A Word on Words; 2451; David Compton

building don johnson you know once again welcome to word on words that had gotten a new novelist and a new welcome to word on words it's a great privilege to have you here when i first heard about this new novel the acolytes i thought it was called something else the axis doesn't do well i think are with a lot of books so i sent it in is the axis and the way it is with publishers everyone has a little piece of that never won and he or she owns and so are we probably winter couple hundred titles before we move from access to the acolytes think the salesforce thought that the axis on an all too much like a world war two book it does very much and i had a matter of fact when i wrote when i read when i read the news stories about there you're phenomenal success

with the axes i thought it must have been or war to start even in one and said see i probably owe assess maybe the baby reporter namesake even the wall street journal occasionally makes a mistake but i said this phenomenal success and i mean phenomenal financial success beyond that i mean the phenomenal success of people who are reading early acolyte of first no you must be happy hour years ago wall was so i'm still happy mom there was you know a couple of years of drudgery and then so my fifteen minutes of fame try to stretch out the mandatory twenty five and then about there jump back into the drudgery and the next book but i am very very happy about it and sing sing man booker prize on both sides of the page know you shot them in part what i will get into the plot of the minutemen a bit and

some of the characters but we we should she astounded bad in this book that your first real literary effort the first time you made a major attempt to be fiction first call was accepted by some to choose to far of what i take it was a healthy advance and in the movies come along and make you what i think is a millionaire in a relatively short time now i'm not much for all women and i think i'm a new maven him openly in a moment on the movies ahmad i was surprising joys and shocked is that i've been thinking about the book for a while in outlining in researching and pointed of turtles but i want to do this for a living sort through a fundamental right polygamy is the something that's really commercial

but there are good chance that human being sold not just as a book but as a movie so as i was writing it i actually was the route might play out as a movie in with that in mind that a lot to do with how i plotted the book in the character's couldn't sew also a shock to accept a pro that that day right at the phone call from the agent i was there for what he said and i know there are there are there are thousands of would be authors out there who dream of doing what you've done when the agency at his exact words or the back of the book on in the lottery roby was i think you may have a winner and that was the first time i'd heard from an agent and i was just elated at that point are still a lot of hard work to be done the book before we set out to sell but to it actually we sold the movie rights before so this'll the book rights and i was outside cutting

yard and my wife called me and said it's it's my agent and diet is it i know it was no no no and as exact words were you sitting now ha ha so why is it that these are the big abc but they don't often know the best one of as i see an international trade and they don't often area there's not a weekly occurrence nominated for them either they don't get there is not everything goes so you have an academy of officialdom but right so we're going to know that up the price for live from a publisher that helped that helped about as a book was circulating now among them the publishers of new york at the time and that's not as rare occurrences it used to be part the benefit of being with a good large agency is that they've got the manuscript that's right people and hollywood at the same time that the publishers are looking at it so it's always good for the for the book sells maybe first

idea does increase the excitement and maybe panic among a certain people in the industry and all the last decade that really has something so that leaves me at the books and it when i'm like a movie now the agents have feet to have a foot in each account one dollar if you will or in film well i have to have you know i know your own party expression an army brat i know you bounce around this country from one place to another i know about the story is the you and your wife going through leaving memphis where you had a job in a dozen executive of kraft right she's gone to pursue a career and wants to get a degree and at universal recipients or hugo oxford and one though john grisham walks into the church where you're sitting with your wife and likeable lovable years now of the like and when i roll out well if that's the best record says ha ha ha

ah like oh it wasn't a literary license called and i had actually been thinking about the book about what you're working on and a lot of the groundwork had been done for love memphis law and i'd sort of the book aside we move down oxford to try to get into a new job and a new house and everything but that we were visiting churches in the area and this particular sunday john grisham and his wife haven't come in sit right in front of us and so probably like ten thousand other people coffee or will you can do it you know maybe i can to so that really did give me the impetus to finish the book and editor of visions diamond ya sa ma sunday monday i was hard at work on the book again well i'm delighted to know reading the front cover the book right there is bored of parliament are several words of outstanding couple of john grisham you know if you're from if you look

at the cover and maybe there is on the screen right now they're in the back drop behind the words the acolyte david compton a central intelligence agency united states or that's the seal of the cia the corps is behind us now you would think that it would be difficult to make a plot work about an agency who which has in effect had its time and its and its role as a basis for a mystery novels and god knows the minister now movement about syria but you've still made were you know one of the things a database current with the news you see every day either still spy scandal still americans working for the cia respond to the russians and then israel and you know any other number of

countries so calm yet the come on firm footing their mom one of the basic premises of the book by giving away too much is that may be the playing field is changing and eight and that is true a lot of what the cia is doing is economic espionage and maybe the battlegrounds of the change from you in the berlin wall and spies going both ways across their tune into the economic fields is you create so that triangulation of interests here one is the us us interest which is a witch's brew the basis for the plot but you created am i am a german action and a japanese action and each case

there is a sort of a government interest in germany and in common interest in japan but unlike the old apes son intelligence has not gotten an intelligence operation it's really sort of a private entity frowning for a common interest and into that triangle you think a lot which twists and turns and leaps and mislead and how to know which one of the women to love which one decade and so interesting to watch as we went through this book let's talk about grier now we're through come from near zero i'm going through a hero who is too straight for his own good he's really really knows and when you're first in addition to me i'm a noble political campaign that's going nowhere you think you got the right guy selling out the wrong guys out where does recover will literally comes from atlanta

is a single bright to die with love playful ambition but the title of the acolytes as the stage is pretty early in the book you figure out where it comes from the original meaning needing someone who follows someone else and thirty that really is the characters we can see it is very straight would say is naive but he's got faith in and people are that he believes in and that's ric gets into trouble but their moves quickly from a few of being in trouble if a political campaign in georgia nine to the site a cia conspiracy get sucked into along with the too beautiful sexy dangerous one thing that you just bought her and he recruited and now a good deal of love of the others saying here early tapestry of book has to do with cia recruitment and there and there are armed the same

questions raised such as if cuban lower and it was necessary to betray or would you to would you slit the throat of an animal in order to prepare you to be assassin any lead based in fact are did your research take you that far or how much of it is and his invention took a license but in the hallway or the bookend youth corps recruitment this is a fairly factual odds with what happens when someone's broadens the cia to work as a spy spy master it really was a combination of my research and also i'd been through some of the interview process for the cia so i've been through

most of what's gone their moms and be condensed approach to the book but as far as hal greer was brought an end talking to different people know different cessna and psychological assessments in that the polygraph test and under hypotheticals about would you do this more lady other promises those are the kinds of things that are actually asked of young men and women who were asked to come in and then served his last same thing to me in that whole process was when his interrogation began to cross examine them bum not always said what about what he didn't say and is there a deeper me to this and is there something you're not telling me about this given the polygraph indicate your being and they see that you're not responding in a pot and in and in a completely candid way almost to the point of making himself about is his own credibility in their sense of is there something more there is it

you think important for somebody who goes into the work of being a spy master had to go through that sort of psychological and exercise and self doubt in order to put into this go around for yourself discover if you can followed role that you do them for the right stuff at all to come up with the one that goes through a pretty hot so you know you're going through and be prepared for a preacher in this experience of the polygraph and inventor of myself i know sin sick and even if you don't have anything high because there are lots of subtleties of the polygraph technician will play through it the technician draws a detour into a yes or no answers and that just as with is pretty relentless about twenty two to admit something odd anything and you don't know if it's a trick earth you know if you need to go ahead and confess something very limited you don't feel like they've even done

all but i was truly i think i wrote about in the book the same thing with the grier visiting with the cia psychologists same sort of pressure the psychologist and ask a question and he wouldn't answer it and we thought it was three would stop talking and the interview technique is that you just don't say anything to the person and let them start blabber n about anything that the else that he my dad has passed so almost like a realistically anyone thinking about going into the cia work and bitter be prepared for free thorough background check and pretty harrowing experience what you do in washington well having been through that experience and have maintained having a gong through the process itself untested but clearly you can understand where grier come from and how he gets where you know and as a novelist i can clearly understand even as a first novelist in that

character for mclean gene easy to establish i wonder how you're able to define the character as elusive as erich so the loyalists in and assist of song lille listening for so well there aren't there are more pronounced the line job's no one working for the germans ill of running to the japanese where his knowledge of a of a craft food executive who's as going his wife to oxford where she's going to get a degree and where does that fall knowledge come from very really know what they're about which leave i realize i don't know i guess you know

a lot of it just comes out of reading that really does is really what's going on the papers of the japanese mafia other lot of people hanging around who were real nice from left over from the cold war lawyers german and gerald gerry comes from night i want to have a few more flaws the other than you're just being a bad person working as a confidence and calm so it is that's really where they came from some of my imagination if one person described the desert imaginative violence you know these things i think are based in america they're very credible characters because this is what we know that people do so even flew out a plot for awhile before you at oxford and then you decide woman a goose bump at that point did you know where you're going and huge you know whether stephanie

was a heroin pretty much head says the basic storyline worked out palm it i guess and revisions subsequent revisions they made to get to the same place a little differently but i knew he was going to trade neumann who's gonna buy it in the end and who's gonna win and done pretty much what the basic storyline was announced some riders just sit down start writing a story not really no words going where the characters go in that i guess i'm a little to the left side brain oriented to work that way so i had it i would write for a few days without line that now won an extra china has it not lying and at night i had a general outline and then as i was working through the book i'd outline for one the outline giving kaufman's know that the next day when i was writing i could not sit down to start writing i have to think about what's going to happen so much

attention stephanie the meat served early on his career later at these and cia meets katie this is kirill i mean that women have that doll a role in an action in the book well sure yeah you mean as far as and i'm wondering it out wet weather will emerge of two women in all areas so it has been for the cia which i think it has this is what i know on russia lot of husband wife team so in the cia and i think it's opened up a lot of other things have to women too so you create it and it's a romantic triangle and you make is about the most a difficultly would seem to me

if you're a writer is keeping the curtain down on long enough in order to do that it seems to me you have to mislead rear end for tuition bomb mr eskew how tough was that i mean i'm following along and all of a sudden a trust of the nation and don't trust cape lined with for a long time beginning to doubt stephanie and i still in doubt kate and actress kate and don't trust stephanie and then i go to recruit our world a life and you know you can do it is a it is the author's contrivance and i think that your success at it is what has made his books of smashing success but talk a little bit about how you do that an ant and just in the process are you

conscious and then you've got to do that i'm deathly conscious of it in the first quarter the book in the last quarter generally relatively easy to write that since it is the middle of the bore korea got to sustain the suspense i keep the readers turning the pages and it's difficult and knowing that puts a lot of pressure on me falling the way happened with this book was i wrote it run one way and i came back and said know is this saudi is is there enough tension here's another conflict because i'd go back and add in no more opportunities for a deceit or some more conflict with characters or something like that mom but that is the tough part of you know keeping the suspense and in keeping the reader know wanting to turn that page to find out what's going on the characters and in the characters run away with you you handle in one direction unless someone a gondola white tomb of a worker

preserve them for the evil once know stephanie and eric and tom i may have started eating a little carried away with eric for a while i just you loved ones doing in and that way was not manipulating people in and have a good time i'm sorry for here so why i had to ring him in a little bit just sitting by herself a picture in your mind dupree for to like him much going to turn out to be a bit of a mini iraq right so it without giving away it gets so what he deserves in the end he's a thoroughly bad person but i think also a very interesting part of the year part of the question in my mind was how a president was gonna come out of moments and how he was going to handle his own perception of set the self self deception and is deception by

but deeply trusted and you know i mean it does take some insight into president of characters in tv be able to depict that i guess what i did was i've worked on several political campaigns some in the capacity of one of the weasels helping the candidate an earlier this a banana that this president is in us around by good people bad people and lots of espn so the president was a difficult character for this book because it as a really central that he supported and armed and we want a showman a certain white but we didn't want him to come off looking like a big firm on that is very human and there's a point when he does come close in a cozy because it because it is it really being misled i mean i as a religion know what a bold he is being an hour hour how

simple minded his answers to these things on what he doesn't know i want a surround himself with people who supply and the answers and trust people to take your things and some of the people who were john sicher things seem to care too much cross the line and the present was difficult character either i actually had a lot more of them that week we come back as we went through the editing process of the body one of the most interesting things to me and i thought it was two of his people after the fact or sitting around talking about the future and are we really going to be indicted and that and denied that they want most us is unlikely other i know must be enacted reenacted every time people fall from grace elysium thought oh yes there is i come from i want it exactly what you said just

one person maybe not there the night table maybe just the disbelief and forth what's happened in what's about to happen and then maybe the other person is much more cynical you knowing what's happened in that has already accepted to the fact that things are going down the tubes and they have to cover for for the president and then there is that most remarkable signs where grier makes its presence felt and role unique way at a press conference on the technology of that law must win the challenge for his writing yeah tom i enjoy technology and i love get isn't toys and when i was researching the book i went everywhere that the book is set and former go into this particular place in california and scouting location to see how we can have the characters doing and what they're supposed to be doing but you know i kind of

gadget celebrity magazines i get about you know you spiked toys in there and things like that so i enjoyed putting them into the book next book what's the thing well could be one of two a either a year another spy thriller but written a little differently solve this was i guess you could say heavily plotted the book i just finished a draft four spends a lot more time to the characters there's a father daughter relationship there that's important others are unfortunate dead wife and then this new relationships but they're still dealing with the spying espionage and some other international issues