a thing so it wasn't until I started working with clancy to where

my research was okay I'm going to reach out to somebody on a naval destroyer and ask them about undersea warfare. Right. Or, you know, I got to find an F-18 a couple years ago. And, and, yeah, it was really awesome. And all these things, and I've, you know, talked to agents, former agency people. I joined AFIO, which is the association of former intelligence officers. You don't have to actually be a former intelligence officer to join the group.

And I've been to, like, symposiums and things like that. So I do the research that way now. I will say the one negative thing. the positive thing is that publishers want me to write a lot of books, which is fantastic. The negative thing is this year I'm writing two books, and it's really, really hard to get the research, to do as much research as you want. I just wrote a book about artificial intelligence. I read a million things and a million podcasts, but part of the book takes place in Cuba,

and my plan was to go to Cuba. I think I've been to 38 countries researching Gray Man and Plancy books, and I wasn't able to go to Cuba this year. I went to Mexico, which is another location in the book. I've been to Guatemala, which is another location in the book. But, you know, like my, there was just no way to fit this Cuba trip in to the thing. I want to go to West Africa this later this year. I'm looking for some sort of contact with the State Department or something. I know I just need to do the reaching out for another book that I'm writing

because it involves sort of diplomatic security and the book that I'm writing and you know it's a book that's coming out next summer i haven't written the first word i mean there's already artwork for you know it's just like that's where i am in my career so it's a really fast pace and so i'd never feel like i get as much research as i'd like to the the one thing that happens is when your book comes out then all the people who are experts they reach out to you sure it's like god i needed you a year ago yeah but there's really no way to to do that i've literally you know, one of the Clancy books I did involved, like, Lithuania and I was asked to speak at the Lithuanian embassy about it. And I'm literally like, yeah, everything I know is on those pages.

You know, it's like, yeah, there are real experts. I would just be there, you know, flashy, but not, you know, like any more knowledgeable than anybody else that is read books or listening to podcast. And another challenge also is, I think if you're not a published author, if you're working on your first book, and you reach out to like retired intelligence professionals or retired soft professionals, whatever, they'll be like, who like who's this to Moak? Yeah. And and and and it. Well, I still get that.

And and is this like, like is this even a real person? Is this an intelligence gathering? Right. You know, like is this a bump? Yeah. You absolutely have to approach these things the right way. Yeah. And I've, I've had people.

a friend of mine who was a thriller author, I guess he still is, who was also a journalist, he told me something that he told it to me at the right time in my career because it was when I was still dealing with all that social anxiety. He said, you'd be surprised by how much people want to talk about what they do. And you'd probably run into that. And overall, that's true. Yeah. But God, I wrote a book called Ballistic. It was a great. a gray man book that took place in Mexico and I was looking for some info on the cartels and I reached out to this guy's you know what happens at this point is like I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who can right send me to this guy well I went down until it was like a

really big shot DEA guy down there and all that and I was like hell yeah and I reached out to that that guy and he's like, I have no, absolutely not. I'm absolutely not going to talk to you. And I'm like, totally respect that. I realize that at the end of the day, I'm the fanboy in your careers. And I'm just here trying to like glean the cool stuff. And if you don't want to give me cool stuff, that's cool. I can pull it out of my butt if I have to.

You know, I have had that happen. But I've also had, you know, CIA guys that are like, hey, meet me at this bar at this time in Alexandria. and I got so much shit to wear a white hat. Yeah. Yeah. Well, almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a coronation. You don't stand out. It's interesting because you mentioned Tom Clancy

and how that got you in. And really, I think Tom Clancy, like I don't know his story in terms of how he you know, got to, like the point where you got to where you had written three books. Yeah. But Hunt for Red October, obviously one of the things that that made his success

was he was passionate about the research. Right. Incredibly. And that's not something you can fake. Just like tactics or the basic nomenclature for weapons and ammunition and stuff like that. You know, if you call around a bullet, people are going to be like. Yeah.

And not just like veterans or cops or this, but people who love that type of work know all this. People who love that kind of work know more about. ballistics than I do. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like, how do you sort of balance that? Because obviously there's a fantastical part in the gray man, right? It's probably safe to say that there is no international cobbl of assassins. But that's, but that's, that's the world that you built, which is, your artistic conceit. Right. It's like, if you're going to read my book, you're just going to have to buy into some stuff. Right.

You know, it's just like, otherwise don't read it. But with the inner workings of, not even the inner workings, but like the perception of how like the CIA works or the perception of how an assassin might work. Yeah. Like how do you research to that because, you know, because there aren't like really, you know, these contract assassins running around, right? There's, you know, the mini manual of the urban guerrilla and stuff. stuff like that, which I own all those in the anarchist cookbook, and I've read all that stuff.

And catch her on the rye. You're on the list. Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, just a lot of it's just made up or extrapolated from something that I have done or I have experienced or somebody that I have talked to. You know, I will, when I wrote The Grey Man, there's a character named Zach Hightower, who's sort of the Grey Man sort of team leader when he's on this, like, imaginary ground branch six-man team which seemed like a good idea when I wrote it back in 2010 and now I'm sort of stuck with it you know it's like as you learn more stuff you go like yeah I've got built that into the story so I've just got to continue this bullshit right you know it'd be like but it works it's the world that you build exactly and I've and I've met you know CIA operations guys

yeah I love your books I mean obviously it's yeah it's not real but I mean I love them um but these guys you know they're out there's like a version of the guy that I want so I was talking about Zach Hightower

who's his character who's very has his real dry wit he's a little bit comic relief but he's also a badass well he was completely based off a guy who was a trainer at this civilian contractor school that I was taking classes at

who never laughed his own jokes to where you go like wait that was funny you know it's like he doesn't even seem to know what's funny but he does you know like that level of dry width this guy named jay gipson i'll give him a shout out

and um i sit there we love you jay yeah i i truly um i truly like i remember talking to people in class i'm like oh come here just for the fucking jokes yeah not even for the shooting yeah um and uh and so that he got built into a character who is you know like ex team six guy or you know um and that's not who he was but that version of him sure

And the same thing as the gray man. I've met a few people since I started writing. I've never met anybody anywhere like that. Right. And now I meet people and I sort of like take little bits here and there. But a lot of it is completely made up. And when it comes to assassinations, I've kind of read every assassination of everybody has ever been assassinated.

You know, it's like I do go down those rabbit holes of like researching how things are done. And then I, you know, extrapolate from there. Right. I've done like some opt for and shoot houses for SWAT teams before. Yeah. Yeah, it's a blast. Yeah. Super intense.

With Sims? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they hurt. I mean, if you have the towel, it helps. Yeah. And then like your pants, you have like 12, you know, rounds right in your garage.

Everybody's trying to shoot everybody in the dick. It's so sad. But I was doing it too. But then that goes into a book. And it's like my little goofy, you know, middle-aged guy in a, in a, you know, opt for class, that becomes, you know, a dev-grew mission against, you know, a palace in Peshawar or something. You know what I mean? Like, and I was in like North Mississippi, you know, when I did this.

Well, the clever thing, too, was that you put, you know, the protagonist as part of like, I think in the book you call it the autonomous asset program or something. I wish I could have that back. That's one of those things. It's like such an on the nose name. That's not really how the agency works. Sure. But I mean, if you made the guy, like a ground branch guy or a Delta operator, there'd be like, I think like even you as a fictional author would feel obligated to get that exactly right.

Whereas if you put them in a make, as far as we know, this is a fictional program. It's like you have the, you have a latitude, right? Yes. Although, and I made court, my hero, he worked with ground branch for a while. And so there's a book called Sierra Six, which came out. one year ago uh no burner's the new one yeah c r6 um and it shows him as a young guy and he's no he has no military experience and he's moved over because he's an assassin for the cia and part of this like special group that nobody knows about and they move him into a ground branch unit and it made

sense in the book i can't yeah well i want i want to go through uh some of it you know through through the books um you know the second one was uh on target yeah in uh Mostly, I recall, is taking place in Sudan. Correct. And, you know, one of the things you had, I thought that was interesting that you played this into the book was court is addicted to opiates. Yeah. Which happens to a lot of guys who get injured. Like, that's not some fictional BS.

I mean, it happens to a lot of dudes. It was an interesting thing that happened in my career because it was only my second book that came out. I thought that made sense because of all the damage, you know, I didn't want to just sort of like gloss over the fact that in the last book, you know, he's, basically dragged off off screen at the end but so i had him yeah i take a little thanks um i i i had him addicted to opiates and here's what i heard from the readers everybody that was x this or that everybody that was like military's like how did you know thank you you know it's like it's so cool that you did that i'm so you know like that's such various immolitude and like you you totally nailed it and then everybody in their mom's basement was like he's he's he's the gray

man he's he's not going to do that yeah so it's just sort of like it's like he's weak he wouldn't be weak like that you know but it was just like the guys who knew and actually i knew some of these guys personally yeah military guys that i'd gone to like firearm schools with or whatever and they're like oh man you you hit the nail on the head yeah i'm a chronic pain sufferer myself I had a bad back surgery when I was like 34 and have like permanent damage from it. And so I've never had an opioid addiction. And if I did, I probably wouldn't announce it right here on the show. But I could see.

Right. Hell yeah, I could see. You know, getting ahead of yourself and taking it when you don't need it. And, you know, it was funny because when our target came out, a lot of interviews, people be like, that's, you know, really interesting how you did the opioid addiction. is like is that something you deal with like and and i'm always like no one asked me if i was an assassin right one specific thing right um but i kind of wrote that out of the story and just to give a little caveat about that and you know some of this from being a writer jack it's like um my last

book burner the my female protagonist um who's a former russian svr split to the americans her name Zoya Zakaava and she has an alcohol you know bad problem with alcohol and some cocaine and stuff like that and i've heard from a lot of female readers that are like that's bullshit you can't do you know like she's she's too tough and it's the exact same thing and i'm always like it's called a story arc that's the beginning of the book and then she you know learns and changes throughout the story it's like if you feel like it's sexist to not have a female character go through stuff right in their life right right then I can't help you.

Yeah, if there are a Mary Sue at the beginning of the book, then what's the point? Exactly. What's the point? I mean, it's not fiction, though. I mean, that part of it, I mean, how many case officers have struggled with alcoholism? I mean, or special ops guys that have struggled with substance abuse. Who have in that high pressure environment. Yeah, yeah. I used to work with a guy who's a few years older to me.

I was a lot younger before I was a writer, and he was a Army paratrooper, and all he did was talk about his back and his fusion and all this other stuff, you know. And he got out of the military when he was like 25 or something. And he was maybe 40 at the time. Yeah. And was just dealing with, you know, chronic issues for the rest of his life. And it just, you know, carrying an 80-pound pack. And, I mean, you guys know better than I do.

So book three was ballistic. Yeah. Which it's been a little while since I read that one. But, I mean, I recall really liking it where court takes on the Mexican drug cartels. Yeah, he does. I created sort of a fake cartel that was based on specific cartels, La Familia. Michiha Hakana, which is like a very sort of like spiritually based thing and the Zetas because it's a military, ex-military guys. And ballistic was a book, there's a scene in the book where

somebody gets their face sewn onto a soccer ball. And that really happened. That really happened in the drug wars. And it was left in a bag on the guy's mother's front stoop, as awful as that is but Don Winslow is a fantastic author. He wrote this book, The Power of the Dog, not the one that was made into a movie. Oddly, there's another book with that title, but it was about the drug wars. And he has that event happening in his book as well.

Well, it kills me, Mark, because I'm a lucky author number three that I'm pretty sure I bled that into a book. You did? You did? Because I think, was it Narco Land? was one of a non-fiction book about the cartels yeah was that the um the bowden book no no i think it was was it uh grillo that wrote that book but there's a there's a non-fiction book about the cartels

where they talk about that incident yeah yeah probably there's probably one anyway i i remember when i read ballistic i was really happy i mean it was intentional i didn't read your book until i finished right yeah yeah i was working on i didn't want to yeah poison the wild yeah um but we obviously we like did some of the the same research. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Don Winslow did the same thing. And it's, I mean, like, you read that and as a fiction writer, you go, it's like, Jesus. God awful. That's horrible. But I'm trying to portray this stuff. And how better can I shove this down people's throat and say, this is how awful, you know, this is happening. And then book number four was dead eye where

court goes up against another assassin. And is this the book where you finally find out, like throughout the books you're uh there's all these references to like something that happened in ukraine and i think maybe this is the one where you yeah that is yeah um i knew i couldn't just keep teasing that out for too long i had to figure out what it was in the first book i've always liked books where when you read the first page of the first book you feel like there's like more things have already been going on right the character's got a history to him on page one and page 10 and so in the gray man people he doesn't talk about how great he is he doesn't buy into his own height, but people think he's the best assassin in the world.

He's like, I'm just basically staggering and stumbling through, you know, my day. But there's this war about the guy. And so I needed something like everybody's like, he did that thing in Kiev. And everybody's like, no, that wasn't one guy. It's like, I heard it was him, you know. And so I just started using that as a little sort of like callback in the second book and the third book. And by the fourth book, I'm like, you're going to have to come up with something really impressive.

So it involved a skateboard. and missiles and aircraft and yeah it was I remember the whole time I was writing that going like it's got to get bigger it's got to get bigger the bigger story but yeah that was so you went the opposite way of Marvel with Nick Fury's eye you went the other way yeah yeah they made it something yeah yeah yeah oh I didn't pay it off yeah uh book five was back blast I really like that one because court gentry goes back to Washington, D.C. Like so through through all these books so far, we've been talking about,

he's being hunted by the CIA in addition to everything else going on. Yes, and he doesn't know why. Right. You know, he's like, he thought that, you know, he'd done everything right, but the CIA is trying to kill him. And so for five, five books, you don't know why. And that's another thing. I'm like, you got to pay this off.

I didn't know this was going to go this long. So it's like now I've got to actually, you know, come up with something that's, that makes, you know, that's big enough because you've been talking. talking about it before book. And so that book is like him really going back to D.C. and like confronting all this. Right.

Baggage. Yeah, figure out why there's this sort of like, you know, kill mission out against him. Number six, I just read, so like in the last like couple weeks, I've read three of them. Gunmetal Gray. Yeah.

It was really cool. You introduced this other character, female character, Zoya. Yeah. As you mentioned, SVR assassin. Yeah, yeah. And her in court have this sort of interesting relationship

as they're hunting this Chinese hacker who's on the land. Right. And so I just wrote the 13th book and Zoya is in that one. She's not in every book. I never wanted to. So when I, when I worked on the Tom Clancy books, there's so many like Clancy characters, you know, John Clark and Chavez and Caruso and all these people that I was always like for the gray man, I always wanted to be him. And then there's there's some other people that come and go in the stories. But I don't want to be committed to have, you know, these 13 people in every, in every, in every, single book. You know, it's like I want the book to be about the, this guy, and then the others thread in and thread out. Yeah, she's a cool character. I mean, there's a, with the female action heroes, there's so many tropes out there. I feel like it's easy to trip over it, right? Sure. But I like that she's kind of has her own agenda. Yeah. It's on her own track. Yeah, yeah. She's, she's not the same thing as the gray man. Like, they compliment each other, but at the same time, there, there's, there's friction here and there. She kind of, um,

he kind of considers himself a paladin, although his head's not exactly screwed on straight. You know, but he feels and she's just sort of like, yeah, no, that's not me. She's full on chaotic neutral. Yeah, she's chaotic neutral. That's good. Is it a D&D reference? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So that, no, that's a good one through Hong Kong and Thailand, I think most of the action takes place. And then agent in place was, is that I like that one to her that takes into Syria in the middle of the Civil War. Yeah, yeah. That was one of those books. The one that just came out, Burner was another one because it involved the war in Ukraine. It's sort of like, I'm writing this book now. I don't know what it's going to look like a year from now, but I'm going to just sort of have to like wing it and guess.

But yeah, Asian in place. I didn't, I did not go do research in Syria. I did go to France, which a lot of it takes place in France. So, you know, if you can go to either Syria or France, you're going to go to France. Sure. And if you want to come back. Yeah, that was, that was, that was, that was, I like it when you have them like in a war zone like that.

It just feels like the pressure is like that much higher as opposed to like London or for hands or yeah. Yeah. And I like mixing you like when you do this many books. Right. You want to mix it up in so many ways. So in, you know, Sierra 6, it goes back into the war on terror and he's involved in Pakistan or whatever. And the new one, there's definitely some combat, but it's not a war zone. He's in Cuba. It's denied territory, I guess.

you know, it's very different. No, I felt like, yeah, agent in place, he was like really, really in over his head. Yeah. So mission critical is Zoya's back, and I don't know how much I want to spoil from the, give it away for folks, but there's a big, big terror plot.

Yeah. Against the intelligence community. Right. Yeah, against the five eyes. And a lot of it, most of it takes place in the UK. I think I'm right about that. Yes. Yeah, I think almost all of it.

When you write enough of these, you're going like, all right, which book was that? But yeah. So now we're getting the ones I haven't read yet. Nine is one minute out. What do you want to tell people about one minute out? Well, one minute out was the only Grey Man book that hit number one on the times list. Cool. I've hit, you know, three, four, five, you know, many times.

But one minute out is about human trafficking. And it's one of those things that I went into it, just not really thinking. about what I was doing and once I got in there I was like whoa what a minefield yeah for a male to be writing about this and it's like I can't I mean it's sexual trafficking um specifically but basically the hero is doing a mission in Bosnia killing an old warlord like Bosnian warlord and he finds the cellar where he has kidnapped women and he is just a way station for this American operation to to bring these to traffic these women to different places and so the hero has to sort of like go through this you know like underground railroad of evil and and find his way it actually ends up in

los angeles of all places and um yeah that was a tough book to write because as i got into it many times in my career i'll be writing you know i was writing a book about that involved the war in ukraine i'm like i don't know what that's going to be like in you know nine months but i've already written 40 000 words i can't start over you know it's like you know it's like Like, so I stumbled into, uh, to some of these books. And one minute out was one of those where I was like, oh, wow, this is some really heady stuff. And then as you do the research, you go like, oh, my God, I have a duty to the, you know,

hundreds of thousands, hopefully millions of people that read this or see it if it's made into a movie to, to portray this stuff honestly. Yeah. Because it's just got awful. Yeah. I, 10. Relentless. Yeah.

What's this one about? I don't remember. No, I do. That one takes place in Berlin, the majority. And I always wanted to write a spy novel in Berlin. I wanted to get an apartment in Berlin. I used to live in Cologne, Germany for a little while. I studied German.

I've been to, Germany is one of my favorite places on the planet. And all the good spy novels, you know, from World War II on take place in Berlin. So I wanted to, like, live in Berlin and just, like, get steeped in it. just really nail this and the pandemic happened after I'd already started the book. So I didn't get to go do my time in Berlin. I've been there enough times before and I've lived in Cologne so I was able to, you know, make it feel real. But it involves kind of a weird story.

The United Arab Emirates has a plot to, it involves Iran and I don't want to give away too much. But it becomes this big espionage novel on the streets of Brooklyn. Lynn with the gray man and with Zoya and with some of the other main characters. And then you mentioned Sierra 6, which is book 11. Is that a straight prequel or? No, it's a half prequel. So it takes place in two time periods, 12 years apart.

And each chapter goes back and forth and they relate to one another. So the first one you see court as a 25 year old who's folded into this ground branch task force that are like doing renditions. and he's folded in basically by the director of operations who wants these ground branch guys to have this other skill set that court somehow has at 25. And I'm really happy with that book. It was a hard one to write because when you're writing almost two plot lines. And the whole time, I'm always thinking about the reader, the whole time I'm going like, all right, I'm switching back to this. Is this the plot line? People are going to be like, all right, I've got to read this chapter and then go back to the cool part.

You know, it's like you have to make them sort of equally as impactful, I guess, and compelling. And that was a tough one to write, but I was really happy with how it turned out. It probably has more like small unit tactics. You know, I didn't understand special activities division or special activities center or whatever when I started writing gray men. So I sort of set it up like, I don't know what it is, like little mini delta teams or whatever. And it works great for the stories. I like, I'm not changing it. Right.

But, you know, the more you learn, the more you go like, okay, well, that's not what I'm doing. You know, it's just, but I like Sierra 6 a lot because it shows court who does not have prior military experience. His background is his father was a ran a firearm school in Florida. And everybody went there. and he started basically when he was a kid training with these people and then playing opt for and doing it and by the time he was 16 he was you know taken out entire like HRT teams or whatever I don't remember how how far I went with it but when he was 18 he falls in with a bad crowd and he actually goes to prison and it's something they did in the in the movie

the same and sort of he's he's collected out of prison by the agency to work for them in the movie it's basically, I don't know, have you seen the movie? It's like, hi, I'm with the CIA. Here's the name of our secret program. Would you like to join? I'm like, I feel like that's not how that would really go down. But I write stuff that's not how it would really go down all the time. Yeah.

Go ahead, Dave. Oh, is there? That's the last one, right? Oh, it's not? Oh, please, go ahead. 12 is burner. That's the most recent one that you have out. Yeah, I came out in February this year.

It doesn't, none of it takes place in you. but it is about Russian foreign intelligence and there's a Swiss banker that gets a trove of documents about how Russia is spending its money in the West, influencing elections, paying off, you know, journalists, paying off people in the American Congress and the German government, that sort of thing. And his name is Alex Veleski, and he is Ukrainian, but he's a banker in Switzerland. and and then so Russia wants that information back and wants him dead the CIA is trying to get the information for its own reasons they're some somewhat nefarious not as an not as an agency I

never have the bureaucracy I never have the agency bad but I'll have shitheads in the agency because that makes for good fiction there's shit heads everywhere yeah I worked at Burger King there were shit heads there so um burner I mean takes place in Switzerland and in Italy and in New York City. It ends up here on 81st Street, which coincidentally is the same street where Seinfeld's apartment is. And basically, I put it right where Seinfeld's apartment. Like, I Google mapped it like at the end.

And I was like, what is that? And I was like Seinfeld apartment. I'm like, well, that's like two doors down from where the, where this whole event. I used to live in the same street as the restaurant, the corner of the 112th Street. Oh, wow. The cafe or the, the soup nancy no not the soup not

not the restaurant that cafe they're in all the time the diner and then you just finished the draft for book 13 the chaos agent yeah the chaos agent it's about well all this sort of

preeminent scientists or engineers involved in artificial intelligence are being assassinated and very quickly it's presumed that China is doing it because they're about to unleash a sort of a weapon platform that can operate at machine speed

and sort of take humans out of, completely out of the loop. And the US government has a policy to where we don't, there will always be a human on the loop. And you know, until we change that policy when the other guys have done it. And at which point we're absolutely on the back foot. But the story is not that. The story's much bigger than that.

But that's sort of the setup. On page one, it's like, oh my God, what is China doing? And then it gets, a lot deeper than that. But it involves Cuba and Mexico and Guatemala, which you think artificial intelligence, you don't think about those locations, but there's a reason for that.

Yeah, I hope I'm not spioning, but it's not chat GPT, like trying to maintain preeminence. No, it's not, and it's not a sentient, because it's not the... Skynet.

Yeah, it's not Skynet. I wish I wrote Skynet. I wish I came up with that. It's not Skynet because it's already been done. Otherwise, I would have loved to done it. But it is. It's actually I've done a ton of research on the subject and it is, it is scary. You know, it is literally very scary, you know, the potential for things.

And things are happening faster than anyone who anticipated. Even the people, you know, at the cusp of this are going like, wow, we thought that would be 2030 before this happened and it happened in 2019 or whatever. So while you're writing this whole series, also the Tom Clancy stuff is cooking off for it. Yeah. right in the middle of all that how did that come about when did you start writing those books yeah so 20 so i'd only had two books out i had gray man on on target two little paperback books gray man did pretty good on target did less well um and i turned in the third book ballistic to the publisher i was a full-time writer um not because i was being just shoveled cash but because i'd agreed

to write these books and and uh you know i was committing myself to it and i got a call from my agent and he's like, hey, are you sitting down? I was like, yeah. And he's like, how would you like to be Tom Clancy's new co-author? And I remember going like, oh, shit. And it's like, I just felt like, oh, please don't make me do this because it's like, I'm going to screw that up. But I'm like, I got to work for it. I was a huge Clancy fan. I'd read everything. I have first editions of so many of his books that my dad gave me at Christmas and I would give my dad a Clancy book at Christmas in the 80s and 90s. And both my parents passed away before I ever got published.

But I knew the characters really, really well. So when they asked me if I was interested in it, I was like, all right, I'll write up 50 pages like I'm writing a Clancy. Right. And I'll give that to Clancy's people and see what they think. And I did. And they had me come up to Baltimore and meet Tom. And, you know, we hit it off.

And I wrote the first one was called Locked On. And we're talking about research and talking to people in the know. and so they didn't know if this book was ever going to come out, the first one locked on, because they didn't know how well I was going to do and how, you know, if Tom and I would ever finish the book or whatever. So I was not allowed to say that I was writing a novel with Tom Clancy. So I had to go out there and start doing the phone calls and, you know, reaching out to people, going to the Pentagon and ODI and I and these other places.

But I couldn't tell them. You know, I was like, God, if I just had that calling card. I'm writing a book with Tom Clancy. Yes, Bonafides to get you in anything. Yeah, the door was, doors would open. But instead, it was just like, here's my little paperback. I'm writing, I'm co-authoring a novel. With somebody who wrote a big series and knows a lot about submarine.

See, so that's funny you say that because it's like I was too chicken to do that. But then like my agent, I was somewhere with my agent and there was another author there. And it's like, Mark's going to do some co-authoring. He's like, really with who? He's like, well, we can't say. but with a very prominent legacy techno thriller author who would be a household name or whatever. And I was going like, I don't know, I can get away with that.

But at that point, it was our, you know, it was pretty late in the game. But yeah, after that first one came out locked on, I remember sort of like announcing it to like my Facebook, you know, fans or whatever, like three weeks, five weeks before it came out when they finally said, okay, we're going to go with this. And I'm like, yes, I did a thing. this year. And yeah, I did three with Tom. We had just finished the third one, which was called Command Authority, and it was about Russia attacking Ukraine and taking over Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

And that was in, it came out in December of 13, and that actually happened in February of 14. Jesus. But Tom passed away, like just weeks after we finished that book. And I didn't know that he was dying. I mean, the last time I'd talked to him. him in person. He was saying that he needed a liver transplant, but he's very upbeat about it. And maybe that's not something I should say. I don't even know if he ever got that or needed that or whatever. But I remember him saying he had some medical stuff, but he was very, you know, upbeat about it. And, you know, so I was as stunned as anybody else. And you really liked the guy. I was fascinated.

I would have done, you know, I would have liked to have kept working with him. His family asked me if I would continue the series after he passed away. And so I did four more, two in 2014, one in the summer and one of the winner. And it was a tough. I took a year off from Greyman at that point. But, you know, their Clancy books are big books. Being a fan of the Clancy stuff, you know the responsibility that you have to, you know, my buddy Josh Hood, who wrote some, uh, treadstone, some books with Robert Leblum stuff.

Yeah, yeah, Josh is a great dude. he's like I feel like I've been giving a keys to a really really nice car and people are like it's not yours so don't mess it mess it you know don't scratch it and I was like wow that's exactly how you you know how you feel when you do those sort of things

it's like I'm gonna do the best I can and I'm gonna try not to make it worse and but yeah so the last client seat book I did was in 2016 and I truly I did seven in six years and I truly didn't feel like I had anything else I didn't feel like next year's book was going to be any good. You know, I just felt like I had squeezed a lemon dry. And so I stepped away.

But it was an amazing thing, you know, to have that opportunity. And there have been some other, I'm trying, I always get confused and get it wrong. But I mean, who are the authors that have subsequently taken up after you? Yeah. So Mark Cameron replaced me. And gosh, I'm going to forget somebody. Don Bentley does them. Mike Madden has done some.

now Andrews and Wilson. Andrews and Wilson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know they're.

Congratulations, guys. We're super proud and super happy. Yeah. I know they're going to do a great job. Yeah. And there's actually, I think, I don't even know if it's public, but there's somebody else I know that's going to be involved. So, you know, it's in really good hands. And it's, you know, they've gotten people.

I had, I had been squeezed pretty dry at that point. And I was like, I feel like I've done. and all I can. It's time for me to get off this train. It's going to be sad to watch it drive off without me. I mean, that's a pretty good run. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm glad that it happened. Yeah, we had Don on.

We had Andrews Wilson on. And, you know, I don't, I don't think Dawn had the opportunity. Was it, what was it like for you, like switching voice? And obviously, you had the good fortune of working with time. Yeah. You know, to do that. Was there a process for you? Did he help you in that?

Or because you had read so much, did you kind of just sink into it? I feel like just knowing the material already, you know, like I was like when I write, I'm not going to write like I'm pretending to be him when he was alive or even after he passed away. I'm, you know, I'm just going to write. But I'm going to have the characters say things that I think that they would say or whatever. And I would learn. Our editor was kind of the guardrails on.

that Tom Colgan you know he he would go like yeah I don't think ding would do that that way but gosh I was I was very lucky and very happy to have the opportunity and you know it it was the changing voice between Gray Man and Clancy seems like it would be a problem but it never really was a problem and I've I've ghost I've been the ghostwriter of a couple of books or I can't even say you know my name is nowhere on the books and I did that while I did Gray Man as well, and I've never really had it. It wasn't any of the Decker books, was it by the chance. Decker's?

No. Yes, I did. I'm your ghost. It's really fascinating. I would really love because you've written a lot of books. And, you know, you talk about, like, the payoffs, but I'd love to know sort of the process for you. Because, you know, you talk about Goon Squad. and that

your publisher picked out one person, one thing. What was Goon Squad originally about? The best I remember, so there's this character named the Grey Man who's known as this like Uber Elite assassin and he has to team up with this like very low level

intelligence guy and it's in Paris and basically it's almost like it was just kind of of a very broad story and it wasn't enough about him but there was one subplot that while he was trying to help this you know like just sort of like wet behind the ears intelligence officer do his mission all these people were trying were after him and i remember my agent saying like if if you got rid of the other guy and just had the gray man do his thing he's like and that's your

title he's like your title is the gray man um and and if you had him with all these people they're just trying to kill him for stuff that he'd done in the past. If you have a reason that there's this gauntlet that he has to run through and he has to go after all these teams and I'm like, like, what? He's like, I don't know. Yeah. He's like, that's your problem. Yeah.

And so I was like, okay, so I came up with this thing that there's this company called Laurent group that is like a big French conglomerate and they have a natural gas deal with Nigeria and the president of Nigeria's brother was involved. with al-Qaeda and had just been assassinated by the gray man and the president of Nigeria is like I'm not signing this until you bring me the gray man and by the way I'm leaving office in like six days or whatever so the this French conglomerate had to pull out they got their head of security who's his German guy and this lawyer who is kind of screwed up the contract in the first place who that's who Chris Evans played in the movie

although it was very much an action role whereas in the book he's not an action character And so that was basically what the gray man was. But yeah, so I just took this one little aspect of Goon Squad throughout 90% and then beefed that up. And it was all my agent's idea and clearly he was right. Yeah. And then the whole thing of like how do you, so when you come up with a story, when you go, okay, now like, so I've got the, I have my character. I know who he is. but I don't know why people are trying to kill him.

You know, I don't know what his end state is. What is he, is, is it just to survive being, you know, the target? Yeah. Like, how does all that form for you? Yeah, I think I just know from reading so many novels that it can't just be about the guy surviving. There has to be a ticking clock. The ticking clock, and this is all metaphorically speaking, you know, there has to be a ticking clock. and at some point the ticking clock gets sped up.

You know, it's all these, you can call them tropes or whatever, but it works, and it makes it fun for the reader. You know, you've got to have, you have to have a hero with vulnerabilities, which is a problem that a lot of, you know, people will try and get me to read their stuff, and I don't because I can't because, you know, everybody's like, hey, when you get a minute, will you read my book? And I'm like, are you different than me? Because it takes me a few weeks of my free time.

to read a book. You know, it's like, are you asking me literally for nights and weekends for the next couple of weeks? Because I just don't have those to give to everybody that asked. But when I would look at stuff, a lot of times you would see like, wow, the hero is this square-jawed,

Billy badass, Deb grew guy. And his only vulnerability is he's out of ammo, but doesn't, you know, the other guy's got a magazine. I care too much. Yeah,

I care too much. Yeah. So you have to have a guy like with strength or a woman with strengths. and vulnerability. Right. And, you know, you have to have, one thing I've learned along the way is that your story has to be personal

to the stakes have to be personal because I think I've written some Grey Man books are a little bit more about the Syrian Civil War and he has to rescue somebody's, you know, family member or something like that.

But then the ones where it's like, he's got to find out why the CIA is trying to kill him and he finds out that he's, maybe done something wrong and he can't live with himself and you know that those personal stakes or the woman that he loves is imperiled and you know it's it's really personal like that a mission critical uh the woman zoya um finds out her father is involved in in some stuff and uh and so it's very very personal and those ones with the personal stakes are the ones that the readers like the most so

there's all these little things you learn along the way or know at the beginning if you're doing it right and you know you can't just make it about the heroes trying to kick ass and take names you know it's like you can make it look like that but when things go off and not to criticize anything else but the the movie take the first taken movie enjoyed it absolutely enjoyed it but if you watch the film his daughter's kidnapped at the beginning he does 83 things right and the worst thing it happens to him is he gets knocked out handcuffed to a pipe which he pulls the pipe down and kills all the people right and then he wins so like for me i need a little bit more vulnerability in the hero i need a little bit more like

wow that that went off you know in left field there and and you know so in the gray man it's like entire aspects of the story happen and don't work for him you know don't work out for him um you know like he he goes to get documents from a forger and forger throws him in a pit and, you know, calls the bad guys, you know, he gets out with the skin of his teeth, but he doesn't get his documents, you know. Right. So I like stories like that. I like when it, you know, it's just like, oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit. You know, he's still backed into a corner.

As a writer, it's tough because I always tell myself, write your guy into the corner and then worry about getting him out later. I really notice that you've never really gone for the easy answer. You know, the easy thing in these books would be, you know, the backpack nuke in downtown Manhattan. Yeah. Right. So you've never done that. It's always much messier. Yeah, I kind of like messy. And I kind of like I learned along the way and I think it was gun metal gray where I was near the end of the book and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. And I was like, what if my hero did something that readers wouldn't necessarily agree with? But it, but it made sense in the hero's mind. And so gun metal gray without giving the end of it away,

his his want at the end of the book isn't what the U.S. government wants and probably what most of the readers would be like, no, do it this way. But it didn't match up with his code. Right. And I remember like kind of wrestling with that a little bit and going like, I mean, people like what I do. I just have the confidence to write what you think is good and see how people, you know, respond to it. And people responded really well to it. So there's a lot of times in books, he'll do things where you're going like, dude, don't do that. Not because he's stupid, but because it's like a different.

His ideological beliefs sometimes. That's exactly right. Court, why are you doing that, man? Don't do it. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, it's like, I don't want to, you know, write books that are just like, you know, fans are going to like cheer everything.

Yeah, exactly. They're going to cheer every, every scene. Right. Yeah, I mean, none of us have like that third person omniscient type of thing going on, right? So why would, why would a character always get everything right? Yeah, exactly. He's going to screw up. What do you always know the end of your book or do you just kind of write and see where it goes?

I wish I knew the end. Every time somebody asks like, you know, how do you, you know, plot the book out or whatever? I'm always like, do you have any ideas? I mean, I truly, and I truly mean that. I'm like, just give me something. I always feel like my life would be so much. My wife is a painter and she sells them, but she doesn't do it for a living, but she's an amazing painter. So she has this studio in our house.

It's a big room. And I never go in that room because it's always such a mess. And there's tarps everywhere and there's resin and crap on everything. And I was in there for something recently. And I just started looking around. I was like, there's an amazing painting. I don't know what the hell that is. That's obviously a mess.

This thing got tipped over and this is there. And then that painting maybe isn't perfect, but I really like that part. And I thought, wow, that's kind of what my brain looks like to me. You know, it's, it's kind of completely confused, completely jumbled. And when I write a novel, the book I just finished The Chaos Agent, my first draft is 190,000 words. Well, the book cannot be more than 165. And that's a long book. So I was just writing, meandering, trying to find my way to the end.

So there's entire chapters where people are going like, all right, here's how we're going to get into Cuba. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. You know, and you know you're supposed to show, not tell. Right. But this is me trying to work it out on the page. And that's not great writing. The final book that comes out next February is going to have all that edit out of there.

But I'm trying to figure it out. So I don't have the ending. And this book, more than others, the one that I just finished, I really was struggling for the ending. And I'm still talking to my editor about one aspect. I'm like, well, what if he did it? Or what if he did it? So it's a little bit up in the air. I always try and write it out before.

hand and never get it all. I have a book due in November that I haven't even started yet but I have a plot but I'm going to diverge from that on page one probably. For you, what would you say you have a plot? What does that mean? It's

not the beginning, middle, end, right? It's correct. Yeah. So, you know, I'm writing a book. It's the second book in my Armored series. The first one came out last year. It's about a, that was about a civilian military contractor in Mexico. And book two involves him, you know, a year, a couple years later, and he works for the State Department for DSF, diplomatic security, and he basically goes on a mission in Africa that is so easy, peasy

that he brings his family along to, you know, go to a safari when they're done. And, I mean, it wouldn't be a thriller if that's what ended up happening, you know, so basically, that's my plot. And I know who the, you know, I know that China is involved. I don't want to give my story away. But, you know, like, just sure. I know these sort of big beats of the story. But when it comes down to, like, you know, a big thing that happens in my novels is it's like a chess thing.

It's like, I need this person to know about this, but not about this. And these people have to be together at this point. But at this point, they can't see what that guy's doing. You know, like this logistic nightmare. In mission critical especially, I was reading that. I was like, how the hell did Mark even come up with this? You come up with it by doing it wrong and going like, well, that doesn't work. You know, so there's a lot of things that's like, well, why wouldn't he just tell him?

And one of the Clancy movies that was made, Some of All Fears, I can't remember the detail now, but I remember when I watched it, I was going like, okay, these people can't talk to each other, but they're both talking to this guy. Why is this guy not telling them that the nuclear bomb is about to go, you know, whatever? There was just some little thing that was like didn't make it. Right. You know, like didn't make it pass. Common sense. Yeah, the inspection, right. And so, you know, there's, there's mistakes in every one of my books.

And, you know, and I get emails every single day. The first great man book, there's at least three mistakes. I used the wrong capital of Botswana. And the reason I did was, like, initially the bad guys were going to be from Liberia or Angola, maybe Angola. And then it's like, no, I'm going to make it Botswana. That just sounds cool. and I just did a universal change in a word document from Angola to Botswana but forgot that I mentioned that they're on the phone in, you know, Luanda or whatever. And that's not the capital of Botswana.

I mean, that book came out in 2009 and people will email me today. And they'll be like, I'm the first person that figured this out. You know, and they're like, hey. Meanwhile, and Kendall has got like 400 underlines, right? Yeah, exactly. And every single one of my books. And, you know, I've written. almost four million published almost four million words and sort of my pat line is like there's about 30 i'd

love to have back yeah i'd love to have to do over it yeah you know and and and so you know i've literally had people go like hey i've found an error in your book um does that offend you if i tell you what it is and i'm like i mean it doesn't offend me but i i always do i mean i'll be honest with you i kind of roll my eyes when i think that some when somebody thinks they're the first person to tell me right I had a lady one time, not to go on this tangent, but I had a lady one time that was like, you have a, you have a character who's at a, their feet are so cold because they're standing on ice that the cold, I think I said, the cold's going up their legs and, you know, now it's in their hips or whatever. Here's how convection works, Mark. It's like, I have my doctorate in thermal dynamics and, you know, cold is the absence of heat. It does not move.

blah blah blah blah blah and I literally wrote the woman back and I said you're absolutely right I will you know never make this mistake again but you need to promise me that every time you read a book where they somebody says the sun rises you need to write a letter to that author because the sun does not rise right we're spinning through you know through the solar system and she never replied but yeah I think people want to get their little dig in and when they find out you're a real human being they're like oh crap yeah it's amazing how people fold up like it suitcase and you probably have experienced that. I wrote one where the same thing just kills me to the day. I wrote about an F-16 taking off from an aircraft carrier. Yeah, and you can't go back in

time. You can't ever fix it. When I did red metal with my buddy Rip Rawlings, who, an active duty Marine lieutenant colonel at the time, it's a 217,000-word novel, a Russian invasion of across Poland into Germany and down into Africa for some very specific reasons. And we got a lot of it right. We did a ton of research. We went to Nellis. We got on a destroyer. He got on a submarine.

We went to Germany and talked to like a general, you know, it was ahead of their armor corps. And he met with French special forces. Like we did all this work. You're still going to mess stuff up in 270,000 words. So at one point, one of us, and I don't even know who it was because we wrote this book together. We had an A-10, and he goes past the indent into afterburner, and A-10 so I'm

have after-burners. Oh, my God. I've literally had, like, A-10 mechanics asked me to sign that page because it's so funny that I eff that up, you know. And I've had, honestly, I've had emails, a couple of really creepy emails from people that basically accuse me of being in the Illuminati. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And I'm going like, wait, wait. How does that happen? I don't know in their head. But it's like I've found this error and you, you know, proclaimed to be, you know, so smart. And you're like one of these like people in charge of things. I'm like, I never claim to be that. But I'm literally sitting there with a muffin at Starbucks typing with my right hand.

You know, it's like I'm not trying to make myself out to be anything I'm not. The sum total of letters in your, in your mistakes is 640. which everybody knows. Yeah, exactly. Red backwards, you can hear the voice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've had it. And the number of the beast.

Yeah. Yeah, there's people you're going like, wow, they're very passionate. Well, and, you know, and that's the thing is it, like, I think for fans, I think for two, there are two levels, right? For fans, like, you suspend, you suspend disbelief when you understand that the, Not everything's going to... Like, there are... There are... I mean, for, like, in gunplay and movies.

Like, there are a lot of things that I... Like, I... What was the movie with Christian Bale? The Gun Kata? Oh, yeah. Equilibrium. Equilibrium. Yeah. I love that movie. I've never seen it.

It's amazing. Really? I love that movie. It's absolutely ludicrous, like, what they're doing with guns. It's ludicrous. Or wanted. It's ludicrous what they're doing. But it's fun. But it's fun. and you suspend your disbelief.

Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, if it's, you know, if it's just, if, if they're just making basic mistakes,

like cocking a double barrel shotgun. Yeah. Then I'm like, okay, come on. Like, yeah. But, but also, but also I don't think that

when it's, when it's like an afterburner on 810, yeah. The only people who would actually know that. Yeah. are people who fly or maintain eight tens. But I've heard from all of them. I've heard of them.

But it sounds like they have a better sense of humor about it than the people who are, you know, kind of the nerds about it. You know, passionate about it. And, and, you know, this is where I go, okay, this is karma, dude, because I remember dinging authors that I really liked when they got stuff wrong. Not, you know, it was pre-internet. So I couldn't, like, do that loud. I wasn't going to write him a letter, but like going like, this guy's an idiot. it's just an honest mistake that's made for you know for for whatever reason you know and and when we all watch films you know it's like every time somebody points a gun there's the sound of like

sling swivels hitting the side of you know it's right right and i'm like click click click i'm like god i want a gun that does that that'd be so cool i would just be out in my garage by my gun safe just making that sound all day long but the guns don't do that i've never done it before mark but now that we're talking about it i'm definitely going to pour myself a cup of coffee in the morning, get on my email, dear mark. You've dinged me before. I'm calling you out. I brought up on, uh, so you remember it too. It was a, it was a rifle.

It was a rival. It was the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, well, actually got. No, and I think I said it was, uh, uh, five, six and it's, it's three. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, it might have been, was it, no, it's the one before this. I don't remember, but I will say, I just, I just, I just gave this long speech about everybody thinks they're the first person you were the first person because you sent me a galley copy yeah well i never sent you another did i know that that's why i said it to you because i thought you had chance a time to yeah yeah yeah no it it absolutely doesn't bother me and and honestly that's cool um my buddy don bentley who you guys have had on your show recently is an amazing dude obviously incredible

military experience in history and fbi but also a good writer and a great guy he was a um helicopter pilot, Apache pilot. And he read an early version of Sierra 6, which I didn't know it when I was writing the book, but the end of it was going to have my hero like desperately flying a helicopter, you know, past the limits of reason and logic because he needs to for the story. And Don was literally like, yeah, okay, you got a good here, but you've mixed up the collective. You know, it's like, and so he saved my book. Because it did come, you know, he did reach out before it was too late.

And it was just a couple of dumb mistakes. And every book's got him. Yeah. You write 160,000 words. There's going to be 10 words. Yeah, yeah. Especially when you're dealing with so many different things that are, like, you know, you're not writing the life of pie, which is just like a personal experience, right?

Like you're writing about all these technical things. And nobody, those same A10 mechanics or, you know, those same people who are, you were hot on the 810 probably wouldn't pick you know catch something yeah that was you know off on the blitz like it's a lot yeah um it's a lot it's it's a lot of different fields of expertise yes and sometimes it's not even really a field of expertise i remember i wrote a clancy book and it took place in cologne germany where i'd live for a while and um one of the characters was running up a fire escape and um i got a letter from this lady she's like i threw your your book across the room into the trash can.

I live in Cologne. And in 1950, they passed a law to where there are no external fire escapes on any building because of whatever thing or whatever. And it's like, so how much research do you have to do? I've literally lived in the city for four or five months. Right.

And I didn't know that. Right. She's so offended that, you know, like I didn't know that part. And, you know, you're not going to win. Yeah.

I spill some tea here about the gray man film. After you had the first option, didn't work out. Hollywood happened. Second run at it. Tell us how that came about. Yeah. So the option came back to me in about 2014, and then a bunch of different studios and filmmakers and even actors were interested in it.

So I was on conference calls. There was this weird whirlwind. like when you don't know how things work and when it happens you're like this is totally not how I would have guessed this was but it was like I was on conference calls every day for like a week and then the Russo brothers wanted to do it and they had just done I think Winter Soldier had just come out which was their first one with Marvel and I'd never seen a rest of development or anything I didn't know who they were but I knew that you know like everybody was saying that they were big deals and

I had a conference call with them and as soon as I hung up the phone like I called my agent and I was like it's these guys I mean it's these guys because they they liked it they liked some specific things about it and there's a lot of differences between the film and the book there always are

but overall I really like the film and I will defend Ryan Gosling's portrayal of the gray man to the death I mean he plays him exactly the way that I wrote him or write him and so when the Russo brothers

signed up with Sony they had me come out to LA because they were going to write the screenplay and I spent a few days with them and sort of we talked about where the series goes and all these other things and then I went away and Joe Russo wrote a script and there was a year later

I guess he sent it to me and I loved it and then it just kind of went around in development hell as they call it at one point Charlie's Theron wanted to do it and so they rewrote They got other screened writers and the Russo brothers stepped away. And honestly, I think Christopher McQuarrie, who does the Mission Impossible,

was attached with Charlie's Theron for a time. And I read the script, and it was very, very different. It was like a really, really, completely different story. And to the point where I was like, if this wasn't called the Grey Man and she wasn't named Court Gentry, I could watch this in the theater and go like, Hey, that looks like something I did once. You know, like, it was, I wouldn't even have recognized it in my own film. You've just touched on, like, one of my biggest rants is don't buy a property if you're not going to be the property.

Like, let the property be his thing. If you're going to write, like, I mean, I love World War Z, but it's not the book. Like, why buy the property if you're not going to do it? Well, and, yeah. And so when this was all going on, I would, like, call my agent. I'd be like, I don't understand. I don't have the juice to make a Charlie's Theron film, you know, big because it's attached to my book or whatever. It's like I'm not, I'm not that out in the world.

Right. So like why, why not just create your own intellectual property and use that? Is that why they did Atomic Bond? Is that what that evolved into for her? No. She did that for another studio for Lionsgate. And then pretty shortly after that, that whole thing died on the vine with Sony. And I'm not really sure why.

you know it's like i always there's there's a beauty to being like an author with an agent in hollywood and agent in new york when you live in memphis because you feel like i'm so disconnected from this stuff yeah i can call somebody and ask i guess but you know i've got to write 3 000 words today and uh you know coach my kids soccer practice and you know my dog's got diarrhea so you know it's like i'm not i'm not really going to get into all that other stuff so when when the film came out did that like supercharge your your writing you're i mean as far as the series getting more attention and more readers on it. Yes. I mean, it's definitely been really good for sales and I definitely got attention. You know, longtime fans, a lot of them didn't like the film because of, you know,

artistic things that the directors did, as you're saying. But at the same time, you also have to look at it like this. The directors are creative people. The writers are creative people. The actors are creative people the cinematographers are they're they're not just trying to render my pages into celluloid or whatever the hell they use these days you know what I mean like it's like they're putting their spin on things and there's there's aspects in the story where I'm going like yeah I couldn't put that in a book I couldn't call everybody agent in the CIA you know instead of officer or whatever you know but you can do it in the movie you can get away with it and but there's also things in the in the film where I was like holy crap they did a really good job

with that um the the aircraft the airplane scene yeah yeah um it was bigger so everything was bigger in the movie sure i wrote it yeah like at the end of the book takes place in this you know big house in normandy france well in the book it takes place in a freaking castle in croatia um which is cool absolutely cool but i didn't you know didn't have that scope or scale in my brain when i wrote it yeah and so there's a there's a part early in the story where he's being being exfiltrated out of an area with some people that he trusts and they all turn on him while he's on in the back of a C-130 and it turns his crazy fight and the aircraft, you know, gets damaged. The aircraft doesn't even crash in the book, but in the movie it does. The film goes so much bigger than I had even envisioned it.

I have like five guys spinning around in a plane like socks in a dryer and then they fall at the back. And in this one, it's like explosions and flips. And there's a big like a Humvee or something for some reason, like right in the middle of the, of the, you know, in the C-130. And I'm going like, why are they extracting this guy from Thailand with a, you know, with a Humvee stretch? You know, there was a lot of things where I'm going like, I mean, visually it looks cool. But like as a writer, you sort of have to explain the whys on things. And I couldn't have gotten away with that. That's fascinating.

Out of curiosity, did you ever ask your publisher why the Great Man had to save somebody? Was it sort of a Save the Cat moment? Was it to establish his character? He's not just like hell bent on revenge, but he's actually a human and cares about people? Yeah, I think it's something like that. It was my agent. Oh, your agent, sorry about this. Before I had a publisher, believe me, all this stuff confuses me.

um but yeah it was this thing where it's like okay that's a really cool scene but if he just shoot some people in the head and wanders off you know in the story it's just not as impactful as if he you know and honestly it's kind of like your agent throwing you curveball he he wasn't even my agent at the time right the guy that i wanted to be my agent and he was telling me no but i'm still interested you know like try something else and so he's throwing me this curveball he's like you know it'd be cool is if you could do this and, you know, I took that as gospel. You know, it's like, I have to do this if I, if I want to get published.

And so, but he was absolutely right because it made the scene a little bit, like, harder to sell, but, like, I've just worked so much harder. And I always, you know, that's my, you know, anybody that watches your show has got more experience in military or law enforcement or intelligence or whatever, because I know, you know, like, I don't know how many, like, fanboys like me watch your show and how many, like, legit, people and I think it's mostly legit people and I'm a little illigent to be here I'm a writer but it's like I just am trying to sell it to the masses right but also have like somebody that knows about guns know that I know some you know like right I know this you know it's like the

the the revolver you know like I read a British author who I love and I won't so I won't say his name but like you know his his revolver ejected you know like they found the shell casings for this guy fires three rounds as he's running through a building. Right. They found the shell casing. I'm going like, well, work that into the story. I don't understand. And so there's a million things like that.

Yeah. And so I'm trying to get as much of that right as I can. Yeah. And then Jack will email me if I get the wrong caliber. And I've got, I've got. Yeah. I appreciate Mark that, you know, I think, you know, I've read, I'm on nine now. But I mean, you're not like, you've come this far.

And I mean, you're not just like mailing it in. Like, you're still passionate about this. Yeah. And it shows. I mean, you could hire some hack like me to ghostwrite books and just cash the checks, right? But I mean, you're still like, this is your baby. You're into it. Yeah. And thanks for saying that. I, I told my, I had a little talk with myself early on. You know, it's like I'm never going to phone this in. If I fail, it's going to be by taking like a big old swing that misses. And so one minute out, which is the one you're about to start, I think. I wrote that one in the first person.

It's the only book written in the first person. I wanted to do that. I thought it would be interesting. And I think I said, it was the only book that hit number one. It was at the time, it was my number one selling book to that, you know, up to that point. But I got a lot of negative, you know, it's like when you look at it on Amazon, like 1% of people didn't like it or 2% of people didn't like it. So, you know, percentage wise, it wasn't a big deal. But the people that didn't read the first eight books and then read one minute out, some of them were just like, completely insulted.

And on Amazon, people are like, he obviously didn't write this himself because it sounds different. I'm going like, if I was going to have someone fake write my book, I wouldn't have them change from the third person to the first person. You know, like, that's such a tell. Yeah. It's like, I'm just, let me talk you through your little art, your logic here, sir. But it was, it was me taking a big swing. And I think overall it worked. But, I mean, some people hate that book.

And then, you know, the next book, a lot of people are like, oh, my God. Thank God he's back on track. You know, this book was the last book. That last book was crap. But I want to fail in that regard, you know. And this book, Chaos Agent, I would have loved to have written 120,000 words in three months of this story. But it ended up being 190,000 words. And anybody that's been around me for the last half a year, my poor wife, you know, she has to hear me talk about, you know,

that it's just I got a big load of dog crap brewing back in my office. And, you know, it's, and I've said that about. every book is just my work-life balance is a little screwed up when my books are about 98% done if my editor call me and said if you if you give me the advance back we can just forget it i would i'm not kidding i'm really not kidding because i'm like there's no way i'm going to bring this home it's a disaster it's not to like my second or third draft where i'm going like oh thank god i've faked it for one more year it's imposter syndrome i wanted to ask you mark and i mean i'm not asking you to give a specific answer here but i am just curious uh

What caliber does? As an author, like in the back of your mind, do you have an ending for the gray man? Like, does court live in a log cabin? Does he go out in a blaze of glory? Like, is there some sort of idea in the back of your mind? Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I actually wrote something that didn't work in a book where it was him sort of like prognosticating his end.

And I didn't end up using it. the book. So I end up writing lots and lots of scenes that I just say for later because I'm like, actually it doesn't really fit right here, but it's, I think it's, I think it's good or whatever. I'll hang on to it and see if it works later. And so one of those times, and one of those books, I can't remember which one. I have him say, you know, kind of like just you're in his brain and he's talking about, yeah, I'm probably going to die like, you know, guts shot in a ditch, forgotten by everybody around me, you know, who keeps, you know, or whatever. And I was always thinking like, well, what if, what if that is how he, you know, actually died?

But I haven't even used the first scene. So I couldn't do that callback. I don't want him to die. I like doing the books. You know, I've done just finished my 13th. There's another one on a contract. I would love to take a year off. I don't know if I will.

I feel like I sort of need to. It's okay. I got to catch up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I got it, Jack's got to catch up. I won't even notice. Yeah, so I, I like doing them. I don't, I would love to be doing great.

You know, it's, I never plan on retiring. Like, I want to, I want to die with a book half written. Yeah. They're like, yeah, this is dog shit. You know, but don't tell me it's dog shit. I'll be dead. Well, I mean, you can pull the whole, you know, Robert Jordan, find your own, very own, like, you know, Brian Sanderson, you know, like the next year.

Who are these people? Art authors. Oh, okay. They're a different genre. But the thing is like, you know, you can do the Tom Clancy. You can bring on somebody to continue the gray man. You know, and I've always said I would not do that. But if I did it, it'd probably be Josh Hood, my buddy Josh.

Because it's so funny because he's the guy that I call when I'm like, you know, throwing the rope in the bathroom over the thing and, you know, tying around my neck. And he calls me in the same situations. And it's just funny because it's like he. he'll say something about my character and I'll go like, holy crap, you're right. And I'm like, I'm like, guy, he's got a good feel for it. But I like doing him. And, you know, I ain't dead yet.

At any point, will he say, I'm getting too old for this shit as he's jumping off a bridge? You know, the crappy thing is, you're younger than me. You're my brother's age. So I'm 50. I just turned 56.

Nobody would know that by looking at us. No. I feel bad right now. It's not the age. It's the mileage. Is that Harrison 4th? Um, but, um, I just saw something the other day in lethal weapon, uh, Martin Riggs. I mean, not Martin.

Uh, what was he like? Danny Glover. Danny Glover. Yeah. What was his character? Murta. Murta. Yeah.

Do you know how old he was when he said that? No. 40 fucking two. Oh my God. He was 42 when he goes, I'm getting too old for this shit. I just saw that on, on social media and I was going like, oh my God. You know, it's like, uh, Wilford Brimley was 50 when he did cocoon. That just makes you want to just go drive off into the woods.

That, yeah. It's crazy. How, you know, we're talking about, you know, this series and the future of the gray man. How is it getting more difficult? Because a character arc, you think a character arc happens over a story or maybe over a trilogy, right? But as you go and, you know, not to, you know, poo on MacBowlin or any of these other great. Mac Bolan is a saint thing. I know that.

But what I'm saying, though... Get his name out of your mouth. What I'm saying, though, is that when a character goes and you don't know how long they're going for, it's really hard to sort of engineer a character arc, right? So how do you manage that? How do you look back at, you know, for the continuity and the books that you've done and look forward and still make the character human as opposed to just, you know, now you know going through the motion right yeah that's a good question he has to grow in every book

and i want every book to be a standalone so when somebody picks up my 13th book and that's the first gray man book they absolutely are in it um but for the to reward the people that have written have read 13 in a row you want to see change and growth and all that and one of the big things is early on in the series the gray man was a little socially inept um because of this lifestyle that he'd had to lead. And that was captured really well in the movie. I felt like Gosling captured that so perfectly well that it never got schmaltzy with the little girl.

In the book, there's two girls. You know, they cut one from the... They had to use the cat. They had to buy the castle, so they had to, you know, get rid of one of the girls. It worked out. But I feel like the... When he started out in the first few books,

he was he was pretty socially awkward because that made sense but when you keep writing this guy you have to have him do these clever things he has to be able to do this social engineering every time he talks to somebody and is lying to them or whatever so suddenly he has to be pretty debonair at times or you know like really like um psychologically aware he has to go from stirred to shaken yeah exactly exactly so as the books have gone on i've left that behind right which i've sort of had to which would be a normal, you know, maturity character arc or whatever. It was fun when I did Sierra 6 because you had him going back to age 25 for half of it. And I tried to dial his personality back to a younger guy's personality.

And the other character, Zach Hightower, is 12 years younger. And now he's kind of a funny, like a little bit comicky relief guy. But back then, he's like former dev group, War on Terror, has got a ground branch team, lost some guys. it wouldn't make sense for him to be yucking it up. You know what I mean? Like he's running these guys or whatever. So I had to change who he was character-wise.

And so I like to, I do spend a lot of time thinking about that. And just the relationship between court and the woman that he loves, it's like, I don't want every, I don't want them to be there. You know, people are like, they need to settle down together. It's like, I just want this to happen to court. And I'm like, they're shipping them. I'm like, no, you don't. No, you don't. I'm going to write a book where, you know, they're painting their white picket fence.

and he's mowing the grass and she's bringing a mice tea. It's like, you're not going to read that book, or you won't read the book after that. Right, right. So I'm like, I feel like I've got to keep things pretty helter-skelder for, you know, if these are going to be thrillers, if they're going to turn into like a harlequin romance or whatever, I guess I could get away with that. Right.

So what's next? I mean, you've talked quite a bit about your upcoming Rayman novel. You said there's a sequel to Armored Coming. Yes, it's called Sentinel. And it will be out next July. I just have to write it. No big deal. No pressure, bro.

Yeah. So it's kind of like, you know, it's, I'm in the research phases for it. I have a sort of a plot, but I really want to try to get over to Africa. I've been to Africa, but only to Algeria. I'd love to get to West Africa. I'd love to have some, like, contact in the State Department that could, like, you know, have me visit an embassy or whatever in Ghana or someplace like that. If I can make that hookup, I think it'll make the book a lot better.

and I you know love love love you know getting deep into these stories you know like into the research I've got four months to write the book but I mean I would

I would drop everything yeah yeah as you know you started this second series as you know obviously you built this world and what the agency was and these organizations were in the Greyman

as you've actually gotten a know people and you're meeting people and you learn you know more about you know special operations more about the entire community obviously you're not going to change the world the gray man like it works for it you know right it is and you're kind of stuck with what you've done but better for better or but obviously on the best seller like nobody has a problem with that yeah you know what I mean yeah yeah um you know they they they want it to make sense it doesn't have to exactly mirror what what the reality is um But as you've grown and become more connected with the community, you know, you've started the second series.

Is that sort of a result of like new knowledge that you have? Yes. So I wrote this book Armored, which turned into a series. I didn't know it was going to be a series. I didn't know Grey Man was going to be a series. I was just trying to hold a book in my hand with my name on it. You know, I'm trying to get published. And I wrote Armored because I was doing a lot of training at a school where they trained civilian contractor.

And I just thought about a story about the contractors, not the people they're protecting, but about them that, you know, these guys would be really cool and I could probably pull it off. And it happened. You know, the book came out. And so, you know, it was me learning, meeting these people along the way and just sort of seeing the blue collar nature of the job. And you can put these like blue collar guys that my hero is a guy named Josh Duffy in Armored. and he's lost a limb in combat. And he is basically a mall cop when it starts in Tyson's corner, Virginia. And he was a former security contractor,

and he's asked to go do this job in Mexico, which is like a suicide mission, basically. But he needs the money so bad. He basically can't pay rent. He's got two little kids. His wife was an army captain. And she's a very strong. I wanted to write it to where she's not the typical wife at home with the kids ringing her hands.

She's like, she's a former Army captain. He's a former 11 Bravo. He's calling her and she's giving him leadership advice because they ask him to run this team in Mexico. And she's like, why are they, you've never been a TL? Like, why are you running this team for a company called Armored Saint, which is in the book? It's the worst private, you know, military contractor on planet Earth. Like they take the jobs that nobody else will take. And, you know, it's like, it's like, you get a, you get a free body bag is kind of like one of the perks.

You know, no charge. So he goes to work for Armored Saint and his wife, who's a former like Apache pilot is back home at the beginning. But she's, you know, very involved in the story. And she's involved in the next story. But these are like based on people that I've met, young female military. people you know i've just always been fascinated you know i was on the u s sampson and destroyer and i meet like a 20-year-old african-american female who's you know has a job i'm like holy crap when i was 20 i was working at applebee right and i thought i was like you know i had a lot of

responsibility you know yeah right right so like i have such respect for these people you know and and and i like to sort of portray them and and so this character nicoe duffy um josh's wife is kind of these, you know, types of people. So I, you know, yes, learning people, learning about people and learning about, you know, these things has worked its way into my new series. Do we have questions for Mark? Yeah. I said Kusra Arons, it was Kuster Battles. Did you ever hear about them? So, you know, like when, like, Afghanistan, Iraq first kicked off. There was a huge need for security people and everybody was standing up security companies. And one of the companies that somebody stood up, I don't know what's called Kester Battles. And like, guys, they'd hire guys,

They'd arrive in country and they just sound like rust in AKs. There was more than one company doing that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Even the good ones. Yeah, I've read all those books by like Robert Young Pelton and the other guys about contractors. Even the good companies were doing some crazy stuff because the demand was so.

The demand was so. Yeah. Mark, I have a question. Is there going to be another Graham man movie? Yes, there is going to be another Grey Man movie. They are working on it. I actually know which book it is. No one's told me if I can tell.

all right now right now there's it come on mark it's one you've read um right now there is a writer strike and an actor's strike so i don't know how that's going to affect things probably a lot probably a lot um steve mcphine was one of the writers on the gray man and he's written a lot of the marvel movies um i think he's the lead writer for gray man too and um i don't know when it's going to come out ryan gosling's attached to it to reprise and uh i don't know when it's going to come out but it will out. Did you ever get an opportunity to meet with the cast and talk to them about the book? Only some of the cast. So basically, I wasn't on set at all. It was COVID time. And honestly, it's been a little bit, it hasn't been like a like, hey, Mark, do you think he should, you know,

carry a P320 or a P360? You know, it wasn't that sort of thing at all. You know, they have their armors and they, and they do what they do. But my wife and I got to go to the premiere in L.A. and they you know the lead characters they shuffled them in and out of the room so fast because they had to be in new york the next day in berlin two days after that and london a day after that you know and so you know like i was in the room with gosling and chris evans or whatever i didn't talk to them you know how i talked to is reggae jean page who plays uh denny car michael um nicest guy you could possibly meet you like within three seconds you forget this guy's like a hollywood actor i mean he's british but you know like i promise you if you're sitting here right now you

just be shooting the shit with him and and and and and Billy Bob and yeah so it was it was a cool experience to do it honestly I was there so kind of networky you know like I'm sitting with like producers and right I was talking to the Russo brothers or whatever and it was it was all just kind of like that sort of stuff and it wasn't you know like fanboying about seeing Chris Evans or whatever although it was cool you know and he did a good job this year Louis Vasquez thank you very much what was it like meeting General Klaus Feldman. Oh my gosh.

How does he know that? Yeah, so I'll probably read it somewhere. So when I wrote this book, Red Metal, Rip and I, Rip Rawlings, who was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, still active duty at the time, we went over to Germany. I went to Poland, and then we met in Stuttgart. And then we had this really crazy day where I was just throwing my credit card down and we took a train all the way to the north of Germany to meet General Feldman, who, I was the head of their armored cord.

Cool. And an amazing guy. We spent the entire day talking to him and had a great time. And then Rip and I got in another train and went all the way down to like Zugschpitzel, which is down in the German Alps on the same day. But yeah, General Feldman was really interesting. He took us to the Tank Museum in Munster and talked about everything. And then we sort of talked about our plot.

for this Russian invasion across Poland into Germany. And he's like, yeah, you know, there's no strategic surprise with the Russians. We would see that happening for a long time. And we're like, we're talking about like an operational raid, like a tactical raid involving rail and stuff like that. And he kind of sat there for a minute. He's like, yeah, that would work. And he goes, you know about how Germany has mined all of the overpasses and bridges? to stop a Russian invasion.

And I don't, Rip might have said yes, but I was like, uh-uh. I didn't know about that. And he's like, yeah, well, we took the explosives out about 12 years ago. Yeah, or whatever, yeah, 20 years ago. And he's like, he's like, yeah, something without strategic surprise could poke through Poland and get into Germany in 16 hours.

He didn't, I don't remember what he said, but, you know, like, and so, you know, he was kind of Rip and I looked at each other and was like, wow, we did not expect to, you know, you know, that reaction. Having said that, we wrote a book that came out in 2019 about the Russians having this amazingly adept, crafty military who pull off this incredible thing. And the reality that happened in 2022 is not that. So as an author, I'm like, I'm so glad that book came out. I was just reading over the weekend, tactics and strategy quarterly about Panzer Groupin-2's thrust towards Moscow in 1941.

Those Germans, they know their tanks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, and the tank museum is this incredible place. It was just funny. There was one tank that was very,

had this very short barrel, almost like when, I ended in Civil War. I forgot what they called him. But it's like, it's this massive barrel. And, but the barrel's like this tall

from the ground. And it's a tank. And they have the projectile there. And I wanted to get my picture by it. And the general goes, for some reason Americans love to get their picture right and I'm like

and it just feels I feel like he's going on me I'm not really sure or going off on my country he's just like phallic or anti-fallic or something but it was really funny he's a very interesting guy

that's interesting well and you know everybody thought that of the Russian military at the time yeah you know like it's not it's not people might look back and go

Oh, how could you've written this? Well, because everybody. Yeah, you know, the T-14 Armada was not battle-tested, but we kind of assumed that they'd have three or four and they'd work, which apparently is not the case. You know, but so you can only go with, you know, the information that you have. And then they actually, you know, have a war and muck it up every way to Sunday. Yeah, I mean, it's like when you haven't seen a friend since you were like 18 and you, you know,

you're both like, we're in soccer together, right, or whatever. And then, you know, you're telling, you know, your wife bought him or whatever, and you go back and he's, you know, 300 pounds. Like, well, this isn't how I remember it. I mean, that's kind of what the Russians were. Right? The Russians had something for a while. Yeah, yeah. And we just remembered them differently.

Exactly. Yeah. We know they were spending money on military, but I think it was all for their daches and their, you know, hookers in England or something. Yeah. And then let's see. Ray Gielan, Gwian, thank you very much for Jack and Dave's cosplay activities. Oh, we got a donation for... The Japanese Skirlgirl outfit is on the way.

And we don't have anything on Patreon, so that's it. Cool. Oh, one more question. Mark, how does it, you know, how do you get a book optioned and eventually made it to a movie? Is these market research? What's the... What's the secret ingredient? Secret ingredient, I don't know.

And I say that because I have friends that are authors that are as good as me or better or whatever. And it's not a quality thing. My guess and my agent told me that he didn't think this was true, but I still kind of wonder, the Grey Man got optioned the first time right after that movie Taken came out. And it's not like Taken, but it is like Taken in that you could male action hero. Exactly. And, you know, you wouldn't have to spend $200 million making that film. You know, like they did. Netflix did.

But so, you know, the way to get it optioned is to write a very cinematic thing. And the way you write something cinematically is if you are obsessed with what the reader experiences as you're writing, you're not telling a story, you're not typing out a story. you are creating an experience for another person. And if you, at every point you go, is this the absolutely most impactful time to tell this to the reader? Or would it be cool if the reader thought this and you trick them and then they have that aha moment?

You know, like every single thing you do like that creates a bigger experience for the reader. And cinematic is visually cinematic. You know, you describe things in a visual way and make it make it big and i mean that's that's not going to get you all the way there but like if you do that as a baseline and then create something good and unique you know the joke is do the same but different i mean it's not the joke it's like they always like people want the same but different right right and uh that's that's a hard little nut to crack and i just when i first started

writing i was like i'm not ever going to create anything you know completely unique i'm not like hooray or whatever but i want to execute the uh you know this not formula but you know this deliver a good experience for people and that's often mark i'm uh i'm excited to like i said i'm on book nine i'm excited to keep reading the series i'm glad that you're still writing it thanks man uh and you know i'm stoked to see what you come up with next i appreciate it so much fun to be on it pleasure i was a lot of fun to be here i've watched this show as i said for or listen to this show 50 times that's awesome more and I mean I hope you know we can do it again sometime down the line a few more books out maybe another film project out and uh when we talk again awesome I'm

always available um so for everyone out there Friday we're going to uh be interviewing a former ATF agent who was he did a lot of undercover work with uh outlaw motorcycle gangs so that'll be interesting so that's for that's Friday and then Andy is Tuesday next Tuesday yeah We have a busy summer. We have a lot of stuff packed in. So, yeah, we'll see you guys Friday and then Tuesday.