Justin Cronin
An article covering the interview with Justin Cronin from August, 2010.
When given the chance to interview Justin Cronin before one of his readings, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He was on the tail end of a long two-month tour, and while I was sure Cronin would be perfectly nice, I didn’t expect him to be too wordy in his answers to questions he’d no doubt responded too many times in the last eight weeks. While chatting with Cronin as we were preparing for the interview, I mentioned this, inquiring how he was feeling at the end of a long, exhausting book tour. He said that he’d spent the previous week back home, though had spent each day doing up to ten interviews on radio, TV, and by phone. Perhaps the interview was going to be a short one.
But after Cronin’s lengthy response to the first question, I knew we were in for a treat. He answered each with interest and gusto, revealing his love for this book, explaining its depths and complexities and how much fun he clearly had writing it. While he always knew it was going to be a long novel, he didn’t let this affect him, wanting to get all the details right with a lot of research from weaponry, to the science of viruses, to actually visiting each and every place mentioned, as well as driving and plotting out the distances covered for accuracy. The second book in the trilogy will not be out until the summer of 2012, with the conclusion being released in the summer of 2014; Cronin has indicated that each of these books will be quite different from The Passage, as he doesn’t just want to write the same book. He will also be returning to various points in the time line, giving avid readers some answers they might not have expected.
As to whether Justin Cronin has satisfied the two reasons for writing The Passage, after entering into a bidding war among publishers, he received a considerably large advance, and the book has gone on to be a national bestseller, with a movie in development by Ridley Scott’s company. And, because his daughter has played such an important part in developing the story, she no doubt considers this an “interesting book,” though it will be some years before she will be allowed to read it.
You can find the complete article here.
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