Heart-to-Heart with Bobby Nash, author of Suicide Bomb

Posted on 27/12/2023 09:15:50

author : Nash, Bobby

Today The Magic Book Corner is proud to present you Bobby Nash, award winning author of several awesome thrillers, along with other novels, comic books, short stories, screenplays, and more.

Here are a few of his books for you to check out:

And here is our little Heart-to-Heart. :)

1. Hi Bobby and welcome to The Magic Book Corner. To begin, could you please tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here. I am a writer. I started writing and drawing comic books until I eventually moved into writing only. Later, I wrote a novel which put me on the path to do more and short stories. I was first published in 1992, but my first professional comic book came out in 2000. My first professional novel premiered in 2005 and my first professional short story came out in 2006. It’s been pretty busy ever since. In that time, I have had over 120 stories published. I’ve lost count of the actual number. I should really go back and count them. I also wrote some short screenplays that were produced as fan films, which was a fun experience. I still dabble with art and on occasion I act and/or work background in movies and TV. It’s a fun side hustle. You can learn more about me and my work at www.bobbynash.com

2. You write novels, comic books, short stories, novellas, graphic novels, and the occasional screenplay for a variety of publishers. Can you tell us a bit about your works please?

I like working in multiple genres, formats, and for different publishers. This has allowed me to scratch several creative itches, which is satisfying.

Comic books were my first love. I learned how to read thanks to Spider-Man, Star Wars, Star Trek, and other comics. I love the comic book medium as much now as I did then and I try to write comics as often as I can. I still love them.

After working in comics for a few years, I decided to try my hand at a novel. I did and it was awful, but I finished it and that sense of accomplishment spurred me on to try it again, The result was a better written story than the first and after a few years, I sold EVIL WAYS to a publisher in 2004 and my first novel debuted a year later. I have been steady busy since then.

Evil Ways opened the door to writing shorts and novellas. There was a group of creators coming together to form what eventually became known as the New Pulp Movement. A writer/publisher who picked up Evil Ways at a convention offered me an opportunity to write some shorts for their fledgling operation, I did and the world of pulp was opened to me. I fell in love with a number of characters that I still enjoy writing today like Domino Lady, Secret Agent X, and the new New Pulp creation, Lance Star: Sky Ranger. Short stories are great for scratching that creative itch I mentioned earlier. Want to write a western but not sure if you’ll enjoy it? Try a short story before a novel. You can dip your toe into a genre to see if it’s a good fit.

I wrote some short scripts that were filmed as fan films. They were a lot of fun and I did them just to see if I could do it. Seeing them filmed was an added bonus. It was a huge thrill attending the premiere and watching it with a crowd of 200 or so people in attendance. So much fun.

3. I have recently read your thriller – Suicide Bomb and absolutely loved it. What inspired you to write it?

The initial idea for Suicide Bomb started when someone told me that I killed someone in every story I wrote. I disagreed, but went back to look and sure enough, they were right. I made a joke about writing a book where I kill a lot of characters in that one title. That’s where Suicide Bomb started, although it was called Blood Shot in those early drafts. As with all of my stories, the first things I develop are the characters. Once I developed Jacks (Detective Catherine Jackson) and Sam (Agent Samantha Patterson) and got to know them, then the plot started to gel. Plots change depending on how a character reacts to situations so once I had Jacks and Sam down, the story came together based on how they dealt with the situation I dropped them into. Had I used Harold and Franklin Palmer from Evil Ways, for example, the story would have played out differently as their reactions would have been different.

Suicide Bomb’s plot is very pulpy in nature. A bad guy we call The Controller has developed a method of turning ordinary people into assassins and pointing them toward a specific target. After completing the mission, the assassin then commits suicide, eliminating any trail back to The Controller. Homicide Detectives Jackson and Carter cross paths with Secret Service Agent Patterson while investigating, which also puts them on The Controller’s radar and a cat and mouse game ensues.

As sometimes happens, this particular novel was set aside as other projects came in from publishers. It was taking too long to finish so I decided it was time to make it a priority. Using Patreon (www.patreon.com/bobbynash), which I was new to at the time, I started polishing and releasing chapters a week (or so) at a time and then writing the ending, which was all that remained. This gave me the push to get it finished and I got feedback from my patrons while working on it. It was during this time that I came up with the new title. Suicide Bomb sounded much more exciting that Blood Shot so with the new title in place, I serialized the novel and got it out a year later in paperback and ebook. Currently, an audio book is being narrated as well. I suspect I will write Jacks and Sam again.

4. The idea of someone having the power to turn anyone into his personal assassin is both absolutely intriguing and downright terrifying. Is there a specific reason you picked this topic?

I liked the suspenseful nature of not knowing if you can trust the person next to you or even trust yourself. Would you know if you had been corrupted by The Controller? The terror of not knowing who was under the bad guy’s control was fun to play with. I also had fun inventing the unique methods of murder in the book. Some of them are downright weird. I also enjoyed playing with the pathology of The Controller. He’s quite disturbed, but in the tradition of the best baddies out there, thinks he’s the good guy. He’s doing all of these terrible things for reasons that make absolute sense to him. That makes him even scarier.

When I first came up with the idea, the first scene that popped into my head was having one of our main protagonists be triggered and turn on the other protagonist. How do you stop your friend without killing them? And if your friend manages to succeed, how do you keep her from killing herself after? I built the story around getting to that point.

5. Why a game-master and the need to be always on top of the game?

In Suicide Bomb, The Controller is a cocky guy. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and, in many cases, he is. Always a couple of steps ahead, The Controller has everything planned out. Everything is going as planned… until Catherine Jackson shows up and he becomes infatuated with her. Finally, he’s found someone on the other side who he feels can match him smarts for smarts. Jacks is intelligent, forceful, and doesn’t back down. The Controller finds her challenging and wants to not only beat her at the game he’s playing, but what fun is winning if the person you won against doesn’t know they lost? The Controller’s hubris, his desire to lord his superiority over his opponent, is effectively the thing that could lead to his downfall.

All of that comes from the character. Had I used the villain from Evil Ways here, for example, it would have been a different story. That character tried to avoid law enforcement, tried to stay under the radar. The Controller calls up the police and dares them to stop him. That mania was fun to write.

6. The crimes you describe are quite a bit bloodier than the average garden variety nutjobs out there. From where do you get your ideas for those particularly gruesome scenes?

I decided early on to really play up the death scenes in this book. I am generally not this graphic, but I felt like these needed to be unique kills. These are not murders being committed by someone trained as an assassin. These are kills being done by normal people under the control of an outside force. There’s no planning here. It’s all instinct. The murder weapons then became whatever was handy. That made for some interesting scenes. The ideas for all of the kills came right out of my head, which has made a few folks remark that it must be a little creepy in there. Sometimes it is. Ha! Ha!

7. You wrote in several genres. Which do you seem particularly attracted to and why?

I love thrillers. I tend to write thrillers most often. Plus, the beauty of thrillers is that they pair nicely with other genres. You can have crime/thrillers, sci-fi/thrillers, action/thrillers, horror/thrillers, etc… I also spend a lot of time calculating and solving crimes in my fiction so crime/thrillers and action/thrillers are the ones I return to the most. I have fun writing them.

8. Among all your books, do you have a favorite? One that means more to you than the others? And if yes, why?

This is an answer that changes from time to time depending on what I’m working on, but my go to answer of late for this question is EVIL WAYS. Not only was Evil Ways my first published novel, which kickstarted a whole lot of other projects, but this novel is probably the most “me” of anything I’ve written. By that, I mean that when I wrote this novel I had no idea what I was doing so I did a lot of things in this novel because they sounded good, some of which I have been told by editors later on not to do. If you’re looking for unfiltered younger me, Evil Ways is probably the closest you’ll get. For that, Evil Ways holds a special place in my heart.

9. Could you please tell our readers a little more about Evil Ways?

Evil Ways was my first published novel. It is a mystery/suspense/thriller. I threw everything I had into this story because I did not know if I had it in me to do more than one novel. We start with a murder in a small town. Add in a damaged FBI Agent in town to visit his estranged brother in an effort to reconnect. A sheriff in over his head. A killer on the loose. That’s where Evil Ways started. As I got to know the characters, the story branched off into paths I had not intended, but ones that made the story better.

10. How did the tale of Evil Ways begin? What inspired you to write it?

The idea for Evil Ways started as a movie Idea I put together for a friend of mine who was looking to direct a low-budget movie. I pitched an idea, but it wasn’t what he was looking for so I took the idea and mixed it with another idea I had and Evil Ways was born. Plus, there was this personal need to see if I could do it. I was still unpublished on a national scale in those days. I was looking to make my mark and break into the writing business. I was hungry for a break and writing Evil Ways helped fuel my creative passion.

I learned a lot writing this book. I took a night class on writing while working on this and got some really good feedback from the teacher and other class members that helped make the character’s stronger. It took me 6 years or so to sell it after it was finished and I tinkered with it during that time. Once I sold it to a publisher, the real challenges started. The publisher turned out to be terrible, a bad fit, no marketing help, no nothing really. However, I had a book in hand and I used that as my resume to meet other editors, other publishers, and I was able to secure work based on the published novel. It was definitely a real-world example of making lemonade out of my lemon situation.

11. You have written the occasional screenplay for a variety of publishers. Will you tell us a little about these?

I have always been fascinated by screenplays and wanted to try my hand, but I can’t write things just for the heck of it. My brain just won’t let me do it and reminds me that I have open projects and deadlines to focus on. I met some filmmakers at a con who were doing Star Trek fan films. They had their own series set called Starship Farragut. They had built these incredible sets and had filmed two or three episodes I heard on loop that weekend as they were across the aisle from my table. On Sunday, I talked to the producer and told him I had an idea for a story. He told me to write it up and they would look at it. This is all for fun as fan films are strictly that. I leapt at the challenge and my episode called “Conspiracy of Innocence” was filmed and released on YouTube. I was later asked to contribute a rewrite to another fan film called Star Trek Continues’ first episode, “Pilgrim of Eternity” and I recently contributed a couple of scripts to Hospital Ship Marie Curie. “Under Fire” was released earlier this year and I have another script that will be filmed after the pandemic is gone. I’ve also written a couple of other things that, for one reason or another, fell apart and did not get filmed. All of my filmed fan films are on YouTube. I definitely want to write more screenplays.

12. Since we were talking about Suicide Bomb, which is a top-notch thriller in my opinion. Taking into account your vast writing experience, what would you say are the common pitfalls and clichés that should be avoided in a good thriller?

There have been a lot of thrillers written over the years. I try to check that the elements I am working on either haven’t been done, or if they have, which is usually the case, how am I telling the story? Am I telling the story in a way that makes it uniquely mine? We can all write the story of a stranger coming to town. What makes each unique is how each writer tells that story. Do we see it from the stranger’s point of view or the town’s? What brought the stranger to town? It’s in the characters and details where the plot becomes uniquely the writer’s.

Clichés are everywhere. We all know them. They, and tropes like them, have been around a long time. There are different ways you can handle them. You can ignore them or try to avoid them. Both are difficult, but can be done. Or you can play into them. Have a character point out the cliché and poke fun at it or grouse at having to deal with a certain trope. There are ways to use them to your advantage.

13. And what would be an absolute DO NOT?

Do not try to write what you think will be popular. Do not try to cater to trends. Books take time, not only to write, but to get in front of the reader. From the moment I started writing Evil Ways until it reached readers was 12 years. Suicide Bomb was 18 years. If I had written to trends, that trend might have been long gone by the book came out. Now, granted, not all books take this long. My last release, SNOW STAR, was finished one month and released the next. The downside for writing to trends is you may find yourself writing a genre you don’t enjoy. If it becomes popular, you may find yourself writing that genre you dislike for the rest of your career. Write the kind of stories you want to read. That’s usually a good place to start.

14. What’s next for Bobby Nash the writer?

Up next. There’s a lot. The past few years have been rather tumultuous for my family. I lost my mother, my brother, and my dad and I both had some health issues. With all of that, I fell behind on deadlines, which I am working on catching up now. I’m currently writing a short story for a pulp magazine, finishing up a novella that reinvents a 1940’s pulp character into modern day, prepping Snow book 6, and there are 2 novels and 2 novellas on deck in various states of progress. And that’s just getting through August. Whew.

15. Speaking about planning, are you a plotter or a pantser?

I like to think of myself as somewhere in the middle. I do loose plots. I know things that need to happen, but I don’t always know how I’ll get from one to the other. I truest the characters to help me get there so for the most part, I’m a pantser, but there is some plotting done too. The one thing I have never been able to do it outline. I don’t do it well and when it comes time to write the story I already feel like I’ve written it and I’m ready to move on to the next thing.

16. On a more personal note, have you encountered any difficulties in your writing career?

Like most, breaking in was tough. Finding a publisher willing to give me a chance was difficult. This was back before self-publishing was a viable option. Today, I have more options, which is always nice. My career is certainly not where I want it to be. Finding a large audience hasn’t happened for me yet. I have an audience, and I love them all dearly, but growing the audience has been tough. I continue to work at it every day. At the end of the day, these are more like challenges I have to work to overcome.

17. And lastly, is there any advice you would have for aspiring writers, or perhaps a message to our readers?

Aspiring writers, write what you love. Have fun with it. Also, if you want writing to be more than a hobby, you have to set attainable goals and treat it like a job. This is a career I love, but like any other job I’ve ever had, there are days I don’t want to do it. On those days, I have to suck it up and do the work. Deadlines are important.

Readers, thank you for checking out my work, for leaving reviews, for the encouragement, the feedback, and the recommendations. Thanks for sharing my news, telling your friends, and nominating my work for awards. As much as I do my work alone in a tiny room, I love being part of this community of creators and readers. Thank you.

About the Author: Bobby Nash

Bobby Nash is an award-winning author. He writes novels (Snow, Evil Ways, Deadly Games!, Nightveil: Crisis at the Crossroads of Infinity), comic books (Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At The Earth’s Core, Domino Lady, Operation: Silver Moon), short fiction (Mama Tried, Domino Lady, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, The Avenger), and the odd short screenplay (Starship Farragut “Conspiracy of Innocence, Hospital Ship Marie Curie “Under Fire”). Bobby is a member of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and International Thriller Writers. He occasionally appears in movies and TV shows, usually standing behind your favorite actor and sometimes they let him act. Recently, he was seen in Creepshow, Joe Stryker, Doom Patrol, The Outsider, Ozark, Lodge 49, Slutty Teenage Bounty Hunters, and more. He also draws from time to time.

He was named Best Author in the 2013 Pulp Ark Awards. Rick Ruby, a character co-created by Bobby & Sean Taylor also snagged Best New Pulp Character of 2013. Bobby has been nominated for the 2014 New Pulp Awards and Pulp Factory Awards for his work. Bobby's novel, Alexandra Holzer's Ghost Gal: The Wild Hunt won a Paranormal Literary Award in the 2015 Paranormal Awards. The Bobby Nash penned episode of Starship Farragut "Conspiracy of Innocence" won the Silver Award in the 2015 DC Film Festival. Bobby's novel, Snow Drive was nominated for Best Novel in the 2018 Pulp Factory Awards. Bobby's story in The Ruby Files Vol. 2 "Takedown" won the 2018 Pulp Factory Award for Best Short Story. Bobby was part of Moonstone’s Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, which won a 2020 Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Anthology. Bobby’s novel, Nightveil: Crisis at the Crossroads of Infinity was also named Best Pulp Novel in the 2020 Pulp Factory Awards.