With this summer’s THE LOST THRONE, Chris Kuzneski continued his commercial and critical success as a thriller author. Here, he talks about where he’s headed and how he got there, starting from where many never progress: the self-published novel.
BOOKGASM: Your route to becoming an author has been an unusual one, from self-publishing THE PLANTATION to becoming famous overseas and now hitting the U.S. How did that all work out?
KUZNESKI: Obviously, my career has taken some unexpected detours along the way. I taught middle school and high school English for five years before I had saved enough money to take a year off and write a novel. I wasn’t sure if my effort would pay off or not, but I know I would have hated myself if I hadn’t tried. Unfortunately, at the end of the year, I had a manuscript, THE PLANTATION, but no agent to represent it.
After being turned down by every agency under the sun, I decided to take a different approach. I figured if anyone could identify with my predicament, it would be other writers who had gone through the same process at the beginning of their careers. Hoping they would be supportive, I wrote personal letters to several of my favorite authors, asking them to read a print-on-demand version of THE PLANTATION. Amazingly, most of them agreed to do it, and before I knew it, the endorsements started rolling in. And I’m talking big-name authors like James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Douglas Preston, James Rollins and many more. Needless to say, I was stunned and overjoyed.
After that, I got an incredible agent and started working on my next novel, SIGN OF THE CROSS. Just about the same time I finished it, Dan Brown released THE DA VINCI CODE. Thanks to him, publishers around the world were desperate for the next big religious thriller, and my book fit their needs. In less than a year, I went from being self-published to being translated into over 20 languages.
BOOKGASM: In THE LOST THRONE, you jump between two very different mysteries throughout the book. Was that tough to do, in pacing and plotting?
KUZNESKI: Believe it or not, I think it was easier to write two separate storylines than one cohesive plot, especially for a novel of this scale. In my mind, dual plots gave me a lot more flexibility as a writer. If my three characters had been in the same city, following the same clues at the same time, their movement would have been a juggling act, a constant battle to keep them out of each other’s way. Personally, I think that would have become claustrophobic — not only for me, but also for my audience.
By writing two plotlines, I had the freedom to alter the tempo any time I wanted. For instance, if Nick Dial had an introspective chapter, I could follow it with an action scene for Payne and Jones. Or vice versa. Of course, the biggest problem was bringing the two storylines together at the end of the book. Once I figured out how to do that, the rest was easy.
BOOKGASM: How did real-life archeologist Heinrich Schliemann inspire the novel?
KUZNESKI: I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh, taking a course on the Greek classics. One of the lectures focused on Heinrich Schliemann’s life, particularly how he used THE ILIAD to discover the lost city of Troy. Or, how he didn’t. That was the incredible thing about Schliemann: No one knows what to believe, because he was such a brilliant con man. Half the time he was taking credit for things that he didn’t do; the other half, he was denying things that he actually did. As an author, that gave me a lot of fodder to work with.
Anytime Schliemann would invent a new fact about himself — for instance, he claimed he had dinner with the President — he would actually change his diary to cover his tracks. Sometimes, he even glued in additional pages if he didn’t have enough room for all the fictional details. Keep in mind, I’m talking about his personal diary, something only he got to read during his lifetime. How bizarre is that? I’m not sure if he did it to help keep all of his tales straight, or he did it because he knew scholars would read his diary after he had died. Whatever the reason, it spoke volumes about the man and his ego.
BOOKGASM: With the foreign locations, how did you handle research?
KUZNESKI: In order to make my setting realistic, I had to do a lot of research. One of the coolest parts of the book — at least from what I’ve been told — is an extended chase scene through the streets of Saint Petersburg. To make it accurate, I printed dozens of pictures of the buildings and landmarks, and attached them to a street map of the city.
Therefore, when my characters ran down a street, I knew exactly what they would be looking at. By the time I was done, I felt like I could drive a taxi in that city. Who knows? If this book doesn’t sell, I might learn Russian and go over there for work.
Thankfully, my books are fiction. So if I screw something up, I get to claim that I did it on purpose. I mean, talk about no pressure!
That being said, I was trained as a journalist, so I always strive to get things right. Back when I was in college, that meant dozens of trips to the library, digging through the stacks, trying to find multiple sources to support your conclusions. Nowadays, I can do the same thing with the touch of a button. Without the Internet, I couldn’t have written a book like THE LOST THRONE — at least not in a year’s time. A decade ago, it would’ve taken me a minimum of three years to do all the research.
BOOKGASM: Most thrillers feature an alpha-male protagonist. You have three. Did that create any problems while you were writing?
KUZNESKI: Since I’m an alpha male, it wasn’t tough at all. I pretty much just described myself in every scene. Kidding, just kidding!
Actually, in all seriousness, I try not to think of my characters in black-and-white roles, like “alpha-male” or “heroine.” Writers who do that tend to write stereotypical characters, and that’s something I want to avoid. So in my mind, I wasn’t creating three alpha males, I was simply creating three different characters.
BOOKGASM: Are your books going to continue as a single series, or do you see spin-offs in the works?
KUZNESKI: From the moment I created Nick Dial in SIGN OF THE CROSS, I realized he had spin-off potential, whether I wrote it myself or had someone co-write it. I might have to give Clive Cussler a call and ask him how he launched his NUMA FILES series.
Out of curiosity, do you have Clive’s number? Seriously. Do you have it?
BOOKGASM: No, sorry. So what’s next for you?
KUZNESKI:I’m close to finishing the next Payne/Jones thriller. It’s called THE PROPHECY, and it focuses on the lost work of Nostradamus. Putnam will be releasing in summer 2010. —Rod Lott
OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with IDW Publishing’s Chris Ryall
• Q&A with Q&A with VALLEY OF THE DEAD’s Kim Paffenroth
• Q&A with I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL’s Tucker Max
Related posts:
- Q&A with IDW Publishing’s Chris Ryall
- LOST to be found … in bookstores
- The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
- TV’s LOST spins off into BAD TWIN book
- The Book of Lost Things
