 Welcome to Conversations with Creative Minds. We have been searching for the meaning of creativity and the role it plays in our daily life. People use creativity to express themselves in different ways, such as writing, painting, poetry, composing music, or innovating new products. Creative Minds have never been more relevant than today because of the need to solve our society's dynamic and complex problems. Today, our guest is award-winning at New York Times bestselling author William Martin. He has a rich career spanning decades, including working in the construction industry, Hollywood, and of course, writing some of America's best historical novels. He's been called the king of the historical novel. He's authored 12 novels, Back Bay, Nerve Endings, The Rising of the Moon, Cape Cod, Annapolis, Citizen Washington, Harvard Yard, The Lost Constitution, City of Dreams, The Lincoln Letter, Bound for Gold, and of course his latest book, December 41. It's a thriller. And being a thriller, it's a departure from Bill Martin's usual historical novel genre. Welcome Bill. Thanks for coming back this time to speak with us again. This is your second appearance with us and we are happy to have you back. December 41 is about events that occurred on December 7, the attack on Pearl Harbor to Christmas Eve on the White House lawn, right? That's how it unfolds, begins actually on December 8th with the FDR's speech to the nation and his voice travels out across America, out into the hinterlands, out across the deserts and up and over the mountain ranges and down into Southern California where the radios in several different locations are picking up that voice. That is the way in which I tie together a series of disparate characters at the beginning of the book who will become irretrievably intertwined by the end. The FBI on December 8th, 1941 in a lot of places, particularly in Los Angeles, was arresting Japanese and German nationals and their allies and friends based upon long-time surveillance and the FBI in Los Angeles rated a compound in a rather expensive and ritzy part of Los Angeles today, a compound that you can still find back in the hills of the Santa Monica Mountains if you know where to look and in the opening scene they arrest everybody down there except for one guy who gets away and he's the one they should have caught because he's the one whose job it will be to get himself to Washington DC and shoot Franklin Roosevelt on the night that he lights the national community Christmas tree of Washington DC and the United States Christmas Eve. It's a great setup for a novel, a novel that's only going to take a couple of weeks to unfold, which you're right is a real departure from the books that I've written over the last 30 or 40 years or so. A December 41 is a thriller rather than a historical novel. Did you find writing this book easier or more complicated than your usual format? There's no book that is easier or more difficult than the one before. There is no step in the process of writing a book that I find easier or more difficult than the one before. When I'm outlining a book I'm always saying gee I wish I was writing. When I'm writing the book I say gee I wish I was editing. When I'm editing the book I say gee I wish I was copy editing and when I'm reading the galleys and proofreading I say gee I wish this book was published and done and out of the house. So nothing ever gets easier for you as a writer. You only get better at it and the idea that writing a single three-act structured novel is easier than writing the big historical volume that covers, as in the case for example, of Cape Cod a thousand years is it's accurate because those books Cape Cod or Back Bay or City of Dreams are much larger in scope than this book. A lot more characters, a lot more stuff to have happening and yet this book took me a couple of years just like all of them do. And even though it's shorter than those books the demands of coming up with scenes that are exciting and seem new but are also part of what is a very traditional kind of story which December 41 is those kinds of scenes challenge you and you need to find new ways to tell an old story basically. Yet the book is rich in detail as you would find in one of your historical novels which is a bonus for the readers. Now did you learn of any actual attempts or assassination plots against the U.S. government during that time in your research and also did you discover anything in doing your research in World War II that utterly surprised you that you had no idea about that really was amazing to you? Well first of all the matter of plots and assassinations and things like that Franklin Roosevelt was the target of an assassin in 1933 when he was a the president-elect. He was sitting in the back seat of a car greeting people in Miami, Florida was an open open car you know convertible and there was back in the crowd an anarchist who stood on a stool and took aim at Roosevelt and loosed off five shots but there were two problems one the stool broke and the other somebody hit the guy's arm and the bullets went astray and that saved FDR who wasn't hit but the person with whom he was riding at the moment who was Mayor Anton Sermak of Chicago was hit in the stomach and later died. FDR cradled him in his arms on the way to the hospital so there was that. Then in terms of the growth of the the fascist movements in the United States in the 1930s all of them ultimately had as their stated goal to take control of the United States and put on to our system of government the same kinds of rigid controls that you were seeing in Germany and Italy and in Japan. There were plenty of people here starting with Charles Lindbergh for example and the America firsters who admired the Germans for what they were accomplishing in the face of the depression particularly in contrast so they believed to the efforts of Franklin Roosevelt who was a kind of an eclectic throw anything at the wall a liberal reformer whose goal it was to basically save capitalism and he was successful at that I would say but these groups and I write about this in the book these fascist groups such as the German-American Bund of Southern California they all were waiting for something called the day the day when all of these fascist groups would rise up start shooting the wrong people and start putting into power the people that they wanted in the mayor's offices and the state houses and in all of the other places where the granular details of American governments were created and so that all of that lead in suggests that while none of these plots would come to fruition obviously there were plenty of people out there thinking about ways in which to get control of the United States there was a plot in the 1930s in which businessmen were planning to put into place a United States Marine officer a colonel or I think or in general who was going to replace Franklin Roosevelt that one went out the window there were lots of these these plots and as far as specific assassination plots on Franklin Roosevelt well you have the the evidence that the secret service was very worried about this when I got the idea to write this book and it all came to me in a movie theater I was watching darkest hours with Gary Oldman where he plays FDR where he plays Winston Churchill and he calls FDR on the phone and asks FDR for help it's May of 1940 France is falling the Germans are advancing on Dunkirk and so forth and so on and FDR says I can't help you American politics ties my hands FDR was in the process of slowly moving the American people toward the realization that they were going to have to fight fascism probably in two on two fronts before it was all over well he tells Churchill I can't help you good luck the camera cuts back and we see Churchill slumped into despair in the movie and as I was watching it I thought to myself in a year and a half those two guys will stand together on the South Portico of the White House like the national community Christmas tree and express the unity of these two nations in their struggle their crusade against fascism and what a target they will make that's where the idea came from and I immediately started doing some research into the possibility of this having happened the part about Churchill being there of course we know about because Churchill traveled in secret in the first week of the war he traveled in secret from England to the United States arriving on December 22nd I think 10 day a 10 day journey on a battleship he left on the the 12th yeah he left on December 12th took 10 days got there in December 22nd much to the shock of the world so we know Churchill was there the arrival of Churchill up the ante not only for the fictional German assassin in my book but also for the real secret service characters and one of them who appears in the book was actually he's a historical character he wrote up his name was Mike Riley he wrote a book called Riley of the White House shortly after FDR's death and the end of the war in which he described his whole experience as FDR's uh anchor man the man who stood at FDR's elbow all the time ready to move quickly pick the president up because of course we know Roosevelt was crippled from polio and couldn't couldn't walk uh to pick the president up and run with him if something bad appeared to be happening and Mike Riley talked about the concerns of the U.S. Army and military authorities in those first weeks of the war uh concerns that were somewhat unfounded that the Germans might find a way to send paramilitary forces at the White House in order to kidnap or kill Franklin Roosevelt what dropped paratroopers of all things out of the sky uh and in response to this they put machine guns on the roof the White House they had military vehicles circling uh circling the White House perimeter perimeter grounds day and night with 50 caliber machine guns on them all kinds of things like that and Mike Riley as the newly appointed head of the Secret Service was much more concerned about as he wrote the the lone assassin or the small team of killers dispatched to kill the president and when I read that I said it didn't happen but they were worried about it they were watching out for it that gives me the justification to go ahead with this bit of the story uh and to uh to spin a whole fictional yarn out of the idea that somebody might try to try to take a shot on Rose at Roosevelt on Christmas Eve so uh that's the long answer to uh to the question that you asked as far as being surprised by anything in world war two history um I would have to say that you know I've read so much there was no moment at which I just slapped myself in the forehead and said wow I didn't know that um but it's uh the process of writing the book was a process of accumulating lots of details that were all very interesting not only about uh FDR and Churchill but about the whole country and where we were as world war two was thrust upon us that's why the book is rooted in popular culture uh it begins in Hollywood it begins with characters who are trying to make it in the movie business and will be drawn into this this web of conspiracy in danger and drama that I've tried to create here and at the same time they're always aware of American popular culture of the of the music of the moment the number one song on December 6th 1941 going to the top of the billboard chart was Chattanooga Choo Choo and of course that's um uh that's an interesting detail on December 8th and this is one of the reasons I began the book on December 8th on December 8th 1941 the day in which FDR gives his great speech the day in which Winston Churchill says I need to get to the United States in order to get into Roosevelt's face because Japan has attacked the United States Roosevelt may turn the force of the United States entirely on the Japanese but we know that Germany is the country we have to defeat first well in addition to those two things December 8th was the date on which uh at Warner Brothers a play arrived at the studio in the story department along with some books and other things that had been sent out by the story editor in New York who wanted to uh wanted to get what was called and still is called coverage on this material that's when it's given to a young reader who in those days worked for a dollar 12 an hour a young reader who would read the play or read the novel and then write a report on it it's one of the things that I was taught to do when I was in film school though I never I never ended up doing and it certainly wouldn't have done for a dollar 12 an hour um but uh one of the plays was everybody comes to ricks everybody comes to ricks of course would just a year later become the movie Casablanca sure and it would become even though there are no battle scenes whatsoever in Casablanca it would become in a way the ultimate American war movie uh it's it's romantic and it's exciting and it's funny and fast moving and uh and it manages to show you in the character of Rick played by Humphrey Bogart the evolution from a guy who as he says in the movie will stick his neck out for nobody to a guy who's ready to throw himself completely into the fray in order to defeat the Nazis and um and while my novel doesn't replicate the plot structure or the love triangle or anything like that what it does do is take that theme and put it on to my fictional characters and so it's just one more piece of the um it's one more piece of the larger drama and one of the reasons that I began it began the book in Hollywood well that's why second world war is always and utterly fascinating um is uh another thriller on the agenda perhaps uh are you thinking of it or back to historical novel or it just well to finally figure that out before we say goodbye i'm looking i'm looking for the idea that will uh capture me in a way that makes me just want to spend another two years sitting here in this room writing and writing and writing and it the likelihood is that it's going to be a historical thriller of some kind and um I think it will probably have the tighter structure of December 41 and of some of the bigger books though I do intend at some point in my career between now and whenever I stop writing entirely uh to write one more Peter Fallon novel this might not be uh the time I think that I'll probably since I did enjoy writing a three act structure uh which is basically what you have in December 41 uh the first act is set in Los Angeles the second act on the road on the super chief speeding across America and the final act is in Washington DC I uh I think that that kind of structure is is one that I like to work in and I'll probably give you another thriller sometime in the next few years but these books all as I said at the beginning take a long time and it never gets easier you just get better at it if you learn how to ask yourself for right questions as a writer well whatever it is all of us fans through the years will welcome it and um we appreciate your coming here to talk about your new book today I loved it and I see great things going forward for it and I hope that she can come back here again and discuss something else soon I hope I hope I write something uh something that is ready in a short period of time so that we can get together again and tell more stories about books we write yeah well I look forward to it and um Citizen Washington is my favorite of all of them because of Washington and um I look forward to your discussing that with us very soon all right Bill thanks again thanks for coming back uh great to talk to you again great to hear about the novel and how it evolved how it started terrific great story thank you