Blake Crouch Interview

We have talked to Blake Crouch, author of over a dozen bestselling suspense novels. His Wayward Pines series is currently being produced as a TV show by M. Night Shyamalan.

For the benefit of those not familiar with the Wayward Pines series, can you tell us a bit about it?

It’s a story about a haunting, strange, quirky, sometimes terrifying town in northern Idaho that is very special and one of a kind for reasons I can’t go into because it would spoil the end of the first book, Pines.

Has it been challenging writing a serial vs. a stand alone novel?

Very! I can’t wait to write a standalone novel again. With a series, the cast of characters just keeps growing and growing, and I have to constantly refer back to prior settings and characters I’ve described. There’s specifically defined world which I have to constantly keep consistent.

Your Wayward Pines series is being produced as a TV series by M. Night Shyamalan and you are involved in writing the script as we understand it. How has that that experience been compared to writing the series?

Writing on the show is obviously a totally different experience than writing in my pajamas in my home in Colorado. It is the most collaborative creative process I’ve ever experienced.

What is your expectations to the TV series? It seems you have a really good cast going there and even M. Night Shyamalan as a director.

I’m over the moon about the team that has been assembled for this show.

On several of your projects in the past you have worked with other authors. Can you tell us a bit about what led you to this?

I love collaborating with friends who happen to be writers. That’s how Joe Konrath and I started out on the short story “Serial.” That short story grew into an entire experiment where we intertwined our two series (my Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite series, Joe’s Jack Daniels’ series). The experience of writing with someone else (often in real time in a Google doc, which is how Konrath and I work) is exhilarating. It’s almost like playing music, like jamming with another musician. It allows room for experimentation and improvisation, which I don’t often get to do in my solo work.

How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurned you on?

I started writing really early on, and my brother Jordan was my first audience. I would come up with scary stories to tell him at bedtime. I wrote lots of terrible poetry in high school, a really bad first novel in college, and then struck upon Desert Places my sophomore year at UNC-Chapel Hill. That would become my first published novel. In terms of moments that pushed me toward becoming a writer…. My parents, my wife, and my English teacher in the 8th grade were all hugely supportive at moments during my development as a writer that were critical, where I might have quit when things got too hard.

What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?

I love to read the kind of books I write. Genre-breaking. Fresh-concept. World-building. My all-time top three authors would have to be Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Harris, and Pat Conroy. Favorite novel of all time, BLOOD MERIDIAN. I just finished reading Wool by Hugh Howey, which was brilliant, and I love the new Marcus Sakey thriller, Brilliance.

What do you do when you’re not writing, any hobbies?

I love to hike, fly-fish, and ski in the mountains where I live in Colorado.

Any thoughts on what projects you might like to pursue once your Wayward Pines series is complete?

At the moment, with the deadline for the third book in the Wayward Pines Series looming, I can barely think past tomorrow!

Anything you’d like to add?

Thanks for having me!

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Visit Blake Crouch at www.blakecrouch.com

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