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🗓 Last Time

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🎙 Interview

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📇 Biography

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📜 Transcript

T114 – Jason Powell

T114 – Jason Powell

Jason Powell: [00:00:00] I queried 14 people at that time. And I got automatic responses from a few.

And then a lot of their websites say it takes six weeks to get a response. Abby’s request was when we query her to send her the first five pages or the first chapter, and I sent her the first chapter, which happened to be five pages, and she responded back the next day and asked if she can have the full manuscript.

And then three days later she asked if we can set up a call.

David Gwyn: Do you want your opening to get as much traction and positive responses as Jason’s, we’re going to talk about why his opening might be the most unique one we’ve covered on the podcast. And Jason will share why he thinks it works so well.

Plus he’ll tell us about the slight change he made with his agent to make his opening even better. I’m David Gwen and agented writer navigating the world of traditional publishing. During the first season of the thriller one-on-one podcast, we’re going to focus on building the skills necessary to write the [00:01:00] kinds of thrillers that land you, an agent and readers. I’m talking to agents authors and other industry professionals about the best way to write a novel.

If you want the expert secrets, this is where you’re going to find them. Last time on the podcast. I talked to Elle Grawl.

Elle Grawl: if you’re in a kind of a psychological thriller or something where your main character might be a little bit more closed off, I think it could be a really helpful way to see them actually sharing, ideas and emotions with people that you might not normally see.

David Gwyn: She shared how she masterfully employees, sub genres to make our characters more interesting and help readers relate better to them.

Today’s guest is Jason Powell. He’s a firefighter in the fire department of New York. A member of the FDN Y incident management team and a member of the FTN. Why fire safety unit. He’s also an associate editor for the online literary journal, Bewildering stories. He has been featured in the fictional cafe. Rachel Ray, every day, sleet, bewildering stories, and numerous other online writing outlets. [00:02:00]

His debut novel. No man’s ghost is out now.

Jason, thanks so much for being here on Thriller One-on-One. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat. It’s

Jason Powell: my pleasure.

David Gwyn: Can you tell us about no Man’s Ghost.

Jason Powell: No. Man’s Ghost is a crime fiction thriller that follows a probationary firefighter during his first week in the firehouse.

It is the same week that that firehouse is experiencing a lot of prank calls to the same address from a man who gets kicked out of his apartment by his wife. So the, the prank calls are just to screw his wife. The, the calls come in every night at three o’clock in the morning. The fire department knows that they’re not, it’s not actually a fire, but they have to go because the call comes, they have to go in and the, the husband is just trying to make the wife’s life miserable for kicking him out.

Eventually he gets to the point where he feels like the fake calls aren’t enough.

David Gwyn: We’ll talk about this a little bit, but you’re a fireman and, and so obviously that’s at least part of the [00:03:00] inspiration for this story. But can you tell us how the, idea of this story came about?

Like what, where did this come from?

Jason Powell: The fire department is not at all what I thought it was when I was getting on the job. Mm-Hmm. It’s so much better. It’s a job that I love and every time I, since I’ve been a firefighter, I’ve been a firefighter for eight years.

Every time I tell somebody new that I’m a firefighter, they say, thank you for your service. And the response now is, no, thank you. And seriously, it, it feels uncomfortable being thanked because it’s such an amazing job. Hmm. I lost my sister three months into the job. My sister passed away. She was 36-year-old.

Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Thank you. And. I hadn’t even worked with everyone in my firehouse at that point, and everyone at the firehouse was at the funeral. Wow. And that’s, that’s an example of it. It really is like a family. We call it a firehouse, as opposed to, you know, police officers calling their, their workplace a police station.

It’s a firehouse. Is it is because it becomes like a family. So what I went to do [00:04:00] with No Man’s Ghost was show people the inside of the firehouse. I don’t watch first responder TV shows, so I, I’ve never seen Rescue me. I’ve never seen Chicago Fire. I know these shows are popular and I don’t know how accurate they are.

All the questions that I get asked that people ask me, is this true that they saw in the show? I’m like, no, that’s not true. So, and, and it may just be a difference between Chicago and New York or wherever these places take. The show takes place, even though Rescue Me was in New York. But whenever I get questions about Chicago Fire, they’re not ridiculous.

It is not what I experienced. So I wanted to give an example of what being a firefighter is like and what it was like being new. So I wanted to do something where the reader, since they don’t know everything that we get taught in the academy, can follow along and learn. And so I thought the easiest way to do that would be to make the main character a new person.

So he, he’s learning and we’re learning along with him.

David Gwyn: Yeah, it’s, that’s super interesting. And it, it did feel, maybe not like a different side, but just it felt really fresh. Like it felt [00:05:00] like something that wasn’t. Something that I’d seen before.

I’m curious about your writing process. Like, before we started recording here, we were talking about how you, you work some odd hours and, and some inconsistent hours. So like, what is your writing routine look like? Is it a routine or is it kind of sporadic?

Jason Powell: It’s not routine. Yeah. It’s, for me, I, it is a, it’s a hard process for me because. I’m most stimulated and most motivated to write when I’m around people. Hmm. When, so before I was in the fire department, I used to go to Union Square to write because it’s, it just feels like being around people who are being themselves and not performing and, and just being comfortable is the best place to write people like that.

Yeah. But then there are so many stories in the fire department and so many things that inspire me. When I’m at work, I just wish I can like find a, a place to go and hide and write and then at, at, at times I do. So in the fire department, we’re always on call. I can’t tell you what is the busiest hour because we, we go out when somebody calls us.

So whenever [00:06:00] there’s downtime, so our, our days, whenever we get called, we go out, we do a little training throughout the day. We eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner together. Whenever we’re not doing any of those things, I’m at my, I’m at my laptop. Writing. If I, if I feel motivated when I have a book or a story in my head, I’m always gonna motivated.

So the only time I’m not writing is if I don’t have the. Or if I’m just too tired to but I’m not a morning writer or evening writer. I just write when I have the time and then, and I have the motivation.

David Gwyn: Yeah. I think sometimes people get too precious around their writing time and they’re like, oh, if I don’t have eight hours of sleep and like a cup of coffee in the morning at five A.m and like with this special candle that I like, like I just can’t get it done.

And I, I feel like you’re a good example of like, no, like you do the work when you can. Whenever you can.

Jason Powell: Yeah. I know a lot of writers. I’ve I went to Thrillifest last year and I met a, a, a bunch of writers. I was talking with one writer, Candice Fox. She’s had a bunch of New York Times bestsellers.

She writes with James Patterson, and [00:07:00] she has a system, like she writes a certain time every day and she pushes out books all the time. I can’t do that. I don’t have that same time every day that I’m not working. Do you know what I mean? So, like, I, I can’t, I can’t do it. So I just, I think you have to go with what’s comfortable for you.

I, I get worried. I read a bunch of books I’m writing, I get worried about, um, books or memoirs on the craft of writing that tell you specific times to do things. I just feel like everyone’s not the same. James Corbin has a BBC Maestro class That’s excellent. Where he’s, he said it made me, it validated me.

It made me feel validated. He was saying, you write when you can, like, it’s a job, so you have to do it often and you have to do it. Consistently, but you do it when you can, you know, to, to try and force yourself. You find your system that works. And, and, and that’s what worked for me, for me, when I have the story in my head, I always want to write.

But then you, I gotta be kind to myself also if I can’t and I can’t. Yeah.

David Gwyn: That’s cool. So kind of kind [00:08:00] of going on on that, what are you working on now? So

Jason Powell: I’ve had several short stories published. Before I wrote No Man’s Ghost and, and my point in writing those short stories were so that I can find an agent I didn’t wanna self-publish.

I feel like I don’t have the, the intelligence and the, the strength to self-publish

David Gwyn: or the time I feel like it’s a, it’s time-consuming. It is like serious.

Jason Powell: Yeah. I admire people who can self-publish and get their book out. I feel like if I can get an agent to do it. Whatever she charges me, whatever he charges me is,

David Gwyn: is one.

It’s worth

Jason Powell: it. Yeah. So I so I wanted to build a resume, so I had a bunch of short stories published, but all of those short stories take place in New York City and they’re, and they’re all connected. You don’t need to read them all to know that they’re all connected, they’re all standalones. But one of the short stories I got published in Bewildering Stories Magazine, focused on a woman named Hannah. Hannah is the best friend of the wife in No Man’s Ghost. Oh, cool. [00:09:00] So book two that I’m working on now focuses on Charles, who’s the probationary firefighter. It focuses on his girlfriend Libby. So in No Man’s Ghost, you find out that Libby is adopted.

Her parents are not her biological parents. So Book two tells her story. Book two is also a thriller though.

David Gwyn: So were you always kind of planning to have these interconnected stories or did it just kind of come about?

Jason Powell: I think that I was always planning to, so the truth is I was writing book two or had the idea for book two before I wrote No, Man’s Ghost.

Oh wow. And then I got the idea from No Man’s Ghost and I loved it and I started writing it. And then it just seemed like a smart, I don’t know that this is true because I got an agent and I didn’t have to figure it out, but it seemed like it was a smart marketing move. Like I’m a active New York City firefighter writing about New York City firefighters, so it seemed like it would be easier to market.

My agent did most of the work, so I, I don’t know if that’s true, but book two when I realized how, how [00:10:00] well it can fit and connect, before I finished writing No Man’s Ghost that all I had to do was add a little more background information to Libby. It just felt like perfect. And so when I wrote book two though, I did write book two with book three in mind.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So I finished book two. My agent and I are going on submission again at the end of this month. Nice. Congrats. Thank you very much. We’re not gonna use the same publisher that we used before. We had a, a great experience, but. We’re gonna go a different route for this second book. So when I wrote the second book, I wrote it with book three and in mind.

David Gwyn: So, speaking of your agent Abby Saul at the Lark Group, can you, I mean, a, a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, you know, are planning on going the traditional route. And so can you just talk a little bit about what made you wanna work with Abby, what you like about working with her?

Jason Powell: Yes. So I found Abby on Manuscriptwishlist.com, which I think is probably the best site, and I looked at a few and [00:11:00] to take nothing away from any of the other sites. Poets, &. Writers has an excellent portal for finding agents Poetsandwriters.com. But Manuscriptwishlist, it just feels like I type what I think my book is.

And then everyone who’s looking for that shows up. Yeah. And so I found Abby and a bunch of others, and I think what I liked about Abby was how her description sounded like a voice. It didn’t sound like a format, it didn’t sound like a template. It, and to take, again, to take nothing away from other agents, it sounded as if she was looking for someone that she wanted to work with.

As opposed to someone who wrote a book. Mm. So I submitted, and so she only came up because she fit the criteria of what I described my book as. So I, I read her what she was looking for and I was very excited by it, and I sent it to her. And I queried 14 people at that time. And I got automatic responses from a few.

And then a lot of their [00:12:00] websites say it takes six weeks to get a response. Abby’s request was when we query her to send her the first five pages or the first chapter, and I sent her the first chapter, which happened to be five pages, and she responded back the next day and asked if she can have the full manuscript.

And then three days later she asked if we can set up a call. Wow, so you had a quick process. Yeah. And so it was quick with Abby and. My relationship with Abby has been like that. So before I was a firefighter, I worked retail a lot and, and in my head I had this idea that I did that uh, managers or bosses are nine to five. But Abby has proven that it’s like she’s available. Anytime I have any random thought, I always read books or I, I went to do the Fest and I heard, I went to, I sat in a bunch of panels and I heard writers talking about the, the imposter syndrome where they feel like they got lucky with their last book.

And people don’t [00:13:00] realize that they’re bad writers and they’re afraid to write the next book because they think that people are gonna discover that they’re actually a bad writer. And I hate to admit that I, that’s how I feel. But I love that it’s Abby that I can talk to about that. Yeah. Because she’s not like stroking my ego.

She’s telling me what she likes about the book. She’s telling me what works, and she’ll tell me what doesn’t work. And it makes writing. So much more enjoyable. Like it, I hate to think of it as a business, but I know that if I wanted to get published, I have to think of that as a business. But I also know that that’s kind of Abby’s job, so I can just do it for the passion of it.

David Gwyn: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, to have someone in your corner who, and I think you kind of nailed it in the way, the way I think about it too, which is Get Publishing is a business. And if you, if you’re working with somebody who. Is the business part of it, then like you don’t have to think about that as much, right?

You like take the feedback, like there is feedback that is required, that it has to fit a certain [00:14:00] criteria. Like it has to look a certain way or sound a certain way. But having someone in your corner can make a huge difference. Like you said, even just like the validation sometimes helps, helps the, the writing process.

That’s really cool. Yeah.

Jason Powell: So for, to your point, book two, when I sent it to her. I gave her a small description and I told her it was a commercial fiction and she read it and she loved it and she said, it’s not commercial. And she explained to me why it wasn’t. And she was like, it’s fine if you don’t want it to be commercial, we can just market it as a market fiction or, or book of fiction.

But if you want do commercial, if book three is going to be commercial and you want this to be commercial, then this is the changes you’ll need to make. And like, I appreciated that so much. Yeah. It reminded me , how happy I, and how lucky I am to have her, to be working with her.

David Gwyn: I think sometimes writers forget that as much as we are writing a book for the art of it and for the love of it and all that, like. We in a lot of ways become a brand, at least to some extent. [00:15:00] And, if you have readers who are reading something of yours, you want them to read the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

And sometimes that just doesn’t work if you’re gonna go from like thriller to picture book to like Right. You know what I mean? You gotta like stay nearby at least. Right? Yeah, exactly.

Jason Powell: Yeah. Next thing I’m gonna write is a young adult novel and everyone’s gonna be confused. See? Right.

David Gwyn: I think you could pull it off.

I do think you could pull it off. Yeah.

Okay. Let’s pause there for a second because I want to talk about author brand. Do you think at all about brand as an author? Personally I didn’t until I went on submission with my debut novel. That’s when I was deciding on my second project and I had a difficult decision. There were two ideas. I loved. Only one of them was the thriller. I made the business decision to go with a thriller because I want to create repeat readers for my books. Do you ever think about the business of publishing while you’re writing?

Obviously it came up when I was talking to Jason and I just think it’s worth thinking about as a writer.

And the next part of the interview, Jason and I talk about his opening. [00:16:00] Why it worked so well and how you can use it to get the kind of positive response that he did. But before we do that, if you’re a writer hoping to land an agent this year, check out the thriller one-on-one dot com submission page. It’s open for new submissions for agents to cover on the podcast.

That’s LinkedIn description, and be sure to check out the through a one-on-one newsletter. If you haven’t already, I provide some actionable steps every week to help you write better thrillers, suspense, mystery, and crime novels. Let’s head back to the interview.

So I do wanna talk about your opening pages. Really your opening chapter, which I, I thought was so interesting. I read a lot of thrillers obviously. And it was so unique, we’re getting this like action-packed opening here to this, to this story. And we didn’t get the main character, which I, I just thought was an interesting move that a lot of thriller writers don’t do. And I really enjoyed it. Like I thought it was so well done. And I mean, you kind of set up our antagonist a little bit at the end of that chapter, but I’m just so curious, I kinda wanna just pick your brain on, why you decided to open this story that way.

Was that always the opening? Were there any [00:17:00] changes along the way in that, that first chapter?

Jason Powell: So, no, that wasn’t always the opening. And I have to give credit to Abby for this. So it, it was funny, the first chapter, which is what uh, made her assign me or what made her wanna read the rest of the manuscript.

Everyone who, every agent who read the first chapter loved it. And Abby loved the, the first chapter. I actually submitted the first chapter as I was writing it to, fictionalcafe.com as a, as a short piece, and they published it. And the owners they like, sort of took me under their wing and, they offered me any help I need with finding an agent and publisher when I finished the book.

Yeah. And they actually helped me write my query letter that I submitted to Abby. So I love the, the, the original first chapter. The problem was, the original first chapter is the same exact scene, but it takes place inside the apartment. It shows the antagonist causing the fire. So when I [00:18:00] sent it to Abby, when we were finished, when she read it and we had our phone call, she said, the problem is there’s no mystery anymore.

I’ve already told the reader who, who did this and why. What is it that they’re gonna read for? So the rest of the book, if they read it, they’ll enjoy it. But why would they wanna read, continue reading it. So to do with the, the other way to take it outside of the antagonist, uh, perspective, I add a little mystery.

I didn’t wanna go into Charles because that’s gonna come later in the book. So I wanted. So if I wasn’t gonna do the protagonists and I wasn’t gonna do the antagonist, it just felt like, okay, every time I go to a fire, there’s a crowd of people watching me. I’ll just write it from the crowd’s perspective.

David Gwyn: Yeah, and it felt so immersive as a reader and like I said, like action packed. We were right in it. And I like flew through the first chapter and I thought it was just so unique and so well done. And I think a lot of, if you’re, if, if you’re listening to this and you’re a thriller writer, especially somebody who I think like the action aspect of it was really [00:19:00] important. Like if you’re somebody who’s writing a story that’s going to have action in it, sometimes just like letting your reader know, like, this is why, you know, this is what you’re gonna get at least in, in some regard.

With this story, I think is really powerful. Because I think it’s just such a unique perspective. And so is there a reason, like, is there, I don’t even know how to ask this question really, but like, I’m curious if you think that this particular opening, like why it works so well with this type of story, if that makes any sense.

Jason Powell: Yes, I, I understand the question. I’m a big fan of John Sanford and the, the Davenport, the Prey series, Lucas Davenport novels, and the Virgin Flowers, and most of those books, the first chapter is the antagonist um, or one of a few antagonists, and I think, so you, you remember the TV series Columbo?

Where you actually watched the criminal commit the crime, and then the, the mystery wasn’t who committed the crime, it was, how is Coloma gonna figure [00:20:00] this out? Yeah. For me, I want the reader to feel like they know more than the protagonist knows. And, and then, then I want them to like the protagonist and want them to figure it out.

They want, they want the protagonist to figure it out. So I feel like it works because it feels like the reader is now involved in this. It’s like they’re like in on the secret. ,

David Gwyn: that’s cool. I, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that is really interesting that it almost, it, it is almost in that way is structured like a mystery in that you, you know, you’ve, you’ve got this, like you said, the, the mystery that needs to be solved.

And so I, I’m dying to know actually, is your second book structured the same way?

Jason Powell: It is. Ah, okay. Structured the same way. So in no Man’s Ghost, the opening chapter, is. Also the end scene, the opening chapter happens and we go back a week and we ex explain to how we get there because the reader knows that that scene is coming.

They’re more invested in how we get there. I, I, that’s my hope.[00:21:00] And I think it works. And, and then by the time they get there with the. Protagonists. They know that the scene is coming, but they don’t know how it ends, and, and so now they’re invested in that. So for book two, the working title is long time coming, and a long time coming.

The opening chapter takes place later in the, in the book as well. And by the time the reader gets to it the second time, they’re already invested in the characters. Again, that’s my hope.

David Gwyn: Oh, that’s so cool. I, I love that structure. I’m, I’m really interested in it. After, after reading, I feel like I’m gonna have to poke around and see if I can find any other stories that are structured that way.

I think a lot of writers struggle obviously with like, kind of the opening chapter, first couple of pages, especially ones that are pitching to agents. You know, they’re like, where, where does my story start? What is the best way to start it? And I think that that’s a way that some writers at least, can use.

One of their more impactful scenes where they’re really showing off what they can do as a writer

Jason Powell: I just recently took that James Corbin masterclass, but the BBC [00:22:00] Michael, and he talks about.

Where to start. And he says he himself, he likes to start in the middle. So I don’t know that I would say that I’ve seen books of his, I’ve only read three or four that follow the same format that I, that I just described. But he does start very much in the action, and a lot of authors do. I just said, John Sanford does all the time.

John Sanford doesn’t necessarily start in one scene and then go back and then bring you back there. But for me, to your point, for people who are worried about where to start, I think if the character’s gonna be likable, the character’s gonna be likable. So we can, we can get that throughout the book.

The, the opening chapter doesn’t need to be the introduction to the character, in my opinion, the opening chapter. I think it’s, it’s easier to, to capture the reader’s attention if it’s something. We would like to see somebody go through or like to see somebody experience, and then we can worry about making the person that we see go with likable.

Or someone we wanna follow. Yeah.

David Gwyn: [00:23:00] Jason, I could talk to you forever. This was, this was awesome. This was so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me.

I appreciate it. If you’re, if you’re listening to this. You know, obviously, hopefully f you know, fingers crossed we got another one coming, but go check out. No Man’s, Ghost my last question for you is just where can people find you? Where can people look you up?

Jason Powell: You can visit me message me on Www.authorjasoncowell.com, and I am also on Instagram at which is underscore thousand underscore words.

David Gwyn: And I will link all that stuff. So if you’re listening to this and you wanna get in touch with Jason, definitely head into the description here.

Grab those links and, and reach out. Jason, like I said, I, I had a blast. This was so much fun. Thanks for taking

Jason Powell: the. Thank you very much.

David Gwyn: Okay. So that’s it. If you’re still here, be sure to leave a review.

I love reading them and I feature all of my reviews in my newsletter, which if you haven’t signed up for yet, is linked in the description. If you like this content, you’re going to love the newsletter.

Next time on the podcast. I’ll be talking to Edgar award nominee, Vera Kurian about [00:24:00] her new novel, a step past darkness.

Vera Kurian: Because when you write your first novel, you can write it in one year or 20 years. If you write your second novel, you’re probably writing it under contract. And in order to meet that deadline, I was terrified of not meeting the deadline. So I wanted to make sure, and it was a really big ambitious book, so I wanted to get it right.

David Gwyn: I’ll see you then.