Chris Pavone: The Expats, The Accident, 9/11, The Travelers, Two Nights In Lisbon and More…

Exclusive interview by Karen Beishuizen

Chris Pavone is a bestselling award-winning writer of four international thrillers. His new novel “Two Nights In Lisbon” will be published on 24th of May. Go check it out!

KB: What books did you read as a child, and did you always wanted to be a writer?

My early favorites were mysteries, sports books, the occasional movie novelization, and a lot of science fiction. It was late in college when somehow, I got the idea that I wanted to write.

KB: You worked as an editor for publishing houses: This background must have helped you when you started writing?

I spent nearly two decades working in a lot of capacities in the publishing business, and all of it helped in one way or another. I think maybe the biggest lesson was that I developed a deep respect for how crucial editing is, for every stage of every project, as well as a firm understanding of the publication process, and all the different types of work that goes on to publish a book. None of this has anything to do with writing. Everything I’ve learned about writing has come from other writers, from reading, and from trying—and failing—to write myself. Writing and publishing are very different things.

KB: Your first novel The Expats was published in 2012 and was a bestseller: How long did it take you to write it and how did you come up with the story idea?

I came up with the idea when I was an expat in Luxembourg in 2009. Although the plot of The Expats has nothing to do with my real life, much of the other material in that novel does. It took about a year to write the first draft, another year to revise and edit.

KB: Your second book The Accident is about one anonymous writer, one Literary agent and one CIA operative: How did you come up with this story line and how hard is it to get to the end with a great ending?

This book was inspired by my years working in publishing, and the story centers around the ways that everyone’s judgment can become clouded by ambition. I think endings are very hard for all novelists, and extra-hard in crime fiction, where you can’t just turn out the lights and leave the room. Readers demand—and deserve—a lot of resolution at the end of suspense stories. For each of my five novels, I’ve started out writing page 1 confident that I knew everything that was going to happen at the end. But for each book I’ve been wrong. While in the process of writing, I’ve always come up with other ideas, twists, reveals, back stories. Even after I type “the end,” I continue to look for new twists that I might add, and these always require revising the whole thing from the beginning. For me this is an important—and enjoyable—part of the process: I don’t know what’s missing from a book until I’ve written the whole thing, then give myself the time and space to look for ways that the story can get better.

KB: In your third novel The Travelers a journalist has his life turned upside down after accepting an offer: How did you come up with this plot because this is something else! Mind Blowing!

This book revolves around the idea of labor—how we value it, what we hope to get out of it, why we do what we do. I wanted to explore characters who aren’t certain for whom they’re ultimately working, and how that uncertainty alters their perception of their work. A soldier can be a hero or a traitor, behaving the same exact way, depending on who is giving the orders. Or who they believe is giving the orders. The same can maybe be said for all of us.

KB: In your fourth novel The Paris Diversion we see Kate Moore returning who was also in your first novel: Again, the lives of 3 people with 3 story lines and they come all together again in the end. How long did it take you to write this story?

I awoke late on the morning of September 11th 2001, and rushed to leave for the office by 8:45. I was one minute late, patting my dog goodbye, when the first plane flew by my window, which was a thousand feet from the north tower. A few times on 9/11 I thought I might die, and I watched from up close as uncountable numbers of people fell or jumped to their deaths, and I left home and couldn’t return for a month, and my hometown fell into the grip of terror that held tight for years. I knew that someday I’d write a 9/11 novel, but I wasn’t even a writer back in 2001. It wasn’t until a decade and a half later, arriving to Paris when it was in its own grip of terrorism trauma, that I had a vivid vision for my 9/11-inspired novel, but mine takes place in Paris.

KB: Do you have favorite writers?

There are many writers whose work I love, far too many to enumerate, and to be honest I don’t like doing it. The types of books I love right now weren’t necessarily the books I loved a decade ago, and probably won’t be the books I love a decade from now. My tastes evolve. But I think all my favorites are writers who clearly spend expand maximum effort to give readers the best possible experience, who care about every single one of the thousands upon thousands of choices, tiny and huge and very size in between, that are what it means to write a novel.

KB: If The Expats would be made into a movie, which actress would be perfect to play Kate Moore and why?

The Expats has been in development for film and television for more than a decade, and I wouldn’t want any answer here to end up conflicting with whoever might eventually inhabit the role. Sorry!

KB: If you could make a list of your 7 favorite books (Not your own): Which ones would you pick and why?

I could not make such a list, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I could easily make a list of the books I hate the most, but that would be rude.

KB: You have a new novel coming out on 24th of May called Two Nights In Lisbon: What is the plot about and why should people read it?

Two Nights In Lisbon looks at first like a story about an American man who goes missing while on a business trip, and his wife’s desperate search to find him. As the narrative unfolds, though, it gradually becomes evident that this novel is really about something else entirely, a story with clear parallels in the real world, an inflection point that we will all recognize, addressing one of the fundamental problems in our society. It’s an exciting thriller, with a lot of unexpected twists, that’s also deeply relevant to the way we live now.

Check out Chris’ website: HERE