Photo by Skye Brodsky
K.B. Brodsky is the author of the new novel Beyond Honor. K.B. Brodsky is the pen name for the husband-and-wife writing team of Bill and Karen Brodsky. They are based in New York and Colorado.
Q: What inspired you to write Beyond Honor, and how did you create your character, Kevin Rhoads?
Bill: Karen and I didn’t ever decide to sit down and write a novel. It started more like a political thriller version of J.R.R. Tolkien, who said that one day he spontaneously found himself writing down the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” and then just started writing.
In a similar way, I found myself looking at a painting by an artist named Bill Logan that’s been leaning against the wall of our living room for years. It’s a moody portrait of a bearded young man turned away from the viewer, looking over his shoulder at something unknown.
He became the inspiration for Kevin. I just started telling myself his story. Military and political thrillers are what I read and enjoy the most, and so it was natural that this was the kind of story I started telling. When I was partway done writing it all down, I shared it with Karen, and she jumped in to join me in creating what is now Beyond Honor.
Kevin Rhoads had several influences. We have had many conversations with people with military backgrounds over the years. We’ve also learned about veterans’ and active military servicemembers’ experiences through podcasts and written biographical accounts.
It struck us both that their stories were often centered more on how their military experiences affected them personally than the heroic feats for which we all admire them. Kevin incorporates the attributes of a hero, but he is not a superhero, and he’s not unscathed by his experiences.
Q: How did the two of you collaborate on this novel? Can you describe your writing process?
Karen: We both work on all parts of creating the book, but we have different strengths. Bill is really good at creating intricate plots and doing research on a lot of the political and military details in the book. And he has this ability to work until the whole plot is laid out.
My strengths and passion lie in crafting how the story gets told—through action, or dialogue, for example. And working out which shoulder our narrator should be sitting on for each chapter.
We both care deeply about our characters and where the story takes them, so we push and pull to make sure their actions make sense to both of us. We discuss and revise and discuss and revise. It ends up being collaborative on all levels.
On a practical level, we have a good system that relies on two things: 1. A shared Google doc where nothing gets changed without the other approving the edit. 2. Constant conversations, especially about the “big picture” ideas. For example, in Beyond Honor, we had lots of discussions about how the arcs of each of our main characters bent “beyond honor” in a way that was true to them.
Q: The author Jack Carr said of the book, “Beyond Honor carries the DNA of the great old-school espionage novels fused with the action of the modern thriller.” What do you think of that description?
A: First, let’s read that sentence again. Jack Carr gave our book a quote! Still can’t quite believe that. (Thank you, Jack!)
We love this quote because that was the goal! Bill has been reading books in the military, geo-political thriller genre—dare I say nonstop—since he was a teenager.
The old school writers like Le Carré, Ludlum, and Forsyth, into the Clancy generation of writers, through to the current era that includes Jack Carr himself are all heroes. Incorporating the elements we love from each iteration of the genre was very much a deliberate choice.
We wanted the thrilling action that so many current novels possess, but we also intentionally slow the pace down and pause in certain places, either for an emotional punch or to focus on certain storylines.
It might also help that Beyond Honor has strong female characters in the mix who are less likely to point a gun or throw a punch in response to a conflict, which leads to more complex combinations of action and old-style espionage.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Our north star was always for the novel to end with Rhoads acting on a personal moral code that takes him outside of his military code of honor, and Skyler being pushed from her early role as an analyst into the complicated world of being an operative.
Our goal was to balance a satisfying ending with a compelling set-up for the sequel, but we always knew where Kevin and Whitney would wind up.
We wrestled with how to begin the story much more than how to end it. A common thriller structure is to open the story with a big inciting incident that hooks the reader and builds the plot around that moment.
Our true inciting incident takes place midway through the novel, bringing several storylines together. Some early readers encouraged us to go the expected route and move this event to the beginning.
We tried it out, but we knew the reader needed to be emotionally invested in the characters before the event occurs. We kept it mid-story, and we both think it was the right move.
Q: What are you working on now?
Karen: We have a solid draft of the sequel written. I think of it like making a table. The table is built and now each pass of the manuscript is like sanding it with a finer and finer grit sandpaper. Each time, the narrative gets smoother and any problems we didn’t catch on the last round show up more clearly. I love this part.
Bill has the first draft of the third book down, and we’ve just moved it to the Google doc phase.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: This has been an entirely unexpected journey—and we are so grateful for the team of people who took a chance on Beyond Honor and are supporting us on this adventure: our editor and her team at Emily Bestler Books/Atria, including Emily, David Brown, Wren Watkins, and Zakiya Jamal; our agent, Anthony Mattero at CAA; and our publicist, Megan Beatie.
It also includes our family and friends who have been so encouraging and such amazing cheerleaders. And thank you, too, Deborah, for inviting us to contribute to your blog!
We tell each other pretty much every day how lucky we are to have started this new chapter in our lives, and to do it together is so much fun.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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