BooksAndAuthor.com: Why do you write?
Jon Land: You know, no one's ever actually asked me that before! Simply stated, I write because I can't imagine doing anything else. Writing isn't just a job or profession, it's a life-style that defines everything else you do. I say that because there's never a time when I'm not writing. From an esoteric standpoint, there's no on/off switch for your imagination and the most important part of the process is what happens when you're not behind the keyboard. From a practical standpoint, I'm always writing one book while prepping another and, normally, promoting a third. It just never stops. That's what I love about it and why, as much as anything, I keep doing it. I never know what the next e-mail or phone call is going to bring and no two days are ever the same. http://www.jonlandbooks.com
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who are your literary influences? And WHY?
Jon Land: Let me start with the WHY: my greatest influences are books by great storytellers that swept me away from wherever I was to the world they created--in other words, my greatest influences have been books that do exactly what I'm striving to do. So let me answer the first part of the question in terms of books that changed the way I looked at myself as a writer: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty because it was the first book I read literally cover to cover in a single day. The Stand(original, not the expanded version) by Stephen King because I missed class while at Brown University because I just couldn’t put it down and had chills the whole time I was reading it. The Holcroft Covenant and The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum because these books more than any other made me want to write thrillers and I think I spent the first few years of my career copying Ludlum as well as King. Marathon Man by William Goldman because it’s as perfect a thriller as has ever been written—I can actually recite passages from it I’ve read it so much. Like I said, the list is endless, but I’d like to finish with a more recent Stephen King title, Doctor Sleep which was the sequel to his brilliant The Shining. I didn’t think a book could scare me anymore but that one literally gave me nightmares and gave me the same feeling I got when I read The Exorcist that rainy Saturday afternoon when I was twelve or thirteen years old.
BooksAndAuthor.com: STRONG LIGHT OF DAY - How many Caitlin Strong novels is this? and what is the challenge of moving the same character from one novel to the next?
Jon Land: STRONG LIGHT OF DAY is the 7th in the series, and the challenge of keeping each book fresh isn't so much structural, as emotional. In other words, not so much what's happening externally, but internally. What personal crisis or issue is defining or plaguing them at the time? In STRONG RAIN FALLING, for example, the male lead of the series, Caitlin's reformed outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters, is facing a financial crisis in trying to raise his two teenage boys. In STRONG LIGHT OF DAY, we learn something very surprising, even shocking, about one of Caitlin’s surrogate sons, when Cort Wesley's 16-year-old boy reveals that he's gay. That's not the kind of subject area the vast majority of thrillers dare to tread in. But the thing I’ve tried to do since I started this series was continuing to challenge my characters emotionally and I think this one confronts them with their biggest emotional challenge yet. And it’s something a lot of families have to face these days which creates a wonderful dichotomy between the normal balanced against the extraordinary. You might say that’s the formula for the series’ success.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who is Caitlin Strong?
It is written she is a complex hero who you have said "owes itself to a conversation ...with your... editor." Explain.
Jon Land: Ha-ha! You know more about me than I know about myself! I don't remember saying that, but it's totally accurate. I worked extensively with my editor in crafting a character defined as much by her flaws as her strengths, who always does the right thing even if it isn't necessarily the wisest thing. The biggest challenge for me has been, as the plots and stakes have escalated, not letting Caitlin turn into a caricature James Bond-like character who just happens to be a woman. My conversations with my editors are constantly about coming up with new ways to challenge her emotionally. Should I at some point, for example, explore giving Caitlin a health crisis, maybe a cancer scare that forces her to look at life and mortality in an entirely different way. Imagine using a crucial investigation as an excuse to put off chemotherapy treatments or staging a book in the midst of them. The key when as a writer you move in that direction is not to hit the reader so hard that they feel betrayed and overwhelmed to the point the story stops being escapist. A fine line I hope I'm up to walking down the road.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Plot or Character? and why?
Jon Land: Come on--both! No doubt about it. The great John D. McDonald defined story as stuff happening to people the reader cares about. That story has to riveting, suspenseful, impossible to put down not just because of all that's happening, but also because of who it's happening to. A thriller, particularly my Caitlin Strong books, is essentially a puzzle and the fun of reading lies in putting the pieces altogether. Playing along with the hero, walking alongside them sometimes with more information than even they have. But none of that works if the reader doesn't have a vested, emotional interest in the characters they're walking along with. Characters like Caitlin and Cort Wesley need to feel like old friends who stop by for a visit every year but never really leave--the imagination, if not the house.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Hollywood calls and asks you to cast STRONG LIGHT OF DAY - Who do you cast and why?
Jon Land: That's easy: anybody who gets the movie made because if you're lucky enough to get interest from Hollywood, it's all about GETTING THE MOVIE MADE. If you don't feel that way, don't sign away the rights and don't take the money. You have to hope your books and characters will get the same treatment as Elmore Leonard's in JUSTIFIED or Craig Johnston's in LONGMIRE. I doubt very much Craig Johnston had ever heard of Robert Taylor before the TV series based on his great character got made. But, thanks to that television series, he's now a bonafide New York Times bestselling author. That's what I hope for/dream of for Caitlin.
BooksAndAuthor.com: 15 words or less - Why should readers run out right now to the bookstore and BUY STRONG LIGHT OF DAY?
Jon Land: Terrific characters, great action scenes, and a truly scary, all-too-plausible plot that can change all our lives. . . . Hey, that's more than 15 but I'm counting "all-too-plausible" as only one word!
BooksAndAuthor.com: What have readers been saying about STRONG LIGHT OF DAY?
Jon Land: Wow, that's a great question. Of course, it's early in the process but everyone has focused on two primary elements of the book: First, the nature of the book's villain whose lack of control over his own emotions makes him exceptionally dangerous and, I'm told, the best villain I've ever created because of the visceral nature of his evil deeds. Second, the gradual revelation of how thirty high school kids who vanish while on a field trip is connected to herds of cattle being picked clean to the bone across the state of Texas. Writing thrillers is about creating connections between disparate, apparently random events and I've tried to take that to a whole new level in STRONG LIGHT OF DAY.
BooksAndAuthor.com: I've always wanted to know a writers day - Do you write everyday? Where? Do you write in silence? I've heard Steven King cranks up AC/DC when he writes. How about John Land?
Jon Land: I write every day out of the second bedroom in my townhouse, definitely in silence! No distractions that might lift me out of the world to which I want to transport the reader. But I've got to get there first and I can only do that inside the box I've created for myself.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What was the last book you read?
Jon Land: MAKE ME by Lee Child. He's done 20 books featuring the great Jack Reacher and shows no signs of slowing down. That's a great lesson for me and wonderful example to follow. And I've probably described Caitlin Strong as a female Jack Reacher maybe a thousand or two thousand times!
BooksAndAuthor.com: What's next?
Jon Land: I literally just submitted my initial draft of the next book in the series, STRONG COLD DEAD, which will be published next fall. Before that, though, March will see publication of my second nonfiction book TAKEDOWN, about a celebrated undercover drug officer who comes out of retirement to battle the biggest drug gang in the country (sounds like fiction, doesn’t it?). And then in June the first in the series I’m doing with the great Heather Graham, THE RISING, will be out. That’s the amazing thing about this business. Here I’ve been doing it for over thirty years and an opportunity like that comes up. You just never know what’s going to happen next.
Jon Land: You know, no one's ever actually asked me that before! Simply stated, I write because I can't imagine doing anything else. Writing isn't just a job or profession, it's a life-style that defines everything else you do. I say that because there's never a time when I'm not writing. From an esoteric standpoint, there's no on/off switch for your imagination and the most important part of the process is what happens when you're not behind the keyboard. From a practical standpoint, I'm always writing one book while prepping another and, normally, promoting a third. It just never stops. That's what I love about it and why, as much as anything, I keep doing it. I never know what the next e-mail or phone call is going to bring and no two days are ever the same. http://www.jonlandbooks.com
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who are your literary influences? And WHY?
Jon Land: Let me start with the WHY: my greatest influences are books by great storytellers that swept me away from wherever I was to the world they created--in other words, my greatest influences have been books that do exactly what I'm striving to do. So let me answer the first part of the question in terms of books that changed the way I looked at myself as a writer: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty because it was the first book I read literally cover to cover in a single day. The Stand(original, not the expanded version) by Stephen King because I missed class while at Brown University because I just couldn’t put it down and had chills the whole time I was reading it. The Holcroft Covenant and The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum because these books more than any other made me want to write thrillers and I think I spent the first few years of my career copying Ludlum as well as King. Marathon Man by William Goldman because it’s as perfect a thriller as has ever been written—I can actually recite passages from it I’ve read it so much. Like I said, the list is endless, but I’d like to finish with a more recent Stephen King title, Doctor Sleep which was the sequel to his brilliant The Shining. I didn’t think a book could scare me anymore but that one literally gave me nightmares and gave me the same feeling I got when I read The Exorcist that rainy Saturday afternoon when I was twelve or thirteen years old.
BooksAndAuthor.com: STRONG LIGHT OF DAY - How many Caitlin Strong novels is this? and what is the challenge of moving the same character from one novel to the next?
Jon Land: STRONG LIGHT OF DAY is the 7th in the series, and the challenge of keeping each book fresh isn't so much structural, as emotional. In other words, not so much what's happening externally, but internally. What personal crisis or issue is defining or plaguing them at the time? In STRONG RAIN FALLING, for example, the male lead of the series, Caitlin's reformed outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters, is facing a financial crisis in trying to raise his two teenage boys. In STRONG LIGHT OF DAY, we learn something very surprising, even shocking, about one of Caitlin’s surrogate sons, when Cort Wesley's 16-year-old boy reveals that he's gay. That's not the kind of subject area the vast majority of thrillers dare to tread in. But the thing I’ve tried to do since I started this series was continuing to challenge my characters emotionally and I think this one confronts them with their biggest emotional challenge yet. And it’s something a lot of families have to face these days which creates a wonderful dichotomy between the normal balanced against the extraordinary. You might say that’s the formula for the series’ success.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who is Caitlin Strong?
It is written she is a complex hero who you have said "owes itself to a conversation ...with your... editor." Explain.
Jon Land: Ha-ha! You know more about me than I know about myself! I don't remember saying that, but it's totally accurate. I worked extensively with my editor in crafting a character defined as much by her flaws as her strengths, who always does the right thing even if it isn't necessarily the wisest thing. The biggest challenge for me has been, as the plots and stakes have escalated, not letting Caitlin turn into a caricature James Bond-like character who just happens to be a woman. My conversations with my editors are constantly about coming up with new ways to challenge her emotionally. Should I at some point, for example, explore giving Caitlin a health crisis, maybe a cancer scare that forces her to look at life and mortality in an entirely different way. Imagine using a crucial investigation as an excuse to put off chemotherapy treatments or staging a book in the midst of them. The key when as a writer you move in that direction is not to hit the reader so hard that they feel betrayed and overwhelmed to the point the story stops being escapist. A fine line I hope I'm up to walking down the road.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Plot or Character? and why?
Jon Land: Come on--both! No doubt about it. The great John D. McDonald defined story as stuff happening to people the reader cares about. That story has to riveting, suspenseful, impossible to put down not just because of all that's happening, but also because of who it's happening to. A thriller, particularly my Caitlin Strong books, is essentially a puzzle and the fun of reading lies in putting the pieces altogether. Playing along with the hero, walking alongside them sometimes with more information than even they have. But none of that works if the reader doesn't have a vested, emotional interest in the characters they're walking along with. Characters like Caitlin and Cort Wesley need to feel like old friends who stop by for a visit every year but never really leave--the imagination, if not the house.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Hollywood calls and asks you to cast STRONG LIGHT OF DAY - Who do you cast and why?
Jon Land: That's easy: anybody who gets the movie made because if you're lucky enough to get interest from Hollywood, it's all about GETTING THE MOVIE MADE. If you don't feel that way, don't sign away the rights and don't take the money. You have to hope your books and characters will get the same treatment as Elmore Leonard's in JUSTIFIED or Craig Johnston's in LONGMIRE. I doubt very much Craig Johnston had ever heard of Robert Taylor before the TV series based on his great character got made. But, thanks to that television series, he's now a bonafide New York Times bestselling author. That's what I hope for/dream of for Caitlin.
BooksAndAuthor.com: 15 words or less - Why should readers run out right now to the bookstore and BUY STRONG LIGHT OF DAY?
Jon Land: Terrific characters, great action scenes, and a truly scary, all-too-plausible plot that can change all our lives. . . . Hey, that's more than 15 but I'm counting "all-too-plausible" as only one word!
BooksAndAuthor.com: What have readers been saying about STRONG LIGHT OF DAY?
Jon Land: Wow, that's a great question. Of course, it's early in the process but everyone has focused on two primary elements of the book: First, the nature of the book's villain whose lack of control over his own emotions makes him exceptionally dangerous and, I'm told, the best villain I've ever created because of the visceral nature of his evil deeds. Second, the gradual revelation of how thirty high school kids who vanish while on a field trip is connected to herds of cattle being picked clean to the bone across the state of Texas. Writing thrillers is about creating connections between disparate, apparently random events and I've tried to take that to a whole new level in STRONG LIGHT OF DAY.
BooksAndAuthor.com: I've always wanted to know a writers day - Do you write everyday? Where? Do you write in silence? I've heard Steven King cranks up AC/DC when he writes. How about John Land?
Jon Land: I write every day out of the second bedroom in my townhouse, definitely in silence! No distractions that might lift me out of the world to which I want to transport the reader. But I've got to get there first and I can only do that inside the box I've created for myself.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What was the last book you read?
Jon Land: MAKE ME by Lee Child. He's done 20 books featuring the great Jack Reacher and shows no signs of slowing down. That's a great lesson for me and wonderful example to follow. And I've probably described Caitlin Strong as a female Jack Reacher maybe a thousand or two thousand times!
BooksAndAuthor.com: What's next?
Jon Land: I literally just submitted my initial draft of the next book in the series, STRONG COLD DEAD, which will be published next fall. Before that, though, March will see publication of my second nonfiction book TAKEDOWN, about a celebrated undercover drug officer who comes out of retirement to battle the biggest drug gang in the country (sounds like fiction, doesn’t it?). And then in June the first in the series I’m doing with the great Heather Graham, THE RISING, will be out. That’s the amazing thing about this business. Here I’ve been doing it for over thirty years and an opportunity like that comes up. You just never know what’s going to happen next.