From the author of Cold Storage comes a riveting, eerily plausible thriller, told with the menace and flair of Under the Dome or Project Hail Mary, in which a worldwide cataclysm plays out in the lives of one complicated Midwestern family.
We chat with author David Koepp about his latest book, Aurora, along with writing, the challenges he faced, and more!
Hi, David! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m from a small town in Wisconsin called Pewaukee, about three thousand people. Not a lot of people wanted to make movies there, so after starting out at UW Madison, I made my way to film school at UCLA. I loved it there, and felt like I’d finally found my people.
I’ve been writing and/or directing movies for the past 30 years or so, but finally had the nerve to try a novel a few years ago, with COLD STORAGE. My second novel is called AURORA, and comes out on June 7th. It looks like both books are being made into movies, so both halves of my writing life will converge.
I feel inordinately lucky to get to do what I do. Oh, I’m also a Gemini and enjoy fried calamari, and my turnoffs include people who smoke in church and radioactive waste.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
Kind of as far back as I can remember, really. I had a typewriter from an early age, as the nuns at St. Anthony’s told me that my penmanship was so bad no one would ever be able to read it. (They weren’t wrong.) So, given a typewriter by my dad, I figured I should probably type something up on it. I started with stories about the grand adventures of a ten-year-old who was misunderstood by everyone at his summer camp, and then I moved on to stories about a moody adolescent who was misunderstood by the young women he fell in love with. Writing, as I recall, was always just a wonderful place to park my imagination, and to settle scores.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut were enormous influences on me from my high school years onward, and they remain so to this day. I feel like they represented very different parts of my personality and interests (see the Gemini thing above, I guess), and I can point to things in my work over the years that were influenced and inspired by them both.
The first book I clearly remember reading was probably “Alvin’s Secret Code,” and I have no idea when that would have been, or who wrote it. But I do remember devising numerous codes of my own, and nailing a plastic margarine container up under my bed in order to hide my spare change, a pretty nifty idea Alvin had used in the book.
The book I can’t stop thinking about? Probably “I Am Legend,” by the late, great Richard Matheson, one of my other favorite authors of all time. FOUR TIMES Hollywood took a crack at that story, and they STILL haven’t used Matheson’s ending, which is just utterly brilliant and devastating. The title of the book makes no sense without Matheson’s original ending!
Your latest novel, Aurora, is out June 6th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Chilling, plausible, tense, heartfelt, and human. (Which is six, if you count the conjunction.)
What can readers expect?
The story’s implications are global, but the real interest I took was in the two main characters, an estranged brother and sister. Their stories are alternately frightening, funny, familiar, and extremely suspenseful. Ultimately, I hope it’s also poignant and affecting.
Where did the inspiration for Aurora come from?
I’ve long been interested in the theme of powerlessness, in ways both literal and figurative. I actually made a movie about a blackout back in 1996 called “The Trigger Effect,” but it was on a much smaller scale, and only covered about three days. Our modern world is precariously dependent on the ability to continue our electrical addiction. What would happen if that went away? What would happen if it didn’t come back?
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
Aside from the daily challenge of the blank page, which we all face every day, I found it challenging to create and sustain a reality within this seemingly unreal situation. That’s part of the fun, of course, but living through COVID while writing made it both easier and harder. I knew all too well some of the intricacies of an extraordinary global event on a personal level, but my story still had to feel fresh, specific, and, ultimately, hopeful.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I’ll be honest, making fun of a billionaire is just enormous fun. Tapping into the impatient, entitled parts of my own personality, I just let them have free rein, and I think the results are pretty damn narcissistic and entertaining. Thom is one of the most unlikable non-villain characters I’ve ever written, and to bring him around to showing some strength and decency was something I wasn’t sure I could pull off until the very end.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best is from Stephen the King, via his wonderful “Danse Macabre,” and it goes something like this – “Tons of people are given talent, it’s a cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. Talent is a great big knife but it can’t cut much unless it’s honed, and writers hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.”
I had that printed out and taped up over my desk for about a decade, and I’ve never forgotten it. The lesson I took was “work hard, hone the talent you’ve got, whether it’s a lot or a little, and just know that if you don’t, nothing will come of it. Because you’re not the only one, buddy.”
The worst advice was along the same lines, but very different to me. It’s when people say “Write a little every day.” Oh puh-LEEZE. Who can write EVERY day? Who would WANT to? Take days off. Go for walks, take vacations, find other things to jam into your mind like movies and books and trips to museums and stupid half-drunk dinners with friends. That’s your raw material. You can’t write every day. It’s an unreasonable expectation, and it will only leave you feeling like a failure.
What’s next for you?
Because I can’t get enough of this story, I am now deep into the screenplay version of AURORA, which will be a Netflix movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “The Hurt Locker”) and hopefully start shooting not long after the first of the year. I’m also working on my adaptation of the superhero movie “The Green Hornet” for Universal.
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
I find it difficult to read novels when I’m deep into writing stuff of my own, and 2022 has been a kind of crushing workload for me so far. So no recommendations at the moment, but I can’t wait till I can start making my way through the stack by my bed!
