JSB: Doug, tell us a bit about your solo book, The Monster of Florence. How were you drawn to this story, and what was the effect of writing it on you?

DP: I moved to Italy with my family as a kind of adventure -- and because I had an idea to write a murder mystery set in Florence. I discovered that the olive grove beyond the gates of our villa had been the scene of one of the most horrific double-murders in Italian history. That's how I first learned of the serial killer known as the Monster of Florence, who had never been caught. I eventually gave up the novel and devoted myself to finding out more about the Monster. I teamed up with a Florentine journalist, Mario Spezi, who had covered the Monster killings from the beginning for the local paper. Mario had a huge archive on the case and knew everyone involved. Together we set out to learn the truth. We eventually tracked down a suspect, interviewed him, and asked him: Are you the Monster of Florence? Lemme tell you, that was some interview...

What should have been the end of the story was only the beginning. After that, Mario and I fell into the story, so to speak. I was eventually asked to leave Italy, while Mario was arrested and jailed for murder. It's a story that is so improbable, so bizarre that I'd never dare write it as a novel. But it's all true.

The great thing about being a writer is that you can exorcise a bad experience by writing about it.

JSB: Lincoln, what drew you to your recent solo novel, Terminal Freeze?

LC: Ever since I first read Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness as a boy, I've been entranced by the arctic / antarctic setting as a vehicle for a thriller (or, perhaps more aptly, chiller). I've always wanted to write a story set in such a spot. Many of my books seem to focus on a group of people stuck in a distant, dangerous locale in which there is no source of outside help. Certainly the frigid northern wastes of Alaska (in my case, the fictitious Federal Wilderness Zone, or "Zone") provided just such an atmosphere.

I was also intrigued by the challenge of taking a quintessential "campfire story" and making it my own. Ever since we lived in caves and drew rock paintings instead of surfing the Net, man's most atavistic fear has been of being hunted by something big and fierce and hungry. No secret there--it's a story as old as the hills. But I thought the time had come to see if I could rise to the challenge, write a really unsettling story of that type that could persist in the reader's memory--hopefully--long after the last page has been turned. Genres become classics for a reason, and I felt it was time I did my best to attempt a worthy contribution.

JSB: A lot of new writers would like to know what it takes to get, and stay, published these days. What advice would you give them?

DP: My advice is to understand it's a career, not a book. If the first manuscript doesn't sell, move on to the next. Most successful writers I know (including myself) have an unpublished first novel sitting in a drawer somewhere. You learn how to write a novel by writing a novel.

Staying published is very different from getting published. If you want to stay published--that is, to gain and audience and grow it--give your readers something more than a good story: give them something surprising and different to think about.

LC: These are merely the lessons I've learned myself, rather than some kind of boilerplate advice, because there are no hard and fast rules and no guarantees of success. But here goes: Keep writing. Keep reading, too. Write the kind of books you'd like to read yourself, rather than tailor your work specifically to what you believe to be commercial or salable. You'll have more fun, and readers will tap in to your genuine excitement. Solicit feedback from those whose taste and opinions you trust. Think of each new story or book you write as a learning experience. Feel free to revise it, but chances are you learned so much in the writing process that--if you can't sell it--it's time to try again, building anew on what you've already learned. The publishing industry has contracted, and it's arguably more difficult to get published using the traditional formula, but the rise of the web has given writers an almost unimaginably broad and powerful set of new tools. Leverage those to your advantage. And good luck!

The lastest thriller from Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child is Cenetery Dance, available now.

James Scott Bell is the author of numerous thrillers, and blogs at The Kill Zone.