Raymond Benson, Author of the James Bond Anthology & Dark Side of the Morgue

June 8, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. It’s starting to be Spring out here in New York; it’s very pleasant to see. We have 4 guests on the show today; 3 authors and 1 musician as always at the end of the show. We have the Lovell Sisters, who are doing very quite well, in the field of Bluegrass. They have a charming and skill sound about them, virtuosos on their instruments. I’ll be happy to chat with them at the end of the show. I’ve got 3 authors on, Paul Doyle, the author of Hot Shots & Heavy Hits. I’ll talk to him about the undercover drug world. At 3:30, we’re going to chat with Jeremy Robinson, who is the author of Antarktos Rising. The fascinating book he’s put together. At the beginning of the show, my pleasure to have on the show, Raymond Benson. He’s the author of a whole bunch of things including the James Bond Anthology that just came out. We’ve had him on the show before and we’re also going to chat with him on his brand new novel, Dark Side of the Morgue, a Rock ‘n Roll thriller. Welcome to the show Raymond Benson.

Raymond Benson: Hello Dr. Kent, How are you?

Dr. Kent: Very Good. Tell me about this new novel.

Raymond Benson: Well Dark Side of the Morgue is the second book in a series, featuring a Rock ‘n Roll detective named Spike Berenger. He’s a private eye. He works in the Rock ‘n Roll business. He is based in New York. The first book came out last year, took place in New York. The second book Dark Side of the Morgue just came out and this one takes place in Chicago. And lots of humor and music references. And cameo appearances by real rock stars. And sex drugs and Rock ‘n Roll. What more could you ask for?

Dr. Kent: Huh. True, true of that. Well tell me about the process of putting together this series, as well you know we talked about in past putting together the James Bond series. What do you do, when you have a character in your brain and you have to get him out?

Raymond Benson: Well Spike Beringer is really pretty much a lot like me. I’m a big classic rock fan myself and I’m a musician. I put a lot of myself into this guy, although he doesn’t look like me anyway. He plays guitar and I play piano, so there’s those differences. He comes from Texas and which I do too. I lived in New York City for a long time as well. A lot of his taste in music and food and philosophies in life are very similar of mine. When I first got the idea for the series, it was mainly to come up with something commercial, that hopefully for people like music and like to read might latch onto.

Dr. Kent: And tell me about the first book in the series, and this is the second, and where is it going from here?

Raymond Benson: Hard Day’s Death was Spike’s first adventure. He is investigating the murder of a famous rock star in New York. It seems like he has too many suspects; the guy’s family, a many sons, and all ex-wives, ex-band members. And all this stuff, so he has to investigate that. In the new one I capitalized on the legendary aggressive rock school of music, that came out for the late 60’s, early 70’s. Guys like Sloth Machine and Jethro Tull, Yes, Gentle Giant. There’s like a family tree of these kind of musicians, and I invented a fictional one for the city of Chicago, with all these fans date back to 60’s. And one by one each member is being bumped off by some mysterious killer. So there is some common link between all these people, and Spike has to figure it out. I should add these books my tongue is firmly in cheek. Instead of Table of Contents, I have a track listing. So every chapter, name of a song. Instead of the acknowledgement, I have liner notes. So the book you can play the book

Dr. Kent: Wonderful, and tell me when you write book like this, compared to all the other books you’ve written. Do you have more fun with it, because you can bring in that side of you, the musical side?

Raymond Benson: Yes, its a lot more fun in any of my own original books, are more fun than when I’m writing for a franchise like James Bond for example. Or I’ve done some other tie in work, like last year I wrote the novelization of popular video game, Metal Gear Solid. And I’ll have a sequel coming out later this year. I wrote for Tom Clancy’s. I did a couple of his spin off series, The Splinter Cell 2 of Splinter Cell books. I kind of had my hand in the tie info world, which was for bread and butter money. Then I had my own original thrillers and novels that’s you know more personal.

Dr. Kent: Tell me actually as always, you know I’m very curious how is it to write for these other franchises. What is the whole process? What do they have you do? What kind of feedback do you give them? What’s the whole process like?

Raymond Benson: Well, it really depends on the franchise itself. With James Bond, I was approached in the mid 90’s by the Ian Fleming estates, to take over the original books continuation novels from John Gardner. Who been writing the books before me. I guess I got the job base on a nonfiction book that I wrote in the 80’s, call the James Bond Bedside Compaign. Which is everything you ever wanted to know about 007, type of coffee table book. And with that, I had full freedom basically the original stories that I came up with, they just had to approve them first. I had to write them in an outline. They gave me the green light, afterwards I wrote the rest of the books. Then I would also do novelizations of the movies that were coming out at that time that weren’t based on books. The later Pierce Brosnan films. Those were original screenplays to begin with, so they gave me a screenplay and I had to turn into novels.

And in those cases since I was king of working for the film company, instead of the Fleming estate, I had to stay pretty close to the script. I was able to embellish after a few of the scenes and add to it because you put a screenplay into pros, you’re about 30,000 words short. So I was able to actually invest some things and try to explain some of their complicated plots.

With Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, that’s based on a video game. I was basically given the characters and was allowed to come up with my own stories featuring the characters that were in that video game. With Metal Gear Solid, they wanted an actual novelization of the actual game story, so I had to stick very, very close to that. So it really depends on who you’re working for, and how much freedom you have, and what you’re allowed to add.

Dr. Kent: And I know I’ve asked you something similar to this in our last interview, but with fascination of most the listeners with writing for James Bond. Did you ever sort of start to dream like James Bond? Did you ever wake up in the morning think I’m James Bond? Did you ever just slip inside that character?

Raymond Benson: *Chuckling* I went to all the locations that I wrote about. I would walk in Bond’s footsteps and stay in the hotels I put him in and order the food I’d give him on a plate. I would it important for a writer, especially with the Bond books; you they are kind of like travel logs in a way. They go to exotic locations and teach the reader about that country and that culture. So, um, yeah, I did that, but I’d never jump out of an airplane with out parachute, or get into fights with scary looking guys, and unfortunately, I didn’t get to bed a lot of women that way either.

*Both Dr. Kent and Raymond Benson have a chuckle. * I’m married. You know Bond was very much a wishful film of Ian Fleming. He was the guy, Ian Fleming, wanted to be. So I just had to basically dig into the characters and try to capture the spirit of Ian Fleming. But no I don’t ever wish to be James Bond. I don’t have a high tolerance for pain.

Dr. Kent: And when you talked about when you wrote about like when you wrote about the jumping out of airplanes, this and that, and what was your research for like that stuff? Where did you find your information?

Raymond Benson: Well as writers, we always cultivate a notebook full of resources of people in various professions, that we can contract when we have a question. For instance, I have a military guy I always go to about hardware and weaponry and military stuff. I have contacts in different government agencies. I have contacts in the medical profession. So its pretty easy to find someone when you’re a writer, put their name in the acknowledgement, not hard to find someone to talk to you and give you information like that.

Dr. Kent: Hmmm, and what’s your next project, are you writing a third book in the music trilogy here?

Raymond Benson: Well, I would like to, but the publisher is on a wait and see basis. To see how this one does. If it goes ok, I’m sure I’ll do a third one. If not, I’ll just move onto something else. This is what we writers do; we’re constantly trying to turn stuff out. My next published book, will be the sequel to Solid Metal Gear. It comes out in the Fall, it’s Solid Metal Gear 2: Sons of Liberty. And the next Spring, the late Spring, I got another Anthology of my James Bond work coming out. The one that you mentioned, the union trilogy, its contained 3 of my novels and a short story that was out right before Christmas. The next anthology will have the other 3 novels and some more short stories. I’m also working on with publisher, Hard Case Crime, on a series of Hope Adventures, featuring a character named Gabrielle Hunt. Kind of an Indiana Jones type guy, and there is going to be six books in the series. Different authors writing each book, and I’ve done the sixth book and final one. My issue will probably come out in 2010.

Dr. Kent: You’re a hard working writer. How do you wake up each morning? Say, ok what’s the number one priority book I’m working on or what’s your process with that?

Raymond Benson: Its juggling a lot of things at once. Its, we authors also have to do their own promotion and everything else. We keep websites, facebook, myspace up. I spend certain amount of time morning, kind of maintaining all my various promotional sites. I spend afternoon usually working on the books themselves, and it kind of depends on what phase of the book I’m in, whether outline writing or conceptual phase dictates what I do that particular day. If I got more than one book going at once, then sure the one I have to finish first is the one I work on with the priority sometimes. I worked on three books at once

Dr. Kent: Now as a kid, would you have a thought you’d be a authoring these James Bond books and all these other thrillers and so on?

Raymond Benson: Never, in fact I was a huge James Bond fan as a child growing up. I grew up with Sean Connery movies. So you know, I never in a million years even thought, I was even allowed to even dream of doing that. In many ways, it fell into my lap. Wasn’t that I even thought it out, it just came to me. Which was a miracle in itself. As far as when I was a kid, I never thought I’d be a writer. I always thought I was going to be in theatre. I studied in college; I was a theatre major. I did spend over a decade in New York City, in the off Off-Broadway scene, as face director and as music director. I’m a film historian, as well, I teach film history at one of the local colleges outside Chicago. So the writing thing just happened, but I’m glad it did.

Dr. Kent: Well its been real pleasure chatting with you again, and I hope I’ll chat with you next time down the road when another one of these comes out. And we can find out more about Raymond Benson, on his website at raymondbenson.com. You can sign up for anyone of those social networking things he was talking about, and a list of all the books are there, and where to buy them and all that stuff. Anything else I’m forgetting?

Raymond Benson: No, you pretty much covered it all. I really appreciate you having me on your program.

Dr. Kent: Alright, well you be well and can’t wait to see the next books come out.

Raymond Benson: Ok. Thanks a lot.

Dr. Kent: We’ve been chatting with Raymond Benson, his website is raymondbenson.com. The author of a ton of James Bond stuff, and his newest book is called Dark Side of the Morgue and a Rock ‘n Roll thriller. Lets all go out and buy that, so he’ll write the third book in that series.

Ok, the next guest on my show is going to be Paul Doyle. He’s got a book called Hot Shots and Heavy Hits, talking about the undercover drug world come on back for that.

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