Author Q&A with Russell ~ Part One

Thanks to increased visibility on social media and following Russell’s recent interview with Amara Wynn (as well as the community getting their hands on the latest release in The Reaper List series), we’ve received a growing number of informal questions. We’ve selected a handful to feature here as part of a new series of site updates, sharing Russell’s answers directly. If anything could be viewed as a spoiler, it will be indicated as such. In addition, one of the most frequent questions involves who Russell would envision playing roles in a film or television adaptation. It sparked such a detailed response that it deserves a dedicated post. We’ll be sharing that separately soon. For now, let’s get started with Part One!

You’ve been working in the space industry for years as an engineer, project manager… What led you to writing?

Russell: I’ve always had a creative side, but it’s been more of a personal outlet than anything intended for others to see. I’ve got a box full of discarded forays into creativity… a board game I made, lyrics I’ve written, some comics I made when I was eleven… even some charcoal sketches I did more recently (though still years ago). Even the books started as something that was filling up my head that I just wanted to get out on paper. I love and appreciate that the stories resonate with people, but I simply wanted to order my thoughts. I started running many years ago, and man… the amount of time to ponder storylines led to some fairly detailed plot points. I probably should have spent more time watching where I was going instead.

Work has led me to really throttle the amount of time that I can devote to writing, but I’m an early riser… a very early riser. So, I began writing in the mornings before I needed to head in. There was a large gap between the second and third books in the Reaper List series… enough that people that had been asking me to payoff the big cliffhanger to Tin Man had stopped pestering me about it. But I knew the story was there. It was just a matter of finding the time amongst all my other obligations.

I suppose we should back up, then. Tell us about the ‘Day Job,’ as you refer to it. It’s interesting enough that a good portion of our questions are about it as much as they are your writing.

Russell: (Chuckle) Yeah. I would expect so. It’s been such a big part of my life that I forget how cool it is. I’ve been working for NASA for a long time, the first half of which coincided with the Shuttle Program, earning my Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and my MBA during that time. I worked the Crawler Transporters, rolling out the orbiters and several test rockets over the years, before transitioning to some other roles. Spent a year out at Ames Research Center, and working on the lunar orbiter there was pretty cool. Then, a year in Washington at NASA Headquarters as the Deputy Chief Engineer for all our science missions… those amazing programs that resulted in Pluto fly-bys, Mars rovers. I think there were 74 or 75 in some state of development or operation during my time there. But I’m back at Kennedy Space Center now and back to working operations for the Artemis Program. Love talking about NASA.

You included elements of the space industry in the backstory for your main character, Shawn Kidd. Did those professional experiences serve as a genesis for the plot surrounding Number 181?

Russell: No. (Laugh). I shouldn’t say they had no impact, but the two endeavors are very thinly connected. I recall the first inkling of a story coming to me during a night out in downtown Orlando. There was a pedestrian street there, Wall Street, lined with bars but only twenty or thirty feet wide. It’s closer to an alley than a street, and the buildings there are pretty short compared to others in the area. You can easily make out the lips of the roofs. And I just pondered what some fool with a weapon could do. This was well before the sad epidemic of these types of events had since overtaken society. Well, those thoughts stuck with me during my runs, and I expounded on the idea. What if it was a targeted event, aimed at one person instead of random? What if it was part of a larger attack, one that had no clear motive?

I had been reading a lot of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor at the time, and the genre seemed to leak into my mental storyboarding. But it never overwhelmed the mental image of what I was developing. It wasn’t until I revisited a favorite novel from my youth, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, that I realized that it served as an anchor for how I built Number 181.

And that led directly into Tin Man? Had you always planned on making it a series? The ending of Number 181 certainly seemed to indicate that plan.

Russell: It wasn’t a plan, per se, but I enjoyed the process so much that it didn’t take long for me to start on the second book. If I’m being honest, the last 50 pages of Number 181 might fit better at the beginning of Tin Man. I felt that the momentum was such that my mind had the first 100 pages of Tin Man already churning. Of course, that momentum didn’t carry over for the gap between books 2 and 3. Since the ending of my first book caused so many people to message me in surprise, I guess I felt the need to do it again (laugh).

Yes, going from one year in-between books to thirteen years in-between was … a choice.

Russell: To be honest, I just drifted to other things. Life got busier with family and other interests. I’m learning German. I'm traveling more, much of which ended up making its way into Kidd. But I always had the germ of an idea for the third book. I never had the time for mental storyboarding like I did before… my mind drifted to other priorities, I suppose. There were some that kept hounding me about the third book, though, my father especially. I think that’s what eventually got me off the fence. I decided it would make a nice Christmas gift for my parents… and it was in March of 2025. Plenty of time to get it written and cleaned up for the holidays!  Guess I just needed a deadline. (Laugh)

And did your ‘Mental Storyboarding’ for Kidd hold up once you started writing?

Russell: Oh, God no. (Laugh). Much more than the first two, Kidd diverged wildly from what was in my head. I always make sure to write realistic reactions. I don’t like laying out set pieces and writing the steps that move from one to the other. I write and let the characters dictate what happens. Some of my favorite writers have lost me a bit in recent years thanks to use of unrealistic plot points. That’s not to say it can’t be fantastical. It’s a book; It should be entertaining and gripping. But you should always be true to your characters. They should never do something that makes no sense for them. And, you have to at least respect the laws of physics (laugh).

When I started Kidd, I had three tentpole-type scenes in my head: an opener to reintroduce Shawn, a critical ‘reveal’ scene akin to the scene in the airplane that ended up in the book, and the framework for the ending. All three of those things changed dramatically thanks to the first character I introduced in Kidd, one who ended up becoming my favorite in the entire book.

Jana Christen.

Russell: (Nod). That entire opening sequence was solely intended to establish the book’s tone and reintroduce readers to Shawn. And… I just couldn’t do it. Fifty pages in, she was still there, and I enjoyed writing her so much that she became critical to the entire book. And the series. Things that I hadn’t even planned on using as connective tissue between the three books grew on the page. It was so easy to write that I couldn’t do anything but let the characters take me where they did.

And the other two elements that I had in my head changed fundamentally as I developed her character. She made Kidd what it is.

What are your general opinions on series? There are a lot of authors out there that seem to thrive in that realm.

Russell: There are, and I certainly enjoy the characters that inhabit many of those stories. My worry with a lot of that is… I guess I’ll call it the episodic nature of it. Or, the “freak of the week” trope where it’s the same few main characters that go through similar cut-and-paste stories in each book. In many cases, the series that I enjoyed have stagnated, I think. Very little changes at the end of the story, and we revert to Page One’s status quo. I suppose it helps from an audience’s perspective in that you can literally read them in any order. Some of the better series have some throughlines such as romantic partners that cross over to subsequent books. But they seem to be more superficial than representing the actual meat of the story, and it can reduce the impact of what could have been a significantly dramatic scene. An example of a writer that doesn’t do that is Greig Beck. I’ve discovered his Arcadian series in recent years and really enjoy it. I’m looking forward to where that one goes. Like his, my stories are more intertwined, and it’s difficult to jump in with Book 2 or 3.

And yet you’ve mentioned Kidd is a good jumping in point for The Reaper List series.

Russell: Yes, well… because of the delay between Book 2 and 3, I took it upon myself to be a bit more heavy-handed with backstory. I think I found a unique way to show the events of the first two books without relying on excessive exposition. But I felt it was necessary to remind readers what happened. Because of it, I think it works well as a standalone book or series entry point, too.

Tune into Part 2 where we get into cover design inspiration, marketing, and hints at what Russell’s working on now!