Outliers Writing University Podcast Series

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Brad Taylor

BRAD TAYLOR, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.), is a twenty-one-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Forces, including eight years with the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta, popularly known as Delta Force. Taylor retired after serving more than two decades and participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, as well as classified operations around the globe. His final military post was as assistant professor of military science at The Citadel. He is a New York Times bestselling author of eighteen Pike Logan thrillers and is a security consultant on asymmetric threats for various agencies. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and two daughters. 
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/into-the-gray-zone-brad-taylor?variant=42923640127522

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Katy Hays

Outliers Get to Know guest host Tracey Devlyn sat down with New York Times bestselling author Katy Hays to chat about her new literary thriller—SALTWATER.Sun-soaked paradise or a gilded cage of deception?A long-buried crime resurfaces, shaking a fractured family to its core. When the past refuses to stay buried, trust is shattered—and survival isn’t guaranteed. 
Katy Hays is a Californian, writer, and cake aficionado. She lives in the shadow of the Sierra with her husband and their dog, Queso. In addition to writing, Katy works as an adjunct Art History Professor teaching rural students from Truckee to Tecopa. She holds an MA in Art History from Williams College and pursued her PhD in Art History at UC Berkeley. When not writing (or eating cake) Katy is a skier, cyclist, trail runner, eastern Sierra enthusiast, and—well, reader. https://www.katyhays.com 
 

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Authors Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt

Nicholas Harvey
A USA Today Bestselling author, Nicholas Harvey's life has been anything but ordinary. Race car driver, adventurer, divemaster, and since 2020, a full-time novelist. Raised in England, Nick has dual US and British citizenship and now lives nomadically wherever he and his amazing wife, Cheryl, choose to land for a few months. He is the author of the AJ Bailey Adventure and Nora Sommer Caribbean Suspense series, as well as multiple collaborations.
https://www.harveybooks.com
 
Douglas Pratt
Douglas Pratt, a best-selling action author hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, captivates readers with his unique blend of charm and intensity, reflecting his Southern roots. His works keep audiences on the edge of their seats, infused with a sense of adventure and exploration. Beyond writing, Pratt's personal interests lead him to sail the seas, exploring vibrant coral reefs and sunken shipwrecks, which fuel his imagination and inspire enthralling adventures in his stories.
Website:  http://www.douglas-pratt.com

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Chris Bohjalian

Outliers Get to Know guest host Tracey Devlyn sits down with New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian to chat about his new historical fiction—THE JACKAL’S MISTRESS.Torn by war. Bound by fate. 
A Confederate wife faces an impossible choice when she finds a wounded Union officer—risk everything to save him or let war take its course.
 
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four books, including The Lioness, Hour of the Witch, Midwives, and The Flight Attendant, which has been made into a MAX limited series starring Kaley Cuoco. His other books include The Red Lotus, The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; and The Double Bind. His novels Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty- five languages. He is also a playwright (Wingspan and Midwives). He lives in Vermont.
 https://www.chrisbohjalian.com  

GET TO KNOW Author David "DL" Williams

David “D.L.” Williams is a thirty-year public safety veteran with assignments including paramedicine, patrol in high-need areas, helicopter rescue, mental health liaison, and violent crime investigations as a detective. The Fraternal Order of Police, Rotary Club, the Arkansas Psychiatric Society, and the American Legion have all honored Williams as Officer of the Year for his work with families and children in crisis, and he is a recipient of the Visionary Voice Award from the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault.  Williams is the bestselling author of Fighting for Her Life: What to do When Someone You Know is Being Abused and Textbooks, Not Targets: How to Prevent School Shootings in Your Community, and he teaches criminology at the University of Arkansas. 
https://www.davidlanewilliams.com

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Tess Gerritsen

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D. 
While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction and in 1987, her first novel, Call After Midnight, was published. It was just the first of 31 suspense novels that she’s written over a 36-year writing career.  She also wrote a screenplay, "Adrift," which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson. 
Tess's first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her novels have hit bestseller lists ever since.  Among her titles are Gravity, The Surgeon, Vanish, The Bone Garden, and The Spy Coast. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.
She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publishers Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen” and Time Magazine named her novel The Surgeon one of the best mystery/thriller novels ever written.
Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series "Rizzoli & Isles," starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.  
She is also a filmmaker.  She and her son Josh produced a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. It aired on PBS channels around the country. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, was a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.
She lives in Maine.
https://www.tessgerritsen.com/

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Mark Greaney

Mark Greaney's research for the Gray Man novels, including The Chaos Agent, Burner, Sierra Six, Relentless, One Minute Out, Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gunmetal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man, has taken him to more than thirty-five countries, and he has trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. With Marine Lt. Col. Rip Rawlings, he wrote the New York Times bestseller Red Metal. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy Support and Defend, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy Commander in Chief, and Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.
 markgreaneybooks.com

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Duo AL Landau

JON LAND is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over 60 books, including his Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong series. Jon has also taken over two of the most iconic legacy brands in mystery-thriller fiction, penning six titles in the Murder, She Wrote and two in the Capital Crimes series. Additionally, Jon has teamed with multiple New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham on a bestselling sci-fi series that includes THE RISING and BLOOD MOON. His next thriller series, written with fellow author Jeff Ayers under the pseudonym A. J. Landau, debuts in February of 2024 with Leave No Trace from Minotaur. The author of numerous, similarly acclaimed nonfiction titles, Jon has more recently turned his talents to ghostwriting with his first effort in that arena, WHITE ROBES AND BROKEN BADGES coming from Harper Collins in August of 2024.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250877338/leavenotrace
 
Jeff Ayers is the author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion for Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books. He has interviewed hundreds of authors for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts and has been a book reviewer for The Associated Press and Booklist. He currently reviews suspense thrillers and mysteries for Library Journal, Criminal Element, and firstCLUE. Jeff co-writes the National Park thriller series for Minotaur under the name A.J. Landau and co-writes the Jigsaw Puzzle Mysteries for Crooked Lane. He is a retired public librarian and former co-executive director for ThrillerFest. He lives near Seattle, Washington. 
www.jeffayersbooks.com

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author PJ Tracey

PJ Tracy is the pseudonym of the mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their cyberthrillers in the Monkeewrench series were national and international bestsellers. After PJ’s passing in 2016, Traci began the Margaret Nolan Detective series, set in Los Angeles, where she lived for many years. Deep into the Dark, Desolation Canyon, The Devil You Know, and City of Secrets have been lauded by critics and fans alike. She now resides in Minnesota and continues to write about murder and mayhem.
https://pjtracy.com

GET TO KNOW Best-selling Author Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-six New York Times bestsellers, including Out of Nowhere, Overkill, Blind Tiger, Thick As Thieves, Seeing Red, Outfox, Tailspin, Sting and Mean Streak. Writing professionally since 1981, Brown has published over eighty novels and has upwards of eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide. Her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. Brown holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Texas Christian University, where she instituted the Excellence in Literary Fiction, or ELF, a scholarship awarded annually to a creative writing student. She has served as president of Mystery Writers of America, and in 2008 she was named Thriller Master, the top award given by the International Thriller Writer’s Association. Other honors include the Texas Medal of Arts Award for Literature and the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
https://sandrabrown.net