1KHO 705: Find Shelter or Die | Ward Larsen, Cold Zero

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen It's never gonna beat this view Oh, it's a beautiful world And I just wanna share it with, I just wanna share it with you It's a beautiful world Such a beautiful world Hmm Right, that's it, come on, lights out, you've got a test tomorrow Just two minutes, I'm about to reach the next level It's going off now Yeah, whatever Let's see, where's the hour? Oh, here it is What? How? Oh no, you're out Better like next time No, home Here's game over for late nights on school nights EEYFI controls how you get them off the Wi-Fi and interbed More parents that choose in EE broadband The UK's fastest growing broadband provider To verify CEE.co.uk slash claims All right, welcome to the 1000 hours outside podcast My name is Ginny Urgent, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside And one in honor An author of so many books He's won so many awards Wardleerson, welcome Howdy, how are you, Jenny? I'm doing really well I just recently read your newest book that's coming out On February the 10th It is called Cold Zero It is a thriller It's a total thriller And then I got sucked down the David Slayton novel series I read the first one called The Perfect Assassin I just think obviously we need to be reading more I love a good story So I would love if you give us your background I'm like how does someone go for me And just like a fighter pilot To be like I'm going to write all these stories Yeah, well I grew up in Florida I went to college Not really sure what I was going to do And ended up going flying with the father of a friend of mine And I just thought that was the coolest thing And a private airplane And so I started looking into that And next thing you know I was signing on And I went into the Air Force for seven and a half years Who fighters there And got out right after Desert Storm And after that I went to work for an airline And a few years into that I had a lot of time on my hands on long overnight And I was always a reader I always like to read spy thrillers And that kind of thing And I just kind of sat down and thought You know I could probably do this or maybe I don't know just for fun And just like what did I go try Because I have a spare time on my hands So yeah And it took many years to write that first One The Perfect Assassin Which you just showed And then all of a sudden I kind of got published almost accidentally And now I'm almost 20 books into it So What I think it is amazing word Like I've thought that to you a little bit Like but I've just been like Well could I I don't think I can You know I like I love all these books But you actually did it And The Perfect Assassin Is the first is your first one Yes It is so good So I'm going to tell people about the overarching plots Because you talk about how I read it on your website If you go to your website You can sign up for your newsletter And you do giveaways You can know about everything that's coming out There's also another book coming out in May A Tom Clancy one Rules of engagement Yep Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Okay so let's keep track of So people can go to your website It's wordlarson.com I'll put it in the show notes But you talk on your website About how people ask you all the time Like What is it so hard to come up with these big grandiose ideas And you're like Well that's not really the hard part The hard part is the nitty gritty You know you're like I only really need one or two really grandiose ideas a year But the big stories here So cold zero And this one's going to be a movie So you already know And it's clean I bought a copy for my teenage boys So I've got like an advanced copy But their copy is coming on February 10th So I'm excited for them to be able to read it But this is like AI technology So they don't want China to have So they're trying to get it to America And it's in this little suitcase And the plane goes down in the Arctic And then people are coming from Russia And from China And from America And they run submarines And there's people on skis And they're dropping from the sky Trying to get this technology So this is a big overarching idea here The big overarching idea And the perfect assassin Is this random lady is sailing through the ocean And picks up this guide This is David Slayton And then there's a bunch more novels And he's an assassin But she doesn't know She just thinks she's saving him from the ocean And there's nuclear Things that have got a ship has gone down And you're just got these like big grandiose storylines Such page turners What is your daily writing rhythm like? Well I write whenever I can I'm very busy You know I still fly for an airline I'm doing you know multiple books here I'm doing two books a year So I'm staying very busy But you mentioned there That you can give this book to your teen industry And when I started out writing I kind of my kids I had three kids at the time they were all grown up At the time my two oldest boys were probably 10 and 12 And my kind of goal My guidance there was to write something That they could read That I wouldn't be embarrassed to give to my kids to read And I think I've held to that over the years I mean there are no adult concepts in there And people die But you know there's nothing that I wouldn't give A teenager to read So I think I've held to that Now in terms of Colesero Which is books coming out next week I wrote that with Brad Thor And I got to say this idea was Brad You talk about the big overarching ideas Well all of his writers we get these ideas From you know reading booze Or reading other books or whatever And we get these little inklings of an idea And sometimes they just stick in your head And Brad approached me And he said this is I got this idea you know stuck in my head about this Airplane that flies over the Arctic And goes down and it's got some technology on board And you know but I'm busy writing my once got hard bath book A year and I kind of would like to co-write it And he's just you know he had read my books He said you're just you know the ideal writing partner Because you know you have the aviation background Which would be a big part of this book So that's kind of how we got together This is his idea to begin with But he is like me is what's called a pastor See the pants where he doesn't outline He just has that big overview Goes the beginning and roughly the end And you just you know go through and make it up as you go So that's kind of where cold zero came from This has been a total gift for me because I really love to read and I love a story Like I would rather have a story any day over Like teach me something more about my habits or whatever But I tend to get stuck like You know if you're like looking at books like I'm like going down the Barbie aisle But I should be going down the Transformers aisle Because and I learned that with Jack Kars books And then I read this book by Jim Shaki called Call Me Hunter And I was like gosh I've really been missing out Like these thrillers are such page to turners And I loved the perfect assassin I mean I I was in a spot where I like had some work I needed to get done that I didn't want to do word And I was like I will give myself the treat I've been able to finish these books And it was so motivating They're that good That it was so motivating and to your point is a series There's two different complete series Which is the Assassin's series This is David Slayton And then there's also another series And then there's some one offs as well So there's just so many books and what a thing Then you're like okay I need another book I just know I'm going to go get the next one Okay so here's a question I have I've talked to people who like help teach reading Because reading you know is on the downward The slope downward slope here And people are not reading very much Yes And they talk about that A big thing that matters is background knowledge So you know a kid who is really good at baseball Is going to do a really good job picking up a baseball book Even better than someone who's a phenomenal reader But doesn't know much about baseball When you write a book like this Is it hard to know like what did What will the reader know about these technical things What will the reader know about this submarine You know do you find it hard to balance like Really explaining or you think you might be over explaining Because you're going to have readers that come from a military background But you're going to have readers that are like a 40 year old mom Who's like I'll love to read this thriller about the assassin How do you handle that? Yeah it's a very good point Because you don't want to sink the people Who aren't up with you know the latest military hardware But you want to be accurate with what you do present So yeah you definitely have to limit what you put in there But I like introducing things Sometimes I'll make things up that maybe doesn't even exist But it yeah having that military background And keeping up with things as I do in the military field I can kind of project ahead You know well what might be the next thing down the road So that's part of being a writer is you know coming up with things that Maybe you're not even on the radar yet But you know you're talking about kids And I think one of the best things you can do for kids Is just have resources books in the house Just just have them laying around I see a huge bookcase behind you And I'm sure there's a lot of kids I want to look at that and just kind of start You know browsing and looking through it And see what's there and what grabs them And that's just one of the best things you can do And that was the case in my household And yeah you talk about like screen time You know when I was a kid you know We didn't have the phones we had now But I watched a lot of go against island You know I wasted a long time doing silly things When I was a kid in the 70s So you know it was different back then And even back then people said well that's terrible thing You know it would be watching so much TV And maybe it was But there were also books in the house And I just you know long summer days When you're you know you're not in school And you have all that time to kill There's nothing better than then picking up a good book Yeah and what a difference My younger brother didn't even want to go to kindergarten Or it actually was first grade Because remember when kindergarten was only half day So you go in the morning you'd be home by lunch And you loved Gilligan's island So he was like this great I'll be home it's on it Whatever noon I can watch Gilligan's island men first grade And he was like what Like I'm gonna have to miss it But that's a whole different era Where the show was only on at a certain period of time Then it was like the price is right And then there was nothing So you're in this no man's land And what are you gonna do Like you have an option to read There was one book that got mentioned in cold zero By Simon Jervais the Elias Network Yes Have you both or who's idea was that I forget whose idea was Simon is a friend of ours He's Canadian he writes for Thomas the Mercer But he writes sort of a spy thriller series And he's a really good guy He writes really good books And we just kind of put that in there as a nudge day Yeah That's so cool It's like a joke Yeah I bought it I haven't read it yet Yeah I bought it I was like there was one reference to one outside book And I was like I wonder if it's real When I saw it was real to Simone Oh yes Jervais Okay talk to us and it was really interesting to read your first book And one of your most recent books because The technology has totally changed You know so you're talking about back and perfect to Sarah's in You know I mean the technologies There was like a cell phone reference They're like maybe I should learn to use one of those All the way to now Which is really not that much of a change in the time period Where there's like an autonomous driving Driving taxi and there's all this facial recognition Do you Get overwhelmed with keeping up with the new technologies And in incorporating them into your books I think we as humans are getting overwhelmed I think you know technology Just in the last 10-15 years It's really just accelerating And AI is only going to accelerate it further And it's a wrote a book called Cutting Edge which you might like And it was Came out about seven or eight years ago And it was a very technology oriented It was about my web interface Which is being researched right now Elon Musk has a company that is researching my web interface Where you don't even need the phone You just think and you connect to the web And it's kind of scary But it's technically feasible It's going to happen It's just a matter of when So you try to imagine Where we're going to be You know one of the iPhone come out Like 15-20 years ago Wasn't that long ago Right You know before then We had little flip phones And you couldn't do nearest as much as you can now So You know we're really not dealing with this Well as humans I think You look at deep fakes And AI how easily they produce deep fake audio and video Right now and it's gotten to the point where You know you really can't believe Online what you see in you here Because it may or may not be true Even the experts have a hard time figuring out What's true and what's not One of the snippets in this time Plenty of books that I was researching And I came across And I thought it was just kind of Mindboggling is There are 45 billion cameras in the world right now As of today Which is not a you know Five for every man woman and child on the planet And most of those are not Being are never going to be monitored The images they capture are just recorded somewhere And they're you know for the reason they're there Is because they're connected to some kind of server And they're just recorded for you know Bet the police needed or if You know a surgeon needs to look at your You know your gastric tumor or whatever it is You know there's just all these images out there From so many sources And most of them are never seen But that creates an opportunity For intelligence agencies To hack in and look at any of those things So really just bottles of mine Like I say You know what can be done with this stuff And our laws are not keeping up with You know how to govern You know AI And technology And it's a little scary I mean I have kids I have grandkids now And I'm a little worried about where we're going to be in 2030 50 years Yeah and you're then having to incorporate this into all of your writing I read one of Brad Thor's first books too And he was like the characters like at an internet cafe And this is in the 2000s You know like he like someone's like Can I use your computer And they like It's totally different In just two decades I read this book because I had read this jack car book It was like my sort of first military fiction I was like I've been missing this my whole life The book is called Only the Dead And it comes from the saying Only the dead will see the end of war And in order to prepare Because I was like oh gosh I'm like so in over my head I read this book called Unrestricted Warfare Which was the life changing book for me Because it's about like what they do in China And how they're like fine If something takes 10, 20, 30 years Which is basically this cold zero book You know they got this AI technology They've been working on for 10 years And you know they it's about ready to launch And what they say in the book is that war has totally changed And they used everyone thinks it's like the civil war And everyone's gonna have a musket And they're like no You don't even know who the soldiers are Like you don't even really know the deep fakes And all of these different things that are going on So it's impressive to me As an author to stay current with those things And to be able to write about And you had a lot of it in this book And you talked even about China Talking about all those cameras Because you had these characters They're running surveillance detection routes That bordered on marathons In the world's most pervasive surveillance state in China So what a story Okay March is when homeschool families start looking ahead You can almost see the finish line Spring goals, end of year milestones Maybe even testing around the corner And this is such an important time to reinforce key skills And build confidence before wrapping up the year If you are thinking about assessments Whether required by your state Or simply the benchmarks you set for your family It's awful to have a tool that makes review simple and clear That's where IXL can really shine IXL is an award-winning online learning platform That fits seamlessly into homeschooling It offers interactive practice across math Language art, science, and social studies From pre-K through 12th grade A person lies as learning for each child Keeps them engaged and gives parents clear insight into progress What stands out this time of year Is a real-time feedback and progress tracking Kids get instant explanations when they miss something And parents can see exactly where growth is happening And where a little reinforcement might help It takes the guesswork out of finishing strong Make an impact on your child's learning Get IXL now and 1000 hours outside listeners Can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership When they sign up today at IXL.com Slash 1000 hours Visit IXL.com slash 1000 hours To get the most effective learning program out there At the best price This is such a fun announcement to make Woon Bikes is officially the 2026 bike partner Of 1000 hours outside And if you've been around here long enough you know That's not a casual partnership We care deeply about the tools that help families reclaim childhood And Woon is doing exactly that Woon was founded by two dads in a Vienna garage Who simply couldn't find a bike that actually fit their kids So they built one And what makes Woon different Is that they don't start with engineering They start with empathy Every part of the bike from the lightweight frame To the brakes size perfectly for small hands Is designed to help kids feel capable and confident In a screen dominated world Bikes are more than bikes They are freedom They are connection They're miles of memories before the street lights come on So this spring we're launching something brand new The 100 hour ride challenge Or release a brand new tracker chart Just for logging 100 hours outside on bikes And for app members stay tuned Integration inside the 1000 hours outside app is coming If you've got little learners The Woon Go Bikes are incredible Available in six bright colors Including the sweetest new powder pink That just feels like spring If you are working toward your 1000 hours outside this year A great bike makes it a whole lot easier Woon designs lightweight bikes Built just for kids So they can ride farther and ride happier Go to Woon.com And use code outside 10 to check out For 10% off your bike purchase Excluding the Woon Wow That's outside 10 for 10% off at WOMOM.com All right, so then talk to us about this first officer Brett Sharp He is one of the main characters in this book called Zero Yes And they're in this plane The plane goes down in the Arctic This is sort of the big overall story What would you do if you were on a plane That's the land on an ice flow And you look everywhere Just white There's polar bears When it's quite an exciting storyline here What of the pilot stuff Because like one of the things that I noticed was that Brett Sharp Like he had investigated aircraft accidents before Yes So there was a sentence that said He would never forget the horrific sites from his first crashing And you also did that Yes, yeah I did When I was in the Air Force The Air Force investigates their own air crashes Whereas you know in the commercial side The NTSB takes over The military investigates their own crashes Each of the services So I was trained as a pilot to be The pilot representative on a crash board or at a crash site So I was an operational crash investigator And it was really interesting It was a six-week course to begin with And then you kind of get into it No, once you finish that course But it was a really interesting field Where you learn a lot about What can go wrong Both maintenance operations Engineering all kinds of things That can go into crashes And usually it's not one thing It's a series of things that go wrong But you know this one It took this crash in cold zero It takes place in the Arctic And the Arctic is a very unique environment It's like nothing else earth There's no landmass But there's ice Very thick ice It's meters thick at the very top And it's just a sea of ice It rotates around It varies in size Depending on the season The time of year And you can go out there And walk around on it And the ice breaks apart And shifts And there's just all kinds of complications And it's extremely remote I mean it's a thousand miles From a nearest Landmass Or re-rescue station And what we did also We kind of restricted A further made it more of a closed room By making the weather bad Because the way you would normally get up To a scene like that Is with air Sea 130s or helicopters Or something like that But that I took that off the table By making the weather particularly bad When the airplane crashed So There are by themselves Now Brecht Harp is the first officer That kind of you know I'm a captain But I got a relate to that being in the cockpit He's the only surviving crew member Of course he's You know his airplane went down So he's feeling really guilty He comes out of it with Not too bad a shape But his captain is dead right beside him And he's got The rest of it There's sort of survivors But no other crew members So And in that situation He realizes right off the bat That they're going to be there A while Given the weather being what it is So that's a It's a survival situation in the near term They need to just stay alive And as you may have mentioned There's a piece of technology on board The airplane that kind of Centered this whole thing revolves around He knows nothing about it So That's the twist But yeah he's a former Air Force guy And I can kind of relate to his background Pretty well Yeah Yeah you had this reference to Sully Sully Sullenberg Yes And his plane went down This is from Night From 2009 Both engines disabled by a Bird strike And all 150 people 55 people aboard survived He landed in the Hudson River I remember it when that happened Yeah Yeah Miracle on the Hudson He did a brilliant job too By the way he really did Just the idea of You know he had nowhere to go He couldn't make it back to the airport He did the exact right thing And the results prove it He saved everybody Wow I mean this is such a patroner Like this is a page 20 You're like It's like Will the ice hold If we use the landing gear 400,000 pounds on 10 tires Not a chance There's no brakes There's no engine Like they land There's no reverse thrust There's no way to steer So you're talking about Picking the best Bad option I mean this is how this book kicks off It's such a patroner And then you know there's all this Interaction And there's a female lead Yes There is Yes Yeah a female lead And you know she's helping to try Basically save the world here It's this KC Sheridan Yes So there's just a lot of Just twists and turns Even And then Okay So talk then about As a military person Then do you have a good sense of all of the other Types of military And like Because then there was a big Focus on the submarines Yes Yeah That I mean Yeah I'm not an expert on submarines I know people who are I'm good friends People who have worked on submarines In the service And I Don't go deep enough to where Whatever details I put in there I double check But I don't put too many details Where I'm just kind of sick myself And again I don't think the readers Want to go overboard with the details But I've read a lot of those types of books I write hunt for red October And all the number of books like that So I just wanted to have an authentic feel Of being you know in the submarine And use the right jargon on that kind of thing So you know I've never been on a sub But I know people who have been Would you be interested? Oh sure Yeah if I get an invitation Sure So interesting I'm someone should invite you And then I learned about There was an icebreaker ship In this book Cold Zero it's called The Snow Dragon 2 It's capable of carving through 10 Feet thick ice So I mean I don't even know You got to like I don't even know all of this was going on I think it's important to know though I mean you have a better sense Read a book like this It's super entertaining But you also have a better sense of the world Can you talk about the Arctic in particular Because you say That the strategic importance of the Arctic Is increasing every year It is because you know The the season warming So every year The northern roots are becoming more and more open The Historically the the most capable Nations when it comes to operating In the Arctic have been Russia first And then some of the Norway's and Finland's And people like that The United States has two icebreakers And most they're both pretty old I think they're now buying some new ones Adding some new ones made But we don't have the capability To go up in real thick ice The Russians have Ten times as many as we do And they're nuclear many of them Which means they can go through Really deep thick ice Because that's You know the so the Russians Have 11 times on the Arctic They have a huge Northern tier And it's been it's to their advantage Because the opening of those trade routes To the north Which are being open longer and longer each year You know it's their advantage You can go from China or the far east To Europe much more quickly Than going down south through The the Suez Canal or something like that So it really saves a lot of time And it just becomes strategically important Also for minerals Mineral mining up there China interestingly Has more icebreakers than we do The snow dragon too By the way is a real boat There is such a ship That's that's factual But they they're not An Arctic nation geographically They're they're nearest Point of Northernmost point in China Is about a thousand miles from the Arctic Circus is way out there But they call themselves a near Arctic nation Because they have a commercial interest They have an economic interest To doing those northern trade routes And it saves them a lot of money A lot of time So you know they are taking A great interest in the Arctic for that reason Okay fascinating I would never have known You know with the strategic importance Of the Arctic increasing every year Submarine-based polar operation Has become an emphasis And then This is remind me of this unrestricted war fair book Casey This is one of the main characters the female lead Was no expert in geopolitics But she knew that the Arctic had become A battleground Not a war fought with bullets But a theater of sharp elbow diplomacy Territorial outreach A military intimidation So it's just like everything is converging On this one spot Where this plane goes down Let's talk about one of the other plain things This is in Jura Pilot The other big plain thing Was when they go into try and save them It's in LC-130 The largest aircraft On earth that operates on skis Tell us about that plane Did I say it right? Yeah It was really interesting Brad and we're just getting in the writing This section of the book And I still fly at my airline I fly for Southwest And I happened to fly with a guy First officer Who flew in the New York Air National Guard And he flew in the only unit that flies that airplane The LC-130 So I had this bonafide expert sitting next to me For three days Who told me all about Arctic operations And landing on skis And all the things you can do So I had an expert right there So I got a lot of that information On the C-130 from him What a cool thing Yeah What a cool thing Talk about this sentence It was a mistake that the Air Force had been making for years Pulling season pilots out At the top of their game Pulling season pilots at the top of their game Out of the cockpit And forcing them into administrative posts Like so many of his brethren Sharp hadn't been interested He'd made the jump to the civilian world Trading major for first officer Yeah that's been a bonus attention Amongst Air Force pilots for a long time And they always have retention problems Where people come to their first point Where they can get out of the Air Force And go fly for the airlines You know the typical retirement is 20 years Most skis leave But the first opportunity really is about the 12-year point It was seven years when I was in But they've opted just because they have so many retention problems But all pilots have always said If you would just let us fly And not force us into additional duty Desk job, staff jobs, Pentagon jobs Things like that But you just stand fly Everybody would just stay in 20 years And your problem would go away But the senior brass never see it that way And that's that's been a long standing point of contention Amongst pilots in the Air Force They kind of want everybody Put everybody on a track to be chief of staff And not just let them fly airplanes Which is why so many sign up I would imagine to begin with They want to fly Yes exactly Most don't want to be Some don't want to make senior rank They just want to fly They enjoy flying And they're the most experienced pilots The instructors And you know we should just let them fly Yeah What about flying over storms? Is that a common thing? Because this was a whole like at the beginning You're like well we're at 34,000 feet It's smooth up here But below us there's this huge storm So then when the plane goes down Then you're going through the storm Yes That's actually pretty common There's different kinds of storms Like summertime with thunderstorms Down in the tropics And Florida where you get those really high tall Cumule and Nembus clouds Can't fly over those yet to go around them But a fast moving heavy winter storm Generally you can just fly right over And you know it's not always smooth But it's you're not in the storm You're not in the clouds I've actually flown over hurricanes before You can fly right over hurricane Look down the eye And it's it's there Because because that The weather is moving so fast It doesn't have the time to build vertically So hurricanes are actually down Fairly low with the clouds around them Not always But a lot of them The smaller ones are not that high So you can fly right over them What an interesting book So many things going on in the sky There's you know at the point that I wrote This should be a movie And then I learned later that I was going to be It says in less than a minute All 24 men were falling through the stormy Arctic sky So I got I was like this has got to be a movie And then I learned then I learned that it's going to be one So you know there's all these things that are going In the sky and then on the ground You know there's the polar bears There's this convergence of all of these different countries There's the people on skis You know they're trying to get to this one spot There's rendezvous spot And then there's things going under It's like all three levels right Then there's things going on in the ocean With these submarines So I don't want to get Obviously can't give away any of The book but the overall plot is fantastic I stayed up really late to finish it Because I wanted to know what was going to happen But I thought there's a couple of things in here That are just overarching fun things that won't give away a plot First one There's a bucky's cup I like to just throw on little nuggets like that Just to get a reaction from people As I just did So nothing but fun You know but Brad and I really had fun writing this Both of them has been writing these kind of long-running series And Brad has read and I think one other book outside his main series So this was really cool for us Because we got a clean sheet of paper to just do whatever we want We didn't have that you know the baggage of all our previous books And all the constraints that that that implies So we just could do whatever the heck we wanted And we had fun with that And I think it hopefully you know comes through in the book But we were kind of having fun with it With things like that I mean it to me it seems like it will be really hard to write with another person It seems like it's such a personal I'm in my you know I'm hunkered down in a room by myself I mean but you also have a lot of experience So this is maybe something a little bit different But are there things about it that are really challenging? You know neither of us knew what to expect Because we had never done it So we kind of went in a little wondering you know how it was going to go And it was surprisingly smooth We we had brads a very positive high energy guy And he just was really easy to work with And we had a good time with it I went better than I think either of us thought of what He had a lot of the beginning it was a little you know awkward just we both were working on other books And we kind of got a little behind on things But once we got in a groove where you know One of us would write some chapter A sentence to the other who would kind of rewrite it and let it We'd just go back and forth like that And after we did that about a dozen times we had a book So it was it went once we got in a groove It went very smoothly so surprisingly So because I have friends who write who do you know I'm friends with Andrews and Wilson Who previously wrote the the Tom Clancy series And they do four or five books a year Co-writing and they've been doing this forever And I could never understand how they did that But once you do it you know And you you kind of set your own little rules and boundaries It can work very well and I think it did for Brad and I One of the lines I really liked this is a So there was just a lot of concepts that kind of extend out into everyday life And I interviewed this man last year His name is Dr. Mark Burman And he wrote a book called The Nature of the Mind And it's all about how nature makes you feel better That's basically the just a bit but he's done All of these different studies And one of the concepts was that In nature you never see a straight line And so you often people will take those design elements And put them indoors and they feel better Like you know people talk about like the live edge table Like that type of thing And so there was a line in here Where you know it's like these characters are like They're just basically roaming in the Arctic Trying to find something And it said they saw something that didn't exist in nature A small ridge of snow that formed a perfectly straight line Yeah That was a cool idea to throw that in there and it's so true Yeah it is Yeah you don't see those perfect geometric shapes in nature Which just doesn't exist So you see that it's something man-made Yeah Okay talk about this line Rattled people are always easier to control Oh yeah that's just my own little psychoanalysis I guess I'm not sure And not even sure if I did it or Brad Brad might have been one of Brad's Yeah it's probably true It's true you knock people off their game And they are a little easier to manage Yeah I loved the sentence fine shelter or die I know just such a painsturner And even this Like critical intelligence sometimes comes from the most unexpected sources So I mean just from start to finish I just thoroughly enjoyed it Can you tell us about the movie process because I mean obviously you say on your website Like I mean I read Perfect to Say I said And I was like I would love to see this in movie form What is that process So you just kind of assume Like that was a really good book They should make it a movie It's a really complicated process It's interesting that cold zero Already is headed that direction You know I think you're also talking to Brad I'll defer to him on the real details of that Because he's much more into that end of it than I am But he had connections out in LA with an agency And Brad really That is very cinematic when he writes he really That's one of the things I kind of learned from Is how to write in a more cinematic fashion That was his sort of training His education He made it in film And he's always kind of been away in his books And so he's always had more of an end in Hollywood And he's been pursuing that for a while He really felt this one would be a good movie Cold Zero And he tried to you know Get his agents to push it and they did And they sent it to some people and Netflix And they just read it and just really liked it a lot And one thing led to another And again, Brad can tell you more of the details of this But it really just kind of It's very usual for a book to get You know picked up for film Before he published Yes That was really a coup So we're very very happy with it So you're going to get to like go to a movie premiere I hope so yeah Are your kids super excited? Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely This will be a new thing Yep, yep I've had a couple close calls I had one, the perfect assassin Almost got made of one I felt that fell through at the last minute I've had a few other nibbles But I haven't had any of my books turned into film as of yet Okay, I'm so excited for you What a cool experience You never know You're like 20 years in The perfect assassin came out in 2004 So you probably writing since 2003 Yes, that probably 2000 Because that first one took many years to write I wasn't really doing it seriously I was just kind of doing it as a hobby on my overnight Yeah, and you just never know You're 25 years in And here's the movie that's going to come on Netflix That's so exciting Okay, let's talk a little bit about perfect assassin too because This is a David Slayton novel And there's a lot of David Slayton novels So you can I mean it is clean I was I was like wow You know, I can give these to my kids Especially we've got girls too But it's harder I think sometimes to find things for the For the boys to read So my favorite line And I know you wrote this to 25 years ago So if you don't remember any of it then Oh, this help jog your memory But okay, my favorite line in the whole book So this is a story of This woman who's just like minding her own business And and saved someone in the ocean And turns out You know, this guy's got a lot of things going on And so my favorite line was I think he says something to her like You remind me of someone And she says Like and honestly say that you don't remind me of anyone I've ever known Such a great line I was like that was really clever But okay, he says to her You can remember details under stress Most people can't Do you think that's true Yeah, I mean that's his training That's been his He's been immersed in this thought process So you know, he's been trained by them By the Mossad to be an assassin So he's really just immersed his life in this Not always happily But you know, he's done it He's gotten very, very good at what he does But you know, he has reservations And but he's very good And he can just see things other people don't see And I think most of the best You know, the people who are really good at trade craft In the world and that kind of thing They they do that They look at the world differently than the rest of us So I tried to put myself in that mindset And you know, see things as someone like him would So he's like in all of these different situations Where he's trying to kind of like get away Or you know, he's trying to basically save himself And there's this one spot And I'm always just surprised Because you like think it's gonna happen But then you know the book is a lot longer So you're like, well, something's certainly gonna happen here But there's this one And I'm not gonna give anything away But this one time he's at this farm And I mean, you're like, and he's just so brilliant And he's like, created all these paths for himself And he's like on this truck And he's at this farm And then like a little kid show You know, just is walking out on their on their farm property And he said it was a small mistake But years in the field in the field had convinced him It was small mistakes that killed you That's kind of a big line Do you find that that's true and Yeah, I think so I think operators will tell you that And I think you know, throwing the kid in There's really kind of a shift of gears I think it's a good thing for writers to do To engage readers Just to just bring something out of the blue like that You know, you're just going along And you're escaping And using all your tray calf All of a sudden some little kid shows up and sees you And it's like, well, now what do I do? And he, you know, he's an honorable guy He's not gonna do anything to harm a kid So he's gotta think fast And talk his way out of it So yeah, I'd like throwing twists like that in Yeah, a lot of twists Is it difficult when you write a series of books About a main character? Do you get bored? No, no, I wouldn't say bored Because you want the character to advance I mean, he's getting older, you know And the more in the later books He's getting older, not maybe And the full chronology of how many years Those books have taken place But he's getting older and the later books He's got a family, he's got kids And in the most recent book He's actually going into management And the CIA Where he's kind of operating the clandestine service And the CIA So and I'm bringing in a new younger guy Called True Miller And a book called Dark Vector Is my most recent one So he's kind of in a supervisory role Very unexpectedly But you want your characters to kind of, you know Learn from their mistakes Kind of Move on and what their lives Like he's got married, he's got kids So things happen And you know, that's how you you advance your characters Yeah, and the technologies totally change Yes So there's actually a lot that's changed in the world Even since 2000 So you're moving this character through Will there be more David Slayton books? Yes I'm working on one of those later this year And yeah And again, it will be his new protege True Miller is the name of the guy And he's the young guy And I'm throwing maybe a little humor in with him He's a very efficient guy He's in his late 20s But he gets good results But he leaves these terrible things Happening in his wake Like he just by accident Not through the incompetence But he just bad things seem to happen Wherever he's been Like I had in the dark vector He's escaping from a wastewater facility In China where he was doing some secret work And he just happened to hit the wrong button And this facility in the middle of the night And everything went wrong And all of a sudden there is this big landslide Of that fluent behind him in his wake Going down And so David Slayton's in Washington Hearing about this, he's got his head on his knee His hand on his head gone on No Where does that come from? Okay, so I mean there is a lot There's a lot to read But there's also another whole series So tell us about the other series Jammer Davis That's it Yes, there's three books in that series Wrote them a long time ago And got very good results So a lot of those books Jammer Davis is a retired Air Force pilot And he's an aircraft accident investigator And the first book is called Fly By Wire And basically there's a crash In France Of a new airplane It's a cargo airplane That is And one of the Prototype one of the first ones ends up crashing And he has to go over He gets assigned To go over Find out what happened in the crash Of course it turns out it's not just anything simple It's an aferious plot And I'll leave it at that But I use very much my experience In the crash investigation field for that When it's sort of a police procedural type book About airplanes Because that's what it is You go to a crash You've got to sift through the evidence Find out what's important And you go talk to interview people Interview the guys flight surgeon And you know people like that Just to see what was up in his life And so it's an interesting field Okay so there are a lot of options There is the David's Lay In series There's the Jammer Davis books There's also three standalone books Now there's cold zero And that is not all It does also then about rules of engagement Yeah rules of engagement comes out in May That's a Tom Plessy Jack Ryan book centered around of course Jack Ryan Also the character John Clark And that series who's kind of a special operations Kind of guy And there's a lot of flying in this one It's it's got really good reviews If it's just now starting to get out to reviewers And people seem to really like it a lot I think it came together well Sometimes you write a book and you think Yeah, that was okay This is good But sometimes you just really feel like it Comes together almost writes itself You know the story just falls into place And this one did This one was like that I really felt like it came together Well so yeah it comes out in May 19th May 19th a plane crash Lots of things like you said about Yeah, so yeah they're going to play in crash So they like attempting towards playing crash My book after that is not going to be about a plane crash I'm not going to get carried away with it But these big overarching storylines Are they they just kind of like Draw you in and you're like wanting to know what I mean they're fantastic Okay I learned some new words So I thought that was great too For the parents listening in New vocabulary I don't even know how to pronounce this word Recalcitrant Recalcitrant? Yeah Yeah All right tell us what that means Recalcitrant? It's so boy we got a challenge being here I could use it in a sentence Yeah you that's what my mom would always say Use it in a sentence Yeah He was he was he had a recalcitrant attitude Which means he just kind of disagreeable Basically Yeah Yeah I didn't know that one at all Resisting authority or control Not a median or a compliant There was actually a lot of them But I only wrote down a couple Plaintively There was one I talked Brad Thor Because I had just read a book as we were writing this book And I had read a book A nonfiction book About a ship called the USS Genet And it was in late 1800s 1887 I think It tried to sail to the North Pole It was a wooden ship and tried to sail up to the North Pole At an expedition Got trapped in the ice And they just spun around in the ice for like two years And it just became this big survival story And some of them made it up but not all But I learned a lot just about Arctic survival From reading that book Because that's pretty much what it was It was an Arctic survival story And one of the words I picked out of it was lead L-E-A-D And what that is in the Arctic It's a great Yeah you do okay Well I know from your book now Okay But I did not know that word before I read cold zero Okay sorry I interrupted But I was like oh What I wondered word I'm glad you actually brought this up What I wondered was is this a word that other people wouldn't know But but possibly not I think I used it in a context in the books where they figured it out Yeah so I figured it out Yeah But it's yeah it's a fissure between ice flows Between the ice sheets and the Arctic Because it's constantly moving and breaking apart and fusing again And those leads are the cracks The breaks between the different ice flows And I learned that in that book and Brad said I didn't know that word I had to look it up and now that's cool It is Cool Yeah it's an Arctic term It's a lead Because like they're trying to figure out I mean and you can imagine yourself in that situation If you're on one piece of ice And the other one is six feet away How are you supposed to get over there Yep It's called a lead Yeah that was another one I learned It was like that was in this cold zero a lot And you do learn it from the context So anyway I liked it I learned a lot of new vocabulary You're going out on tour for this one Can you tell people Where they can find you they can come And get their book signed right They can or they can if you go to either of our websites Mine or Brad Thor's You can find a connection where you can order Sign books online we will sign them at the bookstore And they'll ship them out So you don't have to go to one of these places But we're going Tampa Houston, Phoenix, Palm Springs And then we're doing a Savannah book festival This next weekend And also book festivals in March Tucson and Four Myers So those are all opportunities where we'll be signing books Do you like that part of it? Yeah, yeah I like engaging readers and meeting readers Absolutely Is it exhausting? I mean that's kind of a lot to juggle If you're ready Yeah it's a travel especially with my flying schedule So it's going to be very busy next six weeks Actually I'm retiring from flying in six weeks A little march so that's going to be a big If you're me I'll be writing full time And I'm looking forward to that Wow how long have you been doing it? With Southwest 33 years What? What can congratulations? Well thank you. Yes I'm looking forward to it Been there done that. I'm ready to move on Retiring from flying in six weeks That's a really big deal Yes, yeah it is Are you emotional about it? I'm looking forward to it Actually during COVID my airline had a program Where you could take time off because they were overstaffed They weren't flying much So I took 11 months off and didn't fly during COVID So I just stayed home and wrote And I had no issues with it It worked just fine You got a little taste of what it would be like Yeah so I got my practice retirement out of the way Yeah my dad my dad talked about that Oh that's so cool Well congratulations to you retiring from flying in six weeks And you'll just be focusing on the writing And then obviously all of these I mean there's a lot of book tours If you've got books that are coming out Once or twice a year I would imagine a lot of book tours What are you reading right now? I am just listening to Jack Kars latest recently Cry havoc it was very good it was about Vietnam It was said in Vietnam it was about James racist father Yeah I liked that one a lot I liked that one about this sort of lineage piece Like grandfather to father to You know it was like a three generation thing came up And he said he had to do so much research for that one I'm sure he did and I didn't know that much about the Vietnam War That's kind of why I really liked it Because I learned a lot about the Vietnam War That I didn't already know so it was very very good I think he did too Yeah Because he did He was like I thought I knew more than I did And then when I started to go down the rabbit trail That's what's interesting too It just leads you to more and more knowledge So my husband listened to that one too And the audiobooks are really good Actually you can listen to your audio but cold zero on your website Like it's just a minute Yes Yeah there's a sample on the website Yep Who reads yours This one are my shits who reads all of Brad's books I've had a couple different people read my own Who's like that? Is there like a North Star like Oh this is you know are there some top tier people That you're like if it could be them You know I'm not really that particular about it I've had a few people read it And the publisher will have a division for audio These days audio is a real big deal I listen to all of the books And so it's good to have a good reader But I'm not particular to one I know they'll send me samples Do you like how this guy reads or that guy reads Oh Yeah I'm just getting my opinion And I usually agree and we go with that person But I don't have a real big now There's one guy I really like The guy who used to read the original Reacher books Jack Reacher books His name is Dick Hill He's actually passed away But he read the first ten or so Reacher books And I just loved how he played that character It's quite an impressive skill set Because I have different different tones of voice And they keep track of it And it will be like a man And he'll be able to do a woman's voice And and all of these different characters I'm always super Yeah People ask me if I read my own books I'm like, no way I'm trying to do that Yeah because they have all of these It's a totally different skill set For the fiction books And all of the different characters Ward, I loved it I loved it It is called Cold Zero It is a total thriller And it comes out February 10th You can go back And read the perfect assassin This is assassin series David Slayton And also then this book Coming out in May The May book that's coming out And then also the Simone Jervace one Might be a good one All right but I'm assuming I got a copy of it but haven't read it yet So Ward such an honor I mean you have written so many books And I think there's so many cool opportunities To connect with you Especially with your monthly email Because you do these giveaways And title reveals And cover reveals So it's a it's a cool day and age To be able to connect with an author Yeah That didn't used to be an option So I do love that People can go to your website And you've got all the different titles on there And what the different books are about Sort of an overview of those So thanks for being here Huge congrats on your retirement And on these new books that are coming out in 2026 We always end our show with the same question But it's a favorite memory from your childhood That was outside My first memory Was I was probably three or four years old And I was swinging on a neighbor's swing Said they I had a neighbor A friend of mine who was the same age He wasn't there at the time It was just me for some reason I was over at his house And a sun shower came out And I just thought that was the coolest thing Because it was raining But the sun was out And that's my first memory Wow In Florida Yeah, in Florida That's so cool I don't think they have those in it I couldn't remember I like it was yesterday I don't know why It just stuck with me I think you probably experienced a lot more of those I think it always in Florida It's almost always sunny But it's actually dark and stundering That when it rains Oh yeah Oh yeah Okay that's how it is in Michigan Well what a cool memory A sun shower I love it Huge congrats board And thanks for being here Thanks for it Thank you very much Talking to you Jay