Acclaimed Author Don Winslow Speaks On "Broken," His Latest Book

In six intense short novels, "Broken" is #1 international bestseller Don Winslow at his best. In the book, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters and fugitives. With his trademark blend of insight, humanity, humor, action and the highest level of literary craftsmanship, Winslow delivers a collection of tales that will become classics of crime fiction.

Video Transcript

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RICKY CAMILLERI: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Build at home-- once again, from my home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I'm so glad that you can join us. And I'm so glad right now that one of my favorite writers, Don Winslow, could join us-- here to talk about his new book, "Broken," a series of novellas, some of which featuring characters that we've seen in previous novels, I think some new characters as well. Don, good to see you. How are you holding up?

DON WINSLOW: Good to see you, man. I'm holding up fine. Look, I'm a little disappointed. You know, I was supposed to be out to 20 cities to go to bookstores and read. And that's always a great thing to do. You know, I feel very strongly about both. And I'm grateful to them for all their support. So doing this virtually is the next best thing. And we hope it works. But I miss being in the building with. You know, it's always--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, I love cornering you in the green room and making you talk to me about crime fiction and crime movies.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, it was always great conversations. And as I've said, you have the best greenroom going. And I want to steal the artwork off the walls. So maybe I'll send someone in while we're all absent, and do that. So if the artwork is missing when you get back, it was not me.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Our executive producer will be very happy to hear that compliment. What are you doing to stay sane, to stay-- oh actually, sorry. I almost forgot-- before we really get started, I have to say that 505 million school lunches have not been given to children in the country due to the school closures because of the coronavirus. If you are watching and you would like to help, please go to NoKidHungry.org, where you can find out how you can donate, how you can be a part of helping these children get some of these meals back.

On that note, Don, how are you-- oh, go ahead.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, got it.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Oh, you wrote it down-- oh, that's great.

DON WINSLOW: NoKidHungry.org.

RICKY CAMILLERI: How are you staying sane during your lockdown, during your quarantine. Are you getting a lot of writing done? Or are you finding it hard to focus?

DON WINSLOW: Here's the sad thing. OK, for a writer, the lockdown is not that much different from real life. You know, it's like I spend all day alone anyway, writing and making stories up, and that kind of thing. So it hasn't been that different. But yeah, I've been watching a lot more DVDs, reading more, all of that kind of stuff. You know, I think that everyone's doing.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you find it-- are you finding it harder to focus with everything that's going on?

DON WINSLOW: Not really. You know, look, right now, I'm on this book tour. So it's a virtual tour. So I'm doing a lot of interviews and things. So that-- you know, that's different from my normal writing day. I'm still writing in between interviews, and when I have a chance to do it. But no, you know, I'm not finding it hard to focus. I think-- look, this is uncharted territory for everybody. Everybody's anxious and concerned. And for me, you know, the solution to that, at any time, has always been to write.

That's what I do. And that's where I think I find the most sort of solace, to the extent that I need it.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You know, reading the new book, I can't help but think that this was a bit of-- while you were finishing, maybe, "The Cartel," this was the other book that you were working on that gave you a little bit of a release from the references and the research that you had to do for "The Cartel." Is that true at all?

DON WINSLOW: To some extent. I think, like, the middle three stories in here, that are all set around San Diego, are stories that I've had in mind for quite a while, including when I was writing "Cartel," and "Border," and "Force," and some of the kind of heavier kinds of works. And then after I finished "Border," then I had a bit of time to say, let me go back to those stories. Because I knew that they weren't epics. You know, they were in one spot, and over the course of days rather than decades. But they were more substantive than would fit into a short story.

And so this gave me the time to explore that novella format and see how that worked out for these stories.

RICKY CAMILLERI: How did you know that they were only going to be in one spot, that they weren't going to be expansive? Do you know that early on, when you set in on the first page, that this is really just going to be one succinct little story? Or is that after a little while of tinkering with it, you figure it out?

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, it's after a little while. You know, some of these, again, have been in my head for quite a while. So in those cases, I knew. Yeah, I just want to set this around Highway 101. I just want to set this in Kauai. This is a New Orleans story. So in my mind, they were already kind of-- not contracted, that's the wrong word, but more specific. You know, more focused on one place.

RICKY CAMILLERI: What made you want-- and New Orleans is my favorite city in America. I love it so much. I'm heartbroken with what's happening there right now, as I am with what's happening in New York City. But what made you want to tell a story about New Orleans?

DON WINSLOW: Heritage. My mom's from New Orleans. My grandparents were from New Orleans. My grandmother was a ward heeler for Huey Long in the Depression. So I grew up down there a little bit. My dad was a sailor. And when he'd go off on long voyages, we would go down with my mom to the family in New Orleans. Or as a family, we'd go down there on vacation. So I was at a lot of Mardi Gras as a child. And so it was good to go back there, at least mentally, and set a story there.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Did you feel like-- did you go back there at all to write it, because the locations are so specific and spot on. It's hard to believe that you were able to recall all of those from memory.

DON WINSLOW: I didn't, so I had to do research. I did not get to go down there on this, specifically, so it's just a matter of kind of keeping up. You know, the locations of our memories are always different than real locations, aren't they? And I think that can be a good thing and a bad thing. So you have to recheck it for accuracy. At the same time, you want to maintain that feeling that led you to write the story in the first place.

And I have such vivid feelings about that city and about certain places, and being there, because it has such strong resonance with me.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Your three stories in that are basically the centerpiece of all of these stories, the three novellas in the center, all take place around San Diego, as you said, and feature casts of reoccurring characters, but each one with a different character at the center of it. And each story is dedicated to, I think, a hero of yours. We have Steve McQueen. We have Elmore Leonard, and Raymond Chandler.

Now, upon reading these stories, I was myself hunting for the very direct, clear influence of Elmore Leonard, or very clear, direct influence of Raymond Chandler. McQueen is referenced in his story. But what-- were they even there for you within these stories, or was it just people that you wanted to write to?

DON WINSLOW: No, no. They were very much there in each story. You know, when I got thinking about a story called "Crime 101," which is the one dedicated to McQueen, I just had this idea about this culture that was around that highway. And it was around cars. And I think that Steve McQueen defined that for us back in 60s and 70s-- almost created a cultural biome that I write a lot about.

And so I thought, hey, what would happen if I had a character driving up and down the 101, who was very aware of McQueen's heritage to the extent that he models himself after the McQueen that he knew in film. And the second story, which is called "The San Diego Zoo," which starts with a chimp with a revolver, I wanted that Elmore Leonard quirkiness. You know, where you take a story and you knock it off true north a little bit, and write it that way.

With the third story, "Sunset," if you go and look at Chandler's "The Long Goodbye," you're going to see direct references, direct little homages to it the the story. And last year, I got to go to Chandler's house. I always love to taunt to my Los Angeles friends that Raymond Chandler wrote his great Los Angeles novels from San Diego, because I'm a local San Diego honk, you know. But I got to go to his house. I got to go into the room where Raymond Chandler wrote "The Long Goodbye." It was like going to church. And in the bathroom of that house, when you look on the walls, there are still the bullet holes where a drunk Chandler tried to shoot his wife, unfortunately, fatally.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Back in the second story that you referenced, the Elmore Leonard one-- I will say, now that I think of it, the reference that I picked up on was the criminal-- the sort of main criminal of that story is comically stupid and a motor mouth, if you will, which is very Elmore Leonard.

DON WINSLOW: Very Elmore Leonard. You know, and I was writing that bad guy-- I think his name is Hollis--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, thank you. I definitely had some of the Leonard bad guys in mind, you know. I mean, listen, he wrote some ferociously scary bad guys as well, but he wrote some funny-- again, quirky, off the wall, off beat bad guys. And that's what I was trying to emulate.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Is that something that you have found-- I mean, was that a stretch for you? Because I think most people know you from, at this point in your career, from "The Force" or the "Cartel" series that you put together, all of which are these very serious epics about crime, whereas this is, like you said, it's kind of quirky. It's offbeat. Was that something that came naturally for you, or was it a bit of a stretch?

DON WINSLOW: No, I think it does come naturally to me. You know, prior to the big drug books, and even between them, I wrote some quirkier novels. Some of the characters appear in these-- Boone Daniels, the surfer, and his cast of characters, and some other quirky kinds of things. You know, I feel that I always want to have the freedom-- how do I put this-- to play the tunes I want to play.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Right.

DON WINSLOW: You know, jazz, for instance, occupies a major part of a story in this called "Sunset." And sometimes, I liken jazz to writing in the sense that, yeah, you know, you can play, like, hard bop. Do you know what I mean? You can play those fast, tough, hard driven songs. At the same time, hopefully, you can play ballads. You know? And I think that we should have the right to do that.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You also bring Ben and Chon back, from "Savages," with a story. What made you want to return to those characters?

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, because I like them so much. That's basically it. You know, listen, they're problematic, because at the end of a book called "Savages," they die, Oliver notwithstanding. And so anytime I write about Ben, Chon, and O-- you know, the principal female character there, I have to go back in time. And in this case, I went back in time and I realized-- you know, Winslow, I don't want to be too specific here, but you left a couple of characters from your other books in that place.

And so when I went back and did the math, I went, wow, Ben and Chon and O are going to be there at the same time as Bobby Z. And how old would Bobby Z's kid be now? And what would happen if I threw them together? You know, we found out. I hope it worked.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I feel like you are incredible at writing action climaxes, both with "Broken," and with Ben and Chon's story. What is it-- how do you craft those? How do you set those up? Are you just writing from beginning to end, or are you thinking about where this can go, how this can happen, and sort of crafting it on a board of some kind, with notes?

DON WINSLOW: No, I never do that. I never board it out. I never write outlines-- or rarely. Every once in a while, with the more complicated drug books, I'll have a very rough sort of outline of-- here are the broad moves. But with this these stories, no, I wrote them beginning to end. And I didn't know what was going to happen, to tell you the truth. Now, with the action sequences that you kindly alluded to, that's a matter of rewriting.

I think with action sequences-- for me, it's different for everyone, of course-- but for me, it's a matter of writing them on the first draft, very fast, like the action's just happening in real time. Do you know what I mean-- ba, ba, ba, ba. Then, when I have it down, then I take another, or several, really hard looks at it. And then it's a matter of crafting it, literally down to the syllable level, to get the right rhythms and the right beats-- and, by the way, the right moments of silence in them.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Right and figuring out how each-- because usually, the way that your action sequences are working, there's multiple people involved in those sequences. I mean, at least with "Broken" and with the Ben and Chon story-- forgive me for not remembering the exact title of that story.

DON WINSLOW: "Paradise."

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yes, "Paradise--" where you have multiple characters involved in different shootouts, or aspects of the sequence, so you're cutting back and forth.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, and that really is a matter that-- and it's a matter-- I mean, maybe we're getting too technical here, so stop me. But it's a matter of point of view, right? And what someone told me-- I'd never heard the phrase before-- the close third person point of view, in which I always try to see the action through the character's eyes, but not writing it in the first person voice, writing in the third person.

So when I'm writing it, I'm seeking that action through that character's eyes. And it's happening in real time. And I usually write, also, in the present tense. It's not like you're looking down at a table, for instance, and things are laid out sequentially. You're looking at something that is vertically in your face, right? And it's happening, boom. Then this happens, boom. And then then happens, boom.

So on the first draft, I'm writing that. And then I cut away. Let's go to the next guy. Let's see it through his or her viewpoint-- boom, boom, boom-- and so forth, until we reach what is hopefully a satisfying ending.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you ever try to change your third person voice into something-- I mean, because it feels to me that it is third person, like you said, it's very close. But it's also similar to how we would imagine our main character, or the sort of compilation of all the characters within that story, how they would talk-- that the voice of the third person is very close to the story itself, or who the people are.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, absolutely I try to do that. You know, I-- look, I have no interest whatsoever in self-expression. You know, that's not important, doesn't matter. What matters is the story and the characters, not me. So when I'm writing in that third person close voice, yeah, I'm trying to match the rhythms of that character. And hopefully, it does sound somewhat like their dialogue.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Have you ever been interested in self-expression? Have you ever been interested in telling your story, or some sort of Noah Baumbachian character?

DON WINSLOW: Look, so every once in while--

RICKY CAMILLERI: A writer alone in San Diego, having relationship problems or something?

DON WINSLOW: No. No one would want to read it, you know. I've been married to the same woman, quite happily, for coming on 35 years at the end of this month. So there's-- you know, there's not a lot of story to tell there. No-- every once in a while, I'll write a column, or a memoir, a little piece, or something. And then, I guess that's self-expression. But in terms of the novels, no, absolutely not. That's not my job. And no one would be interested. Who cares?

You know, what I care about, and what I think the reader cares about, is the story, the character. Maybe some new information, you know, in some of the novels that are closer to reality, that comes to them. They're not interested in me expressing myself. And I'm not interested me expressing myself.

RICKY CAMILLERI: How do you know when to break further from reality than when to stick to it? I mean, the opening story, "Broken," at the risk of-- I don't want to spoil anything-- breaks, I think, as far from reality as I think Don Winslow breaks, but at the same time remains kind of grounded and makes sense within the context of the story.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, again, thanks. It depends on the story. You know, when I'm writing, for instance, the big drug books, I know the story, because I'm writing a fictional version of reality, right? And so I have certain touchstones. I have certain-- you know, crossing that river, if you will, I have certain boulders to jump on, to get across. Other pieces, though, are purely fictional. They're coming from the imagination.

Now, they're all set in the real world. So you have to be realistic about that, about place, and all of that kind of thing. But no, in those cases, I'm just going off my imagination. And characters are just sort of appearing and doing what they do. And so, you know, I'm not as concerned about, boy, there was this central event, followed by this important event, followed by that one. It's just-- to be really honest with you, just making it up as I go along.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You know, when you have a character return in one of these stories, that is a big character in terms of your books and your work, but it's a very small return. I don't want to say who it is to ruin it for fans of yours. How comfortable are you with people who haven't read that book, or know who this character is, reading this-- or sort of being introduced to that character in this way?

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, it's always a tricky issue, because you don't want to assume someone's read the previous books. At the same time, you want the reader who is familiar with those books to have a really great, sort of a-ha moment and experience when these old characters pop up. So that's tricky. And it's a matter of, boy, you know, how much information do I give, and how much do I hold back? And hopefully, it was the right recipe.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Well, for one of them in particular, in my mind, it was the perfect recipe, because I got it-- I was pretty sure who was going to be early on. And then when it was revealed, I was like, yes. And then I think there's just, like, one sentence that says who he is. And that's enough for someone who doesn't know. To me, it's like, oh, yeah, he's back.

DON WINSLOW: Good. I'm glad you had that reaction. Look, you have to be fair with the reader. You know. You have to set it up early on so that it plays out at the end. I hate those stories when, you know, the guy is trapped on the skyscraper roof, and hopelessly surrounded by his enemies. And then he flies. And then the author tells you, oh, by the way, his mother was a bird. You know, I hate that moment. And so we have to set that up earlier.

But again, you know, it's so tricky, because you don't want to give it all away. And you just have to try to find just enough, but not too much.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You know, we were talking about self-expression, and how you're not interested in self-expression. I follow you on Twitter. I feel like you express yourself a lot on Twitter, as do I. But you've been kind of quiet lately. Has the turn of events in the world, in the past few weeks, made you reflect differently, or feel differently about how you use your voice?

DON WINSLOW: I have to disagree with you. I don't think I've been that quiet at all. I think I've been pretty outspoken about how I feel about all this. So I'm going to take you to task on that. I don't think--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Me too.

[LAUGHTER]

DON WINSLOW: Maybe people wish I were. That might be wish fulfillment on your part, but--

RICKY CAMILLERI: No, not at all. Not at all. I love your Twitter, Don.

DON WINSLOW: No, look. I think I've spoken out about what I think about this. I think we have a chief executive who's dropped the ball, and not just negligently, but selfishly, and for all the wrong reasons. And as usual, other people are paying the price for that.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you think he criminally dropped the ball?

DON WINSLOW: I'm not a lawyer, but I think that that's a distinct possibility. I think-- look, it's his role and his job to be on top of this, and not to drop the ball for reasons of re-election or economic reasons.

RICKY CAMILLERI: One of-- you haven't been entirely quiet, excuse me, because I have one of them in the back of my head now that I think of it, which was after the CARES act was introduced, the first bill that Congress was passing, you were disappointed in it. You tweeted your disappointment, in the sense that-- not enough, it seemed like not enough was going to people, and most was going to corporations. And we just saw-- I don't know. Just before we started, I saw that Trump fired the Inspector General from the Department of Justice, who is basically independent, and going to be in charge of overseeing where a fair amount of this bailout money goes.

DON WINSLOW: And of course, that's just a coincidence, right?

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, of course.

DON WINSLOW: Yeah, look, this administration is corrupt. There can no longer be a question about that. You can defend it if you want, but there can no longer be a question that this administration is corrupt, that it is incompetent, and that it is self-serving.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Couldn't agree with you more. Don, you are one of my favorite people, one of my favorite writers.

DON WINSLOW: Always enjoy this interview, always look forward to it.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I always enjoy your books. Please, please keep writing.

DON WINSLOW: I'm going to try, yeah.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Good to see you. I am glad that you're healthy. I'm glad that you're safe, that you are holding up in San Diego, and that this book has been put on shelves today-- or internet shelves, however people are getting books right now. Make sure that you get it. It's an incredible addition to the work of Don Winslow, and a lot of fun to read right now. Don, good to see you.

DON WINSLOW: Good to see you, if only at a distance here. I hope you're standing six feet behind the microphone, just in case.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Let me back up.

[LAUGHTER]

DON WINSLOW: And I hope to see you in person soon.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Absolutely.

DON WINSLOW: To everybody out there, be well, be safe. OK?

RICKY CAMILLERI: Please be well-- thank you.

DON WINSLOW: Cheers. Bye bye.

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