Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

HW: Your first two books could be described as pure, relentless adrenaline. In fact, those are your words. Was it difficult to work on a novel taking place in two different times, switching back and forth between the two? How about working with a larger cast? Did that present you with any particular challenges, issues, problems?

BC: It was hard at first, but once I got into the flow of both narratives, it wasn’t such a big deal to go back and forth, which is the way I wrote it. It sounds silly, but I wrote the present in one font, the past in another, and for some reason, changing fonts helped me to get back into whatever section I was working on. This cast of characters, which I knew was going to be big going in, was intimidating starting out. I spent a month on character studies, really getting to know each main character and their back-story before I dove into the book, and I think (I hope) that made all the difference.

HW: Has having children changed the way you look at your writing? Your subject matter? Do you ever pause and think, I guess my kids won’t be able to read that until they’re older?

BC: Abandon was the first thing I wrote after my son was born, and being a father for the first time and that new relationship and life-altering love couldn’t help but find its way into this work. Parent-child relationships definitely constitute a significant aspect of Abandon. And yeah, there’s no way my kids will be able to read my first two books until they’re at least seven or eight (kidding).

HW: Who is your first reader?

BC: My wife.

HW: What’s your favorite procrastination technique to avoid writing?

BC: Playing my acoustic guitar.

HW: Now that you’re in the business, do you find as much time to read as before? Do you avoid fiction for fear of unconsciously copying someone’s stories?

BC: I read more now than ever. You have to. I’ve never avoided fiction for fear of unconsciously copying someone else’s stories. You can’t help but be influenced by the work of others. No one is unique. As Cormac McCarthy said, “The sad truth is that books are made of other books.”

HW: I happen to know you’ve written an essay about Jack Ketchum’s Off Season for the upcoming International Thrillers Writers project Thrillers: 100 Must Reads. Was that format difficult for you? Did the experience provide you with any special insights into your own writings, or into thrillers in general?

BC: It was the hardest thing I’d written all year. I felt like I was in college again working on a term paper. That being said, it was a great joy to delve into the life and work of Jack Ketchum. I had great editors on that project. (HW: Full disclosure time: the editors for that worthy project are the esteemed David Morrell and yours truly. End of plug.)

HW: Tell us a little about future projects. You have a short story slated to appear in the ITW anthology, Thrillers 2?

BC: Yep, it’s called “Remaking” and also happens to be set in a beautiful Colorado town called Ouray. It’s premised on a question: What would you do if you were in a coffee shop, saw a man sitting with a young boy, and suspected the boy wasn’t supposed to be with him, that maybe he’d been kidnapped. I’m over the moon and humbled to be included in such a stellar collection of writers. Joe Konrath and I have just released a free short story as an eBook with the help of our publishers. It’s kind of groundbreaking, both in how Joe and I collaborated, and how our publishers came together to make it available everywhere. It’s called “Serial”, and is probably the most twisted thing either of us have ever written. The Abandon audiobook will have a short story that I read called “On the Good, Red Road,” and finally Jen Jordan’s new anthology, Uncage Me, publishes in July, and I have a story in that one called “*69.”

HW: Are you working on a new novel at the moment?

BC: I am.

HW: Where are you in that process?

BC: About a hundred pages in.

HW: Can you talk a little about the new book, or would that jinx things?

BC: I’m pretty sure I would deeply regret talking about it at this point. I find if I talk too much about works- in-progress, it takes the wind out of my sails.

HW: Any book recommendations?

BC: Joe Konrath just published a novel under the name Jack Kilborn. It’s called Afraid, and I think it’s one of the best pieces of horror fiction to come out in recent memory.

HW: Work uniform?

BC: A white tee-shirt and pajama bottoms with snowflakes on them. I know, it’s awful.

HW: Misconceptions about people who graduated from UNC?

BC: That if by some rip in the space-time continuum, Al-Qaeda managed to get a Division I college basketball team together, and if that team somehow made it to the NCAA tournament, and then survived March Madness, and, now here’s a real stretch, were facing Duke in the championship game on Monday night, that UNC fans would put aside their petty rivalry and root for Duke over the terrorists.

GINSU TONY: THE SHORT STORY THAT BECAME DESERT PLACES

I'm often asked where the idea for DESERT PLACES came from, and the primary source is the following short story I wrote in the spring of 1999, as a student in the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The amazing writer, Marianne Gingher, was the professor of this intro to fiction-writing class, and I