← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Singer
Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on screen that's ever gonna be this view oh, it's a beautiful world and I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful.
- [00:35]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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- [01:55]
Jenny Urgent
All right. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urgent, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And what an honor, an author of so many books. He's won so many awards. Ward Larson. Welcome.
- [02:06]
Ward Larsen
Howdy. How are you, Jenny?
- [02:08]
Jenny Urgent
I'm doing really well. I just recently read your newest book that's coming out on February 10th. It is called Cold Zero. It is a thriller. It's a total thriller. And then I got sucked down the David Slayton novel series. I read the first one called the Perfect Assassin. I just think, obviously we need to be reading more. I love a good story, so I would love if you give us your background of like, how does someone Go from being just like a fighter pilot to being like, I'm gonna write all these stories. Yeah.
- [02:42]
Ward Larsen
Well, I grew up in Florida, went to college, not really sure what I was gonna do, and ended up going flying with the father of a friend of mine. And I just thought that was the coolest thing in a private airplane. And so I started looking into that. And next thing you know, I was sign signing on and I went into the Air Force for seven and a half years, flew fighters there and got out right after Desert Storm. And after that I went to work for an airline. And a few years into that, I had a lot of time on my hands on long overnights. And I was always a reader. I always liked to read spy thrillers and that kind of thing. And I just kind of sat down and thought, you know, I could probably do this or maybe, I don't know, just for fun. I thought, what the heck, I'll try because I have to spare time on my hands. So. Yeah. And it took many years to write that first one, the Perfect Assassin, which you just showed. And then all of a sudden I kind of got it published almost accidentally. And now I'm almost 20 books into it. So what?
- [03:43]
Jenny Urgent
I think that's amazing, Ward. Like, I've thought that to you a little bit, like, but I've just been like, well, could I? I don't think I could. You know, I like, I love all these books, but you actually did it. And the Perfect Assassin is the first. Is your first one. And it is so good. So I'm going to tell people about the overarching plots because you talk about how I read it on your website. If you go to your website, you can sign up for your newsletter and you do giveaways. You can know about everything that's coming out. Because there's also another book coming out in May, a Tom Clancy one, Rules of Engagement.
- [04:18]
Ward Larsen
Yep, Tom Clancy. Jack Ryan.
- [04:20]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, so lots to keep track of so people can go to your website. It's Ward Larson dot com. I'll put it in the show notes. But you talk on your website about how people ask you all the time, like, what is it so hard to come up with these big grandiose ideas? And you're like, well, that's not really the hard part. The hard part is the nitty gritty. You know, you're like, I only really need one or two really grandiose ideas a year. But. But the big stories here, so cold zero. And this one's going to be a movie, so you already know and it's clean. I bought a copy for my teenage boys, so I've got, like, an advanced copy, but their copies coming on February 10th, so I'm excited for them to be able to read it. But this is AI technology that they don't want China to have, so they're trying to get it to America, and it's in this little suitcase. And the plane goes down in the Arctic, and then people are coming from Russia and from China and from America, and they run submarines, and there's people on skis, and they're dropping from the sky trying to get this technology. So this is a big, overarching idea here. The big overarching idea in the Perfect Assassin is this random lady is sailing through the ocean and picks up this guy. This is David Slayton. And then there's a bunch more novels, and he's an assassin, but she doesn't know. She just thinks she's saving him from the ocean. And there's nuclear things that have got. A ship has gone down, and you're just got these, like, big grandiose storylines, such page turners. What is your daily writing rhythm like?
- [05:49]
Ward Larsen
Well, I write whenever I can. I'm very busy. You know, I've got. I still fly for an airline. I'm doing, you know, multiple books here. I'm doing two books a year, so I'm staying very busy. But you mentioned that you can give this book to your. Your teenage teenagers to read. And when I started out writing, I kind of. My kids. I had three kids at the time. They were. They're all grown now. But at the time, my two oldest boys were probably 10 and 12. And my kind of goal, my guidance there was to write something that they could read that I wouldn't be embarrassed to give to my kids to read. And I think I've held to that over the years. I mean, there. You know, there are adult concepts in there, and people die, but, you know, there's nothing that I wouldn't give a teenager to read. So I think I've held to that. Now, in terms of Cole 0, which is books coming out next week, I wrote that with Brad Thor. And I got to say, this idea was. Brad. You talk about the big, overarching ideas. Well, all of us writers, we get these ideas from reading news or reading other books or whatever, and we get these little inklings of an idea, and sometimes they just stick in your head. And Brad approached me, and he said, I got this idea stuck in my head about this airplane that flies over the Arctic, and Goes down and it's got some technology on board, you know, but. But I'm busy, you know, writing my once got Harvath book a year and I kind of would like to co write it. And he's just, you know, he had read my books. He said you're just, you know, the ideal writing partner because you know, you have the aviation background which would be a big part of this book. So that's kind of how we got together. This, this is his idea to begin with. But he is like me is what's called a pantser seat of the pants where he doesn't outline. He just has that big overview, knows the beginning and roughly the end and you just go through and make it up as you go. So that's kind of where Cold Zero came from.
- [07:36]
Jenny Urgent
This has been a total gift for me because I really love to read and I love a story. Like I would rather have a story any day over, teach me something more about my habits or whatever. But I tend to get stuck. Like if you're looking at books like I'm like going down the Barbie aisle, but I should be going down the Transformers aisle because. And I learned that with Jack Carr's books. And then I read this book by Jim Shockey called Call Me Hunter and I was like, gosh, I've really been missing out. Like these thrillers are such page turners. And I loved the Perfect Assassin. I mean I, I was in a spot where I like had some work I needed to get done that I didn't want to do.
- [08:12]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
Ward.
- [08:13]
Jenny Urgent
And I was like, I will give myself the treat of being able to finish these books. And it was so motivating. They're that good that it was so motivating. And to your point, is series. There's two different complete series, which is the Assassins series. This is David Slayton. And then there's also another series and then there's some one offs as well.
- [08:34]
Ward Larsen
Yeah.
- [08:34]
Jenny Urgent
So there's just so many books and what a thing. Then you're like, okay, I need another book. I just know I'm gonna go get the next one. Okay, so here's a question I have. I. I've talked to people who like help teach reading because reading, you know, is on the downward, the slope. Downward slope here. And people are not reading very much.
- [08:52]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [08:53]
Jenny Urgent
And they talk about that. A big thing that matters is background knowledge. So you know, a kid who is really. Baseball is going to do a really good job picking up a baseball book. Even better than someone who's a phenomenal Reader, but doesn't know much about baseball. When you write a book like this, is it hard to know like what did, what will the reader know about these technical things? What will the reader know about this submarine? You know, do you, do you find it hard to balance like really explaining or you think you might be over explaining because you're going to have readers that come from a military background, but you're going to have readers that are like a 40 year old mom who's like, I'd love to read this thriller about the assassin. How do you handle that?
- [09:35]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, it's a very good point because you don't want to sink the people who aren't up with, you know, the latest military hardware, but you want to be accurate with what you do present. So yeah, you definitely have to limit what you put in there. But I like introducing things. Sometimes I'll make things up that maybe doesn't even exist. But it, you know, having that military background and keeping up with things as I do in the military field, I can kind of project ahead, you know, well, what might be the next thing down the road. So that's part of being a writer is, you know, coming up with things that maybe are not even on the radar yet. But you know, you talk about kids and I think one of the best things you can do for kids is just have resources, books in the house, you know, just, just have them laying around. I see a huge bookcase behind you and I'm sure there's a lot of kids that would look at that and just kind of start, you know, browsing and looking through it and seeing what's there and what grabs them. And that's just one of the best things you can do. And that was the case in my household. Yeah, you talk about like screen time when I was a kid, you know, we didn't have the phones we had now, but I watched a lot of Gilligan's Island. You know, I wasted a lot of time doing silly things when I was a kid in the 70s. So, you know, it was different back then. And even back then people said, well, that's terrible thing, you ought to be watching so much tv. And maybe it was, but there were also books in the house and I, I just, you know, long summer days when you're, you know, you're not in school and you have all that time to kill. There's nothing better than picking up a good book.
- [11:00]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, and what a difference. My younger brother didn't even want to go to kindergarten or actually it was first grade. Because remember when kindergarten was only half day? So you go in the morning, you'd be home by lunch. And he loved Gilligan's island. So he was like this great, I'll be home. It's on it. Whatever, noon. I can watch Gilligan's Island. Then first grade. And he was like, what? Like, I'm gonna have to miss it. But that's a whole different era where the show was only on at a certain period of time. Then it was like the Price is Right and then there was nothing. So you're in this. No man's. And what are you going to do? Like you have an option to read. There was one book that got mentioned in Cold Zero by Simon Gervais, the Elias Network.
- [11:40]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [11:41]
Jenny Urgent
Have you both read. Whose idea was that?
- [11:43]
Ward Larsen
I forget whose idea was. Simone is a friend of ours. He's Canadian. He writes for Thomas and Mercer, but he writes sort of a spy thriller series. And he's a really good guy. He writes really good books. And we just kind of put that in there as a nudge to him. That's an inside joke.
- [12:00]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, I got. I bought it. I haven't read it yet. Yeah, yeah, I bought it. I was like, there was a one reference to one outside book. And I was like, I wonder if it's real when I saw it was real. So, Simone.
- [12:09]
Ward Larsen
Oh, yes.
- [12:11]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, talk to us. And it was really interesting to read your first book and one of your most recent books because the technology has totally changed, you know. So you're talking about back in Perfect Assassin. You know, I mean, the technologies. There was like a cell phone reference. They're like, maybe I should learn to use one of those all the way to now. Which is really not that much of a change in the time period where there's like an autonomous driving taxi and there's all this facial recognition. Do you get overwhelmed with keeping up with the new technologies and in incorporating them into your books?
- [12:48]
Ward Larsen
I think we as humans are getting overwhelmed. I think technology just in the last 10, 15 years is really just accelerating and AI is only going to accelerate it further. And it's. I wrote a book called Cutting Edge, which you might like, and it was. Came out about seven, eight years ago and it was very technology oriented. It was about mind Web interface, which is being researched right now. Elon Musk has a company that is researching mind Web interface where you don't even need the phone. You just think and you connect to the web. And it's kind of scary, but it's technically feasible. It's going to happen. It's just a matter of when. So you try to imagine where we're going to be. When did the iPhone come out? Like 15, 20 years ago? It wasn't that long ago. Right before then we had little flip phones and you couldn't do near as much as you can now. So we're really not dealing with this well. As humans, I think you look at deep fakes and AI, how easily they produce deep fake audio and video right now, and it's gotten to the point where you really can't believe online what you see and you hear, because it may or may not be true. Even the experts have a hard time figuring out what's true and what's not. One of the snippets in this Tom Clancy book that I was researching and I came across and I thought was just kind of mind boggling is there are 45 billion cameras in the world right now as of today, which is five for every man, woman and child on the planet. And most of those are not being, are never going to be monitored. The images they capture are just recorded somewhere and they're, you know, the reason they're there is because they're connected to some kind of server and they're just recorded for, you know, that the police needed or if, you know, a surgeon needs to look at your, you know, your gastric tumor or whatever it is. You know, there's just all these images out there from so many sources and most of them are never seen. But that creates an opportunity for intelligence agencies to hack in and look at any of those things. So it really just boggles the mind. Like I say, you know, what can be done with this stuff and our laws are not keeping up with, you know, how to govern, you know, AI and technology. And it's, it's a little scary. I mean, I have kids, I have grandkids now, and I'm a little worried about where we're going to be in 20, 30, 50 years. Yeah.
- [15:11]
Jenny Urgent
And you're then having to incorporate this into all of your writing. I read one of Brad Thor's first books too, and he was like the characters, like at an Internet cafe. This is in the 2000s. You know, like he, like someone's, he's like, can I use your computer? And they like, it's just totally different in two decades. I read this book because I had read this Jack Carr book. It was like my sort of first military fiction. I was like, I've been missing this my whole life. The book is called Only the Dead and it comes from the saying, only the dead will see the end of war. And in order to prepare, because I was like, oh gosh, I'm like so in over my head. I read this book called Unrestricted Warfare, which was a life changing book for me because it's about like what they do in China and how they're like, fine if something takes 10, 20, 30 years. Which is basically this, this cold zero book. You know, they got this AI technology they've been working on for 10 years and you know, they, it's about ready to launch. And what they say in the book is that war has totally changed and get used. Everyone thinks it's like the Civil War and everyone's gonna have a musket. They're like, no, you don't even know who the soldiers are. Like, you don't even really know the deep fakes and all of these different things that are going on. So it's impressive to me as an author to stay current with those things and to be able to write about. And you had a lot of it in this book. And you talked even about talking about all those cameras because you had these characters. They're running surveillance detection routes that bordered on marathons in the world's most pervasive surveillance state in China. So what a story. Okay.
- [16:44]
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- [20:30]
Jenny Urgent
All right, so then talk to us about this First Officer Brett Sharp. He is one of the main characters in this book. Cold Zero.
- [20:36]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [20:36]
Jenny Urgent
And they're in this plane. The plane goes down in the Arctic. This is sort of the big overall story. What would you do if you're on a plane that has to land on an ice floe and you look everywhere, it's just white, there's polar bears. When. It's quite an exciting storyline here. What of the pilot stuff? Because like, one of the things that I noticed was that Brett Sharp, like he had investigated aircraft accidents before.
- [21:03]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [21:04]
Jenny Urgent
So there was a sentence that said he would never forget the horrific sites from his first crash scene. And you also did that?
- [21:11]
Ward Larsen
Yes. Yeah, I did when I was in the Air Force. The Air Force investigates their own air crashes, whereas, you know, on the commercial side, the NTSB takes over the military investigates their own crashes, each of the services. So I was trained as a pilot to be the pilot representative on a crash board or at a crash site. So I was an operational, you know, crash investigator. And it was really interesting. It was a six week course to begin with and then you kind of get into it once you, you finish that course. But it was a really interesting field where you learn a lot about, you know, what, what can go wrong. Both, you know, maintenance, operations, engineering, all kinds of things that can go into crashes. And usually it's not one thing, it's a series of things that, that go wrong. But you know, this one, it took this crash in Cold Zero. It takes place in the Arctic. And the Arctic is a very unique environment. It's like nothing else on earth. There's no landmass, but there's ice, very thick ice. It's meters thick at the very top. And it's just a sea of ice that rotates around. It varies in size depending on the season, the time of year. And you can Go out there and walk around on it. And the ice breaks apart and shifts and there's just all kinds of complications. And it's extremely remote. I mean, it's 1,000 miles from. From the nearest landmass or rescue station. And what we did also, we kind of restricted it further. Made it more of a closed room by making the weather bad. Because the way you would normally get up to a scene like that Is with Air C130s or helicopters or something like that. But I took that off the table by making the weather particularly bad when this airplane crashed. So they're by themselves. Brett Sharp is the first officer that kind of, you know, I, I'm a captain, but I kind of relate to that, being in the cockpit. He's the only surviving crew member. Of course. He's, you know, his airplane went down, so he's feeling really guilty. He comes out of it with, you know, not in too bad a shape, but his, his cap and his dead right beside him. And he's got, you know, the rest of the. There's our survivors, but no other crew members. So. And it's. And in that situation, you know, he realizes right off the bat that they're going to be there a while, given the weather being what it is. So that's a. It's a survival situation in the near term. They need to just stay alive. And as you may have mentioned, there's a piece of technology on board the airplane that kind of centered. This whole thing revolves around. He. He knows nothing about it. So that's. That's the twist. But, yeah, he's. He's a former Air Force guy, and I can kind of relate to his background pretty well.
- [23:49]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
Yeah.
- [23:50]
Ward Larsen
Yeah.
- [23:50]
Jenny Urgent
You had this reference to Sully. Sully Sullenberg, yes. And his plane went down. This is from night, from 2009. Both engines disabled by a bird strike. And all 150 people, 55 people aboard survived. He landed in the Hudson River. I remember it when that happened.
- [24:10]
Narrator/Singer
Yeah.
- [24:11]
Ward Larsen
Yep. Miracle on the Hudson. He did a brilliant job, too, by the way. He really did. Just the idea of, you know, he had nowhere to go. He couldn't make it back to the airport. He did the exact right thing, and the results proved it. He saved everybody.
- [24:25]
Jenny Urgent
Wow. I mean, this is such a page turner. Like, this is it page 20. You're like. It's like, will the ice hold if we use the landing gear? £4,400,000 on 10 tires? Not a chance. There's no brakes, there's no engine. Like, they land. There's no reverse thrust. There's no way to steer. So you're talking about picking the best bad option. I mean, this is how this book kicks off. It's such a page turner. And then, you know, there's all this interaction and. And there's a female lead.
- [24:51]
Ward Larsen
Yes, there is. Yes.
- [24:52]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, a female lead. And, you know, she's helping to try and basically save the world here. Is this Casey Sheridan?
- [25:01]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [25:01]
Jenny Urgent
So there's just a lot of. Just twists and turns even.
- [25:05]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
And then.
- [25:06]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, so talk then about as a military person, then. Do you have a good sense of all of the other types of military and like. Because then there was a big focus on the submarines.
- [25:20]
Ward Larsen
Yes. Yeah, that. I mean, you know, I'm not an expert on submarines. I know people who are. I'm good friends with people who have worked on submarines in the service, and I don't go deep enough to where. Whatever details I put in there, I double check, but I don't put too many details where I'm just going to sink myself. And again, I don't think the readers want to. Want to go overboard with the details, but I've read a lot of those types of books. I've read Hunt for Red October and all, a number of books like that. So I just wanted to have an authentic feel of being, you know, in the submarine and use the right jargon, that kind of thing. So, you know, I've never been on a sub, but I know people who have been.
- [26:00]
Jenny Urgent
Would you be interested?
- [26:02]
Ward Larsen
Oh, sure, yeah. If I get an invitation, sure.
- [26:05]
Jenny Urgent
So interesting. Someone should invite you. And then I learned about. There was an icebreaker ship in the. In this book, book Cold Zero. It's called the Snow Dragon 2. It's capable of carving through 10ft thick ice. So, I mean, I don't even know. You're kind of like, I didn't even know all of this was going on. I think it's important to know, though. I mean, you have a better sense. Read a book like this. It's super entertaining, but you also have a better sense of the world. Can you talk about the Arctic in particular? Because you say that the strategic importance of the Arctic is increasing every year.
- [26:39]
Ward Larsen
It is, because, you know, the seas are warming, so every year the northern routes are becoming more and more open. Historically, the. The most capable nations when it comes to operating in the Arctic have been Russia first, and then some of the Norways and Finlands and people like that. The United States has two icebreakers, and most. They're both pretty old. I think they're now buying some new ones, having some new ones made, but we don't have the capability to go up in real thick ice. The Russians have 10 times as many as we do. And they're nuclear, many of them, which means they can go through really deep thick ice because that's. The Russians have 11 time zones on the Arctic. They have a huge northern tier. And it's to their advantage because the opening of those trade routes to, to the north, which are being open longer and longer each year, it's their advantage. You can go from China or the Far east to Europe much more quickly than going down south through the Suez Canal or something like that. So it really saves a lot of time. And it's just become strategically important also for minerals, mineral mining up there. China, interestingly, has more icebreakers than we do. The Snow Dragon too, by the way, is a real buzz. Know if there is such a ship. That's, that's factual. But it, they are not an Arctic nation geographically. Their, their nearest point of northernmost point in China is about a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle. It's, it's way out there. But they call themselves a near Arctic nation because they have a commercial interest, they have an economic interest to doing those northern trade routes. Say them a lot of money, a lot of time. So you know, they are taking a great interest in the Arctic for that reason.
- [28:33]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, fascinating. I would never have known. You wrote. With the strategic importance of the Arctic increasing every year, submarine based polar operation has become an emphasis. And then this is. Remind me of this unrestricted warfare book, Casey. This is one of the main characters. The female lead was no expert in geopolitics, but she knew that the Arctic had become a battleground. Not a war fought with bullets, but a theater of sharp elbow diplomacy, territorial outreach and military intimidation. So it's just like everything is converging on this one spot where this plane goes down. Let's talk about one of the other plane things since you're a pilot. The other big plane thing was when they go in to try and save them. It's an LC130, the largest aircraft on earth that operates on skis. Tell us about that plane. Did I say it right?
- [29:28]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, you know, it was really interesting, Brad. We're just getting into writing this section of the book and I still fly at my airline. I fly for Southwest and I happen to fly with a guy, a first officer who flew in the New York Air National Guard and he flew in the only unit that flies that airplane, the LC130. So I had this bona fide expert sitting next to me for three days who told me all about Arctic operations and landing on skis and all the things you can do. So I had a, an expert right there. So I got a lot of that information on the, on the C130 from him.
- [30:03]
Jenny Urgent
What a cool thing.
- [30:04]
Ward Larsen
What a cool thing.
- [30:05]
Jenny Urgent
Talk about this sentence. It was a mistake that the Air Force had been making for years. Pulling seasoned pilots out at the top of their game, pulling seasoned pilots at the top of their game out of the cockpit and forcing them into administrative posts. Like so many of his brethren, Sharp hadn't been interested. He'd made the jump to the civilian world, trading major for first officer.
- [30:25]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, that's been a bone of contention amongst Air Force pilots for a long time. You know, they always have retention problems where people, you know, come to their first point where they can get out of the Air Force and go fly for the airlines. You know, the typical retirement is 20 years. Most guys leave at the first opportunity. Really is about the 12 year point. It was seven years when I was in. But they've upped it just because they, they have so much, so many retention problems. But all pilots have always said, you know, if you would just let us fly and not force us into additional duty desk jobs, staff jobs, Pentagon jobs, things like that, if we could just stay and fly, everybody would just stay in 20 years and your, your problem would go away. But the senior press never see it that way. And that's, that's been a long standing point of contention amongst pilots in the Air Force. They kind of want everybody, put everybody on a track to be chief of staff and not just let them fly.
- [31:17]
Jenny Urgent
Airplanes, which is why so many sign up, I would imagine, to begin with, they want to fly.
- [31:22]
Ward Larsen
Exactly. Most don't want to be, you know, some don't want to make senior rank. They just want to fly. They enjoy flying and they're the most experienced pilots, the instructors, and, you know, we should just let them fly.
- [31:33]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. What about flying over storms? Is that a common thing? Because this was a whole, like at the beginning, you're like, well, we're at 30, 34,000ft. It's smooth up here, but below us there's this huge storm. So then when the, the plane goes down, then you're going through the storm.
- [31:48]
Ward Larsen
Yes, that, that's actually pretty common. There's different kinds of storms, like summertime thunderstorms down in the tropics in Florida, where you get those really high, tall cumulonimbus clouds. Can't fly over those, you have to go around them. But a fast moving, you know, heavy winter storm, generally you can just fly right over it. And you know, it's not always smooth, but it's, it's. You're not in the store storm, you're not in the clouds. I've actually flown over hurricanes before. You can fly right over hurricane, look down the eye and it's, it's there because, because that the weather is moving so fast it doesn't have the time to build vertically. So hurricanes are actually down fairly low. The clouds around them, not always, but a lot of them, the smaller ones are not that high so you can fly right over them.
- [32:36]
Jenny Urgent
What an interesting book. So many things going on in the sky. There's, you know, at the point that I wrote this should be a movie, I learned later that I was going to be was. It says in less than a minute all 24 men were falling through the stormy arctic sky. So I got, I was like, this has got to be a movie. And then I learned, then I learned that it's going to be one. So you know, there's all these things that are going in the sky and then on the ground, you know, there's the polar bears, there's this convergence of all of these different countries. There's people on skis, you know, they're trying to get to this one spot, this rendezvous spot. And then there's things going under. It's like all three levels, right? Then there's things going on in the ocean with these submarines. So I don't want to get, obviously can't give away any of the book, but the overall plot is fantastic. I stayed up really late to finish it because I wanted to know what was going to happen. But I thought there's a couple things in here that are just overarching fun things that won't give away a plot. First one, There's a Buc EE's cup.
- [33:36]
Ward Larsen
I like to just throw on little nuggets like that just to get a reaction from people as I just did. So nothing but fun, you know. But Brad and I really had fun writing this because both of us have been writing these kind of long running series and Brad has written, I think, one other book outside his main series. So this was really cool for us because we got a clean sheet of paper to just do whatever we want. We didn't have that, you know, the bag of all our previous books and all the constraints that, that, that it implies. So we just could do whatever the heck we Wanted and we had fun with that. And I, I think it hopefully, you know, comes through in the book that we were kind of having fun with it, with things like that.
- [34:14]
Jenny Urgent
I mean, to me it seems like it will be really hard to write with another person. It seems like it's such a personal. I'm in my, you know, I'm hunkered down in a room by myself. I mean but you, but you also have a lot of experience. So this is maybe something a little. Are there things about it that are really challenging?
- [34:35]
Ward Larsen
You know, neither of us knew what to expect because we had never done it. So we kind of went in a little wondering, you know, how it was going to go. And it was surprisingly smooth. Brad's a very positive, high energy guy and he just was really easy to work with and we had a good time with. Went better than I think either of us thought it would. Let the beginning it was a little awkward. Just we both were working on other books and we kind of got a little behind on things. But once we got in a groove where, you know, one of us would write some chapters, send it to the other who would kind of rewrite it and edit and we just go back and forth like that. And after we did that about a dozen times, we had a book. So it was, it went. Once we got in a groove, it went very smoothly. So surprisingly so because I have friends who write who do you know? I friends with Andrews and Wilson who previously wrote the, the Tom Clancy series and they do four or five books a year co writing and they've been doing this fore and I could never understand how they did that. But once you do it, you know, and you, you kind of set your own little rules and boundaries, it, it can work very well and I think it did for Brad and I.
- [35:43]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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- [38:04]
Jenny Urgent
One of the lines I really like this is a so there was just a lot of concepts that kind of extend out into everyday life. And I interviewed this man last year. His name's Dr. Mark Berman, and he wrote a book called the Nature of the Mind, and it's all about how nature makes you feel better. That's basically the gist of It. But he's done all of these different studies and one of the concepts was that in nature you never see a straight line. And so you often people will take those design elements and put them indoors and they feel better. Like, you know, people talk about like the live edge table, like that type of thing. And so there was a line in here where, you know, it's like these characters are like there's. They're just basically roaming in the Arctic trying to find something. And it said they saw something that didn't exist. Exist in nature. A small ridge of snow that formed a perfectly straight line.
- [38:56]
Ward Larsen
Yeah.
- [38:56]
Jenny Urgent
Oh, that was a cool. A cool idea to throw that in there. And it's so true.
- [39:00]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, it is. Yeah. You don't see those perfect geometric shapes in nature. It just doesn't exist. So you see that it's something man made.
- [39:07]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. Okay. Talk about this line rattled. People are always easier to control.
- [39:15]
Ward Larsen
Yeah. That's just my own little psychoanaly psychoanalysis, I guess. I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if I'd ever.
- [39:22]
Jenny Urgent
That.
- [39:22]
Ward Larsen
Or Brad. Brad might have been one of Brad.
- [39:25]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, that's probably true.
- [39:27]
Ward Larsen
It's true. You knock people off their game and they are. They're a little easier to, you know, to manage.
- [39:33]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. I loved the sentence find shelter or die. I mean, it's just such a page turner and. And even this like critical intelligence sometimes comes from the most unexpected sources. So I mean, just from. From start to finish, I just thoroughly enjoyed it. Can you tell us about the movie process? Because, I mean, obviously you say on your website, like, I mean, I read Perfect Assassin. I was like, I would love to see this in movie form. What is that process? So you just kind of assume like that was a really good book, they should make it a movie. Is it a really complicated process? It's interesting that Cold Zero already is headed that direction.
- [40:10]
Ward Larsen
You know, I think you're also talking to Brad. I'll defer to him on the real details of that because he's much more into that end of it than I am. But he had connections out of. In LA with an agency. And Brad Really Bad is very cinematic when he writes. He really. That's one of the things I've kind of learned from him is how to write in a more cinematic fashion. That was his sort of training, his education. He majored in film and he's always kind of been that way in his books. And so he's. He's always had more of an. In Hollywood and he's been Pursuing that for a while. He really felt this one would be a good movie, Cold zero. And he tried to, you know, get his agents to push it, and they did, and they sent it to some people at Netflix and they just read it and just really liked it a lot. And one thing led to another. And again, Brad can tell you more of the details of this, but it. It really just kind of happened. It's very unusual for a book to get, you know, picked up for film before it's even published. Yes, that was. That was really a coup. So. So we're very, very happy with it.
- [41:15]
Jenny Urgent
So you're going to get to go to a movie premiere?
- [41:18]
Ward Larsen
I'm hoping so, yeah.
- [41:19]
Jenny Urgent
Are your kids super excited?
- [41:21]
Ward Larsen
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [41:23]
Jenny Urgent
This will be a new thing.
- [41:24]
Ward Larsen
Yep. Yep. I've had a couple close calls. I had one, the Perfect Assassin, almost got made at one point, but that fell through at the last minute. I've had a few other Nevilles, but I haven't had any of my books turned into film as of yet.
- [41:36]
Jenny Urgent
Okay. I'm so excited for you. What a cool experience. You never know. You're like 20 years in. The Perfect Assassin came out in 2004. So you probably writing since 2003.
- [41:45]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, probably 2000, because that first one took many years to write. I wasn't really doing it seriously. I was just kind of doing it as a hobby on my overnights.
- [41:54]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
Yeah.
- [41:55]
Jenny Urgent
And you just never know you're 25 years in. And here's the movie that's gonna come on Netflix. That's so exciting. Okay, let's talk a little bit about Perfect Assassin 2, because this is a David Slayton novel, and there's a lot of David Slayton novels. So you can. I mean, it is clean. I was. I was like, wow. I'm. You know, I can give these to my kids, especially. We've got girls, too. But it's harder, I think, sometimes to find things for the. For the boys to read. So my favorite line. And I know you wrote this 25 years ago, so if you don't remember any of it, then all this help jog your memory. But okay, my favorite line in the whole book. So this is a story of this woman who's just, like, minding her own business and. And save someone in the ocean. And turns out, you know, guys got a lot of things going on. And so my favorite line was. I think he said something to her, like, you remind me of someone. And she says, well, I can honestly say that you don't remind me of anyone. I've ever known such a great line. I was like, that was really clever. But okay. He says to her, you can remember details under stress. Most people can't. Do you think that's true?
- [43:03]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, I mean, that's his training. That's been his. He's been immersed in this thought process. You know, he's been trained by the. Them, by the Mossad, to be an assassin. So he's really just immersed his life in this. And not always happily, but, you know, he's done it. He's gotten very, very good at what he does, but, you know, he has reservations, but he's very good and he. He can just see things other people don't see. And I think most the best, you know, the people who are really good at tradecraft in the world and that kind of thing, they. They do that. They look at the world differently than the rest of us. So I tried to put myself in that mindset and, you know, see things as someone like him would.
- [43:42]
Jenny Urgent
So he's like in all these different situations where he's trying to kind of like, get away or, you know, he's trying to basically save himself. And there's this one spot, and I'm always just surprised because you, like, think it's gonna happen, but then, you know, the book is a lot longer, so you're like, well, something's certainly gonna happen here, but there's this one, and I'm not going to give anything away, but this one time he's at this farm, and I mean, you're like. And he's just so brilliant. He's like, created all these paths for himself and he's like, on this truck and he's at this farm and then like. Like a little kid show, you know, just is walking out on their, you know, on their farm property. And he said it was a small mistake, but years in the film in the field had convinced him it was small mistakes that killed you. Yeah, that's kind of a big line. Do you find that that's true and.
- [44:27]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, I. I think so. I think operators will tell you that. And I think, you know, throwing the kid in there is really kind of a shift of gears. I think it's a good thing for writers to do, to engage readers, just to just bring something out of the blue like that. You know, you're just going along and you're escaping and using all your traycaf. All of a sudden, some little kid shows up and sees you and it's like, well, now what do I do? And, you know, He's. And he's an honorable guy. He's not going to do anything to harm a kid, so he's got to think fast and talk his way out of it. So. Yeah, I like throwing twists like that in.
- [44:58]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, a lot of twists. Is it difficult when you write a series of books about a main character? Do you get bored?
- [45:07]
Ward Larsen
No, no, I wouldn't say bored because you want the character to advance. I mean, he's getting older, you know, in the. More in the later books, he's getting older. Not maybe in the full chronology of how many years those books have taken place, but he's getting older. And the later books, he's got a family, he's got kids. And in the most recent book, he's actually going into management in the CIA, where he's kind of operating the Clandestine Service in the CIA, so. And I'm bringing in a new younger guy called Drew Miller, and a book called Dark Vector is my most recent one. So he's kind of in a supervisory role very unexpectedly. But you want your characters to kind of learn from their mistakes, kind of move on with their lives. Like I said, he got married, he's got kids, so things happen. And that's how you advance your characters.
- [45:55]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. And the technologies totally change.
- [45:58]
Ward Larsen
Yes.
- [45:59]
Jenny Urgent
So there's actually a lot that's changed in the world, even since 2000. So you're moving this character through. Will there be more David Slayton books?
- [46:07]
Ward Larsen
Yes, I'm working on one of those later this year. And, yeah, and again, it will be his new protege. True. Miller is the name of the guy, and he's the young guy who. And I'm throwing maybe a little humor in with him. He's. He's a. He's a very efficient guy. He's in his late 20s, but he. He gets good results. But all. He leaves these terrible things happening in his wake, like he. Just by accident, not through incompetence, but he just. Bad things seem to happen wherever he's been. Like I had in the. In Dark Vector, he's escaping from a wastewater facility in China where he was doing some secret work, and he just happened to hit the wrong button in this facility in the middle of the night, and everything went wrong. And all of a sudden there was this big landslide of ethylene behind him and his way going downhill. And so David Clayton's in. In Washington hearing about this, and just he's got his head on his. His hand on his head, going, oh, no, where did that come from?
- [47:13]
Jenny Urgent
Okay. So, I mean, there Is a lot. There's a lot to read, but there's also another whole series. So tell us about the other series.
- [47:23]
Ward Larsen
Jammer Davis.
- [47:24]
Jenny Urgent
That's it.
- [47:25]
Ward Larsen
Yes. There's three books in that series. Wrote them a long time ago and got very good results. Sold a lot of those books. It was. Jamer Davis is a retired Air Force pilot and he's an aircraft accident investigator. And the first book is called Fly by Wire. And basically there's a crash in France of a new airplane. It's a cargo airplane that nobody that is in one of the prototypes, one of the first ones ends up crashing and he has to go over, gets a sign to go over and find out what happened in the crash. And of course it turns out it's not just anything simple, it's a nefarious plot. And I'll leave it at that. But I use very much my experience in the crash investigation field for that one. It's sort of a police procedural type book, you know, about airplanes because that's what it is. You go to a crash, you kind of sift through the evidence, find out what's important and it's. And you go talk to interview people, interview the guy's flight surgeon and you know, people like that, just to see what was up in his life. And so it's. It's an interesting field.
- [48:30]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, so there are a lot of options. There is the David Slayton series, there's the Jammer Davis books. There's also three standalone books now there's Cold Zero. And that is not all. Does also then about Rules of Engagement.
- [48:46]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, Rules of Engagement comes out in May. That's a Tom Clancy Jack Ryan book centered around, of course, Jack Ryan and also the character John Clark in that series who's kind of a special operations kind of guy. And there's a lot of flying in this one. It's gotten some really good reviews. It's just now starting to get out to reviewers and people seem to really like it a lot. I think it came together well. Sometimes you write a book and you think, yeah, that was okay, this is good. But sometimes you just really feel like it. It comes together almost writes itself. You know, the story just falls into place. This one did. This one was like that. I really felt like it came together well. So, yeah, it comes out in May 19th.
- [49:23]
Jenny Urgent
May 19th. A plane crash. Lots. Lots of things like you said about, yeah, planes.
- [49:27]
Ward Larsen
So, yeah, they're both plane crash. I'm tending towards plane crash. My book after that is not going to be about a plane crash. I'm not going to get carried away.
- [49:35]
Jenny Urgent
With it, but these big overarching storylines are, they. They just kind of like draw you in and you're. You're like wanting to know what I mean. They're fantastic. Okay. I learned some new words. Words. So I thought that was great too, for the parents listening in. New vocabulary. I don't even know how to pronounce this word. Recalcitrant.
- [49:54]
Ward Larsen
Recalcitrant. Yeah. Yeah.
- [49:56]
Jenny Urgent
All right, tell us what that means.
- [49:58]
Ward Larsen
Recalcitrant. It's. Oh, boy, we gotta challenge me here. I could use it in a sentence.
- [50:04]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, that's what my mom would always say. Use it in a sentence.
- [50:06]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, he was. He was. He had a recalcitrant attitude, which means he just kind of disagreeable, basically.
- [50:13]
Narrator/Singer
Way.
- [50:14]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
Yeah.
- [50:14]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. I didn't know that one at all. Resisting authority or control. Not obedient or compliant. There was actually a lot of them, but I only wrote down a couple plaintively.
- [50:24]
Ward Larsen
There was one I taught Brad Thor, because I. I had just read a book as we were writing this book, and I had. I read a book, a non fiction book about a ship called the USS Jeanette. And it was in the late 1800s, 1887, I think, it tried to set sail to the North Pole. It was a wooden ship and tried to sail up to the North Pole on an expedition, got trapped in the ice and they just spun around in the ice for like two years. And it just became this big survival story. And some of them made it out, but not all. But I learned a lot just about Arctic survival from reading that book, because that's pretty much what it was, was an Arctic survival story. And one of the words I picked out of it was Lead, L, E, A D. And what that is in the Arctic. It's. It's a. Yeah, you do.
- [51:06]
Jenny Urgent
Okay, well, I know from your book now.
- [51:09]
Ward Larsen
Okay.
- [51:10]
Jenny Urgent
But I did not know that word before I read Cold zero. Okay. Sorry I interrupted, but I was like, oh, I. What? I wondered. Ward, I'm glad you actually brought this up. What I wondered was, is this a word that other people wouldn't know, but possibly not.
- [51:24]
Ward Larsen
I think I used it in a context in the books where they figured it out.
- [51:27]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah. So I figured it out. Yeah.
- [51:29]
Ward Larsen
So. But it's. Yeah, it's a. It's a fissure between ice flows, between the ice sheets and the Arctic because it's constantly moving and breaking apart and fusing again. And those leads are the cracks, the breaks between the different ice flows. And I learned that in that Book. And Brad said, I didn't know that word. I had to look it up.
- [51:45]
Jenny Urgent
And.
- [51:45]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, that's cool.
- [51:46]
Jenny Urgent
It is cool. Yeah.
- [51:48]
Ward Larsen
It's an art. It's an arctic term. Yeah.
- [51:50]
Jenny Urgent
It's a lead. Because, like, they're trying to figure out. I mean, and you can imagine yourself in that situation if you're on one piece of ice and the other one is six feet away, how are you supposed to get over there?
- [52:01]
Narrator/Singer
There. Yep.
- [52:02]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
It's called a lead.
- [52:03]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, that was another one I learned. It was like a. That was in this cold zero a lot. And you do learn it from the context. So anyway, I liked it. I learned a lot of new vocabulary. You're going out on tour for this one. Can you tell people where they can find you? They can come and get their book signed, right?
- [52:19]
Ward Larsen
They can, or they can. If you go to either of our websites, mine or Brad Thor's, you can find a connection where you can order signed books online. We will sign them at the bookstore and they'll ship them them out so you don't have to go to one of these places. But we're going Tampa, Houston, Phoenix, Palm Springs, and then we're doing a Savannah book festival this next weekend and also book festivals in March in Tucson and Fort Myers. So those are all opportunities where we'll be signing books.
- [52:50]
Jenny Urgent
Do you like that part of it?
- [52:52]
Ward Larsen
Yeah. Yeah. I like engaging readers and meeting readers. Absolutely.
- [52:56]
Jenny Urgent
Is it exhausting? I mean, that's kind of a lot to juggle.
- [52:58]
Ward Larsen
If you're ready. Yeah, it's a travel, especially with my flying schedule outside that. So it's going to be very busy next six weeks. Actually, I'm retiring from flying in six weeks, middle of March. So that's going to be a biggie for me. I'll be riding full time, and I'm looking forward to that.
- [53:14]
Jenny Urgent
Oh, wow. How long have you been doing it.
- [53:19]
Ward Larsen
With Southwest? 33 years.
- [53:22]
Jenny Urgent
What? What? Congratulations.
- [53:24]
Ward Larsen
Well, thank you. Yes, I'm. I'm looking forward to it. Been there, done that. I've. I'm ready to move. Move on.
- [53:30]
Jenny Urgent
Retiring from flying in six weeks, that's.
- [53:33]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
A really big deal.
- [53:34]
Ward Larsen
Yes. Yeah, it is.
- [53:35]
Jenny Urgent
Are you emotional about it?
- [53:38]
Ward Larsen
I'm looking forward to it. Actually. During COVID my airline had a program where you could take time off because they were overstaffed, they weren't flying much. So I took 11 months off and didn't fly during COVID So I just stayed home and wrote and I had no issues with. It worked just fine.
- [53:54]
Jenny Urgent
You got a little taste of what it would be like.
- [53:56]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, so I got my practice retirement and out of the way.
- [53:58]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, my dad, my dad talked about that. Oh, that's so cool. Well, congratulations to retire from flying in six weeks. And you'll just be focusing on the writing and then obviously all of these. I mean there's a lot of book tours. If you've got books that are coming out once or twice a year, I would imagine a lot of book tours. What are you reading right now?
- [54:17]
Ward Larsen
I am. I just listened to Jack Carr's latest recently, Cry Havoc. It was very good. It was about Vietnam. It was set in Vietnam. It was about James Reese's father.
- [54:30]
Jenny Urgent
Yeah, I liked that one a lot. I liked that one about this sort of lineage piece like grandfather to father to. You know, it was like a three generation thing came up and he said he had to do so much research for that one.
- [54:44]
Ward Larsen
I'm sure he did. And, and I didn't know that much about the Vietnam War. That's kind of why I really liked it because I learned a lot about the Vietnam War that I didn't already know. So I was very, very good.
- [54:53]
Jenny Urgent
I think he did too. Yeah, he was like, I thought I knew more than, than I did. And then when I started to go down the rabbit trail, that's what's interesting too. It just leads you to more and more knowledge. So my husband listened to that one too and the audiobooks are really good. Actually. You can listen to your audiobook Cold Zero on your website. Like it's. Just a minute.
- [55:14]
Ward Larsen
Yes. Yeah. There's a sample on the website. Yep.
- [55:17]
Jenny Urgent
Who read yours?
- [55:20]
Ward Larsen
This one, Armand Schultz, who reads all of Brad's books. I've had a couple different people read my own.
- [55:27]
Jenny Urgent
Who's like the. Is there like a, like a North Star? Like, oh, this is, you know, are there some top tier people that you're like, if it could be them, you.
- [55:34]
Ward Larsen
Know, I, I'm not really that particular about it. I've had a few people read it and then the, the publisher will. They have a division for audio. These books these days, audio is a real big deal. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and so it's good to have a good reader, but I'm not particular to one. I, they'll sell me samples. You know, do you like how this guy read reads or that guy reads? And yeah, I, I just, you know, give my opinion and I usually agree and we go with that person. But I don't have a real big no. There, there's one guy I really like the guy who used to read the original Reacher books, Jack Reacher books, his name was Dick Hill. He's actually passed away, but he read the first 10 or so reacher books. And I just loved how he played that character. He just kind of.
- [56:18]
Jenny Urgent
It's quite an impressive skill set because they'll have different. Different tones of voice and they keep track of it. And it will be like a man, and he'll be able to do a woman's voice and men and all of these different characters.
- [56:29]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
I just.
- [56:29]
Jenny Urgent
I'm always super.
- [56:31]
Ward Larsen
Yeah. People ask me if I read my own books and it's like, no way.
- [56:38]
Narrator/Singer
Yeah.
- [56:38]
Jenny Urgent
Because they have all of these. It's a totally different skill set for the fiction books and all of the different characters. Ward, I loved it. It. I loved it. It is called Cold Zero. It is a total thriller and it comes out February 10th. You can go back and read the Perfect Assassin, this Assassin series, David Slayton. And also then this book coming out in Feb. In May, the May book that's coming out. And then also the Simone Gervais one might be a good one. I. I'm assuming. I got a copy of it, but haven't read it yet, so. Ward, such an honor. I mean, you have written so many books and I think there's so many cool opportunities to. With you, especially with your monthly email because you do these giveaways and title reveals and cover reveals.
- [57:22]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
So it's a.
- [57:23]
Jenny Urgent
It's a cool day and age to be able to. To connect with an author.
- [57:27]
Narrator/Singer
Yeah.
- [57:27]
Jenny Urgent
That didn't used to be an option. So I do love that people can go to your website and you've got all the different titles on there and.
- [57:33]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
What the different books are about.
- [57:34]
Jenny Urgent
Sort of an overview of those. So thanks for being here. Huge congrats on your retirement and on these new books that are coming out in 2026. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [57:48]
Ward Larsen
My first memory was I was probably three or four years old and I was swinging on a neighbor's swing set. They. I had a neighbor, a friend of mine, who was the same age. He wasn't there at the time. It was just me. For some reason. I was over at his house and a sun shower came out and I just thought that was the coolest thing because it was raining, but the sun was out. And that's my first memory.
- [58:08]
Jenny Urgent
Wow. Wow. In Florida.
- [58:10]
Ward Larsen
Yeah, in Florida.
- [58:12]
Jenny Urgent
That's so cool. I don't think they have those.
- [58:14]
Ward Larsen
I couldn't remember that like it was yesterday. I don't know why it just stuck with me.
- [58:17]
Jenny Urgent
I feel like you probably experienced a lot more of those. I feel like it always in. In Florida, it's almost always sunny.
- [58:24]
Ward Larsen
It's usually dark and thundering, though, when it rains.
- [58:27]
Jenny Urgent
Oh, yeah.
- [58:27]
Ward Larsen
Oh, yeah.
- [58:28]
Jenny Urgent
Okay. That's how it is in Michigan. Well, what a cool memory. A sun shower. I love it. Huge congrats, Ward, and thanks for being here.
- [58:35]
Ward Larsen
Thanks for having. Great talking to you. Jenny.
- [58:40]
Narrator/Singer
Get outside Open your eyes Feel that sunshine kissing your skin Throw your worries out to the wind Climb some trees Skin your knees Feel that grass on your feet again get out there and.
- [58:58]
Jenny Urgent
Take it in.
- [59:02]
Narrator/Singer
Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen that's ever gonna beat this view oh, it's a beautiful world And I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful.
- [59:32]
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