Q: All of your characters have depth to them, even the ones who are dead before we know them for long. What did you use for references for them? Anyone you know show up in the pages, or are they all just figments of your imagination?
Jay and I wanted to craft characters who were interesting people first and heroes (or villains) second. They each needed to have something on their minds, some personal, non-plot issue plaguing them while they tried to keep their eye on the ball. The litmus test we used was to ask ourselves whether these people would seem two dimensional if we met them outside the pages of the book. And while we didn’t mould any characters from people we know, there are snippets of characters: physical features, idiosyncrasies, gestures and colloquialisms that – in hindsight – remind me of certain friends or family members. It was rarely deliberate, though. Well, okay, not often deliberate, anyway.
Q: Did you know when you started out on it that it would be a trilogy? I can barely see past the first page of anything I'm doing, I can't imagine thinking three books in advance.
No. For years I wondered what marathon runners thought about while trudging along for 26.2 miles. At 35, I decided to run the New York City Marathon (well, jog, crawl, hitchhike and eventually give up and wait for the Med-Evac helicopter). The night before the race, Jay and I heard from Victor Gollancz, our imprint at Orion Books in London. They had read The Hickory Staff and were interested in our plans for the series. Assuring them we had extensive notes for Lessek’s Key and The Larion Senators, I promised to e-mail a pair of outlines the following Monday, a mere thirty-six hours later. It was one of those wonderful stomach flops that even the engineers at the Disney Corporation can’t perfect. We had glimpsed a publishing contract for a story we scribbled over donuts and beer and we were about to lose it, because we didn’t have a goddamned clue what happens next.
The following morning my wife drove me to the starting line. For the next four hours, I irritated marathoners with plot ideas, character flaws, potential paradoxes and bad metaphors. At 78th Street and Central Park West, I met my sister who gave me a hug and handed over my mini tape recorder. I spent about twenty delirious minutes telling the story aloud to the Upper West Side, typed the outlines that night and emailed the pages off with several hours to spare. I like to think that if the books ever do well, I might hear from one of those runners, someone who humoured me through Brooklyn or out along First Avenue. I kept the tape as well; although, it seems to make more sense after a long run.
Article comments
1 - pam holby
I was wondering if you could give me the e mail of Robert Scott the author of Like Father Like Son This is in regards to the crystal stedman murder. Thank you very much
2 - Margaret
Good review. Good interview. Thank you. I am waiting in impatient anticipation of Lessek's Key and the Larion Senators. The Hickory Staff I read over a week-end; could not put it down.
Thanks for your review.