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0:50
This is Undaunted Life Man's podcast.
0:53
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:55
Let's get into it.
0:56
All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:58
His name is David McCloskey.
1:00
So he is a former CIA analyst and while at the CIA, he worked in field stations across
1:05
the Middle East and he even briefed senior White House officials and Arab royalty.
1:09
But then he transitioned at 1.2 become a novelist, which is what he does now.
1:13
So he's the author of two novels and he has a third one coming out later this year, but
1:16
his novels are Damascus station and his new book that I have right here called Moscow
1:20
X.
1:21
And so the fun thing about this conversation is it reminded me a lot of the conversations
1:25
I've had with Greg Hurwitz who was on a few weeks ago.
1:29
And it's because of Greg Hurwitz that David and I even know each other because Greg was
1:33
doing a book tour last year.
1:35
So this would have been 2023 and one of the stops was in Dallas.
1:38
I went down there to hang out with Greg Hurwitz, but then, you know, a group of us went out
1:41
to dinner afterwards and David was one of the guys that was at dinner.
1:45
And so he and I kind of struck up a nice conversation about him and his family and the stuff that
1:48
he used to do and that he's a writer and he's like, yeah, whenever I have a new book coming
1:52
out, my second novel is coming out.
1:53
We should talk about it.
1:54
That's what this conversation is today.
1:56
And so we talk about his background, his education, kind of what led him to the CIA, some common
2:01
misreceptions about what it looks like to actually work for the CIA.
2:04
But I did ask him about, you know, black ops, things that happened that happened clandestinely
2:11
that maybe we aren't aware of like how much of that is true.
2:13
We talked about kind of the deep state, whether or not the CIA is actually spying on Americans.
2:17
I asked him a question about what's going on at the southern border and whether or not
2:20
we as a federal government or as, you know, federal law enforcement agencies, if we have
2:23
any idea what's coming over the border and kind of what their intentions are, but then
2:27
we talk about his transition into being a novelist, like what happens whenever he kind
2:31
of like had to burn the ships and say, no, I need to treat this job of writing as my
2:36
full time gig.
2:37
If I'm going to be successful doing this and the amount of research that goes in the amount
2:40
of editing, we talk about some misperceptions about the whole publishing world.
2:43
And then we talk about Moscow X and kind of where the interest came from Russia, but he
2:47
was just very open and honest about some of his failings as a writer, some of the things
2:51
that he did where it's like, no, we got to scrap this entire thing and start over, but
2:55
then also just his entire approach to the whole thing.
2:57
But we weaved in and out of a bunch of different topics.
2:59
I really, really enjoyed my time with them.
3:01
So I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
3:02
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:05
David McCloskey.
3:06
Welcome to the life of man's podcast.
3:08
Hey, thanks, Kyle, great to be here.
3:11
Now the last time you and I were together, we were having a delicious meal in the Dallas
3:15
area.
3:16
We were both there because Greg Hurwitz is a mutual buddy of ours.
3:19
And so we were at a table, we were kind of chit chatting.
3:21
Now do you remember the main takeaway I gave you from our conversation?
3:26
I said, hey, David, you need to start doing this one thing.
3:30
Do you remember what that one thing was?
3:32
I do.
3:33
I do remember.
3:34
And I will tell you that when I woke up this morning, I knew not only was this going to
3:41
be the first question that my answer was going to be deeply disappointing to you.
3:46
Well, how about you give everyone the background?
3:48
I've prepared for it.
3:50
Okay.
3:51
We, Greg Hurwitz, you know, exceptional writer, slightly above average human being, came
3:59
through Dallas, Texas for his book tour last year.
4:03
You and I had not met.
4:04
We're sitting at a table at dinner talking.
4:07
And at some point it comes up that I am considering taking my then seven year old to jujitsu.
4:14
Yeah.
4:15
Okay. Or actually, you know what, I think the conversation started broader than that.
4:20
It was just kind of like we were, I don't know if we're talking about just kind of self-defense
4:23
or what, but we got to, you were like, you know, a real sort of evangelist for taking
4:31
him to jujitsu lessons.
4:33
Yeah.
4:34
And, and I left that dinner pretty fired up about it.
4:38
And it, it literally did not happen.
4:41
There's a better, there's a good news story with my son and his athleticism and getting
4:47
involved using his body this year, but it's not, it's not jujitsu.
4:52
So I, when I literally, when I woke up this morning thinking about this talk that we were
4:55
going to have, I was like, man, Kyle's going to be, he's going to look like he does right
4:59
now.
5:00
He's going to be shaking.
5:01
Well, well, this could be the shortest interview in the history of undaunted life in this podcast.
5:05
Because I am furious from the beginning, but I will just say, since I am an evangelist
5:11
for all the benefits of jujitsu, not just with self-defense, but bodily, you know, mentally,
5:17
all those different things, that is an open invitation to you to any time you want to,
5:23
but not just for your son, but also for you.
5:26
Because you know, we were sitting there, we're looking around the restaurant.
5:28
It's like, Hey man, how many of these people do you think know how to fight?
5:31
And the answer is like, if they don't train, the answer is freaking none of them.
5:34
None of these losers know how to fight.
5:36
And so that's the thing.
5:37
We will move past that.
5:38
I will move beyond my disappointment.
5:39
And I will be the bigger man, obviously, David.
5:43
And I appreciate that.
5:44
I do need that.
5:45
I need you to be the bigger man here in this case.
5:47
So where you live, you've got a lot of good schools there.
5:50
It's going to be good for you.
5:51
I will keep bringing that up, but we need to get into what we're going to be talking
5:54
about today.
5:55
But before we get into the new book, we kind of have to set up your background because
5:58
that really leads into what we're going to be talking about.
6:01
So you worked for the CIA.
6:03
Now here's the thing.
6:04
When somebody works for the CIA, two things automatically come up.
6:07
They're like, oh, that job sounds really, really awesome, or oh, that job sounds really,
6:10
really boring.
6:11
It just depends on what your background is.
6:13
But what I want to know is what in your background, David, or what in your education
6:18
led you to the CIA because I don't remember the CIA being at the job fair in my high school.
6:23
Well, you know what, it was actually, it wasn't a full-on job fair, but the guy who
6:31
ran what was then the Middle East, like kind of analytic division at CIA showed up on my
6:37
college campus when I was 19.
6:39
He was an alum, and he was coming through the Chicago land area to do recruiting at
6:45
so much bigger schools, but he came by campus because, you know, he'd gone to my little
6:49
school.
6:50
It's called Wheaton College outside of Chicago.
6:53
And you know, it was one of those things where at the time, right, I'm 19, I had literally
7:01
just finished like my previous, you know, employment experience was I had been digging
7:06
holes for a sprinkler system company the prior summer, and I'm like, I'm at the same time,
7:13
and I'm studying international relations.
7:15
My mom's horrified by this because, you know, she's like, you're never going to get a job,
7:18
you know.
7:19
So I'm thinking at this time, like, because of the whole digging on the resume, I probably
7:25
won't get in, but, you know, I'll apply and kind of see what happens.
7:31
So it was this very organic, like, I hadn't planned on this.
7:35
I hadn't put myself in this situation, but this guy came, spoke to our class, they took
7:39
resumes, I put mine in, and I ended up getting, you know, an offer to become an undergraduate
7:48
intern at the Central Intelligence Agency.
7:50
So that's how that's how I got in.
7:52
Okay.
7:53
So you became an intern, but then you eventually became an analyst, correct?
7:59
That's right.
8:00
Yeah.
8:01
Okay.
8:02
So I was an analyst.
8:03
So what in the world does a CIA analyst actually do?
8:06
All right, so here's, I think, the best way to think about it, because so much of what,
8:13
so much of the lens for the CIA, as you're suggesting right up front, is like Hollywood
8:19
crazy stuff, or, you know, leaks to a newspaper, conspiracy theories, most of which are not
8:27
true, but some are.
8:29
You know, so everyone ends up with this pretty, like, distorted view of, like, the actual
8:34
day-to-day work of the agency, right?
8:36
The best way I could describe the job to you is it was like clandestine journalism.
8:42
Okay.
8:43
So it's like, I am a, imagine me as a reporter, and I've got a whole bunch of different sources.
8:51
I've got a question I'm trying to answer, right?
8:53
And I'm writing an article for somebody who needs to make a decision, right?
9:00
I'm not making a decision about foreign or defense policy, but I'm writing something
9:03
for the president who ostensibly will.
9:07
And there's an important topic, you know, I worked on Syria.
9:10
So let's say, like, we're writing about what's going to happen in the Syrian civil war, right?
9:15
Broad questions, but really important.
9:17
I'm using a whole bunch of different sources to answer that question.
9:21
I'm using human sources, some of whom have, you know, literally provided us with stolen
9:24
secrets from the Syrian government.
9:26
I'm using satellite imagery.
9:27
I'm using signals intercepts, you know, phone calls, text messages, emails, faxes, whatever.
9:33
I'm using anything available in the open source.
9:35
I'm using reporting from our embassy.
9:38
And I'm writing the answer to that question.
9:41
And I'm backing that up with verifiable facts to explain why I'm saying what I'm saying.
9:48
And so it's very, it's very similar to the way a journalist would write a story and then
9:52
put it out in a paper you're thinking about, you know, how do I, how do I know what I know?
9:57
How do I articulate the argument that I'm trying to articulate?
10:01
And how do you do it in a really clear, ideally, you know, apolitical, non-value-laden, fact-based
10:07
way so someone gets the best possible information?
10:10
That was the job.
10:11
Hey, guys.
10:12
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10:13
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10:16
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So I've always went to partner with an American company that prioritizes America, American
10:31
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That's why I want to remind you that we are partnered with Origin.
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Origin is an apparel company based in Maine, and they are focused on getting as much manufacturing
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11:39
Okay, so just even in your answer there, David, you were able to dispel some of the common
11:51
misperceptions about the job within the CIA, but obviously you've had a discussion with
11:55
a lot of people before about the fact that you did work with the CIA.
11:58
It's obviously not a secret, but what are some of the most common misperceptions that
12:03
you hear about people that just work at the CIA in general and any one of the different
12:08
branches or divisions?
12:09
Yeah, well, I mean, there would be a whole bunch of misconceptions that I might group
12:18
underneath this category of superhero spies, right?
12:22
So there would be ideas that there's a lot of car chases, that there's a lot of action,
12:29
that there's a lot of shooting, that most of what a CIA officer and typically in the sort
12:35
of superhero land, they would call them agents, which is totally incorrect.
12:38
The agent is the foreigner who's providing the information.
12:42
The CIA officer is the one, you know, typically the American who works for the CIA who's collecting
12:47
the information.
12:48
You know, there'd be this view that, yeah, there's a lot of, that it feels, the day to
12:54
day feels a lot more kind of like an action movie.
12:56
I mean, I think everyone would sort of understand that movies and movies, so that's not really
12:59
how it is.
13:00
Because that's the lens, you'd have this sense of, oh, the CIA is operating and doing
13:06
this kind of work inside the United States of America, right?
13:09
That'd be another one, not true.
13:13
So that would be a big category as well.
13:16
I think, you know, related to that one would be this idea that the CIA is like super efficient
13:24
and that it's not a massive, you know, that like, you know, it's, there's a lot of high
13:29
tech stuff and that the headquarters is slick and communications, you know, pretty simple
13:36
and the tech always works and the CIA is really kind of omniscient in this telling when,
13:42
you know, the flip side of the agency, which does do a lot of really interesting, very
13:45
cool work and really exceptional work, you know, is that it's a massive government bureaucracy.
13:50
And so you think about any big bureaucracy, like they sort of, they have similar dysfunction,
13:56
right?
13:57
That would be another kind of, I think, theme of misperception about the agency is that
14:03
it doesn't really behave like a big bloated organization when, in fact, like anyone, anyone
14:08
listed to this who works at a big, you know, inside a big organization or who has worked
14:12
with a big organization would be able to immediately understand some of the problems with, you
14:18
know, too many layers of people, confusion around roles, lots of meetings and emails,
14:25
people sitting in front of desks, like all that's happening to.
14:29
What's funny about that is every time I see a depiction of like the CIA or the FBI on the
14:33
television show, we're in a movie and they have like super modern open floor plan offices
14:40
and all these like really sexy looking things is like, guys, this isn't happening like in
14:44
Silicon Valley, like this is, this is in Langley or this is somewhere like that, like these
14:48
are, have you ever been to an old government building?
14:51
It probably looks a lot like that, but you mentioned something kind of earlier about how,
14:55
you know, a lot of these things we think are happening here on our soil aren't, but you
14:59
know, a lot has been made about the quote unquote deep state.
15:02
Now that is kind of using a political parlance about the deep state being, you know, against
15:07
Trump or against this person or creating all of these, you know, false flag operations,
15:12
but then obviously we see agencies like the CIA saying, yeah, we're not spying on Americans
15:17
only to find out later, it's like, oh yeah, of course they are like, they're spying literally
15:21
on just about everybody at all times.
15:23
So give me your perspective on that because obviously you got to see it from the inside
15:27
and some of us are just taking, you know, our cues from our favorite, you know, conservative
15:30
podcasts or something like that.
15:32
But it does seem like there are, there are certainly operations going on in America involving
15:38
American citizens that that don't seem to be on the up and up in terms of what we hear
15:43
at a press conference, if it's fair to say it that way.
15:47
Well, I think, I think getting down a couple levels deeper into what's really happening
15:56
would probably be helpful because the CIA, there's, there's a series of executive orders.
16:04
So you rewind the CIA is created in 1947, right?
16:08
It is essentially sort of the president's black bag outfit for the first few decades
16:13
of its of its existence.
16:15
It is not a well bureaucratized institutionalized thing.
16:20
There really isn't a lot of congressional oversight.
16:23
There isn't a great sense of its actual budget, right, which which is still sort of a problem
16:28
but is much more of a problem in the 50s and 60s.
16:31
It's a new organization fighting the Cold War and trying to figure out the rules of the
16:38
road and in many respects, I think, doing a very poor job, right?
16:42
So that that age, that world of that agency, I think, colors a lot of the way we think
16:49
about it today, even, right?
16:51
Because a lot of the kind of more conspiratorial stuff comes out of that period and in fact
16:56
was true, right?
16:57
So I just offer that as some general context.
16:59
I think you zoom forward, the CIA is being, and in particular, its relationship with American
17:08
citizens is being governed by a series of executive orders that prohibit the CIA.
17:17
And these go back to like the 70s and 80s, early 80s.
17:22
And the most important one is executive order 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, which prohibits the CIA from
17:33
spying on Americans and from using Americans in intelligence operations unwittingly, right?
17:45
So the agency maintains bases and stations across the United States under what's called
17:52
NR division, national resources division.
17:55
So the agency has a presence throughout the United States outside of Langley.
18:01
Now what those bases and stations are focused on doing, for the most part, is actually foreign
18:08
intelligence collection on non-American, you know, on foreigners who are here in the United
18:14
States who might have some kind of value in terms of the knowledge that they have.
18:20
The CIA does use Americans in intelligence operations, but that is pretty much always
18:28
exclusively done with that person having actually volunteered to participate.
18:34
So a great example would be like a business, like someone who is a scene, you know, at
18:39
a high level of, and I'm making this up, of an international oil and gas firm that's
18:44
based in the United States that does business in, you know, the Persian Gulf, they might
18:49
return from having met individuals in that area and actually agree to be debriefed, you
18:56
know, by CIA.
18:58
But the kind of broad, you know, the concept of the CIA working to collect information
19:04
on Americans or to influence American sort of public opinion, thought, elections, whatever
19:10
it might be, you know, is just simply not true.
19:14
Like any time we're trying to put together a covert influence campaign to sway the hearts
19:20
and minds of foreign citizens, right, there's a tremendous amount of obstacles to putting
19:27
that kind of thing together from a legal standpoint, because you have to demonstrate that whatever
19:31
you're doing isn't going to get back into the sort of media atmosphere in the United
19:36
States, as you can imagine, is, you know, really, really challenging to do.
19:42
So I just, I'm going to shut up there, but I think the idea that the agency is spying
19:47
on you, you know, is pretty much patently false and is highly illegal in pretty much all its
19:54
forms here in the United States.
19:55
Well, you don't need to shut up.
19:57
I have more questions.
19:58
We're going to dig even deeper.
19:59
Okay.
20:00
Yeah, no, it's funny because you mentioned, you know, the first part, but what was it
20:03
called before the CIA?
20:04
It was like the OSS or something like that.
20:06
OSS.
20:07
Yeah.
20:08
Yeah.
20:09
The war time espionage outfit.
20:10
Yeah.
20:11
Yeah.
20:12
I remember Greg Hurwitz mentioning that because he's like whenever they were trying to recruit
20:13
for that, it's like, hey, we need someone with the PhD that can win a bar fight.
20:15
And so that was kind of like what it was there at the beginning.
20:17
And then, you know, the bar fighters and the PhDers kind of started to split off there
20:21
at some point, but there, there, there have to be, because I do know some people personally
20:26
that we're kind of in this field, there are kind of black ops groups.
20:30
There are kind of books that are, or groups that are, you know, somewhat off the books,
20:34
I guess you could say, to do those clandestine operations typically in other countries.
20:40
Again, it's kind of a hard question, David, because it's like, there's what you were
20:45
exposed to.
20:46
There's what, there's what's hearsay, then there's what's depicted in popular culture.
20:50
And it's everybody thinks Jason Bourne, right?
20:52
So Jason Bourne had to shoot this nameless, faceless person, and then he was in the program.
20:56
And then you have something like Orphan X, right?
20:58
From Greg Hurwitz, and it's like that type of thing.
21:01
We just, it's like we want that to be true, because it seems awesome, except for the fact
21:06
that that's a movie, guys, like that's exciting.
21:09
Do we really want people shooting random strangers to become a part of a, of an off-the-books
21:13
black ops type of program within the government?
21:16
I don't know that you actually want that, but talk to me a little bit about that, about
21:19
the fact that it's kind of like, it's the ugly truth that we need people doing nasty
21:24
things around the globe to protect us here on the homeland.
21:27
Where's that just, you know, a bumper sticker slogan that I bought into?
21:30
No, I think, you know, look, for my description of the CIA's clandestine journalism, which
21:36
is the bread and butter work of the CIA is, you know, stealing secrets from foreign governments
21:43
and entities, and then, you know, basically producing a classified, you know, newspaper
21:50
that goes to the president and other people around them that, that enables them to make
21:54
the best possible decisions, like, that is the, the primary function of the CIA.
21:58
However, the CIA has in the most common piece of this, it's, it used to be called the Special
22:04
Activities Division.
22:05
It's now called the Special Activities Center.
22:07
It sits inside, at least, I think, you know, as the last time I saw an org chart, it sits
22:13
inside the director of operations.
22:15
That group has, you know, ground branch, air branch, maritime branch.
22:20
These are, you know, officers who are typically kind of pulled from the military, you know,
22:26
tier one groups, like, to essentially conduct covert, I mean, to implement, I guess, what
22:35
would typically be, you know, an element of a covert action finding that would require
22:41
the use of something resembling military force, but that is being done under the auspices
22:48
of the Central Intelligence Agency, right, because we want the ability, as a government,
22:53
to deny that we did such a thing or to mask our role in that operation, right?
23:02
The CIA does that, right?
23:04
I mean, and that was a, that was a big part of our work throughout the war on terror in
23:10
war zones, like in Iraq and Afghanistan throughout the broader, you know, sort of Middle East,
23:14
like, that is definitely a piece of what the CIA does, but that kind of covert action sliver,
23:21
which tends to get a lot of attention, right, because it is fundamentally interesting.
23:26
I mean, it's why it's the subject of all these, you know, novels and films.
23:31
It's not, you know, you think about the market share of sort of, you know, the espionage
23:35
business, it's a smaller sliver of the work.
23:40
Okay, let's talk about something before we move on to kind of how you transitioned out
23:43
of that type of work.
23:44
Obviously, there's a lot being made about what's going on at the southern border here
23:48
in the United States.
23:49
For all intents and purposes, it's porous.
23:51
We literally have thousands of people streaming across the southern border every single day.
23:55
And now people that don't pay any attention, they just assume it's Mexican nationals that
23:59
are coming across the border, which there certainly is that.
24:01
But there are people coming from all over Central America, all over South America.
24:05
And then as my senator here in state of Oklahoma, James Langford pointed out to Congress last
24:09
year in a calendar year, we encountered at the border, just the people that we encountered
24:14
that we knew came across the border from every single country in the world, including ones
24:20
that are, you know, spoken enemies of us, that would be Iran or Syria or Eritrea or
24:25
North Korea or China or Russia or any of these types of places.
24:29
We encountered these people at the southern border.
24:31
Now here recently, I forget the guy's name, but there was a known terrorist who actually
24:34
went to prison somewhere in the world for terrorist operations for like a decade.
24:40
And there was video of him on the Texas side of the southern border.
24:44
And people are asking like, Hey, who are you?
24:46
And he's like, you're all going to know who I am soon.
24:49
And so as an American, as an American with a wife and children and, you know, willing
24:53
to fight and die and kill for to protect them and the people that I love, there is this worry
24:59
about people coming across the southern border and us as Americans having no freaking idea
25:04
who they are and what they want to do while they're here.
25:06
And then you hear these grumblings about Islamist from fundamentalist terrorists coming over
25:11
here and they come over here individually, but then there are parts of what are called
25:15
sleeper cells.
25:16
So these are groups of people that are here in this country for the most part illegally
25:21
that want to do damage to American people, American infrastructure, the government, just
25:26
the overall piece of the country.
25:28
So from your experience within the CIA or this may be the FBI as well or who the heck
25:34
knows what other organizations, how can we rest easy knowing that, Hey, the federal government
25:39
knows these people are here.
25:41
We're watching them.
25:42
We got eyes on them.
25:43
Right.
25:44
Like we know what they're doing.
25:45
Like I think about the TV show, Homeland, one of the best TV shows maybe ever made, but
25:49
like there were different sleeper cell options to where it's like, look, these these groups
25:53
weren't completely unknown to the federal government.
25:57
They were just being watched before they tried to carry out whatever attack they're doing.
26:01
So there's a question in there somewhere, David, you're smart enough to find it.
26:04
So ready to go.
26:05
Well, let me, so let me say, make a couple of statements.
26:10
I think both of these things are, both these things are true, right?
26:14
It is, it is true that we can and should be doing far more to actually make that border
26:20
less porous.
26:21
Right.
26:22
It make it impermeable, but you can do a heck of a lot more than we're doing now.
26:28
And we are a country with borders, with sovereignty.
26:33
Like this should not be tangled up in our political dysfunction to make it harder to
26:40
come across illegally full stop.
26:42
We should be doing more.
26:43
We can be doing more, right?
26:46
It is also true that having a very porous border makes it easier for people who wish
26:54
to do us harm to get into this country, although they are an infinite, hasfully small number
26:59
of the people who adventure across the damage that they could potentially do is significant.
27:06
And we should be doing a far better job of preventing it, you know, making it harder
27:12
to come in illegally.
27:14
The third point I would make is just that I think from a, the standpoint of thinking
27:19
about the risk that terrorism poses to us, you know, terrorism is, it's a very interesting
27:28
psychological thing because you were far more likely to die on a motorcycle, you were far
27:36
more likely to die in a car accident, you were, I think, far more likely to die like
27:41
in your own bathtub than you are to be the subject or the victim of any kind of terrorist
27:47
violence, particularly inside the United States.
27:51
So I think that's just, you know, just encourage everyone listening to this to kind of, let's
27:54
frame this appropriately, like this isn't, there are plenty of instances of people coming
28:01
into this country who wish to do us harm, they tend to get a tremendously outsized viewing
28:07
in the media because it is like terrifying, right?
28:12
And because it's sensational, it's sensational, like the greatest impact of these kind of
28:20
attacks tends to be in the reaction to them, not even just in the, it's a tragedy of course
28:25
when it happens, but not even just in the body count of what occurs in the attack.
28:32
But you know, there are enough examples of these things where you say like, yeah, it
28:36
is just returning to that second point, like this is a risk, you know, I mean the Iranians
28:42
have attempted to use drug cartels to bring people into the country to conduct hits, you
28:49
know, on like Saudis here.
28:51
So this isn't a figment of the imagination or a sort of theoretical concept, like, you
29:00
know, it makes sense if you are an adversary who wishes us harm or wishes to conduct operations
29:07
here that having having a border that's crossable with relative ease makes makes those operations
29:14
easier.
29:15
Yeah, certainly believe that and you know, I even heard a briefing here recently saying
29:20
that, you know, a lot of people in Congress are being briefed about an imminent threat
29:23
to the homeland.
29:24
And one of my more macabre predictions for 2024 is, you know, obviously it's going to
29:28
be crazy with the election, but I was like, unfortunately, I think that there will be
29:31
a major terrorist attack on American soil.
29:33
And so you can't ever actually predict these things like we don't know if it's going to
29:36
be a 9/11 style or what type of thing, but it's like, it wouldn't be a crazy thing at
29:41
this point to assume something like that will happen.
29:45
But for you, David, at some point you decided, Hey, I don't want to be Jason Bourne anymore.
29:49
I don't want to be going around the country killing all these people and you know, leaving
29:52
a leaving a trail of bodies and nothing else, you decided you didn't want to be that guy
29:56
anymore.
29:57
It's tiring.
29:58
Yeah.
29:59
It's too much.
30:00
It's too much.
30:01
Too many weapons.
30:02
Too much fun.
30:03
So you decide that you want to transition out.
30:05
So how did you come to that decision and what did you move towards?
30:08
Yeah.
30:09
So I got into a point where I wanted, you know, I had been doing, I've been working at the
30:21
agency really my entire real professional life after the whole digging summer at that point.
30:27
And I thought I would like to see something else.
30:32
I had gotten to a point where I was kind of on this cusp of like feeling as though if
30:38
I keep going, I'm going to be here forever.
30:42
And I just felt something inside me like I got to see what else is out there.
30:48
And my wife and I also sort of corresponded with us really wanting to get out of the
30:54
DC area and frankly go somewhere that's more normal and we threw now, you know, your listeners
31:01
can debate whether Dallas, Texas meets those criteria.
31:04
I would argue that it is more normal than the Washington, DC matter.
31:08
It's kind of like Texas.
31:10
It's sort of Texas.
31:12
It's sort of Texas, yes, and we're doing a very poor job convincing anyone here that
31:17
we're Texans to begin with, but we, you know, so those two things kind of smashed together.
31:23
And I thought, you know, let's just, let's, let's go try something else.
31:27
So I, I left and we moved to Dallas.
31:31
I took a job, you know, God help me and don't hold it against me working for a consulting
31:37
firm here in, here in Dallas and did that for a number of years and sort of as I was considering,
31:47
well, I'll rewind actually there were, there was a three month period in between leaving
31:51
the CIA and joining this consulting firm, where I sat down and just kind of started
31:55
to write.
31:56
And it was very unstructured.
31:58
It was like I'm just kind of writing my experiences of working on and living in Syria, which is
32:02
primarily what I did when I was at the agency.
32:05
I mean, you know, that the civil war that was going on there was, was, had shattered the
32:10
place.
32:11
And I was really kind of just working through what I had worked on and seen and lived through.
32:17
And then I started this job right and I kind of put all that stuff aside and just became
32:22
a, became a consultant for a number of years, which was both good and bad and then had the
32:27
opportunity about five years ago to dust off those pages and to get back to the writing.
32:34
And so that just kind of started this process of, you know, writing, writing these books,
32:40
which is what I do now.
32:42
And so what kind of consulting were you doing?
32:45
So I was a, what's called a management consultant, okay, which, you know, in the kind of, I
32:52
mean, the, the, the dark view is just doing layoffs and stuff, which is actually very little
32:57
of what I did.
32:58
Mostly it was trying to working with clients who are basically like, Hey, I have a, I have
33:01
a particular business problem, like I'm thinking about launching this new product, or I want
33:04
to move into this market, like helping them think about that decision and putting facts
33:12
the behind, you know, behind that decisions that they can make the best possible ones.
33:16
It was actually very similar in many respects to what I was doing at the CI, just for business.
33:20
Okay.
33:21
So as you mentioned, you're, you're now a writer full time, but at some point with something
33:25
like that, that's not a traditional job.
33:27
It's not your normal nine to five, you know, wear your suit and don't make any trouble type
33:30
of job.
33:31
At some point, you have to burn the ships.
33:33
You have to say, this is what I do now.
33:35
I am a writer.
33:37
And for most people that have a career in writing, they're not giving a whole bunch of money
33:41
up front to ensure that they stick with it.
33:43
You know what I mean?
33:44
At some point there's a burn the ships at risk.
33:45
So can you take us through what that was like?
33:48
Yeah.
33:49
So it felt that way, you know, I talked about if you bring the ships jumping off the dock,
33:55
like whatever analogy you want to use, but you know, it's how it felt to me.
34:00
So I, I had written the first book, De Massa Station, and it was four or five months from
34:10
coming out.
34:12
And I was starting to tinker around with a second one.
34:16
And I was doing the consulting work too, and seeing these two things in collision with one
34:23
another for the first time of like, if I want to do this, if I want to write another book,
34:28
if I want to go out and promote my writing so that it could, I can sell more books and
34:34
keep the thing going, I can't do this 70, 80 hour a week consulting job.
34:40
Like they hit this point where they became mutually exclusive to one another.
34:45
And I felt like, I felt like when I sat down, talked about it with my wife, prayed about
34:55
it.
34:56
Like it was, if I didn't move forward with the writing, I was going to look back in five
35:03
or 10 years with just deep, deep regret that I hadn't pursued it.
35:09
Because at that point, you know, there's sort of, there's a first book coming out.
35:11
It feels like, hey, there's a wave I'm catching here.
35:15
And if I just sort of don't get on that and ride that wave, I don't, is it going to come
35:23
again?
35:24
I don't know.
35:25
Like be like, and I just sort of felt called pushed, you know, to do it.
35:31
And, and I felt like, you know, if I leave this job and the writing stuff just crashes
35:36
and burns.
35:37
I can, I can, I can come back, maybe I could go find something else to do, but this writing
35:43
wave felt pretty unique.
35:44
And so it, but it did it was, you know, it was scary.
35:47
I mean, you're going from a job where, you know, there's, there's pretty good pay and
35:52
like, you know, health insurance and all this kind of stuff and like going into this world
35:58
of writing, which, which also is sort of bizarre because your day to day is kind of unstructured,
36:04
right?
36:05
Like, you might feel a sort of like, you know, it's not like all of a sudden there's five
36:09
or six hours of like phone calls and zooms and like structure to it.
36:13
It's like the whole calendar is blank.
36:15
It's kind of like what you make of it.
36:17
Like, do you get your words done that day?
36:19
Right.
36:20
It's not someone else.
36:21
It's not someone else's fault.
36:22
If you don't get them done, like you've got to get them done.
36:23
Like how do you set up the whole architecture for your business?
36:25
Like no one's, no one's pushing you to do that stuff.
36:28
Like you got to do it.
36:29
You know, so that's, that's been really fun, but it's also, you know, terrifying too.
36:33
Well, it's, it's an eat what you kill environment.
36:35
And I mean, my first job out of college was a hundred percent commissioned job.
36:39
And so I've just kind of been living in that.
36:41
And because people love the idea of freedom, the idea of waking up and doing whatever they
36:45
want to do, the idea of, Oh, my kid doesn't feel well today.
36:48
I don't need to move my entire life and ask somebody's permission to take care of my kid
36:53
or ask someone's permission to go and do this thing.
36:55
But the level of responsibility that you have just goes through the roof.
36:59
It goes absolutely through the roof because you can't basically stop, stop the train once
37:03
you get on it.
37:04
And again, if, if you don't work that day, you don't make money.
37:07
And so, um, so let's, let's talk about you and let's talk about the, the writing process.
37:13
Because whenever you do a book like Damascus station or the new book Moscow X, there seems
37:18
to be a lot of research that has to go into it while you're writing.
37:22
Now I, I know at least somewhat about some people's process.
37:26
There are people that are basically, uh, I guess they're writing processors.
37:30
So as they're writing, they are processing what needs to happen to the character or to
37:35
the scene or to the narrative.
37:37
And then that's the direction their research goes.
37:39
Then you have other people that do just months and months and months of research before
37:44
they put the first word of, you know, the prologue down.
37:48
Um, so what, what's kind of your process or I guess what was your process with Damascus
37:53
station?
37:54
Was it, hey, I've already kind of written this stuff and now I just need to make characters
37:57
that are, you know, vaguely interesting or what does that look like?
38:02
So I'm a, um, I'm kind of in that former camp right of people who need to figure out the
38:11
story as they write it.
38:13
So I don't, and I've experimented with outlines, but I've not found them to be useful for me.
38:18
And I don't, I don't use them.
38:20
And I eventually abandoned, I put together an outline for Damascus station, abandoned it.
38:25
I put together an outline for Moscow X, abandoned it like within days of starting to write.
38:30
So I'm like, I'm like, why am I doing this?
38:31
This is, you know, this is a complete waste of my time.
38:34
I just need to get into it.
38:36
And I have felt, um, you know, it's, it's interesting.
38:39
The way I'm wired, there's a tent, I'll have a tendency to think about like, okay, maybe
38:45
it'd be better, I sit down at eight 30 instead of actually having to get into the scene and
38:51
write it.
38:53
Maybe I'll, I'll try to read a book or read a set of articles that help me do research
38:57
for the scene.
38:58
Or maybe I'll want to go talk to somebody who knows something about like, I wrote a scene
39:04
a couple of days ago for book that involves safe cracking.
39:06
And I've got a contact who's a safe cracker and I'm like, well, maybe I should call him
39:12
to kind of talk through the mechanics of how this, how this would work in reality to get
39:17
through this type of lock.
39:19
That kind of stuff, it's all necessary.
39:21
But for me, I actually find there's a little voice in my head as I'm thinking about doing
39:25
any of that stuff.
39:26
It's like, you're putting off the words, like you're putting off the hard work of actually
39:30
sitting down with a blank page and coming up with or manufacturing or being open to the
39:36
story presenting itself, depending on how you sort of see things.
39:40
And so what I have tended to try to do is for the first draft, very little research,
39:48
only what's absolutely necessary.
39:51
And I just try to write every day between two and three thousand words, get the thing
39:55
down on paper.
39:57
And then I sort of look at that when it's all done.
39:59
And that first draft is typically 150, 160,000 words, way longer than an actual book.
40:06
And it's hard to overstate this, it sucks, it really is bad.
40:13
But that is the, it's not even a story, it's like all the different, if you were cooking
40:21
a meal, it's not even like me cooking a bad meal, it's like me putting all the ingredients
40:27
out on the counter and being like, okay, what am I going to do?
40:30
What are we really going to make tonight?
40:33
And that is an emotionally exhausting part of the process, at least for me, because you're
40:40
from whole cloth, finding characters and storylines and trying to figure out how you, you know,
40:47
sort of the emotional spine of the book.
40:50
But then once you have that, then it's like, all right, I've got to go and have the conversation
40:55
with the safe cracker because I don't want to write a scene where, you know, like where
41:01
I sprinkle pixie dust over it to show how they get into the safe.
41:05
Like there's an actual reality to safe cracking.
41:08
So then I go and have the conversation with, with Charlie and, or, you know, I read over
41:12
here in my shelf, like, you know, I read my next book is focused on Israel, Iran, like
41:17
I'll, you know, read 10 books on Iran, right?
41:19
So there's, there's a process, but I try to put that off to actually, you know, as long
41:24
as I can to get the story down on paper burst.
41:27
And that's a very intuitive process.
41:29
I don't, I don't outline it.
41:32
I just write what feels like it needs to come out.
41:34
I really appreciate how you put that because you, you basically took any semblance of sexy
41:38
out of that process.
41:39
Cause like one of my good buddies, Joe B. Martin, he says his dad gave him the wisdom.
41:43
Like at one point in his life, he said, look, you don't wake up and go to fun.
41:46
You go to work.
41:47
And so if you have one of these sexier jobs, like you do actually have to do the work because
41:51
a lot of guys in my audience are Jack Carr fans.
41:53
And so they see Jack Carr on Instagram to see all the cool stuff he does.
41:56
So he's going on Joe Rogan, it's like, you guys realize he had to sit down every single
42:00
day for months on end and put pen to paper to create that narrative that you just listened
42:05
to in 12 hours at two times speed to get this entire narrative.
42:09
Like that came from somewhere.
42:11
It's the same thing.
42:12
Like when I see people, they will binge watch season one of a television show that just came
42:16
out two days ago.
42:17
And then they're like, well, when season two coming out, it's like your Jack wagon.
42:22
It took like a thousand people three years to get you that 10 hours worth of entertainment.
42:27
Can you chill out for a little bit?
42:29
But I guess my next question, David would be at what point, and I guess this could get
42:33
into misperceptions of the publishing world.
42:36
So maybe combine these two at what point do you let the writing go?
42:41
So you've written it, you've rewritten it, you've edited it, you've connected a point
42:46
from chapter three with a point from chapter 14.
42:49
And you just feel like I'm done.
42:52
I'm going to send this off.
42:53
And frankly, people don't even understand the publishing world.
42:56
They don't understand what that looks like.
42:57
They think you write the world's perfect novel.
43:00
You give it to an editor who corrects comma splices and verb tensing.
43:04
And then, you know, it just comes out a few months later.
43:07
So kind of move all that together to give us an idea what that looks like for you.
43:11
So I'll give you the bottom line up front is that for me, that is somewhere around 10
43:21
graphs, typically.
43:24
And what that looks like is the first draft, big honking thing, plot holes you could drive
43:33
a train through, terrible pros, you know, weird, like, you know, the chronology of it
43:41
doesn't make sense.
43:43
But there's bits and pieces that really work and the beginnings of the kind of story.
43:48
So that's like draft one.
43:50
And I typically try to get there from the moment I started, I try to get there within
43:56
four to six months.
43:58
Okay.
43:59
And then you put that down for a little bit.
44:03
You might actually pause you real quick.
44:05
I got to ask this before I forget because I know you're smart enough to pick right back
44:08
up.
44:09
So you mentioned plot holes.
44:10
Okay.
44:11
So I feel like a moron when I go to IMDB and I look up, you know, the stuff, because if
44:18
you go to IMDB internet movie database and you plug in your favorite movie, and then
44:22
there are, there's like a section that says like problems or mistakes or something like
44:26
that.
44:27
And so it could be like, you know, a period piece that said a thousand years ago.
44:30
And yet there's a Starbucks cup that's like in one scene on accident kind of a thing.
44:35
But there's a section where it talks about all the plot holes.
44:39
And I don't know if I'm, if I'm just too dumb to be breathing, but there will be these massive
44:44
plot holes in, in shows or movies.
44:48
And I didn't even notice until I read somebody just pointed out and then it's like, Oh my
44:53
gosh, of course, like we've all had movies where we're like, that didn't make sense.
44:57
I didn't really like the ending.
44:58
But for you as you're writing, David, how do you know that this is a plot hole?
45:04
How do you know that this doesn't go anywhere?
45:06
How do you know that this isn't a satisfactory way for this character or this thing to move?
45:10
Yeah.
45:11
That's a good question.
45:14
And I guess it makes me think that the word plot hole is a little bit too precise because
45:20
the holes could be matters of care.
45:24
I mean, so character and plot are just like plot is character in motion, right?
45:27
It's all character.
45:28
But like you could have a characterization issue and I absolutely do with, because of
45:35
the way I write where like I'm writing and as I go, I'm finding the character and stuff
45:41
that I've written toward the end tends to be closer to that character's true voice than
45:46
the stuff I've written at the beginning.
45:48
And so if I've got chapter three written from the viewpoint of, you know, Billy Bob, and
45:54
then I get to chapter 65 and I'm writing another Billy Bob chapter, you know, I have
46:01
spent literally, you know, six months sitting in front of a computer getting to know Billy
46:07
Bob over the course of writing the book and so I got to go back to chapter three in my
46:12
editing and be like, would he say this?
46:16
Is this actually what he's like?
46:17
Is this his interior thoughts?
46:19
So there's, there's holes of characterization that appear naturally over the writing process.
46:25
There's also holes of characterization that can appear if you're trying to force a character
46:30
to do something that actually doesn't make sense for them for the purposes of plot or
46:34
story and oftentimes I will skip over those over the course of that first draft because
46:40
I just want to get to the end as fast as possible so I can begin the work of kind of refining,
46:45
but I know it's there and I have to go back and sort of wrestle with it later on.
46:51
And then there are holes of plot where it's like, you know, okay, how well, here's what
46:57
I was working with just a few days ago, how does I needed, I needed the Iranian intelligence
47:03
services to get access to a list of Mossad officers?
47:06
Okay, how does that happen?
47:08
Well, up until yesterday, I didn't have that problem solved and it was just this like massive
47:12
plot hole.
47:13
So you'd be, you could be what, you know, in, if you'd been reading the book, you'd get
47:16
to this point and you're like, what?
47:18
Like where did this come from?
47:21
That's never explained.
47:23
And all the way on down to little things, which actually in Damascus station, my first
47:27
book, there was an editing snafu and so the type of car someone's driving changes between
47:32
like pages six and seven, right?
47:34
So it's like, oh wait, yeah, and that's a minor, that's a minor thing, but readers always
47:40
love to kind of do the like, ah, got you.
47:42
Yeah, they're like, you screwed up.
47:46
So there's, there's all manner of inconsistencies that, that appear and over the course of it's
47:52
like solving a Rubik's cube that's like working against you at the same time.
47:56
Right.
47:57
Because you, you start to solve bigger problems and as you kind of like turn the wheel or
48:02
you think about it as like tying something like, you know, another like problem pops
48:06
out somewhere that you then have to have to go and solve.
48:09
So you really do have to kind of be an artist and an engineer, like an engineer to make sure
48:14
that this world behaves as it should and that there aren't insane things that happen.
48:22
Uh, inside the minds of characters or very technically.
48:26
And then an artist in order to actually get the emotional residents of the book, right?
48:32
And the characterization.
48:33
Right.
48:34
Well, yeah, I think artists and engineers, the perfect way to say it because I even do
48:36
that here on my show.
48:38
So when I'm doing a solo episode, let's say I'm talking about a very complicated topic.
48:41
So recently I did something on the Enneagram, I went way down the rabbit hole in that personality
48:46
test and went all the way back to like core level stuff.
48:49
And I was like, okay.
48:50
So as I'm creating it, I'm creating it as thoughts are popping up.
48:54
I've got my thoughts that I've kind of jotted down along the way, but then like I'm going
48:58
back and forth and I'm editing the first part and it's all about cogency.
49:03
It's all about narrative.
49:04
It's like, okay, if somebody listens to this straight through, there needs to be a narrative
49:08
that carries them.
49:09
And frankly, I do the same thing when it comes to preparing interviews.
49:12
And so I prepare an interview as if the person is only going to answer the questions that
49:17
I asked them and I'm not interested in any follow up.
49:21
And because if that happens, then I can guarantee that there's a narrative arc to the conversation
49:26
that ends with, hey, I really like that guy.
49:28
I'm going to go buy his book or hey, that's really interesting.
49:31
I'm going to go study this topic a little bit further, but also that's the engineer part,
49:34
right?
49:35
But there's also the artist part, which the first interview I did with Greg was, you know,
49:39
last year, which is really goes to this.
49:42
I prepared like I prepare normally and then I go back and look at the questions I prepared
49:46
and I didn't ask a quarter of them because the conversation just weaved into a more philosophical
49:52
world.
49:53
I was like, eff it.
49:54
Let's go.
49:55
Let's burn what I was going to do.
49:57
And so you have to kind of keep that tension of artists and engineer, but I blew up you
50:01
kind of explaining like the publishing process, what it looks like for your editing.
50:05
And then maybe misperceptions about what what happens during the editing process or just
50:09
the process of getting the book in the hands of the reader.
50:12
Well, I mean, honestly, let me take the misperceptions part first.
50:15
You talked about this with, with, uh, Jack, Karen, you know, his writing and you kind
50:19
of see, I think we as a society and it might just be in general humans kind of, there's
50:25
sort of this mystique or lionization of writers, right, and writing and it is seen as this
50:31
highly like, uh, I don't know, maybe it's even a kind of a sexy job to have, right?
50:37
And the reality of it.
50:41
Is that in some ways it is much more satisfying to have written than to be writing.
50:49
Because you, you know, like having written, we can have this fun conversation about my
50:57
life, the books, like I got, you know, there's a book behind me here that I've written that
51:02
I'm immensely proud of.
51:04
That's really fun.
51:06
This book behind me, Moscow acts like it absolutely sucked to write this thing.
51:12
It was miserable.
51:14
Yeah.
51:15
My, the first, the first draft I completed of it, my wife, who's my first reader, read
51:19
it, had made comments, showed up at the coffee shop where I was writing, sat down and was
51:24
like, this isn't very good.
51:26
Oh no.
51:27
Makes a big changes.
51:28
That is a terrible feeling.
51:31
It's a terrible feeling, as any of us, you know, who, who do any kind of work, right?
51:37
And not necessarily writing, but anything.
51:39
The, when you open up the equivalent of a blank document, right, and, and that could
51:47
also be, you know, if you were doing something in the real world with your hands, where you
51:52
were having to start the really kind of thankless, gritty process of getting something actually
52:00
done, right?
52:02
It typically, like it is not, it is typically not fun to get started in my experience.
52:09
It's not fun to get started going like, if you're out of shape and you have to get into
52:14
a gym and start doing work, it is really not fun.
52:18
If you were trying to learn a new skill and you were in the beginner stages of it, like
52:23
that typically sucks because you, you kind of know that you suck and it's hard in your
52:29
body and your mind don't want to work together to get it done.
52:33
And the blank page in writing is very much like that.
52:35
It's like behind all of the writing or like the finished book is like me sitting, you
52:43
know, in my pajamas at a coffee shop, staring off into space, wondering what should be written
52:49
down on this piece of paper, and that is like, that's the work.
52:55
But if, and if you don't, if you don't do that work, if you wait around for inspiration,
53:02
or you wait around to go and like clean out the garage, or you wait around to, you know,
53:08
take the jujitsu classes, or you, you know, you wait around to go to the gym, like it
53:13
just doesn't, it's just not going to happen.
53:16
Like my experience with most things in life has been that success or victory isn't some,
53:24
it's not taken in a gigantic leap.
53:27
It's literally just small decisions over and over and over again that get you to this
53:35
big thing being done, or that gets you into like that point in your life, that point in
53:41
your marriage, that point in your relationship with your kids, like whatever it could be.
53:44
It's like, it's all of these very small things that kind of build up to that.
53:48
And I think writing is very similar, where it's like, honestly, success every day is
53:53
just putting words down on the paper.
53:55
And then eventually you look up after doing that for six months, and you're like, Oh,
54:00
there's a book here, you know, yeah, well, we get to choose every day.
54:03
That's every day that's hard, you know, you don't want something in you fights it.
54:08
Well, you're, you're choosing to wade into that discomfort, because we do get to choose
54:11
our level of discomfort, I was having a conversation with one of my best friends here recently
54:15
that's thinking about getting into gi jiu jitsu, like actually training on a regular basis.
54:20
And he's kind of asking me questions like, what's it going to be like and when do I feel
54:22
like I can get better?
54:23
And I was like, well, I've been training for seven years.
54:26
And there are times when I leave class feeling like God, I'm dangerous, like man, but better,
54:33
nobody better mess with me on my way from the door to the to my truck, because I'm just
54:37
going to smash them.
54:38
And then I also have these classes where I'm like, have I ever trained jiu jitsu before,
54:43
because I just rolled with a bunch of gorillas, like there are times when you look around,
54:47
and you know, you're looking for the the nails, because you think you're the hammer and all
54:51
you see are other hammers, and just like, Oh, this is going to hurt for the next hour or
54:56
so.
54:57
But it's like, look, yeah, I trained for seven years before I got to the point where it's
55:00
like, yeah, I can, I can handle myself against just about anybody.
55:04
And if I go against someone that's significantly better, I can at least do things to frustrate
55:08
them on their, on their, you know, journey to killing me.
55:11
But then also, you know, people think about, yeah, you know, being a writer must be fun,
55:16
being a podcast, or must be fun.
55:17
But the funny thing about it is when people ask me, Kyle, like I'm thinking about starting
55:20
a podcast, what advice would you give me?
55:22
My advice is always don't do it.
55:24
Don't don't start a podcast.
55:25
I was like, if you can't stare at a screen, a blank screen, once a week for three years
55:32
and turn that blank screen into 60 minutes worth of content that people actually want
55:35
to listen to, and it's three years before you have more than 15 listeners that aren't
55:40
your family members and friends.
55:42
It's like, then don't do it.
55:43
It's way too hard.
55:44
Like the payoff is not going to be worth it.
55:47
And so I don't know if that's just my pessimism coming out, but I'm sure you have a lot of
55:50
people reach out to you because, you know, you're a successful published author.
55:53
But what do you tell people that are like, Hey, David, I want to be like you.
55:56
I want to be like Jack Carr.
55:57
I want to be like Greg Hurwitz.
55:58
I want to be like Stephen Pressfield.
56:00
I want to be like Brad Thor.
56:01
Just tell me how to do it.
56:02
Well, I think, you know, I mean, what you're saying about the podcasting resonates with
56:06
me because what I'm getting from you from this conversation and from our conversation,
56:11
you know, at dinner last year is like, you like what you're doing right now, like the
56:19
inputs to it is something that while it, while it frequently is frustrating, hard, you have
56:27
to, there's probably a lot of times where you're like, I've got to force myself to do
56:30
this work.
56:31
But there's, there's enough flow that can get generated from just the act of doing the
56:39
thing that we're doing right now that my guess is that you're like, I like this.
56:45
And so you're just sort of doing this.
56:47
And then, you know, you create that success that kind of gets created around you is a
56:53
byproduct of your desire to just do the thing as opposed to the reason you're doing this
56:59
thing to begin with.
57:01
And I think that the, what I typically tell people with respect to writing is like, you
57:08
have to, if you are, if you are getting into this, because you want to have written, that
57:16
is going to not work, because you are going to eventually have one, you might get 30,000
57:25
words down, and then you're going to run into two weeks of crappy writing, and you're going
57:33
to get frustrated and stop.
57:37
But if you are doing this because the act of sitting down in front of a screen, put aside
57:43
publishing, put aside books being out there, put aside talking about the books, if you're
57:47
sitting down because you like to create and find stories and put them down in words, and
57:55
enough of the time you show up, you can eventually, for some piece of that day, get into a flow
58:01
where time disappears, then you're good because the source of energy that you're going for
58:08
and that's powering everything is actually the input to the whole process to begin with,
58:14
which is putting words down, getting words down on paper.
58:17
You have to, like, if that doesn't energize you at some point in time for some piece of
58:23
the process, then don't bother, because it's just going to end poorly for you and all of
58:31
your loved ones.
58:33
But yeah, and I think that's, I don't know, man, I think that's true with a lot of stuff
58:37
in life of the smaller, I don't know, articulating it effectively, but if you can get yourself
58:45
to a point where you are comfortable with the level of pain required by the thing itself,
58:53
writing jujitsu as opposed to having one jujitsu competitions, you can get writing the books
58:59
as opposed to having written books, you can get yourself comfortable with the pain of
59:03
the inputs, and also on the other side, the joy and the high of the inputs, you're walking
59:10
out of the gym and you're like, "Aed out," because that hour passed like that because
59:16
you were just in the zone, you can get yourself comfortable with that sort of give and take.
59:21
You've probably found something that you'll eventually likelihood end up being successful
59:26
at and probably making a decent living from because you're aligning your energy, your
59:33
passion with stuff that other people value too, and that's beautiful.
59:39
I think that's a very good word because I tell people all the time, there are people that
59:42
are passionate about something, but they suck at it.
59:44
So look at the first week of any American Idol season, right?
59:47
So it's these people that are very passionate about singing, but they suck at it.
59:51
But then you have people that are passionate about something, they're actually good at
59:54
it, but the marketplace doesn't need it, right?
59:57
And so there always has to be this kind of overlap of the market needs this, plus you're
1:00:01
good at it, plus you like doing it, because there are people that have podcasts that
1:00:07
just shouldn't, they shouldn't be talking, they've had nothing to the conversation, they
1:00:13
had nothing to the marketplace, but it's because they want the sexy outcome, right?
1:00:16
They want to have written, they want to have created.
1:00:19
They want to be the person up in front of everybody talking, and everybody like hanging
1:00:23
on every word, but they forget that there has to be something on the front end of that.
1:00:27
And that's just that's just too much for a lot of people to overcome.
1:00:30
But let's specifically talk about the new book now.
1:00:32
So the new book is called Moscow X. So it was just, you know, you gave me the audio version
1:00:39
of it because I explained to you how hard it is for me to read fiction because my brain
1:00:43
doesn't fire all the time and it's hard for me to keep everybody straight.
1:00:46
But whereas Damascus station was obviously set in, you know, kind of Syria in that whole
1:00:51
area, this is more Moscow, Russia, right?
1:00:54
So that's kind of the main place where this takes place.
1:00:56
So I guess for you, where did you get the idea from Moscow X?
1:01:00
And this does seem like a hard left turn from the stuff that you were doing in the Middle
1:01:04
East, right?
1:01:05
So I guess where did your interest in trying to set something in Russia come from?
1:01:09
Well, so Ben, this was kind of a crazy story.
1:01:15
So I started this book, Moscow X, the first draft-ish of it was set entirely in Texas.
1:01:25
And I had come up with this idea which at the time seemed interesting and cool and I now
1:01:32
realized was insane to set a spy novel entirely in Texas who was going to be a chase between
1:01:40
Dallas and Big Bend area.
1:01:44
And there were Russians in that book, but it was like all here.
1:01:49
And I had like Russian defectors in Plano and I had Russian assassins like this hit team
1:01:58
operating under the cover of like a turbanex van and I had gone down to Big Bend and done
1:02:03
a whole bunch of research down there to kind of get the vibes right, which that was, that's
1:02:08
a beautiful part of the country by the way, I'd highly recommend that anyone spend time
1:02:12
down there.
1:02:13
It's incredible.
1:02:14
But I wrote this thing and I kind of had this like nagging feeling as I was writing it,
1:02:18
which I is now a feeling I've come to recognize I think quicker in my writing process of like
1:02:24
something's wrong.
1:02:25
There's just like these alarms going off as I was writing this thing that this wasn't
1:02:31
the right story and I just kept pushing through, pushing through, pushing through.
1:02:35
And I wrote 60, 70,000 words, something like that, it's like a decent chunk of it, sent
1:02:39
it off to my editor.
1:02:42
He calls me back a couple weeks later and he's like, this sucks.
1:02:46
Oh no.
1:02:47
And you shouldn't write this book and here's why, and he kind of gives some reasons and
1:02:52
he's of course right on all of this stuff.
1:02:54
So I'm sitting there, this is like a dark, this is sort of a dark period, right?
1:02:58
Because I've just spent all this time and energy getting this thing going and he's basically
1:03:04
saying like, this isn't a let's modify this things by 20% here.
1:03:08
This is, yeah, erase it and then start again and I listened to him, but I took a couple
1:03:17
Russian characters from that book and I thought they worked and I put them in Moscow and St.
1:03:25
Petersburg and just started to play around with some new ideas.
1:03:30
And then I quickly realized that now I have got to like learn a whole bunch of stuff about
1:03:35
Russia because I'm going to have to set the book there.
1:03:38
And honestly, I'm glad that I didn't fully think through the ramifications of that decision
1:03:42
because it was a ton of work and that's why the book was so, one of the reasons why it
1:03:47
was so hard to write them and there were other reasons, you know, the invasion happened like
1:03:50
halfway through writing the thing, which was a big problem.
1:03:54
But I, it was honestly that simple.
1:03:57
It was like, I've got these characters I like and then I think can carry a story.
1:04:01
They're Russian.
1:04:02
I need to move them to Russia and then all of a sudden I'm just off running.
1:04:08
I don't, I don't typically think about anything commercial as I'm writing really and I don't
1:04:15
think about the reader while I'm writing.
1:04:18
So for me, this was like, I like these characters.
1:04:20
I want to explore this.
1:04:21
I did not think it might be a bad idea for me to, you know, I've got this whole thing
1:04:27
in Russia because it's going to be a whole bunch of work.
1:04:29
I just kind of pushed through with the characters and then because I feel like they were speaking
1:04:33
to me and there was a story there.
1:04:35
So I rolled with it and, you know, a Russia focused book is what came out of it.
1:04:40
It's interesting.
1:04:41
You said you don't think about the reader because people are shocked sometimes whenever
1:04:45
I talk about the show and I say, well, yeah, I'm, I am thinking about the, the final audience,
1:04:49
but I'm working for an audience of one.
1:04:51
And so I'm like, whenever I had tens of listeners, it's like I'm working as under the Lord and
1:04:56
I'm going to create something that I can be proud of that I could say before God someday
1:04:59
and say, yeah, that podcast that I did, I put my full effort into it because I acted
1:05:03
like you were my boss.
1:05:04
And so it's, it's different whenever you have different ideas as to kind of who you're going
1:05:07
to.
1:05:08
Now with, with this book, so people that pick up Moscow X, it'll be in the show notes guys.
1:05:12
You should definitely check it out.
1:05:13
So this isn't like a fast paced thriller, like what you would expect from, you know, guys
1:05:19
that we had talked about Greg Herwicks with the Orphan X series or the Jack Carr novels
1:05:23
with James Reese's character.
1:05:25
It's a novel that focuses more on, I guess you could say the cerebral and not the kinetic
1:05:32
aspects of espionage, at least that's how I would would say it.
1:05:36
Yeah.
1:05:37
Yeah, that's right.
1:05:38
Okay.
1:05:39
So, so I guess give a pitch to my audience because there's, you know, there's something
1:05:42
about just turning your brain off and watching the expendables, right?
1:05:46
Because those movies are ridiculous.
1:05:48
All the first blood movies are absolutely ridiculous except for the first one.
1:05:51
But it's just like there's something to be said about that.
1:05:54
And then there's something to be said for one of my favorite movies of all time, Zero
1:05:57
Dark Thirty, because it's a three hour long movie that I went to the movie theater thinking
1:06:01
it was going to be, you know, two hours and 45 minutes about the raid on, you know, where
1:06:06
Bin Laden was hiding, and it ended up being two hours and 45 minutes of setup for 10 minutes
1:06:12
of the raid.
1:06:13
And I loved it.
1:06:14
I thought it was great, but it was way more cerebral than it was kinetic.
1:06:18
So why approach it that way?
1:06:19
Why not just do the low hanging fruit of guns, blazing and, you know, chicks being saved
1:06:23
from, you know, certain death?
1:06:25
Well, so I'll tell you, I, I, I've typically tried to write stories that have some grime
1:06:36
surrounding and kind of the real world of the espionage business and the kind of bread
1:06:41
and butter espionage business that I was talking about earlier in this conversation, which
1:06:44
is not stuff blowing up.
1:06:47
It's more this kind of dance around recruiting people who have information we want and then
1:06:54
doing stuff with that information.
1:06:56
And it tends to be the case that that stuff is far less about things blowing up and far
1:07:01
more about, frankly, kind of a psychological dance, which is some parts, you know, just
1:07:08
friendship and some parts manipulation.
1:07:11
And you're dealing with different kind of, you know, angles on deception and identity.
1:07:19
And it's much more about that, right, than it is about guns blazing.
1:07:25
Now, I will say that the arc of my books and I've, my third one's coming out in October
1:07:32
and it's done.
1:07:33
So the arc of this one is also the same as like I like and I think this is, you know,
1:07:38
talking about, you know, working for an audience of one, right?
1:07:42
I write primarily for my nightstand, like that is what I'm thinking about as I'm writing
1:07:47
is like, do I like this?
1:07:48
Like, is this a book that I would be proud of that I would want to read that I would
1:07:52
put that I, you know, if I saw this book and I hadn't written it, would I go and check
1:07:56
this thing out of the library, go buy it and put it on my nightstand to read, right?
1:08:01
That is literally, for me, that is the goal.
1:08:04
And so when I'm thinking about the story, I'm not thinking about like, well, is there
1:08:12
enough action here to draw someone in?
1:08:14
I'm honestly just thinking about if I'm interested in the story.
1:08:16
And the way that my stories have typically gone is like, I want to build, I want to build
1:08:22
up the characters to a point where you as the reader really are interested in all of
1:08:30
them, care about some of them.
1:08:33
And then it typically hockey sticks about two thirds of the way through generally where
1:08:40
the stakes become so high, all of these different threads collide.
1:08:45
And then stuff starts to go kind of crazy.
1:08:48
So in some respects, like, I'm not comparing myself to him at all, but I think like, you
1:08:52
know, Tarantino movies do this kind of good job of like, there's a lot of, there's a lot
1:08:56
of building, right?
1:08:57
There's kind of building and then at some point things just kind of go completely haywire.
1:09:02
I like stories like that, where by the time they go haywire, I start to feel invested.
1:09:09
You know, so my books, like, they don't typically start with some bunch of random people getting
1:09:14
killed because I feel like as when I'm reading those books, I'm like, I don't really care
1:09:18
about them, these people.
1:09:19
So like the action could be good, but like, you know, it's not doing anything for me emotionally.
1:09:23
Like, I want, you know, my characters to be, you know, killing family members and doing
1:09:29
all this kind of crazy stuff later in the book when you're like, Oh my gosh, like it's
1:09:33
much more, you know, impactful because you care about them as people.
1:09:37
So I don't know, that's, you know, that's how I've tended to approach it.
1:09:41
Every book's a little bit different, but that's just kind of my style.
1:09:44
And that's the character development piece that you get from these long running series,
1:09:48
like television series.
1:09:49
So it's like, you know, uh, you know, whatever you would be into.
1:09:53
So if it's breaking bad, you're like really into what's going on with Walter White.
1:09:56
And he's an anti-hero that you're actually rooting for.
1:09:59
And maybe it's Tony Soprano.
1:10:01
And so you've, you know, sat there and you've invested all this time in this character.
1:10:03
And then at the very end, when they kind of leave you hanging as to whether or not he
1:10:06
was actually, you know, killed or something like that, you know, you're super invested
1:10:10
in it.
1:10:11
But David, I really appreciate all the time we spend on all this.
1:10:13
I'll make this the last question of the day because I'm just curious for you as a writer.
1:10:16
So with Damascus station or with Moscow X, you know, how much of the stuff that's in
1:10:22
those books are at least, you know, tangentially related to the stuff that you actually did
1:10:27
or saw when you were in the CIA versus how much of it is straight fiction.
1:10:31
So like what percentage of it is like, yeah, this is like real world stuff that actually
1:10:35
happened versus, yeah, like this is just stuff that I thought would sound cool and, you know,
1:10:39
would be good if it was all in my nightstand.
1:10:41
Well, I so I think, look, I have generally tried where I can to make, you know, whether
1:10:51
whether it's an operation, whether it's a piece of trade craft, whether it's like a
1:10:54
little fact about the CIA tried to make that stuff true when and where I can, right?
1:11:02
So there's a lot of stuff in these books that that's real, a lot of almost all the trade
1:11:08
craft is real, almost all the tech is real, you know, the way the sort of even down to
1:11:17
kind of like the ethos, the culture of the CIA, like I've tried to make, I've tried
1:11:22
to build that kind of framework or foundation of authenticity across the books, because
1:11:28
I like, I like reading books where you feel like you're led into this world, right?
1:11:34
You're led into a world that the author has engineered to be to feel real and in many
1:11:40
respects to be real.
1:11:42
So like I generally try to start from that standpoint.
1:11:44
Now what I will say is like, there are points where the story demands that you break those
1:11:51
rules, the rules of, you know, reality or the real CIA, and I try to be judicious about
1:11:59
that.
1:12:00
So like I never want, because the last thing you want, I think we've all had this experience
1:12:04
in movies or with books where you read something, it instantly pulls you out of the story because
1:12:09
the author screwed up, they screwed up a basic fact, or they did something with a character
1:12:14
or a plot where you're like, that actually doesn't make any sense.
1:12:16
And you're just kind of done, like it's hard to go back to the story after that, because
1:12:20
you fundamentally have like the bubbles popped on that world.
1:12:24
So I try to be really judicious about when I do that in the story.
1:12:28
And I try, honestly, if I break rules, I try to actually explain that they're being broken
1:12:34
so that, and then sort of explain why, so that the reader understands like, okay, you
1:12:42
know, this case officer in Damascus station made this tremendous mistake.
1:12:46
How is he coming back for another piece of the op?
1:12:49
Two months later, like in reality, you sort of you get sidelined or fired, but I kind
1:12:54
of explained the way the process went enough, and then throw you a little bit of a hook
1:12:59
at the end to explain how he got involved, where I think you as the reader might be more
1:13:04
willing to go along with it.
1:13:05
So it's a balance, but I always try to keep it grounded as much as I can in reality.
1:13:13
Okay, very good.
1:13:14
Well, hey, we weaved in and out of a lot of different subject matters today.
1:13:17
I'm really appreciative of your time and like this feels like a continuation of our first
1:13:21
conversation we had last year over dinner, but as for now, that's all for me.
1:13:25
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:13:27
Well, you know, I will hopefully have some time now to actually follow through on the
1:13:32
jujitsu.
1:13:33
So we can we can do another another check in here at some point in the coming months or
1:13:39
a year.
1:13:40
And hopefully I'll have a better answer for you, because I want I want to do it.
1:13:44
And my son's gotten into swimming this year, which has been like competitive swimming,
1:13:48
which has been really good for him and awesome to just be out there using your body.
1:13:52
But I think jujitsu would also be a wonderful, a wonderful answer.
1:13:56
So this is just what I'm going to do.
1:13:59
The next time I see you, I'm not even going to ask, I'm just going to grab you.
1:14:03
I'm just going to grab you with both hands and I'm just going to see what you do.
1:14:07
Because at this point, like if everyone knows about the five love languages, physical touch
1:14:10
used to be pretty high for me.
1:14:12
But now it's way low because if someone's touching me, I'm assuming they're trying to
1:14:16
kill me with my own clothing.
1:14:18
And so it's like, you know, that's one of those things I'm just going to grab you and
1:14:21
just see what happens.
1:14:22
Does that sound like a good plan?
1:14:23
That sounds good.
1:14:24
And instead of touching you next time, I will just bring you a gift, which might be another
1:14:28
one of your love languages and more safe for everyone.
1:14:32
So cigars, whiskey or jerky, you're you're pretty much a safe bet within one of those.
1:14:37
So David McCloskey, thank you for coming on on Don't To Life of Man's podcast.
1:14:41
Thanks Kyle.
1:14:42
This was a ton of fun.
1:14:43
There you go guys.
1:14:44
It's time with David McCloskey, but before we let you go, we are going to do a quick
1:14:47
resilience boost at undaunted life.
1:14:49
Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual
1:14:52
mental and physical resilience and the links here in the show notes are where you can go
1:14:55
and buy his books.
1:14:56
You should definitely do so.
1:14:57
Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.
1:14:59
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
1:15:02
star review.
1:15:03
If you want to come speak alive at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
1:15:06
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1:15:09
That's I N F O at undonton.life.
1:15:11
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1:15:15
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
1:15:18
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1:15:23
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1:15:25
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1:15:29
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1:15:31
The links are in the description.
1:15:33
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:15:34
Remember keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:15:40
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.