Author interview - Anders De La Motte - Author and security expert talks about his anti hero character HP, why we should be careful of social media and his new novel which we'll see in 2015

Photo - Jörgen Ringstrand

R: This month’s interview on the Crime Warp’s is with Anders de la Motte, former security expert and now author of the highly successful techno thriller Game trilogy – Game, Buzz and Bubble.  Welcome Anders, it’s really great to have you here. On The Crime Warp

 

ADLM: Thank you so much for inviting me. I really like The Crime Warp page and visit it frequently.

 

R:  Fantastic, thank you.  An obvious question to start with – before you became a famous author; you had a successful career as Director of Security at a big IT company.  How did you end up in this area of work? 

 

ADLM: I started out as a policeman back in Stockholm, where I mostly worked as a regular beat-cop. (as in working a beat, not beating…. Well you get the picture). After eight years of service I was ready for a new challenge and as it happened UPS (one of the worlds largest freight forwarders) was looking at creating a security department for the Nordics. I had been a part of a major investigation into logistic crime and that experience landed me the job. I stayed with UPS and was then head-hunted by DELL who at the time was one of UPS’ major clients. 

 

R: Why did you then change career to write?  Was this a complete change or did you write whilst you were still working in IT security? 

 

ADLM: I was working the EMEA region for DELL (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) meaning I had a lot of long trips. I usually spent the time reading, but slowly the idea of writing something of my own started to grow. But it wasn’t until my wife, during a dinner in Milan, asked me when I was going to get started on the writing that I became ready to do so. Without my wife I wouldn’t have gotten started, and just as important, I wouldn’t have continued writing when I didn’t immediately succeed.

 

R:   So, what then gave you the first idea for The Game trilogy?  Was it a particular event or individual that gave you inspiration?

 

ADLM:  I wanted to write a story about an anti-hero, someone who was the complete opposite of any detective, lawyer, reporter or other traditional main character in the crime genre. So I came up with HP, a no good slacker who spends his days in front of a video game, TV-series or movie while smoking hemp-based products. The problem was: how do I get HP off that couch and into the adventure? With a cop or reporter that is fairly easy, it sort of goes with their job. With HP it took something else, so I the chance to be the movie/game-style hero he always dreamed about being. Once he got a taste of that, I ended up almost having to hold him back.

 

R:  In Game, HP is drawn into the Game easily.  Although I see HP as a bit of a loser, he doesn’t strike me as a particularly gullible person, yet he’s drawn quickly into The Game.  Is it just HP who is gullible, or do you think that there’s something in all of us that’s a kind of need to be accepted that The Game takes advantage of?

 

ADLM:  Great question! I’m actually very fascinated by the mechanisms that got HP quickly drawn into the game. Most people have a need to be validated, seen and accepted in some way. It goes back to the time when people were living in caves. Either you were accepted around the fire and given shelter or you were outside in the cold where the tigers would eat you. People still have the same need. This is why Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are so popular. Every time we get a like or retweet it is someone confirming our place at the fire, and this makes us feel good. Even more so if it is a peer, someone you respect or even admire, liking or retweeting you. HP has always known he was special and unique, he just didn’t know exactly how. With the Game he gets an audience, a stage and a chance to prove himself. A bit more challenging than posting pictures of your lunch, but the mechanisms are still the same.

 

R:  Buzz kind of builds on this theme, where Argos Eye quietly manipulates public opinion.  From your experience, is this something that’s widespread, or is it more of a comment on what could happen if an individual or an organisation chose to do this?

 

ADLM:  It is definitely more widespread than people think. All of the examples I use in Buzz are actually real-life. Just last year for example, one of the managers of a large hotel chain instructed his staff to regularly grade and comment both their own hotels (high grades) but also the competition (surprise, surprise – they got low grades). 

 

There are PR companies today selling Facebook likes and Twitter traffic and even the news seem to be more and more focused on reporting/posting things that will generate traffic (clicks) rather than what is really important. (Think of that the next time you click on a Great-white-shark-attack or cute puppy on a news media rather than the latest development in Ukraine)

 

With social media the political parties claim to have become more grounded to the public. But if you look at Twitter for instance, this is a tool used by a rather limited group of people that does not necessarily represent the true public opinion (if such a thing even exists).  The tone on Twitter is also mainly mocking and full of irony so basing any kind of decision on Twitter trends and discussions is very difficult. The same goes for Facebook. “Like this post if you think health-care is important” I mean who wouldn’t? But what does 100 000 click really tell you when the question is phrased like that?

 

R: I also suppose that with the rise of social media, we’re so much more open about who we are and what information’s available about us.  I’ve been surprised about how much is in the public domain by default about me, because of my professional life and the clients I work with.  I think that in a previous interview you implied that we give away what the Stasi would have killed for.  What do you think is the real danger in all this data being openly available?

 

ADLM:  Yes, Stasi’s business model was to have one half of the population spy on the other. They took note of who people were friends with, what music, movies and books they liked as well as their whereabouts. With Facebook we have cut out the middle man and now proudly offer the same information up for free. (well, we get some of that nice confirmation and welcome-in-by-the-fire feelings back). Facebook (and other companies then turn our personal data into a commodity that they sell. For a private citizen I’m not really sure there is a large physical danger, although identity theft has increased quite significantly in the last years. For me it is more the knowledge that my entire life can be mapped out by someone else and that my personal decisions, my interactions with my friends as well as my movement and travel-patterns are turned into a commodity and sold for money.

 

The line between what is personal and what is private is getting very blurred.I think all people, just like companies, should have an IT-strategy. What do I post (and why) and what do I completely leave off Social media. For example - Any kind of pictures, links or comments that, regardless how funny/right/justified they feel right this moment would risk costing me:

A. My current job/political office

B. My future job and/or political office.

C. My friends and family, current or future…

 

R: I know that over the past year there’s been a lot in the media about surveillance through the NSA and other government agencies.  I actually think that organisation such as Google and Facebook are much more of a danger and probably far less accountable than governments.  How do you think we should be addressing this?

 

ADLM: You are touching a very valid point. Government agencies at least some degree, have to answer to the political system. Companies, however, do not. Before we hand over private information to them we need to consider why we are doing this and for what purpose. It all ties in with your previous question. What is really private and therefore should stay off the web completely. Remember the web is designed to share information as easily as possible. It is not a place to store or share things you want to keep secret.

 

R:  Can I turn to your writing?  Tell me about your writing routines – do you have a daily routine?

 

ADLM: I normally start at 10.00, before that my caffeine levels are too low, and go on until about 16.00. I have a minimum standard of 3 pages per work day that I always keep, but most of the time I exceed it. Sometimes by far. I don’t sit at home when writing new material, the quietness is too distracting and I end up doing other things, like mowing the lawn or defrosting the freezer. I need to have something happening around me that forces me to focus on the writing. A nearby café or the local library are ideal locations, but airport lounges, trains and flights also work quite well.

When editing my material, however, I like to work from my home office. The large screen makes that work easier and for some reason I get less distracted when editing since that work is pretty much cut out already and I don’t have to make it up.

 

R: Do you plan your books in detail before you start writing or is your approach more organic?  I also wondered whether you’d mapped out the Game trilogy in your mind early on, or were Buzz and Bubble follow on books because of the success of Game?

 

ADLM: I work with a combo of structure and organic growth. I decide on an opening, some of the waypoints and more or less an ending. I also plan some of the main characters and list them in the excel-sheet I use for that purpose. I then write a 3-4-page synopsis of the full story. But once I start writing I find that the plot changes a bit and sometimes new characters introduce themselves. The character Nox and his friend Chief in Buzz did that. They were not planned and I was very surprised when Nox knocked on HP:s door. (that is off-course how he got his name. “Who the h-ll knocks on the door?”

 

Actually I wrote Game as a solitaire book, without any plans of turning it into a trilogy. I even started to write a different script after Game, but then we went to Dubai for a holiday. One day at the beach I found myself thinking about what HP would have thought about this out-of-this-world location and what kind of trouble he would have gotten himself into. About 30 minutes later I had to go up to the room to write things down. I still have the first draft notes on the hotel stationary

 

R:  I really liked your characters HP and Rebecca.  How well formed were they when you started writing Game?  

 

ADLM:  HP was rather well formed. As I said he is a slacker and an anti-hero and like me, obsessed with movies, TV-series and pop-culture. His language is also very “Americanised”, just like mine became after working 11 years for American companies. To balance him off I needed someone who was his opposite in many ways and that is how Rebecca came into the plot. She has some of my other features like being a manic control person that always checks the emergency exits of every room and that hates making mistakes, even little ones. They both grew organically during the writing process and even though HP is the funniest to write I think it is the combination of the two that have made the books so successful. I’m very happy that so many readers have taken HP and Rebecca to their hearts.

 

R:  I found Game incredibly pacey and was almost instantly drawn into the novel, particularly HPs story, he’s really likeable, even though he‘s a loser and a bit of a dope sometimes.  Was the pace hard to achieve – I’m wondering whether you had to rewrite several times to make sure that the pace was so quick.

 

ADLM: Haha, I used all the tricks in the book to get the pace as high as I could even in the first draft of Game. Then the first comment my editor made was: “Anders, we have to work on the pace…” I thought I had given it all I had so I was a bit disheartened to hear he wanted me to increase the pace even further. But as it turned out he actually wanted me to lower it, something that turned out to be almost as difficult. I’m a very determined person and not always as patient as I should be, meaning my every-day pace is probably quite high. I guess this transfers into my stories.

 

R:  Getting novels to market isn’t easy as publishers and agents seem to be deluged by manuscripts from wannabe writers.  Tell me about how you got the Game Trilogy published.  Did you have an agent to help and did it take a long time to get interest in your novels?

 

ADLM: I had written two scripts before Game. Both sort of traditional crime-stories that wasn’t any different and definitely not any better than what was already on the market. Remember this is Sweden, there are more crime writers than IKEA-bookshelves. As I said earlier, with Game I took on a new approach with a different story, a different hero and even a different language. I sent the script to a handful of publisher and I got the first call after only a few days. Game got the first book award 2010 here in Sweden (very proud of that) and in 2011 I started working with “Super agent” Niclas Salomonsson and his team at Salomonsson Agency. From there things really took off. 

 

R:  I read that there was a bidding war for the Game Trilogy.  How did it feel when you found this level of interest in your work?

 

ADLM: Well, you have to remember 2008-2010 this was my hobby and from 2010-2012 my second job. I have had no formal training in writing, the things I’ve learned have come from reading a lot (my mother is a librarian) and from practicing almost as much. Having foreign publisher (and for my new book MemoRandom, even US T-studios) franticly bidding for my stories felt unreal, to say the least. 

 

I measured everything in time. A new country meant a few more months where I could write and didn’t have to do “real” work. The Game trilogy is now available in over 30 countries and the months have turned into years. Since 2012 I’m a full time writer, I get to travel around the world and meet readers who love the characters even more than I do. I am very grateful to be able to live what only a few short years ago was just a dream.

 

R:  Is there any news on The Game becoming a film?  Who would you like to be cast as HP and Rebecca?

 

ADLM: Swedish Film, the largest movie producer in Scandinavia, is producing the Swedish movie. I have read the script and I really liked it. The shooting of the film will probably not start until 2015, but there will be some more news and updates at the Cannes film festival in a few weeks. SF are planning to film the entire trilogy. Most likely there will be an American version later on.

 

R: That sounds great and will be really interesting to experience Game on the screen. Looking forward, I’ve seen that you’ve got a new novel MemoRandom.  It’s not published in the UK until next year, but could you tell us a little more about it?

 

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ADLM: We spoke earlier about secrets, and MemoRandom mainly revolves around a man who has plenty of those. David Sarac is a handler at the Stockholm police force and his job is to recruit and handle secret informants or even infiltrators within organized crime. Threats, blackmail, bribes – he uses every trick in the book to get people to work for him and he has gathered a number of secrets in his carefully coded little notebook. Unfortunately in the middle of a high speed pursuit Sarac suffers from a stroke and crashes. And when he wakes up he has forgotten the past two years. All his secrets are gone, even the code he used for his notes. Sarac has to start investigating himself and as he dives deeper into his own memory he starts to discover increasingly alarming things. Everything seem to lead to a top secret infiltrator code-named Janus and a lot of people are interested in helping Sarac remember this person. Or possibly forget…

 

MemoRandom is a different type of story from the Game trilogy but it has already gotten off to a great start being sold to over 25 countries already. (In English spring 2015) There was a bidding war for the American TV rights, finally won by Lionsgate TV who produces Mad Men. Niclas Salomonsson and I will be executive producers for the series if it makes it all the way into production. Really happy about that, fingers crossed!

 

R: And are there any other projects in the pipeline?

 

ADLM: I’m currently working on the second book in the MemoRandom series (working title UltiMatum) and parallel to that I’m writing a separate movie script with a very talented Danish screen-writer called Mikkel Bak-Sörensen. Really enjoy learning about screen writing. Different toolkit, to say the least.

 

R:  Anders, thank you again for coming on the Crime Warp.  I’ll keep an eye out for MemoRandom and look forward to reviewing it on The Crime Warp. 

 

ADLM:  Thanks again for inviting me and I hope you enjoy the books.