A Conversation with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
What is your process when writing as a team? Do you find writing together easier or harder than writing your solo books?
Lincoln: These days, we tend to divide the work, not by chapter or scene, but rather by a series of chapters from one character’s point of view, a plot sequence, or even an act. Then the other writing partner goes over that work and does a careful revision. The first one will take it back and revise further. And that’s why the books appear as seamless as they are. Of course, this is not always a fun process; sometimes I have to firmly object to Doug’s wholesale slashing of my deathless prose.
Douglas: Which is nothing compared to the manhandling Linc gives my lapidary work.
Lincoln: Regarding the writing process itself, we each have our own favorite kinds of chapters to write. I like to write chapters from the villain’s point of view.
Douglas: Twisted, evil chapters… He’s so good at that, sometimes I worry. I like to write scenes of action and obsessive pursuit — for example, the final chapters in The Book of the Dead where Constance is pursuing Diogenes.
Lincoln: As for the second part of the question, I think I speak for both of us when I say that the joint books are easier to write. There’s somebody you can always call on if you hit a dead end or if you need inspiration. Or if you just want to complain or commiserate.
Douglas: Having a partner helps you manage all the other odds and ends that go into being a novelist, as well. For example, we’re taking turns answering the questions in this very document.
What inspired this new series and character?
Douglas: Much as we love Pendergast, we thought it was time to shake things up a bit by inventing a new series character. We wanted to create someone who was totally different from Pendergast, clever, younger, and sketchier. We have a mortal fear of boring our readers — and ourselves.
Lincoln: We also were looking to write a series of novels that were shorter, faster-paced, with a lot more action, fewer subplots and less ratiocination. The Gideon Crew series was the answer to all that.
Gideon Crew is so different from Agent Pendergast. Did you purposefully write him that way?
Lincoln: Yes, we did. While we wanted Gideon to be as interesting and attractive — in his own way — as Pendergast, part of the idea of branching out into a new series was to create a character who was very much his own person. In some ways, Gideon is the polar opposite of Pendergast. Also, you might think of Gideon as our present to those readers who have been mourning the demise of Bill Smithback.
Douglas: Yes, there’s a wee bit of Smithback in Gideon, no doubt about that. As for Pendergast and Gideon, they’d be like oil and water. Their ways of dealing with people and getting what they want are totally different. Pendergast crushes people mentally and verbally and sometimes physically. Gideon tricks them, he fools them, he hoodwinks them. He is the king of the brave new art of social engineering.
Do you tend to model your characters after people in your own life?
Douglas: Not at all. In fact, for the most part, we avoid it.
Lincoln: Never. That’s a scary thought. We do, however, steal bits and pieces, mix and match — every novelist has to do that.
How did you learn so much about Hart Island? Why did you decide to use that as a location in this book?
Douglas: People ask if we do our own research and the answer is yes. Hart Island is a perfect example why. I was browsing the Wikipedia entry on potter’s field for a completely different reason and came across a mention of Hart Island, the largest public burial ground in the world. I was stunned to learn that, within the boundaries of New York City, there was an uninhabited island, of over 100 acres in extent, that is the final resting place for a million people. As I read on, I was captivated by the history of the island: it had been used as a sanatorium, a place of quarantine, and a Nike missile base, and for a boy’s workhouse, among other things. There was an entire town on the island, abandoned and falling apart now. Being a baseball fan, I was amazed to learn that some of the original bleachers from Ebbets Field had been moved there in 1960 and are still there, covered with vines and rotting away. It made the perfect setting for the book’s climax.
Lincoln: Doug was caught sneaking onto Hart Island and got in serious trouble. But that’s a story for another day…
In this book you brought back the character Eli Glinn. Did you always intend to write him into new books? Will he continue to play an important role in this series?
Douglas: No, we didn’t. In fact, once we finished The Ice Limit, we really had little thought of bringing him back at all. We thought he was dead. But requests for a sequel to that book have been so persistent that we ultimately brought him back in what we call the Diogenes trilogy of the Pendergast novels. From there, it seemed almost natural to bring him back as Gideon’s employer.
Lincoln: The man is a quintessential survivor, and he reappeared, unbidden, as we were writing the Diogenes trilogy. And, yes, Eli Glinn will appear in future Gideon Crew novels.
Do you plan to write more Gideon Crew books?
Lincoln: Yes, we do! The second Gideon Crew novel, Gideon’s Corpse, is already well underway, and we hope to do more — perhaps as many as twelve in all. (We can’t do more than that for reasons that will be clear to anyone who reads Gideon’s Sword.) The actual number of books we write, though, will probably depend in part on reader enthusiasm: we hope people like him and his adventures as much as we do!
Douglas: We’ve already sold the movie rights to the Gideon series to Paramount Pictures, for the most excellent producer Michael Bay. So we do expect this to be a long and fruitful series. Gideon is only going to get better.
You both have been in the business for a long time. How have you seen book publishing change over the years? How much does changing technology affect the challenges of being a writer?
Lincoln: There were two big changes in writing technology. The first was the advent of the computer, which made revising infinitely easier. The second was the rise of the World Wide Web, which made research much easier. Research that once took days now only takes hours.
Douglas: The biggest change in our writing lifetimes is the advent of the e-book. This is an exciting new frontier. We are just at the cusp of what I think will be the biggest transformation of publishing since the Gutenberg Bible.
