A Word on Words; 3728; John Hart

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words john sigg and welcome once again to word on words my guest today is john hart john has worked as a banker a stockbroker and attorney all before beginning is running for his first novel the king was as you may know was an international bestseller is here today to talk about his latest book the last job

jon i work on the word on words like john it's great that you're doing i had to talk about in this book but you know this is what third mystery right this is number three end both previous books have been blockbusters and it is so tough to get a start as a fiction writer in publishing today you would be elated by the reviews well i'm obviously delighted that even minor always someone better views to go with the good ones and that's part of the business but i think what i'm most pleased about is the phenomenal lot that i said right out of the gate i think thats something special has to happen for a first dollar fine an audience and it goes beyond the quality of the book the concentration and effort of the publisher there just has to be something else out there that didn't listen now to the great mass of first novels and i had that in it and it was called anything other than what i

would call it fun right terrific storyteller and uncertain answer vocalist john let me just ask you about where this story came from a maine and at the end it's almost hamlet i mean you got more dead body here love the prince of denmark and what one of the reviewers said that although the body count as high summer socially responsible body count i thought was an interesting way to look at it there's nothing to hold a gratuitous in the novel i mean for what one would usually would you say about how you we came with these stories i don't write the lessons larson oh thank god has a happy to get to the line and literally had to get their lessons with a happy ending i mean the question

of how the book came to be and how our road it is is a very difficult one answer because an awareness more riders mean smart riders they know what they're doing from page one and it's just a question of delivering their vision and they usually outline in an imprecise were trying to do it or the school of corporate hope which means iran organically i make it up as i go and i never really know how it's going to end until it ends so i thought yeah sure absolutely tom you must have had in your mind johnny probably his pal jack the camp you must've known at the outset that there was a missing father did you know how that follows that is true the result now that that came about halfway through our was kicking around three or four different ideas and when the last settlement came to me unexpectedly probably two thirds of the way through the book you had to set up

one morning i said oh my gosh this is horrific well you know we would begin with a flaw here is a young boy and our first view of him the government create your eye our first view of him comes from his reflection in america the bus driver la is looking back at this kansas looks like a robber tried to be the voices is fine i've been there so many symptoms i think of of weak writing that that i see now that i'm in the business that i never noticed when i was younger and one of the things it always bothers me is when in the first chapter dr reutter has a protagonist looking himself and reflection and commenting on his hair and his scar where the yeah i mean and as it sets on a lazy

writing and so and i've never done that and in fact encircling the key was a never describe the character leave entirely to the reader is fascinating because they're all convinced they see him i mean people have said some say should play this character in the movie because it looks just the way describe and was i never describe much allison to find that description i am so when i set out to write this novel if it was arson are different in the first two in that it was third person and the first two have been hit first person of the white male which isn't easy skin for me to slip into i wanted to pursue a little bit and i just had this image in my mind of this character of this boy and we can speak clear about where it came from seth coverage details well and that's all i ever start with is a real strong sense of the main character and a very clear vision of the opening scene and then i distrust veterans are you know that his sister is missing at the outset and then is in effect the park to search for him and his twin well that's part of the plot when the the other the most important part in many ways nothing what makes the

book work as it's not just about his search for his missing twenties been gone for your number it's about his search as well for meaning for power over his own destiny for some sort of control what everything that he's been taught since birth to trust has now failed and family the church the police community schools nothing can give him back his wonderful childhood that he's lost and so while he believes that his sister remains alive and that he thinks he's the only one still looking for how to see find the strength to do something extraordinary when he's such a small boys then and just saw the roots locked into that he feels that way about the world but for a story whose sister has been kidnapped since he believes she's alive out there somewhere i his father has left he thinks his mother is having an abusive relationship with a real group and

that with this man is on theo von move because she and her son have a conversation and which johnny says to her you should've told my father that we shouldn't blame the lives and an end and there you get a sense of that of that search for identity and men and men and some sustenance i think he's looking for a way to proceed on the ground is awfully worried really constituent late great marks off and then you create his friend his friend it turns out of him very active air in and jack and jeff sympathetic character young brother of a football star now to gerald who joined clinton clinton did jerod of pablo would work on the

blog i did you know where that was going to go i think that i did not know it was going to get honest i had no idea i need a foil for jack jack as this like giant a small boy with different types of injuries emotional physical and i needed a foil for him something to a shadow in which he was forced to endure in the shadows is over achieving a sports star brother he's idolized by the father and that really tempers relationship between johnny injected these two misfits that have very little in the world and at the core of this book and i think in the core of everything a try right you'll find at our sense of nobility and our shared commitment between some characters in this this book is very much about the friendship between these two boys and their willingness to to push the bottle open this very dangerous quest to find jaunty sister and so i just needed to both boys to be willing to walk through fire for each other and in order to give them that they had to have very little else in our lives except for that since i'm a booklet on the interesting thing that i

didn't know throughout the voters on reading jackson once and his interaction with his friend johnny the thing i didn't know was that he was carrying a stretcher secret meaning the whole time you blew me away when you finally let me know what jackman yeah and it's interesting to turn his father broke his arm to keep him quiet farmer car bomb but i it was the last thing i had anticipated that day the truth i was hoping that johnny was going to run into her in the end mcdonald's and to end their new mobile are so together and this fall would turn up again with a natural plotkin ullman happily ever after but

but you took me down says about three different paths out hoping kym was going to be the long sought in every reason to believe he might be and you're and you're into it and you know you got it wow that's the trillion dollar question isn't it i've actually learned to have a great distrust of inspired writing if i go home with you know the day actually do work from a separate office i go home within the day and feel like that just nailed it didn't generally come back the next morning with great suspicion and apple would reread scathingly that work to make sure that it's not overwritten because that's that's my grandma and unite costly fight the urge to override things and i have learned as sort of pare things down over the course of these three books and

tilling the pros out but there are times especially little plot revolution summit whatever with the father and how things resolve with johnny jack and i'm now that the lieber free male character i would not discuss jet that when these things happened i literally just perk up man know the monster that is no and that's the beauty of the growth of school of writing i can write a saint to not knowing how it will affect the evolution of the novel and how will all tie together at the end but i know that it's a powerful scene i can do fifty different things with it and this is a question of deciding how to further inland body of applause and those things are there and that is really true from a mom i'm blessed with the various do wife who is a great reader of fiction she recognizes bad writing answer a fight off the rails five she's usually there to actually back on well a character that you just mentioned and we haven't discussed this hoping

for which freeman so mysterious so senator do you use on a human arm a mystery man and iron you know the clever puppeteer that you are you hurt me and the villain for a lot of it i was saying what's he doing here when john hiatt has put this character in this book thank you yeah it is clearly up to use a powerful physical force and the novel perfectly capable of christian and josh brolin as paul mason so so

big and so they almost all were like except there is the simplicity about him and then you and then you again play the trip on all of us and he said know crows know crows and the announcement to do you wanna get this book and read it because you don't wanna know what we were talking about when he said no girls he has given you the clue to the measure and then that worked so beautifully that again i mean i figure that out when did that come when did when did you know that no growth where nothing to do with the birds on the on the roof that really had to do with the location of well a couple on found a couple things in real quick about levi down war on hamburgers i took such chance for this character and he is equal parts avenger monster insane which is a very difficult thing to pull off and i'm yeah and literally the sort of

glue that that holds a deeper threads in the novel together in terms of when i knew about the know crows and says his ouster the crows are the richest mysticism about crystal in the souls of the dead and ties and what levi fears an hour what jack eventually in areas known to fear and down and how actually relates how kimala bennett a very end yeah i knew him at that point what the general ending of the novel would be but that particular hooker twist i'm a lonely figure out as i was writing that chapter so this is a great idea and i said i did that i just realized i could have someone follow the end and that really does make it shine and i'm here that's that for me that's the best part of any novel as we bring in those last fifty pages and all these things that you've put in play come together with an audible click and you know that fits in that it is just going to be seamless and die and i've really that really work at this point for those of you just tuning in i'm talking with john about his new book last child in them and as you would you say you haven't

offered an office away from home where you sit and write writing is your job now the script and then what you're reading well i am a recovering professional of many stripes i was interning stockbroker voters you mentioned in the show in what i cared for most jobs was that a sense of professionalism and commitment to doing the job right and so i do try to treat this like a job i ran off the side ooh weekdays five days a week and fell behind on the weekends but at age fifteen every morning and try to be at my desk and i found that there are two muscles involved in writing for me there's the sort of a free for more organic process where i just let the story ideas come in trust that they'll make sense at some point and in the mornings as what i did i just drive the bus of the story and see where we'll go and then in the afternoon after lunch a switch on the second muscle which is really analytical piece and go back to those pages whether it's one tumor or five foot of rain in the morning and really spend the afternoon teittinen as much sex and

the idea being that if the end of a first draft every single pages have at least one really good look i said i'm not editing from scratch willis so many fiction right now who write almost a forty four around the darker side where you are wanting to i get it ten pages a day thirty days munnell that you know he's still in space alan spencer our story in an italian retelling and i will respect to his success and that's basically what he acknowledges it but what about those times if you have them and my guess is also that it does when the angels on the show was when an era when the news is wrong whether those times common their frightening going to happen especially if they get lazy what i have discovered is that if you ignore the sense of quiet

despair the cover those moments and just do the job which a man that within a day or two it's actually some of your best writing you need you cannot wait for that is if you do for a living niall ally to build character driven owls from the ground up that's why haven't done a series the characters what mattered make it it makes for a longer process it's a more intimidating process because i don't have the character to make sense of in the day but that's where i am in my career and so i just try not to let that quiet voice of despair of a writer's block where we would call it interfere in does it try to push through it so you don't get up and walk away each day with that throughout the day well matt like to say that that's an ironclad rule for me with for sometimes i throw up my hands and to have a beer well absolutely and then when you get back to the iaea will pick up the pot were twelve yeah generally are right in a linear fashion that adults are right piecemeal and patched together and so i always think of right we're left in a

fun kind of rough patch maybe all star others read the whole thing three to try to get the momentum back to back inside less child again because there is a there is a street in the book and destroy a scene that relates to law enforcement look up the call up and the tragedy is clearly in love death in the end you know that even though i didn't tell you are her and shouldn't tell him that is usually given little hope that issue is able to put her life back together but but beyond latin he is major gaming and you have a couple of cops and police chief arm there have to be i think some research or

law enforcement procedure to write that part of the story and make it work as effectively as he didn't achieve called in state bureau of investigation and to sort of make sure that it forces says is not corrupted rand turns out his forces corrupted not the way he thinks is that the research well i never set out to write please proceed or is that that's not gonna book there i'd say good never gets so complicated that its a distraction to what i'm trying to do and i try to take tenets of crime fiction and blend them with tenants of this other novel one of winnow with something that's a bit of both and i was a criminal defense attorney so i was around that world for a while as a lot of friends that are in that world and if there's a specific question like when would a police chief or small town call in the state their investigation as called a lawyer

buddy of mine and said this this feels like what would happen is that accurate and so he called a couple cowboys his and said yeah and what i found is it one which are right are an established people are very willing to be of assistance in people will will talk about anything that they think might be helpful to think about what you wrote about to hear two parties want any open defiance than life are deference it turns out and suddenly yoakam is a suspect and do you think about what that does to the reader well and i was a hope that it lays the reader and end gets their mind off on a different tribe edited let me write down that road there was the sport a the process i mean it is a big puzzle but go back to one of things i said earlier as i mentioned as this book is very much about friendship and the links to which one friend will go for another nurse not just johnny jackson has

that's aha and yoakum they're also be elements of fathers and sons which are always are in my books you know johnny is we learn by the end of the book the man he is stepping into the role in which is father failed him and he is moving up in a very meaningful way going from boy to man and as a contrast to the relationship between hunter and his son allen who is a disappointment in so many ways and to me it's striking how hunt feels a much stronger sense of connection to this traumatize boy that's not his own son almost to the point that he's ignoring his airline and that factors back into the guinness is one of the many things that i did not know i'll would be a significant when i started the novel when and it turned out the loans are going to have to bear the burden of his son's involvement in the treasure i'm writing about a whale hunt is on as my neighbor caught on as my neighbor john yoakam is our life but he said the question that you do it a fair amount it i really do have had dead guy's simon

that my brothers in law that was my wife's idea which has been fun of headaches business partners that i've dressed up is in a sort of a marijuana smoking dirty hippies living in buses on blogs about a reactor that was asked for that permission first cousin and they're gathered there agree with that they enjoy it and i would think to the next level which we actually are raffled off tickets to be a character in the next book and so i've had cherry launches for all model doesn't and we've raised every provider thousand dollars over the past to boats for some local charities and fortress are on board an issue we decide instead of just giving away the names we actually raffle mall nasa we we write some i know i saw an awful in malta waited six month movie i was reading his third novel he'd been here a couple times in some have found it was the cia agent geneva switzerland to announce it was a black woman both in ways it was back to me david no one used in compton actually given that

we'd be back on the show and that immediately and i wondered how often or lose subway john boehner invited knowledge of three washington well it's actually you because names have code resume with the characters that the two writers guild and then it's very easy for them to sound made up and leaders are attended ivy a made up sounding names is difficult so often write the entire novel with filler names for certain characters dr sam alice whatever knowing that our change them or force in the draft new york the idea being that it deliver these guys for year before really know what their name should be and so i and down river francis which was not my second novel i asked my wife the force in the first draft of very casually add this this server dead guy which cunningham and freezes up ten understand she said well how about my brother the older brother

and and said i have two questions would you like to be in a new book and i feel it the dead i thought there be great and about this town shorter and from starting book three here the plan and david wilson who is the body that comes over the bridge into being struck by a car as mother brother in law saw called him and said david i have two questions for you and of course my my father wallner was nowhere have against his boy and some of it your life is so the business of promoting books and eventually it has to be tough today eight million dollars money into the day didn't even though in atlanta but then later that same day three cities in one day is crazy i do enjoy and only problem i have and it's a it's a big one but it's unavoidable as i have young children that don't understand why i'm gon so much they just don't understand why i'm choosing not to leave and that's a that's a tricky business but i very much enjoyed this this aspect of it and with most of

talking with people have a passion for books i love meeting readers the troubled it's tiresome but that's as a major the game in some way are different well i know there's another book we have just a minute left the forthcoming neck well and what's the next vessel that does so well thank you the next book is can be a little bit different of had three novels now that have been pushed by the publishers thrillers they've been received this word thrillers plus which is the nice the fourth one is the first about writing that has kind of a typical thriller protagonist in that he has a skill set that knows how to use and it's affective and in some pretty dangerous ways a he will be as messed up as every protests had ever written because i love to explore human dysfunction that is based about two boys brought up in a hardscrabble orphanage in the north carolina mountains one of the boys is physically abused by the older kids things get out of hand and the younger brother kills one of the older kids with a screwdriver in the

throat of his older brother has been his protector says you cannot take the heat is coming from the us as far as the world was concerned this is only i did this so he goes down for the murder of this boy what neither one of the killed children new is that that very day had a woman come to adopt them both so the one that actually did the felt diego is home to a powerful north carolina family the stronger brother who was an assembly goes off to reform school and eventually escape satan's up a new york living the life of crime and then twenty one years later as adults they are reunited win the younger brother gets into a spot of serious trouble out when one of the tormentors from the orphanage shows up dead personally as an incumbent or principle yes i'd be delighted to do so it'll be huge it drag on you watching and dancing in the letter word on words larry