July 29, 2025 • 23 mins
SPOILER WARNING: Be sure to read Fade In before listening to this interview with Kyle Mills!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
All right. But if we can hold you for a
little bit longer, I do have some burning questions.
Sure, hit me. A spoiler time spoiler alert,
we'll put in another sound effect for this.
Fades alive, obviously. My jaw dropped when we first
interviewed you about Fade and Ihad fully thought with him quote
dying at the end of book one. Let's get some back story.
(00:37):
Let's get a prequel. Let's see him and Matt Egan
becoming friends. Let's go back to the beginning.
What would it be? Fun, that would be fun.
I, I, I hope you would enjoy that cause the readers would
enjoy it. But what got you to this point
to to bring him back? It was very much, I don't know,
I thought about him a lot because, you know, I lived in, I
(00:58):
loved that character. I mean, seriously, like when
when I wrote his death scene, like, I mean, there were tears
in my eyes when I was typing that and I but but to you, he
was dead. Like that was the point of the
book, that I was going to kill him off and all that.
So I, I started thinking about it.
(01:21):
I remember I was on a run in Tucson, a trail running in
Tucson, and, and I thought of a way that he could have survived
and it just kind of popped into my head.
But I didn't have a story for him back then.
And now the world has gotten so chaotic.
I almost need a character if I'mgoing to do modern, what I
consider modern thrillers, right?
(01:42):
This is going to deal with AI and the elites and all this
stuff, you know, the, the divisions in the United States.
I needed a, a character that could process that in an
interesting way. That was a bit of a philosopher
and you know, I'm really deeply moral guy and all this stuff.
So really, that's when I thoughtI'd use that idea to resurrect
(02:09):
him because he was the guy in mymind.
He's the guy to tell the contemporary story.
Like I want to see what all the chaos in the world through
Fade's eyes. I want to know what he thinks
about it. He's not a stoic.
No, a lot of the a lot of the guys you know, who write, you
(02:30):
know, are Vince and are, have these very powerful characters
who are very stoic and all this.And that's not Fade.
He's, he's always thinking aboutthings and wondering about
things and feeling caught up in things.
So he seemed like the right guy to tell the the the story of
2025. Yeah, all these other larger
(02:52):
than life protagonist want to rise above the chaos and and the
the geopolitics of it all. And Faye just wants to be like
write it off What what does thathave to do with me?
But I loved how you brought him back.
Was that the idea when you were running in Tucson?
Was that one of the cops, the sniper?
Yeah. He pulled his shot intentionally
(03:13):
because what was it that he saved them?
And I love how Fade Matt gave him like, hints, like he led him
to it. And then he let Fade put it
together and say, oh, the the cop was one of the guys that I
had saved earlier. And so he pulled the.
Shot. So yeah, his SEAL team had gone
and saved these this, this screwthis, these guys in Afghanistan.
(03:34):
And the guy knew who he was and pulled his shot so and it was in
A and it was in a hospital. Like literally he was shot in a
hospital. Right, so you could help him?
Yeah. So and that was the moment I
thought, well, maybe he could have survived.
But again, I like didn't have a story for him back then.
This was years and years and years ago.
(03:57):
But then when I thought I was going to leave the mid trap
stuff and I really wanted to deal with very contemporary
threats, runaway technology, youknow, chaos or the elites and
all this stuff, I thought, yeah,this is a guy who could tell
that story and that you could empathize with.
Yeah. And I feel like I'm not much of
(04:20):
A creative myself, but I feel like if that is coming back to
you 20 years later, you're thinking what would Fade feel
about the situation or what how would Fade respond?
That means you tapped into something.
You you had a special character.You had a secret sauce, and I
feel like so many people just don't listen to that voice or
that instinct and never get to write that fade in, never get to
(04:40):
write that second book, even though you know it was there and
was there for a reason. You were thinking about it for a
reason, because there was more story to tell.
He was a hard guy to get out of your mind.
Yeah. No, because that's a weird
character and he's to some extent, you know, he's based on
a couple of people I've known over the years.
So you know that I was that werevery dear to me.
(05:03):
So yeah, definitely got a hard guy to dislodge.
What about? This point what about Matt
Egan's family though did becausethat was also a bold move that
hits you like a sledgehammer after book 1.
You know he had the family he helost fate as a friend but still
tried his best to, you know, make amends with him and that
(05:24):
that went to shit. His family just dies off page
like. Yeah, So Matt Egan's family is
funny because I like when I first wrote Matt Egan, it was 20
years ago. He I had like a placeholder and
I was like, Matt Egan's wife does something weird.
And I wanted it to be really theantithesis of everything he was
(05:47):
because I love those opposites attracting.
And one day I was typing and I don't know if people, I'm a huge
fan of a musician named PJ Harvey.
And I thought Matt Egan's wife is PJ Harvey.
She. And so that's what I went with
that you have this very straightlaced military guy and this
(06:08):
woman who was this alternative musician, but he loved her and
they had a family and it was shekind of kept him out of the
darkness kind of thing. But I wanted him broken.
Like you had to have AI mean allthe people that joined John
Lowe's little cabal. Right.
(06:32):
The thing that John Lowe does, which makes him very morally
ambiguous, Ambiguous. I can't do it like you.
Yeah, I did it to you. You've screwed me up, is that he
gives people what they want and what they need, right.
And that's not always that. Sometimes that can be a really
dark thing. And so I gave Matt Egan.
(06:56):
Matt Egan now has become somebody who needed something
that Lowe could give him. And now essentially he's a
little bit enslaved, which again, is kind of like John Lo's
trying to do the right thing. But maybe not.
He ain't no Boy Scout. No.
And look at look at what he what.
Look at what Matt did at the training exercise.
(07:17):
I thought the training scene was, even though there's plenty
of crazy wild action scenes, oneof the most fun to go on is the
training scene when it's like, bring me the beers and I'm like,
oh crap. Like how the hell is this going
to go? And that's when you get to see
Fade's humanity and he's a team guy.
The SEAL, the SEAL mission was still embedded in him, in his
DNA, even after all that he's been through.
(07:38):
Matt, though, was a loose cannonthere and then, particularly
with Eugene, Well, First off, the Eugene character was great.
And then even coming back in thedreams, those dream sequences
were wild. I wonder where you're going with
that. I wonder if that gets unpacked.
How would that? You know, yeah, poor, poor Fade.
(07:59):
But yeah, it's Matt, I think is his own, you know, independent
character that I wanted to be really rich and interesting
because it's easy when you have a character as powerful as Fade
to let the other people fall into the background.
And and it's like when I wrote abook in the first person once
(08:20):
and I discovered that the challenge of that is very much
how do you make the secondary characters who don't have their
own voice rich? And so I wanted Matt to be that
guy. And he is obviously extremely
angry and and has lost his icy veneer, which is hard for him.
(08:45):
So unhinged. Mad.
Unhinged. Yeah, Matt, Maddie and the the
the guy who never made a mistake, you know, is always
super calm, unhinged, lost everything.
Yeah. So that's those are the scene.
With the coffin though. Huh.
The scene with the coffin, yeah,Oh my goodness, that was wild.
(09:06):
So, yeah, I mean, you, you know,the stakes were high, you know,
the stakes were high and there and John Lowe's serious about
putting together a team of the best.
And so how do you do that, you think?
But what is SAS training? And then you turn it up to 11,
right? And so, and then everybody under
(09:30):
that level of stress, all the characters reveal themselves,
right? Like who is Linnea?
Who's Danny, you know, and how do they react to those things?
Linnea being the very straight laced person with no sense of
humor, but then being disappointed in herself because
she wasn't the moral compass there.
Fayed was. And she wanted, you know, what
(09:53):
Lowe was giving her, which, you know, we find out.
You'll find out in the next bookwhat it is he gave her.
So it's, it's interesting to putcharacters under that level of
stress and then see who they arereally.
Yeah, I think it's really cool how she she almost shines as the
the next teammate and team member that you kind of want to
(10:15):
have your back, which she's a sniper and she takes that shot
and Fade, no one, no one thinks it's a viable shot.
And he forces her to take it andshe takes it and makes it like
Fade's pushing people to their limits because he pushes himself
to those limits. And when he's getting Lynnae and
the team to do the same, whetherwhether it's like the physical
(10:36):
limits of taking that shot or the moral limits of testing who
they are and figuring out what'sright and wrong.
I thought the team dynamic was cool.
Reminded me of like an American assassin.
You know, some of these like really iconic training scenes
that bring the team together andthey have this come to Jesus
moment. I knew after that scene they
were as tight as can be. Any OP, you put them in the
village, you know, the, the Madagascar village and all the
(10:58):
other OPS. I was like, they're tight.
No one's screwing each other. There's no bad guy in this team.
Like they are the real deal. They're going to go out and get
shit done. Yeah, they finally did, though
she is very wary of him because he's so different than she is.
And, you know, she likes the steady more like Danny, right?
(11:19):
Like the really steady guy. And he is.
And that guy's, you know, fades all fire.
And I think she points out that,you know, he's the guy that
never dies, but not everybody else is bullet as bulletproof as
he is. So it's that and that's a really
(11:40):
interesting relationship to dealwith, because the thing with
fate is he's one of those peoplewho everybody likes immediately
and she doesn't. And it like, and he he gets to
play with that all the time. Like it's like the only person
in the world that doesn't like him and he has a a great time
(12:01):
with it. It's his actions though, you
know, actions speak louder than words.
It's his actions that bring her to his side or bring her into
the fold. And I feel like she'll have
she'll have his back through anything now after what they've
been through like trial by 5 and.
She's that type of person, yeah,she's that type of person.
She's never going to let A-Team right now.
The other people, I feel like Lisa and him have that bond.
(12:22):
She was she was a great. I feel like there were phases of
women in this book, like she wasphase one.
You met her, you saw who she hither relationship with.
Fade showed who Fade was in the way.
He was going to care for her andhelp cover up the thing with the
football player. Like they had each other's back.
And then Phase 2 is like Linnea.They have each other's back
trial by fire. But then you throw us this
(12:42):
oddball woman who is part call girl but part high end
assistant. Were you just having fun with
that? I was like what?
Where's Kyle Co with this one? Or someone is going to the,
you're going to the elites, right?
Yeah. This, I'm not making this shit
up. Like this stuff goes on and you
(13:03):
see it. I mean, it became kind of blew
up with the Epstein's. But this stuff exists like you,
you know, young women who are trafficked and, you know, sent
off to Eastern Europe or, you know, the Middle East or
whatever. And, you know, become companions
(13:25):
for very wealthy people. I mean, they're all this kind of
stuff exists. It's real like almost nothing.
It's funny. The the the next book I'm
writing is it's almost everything is grounded in some
incident that I've put together that's real.
And Raya is real. So she's essentially sold to him
and she knows it. But their relationship evolves
(13:49):
because he's not the kind of person that would ever he keeps
telling her to quit, you know, and he'll give her all his money
because he doesn't care about it.
They're also still so broken. Like, yeah, I think they can
connect with one another becausethey've been there.
Like, not many people can look at fate and say, I've been where
you've been. I've been as low as you've been.
I've been as screwed over as as you've been, and you still keep
(14:12):
fighting. You're a survivor.
I think she maybe this is what you intended.
She's going to give him the willto live.
I, I feel like that's the arc. I don't know what Fade 3 has in
store. Fade out, maybe.
Who knows what we're going to oh, fade out or not?
Because that might have a connotation.
Someday last book. Yeah, someday.
We already thought we had the last book in book #1 but you,
you did the, the Kyle Mills twist.
(14:34):
You, you pulled the rug out fromunder us.
But yeah, I I just think she's the one who can basically save
Fade from himself. Absolutely, Absolutely.
I'm somebody that grounds him and gives him something to live
for, somebody to be loyal to. And, you know, he needs that
because the world is, I don't know, he's not sure he's cares
(14:56):
about that and cares about beingalive or dead.
But I mean, we all need that, right?
I mean, this is what I'm trying to do with fate is create
somebody that we can all kind ofempathize with.
We all need something to live for, and we kind of cling to
whatever that might be, if it's family or friends or, I don't
know, sometimes it's a job, you know, whatever that makes us
(15:19):
feel like we belong on this earth.
And he needs that, and she does too.
And that they, you know, they come to a pact where that's what
they're going to be for each other.
And we'll see. We'll see if it works.
Yeah, it sounds almost like whatI thought Matt Egan's role was
(15:39):
in Book 1, which was he was the one trying to give Fade that
sense of belonging and like, never giving up on him as as a
former friend, even through everything.
And now I feel like I don't wantto say he failed in that.
He played a very important role in it, but he couldn't put the
finishing touches on it. He couldn't be Fade's savior and
friend, and everything's kumbayain the end.
(16:00):
I think he's too. Broken.
He's too broken now with losing his fan yeah, so curious about
his arc curious about Raya's arc.
I think they she definitely has a future so I want to see where
you go with it. But no doubt you're going to
pull stuff from headlines again.I was reading the scenes about
the syringe attacks when John Lowe like like we were saying a
lot of your books have puzzles in them.
(16:22):
I remember Mitra have enemy at the gates.
There were so many puzzles to figure out what these packages
being left all throughout Africa.
But he almost puts the puzzle together, like, why are these
people being attacked? Not killed, not beaten up?
They're also really brilliant scientists and thinkers.
They're almost the elites themselves.
Why are they getting mobbed? And then he finds out about the
(16:42):
syringe attacks. I swear I read that chapter,
checked my phone like 10 minuteslater and read about the music
festival in France. Yeah, A. 100 something people
stabbed with syringes at a musicfestival.
Kyle, you, you ripped the stuff right out of the headlines.
It's insane A. Syringe.
Yeah, that's. The most obscure thing, and it
(17:02):
happened while I'm reading your book.
And it happened well after I wrote it.
Yeah, it happened, yeah. So that's a, that's also a a
component that wasn't as important in the Mitch rap
books. And that that I really like is
that's the sleuthy stuff. Yes, yeah.
The book's not a mystery or anything, but you.
How do they figure this out? And I like those steps.
(17:25):
You know, they like like a Sherlock Holmes would would
take. And so that was kind of the goal
without was the Mitch wrap step was a little less procedural.
Yeah. Now one other thing just to wrap
it up that makes him Kyle Mills book is the technology.
(17:46):
I don't know what I like the more between the drone in the
very beginning, the AI drone, it's almost like your own
personal bodyguard in the sky, your watcher in the sky.
But that's exactly what I expect.
A guy like a John Lowe or I should say an Elon Musk or, you
know, Jeff Bezos to come up withto protect themselves.
That drone was really cool, but I think the better piece of tech
(18:08):
might have been the Mystery Machine.
Yeah, and. I think you were on the Mystery
Machine for a little while when you had that really, really
awesome beard growing in. Did did you unplug from the
Mystery Machine? No, I need that.
That's literally a face Wyoming face warmer.
So when you're skiing and stuff it, it definitely has a benefit.
But then when it gets warm again, I shave it off.
(18:31):
So that's my cycle, but that machine.
Was perfect because it kind of goes to that moral ambiguity of
John Lowe knows he's not doing the most upright thing.
And that very haunting description of he takes the
children, puts them in this Academy, gives them a life they
would never had, but is secretlystealing their blood to be used
(18:51):
to rejuvenate and make superhumans who are youthful.
Where did you come up with that?Because no doubt in a few months
we're going to see it being soldon Amazon.
Oh God, I hope not. So yeah, the blood thing is real
and probably not a direction humanity I hope wants to go, but
it seems to work. So the other, the other big
(19:13):
motivator for that is, and I, and I kind of made fun of this
in the book a little bit, is theidea, the cliche of somebody
waking up from a coma. So it like when I came up with
the idea, it felt a little General Hospital.
And when I did research, I was strangely, I have two friends
(19:35):
who've been in comas and when I did research for it, it's just
really not realistic. And in fact, I made fun of it in
the book where he where Fayed likes to watch Arabic soap
operas and the guy's like wakingup and but his best friend's
going to screw him. And it's like this big soap
(19:56):
opera. And so I wanted to make it
realistic and that that's where you have this machine that helps
him recover and also all the training that he had to do and,
and the trying to come back and trying to figure out the
difference between, you know, dreams and, and reality and
stuff. So I didn't want it to be that,
(20:18):
you know, you wake up from a coma and you're, you're great.
You know, you're. Right.
So, you know, doing backflips and shooting people and all that
stuff. I wanted him to not be able to
get out of bed, to be able to walk on crutches and all that
stuff. And I think that's something
like how you brought Fade back with the police sniper pulling a
shot because he had respect for Fade.
He was, you know, paying him oneback.
(20:38):
I bought into this one because abig question I had after Fade
one was how the heck is this guygoing to operate?
How is he going to kick ass? And I was like, I hope it's not
just some very gimmicky, you know, some of these characters
who are pushing late 50s are still super elite operators.
They're taking pills, they're doing steroids.
I was like, I hope it's just notthat generic kind of trajectory.
And there was nothing generic about the rehab facility, the
(21:00):
Mystery Machine, the bullet surgery, how it was perfect.
He was in a coma because that's how they were able to extract
the bullet. If he wasn't in a COVA, if he
wasn't immobile for months, theywouldn't have been able to get
the bullet out. Hats off to you.
You got me. I was a skeptical reader after I
heard fate survived. I was like, how the heck are you
going to make him not only survive, but make him be a super
(21:20):
bad ass again? And you pulled it off with fate
and you, you really got me with that one.
So. Yeah.
And it starts kind of really dark because, you know, he that
that drug, by the way, that getspeople out of comas is real.
And you know that it kills 80% of the people they give it to.
And blow's basically like you weren't doing so well so dad
(21:44):
wouldn't have been a big deal. But you know, you didn't die, so
it's all good. Oh man, I know a little bit of a
little bit of John Lowe's character early on, you know?
You you definitely get that and you then that keeps up
throughout the book that that's how he thinks problems through.
It's almost like a high risk factor doesn't matter.
It's still worth it. It's like pot odds and poker.
(22:04):
You're you know, you're in the pot.
You got to keep playing the game.
Exactly. Well, Kyle, Congrats on fade in.
I I can't believe there's more to fade.
After reading the first book, I wasn't sure this would happen
And and now you've got me interested and intrigued for the
third one. Well, hopefully I'm glad you
liked it and hopefully you'll like the the next one.
(22:26):
And I just have to say, great shirt.
This is a great shirt. We'll have to hook you up with
our new rebrand here, so. The rebrand, I haven't, I
haven't gotten there yet though.I don't know.
I kind of like it though. It's it's a little bit of
history. Yeah, true.
The the original Mitch rap podcast.
Well, Kyle, thanks so much. Thanks for spending the time and
and congratulations on yet another pub day.
(22:46):
Thanks, Happy, happy to be here and it's always great to catch
up with you. Got to thank our patrons
including our special, our deputy director, special Deputy
Director Sherry F, our special operator Jason C, our special
agents Ben, Darrell, Kevin, George, Matt, Don, Peggy, Mark
and Chris. Subscribe, rate, interview to
(23:07):
all three seasons of No Limits. You can find us@thrillerpod.com
or on Twitter and Instagram.
All right. But if we can hold you for a
little bit longer, I do have some burning questions.
Sure, hit me. A spoiler time spoiler alert,
we'll put in another sound effect for this.
Fades alive, obviously. My jaw dropped when we first
interviewed you about Fade and Ihad fully thought with him quote
dying at the end of book one. Let's get some back story.
(00:37):
Let's get a prequel. Let's see him and Matt Egan
becoming friends. Let's go back to the beginning.
What would it be? Fun, that would be fun.
I, I, I hope you would enjoy that cause the readers would
enjoy it. But what got you to this point
to to bring him back? It was very much, I don't know,
I thought about him a lot because, you know, I lived in, I
(00:58):
loved that character. I mean, seriously, like when
when I wrote his death scene, like, I mean, there were tears
in my eyes when I was typing that and I but but to you, he
was dead. Like that was the point of the
book, that I was going to kill him off and all that.
So I, I started thinking about it.
(01:21):
I remember I was on a run in Tucson, a trail running in
Tucson, and, and I thought of a way that he could have survived
and it just kind of popped into my head.
But I didn't have a story for him back then.
And now the world has gotten so chaotic.
I almost need a character if I'mgoing to do modern, what I
consider modern thrillers, right?
(01:42):
This is going to deal with AI and the elites and all this
stuff, you know, the, the divisions in the United States.
I needed a, a character that could process that in an
interesting way. That was a bit of a philosopher
and you know, I'm really deeply moral guy and all this stuff.
So really, that's when I thoughtI'd use that idea to resurrect
(02:09):
him because he was the guy in mymind.
He's the guy to tell the contemporary story.
Like I want to see what all the chaos in the world through
Fade's eyes. I want to know what he thinks
about it. He's not a stoic.
No, a lot of the a lot of the guys you know, who write, you
(02:30):
know, are Vince and are, have these very powerful characters
who are very stoic and all this.And that's not Fade.
He's, he's always thinking aboutthings and wondering about
things and feeling caught up in things.
So he seemed like the right guy to tell the the the story of
2025. Yeah, all these other larger
(02:52):
than life protagonist want to rise above the chaos and and the
the geopolitics of it all. And Faye just wants to be like
write it off What what does thathave to do with me?
But I loved how you brought him back.
Was that the idea when you were running in Tucson?
Was that one of the cops, the sniper?
Yeah. He pulled his shot intentionally
(03:13):
because what was it that he saved them?
And I love how Fade Matt gave him like, hints, like he led him
to it. And then he let Fade put it
together and say, oh, the the cop was one of the guys that I
had saved earlier. And so he pulled the.
Shot. So yeah, his SEAL team had gone
and saved these this, this screwthis, these guys in Afghanistan.
(03:34):
And the guy knew who he was and pulled his shot so and it was in
A and it was in a hospital. Like literally he was shot in a
hospital. Right, so you could help him?
Yeah. So and that was the moment I
thought, well, maybe he could have survived.
But again, I like didn't have a story for him back then.
This was years and years and years ago.
(03:57):
But then when I thought I was going to leave the mid trap
stuff and I really wanted to deal with very contemporary
threats, runaway technology, youknow, chaos or the elites and
all this stuff, I thought, yeah,this is a guy who could tell
that story and that you could empathize with.
Yeah. And I feel like I'm not much of
(04:20):
A creative myself, but I feel like if that is coming back to
you 20 years later, you're thinking what would Fade feel
about the situation or what how would Fade respond?
That means you tapped into something.
You you had a special character.You had a secret sauce, and I
feel like so many people just don't listen to that voice or
that instinct and never get to write that fade in, never get to
(04:40):
write that second book, even though you know it was there and
was there for a reason. You were thinking about it for a
reason, because there was more story to tell.
He was a hard guy to get out of your mind.
Yeah. No, because that's a weird
character and he's to some extent, you know, he's based on
a couple of people I've known over the years.
So you know that I was that werevery dear to me.
(05:03):
So yeah, definitely got a hard guy to dislodge.
What about? This point what about Matt
Egan's family though did becausethat was also a bold move that
hits you like a sledgehammer after book 1.
You know he had the family he helost fate as a friend but still
tried his best to, you know, make amends with him and that
(05:24):
that went to shit. His family just dies off page
like. Yeah, So Matt Egan's family is
funny because I like when I first wrote Matt Egan, it was 20
years ago. He I had like a placeholder and
I was like, Matt Egan's wife does something weird.
And I wanted it to be really theantithesis of everything he was
(05:47):
because I love those opposites attracting.
And one day I was typing and I don't know if people, I'm a huge
fan of a musician named PJ Harvey.
And I thought Matt Egan's wife is PJ Harvey.
She. And so that's what I went with
that you have this very straightlaced military guy and this
(06:08):
woman who was this alternative musician, but he loved her and
they had a family and it was shekind of kept him out of the
darkness kind of thing. But I wanted him broken.
Like you had to have AI mean allthe people that joined John
Lowe's little cabal. Right.
(06:32):
The thing that John Lowe does, which makes him very morally
ambiguous, Ambiguous. I can't do it like you.
Yeah, I did it to you. You've screwed me up, is that he
gives people what they want and what they need, right.
And that's not always that. Sometimes that can be a really
dark thing. And so I gave Matt Egan.
(06:56):
Matt Egan now has become somebody who needed something
that Lowe could give him. And now essentially he's a
little bit enslaved, which again, is kind of like John Lo's
trying to do the right thing. But maybe not.
He ain't no Boy Scout. No.
And look at look at what he what.
Look at what Matt did at the training exercise.
(07:17):
I thought the training scene was, even though there's plenty
of crazy wild action scenes, oneof the most fun to go on is the
training scene when it's like, bring me the beers and I'm like,
oh crap. Like how the hell is this going
to go? And that's when you get to see
Fade's humanity and he's a team guy.
The SEAL, the SEAL mission was still embedded in him, in his
DNA, even after all that he's been through.
(07:38):
Matt, though, was a loose cannonthere and then, particularly
with Eugene, Well, First off, the Eugene character was great.
And then even coming back in thedreams, those dream sequences
were wild. I wonder where you're going with
that. I wonder if that gets unpacked.
How would that? You know, yeah, poor, poor Fade.
(07:59):
But yeah, it's Matt, I think is his own, you know, independent
character that I wanted to be really rich and interesting
because it's easy when you have a character as powerful as Fade
to let the other people fall into the background.
And and it's like when I wrote abook in the first person once
(08:20):
and I discovered that the challenge of that is very much
how do you make the secondary characters who don't have their
own voice rich? And so I wanted Matt to be that
guy. And he is obviously extremely
angry and and has lost his icy veneer, which is hard for him.
(08:45):
So unhinged. Mad.
Unhinged. Yeah, Matt, Maddie and the the
the guy who never made a mistake, you know, is always
super calm, unhinged, lost everything.
Yeah. So that's those are the scene.
With the coffin though. Huh.
The scene with the coffin, yeah,Oh my goodness, that was wild.
(09:06):
So, yeah, I mean, you, you know,the stakes were high, you know,
the stakes were high and there and John Lowe's serious about
putting together a team of the best.
And so how do you do that, you think?
But what is SAS training? And then you turn it up to 11,
right? And so, and then everybody under
(09:30):
that level of stress, all the characters reveal themselves,
right? Like who is Linnea?
Who's Danny, you know, and how do they react to those things?
Linnea being the very straight laced person with no sense of
humor, but then being disappointed in herself because
she wasn't the moral compass there.
Fayed was. And she wanted, you know, what
(09:53):
Lowe was giving her, which, you know, we find out.
You'll find out in the next bookwhat it is he gave her.
So it's, it's interesting to putcharacters under that level of
stress and then see who they arereally.
Yeah, I think it's really cool how she she almost shines as the
the next teammate and team member that you kind of want to
(10:15):
have your back, which she's a sniper and she takes that shot
and Fade, no one, no one thinks it's a viable shot.
And he forces her to take it andshe takes it and makes it like
Fade's pushing people to their limits because he pushes himself
to those limits. And when he's getting Lynnae and
the team to do the same, whetherwhether it's like the physical
(10:36):
limits of taking that shot or the moral limits of testing who
they are and figuring out what'sright and wrong.
I thought the team dynamic was cool.
Reminded me of like an American assassin.
You know, some of these like really iconic training scenes
that bring the team together andthey have this come to Jesus
moment. I knew after that scene they
were as tight as can be. Any OP, you put them in the
village, you know, the, the Madagascar village and all the
(10:58):
other OPS. I was like, they're tight.
No one's screwing each other. There's no bad guy in this team.
Like they are the real deal. They're going to go out and get
shit done. Yeah, they finally did, though
she is very wary of him because he's so different than she is.
And, you know, she likes the steady more like Danny, right?
(11:19):
Like the really steady guy. And he is.
And that guy's, you know, fades all fire.
And I think she points out that,you know, he's the guy that
never dies, but not everybody else is bullet as bulletproof as
he is. So it's that and that's a really
(11:40):
interesting relationship to dealwith, because the thing with
fate is he's one of those peoplewho everybody likes immediately
and she doesn't. And it like, and he he gets to
play with that all the time. Like it's like the only person
in the world that doesn't like him and he has a a great time
(12:01):
with it. It's his actions though, you
know, actions speak louder than words.
It's his actions that bring her to his side or bring her into
the fold. And I feel like she'll have
she'll have his back through anything now after what they've
been through like trial by 5 and.
She's that type of person, yeah,she's that type of person.
She's never going to let A-Team right now.
The other people, I feel like Lisa and him have that bond.
(12:22):
She was she was a great. I feel like there were phases of
women in this book, like she wasphase one.
You met her, you saw who she hither relationship with.
Fade showed who Fade was in the way.
He was going to care for her andhelp cover up the thing with the
football player. Like they had each other's back.
And then Phase 2 is like Linnea.They have each other's back
trial by fire. But then you throw us this
(12:42):
oddball woman who is part call girl but part high end
assistant. Were you just having fun with
that? I was like what?
Where's Kyle Co with this one? Or someone is going to the,
you're going to the elites, right?
Yeah. This, I'm not making this shit
up. Like this stuff goes on and you
(13:03):
see it. I mean, it became kind of blew
up with the Epstein's. But this stuff exists like you,
you know, young women who are trafficked and, you know, sent
off to Eastern Europe or, you know, the Middle East or
whatever. And, you know, become companions
(13:25):
for very wealthy people. I mean, they're all this kind of
stuff exists. It's real like almost nothing.
It's funny. The the the next book I'm
writing is it's almost everything is grounded in some
incident that I've put together that's real.
And Raya is real. So she's essentially sold to him
and she knows it. But their relationship evolves
(13:49):
because he's not the kind of person that would ever he keeps
telling her to quit, you know, and he'll give her all his money
because he doesn't care about it.
They're also still so broken. Like, yeah, I think they can
connect with one another becausethey've been there.
Like, not many people can look at fate and say, I've been where
you've been. I've been as low as you've been.
I've been as screwed over as as you've been, and you still keep
(14:12):
fighting. You're a survivor.
I think she maybe this is what you intended.
She's going to give him the willto live.
I, I feel like that's the arc. I don't know what Fade 3 has in
store. Fade out, maybe.
Who knows what we're going to oh, fade out or not?
Because that might have a connotation.
Someday last book. Yeah, someday.
We already thought we had the last book in book #1 but you,
you did the, the Kyle Mills twist.
(14:34):
You, you pulled the rug out fromunder us.
But yeah, I I just think she's the one who can basically save
Fade from himself. Absolutely, Absolutely.
I'm somebody that grounds him and gives him something to live
for, somebody to be loyal to. And, you know, he needs that
because the world is, I don't know, he's not sure he's cares
(14:56):
about that and cares about beingalive or dead.
But I mean, we all need that, right?
I mean, this is what I'm trying to do with fate is create
somebody that we can all kind ofempathize with.
We all need something to live for, and we kind of cling to
whatever that might be, if it's family or friends or, I don't
know, sometimes it's a job, you know, whatever that makes us
(15:19):
feel like we belong on this earth.
And he needs that, and she does too.
And that they, you know, they come to a pact where that's what
they're going to be for each other.
And we'll see. We'll see if it works.
Yeah, it sounds almost like whatI thought Matt Egan's role was
(15:39):
in Book 1, which was he was the one trying to give Fade that
sense of belonging and like, never giving up on him as as a
former friend, even through everything.
And now I feel like I don't wantto say he failed in that.
He played a very important role in it, but he couldn't put the
finishing touches on it. He couldn't be Fade's savior and
friend, and everything's kumbayain the end.
(16:00):
I think he's too. Broken.
He's too broken now with losing his fan yeah, so curious about
his arc curious about Raya's arc.
I think they she definitely has a future so I want to see where
you go with it. But no doubt you're going to
pull stuff from headlines again.I was reading the scenes about
the syringe attacks when John Lowe like like we were saying a
lot of your books have puzzles in them.
(16:22):
I remember Mitra have enemy at the gates.
There were so many puzzles to figure out what these packages
being left all throughout Africa.
But he almost puts the puzzle together, like, why are these
people being attacked? Not killed, not beaten up?
They're also really brilliant scientists and thinkers.
They're almost the elites themselves.
Why are they getting mobbed? And then he finds out about the
(16:42):
syringe attacks. I swear I read that chapter,
checked my phone like 10 minuteslater and read about the music
festival in France. Yeah, A. 100 something people
stabbed with syringes at a musicfestival.
Kyle, you, you ripped the stuff right out of the headlines.
It's insane A. Syringe.
Yeah, that's. The most obscure thing, and it
(17:02):
happened while I'm reading your book.
And it happened well after I wrote it.
Yeah, it happened, yeah. So that's a, that's also a a
component that wasn't as important in the Mitch rap
books. And that that I really like is
that's the sleuthy stuff. Yes, yeah.
The book's not a mystery or anything, but you.
How do they figure this out? And I like those steps.
(17:25):
You know, they like like a Sherlock Holmes would would
take. And so that was kind of the goal
without was the Mitch wrap step was a little less procedural.
Yeah. Now one other thing just to wrap
it up that makes him Kyle Mills book is the technology.
(17:46):
I don't know what I like the more between the drone in the
very beginning, the AI drone, it's almost like your own
personal bodyguard in the sky, your watcher in the sky.
But that's exactly what I expect.
A guy like a John Lowe or I should say an Elon Musk or, you
know, Jeff Bezos to come up withto protect themselves.
That drone was really cool, but I think the better piece of tech
(18:08):
might have been the Mystery Machine.
Yeah, and. I think you were on the Mystery
Machine for a little while when you had that really, really
awesome beard growing in. Did did you unplug from the
Mystery Machine? No, I need that.
That's literally a face Wyoming face warmer.
So when you're skiing and stuff it, it definitely has a benefit.
But then when it gets warm again, I shave it off.
(18:31):
So that's my cycle, but that machine.
Was perfect because it kind of goes to that moral ambiguity of
John Lowe knows he's not doing the most upright thing.
And that very haunting description of he takes the
children, puts them in this Academy, gives them a life they
would never had, but is secretlystealing their blood to be used
(18:51):
to rejuvenate and make superhumans who are youthful.
Where did you come up with that?Because no doubt in a few months
we're going to see it being soldon Amazon.
Oh God, I hope not. So yeah, the blood thing is real
and probably not a direction humanity I hope wants to go, but
it seems to work. So the other, the other big
(19:13):
motivator for that is, and I, and I kind of made fun of this
in the book a little bit, is theidea, the cliche of somebody
waking up from a coma. So it like when I came up with
the idea, it felt a little General Hospital.
And when I did research, I was strangely, I have two friends
(19:35):
who've been in comas and when I did research for it, it's just
really not realistic. And in fact, I made fun of it in
the book where he where Fayed likes to watch Arabic soap
operas and the guy's like wakingup and but his best friend's
going to screw him. And it's like this big soap
(19:56):
opera. And so I wanted to make it
realistic and that that's where you have this machine that helps
him recover and also all the training that he had to do and,
and the trying to come back and trying to figure out the
difference between, you know, dreams and, and reality and
stuff. So I didn't want it to be that,
(20:18):
you know, you wake up from a coma and you're, you're great.
You know, you're. Right.
So, you know, doing backflips and shooting people and all that
stuff. I wanted him to not be able to
get out of bed, to be able to walk on crutches and all that
stuff. And I think that's something
like how you brought Fade back with the police sniper pulling a
shot because he had respect for Fade.
He was, you know, paying him oneback.
(20:38):
I bought into this one because abig question I had after Fade
one was how the heck is this guygoing to operate?
How is he going to kick ass? And I was like, I hope it's not
just some very gimmicky, you know, some of these characters
who are pushing late 50s are still super elite operators.
They're taking pills, they're doing steroids.
I was like, I hope it's just notthat generic kind of trajectory.
And there was nothing generic about the rehab facility, the
(21:00):
Mystery Machine, the bullet surgery, how it was perfect.
He was in a coma because that's how they were able to extract
the bullet. If he wasn't in a COVA, if he
wasn't immobile for months, theywouldn't have been able to get
the bullet out. Hats off to you.
You got me. I was a skeptical reader after I
heard fate survived. I was like, how the heck are you
going to make him not only survive, but make him be a super
(21:20):
bad ass again? And you pulled it off with fate
and you, you really got me with that one.
So. Yeah.
And it starts kind of really dark because, you know, he that
that drug, by the way, that getspeople out of comas is real.
And you know that it kills 80% of the people they give it to.
And blow's basically like you weren't doing so well so dad
(21:44):
wouldn't have been a big deal. But you know, you didn't die, so
it's all good. Oh man, I know a little bit of a
little bit of John Lowe's character early on, you know?
You you definitely get that and you then that keeps up
throughout the book that that's how he thinks problems through.
It's almost like a high risk factor doesn't matter.
It's still worth it. It's like pot odds and poker.
(22:04):
You're you know, you're in the pot.
You got to keep playing the game.
Exactly. Well, Kyle, Congrats on fade in.
I I can't believe there's more to fade.
After reading the first book, I wasn't sure this would happen
And and now you've got me interested and intrigued for the
third one. Well, hopefully I'm glad you
liked it and hopefully you'll like the the next one.
(22:26):
And I just have to say, great shirt.
This is a great shirt. We'll have to hook you up with
our new rebrand here, so. The rebrand, I haven't, I
haven't gotten there yet though.I don't know.
I kind of like it though. It's it's a little bit of
history. Yeah, true.
The the original Mitch rap podcast.
Well, Kyle, thanks so much. Thanks for spending the time and
and congratulations on yet another pub day.
(22:46):
Thanks, Happy, happy to be here and it's always great to catch
up with you. Got to thank our patrons
including our special, our deputy director, special Deputy
Director Sherry F, our special operator Jason C, our special
agents Ben, Darrell, Kevin, George, Matt, Don, Peggy, Mark
and Chris. Subscribe, rate, interview to
(23:07):
all three seasons of No Limits. You can find us@thrillerpod.com
or on Twitter and Instagram.
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