In the forthcoming First Daughter (Forge), Lustbader's protagonist, Jake McClure, survives a horrific upbringing. His inner scars drive him to the outside, and raises a central question that Lustbader sees as having wide significance.

"When you're so deeply damaged, how do you let in even those you love? This is a question that haunts Jack, but I think, to some extent, it haunts a lot of people."

Lustbader is one of the few novelists who is a major success in two
different genres (fantasy and thrillers). But the craft he brings to each is uniform.

"Fiction writing is fiction writing, no matter the genre.  What I mean is this: all fiction is grounded in the same basic needs: story arc and character arcs.  A story begins with an inciting event: something shocking, something that upends the protagonist's world.  Think of North By Northwest.  Cary Grant plays a mild-mannered advertising executive waiting for his mother in a hotel lobby.  Just as the bellboy comes around calling the name of what turns out to be the fictitious name of a spy the CIA has concocted, he waves to someone he thinks is his mother.  Now a rival group of spies is convinced he's the fictional character.  Everything in the film proceeds from that premise.  That's the story arc."

And the character arc?

"Again, let's look at the Cary Grant character in North By Northwest.  When we first meet him he's a momma's-boy drone (despite the fact that he looks like Cary Grant!).  Because of the inciting event, he will move from being a disbelieving nerd to a man on the run, a man who begins to use his mind to escape the enemy's ever more clever traps, until at the end, he becomes a reluctant spy for the CIA and a hero by defeating the enemy spy ring.  Oh, yes, and along the way he falls in love.  The changes he undergoes from the beginning to the end of the film comprise his character arc.  One of the main points of a character arc is that the hero goes from being passive (events happen to him) to being the initiator, a central attribute of a hero in any genre.

"These priorities are fiction-driven, rather than genre-driven."

I asked Lustbader what he does differently today than when he started.

"I think it's more a question of attitude than of action.  I have more experience, for one thing, so constructing a storyline that I find exciting is a familiar task, though possibly not any easier.  For another, I'm more confident, and confidence brings about concentration, which any writer must have.  Also, I'm better able to apportion my time.  

"That said, I'm still obsessed with writing.  When I'm in the middle of a project it doesn't matter whether I write one paragraph or eight pages, my head is filled with my story and my characters 24/7.  It's sort of like being possessed, and I have to say sometimes the grip of it is still sometimes frightening, but this is the only way I can write, walking the edge between one world and the other.  Much of the time, especially toward the end of a novel, the world I've created is far more real to me than life; it also seems far more interesting."

This "obsessive" approach means there is no "typical" writing day for Lustbader.

"The word 'typical' is not in my vocabulary.  Right from the get-go I was taught to think independently, to think outside the box and, most importantly, to see the big picture.  As I've already said, I'm thinking about a project 24/7.  That means, for instance, I always have a pad and pen beside my bed.  Invariably, in the midst of a novel, I'll have a fistful of thoughts the moment after I turn out the lights at night."

Lustbader used to write only in the morning, but over the years that's changed. "Now I often don't get started writing until three or four in the afternoon.  Why this is, I can't say; writing is a basically irrational experience. And it's hard work, but try telling that to anyone who doesn't write."
    
Contributing editor James Scott Bell is the author of Try Dying (Center Street), first in the Ty Buchanan thriller series, and Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure (Writers Digest Books)