Speaking Volumes

I've got to give Mohegan Sun Casino credit for hosting some of the finest in their winning author series. This past weekend I had the pleasure to hear author Steve Berry talk about his latest Cotton Malone thriller, The Emperor's Tomb. These events are hosted in the cabaret, an intimate setting for author talks.

Berry gave a brief introduction to all his books, describing the Cotton Malone series, now numbering five and his three stand alone novels. Fans will be happy to know there's at least one more Cotton book coming out next year but then the character will be on vacation in 2012 while Berry does a stand alone once again.

Berry hinted at a plot dealing with a clause of our United States Constitution but when questioned as to which particular clause he clammed up saying his publisher would kill him if he revealed anymore. He encouraged us to read the first six clauses skipping the preamble,  to see if we could figure out the part that made him day "What!" when he read it himself the first time. There's a challenge if I ever heard one. He certainly has me curious.

Opening the floor to questions from the audience, Berry received many of the usual questions that authors get. He'd answer and then expand giving more insight and had an smooth conversational flow easily keeping our attention. He peppered his dialogue with what only could be considered quotes like

"writing is a discipline. Writing is not an obsession"

He writes January to August and during this period will book only one author talk or writing workshop, all he can handle while in the full swing of writing. Fall is crunch time as he fine tunes the latest book, so all he does is write and edit and November usually finds him on tour promoting the newest novel.

Berry claims to be a recovering lawyer having practiced law for over thirty years, now feeling fortunate to be able to write full time. Being a lawyer and writing legal briefs did not help him one iota in his thriller writing career. He used to read thrillers to escape; now he gets to write them.

When asked if he travels to the locales in his books, he says he does most of the time. Unfortunately he was not able to travel to China, sighting time as a factor, for The Emperor's Tomb. He hopes to get there someday.

When he was writing The Paris Vendetta, together with his wife, Elizabeth,  they visited Paris, and like all good tourists took the elevator up the Eiffel Tower. Little did he realize his wife had a fear of heights and when she let him know this he told her to "suck it up". Now before you berate him too much, he went to tell that when they were in the Ukraine doing research he needed to go explore underground tunnels abandoned by the Nazi's. Lo and behold he found out he was terribly claustrophobic and what did his wife say. "Suck it up", of course. Tit for tat.!

Several people in the audience wanted to know where the name Cotton Malone came from. Berry isn't telling just yet. He indicated he may tell the story some day. In his first Cotton book, The Templar Legacy, he had explained where the name came from but took it out. Berry stated Cotton is fashioned a bit after himself and that the character was born in  Copenhagen. He had a totally different character in mind, but Cotton just took over and his fans are glad that Malone did.

Berry doesn't read classics and makes no apologies for this. He feels they cannot help him to write commercial fiction and because he is writing in contemporary times, they teach him nothing.

His favorite authors?

Raymond Khoury
David Morrell
Brad Thor
Ken Follett
Clive Cussler

He reads what he writes.

My own question concerned the story behind The Amber Room. This stand-alone mesmerized me so much that I went to Russia to see the restored replica at Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg. Like me, he had never heard of The Amber Room, a complete chamber of floor to ceiling amber panels that were hidden during World War II. One night he was listening to a TV program about The Amber Room while trying to catch a pygmy rattler that had somehow managed to invade his home. Thought the rattler commanded his attention that night, The Amber Room intrigued him and he wanted to know more. . In 1995 there was little information about it in the states so he visited Russia and spent hours with the head of the reconstruction  project and learned everything there was to know from him. He paid him $100, a bargain for Berry but a fortune to the project head.

Berry often turns to books for his research, finding that e-books are not part of his tools. Thy are convenient and portable. He sited a wonderful book store near his home in  St. Augustine, Florida. He is able to buy  the books he needs for research and then sell them back.

In an effort to give back Berry and his wife have set up The History Matters Foundation. Berry has hosted six projects to save a piece of history this past year. He donates all proceeds from the seminars he conducts on writing. The seminars are an intense five hour course and cost $100 with all proceeds going to the chosen project. He says he  actually can't "teach you to write but that he can teach you to teach yourself to write" . Recently the foundation donated $10,000 to a rare books library in Virginia, saving ten books. There are plans for six more projects next year.

Berry just returned from a nine day tour with other thriller writers visiting our troops in Iraq which was sponsored by  the USO. It was such a successful and fulfilling venture that he hopes to join Operation Thriller once again next year.

There were over fifty people attending this author event. Over half were men which brings home to me two things:

"Reading is alive and well."
"Men do read fiction; they just need stories that engage them."

The books:

featuring Cotton Malone

1. The Templar legacy
2. The Alexandria link
3. The Venetian betrayal
4. The Charlemagne pursuit
5. The Paris vendetta
6. The emperor's tomb

The Amber Room
The Romanov Prophecy
The Third Secret
and an e-book exclusive The Balkan Escape