"The success of Flight of the Intruder was unexpected and certainly caught me by surprise," Coonts says. "I was practicing law for an oil company at the time and it was in financial trouble. I decided to try to make a living writing, and fortunately it worked out.  The publishers wanted another Jake Grafton tale, then another, and I was off and running. I tell people I haven't done a lick of honest work from that day to this.  It's been one big lie after another."

Coonts has also written three other series, which he says "keeps me fresh."

"Jake Grafton put my kids through college, paid for the planes and flying, and paid for the farm. But Saucer and its sequel have kept me enjoying the writing process.  The Deep Black series is pure action-adventure, pulp fiction as an art form, and it's fun too.  I wrote The Cannibal Queen, a nonfiction flying adventure, for the same reason.  And there is a contemporary novel, The Garden of Eden, that my publisher reluctantly published, but only under a penname. The challenge of doing different things is that your audience usually refuses to try something different. People buy the brand and are loyal to it, and it's hell getting them to try another flavor. Finally, there is the reality of modern publishing: Computers neither forget nor forgive.  You are only as good as the sales of your last book, whatever it was. You step outside your brand at your peril."

This prodigious output gives Coonts a singular perspective in the challenge of series characters.

"I think if you use the same characters over and over, they have to grow as human beings or the series will slowly lose its audience," he says. "Series burnout, the publishers call it.  Finding new plots that can be written with on-going characters can be very difficult."

That being said, what does Coonts do to keep up the quality of his writing?

"Doing other things now and then to keep the enthusiasm level high.  It helps that my wife loves action-adventure and is a gushing fountain of plot ideas.  She has become a huge resource for me as a writer."

As for the writing life itself, Coonts does not have a set routine. "I don't know that I have ever been fortunate enough to have a typical writing day.  If I ever do, it would go something like this: Get up, have coffee with my wife, answer emails, go to breakfast at one of our favorite places or eat it at home, then write until I run dry.  Dinner with friends."

Not a bad way to spend a writing life, the latest result of which is The Assassin, which debuted at #12 on the New York Times list.

Be sure to visit Stephen Coonts's website, www.coonts.com.

Contributing editor James Scott Bell is the author of Try Darkness (Hachette/Center Street) and Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure (Writers Digest Books)