Speaker 1: Hey, there's something I want you to check out. It's
aero dot Net. Not just one podcast, it's twenty different explorations,
one of them being Foody Paradise. I am talking to
the big name chefs and even those that are at
home creating their own cookbooks. See, there is hope for
you because the love for cooking is amazing. Share it
Foody Paradise on aerow dot net a R R o
E dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello, and good morning, Steve.
How are you doing?
Speaker 2: Do it fine? Dude?
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you if I do believe in perfection.
And this is the one. I don't know what it
is about the Devil's Bible, your new book. The thing
is is that it really has my attention to the
point to where I don't want to put it down.
I don't want to put it aside. It's it's walking
with me. How how did you do it this time?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 1: Really I've got that vibration and I can't be the
only one.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you're not the only one. You know.
You just try to you just try to keep the
suspense going. You try to keep everything going, keep it
clipping along. This is this is I think what you're
reflecting on is something you may not realize. This is
the shortest book I've ever written. It's ninety one thousand
It's ninety one thousand words. Normally my books are one
hundred and five to one ten. Now you might think,
well it's shorter. No, writing shorter is harder, much much
harder to write. And so what happens is you got
to keep it tight. You got to keep everything in there,
nothing wasted. Everything has to have a meaning to it.
And so I think you're you're seeing a reflection of that.
This is the tightest novel I've ever written.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what I'm feeling also, Steve, is I
feel like that you know exactly where we are. Because
I'm gonna be honest with you. I loved the time
stamps right there in the very beginning because it told me,
as the reader, this is where we are, this is
how the story's going to go. Really, you made me
feel like that I was part of this story.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you appreciate that. That's what I try to do.
I want you to become the protagonist. I want you
to get into Cotton. I want you to be part
of him. And I said This whole book takes place
over're about a two day period, so it happens. Everything
happens really really fast in this novel. A lot is
going on, a lot of things are coming at you.
They're not quite what you think they are. There's some
surprises in the book, and all of that is on
purpose because I wanted to kind of up in Cotton's
world a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well see, And that's the very reason why I would
love to sit in some sort of focus group and
just listen to people talk about Cotton Malone, because I
believe that that Cotton is so effective in our personal
lives right now, just at different areas of definition, but
we all pull something from Cotton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's an ordinary guy. That's why I think people
like about him. He has trouble with his ex wife,
he has trouble with his son, he has women troubles,
he has a business to run, He has all of
these things that all of us deal with on an
everyday basis. But he also can rise up and do
extra ordinary things when called upon it. I think that's
what makes seem interesting to people as well, and that's
how he survived. Now over twenty books, this is one.
Speaker 1: Of those stories. I mean, first of all, it's a
Swedish princess that is kidnapped. There's a backstory here, and
I love backstories because I believe that before our presence
of now, there has to be a story before it.
And that's what you did. You totally fed into my
imagination on this. Well.
Speaker 2: I appreciated you. That came to me when I was
in Stockholm because I was I had my guide that
was taking me around. Brought me over in Wan to
you see something. And on one of the backstreets there
was an elderly lady walking her dog in the snow
there and just just meandering along mine in her own business.
And that was the daughter, I mean, the sister of
the King of Sweden. She does it every day, my
guy told me. And that's when the novel kind of
hit me. I went, well, what what happened at this?
And this and this and this and this and it
all kind of came together when I saw that life
thing happening.
Speaker 1: Don't you love that, though, Steve, When when something like
that comes to the author, Because I'll be on the
streets and a cobblestone street in Charleston, South Carolina, and
all of a sudden, I have this unbelievable urge to write.
If I walk away, I'm gonna lose that vision. What
about you, Well.
Speaker 2: That's the same thing. I mean, I've got to see
you got to be there, You got to be there
on the ground. You got to see these things on
the ground. And that was one of those moments where
I saw something quite extraordinary. And I asked some questions,
and she told me that the sister does not like security,
doesn't like people around her. She didn't like to be
you know, all of that. She likes to kind of
stick to herself, and all that kind of occurred to me.
I said, well, well, and of course I change it
up quite a bit. But those are the things you
learn on the ground that you can't learn from books
or online. That's where you learn when you're right there
seeing it.
Speaker 1: What are you feeling from your focus groups and your
gatherings in the way that this doesn't necessarily you You
don't have to be a contin malone fan of a
long time period. You can be brand new and still
sit in a conversation and hold a lot of attention
by bringing in your your perception of the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, my books are not written. There's twenty Cottons,
but you don't have to read them in order. You
don't even have to read any of them. And in fact,
in order to know what this one is about, you
can start with this one and go backwards. I mean,
that's the way I write the series. I want you
to you know, each book in the series has to
be the same but different, which is a tall order,
but that's what I try to do. I try to
keep them the same bit different, but I also keep
them where you know you're not going to have to,
you know, read a whole bunch of other books in
order to get this one. Each one stands on its
own two feet when you're when.
Speaker 1: You're writing the thriller, though, it's got to move through
you first. I can't imagine. I mean, because I know
how how wild I am sitting in a chair. Do
you get in the same way where it's no, you
can't sit still.
Speaker 2: There are points in a novel where that does happen,
And that's a good thing. That's a good thing for
me because that means the writing is coming, the words
are coming, the plot is coming. There are times when
it goes very very slow, when I'm kind of dead
still and I can't figure out where to go where
I've written myself into a corner or whatever, and I
have to figure it out. But you want those moments
where everything's clicking along and you go like, Okay, I
know what's next. Yeah, I know this, now, I know
now they're going to go here. Now we do there.
This book was interesting because there's there's some things that
happened later in the novel that actually never occurred to
me till I got to that moment. I got to
that moment and I went, Okay, this is where I
want to go. It required some rewriting to fix earlier,
but it was interesting in this book in that the
plot evolved itself a little bit differently than I had envisioned.
Speaker 1: Well, part of that vision that you hold is it
to have shorter chapters, because the attention span of most
readers these days is pretty much TikTok as short as
can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to have short chapters, short sentences, short
work words, and now a shorter manuscript because I got
it down to about ninety two thousand words, which again
is much harder to write than one hundred and two
thousand words. But you try to get it as tight
as you can in today's world because the attention span
of the reader is limited and they're getting tugged from
every direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do not move. There's more with Steve Berry
coming up next the name of his brand new book,
The Devil's Bible. We are back with author Steve Berry.
How do you deal with the editors in a situation
like that, because I will I cringe inside my soul
when it comes back saying hey, look, let's work on
this area, and revisions just kill my soul as a
creative person. How do you deal with the revisions?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty open to it, I really do. I learned
to write in a critical process where my writing was criticized.
I can deal with that. I want to. I do
have one rule, though, don't tell me you don't like that,
or you hate that, or that doesn't work without telling
me why and how would you fix it? And I
want to I want to hear. I want to hear
what that has to say. It's really easy to say
I don't like that. Well, okay, I didn't really ask
you whether you liked it or not. The question is
does it work? You know you it may work, and
you just don't like it. I need to know why
and how you would fix it. And I would say,
you know, I'm probably between my editor and Elizabeth, my wife,
who does the first edit on it. I go with
about ninety percent of what they suggest.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, because when I when I allow
my wife to do some editing, that's that's that to me,
is the toughest one, even worse than me, because it's
that fear of the one I love is the one
that's reading what just came from me.
Speaker 2: Oh, mine is tough. She owns your own publishing house.
She owns a Blue Box Press, which is a publishing
house in the romance industry. She's had three number one
best sellers. She's tough. She's tough on me. She gives me.
She don't cut me any slack whatsoever. So her read
is always tough, and I want it that way. I've
told her, I said, don't hold back, do what you
gotta do, lay it out. And again she knows that.
She knows that when she tells me something doesn't work,
she's got to tell me why and how.
Speaker 1: The book opens with two Timothy four verse seven. Amazing
to me, that just set my heart up. Is what
it did. I have fought the good fight. I have
finished the race, I have kept the faith. What an
amazing way to start a book.
Speaker 2: It is, and it bodes what's coming down the line
in this novel. As I said, this novel has surprises.
Cotton's world is going to get upended a little bit.
It's already been up ended with a possible adult daughter
he might have, and now he's got some other things
coming in and over the next few books, his world
is going to change for him. That's been fun for
me because I like to change things up and do
something different. But I hope it'll be fun for the
reader because just like in life, fiction has to change too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I am a book cover snob. I love book
covers because my fingers love to touch book covers. I
love the raised It's not lettering, but it's the behind
the scenes, so there's there's two different layers here. I
love that and my hands are just pleased because I'll
sit there and I'll just I'll play with that while
I'm reading. It's that got stuff it dude, stop it.
But but you did that for a reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a beautiful cover. It really is a mat
It's a Matte cover. I've only had one other matt
cover that was The Templar Legacy. All the others have
been gloss covers. Interestingly, the Templar Legacy is my largest
selling books, So maybe maybe there's an omen there that
this book but will hopefully do well. But we wanted
a feel to this book, a feel to this cover. Uh,
and it is one of the prettiest covers I've had
on a novel. And you're right, the texture is different
instead of instead of the embossing coming up, it goes down,
and that it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is. So can you talk about a
twelve part series on Netflix or Hulu that you're going
to be doing or you're going to be turning this
into an animation? I mean, because this can't just sit here.
Speaker 2: Well, it'd be nice. I've been optioned I don't even
know how many times, fifteen to twenty times, but nothing yet.
I still on the right. So if anybody out there
is interested in making a Netflix series, they need to
give me a call.
Speaker 1: So now, now what becomes your learned lesson on this project?
Because that's what I love about writing. You're always going
to be the students, you're going to pick up something
new along the way.
Speaker 2: Every novel I write, I make a point to do
something craft wise that I've never done before. I do
that in every novel at least one thing I've never
done before, which is learning experience. For me, this one
was to write the shortest manuscript I've ever written, in
ninety two thousand words. And I will say it was
a challenge. It was a very, very tough challenge to write.
It's the famous line from Lincoln when he was writing
letters to the mothers of dead soldiers. He apologized, you know,
because if he'd had more time, he would have written
it shorter, you know, and you know, and so that's
what he said, you know. It's that way. Writing shorter
is harder. So this one is there. But I liked it.
I learned from it, and I'm going to try to
keep it going in the books of his Well.
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn through you. And the reason why
is because I just had a Chicago station invite me
up to jock for him, and I said, no, I
can't accept your job because you just want me to
talk over song intros. I can't talk over song intros anymore.
It's not enough so for you to be doing this. Now,
I'm going to be watching you, Steve, to find out
how you experience fewer words, because I think that's what
they teach us when it comes to brevity. Use less words,
Use less words.
Speaker 2: And choose your words carefully. Use less words. You got
to really pay attention. And I know this was a
tough plot for me to write one this tight, but
I'm glad I did it. I kind of got the
hang of it. I think I can keep it going. Wow.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about everything
you're doing? Because you are in touch.
Speaker 2: It's steveberry dot org website. All twenty nine books are there,
the novellas are there, and everything is there. You can
check it out. And the Devil's Bible's out in stores today.
It's all over everywhere, so you can you can get
it at your favorite bookstore.
Speaker 1: Now, I know I'm going over the limit, but you
just said Novello, and I know that we have a
Novello festival here in Charlotte. Don't you encourage a lot
of these unpublished authors. Please participate with the local novellos
because it's an opportunity to be seen as well as heard.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely, absolutely, they should do that. And novella's are
tough for me, yeah, because I've always been a novel writer,
so but you know, I'm learning how to do that
and writing the novella's helped me and writing The Devil's Bible,
because novella's are thirty forty thousand words. One of them
is only like twenty thousand words. Very tight, very very tight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future, Steve. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, sir, I will, and I'll look forward to coming back.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir.