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[00:00:03.980] – Alan Petersen
You are listening to Meet the Thriller Author. I’m your host, Alan Petersen, a thriller author and a big fan of the genre myself. This is episode 228. Before we jump into today’s interview, I wanted to share something I think you’ll find a really valuable, especially if you’re serious about improving your writing craft. Masterclass is running an incredible pre-Black Friday deal right now, up to 50% off. If you ever thought about taking a class from legends like James Patterson, Walter Moseley, David Balducci, Dan Brown, Aaron Sorkin, Shonda Rimes, Salman Rushdie, and many others, this is the perfect moment. I’ve put together a link that helps support this podcast. You can go to thrillingreads. Com/classbf25. It’s all one word, Class BF, as in Black Friday 25. So just head to that link to get the discount and see the full lineup of amazing writing courses. The offer ends before Black Friday, so don’t wait too long. Again, the link is thrillingreads. Com/classbf25. Now, on to today’s episode. I’m excited to welcome back Brian Andrews, one-half of the Andrews and Wilson writing duo. Brian is joining me solo on the show to talk about their newest thriller, Tom Clancy, Executive Power.

[00:01:24.000] – Alan Petersen
This is the 26th Jack Ryan novel, and the third time, Andrews and Wilson is carrying forward the Clancy The Legacy. So I’m very excited to welcome Brian back on to the podcast. The book comes out on November 25th, so make sure to go check that out. So let’s dive in. Here’s my interview with Brian Andrews. Hey, everybody. This is Alan with Meet the Thriller author. And on the podcast today, I have Brian Andrews, who is part of the incredible writing team of Andrews & Wilson. That is Brian Andrews, my guest today, Jeffrey Wilson. They’re Navy veterans, best-selling authors, and the minds behind tier one series, Sons of Valor and Shepherds. And now, of course, the continuation of Tom Clancy’s iconic Jack Ryan character. Their latest executive power comes out November 25th, and it’s a high stakes, high tension addition to the It’s a legacy, in my opinion. Brian, welcome back to the podcast.

[00:02:18.800] – Brian Andrews
Thanks for having me on. It’s great to be back.

[00:02:20.780] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. So you’re solo today.

[00:02:23.460] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, I know. My partner in crime is not going to be able to make it today. But hey, maybe he’ll be on next time, and who knows, maybe I’ll be fighting crime out there in my mask and cape. So we do sometimes have to switch off.

[00:02:36.200] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, absolutely. That’s part of the team, right? Teamwork. Exactly. So let me start right off the bat with a big one. So what was it like When you step into the Tom Clancy universe for the first time a few years ago, I’m imagining it was surreal, intimidating, exciting, all of the above.

[00:02:54.400] – Brian Andrews
Oh, so exciting because I was a submarine officer, and I was reading Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October while I was on a submarine. I was on a 688 Los Angeles class, reading about another Los Angeles class, chasing Russians around while I was doing that. So That was pretty cool. I mean, what an amazing opportunity to be given the keys to the castle, so to speak, for the Clancy universe. Jack Ryan and with Hunt for Red October, I think it’s safe to say that Clancy established the military thriller genre. He’s the grandfather of the military thriller genre. For us to be handed the canon and all these great characters and entrusted with them is just surreal.

[00:03:44.260] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that was up to, though. When his books came out, everyone said how realistic it was, how accurate it was. I don’t know anything about Submarines when I read it. I just love the book. But you actually knew. Were you blown away how accurate things were, the descriptions and technical stuff?

[00:04:00.000] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, I think that was the other interesting thing about Clancy is that he was a research fanatic, and he spent the time to really look at James Fighting Ships and detail naval naval institute press, publications, and anything that he could get his hands on to understand the platform. And he really wanted to introduce the American reader to this secret special universe that is submarine warfare. And he captured people’s imaginations because we’re called the silent service for a reason. Sunreigners don’t talk about the things that they do. But at the same time, even though we have a code of silence, and we need to protect the missions and the means and methods that we conduct. I do think it’s really important for the American people to understand what Sunreigners do and why we do it, and that’s okay. We need the next generation of warfighters to come aboard the Navy and enroll in the submarine pipeline to become the next generation of submarine, the next Bertman Cuso. We’re looking for those people. Without knowing that this service exists and what summerings do, it’s really hard to fill that pipeline with motivated, eager, intelligent young people.

[00:05:27.640] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s great. Never thought about that. That’s a great take that. That actually inspires people to join, watch the movie, reading those books.

[00:05:35.160] – Brian Andrews
Yes, 100 %. It’s why I joined, right? Yeah.

[00:05:39.440] – Alan Petersen
I had a thought about that just now, too. That’s amazing. He did all that research. That was before the Internet. So he probably had binders of research information.

[00:05:50.240] – Brian Andrews
Yeah. And he was given access by the military after the hunt for Rut October, but not during the hunt, not while he was writing that book. So he pulled off something remarkable, which is it was the combination of his imagination and his research, because some of the things that he put in the book were purely conjecture in his imagination. They happen to be, they say, Stranger than fiction. The truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you predict something that might be ahead of your time. I think in some respects, he anticipated some technologies and some research that hadn’t happened yet, but was theoretical. So that’s cool, too. So all fiction writers, we all try to imagine things that haven’t happened yet to stay competitive in our own industry. It’s just to stay ahead of our own competition with a different what if.

[00:06:45.460] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. So I have to ask you, too. So I’m really curious about what that process was like for you and Jeffrey to take over, especially Jack Ryan. I mean, that’s probably one of the most iconic thriller characters out there. How did that process work? Did you have to audition?

[00:07:07.020] – Brian Andrews
That’s a great question. No, we didn’t have to audition. Well, we auditioned in one sense. We didn’t know we were auditioning. Tom Colgan at Penguin Random House is the steward of all the Clancy books. He was Tom Clancy’s editor before Tom passed away in 2013. He He was working with Clancy, and Clancy’s health was declining, and he knew that… I don’t think he knew that his death was imminent. He certainly didn’t know that. But he was slowing down, and he was thinking about his legacy, and he was thinking about, How do I continue these characters if I can’t keep up the pace? That’s when they brought Mark Greeny aboard. Tom Colgan was instrumental at bringing Mark Greeny aboard to take over He started writing with Tom Colgan, and then after Tom passed, Mark continued the Jack Ryan series. Then under Tom Colgan, Jack Ryan Jr. Series was stood up as well. He’s managed the two different series and the Clancy Estate, been the go between Penguin and the Adam House and the Clancy Estate, and all the authors. So he plays a pivotal role in the selection of the authors for both series. And so after Mark Greeny, Mark Cameron wrote, and We had been asked by Tom Colgan to write a book called Rogue Asset, which was a book for the Webb Griffin Estate, which is another estate.

[00:08:39.880] – Brian Andrews
Webb Griffin passed away, and they continued the presidential agent series. We wrote the first non-Griffin book in that series. I think Colgan really liked it. I think it was also, like you said, an audition to see, okay, when Cameron is ready to retire from Jack Ryan senior, do these guys maybe have what it takes? Because I think with Colgen, he’s always thinking about these are, especially the Jack Ryan senior books, they’re big geopolitical books. They have to You have to have subject matter knowledge of the US government and the US military and the intelligence community because Jack Ryan is sitting atop of this giant pyramid of military might and intelligence. How can you tell a story about that if you don’t know anything about that? I think there was a little bit of an audition. He saw that, Oh, yeah, these guys can handle geopolitical situations. We have a good yarn and write some interesting characters. Then when Cameron was ready to retire from this series, I think Mark Cameron and Tom Colgan sat down and said, Hey, who would be good successors? When Colgan was like, I think Anderson Wilson would be good. What do you think?

[00:10:05.490] – Brian Andrews
Cameron’s like, Yeah, I like those guys writing. I’d be happy. I’d feel comfortable handing the reins off to them.

[00:10:12.080] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s cool. I can see now why those writers selected to continue those. I hadn’t thought about that, but yeah, they’re all veterans or like Mark Cameron, law enforcement veterans. That makes a lot of sense to really understand that world, to write in that world. I thought about that one. So you mentioned that, too, how important the military and geopolitical information is into these books. I know you guys are writing an Andrews & Wilson book, not trying to write like Tom Clancy, but what elements of his voice or the worldview do you think was essential to carry over to this book, which, by the way, is awesome. Thanks.

[00:10:54.460] – Brian Andrews
Oh, thank you.

[00:10:55.500] – Alan Petersen
The publisher said.

[00:10:56.140] – Brian Andrews
That’s a great question. I think when you first After you get over the initial shock of, Oh, I’m going to be writing this, and the euphoria that comes with that, then comes the, Oh, shit, moment. How can we write Clancy? I think Tom Colgan knows This is not his first rodeo. He said to us, I don’t expect you to write Tom Clancy. In fact, if you tried, you would fail, and the readers wouldn’t like the book because they’d know, Oh, you’re trying to copy Clancy’s style. You clearly can’t write like Clancy. Only Clancy can write like Clancy. It would feel like you’re trying to ape the master. What he said is, What I want you to do is be faithful to the characters and the ethos of the series But write like Anderson Wilson. I’m bringing you guys in because I like the way you tell stories. And so that’s very empowering. So instead of being intimidated, you’re now suddenly empowered. You’re like, Okay, good. All I have to do is do what I already do and just do it really well and be faithful to the character. So then when you go back and you start researching and rereading books and thinking about your take, the goal is, well, Jack Ryan needs to be a moral, upstanding Boy Scout who always does the right thing.

[00:12:21.700] – Brian Andrews
His wife, his marriage to Cathy is a healthy one. It’s a positive one. They support each other. That John Clark will put his country and his service above himself, and he will always take chances, and he will do whatever is necessary to win at the end of the day. You start to build out, Okay, what’s the essential DNA of these characters? Then it feels, I think it feels authentic to the readers because then suddenly when you finish the Cameron book and you pick up the first Anderson Wilson, it’s not like, Oh, well, this Jack Ryan is an asshole. The last one wasn’t. Why is this guy such a jerk? No, that’s not who Jack Ryan is. So even though maybe the way that our prose flows or how we structure our chapters or internal monolog, those things are unique to our voice as Andrews and Wilson. But the character feels authentic and feels the same. So we tried very hard to be faithful to the canon, faithful to the intent that Clancy had when he started the series about who Jack Ryan is and what he stood for and how he conducts himself.

[00:13:35.200] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s like being the new bond.

[00:13:38.720] – Brian Andrews
Yes.

[00:13:39.930] – Alan Petersen
Exactly. It’s crazy, yeah. Yeah. This So the story puts a Kyle Ryan, who’s Jack Ryan’s son, in a devastating position. He’s a lone survivor of a mission gone wrong in Africa, in Angola, I believe it was, right Angola? Yes. Yeah. I was curious about that. So what drew you to building the book around that emotional pivot and that geographical area?

[00:14:06.540] – Brian Andrews
So when we first started with Active Defiance, we knew we wanted to bring Kyle and Katie into the canon. When you last saw them, they were little kids. Now, dad’s grown up, he’s President, and they’ve grown up. Jack Ryan Jr. Has his own series. We know a lot about Jack. We don’t know as much about the kids, the younger kids. And so it gave us, especially starting with number 24, and I think there’s 11 or 12 Jack Ryan Jr. Books, too. That’s a lot of material. It’s hard to come up with something new and interesting, at least from a plot perspective that hadn’t been done before. And so to avoid retreading, what we decided to do was really focus on the Ryan family. So if you’ve ever watched, there’s a television show called Bluebloods, and it’s about police family. The family is in the business of law enforcement. That’s the family business. We feel like the Ryans are in the family business of protecting America. We decided, let’s dig into that connective tissue of what makes a Ryan a Ryan. It’ll be the same for the kids, Katie and Kyle, but they’re going to have their own paths.

[00:15:24.700] – Brian Andrews
They’re going to have found their own way. They’re going to have different personalities from Jack Jr and different personalities from their dad, but some elements will overlap. Books one and two in the Anderson Wilson series, Active Defiance and Defense Protocol, that’s really focused on Katie. But we always knew we wanted to bring Kyle in. We had this interesting idea that Kyle was not the black sheep of the family, per se, but he’s definitely the one who’s maybe a little more detached, a little harder to, a little less communicative, maybe slightly on spectrum. Just a guy who’s one of these things is not like the other type of situation. When we meet him, we see him doing a job that we’ve not seen any of the other Ryans doing. He’s a cyber field operative. We thought, Well, let’s put him in a place as far away from the rest of the Ryans as possible. Africa, geopolitically, it’s quite an active area because it’s third-world countries that are all trying to actively become first-world countries. The Chinese, with their Belt and Road initiative, have made a lot of inroads into Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, where they’re observing their influence to build infrastructure and telecommunications and mining and petrochemical industries.

[00:17:08.310] – Brian Andrews
And this involvement does not come without a cost.

[00:17:13.920] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, they’re not just being nice.

[00:17:16.080] – Brian Andrews
They’re not just being nice. We wanted to make… We’re always trying to… There’s a lot of people who don’t want to watch the news, and I can’t blame them. The news is not really the news anymore. The news is like verbal combat these days. But there’s these issues out there, these geopolitical events that people need to be aware of. Yes, this book is fiction, but it’s all based on actual things that are happening in real life. I understand. I’m the same way. At the end of the hard work day, I don’t sometimes want to turn on the news and hear people bickering and fighting and accusing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need escapism. Give me a great book. But doesn’t mean we can’t learn something. From our adventures. That’s why we picked this area, because it’s not in the news. People are not always talking about it. It is across the ocean. It is an area with different cultures and different activities that people might not be aware of what’s happening. That’s why we picked where we did and set the setting for this book.

[00:18:21.240] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I thought that was very cool because, and like you said, people don’t know this. I was born and raised in Costa Rica, a little tiny little country in Central America. The Chinese government, they built our National Stadium, our bridges. It was fascinating to read that here. I’m like, Oh, I totally saw what you guys were going for there.

[00:18:45.200] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, exactly.

[00:18:46.900] – Alan Petersen
I also thought it was really cool, too, because it opens up it with a mission being compromised, not to give too much away. Then I’m like, Okay, here we go. Kyle Ryan is going to kick some ass. Then it’s like, Wait a second. He’s like, He’s freaking out. He’s just trying to survive. Yeah. So I thought that was cool. I was like, Oh, he’s not like a superhero. He’s just like a regular guy trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there.

[00:19:12.940] – Brian Andrews
Yeah. And that’s why we made I’m a runner. I always joke with my daughters. I was like, Look, if you had one thing you could be really good at physically, running really fast for a really long time is probably the best, right? Because most of the bad guys, they’re going to stop chasing you after 50 or 100 yards. You just got to make it 100 and they’re going to get tired and stop. That’s a joke, but it’s true also. We’re like, Okay, let’s set it up so that Kyle, who’s this cross country athlete, he’s not some badass with muscles like Schwarz nager. He’s not like his brother who goes around shooting people and kicking in doors and all that stuff. He’s not an operator. He just got to make it back to the embassy.

[00:19:56.300] – Alan Petersen
He didn’t even have a gun in that first opening.

[00:19:59.660] – Brian Andrews
No. No. I mean, his weapon is a computer, right? When he’s compromised and his team’s compromised, he’s just got to make it back to the embassy. It’s a fun action sequence. I think it’s two or three, maybe four chapters where it’s just him trying to survive to get back to the emcee.

[00:20:19.020] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Also, reading the book, too, I can see that Kyle Ryan is probably the one of Jack Ryan’s kids that’s more like Jack Ryan, like his character, his background. Yeah. Yeah. So that was cool to put the tie into the two of them together.

[00:20:37.240] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, exactly.

[00:20:39.500] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Okay. So now I’m curious to ask you about your writing process and all that, you guys have been writing together for many years now. So I’m just curious, how has that partnership evolved over the years? Because, of course, you have your own books and all this, now writing in this universe. Has that changed a lot over the years, or are you guys not… Our fixing what’s not broken?

[00:21:04.820] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, I think we’ve gotten better at working as a team. But I think we were lucky because from the very beginning, we started writing together in 2015. That was the first. We did tier one, and then we did a couple of other books that nobody knows about called Beijing Red and Hong Kong Black for Crooked Lane, but they were written under a pseudonym, Alex Ryan. Even early on, we were partnering on multiple series. So that’s one thing that’s interesting. Right out of the gate, we were working on two series. Now we’re working on four. And to be able to do that requires that it’s not about the writing, it’s about the book, if that makes sense. Let me explain where I’m going with this. The paradigm that we have is it’s not about, Well, I wrote this sentence or this idea is so cool. It has to go in the book because I thought of it. It’s not me having this interview saying, Did you read Chapter 17? Because I wrote that one. It’s not about that. It’s about at the end of the day, when you read this book, did you have a great adventure?

[00:22:14.570] – Brian Andrews
And did Do you feel like the 12 or 13 or 15 hours or however long it takes you to read it? Was that time well spent? When your goal is that, then suddenly it doesn’t matter who wrote what or whose idea led to this or that or whatever. The journey of getting to a good book is all that matters for us. As long as we’re having fun and both of us get to write and both of us get to contribute, and it’s pretty much equal, so it’s not one guy doing all the work and the other guy just taking credit, then our partnership works. Luckily, we both like writing, we both don’t mind editing, and we both have a lot of fun when we’re working on a project together. We talk to each other on the phone a couple of times a day during the week just because it’s fun. It’s more fun to joke around, or if you get stuck, you call the other guy, or you say, I have an idea. I have an idea of what I’m thinking of. What do you think of that? They’re like, Oh, that’s cool. But after that, what would you do next?

[00:23:17.260] – Brian Andrews
You’re like, Oh, I don’t know. He’s like, Well, then what if this happened next? That process of collaboration that we have, we’ve gotten so much faster at it. We write fearlessly now because we don’t have to worry about getting it perfect on our first pass. When I would write by myself, it took me eight years to write my first book. I would go back and I would take a chapter I’d written, and I’d read it all the way through, and I’d tinker with it and tweak it, and I’d try to improve it a little bit. In the Navy, we would call that polishing the cannon ball. It’s like, once it’s shiny, how much more shiny can you get it? It’s It’s actually just a little bit of fear. It’s another type of procrastination to just be like, You know what? I’m just going to go back and tweak this thing that’s already done, then do the hard part of writing new material, because that’s the hard part. Fresh new material. Denova writing is the hard part. Well, with Jeff, I don’t worry about that anymore. I’m free to take chances and to write as fast and as down and dirty as I want because I know he’s going to make a pass on it.

[00:24:27.080] – Brian Andrews
He can fill in any holes or rewrite write stuff or fix it and vice versa. There’s a lot of power in collaboration. Over the years, the idea that we could write four books in one year when we first started in 2015 would have sounded outrageous. We couldn’t have done it back then. We didn’t have our system quite… The gears weren’t quite as lubricated as they are now. But now, I don’t think we could optimize anymore than we have.

[00:24:55.640] – Alan Petersen
If I remember correctly, you’re in different states, too, right? You live in different states. Yeah.

[00:25:00.330] – Brian Andrews
Which is a good thing, actually, because if we could actually get together face to face, we’d probably drink beer and watch TV.

[00:25:09.020] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. You’ll find how to procrastinate if we’re both in the same room.

[00:25:12.720] – Brian Andrews
I know that because when we take trips together, we end up hanging out in the bar and having drinks and then watching GAAF again or something like that.

[00:25:20.130] – Alan Petersen
No work gets done.

[00:25:21.440] – Brian Andrews
No work gets done.

[00:25:23.520] – Alan Petersen
You guys have been very prolific, too, because you just had a new tier one book come out recently as well.

[00:25:28.220] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, it came out on November seventh, Tier 1, Book 9, The Adversary. It’s this blue-covered book.

[00:25:32.630] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. So two books in one month would be good books to get out. How was that world? We ended up promoting two books, writing three books.

[00:25:41.820] – Brian Andrews
In that case, it just worked out. Both publishers wanted a November launch. We thought that the Clancy was maybe going to come out in December, but they backed it up into November. So originally, I think it was going to come out early December, and Adversary is going to come out early November, but they fell in the same month. Different publishers, they can They do what they want.

[00:26:02.680] – Alan Petersen
The difference between working in your universe, a tier one universe, versus the Jack Ryan universe. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Is the approach different? How does that work? How that works?

[00:26:16.380] – Brian Andrews
Yeah. With the Ryan universe, one of the tricks, too, is that started 1984. We’ve got 40 years of material. Now, the world has changed a lot in 40 years. Technology has changed a lot. The geopolitical status quo has changed a lot. We’ve inherited a canon that spans four decades, multiple authors. You can’t please everybody. There’s a lot of things you don’t have control over. There’s certain plots that we can’t tell because they don’t go along with the ethos of the book. We’re a little bit more hemmed in, I would say, on Clancy than we are on tier one. Tier one, we can go wherever we want. We can do whatever we want. We can kill whoever we want. You cannot kill the Ryans. They’re not going to die. You know that going in, that Jack’s not going to die during the book. But in tier one, you never know who’s going to die. We’ve killed some people off. That’s another whole really interesting topic, which is we’ve decided that we’ll never let our readers get too comfortable because that’s real life. There’s stakes in these missions, and people die, and people get hurt, and people retire, and people sometimes opt out because it’s emotionally, physically, financially, biologically draining.

[00:27:58.360] – Brian Andrews
We put our characters in a tier one through the paces a little bit more than we can, say, in the Clancy verse. When you pick up a tier one, you don’t know. I mean, it might be the last book where John Dempsey is there. I’m not saying we did it in this book, but I’m saying you have to always be in the back of your mind as a reader, scared that Anderson Wilson might kill off one of your favorites because we do that.

[00:28:25.100] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, you’ve done it before. Yeah. I also noticed, too, when I was catching up with you guys for this interview, I noticed that on your website, you’ve been working with a lot of major studios on different projects, pitching, some things are options, some scripts are done. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I’m also very curious what it is working in the book publishing world versus Hollywood.

[00:28:53.180] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, it’s a great question. I’ll give you a long-winded answer. Hollywood Hollywood is a challenge. I know people are very excited about it because we love film and television, and for good reason, film and television is amazing. But the level of complexity required to get a project made is orders of magnitude bigger than publishing. With publishing, we write the book, it goes to a developmental editor, we get feedback, we make some changes, it goes to copy-edding, and then it’s out, and it’s out on time. I think in one sense, that’s pretty wonderful. You imagine a story, you get to tell the story. As the authors, we’re the director, we’re the cinematographer, we’re the casting agent, we’re all the characters. We are the actors, we’re the special effects department. We’re doing all the roles because it’s Alan, it’s in your mind. Your mind is filling in all the stuff that would be on the screen. We have a lot of control. When you get to film a television, what happens is suddenly there’s a lot more stakeholders and there’s a lot more money involved. A feature film, the types of books that we write, you’re talking 20 million of an in up.

[00:30:12.630] – Brian Andrews
To make a television show with tier one, you’re talking 2 million an episode and up. Well, this type of money is just not laying around. A lot of people have to invest in the project both financially and professionally. That ultimately results in a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Because you have these stakeholders that are like, I’m not willing to risk my career on this unless I have a say in how it turns out and who’s cast and how is it written and the like. Well, that creates a lot of difficulty. It slows things down. It creates debates about who gets cast and who’s writing and how is it adapted and what budget What budget will we have and what can we accomplish with that budget. And so all these risk factor mitigations and stakeholder inputs just cause everything to slow down. And that’s why it takes a long time to get anything made. And so we’ve taken the approach of if all we ever did was just cross our fingers and hope that tier one got made, and that was our only golden goose. We had one golden goose laying eggs and that was it.

[00:31:28.800] – Brian Andrews
One This step, one thing that goes wrong that causes the series to get delayed, and that’s it. We took the approach of, No, we’re going to try to populate as many projects as we can because we know that every single one of them is going to be rife with complexity and difficulties. We’ve tried to do that. What’s cool about that is it’s allowed us to meet a lot of really great people, interesting people, different producers and actors and directors and potential showrunners. We’ve developed relationships with these folks. What you find when you get into this is that everyone in the business is just as frustrated as the writers are, because there’s only a limited number of outlets for these films and televisions to appear. You’ve got the big streamers and then the theaters and network television. Hollywood has been under siege lately. A lot of transformation, a lot of change since COVID. You have thousands of people that are worried about their own employment and whether They’ll continue to have a job and where’s our content going to go? The Netflixes, Amazons, and Apple’s of the world, they have a lot of power, a lot of control over…

[00:32:57.800] – Brian Andrews
If they don’t green light a a television series or a movie, your odds of getting something made are dramatically reduced. It’s just been a big learning curve. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it. I know Jeff has, too. We are frustrated that Some things are taking longer than we thought they would, but lots of projects are slowly moving forward. I’ll put it that way.

[00:33:24.220] – Alan Petersen
That’s awesome. What do they call it? Developmental Hell?

[00:33:27.220] – Brian Andrews
Yes, developmental Hell. Yeah, It’s real. It’s a real thing.

[00:33:32.640] – Alan Petersen
So a couple more questions, Brian, before I let you go. Because I always ask about advice for aspiring writers that listen to this podcast, and especially writers who want to write the type of books that you guys write, maybe Especially if there’s a veteran. I know you guys do a lot of work helping veterans. And you have a website that helps writers. Can you tell us a little bit about that and some advice that you would have for them listening to this?

[00:33:55.020] – Brian Andrews
Sure. So I’m one of the principals at careerauthors. Com. Com, along with Paula Munier and Hank Philippe Ryan, Jessica Strausser, Dana Isaacson. Dana is an editor. He used to work at Random House. Paula is an author and an agent, and Hank’s an author, and Jessica is an author. We have authors, an agent, and an editor providing 360-degree advice on the publishing industry. We don’t make any money off of this website. In fact, the five of us just split operating costs and all the email costs associated with maintaining the email list. It truly is a labor of love, and it’s actually just our way to give back to the writing community at large because we had a lot of people that all of us were helped by advice, both writing advice on the craft of writing, but also just professional advice about, Hey, don’t do that. Hey, are you not doing this? You should be doing this. The do’s and don’ts of trying to get published. Getting published is complicated and frustrating and hard, and also just does require some inside baseball knowledge. What we’ve tried to do is just share, share that information, give back.

[00:35:17.280] – Brian Andrews
On Career Authors, you’ll find a lot of posts from the five of us, but also we have guest authors post every week. You name an author, they’ve probably posted an article on Career Authors about something in writing. It could be about point of view, it could be about subtext, it could be about how to write a historical thriller, a romance, or how to write a query letter, or how do you write a hook, or what’s an elevator pitch, or how do you get an agent? All these things are on there. And so go there, type in your query. It’ll pull up a bunch of articles, probably several, maybe three to four on every topic now, because the site’s been up and running for 10 years or so now. And it’s all free. It’s all free.

[00:36:03.140] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s a great site. Yeah, so that’s an excellent advice. Brian, before I let you go, what’s next for you two? What are you guys working on now? Can you give us a sneak peek?

[00:36:13.360] – Brian Andrews
Yeah. So So the big news that we have is we launched our own publishing imprint at Blackstone Publishing called AWE, Anderson Wilson Entertainment or All. And so all the Anderson Wilson books are going to fall under AWE. I see the little AWE logo right there.

[00:36:33.080] – Alan Petersen
I like it. Yeah, nice. It’s exciting.

[00:36:36.120] – Brian Andrews
Yeah. So in addition to our own book, so we are going to be… Well, we’re not actually going to be editing or acquiring any books. Blackstone will be doing that? But we do get to help cross-promote and bring attention to the authors that come into our imprint. We’re excited Jack Stewart is going to do a book in our imprint, Don Bentley, Josh hood. Over the coming months, we’ll have announcements about other authors. We’re starting the imprint with veterans and people who served in the intelligence community or series that are written in the space that celebrate this mission before self mentality, the idea of hero’s journey, moral actors, patriotism, the types of things that we try to showcase in Andrews & Wilson works. In addition to novels, we’re also going to be releasing a series of short stories. A lot of the things, Alan, that you talked about that you saw on the website, those titles, a lot of those are short stories. Especially after they’ve been picked up or optioned for film or television, we’re excited to share those with people so they can see, Hey, oh, this movie might be coming out in a year or two.

[00:37:57.260] – Brian Andrews
Here’s the short story that got it started. It’s really interesting. The first one of these that’s coming out is called First Ranger. It comes out December 20th, and it’ll be an Audible and Amazon Kindle eBook. The idea is a bit about equivalent to a four-hour audiobook, approximately. They’re long, short stories. They’re not quite novellas, but they’re a third of a book, essentially, in length. You’re definitely getting your money’s worth. They’ll be priced at a lower price point. But each of them is about something different than our tier one or Clancy or Sons of Our series. It’s like our little laboratory or playground where we get to experiment. First Ranger is the story of Thomas Nolton, who’s a real person. He was recruited by George Washington in 1775 to create America’s first Special Operations Unit, known as the Nulton’s Rangers. He’s considered the father of American Special Forces, Thomas Nulton. We’re introducing readers to what was it like to try to be a special operator in 1775 when your weapon was a musket with a bayonet and you didn’t have comms and you didn’t have satellite imagery and you didn’t have a helicopter that you could fast rope into.

[00:39:28.720] – Brian Andrews
How did these guys operate with the technology of the day? It’s funny because if you took somebody like John Dempsey, who’s a Navy SEAL, and you stuck him back in 1775, he’d have no choice but to use the tactics and methods and means available technologies available to him at the time. He would be a less lethal operator than he is today without his MVGs and his bolt-proof vest and his assault rifle with optics and So it’s just really cool to dig into what was it like to be a warrior back then. So that’s the first book, First Ranger. It’s the first short story comes out, our very first historical military thriller.

[00:40:12.100] – Alan Petersen
That sounds really cool. I can imagine with the little musket. Yeah. Old school. Yeah.

[00:40:17.040] – Brian Andrews
Learning about that was fascinating. So there’s actually a piece of technology. There was a British inventor who had invented a particular type of rifle where there’s a lever that allows you to open the bolt. Before a bolt action was invented, this opened a little chamber so you could load your musket pellet in through the top instead of having to ramrod it down the barrel. But it was invented during the Revolutionary War, and it actually saw action on the British side, but it was so expensive and difficult to make that there were very few of them that were made.

[00:41:04.400] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds awesome. I’m looking forward to that one. And so what’s your website? Where can readers look information on that and your guys’ books? Can you give us that one?

[00:41:14.060] – Brian Andrews
Yeah, andres-wilson. Com.

[00:41:16.220] – Alan Petersen
All right. So Tom Clancy’s comes out on the 25th. So by the time people are listening to this podcast or watching the video, it’ll be out there. Go check it. It’s awesome. All right, Brian, thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

[00:41:29.340] – Brian Andrews
Thanks, Alan. Great to see you.

[00:41:32.020] – Voice Over
Thanks for listening to Meet the Thriller author, hosted by Alan Petersen. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other thriller fans discover the show. You can find all past episodes, show notes, and author interviews at thrillerauthors. Com, including conversations with icons like Dean Koontz, Freida McFadden, and Lee Child. And If you’re looking for your next gripping read, check out Alan’s own Psychological Thrillers and Crime Fiction Novels at thrillingreads. Com/books. Until next time, stay safe, keep reading, and keep the thrills coming.