K.B. Brodsky - Beyond Honor

Host Terry Shepherd steps into the shadowy world of international espionage and political betrayal with Bill and Karen Brodsky. Writing under the pen name K.B. Brodsky, this dynamic husband-and-wife duo joins the show to discuss their debut thriller, Beyond Honor.  

Beyond Honor launches a gripping new series that transports readers from the war-torn streets of Damascus to the frozen reaches of Siberia, and from Alaska's Kenai Peninsula to the halls of power in Washington. The story follows Kevin Rhodes, a grieving paramilitary operative tasked with a dangerous solo extraction in Russia, while CIA analyst Whitney Schuyler tracks a Russian-backed bank conspiracy that reaches all the way to the Oval Office.  

In this episode, Bill and Karen pull back the curtain on how two mild-mannered civilians crafted a high-stakes intelligence thriller and learned to navigate the delicate process of co-writing a novel after 30 years of marriage.  

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Spark of Creation: How Bill secretly wrote the first 70 pages of the manuscript and surprised Karen with it.  
• The Co-Writing Process: The couple's daily routine, their use of Google Docs, and their strict rule to never make edits without mutual approval.  
• Building the Characters: How the authors balanced action and emotion to craft deeply human characters, from old-school Cold War spy Cynthia King to Russian operative Anya Pestova.  
• A Grounded World: Why the authors prioritized believable, real-world inspirations over superhero tropes to create a mosaic of interconnected global stories.  
• Looking Ahead: The exciting news of K.B. Brodsky's two-book deal with Simon & Schuster.  
• Dream Casting: The couple's humorous Hollywood aspirations, including pitching Meryl Streep for the role of CIA head Summers.  

Connect with K.B. Brodsky:

To learn more about Bill and Karen, or to pick up your copy of Beyond Honor, visit their official website at kbbrodsky.com.  

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:35

In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Today, we're stepping into the shadowy world of international espionage, political betrayal, and impossible choices with Bill and Karen Brodsky, the husband and wife writing team behind the pen name KB Brodsky. Their debut thriller, Beyond Honor, launches a new series with a story that moves from the war-torn streets of Damascus to the frozen reaches of Siberia, from Alaska's Canai Peninsula to the corridors of power in Langley and Washington. At its center is Kevin Rhodes, a paramilitary operative shaped by war and shattered by grief, recruited for a dangerous solo extraction mission deep inside Russia. Meanwhile, CIA analyst Whitney Schuyler follows the trail of a Russian-backed bank operating on American soil, only to uncover a conspiracy that reaches all the way to the Oval Office. Blending the high-stakes intelligence world of Red Sparrow with the relentless drive of the terminal list, Beyond Honor explores loyalty, vengeance, duty, and the cost of serving in the shadows. Bill and Karen Brodsky, it's great to have you here. Thanks for the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Thanks for having us, Terry.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Karen, what was the original spark for this story?

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Him. Bill was the original spark for this story. He actually surprised me with the first 70 pages of a manuscript that I had no idea he'd been working on. And when I had the chance to read it, I was stunned and delighted. And then he invited me to join him on it. So Bill really, his love for the spy novel genre and too much free time was the spark for this story.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Bill, what is it like collaborating with your wife?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

This delicate proposition, as I said. Yeah. So we've been married for about 30 years, and I had a I had a business, a real estate business in Manhattan for quite a long time, and really kept our business, my business life very separate from our personal and private life. And so this is something brand new where we're sharing a lot and we're doing things like this together. It's actually the super fun. This has been a super fun journey. And to do something different after having a separate career is also quite exciting.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Karen, how would you describe the day-to-day process of creation?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

We're getting so much better at it. So in the very beginning, Bill's thing is he gets up like at five o'clock in the morning every morning, he writes for a couple hours. I roll in. Coffee's made. And I think in the beginning it was a little frustrating for Bill because it takes me so much longer to just like dive in and really get into the process. So once a minute, it's all good. But he had a few moments where he'd have to say things like, Karen, I think the way one day you said, the think a way I'm supposed to say this is I'm feeling frustrated that you are putting in the time. And then I got it and I jumped into it. Yeah, so the process really, yeah, that that was how it started. At this point, we've gotten, I think, quite good. We write everything on a Google Doc. We have made a rule that nobody can change anything on the document without the other person's approval. So all the comments will be stacked up, and then we'll sit down every day or so, go through the comments, talk about any issues, any questions, any holes that need filling, or any changes that the other person wants to make. And that I think has been super, super helpful. It's a great tool.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Was writing in your background before all of this, Karen?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I took a bunch of writing courses in college and I took a writing class may about 10 years ago in the city. I've always been doing some writing stuff on the side and always planned to write a novel. This wasn't the one. And so actually, yeah, when Bill came out with a book, I'm like, what? No, you can't do that. And then we did it together. And so yeah, it's been it's actually worked out great because he really keeps me on track and he keeps when you have another person you're beholden to, you really can't stick it in a drawer and leave it there for a year because there's another person on the line. So I think it's been very helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

We're talking with a dynamic duo who write under the pen name KB Brodsky about their new book, Beyond Honor. And their website is KBRO D-S-K-Y, KBBrodsky.com. Bill, this book combines paramilitary action, CIA analysis, Russian espionage, and political conspiracy. How do you balance all of those elements without losing the emotional core of the story?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, that's a good question. So I have, like a lot of our peers, read so many of these books. And we feel like this book is a throwback to some of the more Tom Clancy-esque, where you have this mosaic of different stories that kind of come together. And one of the things that we really wanted to explore are character arcs in the world of espionage or in the world of military. So while they're, well, it's a super, we think it's a really fun book, really fun to read, but what we really tried to focus on is the action is it serves the story and serves the characters' arcs in the book. And in this particular book, we're we're exploring betrayal and honor and the cost of honor within these worlds, within the office space of the CIA or the New York real estate world or the paramilitary world. And so all of our characters are faced with questions of honor and betrayal.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

And Karen, you have both a female and a male protagonist. How did you build them?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

When I first read Bill's like that first 70 pages that he surprised us with, I was like, oh my god, these female characters are awesome. And he's like, Oh yeah, I didn't. And he goes, I didn't really even think about that. They just came out. So I was so happy because it's not wasn't like a DEI, we need to get a woman in here and let's he just organically created these characters who were really fun. And then one thing we did have to do, I remember going back and going through the entire book on two different phases. One was exploring Whitney, because we did realize at one point she didn't have enough. The the narrator sort of sits on a different character's shoulder for every chapter. And a lot of the chapters weren't on her shoulder. Or they were, but they were like maybe too emotional and it wasn't really enough about the plot. So we kind of went through and really balanced, wanted to make sure that Kevin and Whitney had a good balance. And uh the same with Anya Pestova, the delightful Russian spy who we wanted to make sure she had a little more depth and she wasn't just the honeypot.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

And your director, Cynthia King, is described as playing an audacious gambit tied to a 30-year debt of honor. What kind of character is she?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I really like Cynthia King's character quite a bit. She's kind of an old school Cold War hardened spy who, you know, without giving too much away, has some trauma, and her boss, the head of the CIA, owes Cynthia King a debt. And so the bill, the book explores Cynthia King's desire to save someone by manipulating her boss who feels as though she can't say no to her, which was a common theme in life, right? Whether you're in an office space or you're all you're constantly balancing who your counterparty is in different scenarios.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

And you move not only through many scenarios, but through many places: Damascus, Siberia, Alaska, Langley, Washington. How do you approach building such a wide international canvas?

SPEAKER_02 8:39

And I think the plot really determined a lot of that. We wanted to, we loved having Kevin be from Alaska. We felt like that was a good starting point for him. And then when the story goes to Siberia, there's a really nice parallel where the skills that he had growing up really lent themselves to this mission that he goes on. So that's a great reason why that kind of worked out.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

You know, I think what we were trying to do is we wanted to have the reader intrigued. Why are we in Alaska? Why are we in Damascus? How does that relate to the story in Manhattan? Why are we talking about this, the the Cynthia King's background and where she came from? Or why are we learning about a Ukrainian missile silo operator who's 25 years old? So I think when you're reading it, and I think hopefully the idea is that you're intrigued enough with these mini stories, and then there's this big event where they like all start to come together, and I think that's the Robert Ludlum or Dave Morrell Le Care is a little more obviously much more character-focused in a much more subtle, brilliant way. But the idea was to create this mosaic that surprises the reader.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

It's also you have these like big dramatic places and things happening, but that sort of general idea of like you can do one thing and have one action, and you can think back to the moment. There's a conversation between President Kemp and Peter Michaels that is like a spark that sets a lot of this emotion. And that one conversation does have repercussions for people all over the world. Granted, it's the president, so he's got a larger ripple when he says something. But there is that thing that explore that idea of you don't know the thing that you do that's going to affect somebody three people outside of your sphere. And I thought that that's been really that was really fun to play with that except throughout the book.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

And also I think within each story, every little move that the our characters do is believable. And I think that helps ground the story as a reader. You could relate to these things as something you're semi-familiar with.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

How do two people who are mild-mannered civilians become such experts in CIA operations, Russian intelligence, paramilitary work in the intelligence world?

SPEAKER_02 11:01

God bless the internet. A lot of research. And talking to a lot of on a human scale, there are people that we know who are in some of those worlds, and being able to really have a lot of conversations with people over time has was certainly instrumental. And then all the research in the reading and all the books and podcasts and Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah. So yeah, those this is this book was 30 years in the making.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Without knowing it.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Without knowing it.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

In political thrillers, the line between fiction and current events can feel pretty thin. How close did you want beyond honor to feel to the real world?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Again, I think if you look at these characters, you can identify these little moments and saying, Oh, I've heard about that in the news, or I read about something like that. It's not it's not an exact parallel, but I don't I believe that there that every character in the book is based on something that's generally real.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

And to jump on that, I would add the motivation behind it was to create a story that felt real. It wasn't to make a political statement. That wasn't that wasn't the motivation behind it at all. It was really just what's in our world today.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Like in Jason Matthews' books, The Red Sparrow, or again, I know I'm using Tom Clancy a lot, but some of his big canvases that he paints in some of those more those books that are ninth, a hundred pages, he takes real world-like events and he peppers in uh real politicians or maybe real heads of state in other countries, layered in with his uh fiction uh narrative of what's ever happening in the story. And I think that blends into something when you're reading, it's a it you it helps you suspend your disbelief.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Talking with KB Brodsky Karen and Bill. The book is Beyond Honor. I love the character arcs that you created in this story. Kevin is transformed by loss and betrayal into a force of vengeance. How did you keep him human while writing that darker story? Karen.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

We never wanted him to be a superhero and one of those heroes who just, you know, nothing bad will ever happen to him. So when he feels things, he feels them deeply. And some things lead beyond honor in this book. He's one of those characters.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

But I do think I think he feels relatable and believable because you get to know his friends and you get to know those relationships a little bit. And therefore, when things you know happen in the book, that that you know, the big exciting event, I think you could you you could relate to his emotions.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

And also just this living trying to balance the different worlds of somebody who's in the military and in their civilian life is something we hear about all the time, and was really something that we were interested in exploring because that is such an important part of a veteran's ex experience, certainly, um, and people in this situation, and that's something that we felt like we wanted to dive into a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

How do you decide which scenes need explosive action versus scenes that need quieter tension?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Again, I do think that this is a book that the the action parts of the book serve the emotional arcs of the character. So when we go back in time and we see Cynthia King's journey of where this debt of honor came from, it's not necessarily that the action is serving a desire to have something really fun happen. But then I think you could better understand why her boss is doing these things on her behalf. Because without that action, without those explosive moments, it would you'd say, Why would anyone do that? Or when Kevin does his big thing, or one of his big things, you feel like the reader feels like, I understand exactly why he's doing this, and it's not I don't think it's to serve just the action writing.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

But it is also fun. Oh, super fun. He'll finish this thing and we'll be like, Yeah, we really like that part.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, yeah. In every collaboration, there are definitely moments of disagreement. How did you resolve those?

SPEAKER_02 15:22

We don't have them. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

She wins the arguments.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

I think we we really did. We do like to hash it out. And I honestly I do like to fight it out more than Bill does. I think I really enjoy drilling down on something and like getting to the bottom of it. And Bill would be more likely to say, I'm fine.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I think there's a lot of times where you're where you can take one perspective or another perspective, but maybe it doesn't with the way that I think about it sometimes, is does the story change? Does it serve the the character in a different way? Is that not the arc that we're looking for? And a lot of times, while there's a subtlety in using a word or maybe a s a chapter or a journey, the end result is similar. Right. And so I'm thinking about that when I'm thinking about is this worth worth getting into, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:11

What surprised you most about writing this book together?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

That we were writing a book together, certainly. Just the very act that we would ever at this point, at any point, but I guess at this point in the present time, we're still surprised, right? Like I'm I'm surprised how much fun it is. It's super fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Because you know, writing I see solo journey, right? A lot of writers write alone. There's good things that happen that they can deal with on their own, or bad things happen that they could deal with on their own. But here, because we're doing it together, we've been so lucky to get these terrific reviews for the book. And it'd be one thing to kind of look on the internet, I was like, oh, I got a star review, or whatever. But it's fun to be like, hey, Karen, this is happening. It's real. So I think having sharing those moments are been really exciting.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

What's been the family's reaction?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

They're so into it. They're so into it. It's been really fun.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah. Yeah. The kids are our kids are older, they're in their 20s. They're surprised and they've they've read the books. They're they comment on the books. They we give them an early draft for some of their input. So it's been a really fun thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

What do you hope that people will take away from their encounter with Beyond Honor?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

That they want to read the second one.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

We weren't trying to rewrite history here. We really wanted to create a really fun book that we could be super proud of. So yeah, I think the takeaway is a really enjoyable time, that it was time well spent, that they didn't regret picking up the book and spending a little time with it. And if it makes anybody think a little deeper about humanity, awesome. But yeah, I think we're a little humble about what our expectations are for the takeaway for this book.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

What are you going to do for an encore? So we have a two-book deal with Simon Schuster with Emily Bessler. And so we've submitted the second book. And we're hoping that she'll like it as much as the first one. We're hoping that that so far this these trade publication reviews will be equally as terrific. And so we're and continue the journey.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

It's a story that's meant for the screen. Do you have anybody in mind that you would like to have play your protagonists?

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I'm casting it in my head all the time. I'm aiming for the fences. I don't want Meryl Streep for for Summers, the head of the CIA.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Good luck with that. Yeah. Yes. I don't know. It's a pretty darn good book. She might be interested.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Yeah. Yep. Hear that, Meryl?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

The book is Beyond Honor. It's written by the dynamic duo of Bill and Karen Brodsky, writing under the pen name KB Brodsky. Their website, KB Brodsky, B R O D S K Y dot com. Bill and Karen, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Thank you so much, Terry. It's been really, really fun. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

In Conversation with Terry Shepherd is a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepherd next time in Conversation.