86. John David Mann: Author of Cold Fear

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 86 of our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author John David Mann. John has been creating careers since he was a teenager. At age 17, he and a few friends started their own high school in Orange, New Jersey called Changes, Inc., whose faculty he actually joined after graduating. Now, before turning to business and journalism, he forged a successful career as a concert cellist and prize-winning composer. In his 20s and 30s, he founded 4 companies, built a multimillion-dollar sales organization, and established several national business journals. Now, John is focused on writing. His books are available in 3 dozen languages and have sold more than 3 million copies. Our conversation today is all about his brand new release, Cold Fear, a thriller. During today's discussion, we talked about the importance of reading fiction, John's writing process, and Iceland, which is where Cold Fear takes place and I recorded the podcast. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with—

John Grisham.

John David Mann.

John, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, thank you. It's great to finally be face to face with you.

Yes, it is. Uh, we've been friends, I guess you would say, for a long time now.

Probably years.

Yeah, years. Yeah, we've communicated a lot back and forth via email and Instagram. So yeah, I'm excited for today's conversation. Now, for my audience that's not familiar with you and what you do and your books, could you please introduce yourself to everybody?

Sure. I'm probably best known for the book The Go-Giver, which I wrote with Bob Burg back over a decade ago. And The Go-Giver, which is a little parable, they call it a business parable, but it's really kind of a life parable. The Go-Giver sold over a million copies. So it's got a lot of exposure out there and all the other Go-Giver books. I've written over 30 books. I didn't start out doing this. I started out as a concert cellist and composer. And I have bounced around careers like a pinball, not because I'm rootless exactly, just because I have a lot of curiosity and a lot of different interests. I've been in retail, I've been in marketing, I've been in sales, I've been in entrepreneurship, in education, but I've landed in writing books. And I think it's what I was always supposed to be doing. It's like I finally clicked. So most of those 30+ books are nonfiction.

Yeah.

know, people will know the Go-Giver books, or they know the books I've done with Brandon Seal, the military books, or they'll know the memoirs. And then I've just now started writing novels, thrillers. So this is like a whole new chapter in, in my career, and I'm, well, thrilled.

Well, I'm excited to jump into it a little bit more. So we're here today to discuss your brand new release, Cold Fear. It's the second book in the Finn Thrillers series. Do I have that correct?

Yeah, you got it!

So, who's the target reader for this book? I mean, what was this shift into thrillers, novels? What kind of sparked that originally? And then who's the target reader for this book?

I'll start with the second question first because when I started promoting the first book, Steel Fear, which came out a year ago— steel as in the metal, like stainless steel— Steel Fear came out in the summer of 2021. And back in the spring of 2021, I started telling people about the book that was coming. And I thought, all my friends are all into personal development and leadership and, and, you know, really nice things. And they don't want to hear about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier. And so I started just making little inquiries and people were interested maybe in having me on their podcast or whatever. And I expected 9 out of 10 people to say, yeah, it's not really for me. I was so wrong. All these people were like, oh, I love, I love thrillers, I love crime mysteries, I love that kind of— yeah, come on. So who is the target audience? It surprises me. You know what, it's— thrillers are so broadly popular. A lot of people that I wouldn't have necessarily expected to be huge thriller fans are. So I don't even know how to quantify who the target audience is. Anybody who loves a mystery, anybody who loves a thriller. They're not military books. The first one has kind of a military look, but they're not principally military thrillers. They're just psychological thrillers. And then you asked what sparked it. And so, what sparked it was really 2 things. For years, my wife would say, you should write novels. You'd be a great novelist. And I would go, thanks for the vote of confidence, which really meant, I don't believe you. I mean, I appreciated that she thought that, but I didn't think that. I thought a novel was like an unclimbable mountain. How do you do that? 400 pages and all these characters and all this plot and how do you keep it in your head? And honestly, Nick, I just couldn't imagine! I couldn't imagine how anybody does that! So, I was like, nah! Not gonna happen! But she kept saying it every now and then and she wore me down and the other thing was that my writing partner, Brandon Webb, former Navy SEAL sniper, We had written 7, I think, nonfiction books together, starting with his memoir, The Red Circle, which was a New York Times bestseller, and that sparked our writing relationship. We kept writing books together. He pitched me on this idea back in 2009.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Um, he had this idea for a novel about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier. It was inspired by a real series of events when he was— he did a 6-month tour on the, on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is a carrier. in the Western Pacific Theater, he was not a SEAL yet. He was a rescue swimmer and helicopter sonar operator. And it was back in the mid-'90s when they were just starting to integrate women in combat roles on ships. So, it was like one of the first generations of female jet pilots on the ship and it was like a whole culture shock, culture shift thing. It's like, where do they sleep and how does that work? And, you know, throwing— couple hundred women in with a couple of thousand men, it was challenging and there was a sexual predator on board. There was this guy who would sneak into the women's restrooms, flip off the light, put his hand in the door, flip off the light and then run in and molest somebody and then run and they never caught the guy. He did this like 6, 7, 8 times and it was just— it was terrifying, horrifying and at the time Brandon, thought, what if these were murders? And so that sparked the idea that eventually became Steel Fear. And so my wife wore me down and Brandon wore me down. And once I wrote my first thriller, I was completely hooked.

Now, how did you originally meet Brandon? He's been on the podcast before. So for anybody that's listening or watching today, you can go back. He was one of the original episodes. We talked about Total Focus, I believe. Uh, you collaborated with him, but how did you originally meet Brandon?

So we'll all remember back in 2009 when Captain Phillips was captured by Somalian pirates and it was this big drama and they had 3 Navy SEALs that took out the 3 Somalian pirates in 3 shots, boom, boom, boom. And everybody watched, watched it happen on CNN, right? This is right around the same time that Sully, Captain Sullenberger, landed his plane in the Hudson. America was hungry for heroes at this time. So Sully was perfect. And these, 3 Navy SEALs captured everybody's imagination and they had— my literary agent was watching TV. She was watching CNN and they were interviewing a guy who trained Navy SEAL snipers and talking about the kind of training that they would have gone through that allowed them to do this and she turned to her sister and said, how come I can't get that guy as my client? I want that guy as my client! 3 days later, that guy walked into our office and said, I'm writing a memoir. I need an agent! And that was Brendon!

That's awesome!

Brendon, when he came back from active duty in Afghanistan, he was tapped to run the SEAL sniper training program and to reformulate it for the 21st century. So, that's why he was on the show and she said to him, your writing is good but you need a real writer. You need— I need to partner you with somebody who can really, really do a great job with this. And so, she called me up and said, I know you don't do this kind of stuff. And she was right, I don't! I didn't. I have no military background, which made it really attractive. I love writing about what I don't know. I love writing about, you know, writing teachers say write what you know. I love writing about what I don't know because I'm in the same boat as the reader. It's like when I open page 1, I don't know anything about aircraft carriers and neither does the reader. I don't know anything about the military hierarchy or structure, how they talk or how they, you know, the power struggles you don't see and what they eat for breakfast or, you know, what it feels like in a carrier. I don't know any of this stuff. So I had to learn every scrap of it to write the book. And I think that the book is the better off for it because the reader kind of gets to learn it along with me.

Yeah. And well, we'll talk about in just a couple of minutes with Cold Fear is that it takes place in Iceland. And yeah, actually sitting in Iceland as we're recording this. So we'll definitely nerd out on that in a minute. But before we do, let's talk a little bit about the subject of fiction. of novels, because as we discussed prior to pressing record, I've had 80-some-odd guests on the podcast, and we've exclusively talked about nonfiction, personal development, and self-help books. And so I've had your co-author in the Go-Giver series, Bob Burg, on, and now your co-author in this series, Brandon Webb, on. So this just feels right. It feels like a good conversation. And it was a good introduction, I think, into thrillers for me to start this book, Cold Fear. And I'll talk about my reaction to the book and to the style of writing in just a minute. But yeah, why don't you tell everybody your thoughts on novels and why we should read them?

First, a quick note, I just want to say that even though Cold Fear is book 2, you don't have to have read Steel Fear first in order to fully enjoy Cold Fear. That's on purpose. We took a lot of care with that. So if you, if you are interested in reading Cold Fear and don't have Steel You can read it later and it'll be fine as a prequel. It works that way. So, yeah! You know, I was on a podcast recently, like last week, and the host said, so, Steel Fear was based on a real situation. Is Cold Fear based on reality or is it pure escapism? And I was like, wait a minute! Are those my only 2 choices? Reality or escapism? So, I have never bought this idea that a novel or a film for that matter is— its purpose is to take you out of reality. You're out of your mundane miserable existence. You know, this idea that we watch a movie to escape for 90 minutes, we read a book to escape for 400 pages from the mundane drag of our everyday existence before we, you know, sink back in, that's a very morose pessimistic viewpoint. I think that we watch a great movie, it's like when you watch Shawshank Redemption, who doesn't have that on their top 5 favorite movie list, right? When you watch Shawshank Redemption, what does it do to you? It's like it gives you— you become Andy Dufresne. You become Red. You are them when you watch that movie. And Red learns throughout the whole course of the 2 hours. to bring his hope back alive. Andy teaches him that hope, like all great things, never dies. And this is a guy in whom hope was dead. You come away from that movie and you feel that. Here's my theory is that great novels, or I'm going to even say good novels, they don't take you out of reality. I mean, yes, they take you into a world you're not familiar with and that's really fun. So, you know, part of it is In Steel Fear, you learn all about an aircraft carrier and the culture on an aircraft, and it's fascinating. It's like you learn a whole new alien world, just, just as if you'd watched, you know, Avatar or something. And in Cold Fear, you come— when you come away from reading the whole book of Cold Fear, you know Iceland. You've got a really good feeling for Iceland, and it's such a foreign culture. It's so different an environment from what so many of us are used to. So there is that you know, you come away feeling like you've learned something. But for me, a good novel gives you tools and skills to engage in your life. It doesn't take you out of your life, it brings you into your life. And here's the magic of that, I think. It's not exclusive to fiction. All great nonfiction books— I mean, if you have a nonfiction book that really makes a difference, it's telling stories. Great nonfiction books have great stories and they're great storytelling because I believe we only learn through stories. That's how we learn is through stories. You don't learn through facts. You may memorize facts, but you learn through stories. Any great public speaker knows that your audience is going to get engaged by the story. So, you look at something like The Tipping Point or Blink, any Malcolm Gladwell book. The man is like a born storyteller. great nonfiction book that really gives you great information you can use in your life, the author does it through telling stories. So fiction is just another— it's not events that actually happened, but it's experiences that are real. It's human experiences, human emotions, challenges, stresses, struggles, triumphs that are completely as real as real gets.

Yeah, I love how passionate you are when talking about this subject. I remember when I was first starting to read nonfiction books, I was very excited. I was curious. I wanted to see what areas of my life I could improve. And I had some people around me that exclusively read fiction, novels, thrillers, mysteries.

Mm-hmm.

And they would tell me, hey, this is the only place where the impossible becomes possible, especially in the fantasy style writing. And you can expand your vocabulary, you can expand your perspectives in the same way that you can with nonfiction. And so I've always thought I'm in this period in my 20s where I want to get as much business style personal development and nonfiction into my brain as possible. But that later in life, Maybe even as soon as in the next 5 years or so, I'll probably make a big shift towards reading a lot more fiction. Right now it's only 2% of what I'm reading every year, but maybe it'll become 50, 60, 70, 100% in the future. So I'm excited for when that happens.

I actually did that because I read— like you, I read all nonfiction. I mean, I was big into philosophy, I was big into business books, I was big into leadership. And in my 20s and in my 30s, it's all I read. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life and when you're an entrepreneur, you've got to read this stuff, right? You have to because it's your food. And it wasn't until my late 30s, maybe my 40s, I'm going to say, where I started to really— I read a novel now and then that really impressed me and really moved me, but it wasn't until my 40s that I began to read a lot of novels. And so, yeah, I think they're, you know, To me, what's important is that what you read— who was I talking to recently? I was on a podcast where somebody said, read everything, read everything because you never know what you'll learn from. I sort of agree, but not quite. I want to say read everything that's great. Read great stuff. If you want to have great thoughts, because the thing about reading and the same thing is true of writing is that you're feeding your thoughts. And actually reading feeds your thoughts, your thoughts feeds your writing, but also your writing feeds your thoughts because as you improve what you've written on the page, you're improving your thoughts. And your thoughts are so important because they create your reality. I mean, they just do. Entrepreneurs know this from tangible everyday experience, but it's true for everybody. Our thoughts really create our existence. So read good stuff, read great stuff.

No, I believe that entirely. Life is too short to read bad books. There are a million books published in the US every year. You can't read all of them, right? So you have to read the the few that can really impact your life and can get you thinking. So—

What you're doing is so valuable, by the way. I just want to say, because it's like you are like this, you're constantly giving us the best. And it's just fantastic. It's like, here, here, here, here, here, here. I wonder if there's anybody who actually reads every book you put out. That would be amazing.

I'm often surprised when I meet somebody in person, as an example. I always post when I'm traveling, whether it's domestically or internationally. And I try to meet up with people who are fans of the page and have been following for a long time. And I'm impressed sometimes with how many books somebody will tell me they've read as a result of following the page.

Isn't that great?

Listening to the podcast and, uh, following the Instagram page.

Must make you feel so great. Yeah.

It does.

That's really cool.

It does. Yeah. It's one of my favorite things. So let's talk a little bit about Iceland. Uh, do you plan on visiting Iceland at some point now that you've written so extensively about it?

It's funny, I've had a lot of people— and this brings me great joy— I've had a lot of people tell me in the last 2 weeks— the book just launched on June 7th, I think, so it's only been out for, for what, 2 weeks? Not even. I've had a lot of people say, after I read the book, now I really want to go to Iceland, which I think is cool. I think the Iceland Travel Bureau should pay me a royalty for all of the incoming tourism. You never know! We're working on getting the book, getting the UK version circulated in Iceland, in Icelandic bookstores. I think Icelanders would enjoy it. Iceland has the highest literacy rate in the world.

Yes, they do. The local person here that's been bringing me around and introducing me to people, his first job when he was younger was door-to-door selling books. And he said that, and this was 30, 40 years ago, And he said that Icelanders love to read so much because for much of the year it's too cold to go outside and really do anything. And so you're inside and they love to tell stories. They're storytellers. They talk about elves and trolls and gnomes and dragons because you just sit around the fire and you read a good book and you tell stories. And that's what they do in Iceland. So you can really see it here. There in downtown Reykjavik, like right outside of my hotel room, there are a dozen different bookstores.

I love it.

Yeah.

I'm in Houston right now. I'm on my book tour, and I was just driving a few blocks from the hotel where I'm in the other day, going out to a restaurant, and I passed this building called— it was a gaming place, gaming supply place called Asgard, which is, you know, from Norse mythology. And Norse mythology has just taken over American culture, right? All these Thor films and Ragnarok and all that. And all that has its roots in Iceland. Iceland was like the original storyteller. The oldest surviving epics, epic poems of these Norse tales are from Iceland. Yeah! So, Iceland is fascinating! Iceland has the oldest functioning parliamentary democracy on the planet.

Yes!

It was the first culture on Earth to have a female head of state. It is rated the safest country on Earth. It is rated the most gender equitable country on Earth. There's so much about the Icelandic culture that's, that's so fascinating. And it is also, you know, an incredibly forbidding physical landscape. Uh, the weather can turn on a dime, and it does. Missing persons are a— crime is very low, missing persons is very high. They go missing in the ice and snow.

Yeah, we, we could talk about this forever. I find it— I find Iceland fascinating as well. One of the things that really struck me is that the average life expectancy in Iceland is 83.5 compared to 78 in the US. It's top 10 in life expectancy out of the 200 countries we have on this planet. And the people here, they eat healthy foods. The cold is good for you, even though for much of the year there's not a lot of sun. Right now, you know, right now—

You're in June, man.

There's 12 hours of sun, so it's pretty simple.

It's not much dark.

Um, now, how did you choose Iceland? I mean, you could have written this book in any foreign landscape, but you chose Iceland.

So Steel Fear, the first book, took place, as I said, all on an aircraft carrier, and that was part of the challenge of that book, and it was also part of the, the beauty of that book. The, the ship itself— imagine this— an aircraft carrier is a, is a steel tube the length of the, of the Empire State Building on its side. crammed with 5,000 to 6,000 people, it shot up and dropped in the ocean for 6 months. And it's, you know, it's like a small city in a tube. And so, very claustrophobic. We wrote about that in that book. Then came the question of book 2, what do we do now? You know, where do we set it? On a submarine? You know? Steel Fear on a helicopter, on a spaceship? I mean, what environment do you go to from an aircraft carrier? And Brandon had told me about a visit he took once to Iceland. He went to swim in the Sófra fissure over by a lake, by the— I think the lake about an hour east of Reykjavik.

Um, I went last week. Uh, did you?

And, you know, did you dive?

Golden Circle? No, I didn't. Yeah.

Okay. There's this place for our listeners. There's this place there in Iceland where you can go diving underwater and it's not cold. Oh, well, it's— it is cold. I take it back.

You wear a wetsuit though. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you go underwater and Brendan described this. There's a— there are spots where you can touch with one hand the tectonic plate that supports, that holds up Eurasia, and with the other hand the tectonic plate that holds up North America. It's the only place on Earth where you can touch 2 continents at the same time. Iceland itself is sitting on a volcanic fissure. It's like a cut lunchbox sandwich cut on the diagonal. and its 2 halves pulling apart by an inch per year, every year. So that's hence the incredible volcanic activity and, and the geological turmoil that has been in existence for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years. So yeah, it's— Brennan described this, and, um, we were thinking about where to go for book 2, and I thought, we've got to go there, we got to go there. So that was the— that was the first— piece of Cold Fear came together was that's going to be the environment.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's truly amazing. I've done a number of day trips, 4 or 5 hours out, you know, outside of Reykjavik. And, and I also did a plane tour. So I got in a small 4-seat plane and we, we went out and landed in the Westman Islands and got to experience the culture over there. But while we were in the plane, You could— I mean, we went over the volcano that erupted last year, and we got to see what it did to the surrounding area. And we got to see the glaciers up in the mountains, but we also got to see the fields of grass that are so green. I mean, it's amazing, the contrast of colors and environments, the lava fields. Iceland is pretty spectacular. And so—

Yeah.

I think you chose a good location for the book.

And the really fun part was trying to capture the culture and the conflicts within the culture, and because every culture has its conflicts. So maybe I should tell people a little bit about what happens in the book.

Yeah, yeah.

Just give a sense of what the story is, not to spoil anything, but just to give you a sense of what happens.

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The story opens, a young woman is running down the street barefoot in the middle of— well, it's Christmas Eve, so it's the middle of winter. Runs through the snow, runs through the streets. We have no idea why, we don't know who she is, and she comes to a pond in the center of town where just the northeast corner is thawed, and she slips under the— she strips off her clothes and slips under the ice sheet. pushes in toward the center of the pond and drowns and you're going, what? Wait! Who is she? Why did she drown? And that mystery really drives the whole book. Who was this woman? Why did she do this? Who was she running from? Then Finn steps in the scene and Finn is our hero. He's this traumatized, troubled Navy SEAL with memory issues. He has trauma from his childhood and also from the recent past. He— and he's on the run from military intelligence and from, from the law. He is a fugitive from the law, wanted for war crimes that he didn't commit. At least he doesn't think he committed them. He's not entirely sure, actually, and we're not either. He's pretty sure he didn't. Anyway, he's in Iceland to pursue several other Navy SEALs who are there because he feels they may have answers to his questions. Meanwhile, there is another SEAL, former SEAL, who's now a contract— turned contract killer, who is a seriously sociopathic gentleman. I would say closest thing I could think of to pure evil, although he has a great sense of humor, which I find a redeeming value. He's there in Iceland because he's there to kill— find and kill Finn. And while Finn is there, he somehow gets wrapped up in this story of this woman who drowned. And something about it really draws him, and then he becomes somehow a suspect in her drowning, and he is pursued by an Icelandic police detective, a woman named Krista, Krista Kristiansdottir. So that's kind of the plot engine of the story, but the underneath part of the story is, is a very brooding kind of thing where Finn is really trying to recover these lost pieces of himself. these lost memories, these lost facts, and, you know, kind of trying to find pieces of his humanity. So there's also a kind of a psychological journey, a psychological mystery, as well as the more external mystery.

So when you sit down to write a book like this, you and Brandon decide, okay, book number 2 is going to take place in Iceland. What does the process of starting the research look like for you? I mean, you've got to storyboard everything, I would imagine, and read books and talk to local people. I think you have a resource on the ground over here. So yeah, tell us a little bit about what that looked like.

So what I want to find out is, of course, I want to find a lot of facts about Iceland, which, you know, it's just you hit Google and you start hitting, hitting websites and just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And part of the, the skill set, I think, of researching for a book like this is you dig, and a lot of what you find you probably won't use. But you never know. So organizing the stuff I find in files so I can find them and I know where they are, it's a huge kind of a filing task, but I'm also trying to really learn sort of the spirit of the place. And I discovered this novelist named Arnaldur Indridasson, and he's Arnaldur— they go by first names in Iceland, they don't really use the— the last name isn't the last name, it's— they don't say Nick Hutchinson, They just call you Nick and it's not informal, even in formal situations, they just use first name. So, this author, Arnaldur, I will call him, is possibly Iceland's foremost living novelist and he wrote a book called Jar City. It's the first of his books that was translated into English and I read it just for a little bit of background, background sense and I was just captivated. It's like, wow, it was just so interesting to me and I went on and read everything he's written. Reading his novels, and that to me is, if you're going to go to a foreign place, if you can find some great novels written about that place, because novelists will have an eye for the kind of detail that you're not going to find on a travel site or sites like Travelocity. The different travel sites are worthless in terms of researching a place because they just tell you, you're going to have a great time, come spend your money, you know, but a novelist will tell you the heart and the soul of the place. And then you're right, I was able to get a contact, a person, Silja Birok, who answered, spent hundreds of hours probably patiently answering all my questions and gave me, filled in lots of answers for questions that I had.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And my contact over here you'll be familiar with this name, Gunnar. Or— I, I'm— yeah, I have such a tough time pronouncing the names in the way that they're supposed to be pronounced. Gunnar, uh, and yeah, the name of the boy who finds the body in the very beginning of the book. And, uh, yeah, that scene was really interesting because in Iceland they believe in a lot of mystical folklore type of stuff, and, and for somebody to believe—

Shh!

Uh, that a mermaid is real and in their backyard is not so unbelievable here in Iceland. And so he sees the body underneath the ice and thinks it's a mermaid.

Yeah. There's a line somewhere in the book where Finn says he'd read somewhere that the majority of Icelanders believe that elves are real. And he didn't find that strange. Not at all. Americans believed in Elvis. Icelanders believe in elves. Everybody has to believe in something. Yeah.

I got a tour yesterday of a road. Translated into English, it's called Elf Hill Road. And there was a— there's a little detour in the road around this Elf Hill because when they were putting in the street, all of the equipment would break every time they would get close to trying to remove this Elf Hill. So they gave up, and the locals believe that there are elves living in this hill still today. There are 3 of them, or 4 of them. And every time they try to repave the street or do any construction, when they get close to the Elf Hill, all the machinery breaks down. So that's like the stuff that you hear about and that you get to see with the locals. It's a really cool culture. And yeah, if anybody wants to learn more, they definitely should read Cold Fear and get a sense for what you've written.

Yeah, it's really fun. It's a really fascinating place. And it also has great geopolitical significance because it is, as Winston Churchill described it, as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic. And during World War II, Axis and Allied powers were both very much vying for a relationship with Iceland because it was a critical stopover spot for planes. That could easily potentially be more true today than ever with the polar ice caps melting and suddenly the Arctic being— becoming a very significant part of the Earth, not only in terms of mineral resources, but also conceivably strategically in terms of, of military control. So Iceland is, is, uh, it's got a really interesting position on the planet.

Yes, no, it definitely does. Yeah. So what else, what else in terms of the plot would you like to tell everybody who's on the fence? Maybe we've got some listeners that are interested in the book but again, they're not really reading thrillers, so they go, I don't know if this is a book for me. Uh, what else can you say to sort of entice somebody or, or interest them a little bit more?

It's interesting, there was a— there were a few reviews of Steel Fear, the first book, that said things like, action-packed from stem to stern, and, you know, uh, every page is jam-packed with action. And I, I love those reviews in part because it's not true. Actually, in Steel Fear There's very little action. Does Finn— Finn gets in a fight at one point, at one point in 400 pages. I mean, it's— there is not a single gun that goes off. There's very little action. There is a lot of tension. There's a lot of suspense. There's a lot of content. There's a lot of material going on. There's a lot of content. Cold Fear, there's a little bit more action, but, you know, primarily these books are not They're not— I wouldn't primarily call them action thrillers. I would call them humanity thrillers. Finn is the main character. In both books, there is a principal female character who is, you know, and we follow the book from her perspective for a good half the time or a third of the time. In the first book, Steel Fear, it opens with Monica Halsey, the helicopter pilot, who's based on a real character that that Brandon knew on that carrier, and you follow Monica for 3 chapters before Finn even arrives on the scene. The same thing happens in Cold Fear. You follow this detective, Krista, before Finn shows up, and Krista becomes a huge piece of the story, and again, you're reading from her perspective, so a lot of the chapters, maybe 40, 50 chapters or something like that, are written from Krista's point of view. What I guess I want to say is in Cold Fear, there are not one, not two, but 3 really strong female characters, and that was really important to me. I love writing strong female, strong authentic female characters. To me, it's like these characters have to feel real for it, for the story to work, but also all this so-called secondary characters. characters, all the other cast of characters. I wrote an essay once that was titled, There Is No Such Thing as a Secondary Character. Every character in a story, if you look at it from their point of view, they've been on the planet as long as you have, you know, they have— they had their childhood, their disappointments, they had their aspirations, they may get killed on page 12, but they had a whole life. So that's, to me as a novelist, it's important to approach every single character with full respect and try to kind of discover who they are and bring that out on the page. And I think that's what I'd say about readers for the book. It's what I hope you'll take away from Cold Fear is you'll really get engaged with these personalities and their challenges and in some cases their triumphs and in some cases their failures.

Yeah, no, I find it fascinating. I, I'm definitely going to finish the book. I, I just started it. I've had a crazy couple of weeks traveling and everything like that, but I wanted to make sure that we could film while I was in Iceland. And I think reading the book, uh, having visited this place now will give me a different perspective. And, you know, I'm excited to share my thoughts once I'm able to finish the book.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Before we started recording, Nick showed me out his hotel window, just like close enough to throw a stone at this gigantic church, the Hallgrímskirkja, which is the tallest church, one of the tallest buildings in Reykjavík. And it features, you know, significantly in the story. And I was like, oh wow, Nick's looking at that right out his window. So I'm thrilled that we're doing this broadcast with you live in Reykjavík. It could not be greater.

Yeah, it really is the tallest. And no matter where you are in the city, as long as you're not, you know, on the, on the, on a slope or something like that, you could see the top of the church. So it's also fascinating when you're driving in from outside of the city, the church stands tall above everything else. So it really is the tallest building around.

Yeah. Amazing, huh?

Yeah, no, it truly is. So I don't know if I caught the answer earlier. Do you think you'll come visit Iceland?

Uh, absolutely, totally. I can't wait. I did not get to do that while writing the book, which is unfortunate. I did get to visit the USS Abraham Lincoln, the carrier, spend a day on that when I was writing Steel Fear, but I did not get to visit Iceland. And, uh, yeah, my wife and I are both completely jazzed about visiting there. I don't know when it'll be, but it'll be pretty soon, within the next year, I'm guessing.

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, I plan on coming back and visiting again. So obviously you're, uh, you're very well read and you've written a lot of books, so I'm curious for people who are interested in reading some novels, what are some of your favorite novels? Obviously, I would highly recommend that everybody checks out Cold Fear if what we, you know, if what we've talked about today interests them. But, um, yeah, give me some recommendations because I'll be entering that space sometime soon.

Well, I mean, in terms of crime novels and mysteries and thrillers, there are— I have, you know, lots of favorites. The— so one of the classics of the genre is Raymond Chandler, who wrote the Philip Marlowe books back in the '50s, and those are great. And he's a near contemporary of Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon, and those are kind of like the classic gritty noir novels, right? I love the Jack Reacher books. I highly recommend them. I love the Elvis Cole, Joe Pike books by Robert Crais. And I highly— people love those. I highly recommend those. There's lots of— and there's a lot— so much— so many others, uh, you can't possibly name them all. Some of my favorites, however, are, are Tana French, whose novels are more— a little more on the literary side, a little more somber, more reflective, really engaging. And they're, they're crime novels but with a— within sort of Irish flavor because they take place in Ireland, and the most gorgeous writing you can imagine.

That's where I'm taking off to after Iceland, by the way.

Is it? Yeah, Tana French is hypnotic, and her first book, In the Woods, and her most recent book, The Searcher, are both— The Searcher is one of the few of her books that isn't connected to any of the others. It's a standalone book, and it's just got the most incredible descriptions, and it's a great mystery, and I recommend that highly. But my favorite novelist of all time is Kate Atkinson, and maybe not for everybody, but Kate Atkinson wrote a series of literary books that won lots of acclaim in literary circles, but they weren't that popular in terms of commercially popular. And then she wrote this series of detective novels, the Jackson Brodie series. I think there's 5 of them, and they were made into a BBC series, which is great. And I think that those books are amazing. But then she wrote a book called Life After Life, which I think it was 20— I want to say 2017, 2018, somewhere around there it came out. And it was on everybody's best of the year list. And that book is a book about— it's kind of sparked by the idea, what if you could go back in the time and kill Hitler?

Hmm.

It isn't what the book is about, but that That does crop up in the book, and the book is about what if you could live life over again. This character does live her life over again many, many times, and it's an extraordinary book which I highly recommend. Kate Atkinson.

Thank you for those recommendations. When I watch this back, I'll be sure to take some good notes. And, and, um, yeah, I'm traveling to Ireland next, which is funny.

Talk about green.

Talk about green. Yeah, I'm very excited. It'll be my first time over there. Uh, how many books do you think you've read in your lifetime?

Wow, that's a great question. I don't have any idea.

Lee Child— If you were to make an estimate, yeah.

Lee Child reads— he says he reads a book a day, which I think is really cool. I probably read 100 a year. Or something like that. And so I probably, you know, probably some years less and some years more. So let's just say 100 a year. So going back over, how old am I? 20? No, I'm older.

You look 20.

Yeah. So probably a couple thousand, I guess.

Yeah. Wow. That's spectacular. I, I look forward to when I hit those types of numbers. I mean, you're so articulate. You're so passionate. Uh, you've been so successful. at what you do. And my guess is, you know, some of the credit is probably given to the books that you've read. I mean, they've changed the way that you see the world and the way that you operate. It's really cool to see.

Yeah, it does. Reading does do that. Reading does do that. It changes who you are, and it refines who you are. It helps to deepen who you are, I think.

Yeah. So, do you think you'll write more of Do you think there will be more thrillers in the Finn Thriller series?

I'm working on book 3 right now.

Okay. Can you—

Coming out next summer.

Where— can you tell us where that takes place? Because how can you go from an aircraft carrier to Iceland, and now you have to find somewhere like the moon or something like that that's even more interesting?

Or maybe like Newark, New Jersey, or I don't know, Columbus, Ohio. Um, I, I can't tell you where it's set yet. But I will tell you that it's called Blind Fear.

Blind Fear.

And I will tell you that before it's over, there is a hurricane.

All right. Well, John, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on today's show. For listeners or viewers that want to learn more about you, and they want to learn more about your recent release, Cold Fear, where should they go? What should they do?

The— of course, I have a site of my own, which has all my books. It's just my name, johnDavidMann.com. But specifically for the Finn books, Brandon and I have a site for our books together and that's where you'll find more about the Finn books. My book tour is on there and more information about the Finn series and that is webandman.com, just like up here in the book. Web only as A-N-D, webandman.com.

A pretty dynamic duo if you ask me!

You know, I thought— I looked at that and I thought, consonant, vowel, double consonant, consonant, vowel, double consonant. This is, this is good branding. We could make, we could make something out of this. So, we started the novels. We changed it from saying Brandon Webb and John David Mann. We changed it to Webb and Mann and I think it's, I think that's working well.

I think it's pretty cool. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show today and I'll be letting the Book Thinkers family know when I finish Cold Fear, and I'll throw a little review up there for you.

Fantastic. Fantastic. I'm so thrilled you're reading this. Thank you so much. I hope you really, really enjoy it. And I imagine you will.

Yes. No, I think so too. That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review And share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.