Does being an expert IRL translate to success in fiction?
From DEA agent to novelist to screenwriter
It’s my pleasure today to interview J. Todd Scott. Former DEA agent, novelist, and now screenwriter as a writer for Lawmen: Bass Reeves (created by Chad Feehan and executive producer Taylor Sheridan).
I first met Todd through Putnam. They were publishing both of us, and my editor thought I should get to know Todd because we were both federal employees. His second novel had just come out, I think, or was about to. We talked off and on over the years because we had something in common: we’d both had careers in the very field we wrote about. Me, in intelligence, and Todd in law enforcement. It was comforting to have someone you could talk to who was going through the same thing as you. Being an ex-fed can have its limitations, but as you’ll see, Todd hasn’t let it stop him from having an enviable writing career.
Alma: We’ve both had careers in government that’s the stuff of thrillers—in your case, as an officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). How many years were you with DEA? What was the most thrilling thing that happened to you during this time?
Todd: I was a Special Agent for nearly 30 years, starting my career as a street agent in Los Angeles in the early nineties, before retiring as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Louisville Division (responsible for Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia), one of DEA’s 23 domestic field divisions. I was so fortunate in my career, working in small and large offices, overseas, and on the Southwest border, and I was involved in hundreds of cases—played undercover roles, flew on jets and helicopters, rode on go-fast boats, got in high-speed chases, trekked the wilderness, hunted smugglers in the Sonoran desert, and dismantled meth labs. In one case, I smuggled multi-ton loads of hash on vessels across the Pacific, so I spent weeks learning seamanship, and even more time bobbing up in down in the dark in the open ocean.
Alma: I think you had the more fun career.
You wrote a trilogy of crime novels (the Big Bend trilogy) and a stand-alone about the opioid crisis (Lost River) before writing a straight-up thriller (The Flock) and then a supernatural thriller (Call the Dark). Talk a little bit about your decision to move between genres.
Todd: Both a creative and a business decision. The first novel I was agented on (which didn’t sell but led to me writing the first book in the Big Bend trilogy) was much more in the vein of The Flock or Call the Dark; more Stephen King or even Peter Straub than Elmore Leonard or Don Winslow. Until the Big Bend books, I probably would’ve classified myself as a suspense or thriller writer, rather than a pure “crime” writer. However, once your debut novel does come out, that’s your genre, and you’re expected to run with it.
I love my crime novels, but always planned to try my hand at other kinds of stories. I penned a very dark crime novel—at least to my publisher—called 13 Days that no one was sure fit even my crime brand, and when Lost River came out right in the heart of the really dark days of Covid in 2020, limiting my ability to get out and support it, I decided to take a chance and work on a long gestating idea I had about a cult, which eventually turned into The Flock. Admittedly, it a calculated business decision too—even though everyone suggested my job as a working federal agent was a book publisher’s marketing dream, particularly when I was publishing books about the very thing I was getting up and doing every day, the reality didn’t match that. So, if being a real “cop” writing about cops and criminals didn’t help me a lot, then just being an “author” writing whatever the hell I wanted probably wouldn’t hurt me much, either!
Alma: Your crime novels earned praise from revered authors such as Craig Johnson (Longmire series), John Sandford, and T. Jefferson Parker, and been described as equal parts Don Winslow and Ace Atkins. And yet you’re not a household name (yet)! We talked about this crazy paradox where folks like you and I, who have the professional background as well as demonstrated writing ability, have a difficult time getting the reading public to pick up our books. Speaking for myself, it is maddening. Why do you think this is? I think the average reader assumes that we can’t be good writers because it’s our second career, but most writers have a day job.
Todd: It is maddening, as I alluded to in the other question. I know in my case I was somewhat hamstrung since I was still on the job—I had to be very careful about author profiles, interviews, essays and the like, because I couldn’t be seen as being a spokesman for DEA, or intimate that the views in my novels reflected a stance of the current administration. All my books were vetted by the agency though, and everyone there was supportive of me personally, so I worked hard to be respectful of the professional latitude they gave me.
Alma: You are straitjacketed when you’re writing but you’re still a fed. At least in intelligence, it’s a lot more restrictive than when you’ve retired, when all they have power over is determining whether you’ve included any classified information.
Todd: All the same, while I love someone like Don Winslow, and his Cartel trilogy is rightly lauded for its craft and “authenticity,” he was only writing about what agents like me were telling him or what he was reading in reports I was living every day. I wrote on my own books every morning, and then put on a badge and gun and went to work. Now, I’m surely not a better WRITER than Don, but it can’t be said I’m any less an EXPERT, and I know my Big Bend trilogy reflects that. But this is a very difficult business, and getting attention for any novel is tough. We’re all trying to catch lighting in a bottle with each new book, so we look for any ways to highlight what makes our work different and unique. You worked for the CIA, are highly respected in that arena, and your spy novels have a level of verisimilitude that most spy novelists can’t match, and yet getting that across to the reading public can be difficult, when there’s (maybe) an implicit assumption that every published author is an expert on what they’re writing about. Yet we can both point to numerous instances where novelists break out because they’re writing about the very thing they were doing or did before they put pen to paper, and that personalized experience is trumpeted in every marketing copy and USA Today review. All I know is I have a unique, personal perspective on drug trafficking, drug addiction, the border, and what it takes to wear a badge and carry a gun for a living, and that perspective is deeply and inextricably wedded into most of my books. I’ll leave it to the readers to decide if that matters!
Alma: Now you’re writing for television as much as you are working as a novelist. How did that come about? Do you prefer it to novel writing? It seems a lot of novelists who dip their toe into screenwriting end up staying there—do you think this will happen for you?
Todd: I truly do love writing for TV and film, although it’s quite different, and my writing process is quite different too. I wouldn’t say I prefer it; I just welcome the change and the challenge. I got involved in it when my own books were optioned for TV. Through those development processes I met wonderful folks who liked my writing and gave me some opportunities to try my hand at scripts and screenplays, and I’ve just continued ever since. I think novelists get drawn into the industry and stick around because, honestly, it’s both fun and lucrative. You can spend a year writing a book no one will buy, or a year working on a TV show or movie that might not get made, but at least with the latter, you’re more likely to get paid! I’m working with great writers on projects that interest me, and as someone who’s always loved film and TV, it feels like having another dream come just true—just like the first time I saw one of my books in a bookstore. My hope is to continue doing both for as long as I can.
For more from Todd, subscribe to his newsletter on Substack, Far Six.
Thanks Alma!
Interesting interview. I've not heard of the author, but now I must look up his books!