Justin Cronin (2016)

The Cleveland Cavaliers, apparently.
Also the Expeditionary Forces of the Army of the Republic of Texas.

Planned it from the start. I've known the last sentence since July 2007 when it came to me as I was standing in a parking lot at the Shaws Market in Hyannis, MA.

Thanks for the kind words.
As for your question: I don't really have an answer! I always like a few mysteries to rest in the book.

That's a tough one. A lot of discipline is required, but I seem to have that. For me the darkest days come when there's some logical question I can't easily solve -- how to get my characters from here to there, or get two characters in the same room, or the dynamics of a large action sequence. I remember one really bad day a couple of years ago walking endlessly around the block into an icy wind trying to solve just such a problem. In the end the answer always comes, but it can be a struggle.

Here's one thing I always do: I ask each of my characters, "What's the thing you're not telling anyone?" In other words, what event in your life has, in a sense, never really ended and is always present? I think of this as the stone around my character's neck, and everybody has one -- I have one, you have one, all the people in The Passage have one.

There's really no reason it WOULDN'T be rather like our world, since people are building it from the tools of the old one. I wanted the reader to feel comfortable there as well -- I didn't want significant material differences to distract from the point of the epilogue. As for language, of course that would have evolved in a variety of ways, but I wasn't going to invent a new language for that part of the book.

1) I'm a planner. Each of the books in the trilogy was outlined in detail before I started. There's still lots of room for improvisation, but I like to know where I'm going.

2) My editor doesn't really cut anything, come to think of it. He makes suggestions, voices concerns, but in the end it's all my call. Most of my manuscripts get longer from the first to second draft, and shorter from the second to the third.

3) I dunno. A powerbar and a banana? A cup of coffee the size of a paint can?

shark most definitely. I'm a good swimmer.

I'm going to take a break for a while. I don't want to be known only as that guy who wrote The Passage. But I do think I will return eventually, perhaps a couple of books down the road, to tell some stories from that world that couldn't logically find their ways into the story. I imagine such a book as titled something like "Tales From the World of The Passage."

I've switched genres before; I imagine I'll do it again. But my voice is my voice; you write how you write. That's only going to change as my life changes, in other words. My voice on the page now is not the same as my voice when I was 25, or 30, or even 40.

Never questioned it. I suppose you reach an age when you want to send everyone to heaven in the end. The last line of that chapter (which I won't quote because: spoiler) pretty much sums up my feelings.

Honestly, no. That's just what the story was. There was no other way to tell it.

Thanks for the nice thoughts for The Passage!

I think what you're asking about is 'exposition' -- the orienting facts of the story, usually near the beginning. And you're right -- if the writer just laid it all out in one big chunk, it would be dull. What I like to do is disperse it-- to give the reader what she needs WHEN she needs it, while the story itself is in motion.

Michael became a lot harder than I anticipate-- this somewhat nerdy kid who, by the end, is capable of ordering people to their deaths.

The plot stayed more or less the same, in terms of major touchstones. I don't think I could have made it through the workday without knowing where things were going -- you can't sit at your desk and think, "Today I will work on my 3500 page epic." My head would fly off. Instead I think, "Today I will write the next 1000 words of such-and-such a scene" that serves certain goals and moves the story forward.

First of all, thanks. Second, I love when people cry; I cry myself sometimes, writing the thing. Note sure what that says about me, but there you go.

You're right: the books mix two very different elements--the large, public events of the story and the smaller emotional moments of the characters. It's a constant give and take. Without the first, the story would feel overly confined; without the second, it would feel inconsequential. I just try to keep both in mind.

I do a great deal of research, of course, but here's the truth-- I don't have to know a lot about a few things, I have to know a little about many things. Enough, in other words, to make the world of the story believable.