Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Brett Battles

Brett Battles' first novel, The Cleaner (original title Hung Out to Die), is an international spy thriller due for release in Summer 2007 from Bantam Dell, and it's already garnering glowing praise. I sweet-talked Brett into doing an interview with me after J.T. Ellison and I discovered that this charming gentleman could well be our long-lost triplet brother. [insert grin here] I now have the honor of conducting his first-ever interview and am delighted to introduce this rising star.

JB: You have a very interesting story on how you came to be with Bantam Dell. Can you summarize it for those who haven't heard it?

BB: You realize even a summary is going to be more than a few sentences, right? But I'll try to keep it as brief as possible.

Like all authors, I sent out queries once I had a draft I was happy with. Mainly agent – probably around 50 to 70 by the time I decided that maybe this wasn't the book. Then right about that time I ran into my friend Nathan Walpow. Some people might know him as the author of the Joe Portugal novels. He offered to give me an introduction to his publisher, Ugly Town, and told me to just send them a copy of the manuscript. So I did. It was almost a year to the day when I received a call from Ugly Town telling me they wanted to buy my book. I thought they'd forgotten about me by then. This was January 2005. They said they wanted to fast track for an October pub date. After thinking about it for a nano second, I said that sounded fine. After all, I was sitting in the middle of a Starbucks and I didn't want to scare anyone with a whoop of glee.

Things were going well until about July when I started getting the feeling that something was up. Sure enough in early August, Ugly Town called and said they needed to put everything on hold. Small publishers have a tough time in this business. It turned out Ugly Town's turn had come. They were still excited about the book, and talked about trying to bring it out in the spring of '06. Honestly, though, I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen. But I didn't give up. I did everything I could to try and convince them to stay in business and publish my book. Still, I was preparing myself for the fact that I'd have to move back into query mode. Then in mid-October, they called and said they had pitched several of their books to an editor at Bantam Dell. She was interested in mine. We sent her the latest draft. A couple weeks later Bantam bought my contract from Ugly Town and then offered me a 3-book deal. I guess it was kind of like being traded from Single A baseball to the New York Yankees, if you're into baseball analogies. I still can't believe it happened.

JB: I did an Amazon search for the book and discovered another novel called Hung Out to Die by Sharon Short, author of the Toadfern Mysteries. Obviously Josie Toadfern is very different from Jonathan Quinn; hence, no one should confuse the two, and multiple books sharing the same title is not uncommon in our business. While Hung Out to Die does sound like a thriller title, was an alternate title ever entertained?

BB: Hung Out to Die wasn't even the story's first title. Originally I called it Devil May Care. Not a bad title, but it didn't really mean anything. One of the first things Ugly Town did after bringing me on board was to ask me to come up with alternate titles. I think I came up with a list of about ten or fifteen. Out of those, Hung Out to Die was definitely the best. And the best part, it ties into the story by playing off the profession of my main character, Jonathan Quinn. He's a professional, freelance cleaner in the world of international espionage. That said, there is a small possibility that it might change again. My original editor at Bantam came up with a title I absolutely love, but a lot of people at Bantam really like what we have now. I could go either way. [Editor's Note: After much discussion, the title was changed to The Cleaner, and the book will be released in July 2007.]

A side note, several of my friends at the old day job decided to come up with a list of possible other titles for the series. There was actually one I probably will use. But the others? Let's just say I won't be using Rinse and Rinsibility or Drying Miss Daisy.

JB: Now for a very serious question. You were in Berlin, Germany on 9/11, and Berlin plays a huge part in your novel. How did that experience, the news and the reaction of the non-American people affect you and/or your decision to write a spy thriller?

BB: Berlin probably affected me more personally, than playing a part in my decision to write a thriller. I've always written thrillers in some form or another. But I have to admit, the city is just such a great location, that wherever I went, I would look at everything with an eye to how it would work in a story. Many of the places I mention in the book are either places I stayed, buildings I worked in or locations I visited.

As far as how being there on 9/11 affected me, there was both an emotion and a tangible impact. It was already late afternoon in Germany when things began. One of the guys I was working with had a sister who worked in a building near the WTC. He kept calling home, but the circuits were all busy, so he didn't know if she was all right. Ultimately, we found out she was, but there were several hours there that we didn't know if she was even alive.

Beyond that first unbelievable evening, when we sat in the hotel, our eyes glued to the broadcast on CNN International, two things still stick with me from that time. The first was the fact that for nearly a week we could not travel back to the States. All international flights were cancelled for many days beyond when domestic flights were once again allowed. We were stuck in Europe. (In truth, my job didn't finish until the end of September, but if it had finished earlier, I would have had no where to go.) The second thing that stood out was the reaction of the German people. Huge metal fences went up almost immediately all around the American Embassy. Everywhere behind the fence were German police officers with machine guns. But along the fence at several different spots, spontaneous memorials – candles and notes and flowers – poured across the sidewalk to the fence. Everywhere we would go, if someone found out we were American, we'd get these very sympathetic, concerned looks. Everyone was our friend then. Everyone wanted to console us.

JB: But 9/11 is not part of the story, correct?

BB: That's right. There are plenty of stories out there that deal with what happened on that day. Hung Out to Die (or whatever the final title will end up being), is not one of them. Of course, I guess you could say the world of HOTD, like that of any thriller set in the last five years, has been affected by that event.

JB: It was an awful time, and I'm sure you're right. Thank you for sharing that experience with us.

Let's move on to a lighter subject, shall we?

Three of my favorite people growing up were Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw. Yours, too, I've learned recently. How did reading Hitchcock's The Three Investigators series influence you?

BB: I loved these books. I wanted to be one of the Three Investigators. [me too! - too bad I was a girl, I don't think they would've let me in the club] They had this cool headquarters buried deep in a junk yard. You could only get there through tunnels built around and under the wreckage. And then there were all these great mysteries they were solving and scary situations they got into. Loved it. I would say that these books were my first introduction into mysteries and thrillers. From there, I moved on to Alistar MacLean then Robert Ludlum and Clive Cussler then dozens of other great thriller writers. But Jupiter, Bob and Pete were the first.

In the past several years, every time I go into an antique store or a used bookstore, I look for copies of the Three Investigator stories that I read when I was a kid. I've probably found about ten of them now.

JB: Another thing we have in common is our love for jazz music. Who are your favorites? Do you listen to music while you're writing?

BB: Absolutely I listen to music when I write. Lyrics, no lyrics, doesn't matter to me. And I do love jazz – John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Louis Armstrong plus many others. But my musical tastes don't end with jazz. I'm all over the place. U2, David Bowie, KT Tunstall, Black Eyed Peas, Green Day, Guo Brothers, Geoffrey Oryema. That's just some. I also love good soundtrack music. Sometimes soundtracks are the best music to write to. The are so emotional. Some of my favorites are the soundtracks to The Mission, Shawshank Redemption, Glory, Field of Dreams, Henry V, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Often I'll select music based on what kind of scene I'm going to write. But sometimes I just let my iPod run on random. Also, since I like to do a lot of my writing in coffee shops, music does wonders to drown out any nearby conversation.

JB: Time for the off-the-wall, just for fun questions. What, for you, is the perfect sandwich?

BB: I'm going to have to take the Fifth on this one. I've learned from experience that my perfect sandwich grosses other people out. [Could it be any worse than the peanut butter, lettuce & mayonnaise sandwiches my mother and oldest daughter like?]

JB: Did you have any pets as a child? If so, what kind?

BB: Dogs, always dogs. Once we even had three at one time. They were all strays that we had some how adopted. One was a golden lab that I named Strider. Hey, I was at that Lord of the Rings phase of my life. He used to like to carry a three foot long 2x4 in his mouth. He didn't carry it from the middle of the board, but rather at one end. He was a bit of a knucklehead, but he was our knucklehead.

JB: Do you have any siblings? If so, did you get along when you were younger?

BB: I have one of each variety – brother and sister. In fact, they're twins. So double the fun for me. They're four years younger than I am, and we were seldom in the same school at the same time. Did we get along? On occasion. Didn't do a lot of hanging out until we became adults. Now we're all friends. One thing though, I can't pick on my brother any more. He's a federal police officer now and carries a gun.

JB: Brett, thanks so much for chatting with me today. I'm so proud to have the honor of conducting your very first interview.

Brett Battles lives and writes in Los Angeles, California. The Cleaner is his debut novel. Look for it in Summer 2007 from Bantam Dell. Brett blogs at The Sphere.