Photo: Todd Stephens
Jon Land is the prolific author of more than thirty-six books. His thriller novels include the Caitlin Strong series about a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, and the Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea books about a Palestinian detective and an Israeli chief inspector of police. He also has penned the Blaine McCracken series, standalone novels, and non-fiction. Jon was a screenwriter for the 2005 film Dirty Deeds. He is active in the International Thriller Writers Organization.
Strong Light of Day, the 7th in the Caitlin Strong series, has Caitlin and her lover, Cort Wesley Masters, learning that thirty high school students, including his son, have vanished during a field trip.
In a separate development, a nearby rancher's entire herd of cattle has been decimated, picked clean to the bone. Linking these two seemingly disparate events is a plot by certain Russians to win a war they never stopped fighting. Billionaire Calum Dane's multinational conglomerate has developed a genetically engineered pesticide with the potential to eradicate world hunger, but this compound has spawned a deadly enemy capable of destroying the fabric of American life.
There's a new element in Strong Light of Day, that of genetic engineering and the possibility of bioterrorism. Tell us about that.
In any thriller, the first challenge an author faces is, 'what can you do that you haven't done before, and no one else has done either?' It's what Hitchcock referred to as a McGuffin. It's the knot or strand holding everything together. In Strong Light of Day, it's agroterrorism--a terrorist attack against the country's food infrastructure. Spectacular one-time terrorist events scare everyone, but in the greater scheme of things, they don't do long-term damage. As catastrophic as 9/11 was, and it certainly changed the fabric of our country, it didn't decimate America. The lights still went on the next day, and there was still food on the table.
In Strong Light of Day, I asked myself, 'what would the Russians go after that hadn't yet been targeted?' The timeframe for the novel begins is 1983, when there wasn't the current technology, so that brought me to the notion of agroterrorism. Yes, there've been novels where crops and pollinating insects were the targets, but I'd never seen a book that personified the threat in a way that could scare people and make them understand the depth of the crisis that would result if the bad guys succeeded.
In this novel, there are many disparate elements that don't seem connected, but when you write a thriller, you're playing connect the dots. In Strong Light of Day, all the dots get connected, and underlying motivations are explained as the reader reaches the end.
Strong Light of Day also brings another new twist--that of "immersive gaming," which appears in a high-stakes gunfight scene. Will you tell us about it?"
Immersive gaming is the next step beyond virtual reality. The ultimate step in immersive gaming is the Holodeck as seen in the Star Trek universe. You're actually in the game; you're a life-size figure and other figures in the game are responding to you. You're in the same landscape with the other figures. The game changes and unfolds around you.
The scene you mentioned in the book involves the heroes staging a gunfight against the bad guys. They're fighting a real war within a virtual landscape. The immersive gaming in the novel relates to the nature of the terror that will be unleashed by the villains: it's a physical thing that moves and destroys and cannot be stopped. In essence, Caitlin Strong, for the first time in her career, is facing a terror she can't kill with a gun.
You mentioned connect-the-dots. This novel, as do your others, has a historical perspective and also occurs in the present. Talk a bit about that.
In this book, I'm telling two parallel stories. One involves a historical subplot with Caitlin's earlier generation of family. These parallel plots aren't mutually exclusive. Something happened in the past that's vital to Caitlin's present. The book's historical subplot deals with Caitlin's father and Cort Wesley Master's father working together in 1983. The historical subplot changes the way both Caitlin and Cort Wesley Masters view their fathers. The current plot is eighty-five percent of the book, and both plots tie in with a connect-the-dots moment. That moment injects a great deal of feeling, of pathos, into the novel. Thrillers are often viewed as shunning emotion; but to me, what makes a reader care about characters is the element of emotion, which is every bit as important as the character's quest and the McGuffin.
You're very prolific. Do you ever procrastinate?
Everyone procrastinates to some extent. But creative procrastination is a positive thing. Some of my best ideas have come when I wasn't sitting at the computer. I might be at the gym; or watching a movie; but these connect-the-dot moments arise from creative procrastination.
What's not positive is writer's block, where you give up, or think because you don't know where you're going in a novel, you can't keep writing. The primary difference between the professional and amateur writer is the professional turns the computer on and gets it done. Amateurs stare at the blank screen and give up when they don't know what will happen next in their story. I trust my characters will take me where I need to go; I stick with them.
Speaking of writer's block, have you ever suffered from it? And how would you define it?
It's hard for me to define something I don't believe really exists. (Laughter). There are times in every occupation when an individual doesn't want to do the job. A surgeon may wake up one morning and not feel like going to the hospital, but that surgeon must go and operate. A teacher's got to go to school and give that lecture. Writer's block, in my view, is an excuse not to write, and, it's a rejection of instinct, the subconscious, and of imagination. If you put a five-year old kid in a room without any toys, he'll find something to play with. Writers are like that five-year old kid: some days, they go into that room and it's filled with toys, so it's easy to come up with a game; on other days, the room has no toys. The writers who won't succeed walk out of the room. The ones who will be successful, are like the five-year old: they find something to play with. Part of being a successful writer is being in touch with your inner five-year old who can sit in that empty room and come up with a toy and a game. That's also the person you're writing for--the five-year old in the reader. The storyteller tries to immerse the reader in the world he or she has created.
Writer's block is the disinclination or inability to create that world. I think the term writer's block is basically an excuse.
What, if anything, keeps you awake at night?
I must be frank here. Many people--writers among them--say money doesn't matter. And it doesn't, if you don't have your health or if disaster occurs. I'm embarrassed to say, the thing keeping me up at night is the question of how I'm going to pay the bills. It sounds so trite to say, but many people assume a writer's life is like Never-Never Land. But, like everyone else, we have bills to pay. I've learned some of the best creative decisions I've made have been the result of financial necessities. So, what keeps me up at night is what keeps me writing during the day.
What's the most important lesson you've learned about writing?
This goes back to when I left Hollywood screenwriting and returned to writing novels. Necessity forced me to seek out a community of writers. Before 2006, I thought writing was a totally insular profession. I was confusing the process of writing, which is insular, with the business of writing, which is not insular.
By joining International Thriller Writers in 2006, I learned writing involves being a member of a community. It's like any other business: the more people you meet, the more you maximize the chances of good things happening to you. Luck isn't random. Luck happens to people who maximize their chances to succeed.
So the number one thing I've learned about writing is that while the process happens in a box, you are made better both as a person and a writer by becoming part of a community--a family. When I joined ITW, I asked ten bestselling authors, from Vince Flynn to Lee Child, for blurbs. They all gave me book blurbs. Since then, I've never turned down a request for a blurb.
In today's world where we're all connected, writers are helped enormously by being part of a community. So, while the process of writing never changes, the new media have changed everything once the process of writing is completed. You must be open to relationships with other writers. Being successful in writing is the same as it is in virtually any other business: it's about how you deal with people.
What's coming next from Jon Land?
After Strong Light of Day, I have a non-fiction book coming in March. It's called Takedown, about an undercover drug officer who becomes a small town police chief. Random events bring him back to his old world and he goes up against the biggest drug gang in the country.
In June 2016, The Rising is coming out. It's the first novel in a collaborative series with the great Heather Graham. It's a crossover to YA with sci-fi, and it's a thriller.
Congratulations on writing Strong Light of Day, about which Lisa Gardner said, "Strong Light of Day lives up to its name, an adrenaline-packed, tension soaked thrill ride that's a topnotch addition to an already terrific series."
Mark Rubinstein's latest novel is The Lovers' Tango