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Barry Eisler has been on the bestseller lists for a long time now. He's an award
winning novelist, having written a string of successful books centering on his wildly
popular character John Rain. John is something of an anti-hero; a half Japanese, half
American freelance assassin. Barry's titles include Rain Fall, Hard Rain, The Last
Assassin, and the new novel Requiem For An Assassin. The books are all well
researched and thoroughly engaging page turners, written from a perspective of
experience that not many can boast, and Barry was recently honored with a
nomination for the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of 2006.
Barry has an affinity for what he calls forbidden knowledge. Beginning with a
fascination with Harry Houdini as a child, Barry has extensively studied martial arts,
including western boxing and wrestling, Japanese judo and karate, and Brazilian jiu-
jitsu. He also has a personal library on subjects such as methods of unarmed killing,
lock-picking, breaking and entering, and the arts and talents used by spies.
Additionally, he worked for three years with the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
Needless to say, when Barry writes, he knows whereof he speaks.
I was quite pleased when Barry agreed to spend a while chatting with me for Web
Digest Weekly. I've been a fan of his novels for some time, and I found the man
behind them to be an extremely nice, pleasant, and charming individual. He was very
gracious indeed. I'm delighted to present him here. Spending a few minutes in his
world is just the ticket for a rescue from the ordinary.
JCP: Barry, thanks for spending this time with me.
BE: My pleasure, Carey; thanks for the invitation.
JCP: Congratulations on the Gumshoe Award nomination for Best Thriller of 2006.
BE: Many thanks for that. I hate to sound like a cliche, but it's an honor just to be
nominated. The other nominees are Lee Child, Robert Ferrigno, William Lashner, and
M.J. Rose -- great to be included in such fine company again.
JCP: What does recognition like that mean to you?
BE: Well, emotionally it's certainly satisfying... external validation that the books are
as good as I think they are. Commercially, every time I win an award, my publisher
advertises it on the book packaging, which I'm sure is good for sales. And as I said,
it's an honor to be included among authors I admire.
JCP: Your bio reads like a spy thriller in itself. Is this where John Rain got his start?
BE: LOL! I'm not sure where Rain came from exactly. But here's my theory...I have a
longstanding 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. When I was a kid I read a
biography of Harry Houdini, and in the book a cop was quoted as saying: “It’s
fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life of crime, because if he had he would
have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold.” I remember thinking how cool it
was that this man knew things that people weren’t supposed to know, things that
gave him special power. Anyway, since then I’ve amassed a small and unusual library
on some of the foregoing and on other esoteric subjects, I spent three years in the
CIA, I got pretty into a variety of martial arts...
And then I moved to Tokyo to train in judo. I think all the other stuff must have been
building up in my mind like dry tinder, waiting for the spark which life in Tokyo came to
provide. Because while I was there, commuting to work one morning, a vivid image
came to me of two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya. I
still don’t know where the image came from, but I started thinking about it. Who are
these men? Why are they following that other guy? Then answers started to come:
They’re assassins. They’re going to kill him. But these answers just led to more
questions: Why are they going to kill him? What did he do? Who do they work for? It
felt like a story, somehow, so I started writing, and that was the birth of John Rain
and Rain Fall.
I don't think it was a coincidence that when the story came to me, it involved
assassinations and so many other elements of the forbidden knowledge that at that
point I'd been studying for years.
JCP: Working for the CIA must have been very fertile territory for your research.
BE: It was. First, because I was trained in so many of the areas that appear in my
books: small arms, long arms, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices,
small water craft, air drops to friendly forces, surveillance, counter-surveillance,
counter-terrorism, agent recruitment and management, and interrogation and
manipulation techniques. Second, because the experience afforded me an insider's
perspective on the way an intelligence agency really functions -- or, as the case may
be, dysfunctions.
JCP: Tell me about your studies in martial arts.
BE: I wrestled in high school, did some judo in college and law school, and also
played around with boxing and karate. That long-standing interest in martial arts,
particularly Japanese arts, got me interested in Japanese culture generally, and the
more I read and learned, the more interested I became. I trained hard at the
Kodokan in Tokyo and earned my first-degree blackbelt just before returning to the
States. More recently I've played around with Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the Ralph Gracie
Academy in Mountain View, California. The training helps me get the action sequences
right in the novels, but I'm also fortunate to know a lot of people who are far better
martial artists than I am, with a lot more real world experience that I have, who help
me get things right.
JCP: Did your aspirations as a writer begin with the life experiences you've had?
BE: I guess so... insofar as my experiences have shaped my imagination.
JCP: Are you continuing your series about John Rain?
BE: The sixth book in the series, Requiem for an Assassin, came out on May 22. For
my seventh, book, I'm going to do a standalone thriller. For my eighth, I may return to
Rain's universe.
JCP: Do you have a favorite among your titles?
BE: You won't believe me... but every time I finish one, I feel like I love it even more
than the others. They're all terrific books, though... I know that's immodest, but I
couldn't stand up in front of crowds and try to sell them if I didn't believe it was true.
JCP: What motivates and inspires you as a writer?
BE: I love trying to find and express the essence of things -- a person, a place, a
feeling. When I feel I'm getting that right, it's just enormously satisfying, a mini-
miracle right on the page in front of me.
JCP: Are you working on a new novel now?
BE: Trying to, when I'm not out promoting... the standalone I mentioned earlier.
JCP: I understand the Rain books have been picked up for development into feature
films. Can you share about that?
BE: I optioned the movie rights to a guy named Barrie Osborne, who won an Oscar
for producing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His production company, Three Dogs & A
Pony, comprises Barrie, two Japanese partners, and one Australian partner. They all
know Asia well and are good people, and I think they're the right group to bring the
Rain books to the screen. I've adapted the first book into a script and they seem to
like it. We'll see...
JCP: Tell me about your new book tour.
BE: It's shorter than the last one! Although still a month long, with stops in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Portland, L.A., San Diego, Phoenix, Boulder, Houston,
Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Millwauke, Indianapolis, DC, Philadelphia, and NYC. Details
are on my website.
JCP: Where do you see yourself in, say, five years?
BE: I'd love to be writing a new book one year, a screenplay the next, and so on. I'd
also love to be living abroad again; it's such an enriching experience. But that will
require some negotiation at home...
JCP: Where are you headed at this point?
BE: I don't know, man, I'm still finding my way. But I like the scenery
JCP: Okay...Now for some nosy questions to satisfy your fans:
Married/Divorced/Single/Involved?
BE: LOL! Married.
JCP: Do you have any children?
BE: An eight-year-old daughter.
JCP: Who are your heroes?
BE: They're all on my MySpace page... but to mention a few here: Churchill, Ann
Frank, Ghandi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher. I admire people not
just with convictions, but with the right convictions for the right circumstances.
JCP: What are your hobbies?
BE: Since I started writing full time, I'm not sure I have any! I work out, I blog on
politics and language, and I read a ton on politics... that's about it. Thank God I love
my job.
JCP: Favorite food?
BE: Too many to list.
JCP: Favorite place?
BE: Tokyo and Barcelona.
JCP: Favorite movie?
BE: Too many to list! But two I watched recently with my daughter that are just
flawless and delightful are Ghostbusters and Galaxy Quest. Superbly written,
directed, and acted, and hilarious, too.
JCP: Shoes, socks, or bare feet?
BE: Bare feet... unless the floor is too cold.
JCP: What one bit of wisdom have you learned that you can share here?
BE: Don't watch television. Unless you're practicing to write teleplays.
JCP: Finally, what are you most proud of?
BE: No one thing, really... but I try hard to use all the potential I have, and doing so,
no matter the results, gives me a lot of satisfaction.
JCP: Barry, thank you for this wonderful interview.
BE: You are very kind, Carey! Thanks for all your good questions and again for the
invitation.
Success has found Barry Eisler in many, many facets of his life. He's taken it all in
stride as well. This is a man whose novels have earned him the respect and
admiration of millions of people around the globe. They've been translated into
almost twenty languages. With the prospect of them soon coming to the big screen,
Barry is busier than ever. He's on the road promoting his latest John Rain thriller and
he's planning ahead with gusto. His graciousness and welcoming attitude in sharing
himself in this interview were well received indeed. I have a feeling we're going to be
hearing from him for a long, long time. Barry Eisler is a dynamic individual.
Barry's website: www.barryeisler.com & www.myspace.com/barryeisler
JC Parrish
winning novelist, having written a string of successful books centering on his wildly
popular character John Rain. John is something of an anti-hero; a half Japanese, half
American freelance assassin. Barry's titles include Rain Fall, Hard Rain, The Last
Assassin, and the new novel Requiem For An Assassin. The books are all well
researched and thoroughly engaging page turners, written from a perspective of
experience that not many can boast, and Barry was recently honored with a
nomination for the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of 2006.
Barry has an affinity for what he calls forbidden knowledge. Beginning with a
fascination with Harry Houdini as a child, Barry has extensively studied martial arts,
including western boxing and wrestling, Japanese judo and karate, and Brazilian jiu-
jitsu. He also has a personal library on subjects such as methods of unarmed killing,
lock-picking, breaking and entering, and the arts and talents used by spies.
Additionally, he worked for three years with the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
Needless to say, when Barry writes, he knows whereof he speaks.
I was quite pleased when Barry agreed to spend a while chatting with me for Web
Digest Weekly. I've been a fan of his novels for some time, and I found the man
behind them to be an extremely nice, pleasant, and charming individual. He was very
gracious indeed. I'm delighted to present him here. Spending a few minutes in his
world is just the ticket for a rescue from the ordinary.
JCP: Barry, thanks for spending this time with me.
BE: My pleasure, Carey; thanks for the invitation.
JCP: Congratulations on the Gumshoe Award nomination for Best Thriller of 2006.
BE: Many thanks for that. I hate to sound like a cliche, but it's an honor just to be
nominated. The other nominees are Lee Child, Robert Ferrigno, William Lashner, and
M.J. Rose -- great to be included in such fine company again.
JCP: What does recognition like that mean to you?
BE: Well, emotionally it's certainly satisfying... external validation that the books are
as good as I think they are. Commercially, every time I win an award, my publisher
advertises it on the book packaging, which I'm sure is good for sales. And as I said,
it's an honor to be included among authors I admire.
JCP: Your bio reads like a spy thriller in itself. Is this where John Rain got his start?
BE: LOL! I'm not sure where Rain came from exactly. But here's my theory...I have a
longstanding 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. When I was a kid I read a
biography of Harry Houdini, and in the book a cop was quoted as saying: “It’s
fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life of crime, because if he had he would
have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold.” I remember thinking how cool it
was that this man knew things that people weren’t supposed to know, things that
gave him special power. Anyway, since then I’ve amassed a small and unusual library
on some of the foregoing and on other esoteric subjects, I spent three years in the
CIA, I got pretty into a variety of martial arts...
And then I moved to Tokyo to train in judo. I think all the other stuff must have been
building up in my mind like dry tinder, waiting for the spark which life in Tokyo came to
provide. Because while I was there, commuting to work one morning, a vivid image
came to me of two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya. I
still don’t know where the image came from, but I started thinking about it. Who are
these men? Why are they following that other guy? Then answers started to come:
They’re assassins. They’re going to kill him. But these answers just led to more
questions: Why are they going to kill him? What did he do? Who do they work for? It
felt like a story, somehow, so I started writing, and that was the birth of John Rain
and Rain Fall.
I don't think it was a coincidence that when the story came to me, it involved
assassinations and so many other elements of the forbidden knowledge that at that
point I'd been studying for years.
JCP: Working for the CIA must have been very fertile territory for your research.
BE: It was. First, because I was trained in so many of the areas that appear in my
books: small arms, long arms, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices,
small water craft, air drops to friendly forces, surveillance, counter-surveillance,
counter-terrorism, agent recruitment and management, and interrogation and
manipulation techniques. Second, because the experience afforded me an insider's
perspective on the way an intelligence agency really functions -- or, as the case may
be, dysfunctions.
JCP: Tell me about your studies in martial arts.
BE: I wrestled in high school, did some judo in college and law school, and also
played around with boxing and karate. That long-standing interest in martial arts,
particularly Japanese arts, got me interested in Japanese culture generally, and the
more I read and learned, the more interested I became. I trained hard at the
Kodokan in Tokyo and earned my first-degree blackbelt just before returning to the
States. More recently I've played around with Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the Ralph Gracie
Academy in Mountain View, California. The training helps me get the action sequences
right in the novels, but I'm also fortunate to know a lot of people who are far better
martial artists than I am, with a lot more real world experience that I have, who help
me get things right.
JCP: Did your aspirations as a writer begin with the life experiences you've had?
BE: I guess so... insofar as my experiences have shaped my imagination.
JCP: Are you continuing your series about John Rain?
BE: The sixth book in the series, Requiem for an Assassin, came out on May 22. For
my seventh, book, I'm going to do a standalone thriller. For my eighth, I may return to
Rain's universe.
JCP: Do you have a favorite among your titles?
BE: You won't believe me... but every time I finish one, I feel like I love it even more
than the others. They're all terrific books, though... I know that's immodest, but I
couldn't stand up in front of crowds and try to sell them if I didn't believe it was true.
JCP: What motivates and inspires you as a writer?
BE: I love trying to find and express the essence of things -- a person, a place, a
feeling. When I feel I'm getting that right, it's just enormously satisfying, a mini-
miracle right on the page in front of me.
JCP: Are you working on a new novel now?
BE: Trying to, when I'm not out promoting... the standalone I mentioned earlier.
JCP: I understand the Rain books have been picked up for development into feature
films. Can you share about that?
BE: I optioned the movie rights to a guy named Barrie Osborne, who won an Oscar
for producing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His production company, Three Dogs & A
Pony, comprises Barrie, two Japanese partners, and one Australian partner. They all
know Asia well and are good people, and I think they're the right group to bring the
Rain books to the screen. I've adapted the first book into a script and they seem to
like it. We'll see...
JCP: Tell me about your new book tour.
BE: It's shorter than the last one! Although still a month long, with stops in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Portland, L.A., San Diego, Phoenix, Boulder, Houston,
Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Millwauke, Indianapolis, DC, Philadelphia, and NYC. Details
are on my website.
JCP: Where do you see yourself in, say, five years?
BE: I'd love to be writing a new book one year, a screenplay the next, and so on. I'd
also love to be living abroad again; it's such an enriching experience. But that will
require some negotiation at home...
JCP: Where are you headed at this point?
BE: I don't know, man, I'm still finding my way. But I like the scenery
JCP: Okay...Now for some nosy questions to satisfy your fans:
Married/Divorced/Single/Involved?
BE: LOL! Married.
JCP: Do you have any children?
BE: An eight-year-old daughter.
JCP: Who are your heroes?
BE: They're all on my MySpace page... but to mention a few here: Churchill, Ann
Frank, Ghandi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher. I admire people not
just with convictions, but with the right convictions for the right circumstances.
JCP: What are your hobbies?
BE: Since I started writing full time, I'm not sure I have any! I work out, I blog on
politics and language, and I read a ton on politics... that's about it. Thank God I love
my job.
JCP: Favorite food?
BE: Too many to list.
JCP: Favorite place?
BE: Tokyo and Barcelona.
JCP: Favorite movie?
BE: Too many to list! But two I watched recently with my daughter that are just
flawless and delightful are Ghostbusters and Galaxy Quest. Superbly written,
directed, and acted, and hilarious, too.
JCP: Shoes, socks, or bare feet?
BE: Bare feet... unless the floor is too cold.
JCP: What one bit of wisdom have you learned that you can share here?
BE: Don't watch television. Unless you're practicing to write teleplays.
JCP: Finally, what are you most proud of?
BE: No one thing, really... but I try hard to use all the potential I have, and doing so,
no matter the results, gives me a lot of satisfaction.
JCP: Barry, thank you for this wonderful interview.
BE: You are very kind, Carey! Thanks for all your good questions and again for the
invitation.
Success has found Barry Eisler in many, many facets of his life. He's taken it all in
stride as well. This is a man whose novels have earned him the respect and
admiration of millions of people around the globe. They've been translated into
almost twenty languages. With the prospect of them soon coming to the big screen,
Barry is busier than ever. He's on the road promoting his latest John Rain thriller and
he's planning ahead with gusto. His graciousness and welcoming attitude in sharing
himself in this interview were well received indeed. I have a feeling we're going to be
hearing from him for a long, long time. Barry Eisler is a dynamic individual.
Barry's website: www.barryeisler.com & www.myspace.com/barryeisler
JC Parrish
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