The Thriller Writer Lab

Ava Roberts spent years as a clinical psychologist before leaving to write thrillers full time. In The Summer House Murder, that background shapes a cast where every character's motivation is psychologically grounded, morally complex, and impossible to judge cleanly. In this episode, Mark and Ava pull apart how the book was actually constructed: the structural choices, character architecture, and...

Bestselling author Amanda West joins The Thriller Writer Lab to break down The Memory Foundation, a speculative thriller about memory flights, destination travel, and a secret mountain facility where guests can relive the best moments of their lives. Amanda talks about moving from psychological suspense into a more high-concept thriller, building the idea of memory flights, and finding the right b...

What does writing feel like when it's actually working? Not the grinding, forcing, staring at the screen version. The other kind, where you're not even really writing anymore, just trying to keep up with your fingers because something is coming through you. Jon Lindstrom is a four-time Emmy nominated actor, filmmaker, and USA Today bestselling author of Hollywood Hustle and Hollywood Payback. In t...

Brittany Butler spent 10 years as a CIA targeting officer running spies in the Middle East and war zones. Now she writes espionage thrillers for Crooked Lane Books and the operational world she lived in shows up on every page. In this episode Brittany breaks down how she builds characters using goals, motivations, and conflicts before writing a single scene, how she balances three interlocking plo...

Michael J. Lalonde spent 23 years as a Canadian Army intelligence officer before writing The Quiet War: Canadian Front, a modern military thriller built around Canada's tier one special forces unit, JTF Two. In this episode we get into how he built a story where the heroes are winning every engagement and losing the war without knowing it, why the villain targets Canada before the United States, w...

Cam Torrens is a retired Air Force C-130 pilot, active search and rescue volunteer, and author of Havoc, book five in the Tyler Zan series. His first two books never got picked up. His third did. Then he went back and got the first one published as a prequel. Every book in the series starts with a real SAR mission or a real location where one happened. In this episode we talk about the dual timeli...

What does it actually mean to write what you know? For Mark P.J. Nadon, it meant embedding the parts of himself he doesn't talk about into the characters at the heart of his new psychological tech thriller, The Treatment Room. In this episode, TD Severin, author of the award-winning medical thriller Deadly Vision, takes over the show to interview Mark on launch day about the craft, the characters,...

A phone call dropped Luke Richardson into a story he couldn’t ignore. An ancient manuscript lost for thousands of years. A British Museum dig in Lebanon. An archaeologist who faked his own death to smuggle out clay tablets. That call became The Ark Files, the first book in his eight-book Eden Black archaeological thriller series. We get into how that real story shaped the novel, how he turns setti...

James Rosenberg is a Pittsburgh attorney and author of the Verdicts and Vindication series, legal thrillers pulled directly from cases he has handled. Unclean Hands is based on the most nerve-wracking trial of his career: defending the store employees who accidentally killed a man they were detaining for shoplifting. We get into how he builds thriller pacing around a full courtroom proceeding, why...

Robert Adamcik is a Navy veteran and defense contractor who writes spy thrillers populated with real people, coworkers, shipmates, and friends, by name and by personality. We talk about his Martini Squad series and the second book The Wave Force Affair, how he approaches getting permission before putting someone in a novel, and what happens when a character based on a real colleague doesn't make i...

What do you do when your characters are trapped at 30,000 feet with nowhere to go? Susan Walter wrote a locked room murder mystery on a plane and had to figure out how to keep it moving when everyone is literally buckled in. In this episode we talk about her writing process, how she went from screenwriter and movie director to bestselling novelist, her brilliant character naming tricks taken from...

35-book veteran Brian Drake joins Mark P.J. Nadon to reveal a brutal industry truth: If you aren't publishing fast, the algorithm will forget you. In this episode, we deconstruct how Brian maintains a prolific pace and why he uses a manual typewriter for his first draft.   Inside the Episode: The 90-Day Churn: The modern algorithm requires high-volume production to stay visible to readers. The Typ...

J.L. Hancock joins me to talk about The Hawk Enigma and how his past work with special operations informed the technical foundation of the story, without letting detail take over. We discuss how he approached researching the technology, how he decided what information belonged on the page, and why clarity for the reader mattered more than explaining everything he knew. J.L. Hancock's book The Hawk...

In this episode of The Thriller Pitch Podcast, I talk with Joel Nedecky, author of The Broken Detective, about the craft choices behind his debut crime novel. We discuss building a story around a private investigator who knows he’s going to prison, writing character before plot, and allowing questions of addiction, family, and consequence to emerge during revision. This conversation focuses on per...

To kick off Season Two of The Thriller Pitch Podcast, host Mark P.J. Nadon shares ten lessons he learned in 2025 after reading more than 45 thriller novels and interviewing 27 thriller authors. In this bonus episode, Mark reflects on the patterns that came up again and again across conversations with writers, including the importance of support networks, consistency, flexibility in the writing pro...

In this episode of The Thriller Pitch Podcast, I’m joined by Westley Smith, author of They Came at Night, to talk about blending psychological thriller and action, and how lived experience shaped the emotional core of the novel. We talk about writing characters shaped by trauma, balancing tension with restraint, and why some stories aren’t built from research alone. Westley shares how personal los...

In this episode of The Thriller Pitch Podcast, I’m joined by Karen E. Osborne to talk about how she builds characters from real life and structures stories across dual timelines. We discuss Justice for Emerson, how observing people in everyday moments helps her capture physical detail and voice, and the way characters become so real to her that she rarely loses track of who they are. Karen also ta...

In this episode of The Thriller Pitch Podcast, I’m joined by Adam Roach, author of The Ritualist. Adam talks about how a 100-word flash fiction piece he wrote for a horror contest became the starting point for his thriller series. We discuss the original flash fiction, what judges said about expanding it, and how that idea eventually became a full-length novel. Adam also talks about writing scenes...

What happens when a real encounter sparks the opening of a psychological thriller? In this episode, USA Today bestselling author Melissa F. Miller explains how she built Cut Off from Sky and Earth around memory, trauma, and the dangerous weight of past relationships. We get into how she blended the feel of a fairy tale with a tense, grounded narrative, why she stepped away from legal thrillers for...

In this episode, international best-selling author Andrew Warren, joins me to talk about how he created White Tiger — a villain who’s as tactically intelligent as he is physically dangerous. We dig into writing action that’s fast but clear, how to use strategy to shape a fight scene, and why a smart antagonist raises every aspect of a thriller. Andrew also talks about returning to the Thomas Caine...

Jo Loveday joins me to discuss Campus of Shadows, a psychological horror thriller that follows a vulnerable mind as it begins to break. We talk about crafting a believable mental decline, how Jo’s nursing and psychiatric training informed Dave’s deterioration, and why portraying addiction felt personal. Jo also opens up about living with dyscalculia and how it helped shape Dave’s character, the ch...

How do you build a high-stakes thriller without losing sight of character? In this episode, Mark Philbin joins me to talk about Kill Them All, a plot-driven thriller built around a twelve-city murder spree and a protagonist who sees patterns others miss. We discuss where the idea began, how he shaped the “12 victims in 12 months” structure, and why grounding a twisty plot in character growth matte...

What makes a friendship unravel, and how do you show every side of it on the page? In this episode, author M.M. Deluca joins me to talk about The Divorce Party, a psychological thriller set in Las Vegas that explores secrets, tension, and the fragile balance between loyalty and betrayal. We talk about writing from multiple perspectives, shaping believable relationships between flawed friends, and...

How do you write action that feels real without losing your voice as a storyteller? In this episode, author T.R. Hendricks joins me to talk about The Instructor, a military thriller shaped by his experience in the army. We discuss how real-world training translates to believable fiction, the discipline it takes to finish a manuscript, and how sixty rejections became part of his journey to publicat...

How do you write 5,000 words a day and still love what you do? In this episode, author Maria Frankland joins me to talk about I Don’t Like Mondays, a psychological thriller that began with a single thought on a crowded Yorkshire train platform: what if someone was pushed in front of the train? Maria shares how that moment became her 22nd novel, how she built a full-time writing career, and the dis...