For those of us who have not yet read your books, tell us a little bit about you and your work.
I’ve spent most of my life on the Oregon Coast, the place I will always think of as home, but recently, my lovely wife, my two rambunctious sons, and I have relocated to Alaska, which is, I’m told, the place to be if you love adventure.
I’ve always wanted to be an adventure hero, and for almost as long, I’ve wanted to write adventure stories. I think I wrote my first story, about a fearless little bear cub, in fourth grade. In my late teens, I wrote reams of Indiana Jones fan fic in spiral bound notebooks; I wish I could find those, because there are probably some really good ideas in them that I’ve forgotten about.
I’ve dabbled in writing for publication for close to two decades now, but it’s only been in the last ten years that I started producing novel length manuscripts. Aside from writing, I love adventure sports—mountain biking, surfing, snowboarding, and I’m particularly fascinated with endurance races like the Primal Quest, or for those who remember it, the Eco-Challenge. I was able to compete in a short distance adventure race in 2003, and I’m pleased to say that my team did not finish last. I spent most of the last six years in the National Guard, which afforded me a chance to see some pretty amazing places—including New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and various corners of Afghanistan. I’m also about 2/3 of the way to getting a bachelors degree in Natural Resource Management with a focus on Fish and Wildlife; I’m intensely interested in environmental issues and especially the impacts of climate change.
With respect to my written work, depending on how you count them, I’ve completed about eight manuscripts for novels, of which only three are actually in a state that I would call “published.” I would describe all of my novels as action-thrillers with a sci-fi/supernatural influence.
Can you give us a spoiler-free preview of The Shroud of Heaven?
The Shroud of Heaven is the first book of the Nick Kismet series chronologically, but it’s actually the third novel I’ve written with that character. Each of the Kismet novels features a stand-alone adventure while advancing a broader story arc. Because of the fact that it occupies a fixed point in history—the Iraq war—I decided to make Shroud the genesis of both stories.
Shroud opens with a prologue set in the first gulf war, where Kismet, as a young Army lieutenant, is sent on a behind-the-lines mission that ends very badly. There, he discovers that he is somehow personally very important to a powerful but secret group called Prometheus, which among other things is the self-appointed guardian of holy relics and mythical ancient knowledge. Following that night, Kismet makes it his mission in life to discover what exactly Prometheus is, and why he is so important in their schemes. A few years later, a chance encounter with a Pierre Chiron, a man who is being groomed to join the Prometheus group leads Kismet to take a job with the (fictional) Global Heritage Commission, which to him seems the perfect place to continue his investigations.
When US troops move into Baghdad in 2003, Chiron summons Kismet to Iraq, ostensibly to help track down artifacts looted from the National Museum, but Chiron’s real mission is much more personal. Having suffered a tragic loss, Chiron is looking for some kind of concrete historical proof of the existence of God. Meanwhile, Kismet is being stalked by a mysterious assassin, who strikes while he’s following a lead at the museum and subsequently leads Kismet on a wild chase across Baghdad. From there, Kismet, Chiron and Chiron’s assistant, the beautiful but distant Marie, head for the ruins of Babylon, where they hope to find the proof Chiron seeks, but instead discover something much more sinister.
How is your book Magic Mirror different from The Shroud of Heaven?
The hero of Magic Mirror is a character named Michael Rook, part-time endurance athlete, part-time environmental consultant. Rook is a reformed monkey-wrencher, who tries to atone for his past sins by volunteering with the sheriff’s department of the rural Oregon County in which he lives. When helping recover the body of a drowning victim, he finds the remains of Derrick Sayler, a scientist missing for nearly two decades. As Rook assists both the local deputies and visiting California detective Claire Keegan, he runs afoul of the Sayler’s former business partner—Willoughby Bane—who fears that the discovery will completely derail his plans to open a mag-lev space launch facility in remote northern Canada. Bane is already on the verge of unleashing a mild flu virus onto the unsuspecting Canadian populace in a twisted attempt to stifle voter turnout in a key national election. Rook meanwhile is beginning to realize that Sayler’s disappearance is not as mundane as it first seems, but just then, Detective Keegan discovers that Rook is still wanted in connection with an eco-terror incident, forcing him to continue his personal investigations as a fugitive.
Magic Mirror is typical of my work in the sense that supernatural elements are woven into the plot, without necessarily becoming the dominant theme. I prefer good old-fashioned action—fist-fights, guns, car chases and other stunts—but I like to have supernatural and paranormal elements kind of lingering in the background. In Shroud I tackle some bigger religious themes, but in Magic Mirror, I draw more on a synthesis of quantum physics and paranormal phenomenon. Some parts of Magic Mirror owe a great debt to Michael Crichton and his non-fiction work Travels, where he wrote about his personal experiences with spoon bending and viewing auras. The disappearing scientist plot was inspired by the real-life case of former Iron Butterfly musician and physicist Philip Taylor Kramer who vanished mysteriously in 1995 while working to discover a means of faster-than-light transport.
Magic Mirror is different from Shroud and most of my other work in the sense that it is much less dependent on constant action, and instead builds slowly toward very explosive turning points. I’ve called Magic Mirror a genre-bender because it weaves sci-fi and a basic “locked-room” murder mystery together, morphs into a bio-terror techno-thriller, and somehow ends up as a disaster epic.
Magic Mirror never quite caught on with the people who initially read it for me, which prompted me to experiment with PublishAmerica back in the early days of PODs. All things being equal, I wish I’d held onto it a little longer, because I think it would have done much better with a smaller independent publisher. As it stands now, PA has virtually no distribution anymore, and they’ve priced their books such that I can’t in good conscience encourage anyone to buy it. PA does offer a pretty significant discount to authors (I think that’s there whole business model now) and so it’s my plan to lay up a small supply and then offer them direct to readers at a much more reasonable price.
How has your military experience impacted your writing?
The greatest impact of being in the military has been to strip away the sheen that seems to cling to most military fiction. It turns out that the people who serve aren’t actually all that different than the rest of us. Some are highly motivated and some are…not so much. The Special Forces guys I worked with (and I did work with them) were great guys—seriously ripped, but humorous and accessible; not the steely-eyed killers of popular fiction. Similarly, most techno-thrillers give you the sense that the military is hyper-efficient; sorry, it just isn’t true.
That being said, my time in uniform gave me a chance to get familiar with a lot of the elements that are the bread and butter of action-adventure; guns, explosives, even some hand-to-hand fighting techniques. I wish I could say that I gained some special insights, but mostly it’s a matter of knowing how to give particular descriptions a little more authenticity. Oh, and there is a Humvee crash in Shroud that is based in part on something that really happened to me in training, though the real story is not quite so spectacular.
What types of stories did you read growing up? Have they influenced
the writer you are today?
I was a big sci-fi and fantasy buff as a kid, but by the time I was a teen-ager…come to think of it, it was right after I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark…I became obsessed with adventure stories, especially those that involved treasure hunting. One of my favorite novels was supposed to be the first in a series from Gold Eagle/Worldwide called The Takers by Jerry Ahern (a second Takers novel was released a few months later, and a few years ago, Jerry put out a third as an ebook). I found it in a supermarket one evening when my family was buying supplies for a camping trip, and I literally stayed up all night reading it with a flashlight in my sleeping bag. After that, I was always checking the racks for more books like that, and eventually discovered Clive Cussler, whom I would credit as my primary literary inspiration.
I don’t know that Cussler, or any other author, has influenced my writing, but he certainly inspired me to want to be an adventure novelist. Clive’s bio always talked about how he spent his free time searching for shipwrecks and lost gold mines…that sounded so cool, I knew that was what I wanted to do, too.
Outside the action genre, I read a lot of Stephen King and Clive Barker. King should be required reading for any author; he can create characters like no one else, and knows exactly how to put you in their head. Barker on the other hand knows how to create atmosphere. Weaveworld may very well be my favorite fantasy novel.
What current authors inspire you?
In terms of success stories, James Rollins tops the list. He writes exactly the kind of books I love to read, and that I would love to write. Cussler remains a favorite, as does his protégé Jack DuBrul, whom I’ve followed since the release of his first novel Vulcan’s Forge. I am just discovering Jeremy Robinson’s fiction, but his personal success as a writer has been an ongoing source of inspiration. He’s living proof that you can change your stars.
One of my very favorite authors is Jeff Long (The Descent, Deeper, The Reckoning) but I’m sorry to say that he has a negative effect on me as a writer. Whenever I read one of Jeff’s novels, I feel like giving up. I know that I’ll never be able to write something that profound.
What do you think (as a writer or as a reader) makes a great thriller novel?
I like complex action scenes, of the sort you might find in a James Bond movie. In Shroud, there’s a chase scene that stretches out over two or three chapters, starting with a fight and foot-chase inside the Iraqi National Museum, which turns into a vehicle chase through the city, back into a foot-chase, and culminates with Kismet being chased by an angry mob. Of course, you’re bound to push the limits of belief when you do that, so it’s important to do you best to respect the laws of physics as much as you can. If your hero takes a punch or a fall, he should show his lumps.
Obviously, well-developed characters are important, and this extends especially to the villain. Of all the characters in a story, the one you really need to sell to the reader is the bad guy. I’ve always believed that every character I write is somehow a reflection of my own personality, which will mean channeling my inner-villain. Cliché megalomaniacs bent on world-domination just don’t cut it anymore.
Finally, there’s the MacGuffin. Every story needs a focus—some physical object or some piece of information that everyone is trying to get. If that MacGuffin becomes too critical to the plot or too complex in nature, the story ceases to be about characters or even the action, and becomes purely expository. I think this has been an unfortunate after-effect of the success of The DaVinci Code; thrillers lately seem to focus more on Templar conspiracies and Church secrets, and less on action, mystery and even the characters. My chief complaint about thrillers of that sort is that there’s an expectation early on of some big, earth-shaking revelation, and it’s pretty hard to deliver on that promise. I prefer a story where, when you learn what the hero is looking for, you say: “Oh, that’s kind of cool” and then when he finally gets it, it’s something entirely different than what he or I was expecting. I like to be able to say: “I didn’t see that coming.”
What’s next for Nick Kismet?
I have two more finished Kismet novels, and plans for several more that will fully explore the backstory of Kismet’s origin and his relationship to Prometheus. The next Kismet novel is called Into the Black and focuses on a search for the Golden Fleece. Kismet #3 is tentatively titled The Unrevealed Heart, and attempts a twist on the Fountain of Youth legend.
I have an outline for Kismet #4 which was originally supposed to focus on the Mayan prophecies of 2012, but given the speed at which the publishing industry moves, I suspect I will have to tweak it a bit to avoid writing a historic novel. When I wrote Shroud of Heaven in 2003, I had no idea that it would be six years before it finally hit the stores, or what developments would come out of the Iraq war. Back then, Saddam was a fugitive, there was no insurgency, and we were all sure those pesky WMD’s were going to turn up any minute. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s to be as vague as possible about when the story takes place.
I wish that I could offer a publication date for Into the Black, but as things stand right now, I’m not sure who will be publishing it.
What is the “Clive Cussler Code”?
Ah, the Cussler Code… Well, I like to call it a nit-picker’s guide/fan letter/tribute novel. For several years now, I’ve been something of a fixture at the Cussler Fan Forum, and one of the topics of discussion that frequently arises centers around the revelation that Cussler’s hero Dirk Pitt has unknowingly fathered twins. The explanation for this was an encounter chronicled in Cussler’s first novel, Pacific Vortex, which was not published until well after the success of Raise the Titanic. What I, and many other Cussler nit-pickers took issue with, was the fact that at no point in Pacific Vortex did Pitt and his ladylove actually…umm…do it. In fact, there was never even a gap in the story where it could have happened. About the same time, the forum moderator, Tony Krome, approached me for help in creating an updated compendium of Cussler trivia, and as we began dissecting some of these inconsistencies in detail, we started creating conspiracy theories to explain them all away. The Cussler Code is a record of our round-table discussions, along with some other insights we picked up along the way. It’s fiction, but most of the characters are real, as are the discussions. The book was never meant to be a commercial endeavor—certainly not by me, though Tony tells me that it has almost completely sold out its original run of 300. I suppose it is my bestselling title, even though I haven’t seen a dime, nor do I expect to. I’ve directed that my share of any proceeds above the costs of production be channeled into supporting the Cussler Forum.
As luck would have it, about the time we finished the first draft, Clive and his son Dirk were touring with their first collaboration, Black Wind, and I was able to present the manuscript to him in person. He gave us a blurb, and later the following summer, the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Arizona ordered 80 copies which, I am led to understand, were signed by Clive himself. I was always hoping Clive would one day pull up to my house in one of his classic cars and whisk me off to his magic writing kingdom where I could be his next co-author/apprentice, but it hasn’t happened...yet.
After your second place finish, have you developed a strategy for
winning next year’s Smackdown? Are you on speaking terms with
Greanias?
After reading Tonya Harding’s memoirs, I think I’ve come up with a workable strategy.
Actually, I’ve swapped comments with Tom a couple times, but I know that we’re in different leagues. I felt honored just to be included in a competition with him and the others, but I was especially impressed by the fact that Tom was out there talking to his fans on Myspace and encouraging them to participate. I think that kind of humble dialogue with the audience is critical nowadays.
Any parting words for our readers?
First, regular Megalith visitors will notice a list of authors on the side of the page there. Check them out. There are some really talented writers in there that aren’t going to be represented on the shelves of your local brick and mortar, and certainly not on the racks at your supermarket. Go to their websites, read samples of their work and by all means, buy their books.
There is a huge disconnect between what people want to read and what publishers think people want to read. I remember a rejection letter I received some years ago where an editor basically told me that, other than Clive Cussler, there just wasn’t much of a market for adventure fiction. I think a lot of us would beg to differ. Well, vote with your wallet. Don’t spend your money on the over-hyped titles that you’ll be able to buy in the clearance bin a couple months down the road; support the little guys (and I don’t just mean me.)
Second, on my website, there’s a video trailer for a short novel I’ve written featuring a classic pulp-era character called Secret Agent X. I should have more information about this very soon, so please, please, keep checking http://seanellisthrillers.webs.com for the latest updates. That particular novel was a blast to write and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
Lastly, I would encourage anyone who hasn’t done so to visit my website and read the Nick Kismet novella “The Devil You Know” which is, I think, a great way to get to know this character.
Megalith Rocks!
Review by Ed Homa
