How do you deal with criticism? I mean, so your books are fantastic. But, you know, I haven't checked, you know, I would be a little weird if I went on Amazon and checked all the all the reviews, but occasionally you're going to get a bad review. Oh, yeah, sure. How does that work for you and your thought process? I mean, do you have to kind of steal yourself for this? I mean, let me just throw one thing on top of all this stuff. You and I are totally different kind of venues. But as I've gone off and done a lot of TV stuff, I mean, I still have imposter syndrome. Yeah. I was on a panel the other day with Dennis Ross,oss who's a gasser you know a legend in the middle east and it's at the it was at the the hayden center and i'm like what am i doing here yeah

um

you know and it's it's on c-span i'm like what is happening and so i still have that imposter syndrome and you know and sometimes you screw up sometimes there's some some criticism how do you and it's it's interesting because coming from a job in which you know you do have a sense of kind of supreme confidence you know some humility involved but um uh but you know there you know is it are you are you kind of pinching yourself every once in a while like holy crap i'm a writer now i have these books they're all over the place i'm a little bit of a celebrity here and there i mean you're you're you know you're one of the kind of this coming up and coming stars of the espionage business um so imposter syndrome how do you take criticism um you know uh you know it's uh uh do you are you are you walking tall right now or are you feeling like you're catastrophizing like like around the corner i'm gonna read a shitty and no one shows up. Sorry. This is like I'm like – I'm probably talking about myself more than you. Well, I was going to say, so wait, you

being on a C-SPAN panel with Dennis Ross wasn't on your bingo card 10 years ago? No, but I'm like, I don't deserve to be here. What am I doing? This is hard. I had a freaking nervous

breakdown, and it was fine, and he's very nice. Yeah. But anyway, but you know, it's kind of, all right, go on MSNB. There's a million people who watch Morning Joe. What am I doing here? I say that all the time.

So, all right, your thoughts on, I just threw a whole bunch of stuff at you. Well, look, I, you know, I feel like every day as a writer, and I think it's, you know, going on TV, same category, right? Like every day is a three-legged stool of basically fear, joy, and self-loathing. And it's just a question of like what proportion those will be in. You know, even days where really wonderful things have happened, they're still afflicted by some amount of fear and self-loathing, you know, because I feel like every time I confront the blank page, I have to deal with imposter syndrome. to replicate what I've done in the past. You know, I actually am pretty good at filtering out the negative stuff. And I just generally as a side note on reviews, be they, I will read, obviously, if it's a thoughtful written review somewhere, you know, I will want to read it. Amazon, Goodreads, that kind of thing. You know, I think as a writer, it's not a good idea to read that stuff because what ends up happening is either A, you read good reviews and your head swells up into a balloon and you think, oh, well, I'm amazing. Or B, you read terrible reviews and then you think you suck. And the reality is neither of those head spaces are particularly productive for good writing. You kind of want a healthy amount of skepticism about your own talents, but you also want that coupled with confidence to always be trying to improve and be putting words on paper. And that's sort of a weird balance to maintain. And I think reviews mess it up. I also, I mean, I saw a great interview with Quentin Tarantino a few years ago where someone asked him, how do you deal with criticism of your movies or your style? And he's like, I just tell people to suck a dick. And I think you kind of have to have this mentality of like, I'm putting my best into this thing. I am trying to make the most incredible story you've ever read and put that down on paper so that you will stay up late and you will ignore family for days. And you'll be thinking about the book, you know, after it's done. If you don't like what I'm doing, you know, go read something else. And so I think you kind of have to, at least for me, it's, it's helpful to have a bit of that mentality too. That's like, I'm doing something here that I enjoy because I'm writing these books as I would want to read that period. Right. And you know, if you're not in, if you're not into it, there's tons, you know, there's so much other content, just go, go find it. So I, I think, you know, me the the i really love to write like my days my best days are ones where i get to spend seven or eight hours just deep in in the book that's what i that's what i live for it's fun to have written the books and to see them up on a shelf and you know to have them out there in the world but no review good bad ugly whatever no book advance good bad ugly you know it's going to change that i'm just going to keep writing and i think that's the that

to me is my healthy healthy spot of like just get up in the morning and you're right you know is okay so the quote is every day is a three-legged stool of fear joy and self-loathing that's

right did you make that up i i so i definitely have not made up the like fear joy and self-loathing combined as being part of the writer's life but as far as i know i think that's my quote although i i don't know i could have picked it up somewhere i don't know who said it if not i i'm happy to take credit for it no

but you know it's there's there's a part because you you do this, if you choose to be in the public eye, you're putting yourself out there. There is a vulnerability there. And you just have to be able to kind of deal with it. And anyone who says they don't care is lying.

Yeah, absolutely. Of course I care how the books are received. And that they sell and that people get to keep doing it. I really do care. But, um, once they're out there, you know, I'm feeling this now, the book's been out for three weeks and I kind of, there's, there's, you know, I can, I can help promote it. You know, I can, I can have conversations like this and like, you know, but like, I can't do much anymore, you know? So it's kind of, the world sort of has to accept

the book and see if it likes it or not. Frankly, there's luck involved too. I mean, a friend of mine wrote a book. And this is years and years ago. And he was lucky he got on at that time there. It was Bill O'Reilly, like the equivalent of Joe Rogan. And the book became a bestseller. But it wasn't, nor would it have been, but it did because there was 5 million people who saw something. There's luck involved there. But again, it's a tremendous achievement. Let me just say, again, I absolutely love the book. I think readers will as well. It has the kind of authenticity. It has the feel of what CIA was like. Incredible characters. So I encourage everybody to certainly the book, purchase it, write a great review. But not most importantly, but like we were saying, you never rest on your laurels. And I know you feel this way too. You're working on something else. What's next? There's another book in training. First of all, any of the same characters or are we moving on? So right

now, none of the same characters. there's no overlap at all which would be the first time you know the first three books there's been some character overlap between the three this one's totally different it's an israel iran story it's all israelis and iranians it is a facade versus the good force um are you going to go to Israel for any kind of... I have had a lot of conversations with Israelis, including some Mossad formers. I had actually been very close to convincing my lovely wife to let me do a research trip there. And we were having those conversations literally in early, I think it was late March, early April. And then there was the drone and missile volley from Iran. And she was like, you know, our life insurance policy isn't that great. Maybe you stick this one out. So I haven't been able to make it yet. I would like to. Now, I mean, I spent time in Israel when I was back at the agency, but it has been over a decade. So it's just been, it been honestly, the way I've been constructing it has been very similar to the way I constructed my second book, Moscow X, which is one where, you know, I had not served in Russia. I had not been to Moscow. And so I had to just have a ton of conversations with people who had. But it's shaping up to be a story about essentially imagining like what if the Iranians had the capability to hit individual Israelis inside Israel. Some Assad officers that the

Iranians want to send a message to.