Publication Day Author Q&A: YEAR OF THE RABBIT by T.D. Donnelly
Author Q&A
New York City: Legendary interrogator Malcolm Chaucer is known as The Oracle. There is no subject he cannot break, no secret he cannot unlock. The key to his uncanny ability: eight years as the victim of experimental torture at the hands of a North Korean madman. Chaucer is a broken man, with a unique psychology that makes him both incapable of lying, and a near perfect lie detector.
A routine interrogation of a witness to the murder of a Korean national leads to an explosive revelation: the assassin was none other than Tempest MacLaren, Chaucer’s ex-wife. A frantic, last minute warning is all he can give her before a North Korean assassin shows up on her doorstep.
And later that night, two more assassins target Chaucer for death. Chaucer discovers his drops compromised, his handler dead, and a million-dollar bounty on his head. Can he survive long enough to find his ex-wife and use his unique abilities to tell friend from foe, and truth from lies. And will he uncover the secret that is the Year of the Rabbit?
Year of the Rabbit combines the man-on-the-run paranoia of Six Days of the Condor, the colorful characters of Mick Herron’s Slough House series, and the raw fun of Lee Child’s JackReacher series.
Welcome, Tom. Thanks for joining us for this Q&A. So, Year of the Rabbit is your first novel. Tell us a little more about it.
TD: Thanks for asking! And thanks for being such a big part of how it turned out!
Year of the Rabbit is a spy thriller about Malcolm Chaucer, the world’s greatest interrogator who also suffers from extreme PTSD from the time he was a prisoner in North Korea. He’s an amazing human lie detector, but he himself has a mental block preventing him from lying.
Well, one day he’s in a routine interrogation, trying to discover the identity of the assassin who killed the son of a South Korean industrialist, only to learn that it was none other than his ex-wife. He tries to warn her, only to find that she and he are both suddenly targets for assassination.
From there it’s a man-on-the-run story, where this damaged man tries to survive long enough to find his ex-wife and discover why everyone suddenly wants them dead. All they know is that it has something to do with a mysterious note left at the site of the assassination: “The Year of the Rabbit is coming!”
The book is quite international, with the characters featuring from across the world and the political spectrum. What drew you to writing a novel that has such wide-reaching tendrils across the world stage?
TD: I’ve always loved travel. I’ve got both a US and an Irish passport and I’m frequently flying off to far flung corners of the world, just soaking in a place and a people.
Personally? I love infusing stories with people from many different backgrounds and perspectives. I think the world’s an amazing place, why limit my writing to just one sliver of it?
It’s also about representation for me. I occasionally lecture on writing and I’ve heard from a lot of students that growing up they rarely saw characters in stories that they identified with. I think that’s such a crime. As a white man, I realize I can only do so much, but I don’t want to repeat the errors of my forebears and write in a monochrome world. I want to respectfully include the larger, richer world in my stories, and encourage voices of every kind to share their stories.
That said, geographically-speaking, Year of the Rabbit takes place only in New York City and its environs, but I grew up across the river in New Jersey and I know what a cosmopolitan place the Big Apple can be. Now, the next in the series is going to have a LOT of globetrotting, so brace yourself!
Who inspired you to start writing? Have your influences changed since then?
TD: I was very into science and STEM when I was young. But in high school I had this English teacher, Doc Flannigan. That was his name. And he was… frankly too great to be teaching high school. He was a college professor actually, taking time to be closer to family, and he was also a published novelist, which I thought was beyond cool.
Anyway, he’d give us these short targeted creative writing exercises whenever he could divert from the required curriculum, and I remember this one assignment was to write a short descriptive piece describing the night. I think I decided to describe the night as peaceful, and the streetlights as bothersome intrusions on that blanket of darkness, or something like that. And Doc had me stand up and read what I wrote. I don’t think many of my classmates knew what to make of it. But Doc pulled me aside after class and made a point to tell me that what I wrote, in his opinion, was very good. And that if I wanted to, he thought I had what it takes to be a writer.
And that was the seed planted. And boy did it grow fast, despite no one in my family ever having had a creative career. Frankly, at home I got a lot of sideways glances, and admonitions to have a backup plan. But I grew up in the eighties, when we were all obsessed with Japan and we worried they were going to take over everything. And I remember they were credited with having an impossibly long view on things, and how they would apprentice at a craft for 10,000 hours to become masters.
So I did the math. If I did that, if I spent five years, full time, trying to make it as a writer, and I failed, I still had plenty of time to think about the backup plan my family was talking about. And since I had a second love: movies, I decided to go for it. I got a degree in Drama and English, and got accepted to USC Film School for my master’s. Then I was super lucky that the first feature screenplay I wrote ended up in a minor bidding war, and I was off to the races as a professional writer. That was about year two out of school, so I never ended up needing to worry about the five-year deadline.
Once you’re a screenwriter in Hollywood, you’re constantly getting sent books to read and to consider for adaptation. I read a lot of great stuff, and I was amazed they’d let this snot-nosed kid consider adapting these books and stories. I got to work with Chris Vogler very early on. He wrote The Writer’s Journey, basically a distillation of Joseph Campbell’s work on the Hero’s Journey. And then I got to work with Ray Bradbury adapting his short story A Sound of Thunder for the big screen.
Ray was awesome to talk to. He was quite old, but he had this childlike wonder when he talked about writing. That was when I knew I was going to do this the rest of my life if they’d let me. And I’m still going strong.
Why did you choose to write crime?
TD: As a screenwriter, I’ve written a lot of crime thrillers, but also a lot of action films, science fiction, fantasy, even comedy, so I don’t really have one genre I prefer.
That said, I can first remember watching movies on the TV at home in the early eighties and a lot of what I remember were the conspiracy thrillers of the seventies like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, along with a heaping side order of James Bond. I loved those films, and how much I got caught up in them.
I find mysteries to be one of the most engaging and interactive genres. A great mystery wants you to try and solve it. A great mystery wants to trick you, and if you’re paying enough attention, maybe, just maybe, you can figure it out before the sleuth does.
Now Year of the Rabbit isn’t strictly a mystery, it’s a thriller. But to me, the main difference is that a thriller is a mystery where the threat is still very much ongoing, and a mortal danger to the sleuths. I love that.
For your ‘day job’, you work in Hollywood and the film industry. How is it different writing for the page as opposed to the screen?
TD: On the one hand, story is story. If you can write screenplays, you can write novels and vice versa. You just have to learn the specific challenges of that particular medium.
That said, screenplays have a lot more restrictions on how you can tell your story than a novel does. It’s been such a freeing experience to write in the novel form!
I’ve done a lot of adaptations over the years, working alongside Clive Cussler, Stan Lee, and Ray Bradbury to name just a few. Cussler’s Sahara, for example, was around 190k words. The screenplay weighed in at 23k. Nearly all screenplays have to come in around there, because that comes to around two hours of screen time. And when the films you write average between 100 million and 200 million dollars to make, you don’t really have the luxury of writing four-hour epics that only get three showings a day.
So the challenge of adapting Sahara is how do I approximate the ‘story world’ of 190k words when I’ve only got 23k to work with? So yeah, novels are long-form poetry. Screenwriting is haiku. Then there’s the matter of only being able to see and hear what the camera sees and hears. As a screenwriter, I have to come up with ways to externalize thought and emotion on a very deep level.
And as just one more example, when I finish a screenplay, it’s highly likely it’s going into the hands of some amazing actors and actresses who are choosing between this story and dozens of others. So how great are your characters? Your scenes? How amazing is your dialogue?
There’s just a different level of pressure on the screenwriting side of the ledger. That doesn’t mean I don’t work just as hard writing novels. I do. But the pressure of novel writing is almost entirely self-generated.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced writing your first novel? How did you overcome it?
TD: For me? Head-hopping for sure! Suddenly, I can write about what a character is thinking?! WOW! Coming from screenwriting, it just feels like cheating. I had so much fun with internal monologues that I wanted to give them to every character! Often several in the same chapter. But with your help I (mostly) got that under control.
Do you like to plan the action of your novels or do you just let them write themselves?
TD: Are you asking me if I’m a plotter or a pantser? I’ll tell you a secret. Most screenwriters have never heard of those terms. With a few exceptions, you can’t really be a pantser in Hollywood. You’ve got to pitch your story. You’ve got to submit outlines, talk about character arcs, sit in meetings on theme. Because there’s a lot of money riding on these films, everybody wants to feel like they’re a part of the process.
Now, that said, I think I’m a bit of a pantser… for a screenwriter. Which means I brainstorm extensively, and I do outline and sketch out the story… but only until I basically know how it’s supposed to go. I liken it to being able to hum the tune. I don’t know the words yet, but I know how the song goes. The rest will come in the drafting.
Malcolm Chaucer’s day job is obviously very different to your own, and his years of torture have shaped him to be the distinct and compelling character that he is. Did you have to do a lot of research for the character? Was it difficult getting the details right for his unique set of skills?
TD: I’ve been more or less continuously employed as a writer for over two decades now, and yet the number of films released that I worked on? A little more than a handful.
See, Hollywood buys ten to twenty scripts for every film they make. And each one of those scripts involves months of research. Much of that research I’ve done is for stories you’ve never even seen.
When I came up with the concept for Malcolm Chaucer, I was noticing a recent trend in mysteries. The amazing British series Sherlock by Steven Moffat re-envisioned Holmes as suffering from a sort of autism, something Sir Arthur would never have known about. The recent Hercule Poirot mysteries on the big screen have Kenneth Brannagh imagining Hercule Poirot as suffering from OCD, something Dame Agatha never knew existed.
In both cases, their psychological illnesses, their weaknesses, were their very strengths. I love that. Suddenly, these super sleuths aren’t so untouchable. And knowing friends who are on the autism spectrum, it’s wonderful that they can go and watch a heroic genius save the day that they can really identify with. It can be an inspiration to people who have had, sometimes, a rough go of it.
A number of years ago, I wrote a project based on a real person, a soldier in the Afghan war. And in order to do him and his story justice, I needed to learn a lot about PTSD. That research, and the conversations I had with that soldier and others, formed the basis for Malcolm Chaucer’s psychological weakness, which in turn would be his greatest strength.
Although YEAR OF THE RABBIT is a book of fast action and high stakes, there is also a lot of emotional depth in the novel. Do you prefer writing the fast-paced action sequences, or do you prefer exploring character development?
TD: In my stories you can’t really have one without the other. Great action with no emotional depth? I’m bored. I can’t get into it. Emotional depth without action sequences? Well, I love a lot of books that fit that bill, but that’s not the genre I’m currently writing in!
That said, writing-wise I usually rip through the action scenes. For me, the key to a great action scene is a unique challenge. What makes this… contest of wills… this mad dash different than any other you’ve seen? What’s the one little thing that makes you say “Well, there’s no way they make it out of this one!” And then I figure out how our heroes prevail! It’s a lot of fun.
But the work of the story, the meat of it, the reason I’m writing in the first place, is the characters, and the unpeeling of the layers of their emotional defenses.
The novel ends on a gripping cliffhanger! Is there more in store for Malcolm Chaucer and his friends? Can we look forward to more titles in the series?
TD: Thank you for the opportunity to plug! Trust me, coming from Hollywood, I hardly need an excuse!
I already have a very rough draft of Year of the Serpent! BUT, when I got to The End, I suddenly realized that Year of the Serpent is NOT book 2 of the Malcolm Chaucer thrillers. It’s book 3.
So I’m about 20% into the second book in the series, Year of the Horse. Year of the Horse finds Chaucer and his ex-wife Tempest trying to rebuild their relationship as Chaucer works on undoing the PTSD that has defined his life. They fly to Paris for a vacation, only for Chaucer to find that Tempest took what she calls “a small job” to pay for the trip.
Well, this small job causes her to cross paths with her mentor, Caleb Moss, better known by his codename: Man O’War. Caleb is the greatest assassin of the modern era, supposedly retired, and he steals her target out from under her nose and kills him. The French Intelligence service apprehends Tempest and Chaucer and lets them know that Man O’War is not only not retired, but he’s on a spree, killing four high-profile targets in the last week.
The French offer them a deal: track down Man O’War and stop him, and all charges Tempest would be facing will be dropped. From there, our couple goes on a globe-hopping manhunt while Chaucer slowly discovers what all Man O’War’s targets have in common, and the deadly reason he’s come out of retirement.
What is your desert-island read?
TD: That’s so tough! On the one hand, I might want a classic like The Master and Margarita. Or an all-time favorite like Dune. But I think I’ll cheat just a bit and go with something nearly impenetrable like Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus Trilogy. What a crazy, borderline schizophrenic, psychedelic adventure story that treats nearly every conspiracy theory of the twentieth century as a subject of satire.
Do you have any writing tips to share?
TD: My most popular course I teach is called Superdraft and it’s entirely about the PROCESS of writing as opposed to craft. In essence, Superdraft says that every human being has two voices in our heads: the Creator and the Critic. But while the Creator is a softly whispering muse, the Critic is a loud drunken boor.
So for a writer to truly be free to create, we MUST find ways to separate these two voices. For a lot of writing that means coming up with ways to muzzle the Critic until their time on the stage is at hand.
Some of this has to do with getting very specific on which voice needs to come forward for which part of the writing process. Brainstorming? That’s a Creator process. Outlining? That’s when we need the Critic to come in and whip this thing into shape. Drafting? Again, that’s the Creator’s time to shine. Editing? Critic, where are you? You’re needed!
So my writing tip for the actual drafting is this: write faster. The faster you go, the less the Critic has a chance to interrupt your process. Write fast, write forward. Don’t go back and correct so much as a comma. There will be time for that later. (The DELETE key is the ENEMY!)
What is your writing process like? Do you have a routine? A favourite place to write?
TD: OK! Now we’re talking. I love my process. I’ve had decades to try different things and I never really stop experimenting. I’ve done the café writing, the cabin-in-the-woods writing, the office 9-5 writing, the writing retreat, the writing vacation… and many more.
Now? I do a lot of my writing via dictation. I’m up at 6AM and on my favorite beach at 6:15. I wear shorts and no shoes and I walk in the Pacific surf. I walk for miles with a boom mic extending from my ear to my mouth, and a small recorder taking in every word, huff, and puff.
After between one and three hours of walking, I head to the office where I either have a computer program transcribe what I just wrote (sloppy but free), or I send it to one of a handful of awesome transcribers (fantastic but it costs some money). I then read back what I “wrote” and make a few adjustments, kind of a minor edit. The rest of the day is admin and outlining forward. I find if I have a small piece of paper with all the next beats in the story it helps me dictate.
Does it work? Yeah. Really well. There’s no delete key on my recorder. I get exercise, blue space mental health, and writing all at once! Now, I should mention that it takes time to get good at dictation. Give it a couple weeks. Remember when you learned how to type? Same thing. You’ll get better quickly. And once you get going… I find I write 2-3 times the number of words per hour that I do when I’m typing.
Downsides? Just the looks I get from the other early-risers on the beach. I think I scare the surfers and the meditators when I dictate an action scene! But hey, it’s Los Angeles. They’ve seen weirder.
Also most important question. Favourite writing snack?
Finally, the heart of the matter! Drinks-wise I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Coke Zero guy who is shifting to loose-leaf iced tea that I make myself. 50:50 green and black tea. Almost good for you, and enough caffeine to stun a quarterhorse. As to food, I’m a sucker for Belgian butter waffle cookies, but not the Stroopwafels. Too syrupy. I want to feel like I’m eating a stick of butter with every bite.
TD Donnelly (Tom) is a Jersey boy transplanted out in Hollywood where he’s been a screenwriter for more than twenty-five years now. In that time he has written on projects that have grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. He has adapted the classic works of writers such as Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee, and Robert E Howard. He’s worked on franchises from Voltron to Uncharted, and from Marvel’s Doctor Strange to The Walking Dead. His feature credits include Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey, and Conan the Barbarian.
You can find him early mornings walking the beaches of Southern California, and spending time with his wife, two mostly grown children, and two very demanding guinea pigs.
