Author (Novel)

Bestselling Doctor / Author Tess Gerritsen (Extreme Interview)

by John Robert Marlow
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INTRO

Tess Gerritsen is a Stanford-educated physician-turned-author whose last 18 books have hit the bestseller lists that matter. After winning first place in a fiction writing contest, she decided to try her hand at novels. Starting with romantic thrillers and romantic suspense, she switched to (mostly) medical and crime thrillers in 1996, and has sold more than 30 million books in 40 languages. Tess has received the Nero Wolfe Award, the Rita Award, and the Robert B. Parker Award. She’s also written screenplays and composed music.

Best known for her Rizzoli & Isles series (which became a TV series on TNT), she also wrote Gravity, and the screenplays for Adrift (a CBS Movie of the Week), Island Zero (a self-financed horror film to be released in 2018), and a documentary called “Pig” (still in production). Publishers Weekly calls her the “medical suspense queen,” while Stephen King says she’s “better than Palmer, better than Cook…yes, even better than Michael Crichton.” Read more…

Author Interview: Alan Glynn (“Limitless”)

Alan Glynn, author of Limitless (The Dark Fields) and Winterland by John Robert Marlow

Alan Glynn is author of the novel The Dark Fields, which was adapted and republished as Limitless. The film adaptation, written and produced by Leslie Dixon, earned over $150M at the box office. (Click here for Leslie Dixon interview. Watch the Limitless trailer here.)

Alan is also the author of the novels Winterland (2009) and Bloodland (early 2012). Married with two children, he makes his home in Dublin, Ireland.

JRM: How and why did you come to be a writer—and how did you come to write The Dark Fields?

Alan Glynn: I’ve been a writer in my head since I was a small kid. I never made any contingency plans or trained for anything else, but I’m still constantly amazed that I’ve actually ended up doing it for a living. I think it was literally the feel of a pen in my hand that kicked it all off.

Fast forward a huge chunk of time to about 1999. Up to that point I’d written two novels and about fifteen short stories, all unpublished. Because there was no contingency plan, I just steamed ahead with the next novel, which became The Dark Fields.

The book started as a sort of what-if proposal. Thinking of the performance-enhancing drugs in sports, I thought, what if there were a performance-enhancing drug for businessmen, lawyers, politicians even? Read more…

Author Interview: Rex Pickett (“Sideways”)

Rex Pickett, author of Sideways and Vertical by John Robert Marlow

Rex Pickett is author of the novel Sideways. The modestly-budgeted film adaptation (written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor) earned over $100M at the box office, and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay (which it won) and Best Picture.

Rex has also directed, and has written several screenplays himself, including My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York—a film that won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. His most recent novel is a Sideways sequel called Vertical.

JRM: How did the Sideways adaptation come about?

RP: We went out to both film and publishing simultaneously. The publishing industry loathed the book in no uncertain terms, and we pulled it after 16 rejections because my book agent didn’t want to stink up the rest of the publishers in the event we did a film deal.

But the film world turned it down universally as well. You hear about rejections in publishing, because your agent gets rejection letters and sends them on to you. In film, you generally don’t hear anything. And I didn’t. Read more…