Writers Roundtable Interview on WS Internet

Gayle Lynds interview by Writers Roundtable on WS Internet Radio. Interview given by Antoinette Kuritz and Bob Goodman.

Section One

A - Speaking about authors, we have an author coming up who is now one of my new most favorite authors.

G - (chuckling)

A - She can hear me - Hi Gayle.

G - Hi. Saying that, how lovely. What an introduction!

A - I am having so much fun reading your book, I'm going out this afternoon and I'm buying all the rest of them. Oh, they're so good! You know Sandra Dijkstra (famous literary agent) was just saying she loves thrillers.

G - Ah, yes.

A - Those are her weakness - and I was thinking to myself I'm going to send her a copy of Gayle's book (chuckling).

G - Yes, Sandy and I go way back. I think she's a terrific agent.

A - Well, she just was so informative. Well Gayle, let me do a short introduction on you. You are one of the few women that I know of - maybe the only one I know of - who writes political thrillers.

G - Yes, I'm afraid that we are what they call an invasion of a male dominated field. (Laughs) In fact, when my first book was going around in 1995, my first political thriller or international spy thriller, however you want to put it, my agent sent it on an exclusive to Dutton and Elaine Koster, who was president then and wanted to buy it. But she was ill the day she was supposed to report. So her assistant called Henry, my agent, and said she wants to buy it. She'll call you in the morning. He said terrific, I'll be here. Of course, he was in a good mood because he thought that he had an easy sale the next day. But then Elaine called and said: “Henry, I've changed my mind. I'm not going to buy this book. No woman could have written it!” (Laughing)

A - Oh, my!

G - And then she wanted evidence that I was a woman! (Laughing)

A - Oh, my goodness!

G - So that was the bad old days. Pretty much I'm told that I'm the first woman to enter the field since Helen MacInnes, who was great and one of my role models. I don't know if you've ever read her books.

A - I haven't.

G - She passed away in ‘85, but she wrote for 40 years. She was called the Queen of Suspense. ABOVE SUSPICION was one of her books and was made into a wonderful film. I think it was with ... no, not Eva Gabor - I can't remember who it was. Anyway, women have been in the field for a long time. But then during the last part of the Cold War, they’d kind of dropped out.

B - Or else ... Ah, Gayle this is Bob Goodman (coming on mike). ... Or else you changed your name or developed a pseudonym of a male's name.

G - That happened, too. Absolutely.

B - Yes. I keep thinking of the science fiction author - James Toptree, who was a woman.

G - No kidding!

B - Really.

G - That's fascinating. I didn't realize that!

B - And George Elliot.

G - Of course, well ... George Elliot - Yes

A - Your books are classified as political thrillers or spy thrillers. What’s the difference between a mystery, a suspense novel, or a thriller?

G - Let’s take an example. Say we're sitting off stage and we're looking at a table in a dining room, and people are sitting there, eating. When that table explodes, its horrible. People die, and it’s a tragedy. That’s the way a mystery book would start. The mystery would be - let’s solve who did this, and if it’s a really good mystery, the author will ask why it happened. If it’s a suspense novel, this what would happen: The bomber would come in. The bomber would plant the bomb under that table. People would come and sit around the table. The waiters would come and take the orders. Are you starting to feel the suspense? You're waiting for that bomb to go off, and that’s what would happen in a suspense novel as well as in a thriller. Now I'm going to use an example all of us have, unfortunately, very close to our hearts: The September 11th tragedies in New York and Washington. In a mystery, those terrible events would happen in the beginning just as they have in real life, and we would have to solve why, how it happened, and so forth. But in a political thriller/espionage thriller or a suspense novel, the attack would be at the end of the book. We would spend the whole first 500 or 600 pages trying to stop those terrible events.

A - Gotcha, how well you clarified that.

G - It’s very interesting to me, too. Those are traditional explanations. There’s been a lot of crossover between the two forms in the last few years particularly, where it seems mystery techniques are used more often in thrillers and thriller techniques are used more often in mysteries.

A - Now, what was your first book published?

G - The first book under my own name was MASQUERADE and that was in 1996.

A - You say "under your own name." Clarify for me please (laughing)

G - We call that my checkered past. (laughing)

A - Were you writing soft porn? (Laughing)

G - (Laughing) Thank God I never had to fall that low, but I shouldn't even say that because the people who do it - do it for their own reasons and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what I had done in the past was I had written about 10 or 11 books under male pseudonyms. Bob, you'll like that. I also wrote 3 juvenile books in the Three Investigators series and was told by the editor that I could not use my own name because boys wouldn't read books written by girls.

B – Well, you know, Gayle could be a man's name.

G - Pardon?

B - Gayle can be a man's name.

G – Yes, well I was named after my uncle. I pointed that out and was told that was not a good enough explanation (laughing). After a while, you just ask yourself, do I want to write this book or not? And if you really want to write the book, then you kind of go along because you know in your mind ahead of you is the career that you want and I was truly paying my dues. Martin Cruz Smith, Don Westlake a lot of really wonderful writers started writing male pulp, and that’s what I was doing. But girls just didn't do that sort of thing, so I was unusual. But I learned a lot, and I was raising children. I had children who had grown accustomed to eating, and I did not want to disappoint them. (laughing) I was killing two birds with one stone. I was learning something that was very important to me and was also bringing in income, so I figured it was a deal.

A - So since MASQUERADE in 1996 you have MESMERIZED, you have MOSAIC, you have 2 books co-wrote with Ludlum - PARIS MATCH?

G - PARIS OPTION. Hey, that's a nice title. Somebody else will get it now. (laughing)

A - PARIS OPTION and HADES FACTOR. Am I missing anything?

G - No, that’s it.

A - That's prolific since 1996. Five full-length books!

G - Yeah, it’s not bad. I'm a little slower writer than I used to be. I think that part of that is I do so much research, and I don't want to shortchange the reader. When I first started out writing, I was pretty much a minimalist, but now I've swung completely over to the Dickensian side of writing. I really love those full, rich tales where there are several characters involved and they're all very interesting and we follow them as their lives intersect.

A - Well, we were talking earlier with Sandy and Bob about books that are plot driven rather than character driven and how sometimes you can really like the story but you don't love or hate the characters. I'm finding in reading MESMERIZED that the story is driving me - it’s a real page turner - but I also really like the characters.

G - Good. Yeah, I do too. I feel deeply involved. I kind of feel like readers are shortchanged if they're not given the full experience, which to me means becoming emotionally, intellectually, and sensorially involved with the character. If you don't have that real resonance with the characters, you're not going to be able to fully experience the book. You're always going to be one step back intellectually, which is another reason to read, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But that's not what I'm about.

A - Gayle will you hold that thought and stay with us?

G - Sure

A - We'll be right back. This is Writers Roundtable on WS Radio. Be right back.

* * *

A – Welcome back to Writer’s Roundtable. I’m your host, Antoinette Kurtz, with my co-host, Bob Goodman and we have the wonderful Gayle Lynds on the line.

G – Thank you!

A – You were saying as we left - and I was so sorry to go to break because you were making a really good point - you were talking about the “full experience.”

G – Yes, of course - reading. As I was saying at the end – You know there’s a reason that some niches of literature, usually referred to strictly as literature, are sort of one step removed from the experiential level of reading, which most popular fiction is really about. That is because it’s a way to stretch the mind, and to explore intellectually. That’s very important to a society as well as to individuals. But what we’re doing in popular literature or so-called “commercial literature” is, I think, trying to give the reader the experience. To live fully. To breathe it, taste it, feel it to the utmost, and that’s really a big responsibility that authors have taken on. Some of us succeed more fully in some books than in others.

A – I know I’m reading a really good book when I find mental images forming as I read.

G – Yes, yes. I agree.

A – The scenes are in my head. I’m reading it, and it’s like I’m seeing it at the same time

G – And smelling it. It’s one reason I’m very careful to make sure that I get color into my books. Taste and odor are very interesting. I think smelling is considered the last sense we have before we pass away. It’s the one that holds on the longest, our ability to smell. I notice that if I just say the scent of newly cut grass, almost instantly all of us know what that smells like.

A – Sometimes we even smell it.

G – Yes, and the smell of percolating coffee or the smell of granddaddy longlegs down in the cellar. These are so evocative and it’s a gift you give the reader when you pay attention to those details and give them out. Not too much of them, of course, because then you confuse the reader’s senses.

A – There is a scene in MESMERIZED where you’ve got your character going through a sub-basement – he’s under the house. And you’ve mentioned the smell of the spider webs and I found myself brushing off my shoulders (laughing).

G – (Laughing)

A – You know that feeling! And I looked around the room to see if there were any spiders.

G – How nice! Thank you!

A - So it absolutely works, and that’s good writing!

G – Well, I think it’s paying attention to the way all of us love to read and what makes the experience work the best for us. I think that’s what most authors are trying to do ... give back what they’ve been given.

B – I think it’s also a matter of meeting your reader more than halfway.

G – Yes, it’s a responsibility. Bob, you’re absolutely right.

A – Are you a disciplined writer?

G – (laughing)

A – So that’s a “no,” huh?

G – Well, you know it depends on whether you consider compulsiveness disciplined (laughing).

A – Okay, explain.

G – I keep trying to put myself in a structure where I exercise at the same time, eat at the same time, work at the same time, and I’m just one those horrible personality types that fights it every step of the way. So sometimes I’m very free form - sometimes I really am structured. The problem is if you don’t write all the time – you don’t get the book done – that’s bottom line. So you have to figure out what you can do with the rest of your life so you don’t lose too much muscle and you’re not totally zonked out with lack of sleep and you eat fairly well (laughs). You really have to take care of yourself or you’re never going to survive.

A- Gayle, these segments are going so fast because we’re enjoying you so much! You will stay with us won’t you?

G – Of course, of course.

A – Okay, we’ll be back in just a minute with Writers Roundtable. You’re listening to WS radio, the largest Internet radio station in the world.

* * *

A – Well, we’re back with our guest, Gayle Lynds, who is making us laugh as she talks to us about the art and craft of writing. Gayle, when did you decide that you were a writer?

G – I think I first decided I was a reader because I became, at a very young age, a book addict and I just never got over it. (Laughs) I think partly we all go through life looking for something that makes life make sense to us. Otherwise, we’re just so out of sync with what’s going on around us. I kind of got life through books – I understood – it made sense to me. I grew up in Iowa in a little town on the Missouri River, and I just never knew any living authors. I really did think that gods and goddesses wrote books – or if not gods & goddesses – dead people. There was just no way that a kid from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was going to grow up to be an author. I revered books so much that I never crossed my mind that I could do it. So I got my degree in journalism and went to work as a newspaper reporter and a think-tank editor where I had top-secret security clearance. I think that’s kind of a clue to what I would end up doing.

B – I was going to ask where you got your ideas from – now I guess I don’t have to.

G – Yeah, as a matter of fact, the initial idea for MASQUERADE came from that experience. But what got me hooked into doing think-tank work was Kurt Vonnegut. When I was in college, he was a visiting professor and he was teaching a lit class I was taking. Do you guys remember his book, CAT’S CRADLE?

B – Hmmm.

G – Just a seminal work, and it’s a very important book. He got that idea by becoming an editor at a think tank. I thought – Gosh, if it could work for him – it could work for me. (Laughing)

A – Oh, my!

G – So anyway, then in my twenties after things had settled down a little bit I pulled out my college typewriter because I had moved to California and there was a whole big world that I didn’t know existed in reality, not just in books. It triggered me, and I look around. I started meeting people who actually wrote. The Santa Barbara Writers Conference was a very important experience for me. Now, of course, I go back to San Diego where you guys are located and I attend and teach occasionally at the San Diego Writers Conference – Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego. Conferences are very important to people who want to write.

A – Well, you know we started another writers conference here in San Diego in October. We did because of a mutual friend – yours and mine – one of your students from the conference in February, Jerry King.

G – Oh, of course! Jerry’s a terrific writer.

A – Jerry is my assistant and for about a month before the February conference he couldn’t get anything done because all he could think about was going to the conference. And then he came back from the conference, and he was all depressed and still couldn’t get anything done. I asked him, what is the matter? He said, well, it’s going to be another year before the conference comes around. And I said to him, what would it take to get you back on your game? He said a conference in October. I said, okay, no problem – we’ll put on a conference in October.

G – No kidding? So you’re going to start one this October?

A – We did our first one last October. It was the first La Jolla; we held it in La Jolla at a hotel overlooking the ocean. Every one of the seminar rooms overlooks the ocean. We thought ambience was important. Jerry swears its not, but I think it is.

G – Oh, no, it is. Believe me. You are right!

A – Okay, from your lips to Jerry’s ears. We had some wonderful, wonderful stuff: David Brin, Johnny Triddler who is an incredible young-adult writer. Katherine Ryan Hyde, Sara Louis, Martha Lawrence, Allen Russell, Mark Clements... the list goes on and on and on. What we did was made it two-thirds the art and craft of writing and about one-third the business of writing. Because I’m a publicist and I think about that. I admire writers so tremendously, but I think that they hurt themselves sometimes by not understanding the business side of it.

G - They don’t want to know.

A – They don’t want to, and you’ve written this wonderful book, it’s glorious, it’s extraordinary, and then what?

G – Yeah. They haven’t done the full job. It comes with the job description. You really do have to understand the business to survive, if you want to keep writing and publishing.

A – You bet. Now, Gayle, we would love to have you at the La Jolla writer’s conference any time you want to come down for it. That is an open invitation.

G – Oh, thank you, thank you. Sounds great.

A – Yeah, it’s a lot of great fun. We do it for three days. And we almost cancelled last year because it was right after September 11th , but we decided it was just something that needed to go on. Anyway, we’re going to get back to the art and craft pf writing with you right after this break. You’ll stay with us won’t you?

G – Of course.

A – All right, we’ll be back in a minute with writer’s roundtable. Please stay with us. Call in at 888-327-0061, toll free. You’re listening to WS Radio, the worldwide leader in Internet talk.

* * *

A - Welcome back to writers round table. We’re speaking with Gayle Lynds, the author of MOSAIC, THE PARIS OPTION, MESMERIZED, THE HADES FACTOR and more! (Laughs)

G- (Laughs)

A – Gayle, you’re there, aren’t you?

G – Yes, I am.

A – Tripping over my words. By the way, we had Barnaby on a couple weeks ago, Barnaby Conrad. We did a full segment with him on his writing, then we did about a segment-and-a-half on the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference. It was great to have him on. Well, anyway, back to the art and craft of writing. Would you say your stories are character or plot driven? You’ve said they’re both very important.

G – Yes! I think they’re both driven. To me you can’t have one without the other. They really have to mesh. They have to work together. And in fact, someone was talking to me about Tony Hillerman, who’s an old friend of ours. I can remember him being asked the same question and him stumbling around. The truth for all of us, I think, is that you get a tiny little idea of the plot and a tiny idea of the character, and they slowly start building. If they don’t grow together, you don’t have a book.

A – That’s an excellent point. Now, how real are your characters to you? When you’re writing.

G – Oh, they are absolutely real. They get quite rambunctious, of course, and want to take off on their own tangent, so we have big discussions. I’ve discovered in the last book or so how visual I am. I apparently see things in my head that other people don’t. This could of course be a prescription for going to the doctor and getting medication (laughs). But I’m trying to avoid that by writing books. You know, when I wrote karate scenes for the Three Investigators books, my editor – you see I’ve never taken karate but I have this phenomenal book by the master of karate ... in fact, it’s sitting right here on my desk – its by Am Nakayama. So I was writing these karate scenes and she took them to her karate class because she just didn’t believe them. And they worked through all of my moves, and they were just the way I described them. So she didn’t change a word. But it was because I saw it in my head, and I didn’t understand why she would question me. But now I get it – not everybody has this problem that I have.

A – Well, now in the novel I’m reading, MESMERIZED, you talk about cellular memory. Here’s my big question for you — did you just use it as a premise for the novel, or do you actually believe in cellular memory?

G – I think that there’s something there – how much is there, I don’t know. There have been enough anecdotal stories of people coming forth talking about it that I think it’s something we have to pay attention to. Obviously the scientific establishment feels the same way, because psychoneuroimmunologists are studying the phenomenon, trying to decide how much of it’s real and how much of it isn’t. I think there’s a responsibility that novelists — writers of fiction — have to investigate the possible. Where our reality intersects with the possible is a very important place for us to be. If we hadn’t been writing about cloning all these years, people wouldn’t be as educated as they are about it.

A – And they’d be more horrified about it.

B – Perhaps we should have a round table with Gayle and some speculative fiction people and some science fiction people and just really go to town because these are ideas that are really going to grab people’s attention.

A – Absolutely.

G – And it’s important to do. Our culture must look ahead. One of the ways we prepare ourselves is by asking all different kinds of questions and circling the issue and coming at it from different angles.

A – Well, you know when you talk about your characters being very real I’ve been asking authors, every author I speak with, because I’ve had such varied responses. Sara Lewis was saying that she went into a grocery store one day as she was writing her latest novel and she was picking some things up and thought ... oh, Charlotte would like that. Charlotte is her main character. Then she kind of hit herself in the head and thought to herself – Sara, Charlotte is a character in your book. On the other hand, Martha Lawrence was telling me she has a writer friend who actually sets a lunch plate for her character while she’s writing. (Laughs)

G – (laughs)

B – Well, Martha Lawrence is a psychic, and so there actually may be –

A – It’s not Martha, but a friend of hers (laughs). But it seems to be a little different for everybody. I have not yet spoken with an author who didn’t say that their characters are very, very real to them.

G – Yes. Yes, and in my case there is a line you know, it’s like a guest in your house that you don’t want them to cross. And I hold onto that line. I go to sleep with my characters a lot at night. That’s in the hypnogogic state just before one drifts off. It’s one of my most fruitful times, when I’m running the movies in my mind. Letting them play around and trying different scenarios as the plot is moving on in the story. But I think I’m a little nervous about setting places at the table or going into a grocery store and trying to feed them. Because I think we all kind of walk this fine line, and I’m already on it (laughs).

A – You know, the more you use your imagination, the finer the line gets.

G – Yes, well said.

A – You know, what I haven’t asked you about at all and I really should is that you coauthored Robert Ludlum’s last two books with him — PARIS OPTION and HADES FACTOR. How did you become Robert Ludlum’s coauthor, and what was it like writing with him?

G – I grew up on his early works and he was a huge influence on me. So, as it turns out, when I started publishing I was called the female Robert Ludlum. He started reading my books and apparently liked them a great deal. He jumped publishers, and when he did, he came up with the idea that he wanted to write a series. Which was the first time he had ever done that sort of thing. For that, he needed a coauthor. Since he had been reading my books, I was the one he went to. Because of my own past respect and that I learned so much from him — he really was the master of suspense — I jumped! I mean, my God, I got to work with somebody who had impacted my writerly life so much. But I’m not the only one. The second in the series was done with Phil Shelby, and now I’m back with number three — THE PARIS OPTION. I will be doing number four, but that’s probably it because I just don’t have time to do it anymore. But I loved it, and he was a gentle man of the old school, lovely to work with. We had no disagreements. Both of us were nuts in the same way. It was very pleasant.

A – Can you describe the collaboration process? I did a nonfiction book with someone else last fall. It’s just a little book. I don’t think of myself as a writer-writer, but it was such fun. The book has done very well, and it was a great experience. But to write fiction with someone else – could you describe that process?

G – Yeah, sure. It was not a problem, except for one little kink in the machinery, and that is that Bob does not type. He writes everything longhand, and then his scripts are sent up to Connecticut to his typist of some 30 years. Which means that he doesn’t use a computer, and I had thought what we would be doing is sending stuff back and forth via email. But that was not to be. Everything had to be done hard copy and sent in the regular mail. He came up with the initial idea of the series, the idea of the main character, that it would have to do with a medical virus, that it would take place partly in Iraq and partly in the Adirondacks wilderness in New York, and that the main character was some kind of medical doctor. He blocked out two or three scenes and gave me a basic story arc of what he envisioned, and that’s what I had to work with. So my job became to build in some interesting subsidiary characters and flesh out the outline. Then we kicked it back and forth. It was a lot of fun. I did a lot of the work because I am the junior partner here. And Ludlum is alphabetized before Lynds (laughs). Oh, it was just wonderful working with somebody who had such an impact on my life. But in any case, we agreed on almost everything. He had a thing about contractions. He did not like contractions. So we compromised – we took the contractions out of the narrative but left it in the dialogue. And he does not like to name a lot of armaments, but when I’m doing the research, man, I want to name some things! So what we did was, we would compromise again — I got to name the weapons I was most fond of. (Laughs) So, when you read the books, you’ll notice what’s named and what’s not.

B – One of the problems with collaborations is often you can tell which writer is writing at which point. How did you avoid that?

G – Honestly, I never even thought about it. Since I did the preponderance of the work and what he was doing was coming in and putting his own stamp on things, so probably that’s why I don’t think there’s any unevenness at all.

A – I look forward to reading them.

G – They’re a hoot, and they’re very well researched.

W – Gayle, you have been a pleasure. You’ve been a joy to have on. You will come back, won’t you?

G - Of course. Give me a buzz anytime.

A – I will, I will. And thank you so much for being with us. Your books are extraordinary. That’s Gayle Lynds, and you’re listening to the Writers Roundtable on WS Radio. Put the pen to the paper, your fingers to the keyboard, and write.

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