Ripple Library: Author Chat With...Cole Chase
The latest installment in our running conversations with authors making big moves these days. Today, at the Ripple Library we feature Cole Chase
How do you get inspired to write?
Writing is a compulsion for me. If I hear an awesome song, it stirs my creativity and makes me want to write. If I see an awesome movie, it stirs my creativity and I want to write. See Cirque du Soleil? Gotta write! Great metal band? Gotta write! It has always been in me. I don’t need special inspiration to write; the hard part is carving out time to write.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
I wrote marketing copy for years. When the assignment was “make a slogan for this product,” I’d just brute force it: “Okay, with no self-editing, I am going to write 25 slogans for this product and see what comes out.”
But now I mostly write novels, and it’s easier to feel stuck. In that case I don’t feel “blocked” as much as I think I’ve taken a wrong turn in the story. Sometimes I just have to retreat for a day and do something else and let my subconscious deliver the answer to me. But most often, I come back to the work in progress with new eyes the next morning and forge ahead. If that means burning down yesterday’s work, so be it.
The most important thing for me was to stop acting so precious about my own words. When I was a new writer, I waited to “feel inspired.” Then I sold my first novel to a publisher, who wanted revisions on a deadline. As soon as you go pro and have deadlines, you quickly realize, you cannot wait for inspiration. Just grunt out some words. If you read the final book, no one can tell from page to page “Here, he was inspired” and “Here, he was just farting it out.” My wordsmithing skill was present regardless of how I felt internally. Once I realized that, it became far easier to kill my perfectionism and just write write write.
What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?
I once had an acquaintance from high school, who had confused memories from a certain period in his life. He believed he had been satanically ritually abused by a celebrity.
This was in California. My friend believed when he was little, he had been taken into a cave under Arrowhead Springs, near San Bernardino, and a Satanic cult had performed rituals with him on an altar. He was desperate to know if these memories were real. I went with him to a psychiatrist, a hypnotist, the San Bernardino County Sheriff (who had a task force investigating ritual abuse), and we even explored the San Bernardino foothills, where we found a network of caves sealed off with a large boulder we couldn’t move. In short, there were vague indications that maybe there was something to his claims, but nothing you would call true evidence. Just when he thought “I must’ve made this up,” he would meet someone in the area who would say, “Yes, I have those memories too!” That would set him off again. I never got to the bottom of it, never fully believed his claims, but boy did it leave him a mess.
I later learned this whole “I was abused by a satanic cult as a child” thing was a trend that was fairly common in the 1990s among certain groups, mostly women in their 40s. Maybe it was kind of a prototype for Q-Anon? Anyway, it would be fun to read a novel about an investigator determined to prove what did or did not happen.
What are you currently working on? Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
In my latest project, a woman is buying donuts for her officemates when a guy barges into her car and says, “I’m a federal agent! It’s an emergency! Drive!” He is not a federal agent. What he doesn’t know is that she is. But he really is being chased by people who mean him harm. Finding out who is chasing him and why launches an international adventure that carries the reader from Seattle to Germany to Greenland and Washington, D.C., with elements of technothriller and comedy. It’s called The Man with No Moves; watch for it next year!
I don’t know where I got the idea, except that I was trying to write a murder mystery and I was not finding my own plot very interesting. This idea popped in, instead, and off I went.
What kind of research did you do for this novel?
Every international thriller needs a MacGuffin that multiple parties fight over. The MacGuffin in The Man with No Moves is based around rare earth elements, or REE. REE are used in everything from smartphones and solar panels to magnets, clean power, aerospace, medical gear; they are increasingly important. So I had to learn about rare earth elements.
When you hear “rare,” you think they don’t occur much in the earth. Actually, many of the “rare” elements are more common than silver. But they don’t occur in big veins, like gold or copper. There is a tiny bit of, let’s say, thallium, in almost all dirt. But it’s so expensive to extract, that’s what makes it expensive, and why we look for areas where REE are more concentrated.
In real life, 38% of the world’s REE lies under the control of China. But the West uses the most REE. So the US and allies are constantly looking for more sources of rare earth elements. This is one big reason our current president has threatened to take over Greenland—it is rich in REE.
I had a lot of fun learning about them, and the cutting edge today is that no one knows what happens if you combine various REE into alloys. But in my coming book, I pretend to know, and it makes a resource the entire world will fight for. More to come!
In general, what emotions do you usually wish to elicit with your writing?
I am just out to have fun. From 2023 to 2025, I published six books about Shadowfast, a heavy metal band that is also a heist crew. The Shadowfast thrillers have attracted a lot of attention, and my favorite review was from Best Thriller Books, who described them as “epically fun.” I want the reader to feel like we are playing together.
If you think of your favorite Mission: Impossible movie, or your favorite Marvel movie from the first couple of phases when they were pretty good, that’s kinda my vibe, too: thrills, excitement, humor; there is darkness but not an overload of it; and the good guys will win. Readers have remarked that the final three Shadowfast books have an ending that is uplifting. A lot of thrillers are grim, or end with the world going to shit. I enjoy that sometimes myself, but I don’t write it. Use my books as a palate cleanser before your next post-apocalypse read.
Best advice on writing you've ever received?
Get comfortable finishing your shitty first draft.
There is a lot packed in that phrase.
First, you can’t be so touchy about your prose and your (non-existent) reputation that your first draft discourages you. Every writer writes bad first drafts; it’s the second draft where you make the happy accidents look like they occurred on purpose. No one has to see that first draft so don’t worry if it reads like you wrote drunk. Don’t scold yourself for not being brilliant every moment your fingers are on the keyboard. Stay on your own side.
And second, you have to finish the whole story in order to see what the story is. If you’re learning to write better, you will slow your progress dramatically if you never finish anything. Always write to the end. You can fix a mess. You can’t fix a blank page.
What is the weirdest/wildest topic or fact that you’ve had to research or uncovered in your research?
This was a surprise I learned when tracking the history of spies. The Bible, in the Book of Judges, chapter 3, tells about a scheme to kill a king, Eglon. Translators have made the wording indirect, but if you parse out the meaning, a Hebrew spy stabbed Eglon to death with an 18” knife while the king was on the toilet, and he was so fat that the killer couldn’t get his knife out of Eglon’s stomach. The killer got a good head start on his escape because he locked the bathroom door, went out the window, and none of the staff wanted to interrupt the king’s bathroom time. I had no idea anything that gross was in the Scriptures that so many people revere. The entire Book of Judges is a trip to read; you’ll also find a woman killing a soldier while he’s napping, by driving a tent peg through his skull. I think the authors were trying to show that chaos ensues if no strong leader encourages citizens to follow rules.
Can you tell us a two-sentence horror story?
Brother 1: Brother, my hands ache from squeezing so hard, and I don’t know what to do with the body.
Brother 2: Oh my god you moron, I didn’t say “dad choke,” I said, “dad joke!”
What else would you want readers to know about you? Where can readers find you online?
Curious individuals can learn all about my books at colechaseauthor.com. There, you can sign up for my email newsletter, and you’ll get Metal Spies, my first Shadowfast book, free.
The Shadowfast Thrillers are available on Amazon in ebook and paperback formats; three of them are on Audible; and you can read all of them free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.
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