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JONATHAN MABERRY: Lately here on the Big Scary Blog we’ve been talking about mystery and thriller fiction.  Some readers have a hard time keeping them straight.  What advice can you give for identifying each genre?

JOSEPH FINDER: A mystery is a whodunit, but a thriller is a Howdunit.  In other words, a mystery’s all about finding out who the bad guy is, whereas in a thriller, it’s about the process.  We usually know who the bad guy is.  We see the bad guy and the hero.  And as far as I’m concerned, suspense fiction and thriller fiction are just interchangeable terms.

MABERRY: I love talking ‘favorite scenes’ with other writers.  Do you have a favorite?

FINDER: Oooh, tough one.  Honestly, there’s a great scene in VANISHED, my new book, that takes place in Baltimore outside an abandoned factory, which I’m really proud of.  I also love the scene in KILLER INSTINCT in which Gordy, the evil boss, loses it.  That was a lot of fun to write.

MABERRY: You’re known for having music playing while you write.  What’s your ultimate thriller playlist?

FINDER: It totally depends on the kind of scene I’m writing, the mood I’m going for.  I like REM or U2 or The Clash a lot.  Sometimes I need something mellower like Coldplay — that gets a lot of airplay at my office while I’m writing. Counting Crows.  A lot of Elvis Costello and Sting.  And believe it or not, when I’m writing action scenes, I like to play John Powell’s soundtracks for the Bourne movies.

I go through jags where I play a lot of gospel (especially writing Company Man) or country (while writing the first Nick Heller; I don’t know why Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” which is a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, declared itself as the theme song of that story.)  Depending on my mood (and if I don’t want to hear lyrics) I’ll play classical music like Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” or Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, the first movement, Allegro con brio.  Or Bach’s haunting Air from Ouverture no. 3, BWV 1069.  So: from the Clash to Cash, from REM to Bach.  Go figure.

MABERRY: Do you ever feel that producing book after book is a grind?

FINDER: I’m never writing the same book.  Each one tells a different story, different people (for the most part), different subject matter.  I also love research, finding out new stuff, so that keeps it fresh too.  And it’s hard, to be honest — doing good suspense in a spare and fast-moving way takes a lot of work, and I like working hard.  Plus, anytime I’m discouraged, I just remind myself that no one put a gun to my head to make me be a writer.

MABERRY: VANISHED launches a new series.  Talk about the book and the lead character.

FINDER: I love this new character, Nick Heller, who’s a high-powered international investigator — a private spy for corporations and politicians.

MABERRY: I thought you didn’t like writing series…

FINDER: For years readers (and my publisher) had asked me to do a series character, but I avoided it for a couple of reasons.  I didn’t want to do the same old gumshoe or P.I. or cop or FBI agent as so any other writers are doing.  Plus, I didn’t see how a continuing character could fit with the sort of corporate-conspiracy stuff I’d been writing since Paranoia.  Until I met a friend of mine who’d been in the CIA and had gone private and I realized that I hadn’t seen anyone like that as a series hero.  And Nick Heller began to appear as, in a sense, an amalgamation of the best of all my standalone heroes, the traits I liked most about them.  I think this character will wear well.

MABERRY: Do you see the publishing industry as an economic train wreck, or is there some hope that the industry will survive the economic crisis?

FINDER: Publishing may go through a rocky year or two, but ultimately I’m not worried about the future of books.  They’re largely recession proof.  In bad times, people need entertainment — that’s the one thing they don’t quit — so the kinds of books we write are going to continue to sell, I think.  Then there’s the Kindle and other forms of e-books, which I think will make book buying that much easier and more convenient.

MABERRY: How do you cook up and serve an idea for a new book?

FINDER: I always start with a “what if” — what if a bunch of corporate bigshots got kidnapped and held for ransom by bad guys who demand the company’s entire cash reserves?  And then I spend months brainstorming plot and doing research, and then the grueling part: getting the dramatic beats lined up, figuring out how one leads to another.

Once I actually start writing, it usually goes fast, like a few months.  I revise it and give it to my brother, who’s an editor at The New Yorker, and then I revise again and send it to my editor and my agent.  By the time I’m done, I’ve probably gone through five or six revisions.

MABERRY: Book signings can be wonderful –or incredibly strange—events.  Do you have any oddball signing anecdotes to share?

FINDER: I was once at the San Diego airport and I stopped at the newsstand near my boarding gate.  I saw a guy reach for one of my books (I think it was Company Man), and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I’ll sign that for you if you want – I wrote it.”

He stared at me. “What do you mean, you’re Joseph . . .Finder?” (Like most people, he pronounced it wrong.)

I said, “Right”

He said, “No way. I don’t believe you.”

I said, “Really, I am.”

“You’re telling me you’re Joseph Finder? I don’t believe it.”

I pulled out my driver’s license.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “You really are Joseph Finder.” He started telling people around him. One by one, people started grabbing copies off the shelf and asking me to sign their books too, until they were all gone.

So I figure all I have to do to hit #1 on the Times list is to go to every single airport bookstore in the country one week.

Find Joseph Finder here:

Author photo by Joel Benjamin.

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