Today I’m privileged to have as my guest an outstanding
best-selling author of Techno-Thrillers, and someone who has directly contributed
to the success of yet another best-selling thriller writer. Ladies and
Gentlemen,
Thomas Block
I was a professional pilot for a long time
(I finally retired more than a dozen years ago), and a professional writer for
almost as long as I flew airplanes. While
my airline flying is behind me, the writing portion of my professional life
hasn’t ended in the least; matter of fact, it’s been cranked up a peg or two in
the past several years.
I flew for an airline for over 36 years,
ending my career crossing the North Atlantic several times a month as I plied my
way between the US and various European cities - just like my characters do in
my latest novel Captain. My professional
writing began a few years after my airline flying, first strictly with magazine
work but then on to novels as I began helping my childhood friend Nelson
DeMille as he began his own bestselling novelist career. Over the years, I have
assisted Nelson DeMille with a good many of his novels in one way or another,
and you’ll find that fact in most of his novels on the acknowledgement page -
including a very generous mention of my new novel Captain inside DeMille’s
newest novel, The Panther, which was
released in October, 2012. Here is an
extract from that acknowledgement section of The Panther:
“Many of my
novels have benefited from the assistance of my childhood friend Thomas Block,
US Airways Captain (retired), columnist and contributing editor to aviation
magazines, and co-author with me of Mayday,
as well as the author of seven other novels.
Although Tom has retired as an International captain, he has not retired
from writing, which does not require good eyesight or quick reflexes, and Tom
has recently published his seventh novel, Captain, available on his website: www.ThomasBlockNovels.com.
Many thanks,
too, to Tom’s lovely wife, Sharon Block, former flight attendant for Braniff
International and US Airways, for her timely and careful reading of the
manuscript and her excellent suggestions, as well as her keen eye for typos and
bad punctuation. Sharon’s reading skills
have been invaluable to both me and Tom, as our minds tended to wander in high
school English class. What we were
thinking about is another story, but we both knew we’d someday have a lady in
our lives who knew how to proofread.”
In 1978, with Nelson DeMille’s help and
introductions (his breakthrough novel By
the Rivers of Babylon had made him into an International bestselling
novelist the year before), I signed a
contract to produce my first airplane action/adventure novel Mayday - which went on to also become an
International bestseller. In 1997,
Nelson and I took the out-of-print Mayday,
revised and updated it together, then republished the novel with both our names
as co-authors. That version became a CBS
Movie of the Week in October, 2005, and is still readily available from Nelson
DeMille’s extensive backlist.
During the 80’s I wrote five additional
novels that had a good run of success throughout the world. For various logistical reasons I didn’t find
myself writing any novels through the 90’s, although I did do even more work
with Nelson DeMille through that period and well into the new century. With all of my old novels long out of print
(excepting Mayday), I realized that
with the dawning of the new era of publishing for both print and ebook versions,
that I could go back to those older novels (the rights to those works had long since
reverted to me), extensively revise and update them, and then send them back
out to once again see the light of day - now dressed up in their modern-day
clothing.
All of these novels were basically
airplane-theme action/adventure, although they ran a gamut from hypersonic
airlines on through Airships and even a detective story. You can see all of the details of these
novels - which continue to sell nicely and receive good reviews - at our
website.
But in the back of my mind I had yet
another story - a new story that I wanted to tell in what I consider a classic
manner, with emphasis on plot, motivation and timing - and with an appropriate
cross-section of characters. While
writers have debated continuously whether it was best to begin the idea of a
new novel with ‘plot’ or ‘characters’, I’m firmly from the school of ‘plot’. To me - especially in the
action/adventure/mystery genres that I’ve worked in - I need to have a ‘plot’
in my mind and then I’ll discover that appropriate characters will simply show
up to advance that storyline as I continue writing. The other way, of course, is to develop a few
interesting characters and have the ‘plot’ develop around them, but that’s not
my particular working method.
As
always, my new novel would be an aviation-theme action/adventure. But unlike many of the modern stories I was
reading, I intended right from the beginning not to pump it up unnecessary violence,
sex and endless mayhem. To me, too many
modern novels (and especially modern movies!) are hardly more than comic books
with storylines that don’t hang together and with endless and brutish snapping
from one scene to the next as if the creators expected that the audience had an
attention span (and a companion attention to detail) that could only be
measured in the smallest portions possible.
So I began writing Captain, a story that was
developed in, as I’ve said, what I consider more of a classic fashion - old
fashioned, really, because it would have an unwinding beginning, a solid middle
built from those earlier chapter underpinnings, and what I wanted to become a very
satisfying ending.
Captain is a story
about what happens to the crew and passengers on a particular flight from Rome,
Italy to New York when unthinkable things begin to happen to their
airliner. It is full of characters that
readers have repeatedly told me that they loved - and also loved to hate. It is an action/adventure tale with a
backdrop of emotions. It is a novel that
slowly moves from scene to scene -
but at a fast pace.
Is that sort of slow/fast mix
possible? Look at the classic movies Casablanca and Dances With Wolves, or the novel Lonesome Dove. That’s exactly
what I was trying to do with Captain; a number of reviewers and
general readers have told me that, to them, Captain is a powerhouse
of emotions while it is simultaneously packed with a very high level of action,
intrigue and adventure.
When I finished Captain we sent it to several
New York publishing houses but their editors initially told me that ‘airplane
stories were out’ and ‘this isn’t what readers want these days’. Since Captain was the story that I wanted
to tell and in the manner that I wanted to tell it, I elected to go with my own
gut feelings about the novel and stick with what I had. Captain is now published Internationally
in print editions, all ebook formats, and I’m just beginning the process of
having Captain (and all my other action/adventure/mystery novels) put
into audio-book form.
Speaking of reviews, it’s quite an
interesting education for a writer to spend a little time with the growing
mound of reviews and comments that you get (and instantly, for that matter) courtesy
of the Internet. While it’s silly to
expect any book to be all things to all people, it’s quite a revelation to see such
a broad spectrum of opinions on exactly the same issues/segments within a
particular novel; here are a couple of examples from Captain:
The flying scenes (which is only one-ply of
the novel’s multiple layers of storyline and character development) were
created to be absolutely authentic - I used my own 36+ years of airline flying
and my own experiences at piloting wide-body jetliners across the oceans to develop
a very real sense of what can and might go on in an airliner. Most of the Reader Reviews and comments that
have come from pilots have said things such as “…everything is very accurate
and realistic”, “Thomas Block knows his stuff, both aviation and writing” and
“As a 10,000+ hour licensed pilot, I found this to be a very accurate and
exciting book”. Now, to balance that
out, I did get one review from a fellow who said he was a ‘retired airline
pilot’ and that the novel was “totally unbelievable and unrealistic”. How, I wondered, could he possibly say
that? I came to the eventual conclusion
that this man must have personally ‘identified’ with the actions of the
characters that I created to become the ‘bad guys’ and, thus, to him, the good
guys were “unbelievable and unrealistic”.
Another example of never being ‘all things
to all readers’ are the psychological/emotional undercurrents throughout the
novel. Here are some of those reader
reviews: “…excellent character development across its entire complement”,
“Something for everyone - action, romance, intrigue”, “Wonderful characters
that will pull you in”, “…several sub-stories made me consider the meaning of
life and the way people react to stress” and “Most compelling is the parallel
between the psychological impact upon people in life threatening
situations”. Sometime after those
reviews were posted, one man wrote that “…the action was okay, but it was full
of psycho-babble and bad romance-novel stuff”. Oh, well - I guess I struck out with him.
Here’s my own - obviously very prejudiced -
opinion of my latest action/adventure thriller: Captain is an exciting
adventure story that you can curl up and spend an enticing, intriguing, enjoyable
time with. That’s not just my opinion,
but also the opinion of a good percentage of the readers who have already spent
time with Captain. You can see those
reviews for yourself on our website,
or directly through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.
I’m very proud of what Captain has meant to the
readers who have found the novel to be the experience that I intended. These readers were quite satisfied with the
time and effort they spent with the crew, the passengers and the other
characters involved in the emotional saga of Trans-Continental Airlines Flight
3. As the creator of Captain,
I have every hope that you will be, too.
Welcome aboard.
Bio:
Thomas Block has written a
number of aviation-oriented novels, many which have gone on to acquire
best-seller status in numerous countries. His novel writing began with the
publication of "Mayday" in 1979. That novel was rewritten with his
boyhood friend, novelist Nelson DeMille in 1998 and remains on DeMille's
extensive backlist. "Mayday" became a CBS Movie of the Week in
October, 2005.
Several of the other novels by Block include "Orbit" (a top bestseller in Germany, among other nations), "Airship Nine", "Forced Landing" (also done as a radio serialization drama in Japan), "Skyfall", "Open Skies" and "Captain". Thomas Block is still writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has edited and updated his novels into ebooks and printed editions.
Several of the other novels by Block include "Orbit" (a top bestseller in Germany, among other nations), "Airship Nine", "Forced Landing" (also done as a radio serialization drama in Japan), "Skyfall", "Open Skies" and "Captain". Thomas Block is still writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has edited and updated his novels into ebooks and printed editions.
Block's magazine writing
began in 1968 and over the next five decades his work has appeared in numerous
publications. He worked 20 years at FLYING Magazine as Contributing Editor, and
as Contributing Editor to Plane & Pilot Magazine for 11 years. Block became
Editor-at-Large for Piper Flyer Magazine and Cessna Flyer Magazine in 2001.
During his long career as an aviation writer he has written on a wide array of
subjects that range from involvement with government officials to evaluation
reports on most everything that flies.
An airline pilot for US Airways for over 36 years before his retirement in April, 2000, Captain Thomas Block has been a pilot since 1959. Since 2002, he has lived on a ranch in Florida with his wife Sharon where they board, compete and train horses.
Complete information (including direct links
to booksellers) is available at http://www.ThomasBlockNovels.com and also through the author’s Ranch website at http://www.FlyingB-Ranch.com.
For Facebook users, additional information
about Thomas Block Novels can be found at two interlinked Facebook sites:
Thank you, Thomas, for this interesting insight to your journey as a best-selling thriller writer. It goes to show that personal experience is invaluable when imbuing a novel with convincing authenticity, and younger aspiring authors should take note of this when researching for their work.
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
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