Joseph Finder- An Award Winning Author

Joseph Finder’s (Finn-der) plan was to become a spy…or maybe a professor of Russian history. Instead he became a bestselling thriller writer, and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel for ‘Killer Instinct’ (2006) and winner of the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller for ‘Company Man’ (2005).

Born in Chicago, Joe spent his early childhood living around the world, including Afghanistan and the Philippines. In fact, Joe’s first language was Farsi, which he spoke as a child in Kabul. Finally, after a stint in Bellingham, Washington, his family finally settled outside of Albany, New York.

After taking a high school seminar on the literature and history of Russia, Joe was hooked. He went on to major in Russian studies at Yale, where he also sang with the school’s legendary a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs (and likes to boast that he sang next to Ella Fitzgerald). Joe graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then completed a master’s degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center, and later taught on the Harvard faculty.

His first book, published in 1983 when Joe was only 24, was ‘Red Carpet: The Connection Between The Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen’, the first book to reveal that the controversial multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, had worked for Soviet intelligence in the 1920s and 1930s. (This book is no longer in print.)

But ‘Red Carpet’ was only part of the story that Joe wanted to tell. So he wrote his first novel – the only way he could legally tell the whole Armand Hammer saga. Published in 1991, ‘The Moscow Club’ described events whose factual truth would only be revealed many years later. ‘The Moscow Club’ was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best spy thrillers of all time and was published in thirty foreign countries.

What followed were three more critically-acclaimed thrillers – ‘Extraordinary Powers,’ ‘The Zero Hour’ (sold to Twentieth-Century Fox for a record sum) and ‘High Crimes,’ which became a 2002 Fox film starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. Joe was invited on the movie set and even cast for a nonspeaking role as a JAG prosecutor.

Published in 2004, ‘Paranoia’ represented a major turning point in Joe’s career, landing on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, among others. It was his first book to use the ruthless drive, corruption and conspiracy of the corporate world as riveting plotline. Called “fun…movie-ready…[with] twists aplenty…” by Entertainment Weekly, ‘Paranoia’ has been acquired by Gaumont, one of the world’s largest film production and distribution companies. The movie deal was announced in April 2009, with Barry Levy (“Vantage Point”) set to script the adaptation.

Joe’s next three novels – ‘Company Man,’ ‘Killer Instinct’ and ‘Power Play’ – were all bestsellers in which things were decidedly not business as usual. He was quickly hailed as “the CEO of suspense.”

Joe’s latest novel ‘Vanished’, published August 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, launched a four-book series featuring corporate security specialist Nick Heller. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator – exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He’s a guy you don’t want to mess with. He’s also the man you call when you need a problem fixed. The second novel in the series, ‘Buried Secrets’, will be published in early 2011.

In addition to his fiction, Joe does occasional work for Hollywood and has written on espionage and international affairs for a number of publications, including TheDailyBeast.com, Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. In an April 2006 New York Times Book Review article, Joe discussed his fascination with ambition as a subject for fiction. He roots for the Boston Red Sox and lives in Boston with his wife, daughter, and a needy golden retriever, Mia, a dropout from seeing-eye-dog school.

Our Interview with Joe

What inspired you to start writing?

Like most writers, I started as a reader. Even now, I read a lot; any good writer should. As a kid, I fell in love with Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet series — The Wonderful Voyage to the Mushroom Planet, Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, and so on — and I wrote Ms. Cameron a letter. To my amazement, she wrote back. I must have been about nine years old, and that was the first time I truly understood that books were the product of a single person’s imagination. We wrote back and forth for years, and I asked her all kinds of questions about where she got her ideas, how she wrote, and so on. That was where I first got the idea that this might be something I could do, too.

Describe your journey to becoming a well-known author.

Once I grew up, I realized I would need to make a living, and that writing books might not be the easiest way. So I went to graduate school and I started teaching, which I loved, and wish I still had time for, but never really settled into. The idea of writing a novel never went away. I had written a non-fiction book that was very controversial, and it occurred to me that that material might be better suited to fiction. My wife and I agreed that I’d have three years to see whether I could write a book and sell it — and The Moscow Club sold just before that deadline expired. Since then, the key to it has just been to keep writing. Every day’s work isn’t going to be good, but if you put in enough days and you keep writing and revising and looking for ways to improve, that persistence pays off. VANISHED is my ninth novel. Every new book has brought a new milestone: first movie sale, first time on the New York Times bestseller list, first award nomination, and so on. I hope it’s a trend that continues, but no matter what, I’ll keep writing.

Who is your favorite author? Why?

That’s an impossible question to answer; it’s like asking what your favorite food is. Some days I like steak, some days I like brownies. I’d have to give you a list. It would start with Eleanor Cameron, of course, and include Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, William Goldman, Nelson De Mille, John Le Carre, David Morrell, Harlan Coben, Lee Child . . . the list goes on and on, because I don’t want to leave anyone out. I have, however, gotten to the point that I can’t read within my own genre while I’m writing. If I’m plotting a thriller, I need to know that the ideas are mine, and not something I subconsciously absorbed from one of my colleagues.

What intrigues you about the Blackwing?

Ah, the Blackwing. I’ve rhapsodized about the Blackwing in print before, but it’s hard to improve on the original slogan: “Half the pressure, twice the speed.” Who wouldn’t want that? They glide on the paper; they make a great, dark, smooth line that feels assertive and strong, not like the pale gray you get from a No. 3, nor scratchy like most #2’s. And of course, for the past several years, part of what’s made the Blackwing so desirable is the fact that it hasn’t been available. It’s been out of production for 12 years, and the ones still in existence — I still have a few — have become almost mythic in their importance. Kids in junior high right now have never lived in a world with the Blackwing, can you imagine? So the news that it’s coming back has been reason for celebration, at least in my house.

Take a look at Joseph Finder’s personal site here, or you can find any of his published novels here. Also, Click here to view some of Joe’s ‘Writing Tips’!