TC attorney Grant Parsons is introducing @nelsondemille and @alexdemille. We’ll switch to threaded tweets for the main event now. 
.@nelsondemille has written 21 novels! The Deserter is the first collaboration between Nelson and his son @alexdemille. Nelson is a #Vietnam vet. He left college to serve.
After he returned from Vietnam, @nelsondemille wanted to write about it. That book didn’t come about for several years, but he did start writing. He went back to #Vietnam in 1997. “It was kinda cathartic” and emotional, he says. “Upcountry” was the result.
.@nelsondemille’s first book contract came about when he met up with an Army buddy after the war who brought a friend who was an editor. Once liquored up, the trio decided DeMille was a novelist.
His first book earned $1500, says @nelsondemille. It was a paperback. “It was so bad. I want to burn them all. I’m not even going to tell you the name of it.”
.@alexdemille grew up with a novelist and went into film. “I was probably afraid of being compared to him.” But @nelsondemille gave him the courage to pursue a creative career.
Both @alexdemille and @nelsondemille recommend moving to LA/NYC to pursue your craft. LA for film; NYC for writing. “Your peers are doing to same thing,” says Alex. It’s a great education.
.@alexdemille is giving a synopsis of The Deserter. The deserter in the book is loosely based on Bo Bergdahl, he says, and once the deserter is spotted in Venezuela, two CID agents are dispatched to find him.
.@nelsondemille says @SimonBooks wanted a three-book deal with a collaborator. He had some ideas, held a contest, but he couldn’t get along with the winner. Suddenly, “I know someone who writes - my son!” He didn’t jump on it, but eventually came around, Nelson says.
.@alexdemille and @nelsondemille live about 20 miles apart (Brooklyn/Long Island) but they still worked separately. Nelson writes in longhand, in pencil. Alex uses a computer.
@alexdemille would get screenshots of pages his dad @nelsondemille marked up; Nelson would get screenshots of pages Alex couldn’t read. (His dad’s handwriting is sometimes illegible.)
The seed for The Deserter came years ago, says @nelsondemille. When Bo Bergdahl left his post, Nelson was fascinated. “I couldn’t imagine doing that.” But Bergdahl turned out to be not very interesting. “In fact, he was a loser.” But Capt. Kyle Mercer? Much more fascinating.
Spotting the deserter in Venezuela was @alexdemille’s idea. “One of the most dangerous places on earth.” Dangerous = interesting, Alex says. “Sending our heroes to Caracas seemed like the perfect way to screw up their day.”
Venezuela’s proximity to the Amazon was intriguing, @nelsondemille says. “We were both thinking ‘Heart of Darkness-type stuff.” He also says coming up with the ending is tough; Nelson told @alexdemille, “Pretend it’s a movie. End it.”
The big mystery — Why did he desert? — was fun to solve and integral to being able to work through the plot, says @alexdemille. And Why Venezuela? Is the other part of the mystery. They got a little painted into a corner at times.
.@alexdemille did most of the #Venezuela research, but never went there (because it’s so dangerous). He talked to expats. One said, “It’s like I’m reading my life.” “Oh god, that’s terrible,” Alex thought. He thought it might be over the top, but no.
.@alexdemille also worried about portraying the geography and topography of #Venezuela, but also the crime, the society. “It’s still a place where there’s shops open and people are living their lives.”
Both #TheCubanAffair and #TheDeserter don’t paint nice pictures of socialist countries, says Ron Jolly. Coincidence? Yes, says @nelsondemille. “I just always wanted to go to Cuba. It was a little spooky. So close to America, but a different world.”
.@nelsondemille remembers seeing Communism’s demise when he went to Russia, and again in Cuba. @alexdemille says drawing a line between #Venezuela and any kind of Democratic Socialism is “disingenuous.” Venezuela is about authoritarianism, he says.
What are your favorite thrillers, asks Ron Jolly. They’re old school, like LeCarre and Tom Clancy. Anything current? “No,” say @alexdemille and @nelsondemille. But sex scenes are increasingly important, says Nelson.
Putting some sexual tension in the book was fun, says @nelsondemille. “You can do it with two men, two women, but a man and a woman is interesting.” “It the authors having fun, the readers are having fun,” says @alexdemille. The characters in #TheDeserter are quite different.
How do you do the dialogue, the banter, without minimizing the danger? Ron Jolly asks. @nelsondemille: In #Vietnam, we never talked about the situation. It doesn’t trivialize it; it highlights it.” He calls it “GI humor.”
Is there a plan for a movie based on #TheDeserter? @alexdemille says they’re working on another book now, the sequel, so no movie plans yet. He doesn’t think he should do the adaptation; a third outlook is needed.
What themes emerged as you were writing? @nelsondemille: The endless wars we’re engaged in. Plus, we’re producing a lot of combat veterans and most of them have things in common. Another theme: American intervention - good or bad?
You can’t get too heavy with the themes, says @nelsondemille. People are always looking for the sex, the violence. You have to work on the pacing. He says #TheDeserter has good pacing.
Cold War thrillers hold a special place in @nelsondemille’s heart. He was all set to become the American LeCarre “and then the wall came down.”
What did @alexdemille learn about writing a novel? “Everything.” He knew structure and dialogue, but he had to break the habit of coming into a scene late and leaving early. Interactions are important; key scenes need to be milked.
.@alexdemille also learned to think more about the characters and not add unneeded complications. He learned a lot about language from @nelsondemille. “It was the greatest writing class I could get.”
.@nelsondemille learned to think more about plot and when a scene should end/begin by working with @alexdemille. He learned to think about scenes and acts.
The General’s Daughter was @nelsondemille’s first book made into a movie. It was an interesting process; but not necessarily good. Screenplays were bad until Wm. Goldman got involved.
Screenplays are only 90 pages; books take 16 hours to read, says @nelsondemille. Lots of stuff gets cut. John Travolta got $20M; The General’s Daughter made tons of money. Nelson DeMille did not.
@nelsondemille watched them film a scene from The General’s Daughter in an airport hangar, about 2 minutes of screen time, and it took 7-8 hours to film. He was bored crazy.
.@nelsondemille calls his writing studio “Area 51.” No one knows where it is except his assistant. Just a table, a pencil sharpener and a coffee pot. @alexdemille wrote in a library and then joined a workspace close to home.
Time for audience Q&A: Paul Brennan was a great character; why isn’t he in #TheDeserter? @nelsondemille: He would have been great. I wish I’d thought of that. Of course, he might get too old by the end of the series.
Q: Do you have a favorite of all your books? @nelsondemille The Gold Coast. I’ve lived on Long Island all my life (not on the Gold Coast) and I just had fun with it. My neighborhood, but the “other side of the tracks.” Great Gatsby meets The Godfather.
Q: Have you ever been to Marble Mtn in #Vietnam? @nelsondemille: I flew out of Danang; that’s as close as I got.
Q: What catches your eye between history and thriller? @nelsondemille: I was a history major and thought about writing historical fiction. My editors sometimes say my books are “too full of history” but I think the readers enjoy it and I’m going to change it.
Q: How do I write a novel about #Vietnam when it happened 30 years before I was born? @nelsondemille: Bruce Cotton wrote Red Badge of Courage without ever having heard a shot fired. Read it. Good luck.
Q: Endings can be unsatisfying and I feel like they’re setting me up for the next book. @nelsondemille: My endings tend to be ambitious because that’s what life is about. You work hardest on the beginning.
.@alexdemille says the plot of #TheDeserter definitely has an ending, but that characters have room to grow.
Q: John Corey is a wonderful character. Will he show up again? @nelsondemille: I’m a little tired of him. I sympathize with Conan Doyle. But ... “the book I’m writing now is a John Corey book.”
Q: Your philanthropic names show up in your books. Is there ever one that can’t work? @nelsondemille: Dinner with me used to be an auction prize. Now the charities sell a character name, sometimes up to $20K.
.@nelsondemille: But it’s hard to fit an East Asian name into a book set in #Venezuela. I have a backlog of about 7 or 8.
Q: How did Charm School come about? @nelsondemille: When I was in #Vietnam, I met some pilots who said they’d seen our comrades bailing out over N. Vietnam and we think they’re going to the Soviet Union.
Their theory, says @nelsondemille, is that the people bailing to the Soviet Union were training their pilots. It was an interesting theory, he says, and it stuck with him. “Ideas come from strange places, usually bars.”
*Stephen Crane is the author of Red Badge of Courage
