The thriller author/archaeology buff/former AMNH employee Douglas Preston spoke and signed books at Barnes and Noble in Sugarhouse last Friday. I packed all my books into my laptop bag in an attempt to be discrete, even though the bag was quite full. I got to Barnes and Noble about an hour early and saw they had all of his books on a couple of tables, which was great because I was missing a few. I bought the last three of his books I didn’t own and waited in the cafe with a raspberry italian soda (of course).
Fifteen minutes before it began, I went back to the front of the store. The employees had set up about 15 chairs and there were still some empty, so I took a seat in the last row (which was relatively close to the mic). He walked in a few minutes after I sat down and the 20-or-so of us there clapped. He laughed and walked into the back with some B&N employees. The crowd built up to around 30ish over the next 15 minutes. I really thought there would be a lot more people. I was wondering where B&N planned on hosting him, but it was a much smaller event than I thought. It was hosted by the front door and the magazines, oddly enough.
Anyway, he told us the background story that inspired his new book Impact. I could retell most of it from memory, but this blog post is already going to be quite long. So I’ll sum it up. He went on a National Geographic expedition to see a hidden Cambodian temple that was discovered by NASA with a craft they invented that would fly over dense jungle and scan what was on the ground. At one point in their expedition they came upon a village of natives that worshiped a collection of rocks they said held the spirits of their ancestors. They told them a legend that said God had thrown them down from the sky. One of the NASA scientists looked at the rocks and freaked out because they were meteorites. He tried to buy them. The archaeologists pretty much facepalmed at that. There was much more detail in the story, but that was the most interesting part.
So, after that, he opened it up to Q&A. Here are the questions and answers I remember. I know there were a couple more, but they didn’t interest me quite as much as the ones I have here. Keep in mind the answers are from my memory. I wrote them down that night right after the event, so they are from very fresh memories, but they are still not direct quotes. End disclaimer. Here they are:
Q: What’s it like co-writing a book with someone? [A good portion of his books were co-authored with Lincoln Child.]
A: Well, I send Lincoln a near-perfect world-class first draft and he rips it to shreds. And that makes me angry. So I rip his new contributions to shreds and send it back. And that makes him angry. And we go back and forth like that for a while. Usually by the end something pretty good comes out of it.
Q: What did you used to do at the Museum of Natural History?
A: Well I started off answering phones and editing the newsletter. I later edited a journal called The Curator. It was terribly boring to edit. It’s professional museum people talking to other professional museum people about running museums. I wouldn’t recommend ever reading it. I ended up being the Director of Publications, which was also rather boring. What I really wanted to do was write, so I quit the museum and moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico. My dad thought I was having a nervous breakdown. He said, ‘You’re almost 30 and you had that great job at the museum in New York. How are you going to make a living?!’ [I guess it all worked out in the end, eh?]
Q: What made you decide to co-write with Lincoln?
A: He was my editor for my first book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, a non-fiction about the Museum of Natural History. That’s how I met him. One day I got a phone call from a senior editor at St. Martin’s Press. He said, ‘This is Lincoln Child. Would you like to meet me for lunch at The Russian Tea Room? I’d like to discuss the possibility of you writing a book for us to publish.’ I was way excited. The Russian Tea Room is like the fanciest restaurant in New York. So I went to the Salvation Army and bought a jacket so they’d let me in The Russian Tea Room and I got there and there was this kid who was even younger than me! And that’s how we got started.
Q: How’d you get the idea for Relic?
A: This is a good story. Lincoln had edited my book Dinosaurs in the Attic, as I mentioned earlier, and he wanted me to show him all the weird back rooms I talk about there. I told him I didn’t have clearance to go into all those areas. But…I did have a key that opened a lot of the doors. So I decided to take him in there at midnight when everyone was gone so I wouldn’t get in trouble. So we were walking around in all the back rooms of the museum in the middle of the night. I showed him the room with the flesh eating beetles, which is how they clean off all the bones. I showed him the room with the whale eyeball collection. This guy collected whale eyeballs. It was really creepy. These huge round eyes [his hands made it look like the size of a basketball] in jars all lined up on the shelves, looking at us. We ended up in one of the dinosaur rooms at around two in the morning and Lincoln turns to me and says, ‘This is the scariest place in the world. We have to write a thriller set here.’ I told him that I was a serious writer that was going to get the Nobel Prize one day and that if I wrote a thriller no one would take me seriously. Well, he ended up convincing me. At one point a security guard came to the door at the other end of the room and shouted, ‘Who’s in there?!’ He was waving his flashlight around with his knees knocking, clearly terrified that he had been hearing voices. I thought for sure I was going to get fired. But then Lincoln–and this is how I knew he was a genius–he says, ‘Oh my god I am so glad you found us! We have been wandering around for hours! How do you get out of this museum?!’ The security guard said, ‘We closed at five! It’s two in the morning!’ And Lincoln said, ‘We know! We thought we would starve!’ The security guard just escorted us to the security exit without ever asking for my ID. He never knew I was an employee there.
Q: Do you guys plan to write more Pendergast books? How many?
A: While anything can happen, and things do happen as those of you who’ve read Cemetery Dance know [D:], Penedergast will live through the next few books at least. [What do you mean at least?! This is where you say that Pendergast will never ever die ever. D:.] We just finished Fever Dreams. It comes out in May. [OMG YAY.] It’s the first in a trilogy. [Son of a...] It goes into the mystery of Pendergast’s dead wife, Helen. [I've read the blurb on their website and am QUITE excited, I assure you.]
Q: Which character would you say you are most like?
A: Well, hm. That’s actually a kind of personal question. I’d say I was always afraid I was most like Smithback. His negative characteristics always seemed to be something I could possibly see myself having. I think Lincoln has quite a bit of Pendergast in him. He’s reclusive and rather eccentric. And a genius.
Q: [Asked by me!] So did Lincoln come up with Pendergast then? Or did you?
A: Well we sort of both did. I like to think I have a bit of Pendergast myself, you know, the genius part. [laughs] This is a good story, though. We were writing Relic and I had these two New York cops as characters. One was D’Agosta and the other was some Irish guy. Lincoln said to me that instead of having the same cliche cops that everyone else had, we should combine them and have one really unique cop. And I said sarcastically, ‘What, like an albino from New Orleans?’ And he was silent for moment on the other end. He finally said, ‘You know what? Let’s work wtih that.’ And he started to describe Pendergast–not as an albino, but someone with really pale skin that looks like an undertaker and he wears all black. He’s like a nineteenth century Southern gentleman caught in New York City, kind of a fish out of water. And within fifteen minutes, Pendergast was standing there as a character insisting on being written.
Q: [Asked by me!] If you could choose an actor to play Pendergast, who would it be?
A: I can never answer this question. I have such a distinct image of Pendergast in my mind that no one can perfectly represent him. He’s like one of those characters that you just can’t assign an actor to. I know there are probably plenty of really good actors that have the talent to pull it off, but it would never be completely right to me. He’s someone like Nixon. I never thought you could pick an actor to play someone like NIxon, but then they did in that Nixon/Frost movie. So I’m sure it’s possible, but I just can’t pick one. The closest I ever saw was Val Kilmer in Tombstone. But even that wasn’t exactly right because Pendergast isn’t sickly. [So I looked up Val Kilmer in Tombstone on Google...and I gotta say, I'm just going to have to watch the movie to see what he means. He does look pale, though.]
Q: I love the books set in the Southwest Four Corners area. Will you be writing more set in that region?
A: I love that region too. I went camping there just recently and have plans to write a book in the Grand Escalante Staircase region. Just a beautiful area. So look forward to a book set in Utah in the future! [I wanted to be all WOO YEAH UTAH!!1! like people are at concerts when the singer yells, 'Hello Salt Lake City!' but I refrained. Because I'm classy.]
After the Q&A, we all formed a line to get our books signed. I was about in the middle, but upon noticing that no one else had more than five books to get signed, I moved to the back. I didn’t mind waiting and was rather embarrassed at my–let me count–20 books and 1 book on CD (yes, I had him sign that too). There is one book I didn’t have of his called Looking at the Ground and Barnes and Noble didn’t have it because it’s out of print. I spoke with Douglas Preston’s brother-in-law while waiting in line (he got behind me towards the end) and he said I should be able to find it on Amazon. He said it’s about how Douglas Preston fell in love with his (the brother-in-law’s) sister. So I’ll pick that up once I’ve caught up on all the books I just bought.
And so, finally, I made it to the table. I instantly blushed and said, “I, um, have a lot.” He said, “Great!” I started taking out all my books. His brother-in-law and his brother-in-law’s wife started laughing. They took a picture of me unloading my books. And then another one when they were all stacked on the table. I said, “This is so embarrassing.” Douglas Preston laughed and said he loved signing people’s collections. I already knew that because I had read his FAQs online, but it was still embarrassing.
While he was signing I told him I had majored in Archaeology and that I had done my field study in Escalante (since that’s where he’s setting one of his future books) and he thought that was really cool. He asked where it was and I told him right outside the city of Escalante.
Then there was some silence…cuz 20 books takes a little time to sign…and I cleverly said, “At least my name is short.” He laughed and said, “Yeah!”
…more silence as I started packing my books back in my bag…
Then I asked if he was going to come to Salt Lake on tour for Fever Dreams and he said yes! I was way excited! But then he said Lincoln probably wouldn’t come. And then I was bummed. Because I want Lincoln to sign all the co-authored books too. Plus he has his own stand-alone thrillers that I want to buy and read. Apparently, Lincoln won’t ever fly. And as he lives on the East coast, that doesn’t bode well for a Salt Lake appearance. Douglas Preston said if they got a bus he would go on that, but maybe not all the way out here. He just doesn’t like travel. Boo! Come to Salt Lake Lincoln Child!
Well that about covers it. I met a lady while waiting in line that had a digital camera and took pictures of me getting my books signed and then one with me standing next to Douglas Preston smiling like a doofus (me, not him). I’ll post those here if she ever ends up emailing them to me.
<3
Adrien Brody. His hair would have to be dyed blonde, but he is lanky and unique enough to work.
Jeff Goldblum. His hair would also have to be dyed. He’s kind of old, but then again so is Pendergast, so I guess it works. His ears kind of bug me though. It’s his eccentricity that gets him in.
Neil Jackson. His only drawback is how young he is. And how inherently attractive he is, since Pendergast isn’t supposed to be so dashing. But my obsession and subsequent literary crush may have tainted how I picture him and so Mr. Attractive Neil Jackson makes the cut. His eyes are the perfect color, though.
Paul Bettany. He is one of my favorite actors. And the hair and eyes are spot on. Seriously, I honestly think he’s perfect for the part. Tall, lanky, unique enough while still being attractive. I would join the casting director’s fan club if they were this spot-on.
Yes, that’s Sting. A lot of people online have pegged him as the perfect Pendergast. And if I hadn’t found Paul Bettany (thank you Jamie), I would have agreed that he looked the closest. Pendergast isn’t quite so rock-star, but it would kick ass if he was. ^^
