Barry Eisler
Barry Eisler
Barry Mark Eisleris a best-selling American novelist. He is the author of two thriller series, the first featuring anti-hero John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin, and a second featuring black ops soldier Ben Treven. Eisler also writes about politics and language on his blog Heart of the Matter, and at the blogs CHUD, Firedoglake, The Huffington Post, MichaelMoore.com, The Smirking Chimp, and Truthout...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
new-york book lists
I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.
japan cities tokyo
I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.
responsibility self causes
Anger, and the self-righteousness that is both the cause and consequence of anger, tends to be easier on the psyche than personal responsibility.
hero thinking care
If the reader cares, I dont think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.
book suffering transition
I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers, and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level, the transition to digital isnt something I welcome wholeheartedly.
thinking government long
I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as forbidden knowledge: methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.
thinking people would-be
It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, theres something even better: evidence, logic, and argument.
jobs essence stories
The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.
focus risk mind
If you focus on the risks, they'll multiply in your mind and eventually paralyze you. You want to focus on the task, instead, on doing what needs to be done.
cia experience national spies three worked
I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.
driven fiction literary nuclear relatively suitcase ticking
Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what.
cia destroy eighth government officials series tapes villains wrote
When I wrote my eighth thriller, 'Inside Out,' in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.
bad people
What I care about is readers because without readers I can't make a living... And I think it's a bad thing for the world if people don't read anymore. I want people to read a lot.
reader whether
If the reader cares, I don't think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.