Rebecca Brown's Interview with
Gayle Lynds
Author of
The Last Spymaster

Rebecca:
It was so great to meet & greet you in Seattle on your book tour. Tell me, what attracted you to spy thrillers?

Gayle:
I was one of those dreadful children who read widely & indiscriminately & obsessively anything that had words on it -- from soup cans & toilet rolls to Gone with the Wind & War and Peace. I had no idea a kid from Council Bluffs, Iowa, could grow up to be a novelist. It was my dream -- & very secret.
     While I was in denial, I got married, had children, earned a degree in journalism, & became addicted to politics -- first local, then national, & finally international. For personal reading, I dove into Helen MacInnes & Robert Ludlum & John le Carre & Mary Stewart. But I was also reading a great deal of nonfiction as well as novels by Gail Godwin & John Gardner & Tim O'Brien.
     Ultimately, my interests finally coalesced. It became obvious even to bonehead me that what I hungered to do was explore global politics -- ever-changing, but ultimately timeless & critical to our daily lives -- without boring people. I wanted to entertain so readers could learn (which I think all of us like to do) while having a lot of fun along the way.
     There was only one form for that in my humble opinion -- international spy thrillers. They look like an elephant, must run like a gazelle, & when done well, are impossible to put down. I like that combination.

Rebecca:
How did you set about writing them to become a New York Times Bestseller?

Gayle:
Oh, dear, the answer is that I stumbled around a lot. I highly recommend stumbling, investigating, adventuring, & making mistakes. A mentor told me years ago it was important to make a lot of mistakes in the beginning of one's book career, because that lessened the chances of making them later on when people know you & it's even more embarrassing. I got a lot of mistakes out of the way fast.
     Any writing is good training. I was a newspaper reporter, then a think-tank editor, & finally a magazine writer & editor. The more one writes & pays attention to the writing, the more one learns to use words for effect. I particularly admire people who write ad copy. Really fine ad copy is tight, to the point, &, if it's done right, packs a lot of meaning into very few words.
     My fiction began with literary short stories. They're tough, a real challenge, but I loved them. As I wrote more, I began to be able to envision an entire novel. I wrote two novels that are unpublished -- a literary novel & a mystery. I knew they weren't great, but I didn't know how to fix them, so I kept attending classes & kept working, kept refining, kept reading others' work & analyzing what I read.
     Eventually I reached the point that I had enough control of my craft to write my own novels. In the mid 1990s, I just jumped in feet first, because the stories I wanted to tell compelled me to. I should've known it was going to be tough to enter a male-dominated field when the president of a publishing house wanted to buy my first thriller, Masquerade, back in 1995, but then decided against it because “no woman could've written this book.” The president was a woman!
     But the next person my agent went to was Steve Rubin (a man, I emphasize), the president of Doubleday, who bought it without a single query. His faith was rewarded: Masquerade ended up being a New York Times extended list bestseller in paperback. As you can imagine, that made me smile a lot.
     The bottom line is that readers want good books. The sex of the author is unimportant if they know they're guaranteed terrific reading pleasure.

Rebecca:
The Last Spymaster has echoes from The Cold War -- what do you miss about that era & how has the spy thriller genre changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall & the Soviet Union?

Gayle:
I'm one of those rarities -- I don't miss the Cold War. I'm glad that awful Balance of Terror is over. No one ‘won’ in the traditional sense, of course, although we were & are the last standing superpower. It was an easy era to write about though, one that still evokes great nostalgia because it was a clear-cut situation (at least from our viewpoint) of nation vs. nation, good vs. evil.
     I started publishing my own novels in the post-Cold War era, which meant I didn't have the luxury of earlier writers. It was a huge challenge, one that I resolved by addressing the fallout. For instance, the largest community of ex-KGB in the world outside Russia had settled in the Washington, D.C. area. I found that fascinating and explored it in my third novel, Mesmerized.
     Then 9/11 happened. It woke us Americans abruptly from our exhausted post-Cold War nap. Suddenly we wanted to know again what was going on beyond our borders, to understand our new & very dangerous world. We've always been a culture of readers, & so of course people turned to books, but not only to nonfiction. Fiction has always been a favored lens through which we not only entertained but educated ourselves. The result of all of this is that spy thrillers are popular again. Very exciting!
     It was a fertile & wonderful atmosphere in which to create my two post-9/11 spy thrillers -- The Coil & The Last Spymaster.

Rebecca:
You wrote with the legendary Robert Ludlum, on a number of supsense thrillers -- how did you meet & what did you learn from the author of The Bourne series?

Gayle:
As it turned out, Bob had been reading my books and liked them a lot. Early on, I was being referred to as the female Robert Ludlum, which intrigued him.
     Bob was a real gentleman of the old school, charming, witty, & kind. I discovered we had the same finicky sense about word choice. Our differences were minor. For instance, he disliked contractions, so we compromised by having contractions only in dialog. He was concerned that he not be cast as a techno-thriller writer, so was less interested in naming brands of guns or weapons than were other writers. Personally, when I'm doing the research in that area, I like to name them. So we compromised again, by revealing the brand & make of those which seemed most interesting.

Rebecca:
Married to the late great detective novelist Dennis Lynds, who also wrote under “a plethora of pseudonyms”, what was it like when two prolific authors lived under the same roof -- who did the housework & did you read each others drafts?

Gayle:
It was great fun living with Dennis. One of the first things he said to me was “You're not a housewife. You're a writer. Forget about picking up the place.” So I gladly did. What a breath of fresh air he was.
     Our lives were deeply entwined, the house was not always as tidy as it might have been, but we wrote a lot of books, raised four children, & had a great time. By the way, we divided the chores equally. He was as adept at cooking as he was at taking out the trash. I fixed the computers & made grocery runs & cooked, too. What a wonder it was to live in a relationship built on respect.
     Yes, we did work on each other's manuscripts. If I had a scene that wasn't playing right, I'd ask him to read it. Invariably he'd pinpoint the weakness in it, & I did the same for him. I loved brain-storming with him, & the intellectual excitement of ideas constantly brewing between us fed our souls. It was a great life. I'm constantly grateful for the years I had him.
     I'd been working on The Last Spymaster when he died in August. A month later, I finally finished the last 50 pages. It was great therapy, & I needed it.

Rebecca:
We enjoyed the movie of The Hades Factor, are any more of your books going to be made into films?

Gayle:
I'm glad you liked it. I did, too. I thought it was polished & moved very quickly. However, some of my fans were unhappy that it didn't follow the book more closely. Still, that's Hollywood. There's an old saying: The wise author tosses his or her book into Hollywood & beats feet in the opposite direction.
     Will there be more movies of my books? I hope so. I'm intrigued to see one artform translated into another. My movie agent loves The Last Spymaster & is starting to show it to producers. Fingers crossed.

Rebecca:
As an established writer with millions of your novels being bought, do you still have to promote your books, & if so, how do you find time to write?

Gayle:
These days, almost all of us promote. I personally love it. I really enjoy meeting readers & booksellers, I find it invigorating. But you've nailed the problem: how does one promote & still write? I have no real answer. One does the best one can, but at some point the promotion has to stop and the writing take over. I'm one of those authors who needs to be completely immersed. Once I'm writing, it takes a nuclear bomb to get my attention.
     Right now, I'm embarked on about two months of solid promotion. I have the notes for my next book in a canvas briefcase that I carry everywhere so I can dip in whenever possible. With luck, I'll have written an outline soon. I like outlines. I figure that doesn't mean I'm married, just engaged. The book ultimately always tells me what it needs.

Rebecca:
Spy thrillers always include some violence, how do you tackle writing about that, & do you have any taboos?

Gayle:
No one's ever asked me that question, Rebecca. You're making me think hard. Hmm.
     Probably the closest I can come to an answer is that I abhor violence, & I treat it with respect. Violence is not to be used lightly in a book, such as for titillation. At the same time, I won't hide it, have it happen off stage, then have characters stand around talking about what just happened. Since I write realistic novels, that's not fair to the reader, or to me as the storyteller.
     My goal is to invite in the reader & create an atmosphere in which he or she can experience the story in all its highs & lows. If I can make a reader both laugh & cry, I think I've accomplished something important, because that tells me they've been caught up fully.
     I've been told my action scenes are some of the best ever written. I wish I could take more credit for that, but truly I see the story -- action scenes included -- in my mind. My job is to translate what I see as accurately & vividly as possible for readers.

Rebecca:
As a former investigative reporter & an editor with Top Secret security clearance at a federal think-tank & in this time of War Against Terrorism & Post-9/11, what advice would you give newbie writers plotting spy/suspense thrillers?

Gayle:
When I began The Last Spymaster, I found I was at sea. I had two great lead characters & a marvelous situation, in that one of them is a spy's spy on the run, & the other is his hunter, but I was struggling with the plot.
     Writing is like geometry. The rule is, go back to the “given.” Part of the given is the villain. Without a worthy villain, you have no plot. In this case, my villain was a retired arms trader -- a merchant of death -- who has come out of retirement for one last dramatic hurrah. As soon as I focused on him, what he wanted, what he would have to do to get it, my plot started to move.
     In all books, whether literary or romance or thriller, the villain drives the plot.

Rebecca:
Thank you, Gayle, for taking precious time out of your life to share with us.

Gayle:
It's been a pleasure for me, Rebecca. As you know, I love your website & the wealth of reviews, interviews, & news you share with all of us who love books.
     I hope anyone who's interested will drop by my website at www.GayleLynds.com where you can find contests, drawings, & even test your Spy-Q. For readers in particular, I've created a section called The World of Espionage. You can also find out where & when I'm coming to a conference or bookstore near you.

Rebecca:
Do catch my Review of Gayle Lynds's The Last Spymaster - I hope it makes you go out & buy yourself a copy!

Rebecca Brown
Published 06/18/06