People ask me where I get my ideas. 
Normally I just fumble around with my response- lame generalities like “all over” and “reading books” and “current events.” In fact I have ideas for books lined up, stored up, cooking away in my head. On my laptop I have title pages for several novels I’ve yet to write- Black Site- The Ex-Patriot- Romeo’s Run- Isla del Muerte- Hope Springs Infernal- Beautiful Russian Ladies. Full novella treatments are written for some; for others I only have a tiny synopsis, thumbnail sketches of major characters, maybe some dialog and a scene or two to set the tone for the project. Who knows when or if I’ll ever write them?
I also have several completed but unpublished 100k plus word novels- Brotherhood of Vengeance, All the Necessary Evil, Throwaway Souls, Goon Squad. BOV was the first book I wrote and, I still maintain, it will someday see the light of day. I haven’t shown it to my agent yet, because I know it needs a tweak here and there to make it more marketable. It’s my job to make those tweaks, not an agent, an editor, a focus group. I’ll get it right, and the agent and editor will get it out.
If I did not hear of a single new clever story that made my creative juices flow for the rest of my life, I’m pretty sure I could write books till the day I die just based on the things I’ve seen and heard and thought about and stored away for when I have time to give them my full attention.
But I do hear new things all the time. Like this; http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6252.4702.0.0
Yep, there’s a story there. I took a master’s class in Organized Crime last year. I’ve read in other places that these are clearly fakes. If so, this smells like the mob, although which mob, I couldn’t guess. I’d have to think they are forgeries, but good forgeries circulated into the world market in that scale could be very, very damaging. It would make a great novel- The novelist Christopher Reich comes to mind, though I could probably pull it off with a WHOLE lot of research!!!!
When I was younger and played around with writing some short stories, my dad used to cut articles out of the paper that he thought would make interesting plots. I remember a piece he gave me about a young Israeli soldier, AWOL from his unit in Tel Aviv or somewhere, turning up dead alone in a hotel room in West Tennessee. No explanation, just a 6 line article or so laying out the incomplete facts. My dad and I talked about how that short article could lead to a kernel of a story that could lead to a huge, full-blown novel. It never went any further than that conversation 20 years ago, but I think, through discussions such as that, my dad helped me look at the world in a way that has inspired my interest in fiction. Who killed that soldier? Did he do himself in for some reason, or was he aced by a crack team of Mossad hitters to silence him? Fiction may not always be truth specific to an incident, for all I know the kid cut himself shaving and bled out, but truth can be found in fiction if it’s created by a writer who takes long hard looks at the world as it is, and brings a piece of that “real world” to life in his story. I try to do that.
Normally I’m not so existential, but I’m alone in Central America at the moment and find myself with time to do a little navel-gazing.
Speaking of a bit of free time- I’ve been pouring through paperback novels like crazy on this trip. I read Joseph Finder’s Killer Instinct, Chris Ryan’s Hit List, reread one of my all time favorites- Frederick Forsyth’s The Devil’s Alternative, and am half-way through Harlan Coben’s Deal Breaker . Joseph Finder’s stuff is interesting… It’s different from me in a way that I enjoy reading and find very smart. I read his first novel, The Moscow Club, a long, long time ago and it was brilliant. Harlan Coben is nothing less than awesome… His stuff goes for the laugh at the same time his plot’s twist and turn and keep you turning the page.
My stuff goes for an occasional snicker, an ironic smile here and there, and that’s okay with me, but I love Coben’s laugh out loud style.
If you aren’t the book-reading type well, shame on you… but there is a film made from a Harlan Coben novel, and it is very good. It’s in French, so you must endure subtitles, gratuitous chain-smoking (I expected the hero to expire from lung cancer before the third act), goofy music, and pompous-assed cinematography, but you should Netflix it just for the story, you’ll be glad you did- It’s called Tell No One, in French it’s something like Ne les dis a persone or something like that- It’s really good.
Speaking of books into film, I got my first offer for film rights yesterday for The Gray Man. We passed, my agents (Film and Literary) think we can do better, but hey, it’s nice any time someone reads your work and likes it, much less feels it would be right for a film, much less offers you money for the rights to proceed with said film.
