Q&A with 2012 Featured Author Thomas Young
Thomas Young is the author of the suspense novel “Silent Enemy” (Putnam Adult), which follows the characters of his previous novel, “The Mullah’s Storm.” In addition to being the author of three books, Young is a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He serves as a Senior Master Sergeant in the Air National Guard and has been a flight engineer in war zones around the world, earning two Air Medals, three Aerial Achievement Medals and the Air Force Combat Action Medal. He holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Alexandria, Va.
Where do you find inspiration?
Anywhere. No kidding–I keep a small notebook in my pocket during all waking hours. You never know when something will give you an idea for an image, a turn of phrase. For example, a few years ago while riding in an Air Force crew van at dusk, I noticed some particularly striking cloud formations. I took out my notebook, described what I saw, and used it later in “Silent Enemy.” Once while sitting in church, I heard my minister quote the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and I thought my character Sergeant Major Sophia Gold would appreciate the sentiment. I wrote down the quote and used it in my newest novel, “The Renegades,” coming out in July 2012. On a military deployment, I wrote down a list of the things in my tent, just to help describe the scene later. And because my novels are thrillers set in the present day, I often see things in the newspaper I can use.
You can get an idea from a song you hear on the radio. You can go to a restaurant and order something your character might eat, write down how it tastes, and use that to put your reader in your character’s head. Inspiration, story ideas, and research material are everywhere you look.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Get a little notebook.
And read, read, read. Read in your genre, of course, to see how other people have succeeded at what you’re doing. But read outside your genre, as well. For example, though I am completely incapable of writing poetry, I read a lot of poetry. I do that because poets can teach us prose writers how to use a word not just for what it says, but how it sounds and how it looks on the page.
Go to as many writers’ workshops and conferences as your schedule and wallet will allow. You’ll learn from workshop leaders and other writers. You’ll make contacts. You might meet the literary agent who loves your project. You’ll have a great time.
Enjoy the process, because getting published can take a while. Constantly strive to learn your craft and improve your skills.
What are you reading right now?
“The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth. Forsyth is the longtime grand master of the military and spy thriller genre. Next on my nightstand is “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. “In the Garden of Beasts” is a nonfiction book about the family of the first U.S. ambassador to Nazi Germany.
If you could sit down to dinner with three other authors, living or dead, which three authors would you choose, and why?
Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant.
I know; you’re thinking, “They’re historical figures, not authors.” But Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, in large part for his six-volume history of World War II, but also for his oratory. It was said of Churchill that he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. Lincoln did the same thing in the previous century. And if you doubt Lincoln’s status as a writer, just reread the Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural Address. (There’s even a book about him titled “Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer.”) And though we think of Grant as the hard-drinking Union commander later elected President, his “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant” is quite well written, and even witty.
Lincoln and Grant saved the Union, and Churchill arguably saved Europe, if not the world. Their combination of courage, wisdom, and mastery of the English language fascinates me, and I’d like to hear anything they might have to say, from their greatest thoughts right down to “Pass the salt.”