Ask the Author: M.P. Woodward
Answered Questions (9)
M.P. Woodward
My most recent book RED TIDE, A NOVEL OF THE NEXT PACIFIC WAR comes out on 9/16/25. It had been bouncing around my head for a while, but I was inspired to write it after talking to several old friends of mine who had recently retired from the Navy. I wanted to create characters that represented them, and show them in the struggle of our current international threat environment.
M.P. Woodward
I was inspired by a lot of international travel for work. Meeting people from all over the world in their various environments made me think a lot about their points of view and experiences.
M.P. Woodward
I am working on a military/espionage book as the first of a new trilogy. I hope to see it hit the market in 2026, if I can keep up my current pace.
M.P. Woodward
Study other writers in the genre you want to be in. A book is a product and readers are your customer. You have to think about what readers want in your genre--the best way to do that is to analyze successful books.
M.P. Woodward
Making people happy. I once got a message from a fan who said he really liked my book The Handler and he asked me to hurry up and write a sequel--because he said he was 92 years old!
M.P. Woodward
On a podcast about thinking, "Hidden Brain," there was an episode that covered this. The strategy I picked up from it was to just write anyway, even if what you are writing isn't yet good. Another author called it "getting out the bad stuff." I think that if you engage your brain in narrative, it will stumble its way back to the good stuff. At least you're not "blocked."
M.P. Woodward
This is a little dorky, but I really loved the Patrick O'Brian Jack Aubrey novels. I would like to see his maritime England in the early 19th century. I would have liked to work at the admiralty and see what the British fleet was doing. To me, anyway, it was a very romantic period.
M.P. Woodward
Because I write fiction, I don't like to read other fiction authors in the same genre (unless asked for a blurb) because it can muddy my own plot ideas. So I mostly read non-fiction that reads like a thriller. That gives the advantage of entertainment and the accumulation of knowledge in one go. Right now I'm reading Jack Carr's non-fiction Beirut book and another called Under Siege by Ben McIntyre. I just finished The Wager, which was an excellent non-fiction historical drama.
M.P. Woodward
Once, when I lived on acreage at the edge of the forest east of Seattle, a small Sheltie dog showed up at my door. I had no idea where he'd come from as I lived a few miles from town and neighbors were few and far between. I took him in and grew to like him. I named him Cody.
I looked around the web for notices of lost dogs in the area and eventually found the owner. She lived 40 miles away on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. When I described the Sheltie, she was relieved and we met at a Starbucks so I could hand him over. We both marveled at the dog's ability to have traveled that far.
Then, two weeks later, little Cody showed up at my door again! So the mystery is--how the heck did this little unassuming dog cross mountains and why did he keep come back?
I looked around the web for notices of lost dogs in the area and eventually found the owner. She lived 40 miles away on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. When I described the Sheltie, she was relieved and we met at a Starbucks so I could hand him over. We both marveled at the dog's ability to have traveled that far.
Then, two weeks later, little Cody showed up at my door again! So the mystery is--how the heck did this little unassuming dog cross mountains and why did he keep come back?
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