New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva is finding creative life in the age of the coronavirus tough, even as he incorporates the reality of COVID-19 into his latest works.
Once again, Silva's protagonist is the dashing Gabriel Allon; an art restorer who moonlights as an Israeli secret agent. One might think that after nearly two-dozen books, coming up with new and exciting plot lines for Allon might be turning into a chore. Does Silva ever get tired of this guy?
"The short answer is no. I find him endlessly fascinating and great company. I basically just have to sit down at the keyboard or with a yellow legal pad and pencil in my hand and he shows me the way."
Apparently, Allon also lets Silva know when to write about him as well.
"When you called, I tapped out the last few words of a paragraph and I'm sitting here staring at it on my computer and just laughing to myself because of what just happened on the page. I really enjoy writing him and not just him, but all of the characters surrounding Gabriel."
That includes one of the characters who plays a pivotal role in Silva's latest novel.
"The character who floated to the surface and demanded to be written about this time is one of my favorites: Archbishop Luigi Donati, private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul the Seventh. We're back at the Vatican with this book 'The Order.'"
Silva says it's not only his books' characters who lend a hand in his creative process. He also credits his wife, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel.
"Writers can get isolated and it's great for me. Jamie is sort of my window on the world and she's working right on top of me right now. We have a little makeshift television studio in our living room and my kids are working from home. We're like a lot of American families, I guess. We're all working under the same roof."
And Silva says the dawning reality of the pandemic even found its way into the plot line of "The Order."
"It's actually set in Italy on the eve of destruction, if you will, just a few weeks before all hell breaks loose. And I was able to foreshadow it a little bit in the book and I wrote the book with such a heavy heart knowing what was on its way in Northern Italy and Venice where a portion of the book was set."
Of course, the virus has gone worldwide and is now taking its worst toll in America. So Silva sees that reality inserting itself into his writing for the foreseeable future.
"I had to decide whether COVID was going to be part of the Allon universe and whether it was going to be something that was going to peter out and we'd get on top of it very quickly or whether it was going to have a long-term global consequences. And the latter is obviously true. So COVID is definitely factored into the next manuscript and talking to people in the business, it's having a huge impact on how people in the intelligence services go about their work."
And it's certainly also having a huge impact on how people in the writing business - such as Daniel Silva - go about their work.
"For the last - gosh, I mean - 17 or 18 years, I've been doing extensive tours every year. This is the first time in a very, very long time that I will not be going out and talking to my readers face-to-face and signing their books. So this is just one of the many strange and dislocating things about this terrible period that we're going through."
But that doesn't mean that Silva's readers won't be able to meet him virtually. He'll be doing a ticketed Crowdcast this Tuesday evening, July 14 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. You can get details on the Midtown Reader web site.
