Brian Freeman
The Bourne Vendetta
The hunt for a trove of secret information forces Bourne to decide who lives–and who dies–in this latest installment in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
The Writer’s Dossier – The Brian Freeman interview
Dossier Update: 1/14/2025: Freeman is out with another Bourne book, and this thrilling series continues today with THE BOURNE VENDETTA. As usual, it’s another can’t miss.
Dossier Update: 9/10/2024: We disclosed Brian’s first Dossier with the release of THE BOURNE SHADOW, his latest in Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. Now, he’s back out with another book of his own, BREAK EVERY RULE. The Dossier caught up with Brian for a few new wild disclosures.
DOSSIER: With your new book, BREAK EVERY RULE (out on 9/10/2024), your protagonist Tommy Miller is a terrorist-slaying badass who’s tried to leave it all behind and enjoy having a family. In order to create a character going through that difficulty, what was your research like? Were you able to talk with people who’ve experienced the challenges of walking away from a similar high-octane career?
FREEMAN: In fact, this was a very special book for me, because I was inspired to create Tommy Miller by the experiences of my best friend, who is (like Tommy) a retired Ranger and police detective. He has taught me so much about the true nature of heroism, and I wanted to honor him and people like him with this book. I’m not sure anyone ever walks away from that life.
They carry it with them and try to live with it.
DOSSIER: With having just released your latest entry into the Jason Bourne universe (July ’24), you’ve got a completely different book out just two months later? How did you prioritize these two projects with respect to time and energy? Did you write them simultaneously, or did you do one and then the other? Any suggestions for writers trying to handle a lot of work all at once?
FREEMAN: I’m writing three books this year, which I’ve had to do several times in the past because of deadlines. I look back on the years in which I was writing one book a year and think – wow, that must have felt like a vacation! (Note: it didn’t!) I’ve had to work on two books simultaneously a couple of times, but I prefer writing them successively, and that’s what I did with THE BOURNE SHADOW and BREAK EVERY RULE. (Ironically, I wrote BREAK EVERY RULE first, but it’s coming out second!) To keep up that kind of pace, you need to have a process that really works for you, and after writing thirty novels, I know how to lay out a schedule that gets me from the first to the last page. But I also know what stages can’t be pushed or rushed.
DOSSIER: With your seemingly boundless amount of creative energy, what’s your 2025 schedule look like?
FREEMAN: Whew! My next Bourne novel is already done: THE BOURNE VENDETTA comes out in January. I just wrapped up a stand-alone mystery called PHOTOGRAPH that should be released in fall of 2025. And I’m diving in to my seventh Bourne novel (!) right now and will wrap that by the end of this year. I expect THE BOURNE EXPLOSION to hit stores sometime next
summer. Early next year, I’ll write Bourne #8, but I hope I can take a little bit of a break after that!
The Writer’s Dossier 7/16/2024 – The Big Brian Freeman interview
Waiting for Matt Damon to call
DOSSIER: With the release of THE BOURNE SHADOW, you will have published five novels in the epic Robert Ludlum series while the last Bourne movie came out in 2016. Given the popularity of the two mediums, do you write the books with ideas about how your stories might play out on screen, or do you just come up with the best plots possible, regardless of how hard it might be for Hollywood to shoot it? Do you have a great idea and think, “Damon is going to hate this!?”
FREEMAN: Can you believe Matt has never called me? I mean, five Bourne books, and not a word, no invitation to hang out at his pool, fly in his private jet, catch a Red Sox game with Ben. It’s like he’s forgotten his whole past. (See what I did there?)
DOSSIER: Nicely done, Brian. I’ll text Matt and have him call ya. (He’s a huge Dossier fan.)
FREEMAN: Okay – seriously, it’s not the plots so much as the character that I have to balance with regard to the movie adaptations. For a lot of readers/viewers, Matt Damon is Jason Bourne. But the Damon version of Bourne really doesn’t bear much similarity to the character we find in the Ludlum books. My goal was to re-create Ludlum’s vision of Bourne – more three-dimensional, more emotionally complex. So I’ve tried to write books that are modern and new, but which feature a Jason Bourne that readers will recognize in spirit from the original Ludlum novels. On the other hand, I’ve also tried to write him in such a way that if moviegoers wants to picture Matt Damon on the page, that works, too. My Bourne does look a lot like him!
As for using the stories in the next movie or TV series…hey, we’ve already got Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan on TV. Time to bring back Jason Bourne.
Resume highlight: director of marketing at a law firm
DOSSIER: Did being a director of marketing at an international law firm give you everything you needed to come up with plenty of ideas for stories where a lot of people have to die? There’s a direct connection there, right?
FREEMAN: I remember talking to a woman on the bus on my way from work. When I told her I worked at Faegre & Benson, she said with disdain, “Oh, so you’re a lawyer.” I just laughed and said, “No, it’s even worse, I do public relations for lawyers.” She didn’t laugh. She looked at me dead serious and said, “You’re right. That IS worse.”
Yikes! So I guess what I learned working at a law firm is how much I wanted to write novels for a living instead.
Actually, no, I did learn a lot at the law firm in ways you might not expect. Litigators are natural storytellers, and the person who tells the best story to the jury usually wins. So I was fortunate to work with people who knew how to talk about complex ideas in a way that everyone could understand – and thriller writers have to do that all the time.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Thrilling music/deadly silence/a Florida beach?)
FREEMAN:I think a lot of readers have this vision of the writer’s life, where we’re in a quiet cabin in the woods, and a soft symphony is playing in the background, and deer are wandering past the window. Actually, it’s a cramped little office where three cats are wandering over the keyboard and my wife is calling from the living room to tell me one of them just threw up on the rug. You learn to tune things out.
But I have to admit – the creative environment has definitely jumped a notch since we moved to Florida. Now, unless it’s the humid peak of summer, I do most of my writing outside, enjoying the breeze and sunshine and staring at the alligators on the lake. They do their thing, and I do my thing. I love it.
The hard, the easy, the crazy
DOSSIER: You’ve been writing two, sometimes three books a year for several years now, which is a lot harder than it sounds. You’ve avoided the trap of becoming formulaic, so, is there a lot of planning and plotting involved? And … how are you finding time to answer these ridiculous questions from The Dossier guy?
FREEMAN: Wait, writing three books a year doesn’t sound hard? Wow, it sounds pretty crazy to me.
DOSSIER: Sounds terrifyingly hard.
FREEMAN: I’ve had to do it several times (including this year – two Bourne books, one new stand-alone), and it makes me look back on the early days of writing one book a year like it was a vacation.
I’ll be honest. I don’t really like writing that way. I prefer to take my time and savor each story. But the deadlines don’t always allow me that luxury. In the early years, I used to write very detailed outlines before starting, but I’ve eased up on that a bit. I still do a chapter-by-chapter outline, but it’s more like a roadmap where I can take detours and explore little side roads. The story and characters come to life and evolve as I get the words on the page. It’s more spontaneous and original that way – but also a bit nerve-wracking when you’ve got due dates hanging over your head
What helps in doing multiple books is that I’ve got the freedom to write very different kinds of stories. One week I’m writing a gritty police procedural like my Jonathan Stride novels. The next week it’s an emotional mystery in a female first-person narrative like THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW or THE URSULINA. And the next week I’m writing an action thriller like Bourne. The diversity keeps it fresh for me, which makes the busy schedule a bit less intimidating. [Checks watch. Types faster.]
Quoting Freeman
DOSSIER: You’ve said, “My stories are about the hidden intimate motives that draw people across some dark lines.” After having written over thirty novels, many of which have won prestigious awards, how long into your writing career did it take to get to that quote? Was that always your writing goal, or did your process evolve into it over time?
FREEMAN: I’ve always wanted to write emotional thrillers. I love the pace and intensity of a thriller, the way it drives the reader to turn the page to find out what happens next. But a story that’s all about the plot – without an intimate connection to the characters – leaves me cold. It may sound strange to think about a mystery or thriller that brings you to tears, but I find that to be the highest praise a reader can give me.
That’s also another reason I prefer the Robert Ludlum vision of Bourne to the Matt Damon vision of Bourne. The Bourne of the movies is a laconic loner – which is great for two hours of action in a movie theatre, but not for ten hours with a novel in your hands. Ludlum’s Bourne needs relationships in his life, even though that emotional vulnerability puts himself and the women he loves at risk. His Treadstone career also makes those relationships fragile and harder to sustain. But hey, that makes for great drama and great twists.
Discover more about Brian at: Facebook | X | Instagram | Brian Freeman | Amazon Author Page