When you pick up the phone and dial a number from a thriller novel, you don't expect an answer. Yet, bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz defies expectations with his Orphan X series, where the protagonist's number is very much active, bridging the gap between our world and Evan Smoak's high-stakes adventures. In a riveting discussion with Gregg, we uncover the intricate details that make his stories pulse with authenticity, from the research on technology to the homage paid to real-life inspirations. Our conversation also touches upon the symbiosis of character development and narrative, where action sequences serve not as the core but as the thrilling backdrop to Evan Smoak's personal evolution and the deep-seated complexities that make him relatable.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
When you pick up the phone and dial a number from a thriller novel, you don't expect an answer. Yet, bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz defies expectations with his Orphan X series, where the protagonist's number is very much active, bridging the gap between our world and Evan Smoak's high-stakes adventures. In a riveting discussion with Gregg, we uncover the intricate details that make his stories pulse with authenticity, from the research on technology to the homage paid to real-life inspirations. Our conversation also touches upon the symbiosis of character development and narrative, where action sequences serve not as the core but as the thrilling backdrop to Evan Smoak's personal evolution and the deep-seated complexities that make him relatable.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the Protectors Podcast and, as usual, we start talking about the conversation before we hit record, joined again by my awesome cohost, am I Dare, and now we are joined by International New York Times and every type of bestseller, greg Hurwitz how you doing, greg? I'm doing great Good to be here. I'm glad to have you know what? Aimee and I were just starting the Audible version of OrphanX and it's quickly turning into one of my favorite audibles. When I feel immersed in these books and I feel like I'm like a part of the story right away, I'm hooked. Because I've tried different types of audibles and stuff, because, whatever I'm these long road trips, I'm like I can't listen to a book, but I'm quickly quickly interested and quickly like consumed by the OrphanX universe. Now.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, man, I have a. So my audio reader is called Scott Brick and you guys both know him. He's one of the best in the business. And what's really funny is, before I sold OrphanX I wrote the manuscript and there's a number.
Speaker 2:Orphanx is a you know he was raised by the age of 12 to be an off the books government assassin and then at some point he left the program and kind of went off the radar and he's being pursued by the same people who built him. But he does these pro bono missions for people in desperate need and he has this encrypted number, 1-855-2-nowhere, and if you call it he actually answers the real number. And so before I even sold the manuscript, I went over to Scott's house. Scott had done my last gosh six, seven books probably and I was like I got a really weird request for you. But we're going out with the book. There's a phone number in it and I want to make sure, if any of the editors we submit to call the number that OrphanX picks up. And I want you to be the voice of OrphanX because he's so great, so we recorded it in his little sound booth before I even did a deal for the series and he's been the voice of OrphanX ever since.
Speaker 3:I love that on so many levels, not only why I'd be calling that number, but just the little bit of creativity and forethought you put into that. I mean, that is a little something extra. That well done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. He's terrific. So it's great. It's great having him as a reader. He's been there for minute one and, yeah, I've been loving writing the series. It's definitely been. I feel like, in some ways, orphanx was my 16th novel and I feel like this series has been the culmination of my career. I mean, I got the ninth one coming out in February called Bone Wolf, but it's been. It's been an amazing experience and I'm glad. I'm always glad talking to people who are the real deal, like you two, who find it, who find it working. I had a lot of Spec Ops friends so I get I get my facts and gun stuff checked pretty, pretty tight so I don't want to make a mistake. There's two things you can't do in a thriller you can't make a gun mistake and you can't kill a cat Like. Those are the two things that'll end your career, you know.
Speaker 1:So I'm trying to cover both faces, or killer cat. There's a whole Netflix series on that.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Now when you bring up the guns, like you, the detail of the Wilson combat, because that's one of my favorite manufacturers and I'm a sports competitive shooter type Not that I'm any good, but I just love the Wilson kind of. But you're getting into it, the intricacies of it, the details, the details of the OrphanX universe down to, like you know, the living arrangements, the way he thinks, the people he talks to, the conversations. You could tell your background with everything you've written is kind of built into these universes Because, like you know, coming from the comic books and coming from the other types of stuff you've written, there's like a whole universe inside your mind of the OrphanX. I can imagine you mapping it out.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of fun and I've look, I rely on a lot of subject matter experts who make me seem brighter than I am. You know I talk to hackers. I have great, great people on the gun and weapon refront. I've shot all the weapons he's on. You know I had a good buddy who passed away, billy Stojak, who helped me a lot with Tommy Stojak.
Speaker 2:I borrowed his last name because last last names of guys in special operations, community, military community and baseball are like the best last names right, so they're just unimprovable name. I mean, I remember like Buster Posey was my favorite player for the Giants for a long time. You name your kid Buster Posey, you pretty much seal his vocational fate and so so Stojak was amazing. But I'd go out there and he'd be like you know, everything would be like you want to go throw some big boy lawn darts out in the desert. He lived out in Vegas and we I would go get on everything and he'd walk me through it.
Speaker 2:So and it's similar with, you know I got I've kind of world class hackers who do the other scenes that involve that. And what's good is that I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert with guns and so the engagement I have with people who are, you know, extraordinary, extraordinarily knowledgeable. The translation for me to understand it sort of helps me bring that and then describe it to average readers, because I don't want to be just writing like gun porn. You know you want to be writing stuff where you know real experts and operators like you guys can read it and I'm not tripping over myself but also people can read it from all sorts of different backgrounds. And so part of that is to try and make everything about character also, like the weapons he chooses, the way he outfits his rigs Ford F 150, he's got it sort of insulated, but everything should be a reflection of character. The vodka's that he drinks he drinks some of the world's greatest vodka's. I get a lot of those sent to me here.
Speaker 1:Okay, I do. I do like that though. Like because, listening to the audible, you're talking about the vodka and the. The girl gets in the car. She's like what do you want? Like sky, or you want something. He's like. It's like the, the inadequacies of him. So you're having someone who's fallible, so he's like. You know, yeah, he could be like the best killer in the world, but his social skills are a little bit like very introverted stunted stunted is a good word, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there's a key line for me that I say in each book, around which the whole series coalesces. And when he's taken out of this foster home, when he's 12 years old, his handler and father figure, jack john, says to him the hard part isn't turning you into a killer, the hard part is keeping you human. And it's like that's the skill set he doesn't really have because he's just trained to be this operate, this assassin, this machine. But the series is really about his. You know, I say he never learned to speak the strange language of intimacy, he doesn't understand these interactions, but the series is really about his process of becoming three dimensionalized.
Speaker 2:It's almost like, you know, when Orphan X opens, it's like he's Pinocchio, but he wants to be a real boy. He just has no idea how to go about it. And so he's got this. Like he can, you know, calculate the wind drift on a sniper round from 1000 yards, 1000 meters. But he's completely undone when it comes to talking to, you know, the, the annoying elderly Jewish woman who lives upstairs from him at the mail slots, who may or may not be based on my deceased grandmother, so, but you know.
Speaker 2:So that's the thing that I thought about with this, which is these archetypal characters who we love, like Reacher and born and bond. We don't get to see them go home. We don't get to see them have an awkward encounter with a single mom in the elevator, right Like so. There's these moments for me where he's moving between this space, that is, almost a mythological space, where he's operating and conducting the missions, but then crashing into a reality that he's not quite certain how to contend with and his skills don't necessarily translate, and he's trying to learn how to translate them across through the course of the series and become a human.
Speaker 3:There is something incredibly satisfying about having a character like Evan smoke, who is so incredibly fine tuned in some regards, but then see him struggle with just having to be forced into, like the homeowners association meeting. You know that having, you know him, panic because he sees, you know, a child's handprint on his refrigerator, I mean those, those made him human to me. But at the end of the day he really is, truly, he's a protector. I mean, he was trained to be a killer but he chooses to use that skill set to help those who can't help themselves.
Speaker 2:That's right, I mean, and that's really the underpinning is once he left the program and part of it is that that, that ethic that Jack instilled in him to be a perfect assassin, he lives his life by the ten assassins commandments, but to also remain human.
Speaker 2:That's like two trains on a collision course, and so at a certain point his own moral compass is just becomes a little unhinged from the missions he's asked to do, and so when he leaves, what he does after, that is, he only will embark on missions that are aligned with his moral compass.
Speaker 2:And these missions, which are the nowhere man missions it's another one of his aliases when he operated or when that phone rings with somebody who's in a desperate position and him undertaking these missions. To worse, it's basically trying to restore for people the kinds of ordinary lives he can never have for himself, like he knows that he can't have that. But when he sees families or individuals being killed by the human, and he realizes that the hands of other humans, he knows that he can intervene and sort of set their life right again and it's almost like reclaiming his soul, one mission at a time, one tiny mosaic piece at a time from some of the assassinations that he conducted and so I came to this series late, as Jason did as well, and I kick myself for waiting so long to pick up orphan X, but at the same time I feel pretty fortunate now that I know I've got eight more of these to go so.
Speaker 3:I don't have to sit around and wait a year for another book to come out, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. But did you foresee writing but book number nine now?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know I did. It was really interesting. I think I wrote a lot of standalone also. I wrote like Hitchcock stand alone. I had one series of four bucks early in my career.
Speaker 2:But I very much was a standalone writer and I think that part of what it was for me was waiting until I had a character. You know I spend more waking hours with Evan smoke than I do with my wife and kids, right, I mean like I'm with him all the time and I had to find a character that felt like I'm constantly learning and as he learns I'm learning and as I'm learning I'm putting it in the plots and this kind of evolution of him. He's sort of thawing out of these, these 10 commandments that are more black and white way of viewing the world and to into a view that is more complicated. He has to start to learn and engage with the messiness of human life, the messiness of intimacy, and he's OCD, he's got like strong OCD and so this sort of engagement of real people, with all their complications and all their messes and all their confusions and all the things that put you in a different place, are really a lot of the process that he's learning and I thought it was something that I could move and grow with, for a series that I don't see an end in sight.
Speaker 2:But I didn't imagine. Like right now I'm working on the next one, I'm more engaged than I've been in my whole career. Like every book that I'm writing I'm more excited about and to be this deep into a series and you've set it up in a way where his character is the thing. Look, at the end of the day, all we care about his character. You know, if you stop someone on the street and ask them their favorite James Bond action sequence, they'll pause a minute. But we all know how he takes his martini, you know. And so if there's, if I have this engagement with Evan and then these other characters that are starting to come in and building out his world, you know which starts happening in the later books and the Nowhere man and Hellbent, and it sort of increases his three dimensionalizing. That's amazing. And then I get to go off and explore whatever topics are of interest to me too and do these deep dives in different areas.
Speaker 1:I love nonstop action, but I don't. You know that's the thing is like when you bring up character and you bring up the thrillers, like all everything to me needs to be built around a story. Now, like it's tough for me to watch, like I'll turn on a Netflix movie and if it's just action, like I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, let's just shoot him up, shoot him up, shoot him up. And you're just like gosh, there's no story, you don't feel anything for the characters. But once you start getting vested in these characters, you're like, oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 1:It's like when we were kids and you're waiting for the comic books every month because you're like you're left at a cliffhanger all the time. That's right, can't wait for that month. And now it's with these books. And that's why one thing Amos said was like we do have eight books ahead of us. So now I'm like me. Like whether I'm working out or whether I'm driving long distance or whether I'm doing anything, I'm always listening to an audible. So now I'm like, okay, now I don't have to keep looking for, hey, what's Ray Porter narrating this month? I'm like you know, it's got the pilgrim doing. So now I'm like I'm vested on this journey because of the character.
Speaker 1:Now I've picked up books, a lot of books, to you know, we talk about action, movies and books and stuff and all it is. It's just like an advertisement for a gear or it's just nonstop action. You're like, well, where's the substance? I want to learn something, like even in this book, even fiction books. I'm always learning something or looking at things in a different way. So that's what I like about these universes, because I can look at them and go, huh, that's a different way to look at that, because there's humanity behind it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I mean you go ahead Am always going to say I don't know.
Speaker 3:I guess I learned something. I learned how fragile short shoulder joint is, apparently, and that was that stuck with me.
Speaker 2:So you even the action sequences can can teach you something well, everything's got to go back to character, and one of the things I think about all the time is how is it orphan acts, action sequence different from Reacher right, different than swagger? It's different than because everything's got to have its own aspect that speaks back to character, because that's, again, that's what we love the most. And so the vodka he has, the gear that he uses, the truck that he drives, the dialogue that he has, the engagement, every action sequence, it has to be something that revolves around and feels like it's unique to him. Or else, as Jason was saying, it's like being in those movies that you're just sitting there feeling like you're getting punched in the face with action and you don't care, because even in an action sequence, even in a fight, character has to come through, or else anyone can choreograph it.
Speaker 3:Oh, and that's fair. And you know, character probably plays more of a role for you because you've had and well extensive amount of experience in other mediums, so with comics. Comics are all about character. And then You've written from for screenplays, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I say, and you can't put anything on the screen that you can't show. So you know, if you don't have that investment, if you don't sympathize or empathize with the character, then nobody watches your movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right and it's just, you know, it just becomes more of the same, and so it, you know, that's been really the process for me is watching Evan grow and you'll see. I mean, I remember when I first pitched the series to my agent I said look, there's this phone number and it rings, and there's some. And he answers the same way every time. He says do you need my help? And Somebody tells them where they are and he goes to help them. And I said at some point, for instance and he's an orphan, like I said, he was left. He didn't know either of his parents.
Speaker 2:He was, you know, the smallest kid in a foster home, but a kid with the most grit. I always think of that. Floyd Patterson quote the boxer where he holds the record for being having the most knockdowns in a fight. It was 16 and he said I also hold the record for the most time to get enough. And so that's Evan.
Speaker 2:Evan was the smallest kid and he's completely ordinary, like, unlike Bond who's devastatingly handsome, or charming, or reachers a huge guy. I mean Evan, I say in every book, he's just an average guy, not too handsome, you know, ordinary size, ordinary build, and so it's really, it's really been about, you know him coming Him coming into the world and sort of growing up and having been shaped in a certain way, and then seeing all the places when that works for him and doesn't work, and this kind of learning process of him to move out beyond that, because there's a tension between perfection and intimacy. You know, I played with this a bit. I you know comics I'm sorry, novels have always been my first love, I mean, you know. So comics were later, tv and features were later. But when I was writing on Batman, I wrote Batman for a couple years.
Speaker 2:I was very interested in this theme because Batman why I like Batman so much is he's Everything that he represents is the pinnacle of human achievement. He doesn't have a magic ring like Green Lantern. He can't fly like Superman. He doesn't have adamantium claws like Wolverine, he's just discipline and technology. But part of how he maintains that is he has no, there's no intimacy in his life, right, his parents died when he was young. He's a perennial bachelor, slash playboy. Robin's always getting killed and there's a new Robin. Then the new Robin gets killed, like he's constantly alone.
Speaker 2:And so it's this interesting thing where in some ways you can have perfection if there's no other humans around messing up your life with Emotions and feelings and their schedules and their needs and their wants. And we all know this as parents, you know, we all know this as spouses. People are complicated and then we discover how complicated we are right, and so in a vacuum, he can have sort of perfection. But the more that he starts to thaw into being a human, the more these Complications start to eat in at him and he starts to feel vulnerability and he starts to have Troublesome emotion come in which starts to undercut the fourth commandment.
Speaker 2:His fourth assassins commandment is never make it personal, and so you know. The second one is how you do anything is how you do everything, and that's in some ways Is is the most famous. Like there's soldiers have gotten that tattooed, people have had jewelry made with that. I mean, it's just, it's this rigor, but it gets very complicated when there's humans involved and you care about them and so he's got to figure out is that something that he wants around, since he doesn't really understand how to do that effectively?
Speaker 1:Welcome to the world of the Punisher. It's like whenever you get that human interaction is when everything starts going wrong. But about the orphan ex is, you know, true crime? I love true crime. I love, like, just coming from my, my, my background, amos background, with Intel and human everything. But I love forensics. I love forensics and I'm thinking the more human interaction he has, the more cross-transference of, like fibers and you know the blood stains and everything else. I just in my mind I see him going oh geez, I got to clean that up, I got to clean this up. I get a like do this. So there's no trace of me anywhere. Because his whole life is about being you can't find him, you can't find him anywhere. He backtraces everything, he backtracks everything, he does his surveillance. He's one step ahead because he plans and plans, and plans. But when you add like a little kid in there, you add human interaction, it really screws up the whole plan.
Speaker 2:That's right, and he keeps getting dragged into these annoying HOA meetings, you know. So he'll be like bleeding out through his sleeve and trying to get home and covering up a knife wound, and he'll get stuck in an HOA meeting and they're having a heated debate over the, you know, the carpet pile for the lobby or something inane that he's just desperately trying to get out of. And so, you know, I feel like there's a metaphor for that in all of our lives because, you know, no matter how great we are at One thing or one skill set, there's always areas that we feel like imposters or we feel like we're. You know, no one has intimacy Perfectly nailed right, that's just not. It's not a, it's not an arena that you can reach perfection with, and so I think there's a lot of people really relate to those scenes.
Speaker 2:It's very interesting what people point out in fanmails and in events. It's almost always those little human moments, right, the moments where he's awkward or where he's uncomfortable. It's such a big part of readers engagement with this, because I think that's what really speaks to us is this notion that in some ways, somewhere, we feel like an imposter who's not fitting in in certain circumstances. And everybody's got that, you know. It just depends which lane it is.
Speaker 3:I would completely concur with that. I think it also humanizes him. It's, you know, as nice as it is to have that hero type character that is completely infallible, it's not realistic and it can only carry you so far. So for you to make a lasting character that people are actually going to buy into, making him human in the most human ways, is definitely going to give him longevity.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you. You know I earlier in my career I thought in some ways of writing about heroes and villains, and the further along I get, I just think of protagonists and antagonists and as the books progress, what I hope is that the antagonists are sort of whispering a siren song in the ear of the reader or the listener that what they say makes a lot of sense, but it's just maybe tweaked 15%. And so then, if you look at Evan, and his engagement is right. I mean, what we connect to so much sometimes are when characters have flaws or shortcomings. You know, if he acts in a way and then is embarrassed or he's ashamed of it, or he regrets something that he did because he didn't quite figure out how to get the engagement in the way that made sense for him, and so he's far from perfect, and the people who he's up against increasingly are far from you know, mustache twirling villains, and so what I'm hoping is I'm bringing together this sort of clash of. You know, it's 50 shades of gray just without the S&M.
Speaker 2:That's one way to look at it, yet I want everyone a little bit confused at different times about you know, is he gonna navigate something that's very, that's more complicated ethically or emotionally than we thought initially. That there's complications. It's not just sheer good up against sheer evil, because that's not fun and it's not as real and I don't find it as engaging. And the writers who I admire the most, like Megan Abbott and Dennis Lahane, are always painting with a very delicate brush.
Speaker 1:You know, that's one question I had for you. You know, and this is where it's may hang and be, I'm gonna be greedy because I'm trying to jump into the fiction world, because nonfiction for me is easier to write, because I see things. I just I believe in facts. It doesn't. I don't. It's not good for me to have my own personal opinion because I'm if I'm not an expert on it, who cares about my opinion? The thing is, when you're jumping into the fiction world is like it's a whole universe. You could right the wrongs, you could write about the antagonists or protagonists. Are you mapping out these books as you're going? That's a couple of questions I've always had for authors. Is like some of them like the outline, the whole thing. Okay, I know I'm gonna go from 8.8 to B to C, to D, toe and I'm eventually gonna get to F or Z. Are you mapping these out or are you just kind of having an idea and you're rolling with it?
Speaker 2:So I've settled in. You know that's an age old question, Jason. So this is what everyone asks about. I've done both versions. My first two books I just wrote as I went.
Speaker 2:I was a kid, I mean, I started my first book I was 19 years old and both of them I delivered these sort of, you know, spectacularly mediocre rough drafts, and I then had to take everything apart like an engine block and rebuild it, Cause the only way you can learn to write a novel and aim, can test, can offer support for this is when you're writing your first draft and screwing it up of your first novel. It's the only way you can learn. And so, and then, at some point, I started to outline more and more, and what I realized is, if it's too outlined, I don't have the same openness to opportunity and play as I'm writing, and so I do something that's quite unusual I call it a rolling outline. And so I'm talking to you guys now. I have a flat screen TV as my monitor and I have two documents side by side, and I'll start off with usually 16 to 20 pages of just bullet points, roughly shaped into groups, snippets of plots or chapter ideas, character stuff, snatches of dialogue, themes and they're roughly shaped up and I tend to know the first three, four chapters. I tend to know the kind of opening flourish of a book.
Speaker 2:And then as I write, I'm starting to write over here in the manuscript, the outlines first swells as I'm writing the book. I mean right now it's still. I'm in the middle of a manuscript right now and it's still like it'll swell and then I'll write it down and then I have more ideas. But as I'm writing in the book, all of a sudden I'll think oh wait, here's this great place. I can drop a handkerchief from the first act and refer to it in the second act and pay it off in the third act. And so the outline is kind of rolling and changing and evolving and getting more specific and at some point it stops bloating and it starts to shrink and at the end this document is a 400, 450 page manuscript and then the outline is just empty because it's all been eaten by the manuscript. So it's a living and breathing thing all the way through.
Speaker 3:I like that a lot and I'm going to confess now I might actually steal that and try to use that in my next go round. That is a fantastic idea.
Speaker 2:Well, because we don't want to get too rigidly locked into an outline, because think how much we discover when we're writing. You know, I've character sometimes where I all of a sudden I'll start to get their voice in the third, fourth chapter and it's like I don't want to have it my high resolution brainstorming notion before it started. So I think in a lot of ways that a writer's job, more than almost anything, is to be open to opportunity, completely yes, and that goes along with him when he operates right, like he's got to see everything. And you guys I mean you know this better than I do because you're both a real deal. But you know when you're operating you have to see everything, as if for the first time.
Speaker 2:It's like Zen's beginner mind Like is a deadbolt two millimeters off course, like you can't move forward with road right, like a lot of us.
Speaker 2:Like I mean I'll drive home sometimes from the gym or something and I won't even remember being in the car, like we get on autopilot.
Speaker 2:And so when you're in a field like Evan, or when you guys are operating, as opposed to when you know you're running around parenting and slurping coffee, it's a very different skill set of the amount of sort of attention and focus that you need.
Speaker 2:You know, for me that's if I'm doing a sport or if I'm riding. It's like this heightened state, and so Evan's trained in that, and obviously you can see where that tips in the hypervigilance right. Or it can tip into OCD or it can, or some PTSD can come in and stoke it at different times where it's an ending state of hypervigilance, and so it's really writing about that constant focus. But part of what that is is constantly being open to anything that is an opportunity, that might change, it might be a threat, and so in a weird way, I think a lot of the process is fractal where, like, I'm writing about a character who's doing that, and I'm trying to apply that process to writing about that character, to keep everything open and alive, so I can be reactive and flexible in the writing as he needs to be, as he operates.
Speaker 1:Ah, I got a big world ahead of me to start building, but it's great to have time now to do it. You know, you have all these thoughts in your mind and like, when you're thinking I was thinking about like the operating thing you almost have to have an OCD because if you don't, you're gonna get drained. When you're on hypervigilance all the time, when you're on vigilance, when you're looking around, when you're on the job and you're like you're always covering your six, you're always looking at what's going on. Does that seem out of place? Does that person seem out of place? And everything in your life is life or death. It gets burned out. So when you get the OCD, you're like huh, okay, your mind is always going through the checks, you're always going through the checks, so it could handle it. Because if your mind isn't compartmentalized like that to be able to, okay, check one, check two, check three, then you're gonna burn out.
Speaker 2:That's right and you can also understand, is that operationalizes, which you guys would know more than me. Sometimes, when you're check one, check two, check three, it's not the most intimate engagement with the person who you might be with in a personal sense. And so how?
Speaker 2:do you balance that perfection in those needs right with also knowing that there's a professional set of standards to maintain, but also your people you have to care about and let in. And so there's these very different modes. And, yeah, so he's got. He has this OCD that he functions with. But we tend to look at these things as pure negatives or like a pure mental illness, and one of the lines I use in one of the books that's upcoming is I say every curse has a blessing. It's not just the reverse right.
Speaker 2:So part of his grinding and he'll get hit, it can go, it can get revved to high where everything out of place starts to just bother him. Especially if there's something emotional that's up right, the volume will get turned up on it. But it's not like that's something he can just excise and do away with, because a lot of times the holes or gaps that we have are because some other part of us is cantilevered out towards excellence, right. So there's like a negative space. You know, in a lot of people who I've, you know, friends are in my community who are excellent in something, whether it's you know snipers or professors or mathematicians, or you know carpenters, it doesn't matter what the field is, but if you're excellent at something, there tends to be some kind of neuroticism or individuality. I always think that's why military and cops have the best sense of humor, right?
Speaker 2:Because there's a you have to have something to keep the insanity in its right place a little bit.
Speaker 3:Best or darkest, darkest, darkest.
Speaker 2:Same thing for me when it comes to humor, mm-hmm, but it's just like, oh my God, like you can joke about that. But it's part of that thing of trying to keep, you know, the sort of craziness that drives excellence on the right side. You know, it's hard to distinguish, it's hard to distinguish.
Speaker 1:It's trying to keep your humanity in a way.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. And keeping a brilliance that's applied in one direction you know which both you guys in the course of your career. There's gotta be a kind of brilliance if you're gonna have a 20 year career in something In all senses of the word. I mean I don't just mean cerebrally, but I mean there's a bright, shining focus on something, and you know there's gotta be other things that balance that. There's a cost to that and then you have to bear the cost gracefully and you have to make fun of it. And so there's all these pieces.
Speaker 2:And it's another thing I really like in the books is that Evans, kind of surrounded, the people he's interacting with are all better than him at one thing, like Tommy Stojak's a better shot, josephine Morales is a better hacker, Melinda Trong's a better counterfeiter. So he can do all these things, but everyone he engages with is better at the one thing than him. And so there's a lot of shit talking, which is really fun for me to write. I didn't wanna have a character that everyone sort of is enamored with, you know. But it also helps because then when he does something that seems unlikely, it seems to make sense because he's doing it the one thing at a kind of lesser level.
Speaker 2:But in a lot of ways he's kind of like Ulysses. He's the man of many wiles. You know, ulysses isn't as great a you know a fighter as Achilles he had to. He was second or third in every category. But he has to bring the totality of who he is to any situation and so Evan's sort of that like a simulating center. I mean that's part of why I say you know he's average size, average build. You know just a normal guy, not too good looking, you'd look right past him. He's gotta bring everything around it into play. But what's fun for me is when he comes to those experts they're, like you know, frustrated with his inability to grasp. You know some higher order aspect of you know network intrusion, even though he's pretty damn good at it. You know better than than you or I.
Speaker 1:You know you mentioned a couple of times about AIMA and I listen, we've been around some really good people, we've been around the real operators and stuff like that. But I think everybody, like you said, everybody has an expertise and, like in law enforcement, we would have a group of 10 people, you know, in our squad or our group, and every one of them weren't. We had some lazy people. But even those lazy people they were really good at one thing.
Speaker 1:Hey, they might be really good at paperwork, you're like, hey, you know what You're gonna. You're gonna tag the evidence. You're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. Two people are really good at kicking doors and clearing places. Everybody has like an expertise and I think it's. It's kind of cool. Like in the real world, everybody is the same. It's just that we have we just at one point in our lives we just went down a different path and we became an expert on something like you're an expert author, you're an expert narrator when it comes to like the pros, and so, like you just become an expert at your realm, and I like the fact that you're reaching out to other experts. The best authors we've seen are the ones who reach out to the experts, the ones, the authors, who think they know it all. I don't think we know who they are, because they never really go any far. They don't go that far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny to talk about door kicking. I remember I did when I was writing about the Marshalls. I wrote some books that dealt with the Marshall service. It's always funny where there's like the one guy who's great with the battering ram, right, and there might be another guy who's like super badass, number one through the door but if he does the battering ram, it like sails through his arms through the door panel because he misses the lock assembly and it's like, oh you know but that's the truth, that's the truth.
Speaker 2:I love it. Everyone needs their lane and so. But you're right in a way, you know, a lot of what I think about is, to me there's sort of a dividing line between people who are good people, right, like there's the people you know you can rely on, there's the people you know who are gonna be, are gonna have your back. There's people you know you can trust. There's, you know, and there's all these different levels of expertise in every field. In every field, if somebody loves what it is that they do and they go all the way down in that every field can contain the wisdom from everything you know. It's not like if you're a Harvard professor of archaeology that somehow that's either that you're more moral or wise than if you're sort of an expert plumber who's pursuing exactly how a system works within a house and has all the tools and expertise to do it. And more and more I find craftsmen, workers of any type.
Speaker 2:I have a very good friend who's a Christian Orthodox, icon carver, which is like the weirdest field imaginable and the expertise he brings to that and the symbology that he brings in, that sort of cracks open into the wisdom of everything.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, I'd rather take somebody who's who's devoted and focused and excellent in one arena, you can talk about anything with that right Versus finding somebody who's kind of mediocre in some field that we might think of as being you know higher in its intellectual capabilities, let's say it doesn't matter if it's a rope, there's nothing there.
Speaker 2:And if somebody's focused, no matter who they are, and look, you see this all the times. I mean I have guys who I've talked to, like, you know, dwayne Dwyer, who did Strider Knives he's now a knife guy who's just, you know, he's also like philosophy and he's an expert in metals and he's combining stuff like the range and scope. I had a buddy who is one of the biggest demolition breaches in the world and he'd come down big old, tough, handlebar mustache Like he's so badass, but I'd come up in the middle of the night and he'd be writing down like calculating overpressure charges and it's like I'd look at this butcher paper laid out and he's doing math. That like my buddy who's running the physics institute at Santa Barbara and he have a great conversation right when they're talking about how things work. It's just, it's connecting all these different areas where people shine and people are extraordinary if they decide to be.
Speaker 1:And if you let them, a lot of times, like when you have these conversations with people and you're like, wow, they know that. Like when you're talking about, like the EOD and when you're talking about knives, and there are so many people that are brilliant and there are so many You're, you see a lot of people that come from the special operations forces, from the military combat veterans, who are so creative. Yeah, like, their new outlet is creativity, whether that's art, whether that's writing, whether it's making knives. They are so creative because they, their mind is always working, it's always solving problems, it's always building universes. I know we've kept you for a little bit. I've got one more question and Aima's got one more question. My question is this it's a 1990s, you're in your 20s From 1990 to 1998, you watch a lot of movies. What is your favorite 1990s movie?
Speaker 2:That's hard, I'm going to give a run, and I think I don't know the exact year, but this would be. This would certainly be in the 90s. There was a run when, on consecutive weekends, shawshank, redemption, the professional quiz show, and I want to say Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction might have been a little bit later, but there was this run when movies were coming out that were all so exceptional you couldn't even believe it. I, I don't know if you guys have seen Quiz Show, it's a lot of it, but there was just this run that you couldn't even believe it Like, oh, and the usual suspects, chris McCurry, and it was a stretch.
Speaker 2:I think Pulp Fiction was a little bit later, if I'm not mistaken, but I mean, and it was just an incredible, incredible stretch. You know, and I've had some fun with my daughter during the pandemic I have an 18 year old and you know, so she was 15. And we did these tranches of movies where I was like the professional, hannah and man on fire, like we did grow alien, alien the thing, and jaws, and we went through a lot of them. But what would you do.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's my all time favorite, he's great man. He and when you, when you talk man on fire, I always think the Scott Glenn Joe Pesci man on fire in the 1980s.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But the 19 the Tony Scott Denzel one oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes me cry every time.
Speaker 1:Every. That's one of my favorite soundtracks. I love that.
Speaker 2:I'm a big that movie, tony Scott, when he was almost so amazing. It's got a one hour first act. Now, first act of movies is supposed to be 20 minutes to 25, maybe 30. It's a full hour. That's just the relationship between crazy and the girl, and so you're. We're talking about character. I mean, you're just all in on this, so that it's like drawing back a bow right and then when it when it turns, you're just completely in emotionally, aim, you're on mute, yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I say I think for me the movies that from the 90s that stuck with me the most clerks, natural born killers and the Matrix.
Speaker 2:Wow, and natural born killers. You know who wrote that.
Speaker 3:I was over stone, did it.
Speaker 1:Wild huh, I love Oliver Stone. I just know true romance is great too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think didn't Torn Tino write the script for that? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what an era.
Speaker 2:The clerks man, the early Kevin Smith, I mean, like he's terrific. He's speaking of comics too. That guy knows more about comics. He's forgotten more about comics than we know, and I've written a lot of the damn things. Yeah, there's a lot of talent and I love, I actually loved. I loved early Spike Lee stuff. I loved she's got a habit. I love she's got habit. I loved the Denzel. My oh Moe better blues was great. Yeah, spike Lee was a send it.
Speaker 1:He was so the 90s were all when the original indie movies came out. That's where indies were, like you know, million dollar movies. Back then it was, like you know, el Mariachi, you know that's right, like all the like the Robert Rodriguez. Everything was like real indie movies. So you, and that's why I love the 90s when it comes, and yeah, i'm- watching.
Speaker 2:Do the right thing was like who is this guy? I went back and watch school days and Dana, yeah, I mean everything, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's like our trip down memory lane. We're showing our age. You realize that I know.
Speaker 2:Whoa 50 years old, so I'm you know. I'm right in that wheelhouse of the 90s.
Speaker 1:I got less than a month left before I hit 51.
Speaker 3:Oh, you got this. It's a good game.
Speaker 1:OK, Ema, last question.
Speaker 3:We got a last question, this one, this one is, you know, kind of a inquiry. Minds want to know. You know, as you know you do so much with itw, is there any chance that Thriller Fest will ever kind of bounce around like the other conventions, or is it always going to stay in New York?
Speaker 2:Well, part of why I mean for the foreseeable future in New York and part of why so itw is international Thriller writers, but a backdrop for some of the listeners who might not know it, and I've had the pleasure of being the president, for I mean my second term. I'm co-president with it, first with Heather Graham, who's wonderful, and now with Lisa Unger, and it's great. I mean we've had George R R Martin, we had Walter Mosley last year, but we keep it in New York because it's it's it's a bit trade in trade, industry focus, meaning we bring a lot of agents in. We do. There's a lot of concrete ways that we try to help. Like I'll usually sit down every year.
Speaker 2:I did a last year with Lisa Gardner, who's I don't know if you've had her on, but she's terrific and we talked to all the first year published authors. We had everyone turn their phones off and we're like ask anything. There's like 30 of us in a room or 15 of us in a room about, and so we try to bring a lot of agents, publishing expertise and a lot of stuff. So New York's just where so much of the industry is focused that we try to have that and in a way. We do have a lot of fans and readers, but it's a bit more industry focused. So I think that we're going to be sticking to New York, at least for the foreseeable future. But I hope you all, I hope you guys will come. Jason, you said you might come this year.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm only. Well, it depends. Are we talking about the turnpike? Am I taking the train? If I'm taking the turnpike or 95, it'd be six hours, oh my gosh. But I just took the train into New York a couple of weeks ago and it's super easy trip. I mean, I'm there, I'm there. Am I coming?
Speaker 3:I can't recommend Thriller Fest enough. I won't be able to make it this year, but I will be back, just because it is always a blast every time I go. I love it.
Speaker 1:Greg, I appreciate coming on the show and we're man. I've got a lot of catching up to do, a lot of listening, a lot of listening. Jeff and I are going to be like best friends by the time I'm done with this series.
Speaker 2:Well, it's terrific talking to you both. Thank you for having me on.