Author Interviews all over the place

First up, and probably funniest, is thriller writer Brad Thor's email interview with Dr. Blogstein that gets into book soundtracks, fear of terrorists, and fake presidents:

DB: How does the president in your novels, Jack Rutledge, measure up to other fake presidents such as Josiah Bartlet from The West Wing, David Palmer from 24, or George W. Bush from Crawford, TX?

BT: ROTFL. You're a pretty funny guy, doc. Let me take these in order. Josiah Bartlet couldn't go a single round with President Rutledge. Who's going to train him? Josh? CJ? Mrs. McKlusky - "He's a wrecking machine, Josiah..."

Presidents Palmer and Rutledge, though, mano-a-mano would be a helluva fight. Plus, Palmer's got that bad paw with all that funky skin. That would be pretty cool, but I'm afraid if things got too tough, he'd tried to tag out to Jack Bauer. Then Scot Harvath would have to jump in and the ass whoopin' would begin. Bauer'd be hurtin' for a lot longer than 24 hours.

Next, as a preview of an event he's doing on April 29 with the American Stage in St. Petersburg, Dennis Lehane talkes to the Bradenton Herald about the MYSTIC RIVER MOVIE, the idea behind CORONADO and now, directing his own play:

[The play] debuted off-off-Broadway in 2005 and had its area premiere at Eckerd College in January, directed by American Stage's producing artistic director Todd Olson.

Olson asked Lehane if he could direct the play at American Stage. Lehane, who enjoyed working with Olson, jumped at the chance.

"It has been a beast of a project," Lehane said.

And Minette Walters is profiled by ABC Brisbane, where she discusses her newest novel, THE DEVIL'S FEATHER (which will be published here this summer by Knopf) and her favorite charity, Doctors Without Borders, with whom she visited Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the country's civil war.

Comments

[christin]

I'm too distracted by the mention of fake president David Palmer to make sense of the rest of this post...omg..........I love him.

[MartynW]

Brad Thor. In a plot that somehow Dostoyevsky never got round to, Thor wrote a novel in which an Al Qeda terrorist develops a nerve gas which only works on non-Muslims. Shouldn't someone develop one that only works on ignorant hate-filled right wing moronic thriller writers?

[Dr. Blogstein]

Wow, Martyn, how very innapropriate and slightly uncalled for that was.

Somehow I think event Dostoyevsky might have been "hate-filled" when writing about Al-Qaeda as well.

Looking forward to reading your book which I imagine will be sympathetic to barbaric terrorists.

[Kevin Wignall]

Full disclosure up front - I'm not familiar with Brad Thor's work so I don't know if it's tongue in cheek etc, etc.

Admittedly, Martyn's comments are on the robust side, but I think they're entirely appropriate and called for in terms of the questions they raise.

We have all at least considered tackling Islamic extremism in our work. I had a short in EQ earlier this year in which I actually played it for laughs - some might have thought I crossed the taste line then, but it's at least arguable.

The problem with this storyline, if Martyn gives an accurate depiction, is not the evil intent of the terrorists but the implicit suggestion that Muslims and non-Muslims are genetically different.

Given that there are still people in the world who try to argue that people of African origin are distinct to the point of being a separate sub-species, this is an incredibly dangerous and knuckle-headed route to go down.

Surely even escapist fiction has certain responsibilities?

[Dr. Blogstein]

There is nothing in Brad Thor's books that claim that Muslims are of a separate sub-species. I think the difference between you, Kevin, and Martyn above, is that you admitted to not reading Brad Thor while Martyn feels its ok to comment on something he has very little knowledge of.

[Lana Lang]

I'm not sure if Brad Thor is really that right-wing.

He hosts a show on PBS, after all. I think he's appeared on NPR once or twice.

He does have a very masculine name, however. And he's a very good looking man.

That's a nice photo of him on his website, with his hands on his hips. He looks a lot like David Caruso in "CSI Miami."