Two elite thriller writers. One high-stakes collaboration.
We’re joined by Brad Thor and Ward Larsen to talk about their new co-authored espionage thriller, Cold Zero. We dive into how the collaboration came together, how they merged their writing styles, and what sets Cold Zero apart in today’s spy thriller landscape.
—
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📚 ABOUT NO LIMITS:
• The Mitch Rapp Podcast: Deep dives into Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills' Mitch Rapp series.
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—
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
06:33 The Genesis of Cold Zero
09:31 The Netflix Adaptation
12:30 Character Dynamics and Protagonists
15:25 Crafting the Story and Technology
18:37 Brad Thor and Ward Larsen’s Seamless Process
21:28 Lessons Learned and Future Projects
35:24 The Writing Process and Challenges
37:32 Fan Perspectives and Author Interactions
39:03 Celebrating Milestones and Community Engagement
40:38 Exploring Short Stories and New Trends
43:42 Upcoming Book Tours and Promotions
46:09 Cameos and Creative Collaborations
47:23 Spoiler Section: Explosive Moments in Cold Zero
56:47 Favorite Parts of Writing Cold Zero
—
#BradThor #WardLarsen #ColdZero #AuthorInterview #ThrillerBooks #ThrillerPodcast #BookPodcast #BookReview #MilitaryThriller #SpyThriller #PoliticalThriller #NoLimitsPodcast
00:00:14
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike.
00:00:17
And welcome back to No Limits the Thriller podcast.
00:00:21
How you doing today, Mike? I am great for a number of
00:00:24
reasons, but one because last week you started the pod talking
00:00:28
about these balding heads. So I'm pumped that tonight we
00:00:31
get to debut our new cover up for the Balding Heads Thriller
00:00:36
Pod Baseball cap. Check those things out.
00:00:40
Yeah, man, you had, you had me going.
00:00:43
You, you, you were keeping up a good face when I said, man, we
00:00:45
should really get hats and like, ah, yeah, that'd be sick.
00:00:48
I know. And then this showed up on my
00:00:50
door showed up. I was supposed to be unboxing it
00:00:52
last week, but it showed up a day after we talked and I wasn't
00:00:56
supposed to open it up until the until this week.
00:00:59
And of course, Mike, there's nothing like my kids open up
00:01:02
everything. Like the only time they don't
00:01:03
ever open up stuff is around Christmas time because we yell
00:01:05
at them. Everything else, they're just
00:01:07
like, all right, I'm opening this.
00:01:08
Addie thought it was like it was her birthday like 2 weeks ago.
00:01:11
She's like, oh, is this for me? But anyways, we get her hat.
00:01:14
Got this. Got this.
00:01:16
Onesie. I don't know if she could wear a
00:01:19
hat with a bullet hole on it. Got my new shirt, it's sad.
00:01:27
The hoodie. Zip up hoodie dude, that thing
00:01:30
is comfortable, let me tell you. Our first round of merch, maybe,
00:01:33
didn't you know? Wasn't up on the back.
00:01:37
This drop is absolutely crushing it.
00:01:40
This is the most comfortable T-shirt I've worn.
00:01:42
That's the most comfortable hoodie I've ever worn.
00:01:44
And this hat, man, that thing is embroidered, too.
00:01:46
That just is some solid embroidery right there.
00:01:50
Yeah. And.
00:01:51
It's a nice, good quality hat. Yeah.
00:01:52
And the mugs, We've always had this with the mugs, with the
00:01:58
bullet hole through the bag. Guys, all this is available at
00:02:00
thrillerpod.com. And while you're there,
00:02:02
something else you can do is join the Patron Book Club.
00:02:05
That is the group of the most dedicated thriller fans and
00:02:09
readers in the world, and they help support this podcast.
00:02:13
They're the reason we can make more podcasts.
00:02:15
And so head on over to thrillerpod.com.
00:02:17
Click the book club tab if you want to be part of this group.
00:02:20
But let me tell you, the book club is going to have a great
00:02:23
time talking about Cold 0 because this book already is
00:02:28
kicking off 2026 with a thrill. It is non-stop action out of
00:02:33
Brad Thor and Ward Larson, and the only thing better than
00:02:36
reading this book was talking to them and interviewing them on
00:02:39
the podcast, which you guys are about to hear.
00:02:43
Yeah, we had a we had a fun time.
00:02:44
We had, as Brad called it, the Brandy bunch, the squares on our
00:02:49
screen. It was great.
00:02:51
Got interesting at times, like apparently we're we're in Brad's
00:02:55
head sometimes with our comments.
00:02:56
But yeah, hey, that's what we're here for.
00:02:58
We're going to push the boundaries.
00:03:00
But this one should not be slept on.
00:03:02
I want everyone to go out, buy a copy, listen to this.
00:03:06
We we recorded a little bit of a spoiler thing.
00:03:08
I don't know if Mike's going to run this at the end or separate
00:03:10
it out, but book comes out February 11th, correct?
00:03:16
I believe so, yeah. And I think I'm going to put
00:03:19
that spoiler section as a post credit.
00:03:21
So definitely listen to our episode.
00:03:23
We'll market it as spoiler free for the interview, but we'll
00:03:26
drop a little review that post credits after you hear the outro
00:03:29
music, we are going to hit you with a spoiler filled
00:03:32
discussion. So tune into the episode, get
00:03:36
the book, RIP through it as you will.
00:03:38
You cannot put this one down. Listen to the after credits for
00:03:42
a little after hours with Brad and Ward.
00:03:45
I really was so interested in hearing how they came up with
00:03:48
those action scenes. There are a few moves in this
00:03:51
book unlike anything you have ever read before.
00:03:54
They are absolutely enthralling thriller scenes on a
00:03:59
geopolitical scale that is beyond what you can imagine.
00:04:02
So check it out and stick around for the spoilers after you're
00:04:06
done. Today we are joined by two
00:04:13
incredible guests, both the first author we've ever had on
00:04:17
the No Limits podcast and the best dressed author we've had on
00:04:21
the podcast. We'll let the audience decide
00:04:23
who's who, so welcome back Ward Larson and Brad Thor.
00:04:26
Who is? Going to Howdy howdy, howdy
00:04:29
howdy howdy howdy. Good to see you fellas.
00:04:32
Hey, guys. See you guys too.
00:04:34
Yeah, like Chris just said, when you guys came in and didn't have
00:04:36
this on the bingo card, getting both Ward and Brad together to
00:04:39
talk about a co-author book. So Congrats on Cold Zero.
00:04:43
It's awesome tracking the buzz online.
00:04:45
I know you guys are about to launch the book tour.
00:04:48
And so it just seems as if this was meant to be.
00:04:50
This book is like backlash meets black ice meets dark Vector.
00:04:55
It seemed right in your wheelhouse as authors and
00:04:57
creatives. So can you tell us a little bit
00:05:00
about how this partnership came to be?
00:05:03
Well, I'm happy to take that first one out of the gate.
00:05:06
I had a kind of a bucket of ideas, stuff that I wanted to do
00:05:12
that I didn't think fit or I did not want to put into the Harvath
00:05:16
universe that I wanted to do outside of Harvath.
00:05:19
And I also didn't want another another book that I just sat
00:05:24
there and toiled over for a year by myself.
00:05:26
I wanted to kind of pump some energy into my own creative
00:05:28
experience. And so I talked to my editor.
00:05:30
I said, listen, what do you think about finding a Co writer
00:05:34
and doing a doing a thriller but outside of the Harvath universe?
00:05:39
And my editor said, do you have some people in mind first said
00:05:43
what, what are your ideas? And I told her and she's like,
00:05:45
OK, pick one of those three and then find somebody.
00:05:48
And I've been a fan of Wards for a long time.
00:05:51
And Ward and I got together at Thriller Fest and we had coffee
00:05:54
because I said, hey, I'm kind of thinking about doing a project.
00:05:56
You might be interested in it. And I didn't know which book
00:06:01
idea Ward would warm to, But of course, the one that had
00:06:04
aviation in it was the one that Ward said, yeah, let's do that
00:06:08
one. And it was just such a great
00:06:09
match because Ward is such a great thriller writer and he
00:06:13
brought so much to Cold Zero that this book, just if I tried
00:06:18
to write this book by myself or with anyone else, it just
00:06:21
wouldn't have turned out as great as it did.
00:06:23
Ward is the secret sauce in this book.
00:06:25
Well, I, I got to say the same. I mean, Brad is very cinematic
00:06:29
when he writes and this thing has already been offered for a
00:06:32
movie and I don't think that would have happened with his
00:06:34
input. So I think OnePlus One was more
00:06:37
than two in this case. *** really came together.
00:06:41
Yeah, I guess we could jump to that since you brought it up.
00:06:43
How did that come about? I know last time we talked,
00:06:47
Brad, you, you had mentioned that, you know, there was
00:06:50
something in the works, but I wasn't expecting that would be
00:06:53
outside the Horvath universe. How did this deal with, you
00:06:56
know, Netflix come about? So I told my team once Ward and
00:07:01
I started working on this, I said listen, when the book is
00:07:04
done and we can finally share it in Hollywood, I said I would
00:07:06
like to have this placed before Ward and I come out with the
00:07:09
book before publication date. So we turned it in and then we
00:07:14
kicked everything off in Hollywood this fall with going
00:07:18
out to everybody with early copies of Cold Zero.
00:07:22
And it's it's neat because Pete Berg, I love Pete Berg.
00:07:27
Pete Berg is an incredible producer.
00:07:28
Director Pete did some of my favorite movies like Lone
00:07:32
Survivor, which is based on the book all about Marcus Luttrell's
00:07:35
experience. I did a great movie in 2007
00:07:38
called The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner.
00:07:41
He did the movie and then the TV show, a Friday Night Lights.
00:07:46
And he's got an awesome series on Netflix right now called
00:07:49
American Primeval, which is just off the charts full of action
00:07:54
and it's really, really cool. So Pete's partners, one in
00:07:57
particular, Ezra Emanuel, who is another amazing producer, Ezra
00:08:01
and the rest of the Pete's team read the book and they contacted
00:08:05
Pete. Down in Australia, Pete's been
00:08:07
working on the adaptation of a book called the Mosquito Bowl.
00:08:12
And so the Mosquito Bowl is about a bunch of NFL players
00:08:16
that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, decided to sign up to be
00:08:21
U.S. Marines.
00:08:22
And so they are in Australia for getting ready to ship out to Iwo
00:08:26
Jima. And they have one last football
00:08:27
game and none of them come back from Iwo Jima.
00:08:30
So Pete's down in Australia, his partners contact him.
00:08:33
And they're like, Pete, you got to read this book that Thor and
00:08:36
Larson wrote. It's amazing.
00:08:37
And Pete's like, guys, you know me, I don't read while I'm
00:08:40
making a movie. I don't.
00:08:41
It's like nothing else comes in. That's it.
00:08:44
And they're like, listen, Pete, if you do not read this book,
00:08:47
somebody else is going to scoop it up.
00:08:48
You need to read it. Trust us.
00:08:50
And so Pete broke his own rule about not reading while he's on
00:08:54
the set. He picked up Cold Zero, told us
00:08:56
he could not put it down, loved it.
00:08:59
And he told his partners he goes, I don't make the deal
00:09:02
happen. Get it.
00:09:02
Get that book for us. So Pete had a really cool take
00:09:06
on it and Pete said, listen, I'm not going to change this book.
00:09:08
I think it's fantastic. I think this is a really smart
00:09:11
thriller. He said, I think we can do a
00:09:14
colder, bolder, more badass hunt for Red October kind of a thing
00:09:18
with this. And I said, OK, what do you
00:09:19
think, writer wise? And he said, well, there's a guy
00:09:21
I've been wanting to work with, let's get him the book.
00:09:23
And we did. And he loved it.
00:09:26
And it's Nick Pisolato. And Nick created the True
00:09:28
Detective series on HBO and Nick also did the most modern
00:09:34
adaptation of The Magnificent 7, which Chris Pratt was in and all
00:09:38
this kind of stuff. So just a great team.
00:09:41
They loved it. And Pete has his first look deal
00:09:43
at Netflix. So we went to Netflix and
00:09:46
Netflix is like, we'll, we'll take it.
00:09:48
This thing's so awesome. There are a lot of other people
00:09:51
that wanted it in Netflix. Netflix grabbed it.
00:09:53
They said this is going to be huge.
00:09:55
So that's how it happened. Well, thank you, Ted Sarandos.
00:09:58
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I could see why.
00:10:02
I could see why they want to eat this one up because as I'm
00:10:05
reading it, it's kind of going cross genre and I don't know if
00:10:08
you guys set out to do that, but it takes on this really epic
00:10:11
proportion because at one point I'm reading a survival story,
00:10:15
but it's also an espionage tale. ACIA thriller.
00:10:19
It's a techno thriller, which is both in your wheel houses with
00:10:22
the cutting edge of transportation and planes and
00:10:24
submarines. A special OPS rescue mission
00:10:27
breaks out. It's a chase scene.
00:10:29
Like I don't know how to categorize this one.
00:10:31
And the good part is it's a grab bag of everything I love the
00:10:34
most in books. Was that part of your plan going
00:10:37
into it or was that natural? I think having it set up at the
00:10:40
top of the world is kind of unique because there aren't any
00:10:43
books really that come fresh to mind that took place in the
00:10:47
actual Arctic and such a unique environment where you don't have
00:10:49
any landmass. You've just got this huge, these
00:10:52
huge flows of ice floating around in circles.
00:10:55
But you know, you can have people out there surviving in a
00:10:58
situation like this. And you can also do what we did
00:11:01
in the book, which close it off with the weather where you can't
00:11:05
reach them. They are on their own, at least
00:11:07
for a few days. You know, they're going to be
00:11:08
unreached, reachable, even with the best of equipment, even with
00:11:11
Ice Breakers and all that stuff. So it really creates, like you
00:11:14
say, that survival situation. There's the geopolitics of it
00:11:17
with Russians and Chinese and the Americans are getting
00:11:21
involved that are all after this one piece of technology.
00:11:24
So yeah, putting into that one unique place I think really,
00:11:27
really set this book off. I guess, you know, I wanted to
00:11:33
we want to stay like pretty much spoiler free.
00:11:36
Maybe we can touch a little bit at the very end, you know, you
00:11:40
guys are kicking off your the book hasn't even come out.
00:11:42
No, no work comes out in the week.
00:11:44
These two heroes, this dynamic duo, you know, obviously you
00:11:49
both have your own perspectives from your own, you know, heroes
00:11:52
you've built. How did you decide to to have
00:11:55
this duo together? You know, like, like you guys
00:11:57
have the duo with with the writers.
00:12:01
Well, we, we definitely wanted to do something different than
00:12:04
we've done before and, and we wanted 2 protagonists, we wanted
00:12:08
a male and a female. And so a good part of the book,
00:12:13
which which I think played out really well was where does your
00:12:17
duty lie? So if you're the surviving first
00:12:20
officer in in this situation, and this is where Ward's
00:12:23
background was just invaluable from all the technical details
00:12:27
to OK, if you survived and you had X amount of passengers,
00:12:30
what's your duty, your duties to the passengers.
00:12:33
That's your that's your job. You've got to see that they are
00:12:35
OK, the survivors of this crash. And then you look at Casey and
00:12:39
it's like, well, what's her duty, right?
00:12:41
She's still on a mission. She has to continue the mission
00:12:44
that she began on behalf of the CIA.
00:12:46
So she gets put in this interesting position of, well,
00:12:49
she wants to survive, but how much can she share with the
00:12:53
first officer, with Brett Sharp? So there was all of that dynamic
00:12:56
there too. So Ward talks a lot about, I
00:12:59
think it's a great way to explain it is we both got this
00:13:02
clean sheet of paper. We both got to step away from
00:13:04
kind of the regular stuff that we've been doing, the series
00:13:07
we've done respectively. And it just gave us this, this
00:13:11
opportunity to kind of spread our wings and to go in a
00:13:13
different direction. And the word, the word we've
00:13:17
used a lot during our interviews and stuff is it was really
00:13:20
refreshing. It's kind of nice to try
00:13:23
something different. Not that we don't love the other
00:13:26
work that we do, but this this was really fun because it was
00:13:29
almost like, you know, there were, there were literally no
00:13:32
constraints on us. We could do whatever we wanted
00:13:34
to do because there was no book that preceded it.
00:13:37
So there's no body of work. There's no universe of
00:13:39
characters we have to worry about.
00:13:40
We could play God in the in this book and have everybody doing
00:13:44
whatever we wanted him to do. And that was fun.
00:13:46
I think, I think the female protagonist was kind of self
00:13:49
fulfilling because we needed Acia, somebody who was
00:13:52
organizing this, this, I won't say theft, but the acquisition
00:13:56
of this device. OK, so she's the one in charge
00:13:59
of that. But the first officer, he is not
00:14:03
only has that legal obligation to take command because he's a
00:14:06
senior officer surviving, the only officer surviving, but he
00:14:09
also has a lot of knowledge about the what's on the
00:14:12
airplane, the survival equipment on the airplane.
00:14:15
And he's been through that training, you know, on his
00:14:17
military days. So he has that seer training.
00:14:19
So yeah, I think they kind of just fell on the place
00:14:22
naturally, those two characters. But I also like that they're
00:14:25
kind of like, you know, obviously she's in the CIA, but
00:14:28
it's more they're not these larger than life protagonists
00:14:32
that, you know, you guys have, you know, for lack of, but you
00:14:34
built up in your own series. Like they they're not ordinary
00:14:37
people that arise the occasion or, you know, ordinary people
00:14:41
that are in different walks of life are able to like come, come
00:14:44
together and and do that. I like how you how you switch
00:14:47
that up and, and brought that nuance to to this new blank
00:14:50
slate, as you said. Yeah.
00:14:52
And I think that burden being lifted off of your shoulders,
00:14:54
not beholden to that universe. And how many other books do I
00:14:57
have to sift through to three, see if I get a detail right or
00:14:59
wrong? Because, you know, us fans, we,
00:15:01
we, we look for that where we, we like it like an encyclopedia
00:15:04
getting all the details right. I think I felt as a reader that
00:15:07
burden was also lifted, that I could just go along for the
00:15:10
ride. And on page one, I say go along
00:15:13
for the ride and mean it literally.
00:15:15
We've got automated vehicles taking over with AI involved.
00:15:19
We've got planes doing unexpected things.
00:15:21
We have Ice Breakers and submarines often in precarious
00:15:25
situations. What was it like crafting this?
00:15:28
And we, we don't want to give away too much about this device,
00:15:31
but both of your books always have cutting edge technology.
00:15:33
What was it coming up with this idea and incorporating AI into
00:15:37
the future of what the next Gen. military might look like?
00:15:41
One of the things that that Brad first said to me when we were
00:15:45
kind of having that coffee, just kind of and he was kind of, you
00:15:47
know, feeling me out about whether or not we would be able
00:15:50
to work together. Is he asked, are you a pancer
00:15:52
or, or an outlier? And that, you know, I said
00:15:56
answer just because I am. But you know, it, it really, I
00:15:59
don't know if we could get along otherwise because we both have
00:16:01
that big overriding idea. We know the beginning and
00:16:04
roughly the end and we just work our way there.
00:16:07
And the way he describes it that it kind of like is you are
00:16:10
putting yourself in the in the position of the reader where you
00:16:13
don't know what's going to happen.
00:16:14
So that was that freedom we had, where we had, we were both
00:16:17
Panthers. We were both just had this big
00:16:19
idea, a clean sheet of paper and we were able to kind of take it
00:16:22
in a lot of different places. So there's a lot of points of
00:16:24
view in this story. Like you say, we have all these
00:16:26
different characters and countries involved and it got a
00:16:30
little complicated, but I think it all it all pulled together in
00:16:33
the end. And per the Mac, Guffin Ward and
00:16:37
I went back and forth a lot on exactly what this piece of tech
00:16:41
should do. So you've read the book.
00:16:43
So those who haven't read the book, I mean, essentially this
00:16:45
is a story about a, about a an extremely clever Chinese
00:16:51
scientist who has developed a, an earth shattering piece of
00:16:55
technology. It'll change the balance of
00:16:57
power for whoever holds it. It is connected to AI.
00:17:00
But it's that's that's where Ward and I were like, alright,
00:17:03
we don't want this to go crazy. We don't want this to be like
00:17:06
something insane with AI. We're like, what?
00:17:09
How do we do this without overdoing it?
00:17:11
And also for this thing, how do we, how do we at least give an
00:17:16
example of what it can do? And that was fun for us too.
00:17:20
So that was 1 area where we're like, OK, let's not overdo it.
00:17:23
Let's make it cool. Let's not go too crazy with it.
00:17:25
And then let's at some point put it to work.
00:17:29
Because as a reader, you'd be going, wait a second.
00:17:31
If they've got access to this really cool thing that they
00:17:34
could use against the people that are chasing them to have,
00:17:37
if nothing else, by themselves a little bit more time, why aren't
00:17:39
they doing that? So we were really thoughtful as
00:17:42
we were doing this. We're like, OK, this was you and
00:17:43
me and we're running away from all these people and we've got
00:17:46
XY and Z at our fingertips. What are we going to do?
00:17:48
You know, like just even the discussions on the survival
00:17:51
stuff, like Ward was I, I thought was so brilliant.
00:17:55
We talked about, OK, you know, we, the, the fuselage has
00:17:59
cracked in half. Well, there are these big
00:18:00
circular life rafts in the airplane and you could inflate
00:18:04
one of those in the cabin to kind of block, you know, the,
00:18:08
the missing back half of the aircraft.
00:18:10
You could inflate one of those and then stuff it with clothes
00:18:11
around there. So there's just so, so much cool
00:18:13
stuff in this that like I said, I, I don't think this, I don't
00:18:17
think this book would have been half as cool as it is without
00:18:20
Ward's input because he just brought so much real world stuff
00:18:24
to this after Thriller Fest. I have to tell you, after
00:18:27
Thriller Fest, Ward and I were actually on the same flight back
00:18:31
home. He was going through Nashville.
00:18:33
And it's funny, like we sat in the front row of the airplane
00:18:37
and he's pointing to stuff in the cockpit while the doors open
00:18:40
saying, well, we could do that with this.
00:18:42
And in the book we could do that.
00:18:43
I mean, like we started on the airplane leaving Thriller Fest.
00:18:46
It was very cool. I showed you the crash axe.
00:18:48
There's a crash axe like this. Deadly weapons if you chose to
00:18:52
be. They're they're really cool
00:18:54
devices. And every airplane has 1, so
00:18:56
yeah. Oh well.
00:18:57
I want to be a family on the wall.
00:18:59
I want to be the third seat in that row.
00:19:02
I got a question for you guys because you guys have both read
00:19:05
Brad and I pretty extensively. As you were reading this book,
00:19:09
did you ever get to a point where you go, Brad wrote that or
00:19:12
what wrote that or, or was it seamless where you really
00:19:15
couldn't tell one from the other?
00:19:19
That was going to be my next question.
00:19:21
You know, obviously how you guys went about writing it because to
00:19:24
me, I picked on like some very little nuances, but for the most
00:19:29
part, I thought you guys did a pretty seamless job of of
00:19:31
meshing the two styles together. I tried.
00:19:33
I got to say I was distracted. I I was a little squirrel as I
00:19:37
was reading, trying to go back to passages and try to guess who
00:19:39
wrote this one. And ultimately I realized it was
00:19:42
a failure. It was a complete failure.
00:19:44
I couldn't tell the difference and I went in whenever a chapter
00:19:47
started thinking, I'm like, OK, is there a clue?
00:19:49
I mean, Brad, you're the master of little cliffhangers at the
00:19:52
end of the chapter that that need me to turn to the next
00:19:55
page. I was like, oh darn, Ward does
00:19:57
that too. And and then everything on a
00:19:58
plane, I was like, this has to be Ward.
00:20:00
This has to be Ward. But then something happens and
00:20:02
I'm like, oh, that's a Brad idea right there that this character
00:20:06
makes this move. So I just gave up with the
00:20:08
exercise and went along for the ride 'cause this is a book, the
00:20:11
actions non-stop. So if you try to pick it apart
00:20:14
and do little exercises like that.
00:20:16
That the book will just grab you and pull you in and you can't
00:20:19
think about anything but the story.
00:20:21
Perfect. That's what we got.
00:20:23
So and one thing the limits of AIAI is not going to help you
00:20:28
with the polar bear. So I mean.
00:20:30
Right. No, it's not.
00:20:32
Yeah, but I love that little touch, it really.
00:20:35
And The funny thing is, it was a weird experience reading this
00:20:38
book during Ice Mageddon. I don't know how you guys are
00:20:41
doing with the ice storm, but I don't.
00:20:44
I didn't think anything could make me colder than going out
00:20:46
and shoveling the 12 inches of ice.
00:20:48
And then I'd come in and read the book and I was even colder
00:20:51
inside my house reading. Oh, that's so funny.
00:20:54
Yeah, we got a good pub date being in February.
00:20:57
It's been cold out. Yeah, that, that.
00:20:58
Works well, Yeah, your cover is. Your cover is even.
00:21:01
Like just looking at it makes me cold, you know?
00:21:04
Yeah, the cover turned out great.
00:21:05
Yeah, we, we were really happy with the cover.
00:21:08
They they did a, they did a fantastic job with that.
00:21:11
The last book I felt that way, and even on the cover was Dark
00:21:14
Vector, your book Ward. Did that play any role in Brad?
00:21:18
You you picking out Ward by seeing what he was able to do
00:21:22
there, or were you guys, how familiar were you guys with each
00:21:25
other's work as you started this partnership?
00:21:29
I was pretty familiar with Ward's work.
00:21:30
I mean, I'm a reader of Wards so.
00:21:33
So for me it was, no, it was easy.
00:21:36
I think. I think maybe I'd read his,
00:21:38
whatever his latest one, I made sure I read it or re read it
00:21:41
again before I sat down with him at Thriller Fest.
00:21:44
But yeah, I was pretty up to date.
00:21:46
I, I knew it would be silly for me to just sit down and talk to
00:21:50
people not kind of knowing what their stuff is.
00:21:52
And I'd narrowed it down. I mean, yeah, I went to, I went
00:21:54
to Thriller Fest and I was just like, let's see if we can put
00:21:57
this, put something together with Ward.
00:21:59
Like I knew like 3 ideas and I knew any of them would be great.
00:22:03
But of course when when I mentioned something with
00:22:05
aviation and Ward had said I want to do something with
00:22:07
aviation, I was like, okay, slam, slam dunk, slam dunk.
00:22:11
But my joke is, is that I'm running my own Scandinavian
00:22:14
version of DEI. Nobody else had a Scandinavian
00:22:17
name on my list of co-authors, so I picked Larson.
00:22:20
So you could have Thor and Larson.
00:22:21
And then when we cast the movie, I want Rebecca Ferguson to play
00:22:25
Casey Sheridan. So we could have Thor, Larson
00:22:28
and Ferguson and we'll just keep it Scandinavian from front to
00:22:30
back. We're going to put all all the
00:22:32
Scandinavians to work. Let's do that.
00:22:35
You can get a Scars guard in that film.
00:22:38
You could see. There you go.
00:22:39
Look at 2:00. We'll send you a check.
00:22:41
Good job you. Guys.
00:22:44
Getting the credits. Can you guys elaborate a little
00:22:46
bit more on like the writing process, you know, doing this?
00:22:50
Yeah. What what we would do is we
00:22:52
would start out just talking about, you know, we would kind
00:22:55
of do it in chunks of like 6 or 8 chapters.
00:22:58
And we talked about where we're going to go in these next six
00:23:00
straight chapters. And one of us will go ahead and
00:23:02
write it, send it to the other one.
00:23:04
And the other one would do some heavy editing.
00:23:06
And we just go back and forth like that.
00:23:08
And it probably took about a dozen iterations of it.
00:23:10
And it seemed to kind of accelerate at the end where we
00:23:13
kind of got into a groove. It was a little more difficult
00:23:15
at the beginning just because, you know, we haven't done this
00:23:17
before. We haven't worked together.
00:23:19
Neither of us have ever done Co writing, so there was a little,
00:23:22
you know, getting used to the process.
00:23:24
But once we kind of settled into it, I was really surprised.
00:23:28
We got to talking about some of the mechanics of things, like
00:23:30
for example, keeping a timeline of what's going on.
00:23:34
And I talked to Brad about that and he told me his technique and
00:23:37
I, it was really stunning that it was almost identical to the
00:23:41
way I do it, except he kept his version electronically.
00:23:43
I keep mine on paper, but it was like the stuff we put on it was
00:23:47
almost exactly the same. And I thought it was cool that
00:23:49
we, you know, having written looks for so long independently
00:23:52
came to this same process. So there was a lot of
00:23:55
commonalities in what we did. Yeah, listen, the hardest thing
00:24:02
at the end of this was just figuring out how to turn off all
00:24:04
the comments in the column on Microsoft Change Tracker.
00:24:08
That ended up being the most difficult thing at the end.
00:24:11
You can see our whole conversation, all the bubbles
00:24:13
and you know, comments and all that kind of stuff.
00:24:15
But what was neat is this editing is we, we were editing
00:24:18
as we went along so that when we got a, we got our first draft
00:24:21
on, it was unbelievably clean. I mean, we're catching stuff
00:24:25
along the way and everything. So what we ended up turning in
00:24:28
right off the bat was like super easy.
00:24:30
And I remember I got Emily Besler's edits and words like,
00:24:34
do you want to help with them? I'm like, there's nothing here,
00:24:37
man. This is like the smallest,
00:24:40
lightest editing letter I've ever received.
00:24:42
And I thought that spoke really well for the strength of the
00:24:44
book that Emily didn't have. Like, we got a plot hole here
00:24:47
and you forgot this and you didn't tie that.
00:24:49
There was none of that stuff. So the editing process was next
00:24:53
to nothing but next to nothing in the end because we were doing
00:24:56
it from the very beginning, if that makes sense.
00:24:59
You had two sets of eyes on it the whole time.
00:25:00
You know, and editors in a sense where, yeah, he would write and
00:25:04
I would edit his stuff and vice versa.
00:25:06
So we were kind of becoming both authors and editors and it just,
00:25:09
it came out with a real clean product in the end.
00:25:12
Did one of you have something you wanted to put in?
00:25:14
The other one was like no, hell no.
00:25:16
Like we, we, we, we got to get rid of that or.
00:25:19
No, that, I mean, that was the thing, like, no, I made this
00:25:22
joke. The other like, no, no creative
00:25:24
pistols at dawn, none of that stuff.
00:25:27
You know, they didn't get it didn't get rough at all, which
00:25:29
was actually just delightful. I mean, you guys know Ward, you
00:25:34
know how what a wonderful guy is and he's the same way during the
00:25:37
writing process. So it, you know, we, we both
00:25:41
would talk about stuff and we'd be like, OK, what works here?
00:25:44
OK, that's good. But can we do better?
00:25:46
You know, I'm a big believer and take the first four ideas and
00:25:48
throw them out, right? Because if you can think of
00:25:51
these four things happening in the twist, the reader may see it
00:25:53
coming too. So let's get to 5 or 6.
00:25:56
So it was, it was really good. And I think we, the relationship
00:26:00
served to push us harder and to make us set the bar higher.
00:26:05
You know, we could do this here, but what about that?
00:26:07
And, and I'd say, I don't know how we would do this in this
00:26:09
situation. And where do we go?
00:26:10
We do it like this. And so it was to kind of toil as
00:26:15
a lone author with your own stuff and now to have the
00:26:18
benefit of working with someone whose talent and creativity you
00:26:21
really respect that It it it it's just I think I don't know
00:26:26
that I could have actually, I do know I couldn't have done any
00:26:29
better than than doing this Co written book with Ward.
00:26:33
I mean, it's just wonderful to work with.
00:26:35
And he he encouraged me to raise my game.
00:26:37
And I, I think that's why we're, listen, I have to be honest with
00:26:41
you guys and I, I'm always pushing deadlines with my editor
00:26:44
and stuff. So I don't have tons of lead
00:26:46
time for each Harvath because I hold on to him forever because I
00:26:48
keep thinking I can make it better, I can make it better, I
00:26:51
can make it better. And it drives my editor crazy,
00:26:53
the perfectionist in me. But it's how I'm able to kind of
00:26:57
stay where I'm at my game and not lose ground.
00:27:00
You know what I mean? I'm not just turning in stuff
00:27:02
just to, OK, well, I got to make my deadline, so I'm going to
00:27:04
turn it in. I'm really, I'm, I'm overly
00:27:08
tight with it, but but I think it's good.
00:27:12
I think the end product, the Harvath books are, are great
00:27:15
because I pay so much attention to them and I work so hard.
00:27:18
What where that hurts me, though, is I can't get advance
00:27:22
review copies out very far in advance of a pub date because
00:27:25
I'm constantly, I mean, you think about it, I'm I'm touring
00:27:28
for a book, then I got to come up with an idea for another
00:27:31
book. I'm not, you know, three books
00:27:32
ahead in my brain for Harvath, But so what's really cool that
00:27:37
happened with Cold 0 is Ward and I had this schedule.
00:27:39
We met the schedule. We got the book done when we
00:27:41
were supposed to get it done and we were able to send it out.
00:27:44
All these places. We got a publishers weekly start
00:27:47
review and a Library journal start review.
00:27:49
I've never gotten one of those my entire career.
00:27:52
And I'm convinced a it's because the marketplace has changed.
00:27:55
They used to hate thrillers at both of those places and not
00:27:57
hate them. But I, I would say thrillers
00:27:59
didn't like Rodney Dangerfield got no respect from a lot of
00:28:02
reviewers. And so things have changed in
00:28:05
that sense. But it is so cool for me to look
00:28:08
at this book that Ward and I did and to get this great critical
00:28:12
acclaim and even the early fan stuff from Netgalley and us
00:28:15
giving away our ARCS. And you guys, it's just every
00:28:18
time we turn around, we're just hearing, gosh, you guys did a
00:28:21
great job. And that makes all the hard work
00:28:23
worth it. Yep.
00:28:25
Well, that's well deserved. Yeah, Congrats on that.
00:28:27
And I actually noticed that as well because one of our
00:28:31
listeners, Chris, she's one of our patrons who supports the
00:28:33
podcast. She met you guys at a
00:28:35
conference. Boy, it seems like in the fall
00:28:37
even maybe possibly late. Summer in New Orleans, Usher
00:28:40
comes. Yes, getting a September.
00:28:41
Yes, and she got a copy of this and she was telling us about it.
00:28:45
And so it, it just felt like for months and months and months,
00:28:48
we're hearing this positive feedback.
00:28:50
And now I'm seeing that on social media and my feed being
00:28:52
inundated with great reviews. And it allows your media tour to
00:28:55
breathe a little bit more and get and the Today show show Brad
00:28:58
your. Your appearance I.
00:29:00
Felt like that really kicked things off well and coincided
00:29:03
with the Netflix announcement. That was cool.
00:29:05
Between you guys partnering on this, both of your experience,
00:29:09
all of that that you just shared, it almost seems like the
00:29:11
perfect storm, like it was just faded by the universe to to get
00:29:15
this book out. And it did.
00:29:16
It just seemed to fall into place.
00:29:18
I mean, some books are just easier to write than others.
00:29:21
And I think, and you've probably read books before where you,
00:29:24
you, you get up to a point, you look at that say, you know, the
00:29:27
writer was having fun with this. He was having a good time
00:29:29
writing. This we could tell.
00:29:30
You can tell when they enjoy it. That's.
00:29:31
Where we were, we were at that place.
00:29:33
We were really enjoying ourselves.
00:29:35
Yeah, I love that. You know who we've seen that a
00:29:37
lot from, which is interesting. We kind of feel like for some
00:29:40
reason 2026 is already kicked off with Co authoring being the
00:29:44
theme. We talked to Jack Carr about,
00:29:46
you know what, what he's got going with MP Woodward.
00:29:48
And we've been long time fans of Andrews and Wilson, which they
00:29:52
have their own imprint and everything, but they kind of did
00:29:55
it from the jump, like their first books as writers were
00:29:58
co-authored. What is it like for you guys
00:30:00
being established authors now? You know, later in your career,
00:30:04
you know, 20 plus books. What is it like to now have gone
00:30:08
through this process? What do you think you could
00:30:09
still learn and take away having, you know, this notch on
00:30:12
your belt now? What's your biggest take away
00:30:14
having done this? I think it's definitely made my
00:30:18
writing better. I've learned some good, you
00:30:20
know, tricks from Brad. You know, he there's things he
00:30:22
emphasized and I and I look back and I go, yeah, you know, he's
00:30:25
right. Those are really good ideas.
00:30:26
You mentioned the endings. You always like to end the
00:30:28
chapter on a, on a, you know, hard ending where you're really
00:30:31
kind of leaving the reader on the hook or he's got to keep
00:30:34
reading to see what happens. You know, what came of this?
00:30:36
And there were a number of times when I, you know, write some
00:30:39
chapters and send him and he, he'd send back his notes.
00:30:41
And a lot of the notes were like the ending, let's make the
00:30:43
ending better, you know? And he and he said in a positive
00:30:46
way. And I was like, yeah, you know,
00:30:47
you're right. It could be a little better.
00:30:49
And that's what we do. And I think it ends up showing.
00:30:51
So I learned from this thing. It's going to make me a better
00:30:54
writer on my solo books. Yeah, I got to, I got to echo
00:30:58
that. I think my writing has become
00:31:01
considerably better from the experience working with Ward,
00:31:03
seeing how he does things, how he works through character
00:31:06
development and and looks for the right place to pivot and
00:31:09
give you the twist in the intrigue and all that kind of
00:31:12
stuff. Yeah, I it is.
00:31:16
I don't want to say I wish Ward and I had done this years ago
00:31:19
because I think it was just the right time for both of us right
00:31:22
now. You know, you you can say, oh,
00:31:23
if we'd only done this years ago.
00:31:26
No, this was the right time to do it.
00:31:27
And it's it's the right book and everything.
00:31:29
I think all the stars aligned. Like you said, it was the
00:31:31
perfect storm. And this is this is, we're super
00:31:37
excited to get this into the world and have the fans be able
00:31:40
to read it because we're very proud of what we did.
00:31:43
And we did it with the reader in mind.
00:31:45
I mean, it sounds silly, but our whole thing was all right.
00:31:48
How do we surprise people? We're let's get a rug pull in
00:31:50
here. Let's give them a let's give
00:31:52
them a twist. They're not expecting.
00:31:54
What's a different way to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:31:55
blah. So, you know, we we built this
00:31:58
book for my audience and Ward's audience together, right?
00:32:02
Because we know that we've got these great thriller readers and
00:32:04
we're like, OK, those are our hardcore true.
00:32:07
What's going to surprise them? What have they not seen from
00:32:10
either of us before? And how do we how do we deliver
00:32:12
that in the book? So it was a great experience.
00:32:18
I mean you guys talk about the positives were were there, you
00:32:21
mentioned that there wasn't really any creative differences,
00:32:24
but were there any hurdles or what was your biggest
00:32:27
difficulty? Ward snores, ward snores and
00:32:30
that that got there a couple of nights where that you know, like
00:32:33
they put them on the couch. Good luck on the tour then.
00:32:38
I think the, you know, the scheduling of anything, just,
00:32:41
you know, doing basically two books a year now it's, it's a
00:32:44
challenge. I mean, we did it and I think we
00:32:46
can do it, but it's, it's a challenge.
00:32:47
So, you know, it was, it took a lot of discipline for us to to
00:32:51
both do this because, you know, his books say how they take a
00:32:54
long time to write. And I'm busy with mine too.
00:32:56
I just wrote the Clancy book that took a lot of time.
00:32:59
And so it's, you know, I think that was probably my biggest
00:33:03
challenge was just, you know, the scheduling of it.
00:33:08
Yeah, that that really is when you're writing a book a year and
00:33:11
then you're Co writing an additional book.
00:33:14
Yeah, that's it. That's a big deal.
00:33:15
That's a big deal. Takes a lot of you have to be
00:33:17
very organized, you have to be very disciplined.
00:33:21
So yeah, that's, that's actually a great point that I, I
00:33:24
wholeheartedly concur with that. Is it something, having learned
00:33:28
these lessons, you would consider again either two books
00:33:31
in a year or just simply this partnership Co authoring another
00:33:35
stand alone? We're we're already at work out
00:33:37
of 2027. They're in the works.
00:33:39
We can we can break that here. We're already working on a Co
00:33:42
written 2027. You're already here first.
00:33:44
There you go, we're breaking news with you guys.
00:33:47
I love that. Is it going to be in the same
00:33:52
kind of vein as this one, or is it another one of those ideas,
00:33:54
Brad, that you had floating around that you had considered
00:33:57
originally? So I completed this is Ward
00:34:02
doesn't even know this story. So I completed we got Cold 0
00:34:07
turned in and I was talking with my agent and everything and my
00:34:10
agent goes, okay, so that was one of the three ideas he took
00:34:13
to Thriller Fest. What about the next idea?
00:34:14
And I'm like, OK, I've got this idea.
00:34:16
And she goes have you called Ward yet to see if Ward likes
00:34:19
it? And I'm like, not yet.
00:34:21
She goes. You had a great time working
00:34:24
with him on cold 0 like that ought to be the first call you
00:34:27
make is to call Ward, say here's so here's another idea.
00:34:31
It's I tell me what you think and if you'd be interested in
00:34:34
doing it, you know, and so I, I was thrilled to call him and
00:34:38
just say, hey, I got another idea.
00:34:40
You know, do you want to, do you want to saddle up and ride again
00:34:43
and do another one? And he said, he said, I'm doing
00:34:46
the Clancy book now, but yeah, I'd like to do it.
00:34:49
So we're already we're already working on our 2027 book.
00:34:53
Love that. So I'll still have a Harvath
00:34:55
book. I'll still, you know, every
00:34:57
summer I'll have a Harvath book. And now we've got the, we've got
00:35:00
the Brad and Ward book this winter.
00:35:02
And then next winter, we'll have a we'll have a brand new Brad.
00:35:04
And I'll have one of my books next fall.
00:35:07
And perfect fall of 27. For the Slayton.
00:35:11
Or the Slayton True Miller. True Miller.
00:35:13
Yeah, Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
00:35:16
What's next because I know Brad, you've got choke point.
00:35:19
Where are we at with with choke Point with your schedule because
00:35:21
that's a what, June release? Can I?
00:35:23
Curse on this. Yeah.
00:35:26
So down here in my left hand screen fuck you and fuck you in
00:35:30
the upper right hand screen. This has been because of one
00:35:34
comment you guys made. I know you.
00:35:37
I talk about Ward pushing me as a writer.
00:35:39
You 2 have stuck in the back of my mind.
00:35:43
So guess what I am not doing in this book and it is really
00:35:47
caused me to work my ass off. There is no get a guy to get a
00:35:52
guy that has echoed in my head. You didn't accuse me of that.
00:35:57
But what you guys said is that is one thing that you see often
00:36:01
in thrillers that you do not like.
00:36:03
And I heard that and I internalized that and I have
00:36:06
been pushing this. I'm I'm thrilled with this new
00:36:10
Horvath. It's really, really cool.
00:36:12
But that thing that you guys said, I was Jesus, that makes a
00:36:16
lot of sense. Yeah.
00:36:17
Get a guy to get a guy. And it's just.
00:36:19
It has been. Your voices have echoed in my
00:36:21
head as I've been working on this book, which is.
00:36:24
Living rent free. Living, yeah, exactly living,
00:36:27
living rent free. But it's a good thing.
00:36:29
It's a good thing because I not that I fall back on get a guy to
00:36:33
get a guy. But you know, you got to fill,
00:36:35
you got to do 100 words. You know, it's 350 pages for you
00:36:39
know, and it's there's got to be steps and you got to get there
00:36:41
and all that kind of stuff. But I have purposely avoided get
00:36:45
a guy to get a guy in this book. It's been hard.
00:36:48
I find it, I, I, I would love to pose this question award.
00:36:53
I find that no matter how many books I've written, it does not
00:36:55
get easier. The process of writing doesn't
00:36:57
get any easier. It is just as hard, if not
00:37:00
harder for me now than it's ever been before.
00:37:02
It's my 25th Harvath. I'm trying to do things with
00:37:04
them that readers have never seen him do, but not to repeat
00:37:08
things. This is kind of a milestone. 25
00:37:10
seems like something where I should be extra working hard to
00:37:13
pull out stops. But I do that with every book
00:37:15
because I don't want to rest on my laurels.
00:37:17
But the get a guy to get a guy thing you will not see in this
00:37:22
book. So thank you that's.
00:37:26
Awesome, Brad Thor just said. Fuck you.
00:37:29
That's. But that also means I hope we
00:37:34
don't get. We don't get demonetized.
00:37:37
Well, I wish we were monetized in the 1st place, but that's a
00:37:40
side note. Monetized to be yes, exactly.
00:37:44
We do this because we love reading and we love you guys so.
00:37:48
That's kind of the point though, because we listen to all the
00:37:51
interviews. So when you're on tour, if they
00:37:53
have any virtual screenings and then all the podcast.
00:37:56
And The thing is, we we kind of want to come at it from more of
00:37:59
a fan perspective where a lot of media platforms are that, you
00:38:02
know, kind of promotion cheerleader perspective.
00:38:05
And so we want to promote, promote, promote, absolutely.
00:38:08
But we also want to incorporate, you know, the general fandom
00:38:11
because that's how Chris and I started was We're just two guys,
00:38:14
very average, maybe even less than guys talking about books.
00:38:18
And most of our fans have identified and said, your
00:38:21
conversations are like the conversations I'm dying to have
00:38:23
when I finish a book. And I just don't have anybody
00:38:26
around me who kind of that I could talk that talk with.
00:38:29
And so we do try to stick to the fan perspective, but that does
00:38:32
often mean we, we come sometimes with harsh critiques.
00:38:35
But I, I do hope everyone realizes if we're covering a
00:38:38
book on the pod and if we have an author on the pod, we are
00:38:41
absolutely recommending read everything they ever wrote.
00:38:44
Because if we're not covering it, that means something, you
00:38:46
know, if we're not tearing it apart and criticizing it or
00:38:49
giving our feedback on it, we're not going to waste your time
00:38:52
with that. So the fact that we choose to
00:38:53
put the books on the slate means we absolutely love them and and
00:38:57
want the people out there reading them so.
00:38:59
Awesome. I guess that's who we are.
00:39:04
Yeah, we've been going strong. It's almost five years, our 550
00:39:07
year anniversary coming up in April, so. 300 this is going to
00:39:10
be something 310 or so episodes so it's.
00:39:13
And I did get to thank you guys over the summer, but I want to
00:39:16
say thank you again. It was so cool when you were
00:39:17
taking Edge of Honor to the locations in the DC area.
00:39:22
And. That Mike that was that was very
00:39:24
cool. So thank you again for that.
00:39:26
And you're sure and I stand by that was honestly, I think that
00:39:32
was the most fun, enjoyable book you wrote.
00:39:34
And just the idea of a summer release, July 4th, it was in my
00:39:37
neighborhood in DC. That book really did something
00:39:39
special for me. And when we did our 2025 Best of
00:39:43
it was definitely high up the list.
00:39:44
And I think I stood by it was the most fun joyride of the
00:39:47
year. Thank you.
00:39:49
Thank you. Glad to hear it.
00:39:51
I've to bring it back to cold Zero, though.
00:39:52
I think this book has an opportunity to to be just like
00:39:57
that, like it's I think it started off so excited to.
00:40:01
Get not only our, our, our, our fans perspectives, but you know,
00:40:04
just everyone else that is in this community.
00:40:06
I I want them to read this book because of how much I I enjoyed
00:40:10
reading. I, I immediately handed it over
00:40:12
to my wife. I'm like, all right, I've been
00:40:14
begging her. She she reads like not this
00:40:17
genre. And I was like, you got to read
00:40:20
one of my books. Please read, read one of the
00:40:22
books I cover on the pot. And I was thinking about what
00:40:25
she's like, all right, fine. And when I finished this book, I
00:40:27
was like, all right, this is the one I want you to start with.
00:40:29
I was like, this is cool. Like you'll like this.
00:40:31
And then if you if you don't like this and you're not going
00:40:33
to like anything else that I that I read So.
00:40:36
But yeah. Does that mean you'll go up to
00:40:39
the Arctic and do some on scene filming up there that?
00:40:42
'D be fun. You're going to take her to the
00:40:44
fall bards and a little cold vacation.
00:40:48
Exactly. Can I push on another or tug on
00:40:51
another string, which is as much as we're seeing in the in the
00:40:54
genre. 2026 is already like the the co-author push.
00:40:58
That's kind of a thing we're noticing.
00:41:00
We're also noticing a shift towards short stories and I know
00:41:04
you've each dabbled. David Slayton.
00:41:05
We loved getting an origin story a number of years ago.
00:41:09
Ward. That was a really cool way to
00:41:11
tie him in and his origins with Mossad and Brad, we know at one
00:41:14
point you had released a short story and there were also a
00:41:17
couple other addendums, you know, and we talked about that
00:41:20
once about the lessons learned from the big box retailers and
00:41:23
how that happened. But do you see value that had a
00:41:26
bonus? Exactly.
00:41:28
Do you see value in short stories as a medium?
00:41:31
I know Andrews and Wilson are doing a monthly short story
00:41:34
that's part of their new imprint.
00:41:36
Jack Cars toyed with the idea, with us saying something that he
00:41:39
never got to finish up in a prior book, Savage Son.
00:41:42
He might want to explore as a short story.
00:41:44
Is that something you guys would ever consider in the near future
00:41:47
or beyond? For, for me, I, I, I think time
00:41:52
is more of an issue. I, I just don't have the time
00:41:54
for, you know, too much and I want to get too much on my plate
00:41:57
because I feel like if you, if you start getting over
00:42:00
overwhelmed, then the quality goes down.
00:42:02
Like Brad was saying, you know, the reason he's always late turn
00:42:05
to his books because he's, he wants to redo it.
00:42:07
He can always make him better. And that's really where my spare
00:42:10
time goes. So I've done a couple short
00:42:12
stories. I enjoy them, but you know, just
00:42:15
for special projects like anthologies, things like that.
00:42:18
But in terms of just doing 1 or the main my main series, I don't
00:42:23
see any time soon doing that. So I agree with Ward.
00:42:27
So number one, it's the time. I don't know that the ROI is
00:42:30
there. I know it's great for fans, but
00:42:33
if I have to come up with an idea for a short story, could
00:42:36
that have been a book? Like the energy is the same,
00:42:39
like if it's, if it's a short story idea, it's got to be a
00:42:42
great idea, just like it's got to be a great idea for a book.
00:42:46
So, but at the end of the day, it's just, it's just, there's
00:42:50
only 24 hours in the day in doing 2 books a year now is I
00:42:56
don't know how I cram a short story in there when I've done
00:42:58
it. I'd like for the Thriller
00:43:00
Writers Association, we did an anthology when, when David
00:43:05
Morrell and GAIL Lynn started it, it was a dues paying
00:43:08
organization. Now it doesn't have to be
00:43:10
because we did that anthology, the thriller anthology, and it
00:43:14
made so much money we were able to convert, just open up the
00:43:18
Thriller association to anybody that wanted to join.
00:43:20
So yeah, so that was like that I was able to do.
00:43:25
Now I agree with Ward. It's it's like, where's my time
00:43:27
best spent? Right.
00:43:30
At ROI, yeah, I get that. Especially with this 2A year
00:43:34
model that potentially could be the way forward or at least this
00:43:37
year next. That's that's a lot of time
00:43:39
right there. So what's up next?
00:43:42
You guys got your book tour? It kicks off pretty soon, right?
00:43:46
Couple days, right? Yeah, we go to Savannah this
00:43:49
Friday. Yeah, this weekend we're going
00:43:50
to Savannah Book Festival. We're the headliners for the
00:43:53
opening acts. They can't start without us.
00:43:56
They can't open it without us. You're also in a lot of warm
00:43:59
locations. Was that by design?
00:44:01
That's David Brown. That was Oh, yeah.
00:44:04
So David Brown said he he said, you know, is is Ward willing to
00:44:09
tour? And he said, well, wait a
00:44:11
second, let's see how, let's see how you guys do on stage.
00:44:15
He's like, I want to see you guys together and decide if I
00:44:18
want to put you on the road. David's super smart.
00:44:20
So we did. We were interviewed at
00:44:23
Bauschercon. Andrew Clavin was kind enough to
00:44:25
step in because I think it was going to be, wasn't going to be
00:44:28
Jim Rollins. And then Jim couldn't make it to
00:44:31
Bauschercon. So Jim, I know why he owes me a
00:44:34
lot of poker money. So I kind of could have
00:44:36
predicted that he wasn't going to show up.
00:44:39
Where's the money, Lebowski? Where's the money?
00:44:42
So anyway, we did this and Davis, like you and Ward were
00:44:45
fantastic. I want to put both of you on the
00:44:47
road, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:49
And I said, OK, well, it's going to be February.
00:44:50
And he said no, no, I've already thought about it.
00:44:52
He said I'm only going to send you and Ward to warm places for
00:44:56
for for the tour because he didn't want to deal with weather
00:44:59
delays if he could avoid it and stuff like that.
00:45:01
It wasn't just a kind of pamper us, but yeah, I mean, we get to
00:45:04
go to some nice places. For me in particular, it's great
00:45:09
because now I'm doing 6 cities twice a year.
00:45:12
So that gives fans 12 cities in which they can see me.
00:45:16
Now if you want Cold Zero signed by me and Ward, you've got to
00:45:19
see me and Ward together or see us each separately and bring
00:45:23
your copy of Cold Zero to to a signing.
00:45:27
So that's kind of the that's kind of the nice thing about
00:45:29
doing this is the people are going to get book signed by both
00:45:32
of us at the same time, which is fun.
00:45:34
So so I walk away from this thing we did at Bowsher Khan.
00:45:37
We're up on stage, we're talking about, you know, the book.
00:45:39
And as we're walking away, Brad says, well, you passed the
00:45:42
audition. I was auditioning.
00:45:45
I didn't even. We didn't want to make you
00:45:47
nervous. We wanted you to just be you and
00:45:49
you knocked it out of the park. You did a great job.
00:45:52
Now you just put them in a polar bear costume for the Netflix
00:45:55
cameras and we're good to go. You can have them have them in
00:45:58
the show. That's.
00:45:59
It that's funny or Ward and I'll be passengers maybe as the plane
00:46:04
goes down. You know what?
00:46:05
I. Mean there you go.
00:46:06
We need a cameo. We definitely need that cameo.
00:46:09
I guess if you had to pick a cameo, what, what?
00:46:11
What would ultimate cameo? What?
00:46:12
What would it be? Gosh.
00:46:14
That's a good, that's a good question.
00:46:18
I don't know. I kind of think, well, Ward, do
00:46:20
you have a particular role you'd want to take?
00:46:22
It depends on if they let you speak.
00:46:24
That's the other thing. Sometimes they'll let the author
00:46:27
in, but you can't say anything. Or you get to be a desk clerk
00:46:29
like Stephen King, you know? There aren't that many
00:46:33
characters. Well, I guess there's some
00:46:34
characters on some of the ships, so yeah, maybe they could be on
00:46:37
a ship somewhere just to. I do picture you as sharp.
00:46:40
I mean I I could see it. Yeah, I could see that too while
00:46:44
we were writing it. I could see, I could see board
00:46:46
as sharp. Absolutely.
00:46:48
I also thought of Chris as Casey Sheridan, but that's another
00:46:50
story. Well, while we're messing
00:46:58
around, do you mind if after we close out, we take you for just
00:47:01
a few minutes to do a couple spoiler filled questions?
00:47:04
We'll have the spoiler alerts. We'll release it as a as a
00:47:07
separate bonus just to entice fans to go out, pre-order the
00:47:11
book, read the book, and then come back for more from these
00:47:13
two. Because when you finish this
00:47:15
book, there are some explosive things.
00:47:18
Two scenes in particular that I definitely want to hear about
00:47:21
from you guys how you got there. Cuz wow, they do something I've
00:47:24
never seen before in any book. So if you want to hear a little
00:47:27
teaser from these guys about how they came up with that, tune
00:47:31
into the spoiler section right after this.
00:47:33
But before we transition to that, as both of you know,
00:47:37
there's a thriller podcast, No Limits tradition here and it's
00:47:41
to leave our guest with a Limerick.
00:47:44
So I wrote a Limerick for you 2 on this one.
00:47:48
A flight vanished where Arctic winds blow as skyfire sets
00:47:52
rivals aglow. Brad and Ward spun the tail of
00:47:56
ice spies and a trail. One wrong step and you'll freeze
00:48:00
down below. Thank you guys for spending the
00:48:02
time with us tonight. Very good.
00:48:04
Thank you for having us. That was.
00:48:07
Awesome guys. All right, guys, hope you
00:48:13
enjoyed that interview with Brad and Ward.
00:48:18
I guess Next up we'll we, we got a scorecard in this book.
00:48:21
We got to talk about it. We haven't, we've said how much
00:48:24
we've liked it. We've enjoyed it, but we want to
00:48:27
get into the nitty gritty with it.
00:48:28
So that'll be next time. Before we get out of here, we
00:48:32
need to thank our patrons, our deputy director Sherry F and
00:48:35
Brad E, our special agents, Adam, Mike, Ben, Daryl, George,
00:48:40
Matt, Don and Chris. Please subscribe, rate and
00:48:43
review to all three seasons of No Limits.
00:48:46
You can find us@thrillerpod.com or on Twitter and Instagram at
00:48:50
Thriller Podcast. And as always, just let Ward and
00:48:56
Brad be Ward and Brad. All right guys, if you stuck
00:49:13
around spoiler warning coming so get ready in the next few
00:49:17
seconds. You must have read Cold Zero to
00:49:19
continue. Spoiler warning coming now.
00:49:22
I don't know about you Chris, but guys, spoiler section right
00:49:26
here. I'm about to drop a bomb who
00:49:28
came up with the idea to bomb the ice so that this submarine
00:49:34
can can surface when that. Happens this.
00:49:37
Culminating moment. I lost my mind.
00:49:39
I lost it. That was Ward.
00:49:42
Yeah, I've just had myself and Casey's, you know, mindset and
00:49:45
it just seemed like the perfect out, you know, I, well, I mean,
00:49:48
I've dropped a lot of bombs on my day, so I know what they
00:49:50
could do and can't do. But yeah, I, I came up with that
00:49:53
one and I thought it was just kind of, that was a pretty
00:49:56
elegant way to, you know, figure it all out.
00:49:58
It's very cool. Yeah, I like that.
00:50:00
Do you think they could do it? Can they crack the ice with
00:50:02
whatever munitions are? Yeah.
00:50:03
Bomb's a bomb, yeah, You just got maybe adjust a fusing so it
00:50:06
penetrates a little more things like that, which you can do, you
00:50:10
can arrange. So yeah, I don't see why not.
00:50:13
I love that. I love that idea was, I don't
00:50:16
know, when I was reading that part I was like, this is
00:50:17
awesome. And it didn't even raise the
00:50:19
body count. Yeah.
00:50:21
No, it was just a clean. It was almost like that answer
00:50:24
was in front of us the whole time and it was just, it was
00:50:27
just waiting for, you know, it's a low hanging fruit waiting to
00:50:29
be grabbed, but nobody sees it. And, and when Casey pulled it
00:50:31
out, my jaw dropped. Just hit the floor.
00:50:35
And the worst? One I was and now how about the
00:50:38
other one? What about that icebreaker?
00:50:40
Because when that thing when the the stakes were already high,
00:50:44
but it was almost more personally high.
00:50:46
Like, I was invested in the Captain, I was invested in Chan,
00:50:48
I'm invested in Casey. But the stakes rose to an in
00:50:52
exponentially more dangerous situation when that icebreaker
00:50:56
sunk the Russian sub. This is a direct foot, you know,
00:51:00
on the path to war between Russia and China. 2 superpowers.
00:51:03
How'd you come up with doing that?
00:51:06
I, I don't know who exactly the idea that was, but Brad always
00:51:09
talks about raising the stakes. You know, that's one of his, you
00:51:12
know, usual critiques we had to raise the stakes higher, you
00:51:14
know, and make it even more, more death defying.
00:51:17
So I don't know where the idea came from exactly, but that's
00:51:21
something he he, he goes on about.
00:51:23
And I think he's right. You know, the higher you can
00:51:25
make raise the stakes, the more invested the reader will be.
00:51:30
In an all fairness, if gun to my head, I'm going to say that was
00:51:35
Ward's idea to ram into the to the submarine because we said
00:51:40
we've got Skyfire. It's like Chekhov's gun, right?
00:51:43
You put the gun on the stage, you see it in Act 1, you have to
00:51:45
fire it by the end of the play. So we had to use Skyfire.
00:51:50
We figured we couldn't use it throughout, you know, it
00:51:52
couldn't be the Chinese send an airplane and you take that down
00:51:56
to because the battery's draining and all that kind of
00:51:58
stuff. And so that one made the most
00:52:00
sense. And that was act of war kind of
00:52:03
territory. So we talked a lot about what
00:52:04
does this mean? How do the Russians react to
00:52:07
that? How did the Chinese react in
00:52:09
back and forth? So yeah, that was, you know, I
00:52:12
mean, high stakes, global stakes war potentially in the Arctic.
00:52:17
But yeah, that that was that was Ward that said, well, let's do
00:52:20
it that way because we talked about a couple of different
00:52:21
permutations. How and where are we going to
00:52:23
use Skyfire? And that was that was Ward 2.
00:52:27
So this is the kind of just awesome stuff that Ward brought
00:52:30
to the book. We didn't, you know, we had this
00:52:33
Mac Guffin the Skyfire, and we did not identify exactly what it
00:52:37
was till probably a third of the way through the book.
00:52:40
We kind of knew roughly what we were going to do with it, but it
00:52:43
was kind of vague and we left it that way, you know, which was a
00:52:46
little risky, but we left it that way and then kind of went
00:52:49
back and filled it in and I think it worked.
00:52:51
Like every time we talked about Skyfire, immediately in my head,
00:52:54
all I could see was the briefcase from like North by
00:52:57
Northwest. You don't know what's inside.
00:52:58
It just kind of glows when the briefcase opens up.
00:53:02
And that was in Pulp Fiction. I think they did that in Pulp
00:53:04
Fiction too. So it's like we knew there was
00:53:07
something there. We just, we hadn't figured out
00:53:09
like, OK, how are we going to use it?
00:53:11
Where are we going to use it? And but that again, we're
00:53:13
Panthers, right? So we knew we would feel the
00:53:16
moment when we got there that it was time to use it.
00:53:19
It didn't matter that we didn't know exactly where we were going
00:53:21
to use it. We would know when we got there,
00:53:23
and when we did, we knew. Yeah, I love that.
00:53:29
And you even set the groundwork for it with the opening scene
00:53:31
because that was a fun ride off, you know, off the jump with the
00:53:35
car being taken over. Because that's also another Brad
00:53:38
Thorism is ripped from the headlines.
00:53:40
I think a lot of people are wondering when will AI take
00:53:42
over, start driving our cars for us or controlling the systems
00:53:46
that we rely on. And it could become a matter of
00:53:48
life and death. And you guys addressed that
00:53:50
right off the jump. So when Skyfire was used in that
00:53:53
manner to control the icebreaker hit the sub, it wasn't that out
00:53:56
of the blue. It's kind of like we were
00:53:57
prepped to already understand there's little hints of what
00:54:00
this thing can do. Yeah, exactly.
00:54:03
So. Wow, sorry.
00:54:06
Now that like you guys are explaining it to us, I can I can
00:54:08
kind of see, I want to go back and reread now that I understand
00:54:12
what you guys did and, and, and now I think I could better pick
00:54:15
out who, who, what and where what happened.
00:54:17
But. So does this mean you guys
00:54:19
didn't know for sure that that's exactly how it would end?
00:54:22
That the rescue would be on the sub after the fighters bombed?
00:54:25
Or did did you kind of know that was where you were headed?
00:54:28
We, I think we knew where we were headed.
00:54:31
We just didn't know what the what's the, what the rescue
00:54:35
would look like. Like I learned from Ward about
00:54:37
just how the special operations guys were going to have to prep
00:54:40
a runway and all this kind of stuff.
00:54:42
And we talked about, OK, what happens when the plane comes in?
00:54:44
What are the Chinese going to do when they see that plane come in
00:54:48
and all this kind of stuff. So it was a discussion all
00:54:50
along. We knew where our exit point
00:54:52
was, so to speak. We knew and we kind of wanted a
00:54:55
AA double thing to happen there. So, you know, you think, OK,
00:54:59
great, they're going to get out. They're free, finally, they're
00:55:02
getting off this ice and they're rescued.
00:55:04
And then surprise, you know? It was really kind of
00:55:07
serendipitous. We were not planning on this
00:55:09
from the beginning, but about halfway through the book, I was
00:55:12
out flying with Southwest, and I just happened to fly with the
00:55:15
guy who flies C130's, LC130's in the New York Air National Guard.
00:55:20
It's the only unit in the world that flies C130's on snow skis.
00:55:24
And then they go up to Greenland and down to Antarctica.
00:55:28
So he was just as fond of knowledge about, you know, what
00:55:31
these airplanes could do. And I like, could you, could you
00:55:33
land that up on the Arctic on an ice sheet?
00:55:35
He was like, yeah, the conditions are right, if the ice
00:55:38
was sick enough. Sure.
00:55:39
So. And we went from there.
00:55:41
So I was just, it happened. I just stupid, you know,
00:55:44
stupidly got into that and I think it worked great.
00:55:47
You know, I, I really like putting that airplane in there
00:55:49
in spite of what happened. In the end to it.
00:55:52
That was Brad, Brad. And now we get the airplanes
00:55:54
going to crash. There's going to be fire.
00:55:56
Yeah, I was. Wondering I was like, is this
00:55:59
it? Is this the rescue?
00:56:01
Are they just going to land to get out exfill?
00:56:03
And I wasn't sure I was like, OK, if that happens, I'm pretty
00:56:06
satisfied. That's I'm glad they're safe,
00:56:09
but what, how could this go wrong?
00:56:10
And then when it all went to hell, I was and that brought in
00:56:13
that traditional thriller scene as well.
00:56:15
Like I said, we we do get the payoff of a special operations
00:56:20
shootout. Mission goes wrong, think on
00:56:22
your feet, pivot in the moment. That's very hallmark of the
00:56:25
genre that we read about these super assassin operators
00:56:28
embedded with these special OPS teams.
00:56:30
And it was almost refreshing like 3/4 through the book to be
00:56:33
like, oh, they're doing that as well.
00:56:34
Like I'm getting all these beats that I'm used to and that I
00:56:37
really enjoy. Yep, that was great.
00:56:41
Well, thank you guys. Appreciate you coming on tonight
00:56:43
and even doing this little after hours bit with us.
00:56:47
Thanks for the Limerick. Besides the ending what what was
00:56:50
your favorite part to write? What is the question for each of
00:56:55
us? Yeah, either.
00:56:58
So I really like the ending we just talked about because Ward
00:57:01
and I went back and forth about, OK, how should this go?
00:57:04
Should the Chinese, so originally we talked about
00:57:06
should the Chinese blow up that C130 in the air before it even
00:57:10
lands? I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's
00:57:12
got to come down on the ice. We've got to have exactly what
00:57:15
Mike said. You got to have that feeling
00:57:17
like, OK, they're getting out, you know.
00:57:19
And again, I I said to Ward and it's so funny because this is
00:57:22
the one got a creative funny thing we have is that I've seen
00:57:26
every action movie that there is.
00:57:28
Ward has not seen every action. I'm like, hey, do you remember
00:57:32
in con air when he's like, Brad didn't see it?
00:57:34
I haven't seen that, haven't seen it, but it's like his
00:57:36
answer, whatever I asked him. So I said what I said.
00:57:39
When you think about it like a movie, which is how I write my
00:57:43
stuff, I'm like, I want to see everybody in the theater think,
00:57:47
oh, that's awesome. You know, normally when they do
00:57:49
a rescue mission, they'll have an American flag in the like, if
00:57:52
it's AC130 and stuff, it's this whole you're being repatriated
00:57:57
and it's this all, I even get emotional thinking about it.
00:57:59
But there's this cool thing they do in the aircraft and
00:58:01
everything. And so I thought, all right,
00:58:02
this is awesome. They're going to get off the
00:58:04
ice. Everybody's kind of letting
00:58:05
their guard down and then boom. And so it gives us a whole
00:58:09
nother ramp up of action in another kind of action package
00:58:13
that comes out of that explosion.
00:58:15
So that was my that was my favorite part of the whole book.
00:58:17
If I have to pick one. I enjoyed the polar.
00:58:21
Board same for you. The polar bear.
00:58:24
There you go. Yeah, the way he just got out,
00:58:28
he's just a footprint at 1st and he's just out there somewhere,
00:58:31
you know, he's there in the background.
00:58:33
You don't know what's going to come of it, but.
00:58:35
Like a shark. Sooner we didn't know what was
00:58:37
going to come of it. We just knew he was out there
00:58:39
somewhere. So just this natural threat that
00:58:43
nobody can govern, that's beyond the control of any of these
00:58:46
great governments, and we ended up using them in the end.
00:58:51
Yeah, that was that was fun too, that that he came all the way
00:58:54
back. That was good.
00:58:57
As much as the main motivation is to have domination and
00:59:00
control, Skyfire almost embodies the technologic age and
00:59:04
humanity's like willingness to control.
00:59:07
The two things that are most deadly in this book essentially
00:59:09
are the elements and nature itself.
00:59:12
You know, you're up against physics and as much as you try
00:59:15
to control the world and dominate the world, that's
00:59:17
that's still a factor you've got to consider.
00:59:19
So the polar bear encapsulated that for me.
00:59:21
Cool, love it guys. Pick up this book pre-order if
00:59:26
you haven't. Well, if you listen to this, you
00:59:27
heard the spoiler, so you definitely have already read
00:59:29
this. But Brad Ward, we'll talk to you
00:59:31
next time. You guys have a book coming out
00:59:33
and appreciate you always spending the time.
00:59:36
Thanks guys. Thanks for having us.