You wake. Confused. Disoriented. A noose is around your neck. All you can focus on is the man in the mask tightening the rope. You are about to die.
Pendulum
, Adam Hamdy’s newest and thrilling novel, tells the story of a battle-hardened photojournalist, John Wallace, and his struggle to outrun a masked man who wants him dead. Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted, no idea who his attacker is, and no idea how he will prevent the inevitable. Pendulum puts a deadly killer on his tail as Wallace fights to discover the truth of why he’s been marked for death. The novel itself was prompted by the rapid and profound changes the world has undergone in the past twenty years. Adam Hamdy is currently finishing Freefall, which is the second book in the Pendulum series. It is expected to be published next summer.
All of this comes with the very exciting news that Thrillerfest 2017 is taking place this week, featuring great writers of some of your favorite thriller novels that get your heart racing! Many famous authors who have gone down in history for their thrills and chills will be coming together in New York this week to speak about their latest books, news and more.
We spoke to Adam Hamdy about his latest and greatest thriller novel and what he has in store for us!
BookTrib: What was your goal in writing this book?
Adam Hamdy: My primary goal in writing Pendulum was to give readers a thrilling story. James Patterson described Pendulum as one of the best thrillers of the year, so I feel that I achieved at least a partial success. I also wanted to use Pendulum to take people on a journey through the darker side of the modern world, looking at the way we’re connected by technology and playing on the risks those connections create.
BT: What was it like transitioning from screenwriting and comics to writing fiction?
AH: Authors like Stephen King, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, and Thomas Harris were my heroes growing up and I’ve always been in awe of people who can create an entire world using nothing more than ink and paper. To then take people into that world with interesting characters and take them on an engaging journey seemed like something only those with mystical talents could do. I started writing for screen because I felt comfortable with the medium, but I realized that my awe of books bordered on fear, and I don’t like being afraid of anything, so I set myself the challenge of writing a novel in 30 days. It was a rough, raw, somewhat painful experience, but it showed me that I could do it. I don’t think one ever finishes evolving as a writer, but I now feel much more comfortable with the medium and absolutely love writing books. Novelists have tremendous freedom and there’s something deeply satisfying about being able to explore a world and its characters in such depth.
BT: What is your writing Kryptonite and how do you overcome it?
AH: Screenwriting has instilled the discipline of working to deadlines. I’m also accustomed to generating lots of ideas, so I rarely ever experience writer’s block. My writing Kryptonite would have to be distractions. Twitter is a big one and I know I’m not alone in this. A number of my fellow authors complain about the amount of time they spend on social media, and it is far too easy to switch windows and see what’s going on in the world while you think about your next paragraph. Before you know it, you’ve lost forty minutes watching videos of dancing cats.
BT: What are some of your earliest writing memories?
AH: When I was a kid I wrote a story set on a plane in which the hero had to fight a bunch of bad guys to prevent the plane from crashing. It was basically Die Hard on a jumbo jet, long before John McClane hit the screen. My English teacher was so worried by the level of violence and gore in the story that he summoned my parents for a meeting and asked them whether everything was alright at home. It was. My imagination had been sparked by the Stephen King books I’d just started reading.
My great uncle was a very successful wildlife artist and for a while I thought I might follow in his footsteps. When I was eight, I sent him a drawing of an eagle and his response was so unenthusiastic that I immediately abandoned my plans. A few years later, I wrote him a story based on one of his paintings of a snow leopard. He said the story was ‘good’, which for him was high praise indeed. Who knows whether I’d have ever written another word if he’d responded to it the way he’d taken to my eagle?
BT: What makes Pendulum stand out from the crowd?
AH: Readers have talked about the relentless pace of the book. It’s a very tight novel, so readers feel the frenetic energy that propels the characters through the story. Pendulum centers on an everyman, someone readers are able to identify with, and his familiarity means people really feel the pain of his ordeal. John Wallace isn’t a spy, cop or FBI agent, so there are no procedural rules to restrict how he tackles the killer. Pendulum is set in an anarchic world, which freed me to offer some shocking twists along the way. Readers will never be sure who’s safe and who, if anyone, is going to make it to the end of the book.
Adam Hamdy’s books are available on Amazon.
