Speaker 1: Hey, how are you doing today? This is zero Collins Era.
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you again.
Speaker 1: How are you fantastic? Looking forward to sharing a conversation
with you. Because you have got this way of writing
in this modern age, that is, I mean, the chapters
are shortened to the point. The font in your books
is perfect, the covers are just classic. I mean, there's
so much that goes into the presentation of your stories.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I appreciate the
full view.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've that I've learned through
you is the fact that you like to take us
into the story by making sure that you give it
to us as the experience and not just a storyline. Hey,
by the way, did you hear this? No, you give
us an experience. How is it that you're able to
invest in that?
Speaker 2: Uh? I think that's a I think that's a tool
of the trade where you want to you know x
what we call exposition explaining things to readers and as
a you know, a narrator, it's sort of the enemy,
you know. I always want everything to unfold through the
through the character eyes and let the reader experience it,
experience things through them.
Speaker 1: So now is that the reason why my cutoff time
for reading is eleven thirty PM. But I'm still reading
your book at twelve fifteen there, mister mister.
Speaker 2: Apparently, and I'm happy to hear it.
Speaker 1: Well, you can't put it down. And I swear to god,
it's the length of the chapters. I go, oh, I
got one more in me. I got one more in me.
Speaker 2: That's good thing, know, you know, it's funny. I like
to listen to reader feedback, and that is one of
the things that people respond to, the chapters being short
and cinematic and trying to shift perspective so that you know,
you don't just stay with the same thing over and over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The book we're talking about is Tom Clancy's Terminal Velocity.
I was one of those doubters when Jack Ryan Junior
first appeared on the scene. I thought, oh boy, where
are we going? Where are we going? Oh my god, dude,
he's got his own world, He's his own man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's been one of the fun parts of the
series and something that I discussed with the editor, which
is that we want to make him a whole person,
you know, and mature him and give him mature adult relationships.
And struggles and things that a guy who's now in
and you know, kind of in his mid thirties would
would have.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that you say that make him a whole person,
because that's one of the things I wanted to talk about.
I said that in his paragraphs, you make Jack feel
like he's stepping through those pages and he's sitting right
there in front of us.
Speaker 2: Well, that is certainly the intent. And I think that
if you can make characters extraordinarily relatable to people, you know,
to where you think, oh, yeah, I have felt that
way before, or I too would struggle with that. You
know that to me, that's always been the magic of fiction.
Speaker 1: Without giving away the book, what happens is there's a
string of murders in the US and they most people
would probably say, ah, they're unrelatable. Jack Ryan sees something
else to me that I call that listening beyond sound.
He knows there's something beyond this moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's that's something else that we we
always want our characters. We want you know, you want
them to be do you want to root for them
and think, Okay, but I know he's a smart guy.
Can he put this together? And how might he assimilate
these these various clues, And so that's that's definitely something
we like to do with our dramatic heroes.
Speaker 1: So the way that you write, is it a brain game?
I mean you're putting puzzles together here.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is absolutely a brain game. And so I
I think it's it's you know, you start with what
what what's going on in the world geopolitically, how might
my set of heroes be related to that? And then
you know, let's let's give them something tough to to
figure out and piece together, and the readers along for
the ride.
Speaker 1: Well, I have you know that I'll be watching the
news to find out Cashmeir appears in those headlines again,
because you you are, you're very much up to date
with with the balance of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was kind of shocking. Actually, I
had I had finished this book and turned it in
and about I don't know what it was, three or
four months ago, you know, India, India, Pakistan really boiled
over and it was over a terrorist incident in uh
In in Pakistan or sorry, in Kashmir. It was almost
exactly it was almost exactly the plot of the book
on a geopolitical sense, and I was like, whoa, that's
that's a little that's a little creepy.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like a clairvoyant sometimes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sadly. Yeah. Because also my last, my last Tom
Clancy Jack Ryan Junior book was called Line of Demarcation.
It wasn't very long ago, came out in May and
it was about you know, a naval a naval engagement
in off the coast of Venezuela and lo and behold
that happened yesterday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like you've lived this life before.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, I'm living it vicariously. Let's let's let's put
it that way.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with M. P. Woodward
coming up next. The name of his book, Tom Clancy's
Terminal Velocity. We're back with MP wood war So then,
how are you able to incorporate your personal experiences into
the writing, because I mean you come from the enable
naval intelligence. I mean it's like it's one of those
things where it's like it's like you experienced it, now
I'm going to put it into words so that the
everyday average person can understand it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that, and that's that's probably something that comes
with perspective and age. I was a naval intelligence officer
for about a decade, and I think that one of
the things you get to see in that role as
you as you progress are the way that the different
intelligence agencies work together and the way that they have
different points of view, and the fact that there's individuals,
you know, behind these behind these these these big you know,
complicated sounding acronym and places and so so understanding that
and and and giving those people uh uh, you know,
actual characters as a lot is a lot of.
Speaker 1: Fun as that author. How are you protecting yourself from
AI technology? Because that darn jet GPT thing is a mess.
Speaker 2: There's a lot. I think that that's a you know,
there's a there's a lot that's that's got to happen
out there with with AI. In terms of protecting people's
intellectual intellectual property, I'm hopeful that the government will will
sort of step into that and put some some guardrails
on that, because you know, it's just not okay to take,
you know, a John Grisham book and use all his
characters and create another one. So I imagine we will
see some action on that front.
Speaker 1: Well, you've always come across to me as somebody who
if you had to get into an Encyclopedia Britannica, you
would do it. You would go to the library and
get one of those things and you'd go home and
you would study that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do a lot of research on on my
on my own, and uh it's honestly it is. So
it has gotten so much easier to to just find out,
you know, just about any fact, including by using by
using AI. And so there are the tools at an
author's disposal today are the best by far than they've
ever been.
Speaker 1: Because that man, dude, when I when I discovered the thesaurus,
I thought, this is the greatest thing ever. This is
help me with my words?
Speaker 2: Yes, that that that definitely helps. And being able to
write clicks, you know, like, oh my god, how many
you know, one of the challenges is dialogue tags. How
many times can you use the word said right? And
so it's like, well there's ass and then there's exclaimed
and you know, right, seized and groaned, and you go
on and on and on. So eventually you sort of
develop your own lexicon.
Speaker 1: Do you create your own grammar rules? And the reason
why I bring that up is because Mark Twain put
in his in his autobiography, he says, you need to
write in your own accent. And so when I my
last book, man it, oh the grammar just sucks so badly.
But it was the way that I was sharing the
story that made it look right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have been I have what I call the compendium,
which is, you know, things that I that I have
that I have picked up experience every time I write
a book, and like, okay, these here are some new
synonyms for things like said like like I just discussed,
here are some some different ways to put similes, et cetera.
And you know, I think that one of the major
grammar rules is writing in an active voice, not a
passive voice. But definitely you have to it has to be.
It has to be your your voice and your your style.
Speaker 1: Throughout a Jack Ryan Junior novel. Is it a formatic
or is it a formula? Because because there's I mean,
because you're onto something here that is so attractive and
then we keep coming back to it. It's it's almost like
we're addicted to it.
Speaker 2: Is it? Is it formatic or formula? Well, what does
formatic mean? Let's start. Let's start there.
Speaker 1: When you start breaking it down with formatics. There are
things that I do as a podcaster. Even as a broadcaster,
there are formats that that I created in order to
stay in focus and make sure that I don't come
outside the lines, because sometimes, especially when it comes to
writing a book, you don't have time to go outside
the line.
Speaker 2: See that I learned learned something new today? Yeah, well okay,
well I would definitely say it's formatic. Then I don't.
I don't ever want it to be formulaic. But in
terms of format, you know, I think of things like,
I want the timeframe for this to be two to
three weeks. I want there to be personal struggles for
the heroes in parallel to stakes that are geopolitical in nature,
you know, sort of stuff like that that that are
that are that are equivalent to the to the format.
But I want to vary how those how those unfold
every time.
Speaker 1: Are you out on a speaking tour at all right
now to help promote the book?
Speaker 2: I am? I mean, you know these days that's mostly digital,
right that's good, and and and podcasts, et cetera. But yeah,
I'm I'm appearing in a few places. I'm going to
be in Scottsdale on September of eighteenth, promoting this book
and another one. Yet.
Speaker 1: Wow, where can people go to find out not just
about about terminal veloss any but everything that you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. I have a if you go to
mp Woodward dot com. I'm also at MPW author on
x and I have another I have a book coming
out in a short period here called Red Tie, the
Novel of the Next Pacific War. That's a military fiction about,
you know, a conflict with China, and so I'll be
I'm out doing some publicity for that one right now
as well.
Speaker 1: Oh would you do take a look at the news
headlines yesterday and see those three people together going, oh,
it's time for my book now, you.
Speaker 2: Know, somewhat sadly that is? That is there is no
shortage of books about great, great power competition right now.
Speaker 1: Wow, Well, please come back to this show anytime in
the future. The door is always going to be open
for you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Ero, It's been a pleasure to
be on.
Speaker 1: All right, man, you'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, you too appreciate it.