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Welcome back, Terry. Why
do you write the kind of books you do?
The type of action/adventure/suspense books that I write are
the same kind of books I read as a kid and continue to read up until this day.
I can’t remember if my love for the genre started with the Sherlock Holmes
stories, but I think the Fu Manchu series of adventures by Sax Rohmer preceded
Sherlock. Today I eagerly await the next Joel Rosenberg thriller, and I’ve come
to love the Charles Lennox detective mystery series by Charles Finch. He spins
a great feel for Victorian London.
Besides when you came
to know the Lord, what is the happiest day in your life?
Boy, this is tough. Different kinds of happy, eh? I was
filled with awe at the birth of my children. I was struck by the immensity of
God’s favor the day I married Andrea (and, honestly, that joy continues to grow
each day, now 40 years later). And I pulled off the Interstate, turned into an
empty parking lot and literally danced around our car the day my agent called
and said, “Hello, mister author,” for the very first time.
Yes, that is a
wonderful feeling. How has being published changed your life?
I never thought I’d be this busy at 73.
It’s been 15 years since I started writing the first novel
and writing has continued to drive my days even now that I’m “retired.” I’ve
been successful enough that I keep writing books and keep having them
published, but not so much that I’m on TV or slogging through multiple city book-signing
tours (but I wouldn’t turn one down). Andrea and I live in a small house on a
cul de sac, seven minutes from two of our grandchildren. The life of a
published author is quiet, but busy. My days are filled to overflowing –
sometimes with anxiety when I’m stuck or up against a looming deadline.
Sometimes with tending a large vegetable garden and multiple beds of flowers.
Busy … but I’m blessed.
What are you reading
right now?
For the last several years I’ve belonged to a book club with
a bunch of guys I’ve known for a couple of decades. We just finished The Power of One, an older book about
the rise of apartheid in South
Africa, and we have just started A Cross to Kill by Andrew Huff, a fellow
Kregel author. At the same time, I’m now reading We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels on my own and just
finished The Martian by Andy Weir.
Waiting on hold is The Glass Hotel by
Emily St. John Mandel (her Station Eleven book was awesome!).
I’ve featured, Andrew’s
books on my blog, too. What is your current work in progress?
The Empires of Armageddon series is complete (we’re currently
doing last edits on Book 3, Ottoman Dominion, that comes out in November), so I
took a bit of a break and I’m now onto a number of different projects. I’ve “finished”
a non-fiction book, Rescuing the Hidden
Hearts of Men, that I continue to find needs polishing and improving to
move forward. I’ve also resurrected two books – Hunger’s Ransom and Jacob’s
Portion – that I wrote years ago. I believe I’ve become a much better
author since I completed those manuscripts and it’s clear both of those books
need a good bit of work. But they are both solid stories, so I’m trying to
breathe life into them and make them viable. And I’m nurturing the seed of an
idea that may be called The Crimes of Lough
Neagh.
What would be your dream
vacation?
Two stops. As much for Andrea as for me – back to Jerusalem for a couple of weeks just to soak up the
animate presence in that amazing city, then a couple of weeks return to Paris. Preferably in the
mid-Fall season, after the tourists and before the cold rains. Jerusalem
breakfast in one of the myriad pastry shops that dot the city; lazy lunch in a Paris sidewalk bistro and
then a languid stroll through the flower market on Ile de Cite in the shadow of
the wounded cathedral of Notre Dame.
Sounds wonderful! How
do you choose your settings for each book?
Mostly, I try to write a lot about what I know. My six books
thus far have all been set, ultimately, in the Middle East.
The Jerusalem Prophecies series is rooted, at the start, in New York City (where
we lived for 10 years) before heading to Jerusalem and The Empires of
Armageddon series is launched from the Washington DC area (where I once worked
and we’ve visited regularly) before landing in Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Amman, and
Ankara. Since my books are often tagged “end-times-thrillers” it’s understandable
that a great deal of the stories play out on the stage of Israel and the rest of the Middle
East.
If you could spend an
evening with one person who is currently alive, who would it be and why?
These questions are killers. I think, Henry Kissinger … though,
since he’s 97, the meeting should be scheduled soon. Former US Secretary of
State and National Security Advisor in the administrations of Richard Nixon and
Gerald Ford, he’s also a decorated veteran of WWII. Imagine the perspective
Kissinger has on Watergate and the Nixon White House.
What are your
hobbies, besides writing and reading?
Gardening. I have an over 400 square foot vegetable garden,
surrounded by a metal fence called “hardware cloth” to keep the field mice and
chipmunks from eating all the harvest. I grow the standards – tomatoes, green
peppers, green beans, zucchini, along with strawberries, beets, carrots,
lettuce, onions, garlic, cucumbers, and three different kinds of herbs and a
peach tree. Andrea and I also love flowers, so we’ve surrounded our home with
color. I have three perennial beds – one 40-feet long – and annuals growing
front, back, and sides of the house – and in front of the utility shed. It
takes work! But it’s one way I get my exercise.
And that sounds
beautiful. What is your most difficult writing obstacle, and how do you
overcome it?
Organization. There are two kinds of writers – architects and
gardeners. Guess what kind I am. Plant the seed, water it, let the sun shine on
it, watch it grow, and see what happens. And usually I start a book with one
idea and a vague expectation of the destination. The book grows, too. So I get
lost a lot. Boxed into corners. Too much research. Whole sections (some very
good) with no home. Editors asking me questions like, “Well, what is his
motivation? Why would he do that?” Huh? He’s got to … it’s part of the action.
But I’ve gotten better. Because of the world-wide stage upon
which my books play out, over a significant number of time zones, the significant
number of characters, and the rapid shifts in action from one locale to
another, keeping the scenes in the correct order was a challenge.
For each book, I created an Excel spreadsheet “Outline/Timeline”
for myself that tracked the “date/time stamp” for each scene. I also included
the “date/time stamp” in the book with each change of scene to help orient the
reader. Each line of the spreadsheet also included a short, descriptive sentence
about the content of each scene. That way, if I needed to move scenes in the book,
I also moved the scenes on the spreadsheet to make sure the “date/time stamps”
were correctly aligned.
This Excel spread sheet was a God-send and really helped me
remain organized in so many ways.
What advice would you
give to a beginning author?
Try tennis.
Okay, never mind. Writers gotta write. That’s what we do.
The “key to success” in writing is not in a book, not in a
seminar – though those are great resources and can be extremely helpful. The
key to becoming an author is to diligently sit in front of your computer and
write. Books and seminars are great for honing your craft, discovering how to
become more adept as a writer. But the success is in the actual writing. In
being disciplined enough to keep going back to the computer screen. It’s putting
in the work, sharpening and focusing – and editing – until what you can’t get
any better.
So enjoy the writing and the creating of stories for what it
is - exercising the gift God gave you.
We are storytellers, an ancient and cherished profession. We
remember and honor the past, spin tales of the possibilities of the future and
entertain in the present. Not a bad way to spend a day.
So, keep at it. Never give up. Write all the stories in your
heart and all the words God gives you. And celebrate the gift.
Tell us about the
featured book.
Three ancient empires are rushing toward a collision in the
volatile Middle East; an official high in the US State Department is conspiring
with a foreign power against the US President; a centuries-old prophecy is
unveiled that herald’s Christ’s imminent return; and malevolent created eternal
beings – fallen angels – are determined to invalidate Biblical prophecy so they
can manufacture a different ending to the Bible … reverse the outcome of the
battle of Armageddon.
In Ishmael Covenant,
the first book of the Empires of Armageddon series, Diplomatic Security Service
agent Brian Mullaney is banished to Israel
to protect new US
Ambassador Joseph Atticus Cleveland. Mullaney and the ambassador are thrust
into the cauldron of Middle East conflict,
both political, spiritual, and personal. They come into possession of an
ancient, lethal metal box that supposedly holds a second prophecy that could
threaten both the nascent peace treaty between Israel and all its Arab neighbors –
the Ishmael Covenant – and also reveal the insidious plot of their evil
enemies. Mullaney finds himself fighting for the life of the ambassador and his
daughter, fighting for his own crippled marriage, and fighting a spiritual
battle, for which he is unprepared, against the agents of evil who are
determined to destroy the box, the prophecy, and the Middle
East as we know it.
The story in Persian Betrayal commences exactly
where Ishmael Covenant ends, with the
destruction of the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem
by agents of the Turk, who is still trying to destroy the prophecy of the Vilna
Gaon and the lethal metal box that protects it. Mullaney finds himself
propelled into the midst of a spiritual battle that is manifested in the
physical realm: the Turk’s Disciples leave death and destruction in their wake
as they attack the US Embassy and the Ambassador’s Residence in Tel Aviv at the
same time, but fail to secure the box of power; Ambassador Cleveland goes AWOL –
without his security detail – to confront Turkish President Emet Kashani about
the rumors of a Turkish attempt to steal the nuclear weapons at the Incirlik
Air Base; and Mullaney is enlisted by an eight-foot angel to become the Final
Guardian of the Gaon’s lethal box.
Please give us the
first page of the book.
Hurva Square, Jerusalem,
Israel
July 20, 2014, 1:14 p.m.
Rabbi Chaim Yavod raced into Jerusalem’s Hurva Square, choking on the thick,
swirling stone dust that encased the square in a malevolent fog. He leaped over
huge shards of fractured stone and concrete—white, arched remnants of the Hurva
Synagogue’s once magnificent dome. A symphony of horror filled the square
nearly as thick as the stone dust—moans of the wounded and maimed; wails of
survivors as they stumbled over the bodies of those who were not; shrill and
urgent sirens promising help but not prevention.
Only moments earlier he had been sent to fetch Rabbi
Herzog’s car. Then, in a mounding tide of rumbling destruction, the world that
Chaim Yavod knew best was obliterated.
The convulsions of the first explosion ripped the door of
the black Toyota
out of Yavod’s hand and knocked him back onto the uneven surface of the small
parking lot. The ground shifting under his shoulder blades, Yavod felt three
additional explosions shudder the stones of the street. He looked up, above the
rooftops toward the north. What looked like a volcanic eruption of smoke, stone,
and debris was roiling ever higher over the square that contained the Hurva
Synagogue—outside of the Western Wall, the most revered symbol of Jewish worship
in Jerusalem.
Now Yavod frantically scrambled through the destruction in
the Hurva Square
toward the smoking, shattered remains of the synagogue. The sickening fear
tearing at his heart pushed aside any concern about delivering the envelope
inside his jacket pocket—the decoded second prophecy from the Vilna Gaon. Israel
Herzog, chief rabbi of the Israeli Rabbinate Council, his friend and superior,
was probably somewhere under the collapsed dome and crumbled walls of what had
once been Israel’s
most beautiful synagogue. Was Herzog alive . . . any other members of
the council who were with him? Could he save them? Yavod pressed on through the
escalating havoc.
How can readers find
you on the Internet?
Website: https://www.terrybrennanauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terry.brennan.5201
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTerryBrennan/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/terrbrennan1
Readers,
here are links to the book.
https://www.christianbook.com/persian-betrayal-2-terry-brennan/9780825445316/
https://amzn.to/3ip1nVF - Amazon Paperback
https://amzn.to/2Cjcznm - Kindle
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