Interview with Kyle Mills, author of The Immortalists

Interview by Ed Homa


Please welcome Kyle Mills to Megalith. Mr. Mills has been a successful author since 1997 when his first book, Rising Phoenix, was published. At the end of December Kyle’s The Ares Decision was published; this was his first novel in Robert Ludlum’s Covert-One series. At the beginning of December he will release his most recent solo novel, The Immortalists.

M: We are pleased that you accepted our invitation to speak with us. You grew up as a child of an FBI agent. What was that like?

KM: Endlessly interesting. I was having dinner with my father in London when his assistant came in and told him that a plane had gone down and they needed to get to a little town called Lockerbie right away. I’ve had drinks with a guy who, by law, can’t be photographed. I’ve heard first person accounts of gunfights that actually involved monkeys. I always felt sorry for kids whose fathers sat at a desk all day.

M: Did you ever consider becoming a FBI agent?

KM: I did. I even went so far as to apply. The sad truth, though, is that it isn’t the same organization it was when my father was young. He’d go after fugitives by himself and, if he was lucky, grab a local sheriff to help him out. He’s fallen out of second story windows, chased people through the woods in a 4x4, and gotten into a gunfight when he wasn’t carrying a gun. Now it’s more cerebral and technical—lots of careful counter-terrorism and white collar crime. I wanted to be a cowboy.

M: Tell us a little about your career before becoming a writer and your move to Jackson Hole.

KM: I made commercial real estate loans for a bank in Baltimore during a market collapse. I was 26 years old, responsible for almost 100 million dollars in bad debt, and my hair was starting to turn grey. When I got the chance to escape, I took it.

M: Your continuing series character, Mark Beamon, is an FBI agent. Tell us a little about the creation and development of him.

KM: He’s very much a composite of FBI agents I’ve known over the years: My father for that bigger-than-life quality, a combination of a few other guys for that absent-minded intellectual streak, and a dash of me for the underlying self-doubt.

M: Early in December The Immortalists will be released. Could you fill us in about this book?

KM: It seems inevitable as you get older to start thinking about your mortality. And if you’re a science geek like me, you start wondering why it’s so inescapable. The science of aging is advancing at a startling rate and a time when people won’t have to suffer through it isn’t that far off. In fact, it’s possible that there are kids alive today who won’t ever get old.

I tell my story through the eyes of a biologist whose daughter has progeria, a rare terminal disease that causes children to age at a wildly accelerated rate. He stumbles across some promising research done by a recently deceased colleague and suddenly it seems as if the entire world is against him—he is arrested for industrial espionage, someone tries to kill his family, his lab is destroyed. The forces he’s up against seem almost omnipotent, but his daughter’s life hangs in the balance and there’s nothing he won’t risk to save her. Similarly, there’s nothing the group trying to silence him won’t do to keep their secret.

M: How were you approached by the Ludlum people about the Covert-One series?

KM: I just got a call one day. It was startling to the point of prompting me to initially say that I wasn’t sure I was interested. It’s a little terrifying to be asked to step into shoes that big.

M: Are you a Ludlum fan? Were you familiar with the Covert-One series?

KM: I was a huge fan when I was growing up, though I actually hadn’t read any of the Covert-One novels until I got the call.

M: What directions were you given regarding your handling of the series?

KM: They were pretty flexible—the two main characters needed to be included, the spirit of Ludlum’s style needed to be adhered to, and there had to be a science angle. Other than that, I was given a lot of creative rope.

M: Did you enjoy playing with characters that are not yours?

KM: Much more than I thought I would. It’s kind of nice not to have to create all your characters from scratch and to instead riff off something someone else has done. The Covert-One characters are very different than ones I would normally devise, so it was an interesting opportunity to move out of my comfort zone.

M: Did any character surprise you by becoming a favorite?

KM: I ended up really liking Jon Smith, the main character. In prior novels, he had been very much defined by his actions with only a few hints at his inner character. It was a perfect set up to explore him a bit.

M: Will you be writing another Covert-One?

KM: It looks like I will be. Not the next one, but the one after that.

M: Is it possible for you to produce a Covert-One and a solo novel of your own each year?

KM: No way. I wish I was a faster writer, but I just can’t seem to write a book I’d want to put my name on in much less than a year.

M: What is your process for writing a novel? How do you balance research and the writing?

KM: I tend to be a nut for research, but it really depends on the book. Darkness Falls was a story about a terrorist attack that collapses the world’s oil supply and demanded an enormous amount of research. Is it possible to destroy oil in the ground? What would the economic ramifications be? How does drilling work, etc.

Sometimes, I have to control myself a bit. In The Ares Decision and The Immortalists, I decided that I’d include all the evolutionary biology, neurology, and genetics information that I wanted in the first draft and that in the second draft I’d take precisely half of it out. I can get a little over excited about that kind of stuff and find myself writing a textbook.

M: How do you write? Are you a disciplined writer? Sitting at your desk the same hours each and every day?

KM: I am fairly disciplined, though you wouldn’t know it from looking. I work lying on my sofa in the living room and spend anywhere from three to eight hours a day depending on where I am in the process. If I’m outlining, three is about all I can manage. It’s tough to think that hard for much longer without getting a headache.

M: What programs (such as Google Earth) do you use in your writing?

KM: The rise of the Internet has been so amazing for thriller novelists. I can’t believe I was able to write Rising Phoenix without it. There were a lot of calls to the DEA and stacks of subversive-looking books on my shelf as I recall.

Now I use search engines and Wikipedia, but rarely Google Earth. There’s no substitute for actually standing on the ground in the places you write about. I spent a lot of time in Africa researching Lords of Corruption and The Ares Decision, and in January, I’m off to Spain and Morocco to scout locations for the next Ludlum novel.

M: Are you a techie? What are your favorite devices?

KM: I live in both extremes. My mountain bike looks like it was built by NASA, but I drive a ’52 Chevy pickup. I love having the latest MacBook and ski boots made from carbon fiber and titanium, but don’t own a cell phone.

M: Do you writing in public places like coffee shops?

KM: Only when I’m really stuck. There are so many distractions around my house, I’ll occasionally go to a bar where no one knows me and there is no Internet connection. Amazing what I can get done when there’s no alternative.

M: Who were your favorite authors growing up?

KM: Ludlum, Stephen King, George Orwell, and Tom Clancy spring immediately to mind. But I pretty much read whatever I could get my hands on. My seventh grade book report was on James Clavell’s Shogun. I had to get an extension because I didn’t realize there was a second volume.

M: Do you have much time to read? Who are your current favorite writers?

KM: I almost never read fiction anymore. Most of my book time is devoted to research, which isn’t so bad because I’m curious about almost everything—physics, biology, psychology, history, music, language. It’s all changing so fast, I feel like I’m constantly playing catch up.

M: Are you a fan of thriller movies? Do you have any favorites?

KM: Absolutely, but I’m never sure what falls into that category. Alien, Seven Samurai, Rope, Pulp Fiction, Jaws, Scarface, Blade Runner, Natural Born Killers, Angel Heart. Do those count?

M: Have you jumped on the e-reader bandwagon?

KM: The Immortalists is being published by Thomas & Mercer, which is a division of Amazon, so I bought a Kindle recently. Amazing technology and no doubt the future, but my wife took it and won’t give it back.

M: You and your wife are rock climbers. How did that love develop?

KM: In college, I’d read a magazine article about Yosemite rock climbers and thought they sounded like the most amazing people in the world. When I got out of school, I spotted an ad in the back of Outside offering lessons at some cliffs about five hours from my house. I signed up and was immediately hooked. Thank God my wife (girlfriend at the time) is pretty adventurous.

My elbows and shoulders have semi-retired me at this point, but it’s something that will always be a part of my life. We’ve made friends all over the world and always have an excuse to travel to some crazy place or other. I’m a mountain biker and backcountry skier now, but I have to admit that they are no substitute. If I could have my 25-year-old body back, I’d return to the cliffs in a second.

M: Good luck with The Immortalists and Covert-One and we look forward to your future work. Thank you for taking time out to chat with us and we look forward to speaking with you again.