Here’s another interview in my series on how to become a writer. This time, I asked a couple questions to Steve Perry. I first learned of him via the Net Force series and later on by reading his blog, which has great info for both authors and martial artists. Steve’s written a gazillion novels in a wide range of franchises: Star Wars, Tom Clancy, Aliens, Conan and much, much more. So let’s just say he’s a pretty experienced writer.  Enjoy the interview!

Steve Perry, training Silat

Q: How did you start out writing your first book?
A: I was looking for an agent, and I’d been writing short stories, which weren’t going to get me one. So I pitched a novel. The potential agent wanted to see chapters and an outline, and I didn’t really know how to do that, so I wrote the book in a hurry, then used that as a basis for the outline. Read More→

Related Posts:

• So you want to be a writer, Part 6
• So you want to be a writer, Part 5
• So you want to be a writer, Part 3
• So you want to be a writer, Part 2
• So you want to be a writer, Part 1

In this series on how to become a writer, I wanted to get the views of some experienced and successful authors. So it’s with great pleasure that I can present this interview with Barry Eisler to you. Barry is a bestselling author, best known for his John Rain series, featuring a hit man specializing in natural causes. His latest book Fault Line starts another series and I’m looking forward to see how it evolves. As you’ll be able to tell from some ot the answers, Barry’s a friend of mine and he has a wicked sense of humor.

Don’t forget to check out his site for some more resources for writers and a great forum.

Q: How did you start out writing your first book?
A: I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as “forbidden knowledge:”  methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.  When I was a kid I read a biography of Harry Houdini, and in the book a cop was quoted as saying, “It’s fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life a crime, because if he had he would have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold.”  I remember thinking how cool it was that this man knew things that people weren’t supposed to know, things that gave him special power.  Anyway, since then I’ve amassed a small and unusual library on some of the foregoing and on other esoteric subjects, I spent three years in the CIA, I got pretty into a variety of martial arts…

And then I moved to Tokyo to train in judo.  I think all the other stuff must have been building up in my mind like dry tinder, waiting for the spark which life in Tokyo came to provide.  Because while I was there commuting to work one morning, a vivid image came to me of two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya.  I still don’t know where the image came from, but I started thinking about it.  Who are these men?  Why are they following that other guy?  Then answers started to come:  They’re assassins.  They’re going to kill him.  But these answers just let to more questions:  why are they going to kill him?  What did he do?  Who do they work for?  It felt like a story, somehow, so I started writing, and that was the birth of John Rain and Rain Fall.

Barry working on his ground game with Dave Camarillo

Q: When did you decide to write full-time and how did you reach that decision?
A: You remind me of that joke about why dogs lick their genitals… (oops, did I say that out loud)?
I love writing, and had for a long time thought that getting paid to do full time what I love would be wonderful.  So as soon as I got my first check, from Sony’s Village Books imprint for the Japanese rights, I left my day job and started concentrating full time on writing.  That was in 2001, and it’s been a dream come true ever since. Read More→

Related Posts:

• So you want to be a writer, Part 7
• So you want to be a writer, Part 5
• So you want to be a writer, Part 3
• So you want to be a writer, Part 2
• So you want to be a writer, Part 1