Rodger’s Two Cents: Setting Stories in the Wilderness

Among the highlights of the last month was a great podcast conversation with Andrew Child, brother of Lee Child and the author of the last several Jack Reacher books. We discussed his earliest books, and a few of mine, as well as the challenges of taking over a successful series (as Andrew took over Reacher from his brother).

Most of Andrew's stories are set in big cities, like New York and Chicago. That makes a lot of sense for a man who is originally from Birmingham, then New York and Chicago in the U.S. My new book, Echoes in a Stone, takes a reader from Anchorage, to Seattle, and Taipei. I spent years of my pre-writing life building companies and doing political and business consulting around the world. At one point I'd visited so many cities in one year that I woke one morning and had to check my plane ticket to remember where I was.

But a guy with my background craves the ability to get away. That probably explains why a one-year business commitment in Alaska has turned into decades of adventures. And as I get older, I've come to believe that wild places fill a place in the soul, pushing out stress and concerns. Most of us carry the weight of the world, career, family, and social issues hung around our neck. In my travels I found that few people have discovered the power of wild places to help us find what is really important.

In fact, few have ever walked in wilderness, or floated a wild river, or paddled a canoe across a lake where the only sounds are rustling leaves and the call of a loon. But I have, and every experience brings me joy. Even after moments of fear or action, like having a grizzly bear with cubs walk behind me while I'm out in a river with a fly rod, it brings me peace.

Few thriller readers have experienced that, which is why most of my books take a reader into the wild as well as to urban settings. My love of books began reading stories that took me places that I thought I would never see. Eventually my writing has allowed me to visit many of those places. I want readers to join me, to feel how the temporary absence of urban hustle can simplify problem solving, entertain, and leave you with a sense of peace.

Many of my stories feature heroes, bad guys, and dangerous wild places, which makes solving the crises in the story a three-way challenge. In the end, the survivors will probably go sit on a rock near a clear running stream and recover. This comes from one of my strongest personal beliefs: "In the future nothing will be more valuable than the ability to be alone."

And how does Andrew Child fit into this narrative? He and his wife left the city and moved into a home in the wilds of Wyoming.

Rodger Recommends: Reading A Novel Outside Of Your Typical Genre

The last hour of almost every day is spent with a book. I read an average of twenty-five to thirty books every year. Generally, four or five are classics. About a dozen are from bestselling authors you probably know: Brad Thor, Robert Dugoni, Ward Larsen, D.L. Auffenorde, Anne Cleeland, Jon Land, and Marc Cameron. Several of these authors have become good friends.

The rest, about half, are books from new authors. How do I pick them? Some are referrals, some are from authors I met at conferences, but most are just random picks from Facebook ads that are well crafted and offer something outside the box as part of the plot.

I find that my old standbys, conflicts with drug cartels, shoot-em-up gangs in the cities, and Middle East terrorists seldom draw my attention anymore. Current events in the real world are moving faster than most of us can write a novel. The evening news and podcasts are filled with short, violent plots, and people as well as skilled authorities working hard to vanquish the bad guys.

But many newer writers tackle challenges that aren't the subject of the five o'clock news. How about using a vineyard in Oregon as a cover for political assassination as something unique? Or how a single unknown soldier in World War I carves out a place in history? Or the upcoming book from a new friend, set in Rwanda, focused on overcoming police corruption?

Like many of us, I let television fill that empty time slot in the day. But when I pick up a book, I prefer a story that makes you think as well as feel.

I encourage you to pick a novel outside the genre you usually read. The first novel in my Gritt series, Tempest North, or in my Walker series, The Eel and the Angel, will take you places you've never been, with stories that are unique. If not one of my books, find one on Facebook or from some other source that's different, and enjoy.

Rodger That: A Lesson In Optimism

Every once in a while, my eternal optimist temperament hits a bump. It might be international politics. I would love to see regime change in Iran but fear the consequences of an outside power trying to impose it. (My book, The Shadow Game, is built around that concern.) It might be petulance or disease. I remain concerned about how the USA and the world dealt with Covid. It might be domestic divisions. For the first time in my lifetime, I've seen long-term fly-fishing buddies quit talking over their views on society. Are we in such deep trouble as a society that we cannot again come together?

But those momentary lapses in my optimism are usually resolved by something else in my life. My one lapse this August dissolved over the weekend at, of all things, a musical and dance concert. Children from the age of six to eighteen presented a two-hour concert at a major venue in Anchorage, Alaska. The Music Machine has been presented annually by the children of Alaska for more than four decades.

Few people know that Anchorage has one of the most diverse student populations of any city in the world. Hundreds of kids, led by dedicated adults with years of commitment to the show, put on a mesmerizing performance of song and dance, all dedicated to the 250th birthday of the USA. Their joy was contagious. Their commitment to rehearsal was obvious. Their love of country was invigorating. The unity of kids from dozens of cultures and economic backgrounds was eye-opening. How kids from first grade to graduating seniors took care of each other, supported each other, and reached out, even covering mistakes or difficult moments for some who were disadvantaged, delivered a message.

America was born of conflict. It took years to get our constitution right. In the end, we managed to agree to disagree and built a country. Nothing going on in the USA today cannot be overcome by what should unify us. We just have to accept that part of us more than we do what we disagree on. The kids from The Music Machine show that it can be done.

For those who read my books, you might realize a bit of that mindset in the stories. There is good and bad in the world. But our heroes are not all good, and most of the bad guys have some good traits. In my upcoming book, Echoes in a Stone, you will meet really good people doing the wrong thing, helping outright crooks. You will also meet brutal people reaching out to do the right thing. When things are at their worst, most of us will reach out to any hand that can save us.

Taste Of The Wild: Blackened Fish Caesar Salad

A great warm-weather meal, or a treat for an evening when you want something special but not heavy. Pictured here with blackened king salmon, but it also works well with sockeye, silver salmon, walleye, striped bass, or king mackerel, or any fish with real flavor. (Milder white fish like halibut will soak up the seasoning but lose most of its own fish flavor once blackened.)

Serves 4
The Salad

• ½ head romaine lettuce per person, chopped or torn

• 2 slices sweet onion per person, cut into 2-inch strips

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• 1 tbsp shredded parmesan per person

THE DRESSING
Minced garlic - 3 tbsp
Dijon or coarse mustard - 2 tbsp
Anchovy paste - 1 tbsp
Worcestershire sauce - 2 tbsp
Lemon juice - 2 tbsp
Olive oil - 3 tbsp
Finely grated parmesan - 4 tbsp
Mix all ingredients together.

THE FISH

• 1 boneless fish filet, cut into 1-inch-thick strips

• ½ cup Cajun seasoning (Zatarain's recommended)

• 1 tbsp smoked paprika

• 1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs

• Olive oil, for frying

Dust the fish strips in the seasoning mix. Fry in hot olive oil — a cast iron skillet works best — turning when the strips darken. Cook each batch no more than 5 minutes total; you want a blackened outside with a moist interior.

ASSEMBLE
Toss the dressing into the salad, then top with the blackened fish strips. Some like a bite of fish with each bite of salad; others prefer to eat them separately — either way works.

Note: Serving a crowd, or making this a side dish? Crumble the cooked fish over a large salad and toss it all together.

Rodger That: Change

In my upcoming book Echoes in a Stone (September 1, 2026), a middle-aged couple, Brandt and Andrea, who have spent a decade working day and night to make their fortune realize, finally, that the dream they have been chasing might have been a nightmare. They stare at each other, dressed in worn clothing, their hands torn and sore, their faces prematurely aging, and stop.

In one day, after thousands of days of commitment, two things happen. First, they wrap their arms around each other and decide to take charge of redirecting their lives. Second, a new dream appears. But is it also a nightmare?

Persistence has always been a building block of my life and the lives of most of the people who I believe are successful. With that said, beating your head against a door hoping that it will open has never seemed prudent to me. It's true that, as Jack London once wrote, "Life is not always a matter of holding good cards but sometimes playing a poor hand well." Still, after playing that hand, sometimes for years without winning, it has been my personal experience that it is time to fold. Not just fold, but to find a new game.

In Echoes in a Stone, the new game offers promise beyond their wildest dreams and problems they never knew could exist. But every opportunity comes with problems. Brandt and Andrea decide to change, forcing their heads and hearts in a new direction. Chasing the new dream, even with possibly terrifying consequences, is better than beating their heads against that locked door.

I remember when I hung up a successful business career to become a writer. Part of what moved me was reading an essay about George Bernard Shaw, in which he noted, "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

There is a lot of me in the story of Brandt and Andrea, and a lot of all of you who quit a life that wasn't working in order to find one that makes you happy.

Rodger’s Two Cents: Wishful Thinking

I am currently writing a book about the demise of one of today’s most arrogant and damaging world figures. I guess that it is a bit of wishful thinking from someone who loves to take an idea and flesh it in to create a stimulating story.

There are several world figures that this could be about, but in this case, it is about one man who, until he rose to power had accomplished nothing. His rise was so unexpected that he interpreted it as almost a divine moment. He believed that if he could will himself into the spotlight, then that same will would make him almost unstoppable. If he could dream it, it would happen, and no one and nothing would stop him.

In the United States today, we have a major problem about empathy and sympathy. To many of us, showing sympathy to those who are less fortunate, discriminated against, or troubled has led us to demand that society solve the problem. Others of us employ empathy and command ourselves to help, even if it is a little, even if it is to show others how to help themselves. 

I’d love to see both sides compromise on this divide. One person’s problem is not necessarily caused by society. But not all people can solve their problems without some societal reform. But even more importantly, I have come to believe that this divide is a good example of why the government and society that our ancestors built in America works. 

But the leadership in Russia does not have this debate. Vladimir Putin allows no criticism. He tolerates no debate. To him, empathy and sympathy are weaknesses that are intolerable. He despises the history of Nazi abuse in his own country without seeing the same divine arrogance in his own leadership.

We kick, we bite, we scratch in this country and we always have. Even the elected leaders that some among us might not like will term out someday. But that is not true in Russia. So, my question to you is, as I write my story about Putin, how should it end?

Rodger Recommends: The Paul Mcgrath Series

I had a great conversation recently with author Andrew (Grant) Child, the brother of Lee Child. 

It was part of my writer-to-writer interviews, with five-to-ten-minute segments posted on my YouTube page every Wednesday.

Andrew took over writing the Jack Reacher Series from his brother a few years ago. His focus on the extraordinarily successful series follows a career writing some truly fun novels of his own. I personally loved his Paul McGrath novels. Paul, a former military cop (like Jack Reacher), works in a custodial role — a nondescript, everyday man with a passion for righting wrongs.

Andrew grew up in Birmingham, England, a book in hand. His favorite character was Robin Hood, a character with humanistic fervor and skills and a passion for defending ordinary people being abused by the powerful. Unlike Reacher or Mark Greaney's Gray Man characters, Paul McGrath doesn't leave gun smoke in the air wherever he goes. His intellect and the skills of an old-school gumshoe slowly chip away at the armor that the powerful use to avoid accountability for bullying and stealing. It is a blast to observe the powerful slowly realize that their world is collapsing around them without knowing who is responsible or why. Somehow it is more satisfying than seeing them blown to bits.

I love a shoot 'em-up, but between television and the plethora of superhero movies, we are inundated by them. It's fun to read a book that challenges the reader to think. Does the hero see the clues that the reader sees? Is the character truly evil, or just a little odd? Is the damsel in distress really an innocent girl? How is our 170-pound hero going to stand up to the 250-pound muscle protecting the bad guy? Settings so real that you are there. Plots that make you think, put you the reader into the story.

There's a bit of Robin Hood in most thriller adventure books, including mine. Both my historical-frontier adventure Gritt Series and my thriller Walker Series are written to make you think, to become part of the story yourself. Because so many of my stories are set in places most of my readers will never see — jungles of Mexico, the frozen North Sea, windswept Aleutian Islands, Siberia — I write to help the reader visualize the settings in their own imagination. Like Andrew, I invite my readers to be part of the setting and story. Look for books that make you think, from writers who know that when most of us find ourselves in terrible danger, there is little chance that someone is going to come charging in on a white horse to save us. We can save ourselves.

One other thing connected Andrew and me. After years of living in huge cities, Andrew and his wife took a cross-country driving trip and "found" the beauty and peace of wilderness Wyoming, where they bought a home. Alaska brought me that same peace years ago. We talked about how amazing it is to stop writing long enough to watch a moose wander across our property, possibly followed by a bear — a story of predator and prey. It is up to the moose to save itself.

Taste Of The Wild: Barbequed King Salmon

One of the amazing things about living in Alaska is our ability to harvest most of the protein we eat. In June the first salmon runs of the year push into our bays and then Alaska’s cold, clear, rivers. I try to catch a couple or kings each summer. (For years I kept a dozen, but the runs today are a fraction of what they used to be.) King Salmon from the market can be expensive, but worth it.

Ingredients for grilled King Salmon (serves 4)

I cooked this on a gas grill but admit I prefer charcoal like at our remote cabin.

4     Rectangular king salmon fillet pieces about 4 x 6 inches, skin on

4     T. light cooking oil

4     T. Barbeque sauce

Grilling King Salmon

Heat the grill to a medium heat, and then brush the fillets with the cooking oil, both skin and flesh side.

Place the fillets on the grill flesh side down and cook until the tiny dots of cooked fat appear on the sides of the fillet just above the heat source (about 4 minutes).

Turn the fish, to skin side down and slather BBQ sauce on the flesh side and continue cooking until the tiny white dots of fat sprinkle the entire side of the fillet (about 5 minutes). The BBQ sauce on top should be hot and steaming. Serve immediately.

I like to grill this with a homemade fermented Jalapeno BBQ sauce. I’ve never disclosed the recipe, and I won’t here. I really don’t know you yet, and I’d hate to have to kill you. But below is a simplified recipe that works well.

I love serving King Salmon with grilled corn on the cob and spiced cabbage.

Spiced Cabbage

Begin browning four chopped slices of bacon, and two minutes later add ½ of a sliced yellow onion and continue cooking until onion becomes transparent. Add ¾  head of cabbage shredded and continue cooking for six minutes, stirring every couple of minutes.  Stir in ½ cup of apple cider vinegar and ½ cup of brown sugar and cook until cabbage is soft.

Simple BBQ sauce

Mix these ingredients at least six hours before cooking to allow flavors to merge.

1 C. smokey store bought sauce, (Baby Rays)

½ C. salsa

½ C. dried onion flakes

¼ C. Worcestershire Sauce

1 T. each salt and black pepper

Rodger That: Something Different

I write both thrillers, (with settings around the world), and frontier fiction where the craziness of man against man occurs in wilderness settings; where the land itself, or the weather, or even the wildlife adds to the conflict, sometimes becoming another opponent, and occasionally becoming a refuge.

Carmen and I will once again attend Bouchercon, a convention of writers and readers, this year in Calgary. A high percentage of the writers and readers at this convention are aficionados of the mystery genre. With that in mind, I’ve focused on that genre in my own reading for the last two months. Here are my favorite authors from my time in the underworld. Robert Dugoni has been writing legal and police thrillers for decades. His book, Her Cold Justice was a fun read. A.C. Frieden, usually writes thrillers set across the globe. Last year he wrote his first mystery set in New Orleans. Dead In The Quarter is not the kind of book you read at bedtime; it might keep you awake. Gene Koon is a new writer, who like Frieden and me has extensive experience around the world. He ignored that part of his life and wrote a fun mystery set where you would never expect a thriller to occur. His book Another Try should be a cozy fireside story in quiet Oregon wine country, but it isn’t. Who knew that bullets and chardonnay pair well together? Jay S. Bell as himself and under a pseudonym has been writing mystery for decades. His book Welcome To Cottonmouth is one of the most intense action stories I’ve ever read. With dozens of books under your belt you can ignore many of the traditional rules of storytelling and make it work.

I encourage everyone who loves to read, to leap off from a cliff once in a while and pick up a good book in a genre that you might never normally read. For me, they are a window into challenging worlds I don’t normally visit. It’s amazing how often I will get a note from a reader who mostly reads romance, explaining that the romance in my thriller or frontier fiction books, set in crises settings, elevates passion to all new levels. I’m happy to respond to every note and to recommend another of my books or even one form another author who I read. 

Rodger's 2 Cents: The Times Demand It

Like so many, the war with Iran has left me with mixed feelings. My family lived in Iran prior to the 1979 Revolution. The leaders of the Iranian Army, Air Force and Navy all refused to use their troops against their own people protesting the government. After the Mullahs came to power by exiling or executing the socialists, communists and social democrats that helped them gain power, they turned on the former government. All three of the military leaders who refused to attack their own citizens were shot. My family lost a number of friends in the purges.

Since then, the regime has openly declared war on the USA and Israel and murdered tens of thousands of their own citizens. The current regime’s war on the United States has continued for forty-seven years. How did we get into a situation where smart capable American leaders have tolerated a low-key, decades long war waged against the USA, a war that included the Beirut Barracks bombing that killed hundreds of Americans? How did our allies in Europe and the Middle East allow one nation to promote and fund the majority or terrorist groups in the world?

What amazes me most is that the appeasement and coddling of the Iranian regime is so similar to how the West, and especially Britain, appeased Hitler in the lead-up to World War II. Years ago, I read a great book on the subject and recommend it. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie is an amazing read. 

It covers all the bases, mirroring what we have seen from American and allied leaders and Iran. First, we slapped the regime like one might slap a naughty child. Then we ignored them, thinking that they really weren’t that bad and would probably just go away. Next, we tried to engage with them diplomatically but knowing that they were right and that Allah was on their side, they felt free to lie, make promises they didn’t intend to keep and stall until they were so powerful, with weapons that made them unstoppable. Along the way, our leaders tried to pay them off, cajole them with flattery, and enter into treaties that, had they worked, might have postponed the development of Iranian power, but in the end just gave the regime more time to perfect their asymmetrical warfare capabilities. Imagine the world’s foremost terrorist regime with nuclear weapons.

Bouverie’s book on how the Allies dealt with Hitler was almost a blueprint for how the West has dealt with Iran. For decades, the regime has funded attacks on the West and openly killed its own citizens who dare to disagree. Like Hitler, they formed a second national army—IRGC, analogous to the SS—dedicated to the regime, rather than the country. And like the Brownshirts, who enforced Nazi dogma, the Iranians created the Basij, a militia whose only job is to crush domestic resistance. This has all been seen before.

What is different is that in the early years of Hitler’s rise to power, as much as 80% of the German people supported his movement. In Iran, less than half of the population supported the early rise of the Mullah regime. Today, roughly 20% support it, 60% oppose it, and the remaining 20% are simply keeping their heads down. You do not have to destroy the country to oust the regime. 

For those of you who question the war in Iran, that is one of our most treasured rights. But read Appeasement before you cement your thoughts. I’m not sure that our President is much of a reader, but someone on his staff is.