THE CRAFT OF WRITING — APRIL 2022
WITH JOHN GILSTRAP
Today the CRAFT OF WRITING blog continues its 2022 deep dive into mystery, suspense, and thriller novels by welcoming thriller author John Gilstrap. John is the author of over twenty-five novels, including one of my favorites, Nathan’s Run.
In addition to his popular Jonathan Grave series, John is developing the Victoria Emerson series of thrillers. A few of his books are shown below.
If you’re interested in thrillers – either reading or writing them – this is your opportunity to interact with one of the masters.
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When John Gilstrap’s first novel, Nathan’s Run, hit the market in 1996, it set the literary world on fire. Publication rights sold in 23 countries, the movie rights were scooped up at auction by Warner Brothers, and John changed professions. A safety engineer by training and education, he specialized in explosives and hazardous materials, and also served 15 years in the fire and rescue service, rising to the rank of lieutenant.
More than twenty books and seven movie projects later, it’s been a good run, and it’s still running
Outside of his writing life, John is a renowned safety expert with extensive knowledge of explosives, hazardous materials, and fire behavior. John lives in Berkeley County, West Virginia.
Please visit John’s website, www.johngilstrap.com for more information.
Interview with thriller writer John Gilstrap on the Craft of Writing blog Share on X
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Welcome John Gilstrap, and thank you for joining us!
Thanks for having me.
Please give us some background – have you always wanted to be a writer?
Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed writing and telling stories—but I can’t say that I always wanted to be a writer, at least not as a profession. In high school, I was the editor of the school newspaper, and I was enamored with the notion of being an investigative reporter. The reality of that work, however, runs counter to my nature. I don’t like to stick my nose into other people’s business.
I ended up pursuing other avenues as a profession—safety engineering with a specialty in explosives and hazardous materials—and I continued to write stories in the way that knitters knit sweaters and blankets. It was a way to relax. I didn’t think of those efforts as leading to any sales until I wrote Nathan’s Run in 1994 and I realized that it was a special story.
Why did you decide to write thrillers?
I’m not sure that I ever consciously decided to write thrillers, per se. I wanted to write exciting stories. It wasn’t until after I’d sold Nathan’s Run that I was told by my publisher that it was a thriller. Twenty-six years after the publication of that first novel, I still try to write exciting stories, and now I know what the genre is.
I loved reading Nathan’s Run. Can you tell us how you came up with the story?
Thank you. I wanted to write a story in which the protagonist had to make a binary choice between doing his job and doing the right thing. That’s about all I had. I thought the protagonist should be a cop because I was deeply into my fire service years at the time, and I knew (and continue to know) many cops.
At the same time, I was named to chair a committee in Prince William County, Virginia, where I lived and worked at the time, whose responsibility it was to review the budgets of human service agencies with an eye toward trimming costs.
The first facility I visited was the juvenile detention center, where I saw a boy who was about 12 years old sitting by himself in a corner. He looked sad and terrified. I have no idea what he’d been accused of, but to me, he looked like a kid who could have been my own.
Another piece of the story fell into place. Suppose a kid escaped from a juvenile detention center and a cop had to chase him down? That felt about right. A lot of details needed to be filled in—all of the whys and therefores—but I knew there was enough story to chew on.
The final story took shape in my head as I was driving across Montana in a rental car whose radio was broken. In those eight hours, I had the beginning, middle and end all locked down in my head.
You’ve had great success with your Jonathan Grave series, and you have a new series, the Victoria Emerson thrillers. Can you tell us about each one of those and when the next books will be released?
Jonathan Grave is a former Special Forces operator who now runs a very special private investigation agency. The overt part of Security Solutions helps some of the biggest corporations in the world solve problems through very unconventional means. It’s the covert part of the company that is featured most in the books. Jonathan and his team perform freelance hostage rescue operations. It’s not uncommon for Uncle Sam to ask him to perform tasks that governments can’t legally ask people to do. The next Grave book, Lethal Game, will hit the stands on the last Tuesday in June.
My Victoria Emerson series imagines the aftermath of Hell Day, a nuclear war that kills hundreds of millions of people yet leaves hundreds of millions more to cope with the challenges of rebuilding something that looks like a society. A former member of the House of Representatives, Victoria and her family are preppers and are uniquely suited to survival under harsh conditions. When they wander into the little town of Ortho, West Virginia, their intent is merely to spend the night and move on, but conditions don’t allow that. The people of the town are in a panic in the aftermath of the Hell Day attacks, and when they turn to Victoria for leadership, she can’t say no.
What’s your writing process? Do you start with plot or characters or some combination?
I can’t separate plot and character in my head. When I write, I write the story, which by definition to me is interesting people doing interesting things in interesting places. Thus, plot, character and setting are not separate things in my mind.
What are your plans for future novels?
I am currently under contract for one more Victoria Emerson novel and two more Jonathan Grave novels. In addition, I would like to dabble in more short stories in the coming years, and I’m collaborating with two other writers to crank out an old-school Western. That one will be a long time coming, simply because it’s not at the top of any of our lists of things to do.
What advice would you give an aspiring author of thrillers?
Never lose sight of the fact that you’re writing a thriller. Hopefully, it’s a well thought out thriller populated with strong, compelling characters, yet remember that readers will be attracted to you work primarily for the thrill ride. In this genre, pacing is everything. That doesn’t mean an explosion on every page, necessarily, but those long descriptive scenes of happy people doing happy things happily probably need to be cut.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
My website is always a good place to start. There, you’ll find links to the books, biographical information, my YouTube channel and Facebook page, and pictures of Kimber, the cutest puppy on the planet—and the newest addition to the Gilstrap family.
Thank you, John, for being with us today.
Thanks for having me.
Interview with thriller writer John Gilstrap on the Craft of Writing blog Share on X