Douglas Preston - Gideon’s Sword

Lincoln: Doug was caught sneaking onto Hart Island and got in serious trouble. But that’s a story for another day…

In this book you brought back the character Eli Glinn. Did you always intend to write him into new books? Will he continue to play an important role in this series?

Douglas: No, we didn’t. In fact, once we finished The Ice Limit , we really had little thought of bringing him back at all. We thought he was dead. But requests for a sequel to that book have been so persistent that we ultimately brought him back in what we call the Diogenes trilogy of the Pendergast novels. From there, it seemed almost natural to bring him back as Gideon’s employer.

Lincoln: The man is a quintessential survivor, and he reappeared, unbidden, as we were writing the Diogenes trilogy. And, yes, Eli Glinn will appear in future Gideon Crew novels.

Do you plan to write more Gideon Crew books?

Lincoln: Yes, we do! The second Gideon Crew novel, Gideon’s Corpse , is already well underway, and we hope to do more — perhaps as many as twelve in all. (We can’t do more than that for reasons that will be clear to anyone who reads Gideon’s Sword .) The actual number of books we write, though, will probably depend in part on reader enthusiasm: we hope people like him and his adventures as much as we do!

Douglas: We’ve already sold the movie rights to the Gideon series to Paramount Pictures, for the most excellent producer Michael Bay. So we do expect this to be a long and fruitful series. Gideon is only going to get better.

You both have been in the business for a long time. How have you seen book publishing change over the years? How much does changing technology affect the challenges of being a writer?

Lincoln: There were two big changes in writing technology. The first was the advent of the computer, which made revising infinitely easier. The second was the rise of the World Wide Web, which made research much easier. Research that once took days now only takes hours.

Douglas: The biggest change in our writing lifetimes is the advent of the e-book. This is an exciting new frontier. We are just at the cusp of what I think will be the biggest transformation of publishing since the Gutenberg Bible.