Passing the (Literary) Baton

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s a touchy decision, isn’t it? When a beloved author dies, should their stories and style go with them?

Nicholas Meyer and Anthony Horowitz and others have done Arthur Conan Doyle proud, and Sophie Hannah is brilliant as the new Agatha Christie. Robert B Parker––reincarnated by several others ––still keeps his millions of fans, too.  Ludlum. Clancy. And in this very space, we were talking about what would happen to Sue Grafton’s books ––since her family has sold the movie rights, can a new book be far behind? (Does anyone want to write Z is for… but that’s a question for another day.)

But today, we celebrate.

A dear friend and his writing partner--two amazing and talented best-selling authors--are carrying on the tradition of another beloved author who is no longer with us on earth. And the way Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson are approaching this delicate and daunting task is incredibly respectful, and incredibly exciting.

PASSING THE BATON 

– Estate Writing for W.E.B Griffin

by Andrews & Wilson


In track & field, the relay race is one of the most thrilling events to watch because the race is not won or lost based on the talent of a single runner. With each leg of the race, the baton is passed to a new runner whose job is to meet or exceed the pace set by his or her predecessor. As co-authors, we are no strangers to the concept of teamwork and sharing the load, but when Tom Colgan at Penguin-Random House approached us about taking over the Presidential Agent series for the W.E.B. Griffin estate, he definitely brought new meaning to the expression “passing the baton.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar, W.E.B. Griffin (aka William Edmund Butterworth III) is the iconic author of 59 detective and military thriller novels, within seven series, written over the span of six decades. He passed away in February 2019 at the age of eighty-nine with over 160 publishing credits to his name including non-fiction works. One of Griffin’s most celebrated and well-known characters is Charley Castillo, the hero of the New York Times Best-Selling Presidential Agent series.

Our first reaction to Tom’s offer was an enthusiastic “hell yeah,” but that excitement quickly turned to dread as the reality of what we had agreed to began to sink in.

We started saying things to each other like: “Dude, I think we might have bitten off more than we can chew. How can we write a book that measures up to such a legendary name? How do we honor the characters and universe Griffin created without being able to talk to him about it? And…what happens if we mess it up?” Suddenly, the weight of that baton in our hands felt very, very heavy.

That’s when Tom stepped in with coaching advice that became our lodestar. “Guys, I’m not asking you to write WEB Griffin,” he said, with a knowing smile, “No one can write Griffin except Griffin himself. What I want you to do is write the best Andrews and Wilson novel possible and write it in a way that honors the characters and universe Griffin created. Do you think you can do that?”

With those sage words, Tom empowered us to run our own race, instead of stumbling down the track looking over our shoulders. In talking with other estate authors—Marc Cameron, Mark Greaney, Don Bentley, and Josh Hood—we found this to be a common theme. Writing in the shadow of the masters (e.g., Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, and W.E.B Griffin) is a daunting proposition. 

The key to success as an estate author is not to emulate the greats who came before you, but to tell your story with the same passion and enthusiasm they did. The readers will never accept a second-rate copy, nor should they be asked to. What the readers really want to experience is the next leg of the journey. The writer might have changed, but the race is still on and so long as it’s just as thrilling the readers will be satisfied.

Interestingly, we took this idea of “passing the baton” to the page as well. With ROGUE ASSET, our tasking was not to reboot the series, or reboot Charley Castillo for that matter. He’s the same Charley, he’s just in a different place in his life.

Time has passed. People in power have changed. The geopolitical landscape has evolved. When the novel opens, Charley is retired out of the spy game and living on his ranch. Then, the Secretary of State is kidnapped and the government calls him out of retirement. However, the ask isn’t exactly what he imagined it would be.

The Presidential Agent program is back, but leadership surprises Charley by tasking him with finding and training his successor. That successor turns out to be Marine Raider P.K. McCoy (grandson of another beloved Griffin character) which allowed us to pay homage to the iconic Corps Series as well. Ironically, as the story unfolded, we discovered that Charley still had plenty of gas left in the tank, which led us to an unexpected pivot. Instead of Charley fully passing that baton, in ROGUE ASSET a brand-new partnership is forged.

As stewards of the Presidential Agent series, we have gained such incredible respect for our fellow genre authors who write for the Clancy and Ludlum estates. It’s both an incredible thrill and responsibility to write larger than life legacy heroes—like Charley Castillo—known by millions of fans. Our only regret is that W.E.B. Griffin himself is not here to share our excitement about this book, but we believe in our hearts he would be proud.



HANK: Awww… And I should tell you ROGUE ASSET is published by GP Putnam & Sons and launches December 7th. And you can hear more from Brian Andrews (with Vera Kurian, Scott Shepherd and Kimberly Belle!) in The Back Room on Sunday, Dec 5. (As you know it’s free, but space is limited. Just like in the submarines where Brian served as an officer. Ask him—he has some amazing stories. Ever think about what it might like to cook on a vehicle that’s always tilted?)

Anyway. Did you ever read W.E.B. Griffin?

And don’t you love the amazing Tom Colgan’s advice—to honor the author’s characters and universe? And isn't it clever that A&W “passed the baton” in their book, too?

And one more thing: Andrews & Wilson write action-adventure and covert operations novels honoring the heroic men and women who serve in the military and intelligence communities. And check out their bios—they know whereof they speak. And we salute them!

What questions do you have about their writing—or their military experiences? 

Andrews & Wilson is the bestselling writing team of Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, the authors behind the Tier One, Sons of Valor, Shepherds series and Rogue Asset, the ninth book in the W.E.B. Griffin Presidential Agent series.

Brian is a former submarine officer, entrepreneur, and Park Leadership Fellow with degrees from Vanderbilt and Cornell. He is also a principal contributor at careerauthors.com, a site dedicated to helping aspiring authors.

Jeff worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. During his fourteen years of service, Jeff made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL team.


To learn more about their books, sign up for their newsletter online at andrews-wilson.com. Follow them on Twitter: @BAndrewsJWilson and Instagram/Facebook: @AndrewsandWilson.

The Story behind the Story—Faith, Firepower & Fiction by Andrews and Wilson

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Recently, I was talking with a friend, and she asked, "Do you have other stories you'd like to explore? Other than your series?" Boy, do I! That's the thing for most writers. You have more ideas for books than you have time to put them down. And there's another bar to overcome as well - if you've become known for small-town mysteries about a cop and a priest, publishers might look askance at your idea for an historical mystery set in London. Or if you're the bestselling writing team of action-packed military thrillers, like Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, how do you tell your readers you'd like to have characters struggle with faith as well as fights? Let alone sell your publisher on the idea of adding supernatural elements to your suspense!

Well, Brian and Jeff, writing as Andrews & Wilson, got lucky. That is, if you use the formula preparation + opportunity = luck...

In corporate team-building retreats, there’s a well-known trust-building exercise where you are instructed to stand up straight, fold your arms across your chest, and blindly fall backward like a board into the ready and waiting arms of strangers. Assuming all goes well, they catch you . . . saving you from an embarrassing fall and probable concussion. When your turn is over, you switch and one of the catchers swaps places and becomes the catchee. . . .

This is the metaphor we like to use to describe the partnership between an author (or in our case coauthors) and a publisher when launching a new series. In the case of the Shepherds series, our new action-adventure series with spiritual elements, we put our trust in Tyndale House. But like any partnership, the reciprocal is also true—Tyndale had to put their trust in us. But before we dive too much deeper into the series, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because there is an interesting “story behind the story” that we have to share.

It all started when a fellow thriller author friend of ours, Army veteran Josh Hood, was on an airline flight and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. As fate would have it, she worked at Tyndale House and noticed that Josh was working on a manuscript. Friendly small talk ensued, and after talking about his faith and background, he explained that he wrote military thrillers. She responded by telling him that Tyndale was looking to grow its men’s action-adventure presence in the market. Naturally she inquired if he had any material with faith elements that might be submission ready that Tyndale could take a look at. Josh, being Josh, said something to the effect of “At the moment I do not, but I just so happen to know some guys who do. Andrews & Wilson have a project under development that I think may be exactly what you’re looking for.”

The next day, Josh called Jeff, recounted the story, and an hour later our agent, Gina Panetierri, was in contact with Tyndale House. A couple of days later, we were on a Zoom call with Karen Watson and her team at Tyndale working out the details of a groundbreaking new series called the Shepherds. They’d never worked with us before, we’d never worked with them, but we shared a vision—the desire to bring authentic action, military characters, and spiritual elements to the marketplace.

Faith, firepower, and fiction . . . that was our mission.

Fast-forward twenty months and here we are, in the middle of launch week doing interviews and virtual events for the first book in the series, Dark Intercept. The entire process sometimes feels surreal, getting from there to here, and yet isn’t that the way of things in life? Unexpected doors are opened, unexpected introductions are made, and unexpected collaborations ensue . . . but none of that would be possible without trust.

Assuming the story behind the story has piqued your interest, by now you’re probably wondering what the Shepherds series is and what makes it unique. Great question! When the Tyndale team read the manuscript, they came back to us excitedly proclaiming that Dark Intercept is “Taken meets Stranger Things.” We immediately loved that tagline, because it truly captures the heart of the first book in the series—a thriller series with both supernatural and action components. Taken is the story of a man who is willing to risk everything and do anything to rescue his kidnapped daughter. In Dark Intercept, we find Jedidiah Johnson in a similar situation— except in Jed’s case, there’s a twist. Instead of setting out to rescue his own daughter, Jed agrees to rescue the daughter he wishes he had. The Stranger Things mash-up is a super fun and appropriate reference because just like in that series, in Dark Intercept, the reader quickly realizes there’s more going on than meets the eye in the streets of Nashville. Seemingly impossible supernatural occurrences are happening all around Jed, and the more he tries to deny them, the worse things get. An unseen war is raging, and the players are engaged in a spiritual warfare battles between good and evil.

A lot of people have asked us if the Shepherds series is a new direction for us because we’re incorporating these elements, but the answer is no. We don’t actually think of this series as a new direction, rather just an extension of the work we’re already doing. We’re best known for having coauthored the bestselling thriller series Tier One and its shared universe series Sons of Valor. The Shepherds series incorporates all the same elements our readers love and look forward to: covert operations intrigue, fast-paced action sequences, and nefarious plots carried out by bad guys who are as competent as they are vile.

What sets the Shepherds series apart from our previous work is a deeply personal spiritual component. Through the protagonist’s eyes, we tackle questions of faith and purpose. Like so many of our readers, our hero has regrets. He needs answers to questions that he’s too afraid to ask. He second-guesses the choices he’s made in his past, and the path forward he’s seeking is both unclear and frightening. To the world, he presents himself as a battle-hardened warrior who has it all figured out. But on the inside, our hero is racked with self-doubt. Like so many of us, he realizes he can’t figure it all out by himself, alone and in his own headspace. He needs help. He needs purpose. He needs faith. These are very human themes, themes that readers—both secular and spiritual—can wrap their heads around and relate to. So while we are breaking new ground by incorporating these elements into our existing framework of action adventure, the characters still drive the story. And as authors known for writing realistic, true-to-life military thrillers, we look at the faith elements not as something new, but as just another, important layer in writing characters true to the heroes we’ve served with.

Which brings us full circle back to the theme of this article: trust. There’s actually a third member of the crazy trust exercise we described: the author, the publisher, and the reader. That’s right, we’re asking you, the reader, to trust us. We’re asking you to pick up a copy of Dark Intercept and put your faith in our hands to catch you as you free-fall into an adventure that might feel a little uncomfortable or crazy at first. Don’t worry; we’ll catch you . . . and we promise you’ll have a thrilling experience for it.

 

JULIA: That's an offer you can't refuse. Readers, how do you feel about authors expanding into different types of fiction? What do you think of genre-blending? Has there ever been an author you liked better the second or third series down the road?

 

Andrews & Wilson is the bestselling writing team of Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson—the authors behind the Shepherds series, the Tier One and Sons of Valor series, and Rogue Asset, the ninth book in the W.E.B. Griffin Presidential Agent series. They write action-adventure and covert operations novels honoring the heroic men and women who serve in the military and intelligence communities.

Brian is a former submarine officer, entrepreneur, and Park Leadership Fellow with degrees from Vanderbilt and Cornell. He is also a principal contributor at careerauthors.com, a site dedicated to helping aspiring authors. Jeff worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. During his fourteen years of service, Jeff made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL Team. Jeff now leads a men’s military ministry for a large church in Tampa.

To learn more about their books, sign up for their newsletter online at andrews-wilson.com. Follow them on Twitter: @BAndrewsJWilson and Instagram/Facebook: AndrewsandWilson.