PAST COFFEE CHATS Tess Gerritsen Sandra Brown Jennifer Apodaca Lorenzo Carcaterra MJ Rose Peter Abrahams Nancy Cohen Janet Evanovich Martha Lawrence Evan Hunter/Ed McBain William Lashner Lisa Gardner Gillian Roberts Clive Cussler Carol Higgins ClarkDavid BaldacciLawrence Block Stella Cameron Sara Paretsky Stuart Kaminsky Stephen Coonts Nelson DeMille Stephen White Nevada Barr Jerry B. Jenkins Michael Connelly Stuart Woods John Saul Lisa Scottoline Barbara Delinsky

Bestselling Author Gayle Lynds Rob Holden: Gayle Lynds, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. Thanks for joining us here today! Gayle Lynds: It's a pleasure ... and an adventure. Rob Holden: I'd like to start this off with your latest novel, The Coil. Can you tell our readers a bit about it? Gayle Lynds: The Coil is the sequel to Masquerade, a continuing story of a family of spies and assassins, but also a political thriller. Liz Sansborough returns from Masquerade, where she had an interesting but somewhat unresolved ending in the book. I'd always wanted her to be happy, and at the same time my editor at St. Martin's, who was working with me on the Ludlum/Lynds books, kept encouraging me to write a sequel. So I searched for several years for a story worthy of Liz and the other characters. Finally I realized that her father, a top independent assassin from the Cold War known as the Carnivore, had kept files of all of his jobs -- the targets, the employers, the circumstances around each hit. This sort of information can topple governments. Once I knew that, I had enough to put the story together. I'm not answering your question.... oh, well -- forging right ahead and depending upon Rob to edit me into some sort of sensibility -- in The Coil, someone is using the Carnivore's files to blackmail world leaders. At the same time, Liz's cousin has been kidnapped, and the only ransom the kidnappers will accept is those files. So Liz

must turn her back on the new person she's become -- no longer CIA, now a college professor specializing in the psychology of violence -- and re-enter the black world of spies and criminals to try to find those files and save her cousin. Whew! I loved Masquerade, by the way, so it was a true joy to work on The Coil. Anyone who’d like to read more about both books as well as their opening few chapters can boogie on over to www.gaylelynds.com and check ‘em out.

Natalie R. Collins: And Liz and Simon are both very memorable characters. Do you have more adventures planned for them?

Gayle Lynds: Thank you. Gosh, I’m glad you enjoyed Liz and Simon. At the time I was working with Keith at St. Martin's, my stand-alones were being published by Pocket. He quietly kept nurturing me, brainstorming with me, and now of course I've jumped over to St. Martin's to be with him. So The Coilis our first book together, the second in this inadvertent series, and now we’re talking about a third. Right now I'm working on a new stand-alone called The Last Spymaster, which will be out next spring. To answer your question -- the book the following year will be the third one in what we’re tentatively calling The Carnivore series. I can’t wait to start writing it!

Natalie R. Collins: I like it. People won't forget it. The details in your books are very intricate. How much time do you have to spend researching?

Gayle Lynds: The intricacy, I suppose, is due to all of the research. I research a great deal, as you've guessed. For instance, the information about the fictional group, the Nautilus, is based on an actual organization with headquarters in The Hague. They're called the Bilderberger Group, named for the hotel in the Netherlands where they met for the first time, in the early 1950s. I spent eight years researching the group, which turned out to be a far more difficult job than I'd ever imagined, simply because little is known here in the U.S. about them, although they're fairly well documented in Europe and even, to a certain extent, in Canada.

Rob Holden: Gayle, I would like to jump back to Masquerade, which was originally published eight years ago and has recently been re-released in paperback. Can you tell our readers a bit about that story?

Gayle Lynds: Masquerade came out in 1996, which seems like yesterday to me now. It's the story of a woman with no memory who's told she's CIA and that an assassin has targeted her because she's seen his face. Of course, she doesn't remember that or anything else. So she's sent to one of Langley's top-secret training camps to get back her skills, and in the process her memory slowly returns. My goodness, what an interesting life she’s had -- once she remembers it, the story is essentially one of espionage ... what that world is like, those who pass through it, and what happens when people go rogue. It's political, too, of course, as all of my books are. It asks fundamental questions, which are re-asked in The Coil, about identity -- who are we? And how do we know who we are? We spend so much of our lives living outside of ourselves, and we must in order not only to survive but to take care of our family and friends, that we continue to neglect the real jungle, the real wilderness of the unknown -- which is between our ears. That's one of our jobs as humans, it's always seemed to me -- to understand ourselves well enough that we can then reach out to create a world that is better, healthier, happier. We haven’t inherited it so much as we've borrowed it from future generations, and it's our job to make sure we pass it on to them with perhaps fewer dents. Sorry about that rant!

Rob Holden: Was it difficult to re-visit a leading character in a novel after eight years away from her?

Gayle Lynds: Revisiting Liz ... hmmm. Darn good question. Yes, it was. Readers had been asking me for years to bring back the cast of Masquerade, and honestly I wanted to, but I just couldn't find a story good enough. You know that old adage -- be careful what you ask for. Well, I got a great story, but in it Liz does a 180-degree shift from whom she'd been in Masquerade, because there she's a trained operative, gone apparently rogue, sly, underhanded when necessary, and a killer. But at the end of Masquerade the CIA won't take her back. Her family is dead, and she has nowhere to go and longs only to return to what she knows -- the CIA. Thankfully, when The Coilopens, she's resolved that issue by returning to school and earning her Ph.D. in psychology. But the trouble for me was that she’d finally gone into that uncharted territory of her mind and her soul and discovered she found violence appalling, inhuman. Naturally, her specialty becomes the psychology of violence. Therefore, I was faced with a character who was the same but completely different. Talk about a challenge. But heck, I knew I wasn’t going to be bored! Fortunately, Liz kept her dry, irreverent sense of humor, and she still had a lot to learn about love and trust. The hardest characters for me to write are those who don't think. Liz thinks. And feels and analyzes. When her new character finally began revealing herself to me, what a joy. The best novels ask tough moral and ethical questions. In The Coil, Liz is attacked and must deal with that, based on her new antiviolence sensibilities. So at first she's able to outwit her attackers and use karate to defend herself, but then the violence escalates, as it must, and she’s forced to face finally what she truly believes. How and what she decides to do is at the heart of the story, at the heart of questions for all of us these days I think.

Rob Holden: I'd like to move back a bit now to the work you did with the late, legendary Robert Ludlum. Could you tell our readers a bit about how that collaboration came about, and what it was like?

Gayle Lynds: I grew up on Bob's books, particularly the early ones, and truly loved them. He had a big impact on my life as a reader and as a developing writer. I also loved the work of Helen MacInnes, Eric Ambler, and Graham Greene. Of course Forsyth, le Carre, and Follett also impacted me greatly. But Bob was really the first I'd read, and like a first love, that initial relationship is unforgettable, viscerally important. When Masquerade was published in 1996, I was being called the Female Robert Ludlum, as well as the Female John le Carre. Anyway, Bob heard about it. Remember, he was a towering icon, and I was just a debut novelist. Well, he bought Masquerade and read it because he wanted to see what “the competition” was up to. What a compliment. He loved the book and continued to buy and read my others. Later in the 1990s he decided to leave Bantam. His life was in change then, and shortly thereafter his wife died, too. Anyway, when he jumped to St. Martin's, he decided it was time to reinvent himself, and among the new things he wanted to do was create a series, a real series, not an inadvertent one like the Bourne books. And he didn't want to do it alone. So he asked an intermediary to see whether I was available. He thought that our work was compatible, that we probably would mesh well, and as it turned out, he was right. I don't know whether you realize he didn't type. Not a letter. In fact, he still wrote his books on yellow legal pads and sent them back to Connecticut to his longtime typist. This meant of course that email was out of the question, which I'd figured would be a good way to work. And no one can write a book on the telephone. I live in California, so Bob invited me to fly to Florida so we could work together there, but I have a family, and my father was dying of Alzheimer's, and there was just no way I could go. The result was, we ended up collaborating the old-fashioned way -- hard copy. We kicked it back and forth, seldom disagreeing. We both had quirks of course. He disliked contractions, while I find them useful. So we compromised -- no contractions in the narrative, but yes in the dialog. That worked nicely. Also, he was concerned about treading on Tom Clancy's literary turf, so he did not particularly want to name weapons, but when I do the research I want to share some of it with the reader, because I think it's interesting. We compromised again, easily as always, and I named the weapons of which I was most fond. If anyone would like more of the scoop -- as you can imagine, I’m asked about Bob often -- my webmaster created a page just so I could answer a lot of readers’ questions. Just go to www.gaylelynds.com, and click on the “Robert Ludlum” webpage. It’s listed on the left-hand side, which is appropriate, because Bob always said he was a limousine liberal.

Rob Holden:Okay. Gayle, I would like to move on to the entire genre of spy fiction, and the "re-birth" that it has been undergoing recently. Could you tell us a bit about why you think it "died" in the first place, and what is responsible for its current (and much appreciated) resurgence?

Gayle Lynds: Great question, Rob. As you know, this is something I lived through and found endlessly fascinating -- and discouraging at times, too. During the Cold War, spy thrillers were the world's top reading choice, devoured at the rate of tens of millions a year. But when the Iron Curtain collapsed, a death knell rang for the genre. Critics claimed readers wouldn't want to read spy thrillers anymore, because there was nothing to write about without the West-East Balance of Terror. The Cold War had been “easy” in the sense that the lesser authors simply wrote good-vs.-evil books, without the shades, the nuances of gray that showed the true complexity of the Cold War. So publishers lost interest in publishing those books. And finally, with enough bad news, even readers will be driven away. The sales numbers of the top authors plummeted, and new authors had a very, very, very difficult time finding publishing homes. I was one of those, finishing Masquerade in the middle of this period, but that's another story. In 1998, both John le Carre and Frederick Forsyth declared the genre dead and went off to write books in other fields. Then 9/11 changed everything. Until then, Americans were somnolent about world affairs. We were still exhausted from the nuclear detente of the Cold War and simply wanted to concentrate our energies at home. But those horrendous attacks forced us to look out again beyond our borders, and what we saw was a world in turmoil, a threatening world, which increasingly was focusing on us as the source of many of the globe's ills. All of a sudden, Americans wanted to know what was going on out there. It was imperative to educate ourselves again and not simply rely on our federal government. Of course, we're a nation of readers, so we turned to books, but not only nonfiction. We've traditionally, excitedly, gratefully acquired much of our knowledge about how the world works both publicly and privately as well as sub rosa from fine political thrillers. And that's what the best of spy novels are -- political thrillers. It's now three years later, and the “espionage/thriller” category sales are soaring. In 2003 alone, they jumped 34 percent, which tells us that readers are devouring espionage tales again. If authors continue to write fine spy thrillers, and publishers continue to publish them, the readership will only grow. Since I think it's vital that Americans as well as citizens of other nations have access to a variety of opinions and thoughts about how our planet works, I’m overjoyed that this at least came out of 9/11.

Rob Holden: Since the resurgence is so recent, could you tell our readers who you think -- aside from yourself, of course -- are some of the standout writers working in the spy fiction field today?

Gayle Lynds: Of course ... read Jenny Siler, Francine Mathews, Joe Finder, Dan Silva, also, Raelynn Hillhouse will have her first novel out in August. She's very good, was a student at Humboldt University in East Berlin at the end of the Cold War. Oh, yes, Vince Flynn writes excellent political thrillers, too. Nelson DeMille, too. I’m hearing good things about Kyle Mills. I haven't read Follett in a while, have you?

Rob Holden: Not recently, no -- but that is an interesting list!

Gayle Lynds: Thanks, I'll need to do that! I also read David Morrell, Dean Koontz, Gregg Hurwitz, Douglas Preston, and Dale Brown.

Rob Holden: Gayle, one of the questions our readers who are also writers like to have answered is about our guest author's writing habits. Can you tell us about your "typical" writing work day?

Gayle Lynds: I write from the time I get up until I fall into bed. Life interrupts that. I wish I were one of these highly disciplined types who sets aside certain hours and then has the rest of the day to have a life. I'm in awe of Mike Connelly because he can and does do that. Me, I work by the immersion method. I'm swimming in words and ideas and research 24-hours a day, and I just wish I didn't need to sleep. This is not healthy -- I do not recommend it -- but I've tried everything short of drugs and extended periods of intense psychotherapy, and the truth is, I work best when that's all I do -- work. Boring, huh?

Rob Holden: No, not at all! And since you mentioned Nelson DeMille, it might interest you to know that in a recent interview with us here at ReadersRoom he revealed that he doesn't type either -- but rather writes on yellow legal pads.

Gayle Lynds: Really? I didn't know that about him. I've not met him, but I sure enjoy his work -- also that he's a bit prickly. Prickly people interest me.

Rob Holden: So, what's next for Gayle Lynds?

Gayle Lynds: I'm in the midst of my new novel, The Last Spymaster. Oh, I do love it! That's the wonderful part, isn't it, Natalie? When one is so crazed about the work, that it's exciting, and the ideas are fascinating. Of course, at some point one decides it's nothing but garbage. But one manages to survive that and return to some sort of rational place where one sees that the manuscript isn't all that bad. I like that place, too, since it's so practical. Right now, I'm at the honeymoon stage. Las Vegas, here I come!

Natalie R. Collins: It is the most exciting part, Gayle.

Gayle Lynds: Boy, I agree, Natalie. I'm not far enough into the book yet where I've screwed it up!

Rob Holden: Finally Gayle, is there anything you would like to say to your readers who may read this chat at ReadersRoom.com?

Gayle Lynds: We're so fortunate to live in a highly literate society. If I had my druthers, I'd put a book in every child's hand, not a gun. Many of us who write in my field do so with this in mind. We write not to encourage violence, but to understand its sources and costs, cautionary tales really. If we do our jobs right, readers have a great time enjoying high adventure, and they learn a lot and get a lot of great insider intel rather painlessly along the way.

Rob Holden: And we, at ReadersRoom.com, share those sentiments with you completely. Gayle Lynds, this has been a fascinating chat, and thank you for taking the time! Best of luck with The Coil and all your future work!

Gayle Lynds: Muchas Gracias!




Copyright 2004 by ReadersRoom, LLC. All rights reserved.