In Identity Crisis, you kind of shined the
spotlight back on Ralph Dibny, better known, I guess, as Elongated
Man. Even hard-core fans probably weren't too familiar with him. Is
the plan to include more characters like that in your Justice
League run? I love to play with unknown characters. That's
what I do as a novelist. I have to take a character, and I have to
make you love that character, even though you've just met him.
That's what I have to do as a novelist. You don't know my
characters in The Book of Fate. You don't know who Wes
Holloway is. But I have to make you love him by page one. That, for
me, is what I love about the comic books, taking those characters
that no one loves and seeing if I can do the exact same thing. It's
almost easier with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, because the
backstory is there. But to really stretch your muscles, the most
stretching can take place in the character who's undeveloped. I
really believe there's no such thing as a bad character. There's
just bad writing. I really do believe you can make just about
anything interesting.
Do you think the medium has been sort of reenergized by
writers, like you, who don't just write comics? Writers who
approach it from the mind-set of a screenwriter or a
novelist? The interesting thing, for me, is I don't think
it's so much coming from a different discipline. I think it's
actually coming from a different life experience. I think comic
books, for a while, could have easily been written by and for
people who simply love comic books. That's not a bad thing; I'm
absolutely a fan, first and foremost. But I'm going to bring a
lawyer's and a thriller writer's eyes to it. I always say the best
thing I did for myself as a writer was to go to law school, even
though I really had no intention of practicing law. Listen, that
was a very expensive way to spend three years. I was $60,000 in
debt when I came out of it. But I now had a world to write about, a
world that would have been informed just by my high school
experience. In fact, to tell you more about myself, my first novel
wasn't The Tenth Justice; there was a novel before that,
and that novel was solely about my college experience. That's what
I knew; that's what I experienced; that's what I wrote about. The
book got 24 rejection letters. There were only 20 publishers at the
time, which means some people were writing me twice to make sure I
got the point. It really was law school that gave me a setting, a
place, an importance that I just did not have before, because I
didn't have the life experience.
How does it feel to go from that point - 20 publishers, 24
rejection letters - to 10 years later with The Book of
Fate and you can call on presidents to help with your
research? The way The Book of Fate started was,
one of them called on me. If ever there were fate in the world.… I
was looking for a new book idea. I had some ideas - I knew the
plot, and I knew the Mason stuff, and I knew some of the other
things. We have a PO box through our website; people send books,
and I sign them, and we send them out. My wife is opening the
books, and I'm signing them across the table. She opens up one of
the letters, and she says, "Oh my gosh, this is so funny. A
secretary in former president Bush's office is trying to get a free
signature by using Bush's stationery." I grab the letter out of her
hands, and I read the letter. I read the letter, and it says, "Dear
Brad … we like your book … would you please send us this signed
thing?" I look down, and it also says, "Barbara and I have a great
library." And I stopped: "'Barbara and I?'" I realized
this was no secretary. Listen, I don't care what your politics are:
If you're a former president, you get a free book.
So, I sent him a free book and also a request that said, "Can I
come see what your life is like?" I couldn't help but be fascinated
by the fact that he was the most powerful man in the world, and
suddenly, he was just another guy who had to stop for red lights
again. To my surprise, he said sure, come down for the week. I
spent nearly a week in Houston with him and Barbara, and it was one
of the most surreal experiences in my life. Right after that, I
sent a note to Clinton's office, and they had me come up to
Clinton's office in Harlem. It just was absolutely fascinating.
The Book of Fate really got started with that twist of
fate. To answer your original question, it is something I feel so
lucky to have experienced. But I can't for one second possibly take
it that seriously, that "oh, it's because of me."
Come on, it's at least a little bit because of you. One
thing I appreciate about your writing is that it all at least seems
possible, whether you're dealing with ex-presidents or
superheroes. When I was in Bush's office, they told me
that when they leave the White House and they're no longer
president, one of the first things they have to do is plan their
own funeral. And I just thought, "I've got to put that in the
book." When I was in Clinton's office, and I saw that picture taken
from the Oval Office of Clinton's desk, I put that right in the
book. All the details you see about the office, all the details you
see about the ridiculous things that are sent to them, all the
details about the actual office mechanics, about the secure faxes,
about the security, about all those things that go on when you
leave the White House and just go back to being a normal person
again - those were all shaped, and basically lifted, from what I
saw in Bush's and Clinton's offices.
I can make up anything I want; it's fiction. But if I tell you that
former presidents actually have a secret brownstone that is across
the street from the White House and only the former presidents can
stay there, or that they have to plan their funeral right when they
leave the White House, because presidential funerals are truly
national events that have to be put together in two days with
nearly no notice, you start saying, "You know what? That sounds
really, truly real to me." That's when fiction comes alive. Fiction
and thrillers, to me, are giant lies trying to masquerade as the
truth. My job as the writer is to arm myself with enough details to
convince you that it really happened.