Mark Greaney on Modern Signed Books!
Bestselling author Mark Greaney discusses Gunmetal Grey on the Modern Signed Books podcast.
Episode transcript (also available as a PDF):
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Introduction:
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Welcome to Modern Signed Books. If
you're interested in what makes your favorite authors tick, then you'll love
hearing what they have to say in our interviews. Learn how they got started
writing, the books and authors that inspired them, and much more. Meet
today's hottest authors as they discuss their lives and writing with art book
specialist, Rodger Nichols. And don't forget to pick up a copy of your
favorite books at vjbooks.com. Here's Roger.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Welcome to Blog Talk Radio. Mark
Greaney is a writer's writer. Not because he has a style that calls attention
to itself a literary pretention. No, just the opposite. His prose has a clean
transparency that puts you, the reader, seamlessly into the action. That does
not go unnoticed by the reading public, nor does it go unnoticed by other
authors. It's the reason Tom Clancy picked Mark Greaney to collaborate with him
on the "Jack Ryan" series. Why he was offered the series after
Tom's passing? It's because Clancy, like millions of other readers, have
become a fan of "The Gray Man," Court Gentry. His on again, off
again relationship with the CIA has led him to a lot of interesting
situations. And now the latest in the series has a perfect title. I love the
title. "Gun Metal Gray." It hits bookstores February 21st. It also
has a page-turning plot that involves a Chinese government hacker who flees
China when his parents, hostages for good behavior, are killed, and he knows
he's next.
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The Chinese want to kill him, both
the Russians and the Americans would like to grab him for the knowledge in
his head, and more than one criminal gang wants to exploit his hacking skills.
It's up to the gray man to get him to safety. If not, an old friend held
hostage will be killed. We are very delighted to welcome back Mark Greaney.
Good morning.
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Mark Greaney:
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Hey, good morning, Rodger. Thanks
for having me.
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Rodger Nichols:
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You betcha. The right name can go a
long way to creating a character's identity. Court Gentry has this kind of
upper-class feel, but interestingly enough, "The Gray Man" seems to
echo a dramatic Pulp Fiction days, or film noir, things like "The Third
Man" or "The Thin Man." Is this intentional or did it just
kind of evolve that way?
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Mark Greaney:
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Funny you say that. When I wrote
the first in the series, "The Gray Man," at the time I was really
binging on a lot of John le Carre, older John le Carre novels and it wasn't
researching for "The Gray Man" or anything, I was just loving it.
And I had watched the ... I don't know if you ever saw the BBC series of the
spy who came in from ... I mean, oh "Tinker Tailor Solider Spy."
[inaudible 00:03:09]
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Rodger Nichols:
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Yes, fascinating. Oh, my gosh.
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Mark Greaney:
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[inaudible 00:03:12] going back to,
I think it was around 1980 or so. So I read the novels and I watched this
really low, but tense BBC series and all that was going on at the same time
as I wrote "The Gray Man," so it wasn't intentional, but I very
much see that ... you have this really fast-paced action-y plot in the first
book of the series, but at the same time, it kind of hearkens back to a
little more I'd say, upper crust type of espionage writing. That wasn't
intentional, but it was kind of a lucky, happy coincidence. I've kept that in
the series a little bit. It give it a little bit of a [inaudible 00:03:57]
feel because you have so much edgy stuff and so much dark stuff and I kind of
like the fact of combining the two.
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Rodger Nichols:
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It gives an interesting tension
between those two aspects of it, so I really appreciate that. One of the
things that really good heroes have ... everything is not sunny and bright
for them.
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Mark Greaney:
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Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and
that was important from the beginning of the series. I want there to be
tension on every page and I want the reader to really feel what this hero is
feeling, which is a lot of daggers out for him. Not just from the obvious
black hats in the story, but from people he teams up with or past
relationship he's had. All sorts of things. There's a lot of tension in the
guy's life. You can overdo it and just make it this masochistic, miserable
story, and I don't want to do that. There's lightness and there's dark in the
story, but I do like, as I said, tension on every page. Even the villains.
The villains all come together and high five and work together perfectly to
do take care of the hero. There's a lot of tension with all the different bureaucracies
and all the different [inaudible 00:05:14] that are up against "The Gray
Man." I just like it. I hate tension in my real life, but I love in my
writing.
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Rodger Nichols:
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What's interesting, because one of
the questions or comments as I read this thing, I wrote down
"inter-service rivalry, not just in the U.S. but in Russia and Chinese
as well." And the tension between the various agents there and various
services working or not cooperating with each other, I thought, "That's a
really interesting aspect of it." Of course, you are doing this very
much consciously.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yeah, that is conscious. And I do
think it lends realism to it. And it also ... the average reader probably
isn't working for the Russian FSD, but the average reader probably works in a
big company where people are vying for power and authority and there's the
guy up the hall that rules with an iron fist or is a big fish in a little
pond. And I think that's very relatable. I worked in the corporate world, and
I loved the company I worked for, I'm not saying that there was that level of
backstabbing, but it's just kind of fun to translate that into a bigger story
with life and death issues going within these sort of inter-agency rivalries.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Any time there are more than three
people, you've got politics involved. In fact, more than two actually.
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Mark Greaney:
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Very true. Yeah.
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Rodger Nichols:
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As I went through I happened to jot
down some, what I thought were character revealing moments and I'm interested
to see those are the same things that you were thinking of as you wrote. I'm
sure you were, but ... almost at the very end, one of the things he says, he
says, "Everybody I've ever met was hiding something."
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Mark Greaney:
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The person I've created in the series,
he works for a deniable department in a shady, or shadowy, let's say,
organization and he comes from a history of a lot of deceit and a lot of
darkness. He's always ... if he's having any sort of an interaction with
someone, it usually involves sort of a lie. Either his legend or his identity
or his mission. They say cover for action and then cover for status. Both of
those are things that an operative will do in the field which involves
deception. So he's deceiving people, he's expecting other people are
deceiving him, and that's just the life in which he lives. So the reader is
locked into this guy for better or worse and you're along for the ride in
that. You have to sort of doubt or be suspicious of everyone you come in
contact with in this story.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Yeah. It's a matter of
self-preservation a certain amount, I would say.
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Mark Greaney:
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Right. Exactly. Yeah.
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Rodger Nichols:
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And then at the beginning of the
book or very close to the beginning, it says, "Being the gray man didn't
mean being in control at all times. Sometimes it meant relinquishing all
control, playing the game." That is an interesting insight.
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Mark Greaney:
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It's so easy to make these
characters like they're some sort of a superhero and they do ... either with
their fists or their wits they go through and push things aside and enact
their will throughout the whole story. And I think that makes for kind of a
boring story, where you feel this superhuman nature of the character. In the
real world, he has to ... I mean, he's been a ... this is the sixth book in
the series, and I can't tell you how many times he's had his hands tied
behind his back or a hood over his head or he somehow had to put himself
unarmed in a dangerous situation because that's the only way he could get
into the situation. Cover for action. I think that that just lends a reality
to the situation. He's not Iron Man coming through, completely able to defend
himself at all times. I want to create a slightly more realistic world.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Yeah. There is a noble streak in
him too, that shows up from time to time. He has, maybe a little different
than most people, but he has a very strong sense of ethics.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yes and he has a conscience that
gets him into a lot of trouble throughout. And in this story ... I use that
in all the books, to some degree. At some point he evaluates the mission
that's he on and determines how right or how wrong he is throughout what's
going on. And in this story, he has a pretty cut and dried mission that the
CIA sends him on, but as he learns more and more about it, not just that he's
being duped by the CIA, which he sort of is to some degree. It's a little
shady and I don't want to give too much away, but he does feel like his
target ... his mission doesn't necessarily serve his target in the way that
he thinks would best work. I thought it would be interesting, as I was
writing this story, that it's okay with me if some of the readers think he's
doing the wrong thing. They think, "Well, it'd just be better if he did
X, Y, or Z instead of A, B, and C," which is what he wants to do.
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I wonder, when the book comes out,
if I'll get some pushback, I'll get some fan mail that says, "I liked
the book and it was fun, it was exciting, but I don't know why the gray man
did this and he could've just done this," sort of ignoring the moral
code that I've created for this guy over the past six books. But I think this
is what the character would do in that situation and if some of the fans
think that he should've done something else, I'm okay with that because I
think that just makes for interesting reading.
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Rodger Nichols:
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It does. There's on point, again,
not to give away too much, where there are heavy duty firefight, he risks
himself to save several women in the situation. And that goes a long way to
indicate moral character.
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Mark Greaney:
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Right. Yeah, he's in this situation
and every fiber of his being wants to continue on with his mission and get
out of there, but he just can't turn away from the plight of these people he
realizes will be left in harm's way. I've had him do that before. It's like
he'll do the right thing. He might go kicking and screaming into it, he might
be very sarcastic and complaining about it the whole way, he definitely is a
guy that knows right from wrong, although his compass doesn't true north,
there are these moments where it's very on the surface what he needs to do,
regardless of whether that puts him jeopardy.
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Rodger Nichols:
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And interestingly enough, that
leads into the quote from his old friend Fitzroy, who says to him at one
point, he says, "With you it's all about doing the right thing, come
what may. You'll do it with an ally, you'll do it with an enemy, or you'll do
it alone. You'll die before you got against what you believe in. It makes you
the one good man in all this." And then he answers, he says, "It
makes me exploitable and expendable." And the other guy says, "Too
true. No argument there, lad." That's a nice little exchange.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yeah. And that's sort of the theory.
I should use that as an explanation of the series at large because something
along those lines comes up in each one of these novels, because it's just ...
the character that I created six or seven years ago when I wrote the first
book, has stayed true to that and the story has revolved around him having a
plan A and maybe deciding on a plan B and then turns out plan C is the only
thing that's going to work for anybody. I like twists and turns in novels,
personally. I'm a reader, first and foremost. And this is what I like to
read. I want to put enough intrigue in there to where it doesn't become a
convoluted story because these are fun action novels at their core and just
build as much other sort of nuance and texture to the story as I think will
fit.
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Rodger Nichols:
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One of the delights of a series
character that each time they appear the reader gets a little bit more
information about them. How do you think Court Gentry has changed over the
series?
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Mark Greaney:
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That's a good question. I think he was
very sure of himself in book one. He felt like he'd been wronged and he was
somebody that ... he wasn't actually working on trying to clear his name, but
he was definitely working on trying to make it through the day very sure of
himself. He's less sure of himself now because of some textural things that
have happened in the story, some history that's come out. And so now he's
someone that sees himself definitely as a weapon that can be put to good use
for doing the right thing, but I think he's a little bit more fatalistic,
he's a little bit more aware that he might not have all the answers. He
second guesses himself a little bit. There is a time where he flips the
switch and does what he has to do, but just like in the real world, his
character and his moral compass or whatever is this maturing aspect of him.
He's a fun character to write as long as I make each story very different
from the last, which I've been able to do so far. That makes it fun for me. I
feel like he's always going to be growing as a character.
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Rodger Nichols:
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And again, that's the way we, as
readers enjoy it. I mean, yeah, there are series characters who never change
at all, and the plot is a formula and they read it over and over again
because they love the formula, but I think it's much more interesting to have
something where you get a familiar character and put him in really different
situations and give him different responses and that, as I say, you learn
more about the character as a result of those situations.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yeah. It's two sides of the same
coin, though. Because there are some books that I read and I know exactly
what I'm going to get when I pick it up, but I still pick it up. And I'm
still like, "That's the book that I'm looking forward to." And there's
not a lot of change in the character or whatever. But it's all in the
execution of how the author does it. But it's two sides of the same coin. For
me personally, I like each book to definitely be a standalone novel, but at
the same time, that has this larger story arc, which is a treat for the
readers and it stuck with me the whole time. It's the readers that want to go
back. They might read "Gun Metal Gray," book six, and say,
"Wow, I need to know what's gotten him to this point." And each one
of the novels is a standalone but you build a little bit on each story to
where it should be a pretty fulfilling experience to take in the whole
series. So that's just how I like to write.
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Rodger Nichols:
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I was just curious about the way
you plan out when you look ahead, because obviously with as many obligations
as you have, you have got to be really focused and planned. So how often do I
want to stop doing the Jack Ryan stuff and stop a day a Gray Man stuff. Does
that long range planned out for the next three or four years or do you just
kind of go as you go?
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Mark Greaney:
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A little bit go as I go. With the
publisher, I've got a deal for two Gray Man books after Gun Metal Gray so
far, and the books are doing really great, so I'm in a lucky position where I
expect things will ... I'll be offered more after that, and I'm happy to
write them. The only thing is I want to have some control over my deadline,
so that I know that I'll have a good book out. If you just have to have a
book turned in every January first or something, I think after awhile the
quality would suffer, and I don't want that to ever often. So I want to have
the time I need to work on the stories and develop the stories. It's not like
painting a fence or something. So many times people will read your book and
they'll be like, "You need to write faster. I can't believe I have to
wait X amount of time for the next book," and it's not just a certain
number of hours it takes to create a book.
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That works for some people. And it
works for me for awhile, but you pick your low hanging fruit earlier on in
your career and you have to do a lot more work and do a lot more research and
talk to more people and let ideas germinate. I've always said that I made a
Gray Man book that people don't like, but it's never going to be from lack of
trying. It'll be maybe I'm swinging for the fences and hit a foul ball
somewhere down the road, but I put my all into each of these books and that
will always continue.
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Rodger Nichols:
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It's interesting is, how often do
people bring you ideas or situations that they'd love to see him in?
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Mark Greaney:
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I get ideas a lot. I don't read
things. I've had people that are like, "Could you read ... here's an
idea I have." And I don't even open the attachment because I don't want
to be accused of "You used somebody's idea." Early on, somebody
would send me something on Facebook, which sounded exactly like a book that I
was ghostwriting at the time and I thought, "Wow, if that person knew
that I was ghostwriting this book, they would totally think I stole their
idea." It wasn't the whole plot, it was just an aspect of one of the
characters. And it kind of made me take a step back and say, "It's great
that people have ideas and I hope people write their own books because some
of these ideas are pretty good, but I don't want to touch them." I have
enough ideas right now. If I didn't think of anything else new- I'd be
writing books for 15 years, it's just you have to develop those ideas. And
you have to go out yourself and do the research and talk to the right people
or whatever.
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It does sometimes, to me, feel like
a lot of people think that authors are just sitting at home checking their
email to see if anybody's got an idea for them to write a book about. Because
I do get something every couple of days about "You should do this"
or "you should do that" or "you should talk to my uncle who
was a tailgunner in the Vietnam war," or something like that, and it's
like, "You need to write a book about him." And perhaps there are
authors that don't have their own creative ideas that are just sitting back,
waiting to get those emails, but I just have a lot going on as is that I'm
passionate about.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Of course there are the ones that
say, "I've got this great idea. We'll split it. You write the book. I'll
put the idea up and we'll split the profits." I've heard that way too
many times.
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Mark Greaney:
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Have you? Same thing. And it's
like, "I'm not a writer, but I've got this great idea," and I hate
to sound like this, but I bet you everybody, there's 400 million people in
America, and I bet you every one of us has a great idea, it just takes a lot
of discipline and refining it. Your elevator pitch, it does not translate ...
it's not just something you hand over to an author and then they write a
bestseller. I don't think it works that way that often.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Not very much. I want to point out
one little item that just popped up at me. We're reading through this. At one
point, he tapes night vision binoculars to the bill of his ball cap to give
him hands free. Just like ... oh, that's a great idea. Is that something you
picked up from one of your contacts in the community or just an idea that
came to you?
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Mark Greaney:
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Not specifically. I was doing
research on the googles, and just thinking about the mechanics of where he
was in the story and what he might do. And I have him using [inaudible
00:20:57] methods all the time to make the most of what he has. He's not
always parachuted in behind the lines with the latest and greatest CIA
gadgetry. And Gray Man as a character is a denied CIA contract agent at this
point in his career, so they don't give him CIA equipment, they give him off
the shelf material here and there, which means he doesn't ... buy
surveillance gear that you can buy off the shelf from a company in Japan or
Korea and he'll use that because it can't be traced back to the CIA. Also
early on in the story, he feels like maybe his cover's been blown with the
CIA, so he takes a lot of the gadgetry that they gave me him and he dumps it
in the garbage can. Fortunately, for him he's in Hong Kong, which if you've
ever been to Hong Kong, there's an electronic, the high-tech electronic shop
about every 15 feet.
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Like we have Burger Kings in
America. So he does do some shopping in the store. No, it was just something
he put together because of the mechanics of what he was doing, which means me
as the author put it together because not wanting to have him fool with his
hands so much as I was writing the story, it just seemed like it could be the
thing to do.
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Rodger Nichols:
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It seems to me that every spy or
agent needs to carry a roll of duct tape wherever they go. That just seems
like logic.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yeah. They say that in the
military. If the answer to your problem is with some duct tape, you're not
asking the right questions.
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Rodger Nichols:
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There's another quote you have in
here from the military. It's a quote from the Seal, that says, "The only
easy day was yesterday." And I like that too. I thought that was pretty cool.
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Mark Greaney:
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Yeah, that's a real thing the Seals
say for sure.
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Rodger Nichols:
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When ... you mention in it that his
father was a Marine Scout Sniper ... are you looking that being some of the
influence on him as a character?
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Mark Greaney:
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Yes. I had created, early on in the
series, that his father was a police officer in Florida who had a background
in the Marines and he had started a firearm school and that's where Court
grew up, basically, as almost a mascot for the school. S.W.A.T. guys coming
in from all over the country, and finally the CIA at the school got bigger
and bigger. That's where he learned a lot of his chops as a boy. So his dad
has always this influence on him. Not completely positive. And you see that
play out in different parts of the series, just as any legitimate ... the
father has a huge role over the son and that's just a reality, and you spend
a lot of time in The Gray Man's head in these novels, obviously. I've written
six now and I guess they're 2,500 pages or something of gray man stories. So
there's a whole lot of time where the effect of his father or the effect of
his past has an effect on him.
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Also he's in Vietnam at the time
and I had said that his dad had been in Vietnam, so I wanted to explore that
a little bit, just in a very small way. Just him thinking about his father
and what his father might've experienced while he was over there.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Right. It adds a lot of depth to
it, I think. It's one of those small things that build character like that that
I really enjoyed about the book. Which is highly recommended, by the way.
This is good stuff. I will sell it to you directly. Dang got good stuff. So
there you go. Is there anything about the book that I haven't asked that you
would like to share with the listeners?
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Mark Greaney:
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No, not that I know of. I think
that when you pick this book up, you do get ... a lot of people come to me
having read my Tom Clancy novel. You do get a geopolitical flavor that you
get in a Tom Clancy novel, in that it is a very contemporary look on what's
going on in the world. The Chinese People's Liberation Army, cyber warfare,
the criminal organizations in Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand. So there is
a very ... it is the world as we see it now. And then it departs from the Tom
Clancy series in that you ... it's edgier, it's a little gritter and you
spend a lot of time at the street level, whereas with the Tom Clancy books
you inevitably spend a good bit of time in the Oval Office or in the Kremlin
or whatever. And this book basically is about a denied CIA contract agent on
a mission with more enemies than friends by a factor of about 100, and how he
navigates through that. So a lot of people think that it's a Tom Clancy novel
because I'm the guy that likes Tom Clancy novels, and when they see it, when
they read it, they'll actually see an edgier of a geopolitical story. I hope
they like that distinction and difference.
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Rodger Nichols:
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I think that there'll be no problem
with that. I know that the advanced work has gotten a lot of positive reviews
and I think it's going to continue on like that. Mark, I want to thank you so
much for taking time to talk with you and I want to mention that if you are
listening out there to this broadcast and you are a fan of Mark's, you can pick
up an autographed copy at VJ Books because they do a fabulous job.
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Mark Greaney:
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They sure do. And I appreciate you
having me on. Thanks.
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Rodger Nichols:
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Thank you so much. Our guest has
been Mark Greaney. The latest in his "Gray Man" series is "Gun
Metal Gray." It publishes February 21st. Thank you so much and keep up
the good work.
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Mark Greaney:
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Thank you very much.
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