Latest / The Two Authors’ Podcast / Genres, Research, and Icky Things with Tess Gerritsen

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Genres, Research, and Icky Things with Tess Gerritsen · The Two Authors’ Podcast

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I said, "Wait, wait, wait. Everything that goes wrong is not your fault. NASA does everything
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perfectly." And he says, "Who is at fault then?" And I said, "It's the U.S. military."
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And he said, "When would you like to come?"
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Welcome to the Two Authors podcast, an entertaining chat show hosted by bestselling mystery and
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thriller authors Douglas Pratt and Nicholas Harvey in lively, humorous and informative
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conversation with distinguished guests who share their thoughts and experience about
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forging a successful author career. Welcome to this week's show brought to you as always by
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the best formatting solution in the galaxy. They're wonderful. They're so good that we sing songs
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about them. Exactly. We wax lyrical. Wax lyrical. Wax or whack, I'm not sure. Anyway,
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they are fantabulous as we've announced many times. You know you can do the four stages.
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Sounds rather illegal, but it's not. So, sprayed edges and four stages.
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Yeah, depending on where you're from really, I guess.
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Yeah, well, it just happens every day in Tennessee. But four stages and sprayed edges are two
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two different things. So, Forced Edges is this sneaky little way of prepping the files
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with basically an image around or the part of an image around the edge. And there's software
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you can get there that will build this for you. And essentially, it doesn't really cost
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you anything more to do a Forced Edge. Pop it in Valom and then do the book. So, if you
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want to do a little run of, like if you're going to a signing and you say, "Hey, I want
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to take 50 books to this signing." And so I'm going to do a print run of those. You can
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to format them with these four stages.
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And you've got an image on the edge of your book.
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So you've got this sexy, special one
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that really doesn't cost you anything more
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to then take to a signing.
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- I want to do a little diver that swims up the side.
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- I've got all kinds of ideas to do for four stages stuff.
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I've just got to, you know, for me, living where I am,
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I've got to figure out how to get it done, get the book.
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- Third world, yeah, whatever.
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So, yeah, little creepy island.
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So, but for Orth and Nation later in the year in November in Vegas that I'll be coming over
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for and I have a signing table at and I'm in the anthology and all that jazz. It'd be a good time.
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I'm probably going to do something special for there. To sell there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
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Thank you to Vellum. Big thank you to all our Patreon supporters. We have been remiss, Doug.
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Remiss. We're often remiss. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, that's true. But we haven't mentioned
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some of the names of the folks in the last few months that have been signing up with us on the
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old Patreon there. So huge thanks to Patrick, Cheryl, David, Rob and Kim who all signed
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up on the Patreon and they get the really cool bonus stuff. And we just finished, we're
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doing this intro after we recorded this episode with an amazing guest and great extra stuff
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that's in there for our bonus subscribers just teasing the shit out of you right there
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on it. So a couple of dollars a month, you too can be a special person and be on our
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Patreon. You can be special. Not the special that we two are, but actually really special.
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And my mama says I'm special. Yes, she does. And she had to pay extra in school for it. So
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Leading straight in to our guest this week, the amazing New York Times bestseller, Tess
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Garrison is with us, which we cannot wait. We'll chat with her shortly. But first,
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a listener question from another amazing recent guest that we had, Lisa Gardner.
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Lisa Gardner, thank you so much for joining us the other week for the interview and for
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sticking around for a listener question. So you have something for us. What you got?
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So this is my favorite question to ask all authors. What do you do to get yourself inspired and start writing for the day?
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Oh, I don't think Doug can say
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A jog naked through the pasture with a horse. I don't know
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Mostly I think the big thing for me is I like to
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One, when I'm working on a book, and I just finished a book this weekend, so I'm actually
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at that point where I'm just going through.
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So now it's like, for the moment, I'm not thinking about anything except for what the
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book was, so I can go back through and do my read through.
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But when I'm working in the middle of a book, it's constantly going in my head.
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So kind of we talked about the guy who writes for an hour, I'm like, to me, I think they
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would be perfect because I'm working on that thing right up to the moment.
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So I'm ready to get the keyboard burning.
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Usually though, I still have to have a little coffee in the morning.
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I do my coffee and my wordle first thing and then I jump into writing.
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So I like it.
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Wordle, wordle is the key to your success.
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This is what you heard it now.
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It's going to be the credit in the front of the book.
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I credit these first pages to wordle.
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Credit wordle, credit wordle.
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So I'm going to do that credit wordle and I'm like, what?
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I don't even know this word.
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What the heck is going on?
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Yeah, I pretty much just put my ass in the seat.
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As we talked about in the show, you know, it's a it's a business
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and I kind of treat it that way.
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And I think I probably could do with a better system of preparing myself for the writing
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side of it to get going.
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I love this thing that we talked about with the chap who sets aside the time, so he's
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really keen to do it.
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But the first thing I normally do is read through either what I wrote the day before
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or the last part of what I wrote the day before.
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And then I look at my notes because I try and make some notes at the end of the day
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if I left it hot, as you call it, in the middle of something.
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So I can kind of jump back in there.
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But generally speaking, I try, I find I'm more creative in the mornings.
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So I try and get writing done right away.
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I'm kind of an early riser.
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So normally I message Doug when I get up because he's not an early riser and it annoys the
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shit out of him because he forgets to turn his phone off.
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I do get up at 6.30 in the morning.
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So I'm not the early riser, but he's like waking up before the chicken and raw.
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He's getting better.
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I think over the years we've known each other now, I've coerced him into getting up earlier
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by annoying him with messages before he gets up.
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- I'm the O-Dark 30 writer.
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I feel like it's best before you start thinking
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too much about the day.
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- And do you have a routine?
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Do you have anything that has to be in place
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or going for you to sit down and start?
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- My process is very similar to yours.
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I'm first thing in the morning
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and I start with what I wrote the day before.
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'Cause proofing what I already did is less intimidating.
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And then by definition, you start thinking,
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"I can fix it, I can fix it."
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And then by definition, that also leads you to,
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Okay, and now this is what we're often running. I cannot write in the afternoons for love,
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nor money. At 3 p.m. if you told me to plant my butt in the seat and produce, you know, a thousand
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words, I would just curl up in the seat and take a nap. I'm not going to lie. So it's interesting,
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the bio rhythms like piece of it, like morning, I kind of got to find your fit.
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I've kind of found the rhythm here. We have to drive into town to go to a gym. So we kind of
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gym about 2.30 or so. The exercising is always an idea starter for me. And so if I have any
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kind of problem in the manuscript or what have you, I chew it over while I'm, and I normally come
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up with some kind of solution. So that gives me a little burst of energy when I come back
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because I've kind of fixed something. Well, that's kind of what I do. I'll draft something and then
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I'll go walk with the dogs in the mountains. And in the afternoon, if anything, I can revise,
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But I can't carry on.
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Like it's like, but it's like while I'm walking,
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oh wait, that's going to be a problem.
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Oh wait, you had the scene like, you know,
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100 pages ago, the beans, you got to count for that kind of.
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It's like, the rest of the light bulbs go on.
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- That old shit moment when you realized
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that you just screwed up something back
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in the first third, brilliant.
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- It was brilliant.
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No, not so much so.
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- So well.
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Hey, thank you so much.
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Great question.
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We really appreciate you sticking around.
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This has been a blast. Thank you so much.
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Tess Garrison, welcome to the show. This is an absolute delight and an honor to have you here.
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Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.
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Exciting times with another book coming out soon, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
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But first of all, give the listeners who've been living under a rock for the last 30 years,
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give us a little bit of info on how you first started getting interested in writing and when
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when you were first published?
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- I knew I was a writer when I was seven years old.
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And that seems to be a universal age
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for a lot of writers I know.
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Seven is when we I self-identify what we're gonna be.
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Instead of being a policeman or a nurse
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or anybody else, I wanted to be a writer.
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But then I ended up going to medical school.
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So I became a doctor somewhere in the middle there
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and really didn't get back into writing
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until I was an intern.
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And then I was home with my two kids on maternity leave
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and I wrote my first book.
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You know, that's how it all started.
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probably around age, oh, 28, published my first book,
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you know, a couple of years later.
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- I love the way you just glide through the fact
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that you became a doctor.
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(both laughing)
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Notice how the age went from seven to 28.
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There's a little bit involved in becoming a doctor.
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- I just became one.
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I was just like, "Hey, what are you gonna do this week?"
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I think I'm gonna become a doctor.
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So I'm like, "Yeah, I'm stuck."
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- Well, you know, I'm from Asian American family.
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And if you know anything about Asian Americans,
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You wonder why so many of them become doctors.
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And it's because I have parents who kind of demanded it of me.
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They're so focused on security and making sure
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that you have your place in the world.
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So I did what they wanted.
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And I went to medical school and became an internal medicine
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specialist, practiced for a couple of years.
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But maternity leave was a blessing for me,
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because it allowed me time to be at home.
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Yeah, there was a baby sleeping next to me.
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I was going to say, yeah, don't forget that part.
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Otherwise, the sun's gonna disown you.
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- Yeah, yeah.
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There was a baby there who occasionally needed my attention,
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but it allowed me time to write my first book.
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- So one of the things that's amazing
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is you've never been afraid to venture into new genres.
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I mean, early on, some romance, then the medical thrillers,
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then crime, and now espionage.
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And you've even dabbled in horror
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with your son, I believe, in writing screenplays.
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- Made a horror film?
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And you must remember, I did science fiction as well.
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- I am.
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How could we forget the science fiction?
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So have these decisions to move around
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been to feed the muse purely or business decisions?
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- It was never a business decision.
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I mean, if you were gonna be a business savvy person,
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you would never change genres.
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That's what your publisher wants.
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They want you to write the same book only different.
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- Yeah.
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- So my bouncing around
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between all these crazy different genres
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was all about the story.
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A story would occur to me and maybe it wasn't
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what I was used to writing, but I had to write the story.
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And I got a lot of advice not to do that.
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I was told again and again that you've got a brand,
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don't ruin the brand.
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I couldn't listen.
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- Well, and you've done pretty well with that.
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I mean, it's not like you, I mean,
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obviously I think the Resolute Niles TV series alone,
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I am for what, seven years.
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So how did that show change how you wrote that series?
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That's always kind of.
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- You know, I kept writing the series
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the way I had always written it.
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Anybody who watches the show and reads the book
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sees the differences.
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And when things go to Hollywood, they really change a lot.
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In particular, they made my very ordinary looking
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characters glamorous.
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And that removed a lot of, I think,
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what my readers loved about these characters.
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They could identify with Jane Rosoli,
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because she wasn't a beautiful woman in the book.
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She was a wallflower.
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And we've all felt like wallflowers
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at some time in our lives.
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I don't know what you're talking about.
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I don't know what you're talking about.
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(laughing)
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- But then they cast--
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- Always been a lily, that's all I know.
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- Oh, well congratulations.
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You're the only one in the world.
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Then they cast Angie Harmon in the role.
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You know, never Wallflower in her life, I'm sure.
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So what changed for me maybe was I tried
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to inject a little more humor in the stories
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because the show was funny.
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They did a great job with that.
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But other than that, my characters remain the same.
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- Well, that's a great show.
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Although I like said, my wife is a huge fan
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and I remember when we watched "Brazilian Alps"
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and came out and she was like,
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"Well, that didn't happen in the books."
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- No, no.
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(laughing)
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- So, but like, and you said, you've gotta say,
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you are a doctor.
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Where does that clinical knowledge
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actually help you write the thriller?
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And like, where does it then also become a liability?
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Is it like, you know, where do you know
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it's gonna slow down the story if you're overly accurate?
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Obviously, it helped when I wrote my first medical thriller, which was Harvest.
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I didn't have to do as much research because I had the contacts.
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If I wanted to talk to a cardiothoracic surgeon, I would pick up the phone and call somebody
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I knew.
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So that helped with the truthfulness of what it's like to be in the operating room or the
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autopsy room.
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But you're absolutely right.
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You have to be very careful when you're dealing with a highly technical subject that you don't
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overwhelm the reader.
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But on the other hand, the reader wants to know your secrets.
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And to explain your secrets, sometimes you have to give a little more detail than you
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normally would.
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So my trick about injecting technical details is try to find an emotional hook to that detail.
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You know, I don't have to stop and explain what ventricular tachycardia is.
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I don't really bother to, but you can see from what the characters, how they respond
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to that, you know that it's a bad thing.
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If you have a character say, "Oh my God, he's in V-Fib," you don't need to know what
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V-Fib is.
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You just need to know it's a very bad thing.
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Right?
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So that was really, I think my trick about injecting technical stuff is always find the
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emotion behind what that means.
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What about as, obviously, technology has changed, practice has changed.
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Have you had to learn new things that maybe you're exposed to?
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You're not, I assume, not a practicing doctor.
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You don't have anybody taking appointments right now.
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Are you having to keep up with the knowledge of things just to kind of keep that up to date
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so you're not going, "Oh, well, it didn't happen."
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this and somebody goes, "Ah, that's outdated. We haven't done that in 10 years."
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Well, yeah. Well, you know, the drugs never stay the same. So the drugs that I was using
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30 years ago are not what they're using now. I think the best example I have for keeping
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up or learning new stuff was I wrote this book called Gravity. It was a medical thriller
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set aboard the International Space Station. And what do I know about space? But, you know,
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I pitched that to my editor. They said, "Great, go ahead." And then I thought, "Oh my God,
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I do now. I don't know anything about the space program. So I ended up spending two years just
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doing research on the space program, life in space, you know, medicine and microgravity.
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No matter what you write, you're always learning something new. And that's really like a lot of
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the fun of the whole career is I feel like I've learned a lot about Chinese mythology and archaeology
15:26
and aerospace medicine, it's a lot of fun.
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And now, back to the show.
16:14
You've almost answered the next question, which we were going to ask you, which is about
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the research writing ratio.
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Obviously, it varies depending on the books you're doing.
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And you're doing books in series for some of them.
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So as you go deeper into the series,
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you're already kind of clued in on a lot of that stuff.
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But do you do all your research up front,
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or do you do enough to get you started?
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I think I do enough to get me started.
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Because once you've got that germ of an idea for a story,
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you're so anxious to get started, you don't want to wait--
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Oh, yeah.
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You know, years.
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You just want to get going.
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And then you learn stuff.
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You said, "Oh, now I got to find out what this, you know, a list of a section of knowledge
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I need to acquire."
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You should never get in the way of your own enthusiasm.
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That is really my rule, is once you've got that head of steam, get going.
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And a lot of times I will, I'll think, you know, I'll put a little sticky there and say,
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"Look this up later and just keep on moving forward."
17:09
Yeah, you were talking about the writing, about the space stuff.
17:12
You need to do enough research that you don't launch up in this whole plan out your whole
17:17
spacecraft, describe it all in the early chapters, and then find out that it can't be like that.
17:23
Well, that's okay. That was the one exception where I did have to do a lot of upfront research.
17:28
I knew it was about a disaster in space, but I didn't know enough about normal
17:34
spacecraft operations to come up with a plausible disaster. So that one I went to NASA for,
17:40
how I approach them is a tale in itself, because I remember calling up the public
17:45
Affairs Officer in Houston and saying, "I'm a thriller writer. I want to write about a disaster in
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space. Can you help me?" And he said, "Do you know what the purpose of my office is here? It's to
17:56
make us look good. Tell me what goes on in your story." And I said, "Well, everybody except one
18:04
person dies aboard ISS and a shadow crashes on landing killing everybody aboard." And he said,
18:11
I don't really think I want to cooperate with this. I said, "Wait, wait, wait. Everything that goes
18:15
wrong is not your fault. NASA does everything perfectly." And he says, "Well, who's at fault then?"
18:22
And I said, "It's the U.S. military." And he said, "When would you like to come?"
18:29
It was, I mean, I was an anthropology major in college, so I'm good at identifying tribes. And
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conflict with military space people because they're fighting for the same
18:45
tax dollars. They don't agree with the same goals. I mean really the people who
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worked at NASA other than the military, they're Star Trek people.
18:55
They believe in space for all mankind and military is like that's
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for our killer satellites and nobody else. Yeah, yeah, where do we put the
19:02
rockets? Right, right. So that's how I really got into NASA. I was there for
19:08
you know, a week I talked to everybody I needed to. They were incredibly wonderful.
19:13
And then I went to Cape Canaveral for the Kennedy Space Center. And so all that together gave me
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a good feeling for how do you make a disaster? What can go wrong? But you have to know what goes
19:24
right first. Well, so also like, and let's talk a little bit jumping from space to spy is because
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in your book, The Spy Coast, which is book one in the Martini Club, great book too, which is
19:35
It comes out of discovering that you're Camden, Maine, where you live, is actually like a haven for
19:41
retired CIA operatives, which is kind of cool. And I was just, before we came on, I was talking to
19:46
my wife and my father-in-law about that, and they're like, is it because they know that's where the
19:50
best place to hide is with a whole string of wire that is. But what, what kind, that led you to
19:55
moving into SBI. What's the difference, though, on a craft level, doing espionage versus doing,
20:01
like writing the medical thriller or writing and writing a spy novel. There's so many variations
20:06
there. It's all down to research. But what I was really researching when I was doing the spy novels
20:11
was personalities. What kind of person becomes a spy? How are they different from everybody else?
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That was what I was trying to capture, were characters who would be attracted to work
20:22
in intelligence and what happens to them after they retire. So it was a lot of reading memoirs.
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And spies like to write memoirs.
20:32
(laughing)
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- They're very secretive.
20:34
(laughing)
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We can't talk about it now, but.
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- Yes, you want them to be telling the truth
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of their own memoirs.
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So it was just trying to get a feeling
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for the kind of people that do this,
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because that's who my characters are.
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You know, I just happen to live in this really
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kind of peculiar community that I lucked into
20:52
when I moved here.
20:53
And it's an interesting story.
20:54
Why did so many spies end up in Maine?
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- Yeah, it could have been retired serial killers.
20:59
- You know, there's lots of things it could have been
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that wouldn't have been nearly as good.
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- I just feel like it's gonna be safer there
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'cause they're like, well, we're safe here.
21:09
- Yes, and they're probably all well armed up here.
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- I was gonna say, yes.
21:12
(laughing)
21:13
They're all carrying.
21:14
- It's a puzzle and it's a question
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that I've asked many people, why did they end up here?
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I've gotten several different answers.
21:22
I think that part of it is that this is far
21:24
from any nuclear target.
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That was one explanation that was given me.
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Another is that this used to be a place for safe houses.
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So if you wanted somebody to go away and disappear for a while,
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they'd set them up to Maine and they liked it here.
21:37
Another explanation is the very first generation
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when it was moving over from OSS to CIA.
21:43
These were people who were recruited from Ivy League schools.
21:46
They were from Yale and Harvard and all the--
21:49
they were bluebloods.
21:50
And these people probably came from money.
21:53
And when they were growing up, Maine was their playground.
21:55
So rich people used to come here all the time for summertime.
21:58
So they just retired in places that they were familiar with.
22:02
But it's a fascinating story and about the origins of it.
22:06
But what I love about it is that I'm surrounded
22:09
by so many smart people.
22:11
And it shows up in my new book.
22:13
We have a conference here that's been going on for about 40
22:15
years called the Camden Conference.
22:17
Started, rumor has it, by a bunch of spies
22:21
who wanted to get together every year
22:23
and talk about global affairs.
22:25
And so they get speakers from all around the world
22:28
to come and talk to this conference.
22:29
And the public is invited if you can get a ticket.
22:32
And every time I go to the Camden Conference
22:35
and somebody local stands up and asks the question,
22:38
I'm always blown away by how in-depth these questions are,
22:42
how clearly well informed they are
22:43
about international affairs.
22:45
And I always think another spy.
22:47
(laughing)
22:49
So yes, I am surrounded by them,
22:51
but it makes for a very lively community.
22:53
I have a different people that surround me in Tennessee
22:55
and Mississippi, so it's not quite spy level people.
22:59
But they do have a lot of guns.
23:01
We do have a lot of guns.
23:04
- Let's talk about "The Shadow Friends."
23:06
It's the new book, third book in the Martini Club series,
23:10
comes out in August when this will be airing.
23:13
Let's not give away too much,
23:14
but give the listeners a brief
23:16
on what to expect from the new one.
23:18
- Well, if they've read the first two books
23:20
and they know my five spies, their retired spies,
23:22
And one of them is, her name is Ingrid.
23:25
I think of her as the Hermione of the group.
23:27
She's the really clever one.
23:29
And it opens like years before when she's still working
23:31
as a spy and she's in France trying to protect an informant.
23:36
And things go wrong and the informant gets killed.
23:40
And her fellow agents get killed.
23:42
So now it's years later, she's still haunted
23:44
by that horrifying disaster.
23:46
Out of the woodwork comes an old lover and spy
23:49
who was her colleague.
23:50
wants to pull her back into the business
23:52
because they have a chance of finding the assassins
23:56
that attacked them years before.
23:58
So Ingrid is, she's in a quandary
24:01
because she's happily married.
24:02
And here's this old lover back in her life
24:05
and he still looks really good.
24:06
He's still hot.
24:08
- As old lovers always do, don't they?
24:11
- Well, you know, as you get older,
24:13
as you get older, you start to look at 70 year old men
24:16
and think, well, I could do him.
24:18
(laughing)
24:20
(laughing)
24:22
It's like, okay, desire ages along with you,
24:26
but it's still there.
24:27
- It is true, it is true.
24:29
And thankfully we do, 'cause I mean, yeah,
24:32
at least she has something more to talk to
24:33
than some year old man about.
24:34
- Right, right.
24:36
So here's Ingrid.
24:37
Here's Ingrid pulled back into the business
24:40
because there is another assassination in her little town
24:43
and it appears to be the same assassin
24:45
who attacked her years before.
24:48
So she joins her ex-lover.
24:50
they go off into the wild and leaving behind her poor husband who's trying to pick up the
24:55
pieces. And so the story is told from a lot from his point of view, is trying to understand
25:01
his wife's behavior and the group of other spies who are their friends, all trying to
25:06
understand what is Ingrid up to.
25:08
Great explanation, obviously, of your own book. I love the bit in the middle. Doug,
25:11
by the way, is being stalked by an ex, but she lives in a trailer park in Florida. It's
25:15
very, very different.
25:16
(laughing)
25:19
- She has paid, she has all three of her teeth.
25:21
Thank you very much.
25:23
(laughing)
25:25
- All right, so I'm gonna fangirl a little bit here
25:28
because I'm reading the book
25:29
and we got an advanced copy, thank you.
25:32
And the opening chapter for me is a masterclass.
25:35
It's the inciting incident.
25:36
You talked about it being set in France
25:38
back in time with Ingrid.
25:40
And it accomplishes so much.
25:43
Basically, it's got an inciting incident.
25:46
It makes you fall in love with the poor girl
25:49
who's trying to be protected.
25:51
You're reintroduced to Ingrid,
25:53
who's one of the people you love from the,
25:56
she's part of the family from the other books.
25:59
You introduce this fella who's gonna come up later.
26:02
Writers, this is how you info dump without info dumping.
26:05
How far is the end product from the first draft?
26:07
I gotta ask you that much.
26:09
And did this take some tinkering with to get right?
26:12
I probably wrote that first chapter at the very--
26:16
it was after I finished the rest of the book.
26:18
I just knew that there was going to be a flashback.
26:21
But what I was really trying to establish--
26:23
and the real goal of this story was
26:26
to put her marriage through a stress test.
26:28
I wanted to see how this marriage would survive.
26:31
So her marriage to her lovely husband, Lloyd, who's--
26:34
let's put it this way--
26:35
he's not the action hero that Rodrigo is.
26:38
Lloyd is very domesticated.
26:40
He cooks.
26:40
He was an analyst.
26:41
She was not never a covert operative, so he sat in the desk all his CIA career, and she
26:46
married him and she feels secure and settled with him.
26:50
But that first chapter was really intended to show that she was going to have a choice.
26:55
Was she going to choose to stay with Rodrigo, who was her lover, or was she going to go
26:59
back to that analyst who was falling in love with her?
27:02
And that was the whole point of it.
27:03
And yeah, there was action and there was a set up of the crime, and there was introducing
27:07
Rodrigo, but it was more, this is Ingrid making her choice to go home and marry Lloyd.
27:11
And we've lost somebody.
27:13
- Yeah, it's the, can we back?
27:16
It's the, I'm on an island in the Caribbean
27:18
and I have better internet than he does
27:21
in the great state of Tennessee.
27:23
All right, let's move on to talking about
27:25
some of the business stuff a little bit.
27:26
So we all dream about getting a TV deal or a movie deal.
27:32
And you've had that, you've had a TV series,
27:34
you've had movie options, you've had a lot
27:36
and you've had the good and bad of it.
27:38
And there's some lessons to be learned there,
27:41
which I know I think on your website, you share some of that stuff.
27:44
Talk to us a little bit about what happened with the gravity situation.
27:47
Yeah. So this is a very long story.
27:50
And actually, if you want to read it in depth,
27:52
there is this book called "Hollywood vs. the Author."
27:54
And I have a whole chapter in there about suing Hollywood.
27:57
I wrote the book "Gravity," which was about the International Space Station,
28:01
a woman doctor, she's a lone survivor after a series of bad things happens,
28:05
and she has to survive aboard the International Space Station.
28:09
I sold that book in 1999, when the book came out in 1999, I sold that to New Line Cinema
28:16
for a very, very big deal.
28:18
It made the front page of Daily Variety as the biggest deal of the year.
28:22
It went into development and then it never got out of development as these things happen.
28:27
So over the intervening years, New Line Cinema was acquired by Warner Brothers.
28:33
And then Warner Brothers came out with a movie called Gravity, same title about a female
28:38
Medical Doctor Traptoboard, the International Space Station, after a series of accidents
28:42
happens.
28:43
And it seemed pretty familiar to me.
28:47
But then I thought, "Well, these things happen.
28:49
Warner Brothers had the right to make my film because they owned the copyright."
28:54
And then we got my agent in New York, got an interesting phone call by somebody I would
28:59
just call Deep Throat, who called and was very disturbed.
29:04
person had worked with New Line Cinema at the time my book Gravity was being developed.
29:11
This person said that a director had been hired, had been attached to the movie, and
29:17
that director was Alfonso Cuarón.
29:19
Now Alfonso Cuarón was the director and writer of the Warner Brothers movie Gravity.
29:25
When my agent, and by then I was told I needed a lawyer, when his people were approached,
29:32
Corone claimed he had never heard of me
29:34
and never heard of my book,
29:36
even though he was attached to my movie in 1999.
29:40
So what did I do?
29:41
Probably the stupid thing, but I couldn't help it.
29:44
I sued Warner Brothers, not for copyright infringement
29:48
because I admit they had the right to make the movie.
29:51
I wanted a based upon credit.
29:53
In other words, based upon the book by.
29:55
That's what novelists really care about.
29:57
We want people to buy our books
29:58
and just imagine how many more books I might have sold
30:01
if I had had that particular credit.
30:03
But I was cut out entirely.
30:05
I mean, they said I didn't have anything to do with the story.
30:08
The man who claimed he wrote the whole thing in two weeks
30:12
said that it just came to him in a dream.
30:14
Anyway, the whole thing was pretty sorted.
30:16
The lawsuit lasted about a year.
30:19
We were ruled against again and again by the judge
30:22
who was unfortunately, went to the Ninth Circuit in LA.
30:26
That's where we sued.
30:27
We were essentially were defeated by one of her rulings
30:31
was that when Warner Brothers acquired New Line Cinema, they acquired the rights to buy
30:37
movie, but they did not acquire the obligations to that contract.
30:42
So they got to make the movie, but they didn't have to honor the contract that I had signed
30:46
with New Line Cinema.
30:48
And at that point, I had spent a lot of money, and even if I had won that appeal on that
30:53
particular point, it would still have gone back to the original judge who continued to
30:57
rule against us.
30:59
My husband was having all kinds of anxiety about this whole thing because now I'm wondering
31:04
about this as saying, "If you continue with this lawsuit, we're going to come after you
31:08
for court costs."
31:09
Then we're talking about millions of dollars.
31:12
I felt that I had made my point because I was not going to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
31:18
What was important to me is that I could continue to keep talking about it and even writing about
31:23
it.
31:24
The upshot is that that chapter in suing Hollywood is now being used in law schools.
31:33
I have taught a couple of law school classes where the professors, their point that they
31:38
want to make to their students is number one, where you file your lawsuit is important.
31:43
Do not file in the Ninth Circuit if you want to have a chance at Hollywood.
31:48
File it somewhere else.
31:49
And number two, everything depends on which judge you land.
31:54
That's where justice lands.
31:55
It's all about the judge.
31:57
And now a quick word from this episode's sponsor.
32:00
Hey, it's Jamie Davis, show manager for Author Nation.
32:03
I hope to get to know you a lot more at the conference coming up in November, so make sure
32:07
you come over and say hi.
32:09
Also someone requested more dad jokes, so don't blame me for what happens next.
32:14
Like, why did the elephant use her trunk as a bookmark?
32:19
Because that way she knows where she stopped reading.
32:23
And now, back to the show.
32:26
With the new series, you're with Thomas and Mercer, which of course are Amazon, and there's
32:32
some TV and movie rights attached to that.
32:34
Did your experience with gravity be part of what drove you to go with Thomas and Mercer
32:39
and hammer out this deal?
32:40
What I wrote the first book in the series, The Spy Coast, there were several publishers
32:45
who were interested.
32:46
I went with Thomas and Mercer because it came with a TV deal attached.
32:50
So it's still in development.
32:51
I understand they've hired the writer's room.
32:54
They have like five writers attached to the first season.
32:57
They have a showrunner and that's the latest I've heard.
33:00
You know, these things move at a glacial pace.
33:02
So we'll wait and see.
33:04
I mean, it could be in development
33:05
for the rest of my life, but who knows?
33:07
- I'm guessing the contract you signed with Amazon
33:11
was a lot tidier than the one that you had.
33:14
- Yes, yes.
33:15
And everybody knows where the source of this story is.
33:18
It's from my books.
33:19
- Since you're talking about Thomas and Mercer,
33:21
Because wide versus exclusive, which is kind of what we-- a lot of indie authors are big.
33:27
That's always a big question.
33:28
Should I go with the big trap or exclusively the Amazon for the Kindle Unlimited?
33:32
And so Thomas and Mercer are famously strong on eBooks.
33:36
And they've got the massive Kindle Unlimited subscription base.
33:41
But in this same process, you gave up Apple, Nook, and to the other one.
33:45
So how did that feel for the trade?
33:47
I mean, do you think that the Kindle Unlimited is worth that trade off?
33:52
That's a good question.
33:52
I mean, there are some things you do surrender, and that's the e-book versions from other
33:59
distributors.
34:00
And you also pretty much surrender any chance of being on the New York Times bestseller
34:05
list, because Barnes & Noble won't carry you.
34:07
You have to be in Barnes & Noble to get on the Times list.
34:10
On the other hand, I have sold a ton more books than I ever have before.
34:16
I look at the number of copies that have gone out for the spy codes.
34:20
It far, far exceeds anything I sold with other publishers.
34:25
So if you're interested in Eyes on Your Books, I think Amazon makes sense.
34:30
I like dollars in my wallet.
34:32
That's where I want to come through.
34:33
So if Eyes on My Books works, then I want them to buy my book.
34:37
Yeah, we're sort of doing this for a living.
34:39
So yeah.
34:40
Put dollar, yeah, yeah.
34:41
Yeah.
34:41
I mean, there's a little bit to the...
34:43
Yes, I'd love to be on the New York Times list, but at the same time, I like making a lot of money.
34:48
Well, you can make a lot of money at Amazon as well. The amount of money isn't that different,
34:55
actually, which is interesting. Just the number of books.
34:58
The number of books. I think that Amazon figured out early that pricing books a little cheaper,
35:04
you sell a lot more. Even though your books are price lower, you still make the same amount of
35:09
of money because of volume.
35:10
- Yeah, and paid treats, of course, which are enormous.
35:13
Like for you, they would be huge numbers of paid route.
35:16
That one month early access in Amazon system
35:21
before the official release date is huge as well, right?
35:25
So that gets a lot of interest.
35:27
So let's move on to another project
35:29
that you could tell us about is Vacationland.
35:32
- Well, Vacationland, I'm afraid,
35:34
is on the shelf right now at NBC,
35:36
but I have another TV show.
35:39
But wait, I have another.
35:42
It's just been filmed.
35:45
I can't remember.
35:45
I think the title is called Murder in a Cold Place.
35:48
The same writing partner that I had for Vacationland, he and I teamed up.
35:52
It's a wheel of movies at lifetime featuring two female investigators in Anchorage, Alaska.
35:58
That'll be the cold part.
36:00
Yes, yes.
36:01
Well, the idea was that we had somebody who's from Alaska and somebody who's a fish out
36:06
of water.
36:07
They hate each other, they get paired up,
36:08
and they solve crimes.
36:10
So the first one we wrote, as I said, it's been filmed,
36:14
and we are now in meetings for movie two, three, and four
36:19
with the same characters.
36:20
- Wow, that's awesome, that's great.
36:22
So, well, you do have a lot of books under your belt,
36:25
so do you ever write something though
36:27
that just blows you away,
36:28
that gets you running out of the office
36:30
to go tell your husband or somebody else that's important?
36:35
You're like, "Oh, I got something in other lines."
36:38
- Well, you know--
36:38
- Can you just kill somebody?
36:40
- It's really funny what's exciting to me
36:41
are the books that are like,
36:42
unlike anything else I've written,
36:45
the really weird ones, the strange ones.
36:47
Now, I wrote a book once called "Playing with Fire,"
36:50
which was a very thin little book
36:51
that started off as a short story.
36:53
It's about a female violinist
36:56
who buys a piece of sheet music in Rome,
36:59
takes it home, and every time she plays it on her violin,
37:02
her little girl goes berserk
37:03
and does something horrible.
37:05
turns into a little monster.
37:06
So she thinks that this music has some sort of
37:08
supernatural power and she goes back to Adelaide
37:10
to find out who wrote it.
37:12
And then in intervening chapters,
37:13
we go back to pre-war Venice and we find out
37:16
where that music came from.
37:17
So it ends up being kind of this almost ghostly haunted
37:21
thing that came along with another dream that I had
37:25
where the music appeared to me and I wrote the music
37:28
and it was recorded.
37:29
So it was this combination story plus violin piece
37:35
that became one project.
37:36
And I was really excited about that.
37:39
So people can go online and listen to the recording of it,
37:42
recorded by a famous concert violinist.
37:45
So that was one of those weird things that come to you
37:48
every so often, you don't know where it comes from.
37:50
It came to me in a nightmare,
37:51
but I was excited about that one, yeah.
37:53
- Yeah, I was gonna say, you said a dream,
37:55
but it sounded a little more haunting than a dream.
37:58
(laughing)
38:00
And I wanna assume that maybe you do at least
38:03
know how to read music,
38:04
'cause I do not, if I came up with a piece--
38:06
- Yeah, I do.
38:07
- That'd be like--
38:08
- Well, this is the fun thing about it
38:10
because I was writing the book
38:11
and I was describing this piece of music
38:13
that did not exist.
38:15
And I think all my descriptions of it
38:17
fed into my subconscious so that when I woke up
38:20
I was hearing the melody.
38:22
So I was able to write it down
38:23
and sent it to a producer friend of mine
38:26
and he lined it up with this concert violinist
38:28
who recorded it.
38:30
So it was just one of those bizarre things that happened.
38:33
That's insane.
38:33
I'm gonna try to get some of my songs
38:35
that I sing in the show.
38:36
(laughing)
38:38
- Yeah, you could have somebody else
38:39
transcribe it into music.
38:40
- Totally, absolutely.
38:41
I just can sing it out loud
38:43
and let it just kinda get trans.
38:44
What do you think?
38:44
- It might be music adjacent.
38:46
(laughing)
38:48
We can try it.
38:49
- I told you, I play the radio really well.
38:51
That's my, that's my style.
38:53
(laughing)
38:54
- So let's talk about a little collaboration you had
38:57
with some no-hopper called Lee Child.
38:59
So tell us about that.
39:00
How did, I'm dying to know how that came about.
39:03
Was that over drinks like, hey, what we should do?
39:06
Or was it a bit more strategic or?
39:08
- It was our editor.
39:10
Lee and I have the same editor in the UK.
39:13
And she just came up with this great idea.
39:15
She goes, hey, wouldn't it be fun if you two
39:16
wrote a short story together?
39:18
And because Jack Reacher was about to go to Maine
39:22
in one of the stories.
39:23
And she said, a Maggie Bird lives in Maine.
39:26
Wouldn't it be great if they met up there?
39:28
I have to say, I was intimidated.
39:30
I thought, I can't write a story with that.
39:31
- No, you weren't.
39:32
I can't write a story with Lee Charlton.
39:35
(laughing)
39:36
I was so intimidated.
39:38
I just said, "I'm not sure I can do this."
39:40
But Lee was all in.
39:42
So the way we handled it is Lee wrote the first chapter.
39:44
I wrote the next chapter, he wrote the next one.
39:46
I mean, we just kind of played on,
39:48
we had no idea where it was going,
39:49
but we would play off each other's chapters before.
39:52
And I think the short story was a lot of fun.
39:55
It's Jack Richard goes to Maine
39:57
because somebody there is doing a search
39:59
on his dead brother.
40:00
He wants to know who was searching.
40:01
He shows up on Maggie Bird's doorstep.
40:05
And she knew Jack Reacher's dead brother.
40:09
They worked together in Bangkok.
40:11
And so it's, anyway, it goes from there,
40:13
but it ended up being very exciting
40:15
with a lot of gunfire and somebody's,
40:19
Lee changed one thing in my part.
40:22
I said that Reacher shoots the guy in the head
40:24
and Lee just added a little
40:26
and the top of his skull hit the wall.
40:28
(laughing)
40:30
- Oh, thank you, Lee, for that detail.
40:33
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:34
You missed out the medical part.
40:36
(both laughing)
40:38
It's, you know, Doug and I write together.
40:40
Now we're talking, you're talking Lee Child-Tess Garrett's
40:43
and level, we're on a slightly different level,
40:45
but Doug and I do write together,
40:46
and when we do, I'll co-write.
40:49
We do go back and forth in chapters in the same way.
40:52
And one of the things we always talk about
40:54
is when you get the chapter from your partner
40:56
and you read through it, you get excited,
40:59
you get like, "Ooh, this is good.
41:01
Now I gotta give something back."
41:02
It really, I feel like it elevates your game, right?
41:06
- Well, you know, 'cause you feed off each other, right?
41:07
Or you're torture each other.
41:09
But how do you-- - Oh, yeah.
41:11
- Do you ever get that to that stage
41:13
or you get a champion and go,
41:14
"I don't know what to do with this.
41:16
This is horrible."
41:17
(laughing)
41:18
Or if you do, you will not admit it, right?
41:22
- I was gonna say, not with Nick,
41:24
but I have with a different--
41:26
- I've had it with a different--
41:27
- That's right.
41:28
- One thing I've got there.
41:30
What do I do with this?
41:31
- Yeah, that's a danger of collaboration.
41:33
You have to know your writing partner very well
41:35
and trust them.
41:37
- I think you're on the right track with Lee Child.
41:40
- I think he's on the right track with that.
41:41
- That is a good point right there.
41:42
- That's really where we're at.
41:43
Like I love Lee Child, but I mean, Jack Reacher can't,
41:47
he's not gonna be in medical procedures.
41:49
- So with a huge backlist,
41:51
you've got the Rosalia Niles franchise,
41:53
you got the Martini Club ongoing.
41:55
We've got all this TV stuff and movie stuff
41:58
How do you decide what your next year looks like?
42:01
Like, I mean, how far out do you plan?
42:03
And what guides what you're gonna do in the next process?
42:07
- Or are you looking for a break?
42:08
- Yeah, yeah, really.
42:09
- That's another question.
42:10
- Do you know how to stop the train?
42:12
- I had been saying I was gonna retire
42:15
for the last 15 years.
42:16
- Don't you dare, Tess.
42:17
- I haven't been able to.
42:18
Because you know, what drives me is, oh, I got an idea.
42:23
Oh, what happens next?
42:24
You know, that's just like this, and really,
42:28
we are obsessed people.
42:30
I think, I don't know any writer who's willingly retired.
42:33
- Short of losing like your faculties,
42:36
I don't think that I would.
42:37
I think that I always have a, I want to write something.
42:39
There's always going to be something that's going to be.
42:41
- Right, and I think most of us,
42:43
even if we suddenly could not find a publisher anymore,
42:46
we would still be writing.
42:47
We would write for ourselves,
42:48
or we would write and put it up on the internet
42:50
because people are talking to us in our heads,
42:53
and we want them to have their voice.
42:55
- A lot.
42:56
- Shut up, shut up.
42:58
(laughing)
42:58
So it's, when you hear that voice in your head,
43:01
it's like, yeah, it's such a gift
43:03
because they're telling the story
43:05
and you're just the channel.
43:07
- All right, we have a couple of questions to wrap up here.
43:09
This has been so special spending time with you.
43:12
So this is a question we ask all of our guests,
43:15
which is what do you think your author's superpower is?
43:18
- Dedication.
43:19
(laughing)
43:20
It is that I will not give up.
43:23
I do not give up.
43:24
I have nursed so many hopeless manuscripts to the end.
43:29
I think--
43:30
- Same, same.
43:31
- You know, you have to be willing to work
43:35
with the impossibly bad writing
43:37
that we sometimes do and fix it.
43:39
- That's great, good perseverance, perseverance.
43:42
All right, we have the last question
43:45
for this part of the interview.
43:46
- Our last question is our Wheel of Questions.
43:48
- Oh, okay.
43:49
- So it's a random question that we're gonna give you.
43:52
Yeah, it's all fun and games here.
43:55
So we don't take anything seriously.
44:00
Okay, ooh, this is a good one.
44:01
Ooh, Nick, I can't wait to hear yours.
44:03
What is your biggest ick?
44:06
- Bodily functions.
44:07
(laughing)
44:09
You know, I don't like to write about people's bathroom habits.
44:13
It's like, I can skip past that, all right?
44:15
I want to talk about that.
44:17
- That's fair.
44:18
Yeah, nobody wants to read that part either.
44:20
- Except for sex. - I think most people
44:22
sex I can deal with, but all the bathroom stuff never mind.
44:26
(laughing)
44:26
- But the other bathroom stuff is all about that.
44:28
That's fair, that's fair.
44:30
Nick, what's your biggest ick?
44:32
- Right now, it's the Caribbean centipede.
44:35
So these suckers will grow up to a foot long
44:39
and they've got six million legs
44:41
and they're venomous, slightly venomous,
44:44
and I'd never heard of them until we were here.
44:47
And we've had some, what we looked up
44:49
and we thought they were gargantuan
44:51
and these things are about four inches long,
44:53
they're the little baby.
44:54
But we've had those, we're upstairs,
44:57
and the building is concrete,
44:58
so I don't know why they're coming in here,
45:00
but in the last six months we've had three of them,
45:03
and they freaked me the...
45:05
(Doug gasps)
45:06
- Oh yeah, are they all in other places in the Caribbean
45:09
or just the Caimans?
45:10
- No, they're throughout the Caribbean, I believe.
45:13
And yeah, I'd never heard of it.
45:14
I don't wanna run into a fully grown adult one.
45:17
They're terrifying.
45:18
So yeah, what about you, Doug?
45:19
What do you got?
45:20
My biggest thing is probably gonna be,
45:22
I honestly, I cannot stand rats like the idea.
45:25
Like, I don't care.
45:26
Like you could come with a pet rat.
45:27
I'm like, why would you have a pet rat
45:29
that doesn't make any sense to me?
45:30
That's just gross.
45:31
Like this, I'm not getting it.
45:32
They're smart and whatever.
45:34
- Oh, I got an Ick, I gotta talk to you about.
45:36
So.
45:38
This is just an NPR.
45:40
- Welcome, wait.
45:41
Welcome to our new show.
45:43
- The Icks.
45:43
- What's your Icks?
45:45
- The Icks.
45:45
- The three Icks.
45:46
- Okay.
45:46
- The three Icks.
45:47
- If you listen to NPR,
45:49
There was a great episode the other day about a woman who's terrified of roaches.
45:53
So what did she do?
45:54
She goes to a guy who eats insects and she says, "Tell me how to eat a roach."
45:59
And he just, he's just this guy who eats crock-ro-...
46:04
He eats crickets and he eats grubs and he goes, "They're fine."
46:08
He says, "I have never eaten a roach, but I will try."
46:12
And so they cook the roach with garlic and everything.
46:15
And then he has this roach.
46:16
the whole radio crew is there, they're all going,
46:19
this doesn't smell good.
46:21
And though he says, so we're gonna bite into it,
46:23
but be aware that the inside may score.
46:27
(laughing)
46:32
So I'm in the car with my granddaughter,
46:34
so we're all listening to this, we're driving somewhere,
46:36
the girls are going, turn it off, turn it off.
46:39
(laughing)
46:40
And I thought, no, I gotta hear this, this is great.
46:42
- You're plotting your next horror book.
46:44
I will say, I will say, like the whole squirting thing,
46:47
like what's that show that Dr. Pimple Popper?
46:51
And I'm like, I don't know any part of that.
46:52
'Cause that show is probably the bigger it,
46:54
'cause I'm like, ugh, that's just the idea of that,
46:56
just makes me go, no.
46:57
- But if in case you're interested,
46:58
the end of the show was that the insect eater said,
47:02
"No, I think that there's a reason
47:03
"nobody eats cockroaches."
47:06
(laughing)
47:07
- I like the idea of be careful it might squirt.
47:11
(laughing)
47:12
- That's a T-shirt.
47:13
That should be a line in one of your books.
47:16
Get that in there somewhere.
47:18
Doing an autopsy and be careful.
47:20
There's a lot of options of how that line could make it in a book.
47:23
A lot of genres.
47:27
All right, that's a great place to end this episode, I believe.
47:31
Isn't, really.
47:32
Tess, this has been so much fun.
47:34
Thank you so much for joining us.
47:35
It's a real honor.
47:36
Thank you.
47:37
Next show will be the three X.
47:39
Absolutely.
47:40
Stay tuned for the new show coming soon.
47:42
(upbeat music)
47:48
- That was a lot of fun.
47:49
She is a hoot.
47:50
- Honestly, I'd listen to some interviews with her
47:53
and everything and she's always nice and friendly
47:54
and everything else, but she was funny.
47:57
- She was fun.
47:58
I would like to be sitting around having,
48:00
I would like to join her Martini club.
48:01
- No kidding, yeah.
48:03
- No kidding.
48:03
- No kidding.
48:04
- Yeah.
48:04
- But you know, it's interesting.
48:05
Like she's, she's looked at how many books she's done
48:10
with going with Thomas and Mercer now versus her try days. I found that kind of fascinating.
48:15
Very interesting. Yeah, yeah. And she said it's steered by the fact that it came with
48:20
a TV deal in the mix, which is obviously a strong driving influence. But it's also interesting
48:28
how she talked about more people are reading her books now because of the Amazon distribution.
48:33
I'm sure a lot of that is the Kindle Unlimited and the way Amazon is geared toward selling
48:39
books. And I mean, people say what you will, but they know what they're doing. They're
48:42
selling books. And it is fascinating to me. And I think it's neat because she's in Kindle
48:47
Unlimited. Obviously, we make a lot of my own Kindle Unlimited. I think that it's one
48:51
of those kind of weird symbiosis where people are going to come into the KU program because
48:56
they're like, "Hey, look, I can read Tess Garrison or I can read Dean Coots."
48:59
It's a big draw. Thomas and Mercer are pretty switched on when they, and I'm sure they get
49:04
a very favorable deal, obviously, for names like that. But their draw for people to subscribe,
49:10
it has to be really high. Very cool. Very cool.
49:12
That's very fascinating. Fascinating. Yes. Of course. And as always, please come support
49:18
the show over at Patreon at patreon.com/thetwoauthorspodcast. Your kindness helps cover the cost of bringing
49:25
the show to you. And so we get to bring great people like Tess Gerritsen and all these people
49:30
we've had lately, been a lot of fun.
49:32
So if you can jump over there and support us,
49:35
we appreciate that.
49:35
So thanks of course, always to our big friends
49:38
over at Veilum as always.
49:40
We love you.
49:40
- Big thanks to our big friends.
49:42
Did you just call brats big?
49:43
- Together as a collective.
49:45
- Together.
49:46
(laughing)
49:47
- They're big, big brained.
49:48
- I did.
49:49
- Big brained brats.
49:50
- I don't know why you had to point it out.
49:51
Oh, big brained brats.
49:53
- That's your next t-shirt for him, the big brained.
49:55
- God, I got so many t-shirts to make
49:56
for the next conference.
49:58
Make sure you guys go trivellum.com/twoauthors to find out more.
50:05
You can find that in our show notes as well as links to Tess's information and anything
50:10
else.
50:10
We'll be back next week with a new episode of the Two Authors podcast.
50:14
Until next time, be cool to each other.
50:17
Fair wins and follow-ups.
50:19
You've been listening to the Two Authors podcast with Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt.
50:25
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