Steve Berry

So let's start at the beginning. How did you get started writing?

Well, I, I didn't write my first words until I was 35 years old. So I got started late, which I would not recommend to people. I recommend starting a little earlier. I kind of wasted ten years. During the nineteen eighties, I had a little voice in my head that was telling me to write, and I didn't know what that was at the time. I didn't understand it. I now know that every writer has a little voice in their head telling them to write. They're actually born with that little voice in the head that tells them to write.

Now it doesn't tell you how to write and didn't tell you what to write, but it does tell you, that I need you to sit down and I need you to write. But I ignored it until the summer of nineteen ninety. And when I did that, I decided at that time to write a novel. And I sat down and I wrote a book, and it took me twelve months to write it. And I wrote what I knew. Now, subsequently, I teach writing. I've taught about 3,500 students around the country in writing, and I will tell you that writing what you know is extremely bad advice. Do not write what you know.

No. Instead, write what you love. If what you know and what you love are the same thing, fine. But if it's not, pick the one you love. I didn't. I wrote a legal thriller. And, of course, at the time in 1990, legal thrillers were really hot. That was really going high.

And it was about six inches, seven inches thick, which tells you how bad it was. It's not supposed to be that big. It was a 70,000 words, and it was horrendous. It's a good story just told horribly, but it's the only manuscript I kept. It's the only one I have. I've written 27, and it's the only one I've kept because it's the best thing I'll ever write in my life. And you know why? It's because I started it, and I finished it.

Oh.

Ninety percent of all writers do not finish what they start, but I finished it. Well, over the course of the next eleven years, I wrote seven more manuscripts. So I wrote eight manuscripts over twelve years. Finally, five of those went to New York publishing houses. They were rejected 85 times. I made it on the eighty sixth time twelve years after I started, and that was The Amber Room in 02/2003. And now here we are 26 novels later, and I get to keep doing it. So I had a very long process to get here, but it was worth it in the end.

Yeah. That's incredible. So you've been writing eleven, twelve years submitting manuscripts before you had one picked up. Correct. And you said you had five submitted to

Five went to New York houses. Yeah. They were rejected by at that time, there were 17 New York publishing houses. Today, there are four. So it shows you the what's changed. So there are, they were rejected 85 times. I made it the eighty sixth time finally.

Wow. So you had an agent at that point when you're submitting?

I was fortunate enough to get an agent, which is incredible because getting an agent is just harder, harder than getting a publisher. Yeah. But for some reason, Pam Ahern in New Orleans took me, and she stuck with me do a through 85 rejections. She was there all the way through. Why she stuck with me, I have no idea. She should have fired me long ago. But, she told me later, she said, that I just had a feeling we were gonna make it one day. I thought we were gonna make it.

You were you were determined, and I wanted to be there when you did it. And so she, she she did it. And now she gets 15% of my first ten novels for the for eternity. Yeah.

So that's incredible persistence. And you were working, at that time, I imagine you were Yeah.

I was a lawyer. Yeah. I was working as a lawyer full time. I would go to the office at 06:30 in the morning, and I would write from around, you know, 06:30 to about nine. And I wrote I wrote probably thirteen, fourteen manuscripts that way. I I did the first eight books after I was published that way. No one actually saw me write a word. You know, I I was alone when I wrote.

So, that was the way it was until about book nine, somewhere in that neighborhood.

And so when you're you've got an agent, you've done eight books, five of them have been rejected, you keep submitting. How do you have, like, the persistence or, I guess, the self esteem to keep going with that

Well, it wasn't easy. I'm I'm not gonna fool you, and I'm not a Superman. I quit about three times during that period, but I credit the little voice in my head. The little voice would come back after a few days and say, okay. The pity party's over. Let's get back to work now. Let's go to work. So and and it did.

It got me back, and I just kept plugging away until one day the world changed. What happened for me is the world changed. I was writing action, history, secrets, conspiracies. That used to be called a spy novel. But in 1990, that genre died. When the cold war ended and and the Soviet Union collapsed, the spy novel died. And by the mid nineties, the genre was dead. And by February, it was cold and in the grave.

And then in 02/2003, Da Vinci Code came out, and Da Vinci brought the genre back, but not as a spy thriller, but as action history sequence conspiracies, as an international suspense thriller. And that's what I was writing. And Random House had had bought Da Vinci. They didn't realize what they had. They realized they had something special, but they didn't realize they had one of the largest selling fiction books of all time. But they were looking for stuff to go with it. And I was a Dan Brown fan long before Da Vinci Code, so mine was perfect. And I got bought to go with Dan.

Dan came in spring of o three. I came in fall of o three. He gave me a wonderful blurb from my book, called it My Kind of Thriller, and the rest is kind of history. I just kept going.

That's amazing. So persistence plus a little bit of luck?

Yeah. So you gotta have luck, but you make your own luck by staying in the game.

Exactly. Exactly.

Your own luck by staying in the game. If you want it bad enough, you stay with it. And one day, you'll catch a break. And one day, I did. I caught a break.

Yeah. That's amazing. So you've been writing for a long time. Do you remember how you found your agent? Did you go about it

I did the old fashioned way. I went and bought the Guide to Literary Agents, which is put out by writer's digest every year. It's still put out to this day. I opened it up to the non fee paying section because you never pay an agent a fee under any circumstance. I looked them up. I saw every agent who who handled my genre. It was about 400. And I did what it said.

Each one tells you what to do. Now in those days, there were no electronic submissions. You had to type the letters out. You had to put them in the envelope. You had to put the synopsis if they ask for synopsis in there. You had to do all the things it asked to do. And I did that. And out of 400, about 10 wrote back.

Wow. And out of the 10 who wanted a little more, only one took me, which is a miracle, by the way, because usually it's zero. And she took me and hung with me doing 85 rejections.

So you sent postage to 400 agents?

Yes. 400 agents postage. And I remember at the time, it was probably $3,400 at that point in postage. I did them myself. I typed out the letters on the word processor, which was a very primitive linear word processor that worked in DAWs and the old DAW system. So it, it was very, I did each one and I tailor made it to each one and I did what it said. Now if people are listening to me today and they do that, you could you still do it that way.

Yeah.

But now you can do electronically, but follow the directions. If it says I want 10 pages, if it says I want 30 pages, don't give them 31 because the chapter ends on the next page. It's actually a test to see if you can follow directions. Follow the directions exactly as it says and send your stuff in and see what happens.

Yeah. Another lesson in persistence plus a little bit of luck. And it's a good lesson now because, you know, when people say, oh, I've been rejected by 50 agent. And I'm like, great. Try another 50 and then see where you're at. So it's

Oh, yeah. I mean, fifty fifty, you're not even you're not even in the game.

Not even in it. Yeah.

In the game. Yeah. You gotta keep going. And if you get rejected, you gotta write another manuscript and start over again. Yep. Yeah. You keep that's what I kept doing. And I was teaching myself during that twelve years how to write a book a year because I knew if I ever became a commercial fiction writer, they were gonna want a book a year.

Now that was back before ebooks and Amazon and all that. So in those days, you only wrote a book a year. Mhmm. So I taught myself how to do that so that when I did get bought, I was ready to go. Yeah.

Yeah. That's smart. If you're ready to play, hit the ground running without a

push for hit the ground because you gotta to you write a book, it's great. But you're only as good as the last word you wrote. Now you move on to the next word.

Yeah. Yeah. So now we're at it's, 19 books you have published. Is this your nineteenth?

I have 19 cottons, but I have 26 total now.

26 cottons. 27

is coming. 27 will come this July. So I have 27 novels. I've been writing thirty five years, published 22 of those.

Wow.

So, but I'm on novel 27, 19 cotton Malone's.

19 Cotton Malone's. And the newest one, The Medici Return, is a Cotton Malone book.

Idiots. Idiots.

Yeah. What do you love about that character? You keep bringing him back.

He's a great he's fun. He's he's very ordinary, and that's what makes him cool. He's like a guy next door. He has troubles. He has problems with an ex wife, his son. He's not good with women. He's got a bookshop to run. He's got all kinds of things.

But yet he gets himself into some extraordinary situations and is able to get himself out of those. So I, that's what I think makes him popular. He's had 19 adventures, but that shouldn't put off any readers. You do not have to read my books in order. You can pick the books up in any order you want. You can actually read this one first and go back. You won't miss anything. Nothing will change.

I write them that way on purpose.

Yeah. I think that's a great strategy. Start anywhere. Start with anything that any blurb that grabs your your fancy.

All the books deal with a different part of history, something from the past that's still relevant today. They're modern day thrillers, but each of them deals with something different. So you need to look and see what what interests you.

Exactly. And do you think that, that's the reason this is so popular this series? You've kind of made him an everyman. Do you think that makes it

Exactly, I think, what it is because he's not a Daniel Craig. He's not a Marvel hero. He's a guy that makes mistakes, but he can rebound from them, and he can save the day. And he's been, you know, I've been very fortunate that he's caught on, and it's a brand now because the thriller genre is in decline right now. It really we had a twenty year run. 02/2023, it began its descent. Romantasy has taken over now, and it's now the hot genre.

Yep.

Thrillers were the hot genre for for twenty years, but not anymore. But thankfully, I have an audience and a brand, so I can continue and keep going forward, which I did not have in the nineteen nineties, which is why I didn't get bought.

Yeah. That's the I think the dream, right, is for you as an author to be your own brand.

Yes.

People are buying a book because it's your name on it.

It's a Steve Berry book. Yeah. Yeah. They run by Steve Berry, and that's cool. And that's what you strive for so that your audience that gives you worth in the publishing business. Yes.

Mhmm. And so with this character, do you think that, readers love him because it's easy to put themselves in their shoes? Yeah. I think so.

I think it's very simple. He's not as I said, he's not a superhero. Yeah. He, he thinks like we do. He reasons like we do, but he can do extraordinary things. And I think readers identify with him. My readership's about fifty fifty men and women, which is really cool.

Mhmm.

But women like him and men like him. My books don't have a lot of violence. People die in the books, but only if absolutely necessary. There's nothing gratuitous about it. There's no foul language, and there's no sex. So, you know, the books are you know, I think the readers like them.

Yeah. And appeals to a pretty wide range. So this book, you said every book has a different historical aspect to it. This one, we're going to the Vatican, looking at papal documents, sixteenth century Italy. How did you do research for that?

I was there. I was in I went to Tuscany. I'd never been before. And so in 02/2022, I went. And, I went to see Florence in Siena, and then we stayed and watched the Palio. And I saw Tuscany all over there, and I I said, this is great. And while I was there, a novel found me. You don't go looking for a novel.

It will never ever reveal itself. But if you can put yourself in the right situation, the idea will jump out in front of you. And your job is to recognize it when it jumps out. And so it did jump out, and I realized there was a novel here. And I put together this whole thing around the pledge of Christ and the pope, Julius the second, and the money he borrows from the Medici, and the debt that's still owed today, and the fact that who's gonna be the next pope and the next prime minister of Italy hinges on the balance of cotton finding not only the pledge of Christ, but the last Medici. The the Medici family died out in 1743. It no more heirs. It went extinct.

But it occurred to me, what if there was some more? So all of that is what Cotton finds himself in, and he ends up in the Palio, which is one of the greatest spectacles in the world. And he gets to ride a horse in the Palio, which is pretty cool.

That is pretty cool. Was there, was it a bunch of things that kind of brought this novel together for you? Or was there one specific thing that you're like, oh, this is it?

No. I kinda built. I I saw the Medici Chapel. I saw the Domo. I saw it went all around Florence. I went to Siena. I saw the Palio. All that sort of built.

And then one day, I was driving back to the hotel in the van, and the idea hit me. I said, I I there's a novel. I got it. I think I know what it is now. And, and the Medici return was born.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, obviously, the Medicis were hugely influential influential and rich family, when they existed. What what did what kind of research did you do for this? Did you research while you were there? Or Yeah.

I did a lot. I was there. I actually went back another trip a few months later that was specifically geared to research and spent, five days there. And I got about 200 books and brought them home. And I did a lot of work here as well. And I got my three to 400 sources, and I went to work. And I learned all about the Medici. I didn't know anything about them.

I never I never did first thing about the Medici. And, I I had to learn all about the family. I didn't know anything about the Palio. I didn't know anything about Florence. I had to learn all that stuff. But that's what makes it a little fun for me is that I get to learn some things I never knew.

Yeah. Three to 400 books is a tremendous amount of books.

Every every novel is three to 400. I don't read those books now, but I read large chunks of those books. I do. And my notes are about six to eight inches tall, and I use those to write the book.

Wow. So you do that before before you put

Yes. That's I get started, six months, before I finish the novel before. I do the preliminary research so that when I finish the that novel, I can start the next one the next day.

Wow.

And I'm ready to go. That's how I maintain a book a year.

So you're researching the next book while you're finishing the book before?

Yes. Absolutely. You're a multitasker. Researching and outlining the first hundred pages of that book. Yeah. There's always three in my brain at all times. Right now, I'm writing 26, researching and outlining 27, and conceptualizing 28. Wow.

There's always three. That's the only way I can stay, on the on the book of your schedule.

Nice. Yeah. Especially with the amount of research you need to do. I imagine that's

a little bit more my books a little different than others is there's a huge amount because I keep my books about 90% accurate. I trip it up about 10%. There's a writer's note in the back of all of my books that tells you when that happens and how that happens.

Okay. That's nice. So so how do you do that, that balance between what's historically accurate and the suspense?

Yeah. Mixing information with action is the toughest thing in our genre.

Yeah.

You've got people who read our genre want information, but they don't want too much of it because we're not writing a textbook. We're writing a novel. So I have to mix it. And I'm not saying I'm great at it. I'm just saying that I'm very conscious of that mix, and I try to make sure I don't give you too much or too little. My wife, Elizabeth, is my first reader of the manuscripts, and she's an editor herself. So she has a good eye of when I have too much or too little. And she Yeah.

She keeps that straight for me.

Yeah. I don't know if you have a rule of thumb of that for that. But, you know, I read, a lot of, like, electronic books. I read paper books too. But it's really interesting because I read all all different genres to see what people highlight depending on what they're reading. And with the thrillers, it's usually the factual stuff. Mhmm. They want that.

They want those little tidbits. They want the trick is to make those tidbits relevant to what's going on.

Exactly. You know? They're not

just not gratuitous information. It's it's important information. That's why the locales in my book become almost characters in the novel. They're they're just not there. They're integral to the plot.

Yeah. And I imagine you have to travel to make that happen. Have you ever got a book where you you haven't visited the place you've written about?

Two books I did. The Emperor's Tomb, I did not go to China, but I had a friend of mine who did. And he brought me back a lot of pictures and answered all my questions. And then I did not go to Antarctica for the Charlemagne pursuit. Though I'm gonna go to Antarctica in a couple of years. Couple of years from now, I wanna go really bad. So we're gonna make that trip in a couple of years. But, those are the two exceptions where I did not do any, I did not do did not go to the scenes on in those two books.

All the rest, I'll be this one particularly, I went to everything that you see in the novel.

Yeah. So for the books where you didn't go, did you find that more difficult?

So right? Not really. I was able to get enough books and descriptions to make it work. And he belonged to China, so he was able to tell me things he smelled and saw and touched, and that helped.

Yeah. That's incredible. So, yeah, Antarctica should be good. There's only a very short time you can go there. Right, though? If you're

You go in you go in February. Yeah.

That's it.

December, January, or February is all you can go. And, so we're looking to do that. I want I've been wanting to do it. So I think in '27, we're gonna do that.

Nice. Then we'll, look forward to another Antarctica book maybe.

That'd be cool. It wouldn't it? I I did a pretty good run with it though in Charlemagne pursuit. So I may be able to use the locale again. Nice. So overall,

you, you've said that the secret to writing a thriller series is to keep everything the same but different. Yes. And I'm curious. What what does that mean to you?

Well, every book in 19 books in a series, they all have to be the same in that you have Cotton Malone and Cassiopeia Vidd and the other characters. You have action, history, secrets, conspiracies.

Yeah.

What's different is a different bad guy, different thing from history, different motivations, different so what, different, motivations of the bad guy. All of these things are different in each novel, so you have the same but different. And so each one fits in the series, but it also stands on its own two feet too. And that's what you want. If you have read the books in order, there are things you will, notice. But if you have not read them in order, those things will not annoy you because you won't you'll pass right by them, and they won't mean anything to you. And so that's the trick. I learned that trick from Lee Child in the Reacher series.

You know, make them stand on their own, but every once in a while, you drop a little nugget that means nothing to anyone unless you've read the other book. If you hadn't if you hadn't read the other book, that doesn't annoy you like there's a secret you don't know about.

Okay. So it's an invisible like an invisible Easter egg for for

people to read it. You have read the other books, you know what it is.

Yeah. And then you're an insider.

The other books, you go, okay. Fine. That's cool. Let's go and keep going forward.

Nice.

And that's the way you want it. You don't want it where they they read it and go, oh, what is that, man? What do I they know I don't know. Yeah. That's what you don't want.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. And I also saw that, Cotton Malone is coming to television. Is this Well,

there's talk about it, and there's a lot you know, they are as I say all the time, they knock on the door, they stand out on the front porch, but they never come inside. So they're still out on the front porch talking to me. No one you know, I've invited them inside, but they haven't come in yet. So we'll we'll see. We'll see if that

Seems the way it is to go with Hollywood. You option everything, and then you hurry up and you wait. And

You hurry up and you wait. That's right. So we'll see. I don't I don't look forward to ever happen. But,

you

know, it'd be kinda cool if he came alive, but I don't I don't see it ever happening.

Yeah. Would you wanna be involved with that process? Or

I mean, I don't mind helping out or answering questions or doing it, but I don't know the first thing about making TV shows. Yeah. I could help, you know, a little with the script and make sure that things stay faithful to the series. I think that's what you wanna do is stay faithful.

Right. While while translating it to a different media. So

Yes.

Yeah. Alright. Very nice. Can you tell us a little bit about History Matters?

Yeah. It's a foundation that my wife and I started in 02/2009, and we help local communities raise money for historic preservation. And we've done about 80 projects, raised about $3,500,000 We go into a community and we do a writer's workshop where we teach writing. You buy your way in with a contribution, dollars 200, dollars 3 hundred. That money goes to the project. We don't charge to come. We don't charge expenses. And then, you know, basically, the writers get taught, and the project gets money.

And it works out really well. And we've done quite a few. We have a website that's attached to my own website, steveberry.org. There's a history matters tag in there. Just click on it. If someone has a project or something that they may want some help with, you can send us an email. We'll see if we can help you out.

Well, that's lovely. That's lovely that you don't charge for that and just do that for No.

We donate our time and all to do it. That's where we've taught about 3,500 students.

Wow. That's incredible. And you also were a founding member of, the International Thrillers Writers.

I was. I was one. There's about 50 founding members, and I was lucky enough to be one of those.

Yeah. How did that come about? How what was the inception of that like? Because now it's a huge contract.

That was started in 02/2004 by Gayle Linz and David Burrell. It's it's the Guild of the Thriller Writers. I think they have over 5,000, six thousand members now. When we started it, we had us, 50. Yeah. It was just a few of us. I served as co president for a few years. I also served as vice president of publications for a number of years.

So, I did several books for international thriller writers. I put several books together. Thriller, Thriller two, FaceOff, Match Up, all those, I I was the, managing editor of all of those.

Wow. And the initial idea was kinda to have a guild for thriller writers. Was that kind of the idea behind it?

Yes. That was the idea, and it it it now has become that. And they meet every year in New York in Thriller Fest.

They do. Yeah. And it's really fun. If anyone is a thriller writer and you wanna attend, well worth your time. So wonderful. Well, as we're coming to a close, I just have one final question that we like to ask everyone. If you could offer one piece of advice to newer or aspiring writers, what would you say to them?

Write. Write. Do not ignore the little voice in your head. Sit down and write. There's only one way to learn how to write, and that's to write. And you have to keep writing and write some more and write some more. You can eventually find some help that so you can learn how to teach yourself how to write. No one can teach you how to write.

There's no there's nobody in the world that can teach you how to write, but there are people that can teach you how to teach yourself how to write. And that's what would be nice to find. I was lucky to find that. Some people who helped teach me how to teach myself would write. And then you have to do it every single day. You have to do it. And keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. There is no shortcut.

None.