Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey, kyle, thanks for joining me. How you doing today, man, I'm doing well. 're here, got your new book, fade In. It is phenomenal. It's on the shelves now and I know you're doing a little bit of a book tour. We've got a lot of conversation. I want to dive in, but you know, for a lot of my guests I like to kind of give a little bit of introduction to my listeners and viewers.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Why don't you tell us a little bit about you know where you were born, and it's kind of a cool story, and then we'll kind of dive into questions about Fade In. Yeah, I was raised in Salem, oregon. My father was an FBI agent, and so we were in Salem, we were in DC, we were in London, but most of my childhood in Salem and yeah then moved to Baltimore after college and now we're in Wyoming half the time and Spain half the time, so we get around. For sure, we've kind of lived all over the world. It's been a bit of an adventure, so, which is kind of nice though, because being a writer you can work from anywhere. It's one of the best things about it and you know, you can take all those places and people you meet and shove them into your books.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Well, I mean, you have now how many books, is it? Twenty, four, twenty five.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Twenty four, twenty five I should know that number, but it's a lot After 20,.

Speaker 1: 1:38

You just say the fact you're like it's two dozen give or take. Well, I mean, in a lot of your books you bring in different characters and places and stories from all over and let's just dive into that. You know, fade is a book that you wrote 21 years ago and phenomenal book. And now you know, at the very end of it you know we kind of thought that was the end of Fade and it seems like maybe at that point in time you did too Walk us back into a little bit of history for the book because there's no spoilers. It's been out for a minute and talk to us a little bit about Fade, the character in the book, and then where you left him.

Speaker 2: 2:15

And then let's jump into Fade in and where you're bringing him back is the nickname of Salam al-Fayed, who's a former SEAL and CIA operative, who is a kind of his family were first generation Syrian immigrants. So he worked for the agency. He kind of got screwed over. In the end he got shot. The bullet was lodged in his back. It was slowly, you know, paralyzing him. He wasn't getting the. They refused to give him the surgery he needed and then they came back to him and wanted him to come back and work for them, basically use him up until he was dead or paralyzed. And this is the first book he got into it with.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Homeland Security really wanted to kill the guy who had tried to bring him back, and it was basically a book that I had written. It was going to be just this rampage by this guy who's actually really funny, kind of dark humor, really philosophical. But his whole thing was I'm kind of doomed and I'm just going to go out in a blaze of glory. I'm going to try to kill this guy first and that was the. That was the idea that he would go out in a blaze of glory and he did, and in my mind he was dead at the end of that book. But I could never stop thinking about him and my fans continue to send me letters about him and emails, and so I don't know. I just started thinking I wonder if I could resurrect him, and then one day I came up with an idea for how he could have survived.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Well, it's a fascinating thing too, and I love some of the insight that was left into how he wasn't shot and killed, the insight that was left into how he wasn't shot and killed. As far as that, that, and you know. There again, I don't want to leave any spoilers for those who haven't picked the book up, but you know there's some great twists there and you know bringing them in, so why don't you you talk to? You know, obviously, how he comes to and you know he's been, he's survived and what kind of's set up for in Fade, in.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, poor Fade, he kind of wanted to die and he's actually been clinically dead multiple times, but he always comes back and he's always really disappointed. So in this one he wakes up and he's super angry about it and in the end, though, he is kind of taken in by this group he's wanted by the police for all his shenanigans the last time and a group comes in and says you know, we'll give you a new identity and we'll give you all the rehab and that you need, and at the end of it, we want you to consider coming to work for us. And he really has no choice at this, this point. He can't walk, he can't even get out of bed and basically the police are going to descend at any moment and off he's going to go to prison wheelchair. So he does this, but he doesn't really want to take the job.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And he finds out that it's a group of billionaires, one in particular, who have decided that the world's really getting crazy and out of control and we're headed into a ditch, and that governments have become so ineffective or destructive that they really need to get together and try to stop this from happening. Basically the collapse of society. And it's true, if you think about it, the power of these people, the billionaire class, is beyond what it's been since probably the JP Morgan days and probably much more so. I mean, they control everything you see, everything you read. They're add, they're addicting you to these, you know, to Facebook and all these things. And they, you know you can't send a, you know rocket up without Elon Musk, you can't communicate without his satellites. I mean, you know, in fact, he threatened Donald Trump at one point and said you know, you don't, you're not going to send anything in space.

Speaker 2: 6:22

And so these guys have all this power and my idea was that they would have kind of this guru that would say you know, making another billion if you already have 200, it's kind of a waste of time. Why don't we try to use this a little bit for good? And he's very good at convincing people of things, of giving them what they want, figuring out what they want and giving it to them. Sometimes it's really dark, but he needs them. Sometimes it's less so. And what Fade needed was like a purpose, you know, an identity, like he's coming back from this coma, he's wanted by the police, he has a new identity and he just doesn't know what to do and this guy gives him basically something to do, and that is to be the paramilitary wing of this group, because sometimes you know there's no substitute for just killing somebody. That's in your way, and they realize that.

Speaker 1: 7:17

And you say that too. Sometimes a loose cannon is your best weapon, right? So you know he's working there with John Lowe. But you know I wanted to also bring in the character Matt Egan, who has a history with Fade and he's the person who gets the phone call and, kind of you know, steps in at the very beginning of the book. If you can maybe talk a little bit about their relationship again, I know we're not going to do all spoilers, but there is a lot of the backstory there that I think is important for readers who may be just picking up this book for the first time.

Speaker 2: 7:47

So they were best friends and worked at the CIA together. They were both have a special forces background and had a pretty significant falling out over the bullet in Fade's spine and Matt Egan unable to get him help. And Fade actually realizes it wasn't Egan's fault, that he tried and did everything he could, but he's like I want to hate somebody for this, so I'm choosing you. And in the first book they really get into it. But Fade finds it's very difficult to kill him. That was his plan was to kill him, but when he lines up the crosshairs he just can't pull the trigger and so that continues.

Speaker 2: 8:26

Matt Egan is now a bit broken because of events that have happened and he's kind of the first thing that Fade sees. And Fade sees it again as you've screwed me over again. I was supposed to be dead and now here I am laying here virtually can't move anything, and I'm back. But Matt Egan runs this group. He essentially runs security, security in air quotes for this group that I don't know, sort of trying to gain an enormous amount of power internationally in order to hold things together. And so he doesn't really want fade back because fade's an unpredictable guy, I mean he doesn't know what he's going to do. I mean he's he's not above, you know, chasing a bunch of Xanax with tequila and he's a little suicidal. So he has an interesting kind of worldview or like interesting personality quirk that he's very, very courageous, but it's not really courage, it's it's indifference. So you know he'll, he'll run straight into the bullets mostly just because he doesn't care if one hits him. Yeah, so so his team he's extremely good at what he does.

Speaker 1: 9:40

He's a legend, a combat legend, but his team's a little skeeved by him because you know he's it's really unpredictable guy to work with so when you decided to bring back fade, uh, when did you make that decision and what was it like for you on the writing side of things? As far as coming back in, because it's like it reminds me a little bit and you know different story plot too but like Dexter I don't know if you're familiar, but the show like all of a sudden Dexter's dead and then he's back in and then all these like 10 years have gone by and people have been like man, I feel like I want to bring them back and so I was like I was kind of working with them at the same time and doing some interviews and I was like awesome, another badass characters coming back and I wondered like, what does that look like from that time of 21 years of you know between these books that you decided? When did you decide to bring them back? What was that process like? And maybe just kind of walk me through that you know, uh, you know, as far as that exchange, yeah, so I I was.

Speaker 2: 10:45

I remember being on a really long trail run in Arizona and it just popped into my head how he could have survived. But this is I was working on the Mitch Rapp series. I did nine books for that and I was kind of in the middle of that and it was an interesting process because I thought, oh yeah, that would be cool, I could bring him back, but what would his story be? So you got to have a story for a character and at the time I didn't know, I was really embroiled in the trap. Stuff Can't split my attention very well. So I just put it in the back of my head and I had arced Mitch Rapp into a lot of different things. You know he started out just in terrorism, but I put him up against domestic terrorists and the Russians and all this and I really wanted to do this idea that I had. That was very much.

Speaker 2: 11:35

The world is running out of control. Somebody's got to stop this. The politicians have become incredibly destructive and incompetent and, frankly, old. You know we're relying on these 90 year olds to take us into the next, you know, generation and so are the next era, and I kind of you can see, I kind of started it in the Mitch Rapp books. If you read those books there's a guy named Nicholas Ward who's like the first trillionaire and he becomes very close to Irene Kennedy, the CIA director, and I thought I'm going to create this sort of shadow group that's going, you know, mitch Rapp could be their enforcer.

Speaker 2: 12:16

Because this is really the idea that I wanted to do. I wanted to write about and I had finished the Mitch rap arc that I wanted that I guess that was the first arc in my mind. It was. I got Mitch rap when he was very frustrated and angry, his wife was dead and I took him all the way to having a, basically a wife and a daughter, and he was in a much better place and that was the end of my arc and I was sort of starting that next arc. And then one day I just realized it was wrong for the series. I thought I am really imposing my style on Vince's series. This is not something Vince necessarily would have written about in my mind.

Speaker 2: 13:02

So there was the question I mean, they didn't mind, like his family said, that sounds like a cool idea, but it really felt like a takeover, hmm, and I didn't really want to do that. Also, I didn't know if Mitch Rapp was the right guy to to do this with, because Mitch is always the he's like the master of his universe, and I wanted somebody that could get dragged into it and have sort of these philosophical observations and not be sure if they're doing the right thing. Because you know, fate has a moral compass but he struggles with it because he's not sure he wants to do the right thing but he's not sure what it is a lot of times. And neither is John Lowe, and they're gathering power very, very quickly, and even John Lowe's like I don't think I have the systems in place to control this. It's going better than I thought.

Speaker 2: 13:54

And so that was when I decided I was just going to wrap up the Mitch Rapp thing. And it was really a situation with Mitch Rrap that I was either going to commit and write the mid-rap series for the rest of my career and write more than Vince did, or I was going to move on and turn it over to somebody who would have a fresh perspective, and so I decided on the latter.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Well, and that ended up in the hands of Don Bentley who, with his first turn at the mid-rap series, I interviewed him in Houston at Murder by the Book, which is where you're going to be here very shortly wrapping up your tour. I know you got a couple of dates Dallas and Houston left but is that something that you, when you wrapped that up and you brought that to them, did you have an idea of, like who you thought might be interested in taking that over? Was that kind of like? What was that transition like? I was just kind of curious as far as that. You know you bring up to Vince's family and that you know you're going to go ahead and you know turn in your last book there in that sense. But what was that like for you? And was that difficult to leave that series? You know, I know you said you've kind of came full circle and put them in a different place, but just kind of curious what that was like after so many books under that helm.

Speaker 2: 15:07

Yeah, it was super hard to leave that series. That's the best job in the world, particularly for a guy like me who mostly likes sitting in his basement typing, and that you know, that's what they wanted me to do. So it was, it was great, it was a well, I'd been a huge fan of the series before that, I mean, and I got to take over one of my heroes, yeah, I mean. So, yeah, that was a funny process. So they asked me, who would you think would be really good to take this over? And I gave him a list that did not include Don, but it was because he was literally on the New York times list at number two with the Tom Clancy stuff, right, and I'm like, well, he's not going to leave. That you know. Um, so I never. I didn't, I didn't suggest it cause I thought there was no way.

Speaker 2: 15:56

And then, coincidentally, he and I were having dinner together not shortly after this and they had, unbeknownst to me, asked him, you know, if he might be interested in this, and so he's asking me about writing for the series. But it had not been announced that I was leaving, and so I just lied. I'm like, no, no, I'm, you know, I'm sticking with it and all this stuff. And he was. I had no idea, but he was freaking out and called his agent first thing the next morning and said, oh my God, they're firing Kyle, and he doesn't even know. He's like I don't want the job. They're like I'm not doing it. And uh, so his agent said let me call, and he called vince's agent and he said no, kyle can have this as long as he wants, but he quit.

Speaker 1: 16:53

And then he called me the next day and like you bastard, you lied to me all night well you told me he said like when he I heard the story from his point of view and he's like whatever you do, never play poker with kyle, ever.

Speaker 2: 17:09

The guy has an unpenetrable poker face I've been lying about that for a long time, because it took him a while to find somebody and right, right, no, I couldn't, I couldn't say anything. So, yeah, I, so yeah, I'd gotten really practiced at that.

Speaker 1: 17:24

You just pull it into another character in your books. Man, that's all, yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:27

I lie for a living, I guess Right, but yeah, so it was pretty funny. I was really stoked that he took it because I thought he would be perfect for it. But again, you know you're number two on the list with Tom Clancy. I just didn't think you'd want to do it.

Speaker 1: 17:41

Yeah, no, I think he did a great job. I like how he inserted the book into an era of Mitch's life there too. So just a fabulous job. And you know again, applause to you for all the amazing books you put out with that series. I think you know he did Vince and his family proud with that it was wonderful work, wonderful work, thank you, super fun, oh work, wonderful work.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Thank you. Super fun. Oh, it seems, it man Great writings. Well, I'm really excited for people to check out Fade In, as far as you know, the last two dates of the book tour.

Speaker 2: 18:10

If you want to go ahead and plug those real quick where they'll be, yeah, I'll be at Half Price Books in Dallas, and that is tomorrow, and then the next day I will be at Murder by the Book in Houston. So yeah, if you're in the neighborhood, come and check it out.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Nice. And what is the Dallas one? I'm going to be dropping the podcast on the morning of Dallas, so on August 5th. Here is when this podcast is live. So tonight we'll be in Dallas. What is that one going to be? Do you have it in conversation with anybody? Are you just going to be kind of talking, doing some readings? What Are you just going to?

Speaker 2: 18:41

be kind of talking, doing some readings. What does that look like for folks? That was with David McCluskey, oh yeah, okay, yeah, like a terrific writer and former CIA guy and yeah. So that should be a lot of fun. We're just going to do, we're going to chat a little bit about books, we'll take some questions, sign some books, but it'll be a good time.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Nice and then in Houston. So you'll, you'll have to come and uh, yeah, some q and a's and things there to the audience.

Speaker 2: 19:06

Yeah, absolutely same same thing.

Speaker 1: 19:07

I'll talk a little bit about the books in the mitch rap series and, uh, yeah, take some questions and we'll just, you know, just have a little chat that's fun and it's really nice to be able to have that time to meet someone and say hello and kind of get some of those questions uh answered that some of these folks may have with the certain characters and whatnot. Yeah, so what's on, what's on the the uh, the future agenda, man? What's uh? I know you got a move coming up and there's going to be some things happening, but what's uh? What's on your idea plate for the next book that's coming out?

Speaker 2: 19:37

Yeah, I just recently finished the first draft of the second book in the second. The way I think of it is the second book in the Fade series but the third book he appears in. So yeah, I'd probably be out, you know, roughly the same time next year.

Speaker 1: 19:53

And what does this look like for you as far as the process? You know, as a as a writer myself too, I know that there's. You know, as far as getting into a place sitting down, uh, writing, you know, like you said, locked in the basement. But what does it look like for you? What, how many hours you putting in? Is there a certain peak time of the day? What is your process like as a writer?

Speaker 2: 20:12

I'm kind of a nine to fiver. Okay, it's just because my when my wife was working, I just worked when she wasn't here, so that got to be like a nine to five normal job. Now I'm a little. Now I can be a little more flexible. You know, if the snow's flying or something, I'll go skiing and work the weekend or something. So I'd work really hard on bad weather days and not as hard on good ones. So it's, I've gotten better at it. I'm better at you know figuring out where I'm at and if I'm going to meet my deadline. So you know if I'm better at you know figuring out where I'm at and if I'm going to meet my deadline. So you know if I'm ahead. I take some time off, and so that's one of the great things about writing is the flexibility of it.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Yeah, now when you finished this book, were you already having that arc of that next you know book? Or did you kind of sit back and you know, absorb where that was and think, okay, where can I take them next? Because I know it took you a little bit of time from fade to fade in. Obviously not that much for turnaround time, the next go-round. But do you have an arc in a series where you're like man, this is going to be multiple, three, four, five book kind of thing. Is this something that you know? I mean, I don't want to give anything away there, but I'm just kind of curious as far as that. Are you bringing this also with some of the current climate and things are going on, cause obviously you brought that to and that kind of fiction, you know fact faction kind of you know half and half world, just kind of curious about that. Or do you let some of the events of what's going on, uh, you know, kind of influence maybe where you're going to be taking fade?

Speaker 2: 21:39

I mean the general concept of the world kind of getting a little crazy is what I want to talk about in this series, but in a way it also makes it really hard to plan too specifically ahead. So I mean it's. I mean, for instance, russia being a good example. I wrote a book a Mitch Rapp book once about Russia invading Ukraine. So thank God it was a few years before it happened and that was such a weird thing for Putin to do that. When I wrote the book, I really wanted to write that book, but it seems so stupid and crazy that no one would do it. So I gave the Putin character a brain tumor and he was afraid he was going to weaken and all the people around him were going to kill him and try to take over. Right, but because there was no way Russia this was going to be good for Russia, it was going to be a disaster. I did a bunch of research on it. There's no way. People have always, uh, overestimated their military capability by like five times. So, and this is the kind of thing or Hamas, I mean talk about the biggest tactical error of the modern era. You can't predict what's going on. And the other is technology.

Speaker 2: 23:02

When I started this book, when I started writing it, ai really wasn't a thing Like that's how fast. Now. I mean now it's taking over right in. What is that span of a year and a half or something? So you takes a long time to write a book. So you have to really think about what's the next year look like, and that's incredibly hard. I, like I. I wish I lived, I wrote thrillers in like 1650. Because you know it was going to be exactly the same 50 years from now. 1700 is gonna be exactly the same as 1650. Now, next month it could be completely different than this month. So it's a.

Speaker 1: 23:43

It's a challenge I can imagine. You know I was kind of curious if you had anything that you wanted to reach out and to say to some of your fans you know supporters and followers that had been out there. You know, obviously you have quite a distinguished career and just curious what you might want to say to them.

Speaker 2: 24:03

Yeah, I just I want to thank them, I mean particularly all the Mitch Rapp fans who have stuck with me, you know, who are really excited about a new character in a new series. It was really hard to know how those fans were going to react first to when I took over Cause I thought, oh man, the hate mail's going to pour in, or it may be. I mean, I had no idea, um, and that didn't happen, fortunately. And then there was the side of oh, I'm leaving the Mitch rap series and people really liked the books. But maybe that was, you know, they didn't care about me one way or another, it was just the Mitch rap stuff. And that also hasn't happened, and people have been really excited to, you know, go on a little bit of a different journey. So I really appreciate that giving me a chance.

Speaker 1: 24:51

Nice, yeah, yeah. Well, you know I was also thinking in in line with that. You know, legacy is something that that I often think about and talk about with a lot of my guests and obviously you know 24, 25 books here under your belt, you know you've number one New York times bestselling author. There's so many things that you have left in print for those to be able to see, as you know, a legacy of your writing. But you know, I was also curious as far as how you view your legacy on a personal setting and as well as that professional, as a writer too. Is that something you think about? And what is it that you know go when someone mentions legacy and how do you kind of embrace that?

Speaker 2: 25:34

I like to think that I wrote books that made you make a reader think about things from a different perspective. I've always been really interested in the gray between the black and white. You don't notice that as much with the Mitch Rapp stuff because I was writing very much in Vince's. You know style and he was more of a good versus evil guy. So. But I want people to learn things. I want people to see something that they thought they knew for sure and then at the end of the book think, wow, maybe you know, maybe I wasn't thinking that through fully, and that's what I find interesting about books, and I've been very lucky to be able to write the books that interested me.

Speaker 2: 26:17

I think a lot of writers get into series. They become some extent victims of their own success. You know it's hard to have a huge series, your number one New York Times bestseller, and then tell your editor I'm just moving on, I, you know, I want to do something different. I want to write romance. Uh, so I think I have done that.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Like there aren't that many writers that have just been like I'm going to go over here and then I'm really interested in this concept and I'm interested in this concept and I'm going to write thrillers, but they're going to be built around different types of characters. Sometimes they're men, sometimes they're women. I've written in the first person. I've done all these things because I think what's the cool thing going on in the world now that I want to explore and then I build that book around it. Similar going on in the world now that I want to explore and then I build that book around it, similar to what we were talking about with fade of, I thought, oh, I can bring him back, but what's? What's the story he wants? He's perfect to tell and I found that story, but if I hadn't, he would have never come back.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Well, no, it's a great vehicle for that too. I like, uh, how you've been able to really dive into what interests you Cause I think when you have that passion, that comes through, and I find the writing is always better as opposed to, like you said, being a victim of your own circumstance.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Yeah, and then you can do something new, which is always. It's hard, like once you write, for instance, nine Mitch Rapp books. You start writing an action sequence or something. You'd start thinking, have I written this before? Like, you know my play, you know you have to go back and try to figure out. I think I've done this. There's something too familiar about this scene and that happens to all of us. Now, you that definitely. You get a bunch of thriller writers together drinking, uh, who've written a lot of books, and that always comes up and you're like, oh man, I realized I'd written that scene before I'd throw it away.

Speaker 1: 28:06

I would love to be at that circle and just hearing all of you guys talk about like dang it yes, back in this day I did that one, this, ah, repeated it, or whatever or the struggles of doing that Cause you know it's great. I mean, it's a good point there too, and I know that kind of your background and, being close, you know your father uh, being in the position he was, you've been influenced and been around a lot of things and I was also curious, like, as far as is in this book and fade in, was there any um type of research, any place that this book took you? Or is there any type of people that you spoke with as far as kind of to getting your head around this and and kind of doing that research? What did that look like?

Speaker 2: 28:45

For this one it was much more science than because it's an unconventional group. So it's not the CIA, it's not the military. My big one that I can't do at all is guns, which is funny because my father was a FBI firearms instructor for a while, but it's just not something I know anything about. It's super complicated and people are really tuned into it. Yeah, they are. You do not want to make a mistake on that. In my first novel this would have been 30 years ago I made a couple of mistakes about guns. This was before the internet and my dad read it and he didn't say anything what? Which? Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:27

Thanks.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Dad. Truth be told, my father wasn't a gun guy either. I mean, he carried one for work, but when he retired he put it in a box and stuck it in the house. But yeah, I think, yeah, I called shotgun shells bullets I think.

Speaker 2: 29:42

But it's funny is like even back then it was so hard to research stuff and I I used to get a lot of mail from prison, um, because I had some guy smoking crack out of a plastic pipe and it turns out that would melt. But I was thinking like a bong right, and I'd always I'd get these letters you know they're from prison when they're done in pencil and so and I know they're going to be like I have it on very good authority that you can't smoke crack out of a plastic pipe, so it's much easier now, like I, I used to have to lean on. I mean, that was one of the reasons, honestly, I started writing thrillers is because I thought I wanted to write a book and I thought I loved all kinds of books. I'd been a huge reader in all these different genres I still am and I thought, wow, it'd be really easy to research because I know all these people. I've known them since I was a little kid and sure enough, you know you just get on the phone. Now you can just.

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, no more visits to prisons to interview folks on. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:55

No. The problem now, though and this is brand new, we were just talking about AI is the information is getting worse, so it seems very convincing, and but you have to. It's almost more time consuming now, because you have to double check and triple check everything from multiple sources, and I noticed this recently when, so I live in a town in spain called granada, and it's very, very beautiful town. It's a white, like houses and hills and an arab fort, and I get a lot of stuff in my news feed about granada, because you know I live there, right, and they have these beautiful pictures of granada on the article, and I'd be looking at it and I'd I'd asked my, my wife, like where was that picture taken? And she's like nowhere. That's not Granada, and what it is is people using AI so they don't have to pay for it.

Speaker 1: 31:55

Right Right, copyright image or something.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Make a, create an image of Granada. And it's so real that even I look at it and I'm trying to think what vantage point, like would you go to? Where's this? This church on a cliff, like, and that's everything. Now you look at it and you're like, wow, this seems very, very credible. And then you think just there's something about it, just doesn't smell quite right. So I think it's going to be a situation where now it comes full circle and I have to call friends at the CIA again.

Speaker 1: 32:27

Yeah, yeah, totally man, and that is something that it's going to be indistinguishable at some point in time. And there's ads and things you'd look at now and you're like, wait, is that a real person or not? Like, and you can kind of there are some tells, but that's just you know. Just you know first, two, third, fourth generation of that and a year from now. Like you, we talked about what can happen between the months, what can happen in 12 of those. What's that going to look like?

Speaker 2: 32:51

yeah, I mean, you used to be able to trust video nope. Now you can't at all, nope. So it's um, yeah, it's. It's going to be an interesting challenge to try to not make those kinds of errors. The world is very complicated and it's going to be an interesting challenge to try to not make those kinds of errors. The world is very complicated and it's like you know.

Speaker 1: 33:09

I.

Speaker 2: 33:09

I I can't trust the photo that comes up on Google Yep.

Speaker 1: 33:13

Well, I guess you know before we leave by this. You know a couple more questions here, but this one just popped in my mind is the idea of AI and, in a writer's format like there's, a lot of people can spit out a book. Now, obviously it's not going to be, you know, human quality, right. But we are kind of on an edge of things too, where I know a lot of people can maybe use this for tools, maybe helping them in some way. I know podcasters that use it as they're kind of setting up for interviews and stuff. So there's a lot of different usage where it can be a tool in the toolbox. But I was just curious about your take as far as either in a sense of a tool in the toolbox, or how you see that and how that may change or affect writing, and maybe even in your genre and with you and your peers, I think it's going to be on like a seismic shift.

Speaker 2: 34:08

I don't use AI, other than my wife uses it to, like, generate pictures or something, but I don't use it I. I tried it once and I thought I'm going to take a rough draft, my first draft of a chapter, and I would put it in AI and say, rewrite this into a final in the style of Kyle Mills. And it cleaned it up. I mean, it's nothing I would have written and for me, writing the books is the fun part. So, like, I don't just want to churn them like that and it's not of any interest to me at all. Um takes out the fun part of my, my job, right, sure and um, but I think this is going to be the future, I mean it's, it's going to get really good at this and, um, I also think and here's, here's the people, the wild speculation, what I one thing I've noticed and I'm getting to the point here over the 30 years that I've been writing is people have been in the beginning, were much more tolerant of what we were talking about earlier different perspectives, learning something new, learning something maybe they disagreed with, right, um, now people are really sensitive to that and they're going to label you, even, even if it's a, even if it's a character, that's the bad guy You're like, well, that guy's a serial killer. I don't agree, I'm not agreeing with him. He's like a character. So, um, I think the way I see this in the future is custom books, and that that's that's what I think is going to happen. That, like, you write a Mitch Rapp book and then people can order it, but they have sliders and they're like, oh yeah, I want more hot sex, but I don't like swearing and I want you know this and I want it to be set in this town and you know my hometown, oh, and I want to be a major character in it. And then you'll get that that book will be just for you, and I suspect that is going to happen, because that's what's happening on the internet, right, people get funneled in by these algorithms.

Speaker 2: 36:16

It's incredible to me because I I read and study, uh, news from all kinds of different sources, including crazy conspiracy people, because they'll give you great ideas, right, yeah, and so I'm just all the far left, the far right, the complete tinfoil hat people. I get it from everywhere and I'm always amazed, sometimes when I talk to somebody who's from one perspective or another, how much they don't know. Talk to somebody who's from one app perspective or another, how much they don't know. Because not only sometimes you're being spun to, if something bad happens, to say your politician gets caught, I don't know, taking a bribe or something. They just won't report it. So you're just missing that data point and people will say well, what are you talking about? Kyle, it happened yesterday. And so as people become more and more dialed into never hearing anything from anybody that disagrees with them and everything confirming their own biases, it becomes harder and harder to read a book, and harder to read a book that maybe.

Speaker 2: 37:24

For instance, I once wrote a Mitch Rapp book that I had an Iranian terrorist and he was kind of going off on America like yelling about why he became this Iranian terrorist, and his editor said you got to take this out, man, you're scoring a lot of points against the United States. But I thought but this is interesting, right, the Iranians don't like us, why? Well, we overthrew their government and stuck in a brutal dictator. You know we, we supported Saddam Hussein in a nasty war against them. You know, et cetera, et cetera. You know we shot down one of their passenger airliners and basically told him to go stick it, and so she's like, well, you can't have that in there because it will make people uncomfortable. But to me, that's the interesting stuff of books, right, yeah, I hate the terrorist. That's just like I hate America. Because I hate America, right, like you know, why not give them some reasons, a motivation, a personality, all these things, and then maybe you learn something?

Speaker 1: 38:22

That's a piece of history, right? I mean, there is a reason why certain people feel this way, if they're from this area, they're from this viewpoint or they grew up with this kind of circumstance. And all you're doing is really just embedding the real truth of that character, whether somebody it's not like you're anti-US, but you are showing a character that is this reason why they feel this way, justified or not. That is just basically coloring in that sketch of who that person is.

Speaker 2: 38:50

Yeah, it's like writing a serial killer, which I did once and I'll never do again. But you have to think about it. Why does this guy feel justified in doing this? Why does he think it's okay? Is he just insane? Has he backed or knew a reason? You know whatever? So that's that to me. I find really interesting. But, as I've said, I think Vince's editor was right, because I was doing something I would have written, not necessarily what Vince would have written.

Speaker 1: 39:20

Right right.

Speaker 2: 39:21

And I think that's become more and more every year that if you write a character who's you know I don't know, in this case anti-American, or maybe he's anti-Christian or something and you give them a you know backstory as to you know, it might be like why do you hate America? Well, you blew up my mom, right, could have happened. We blow a lot of stuff up. Well, that'd make you mad, right? I mean, I remember when my dad used to work with IRA, the Irish Republican army, and they would come here to hide out after they did something, so you'd have to chase them back to the United States and all this stuff. But I thought, you know, if the British had bombed the bar they were in and killed 50 Americans but said, you know there was a terrorist in there, we'd have said, yeah, but you blew up my mom. Maybe it was justified bad terrorist, but that could make you angry and I don't know. I find those kinds of motivations interesting, but sometimes they're hard to read.

Speaker 1: 40:18

Yeah, yeah, well, no, well said. And, um, you know, I, I know you got a lot of other things going on. You got a flight tomorrow there. I'm excited that you're coming to Texas. Can't wait to hear all about that. Um, you know, and for those who might want to follow with any future book, tours or any information and news, I'd love for you to kind of plug where they can go and find these things and maybe plug your socials. So you know, those who are ready to follow in maybe ask some questions for you after this, uh, how they can, how they can go about that.

Speaker 2: 40:45

Yeah, just so, it's Kyle Mills, author and that's X. Facebook and Instagram. I've not delved into Tik TOK yet. Um and my, uh, my website is kylemillscom and so, yeah, check it out. I, you know, answer all my stuff, so or you can email me also through the website if you want to get in touch.

Speaker 1: 41:06

Absolutely Well, everyone, make sure you go check out Fade In. This is a phenomenal book. You've put out some great work. Thank you so much for sharing your talents, kyle, and yeah, thank you for joining me today. I look forward to having you on again sometime.

Speaker 2: 41:18

Yeah, I hope so. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 41:20

Thanks, man, you have a.