518 | Brian Andrews | Tom Clancy's "Defense Protocol" & Wilson Combat

Brian Andrews, one half of the writing duo Andrews and Wilson, joins the show once again to discuss their latest contribution to the legendary Jack Ryan series, "Defense Protocol." 

Chapters

• 0:15 Jack Ryan Universe and Writing Careers
• 9:59 Firearms and Fiction
• 24:02 Evolving Military Thriller Genre

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

hey, welcome back to the protectors podcast. Excellent guest today brian andrews, from the duo andrews and wilson. They've been on the show I have no idea how many times, but they have been the most frequent guests on the show and I was lucky enough to go out to an undisclosed location and do some shooting with Brian not that long ago. So, brian, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Hey, thanks for having me, and we need to make sure we stay the undisputed champions in the guest category on your show. So you know, I hope you're not thinking of reducing our frequency at any time in the near future.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Listen, as long as we can talk guns and books and gear and everything else, why not?

Speaker 2: 0:55

All right, good, good.

Speaker 1: 0:57

You know. One thing I've noticed, though, is that you guys can't I would literally. You guys have been on like 10, 11 times so far, probably, so what do we got going on? Now? We have defense protocol, tom clancy new thriller out, and where are we at?

Speaker 2: 1:13

yeah. So defense protocol is our second uh book in the clancy series. So I'm sure all your listeners know who tom Clancy is, but you know, in case it's been a while since you've read one, there's 25 books. Defense Protocols the 25th book in the Jack Ryan series. So Tom Clancy wrote his first book 1984. It was the Hunt for Red October.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Jack Ryan everybody knows this guy was the hunt for October. Jack Ryan everybody knows this guy. You know he's a CIA analyst and super smart, but he also just can't let go of the problem. He's got to solve it. He's got to get out in the field and solve it. He's a smart guy. He's a moral guy. You know he's a guy who's sort of America's Boy Scout and I mean that in a good way.

Speaker 2: 2:01

And so you know the entire Clancyverse is sort of built around Jack Ryan and his family. And so over the years since 1984, you know Tom Clancy some readers might not know this, I think most do, but he had. He passed away in 2013. And since that time, the Clancy estate and the publisher, uh putnam, which is a imprint at penguin random house they've continued on the canon of the jack ryan universe and there's uh more books have continued. So mark green he took over from from tom clancy and he wrote until he passed the baton to mark Cameron, and Mark Cameron wrote a number of books and then he just recently passed the baton to Anderson Wilson, and this is our second Jack Ryan book.

Speaker 1: 2:54

You know I go back Jack Ryan because the Patriot games hunt for red October. Yeah, great, great. You know submarines, blah, blah, blah. But you know Adam Baldwin, great, great, absolutely great movie I love it. But when you get into, like the patriot games, and you get into um, oh geez, what's the other one, the main one with harrison ford right, it's like well, patriot games was his big one. I would say yeah yeah and uh, there was two with harrison ford there were yeah and then you have chris pine and john krasinski yeah so I I really like this new series, though with john krasinski yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:32

So I think that's that's worth talking about too. Just to let you know. Listeners know, you know the universe is very big, um, but the krasinski television show, that's an Amazon Skydance jam and it's a reboot. Right, it's a reboot. They're looking at a young Jack Ryan, sort of reimagining what he would be like if he was starting off as a CIA analyst. Today he has all the same qualities and characteristics but completely different storylines. 100 departure from the book series, um, and so the fans, uh, in the clancy verse know this, they know that. Okay, like you said, we had the original, uh, jack ryan, and in the movie hunt for october's alf baldwin, and then we had harrison ford, we had ben affleck who I think did maybe some oh, yeah, yeah, something like that, uh, and then chris pine, and, and that that ryan movie doesn't follow any of the books um shadow

Speaker 2: 4:34

state, I think is what it was called, or something like that um, shadow recruit, yeah, shadow recruit, um. But the clancy book series, the one that we're writing in that canon, has been sort of intact and unmolested, shall we say, you know, for its duration. So in the Clancy book verse Jack Ryan is president of the United States. He's been, you know. He started off as an analyst, became CIA director and worked his way up to president of the United States. So now he's president of the United States and he will likely stay president of the United States for the foreseeable future in the book series.

Speaker 2: 5:14

And so one of the things that we did, which was kind of interesting and new when we took over running the series is we looked at, okay, what other Ryan family members could be starting to participate in the family business. So Jack Ryan Jr actually has his own book series already. I think they're on book 14 or 15 right now. It was originally penned by Mike Madden, a friend of ours, a joint friend of ours.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Don Bentley, who you know so well Don was writing for a while did an amazing job and now he's handed off to mp woodward, and mike is a former naval intelligence officer. He's writing that jack ryan junior series in parallel while we're writing the jack ryan senior series, and what we did is we sort of plucked from the Ryan family tree a really interesting character, katie Ryan, one of Jack's daughter, or Jack's yeah well, he's two daughters, but his younger daughter and she is working for the Office of Naval Intelligence when we meet, when we first meet her in the last book, act of Defiance, and so this book features Katie Ryan again. She's just on a new adventure, trying to solve a new global crisis.

Speaker 1: 6:28

You guys do a great thing with all of your series by having rich character development, which I like to see, and I like to see that in these universes they are a whole new universe but they're connected. You know, like you have the dad over here, the Jack Ryan Jr over here, then you get a split off series. I want that. I want a lot of different characters. I want a little different books because I tell you, most people could run through it, Like you really get into a book, you can knock it out in a few days a week and you want more. And, like the age of social media now, you always want more. So when it comes to books and everything you got to be producing and you guys are knocking these books out and I'm you know you got to keep up and you guys have got to be the busiest authors I know.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Yeah, right now we're we're writing four different series. So we write um this Jack Ryan series, we do the tier one series, which is our first big series. I think the first thing we came on your show about to talk about John Dempsey and tier one. Uh, we spinoff series from Tier 1 called Sons of Valor, which features a character that first appeared in War Shadows, lieutenant Commander Chunk Redman, keith Redman, and Chunk was a fan favorite, that's why he sort of got his own series. And then we have the Shepard series, which is sort of our men's action, covert operations with the faith component. So that's a little more speculative. It has some spiritual warfare type stuff in it, combined with regular special operations.

Speaker 2: 8:05

So yeah, so I think maybe it's worth noting for everybody who's listening that if you're waiting for a particular Anderson Wilson title that's coming out, you've been like, well, when's the next Dempsey book coming out? When's the next Chunk book? I'll tell you now. So 2025 is going to be a great year for everybody who's fans of all of our series. So we've got Dark Rising, which is the fourth book in the Shepard series, coming out in April. We've got Sons of Valor 4, false Flag, which comes out in July. We have the ninth Tier 1 book, which is coming out in October, and then we have our next Clancy book coming out next December, and those last two we're still debating titles.

Speaker 1: 8:50

So I don't have titles to share, but we do have pub dates. You know, tier 1 is my I don't know, you know, probably could be at this point after listening to the last one it probably is my favorite series. I love the whole dynamic with Dempsey the Dempsey son, everything going on in the background and like you know who's going to be president next and I mean just it's crazy how you have all these characters and you you build with them and it's like you want more of them and that's why I like about what I was talking before about, but the universes, but the tier one series. For anybody out there who has not read it, pick up the first one and just start reading, start listening. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a huge audiobook, yeah, but when I listen to those books I feel like I'm in the book, I feel like I'm in a movie and they're and they're so well well put together that it doesn't feel disjointed.

Speaker 1: 9:42

The stories are great and I really do absolutely now. Now I have to go back and I have to catch up on clancy books too, because I need more. I need more audio. I'm like it's sucking right now. I need that. But one thing I do want to say.

Speaker 2: 9:58

I appreciate you saying that. I think we look at tier one like a family. These characters are people that we actually care about and that's important, because one of the things about our brand and just us as professional storytellers, is we never want to phone in a book, we never want to just write a book because we've got a deadline and we just got to pump one out. There needs to be something to it. There's got to be heart, there's got to be a hook, there's got to be a reason that we're asking people to spend 12 hours of their time you said, you know, on an audiobook it's 12 hours of your, of your life, listening to the adventures and and travails of of the people and the stories. And so you know, we care about these people. We care about dempsey and his life and his family and other ember team members and, um, so yeah, as long as, as long as people also care, we're going to keep riding them.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Well, you care, because you're actually doing the research as well, and we know you've done research with the subs and been on aircraft carriers and everything else. But I do, you know, with me it's all about guns, what's up? So now you and I go to the range and you're pulling out this Wilson Combat EDC-X9, just like the one I have and we start plugging away with that thing and that. What a piece of, what a piece of art that is yes I mean we're very grateful for our partnership with wilson.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Um, it really develops just sort of organically, I actually. I think, if I'm not mistaken you, you introduced us well actually I Well, actually I did, didn't.

Speaker 2: 11:35

I yeah, you know, and because I think you know, if I remember how the conversation went, it was sort of you were saying you know, these guys are the best in the business. You know family run company and they haven't sold out to you know sort of the taking the corporate route and they still really care about what they're doing and they, they manufacture, design and manufacture, you know, precision firearms at a level that nobody else does. And it seemed like a sort of a natural fit for us, especially with, like the tier one Ember team. Like this is the type of of platform that they would pick for themselves, right, you know where it can be highly customized but also highly accurate, very reliable. Yeah, so it just was a natural fit and and we love them down there at Wilson.

Speaker 1: 12:32

You know, you and I shot a couple of different guns that day. One was another manufacturer and then you and then you shoot that gun and then you put the wilson in your hand. I I keep telling people like there's such a difference between like a mass-produced yeah firearm and something that you can tell is tailor-made. Like me, I I purchased the edc x9 and I had him put like the flag on it, I had the grips I wanted, I had the sights I wanted on there. If I could go back, I I'm still debating whether or not I would do optics or not, because I love your optics on there, because it's like listen, you pick it up and you're like putting bolts on top of bolts.

Speaker 2: 13:07

So I don't know, I could do the same thing with iron sights, but it's not as quick yeah, yeah, and I think, like you said, the difference is there's no slop in any of the mechanism, right? So it feels like, um, it's sort of like the difference between driving like a modern day bmw and Ford Mustang from the seventies. Right, you know, the, the, the Mustang from the seventies is wild and crazy, it's going to be all over there and and that that modern day BMW is so precise, so exact, so tight, you know, and that's, that's the Wilson, you know it. Just, it feels, it feels literally bulletproof in your hands, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 13:55

It feels like you could beat the hell out of it. I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of art. But I always tell people I'm like a gun is made to be shot. A gun is made to be just used. Don't baby it, don't whatever. You slingshot it, you go, you shoot, shoot, shoot, you reload and you shoot some more. You can put it and I like to use any, any crap ammo I can into it to see if it'll perform. And then obviously, you know your carry ammo is going to be a lot different than the crap you're putting into it. But I like to see a weapon putting the cheapest things through it because if it doesn't manifest, if it doesn't malfunction, based on you know, some guns are very finicky. They are like that BMW, let's say. You're like the 3 Series from 1980s compared to the 7 Series. Now you know what I mean. It's very finicky with how you operate it, but with those Wolsons, man, you could beat the hell out of them.

Speaker 2: 14:50

You don't want to, but you can. Yeah, yeah, and, and, and. Even in the day that you and I went to the range, we just bought the range ammo, right, and we just we didn't even look at what it was, we didn't worry about it and, um, and, and, and you were stacking them up, right, you're shooting through the, through the holes where you shot before. So it was pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I tell you, what you and I need to do is we need to get some of these wilson guns. We need to go to a range somewhere off-site, like a nice outdoor range, and set up a nice course and beat the hell out of thing with like a thousand rounds, like I want to, like, just, I want extra magazines. I want to just shoot, shoot, shoot until it's like flaming hot and then shoot some more because I want I you know I love social media, you know that I love, like you, people put up little clips of shooting and a lot of them are like, hey, you know what they look great. But what I want to do is I want to take a thousand rounds and I want to just have like magazine upon magazine and just shoot that thing from every position possible and just, you know, shoot from one yard to 50 yards, to 25 yards and just move with it and everything.

Speaker 2: 15:59

I want to see how these things are so the muzzle is bright red.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Yes, absolutely Like a thousand rounds, like we better wear gloves because that sucker is going to be burning.

Speaker 2: 16:08

All right, we'll do it.

Speaker 1: 16:10

So that's a hint, wilson, let's do this.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Well, we'll talk to Guy and see what he has to say.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Yeah, I just picked up uh, I just picked up the DCX9 probably like a year and a half ago, and before that I was shooting another manufacturer's 1911. And there's such a difference between it, man, and I can't. I can't speak too much about how much I liked the the Wilson's, because there are so there are so many different 1911 platforms now. But I see Wilsons coming up with this new one and I haven't really checked it out yet. It's like Model 77 or something I've got to look it up, but it looks pretty solid.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Yeah, we'll have to see if we can get the inside scoop on that.

Speaker 1: 16:53

So we have Defense Protocol. What else is going on with you guys in 2025?

Speaker 2: 17:04

Yeah, so I kind of drifted off subject, didn't I? Um, did I say all the books are coming? Yeah, I think I took us through the all the books, um. And then we've got, um, we've got the tier one series is optioned, uh, and in development at Legendary Entertainment. So Legendary Television, we've got two great producers. Marcus Blakely and Peter Johnson are the guys who are sort of spearheading this, and we love these guys. They're really, really smart, experienced in TV. They worked on 24 and Supernatural and Lost in Space and the Jack Ryan series over at Skydance. So they've got great bona fides and they're just very enthusiastic. They get Dempsey, they get what we're trying to do in the series and the story that we're trying to tell. We've got a writer attached and now it's just sort of looking for see if we can get it cast up and look for a home for it at one of the streamers.

Speaker 1: 18:09

Now, if you can get away from the thriller genre and anything with guns, what would you write? Would you go back and like write a historical book or would you write nonfiction?

Speaker 2: 18:19

Oh, I think we're fiction guys for sure.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I'm talking about you, brian Andrews. You.

Speaker 2: 18:26

I mean, I think you know I've been thinking a lot about leadership these days, especially in the challenging sort of geopolitical climate we have right now. You know what does it mean to be a leadership Can we is leadership by example. Leadership by example, I think, has gone, fallen out of favor for leadership, shock, jock leadership, I guess, is what I would call it. You know so I, if I had to decide. You know I've been, I've been mulling over the idea of putting together a. You know so I, if I had to decide. You know I've been, I've been mulling over the idea of putting together a. You know something nonfiction related to leadership, that that I could see that in my future.

Speaker 1: 19:06

You know, leadership is one fundamental that you can't really teach. No, you can give someone a baseline with rhetoric and everything, but you have to show them the way, and I think in order for people to find the way, sometimes they need to read it. You know the social media thing, man, I'm telling you, 30 second clips or five minute clips will not show you how to be a great leader. No, but that's why I like the idea of you picking up and writing a book, because sometimes, like to me, I like to, like you know, I like to tap. When I'm reading a nonfiction book, I'll tab it, I'll go back to it. I'm like huh, it's a reference guide, yeah, and I think something like that would be perfect, like ROTCs, people who are junior leaders on up to the corporate world.

Speaker 2: 19:49

Yeah, I mean the corporate world really has.

Speaker 1: 19:50

They're very lacking when it comes to actual.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I think that's right, you know. And when I left the Navy, you know, as an officer, I thought a lot about leadership. And how am I representing? What type of leader am I? As a junior officer, you know what were my strengths, what were my weaknesses? Leadership drives the Navy. It drives the success of every single ship and submarine and squadron. You see it, you just see it. You know, good leaders set the climate, they set the expectations and everybody just sort of follows suit.

Speaker 2: 20:26

And then, after the Navy, I went to get my MBA and I was a park leadership fellow and the message of the park program is servant leadership, this idea that you know leaders need to give back in some way. They're giving their expertise, they're giving their time, their generosity, their knowledge, their enthusiasm, and they make sacrifices. You know they make sacrifices to put their team ahead of themselves, or their company ahead of themselves, or their nonprofit ahead of themselves, or their nation ahead of themselves. And so these types of principles have informed my writing. I tried. I think they inform my life and how I interact with people and conduct my business as an author, because being an author is a business, and conduct my business as an author because being an author is a business how we try to support veteran entrepreneurs and mentor people trying to get into whatever, whatever their next act is as a veteran. After you come off of military service, everybody has a second act. It's a challenge, so I think there is an opportunity for so.

Speaker 2: 21:37

I try to take that experience and my principles and pay them forward.

Speaker 1: 21:42

And you know, you and I had this discussion when I came out there to shoot with you about how you integrate that leadership into your fiction books as well. They're kind of like a framework of what kind of leader you would want to be or what kind of leader you think someone would follow yeah, because a lot of guys are.

Speaker 2: 22:01

You know that you've got two types of readers. You got guys that I'm gonna read. If I'm gonna read a book, I better be entertained. I don't. I'm not picking up some self-help book like that's not my gig, right. And then you've got guys that are all about self-help, self-development. Don't say self-help, self-development and I'm optimizing myself and I'm going to read everything I can, from every successful you know athlete to service member to you know entrepreneur and podcast, and I'm going to make myself perfect. You know so good for those guys, they're out there seeking out the information from experts and trying to self-improve. But for the people that say, you know what, when I have time to read, I want to be entertained, I want to have fun. I think there's still an opportunity for for some self-development there too, and so that's what we've done in tier one is we put leadership scenarios and moral crises into every book, so that you might not be aware of it when you're reading the book, but you are exposed to someone who doesn't give up.

Speaker 2: 23:05

They're persistent when faced with moral crises, they don't crumble, they don't sacrifice themselves or their principles in order to try to overcome a challenge, and I think those things matter. That's what helps make people better people, and so there's still opportunities to talk about leadership, even if it's just in storytelling.

Speaker 1: 23:27

I love it, brother. Well, I'm looking forward to picking up Defense Protocol. Actually, I think I might have a copy here.

Speaker 2: 23:32

I'm so glad I'm not sending you one if you didn't get one.

Speaker 1: 23:35

Yeah, I'm so happy with their publishers. They I'm so glad I wouldn't have sent you one if you didn't get one. Yeah, I'm so happy with their publishers. They always send me the copies. But I want to start listening to this series again. Yeah, and I want to start going back and I want to start from the beginning, because I mean, 25 bucks would be great.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:47

But you'll think about that evolution You'll get to see.

Speaker 2: 23:50

There's a couple things that happen, so we should have another discussion after you've done that, because you know the first Clancy book came out in 1984 and storytelling thrillers. Well, he was really the grandfather or the father of the military thriller.

Speaker 2: 24:06

I mean, he's sort of in the genre, but the way that stories were told then versus now have changed, and I think it goes to sort of what you were saying before. You know we have a much more kinetic entertainment environment. Now, right, we want, we want our shows when we want them. They're fast paced, there's action, there's, you know, social media clips of boom boom, boom, boom, boom. The chapters are shorter. We got to get to the meat quickly, so it'll be fun for you to see. Like, how does it feel going through those stories from 40 years ago when stories were told differently versus now?

Speaker 1: 24:43

I love it, brother. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show and I appreciate you and I'm looking forward to the future man.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Well, thanks for having me and I'm looking forward to 2025.