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INTERVIEWS & ESSAYS with JOHN J. NANCE, AUTHOR of MEDUSA'S CHILD

Monday, April 24, 1997

Gallivanbn: Welcome, Mr. Nance! Thank you for joining us.
John J. Nance: Thanks. Good to be with you this evening.

Question: What kind of flights have you made lately?
John J. Nance: Well, aside from regular airline flights as a 737 captain, I'm doing a lot of transition training in the King Air, a twin-engine turboprop which I own and fly.

Question: What does it feel like to pilot a 727 full of people?
John J. Nance: Any turbojet airliner is a joy to fly just as an aircraft, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of being an airline pilot is the challenge and responsibility of keeping over 140 people completely unaware of fact that they're airborne, in other words, by making the extraordinary very routine, which is what we do in airline flying. It's a great and satisfying technological challenge.

Question: What's the scariest thing that's ever happened while you were piloting?
John J. Nance: I've been asked this numerous times over the years, and the one I always come back to was a landing in Denver, Colorado late one afternoon many years ago with Braniff International when we got into a terrible downburst on short final. If the captain (a great fellow by the name of Pete Coberg, I still remember Pete) if he had not brought all three of his crew members into a discussion on how to handle the thunderstorm-ridden Denver area, and if we had not been able to communicate as a team, we would not have made the decision to add sixty knots to our airspeed. Without that extra speed, we would without question have crashed short of the runway. Not only was that one of the first and most profound exposures for me to windshear, it was perhaps the first and most profound exposure to the immense value of teamwork and communications in the cockpit environment.

Question: Have you had any experiences in your flying career that compare to Captain McKay's?
John J. Nance: Well, certainly no nuclear weapons ticking off in the back of my aircraft, but the scene with McKay getting into windshear at the Navy base in Maryland is drawn from that same experience I mentioned above, and his method of command and dealing with the challenges of flying an aircraft in trouble come from both my air force and airline training and experience.

Question: Will MEDUSA'S CHILD be made into a miniseries on the scale of PANDORA'S CLOCK?
John J. Nance: You know, after the incredible success of PANDORA'S CLOCK in the hands of NBC, my own network, ABC (where I'm Aviation Analyst and Aviation editor for Good Morning America) has a high hurdle, but it's ABC that will be doing the 4-hour mini-series on MEDUSA'S CHILD. We do not yet have a production date or air date, but my producer is working hard down in Tinseltown to get the show started and I expect that filming will take about two months.

Question: Do you think the world would really be reduced to the Stone Ages if all computer chips were obliterated?
John J. Nance: That's a bit of a liner-note overstatement, to say the least, but the thing I did find in researching the effects of a massive EMP (electromagnetic pulse on North America in the late 90's is that the degree of disruption of our daily lives as well as very, very serious disruption of our economy and perhaps of the world's economy, was so grave a threat that it's hard to detail in one book all the impact it would have. Stop and think for a second how much of our daily lives are directly affected by, or even dependent on, computers. Extrapolate that, then, into a view of what would happen if we couldn't access our bank accounts, couldn't run computer-controller machinery (which includes jetliners), and couldn't even operate the major power grids which are now largely computer controlled. As I say, the impact would be immense, and I figure it would be at least six months before the majority of those useless chips could be replaced nationwide.

Question: What current authors do you look to for a sure-fire excellent read?
John J. Nance: Well, lately, just for the fun of it, I've been saying that commercial happiness is seeing John Grisham in my rearview mirror...but seriously, I do look to John for continuing excellent reads. Recall that I'm a lawyer too, so any well-told tale on the stage of law is interesting to me. I think, also, there is a continuous fascination on my part in Pat Conroy's incredibly beautiful use of our language. Prince of Tides, for instance, was masterful in its use of linguistic imagery, and since the type of high-speed thrillers I write leave little room for the extra paint brushing of word pictures that authors such as Conroy can deliver, I get a bit envious from time to time. Nevertheless, it's a constant challenge to give my readers the maximum speed with the best plot and story communicated with the best use of the language I can manage. I'm getting more accomplished at this with each book, but you also have to understand that today the wise editor (and I have a good one) wonOt let a thriller author get too carried away.

Question: What is the most exhilarating part of flying for you?
John J. Nance: I'm not sure I can really pin down one part or another of the flight sequence. Someone once said that the greatest thrill for man was flying, and the second greatest was landing. Landing is, indeed, a challenge because we never get it perfectly smooth and just like we want it every time, but there have been so many, many hours at altitude over some three decades of flying -- as a military pilot (C-141, Air Force), as a commercial pilot, and as a private pilot, when I've simply sat there looking in awe through the glass at the incredible beauty of this planet with the realization that only from altitude can you really get a feel for its true dimensions.

Question: What are your future plans for writing after MEDUSA'S CHILD (which I loved)? Can you tell us what you are working on?
John J. Nance: Certainly. I'm about 1/3 the way through my next major fiction thriller which will be entitled CASSANDRA'S SONG, and will be published sometime in 1998 by Doubleday. I'm proud to say that Doubleday and I concluded a new three-book contract this year, and Cassandra is the first of that series...and St. Martin's who has done a wonderful job as my paperback publisher, is a part of the same three-book deal.

Question: What is the most important part of the writing process for you?
John J. Nance: The plot. Without question, the plot. Today's audience is a multi-faceted one that shares a common knowledge of what good story-telling is, and what it not. They won't tolerate certain things, including a slow pace or a transparent predictable plot. Therefore, since my stage is aviation (never my subject), I work very hard to come up with plots that no one else has thought of, but ones which involve the item of universal interest for all of usordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of trying circumstance. When placed on my aviation-oriented stage, these types of stores become uniquely mine, but the requirements for the finely-tuned, well-conceived plot remains the most essential element.

Question: What is your opinion on the crash of TWA?
John J. Nance: I'll tell you what the aviation community "knows" at this stage, which is basically to repeat what the National Transportation Safety Board feels as far as my latest information indicates. Simply put, "we" know the center fuel tank in TWA 800 blew up, and that the explosion in the tank provided the motive force for the physical destruction of the airframe. What no one yet can show is HOW the tank blew up, or more precisely, what provided the spark which ignited (explosively) the heated fuel vapors which existed in the almost empty tank at lift off from Kennedy. Now there are several possibilities, the most logical one being a spark inside the tank. Many people erroneously believe that the fuel boost pumps are physically inside this sort of tank and could have shorted out. However, boost pumps are actually outside the tank, and are connected to an impeller INSIDE the tank through nothing more than an insulated shaft. Therefore, it's very hard to find a source for the spark, and while there are theories, there is yet no conclusion. By the same token it is still possible that a bomb of some sort imploded the tank and provided the ignition source, but left behind inadequate traces. Possible, but probable or not is a hot question at the NTSB. The missile theory, by the way, has always been 9/10's ludicrous for many reasons we donOt have time to go into. Possible, barely, but by no means probable. Finally, it might be possible that a micrometeorite hit the plane and exploded the tank though no one at the NTSB is particularly espousing this theory because of a lack of evidence. So, that's it to date. Will it be solved? Probably by process of elimination.

Question: Do pilots get better food on the plane than the passengers?
John J. Nance: Well, depends on the airline. Good question, by the way. Some airlines provide special menus for their pilots...including the airline on the west coast I fly for, and that's great because we can control the cholesterol levels and fat etc. Some let their pilots have first class meals only if there are extras, but provide coach meals otherwise. And in the old days, most were like my previous carrier - Braniff International - which didn't believe in feeding pilots. We had to forage for ourselves, which is to say that we could eat whatever, left over in the cabin (provided the flight attendants looked after us), but if the food was gone, we didn't eat. We now know as an industry that this is a stupid way to do things, because low blood sugar from not eating does not contribute to the best levels of performance in a pilot. You do NOT want a tired, hungry pilot with low blood sugar trying to get your jet on the ground some dark and stormy night.

Question: What is your favorite book you wrote?
John J. Nance: This is, really, akin to asking which of my kids I like best. I never thought I would feel like this, because certainly some books have been more successful than others but in fact there is always an anthology behind each work, whether my 4 non-fictions books, or my fiction works, and therefore it's really impossible to choose among them. I will say that Pandora did more to put me into orbit than the book I thought would really be the breakout...PHOENIX RISING. I loved Phoenix a lot because my central character was a female, and as a male, I'm just not equipped to know everything I needed to know to make Elizabeth Sterling (my lead and the hero of the story) into a completely believable woman. The solution was to strain as hard as I could to understand the woman's point of view on everything Elizabeth encountered, then have my wife and my business partner and editor (who is female) wield a heavy pen in helping me change what needed to be changed to make Elizabeth exactly what she should be a very strong, very feminine woman who had achieved much in business without ever giving up her femininity. I'm very proud of that character and of the fact that more than half my audience is female.

Gallivanbn: Last question folks, thank you for joining us!
John J. Nance:

Question: If you never flew again, would you be happy just writing books?
John J. Nance: It would be very hard not to fly again, but I've made other transitions in life, and through writing I can use and reuse and let blossom so many of the experiences that I've had over the past three decades that, yes, it could be a substitute. Nevertheless, I'm far too involved in too many things that interest me to sit still and JUST write. I'm a professional speaker, for instance, and greatly enjoy that challenge. But, I also must say that I've left the Air Force C-141 after 23 years and never for a minute looked back or felt deprived, and I left the Braniff cockpits (rather, they left me when the company went bankrupt in 1982) and didn't even think about rejoining the airline industry for three years, so I guess I could do it.

Gallivanbn: Thank you again for coming Mr. Nance. Goodnight folks!
John J. Nance: Thanks very much. It's been a pleasure being here.

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