The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the 'Inspector Anjelica Henley' series Nadine Matheson sits down with fellow authors for insightful, honest, and entertaining conversations. Each episode dives deep into the world of writing, from the publishing journey to overcoming challenges, the experiences that shape their work, and anything else that comes up when great minds come together. Whether you're a fan of gripping stories or curious about the life behind the books, 'The Conversation' promises thought-provoking chats and moments of inspiration.
If you'd like to be a guest or have a message or question, reach out to us at theconversation@nadinematheson.com.
Finalist -Independent Podcast Awards 2024
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The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Michael Idov: Gen X, Spies and Outrunning Reality
What happens when reality becomes stranger than fiction? Author Michael Idov sits down with me to explore the fascinating world of spy fiction writing in our increasingly unpredictable geopolitical landscape.
Michael reveals how his spy thriller "The Collaborators" navigates a middle path between cerebral procedurals and over-the-top action fantasies, creating stories grounded in authentic global politics while still delivering heart-pounding sequences. Drawing from actual events like the 2021 Ryanair incident in Belarus, he demonstrates how truth provides the perfect foundation for compelling fiction.
Michael's journey from journalist to screenwriter to novelist offers valuable insights for creatives navigating multiple storytelling formats.
Whether you're fascinated by espionage, curious about the craft of thriller writing, or interested in how personal experiences shape fiction, this episode illuminates how writers transform cultural understanding into narrative gold.
A brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress stumble into a global conspiracy that pits present-day Russia against the CIA in this electrifying, globetrotting spy thriller.
Criss-crossing the globe on the way to this shocking revelation are disaffected millennial CIA officer Ari Falk, thrown into a moral and professional crisis by the death of his best asset, and brash, troubled LA heiress Maya Chou, spiralling after the disappearance of her Russian American billionaire father. The duo’s adventures take us to both classic and surprising locales – from Berlin and Tangier to Latvia, Belarus and a semi-abandoned technopark outside Moscow.
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Yeah, it's weird, right, because it's not the same set of skills. No One could argue. It's two diametrically opposed sets of skills. No one becomes a writer, you know, because they enjoy other people's company.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with your host, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you're having a good week, and I hope that you're getting ready for summer, because, yes, we are in June. I'm not sure how we got here, but we are here. The weeks, the days, the months have just been flying past and we find ourselves looking at, well, the eve of, and I, for one, cannot wait because it's been busy. It's been really busy with writing books, doing events, and it's nice just to take a moment, sit in the sun and smell the roses and also listen to podcasts, which is why I have a request If you've enjoyed previous episodes of the Conversation, if you've enjoyed previous episodes of the conversation, if you just love listening to the conversation, could you please leave a review, the reviews, the comments, the likes?
Speaker 2:It really does help keep the podcast going and I will be really, really grateful. That's all I've got to say about that, and I'm going to get straight on with the show, because this week I'm in conversation with Michael Eidoff, who's an author, director and screenwriter, and his new book, the Collaborators, which is a spy thriller and was also a Times Book of the Month is out now, and in today's conversation, michael Eidoff and I talk about the real life events that inspire fictional thrills, what rejection looks like in the film industry in comparison to the publishing industry, and what it means to transition from a writer to an author. Now, as always, sit back or go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Michael Eidolf, welcome to the Conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Nadine. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to have you here, right, I don't normally get very political on the podcast because I know what I'm like I get carried away. But I just, I just thought.
Speaker 1:Going right in there.
Speaker 2:I'm going right in there, Okay. So obviously I'm looking at the whatever, everything that's going on politically in the States, and then I'm looking at your book, the Collaborators, and I'm thinking it's because of what thinking because of everything that's happening, has it made you approach your writing or even look back at your book the Collaborators, differently?
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, for sure, and you may notice that the Collaborators is set in 2021.
Speaker 1:And the reason for that is it was written largely in 2023. And back then I felt like, you know, the Ukraine war was still something I couldn't quite wrap my head around in terms of making it into a literary fodder, because you know, I have friends in Ukraine and you know it's been absolutely devastating to keep hearing the news from there, and I had been doing quite a bit of work with Russia before that and have completely extricated myself from any projects that involved Russia once the full-scale invasion started. So it didn't feel right to address it in a fun genre setting. So I had to set the book in what I felt were the last moments of the previous status quo, right Like the sort of the summer of 2021, where you can already see that like something's about to happen, but like the old kind of structure of the Russia-US relationship still kind of applied. And you know COVID was still wreaking havoc on the world, but at least that was more understandable than whatever the hell was going on, you know, at the time.
Speaker 2:And the funny thing is, of course, now I feel like that about 2024, where my second book is set, and I just finished a draft of a book called Cormorant Hunt, which is the book two of the same series, and it's really kind of tragic comic that I now had to set it in 2024, because then now I feel like well, 2024, I understand, but I don't understand at all like well, 2024, I understand it's crazy because you know we're always told to write what you know and I suppose, because you know when you're writing a collaboration, because I was reading about it and in a sense it's kind of what you know, but you are still creating this world and this, I suppose, this alternative reality, things that haven't you know, you don't expect to happen, but then you look at the current state of everything around you and you're thinking you wouldn't put this in a book really previously.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, there are things happening in reality that would be too cheesy to put into a spider.
Speaker 1:I mean reality has been outpacing genre for a while now. If you look at what the Ukrainians did to sabotage the Northern Stream with a special op on a yacht, or the exploding pagers I forgot about that, Remember the exploding pagers Without assigning any humanist value to that operation, like that is something from a movie and not even a good movie. So yeah, it is. It is hard and in many ways the collaborators was me writing about what I know, though I am a civilian. That needs to be. You, you know set up, Ron.
Speaker 1:I'm not an intellectual, You're not a spy. I'm not a spy, although I know it's like proving a negative because you know that's what a spy would say, but obviously I am not. But my, I mean and I'm sure there's a lot of errors in the way I describe, you know, the CIA bureaucracy, because that is the part of the book where I'm frankly just like basing it on research and talking to friends of friends in the community, and this is like when I'm flying blind a little bit. But I think my strength side is that I've lived in all these countries and I know all these cultures and so basically whatever happens in collaborators like I know exactly on what street corner it happened whether it be in Latvia, morocco, berlin or Thailand.
Speaker 1:These are all places that I know and I've leaned into that because you have to, as you said you know, write what you know and that was sort of I know the cultures and underlying geopolitics and I feel more sort of confident writing about that than I do about, like, what's happening on the seventh floor of the you know, the new headquarters building in Langley, which I'm sure a lot of veteran intelligence operatives are, you know, brilliant at.
Speaker 2:I just, you know, I just completely forgot about the exploding pages. That's still in my head and now I can see in my head. I can see it Like they're in the grocery store and yeah, and the pages were like exploding in their pockets. And you said that would be like a really bad movie.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, a lot of stuff in the collaborators has happened in real life and that was one of my sort of approaches to like the action sequences were you know the. This is not much of a spoiler because it's the scene that opens the book. The first scene of the book uh, where a you know an airplane gets taken down, uh, over belarus, so that, like, one person can be yanked, you know, off the plane and the rest are let go. That happened in 2021. Um, it's the so-called ryanair incident and people can look it up your, your audience is welcome to google it.
Speaker 1:Um, that's pretty much a documentary account of a thing that happened in the. The moment I read about it, I was like this is such a perfect opening scene for a book and yeah, so there's quite a bit of that. My general rule was that if something is kind of big enough to to make the news in real world, I want to find like a real world equivalent for it, so that no one can accuse me of being too fanciful. Know, they say like, oh, that is really like that's something out of a movie.
Speaker 2:I'm like, actually, this happened in real life on this day yeah, I don't think anyone would be saying that now, though I don't think anyone would be reading anyone's bible and thinking, yeah, this would never happen. So, michael, how would you describe your writing journey? Because I always like to ask and also I always think there's a difference between your writing journey and your publishing journey. The two are not necessarily the same.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, I've done a lot of things in my life that all amount to storytelling in some way. Right, I've been a journalist, I've been a, I've been a tried to be a literary novelist, I've been and am a screenwriter, and occasionally I direct a little movie when they let me. But writing spy fiction actually like feels like a very weird sort of belated homecoming to me, because it is a genre and a kind of a mode where I can basically just play into all of my strengths and be weirdly personal too, like for something that's like genre you know the collaborators is really autobiographical. Like I've put so much of myself and my family's history into the character of Paul Aubrand and then a little bit into Ari Falk. So I I'm really happy to be doing this and all I want is an ability to continue doing this.
Speaker 1:So, thankfully, my my publishers Scribner in the US, simon Schuster UK in the UK they were incredibly supportive and they contracted me for a sequel well before the first book even came out, which is such a great vote of confidence and I'm told it does not happen too often these days. So at least I know there's going to be at least two such a great vote of confidence and, I'm told, does not happen too often these days. So, uh, so, you know, at least I know there's going to be at least two, you know. But, um, I, I absolutely love this and I want to continue and, uh, uh, the reviews that mean the most to me are reviews from um sort of the people who have really spent their whole lives, like you know, in in that genre, like either writing or reading, and and and. When they say that this sort of stands up to the test, I'm like, yes, that is, uh, that's what I'm working for.
Speaker 2:I want to, I want to write something for the people who like live and breathe, spy fiction did you know initially, when you started writing the first book, that it was going to be part of the series? And the only reason why I ask is because I remember when I first sat down with my was it the first? No, I think yeah. The first time I sat down with my agent before I signed and he asked me about my book and he asked me if it was a series. And in my head I'm thinking, well, I just want to sign a contract. So, yes, it was a series.
Speaker 1:I hadn't planned it. It's the conversation that everyone in Hollywood has when they are selling a TV show, because you've basically, you know, in 99% of the cases you've only worked out one season in your head and you know how the story ends at best.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, during the pitch, they're like it's sort of a favorite question of of the buyers. They're like so what does season four of this look like? You know, and you just, and you're just like dear God, let me just get through to like the end of the sentence and get back to like selling the story I actually worked at and at first, if it's a success, you're like oh, oops, now I have to actually do this. No, there was no conversation about this being a series until everyone started getting really enthusiastic internally about the first one. But my agent, who minces no words, um, but my agent, who minces no words, um, asked me um up front when we were talking about the book. Um, and I'll have to edit her speech a little bit uh say you know, if I do this, if I sell this for you, are you going to screw off and do something else entirely, like you usually do?
Speaker 1:and I'm like no, no this is the next 20 years of my life.
Speaker 2:If this works and she's like all right, okay you know, when you look back at like your screen I'm not god it makes it sound like it's over and it's not over. But you know, when you're looking at your screenwriting career and interacting with with producers and I suppose I want to say, like the Hollywood system was, did any of that like prepare you for publishing, because it is a completely different beast.
Speaker 1:And also like the reactions that you're getting from you know readers it's going to be different from, from, I suppose, like a film critic or audiences seeing your movie like straight away um, that's a great question and not, you know, I I'm usually asked a variation of this question, like in creative terms, like is it hard to switch from like a screenwriting to you know, a screen? Yeah, which is, you know, a boring question to answer. Yeah, of course it's different, different, you know, but this is this is actually a more interesting version of the question Like, is the industry different? Yeah, and I'd say there's a healthy bit of like connection between the industries, but some maybe too much, because I feel like there's a lot of books being written out there and being published only to provide the so-called underlying intellectual property for an eventual adaptation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, like you, basically, it's like it's like story laundering. You, you launder the story by making it into a book, and it doesn't matter if it works as a book, because then you can go off and pitch it as as a TV series or a a film, by saying, hey, it was a book first, you know, cause you don't have to worry about this being an original story, and for me, a book always needs to want to be a book first and foremost. If this thing came to me as a screenplay, I would have written a screenplay, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I came to me as a screenplay. I would have written a screenplay, you know, yeah, um, and I feel like there's just there's something about a book that you know there's something about asking for like eight hours of someone's time as opposed to two. You know, um, that's like places a big responsibility on you to um, just to move things along and to you know, and just not be boring, basically. And there's the I come from, like literary fiction. So you know, it's not that I'm saying every book has to be, you know rip, rip-roaring, you know action, tale, but still there's a real responsibility when you ask for so much of people's time to read it.
Speaker 1:And in terms of the industry, well, everyone predicted that, like, the books would, you know, die off and they're doing really well. You know, like, generally, they're doing really well, um, you know, like the, the generally the book sales are are great, um, and physical books are still alive. It's just, it's interesting. I'm looking at my sales and the physical book sales are almost one-to-one with um, with eBooks. So it's almost like they found a way to coexist in a way that doesn't really hurt either side of the equation.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like Zygon.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I was just saying that it's doing really well, but it's also very different. The book buying, for example, demographically it's very, very female. You know, the book buying, for example, demographically it's very, very female driven. You know, with your book, the spy for the physical book buying is, um, over the last sort of 10 years or so, yeah, it's skewed more and more female and, um, I think one of the like sort of industry things that I've heard about the collaborators is oh, you're like it's very smart of you to include, like the main, a main female character, because this is, you know, who buys books these days. And honestly, I was like, oh, I didn't, like this wasn't strategic, I just wanted to do this. But I like, I like Maya and she's like a co-lead character. And then the second there's, you know, another sort of female lead, but I never, it never occurred to me that like, oh, I'm writing this so that they can, you know, sell it to an audience. So yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:you know, because when I think about my own books, I'm thinking that you kind of like you write in your own bubble. You know because if, when I think about my own books, because I'm thinking that you kind of like you write in your own bubble, you know you've created this world for yourself and you coexist in that bubble and you're not really well, I like to think so you're not really thinking about okay, how is this going to respond where people of this demographic and when it drawing this audience? And then, when you fast forward two years later, when, when you're sitting with your I don't know your marketing team and your publicity team and they're saying oh no, you did, that was a very good strategy, you did. And you're thinking I didn't have a strategy, I was just writing a story.
Speaker 1:Right, well, I mean, I think you're lucky in that case, because you know if you're in tune with what people want, that's great yeah but you don't have to be. You know it's um. Some books wait for their own audience or create their own audience so yeah, no, but that's that's great. If, if that, uh, if that happens, yeah, I think the bad thing is to think about it before you even start thinking about the story.
Speaker 2:That's when you sort of corrupt your own thinking yeah, I mean, that's kind of like writing to trends, isn't it, when people's like, oh, this is the current trend, so this is what you need to do, whereas I don't know judgment.
Speaker 1:The only problem is it takes two years to you know write exactly by the time it comes out. I guarantee you you're going to be late to whatever trend you're trying to catch up to.
Speaker 2:I think that's exactly the point. You know, when you're talking about ebooks and print and it's kind of being like one-to-one in my head, I was thinking about vinyl. You know, they always said vinyl's dead, like it's never making a comeback, because you got cds and then you had streaming and now they're saying no, vinyl is. It's not even slowly is making a comeback. More and more vinyl is being is being people. So the same with print.
Speaker 1:I have a 14-year-old kid. She has more vinyl than I ever did, because at that age you didn't have enough money to buy everything on vinyl, so you just bought cassettes. I just had cassettes, cassette tapes, and none of them were pirated. But the thing about her is it's a physical artifact. She barely ever listens to stuff on vinyl. She just kind of likes having it and I think that's because you know, the art is beautiful and there's holdouts. The vinyl itself, like the technology, has moved somewhere where they can, you know, make all these like crazy-coloured art object type vinyl records. It's just become something you can hold or display. Somehow it works. It's really funny. We want something physical, yeah.
Speaker 2:I do miss. I think that's actually what I do miss about. You know, even though I probably stream more well, I do, I stream more. I can't remember. I can't tell you, the last time I bought did I even sell CDs anymore? But I can't remember the last time I bought a CD.
Speaker 1:I've lost the plot on this because after I heard that cassettes are back, are they as like a hipster thing. That kind of killed me, because vinyl I understand, but cassettes were always like a cheap compromise, like the you know, artist tiny. The sound quality is iffy. They're annoying. It's like really we're gonna fetishize cassettes now look, can we just forget that this existed?
Speaker 2:see the vinyl. I understand the cassettes. I do not understand because all it is, because it's exactly what you said. I remember, you know, like being younger and you'd want the album, but the cassette is the cheap alternative, maybe if you're like buying a present for a friend. Um, and the vinyl was amazing. It always was amazing, because when you got the fold outs and then sometimes they'd have the lyrics inside and you can read a little story about your artists and then that's all. Yeah, that's all disappeared. But a cassette was just hassle, especially when the ribbon came out or the tape came out.
Speaker 1:You got to find a pen.
Speaker 2:You could tell, michael and I are Gen X.
Speaker 1:But I got to say, the one thing cassettes were great for was making mixtapes.
Speaker 2:Oh, the best mixtape I got my brother. A guy made it for me. He made me a mixtape and my brother took it and taped over it and I could have killed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know that was pain, that was painful. So, michael, I yeah, I know that was pain. There you go, that was painful. So, michael, going back about the collaborators, it's a question I ask now because someone asked me and I thought that's a good question. I'm going to steal it. Was there a challenge?
Speaker 1:in writing that book, or any challenges I mean, the first one that comes to mind is really just pulling off the, the genre of it all, like pulling off the structure. That would be surprising for people who have really, you know, really immersed themselves in this kind of book. So just making sure the twist works and then making sure it doesn't invalidate anything in terms of character, because there's a lot of twists for the twist's sake out there, and I wanted something that makes you look back at the entire book. And I'm trying, you know, to be vague so as not to spoil what it is. You can be vague, right, but that was the big like to make sure that this construction holds.
Speaker 1:One of my biggest inspirations is a novel by John Le Carre that not many people, actually, I think, would name as their favorite. It's called A Small Town in Germany and it's not one of his, like you know, big smiley books. But there's a beautiful and very sort of humanist twist at the end of that book that just kind of makes you realize what it is that you've been reading this whole time. And it's, you know, because a lot of the times in the genre it's like, oh, that guy is the mole, and that's the best, but that one specifically in A Small Town in Germany. It just does something that like recasts the entire book in terms of, like, you start understanding somebody's motivation, like that's. The real twist is that it's not that you understand now what's been done, you understand why it's been done, and I really took that as my kind of pole star in writing the collaborators I wanted this shock of recognition, not of somebody's actions but of somebody's motives, and so that was pulling that off was the biggest challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always like to think that when I'm writing that I'm writing in a sense not only just to tell the story, but also I'm trying to understand, because then it just comes back to me being well, say, my being a former criminal lawyer. I'm always trying to work out, like what motivates people, what has brought someone to that point. So even when I'm writing my own books, I think that's always like the overlying, the underlying motivation. It's like what has got this person here, what has pushed you and that doesn't matter whether it's the protagonist or the antagonist what has got you to this point?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, absolutely what is your favorite of your own books, because I want to read one now oh, oh, my god, what's my favorite?
Speaker 2:yeah, let's block your book. I feel like I've got to pick my favorite child. Hey, do you know what? I'm gonna pick the first one. I'm gonna pick the jigsaw man, because I think that is the book that I didn't expect anything to happen with it, like I wrote it and I was like, whatever happens, like it happens, I'm not, you know.
Speaker 2:I'm not fixated on the outcome, but I think the reason why it's my favorite is because, um, like my main character in it, henley, who's a detective I saw her in my head like probably like two to three years before I even started writing the book and I just need, yeah, and I just needed somewhere to put her like I didn't have the story. And then when the story came to me I'm like, oh, this is the perfect place for her, like I found her and yeah. So I think that's that's my. That is going to be my favorite.
Speaker 2:And also it brought in um, one of the I say one of the serial killers in there, peter Olivier. I don't know why people love him so much, but everyone loves him. And because he started off, and because he started off in my head it's just a mind I always called me he was just a plot device, he was just something to keep the story moving, but then he ended up being something bigger and everyone's always asking when he's going to come back. So, yeah, yeah, we'll go to jigsaw back yeah, absolutely well, do so.
Speaker 1:You wrote it. You wrote it on spec, right like you wrote it no, I was doing that.
Speaker 2:I was doing a creative writing masters and we had to yeah, and we had to write the novel in order to complete the course. So in my head I was just thinking, look, I just need to finish this so I can pass the course. None, I'm just going to get on with my life. You know, I can't go to court. I have a job. This is just just getting it done. And then, yeah, it just turned into something bigger and I think it's probably. I think that's probably like the beauty of probably writing your first book, like there's no real, you know, constraints on you. There's a little bit of freedom, as opposed to when you're now writing under contract and someone's asking for the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this second book that I just finished was the first time I wrote um on deadline. When, like, the book is already announced and it's um like on the publisher's schedule, it is remarkably like hard. It's weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah it's. It's like oh, it's just, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it has to be done by a certain day. And, um, yeah, that is uh. I I'm pretty excited about how it came out, but I don't, I did not enjoy the experience no having a hard deadline yeah, it's like I remember a friend of mine, she.
Speaker 2:She messaged me one day and she's like nadine, I've just gone on amazon and the book that I still haven't finished writing yet is now available for sale on amazon by her publisher and she's like I'm literally looking at it now. I'm like she hasn't finished the first draft, but then it's already up. And that's a weird thing as well, because it's a different pressure, because it's not only your editor saying deliver it by the 1st of July, now it's like there's the world's expectations for it to be available by the 1st of July.
Speaker 1:These are champagne problems, I think, but yes.
Speaker 2:They are actually, aren't they? They are definitely first world problems, right, right, michael, when did you because I always like to ask when did you realize, not that you could write, but you, but that you could tell a story? Because, again, there's a big difference, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because a lot of people couldn't write yeah, um right, I uh I'm gonna give a really boring answer. Like I always wanted to be a writer. I think I wrote my first quote-unquote novel when I was eight. It was some weird Western thing, I think, written by an eight-year-old in the Soviet Union. I would love to reread it at some point, actually, if, if it like, if it's somewhere around like childhood papers, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I always wanted to write, as just that, the forms that it took were different, but and I'm not one, I don't think I'm one of those people who do it to like, you know, to gain kind of like recognition or love from their peers, because it's like I always wanted to be slightly anonymous.
Speaker 1:Uh, I am vain, we all are. I want my name to be known, but, like, um, my experience that I had in Russia with having like my face known is not something I enjoyed, to be honest, because I had this weird three year period when I went to Moscow and was the editor in chief of GQ in Russia and that came with like a weird B-list celebrity status, as I found out. Does it really Well? Yeah, in the US you have Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter and then everyone else is just an editor doing their job, and in Russia, as I found out after coming there, every editor is Anna Wintour. Every editor is Anna Wintour. The editor of a Western magazine is a public-facing job, with people writing about what they saw you on the street dressed in. That is something I. I'm glad I had that experience, because now I know for sure that I don't enjoy it.
Speaker 2:That's weird, though, isn't it? Because, say, you're doing a profile on an actor, not only is it the profile on the actor, in a sense it's also on you, and really you're just supposed to be in the background.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the problem with these jobs is that most, most of what you do is just, uh, I, I wanted to be an actual editor, like what you're describing. Like I wanted to assign and edit stories and, uh, it took me a while to figure out that actually, the gist of the job is to placate, um, advertisers, uh, which means you just have to go, uh, to all these like commercial events, you know. So, like, any given week, you'll have like five, you know, boutique openings and and you just have to show up there and be photographed and that's kind of your job. That's like 80% of your job is to be photographed standing next to somebody's marketing rep. Photographed standing next to somebody's marketing rep, and it had fun moments, like I remember.
Speaker 1:Back then it was still possible in 2013. I think we, you know the Russian GQ was like sponsoring the Russian premiere of Skyfall yeah, so the cast, you know, and one of the minor royals was there. It's like, you know, you can like rent a royal, I think, for your movie Rent a royal Right and there's Prince Michael of Kent.
Speaker 2:I don't know why that really is renting a royal Right right Sorry.
Speaker 1:But like it was sorry if I'm saying something controversial.
Speaker 2:It's fine. I just think it's funny.
Speaker 1:So it was like, oh wow, this is really glamorous and cool and we get to like attach our name to like a Bond movie. But you know, but for every event like this, there was like 10, like car dealership openings.
Speaker 2:That is so not what you would expect In head. When you're saying to me you're the editor of russia, gq, russia, I'm thinking okay, you're sitting there in your office with your red pen right yeah, yeah, that's what I thought, uh, but no, well, it's all gone.
Speaker 1:There's no more russian gq. Kondinast has left the country. Well, yeah, maybe they'll come back at some point, uh, you know, when russia stops, uh, doing what it's doing.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah it kind of ties in, though. You know, when I speak to a lot of writers on this podcast and there are some who you know when they first set out to write a book, all they're thinking about is writing the book, and then all they're thinking about after that is, you know, it will be on the bookshelf somewhere, and then I'll just move on to the next book, but then they get the reality check of that. Now you need to be outside. You now need to be doing events, you need to do panels. You now need to be visible as not just the writer, now the author, and for some people, that's a big, that's a big adjustment to make.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's weird, right. Weird right Because it's not the same set of skills. One could argue it's two diametrically opposed sets of skills. No one becomes a writer because they enjoy other people's company.
Speaker 2:It's like when I'm I call them the baby lawyers, when I'm teaching the baby lawyers, when I'm teaching the baby lawyers and I'm teaching them advocacy, so you know communication skills and doing your speeches and stuff. I always say to them you need to be prepared for for the point that one of your family members are going to ask you to do the wedding speech or do the funeral eulogy or do the baptism. There'll be some kind of public speaking role they want you to do. But the two are completely different. Because you doing a closing speech to a jury you know it's not, it's not going to be any more than 12 people, whereas you standing before an audience, a large audience. It's two completely different things and it can be hard for people to understand that which you know goes back to, you know, being a writer in your room at your desk and being an author being on the stage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, again, it's a good problem to have if you have this to stand on. But yeah, this is not. You know, it's strange that that's part of the deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah it is. How did you ever manage rejection? I'm saying both industries In both, I suppose as a screenwriter now, Now as a novelist. You've always been a novelist.
Speaker 1:Not well. Well, nadine. Um well, the thing about uh movies is that, and especially the movie and 2u business, is that the rejection takes many forms, and one of the forms it takes is when somebody buys your story and does nothing with it. And this is something that makes me feel very fondly about books, because the thing is, when you write a book and you're done with it, it's done, it exists, uh, even in the offance scenario where no one buys it, you can just go nuts and self-publish or hit share link on the Google Doc that you've been writing on, and it still exists. It just exists in a slightly different form, whereas a screenplay, of course, is just a blueprint for something else that will take another like 10 steps to actually become reality.
Speaker 1:And so, to me, the hardest part is having something sold which happened multiple times to me and seems to be a very regular to me, and seems to be a very regular, unremarkable Hollywood experience when you sell something and everyone acts very excited about it, you get paid, which is great, and then just a year goes by and nothing happens, and then everyone slowly loses their enthusiasm for it, and then, three later, no one, no one says your project is dead. No one ever calls you to say we are officially not pursuing this anymore. Like this never happens. It just kind of peters out, yeah, it fades, and you're supposed to understand by like outside context clues that they're no longer interested in it. Uh, and that like that is my least favorite kind of rejection. Just like, just don't buy it, you know if you don't want to do anything.
Speaker 1:But and and that is a very american thing, because there's too much money in this town they can afford to buy things and not pursue them in europe. Europe, if you sell a script, there's like an 80% chance that it's going to get made, because there's not enough money in the industry to buy up scripts they have no intention of producing and so sorry for the long answer, but that is the one type of rejection I absolutely cannot stand is like this slow, slow hiss of like air coming out of a project.
Speaker 2:But I think I think that's probably why I'm very cynical. It might be just the lawyer in me. I'm very cynical about the enthusiasm that you could get from production companies because you know, it's like when you explain book options to people and you say, yeah, it's been optioned, but it doesn't mean anything's going to happen with it. It's like someone says I'm giving you some money just so I can hold it, I can pull it in my pocket for a few years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for a year or two or even three, or they might extend it. But then it's like you say, it's probably the worst case of ghosting, because there is nothing, no communication. It's just, he said it, just, it just fades out until you just start being okay.
Speaker 1:well, that's it, it's over right, but but they don't let you know yeah it is like ghosting. You can yeah, you can keep like living a fantasy in which you know it's, they'll come back, yeah right, exactly. Yeah, it's not great, and especially since you know it's just, it's so disingenuous, right, it's like it's like you know, and it's like yeah I think that's that's what makes me so cynical.
Speaker 2:And they're like I love your book. I think you're amazing. You're like and who love your book? I think you're amazing. You're like mm-hmm. And who else have you said? And how many other people have you said that to today? I am not the only one.
Speaker 1:Yep, not to draw obvious parallels, but yeah, that's what it feels like.
Speaker 2:Listeners, it's time for a very short break. If you're enjoying this conversation with Nadine Matheson and want to help keep the podcast going, why not buy me a cup of coffee? Your support goes such a long way in keeping these conversations flowing. Just check out the link in the show notes. You know, when we were talking earlier about basically book writing and people writing books but with the intention of it being made into a tv series or film and I said this to someone probably a couple of months ago on this podcast, there was like probably three, three books in a row that I'd read and each book I'd felt like it hadn't been written for like me and I'm talking about in terms of the reader. It felt like it was a blueprint to be made into a TV series or a film and it just made me feel differently because it felt like it was missing something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know how, like sometimes you go to a, you know, like a local restaurant or like a fast food joint, like a burger joint and it's just, you know, and it's like just good, made with care and, you know, delicious, and things like that.
Speaker 1:And sometimes you go to a fast food joint and it is roughly the same, everything's fine, but you just feel that this is like a showcase that they've made for venture capitalists to come in and make it into a franchise.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, that is like that is the model, you know, but like they will never be happy with just one burger stand, like they want, uh, some hedge fund to come in and put them into, like every airport in the world, and so that is, unfortunately. That is a feeling you you get from, um, uh, from some books when it was like, oh, yeah, okay, you're creating a character that you want to be like the new jack reacher or something like you want this guy to, or this want to be like the new Jack Reacher or something Like you want this guy to, or this woman to be. You know, like you're just introducing somebody you want to do 28 novels about. Yeah, and you know again, I don't want to like, I don't want to disparage people who do that Like why, you know why not if there's an audience for it, but there is. Like sometimes you get like a whiff of cynicism about it yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So uh, definitely a good thing to uh to avoid that in your own writing, because you you really have to be like excited by what you're writing in the moment you're writing it, because otherwise it's just it becomes a job like any other.
Speaker 2:I might as well be like an insurance salesman, you know you do need to be excited about your writing because even now I'm very much a planner. So I've been working on something. But I knew I had to rework the plan. So I'd been working on the plan before we started recording and at one point I sat back and I was like what am I doing? But then, because I was still excited about the story and the characters and I know what's going to be coming next, it keeps me motivated to keep going and you need that. Do you plan everything out? I'm trying to find the right way to say it. Well, I do plan, I plan. I don't plan out every single detail. I call it like a safety net so I know how it ends. But I'm very much open to things changing once I start writing. Because things do I always say like a subplot just comes out of nowhere, because you get into what you know, you get into a flow of writing. But I do, I have to have a plan.
Speaker 1:I couldn't just start writing and oh, no, no, yeah, because with the collaborators I knew how it was going to end, because that sort of just justified the whole book. But I did leave some spaces to how to get there, where I like I didn't know how we're going to get to that point, like until I got to that point in the book and it worked out really well. So I wanted to recapture the same structure in the in the second book, um, and it just didn't work at all.
Speaker 1:I I hit the end of the like pre-planned section and I thought like this sort of momentum is going to carry me over to the ending, and it just didn't. Like I spent like a month staring at a wall and then I had to admit to myself all right, I uh, this time I have to go back and I have to actually just do like a scene by scene until we get to the end, and like I'm not going to be able to move forward until I know exactly what happens. So I guess it's just kind of it varies on the book.
Speaker 2:Definitely it's a hard moment for I think, maybe like a lot of writers not even necessarily a new writer to look at their work and acknowledge, say to themselves, you know what it's not, this isn't working, and to go back and rework it.
Speaker 1:That's something I just experienced, like three months ago with this one, because, uh, it's like I, I really had to. I had to go away for a month, even because, like I didn't want my family to see me like tearing my hair out, and so so I was like all right, I am looping back to page one and I'm like rewriting everything. Yeah, with the new intention.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I've done with this one that I'm working on. I literally had to go back Because I've been working on it on and off, because I've had my other books in my series to write, so going back into it and I'm like this isn't working, I thought no, I have to go back literally to page one, to the minute we meet the main character and we work it and hopefully it will work out.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, look, it's better to do it to yourself than to hear it from the editor, isn't it?
Speaker 2:that is very true. I'd rather yeah, I'd rather, I'd rather put myself through it and then know when I do finally deliver the manuscript. I know that I've done everything I could have done and then hopefully, you know my editor is then doing her editing job Right, as opposed to saying Does your editor edit heavily?
Speaker 2:I think what I found is that it's probably less editing with each book. So in the beginning I remember when I first wrote the Jigsaw man and I got my editing notes, I was like, oh, there are pages and pages and pages of editing notes. But when I delivered the fourth one, I was like, oh, there's only like three pages, so it's more. Yeah, Do you still?
Speaker 1:edit. Do you still ask the questions? Ask the question. Yeah, well, you earned it then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've learned, I've learned, yeah, even though yeah, my sort of weird situation is that, uh, the my agent does quite a bit of like what essentially amounts to editing, like, so, like it's, she's not going to take the book out unless, like, she loves it.
Speaker 1:And so, with with the first book, like so I was on like draft three before it came out, before it went out to, uh, to publishers, because, um, sort of the agent does what you know what, what editors sometimes do, and um, when they edit itself was, uh, was pretty light but very like you know, I was very happy to to have it because it really, like you know, you do need a fresh pair of eyes and you know who, and my editor writes his own um spy novels like his, yeah, so he's super, uh sort of steeped in, uh in the genre, so I was really happy to get uh, to get some feedback yeah, no, you definitely need a second pair of eyes on your work, because I've got this one scene in my fourth book in my series, which is just coming back to me to do my next set of edits, and I'm wedded to this one scene and every time my editor says we don't need it, I keep putting it back, and this is like the third time.
Speaker 2:She's like we don't need this. So I'm like, okay, all right, I've given up, but I tried, like I tried to keep, but I'm like she, she knows best, she does know best and I trust her. So that's what I'm going to do, right, michael? Before I go on to your last set of questions. I was we've been talking about the collaborators and firstly, do you want to tell the? We've been talking about the collaborators and firstly, do you want to tell the listeners of the conversation about the collaborators? I'm trying to. You know, I'm forcing you to do your elevator pitch and then I'm going to ask you.
Speaker 1:I I mean, yeah, I I hope that your audience has at least like a cursory interest in it, because otherwise we are like 47 minutes into a recording. Oh right, will. So my apologies to whoever is not knowing what the fuck is. Well, it's.
Speaker 1:The collaborators were really born out of sort of frustration with the two kinds of spy novel that exist in the world. One is an incredibly cerebral procedural that's considered realistic, and the other is like completely fanciful, you know what we call like spy-fi, right, where you know everything blows up and I always felt that there's a third way and and there's sort of not many people working in that third and there's sort of not many people working in that space where something is realistic and grounded and based in research and actual underlying geopolitics, but at the same time has room for a couple of shootouts and a car chase, because things like that do happen in real life. And, just like you mentioned with, uh, with your character, um, the detective, I had the character of Ari Falk in my head for a little bit before, uh, before figuring out what to do with him. Because, uh, I have friends in the intelligence and national security community not not all of them, like clandestine, some of them that are just like NatSec.
Speaker 1:You know people, but um the thing is, they're not different from anyone else they're just, you know, and most of them are in like their thirties and, um, they have favorite movies and books and and and music and they, they don't exist in some sort of parallel, clandestine world where nothing happens. But you know, intrigue and subterfuge, like they go home and they like Forget the milk. Yeah, they're millennials who were brought up on Harry Potter, you know, they're not mysterious and I really wanted to reflect that. So I wanted a character who would basically just be a relatable human being with no special abilities and no like superpowers and no, you know, who can't overpower like five skilled opponents and a in a shootout, uh, but you know, just has some basic training and is moderately, uh, smart and witty and just just all around reliable. Somebody I can see having gone to school with and that is sort of where ari falk was, um, was really born, and then I was, yeah, waiting for the correct plot to find him. But if I needed to do an elevator pitch for the book, I'm sorry. No, no, no, that's fine.
Speaker 1:It's a novel about a sort of a disaffected millennial CIA officer who's on the verge of quitting when his star asset is killed and he realizes that it's just basically nothing he's done has brought any good to the world. And at the same time we have the second protagonist, this sort of spoiled and troubled Beverly Hills heiress, maya Jo Auburn. Beverly Hills heiress, maya Jo Auburn, whose father mysteriously disappears and is presumed sort of dead by suicide, and she sort of deals with her stress by going off and trying to figure out what actually happens to him. And they don't know it yet. But the CIA officer and the heiress are kind of on a collision course and they realize about halfway through the book that their missions are one and the same and they're looking for the same person. And I'm not going to spoil what's rest, but it leads us to an old and fact-based sort of conspiracy about something that happened in the 90s, at the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a good pitch. Okay, before I go into your last set of questions, if you could spend an afternoon with any of your characters in the Collaborators, who would it be?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good one. Alan Keegan, I really like Alan Keegan. He is, for those who don't know, he is an do this sort of thing where basically it know, or we're basically sifting through like CCTV recordings to figure out like the ultimate truth of what happened in in various cases. So, and the creator of of Bellingcat, his name is, his real name is Elliot Higgins. So Alan Keegan is clearly like a bit of a hat tip to yeah to him, and I just um, I really like alan and um, and every time he pops up in the book, I uh, I think like, oh, this is, this is the guy I would like to hang out with. And also every time he talks about the world, like if alan, if Alan Keegan says something in the book, you can be pretty sure that's like me. Talking Like the world view is very much my world view. It's you, as opposed to other characters who are not exactly like me. Like what he says is usually like oh, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:That's Michael.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, he also has my music taste, as opposed to Ari who listens to like Weezer. Yeah. So Alan Keegan, he's British and he listens to a lot of like British indie music of the turn of the century. He's like he's like a black box recorder fan and lady tron and things like that and this is all like straight up my music place. So like I've just given him like every british uh indie artist I I admire okay right.
Speaker 2:So last set of questions, michael are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?
Speaker 1:I'm a highly functioning introvert who can pretend to be an extrovert for, uh, the time needed and then needs to go lie down. So, yeah, I can be like, I can be very sociable, like I am now, and then I'll need to go and do a New York Times crossword puzzle, which I will the moment we're off the call. So, honestly, yeah, just introvert, but I hide it well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or not very well.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of writers on here. Okay, so I need to caveat now with saying good or Okay. So what I need to say? I need to caveat now with saying good or bad. So what challenge, good or bad? So what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?
Speaker 1:I would say my family moving from Latvia to the US in 1992. I was 16. I wasn't sure what the future held. I was 16. I wasn't sure what the future held. I didn't know if I would ever learn English to such an extent that I would be able to write in it, because my identity at that point, at 16, was already veryught. Like I, I didn't know if I was going to find a way to do what I?
Speaker 1:Um what I do, and and I was looking back, I was very lucky that I was 16 and not, you know, 20. Um, because there's something about that age that uh allowed me to keep uh my native r yet be, you know, fluent enough in English to to write books in it, whereas, you know, my sister was 11 at the time and she speaks English without an accent, you know, but I don't think she can write in Russian. Or I know people who came, you know, at like 18 or 19. And like their English is still like it's just just it. It's great, but it's still like a foreigner's english. And so there's, accidentally, there's something about um moving at 16 that made me uh be able to like be fully bilingual and um, uh, that is literally just the fact that shaped my entire life from from there and out, and thank you to my parents for doing that when they did it yeah, god, I was thinking what I was like when I was 16 because I would have been, yeah, same.
Speaker 2:Well, 1993, I was 60 and it's such a funny age because you still you still haven't quite worked out who you are, but you kind of know what you want to be and you're just trying to work out how you're going to get there. And it's so easy to just feel like you know, this is where I am now. I'm just going to fully emerge myself in this community, this way of life, this friendship, in order to fit in and forget everything. Yeah, it's a funny age, for sure.
Speaker 1:I uh, yeah, my daughter is heading there. She's 14 now, so strapping in and uh, good luck, okay.
Speaker 2:So if you could go back to when you're 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1:oh my god, stop screwing around and write a book that's a good one, okay.
Speaker 2:So what is your non-writing tip for writers? I always say you could tell them to go for a walk, drink water non-writing tip.
Speaker 1:Um, I I'm not sure I have any. I you, you mean just like how to conduct yourself and like, oh, um, well, I feel like if you're passionate about something that's not your job and you you're not sure how to fit it into your life, uh, to me the only thing that helped was doing it first thing in the morning, like if you feel like there's something that you just you want to do it, but you sort of you feel like I'm never going to get to do it, so I'm not going to pursue it. Try rolling out of bed and doing it for an hour, then just like, literally just be gross, no shower, no, like you know, uh, yeah, just just just do it and then have like breakfast and let your day begin like, wake up at 6 am, try to do it for an hour and, um, then go on with your day like you will. You know, you, in the grand scheme of things, like and of course this is for people who don't have to deal with like large families or kids, and you know there's there's all sorts of complications. But if you can't afford to do something like that, I would say like, if you feel like, oh, there's no time in my day to do this thing I'm passionate about, like, just try doing it, um, first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter if it's good or bad. You can revisit it later in the evening and look at it and go oh my God, what was I thinking? It doesn't matter, it'll be done. It's the only way to find out. One thing that I learned about myself when I had all these day jobs is you're not going to come back from work tired and do the thing you're passionate about. It's just, it's hard and you're not going to do your best job. So so just yeah, try to start your day with it and then, and then go on with the rest of the day. That's the only tip I have for anyone.
Speaker 2:No, I think it's a good thing. I mean, it's basically how I feel about working out. I know I'm not going to do it at the end of the day, so I will get up like at quarter six, do what I need to do, and then I, whether I do it badly, whether I just do it slowly, at least I know it's done and then I just I can get on with my day. And I always say, like I said repeatedly on this podcast, sometimes it's about stealing time. You know, when you want to work on that book, or I know, do that painting, you just have to steal the time, and the morning is the best time to steal before the rest of your day gets started. Okay, so finally, michael, where can listeners of the conversation find you online?
Speaker 1:because they need to find you, oh all right, well, um, I, I have an actual website, like it's 2004 or something. It's michaelidavcom, with a dash. So it's michael-idavcom, because some weirdo is like squatting on the normal Michael Idov, oh, so annoying. So I have to do the dash. But, um, yeah, so it's um and it has links to my you know, dwindling social media presence. I'm also Michael Ida, without the dash on Instagram, and you can always like, dm me there. Uh, I think that's the easiest way to get um in touch with me is just find me on instagram it's michaelidoff and and dm me. I usually check the messages there and, um, yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's the way to you know, to get in touch with me the most important thing is that you can be found, and that just leads me to say, michael idol, thank you very much for being part of the conversation thank you so much, nadine thank you so much for listening to today's conversation with Nadine Matheson.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode featuring more amazing guests. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes, and if you'd love to join the conversation as a guest, feel free to send an email to theconversation at nadiemaffersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.
