88 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
Soapbox
“It wasn’t just him evolving; it was the writer-editor collaboration.”
Thirty Years in
And Still Learning
John Sandford’s editor recounts their time together
By Neil Nyren
sexy; how he constantly varied his style,
from more thriller-ish to more mystery,
from more humorous to hair-raising all
the way, from unveiling the bad guy on
the very first page to holding the reveal,
and holding, and holding. New locales,
new subject matter, new ways to commit
mayhem.
I wrote a bunch of things like that and
sent it off to him. He replied thanking
me and said that it was lovely and flat-
tering and all... but he noted that I’d left
out some of the most important parts.
I’d left out the time he’d written a
standalone titled Dead Watch, and after
reading it, I’d replied that, well, I hadn’t
liked it as much as I thought I would. At
that point, we had exactly one month
until deadline. During that month, we
were communicating via phone and
email constantly—throwing out stuff,
changing characters, completely shifting
the time frame from the near future to
the present. At the end of that month, by
god, we had a book.
Or the time he killed off a child at the
end of one of the Prey books, and I told
him that it was probably not the best
idea he’d ever had, and together we
devised a last-minute rescue that was
much more satisfying.
Or the time his final manuscript
started with a muddy, complicated first
chapter, and I said, “Didn’t you send me
a chapter a few months ago that worked
better?” and he said, “Yeah, now I don’t
remember why I threw that out,” then
stuck it back in, and it was perfect.This piece started as one thing, but then
it became something else entirely. Let me
explain.T
hirty years ago this month, John
Sandford’s first novel, Rules of
Prey, was published. It was origi-
nally called The Maddog’s Game, but we
thought it needed something bigger, so
I came up with the title and told John
we’d use either rules or prey on whatever
he wrote next. I guess we know how that
came out.
I was lucky enough to be John’s editor
then. I am luckier still to have been his
editor ever since. It’s been three decades of
friendship, jokes, dinners, and publishing
gossip; it’s also been an unparalleled
opportunity to watch a master craftsman
evolve.
That’s always the hardest part of a
long-running series, isn’t it? How do you
keep your books feeling new and sur-
prising? We’ve all at some point read the
latest installment of a venerated series
and thought, “Really? Hasn’t he done
this book before?”
This was where I was going to outline
some of the things John’s done over the
years to escape that trap—how he trans-
formed Lucas Davenport from an unpre-
dictable, sexy, rich womanizer into a
grown-up (though still an unpredictable
one); how he kept enlarging the scope of
Davenport’s activities, from city to state
to the whole damned country; how he
invented Virgil Flowers to supplement
Davenport, for those who missed theNeil Nyren retired at the end of 2017 as the
executive v-p, associate publisher, and editor-in-
chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons and is the winner of
the 2017 Ellery Queen Award.Or the time he actively proposed
killing off Davenport’s wife, the won-
derful Weather Karkinnen, because it
was getting difficult to write her into the
books, and I said if he did that, a massive
contingent of his women readers would
be on his front lawn with pitchforks and
torches.
“All of these times, and many more,”
he said, “were just as important to how
the books had changed and evolved and
stayed relevant as the changes that
affected all the books. It wasn’t just him
evolving; it was the writer-editor col-
laboration. It was what we’d done, and
what we still do, together: speculating,
analyzing, bouncing ideas around. Put
that in there.”
“But, John,” I said, “this is a piece
about you.”
“Exactly,” he replied.
So here it is, John. Thirty years in, and
I’m still learning from you. Happy anni-
versary—and I can’t wait to see what
comes next.
Oh, wait, I do know: Bloody Genius,
with Virgil Flowers, due this October. It’s
a hold-the-reveal novel—with a new way
to commit mayhem. ■©^
LOIS^
NYREN