543 | Ward Larsen | Author of TOM CLANCY RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

We talk with Ward about moving from A-10 fighter pilot life to airline flying and then into a full-time career as a thriller author. We dig into what it takes to write authentic military fiction and how he handles the pressure of writing in the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan universe.

Transcript

Fighter Pilot To Airline Life

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Ward, welcome to the Protectors Podcast. Appreciate you coming on. How you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Good, good. Thanks for having me, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Great. Hey, you know what? I'm not gonna rapid fire you like I did with Brad Taylor. I think with him, I was just like boom, boom, boom, here we go. You know, I had he put his Delta Force guys on and he was ready to just answer these rapid fire questions. But with you, it's a little bit different. You got the the fighter pilot. Is it the I don't think it's my cheese mode, but it's like that air, the air. It's a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

My shades on, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Exactly. You know, if you had your shades on right now, it would actually be pretty cool. So let's get going. Hey, um you've gone from fighter pilot to airline captain to author. Which transition was the hardest for you personally?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Uh well, it's I guess the going from you know fighter pilot to airline pilot was like the first transition. And that was different, you know, because you don't have that that camaraderie. It's just a different work environment. You know, it's a very much uh the airline pilot's not a nine to five kind of job, but you know, once you kind of set the parking brake and you're done for your trip, then you go home and it's it's it's done. They sit. And uh whereas, you know, the military are kind of in that society, and you know, any given time you can get the call, and yeah, who knows where you're gonna be the next day or the next week. So that was probably a shift in mentality, I would say, between those two.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah, and that kind of goes into the second question was like you're in the military, and that's you know, it's it it's like you said, camaraderie, but there's so much to it, and it's life and death. I mean, obviously, if you're an airline pilot, it's life and death, but it's a little bit different, you know. Yeah, the the object is to, you know, go from point A to point B to point C, you know. With with fighter pilot, you never know what's gonna happen. You never know what the next day is gonna be, and you never know where the mission is gonna dictate. When you were in the military, did you have this realization that, like, you know what, hey, I need a second career? Like, this isn't gonna be a long-standing thing that I'm gonna be able to sustain for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Uh, I was in for seven and a half years, and that's the first opportunity you have at that time to get out of uh and go do the airlines or something different. And uh it always had the back of my mind I might want to go fly for the airlines. You know, it's a very different kind of flying, but you know, you yeah, more family time, more time at home. Uh, you're on the road a couple days a week, but uh it's kind of a different lifestyle for your family. So it always been the back of my mind. Um, I I might have stayed in, I I thought about it, but uh it it's it's always a tough decision, and you know, I keep in touch with and also at the time I was taking pretty serious about going in the Air National Guard, so I could still keep my hand in that military flying end of it. And that I I sort of had a job, but then it fell through at the last minute, so that that felt didn't work out. So sometimes you could do both, but uh it was kind of good at the time because I had young kids right when I got out. I

Becoming A Thriller Writer By Accident

SPEAKER_00 3:20

had one young kid and just about to have another. So yeah, you have a little more family time with uh with the airline life.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Now, when you jumped into the airline life, how did you pivot into an author? Now, were you writing on the side while you'd be doing all of this?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Uh not at all. No, I was not one of those kids that always wanted to be uh a writer my whole life. Um I but I was always a reader, and I've never known a writer that wasn't a reader first. I used to read uh, you know, Tom Clancy and uh military fiction and spy thrillers, that kind of thing, the old Robert Ludlow. And uh I think I remember reading one particularly bad, you know, book out on an overnight thinking I could do better than that. So I kind of knocked it aside and got this kind of you know thought of my head, maybe I could just write a book. So I just started takering around with it. And it took many years to get the first one done, but I did write a book, a spine thriller, uh called The Perfect Assassin. And I just got really lucky and hooked up with a small publisher right away and boom, got published. So and then they were saying, Well, what's next year's book? And I was like, There's another one. So I started writing book too, and here I am 18 books later, you know, one thing leads to another. And uh yeah, it's it's been so it wasn't really a grand plan, it just sort of happened and I'm glad it did, you know, because I've just retired from the airline fly, and I've I'm done with that. I'm just gonna be a full-time writer now. That happened a few uh months ago, and uh looking forward to just staying home and writing every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

You know, these are a lot of different pivots, and pivots kind of the new the new way the podcast is going where I like to talk to people who are kind of like us, you know, they have they've had several different like identities. So you've had these different identities, and now you're kind of transitioning from even airline pilot hasn't a uh a key point adrenaline in it, and that is tough to go from you know 30 years worth of adrenaline into like an author type. So how are you how are you dealing with that pivot into this new this new transition into your life?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Well, it wasn't really that hard of a pivot because I was doing both for many years, you know, because I was an author and a pilot for a long time. It's kind of nice you go to a party and people ask, what do you do? I'm an airline pilot. Everybody knows what that is. It's very straightforward. It's like, okay, you know, which airline, what route do you fly, that kind of stuff. But uh everybody knows what you do. Uh say I'm a writer, and what they ask is, Oh, what kind of stuff do you write? I say, Well, and I used to always say, uh, military thrillers, spy thrillers, and they're like, Oh, like Tom Clancy. And now for the first time I can say, why, yes, actually, exactly like Tom Clancy, because that's what I'm writing right now. So he is the household name. He's probably one of the most recognizable names in fiction. I mean, him and Stephen King and one or two others. I mean, nobody knows, you know, that an author's name like that one.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Now, was there a book or an author at one point in your life where you're like, I know you said, like, hey, I could do that, but was there someone that was kind of like your influence?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Um, I don't know if there's one that was an influence. I mean, I just really like some of the older school stuff, uh, some of the Ken Fall and Frederick Forsyth and and Ludlum. That's what I kind of grew up with. And then, you know, in more recent years, you know, Mark Greeny writes a really cool series of books, the Gray Man books. Um he starting this last February, had a book come out and I co-wrote it with Brad Thor. And I'd been reading Brad's stuff for a long, long time. And he approached me a couple years ago about uh a project he wanted to do. He wanted to get into co-writing, which neither of us have ever done. So I really learned a lot from him from working with him. And uh we uh we had a book come out called Cold Zero, and uh it was it was really a lot of fun to write and I learned a lot from him, and uh, I think we got to do another one.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, it's great. I've I've seen a lot of the different authors kind of pushing off into different genres and also doing a co-author, and I think that's a great, great aspect of this. You you mentioned Mark Greene, and he has he doesn't have a military background, but his his writing is so authentic because he like immerses himself into that culture. Yeah, you do have a military background, you do have an aviation background, but you know, the Jack Ryan series has so much spy craft. How did you kind of immerse yourself into that world in order to make it authentic?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Well, I've you know, I've been reading that kind of thing for a long time, and I try to keep up on you know the latest and greatest. Um, interestingly, you know, the last three books in the Jack Ryan series were written by Andrews Wilson, Jeff Wilson, Brian Andrews, and they're both ex-Navy guys. So they had a very uh strong presence of the Navy in those three books. Um, so I I actually was kind of happy that I got this one because in my background, let's be put a little more aviation in it, you know, not necessarily Air Force. Actually, there's some naval air in it. So uh it kind of gives a different aspect. I think the readers will appreciate that, not being in the same service, kind of the same thing every time. So it gets a little diversity. Mark Cameron wrote before that he was a law enforcement guy, so he had that kind of bad to some of his uh Jack Ryan books. So yeah, I think it's kind of neat to have different writers with different strengths and backgrounds uh in this series.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

You know, before we jump into the new book, The Rules of Engagement, one question. A lot of people are listening or are reinventing themselves later in life. What advice would you give someone making a major payment after 40 or 50?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Um you know, persistence counts for a lot, um, and especially in the publishing industry. Um it's it's hard, it's a hard thing to get going in to get to be a published author, but uh it can be done. And you have to be persistent, you have to kind of be professional, you know, you have to uh do your homework. And when it comes to writing, it's just yeah, you gotta write a good story, you gotta tell a good story, and not everybody can do that. Um, but it it takes some you know, some some work, and you have to get in the seat every day and just do it. Um, you know, and there are other things you can do too, uh, after Fifth of Summerbore. You know, the writing is, you know, you make some money out of, but it's sort of a self-fulfilling thing. I kind of it would be nice to think that, you know, 50 years from now, when I'm long gone, somebody's gonna look at a shelf and see a book and say, oh, I wonder what that is, if it's any good. I'll be entertaining somebody no longer after I'm gone. So I've always had that kind of in the back of my mind.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Okay, now this is a little bit different. Okay, so you're an author, you've been published before, but have you had the opportunity, and you know this is book is gonna be there, to walk through the airport and look over it and see one of your books on a shelf.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Uh yes. It's happened a couple times with my own books. Uh more recently with uh Brad Thor, we were going on our tour from spot to spot. We saw it at a few places in the bookstores, airport bookstores. So, yes, and I know this fancy one will be pretty much everywhere. So, yeah, it's it's pretty exciting to kind of see you know your name, even if it's small print at the bottom, to see something you've you know created there on the shelf. And I haven't liked I I go run on the beach here. I'm in Sarasota, Florida, and I go for runs on the beach, and you know, there's always somebody out

Writing Jack Ryan With Respect

SPEAKER_00 10:40

there with their beach read. And I haven't seen anybody with one of my books just yet, but I know it's gonna happen Sunday. And these days there's so many people with Kindles probably have been people there, or like on the airplanes I used to fly. You know, there's people back there with my books, but when it's a Kindle, you can't really tell.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Or on Audible. That's my my gig, guys. I listen to everything on Audible.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

I do that a lot myself, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Now you mentioned Clancy, and I know Clancy, and everybody I know knows Clancy. And I have had Andrews and Wilson on a bunch of times. I'm pretty good friends with those guys. And we talk about that massive responsibility of taking over that title, Jack Ryan. I mean, there's literally going to be a new the show's coming out premiering in the next couple weeks. That's a massive responsibility. And yes, you have been published before, yes, you've been with some of the major labels and seen your name, but taking over that, how's that how's that affected you?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Well, it's a little intimidating, of course. I mean, you really, yeah, you you see that coming, you know what a big name it is, and you want to get it right. So you really have to kind of do your research. This is book number 27, uh Rules of Engagement in the Jack Ryan senior series. And so, you know, that's a lot of backstory, and some of it goes back 40 years. And you know, I've I've read pretty much all the books, but some of them I read a long, long time ago. So, you know, it takes some research. I did a thing Amazon has a deal where you can actually download all the Kindles of the entire series for like 200 bucks. And that was one of the first things I did, just so I could go back and search and kind of research some things. So uh, you know, it there's a very dedicated uh fan base of Clancy uh readers, and uh they have Facebook groups and things like that. And uh, you know, I want to respect that and try to get it right for them.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Where is Jack Ryan now? What is he up to?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Uh he's still president, he's been president for a long time. And I you know, I discussed this with the editor, uh, Tom Colgan and Putnam if he runs this. And you know, his theory is you know, Jack Ryan's been president for you know in real time, probably four terms now. But the theory is, well, where does he go from there? You know, what are you gonna do? And maybe someday they'll, you know, have him retire and bring one of his kids on to be president. I don't know what the plan is. That's not my pay grade, but you know, he's still president and he's still fighting the good fight, trying to uh do the right thing in a in a dangerous world.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

With 20 plus books, how do you kind of keep that universe together?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, well, there's really more than that because you've got the Jack Ryan Jr. books too, uh, so it's probably over 40. Um, again, it's it's a lot of homework. And you also try to uh, as a writer, stay within what you know, you know. So I dealt with the um the John Clark character, and this was something that was kind of pre-arranged with the editor. He was just he said this is gonna be a John Clark book because we haven't done that in a while. They tried to kind of mix it up. It's not gonna be this huge geopolitical plot where we're putting the world at risk, you know, on a large scale. So, yeah, there are a few constraints like that. But aside from that, I was kind of free to do what I wanted with uh with Ryan and uh the subsidiary characters. So uh that was my that was my marching orders. And then what I did is I put together just a couple pages uh outline and it it goes to the editor and to the estate, and after that they get the approved say, All right, see you in seven months, you know, and that's pretty much all the oversight you get. So it's kind of on you to to you know do your research and and try to get things right. And I also coordinated with the you know, Andrews Wilson, who had worked on our recently, and uh they they put in a few Easter eggs uh in the book that they were just finishing up for mine as I was writing it, and I did the same thing for Mike Woodward, who's gonna write the next one. So we kind of have these little loose, small connections from one story to the next to kind of lead you into it. It's not a continuous story, but we do kind of put a little foreshadowing in for the next story.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Where do we see the world? How does this connect into like the current world? Because Clancy has always been kind of connected to reality in one way or the other.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Sure, sure. And you know, the world is changing. I mean, when I started writing this book, there was no war in Iran, and now there is. So you kind of have to be careful and not write yourself into a quarter where world events might, you know, change the whole plot of your book because that could be kind of a disaster. Um, you really have to stay up with current events. I read a couple of newspapers every morning just to kind of keep up with things because that's my genre, you know, the current events, the spy craft and the uh the military situation, what's going on in the world. So you really have to keep up with it. And uh fortunately, I mean, we have a war now in Iraq and Iran, and um that did not really um make any major changes to my story. It didn't really affect the the outcome or the plot of my story. In fact, there's a part of it at the end that really kind of validate when it comes to choke points. It kind of validates, you know, what I did end up doing. So uh yeah, it you you you have to keep up with Corona Best, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Now, do you map out a book? Some people like write as they're going,

Research Habits And Writing Without Outlines

SPEAKER_01 16:00

they're thinking of new ideas, but do you like kind of map out like an outline of, hey, you know what? By the end of this story, we need to be here in between. You kind of outline it.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, I don't do an outline. Some writers do. Some writers have these extensive outlines that just outline every step and every plot change along the way. I don't do that. Uh I'm a seat of the pancer, so I just I have a basic beginning and I kind of know where I'm going at the end, and I uh go from there. And it's funny, when I was writing with Brad, he does it the same way. We couldn't really do it otherwise if we weren't the same. And uh the way he views it as you are writing in the seat of the reader where you don't know what's coming next. So it really kind of puts you in that reader's viewpoint. And I I think that's a good way to look at it and a good way for me as a writer to look at it, you know. As you know, if I were the reader, where would I think this is gonna go or where it might surprise me if it did go? Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Now, if we're gonna backtrack and see where you came from, which book should we pick up? Uh recommend my own series? Yeah, your own series.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, well, I just kind of started a spin-off series called Dark Vector, and I think that would be a good one to pick up to give me a good flavor for what I'm writing or where I'm going.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah, I think the big thing too for me is like uh audible and the narrator. So who's your do you have have you had a consistent narrator?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Um, I've had two different ones, but yeah, I mean I've been happy with both of them. And I do get a say on it when they because I went to this sort of a spin-off series recently with Darfactor, and they thought that would be a good chance to maybe try a new narrator. So we did, and they did a few people they auditioned and sent me the audition tapes and and let me uh you know took my feedback on that. We all tended to agree who the guy was, and it was good. And then with the what a book I did with Brad, we use his uh standard narrator, Armand Schultz, and uh and he's of course one of the best. So yeah, I've been very happy with all my narrators. People asked me if I would read my own books. I'm like, not a chance. I just don't have it in me.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

You know, we got to backtrack. I I didn't even think about

Flying The A-10 And Finding Adrenaline

SPEAKER_01 18:10

it. So, what did you fly when you were in the military?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Uh uh flew A-10s.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Oh come on, that's like the best thing in the world.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, that's and always is when I talk to Army guys or Marines, you know, oh, you're an Air Force buy, great. I flew A-10s, oh you're we love A10s.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Well, I mean, all the other stuff is really cool, but I think the A-10 is like the grunt. So you kind of have that grunt mentality as well. I'd make sure exactly. Yes, yeah. Now, when you're like when you're flying an A-10 though, how do you, you know, uh you're grasping like there's so much to an A10 compared to like, you know, is it does seem like kind of like basic, hey, I gotta go burr, I'm gonna drop some bombs, you know. Yeah, what was it like kind of jumping into that and learning that platform?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

It's it's a little more hands-on than uh other fighters and the fast movers because they tend to be a little more electronic, they got the radar and they carry usually one bomb load, and they will come on to they only get their target and they'll plot the target in and just put the death dot on it, and they'll just make one pass, drop the bombs, and go home. A10s, whole different thing. You're usually talking to somebody on the ground, you're uh you know, searching for targets, you're maybe marking targets, or other people are marking targets for you. And it's not just one pass and go home. It's like one pass to drop a bomb, one pass to strafe, and you stick around for 30, 40 minutes, you know, doing supporting whoever you're trying to support. And a lot of times it's it's close quarter stuff because you're you're actually talking to forward air controllers or somebody like that where you're really working close to uh close contact troops.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, we know now when we're talking about the adrenaline factor, going from an A10 to an airline pilot must have been in a very interesting transition. Hey guys, we're gonna be uh landing here, but when we come in really close, might be surfing.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

You know, but the the one thing that struck me when I first got there, I remember as I um at the airline, I they kept me over to work an extra day. I finished my trip and they said, Oh, then scheduling calls say, Hey, you got to work tomorrow. I was like, I do. Oh, wait a minute. If I work tomorrow an extra day, I actually get paid more, and that never happened in the military. You you just get called in for a weekend to do something in the military, you don't make any more money. That was quite a revelation.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

That's awesome. Yeah, because you never think about that. Like you're like, oh, you know, when you're on overtime in the military. I think our country would be like tap the money if we were on overtime in the military. Yeah, that's like one of the now that's the biggest pivot is to come from hey, you know what, working whatever thousands of hours to work in. Oh, you get paid for over 40? What is this? That's great. You have any advice for anybody trying to jump into either one of the worlds, jumping

Career Advice On Flying And Publishing

SPEAKER_01 21:00

in and becoming a pilot nowadays or into author or both?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

You know, being a pilot nowadays, it's it's the bar going in is just the cost of it, just learning how to fly. It's very expensive to learn how to fly. But once you do that, or once you cross a threshold of where you somebody's paying you to fly airplanes as a flight instructor or a commuter airline pilot, that's you get past that and you start building flight time, you're gonna get an airline drive real fast. It's a really good career track right now. There's a lot of hiring going on, and there's gonna be a lot of retirements in the next decade or so. So I would highly recommend it. It's just, you know, there's a big you know hurdle of just paying for that initial flight training, which is not cheap. Um, as far as writing, um, you know, I've it it's it's really morphed a lot since all the self publishing stuff has gone on. Um really my advice and the guys I've seen uh be successful lately uh quickly, it's it's hard to do, but they they network a lot, they go to conventions. Writers could batch and just get to know people and they write, right, right. And they just, you know, don't stop and they are persistent, as we mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

That's my favorite saying: write, write, write, edit later. You know, you just write get it on paper and just get it down and fix it later. I think he might be the first person that brought up networking. And that is actually a key factor in so much, especially when it comes to the military and people transitioning and are just changing careers, is you have to network. You have to. And it's not like, hey, look whom I am. What can you do for me? It's like, hey, this is me. Thanks for talking to me. That that kind of networking.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah. I had a writer recently tell me, um, and he's, you know, he was published by a small publisher, and he had his books out and he got a signing, and I won't give names. It was a certain bookstore. But uh, you know, this guy lived in Dallas, and the bookstore was, you know, about a two-hour flight away. And this guy was also an airline pilot, I guess somebody I know. But this bookstore said, Oh, we had some books of yours. I wish they were signed. And that guy was like, okay, hang on. And he just took a non-red the flight out there, you know, took a couple hours to get there, signed the books, and non-red back. And this bookstore owner was like, Wow, that's really cool. Yeah, you just came out here and flew all the way from Dallas to do that. And he made a friend and a bookstore owner that was a very useful friend. So that kind of thing. I mean, you really have to bend over backwards to make these things work. But you know,

Final Thoughts And New Release

SPEAKER_00 23:30

that's that really will help you along the way.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

And remember, it is part of it. It's part of your job is to network, and part of your job is to be marketing yourself.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Absolutely. I appreciate you coming on. Everybody, Tom Clency's new book is out soon.