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Killer Thriller TV: Raymond Benson On Bond, The Black Stiletto And His Thriller Writing Career

483 views · Published 12 June 2013 · 22:08 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: The Creative Penn · 2013 · Education

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Thriller author J.F.Penn interviews award winning and bestselling thriller author Raymond Benson about writing Bond, The Black Stiletto series and his writing life.
Check out the author websites at: http://www.JFPenn.com and http://www.RaymondBenson.com

    How Raymond's writing career progressed, through stand-alone thrillers to James Bond novels as well as writing for computer games, drama and music composition.

    How Raymond learned to write a plot with obstacles and how his background in theatre direction trained him for life in terms of communication and organization, as well as analyzing stories and characters.

    stars and stripesWe talk about The Black Stiletto series, the latest is Stars & Stripes. The Black Stiletto lived in 1950s/60s New York City and fought for social justice on the streets of New York. She became a legend and then mysteriously disappeared. In the present time, a man is caring for his mother who has Alzheimers and he finds out she was the Black Stiletto. There's a lot of research in the books, but also a lot of Raymond's own self, as his mother-in-law did die of Alzheimers.

    Even though Raymond wrote Bond books, many of his own thrillers have female protagonists and his new series, The Black Stiletto, is written in diary form, 1st person female, so Raymond has a lot of female beta-readers.

    Raymond talks about writing and researching the Bond books. He knew the characters intimately and so he mainly needed to bring story-lines and a villain. He did some historical research on global hotspots that had links with the UK and wrote stories around that. Japan, Southern Spain and Corsica were his top locations. Are thriller authors as exciting as their protagonists?

    Raymond's favorite author is Ruth Rendell, a British mystery writer, and he also reads Lee Child, John Sandford, Bryan Freeman, Greg Isles, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Connelly and many others.

    Raymond talks about his other books available on the Killer-Thriller site, for example, Evil Hours, Face Blind -- about a woman who has a neurological condition where she can't recognize faces. A lot of Raymond's books are around mothers and children. There are also some rock'n'roll thrillers with lots of music in-jokes.

    How Raymond's writing life is structured into phases and a bit about his dark office, his musical accompaniment and how you can encourage your own creativity.

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