Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with J.C. Sullivan

What inspired you to write “Shark and Octopus”?

Sullivan: I got the inspiration for the novel while watching a movie trailer for Ocean’s 11. I have always enjoyed heist novels and movies, where a gang gets together to pull off a difficult theft. But instead of the glitz of Las Vegas and the suavely polished Brad Pitt and George Clooney, how about a group of very unpolished Baltimoreans doing the heisting?

For the subject of the heist, I was inspired by my reading in the history of World War II. There actually was a Nazi Special Task Force for Music, which looted instruments all over Europe. There actually is a violin considered the most valuable musical instrument ever made and that is what my gang of Baltimoreans is after.

Tell me about yourself – something that I will not find in the official author’s bio?

Sullivan: Tom Clancy mentions my father in the bestselling novel Patriot Games.  The novel’s main character, Jack Ryan, is having a conservation with - of all people - the Queen of England. Jack Ryan describes what it’s like growing up in a Baltimore neighborhood with Irish FBI agents with names like Sullivan. That’s my father; the Clancys and the Sullivans lived only a couple blocks apart in a Baltimore row house neighborhood. I have returned the favor by mentioning Tom Clancy’s father, who was our neighborhood mailman, in my as yet unpublished novel Freeze Tag. 

How do you come up with the names for your characters?

Some of the character names in Shark and Octopus are literary references – Bobby Lowell (for the American poet Robert Lowell); Larry Ferlinghetti (the American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti); Billy C. Williams (William Carlos Williams).

Some of the character names tell the reader about that character. For example, Griffin Gilmore is extremely knowledgeable about mythology and his first name refers to the mythological creature the gryphon, which had the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. Griffin’s last name is a street in Baltimore, a reference to his and my hometown. The last name of his girlfriend, Annie Knaack, tells you something about her skills.

In Shark and Octopus I slipped in one or two character names of people I don’t much like. Timothy Dean, for instance, was the principle at a Catholic high school where I taught, a school touched by the priest abuse scandal.     

If "Shark and Octopus" were adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?

Sullivan: This was a fun exercise. I have decided to cast the following actors in the four leads:

Ryan Gossling as Griffin Gilmore

Emma Stone as Annie Knaack

James Franco as Bobby Lowell

Elijah Wood as Kit Carson

What is your favorite book, genre, and/or author?

Sullivan: The authors who have most influenced my writing are Donald Westlake (the John Dortmunder novels), Christopher Buckley, John Cheever, John Updike. Can I add a songwriter? If so, the songwriter whose lyrics have influenced me most is Bruce Springsteen.

What are you working on next?

Sullivan: I am almost finished the sequel, Mr. Fox. Here's a taste of the story --

Is the Alexander coin the solution to the greatest historical mystery ever, the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great -- or is the coin just a scam? That’s the question Griffin Gilmore must solve in Mr. Fox, a completed 84,000 word historical thriller.

Griffin’s unique profession is recovering items of value without anyone noticing they were ever gone. He’s approached by a nameless Egyptian who asks Griffin and his team to recover the Alexander coin, stolen that morning in a carjacking. He does not quite believe the man but takes on the assignment.

The coin is recovered, then lost. The Egyptian turns out to be a spy, with an American mistress who was part of the carjacking crew. An expert in ancient coins is a carjacker; so is the Vice Consul of the Artsakh consulate. There is blackmail, a car chase through the streets of Baltimore, and a professor who’ll claim the Alexander coin is legitimate, for a price. As Griffin asks several times through the action: Who’s scamming who?  

Griffin could not recover the Alexander coin without his team: Covington “Kit” Carson, his best friend since kindergarten and a top ten lister of everything; Bobby Lowell, an actor with a gift for eliciting needed information through his improvisational skills as bereaved brother, movie location scout, or Homeland Security bio-hazard specialist, as required; Saif, a wizard at the computer keyboard; and Annie, Griffin’s longtime girlfriend, observant and insightful, calm where he is impatient, intuitive where he is logical.

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