A Conversation With Gayle Lynds

JONATHAN MABERRY: How do you categorize the kind of novels you write?

GAYLE LYNDS:  I’m a novelist of international espionage, having fallen head over heels for adventure, politics, culture, and history.  Spies are the perfect source for all of that.  When I wrote THE LAST SPYMASTER, I created a hero considered the CIA’s preeminent spy through the end of the Cold War right up past 9/11.  Then he was arrested for espionage, as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen had been before him.

He captures all of the elements I mentioned above, and provides a good dose of intrigue, too, especially when he escapes from a maximum-security prison without a trace.  A young CIA hunter is sent to find him, and he eventually becomes her mentor.  Readers can enjoy watching their reluctance to work together and learn everything he has to teach her, too.

It’s a classic thriller in the sense the pair have a terrible event to stop, and in that lays the difference between thriller and mystery.  In a mystery, the terrible event happens in the beginning of the book, and the rest of the story is figuring out who did it, and if it’s a really good book, why.  Ross Macdonald always said a mystery was a series of fascinating interviews.

JONATHAN:  Most writers have a favorite scene they’ve written.  What’s yours?

GAYLE:  One scene that was the most fun was a car chase scene on the Beltway around Washington, D.C. in THE LAST SPYMASTER.  It was a challenge, because chase scenes like sex scenes are fundamentally all the same.  The art comes in, in making them not only different but compelling beyond the simple situation.  I’ve had many readers email me how much they enjoyed the chase.

Another favorite of mine is a scene in THE COIL, which occurs at the end of the book.  In it the heroine’s father, a legendary assassin, is uncovered as a character who has been in the book all along.  It was a deeply touching moment, watching the father and daughter come together.

JONATHAN:  You’ve been at this for a while.  What keeps it fresh?

GAYLE:  I’m riveted always by the next book.  I begin thinking about it long before I’m writing.  At this point I have notes to myself for the next three books.  When one loves the work, and doesn’t mind having no sense of comfort that one can pull it off again, it’s just darn addictive.

JONATHAN:  You’re a member of the U.S. Association for Intelligence Officers. Give us the skinny on that.

GAYLE:  AFIO is a remarkable organization of people who have been spies or have worked in  other functions in the IC (Intelligence Community) or simply want to support of the work of U.S. intelligence.  Years ago I had Top Secret security clearance when I was an editor at a private think tank that did a lot of defense business.  It was riveting.

JONATHAN:  Publishing has been as hard hit as other industries by the economic tsunami.  What’s going to keep the book business afloat?

GAYLE:  We are, and so is everyone who loves a good tale.  I’ve seen these retrenchments before due to many reasons, including consolidations of publishing houses, recessions, and fear that electronic media, TV, movies, etc. have doomed print books.  The business is changing, and electronic books of one sort of another, although now a very small percentage of sales, will grow.  But a book is a book, and people will continue to want to read them whether on paper or on a screen.

JONATHAN:  What’s your process from “Hey, I have an idea!” to “I just sent my manuscript to my editor!”

GAYLE:  It’s a long and winding journey.  Boxes with no tops, about three inches deep, sit on shelves behind my desk.  Each has a different label, and into them I throw clippings and notes to myself.  One box is simply Next Books.  In there are sheets of paper describing novels I want to write.

I’ve just sent in my latest book, THE BOOK OF SPIES, to my editor and agent, so I’m now in the beginning stages of the next book.  At this point I know the main characters because they’ll continue from THE BOOK OF SPIES.  (This will be my first series.)  I also know the opening chapter and what the book is about.  Next I’ll figure out what the bad guys are doing, what their goal is.  Then I go through the walking around my office stage of thinking about the plot until I reach the point I simply can’t stand it anymore because I desperately want to write.  At that point, I heave a sigh of relief, and begin the book.

JONATHAN:  Tell us about THE BOOK OF SPIES

GAYLE:  It will be published sometime in mid 2010.  Some clippings particularly fascinate me, and so I keep them a long time.  In 1989 I saw an article in the Los Angeles Times about a library that dated all the way back to the beginnings of Byzantium and was added to over the thousand years of the empire.  When the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople  in the late 1400s, the library could’ve been destroyed.  Instead the niece of the last emperor escaped, and she took several hundred magnificent illuminated manuscripts with her.

When she married Ivan the Great, about 800 of the books went with her to Moscow as part of her dowry.  The library was passed down to her son, and then to her grandson — Ivan the Terrible.  What fascinated me was when Ivan died, the fabulous library vanished.  People have been looking for it ever since, including Peter the Great, Napoleon, and Vladimir Putin.

But THE BOOK OF SPIES is a contemporary tale of, as the title suggests, international espionage.  It’s also the beginning of my first series, and takes place across Europe, from London to Rome, Istanbul to Athens.  At the same time it’s rooted in Washington, D.C. and events in eastern Afghanistan.  I’ve enjoyed writing this book a great deal, and sure hope readers find it equally intriguing.

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