Jon Land – Interview

Jon Land’s latest thriller/mystery featuring fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, Strong At the Break, is now out in the bookstores and at Amazon and is rapidly rising up the bestselling books ranks! It’s a great novel that can be enjoyed as a standalone, though the whole series is excellent, so if you love thrillers, you should check them all out. Jon Land graciously agreed to let me interview him, and I didn’t even have to threaten him or coerce him with blackmail (no, I am NOT crossing my fingers–I stand by this comment), and what follows is the result. Get to know the Man, the Myth, the Legend, the best-selling author Jon Land and his inspirations, hopes, dreams, and more about his novels by simply giving in to my hypnotic powers of suggestion and READING ON!!!

Professor Crazy:  So, Jon–long time, no see…how’s the wife and kids? But, enough of the small talk and playful banter! Just tell me the truth, man–how long have you been interested in Texas history in general and Texas Rangers in particular, and what prompted your interest enough to want to write novels about them?

Jon Land: I’ve been a fan of westerns for as long as I can remember and the Texas Rangers are emblematic of the entire Western/frontier mythos so crucial not only to the development of our country, but also the development of the entire nature of heroism. But what spurred me to want to base a series around their exploits was Caitlin Strong herself. Thrillers make up the most popular book genre and the vast majority of books are bought by women. Yet there wasn’t a single female thriller series hero—think a female Jack Reacher. Sure, plenty of mysteries feature female heroes but until Caitlin and the Strong series there were no thrillers that really did.

Life or career? That’s a big distinction, so I’m going to go with career. Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, David Morrell and Stephen King were the authors whose works made me want to be a writer and much of my early work was basically imitating them. But the best advice I’ve ever been given about writing actually came from my martial arts instructor who told me to get out of the way of the story and let the characters do the work. The book’s about them was his advice, not me.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any of that $20 billion has made its way back here to fund militant groups so, yes, I made it up. But, as Robert Louis Stevenson so aptly stated, “It doesn’t bother me if you believe what I’m saying is true; all that matters is that you do not disbelieve it.” That’s where the phrase “the suspension of disbelief” was born, and the mark of all good thrillers is to come up with a premise that seems credible enough to mimic reality. And the fact is, Professor, that billions of dollars DID go missing and nobody really knows where it ended up. So maybe my idea’s not so crazy after all!

Could you please go into the role Chinese immigrants play in the lucrative flow of drugs to America from Canada?

It’s really tragic, since we’re basically talking about slave labor here. They pay their way into Canada and end up pretty much enslaved before they can win passage into the United States. They do the grunt work in the grow houses that are all over certain parts of Canada, growing and tending the plants to earn their way into the United states. This is an extremely sophisticated drug network north of the border. Everyone has their roles and there are no warring cartels or border incursions to worry about as there is in Mexico. Very, very few people realize that more drugs actually come into the U.S. from Canada than Mexico every year and these Chinese immigrants play a big role in that unfortunately.

I was interested and a little surprised to read that Don Imus had been a major source of funds for the Intrepid Center of Heroes where your character, the Iraqi war veteran Mark Serles, goes for rehabilitation after his legs are blown of by an IED and to be fitted with prosthetic legs. Could you tell us more about this, and the Intrepid Center of Heroes? Do you know Don Imus personally?

I don’t know Don Imus personally. I remember him discussing his intentions and involvement on the air and then learned more about it when I did a promotional visit to the Intrepid to meet the patients and staff. My publisher donated a whole bunch of books and I don’t think I’ve ever had a more uplifting, positive experience in my entire career. They literally work magic for our amputee and burn victim vets, many of whom are really just kids and have been given a second lease on life now. Very few of them walk into the Intrepid but almost all of them walk out. Spending time there and getting to know these young people and the wonderful doctors and nurses who are there for them really changes your outlook on life and reminds you of the things that are really important. Man, how much of our lives are spent obsessing over the trivial when these kids are learning to walk on prosthetic limbs.

You have made the sex slave rings in Mexico a big part in the second novel in your Caitlin Strong series, Strong Justice. This time, Cort Wesley Masters, the outlaw sometimes love interest of Caitlin, has his teen son Dylan kidnapped by one of the rings when he travels there in his dad’s truck to see Maria Lopez (who was rescued thank to Dylan, Cort, and Caitlin in Strong Justice). Dylan eventually winds up because of this in the hands of Malcolm Arno, the founder of the Patriot Sun organization.  What are the goals of the Patriot Sun, and why does Arno think kidnapping Dylan will get back at Caitlin in some way?

Well, it’s all personal for him. As children, he and Caitlin were both present when her father killed his, and he’s been thirsting for vengeance ever since. Since Dylan is like Caitlin’s surrogate son, what better way to gain that vengeance than to kidnap and ultimately kill the boy? Shakespeare taught us that villainy is all about obsession and this particular obsession defines Malcolm Arno and will ultimately destroy him just as their obsessions similarly destroyed a host of Shakespearean characters.

Colonel Paz is also back in Strong At the Break. Why does he refer to Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong as “my ranger”? Why is Paz building up an army in Mexico?

To provide a personal army for Mexico’s head drug enforcer to use against the cartels. Of course, Paz has a tendency to pursue his own agenda, so things don’t work out exactly as planned. And there’s a really nice connective twist about who’s really backing this army and how that ties in with the overall plot. Paz is one of my greatest character creations—he wasn’t even supposed to survive the first installment in the series (Strong Enough to Die, available as an E-book for only $2.99 now!) but decided he had a different nature than I’d intended to give him. He’s actually hired to kill Caitlin Strong, but fails and develops an obsession with her that leads him to change his ways profoundly. Because of that he’s extremely protective of her, kind of like a guardian angel who keeps showing up when she needs him the most since he feels he owes everything’s he’s now become to her.

What did Cort Wesley Masters do that has made him a wanted man in Mexico?

Simply stated, he gunned down the Mexican drug dealer responsible for killing his son Dylan’s girl friend. But things are never simple for Cort Wesley. Violence has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember and he struggles constantly to reconcile that with being a father to two boys and Caitlin Strong’s lover.

Who is Gort, or Buck, LaChance, and what happens to his two brothers?

His two brothers were running the drug smuggling business out of Canada for the Hells Angels until Caitlin killed them and Buck is running the Mexican White Slavery outfit that kidnaps Dylan. Making people care about characters is all about making the conflict between them personal, so you can see where this is headed as far as Caitlin and Cort Wesley are concerned when they finally have their confrontation with Buck back at the Northern border.

Though you don’t live in Texas, you obviously have a “strong” connection to the state and its history. Where does this love and interest come from?

Well, I wouldn’t call it love so much as fascination. There’s so much in Texas that remains frontier oriented, that mythos I mentioned before. The rugged individualist—the very nature of the classic American hero—lives on there in a way that George Bush tried to emulate as president and failed miserably at. Everything just seems to be bigger in Texas, and that starts with the Rangers themselves. They’re still doing pretty much the same thing they’ve always been doing and the truth is my fascination with Texas grew out of my fascination with the Rangers and their history.

Why are the Mexican authorities so interested in extraditing Cort for killing, as Caitlin puts it, “a single dead drug dealer”?

That single dead drug dealer happened to be a close relative of the local governor, so it comes down to personal again. But the Mexican authorities in general are getting pretty tired of Caitlin and Cort Wesley shooting up their country, as they did in the first two books in the series. Strong Justice actually climaxes in the streets of Juarez with them, and Paz of course, laying waste to the drug cartels. So incarcerating Cort Wesley is as much about revenge as anything.

Malcolm Arno’s sentiment that: “Washington has to be stopped, plain and simple,” is unfortunately one that many people today can relate to, and there are many who want to deal with this problem violently, if need be.  How does Arno want to “stop” Washington?

(Jon Land laughs) Okay, you caught me. I’m showing my politics here. Arno is an encapsulation of the right-wing wackos who I detest beyond measure. People who define themselves by stoking fear and hatred in this country. The Sarah Palin crowd, I guess you might say, or the Tea Party taken to an extreme . . . or maybe not such an extreme. Arno’s goal is to start a guerrilla war, essentially a second Civil War to spread his crazed gospel. These are dangerous people made even more dangerous by the fact that they have thousands and thousands of devoted followers. Did you know there are 300,000 Americans who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” and don’t even recognize the country’s laws? Well, they’re out there and if there was someone, like Malcolm Arno, willing and capable of organizing their hatred and capacity for violence into a singular civil movement, then Strong at the Break might not be fiction at all.

According to Arno, how has Obama “done more for their cause than any man in this room,” when he addresses his followers at a meeting?

Hey, I only wish I was making this stuff up, but the fact is the ultra-right wing has never been more organized than they are today. Obama represents the perfect antagonist for them:  smart, Ivy League-educated, liberal, and black—all things they, for the most part, despise. He’s galvanized the radical right in general and militia movements in particular all over the country—basically driven all the crazies out of the woodwork. America has never been more divided and if you want to know why, just check out the Websites of these groups who honestly believe the sky is falling. It’s a bunker mentality rooted in obstinacy, stupidity, and bigotry. Malcolm Arno seizes upon that in building his movement to a terrifying degree.

What’s so secret about Operation Rising Dawn that people try to kill Caitlin Strong to stop her from looking into Serles’ statements to her?

Without giving too much away, the money pilfered from Operation Rising Dawn in Iraq has gone to fund much of what Malcolm Arno and the Patriot Sun are trying to do. The right-wing wackos (read: the Dick Cheney crowd) can’t risk having their grand scheme exposed which means they have to try and get rid of Caitlin. Big mistake! (laughs)

When Caitlin goes to Washington, D.C., to talk to a man who calls himself “Jones” (he called himself “Smith” in Strong Justice) he doesn’t have much good to say about Bremer’s time in Iraq. Jones calls him and his men: “the most incompetent bunch of fools I’ve ever come across in my entire career.”  Would you say that also comes close to your own opinion about Bremer and his men?

Absolutely, without question. We’re still paying the price for any number of terrible decisions he made, starting with disbanding the Iraqi army and not allowing Bathists (Saddam’s political party) from playing any part in the formation of a government. I don’t think he did a single thing right, not one, which was typical of the Bush administration’s “hires.”

Who is “Kirkendale” and why is he killed?

Kirkendale’s a CIA forensics analyst who’s killed because he’s figured out the truth about the money siphoned off from Iraqi reconstruction efforts and funneled ultimately to Malcolm Arno’s Patriot Sun.

You mention Timothy McVeigh and that he called the Michigan Militia “home” for a time before he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City. I hate to say it, but McVeigh also had ties to an Arkansas militia group, and “Elohim City” in Muldrow, Oklahoma, which is fairly close to Fort Smith, where I live.   Do you think that with the better funding and growing organization of these sorts of militant groups, we’ll see an increase in the numbers of home-grown terrorists and terrorist activities in America in the coming years?

Oh boy, that’s a truly scary question. I’m almost afraid to answer it because I’m afraid I’m wrong. But it’s only going to get worse as long as Obama is president which I hope, I mean really HOPE, will continue to 2016. I really fear another “Timothy McVeigh” or even an army of them. We spend so much time worrying about Islamic terrorists launching an attack on us from the outside, I don’t believe we’re spending nearly enough time worrying about attacks launched from within.

I just have a couple more questions, Jon. Could you please tell our readers how Colonel Paz got the moniker the “Angel de la Guarda”?

Redemption is the ultimate classic theme going back through all of the American literature and Paz personifies this quest for redemption perfectly. His transformation, his metamorphosis, leads him to want to protect the kind of person he used to exploit or destroy. In this case that’s the poor peasants who live around Juarez, Mexico. After he witnesses drug dealers burn some of them alive for sport, Paz gets even by burning a huge cache of their drugs. And word gets out quickly that the poor and helpless now have an almost heavenly protector.

Would you say that the Thomas Aquinas quote you mention: “Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in circumstances confronting him” could describe not only Colonel Paz, but also Texas Ranger Strong and Cort Wesley Masters?

Professor, you’re making me sound much more intelligent than I really am!!!! (laughs) But, yes, I do think it describes their mindset and sensibility accurately. It’s not just the way they define themselves, but also a justification for the violence that inhabits their lives. I never actually thought of that quote in relation to Caitlin and Cort Wesley but, come to think of it, it’s spot on.

I know it’s kind of soon to be asking whether or not you’ve begun the fourth Caitlin Strong novel, or have a title for it yet, but have you, and do you?

Funny you should ask, because I’ve just finished Strong Vengeance, the next Caitlin book scheduled to be published in June of 2012. Hey, based on the way this interview has gone, that might have been better title for this book. And it’s gone so well, how ’bout we finish it with me making you the first person I’ve actually told that this time out Caitlin will be taking on homegrown terrorists with a plot to murder millions. I believe that makes Strong Vengeance the perfect follow-up to Strong at the Break.

Wow, Jon! Excellent scoop to give me!  I really enjoyed spending some time with you and interviewing you. I and the staff at Boomtron wish you much luck, happiness, and success in the future!

If you haven’t read the Texas Ranger series by Jon Land yet, folks, you should check it out, and pick yourselves up a copy of Strong At the Break today.