Author Spotlight: Bruce T. Jones

New Orleans does things to people. It swirls the senses of both the folks who live there, and the ones merely passing through. It overwhelms its citizens and wayfarers alike with as many people and places beautiful and light, as wicked and dark. One man long renowned for being fairly good with words said of the city, "The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time." Clearly, New Orleans left a deep impression on Bob Dylan’s psyche.

And so too has New Orleans done on the spirit of today’s Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight guest, author Bruce T. Jones. Jones is here to talk about writing, and share some thoughts about his debut thriller, The Lost Reflection, an uncanny tale set in New Orleans. Not to be outdone by Dylan without a fight, the eminently well-traveled Jones says to New Orleans, "…no city has touched my soul, and called me back like you."

So touched was Jones’s soul that he was compelled to write The Lost Reflection. We know the feeling. New Orleans affects us the same way. That’s one of the reasons why we’re so pleased Jones joins us for this Spotlight. Another is that The Lost Reflection is a chilling, delicious read. And so without further ado, let’s get the Spotlight’s rows of klieg lights fired up and trained squarely on today’s guest.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Jones:    So many fictions and only one to choose. The Lord of the Rings would have to be the front runner. It’s long and certainly not the easiest book to read. It takes my dyslexic brain longer to process than most, thus it would last much longer. It is a great tale of defeating insurmountable odds, offering hope to get off this God forsaken island you have dumped me on. And lastly, it allows the wandering mind so many directions to continue the saga of the characters, both past and future.

What do you mean Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t nonfiction? Actually, although it may not be the one of the best written books I have read, Kyle Maynard’s No Excuses is certainly a testimony to one man’s belief that nothing is impossible. Hence, proper mindset can overcome even the biggest obstacles in our paths.

Gazala:    Your new book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled The Lost Reflection, about the Vatican's ancient secret hidden in the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans' French Quarter. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about The Lost Reflection, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Jones:    The roots of this tale are entrenched in 250 years of New Orleans history. This is a living, breathing legend that can be experienced today upon a visit to the Crescent City. Believe in vampires or not, the mystery of the Ursuline Convent’s third floor is a fascinating tale. Otherwise, the book contains some pretty hot vampires and is pretty darn inexpensive entertainment.

Gazala:    What are books for?

Jones:    Education would be the academically appropriate answer. But for me, it’s the ejector seat from reality. It’s a chance to free one’s mind from the everyday constraints and tribulations which have a tendency to wear the soul down over the long years. It’s sharing in accolades and tragedy, growing emotionally and spiritually with the writer, it’s... education. 

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Jones:    What I have learned in this journey, rules may be responsible for the best books never written. There are books, educators, publishers, editors and agents. All have different interpretations of the rules, so many more than three. Unfortunately, society rarely embraces the rule breakers, but when they do, the creation of some astonishing work is witnessed.

Gazala:    A nice gentleman dressed in black with long, sharp fangs seems hungry for my attention. While I see what he wants, ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Jones:    Q: If this guy starts to kill Richard, should I run? A: I probably should hide out in the dumpster until the guy in black leaves, then nab Richard’s Starbucks gold card. If the cops or the coroner finds the card, they’ll probably use it themselves. I could use a free latte about now.

It seems Jones has spent enough time in New Orleans’ steamy swelter to fare well under the Spotlight’s fiery glaze. Interestingly, I never told the man I have a Starbucks gold card, but I do. Eerie. That kind of supernatural vision bodes well for a book about otherworldly thrills in a city where you could be dead for a long, long time. See for yourself — The Lost Reflection is available at book retailers everywhere, but if Amazon's your preference you can get your copy right now by clicking here.

Author Spotlight 2012's Greatest Hits

Gazalapalooza is all about writers and writing. Our Author Spotlight is a very popular recurring feature. That’s understandable, because not only do we have only the most fascinating, erudite and attractive authors visit the Spotlight, but these same literary luminaries shed bright light on the art, craft and business of writing books that people everywhere love to read. We’re fortunate that lots of very gifted authors generously spent some of their valuable time educating and entertaining our blog’s readers. We’re equally blessed that many thousands of Gazalapalooza readers like you from all over the world dropped by to learn and laugh with the 21 authors who graced our pages in 2012.

2013 is mere hours away. Soon we’ll be ringing in the New Year with Author Spotlights shining on Bruce T. Jones, James Grippando (back for seconds!), and Brad Meltzer, all visiting to talk about their respective new thrillers The Lost Reflection, Blood Money, and The Fifth Assassin.

And that’s just in January.

As we prepare to bid adieu to 2012, we decided to say farewell by assembling a "greatest hits" compilation of sorts. (Admittedly, it’s a highly subjective assemblage, but it’s our name on the virtual door so we get to do what we want. That’s one of the benefits of being boss blogger.) Accordingly, we’ve culled from our Author Spotlight interviews some nugget of truth, fiction, wisdom, or inanity from each authorial soul intrepid enough to venture into the Spotlight’s white hot heat in 2012.

Without further ado, please join us as we ring out the old year and welcome in the new with the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight Redux, 2012 Edition. Enjoy.

Salma Abdelnour: "After wondering for years if I had the guts to follow that fantasy and see where it would lead, I finally did it."

David Baldacci: "Be afraid with every project that you can't bring the magic again. Fear is a great antidote to complacency and formula."

Steve Berry: "What is known, is suspect."

Catherine Coulter: "So, yeah, it's a block, but it's not caused by angst or stress or any sort of psychological malaise -- I think it's all because of a bad plot."

Richard Doetsch: "I disagree. No rules. Rules constrict creativity. If I listened to the rules I wouldn’t have started my novel, The 13th Hour, at the last chapter and written it backwards."

Dan Fesperman: "Apologies for looking like such a tatterdemalion in my current state of labefactation, but you scrofulous laggards were certainly a bit dilatory in arriving."

John Gilstrap: "Plus, if my copy of Moby Dick is the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, I’ll have toilet paper for my first 672 days on the island.  (Oooh, I’m going to be in trouble for that one.)"

James Grippando: "The only people who can be totally honest with each other are lovers or strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating."

Malcolm Holt: "It's hard trying to watch a DVD in the bath."

Alan Orloff: "I’ve lived in the D.C. area most of my life, so I know something about the sordid stories associated with those walking the corridors of power."

Kira Peikoff: "For me, books are my drug of choice — my regular and much-needed dose of enlightenment, entertainment, wonder, and inspiration."

Matthew Reilly: "So far as I know, the only rule is this: write what you love to read yourself."

Matt Richtel: "You imagine you won the lottery, or that the beautiful woman/man across the aisle in the bookstore flirted with you, or that you saved the airplane from terrorists on 9/11."

James Rollins: "Whatever problem you struggle with during your writing day (dialog, opening a scene, etc.), you’ll discover a great example on how to address that in the book you read that night."

Kieran Shields: "Side effects of this novel may include sleeplessness, temporary confusion, and feelings of delusional well-being.  If you experience criminal detection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate professional assistance."

J. Gregory Smith: "…I came up with a sort of superhypnosis combined with a mysterious concoction that allows access to the deepest reaches of a subject's subconscious. Now we're talking power."

Simon Tolkien: "…I don’t think that starting at page one and seeing what happens can ever be a recipe for success. Writing good novels requires great organizational skills, particularly if the writer intends to keep his reader absorbed in the unfolding story."

Tim Wendel: "Well, you start with the rules. Those are your flickering lights as you move into the darkness when you begin any new book."

Stephen White: "Obviously, if someone doesn’t get around to reading the ending of this fine series, you won’t be able to tell me all the ways I screwed it up. Why would anyone pass up that chance?"

David Wong: "That's a deeply personal question, and you quite frankly have no business asking it. This interview is over."

Stuart Woods: "I have a fevered imagination and a rich fantasy life, which helps with the sex scenes. That’s all you need."

Wow. It’s difficult to pick a favorite, isn’t it? Trust us, it’s not nearly so easy as you might assume.

We extend our many and sincere thanks to all of our Spotlight Authors. Remember to support our authors. Read their Spotlights. Then go read their books. All of them are available all sorts of places, including Amazon.

Last, but immeasurably far from least, we also thank all of you, Gazalaplaooza’s readers, for spending some of your precious time with us this year. We wish all of you and yours a very happy, peaceful and bountiful 2013. Be good to each other. And keep reading.

 "Who said nights were for sleep?"

~~Marilyn Monroe~~

United Authors

Legacy book publishers are in trouble the same way their record company cousins were when the latter were blindsided by the digitization and subsequent revolution of Internet-based commercial distribution of musical entertainment. In that environment, it's no mystery why Tower Records and its ilk have all but disappeared from shopping centers.

How many record stores have you visited during the holiday shopping season? Could you have found a stand-alone record store even if you wanted to? Nonetheless many of you will gift recorded music to grateful music-lovers, as probably as not via iTunes gift cards and the like. Then your happy recipients will hop on the web and download digital music to their computers, cell phones and iPods. Those musical acquisitions are unencumbered by plastic or cardboard casing, and your downloaders won’t care a bit. They want the music. The physical trappings that used to encase the tunes simply aren’t relevant.

For music appreciation purposes, an iPod by any other name is still just an "e-listener," filled with "e-songs." The massively successful market penetration of e-listeners and e-songs worldwide demonstrates beyond doubt that music entertainment consumers care primarily about efficiently and conveniently acquiring the music they want at reasonable prices. Forcing customers to trudge to a store and overpay for a piece of plastic laden with music they don’t want just to buy one or two songs they do has been extinct for years now. But the record companies remain largely clueless about how to adjust their business, profit, and talent-acquisition models accordingly.

The ongoing death spiral of the old record company business model is instructive as traditional book publishers and sellers ceaselessly bemoan their now equally traditional dwindling book sales. The record companies’ woes were predicated on the companies' mistaken belief their business was selling physical recordings. It wasn't. They’re in the business of selling a form of popular entertainment — recorded music. At the end of the day, consumers wanted the music, not the vinyl or tape or plastic by which the companies attempted (successfully, for a long time) to restrict its availability and control its pricing.

The same self-inflicted myopia clouds current legacy book publishers' vision. They cling to the notion that they're in the business of selling paper, and the overwhelming majority of their business model is structured accordingly despite indisputable evidence (whither Borders?) they're wrong. A paper book is nothing other than a technology by which a form of popular entertainment — stories told in printed words — is sold to consumers. It’s also a technology whose days of market dominance are well behind it.

The current renaissance (which it most certainly is — see Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, et al.) of book self-publishing, underway via the digitization and Internet delivery of e-stories directly to readers, rattles legacy publishers into scrambling to purchase stakes in self-publishing firms flush with e-book expertise. One example is British legacy publisher Penguin’s purchase last summer of the American self-publishing company Author Solutions. Penguin bought Author Solutions less than a year after Book Country, Penguin’s own timid stutter-step into self-publishing, launched to less than magnificent results.

The legacy publishers’ objectives in doing deals like Penguin’s for Author Solutions are twofold. Primarily, they hope to exert some measure of control over the new business model that threatens them. A distant second is to use the self-publishing outfits as a kind of minor league farm system to scout authorial talent deemed sufficiently "worthy" of traditional book publishing contracts. The legacy publishers will fail, because self-published authors of varying degrees of success achieved on their own terms won’t be eager to sacrifice their independence, and vastly higher potential earnings, on the crumbling altar of a clearly dying business model.

Think about it. No one gets excited because Random House or Harper Collins has a new thriller coming out. It’s the author and her story that matters to you, not the publisher. I bet most of you couldn’t name the publisher of the latest novel you enjoyed. I’ll win that bet at least 99 times out of a hundred, for the simple reason you don’t care who the publisher is. It doesn’t matter. It’s not why you bought the book.

Internationally best-selling thriller author Barry Eisler realized just that when he rejected a two-book contract offered him by legacy publisher St. Martin’s Press. That deal included a $500,000.00 advance. Eisler turned down the contract because he wanted to claw back from traditional publishing some measure of independence and control in his career, as well as the opportunity to foster a more intimate relationship with his readers than traditional publishing afforded him. Also, Eisler ran the numbers. Electronically publishing his novels and stories on his own he stood to net a lot more money, more quickly, than what any legacy publisher could pitch to him under the outmoded constraints of traditional book publishing. So Eisler mostly e-publishes now. If he wants to grant one of his e-books corporeal existence, he arranges with Amazon publishing arm Thomas & Mercer to make available physical copies of his work via the Internet.

It's interesting to ponder what might happen if some successful e-book authors like Eisler chose to band together and form their own enterprise to foster, market, and sell digitized books outside the legacy publishers' clutches. There's precedent in entertainment annals for that too — about a century ago popular Hollywood stars Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and a handful of others founded an independent film studio called United Artists. They wanted to free themselves from the oppressions of the so-called studio system of commercial American movie-making. Almost a century before the opportunities afforded by a cheap, ubiquitous and commercially-accepted Internet offering Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Instant Video entertainment for in-home 84" flat screens, Chaplin and his colleagues succeeded, in small ways for a short while. Imagine the same effort undertaken by similarly situated movie people now, much less a few years from today.

Now imagine a new digital book publishing operation established along the same lines as United Artists, by a similar caliber of Internet-savvy literary talents for the same reasons. Thanks to current technologies and growing customer acceptance of e-books, such a company would be freed entirely from devoting costly resources to making, storing and delivering physical books, not to mention the arcane financial accounting that necessarily intertwines with all of that. Middlemen siphoning off time, space and money between author and reader would be rendered superfluous. Instead, this company would spend its time and efforts strictly on discovering and promoting authors and their work. The imprimatur of a group of popular and well-respected "e-authors" like Eisler and J.A. Konrath on e-books released by such a company would provide meaningful value to authors and readers alike. It would help talented but relatively unknown authors who otherwise might get lost in the Internet’s raucous e-publishing noise gain readers’ notice. It would help readers find new e-stories to buy and read that come with a seal of approval from established authors whose writing they already know and enjoy. One avenue of book publishing's imminent future may very well lie there, unfettered by paper, brick and mortar, delivery trucks, predacious agents, and bewildered legacy publishers.

Maybe they'll call it United Authors.

 "The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."

~~Mary Pickford~~

Author Spotlight: Simon Tolkien

We’re pleased to have join us for this edition of the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight novelist Simon Tolkien. Tolkien’s here to tell us something about his brand new thriller, Orders from Berlin, and to share with us some of his insights about the writing life, and life generally.

As is our wont with all our intrepid Spotlight guests, a bit of authorial background is in order. Tolkien was born in England in 1959, and grew up in a small village near Oxford. He studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford, before establishing in Britain a successful legal practice specializing in criminal justice. The author of four gripping novels, Tolkien now lives with his family in sunny southern California.

Did we leave anything out? Oh, yes…

Before we venture further, we’re sure our guest’s last name rings a bell loudly for many of you. Perhaps all the more so with this weekend’s highly anticipated theatrical release of the movie, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." Tolkien is the grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien. In 2003, shortly following his debut novel’s release, Tolkien said of that heritage, "Living in the shadow of The Lord of the Rings has not been an easy experience and I was always telling myself that I couldn't write fiction. However, I began writing my first novel on January 1, 2000. The first effort was rejected and that was hard, but I was determined to carry on and the result was The Stepmother (since retitled Final Witness — ed.). I think that my grandfather would be both pleased and proud that I have become a novelist. My book is a courtroom drama; it could not be further removed from his world of elves and dwarves, but writing it has made me feel close to my grandfather again. It is as if I have come into my true inheritance."

We agree. And in the years following the publication of Final Witness in 2002, Tolkien has proudly continued his family’s august literary legacy by authoring excellent novels that consistently earn well-deserved acclaim from critics and readers. Tolkien’s second novel, The Inheritance, was published in 2010, followed a year later by his third, The King of Diamonds. Those books appear in more than half a dozen languages round the world, and we’re confident the fate for Tolkien’s latest, Orders from Berlin, will be at least the same.

Preliminaries now complete, it’s time to welcome Tolkien to the bright klieg-lit glare of the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. Without further ado, let’s get this Spotlight underway.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Tolkien:    Doctor Zhivago — because it is the most true novel I have ever read, describing how we pass in and out of life in a haphazard way, caught in cross currents, unable to control the vagaries of chance that can be most cruel. And non-fiction — a huge, well-written history of the world complete with illustrations to keep me distracted while I wait for rescue.

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled Orders from Berlin, about a Nazi plot to assassinate Winston Churchill during WWII. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Orders From Berlin, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Tolkien:    Here’s why — it’ll take you back to the fall of 1940 when the world’s fate hung in the balance poised between good and evil, when fact was stranger than fiction, and an assassination could have changed the course of history. It’ll make you feel what it was like to live in a city that was being bombed day and night and in a country that expected to be invaded by the most terrifying military machine that has ever been assembled. You will walk through the corridors of power and meet Churchill weighing options in his underground bunker, Hitler venting his fury on his generals, and England’s top spies meeting in secret conclave. And you will stand on the shoulder of a young detective constable and feel his anxiety and frustration as he works alone against overwhelming odds to try to foil a plot to kill Churchill and take England out of the War. It’ll keep you awake into the small hours and leave you satisfied when you close the book at the end of the final chapter.

Gazala:    What are books for?

Tolkien:    To take us out of ourselves, to extend our limits, and to people our imagination. To entertain and to move and to instruct. To make us see the world in an infinity of different colors and to make us more than we are.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Tolkien:    Somerset Maugham is the greatest writer of short stories that I have ever read. I particularly love the ones set in Malaya that bring a vanished world to vivid life in a few pages, setting up and exploring conflicts that can rarely be resolved. Maugham could not have done this without a mastery of his art and I don’t think that starting at page one and seeing what happens can ever be a recipe for success. Writing good novels requires great organizational skills, particularly if the writer intends to keep his reader absorbed in the unfolding story. My years of practice as a trial lawyer have helped me with plotting. And there is research too — a book can be more interesting if it takes the reader into another world or historical period, although I think it’s important that this is not done for its own sake — the novelist’s purpose is to create, not educate. For me the research and plotting can take longer than the actual writing, but I need to make sure that I don’t over-prepare. It’s vital to leave enough space inside the plot structure for the characters to develop into real three dimensional human beings with credible motivations for their actions. And the story needs to evolve naturally but cohesively out of their interplay.

Gazala:    I've got to crack this coded message — time is of the essence. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Tolkien:    Q: What do you believe in? A: That we may well be alone and that God — if He exists — is not involved in the day to day workings of the world. I am left cold by the emphasis in western religions on the continuation of life after death; the importance that Buddhism places on exploring a consciousness beyond the self makes more sense to me, as do its tenets for how to live life wisely. That death makes life more precious, not less. That love and creativity and artistic endeavor make human beings more than they are and that the evil of men like the Nazis has at its root a complete limitation of imagination and empathy. That we need to understand that the dead were just as alive as we are now and that the past is another country just as real as our own — simply to walk down a street in another time is the greatest experience I can imagine. And finally — as you say — that time is of the essence.

Yes, time is always of the essence. And to save you some time, we’ve made it very easy for you to get your own copy of Orders from Berlin. All you have to do is click here, and Amazon will have your copy heading your way in mere moments.

Author Spotlight: Richard Doetsch

As many of you have noted, Gazalapalooza took off the month of November. Though we weren’t here on the blog, November was a productive month -- issues were addressed, matters confronted, ghosts put to rest, and conflicts resolved. Now we’re back, and we’re back in a very big way with this edition of the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight featuring internationally best-selling author Richard Doetsch.

There are many great thriller authors whose books enthrall readers worldwide. With eight globally successful and popular books to his credit (one of which is being made into a big-budget movie), certainly Doetsch is one of them. But not many of those authors actually pursue some of the "thrills" their characters endure in those books. Doetsch does. The accomplished triathlete counts skydiving, and scuba diving among his extracurricular activities. That is, when he’s not quenching his thirst for real-life thrills by jumping off bridges, cliffs and cranes with only the glorified rubber bands wrapped round his ankles standing between him and a messy end. We’re confident it’s Doetsch’s willingness (nay, eagerness) to belly up to the extreme experiential bar that gives his writing the flavors that his readers savor so avidly. Esteemed Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight alumni SteveBerry and James Rollins both have declared Doetsch’s just-released novel, The Thieves of Legend, as one not to be missed. Rollins confesses the book "stole my breath..." Not to be outdone, Berry says, "You’ll grip the pages so tight your knuckles will turn white."

We fear such lofty praise for Mr. Doetsch’s new book from two of the world’s preeminent thriller authors might go straight to his head. We can’t have that without inviting him to sweat some of it off under the unforgiving glare of the Author Spotlight. Now that’s he’s perched expectantly on the edge of the Spotlight’s hard wooden chair, let’s see how well Doetsch does under our klieg lights’ blaze.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Doetsch:    Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, not just because of the season but for what the book is. It’s a ghost story, a feel good story, and a time travel tale. It has mystery, humor, poignancy, hope, and one of the greatest characters ever created.  It paints a picture in the mind far better than any of its film adaptations. It is one of the few stories you can read time and again and get something new out of every time.

As for the non-fiction, that’s a tough one… I would take a visual dictionary, one of those huge visual dictionaries so I could learn about everything, so once I was rescued from the island I could get back to writing and all of my research would be done.   

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled The Thieves of Legend, featuring the return of former thief Michael St. Pierre. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about The Thieves of Legend, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Doetsch:    The Thieves of Legend is an action, adventure, thriller, mystery, with strong characters, a bit of history, and love (the true motivator). It delves into historical figures who have shaped the world yet have remained out of the spotlight, such as Chinese admirals from the past who commanded forgotten fleets of 300 with giant ships over 425 feet long whose size wasn’t matched until the aircraft carriers of today. It tells of treasures from World War II, and even greater treasures from 600 years ago; eternal life; thefts from the depths of the Venetian Casino in Macau (the largest casino in the world); and intricate, complex break-ins into the Forbidden City and its secret vaults where mysteries have been lost to time. It’s a race through New York to the medieval streets of Granada, Spain; from Italian castles of old, to modern China and its ancient history, and to volcanic islands that evade modern sea charts. Oh, and it’s the story of Michael St. Pierre, a reformed thief and his group of friends: a priest, his old parole officer, and his on-again, off-again, on-again girlfriend who’s his on-again, off-again rival thief. And P.S.: The Thieves of Darkness, the prior book in the series, is being made into a pretty cool movie.  

Gazala:    What are books for?

Doetsch:    Everything. They are for fun, education, escape, seeing the world through different eyes. They’re for excitement, insight, paperweights (the over 800 page ones). They’re for gifts, for sharing, for collecting, and for libraries.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Doetsch:    I disagree. No rules. Rules constrict creativity. If I listened to the rules I wouldn’t have started my novel, The 13th Hour, at the last chapter and written it backwards.  But… there are things... Things like writing every day, thinking outside the box, thinking differently, reading, watching movies and other forms of entertainment. Living, experiencing life is so important as drawing from our life gives our writing realism; facing our fears so we can translate those emotions to paper. Experiencing love, loss, and pain makes our writing believable.  So, no rules, but maybe habits that will contribute to our skill. Habits.

Gazala:    Speaking of thieves, someone outside is trying to heist my truck. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Doetsch:    Q: For someone who just found out about you, would you say they can start with The Thieves of Legend and then go back and read more about the adventures of Michael St. Pierre? A: Absolutely, each story stands on its own, fully fleshing out the characters in the context of the current story while hinting about things past and future. This way, there are definite arcs in each story -- the new reader can emotionally relate to my characters and in doing so enjoy the ride as much as the reader who has experienced all of my stories.

We suppose it’s not altogether surprising that an extreme sports enthusiast / best-selling thriller author of Doetsch’s pedigree survived the Spotlight reasonably intact. You might not be able to say the same for yourself after indulging in the relentless wonders, mysteries and adventures filling the pages of The Thieves of Legend. Don’t take our word for that -- get your copy of the book from Amazon by clicking here. You’ll be thrilled you did.