On this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the host sits down with author Mark A. Gray to discuss his new book, "The Gray Man," and what it's like being a writer in the sex trafficking industry. Mark talks about how he came up with the idea for the book, why he writes about sex trafficking, and why he thinks it's a good idea to make a movie based on his book. He also talks about why he doesn't want to be mistaken for a serial killer, and how he thinks about his work as a writer. This episode was recorded on location in Los Angeles, California, and was edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and edited by Alex Blumberg. The show was mixed by Matthew Boll. It was mixed and produced by Patrick Muldowney. Special thanks to our sponsor, Amazon Prime and VaynerSpeakers. Thank you for supporting the show and supporting the podcast. The show is now available on all major podcast directories including Audible, iTunes, Podcoin, and Podcoin. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and we hope you enjoy the show. If you liked it, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with a friend! and tell a friend about the show! Timestamps: 1:00 - The Gray Man: The Grayman: 5:30 - How do you think the book is good? 4: What do you like it? 6:00 7:15 - What kind of sex trafficking? 8:00 -- What would you'd like to see in a movie? 9:30 -- What are you looking for in the next episode? 11: What are your thoughts on a sex trafficking novel? 14:00-- How do I think it's better than the next one? 16:00- What do I like about the best book? 17:40 -- How would you want to see me write a better version of the Gray Man? 18: What's your favorite kind of story? 19: What is the worst thing you re going to write? 21:40 - Do you have a favorite character in your next project? 22:20 -- what do you want me to write about? 27: What would your favorite character? 26:20 - What s your favorite thing about the Grayman? 29: What s the most important thing you're looking for?
00:01:17.000She'd find a positive, so she never complained about anything.
00:01:20.000Yeah, I do run into people all the time, you know, kids' parents or, you know, on my soccer team, my kids' soccer team or whatever, and I'm like, I wonder what they think of me.
00:01:30.000I wonder if they know, like, how many of them have read your books?
00:01:33.000Yeah, it's the ones that say they've read my books, and then I kind of go like, ah, crap.
00:01:37.000Yeah, I get that with parents when they say they've listened to my podcast.
00:02:11.000The kind of insane narratives that you create, the kind of situations that you create in your mind, they're very good when you're suffering.
00:02:22.000Yeah, I have a blue-collar philosophy about writing.
00:02:27.000I like generating a product that people can use if their flight's delayed or they're snowed in or whatever, and I get people emailing me all the time.
00:02:34.000It's like, hey, I read your book when My mom was sick and I was in the hospital.
00:02:38.000I like that, that it serves a sort of physical purpose.
00:03:58.000I liked it, and what I say, and I don't know how this makes me sound, it's like the movie is the best possible commercial for my writing, and if you're a writer, you want eyeballs on your work.
00:06:59.000But as an author, you couldn't put out the Gray Man novel with her face on it, and they opened the book, and it has nothing to do with a woman.
00:07:09.000And as much as I love her, I was like, well, this isn't going to sell books or get eyes in my work.
00:07:17.000The screenplay was actually really good, but I remember thinking if I went to the theater and saw it and it had a different title, I would not even know.
00:07:23.000There'd be like one scene where I'm like, oh yeah, I did a thing on a plane too.
00:09:03.000Well, I got a ton of people mad that Ryan Gosling was in it before it came out.
00:09:08.000And they were like, you need to get some unknown guy because nobody recognizes the great man.
00:09:12.000And I'm like, you probably don't understand how $200 million movies work.
00:09:18.000What we're going to do is we're going to get this guy out, you know, find the guy at the mall and make him that, you know, it's just not how it works.
00:09:24.000It's too bad because I don't really know if it makes a difference.
00:09:30.000I think they think it makes a difference, but I think if you have a movie that has an amazing plot and a great trailer and it looks wild, I think people get sucked into it anyway.
00:09:42.000Yeah, and honestly, one of the best films I've ever seen in my life, which is an action film, it's a Korean film called The Man From Nowhere, and fortunately it came out after The Gray Man did, otherwise people would think I'd ripped off The Gray Man.
00:09:56.000Because it's about a former assassin who's trying to lay low and he ends up having to rescue this girl.
00:10:03.000Well, the book, though, came so much earlier than the movie.
00:10:07.000How many years was it between you writing the book and then the film coming out?
00:10:10.000I wrote the book in 2007. It came out in 2009 and the film came out in 22. And so it's like 13 years.
00:10:39.000Yeah, he really played an awesome version of the character you wrote in the book.
00:10:44.000Yeah, and that's an example of a difference in the film that I liked, you know, because my Lloyd in the book is not like a physical presence.
00:10:53.000He's more of like the asshole mastermind of the whole thing.
00:10:58.000But, I mean, obviously, if they can get Chris Evans in their film, they're going to beef up his role and make it a more mano-a-mano thing, and I thought that was fabulous.
00:11:06.000Yeah, and Chris Evans just really nailed it.
00:11:09.000He played the perfect douchebag, asshole, cocky, confident psychopath.
00:12:18.000I mean, you know, like three friends probably read it.
00:12:21.000And I put that aside and I wrote my second book in seven months because it's like there's something about, you know, I always say everything in this world is cheapened by my ability to do it, you know.
00:12:31.000It's like I always wanted to learn a foreign language and, you know, I'm not super fluent in any foreign languages, but I speak some German and some Spanish.
00:12:37.000And it's like once I learned to do it, I'm like, oh, it's not that impressive because I can freaking do it, you know.
00:14:04.000I worked in a cubicle, and I was destined to do that for the rest of my life.
00:14:08.000And I was frustrated about not going anywhere, and there was just this point where I said, I like to write.
00:14:15.000I like to walk down the street and think about some espionage theme or something, and I like to do research, and I like to type stuff out and fix it up.
00:14:25.000And it's like, okay, nothing's going to come of this, but the thing that's going to come of this is you're doing something you enjoy to do.
00:14:32.000And honestly, that just let a lot of steam out of the kettle, and suddenly I wasn't like, I'm a 39-year-old man who has no success.
00:14:39.000And I just became this guy that's like, oh, I like writing books, and I think each one's getting a little better, and maybe something will happen someday.
00:14:46.000And really quickly, I mean, within a couple years, I was published.
00:16:38.000I'd been at the company for like nine and a half years.
00:16:40.000I went to my boss and I put my notice in on a Wednesday.
00:16:44.000And the next Monday, They brought everybody in to the auditorium for a meeting, you know, 800 people there, and they're like, hey, listen, like sales are down or the economy, you know, this is 2009. So, you know, the economy is not doing well or whatever.
00:18:11.000You know, talk to people that win, and they'll tell you that story, that I knew it was going to happen, I made it happen, I had a vision board.
00:18:18.000Talk to people that tried and failed and are homeless, and they have a different version of this manifesting reality story.
00:18:24.000And I've fallen on my face in so many ways in my life that, like, I recognize how lucky this is.
00:18:31.000And I would not, you know, grab some kid and go, like, quit your job, be a writer.
00:18:34.000Man, it's going to, you know, just because it worked for me in that one instance doesn't mean it would, you know, work in any instance.
00:18:40.000Yeah, I think the best inspiration you could give to someone is just your own success.
00:18:45.000For you to tell people to do what you did, it's almost irresponsible.
00:18:52.000And I feel like everything I've learned, I've learned by doing it wrong a few times.
00:18:57.000I'm not like Yoda, I'm not this guy on a mountain telling them, it's like, yeah, no, I've done a lot wrong, and what I might tell you could be totally wrong.
00:19:04.000But learning how to do stuff, that's a part of the process.
00:20:06.000And I used to sort of give advice to people based on my own problems, you know, like earlier in my career.
00:20:14.000So like a young person will be like, what do I need to do?
00:20:16.000And I was like, I wish I believe in myself more because I was very half-assed about everything because it's like I never thought anything would come from it, but I wanted to write a book.
00:20:25.000So I'd pick here and pick at it here and there.
00:20:27.000So I used to tell people, you know, believe in yourself, believe in yourself.
00:20:30.000And then you start learning a little more about these people and it's like, yeah, self-confidence is not this person's problem.
00:20:38.000It's writing or it's editing or it's something like that.
00:20:41.000And it's like they're very, very confident.
00:20:44.000There's not one-size-fits-all for helping people.
00:20:47.000Well, there's also confidence versus confidence that's based on an understanding of your competence and your work ethic and confidence that's built up over time with effort.
00:21:58.000I'm not Jack Carr or Brad Taylor or any of these other guys.
00:22:03.000I bartended until I was like 31. I always had a couple jobs.
00:22:09.000I got my degree in international relations and political science, but didn't do anything with it for 20-something years, other than 10 bar with it, I guess.
00:22:18.000I read every espionage novel, military stuff, fiction.
00:22:25.000I actually tried to get in the Air Force at one point and didn't get in.
00:22:28.000I was sort of fascinated by that world, and I'd read The Economist when I was 17 years old.
00:22:33.000I had a subscription to The Economist and U.S. News and World Report and would read all this.
00:22:39.000I was just interested in that, foreign policy and that sort of thing.
00:22:43.000So I loved it, and I loved thinking up kind of like wild, crazy stories and big action set pieces and stuff.
00:25:13.000I mean, he's got a compass, and it's kind of a fucked up compass, but yeah.
00:25:19.000Yeah, in one of the books, I think it was Gunmetal Gray, it was the sixth book, I remember near the end, I was like, I'm going to have him do something that makes sense to him, but it's actually the readers, it's not what the readers are going to want him to do.
00:25:57.000And I said, all right, I'm going to have him do what makes sense in the story for this character the way that I built him up over six books.
00:26:04.000And I never really got much negative pushback from that at all.
00:26:07.000So I guess that was the right decision.
00:26:12.000It's always interesting when you're—reading is so fascinating to me, reading fiction, because someone is creating this world and you're trusting them with all these people in this world for it to not mess with your—it doesn't—you know,
00:26:32.000there's a suspension of disbelief that's involved in any, you know, reading literature or watching a movie or anything like that.
00:26:39.000And you just don't want to mess with it to the point where someone's reading it going, ah, come on!
00:26:47.000And you do a great job of avoiding ah, come on moments while you're navigating this impossible world of this elite assassin who somehow or another never gets killed.
00:27:10.000And I wrote the opening for The Gray Man.
00:27:14.000And it's a sniper thing, and an American helicopter gets shot down.
00:27:20.000And this guy that has nothing to do with the operation with the American soldiers...
00:27:24.000It's just trying to get out of the kill zone where he's killed somebody, and he takes a sniper shot and kills some of the people that killed the Americans.
00:27:31.000And so I gave that agent the first 50 pages of the book.
00:27:36.000I'm like, will you tell me what you think?
00:27:37.000He's like, yeah, it's great that shooting those guys from a mile away, that's really badass, but he needs to save somebody.
00:27:44.000And I'm like, wait, how's he going to save somebody?
00:27:46.000He's a mile away, and it's like Al-Qaeda, you know, since 2007. And he's like, I don't know, I'm not the writer, but he needs to save somebody.
00:27:53.000So I went back into the story and I was like, well, shit, that doesn't really, you know, that's so implausible.
00:27:59.000But then I'm like, all right, I guess it's my job to sell that.
00:28:02.000And the whole series was informed by that early film.
00:28:07.000Because what I do is I create pretty outlandish things and then work my ass off to sell them to the reader.
00:28:14.000You know, put in the real world stuff, the geopolitical stuff, put in all these, you know, explain the hows and the whys to the best if you can.
00:28:25.000And then at some point, you know, the bad guys have to miss their shots a lot more than the good guys miss their shots.
00:28:42.000But at the same time, there's a heart to the story and all that, and I'm trying to pull the reader in to where they don't go, this is just way too out of left field.
00:32:56.000Yeah, I have incredible respect for him because, you know, a lot of authors have co-authors or whatever as they get older and, you know, it's just harder to come up with new stuff, something you haven't done before.
00:33:07.000Well, as you get older, too, you lose your juice.
00:33:17.000My concentration levels at this point in my life is not what it was 15 years ago when the only thing competing with me writing my book was my Xbox, you know, when I was off work or whatever.
00:33:29.000And, you know, now it's kids and dogs and, you know, travel and, you know, other obligations.
00:33:35.000And so when I do have, like, a three-hour pocket of time to write, it's real easy to kind of lose focus.
00:33:41.000And I'm like, wow, I remember going to Starbucks at 8.30 in the morning on a Saturday and staying until 9 at night, you know.
00:33:46.000And it's like, I can't do that anymore.
00:34:12.000I've been married on my second marriage, but I didn't get married the first time until I was 47. So, you know, I was in my—I was published and had several books out before I got married.
00:35:07.000I know a lot of people do things like that to charge the brain up.
00:35:11.000Yeah, I like to start writing as soon as I possibly can when I wake up, which used to be 5 in the morning.
00:35:19.000I wrote my first book when I had a full-time job, and I wrote it between 5.30 and 7.30 at Starbucks over a six-month period.
00:35:28.000Now, you know, there might be carpool or something else where I don't get started, but I have a detached, we have like a pool house that's my office and my house.
00:35:36.000And so it's 30 steps out my back door and it's a completely different experience.
00:35:40.000It's like being in, you know, it's like being somewhere else and nobody bugs me or whatever.
00:35:45.000And so I like to get in there as quickly as possible, look at as few emails as possible.
00:35:50.000I mean, you kind of look and see if things are, you know, there's chaos that you need to attend to, but if there's not, And I like to start writing and I will write in the mornings.
00:36:01.000It's only when I'm like way on deadline and I'm going to be overdue where I will write in the afternoons too.
00:36:07.000So I try to write 7 or 8 till noon or something like that.
00:36:15.000Other stuff, I'll take the dogs to the park and I think about the books when I'm doing that and I'm always jotting stuff down in files for the books.
00:36:23.000So, you know, there's a lot of, ask anybody in my family, there's times where I'm just sort of not 100% there at the dinner table for a minute because I'm thinking about, well, wait, what if that all happened in Singapore, you know?
00:36:36.000So my brain resides there even when I'm not working.
00:36:40.000But I try and like right now my writing goal is 1,500 words a day.
00:36:59.000And so a lot of guys do that same thing that you're talking about, like there's a process after you're done riding where you're thinking about the riding of the day, and then you just sort of jot stuff down.
00:37:10.000And a lot of guys like to, like I said, go for walks, or you like to take the dogs to the park.
00:37:15.000Yeah, we have a big 100-acre off-leash dog park where I live, a few minutes from my house.
00:37:20.000And those 40 minutes or so where I've got the dogs out there, if I'm by myself, I will...
00:37:29.000Usually be like really focused on the book or doing some sort of like audiobook research for the book or something like that.
00:37:36.000And then you're always thinking of the next book you have to write.
00:37:39.000So I have another book to write this year and so I'm trying to plot that out just in my head for now, not write anything down.
00:37:46.000In the down time when I'm not thinking about the book that I'm writing now.
00:38:54.000Oh, it puts you in wild states of mind.
00:38:56.000Yeah, but for this kind of book, the only time I've ever really had it, it's kind of embarrassing, I don't know why I'm saying this in front of so many people, was when it was put in lime squares and nobody told me.
00:42:42.000If you found out that there were werewolves, that werewolves were real, would you ever go in the woods at night, even when it wasn't a full moon?
00:44:15.000You're down there at one of those shark feeds where they have all this chum and a big ball and like hundreds of sharks.
00:44:20.000And there's times where they're above you and there's the boat and then there's like 50 sharks and you're kind of down at the ocean floor going like, I'll wait for them to move on.
00:44:30.000We played a video the other day, Jamie pulled up, of this guy that's in one of those shark...
00:45:31.000Do you train at like a tactical place?
00:45:32.000Yeah, it's been at different places, but I've done most of my training at a place in Middle Tennessee called Tactical Response.
00:45:39.000You know, back at that point, they were training a lot of civilian contractors.
00:45:43.000And so I took a, you know, you take pistol and advanced pistol and rifle and advanced rifle and this and that.
00:45:50.000And then there's these things called, like, you know, HRCC, high-risk civilian contractor classes.
00:45:56.000I took a bunch of those, and they're like a week long, and you stay in the bunkhouse or the team rooms with the guys.
00:46:01.000And I learned really quick that, like, it's cool to learn about the guns and the gear and stuff for your books, but it's so much more impactful to sit there in the team room and drink scotch with, you know, SWAT guys or Special Forces Group dude or whatever, you know?
00:46:16.000It's just like these been there, done that guys, contractors, Blackwater guys back then.
00:46:22.000And so, you know, I feel like I kind of became a mascot of that school.
00:47:03.000Early on, I mean, I actually heard the term The Gray Man at one of these classes from a guy, I think it was a contractor, which is just...
00:47:10.000They would say, you know, be the gray man who just, like, not wear the tactical gear and the 511 pants and the Wiley X glasses and the Luminox watches or whatever.
00:47:20.000Because they're traveling into the Middle East and, you know, the airport in Dubai or something like that, Al-Qaeda would have, like, watchers there, you know, seeing who was coming in and things like that.
00:47:32.000And if you're there with Salomon boots on looking tactical.
00:47:53.000Balancing the incredulity, balancing the plausible aspects of the story, is that difficult?
00:48:03.000Because you've got a guy who's constantly involved in gunfights and knife fights, and people are throwing knives at him, he's jumping out of fucking buildings, and there's so much chaos.
00:48:31.000I wasn't in India where it took place because this was pre-COVID. I was in Hong Kong researching a Clancy novel.
00:48:37.000And I saw the scaffolding and I went up to it and I climbed up on part of it and I looked around, you know, and I was like, okay, if you cut this, then this ought to do this.
00:48:44.000Now, I wouldn't do it, you know, because it's six stories.
00:48:48.000But in the first Gray Man book, he has to have basically surgery or he has to get sutured up while he's driving, get his gut sutured up.
00:48:57.000And I talked to, you know, a special forces medic and talked about doing that and plausibility of that and going into shock and all these other things.
00:49:07.000And a lot of people kind of complained about it and said, that's so impossible, that's so impossible.
00:49:11.000And I'm like, yeah, but if you read the book again, he passes out while it happens and crashes the car.
00:49:15.000It's like it was not perfectly successful.
00:49:17.000You know, it's just like he didn't come out.
00:49:19.000It wasn't like he's just like, yeah, sew me up while I drive.
00:49:22.000People can do wild shit under pressure.
00:49:25.000To say that that's not possible, I read about a guy, I believe it was in Antarctica, who was a doctor who had to take his own appendix out.
00:50:06.000He intended to use a mirror to help him operate, but he found that it's an inverted view too much of a hindrance, so he ended up working by touch without gloves.
00:52:31.000I might not want to read a book about butterflies.
00:52:33.000I wouldn't be like 293 pages going, I'm going to write a scathing review about a book I don't want to read.
00:52:39.000That is a problem with people that write reviews on almost anything because when someone enjoys something and they want to go see that something, that's their genre.
00:52:49.000That's the thing they're interested in.
00:52:50.000Then they're going to write a review based on someone who actually enjoys the genre.
00:52:54.000But you get a lot of reviewers who are just reviewing things that they have no interest in at all.
00:52:59.000And they write these horrible negative reviews.
00:53:02.000And it's like, who are you trying to convince?
00:53:04.000People that think exactly like you weren't going to like it anyway.
00:53:07.000It's such a weird way to write things.
00:53:11.000Jack Carr and I had this conversation with his podcast once where we were talking about the The viewer reviews of our shows, Terminalist and Gray Man, and then the professional reviews or whatever.
00:53:25.000And the people that watched it loved it overall.
00:54:17.000And he's just doing something different than what the critics...
00:54:21.000I remember David Lee Roth once said the reason that critics all hated him and they all loved Elvis Costello is because all the critics look like Elvis Costello, which I don't know if that's true.
00:55:32.000I've always had this philosophy, it's like if you read my book, if you spend the 12 hours to read that book or whatever it takes, it's like you get to share your opinion with whoever you want.
00:56:03.000But those guys are really good because if someone who can really see it and they expose something that makes you uncomfortable, that gives you an opportunity to get better.
00:57:39.000There's basically really disingenuous stuff in there.
00:57:42.000Not every review, obviously, but that happens sometimes.
00:57:45.000And I'm going like, oh, okay, as a writer, I know how you wanted to make these two paragraphs really impactful here, so you just told some bullshit about my story that's not even in the story.
00:58:07.000You get these basketball commentators online and doing podcasts and doing these shows where they're just talking crazy shit about these players.
01:00:38.000A voluptuous woman named Margo Winchester appears later in the town, in the nearby town Miranda, and is spotted by local sheriff Homer Johnson.
01:00:48.000He tries to make advances, but Margo rejects flirtatiously.
01:00:52.000At this point, after that she is picked up by Leonard Box, a known troublemaker and son of a sawmill operator.
01:00:58.000An argument breaks out the result that Leonard subdues and rapes the unconscious Margot after she accidentally kills him.
01:02:15.000But I think we're better served by the unprofessional, by the actual person who's just an intelligent person, who's a fan of the work, who reads the book, and then can write a little Amazon review or some other critique about it.
01:03:11.000It's like if you crowdsourced all the opinions...
01:03:16.000The problem is you can game that, right?
01:03:18.000If a person's problematic, like if you're going to crowdsource a JK Rowling's book today, well, the thing about the criticisms, it would be overrun by people who are like trans activists who are angry at her for her stance on women being women.
01:03:36.000And I've said that often about fights, that maybe we should crowdsource the scoring instead of having these people that are professional judges, because some of them, they get it so wrong.
01:07:03.000There's an inverse correlation between how, well, there's a positive correlation between how long someone's email is and how crazy they are.
01:07:39.000Some people like that, though, if you do somehow or another get in contact with them and you communicate with them, they realize, oh, you're just a person.
01:09:08.000And what I used to think before I had any, you know, people knew who I was, I used to think, like, the really successful people turned to assholes because they're not as friendly.
01:10:17.000I just want you to tell me that it's me or something.
01:10:21.000Yeah, well, there's a lot of people that are schizophrenic.
01:10:23.000I mean, there's a certain percentage of the population, I think it's like 1% or something like that, that is just schizophrenic, period, no matter what you do.
01:10:31.000I had a guy call my then, like, 90-year-old aunt at 5 in the morning looking for my number because she was in the phone book in Memphis and I wasn't in the phone book in Memphis.
01:10:41.000And she's like, I need his number, I need his number.
01:10:43.000And so I figured out who it was because, you know, there's a short list of people that...
01:10:55.000And he said, instead of him saying sorry, he's like, I hope you see that the links that I went to to reach you shows you how intense I feel about this project that we can work on together.
01:11:26.000And this idea that another person who's not busy, who is obsessed with doing something with you, somehow or another can talk you into that.
01:11:35.000You're like, I don't have the bandwidth.
01:11:44.000People want, you know, they're like, oh, I've got a story for you.
01:11:47.000You're going to want to write this book.
01:11:48.000And it's like, and my pat answer, I don't usually reply to them now, but my pat answer was like, just as you are passionate about that idea, I have ideas of my own about which I'm passionate.
01:11:58.000And that's what I'm working on right now.
01:11:59.000But even people, you know, they're like, will you read my book or whatever?
01:12:03.000And I blurb people's books all the time.
01:12:27.000Well, I don't think anybody who is not in this sort of public sphere has any understanding of how many people are coming at you with projects and ideas on any given day.
01:12:39.000I can't keep up with the text messages from people that I know.
01:13:06.000Yeah, to have a separate me that just interacts with people on social media, interacts with people in email, interacts with people in text messages.
01:13:14.000It's just not, after a while, it's not possible.
01:13:16.000So I just change my number every now and again.
01:14:09.000Because it's just, you have a deadline.
01:14:12.000And then also you want it to be the best fucking thing you could do because you've done so many great books already that this has got, you've got to nail it.
01:17:52.000He reads it and gives me his ideas, and I'll do a second draft, and then he'll read it again, and then he'll go to a copy editor, and I'll get it, and then he'll go to a proofreader, and I'll get it.
01:18:00.000And still, there'll be some mistake that makes it into the book at the end.
01:18:21.000But once it's turned in for the final...
01:18:25.000I'm the last one that looks at it before a copy editor goes and fixes the little things that I... And I kind of have a bad reputation at my publishing house for making a lot of changes at the end.
01:18:38.000I crammed 14 pages into a Clancy book once.
01:18:42.000After Tom had passed away and I was writing the Jack Ryan books, like literally the last go-around, I was like, you know, I really feel it needs this scene.
01:18:50.000And they came back to me and they're like, we've already measured the spine.
01:18:53.000And I was like, did not know that was a thing.
01:18:56.000But to their credit, they made changes and they got it in there.
01:19:59.000And I've listened to the Ray Porter thing and there's like six female Mexican, you know, women in the story and I could tell them all apart.
01:20:23.000I do, too, because there must be some sort of cues to where they can, because, you know, sometimes in writing, you don't identify who's speaking until after the sentence or whatever.
01:20:33.000So somehow, I don't know how they reverse engineer that to do an audiobook.
01:21:31.000It's a Navy SEAL book, and he read it, and I was like, this guy could be a professional audiobook guy, because there's an intensity to him and all that.
01:21:42.000Yeah, I love it when an author reads their own book, especially when it's someone who has done a lot of podcasts and knows how to communicate.
01:21:50.000He's already got a distinctive, recognizable voice, like a Malcolm Gladwell or something like that.
01:21:56.000I love when they read their own stuff.
01:24:31.000The first few books, you're pulling off the low-hanging fruit.
01:24:34.000You have your whole life to think of these cool ideas and these interesting scenarios, and then you get a little bit more and a little bit more, and then you get to a point where it's like, okay, I've...
01:24:46.000Taking all the parts off of the cars that I have in the back of my house, you know.
01:24:50.000And so you just have to go out and get more information.
01:25:17.000Or this guy's following another guy down a street.
01:25:20.000Or this woman is going to kill her husband or whatever.
01:25:26.000It's like those things that you've done.
01:25:28.000I used to joke, I'm like, there's going to be a point where I'm going to be riding a knife fight in a hot tub and go like, this is my third knife fight in a hot tub.
01:25:37.000It's like, how many times can you get away with that?
01:25:39.000Do you feel like there's going to come a time where you can't, like it strains credulity to keep the gray man operational?
01:26:17.000It's not about the war, but it's about Russian foreign intelligence.
01:26:20.000And so I had to do a year ago when I was writing the book, I had to really sort of prognosticate where we would be a year from now to get all that.
01:26:28.000So it took a lot of work and a lot of research.
01:26:31.000And it will there will be a time where, you know, America doesn't have that many peer enemies.
01:26:39.000You know, obviously there's China and there are near peer enemies.
01:26:42.000China and Russia and North Korea is nukes.
01:26:43.000Otherwise, they wouldn't be on anybody's radar.
01:26:47.000So when I was doing the Clancy books, I was going like, all right, who's left?
01:26:52.000You know, we can't bring in people from outer space.
01:26:54.000You know, it's like, what are we going to do?
01:26:57.000But there's different ways to skin a cat.
01:27:00.000But I mean, I think, yeah, ultimately, it's going to just get harder and harder to do.
01:27:05.000It's harder to write my 24th book than it was to write my 5th book.
01:27:16.000One of the things to me that's been interesting about your books is going from the original Gray Man to Sierra 6, where I'm at now, where you have to deal with the new technology.
01:27:28.000And you have to deal with new surveillance technology.
01:27:32.000You have to deal with the fact that someone's going to be a known person.
01:27:36.000When you've got a guy like the Gray Man that's been involved in so many operations and so many different missions, at a certain point in time, people are aware of him.
01:27:45.000They're going to be able to recognize him.
01:27:47.000Yeah, if you look at it literally, but I'll go back to James Bond.
01:27:51.000He'd walk into a place and say, my name's James Bond, or Bond James Bond.
01:27:55.000I'm like, he actually used his real name.
01:28:34.000I mean, my guy's going to need to be able to climb that fence and jump off that scaffold and land on a tuk-tuk or something.
01:28:42.000It's like that's not going to go away as long as I'm writing the series.
01:28:45.000So if each story on its own stands on its own and is fun and is exciting and has something, some kernel out of what's really going on in the world, hopefully to make it...
01:29:10.000Do you feel like there's going to come a time when you have to come up with a new gray man?
01:29:26.000But, you know, as far as exchanging the gray man out in a story like someone younger comes and takes a role, probably not because I'm really not aging him.
01:29:34.000You know, it's like I mentally I'm going like, all right, so he'd be he'd probably be.
01:29:41.000By this story, he'd probably be about 46 now or something like that.
01:29:44.000So he could still do a lot of the stuff and a lot of the stuff he couldn't do.
01:29:48.000I remember, you know, when I wrote the first Gray Man, like the older guy who, you know, was like his boss, Hanley, I think was like 44 or 45 or something.
01:29:58.000I was like, yeah, it's this old fart, you know, and now I'm 55. And you're going like, what an asshole.
01:30:04.000But yeah, I think the books are always going to sort of stand on their own and stand alone, like a James Bond or something like that.
01:30:15.000And I want there to be story arcs and I want there to be psychology of interpersonal relationships and all these things in the story.
01:30:23.000But I'm not looking to make the reality, you know, and have anything to do with time.
01:31:00.000Because, like, if you're doing these things in chronological order and we get to 10 years from now and you're dealing with a 58-year-old gray man...
01:31:06.000Unless you're still saying he's 37 and people are able to...
01:31:10.000They'll either buy it or they won't, you know?
01:32:34.000It sort of looks like that to a degree.
01:32:36.000Just for a second, you're like, what just happened?
01:32:40.000Yeah, the process of watching your work become a film has got to be very weird.
01:32:44.000Yeah, I wasn't closely involved with it.
01:32:48.000I went out and met the Russo brothers when they were going to write the script and spent a few days with them talking about the story and where the future story, because they wanted it to be a franchise from the beginning.
01:32:58.000But I wasn't involved in the day-to-day, but I was sent scripts.
01:33:02.000Joe sent me the script that he wrote, and then I saw the shooting script right when they were shooting.
01:34:45.000I think I went into it with the right mindset that this was a film representation.
01:34:51.000And I know that the directors are really creative people and the screenwriters and cinematographers and actors.
01:34:57.000They don't look at it as their job that they're engineers that are going to take a piece of paper and turn it into celluloid with everyone doing exactly the same thing.
01:35:07.000There are places in there where I think I really like what they did, and there's places in there where it's like I think my line landed a little bit better.
01:35:18.000I wasn't mad that they didn't do it my way.
01:35:21.000It's more like, okay, I think I have something to offer still instead of all these big shots with all this money come and make something so vastly superior to the little paperback that I wrote.
01:35:32.000I think there's places where my stuff holds up and there's stuff in there that I think is fantastic too.
01:37:14.000And I think it was just an age thing because in his head he was pretty literal about – at this stage when I wrote this book, he's a young CIA analyst who – Or whatever.
01:38:01.000Yeah, well, it's so interesting when you get a known commodity, like a famous celebrity that comes in and takes over a role that you've created.
01:39:05.000The funniest part was that there's a scene, a big action scene in Prague.
01:39:10.000It takes place in Prague and the gray man is handcuffed to a bench and he's shooting bad guys and he can't get away and there's cops and dead cops around him and then the bad guys, Chris Evans sending the bad guys in from all directions.
01:39:23.000And at one point, he reaches over to this cop and pulls a frag grenade off the guy's utility belt.
01:39:27.000And I'm like, the cops in Prague carry frags?
01:40:40.000I mean, the kind of books I read are the kind of books I write.
01:40:43.000And I wrote a military thriller, co-authored a military thriller in 2019 called Red Metal with a then active duty Marine Lieutenant Colonel, a good friend of mine, Rip Rawlings.
01:40:54.000Because I always, even though I wasn't in the military, Tom Clancy wasn't in the military.
01:40:58.000It's like I always thought that I had one of those in me, like a big military thriller like an old Tom Clancy one.
01:41:15.000And for like four years, we would just bounce ideas off each other.
01:41:18.000And one day I just said, hey, Rip, I think I could go to my editor or my agent and I can get us a book deal if you want to do this together.
01:42:11.000I'm not going to be writing, you know, a Bollywood script or anything like that anytime soon.
01:42:15.000Do you have time in between books where you just...
01:42:20.000Read or just research and just try to like to fuel your creativity?
01:42:26.000Yeah, I didn't but now I realize how important it is and so last year I had two books come out and the film came out So I had all these things that didn't involve writing a book and I wrote burner which I went to several countries to research and took probably eight months to write the book and And I was supposed to write something else last year.
01:42:45.000And both my agent and my editor, who are both great guys, they both said, why don't you just take the rest of the year off?
01:42:51.000Because you've really been burning the candle at both ends and start fresh next year.
01:42:57.000And so it was hard, you know, to get up one day and not feel like you have to be on your laptop in four minutes, you know.
01:43:04.000But I used that time to kind of come up with this year's book to where I have...
01:43:09.000Pretty more fleshed out outline than I usually do.
01:43:13.000But yeah, it was just days of going to the park or working out in a little home gym and listening to podcasts about stuff that would be in the next book or reading stuff and slowly taking notes.
01:43:28.000And I don't really have the luxury of doing that every time.
01:43:31.000When I finish the new Gray Man book, I've got to get right into the second Armored book, which is the one that will come out next year.
01:43:38.000And I better have a plot to figure it out on the plane, you know, as I'm on book tour or something.
01:43:44.000Is that good to have that kind of pressure?
01:43:47.000If I didn't have it, I'd probably still be writing my second book, honestly.
01:44:41.000I've never met anybody who does great work who's like really happy with the whole process.
01:44:46.000Yeah, but it's fun to fantasize about just like getting up in the morning with a big smile on your face and going like, man, I'm kicking ass.
01:46:47.000And to know the language and to know the characters and to keep it true to the original work.
01:46:54.000Yeah, so I'd only had a couple of paperback books out when they asked me if I was interested in being his co-author, but we had the same editor.
01:49:32.000I got found out about nootropics because of Bill Romanoski.
01:49:36.000He was a former football player, great football player, and developed some, obviously, some neural issues, post-concussions and impacts and stuff like that.
01:49:47.000So we created something called Neuro One, and I really liked that.
01:49:50.000I started taking Neuro One because there was a show called Allison No Name.
01:50:29.000And one of the things we've done with AlphaBrain, because this is a company that I owned, we sent a bunch of it and we funded two double-blind placebo-controlled studies at the Boston Center for Memory.
01:50:43.000And they showed increase in verbal memory, increase in reaction time, increase in peak alpha flow state.
01:50:51.000So it enhances your ability to think, and that's the thing.
01:50:57.000It's not going to make you smarter, but what it does is it provides your brain with the nutrients it needs to function at its best.
01:51:07.000Last year, I was worrying that I was having some kind of cognitive decline because I was forgetting things.
01:51:12.000And it's like, wait, did I just do that or was I about to do that?
01:51:15.000And I think it was because I was just really overloaded, just busy and family and stuff.
01:51:20.000And, you know, it's like going from two dogs and no family to three stepkids and four dogs and, you know, the movie's out and two book came out.
01:51:30.000And I just really felt like something was going on in my head.
01:51:41.000Recharge to some degree, but as you get older, you need that.
01:51:44.000Well, there's also a thing with the vitality of your body.
01:51:48.000Like, the more vitality you have, the more robust your body is, the more you can function at a high energy level for longer periods of time, which is, I think, cardio is very important for anybody who's creative.
01:51:59.000I mean there's a lot of like brilliant creative people that never work out ever and 100% you can do it I know some brilliant comedians and writers and all they do is they force themselves to sit down they create amazing work But I think if you looked at it comprehensively the overall robustness of your physical body the your body's ability to generate energy Function at you know a really good pace and to just be Overall,
01:52:27.000healthy, I think, is very important for creativity.
01:52:30.000And I think cardiovascular fitness, in particular, seems to really enhance creativity.
01:52:35.000I know a lot of people that get very creative when they run, very creative when they'll do something that is a high tax rate on the body, like yoga or CrossFit, something that just keeps your body functioning at a very high level.
01:54:38.000I think that there's a real physical requirement of taxing your body that comes with that sort of anxiety, that if you don't meet that physical requirement, your body's just like...
01:54:49.000Because it's like, we've got to run, man.
01:54:54.000We've got to get the fuck out of here.
01:54:56.000Unless you meet those physical requirements, like wear your body out so that it can get back to a normal baseline, it doesn't burn off all that shit.
01:55:05.000I'm obviously not talking about it like a scientist, but there's something to that.
01:55:10.000For me, in times of peak anxiety and peak stress, nothing makes me feel better than a hard workout.
01:57:21.000So the first surgeon went in to clean up a one-level bulging disc and left sequestered disc material, so the jelly inside the jelly donut that is the disc, in the foramen, which is the Joint area where the nerve root goes,
01:57:39.000and it crushed off my nerve root, my L4 nerve root, which means I can't dorsiflex my left foot.
01:57:48.000But if it was my L5 nerve root, another doctor told me, he's like, look on the bright side.
01:57:55.000If it was the L5 nerve root, you'd never be able to evacuate your bowels or have sex or anything like that.
01:58:01.000And I'm like, okay, suddenly, you know, the glass is half full.
01:58:06.000And so what have they done to correct that?
01:58:07.000Well, so I had a second surgery to kind of get that disc material out, and then I had a third surgery because I just had so much discogenic pain, so just midline back pain.
01:58:17.000I was walking with a cane when I was 34, and I'd have been an amateur, but a very intense soccer player.
01:58:25.000And the third surgery, they went in through my front, and they moved the whole stomach, the whole peritoneum, the bag that holds the stomach, and they put, like, these, like, shoehorn in there, and then they took out the discs, and then they put in these joints that look kind of like an Oreo cookie,
02:00:23.000Anybody that says, you should do physical therapy, it's like I know all the exercises because I've been to like 10, 12 bouts of physical therapy and I do them and it probably makes it somewhat better.
02:00:50.000Well, there's some places that you can go outside of the United States where they can do some pretty phenomenal stuff with stem cells because they don't have the same regulations that we have here because of the FDA. But I know a bunch of people that have had neurological issues and some serious injuries that they've helped recover from.
02:01:26.000I think Hulk Hogan said that because of his most recent back surgeries.
02:01:30.000Hulk Hogan's had a series of back surgeries and I guess he can't feel his legs.
02:01:35.000That's the nerve roots that go down your legs.
02:01:37.000Yeah, but back surgery is a crazy one and I wish I had known you before you had gotten it because there's stuff that you could do with bulging discs now that you can really repair them with stem cells and with There's some decompression exercises that they can decompress the spine.
02:01:56.000There's a machine called Reverse Hyper that's particularly good at the lumbar area.
02:02:01.000It was created by this guy, Louie Simmons, who was a famous power lifter, who fucked his back up from compression, and they wanted to fuse his back, and he was like, well, why can't I figure out a way to decompress it?
02:02:17.000There's got to be a way to decompress it.
02:02:18.000So we invented this machine called the Reverse Hyper.
02:02:21.000And what the Reverse Hyper is, we have one out here in the gym.
02:03:35.000Jiu-jitsu and wrestling, it's like people are constantly shoving your neck into You're getting stacked, where literally all your weight is on your upper back and your neck, and someone's got a hold of your legs, and you're trying to pass, and you're resisting and moving,
02:03:52.000and there's so much strain on the spinal column.
02:03:55.000Unless you strengthen all the tissue around that to keep it stable, you're going to get injuries.
02:04:22.000But for bulging discs, I had a bulging disc in my neck to the point where it was causing ulnar nerve pain, where I'd have this pain in my elbow and my fingertips were getting numb.
02:04:36.000Back in 2002, I basically went to the ER because I blew a disc playing soccer.
02:04:41.000And the surgeon was this British guy who knew all about soccer.
02:04:45.000And he's like, you know, you might have to sit out the rest of this season, but by the fall, you'll be able to play again if we do this surgery.
02:05:56.000When he fought Teyoshi Kosaka, which was, I think, the first fight that he had in the UFC, he couldn't do any wrestling because his neck was so fucked up.
02:06:03.000So he just kind of had to like spar and condition himself and get in shape without doing any wrestling.
02:06:10.000But then he was doing Sons of Anarchy.
02:06:14.000He was doing a stunt scene and he fell on his neck and just fucked his neck up and then wound up getting it fused.
02:06:21.000But now they're doing these articulating discs in the neck that have been very successful.
02:06:25.000In fact, Aljamain Sterling, who's the UFC bantamweight champion, he actually had that done.
02:06:31.000So he had a disc replacement in his neck where he fought Pyotr Jan, fought for the title, got illegally kneed in the head, and won the title on a disqualification, which a lot of people are like, boo, you can't win a title like that.
02:06:47.000Then had to get this operation, so it was a long time before they had the rematch, and they came and dominated in the rematch with a fake disc in his neck.
02:08:36.000And there's also, there's this perspective that comes from having been debilitated, having been really injured and And then recovering from that, will you really appreciate your ability to move?
02:09:32.000That kid is a lot luckier than somebody else, too.
02:09:36.000When you're injured like that, does that sort of aid your writing in a way?
02:09:43.000Because a lot of times when you're dealing with characters, you're dealing with characters that are involved in combat, especially the gray man.
02:10:18.000And I'm like, nobody's asking me if I'm an assassin.
02:10:21.000They're only asking me if I'm popping pills.
02:10:24.000But I can understand how somebody could get on, you know, because I was taking them for pain and when the pain got, you know, low enough, I didn't take them regularly.
02:10:35.000But I still, like, I would have a panic attack if I didn't have some access to hydrocodone because when it flares up, I mean, there's nothing that makes it go away that I know of.
02:10:46.000I have a good friend who was an MMA fighter who had his nose smashed in a fight and got his nose fixed and like crushed all the bones and he got hit with an elbow.
02:10:57.000And he fought this guy, Mirko Krokop, who's like a legendary assassin, like one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, and he got his nose smashed.
02:11:04.000Brendan wound up winning the fight by KO, but then afterwards his nose was fucked.
02:11:09.000And then he had to get it reconstructed, like literally rebuilt.
02:11:28.000He's like, I didn't even realize I was hooked.
02:11:30.000But then the fear is that he gets some other injury and he needs, you know, it's like you hear about these people like, don't give me anything because I'm addicted.
02:11:38.000It's like, oh my God, that's probably stressful for the doctor too to have to do some procedure without giving somebody.
02:11:44.000Well, I'm not addicted to painkillers, but I don't like them.
02:14:17.000Do you find you like doing it by yourself because it's sort of meditative and it sort of helps you think about the stuff you're writing?
02:14:23.000Yeah, I'm usually listening to an audiobook or something like when I work out.
02:14:27.000I don't even think about working out when I work out.
02:14:29.000I'll sort of write down what I'm going to do and I try and do a little bit more than I did last time or another rep or better form or, you know, some little improvement because I can see what I did when I did whatever back and biceps three days ago.
02:14:44.000But when I stretch, it is meditative because, I don't know, it's kind of like, I hate to use that term, me time, but it's so like this, I go in there and nobody's in there and I'm just kind of doing my thing and it makes me feel good afterwards and I'm happier doing it than not doing it.
02:15:03.000And I'm able to sort of multitask and get some work done listening to audiobooks.
02:15:08.000Yeah, that's how I feel about it, too.
02:15:13.000I've worked out with trainers before, especially with martial arts, but when it comes to weight training, especially because I don't do stuff where I need a spotter.
02:15:39.000People that I respect say, oh my god, you've got to do this.
02:15:42.000And I'm kind of like, You should read or listen to or watch YouTube videos from Andrew Huberman.
02:15:48.000He's a professor out of Stanford who's done a fantastic job of breaking down the benefits of cold and heat therapy.
02:15:55.000And it ramps up your dopamine by like 200% and it lasts for hours.
02:16:01.000Reduces inflammation, produces all these cold shock proteins that are fantastic for your body.
02:16:06.000And heat and cold together, the contrast therapy is also very, very good for you.
02:16:11.000But just heat alone, you know, they did a study out of Finland that showed that four times a week of the sauna for 20 minutes had a 40% decrease In all-cause mortality.
02:19:39.000David sent me a photo of his toe yesterday.
02:19:41.000I'm gonna send this to you, Jamie, because it's so crazy.
02:19:45.000Because he was just telling me, he was just sending me some stuff about, like, things he's been doing.
02:19:51.000And, you know, he thinks of it as, like, he literally says that it's like he's gaining knowledge from these suffer sessions, from these, you know, marathon runs that he'll do on a regular basis.
02:20:04.000And, like, whatever he's getting out of there, he's like, I'm getting, like, he thinks of it as, like, that's his toe.
02:21:33.000I mean, surely he knows something about footwear, so it's not like...
02:21:36.000It's just the amount of hours and miles and the pain, and it's his mind.
02:21:42.000It's all in his mind, and that's what he works on.
02:21:45.000I mean, what he's doing when he's running like that is just...
02:21:50.000He's extracting the maximum amount of human potential out of what his mind and his body is capable of doing it, and then he goes to sleep and does it all.
02:21:58.000This is probably back when it started in 2016 when he had almost a full nail.
02:24:12.000Millions of people with this unstoppable fuel, like this fuel for the body and for the mind.
02:24:19.000Like you see, like if David Goggins can do it, and he talks openly about how he used to be 300 pounds and he was lazy and then became this unstoppable force.
02:25:00.000When you're talking about a guy like Court Gentry, who's this insanely exceptional person, knowing that there's insanely exceptional people that are out there that are just one of one, like a David Goggins.
02:25:33.000You know, it's like I don't think there's anything in my books medically that doesn't make sense if you had the mindset to get through it.
02:25:41.000And even in the first book, like, he's shooting himself up with, like, veterinary drugs or something, I can't remember what, to, you know, get his heart rate back up for this final fight, even though it's going to make him bleed more.
02:26:55.000I was a ghostwriter for a book of a guy that was a military dude early in my career, and he's a brilliant guy, and I'm really proud of the book, but he would just be telling me stories,
02:27:10.000and the thing that he might have been focused on in the story wasn't the interesting thing to me.
02:27:15.000I'd be like, wait, what did you say about...
02:28:11.000And, you know, just every little bit of that, you know, works its way into the books.
02:28:15.000And, you know, sometimes it's mundane stuff, but sometimes it's really cool stuff, too.
02:28:18.000How difficult is it to when you're writing stuff about like international policy and you're writing stuff about like how people would be deployed and how like a special operations group would be deployed?
02:28:33.000How difficult is it to kind of even Get a read of what would go on.
02:28:39.000Like, some of it is, I'm sure, classified.
02:28:42.000Yeah, a lot of it's classified, and so there is this point where I just make stuff up, but I try and build with as much detail as possible.
02:28:50.000I mean, I have this book called The U.S. Intelligence Committee, and it's like onion-skinned paper, and it's like that thick, and it's like every unit, everything that's not denied or sub-Rosa.
02:29:43.000Yeah, it's just a term they use in the government a lot for something that's, you know...
02:29:48.000You have to learn all those terms, too, which is interesting in Sierra 6, where Cort, who doesn't have a military background, gets integrated with this group that does when you go back 12 years.
02:29:58.000And, you know, he's got to kind of learn all those phrases, and they're all frustrated that he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
02:30:11.000When I wrote him in the beginning, the wars were going on, and I knew that there's going to be a lot of really good authors writing this stuff that are downrange right now.
02:31:09.000Yeah, I just want a different, you know.
02:31:12.000And then I do think narratively it adds to the story that he's not, you know, SEAL Team 6 and doesn't have a bunch of buddies, you know, that are team guys.
02:31:22.000And the guys on his paramilitary team in Special Activities Division in Sierra 6...
02:31:32.000But he's there because he's been an assassin for the CIA since he was 20 and had done some operations in Russia, and they needed a guy on the ground that had a certain level of tradecraft abilities that these former SEALs didn't have.
02:31:54.000Do you ever run plot lines and things that you're writing about past people that may know the way those things are handled and done and see if you're doing it correctly?
02:32:06.000I've talked to CIA guys regularly or military people and, you know, I always hear, you know, here's the non-classified version or here's what I can tell you.
02:32:17.000I've been sitting at the Pentagon and I've asked a question and they're like...
02:32:27.000Yeah, the first book I did with Tom Clancy, I wasn't allowed to say that I was working with Tom Clancy because they didn't know if the book was going to be good or come out or whatever.
02:32:35.000So it was so frustrating because it's like I'm in there going like, hi, I'd like to talk to somebody about something.
02:32:44.000Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm talking to the generals or anything like that, but, I mean, it's, yeah, there's people.
02:32:50.000I've been on, gosh, I've been at, like, Camp Pendleton in California and the Navy base in San Diego, got on the destroyer, got to go out to the A-10 thing at Nellis Air Force where they're the warthogs.
02:33:03.000I've had some really amazing experiences, and it's all kind of non-classified.
02:33:08.000There's public information officers with each thing in the military, and you go through them.
02:33:15.000Or, in some examples, I've just known a guy, like my buddy Rip that I wrote the book with, who now, incidentally, has his own foundation in Ukraine and is supporting a battalion of foreign fighters in Ukraine.
02:33:28.000Spent his entire career as a Marine Corps officer, retired, and then this war with Russia kicks off, and he's over there trying to support, you know, the war effort.
02:33:38.000But, you know, he was just a guy I met at the Pentagon.
02:33:44.000But, yeah, no, I— How did you even—how does that conversation even get—like, how do you get in the Pentagon?
02:33:50.000I mean, it's happened a few different ways.
02:33:52.000I had a guy, a friend of my brother's was a Marine at one point, and he put me in contact with a Marine aviation guy, and he was going to be at the Pentagon, and I went up there and saw him.
02:34:03.000And Rip was a guy that liked my books, and we were talking, and he just said he worked at the Pentagon.
02:34:08.000And I'm like, I'm in D.C. all the time.
02:34:45.000It's like people that are legit and they're badass, but they're not badass enough for themselves for this story.
02:34:52.000My buddy Brad Taylor, who's a fantastic thriller author, a former Delta guy, Army Special Mission Union guy, He's like, you know, you never meet a parachute rigger for Delta Force.
02:35:02.000Everybody you meet is an operator for Delta Force.
02:35:06.000There's just a lot of baloney about what people say.
02:35:10.000He's like, yeah, we loved our parachute riggers, but no one ever says that's what they did.
02:35:14.000They're always like, yeah, I'm using Delta.
02:35:16.000It is an interesting thing, like the motivation that people have to puff themselves up.
02:35:51.000And I have such respect for the men and women that go and serve their country because I've met 20-year-old female On a destroyer, it's her job to bring the helicopters in.
02:36:05.000And you're just like, wow, when I was 20, what was I doing?
02:37:37.000Do you feel like a responsibility when you're writing to sort of reflect that, that, you know, you have such a deep respect for these people that you have to write that in a way that sort of portrays that in an accurate sense?
02:38:27.000It's a fascinating thing to me to write about and to talk about.
02:38:31.000And again, it's just I like to build stories around reality and then at some point go off, you know, where the guy's jumping off an airplane and without a parachute and finding a way down, you know.
02:38:45.000When you're researching villains and corruption, have you ever met with people that are corrupt?
02:39:14.000I actually had finished the book, and it involves Americans who are being influenced by Russia or taking money from Russian foreign intelligence and Americans in government.
02:39:24.000And just a couple weeks ago, this guy...
02:39:29.000FBI guy in New York who was like head of counterterrorism at one point, but he was also involved in the sanctions, Russian sanctions.
02:39:38.000He just got indicted for taking money from Oleg Darabowski, which is one of the oligarchs that, you know, Putin supports or supports Putin or both.
02:39:47.000And, you know, these things happen and they just caught a Russian GRU guy that was about to intern at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
02:39:57.000And they just caught a German BND, the German foreign intelligence, Bundesnachrichtendienst, guy who had been spying for the Russians for a long time.
02:40:10.000And, like, all that stuff's really fascinating to me.
02:40:12.000So I want to learn about it as much as I can and then write a fictional, you know, version of it.
02:40:19.000And I'd actually written this book before these three things came out, but, I mean, the Russians have been doing stuff like that for a while, so...
02:40:25.000Yeah, it's disturbing when you find someone like that.
02:40:29.000Is this the same guy, the guy that was a part of going after Trump for Russiagate, where it turned out that he got indicted for conspiring with Russia?
02:40:55.000There was a gentleman that was involved in Russiagate, involved in going after Trump for his ties with Russia, and it turns out that he was colluding with Russia.
02:41:06.000And that he was either colluding with oligarchs or there was something involved and he was recently indicted.
02:41:14.000That might be the same guy because it was an oligarch connection.
02:41:19.000That's the people that have the money outside of the U.S. I mean outside of Russia.
02:41:22.000So those are the people that are going to be paying you off.
02:41:24.000Yeah, that was one of the more wild things about the beginning of the Ukraine war where they were going after the oligarchs and taking their yachts.
02:41:32.000Well, my book, Berner, opens with court blowing up Russian yachts just as something to do, just as a side gig, and then he gets pulled into the main part of the story.
02:41:43.000Yeah, I was down in St. Lucia researching it, and these people came ashore in some kind of a tender from a big yacht.
02:43:14.000Not only that, they have a crematorium, a traveling crematorium.
02:43:19.000So they're literally just throwing these bodies into the burner and they're not giving any sort of an account of how many losses they've had.
02:43:27.000There's a report that some Wagner troops were stacking their dead guys up as basically sandbags.
02:43:35.000And, you know, that's pretty awful if you think about it.
02:43:44.000People in FSB told him what he wanted to hear, and they were supposed to be setting up influence operations in Ukraine for years and years, but they've been stealing the money.
02:43:54.000And then when he said, you know, is this now the right time to do it?
02:44:21.000People don't have to be competent, but they've got to be loyal for you to survive.
02:44:25.000And so he has these incompetent people that were all stealing from the government, and they were also telling him, it was kind of this feedback loop.
02:44:33.000He was hearing what he wanted to hear.
02:44:34.000That's part of the problem, too, right, that they're hearing what they want to hear because people are terrified to tell them bad news.
02:44:40.000I wouldn't want to go to Putin and say, yeah, we can't do this.
02:44:44.000They say it's the same thing with Xi Jinping, that nobody wants to tell him the bad news.
02:44:49.000He doesn't even find out about things that went wrong until quite a while later.
02:44:52.000Yeah, and I imagine that's throughout history.
02:44:56.000It's always been the case for those type of leaders, sadly.
02:44:59.000When you're writing about all this stuff, it's such a complex and nuanced landscape that you're interacting with.
02:45:10.000That's got to be one of the most difficult parts of the job, is incorporating these fictional narratives in with this sort of very realistic world of espionage and crime and Yeah, finding out what to use and what to leave out is really,
02:45:25.000really hard because I will be very fascinated with something and I'm like, it really doesn't push the narrative forward.
02:45:31.000And early in my career, I would read these like really dry government documents about this thing.
02:45:36.000And I wanted to prove that I read it by throwing stuff into the story.
02:45:40.000And my editor would save me from that.
02:45:45.000But yeah, there's so much information.
02:45:50.000But what really makes me enjoy my books is while I'm doing the research by myself, I come across something and I go like, holy shit, people need to know about this.