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dot Net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello, mister Mark, how are
you doing now? Are you fantastic? Always looking forward to
sharing a conversation with you because you totally get it. Dude,
Thank you man for you to be putting this book together.
I mean, I mean, the whole world right now has
got to be a blizzard white canvas for you because
there's got to be story ideas just floating through that
imagination of yours left and right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there's a lot going on in the world,
that's for sure, and I really like to pull from
you know, what's happening. But you know, also things have
to make sense, and sometimes the world feels like it
does it makes sense.
Speaker 3: So it's a hard time to pull from the world,
isn't it.
Speaker 1: But isn't that the art of thrill when it comes
to writing, because you're able to take things that are
happening in the real world, and in all honesty, it's
almost like you become our informer, not not necessarily a newspaper,
but are an informer to pay attention and to be
aware of Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, my first job is to entertain, and
I never lose sight of that. But at the same time,
when I'm doing research on whatever contemporary issue.
Speaker 3: That I want to write about or whatever I.
Speaker 2: Want to put my hero in the middle of, you know,
I like to not simplify it, but at least get
it in a palatable, you know, bite sized piece here
and there to where people can understand it. And you know,
one of my favorite things is to learn something and
just be fascinated with it and just want to scream
it from the mountaintops. And I go, Okay, it's going
to be a year before this book comes out, but
eventually people will get to hear, you know, my take
on this or what little tidbit of information I found out.
Speaker 1: All right, So from one author to another author, what
do you do with that time? Because one of those
things that happens is is that you and I sacrifice
so much time in putting words in motion, But then
when people say, what's your favorite song? Oh, well, I
was writing a book at that time. I mean, is
that how you base your life too? Is that on
the books that you write that sets up the tone?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Pretty much? I mean.
Speaker 2: And I have sort of a product cycle for each book,
and they're you know, here I am in February when
the last book comes out, and so it's kind of
a happy time because that book is done, but I'm
already stressing about next year's book. And in the middle
of the summer is when I'm sitting alone in the
dark day and night, pulling my hair out, going this
is a mess. And usually by the end of the summer,
I'm into my second edit and I'm like.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I've I've found the book in this big mess.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like I've I've gotten rid of the
stuff that doesn't belong and now it's starting to look
like a book.
Speaker 3: So I kind of go through the same thing every year,
and all my friends and family.
Speaker 2: Hear the same lamentations from me in the summertime when
I say it's not working and.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, it's every year field the same Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's And the thing about it is, though
it becomes eye to eye contact, it's not necessarily always words.
It's just that somebody around you that knows you will
you just give them the look. They know exactly where
you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 2: And you know, people always tell me like, you know,
you said this last year, and which is true, but.
Speaker 3: That doesn't that doesn't make that doesn't make me less,
doesn't you know?
Speaker 2: And I'm always like, yeah, but I'm always pushing the
envelope and this is the year where it's tough.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I was doing a book signing yesterday and somebody said,
you're a very humble author. You talk a lot about
the struggles of writing. And I was like, well, that
doesn't sound like it was a very interesting conversation I
just had with these people.
Speaker 3: They're like, no, we enjoyed it. I'm like, right, that's good.
It sounds like I was talking to a therapist or something.
Speaker 2: But no, it's it's it's a tough slog and then
when you finally have it the way you want it,
it's a huge elite and then you start over and.
Speaker 3: I'm not complaining.
Speaker 2: I wanted, you know, I tried for twenty years to
be an author before I got published, so I'm happy
to be here.
Speaker 1: So then when you do the research, which you do
and listeners that are just discovering, you need to know
that you do the research. Do you know what you're
looking for in Ireland? Or are you going over there
to locate your meuse?
Speaker 2: You know, it's both. All those things have happened. I
have gone on research trips for almost every one of
my books, at least one, and I did go to
Northern Ireland for this book. But when I went to
Northern Ireland, I already had completed a draft of the book,
so I sort of knew what I was looking for.
I had written entire scenes about these towns that I
hadn't visited, in these roads and churches and things, and
then I went there and really kind of solidified things.
Speaker 3: There's been other times I went to.
Speaker 2: Mexico for a book very early in the writing process,
and I literally was just wandering downstreets trying to get ideas,
and I did.
Speaker 3: So It's always like, when you can fit your research
trips into.
Speaker 2: Your schedule, you make the best out of it and like,
I just got that from the Austrian Alps for next
year's book.
Speaker 3: I got back like two weeks.
Speaker 2: Ago, and I had an idea and I was like,
I have to get over there while it's still you know,
alpine weather and not in August like I usually, you know,
I just usually go in the wrong season.
Speaker 3: But I got over there in the right season. It
was super helpful.
Speaker 2: So it's a huge part of my writing is to
get away and get those research trips in and it
really lets you locked into the story.
Speaker 1: Are you doing verbal you know, a note taking, because
I mean, I know how I am when it comes
to my handwriting. There's many times I'm writing so quickly
I can't read it later on. I might as well
call myself a doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I have an app on my phone and I'll
be talking into my phone and it gets it about
it gets it about seventy five percent right, and I
can usually figure it out and I take it tons
of pictures and videos, and my toblicist is asked for
the pictures and videos because they want to put something
together for you know, when the book comes out and
I'm not over there trying to create a publicity material.
You know, I'm literally photographing a bathroom or a payphone
or you know, a mailbox and things like that, and
they're always, I think they're always disappointed when they see.
Speaker 3: But it's it's it's for my own use to.
Speaker 2: Get to get home and to put that story together,
put those locations together.
Speaker 1: But that's so important because I know that in one
of my books, I had the wrong paint on the
for the color of the walls, and they called me
out on it. They said, that's not it, that's not
exactly how that really looked. And to say, it's like, man,
I should have taken a picture because because you know,
I took a guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you will get called out on anything that's not right.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, I have realized
that my job is to you know, tell stories, and
it's not to render things exactly the way they are.
I did one of my gray Man books was there
was a real location, but there wasn't a balcony. The
hotel didn't have a balcony, and I just put a
balcony there because I needed a balcony for the scene.
Speaker 3: And you know, so I do a lot of that,
and you just wait.
Speaker 2: You'll get an email from somebody who's like, you know,
those shoes aren't don't come in that size or.
Speaker 3: Whatever specific specific thing, and you go, Okay.
Speaker 2: That's you know, that's what they're locked into. And I
was locked into trying to make the one hundred and
fifty thousand words credible. Not necessarily one hundred percent I
care it, but you do learn a lot when you
go to these locations and you kind of get an
idea of the atmospheric's kind of these intangible things.
Speaker 3: It really does. It really helps me a lot.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you did this time around
that really caught my attention was the introduction or this
is the first time that I've taken note of it
ghost Town. And the reason why I bring that up
is because we have a lot of soldiers that come
cruising through Charlotte and you'll sit there there are you
still serving?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: What are you doing these days?
Speaker 3: Hmm?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the birds. I'm going, whoa, you
just switched on me, and now you make me wonder
if people aren't working more with ghost Town and things
like that. And I'm not supposed to know about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in this book.
Speaker 2: You're right, this is the first time that this has
come into play.
Speaker 3: This is my fifteenth grade man book.
Speaker 2: But this is the first time the Court's really been
working with an official organization.
Speaker 3: So he's working with a very.
Speaker 2: Small spy shop called ghost Town that is private, but
they are taking orders from the head of Operations for
the CIA in this book. And so the very very
tiny little office is run out of an old pedietary
office in Virginia. And yeah, it was fun. It's fun
to have Court with the little cadre of people that
he can trust. It's taken him fifteen books to find
a half a dozen people he can sort of trust
enough to do something like this. But it was a
cool thing to cook up. And you know, I know
a lot of people who are former this and former that,
so you know, you can draw inferences and put together something,
you know, in a fictional basis.
Speaker 1: So what is that like for Court? Though psychologically in
the way of being in that small room in Virginia,
but yet what they're doing is global. It's like there
are no walls, there are no borders. They've got to
be able to think way out of the box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wanted to create that kind of bizarre
juxtapositioning that they're in this drab office park, because I
do that myself. I'll be walking around DC or in
the towns around d C and uh, and I'll see
some you know, boring building and I'll try and you know,
wonder what might be there and uh. And of course
it's all fiction in your head. And for Court, who
is somebody who has been betrayed many times. He's a
former CIA officer, but he's you know, worked in the
private sector a lot. And I will I'll tell your listeners,
this is a standalone novel. You don't have to have
read the first fourteen. You can enjoy you can enjoy
this book. But it's it's very much a case of
him wanting to get back to the country and the US.
In this book, there is kind of an insider threat
inside the government, that is, you know, threatening some counterintelligence professionals.
Speaker 3: And so ghost Town.
Speaker 2: Is sort of the only group that the head of
the CIA knows has not really been infiltrated because they're
brand new. They've just been stood up and this is
sort of their first operation. So ghost Town gets this
really outsized responsibility to find these five assassins who come
into America to kill these counterintelligence professionals, and yeah, it
was it was a fun story to work on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but how do you gain the confidence? Because if
you if you, if you're working with ghost Town and
your brand new how because I would be that that
that commander or that leader and I'd be going hmmm, yeah, yeah,
what you got going on there again? Because I mean
it's like how because that to me is years of
trust for something like ghost Town. How did you get
them into it and get them to be in the
front line like that?
Speaker 3: Well, so they're run by Matthew Hanley, who is in
my book.
Speaker 2: He's the former deputy director of Operations for the CIA,
and he was kind of banished to Papaula, New Guinea
and some other far flung locations for things that happened
in earlier books. And so he's trusted by the by
the president deputy director of the CIA, and Handley trusts
Court the gray Man and Zach high Tower, who's a
kind of a gray Man in sidekick who's been in
and out of several of the books. And there's another
character named Chris Travers who is also former CIA and
these guys are are.
Speaker 3: Trusted by.
Speaker 2: Hanley, and Handley's trusted by the CIA, but Hanley doesn't
necessarily trust the CIA because there's been you know, this
infiltration has gotten so big and so scary. I kind
of wanted to make this book feel a little bit
like those nineteen seventies era political Three Days of the
Condor or the Parallax View, those type of movies where
you really feel almost paranoid about our own government. And
I just think this is an interesting time in our
lives where we can kind of explore that in fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because then when you know, when you think of
that time period, to me, the world hasn't been colorized yet.
It's still kind of a dingy color, but it's not bright.
So when you write, do you think of those old
shows and those old ideas or even photographs where it's
like it's not bright, but I know what's going on
in this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. It's funny. I don't really fill
in faces of characters. People don't used.
Speaker 2: To always ask ask me what the Great Man looked
like and everything, and and I've described him in the book,
but like when I'm writing scenes, I don't fill in
his face or Zoia who's a Russian asset in the books,
who partners with him.
Speaker 3: I don't really see their faces so much. I mean,
I see all the.
Speaker 2: Action, and I see all the movement, and I see
the settings, and you know, more than anything, I'm thinking
about the kind of the emotions and the energy that
I want to get out of the reader in each
page or scene or paragraph, and and that's I'm trying
to think of it almost like music. You know, this
is a this is an ebb, and this is the flow,
and this is the high point, and this is a
little more you know.
Speaker 3: Exploratory and quiet.
Speaker 2: So it's it's, it's that's kind of what I see
in my head. Other than I don't see it like
really like a movie as much.
Speaker 1: Are you listening to music while you're doing that, because
I have to if I'm looking for kind of a
flow and you okay, you know it's like cash flow.
What is the word flow? I got to have some
sort of head music on.
Speaker 3: I do not listen to music.
Speaker 2: I find it distracting, like in a positive way, Like
I'm distracting in a positive way, Like I like to
listen to music.
Speaker 3: So I listen to the sound of rain when I'm
the whole time, the whole time I write, and that
that blocks out.
Speaker 2: And I like to write in coffee shops and public places,
hotel lobbies, things like that as much as I can,
and but I tune out the people around me, and
I tune out the sounds, and you know, if I'm
doing it right, sometimes it sometimes I realize I can't
tune out the other things, and that's when I know
I'm not in the right head space to be writing.
Speaker 1: You know that the WDWE is going to figure out
a way to put this this battle between Court and
Campbell inside their ring. They're gonna somehow, some way, it's
that the storyline is going to end up in that ring.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not getting cut of that. I don't know. Yeah,
it's a it's it's two characters.
Speaker 2: So Campbell Coyle, who is a villain in the stories,
is Northern Iris, retired assassin who has a very personal
reason for going after the Gray Man.
Speaker 3: And I wanted it to be two characters who don't
like each.
Speaker 2: Other but realize that they have a lot in common,
and it's almost sort of an inevitable showdown between the
two of them. But I wanted there to be a
lot of twists and turns in it, so it doesn't
really go the way the reader.
Speaker 3: Might expect it to go for like a typical action book.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of an interesting It was a very
nuanced story for me to write, which was fun.
Speaker 1: Please do not Move. There's more with Mark Graney coming
up next, the any of his brand new book, The Hardline.
We are back with author and the head of the
gray Man series, mister Mark Grannie. You were talking about
the nineteen seventies for a storyline, and of course I
know that that Court Gentry's family is from the Norfolk area.
I know about that traffic in Norfolk, but what was
it like in the nineteen seventies. I mean, did they
have that army traffic or that that navy traffic at
two o'clock in the afternoon, because how does anybody get
around that city?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did not research that time period, but yes,
Court in my backstory for him, and when I wrote
a lot of backstory in those first few books, I
didn't know this was going to be a fifteen book series.
Speaker 3: So it's fun.
Speaker 2: It's fun slash, you know, frightening to go back and
go like what did I say, and what did I
mean by that? And I'm doing that because this does
involve a lot of history in the story.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Court worked for the.
Speaker 2: Special Activities Division, which is like a group of CIA paramilitaries,
which is a real group. And I say that he
was based in Norfolk or Virginia Beach when he was living.
Speaker 3: There previously with the CIA.
Speaker 2: So I had written some scenes from back then, but
that would be like ten or fifteen years ago, not
as far back as the seventies. But I did actually
get to go on a research trip up to Virginia
Beach in Norfolk and McLain in DC for a couple
of weeks. So it's great to do the research.
Speaker 1: So how is it that Court is able to push
through everything? I mean, that's the one thing that I
really love about Court is that he totally believes and
he wears it well. Perseverance. Was that taught to him
in the early stages of building or how is it
that he has become that person no matter what, he's
going to move through that mountain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is super relentless.
Speaker 2: His backstory is that he was basically raised in the
shoot house of his father's firearms school in Florida, and
so when he was sixteen years old, he was training
like high level slot teams and law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And that's actually realistic.
Speaker 2: I took a long range sniper class a few years
ago in Virginia, and one of my instructures was sixteen
years old, and he was phenomenal and he was the
son of the guy that owned the place, just as
I had created Court, you know, ten years before that.
But then he's scooped up into the CIA when he's
only nineteen years old, and he has put through a
two year program to learn how to be an autonomous
singleton asset, so just literally dropped in anywhere, live amongst
the enemy and do operations. So he's trained very very
hard to be incredibly relentless, never say die. He also,
as compared to other you know, movies and books you
read about this, these types of stories, my character does
take a lot of battle damage, and he deals with
the battle damage. He is seeking out medical care or
giving himself medical care. It's like I don't shy away
from the physical and mental tolls that just would kind
of you know, play.
Speaker 3: On a human body and a human brain. And that's
another interesting, you know, fun part for me as a writer.
Speaker 1: What about you though, as that writer, because you've got
to go through it before court does, because it's going
through that nogative yours.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I always say that I can talk about it,
you know, and I do a lot of training with
firearms and scuba diving and you know, the fun in
the back of a fighter jet and all these sort
of things, and I'm like, none of this is for
me to try to pretend like I'm this type of
a character.
Speaker 3: I'm really not.
Speaker 2: I am somebody that just wants to make it as
real as I can and on the age. I'm not
a former Navy seal or anything like that. I'm a
writer and so that's why I'll take you know, one
hundred firearms classes to try and get details writer or whatever,
battlefield medicine and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So I like to learn about it. I like to
talk about it, and you know, at the end of
the day, I like to go home to a warm.
Speaker 2: Bed and watch TV with my wife, you know, cook
a steak.
Speaker 3: So I'm not living his life, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: There is a huge movement right now to create graphic novels.
Would you ever grow in that direction? With just one story.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I mean, I've thought about short stories.
Graphic novels are big right now. It almost came to
pass when the gray Man film came out a few
years ago, that we were going to do a graphic
novel version of that, and it just it just never
actually came through. It was just more of a time thing.
I love graphic novels, I really do. I sort of
didn't get it until somebody I know some and then
I really got into it.
Speaker 3: So I get it.
Speaker 2: And also it's a great way for a writer to
generate intellectual property that they can.
Speaker 3: Sell dramatic rights to or whatever.
Speaker 2: So the business of graphic novels is legit for people
in the writing world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what would that do to the perfectionist side
inside of you? Because that would mean even fewer words,
because I can't imagine what you're doing with the hard
line and how much kind of editing you had to
go through with just this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I cut more words out of this book than anything
I've ever written.
Speaker 3: And well, Eddie Grayman.
Speaker 2: Book, and it's really hard for me. It's I don't
ever want to be uneditable. I'm still editable, but you know,
my editor comes back and he's like, you know, I
feel like you've stressed this point enough or whatever, and
I'm going like, okay, I can make this happen. And
I always tell him. I'm like, I'm going to save
fifteen thousand words and I'll come back and I'm like,
I've shaved six and that almost killed me. Please let me, please,
let's stuck the madness. Yeah, it's I don't even know
if it's perfection. It's just like I really like to
see other viewpoints in a scene, and I like to
build stories. And I think it's the Tom Plancy effect
writing books with Tom Plancy before he died, to where
I just started getting a little bit bigger and deeper
and going after the story from more angles, and I
like to write.
Speaker 3: I like to read.
Speaker 2: Books like that, so it's no surprise I like to
write them as well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Tom Clancy, do you find yourself being the
medicine man that walks through the village that's looking for
the next writer, because I mean I'm seeing a lot
of bands do that with their music, is that they're
looking for the next level of entertainer. And it's like,
I mean, you've already become such a major part of
our lifestyle with a gray Man series, and I always
wonder what is Mark up to behind the scenes that
we don't know about.
Speaker 2: Well, I have friends who are writers who are in
earlier stages of their career, and I do what I
can to foster them, not really not necessarily work work
with them specifically, but I mean, I've I've made a
lot of introductions to my editor and agents and things
like that of people that I like and believe in.
And so you know that when I left the Tom
Clancy series several years ago and my editor.
Speaker 3: Who you know, was editing the Clancy books, He's like, yeah,
I have any ideas for you know, who should come next?
And I was like, you should. You should look into
Mark Cameron.
Speaker 2: He's been putting out books for a long time, and
they don't they don't on the surface, they don't look
like Tom Clancy novels.
Speaker 3: But I'm reading his new one and he's got.
Speaker 2: All that, you know, he has all the abilities and
and and then Mark Cameron started doing them and uh,
and so it's.
Speaker 3: Funny, you know, It's it's.
Speaker 2: Like you feel like, Wow, I've never really felt like
a player in this business until I suggested somebody and
they listened.
Speaker 3: They listen to what I said.
Speaker 2: It's one thing to sit there by yourself and write
a book. It's something else to like see somebody else
and go like, this guy would be right for this role.
Speaker 1: Wow, Now you can say no comment on this one
and move on. And and I just want to know,
is there ever going to be a time when court
gentry is hired to take care of the people here?
In other words, there's a big story here because we
know what's happening in this nation right now. My god,
it's got to be fertile soil for you right now.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: But I go back to something Tom Clancy used to
always say. He said, the difference between fiction and nonfiction
is that fiction has to make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's so much there's so much going on
in the world right now that like when I.
Speaker 2: Just say it out loud to myself, you know, just
not to get political on one side or the other,
but just you know, like something that happens in the
news and you say that out loud and you go like, wow.
If I put that in a book, my editor would
be like, Okay, You've got you have some misspellings here
because none of this makes sense.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, you know.
Speaker 2: Intelligence heads being involved in an election dispute in the
United States in Georgia for example. You know, it's like,
it makes no sense that that would ever be the case,
but that's what's going on right now. And I could
I like to, you know, be very knowledgeable by what's
going on in the world, but I've been completely surprised
by things. So my stories are not so close to
what's happening day to day. But this book does involve,
you know, people withinside the United States government, with some
you know, different designs and just uh ways that they're
seeking power.
Speaker 3: That are not right.
Speaker 2: And I think I think it plays into the paranoid
of our times, to be honest.
Speaker 1: In a very weird way. Do you think that when
when people check out your books on audible, that that's
who we think Court Gentry is. We hear that voice
and now it's like, okay, I got it, I got
the voice. Now, yeah, this is him. This is what
he sounds like.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what other people think, but
I feel exactly that way because I never read my
books after I've written them. But I always listened to
Jay Snyder the narrating because he's done a great job.
Jays done such a good job. So when the book
comes out, I always, you know, listen to at least
a huge part of it, surprisingly large for somebody to
just spend a whole year on, you know, with the
same the same material, because I'm fascinated how they do,
how he how well he does it. And so I,
you know, I'll be writing a scene and I definitely
hear Jay Snyder's voice in courts dialogue.
Speaker 3: Which is kind of fun, and in Zach's dialogue and
it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about everything
that you're doing, Mark, especially keeping up to date with
where you're growing.
Speaker 2: To well, I'm on all social media more than I
want to admit, But I also have a web page.
Speaker 3: It's my name Mark Grainy g R E A and E.
Speaker 2: E Y Books dot com and I keep everything up
to date there with appearances and books coming out, and
you know, any any other thing that's happening, you can
find it on my website.
Speaker 1: Ah, should we book next year's interview already?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: We should just put it down in the book to
say all right, this is when we're gonna meet again.
Speaker 2: I will have something out next year, hopefully it'll be good,
and I'm working on it now.
Speaker 1: Well, come on back, man. The door is always going
to be open for you, dude.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Always great talking to you.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant? Okay, sir?
Speaker 3: You see man,