I have been lucky in that I have had a lifetime of experiences; some sprinkled with high-octane danger, some with hilarity, many with affection and more than a few wrapped up in making film and TV, but all with a sense of wonder. I have been able to draw on these experiences for my books.
Filmmaking also informs my writing. Dialogue should be short and to the point. Descriptions vivid but concise and I always try to enter a ‘scene’ or chapter halfway through what is going on. Common in film, less so in books. I have visited over 120 countries, allowing me to include views of places many people have only vaguely heard about or been excluded from.
I started as a Kidnap, Ransom, and Product Extortion insurance broker at Lloyd’s, then left to work for Jim Henson and the Muppets. Not so much a jump as an intergalactic change of profession and pace. Since then, I went on to produce numerous TV series, movies, and mini-series, buying the International Hallmark Channel along the way.
I now live in Malta, where I have a number of interests, a wonderful wife, two French bulldogs, and I write. So far I have completed six books with three published now by Sharpe Books, two more for December, and one more next spring.
Not surprisingly, my thrillers are all set in the movie industry. I have two recurring characters: Marcus Riley, a producer, and art collector/designer Melinda ‘Mako’ de Turris.
Each book uses the movie industry or a particular aspect of it as a backdrop, an entrée into a thriller that is often only tangentially related to my core theme of the entertainment industry. However, every plot of my thrillers has an anchor in history and takes the reader somewhere special.
Fall Out includes historical facts such as Nu-Shu, the first women-only language developed in Hunan, China, and the sites of Yamashita’s gold, buried in the Philippines – the greatest single theft in history. Locations and events include Cannes Film Festival, Bel Air, Belgravia, Lake Como, and the jungles of the Philippines.
The Bastion reveals there are as many streets below Valletta as above it, and how of two identical photographs one can contain enough data to hide the entire works of Shakespeare. Locations and events include an exclusive treasure hunt car rally in France, Adak Island, Point Roberts, Los Angeles, Vancouver, underground Valletta and the wild mountains of Calabria.
Sunset Circus deals with a lost treasure of the Romanovs as well as a secret from the Stalin era that, if known, would rewrite history. Locations and events include Ekaterinburg, Tobolsk, Okunevo, Los Angeles, Catalina Island, Los Alamos, Mesquite and an opera in a mansion in Nevada City.
Future publications…
Sympathy for the Devil deals with one of the very few crashes of the world’s fastest plane, the SR-71, and the rise of North Korea. Locations and events include the vineyards outside Adelaide, the opal mine underground city of Coober Pedy, Victor Harbor, Tasmania, Canberra, and the PIFF Pyongyang Film Festival.
The Gaping Void begins with the greatest tsunami in European history on 1st November 1755, which wiped out Lisbon and overnight removed a superpower from the European theatre. Events and locations include Lisbon, Faro, Madeira and Porto Santo Island, Timbuktu, the Hamptons and the Palm Beach Cavallino Classic.
The Dolos Legacy has at its core the relationship between China and Paraguay, who in fact have no diplomatic relationship, as Paraguay still recognises Taiwan. That status quo provides the perfect cover for a billion-dollar illegal industry. Locations and events include The Presidio in San Francisco, Washington DC, Laguna Seca race track, Paris, Tijuana, and Alta Paraná, the land between Paraguay and Brazil along with an election rally on the border.
I try to be different in the thriller genre by not only setting thrillers in the entertainment world but also blending it with nuggets of history, to create a story whose lines between fact and fiction are blurred.
I also enjoy including movie gossip and legend as well as explaining everything from how stunts and f/x work, to revealing who the real movers and shakers are and how they run the entertainment industry.
Research is a driver for me. I start writing with one pure ‘McGuffin’ and no real idea of the characters I will create and the multiple storylines that eventually all come together. I suppose that, as I write and research, my imagination and facts meld into a storyline. As I go along the same story that my readers will hopefully eventually enjoy, I always ask three questions:
• Is character informing the action?
• What is the least expected turn in the story?
• Is it eventually all completely believable?
The original two producers of the Bond franchise always said their stories were set 20 minutes into the future. The ability to mix fantasy with everyday reality is for me one of the drivers of a good thriller franchise. You can almost taste the reality even though you know it’s wild fiction.
Believability does not mean the stories have to be gritty, depressing, or have a flawed hero. It does mean that the story should wrap up the reader in both the warmth of familiarity and the cold chill of risk, surprise, and danger.
If all this leaves you asking how on earth this all comes together, the first three books are available on Amazon. More to come!
Mark Grenside is a London-born thriller writer and the author of Fall Out.
