Interview: Mike Grist, author of Saint Justice

Please welcome Mike Grist to the blog today! Mike is the author of Saint Justice, the latest in the Christopher Wren vigilante crime series. Reviewers have called his books “addictive,” “edge-of-your-seat writing,” “a fantastically scary read,” and “not your run-of-the-mill thriller!” One said that Grist “grabs you by the neck and won’t let you go.” Sounds rather painful, but Grist’s crime thrillers aren’t for the faint of heart!

Q&A with Mike Grist

On your blog, you’re very open about your writing and publication process, and it’s fascinating to get an insider view of a working author’s life. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about writing and/or publishing during your career? 

Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned (and am still learning) is about genre and reader expectation. My earliest books didn’t take into account genre expectations at all – I wrote an epic fantasy that took after China Mieville’s weird worlds, with a vast slew of new races (insect people, dog people, stone people) living in a Victorian-esque industrial city with a magic system based on belief.

It was a joy to write – but it sidestepped just about every genre convention. I was writing purely what I loved, and gradually discovering that by departing so much from established tropes, I’d left myself with a tiny niche audience.

Everything I’ve written since has been an effort to match up what I want to write with what readers want to read. It’s been a journey.   

You mentor authors on all sorts of topics: everything from knowing the genre to what works in online ads (and what doesn’t!) to all those techie things that many writers shudder to think about. What’s the number one topic that authors want your advice on? Has that changed in the time you’ve been mentoring? 

The biggest issue is marketing – there are plenty of courses out there that’ll tell you how to do Facebook ads or Amazon ads, but not too many services who’ll actually look at your marketing materials, your ads, your data, and give you a hard dose of reality along with advice.

I’m doing this constantly for myself, as I learn more, getting better to grips with factors like CTR (clickthrough rate), CVR (conversion) and how to maximize them.

I often think I know nothing about marketing – but when I mentor fellow authors who are starting out, I realize just how much I already know, and how much there is still to learn. It’s all part of the challenge now – not just the writing, but the marketing too. 

The main character in Saint Justice, Christopher Wren, is a cult leader and ex-CIA agent. What inspired you to write about a cult leader? 

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a thriller for years. I love Jack Reacher, John Rain, Lisbeth Salander and other smart, kickass vigilantes like them, along with TV shows like 24. I also was deeply influenced by the 1993 UK TV show Cracker, about a criminal psychologist who used psychological tactics and theories to ‘crack’ criminals in interrogation.

I wanted a hero who had that skill. It helps that I’ve studied psychology and motivation extensively myself. Combine that with a fascination with cult leaders, and I had a backstory for Wren that would give him a kind of intuitive grasp of what makes people tick. That explains his cult survivor background. Making him also a cult leader just grew from there – he wanted to make amends and help people, after experiencing the horrors of his father’s suicide cult. Add to that the idea of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars, street children who serve as Holmes’ extended intelligence network, and I saw huge possibilities in Wren having his own ‘cult’.

By their very nature, cults and the CIA are quite secretive and guard against intrusions from “outsiders.” How did you research these groups? 

I probably had a jumpstart on understanding cults and their psychology from my psychology studies, but took that knowledge further by reading the seminal works on cults, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan and Going Clear by Lawrence Wright. I interviewed several cult survivors directly, including Claire Ashman, a victor of 2 Australian cults, read about that on my blog (http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/2019/01/discussion-with-two-time-cult-survivor-claire-ashman/). Those talks were deeply fascinating.

As for the CIA, I was especially interested in propaganda and black psychological operations, and learned what I could from works like Ghost Wars by Steve Coll and The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti. It’s such a rich seam, reading about all the ways the CIA has tried to manipulate world events from the shadows.

What aspect of Saint Justice did you find most difficult to write? 

I think I struggled most with the racial component. Christopher Wren is a mixed-race man, precise ethnicity largely unknown, and since I’m a white man with no experience of being a minority, it can be a challenge to properly show his interactions with the wider world. In earlier edits I was told I overdid the challenges he had to face, and over-emphasized his race.

I always listen to feedback and adapt. I don’t get those comments anymore. Race plays a key role in Saint Justice, but it is far from the only thing going on, and it never slows Wren down in the pursuit of justice.

Who do you see as your target audience? 

This ties in to the learnings I’ve been through regarding genre – when I set out to write Wren, I figured I was writing for people like me – I’m 40, I like Reacher and Rain, but also Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, popular shows that can be extremely violent.

I’ve since learned that, while everyone can enjoy Reacher and Rain, by far the largest number of readers lie at the older range of ages – men and women in their sixties plus, who may not accept the level of violence I’d taken as read from the shows I watch.

As a result I have graded the violence down throughout the series. There is still plenty of violence, but it is less graphic now, less sustained, and less cumulative. There’s more humor, more humanization of Wren. None of this involves changing core facts about the character or story – Wren was always funny in my head, always cared deeply about his cult members, and was never sadistic, but those things weren’t coming across on the page.

Through dialogue back and forth with my readers, I’ve learned how to better show them a true picture of the guy I spend my days writing.

What should fans expect next in the series?  

Book 4, Ghost War, just came out – and while dealing with its own urgent injustices, also propels us closer to Wren’s arch-nemesis, his father the Apex, who ran Wren’s childhood suicide cult, and may or may not have survived. Future books will continue this advance toward some terrifying master plan. Because of course, the Apex has a plan for America, and it’s not pretty.

Who are your favorite authors? Favorite books? 

I love Lee Child, probably my favorite by him is Make Me – one of the darkest in the Reacher series, dealing with the real depths of human nature once set free on the darknet. I also love Barry Eisler’s work, from John Rain the assassin to Livia Lone, a female sex crimes cop who hunts down child abusers and practises an often lethal form of jiu jitsu.

More widely, I love science fiction too. I was hugely impressed by Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘Children of Time’, which deals with humans and a new spider race finding a way to co-exist on some far-off colony planet. The psychological stages they go through in that book are fascinating.

When you’re writing, what’s the one thing you MUST have with you? 

Headphones. I always listen to music while writing. In the morning, while I edit or work on marketing, it’s instrumental music from film scores, heavy on Hans Zimmer. I especially love the score to Interstellar. In the afternoon it’s a pop and folk rock playlist which I constantly update, including tracks from Billie Eilish, Kongos, The Lumineers, George Ezra.

Thanks, Mike!

More about Saint Justice and the blog tour!

Saint Justice by Mike Grist

Hundreds of human cages hidden in the desert. One man with nothing to lose.

Christopher Wren pulls off I-70 after three weeks on the road and walks into a biker bar in Price, Utah. An arbitrary decision he’s about to regret.

The bikers attack Wren, leave him for dead and steal his truck.

Now he’s going to get it back.

From a secure warehouse in the desert. Ringed with fences. Filled with human cages.

As Wren digs deeper, a dark national conspiracy unravels and the body count mounts, but one thing is for sure.

They picked the wrong guy to teach a lesson.

Purchase Links:

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2XEWCiG

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/33Hdfyi

Audible: https://adbl.co/3kxKNoz