Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, and good afternoon. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well.
Speaker 1: The way you write, I want to get into your imagination,
because what's going on with with with Black Sun Rising?
Is it feels like something out of the newspaper today.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, yes she was returning out that way. Yes,
that wasn't quite the intention, but yes I wrote that,
like what a year almost two years ago, and the
world has evolved and it's turning closer to what I
was imagining when I sat down to write it. But
it's it's still the work of fiction, but it's it's
based on what I perceived as a real world.
Speaker 1: Well, I would love to see how people are going
to react to Marco Zorn in this, in this particular story,
because I mean you, he deals with a lot of
heavyweight stuff and he's the only answer to a lot
of things.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out well, at least the way I've
structured it. In real life, it's usually not one version,
but yes, in this in a novel form, yes he's
the one, and it turns out he's critical to exposing
the plot and defeating the plotters.
Speaker 1: Do you ever sit back, as the author and wonder
how our imaginations in vision Marco, what does he look like?
Is he a Johnny Depp style or is he a
Brad Pitt kind of guy?
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting you should ask, because you know, I
never described him. I never give his age, I never
give his appearance. I wanted the reader to fill that in.
He's in his early forties, he's good looking, he's very
in very good physical shape, although he probably drinks too
many martinis and too many salted almonds in the evening.
He lives a slightly dissipated life. But his actual appearance.
You know, people ask frequently ask if if it was
ever made into a movie or television series, what actor
would I select. You know, I'm having a very hard
time doing designing on that, and I have to do
it further thought. But he's going to be he's uh.
He he likes to dress well, he gets his clothes
from a tailor. He uh, He's immaculate in his appearance.
And but beyond that, i'd have to start writing down
the name is a prominent actress or off hand, I
can't give you a smart answer.
Speaker 1: But you know what, what's really interesting about this is
the fact that it's almost like you're saying, you believe
in the theater of the mind, what we see inside
our imaginations is just as much beautiful, you know, when
it comes to moving pictures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yes, I believe that very strongly. I think
all great I'm not putting myself in that class, you understand,
but great novels and stories, much of the creativity comes
from the reader. He or she puts builds an image
of the character as the setting the not just the
main character, but all of them. And that's a kind
of a formal creativity on the part of the reader
or that I think is very important, and I don't
want to I don't want to destroy that by giving
too much information.
Speaker 1: The book we're talking about is Black Sun Rising. I mean,
this looks and sounds like we said earlier. It looks
sounds like today. I mean, I mean, white Nazis in
the White House. I mean, it's like, oh God, And
because I mean you've seen what we've gone through in
the past couple of months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I never thought it would happen this way.
You know, when I wrote it, I thought this is
speculative fiction. We've seen this happen in other countries. A
number of countries. In recent months, the right wing crypto
fascist movements have arisen in Italy and in France, both
led incidentally by women, which is an interesting subtopic. But
we're seeing it in Hungary and in its own special
nationalist forum, in Russia and in China. It happened once
in the United States in the nineteen fifties, as you may, yeah, no,
I never thought it would happen again. I thought all
that kind of fascist thinking and disappeared. Now I happen
to believe very strongly in the common sense of the
American people and the good will and basic decency of
the American people, And I really don't think it's going
to turn into a Nazi regime. But it's what I
see around is scary, and I think I wanted to
put down a mark or a warning and so to
speak about what could go wrong.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that, if in
your own creative way, you're kind of making people aware
of what could be, well.
Speaker 2: That's what I was trying to do. Things are going on.
There's a deterioration and civic discourse, public discorse, a lot
of it of course coming from the media or for
mass media, where people are saying things and advocating things
which five years ago, ten years ago would have been
unheard of. I don't know why this is happening. I
think you need a psychopathic or psycho therapist to try
to explain it, and I don't actually think they would
know the answer we have. What is going on is
a sudden or not to sudden, perhaps, but an appeal
to the strong man, and a strong man who's going
to be tough and unrel lending in his or her leadership.
People want leadership, and they'll and anything that interferes with
their perceived dream of the strong leader is anathema. It
is being rejected, and I think that's very scary because
you all subtle, Jay, all nuanced in public debate. It's
just being washed away and it's either my way or
no way, and I don't like to see that.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Otho Eskins coming
up next. Let's get back to that conversation with Otho Eskins.
One of the things that you cover in your books
so well is the fact that I love the way
that you handle conflict, and the conflict for Marco this
time around is that his partner has been murdered, and
that leads him straight into Black Sun. And that to
me is like, Okay, there's the conflict. Now let's go
get the story, and you lead us along the entire way.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for saying that. I think Marco Zarn
has a number of conflicts. He said that conflict. Then
when he infiltrates the Nazi training gap, he finds himself
in a terrible dilemma. He's training young men who or
just raw recruits UH into into a fighting force who
he wants they will. The leadership wants to turn them
into a kind of a Gestapo armed forces, a militia,
and uh Zorn is a pall by this and totally
rejects the objective. On the other hand, he has military background.
When he's as a he's assuming the position of an
officer or UH and what he so when he deals
with these men, he finds that he wants them to
do two things. He wants them to fail because he
doesn't want UH these guys to go out there and
and attack the US government, attacked the army or FBI.
On the other hand, he wants he wants it takes
kind of odd pride and even trying to get them
to learn how to handle weapons, and he doesn't want so.
At one point, as you may recall, he finds himself
unwilling to abandon his man. He could leave them and escape,
and he can't do it because he has a very
strong moral and ethical convictions, and one of them is
you don't abandon the people who are working for you.
The other conflict, of course, is he gets emotionally involved
with a woman otherwise known as the Bride of the Apocalypse,
who when he despises and is totally obsessed with. So
he's got a lot of conflicts.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I
wish you could see my notes, and I wanted to
know that where were you when the identity of the
bride came into being? Because I mean, were you at
a mall? Were you at were you visiting someplace? Because
thoughts like this don't just happen. You had to have
seen something, smelled something, something just had to happen.
Speaker 2: Well, I think I knew from the beginning. She appears
very early on in the second chapter, I think, without identification.
Then she shows up again when she visits the woman
who makes trussword puzzles, and then of course she varies
in directly with Marco Zorn at the training camp, I think,
and then of course they have interconnection after that. I
think I knew in concept that what her role is
she plays. We don't know much about her, we don't
know how old she is, we don't know her real name,
and we don't know what she does in this neo
Nazi movement. But in my mind she plays in a
crucial key role in in that and she carries out
including well, I don't want to give away too much,
but I mean she is a killer and is a
cold blooded killer and a very dangerous person. I think
I knew in general terms what she was and but
obviously there's a lot of but she's mostly a mystery,
including a mystery to me as a writer, Now, what.
Speaker 1: Have you learned from each of these characters? I mean,
putting the words on the page is one thing, but
you had to have learned something from Marco as well
as the bride.
Speaker 2: Well that's interesting, you could learn it that way. Yeah, well,
I like to when you want to write these characters.
I have a general notion at the beginning of her
in the very first book, the reflecting pool about about him.
A kind of person he is, He's uh, he cuts
the corners is frequently because illegal or semi illegal things.
On the other hand, he has a very strong moral
core and he doesn't violate that. But as I've written
in the books, his character has evolved. As you know,
he doesn't like to use guns, and that's a mystery.
At the beginning, you don't know why. And at the
beginning I wasn't sure why. I hit it at it
in the very first novel, but I elaborated a bit
as going one goes on, and in Black Sun Rising,
I think I explained it, partially explained what it is
that he's that he can't bring himself to do and why.
But it's a I tried to keep Marco Zorn a
mystery to the reader, in which grad means also a
bit of a mystery to me.
Speaker 1: You could have easily put this story inside New York City,
even Miami, but you chose Washington, d C. What was
What's the reason is it? Because because when I think
of the underworld, I don't think of DC.
Speaker 2: No nobody does. I've chosen for a very simple reason,
which it's the city. I know this I've lived and
grew up here. I've lived in other cities both well
in Europe the Middle East, and I know, I know
the city, and I wanted to use the city as
almost as a character in the series. And I elaborate
that a bit in Black Sunrising, because I created another city,
another except Guranians city. Now all cities have underground and
that's where all the electronics and power and gas and communications,
not to mention sewage and water and is transported, is delivered.
I take that concept and elaborate it to create an underworld,
which I which in my imaginations, goes back to the
early days of Washington, to lease to the period of
the Civil War when they were building tunnels and areas
where they could be activities could be carried on. I
probably carry my description of Washington underworld beyond what it
actually looks like. There are things going on down there
which I skip over. There are subways that move through
via underground. It's just below the surface. And I thought
I'd like to look at that. I'd like to look
at Washington and see cities and when a good city,
a beautiful city, and a city of crime and corrupt you.
And now I sort double down on that by making
it quadruple city above the ground and below the ground.
That was the concept that I was working with in
writing Block Sudden Rising.
Speaker 1: Wow, well, you definitely did it well. You did it well.
Where can people go to find out more about all
of your books and give you some love?
Speaker 2: Well, you can go well, obviously you can order it
on Amazon or I hope at your local bookstore. You
can learn a little bit more about me if you
go to my homepage olthoeskn dot com. And uh, I
think I talk about myself a bit and about my
writing and my experiences a little bit in where I
as a foreign service officer for twenty some years. So
it's all laid out. It's brief. I keep something private,
but it's there.
Speaker 1: Wow. Please come back to the show anytime in the future.
Today's proof that you know the door is always going
to be open for you. Sir.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much. I always enjoy our conversation.
It's fun.
Speaker 1: Will you'd be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay,