For the scoop on the origins of Painkiller, you may want to have a look at a recent Q & A conducted on the porch of bungalow nine at the Conch Bay Beach Club by a quasi-retired CIA operative known as W. Cooper.   Click here to read The Interrogation


Or, click here to watch and hear Will Staeger talk about Painkiller in his own words in the 90-second interview he did recently for MeetTheAuthor.com...


Or better yet, have a look at an entry stolen from the writing journal of Will Staeger, scribbled in the summer of 2004:

I once heard that Robert Ludlum said he wrote out of anger -- that his ideas came from something that enraged or infuriated him. I suppose that applies to Painkiller and my reason for writing it: first, as the years ticked by, and like everyone else, I suppose, I grew weary of working for people I disliked. I grew weary of working for anybody, in fact -- so I decided to write a story about a guy who worked for no one. Cooper, as I conceived of him from the start, is a man beholden to no one, a man who can do what he wants, when he wants, wherever he wants -- and so he has picked the most exotic place on earth in which to live, not only because he wanted to live there, but because he needed what this place -- the British Virgin Islands -- had to offer. Something had happened to him -- something requiring the pain-killing benefits of the islands for their anesthetic effect.

I was also infuriated at the hypocrisy of the so-called leaders of business and government. Infuriated at the annoying trait most elected 'officials' or 'captains' of industry tended to display: the outward, public position of working toward the well-being of all people...and the reality of being in it only for themselves. The government of the old Soviet Union embodied this principle better than any organization, providing great fodder for spy novels while the Cold War remained in effect; once the Cold War expired, I'd found that the hypocrisy had migrated a little too close to home. So that, too, is what I wanted to write about. The Julie Laramie character offered an 'insider's window' to this world, working as she does for CIA.

It's probably worthy of mention that I wrote Painkiller as a reader too -- a disappointed reader. I grew up reading Clancy's early stuff, Ludlum's novels before anybody thought about making movies out of them, the old Ian Fleming paperbacks. Thing is, when the Cold War went away, so, it seems, did the great spy novel -- and no author stepped in to take over. There was no reinvention of the genre, not that worked in a contemporary setting, not with that combination of breakneck pacing and interesting roster of mysterious and frequently corrupt characters. Crime fiction sort of stepped in and climbed the best-seller lists -- I worship Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, don't get me wrong -- but with the exception of Michael Connelly, the page-turning suspense just wasn't there for me in the crime genre, at least not in that stay-up-all-night-and-sleep-through-school-or-the-job sort of way I'd grown used to in the classic, Cold War espionage thrillers. And the bestselling thrillers of today' Sure, maybe there's some decent pacing, but the characters inevitably fall flat for me.

Answer: If no one else would put one out there, I'd do it myself -- write a spy novel for today, pepper it with relics of the Cold War come back to wreak havoc on the world as we know it...with at least a game attempt at odd, twisted characterization and a hermit's view of the world -- the kind of perspective only the mind of an enraged (and possibly insane) skeptic could devise. After only about a hundred drafts, I thought I might just have something to satisfy my -- and maybe a few other readers' -- thirst for that missing international spy thriller it seemed Mikhail Gorbachev and his Perestroika had taken from our midnight reading hour.

I actually began the story intending for the hero to be an anti-hero, but to be much younger -- a new CIA man fresh off the training regimen -- but soon decided you can't have much of an anti-hero unless said anti-hero has been wronged, lived too long, and ultimately checked the hell out from society as we know it. I read up on the Caribbean, set the story in the British Virgins to start, and tried my hand at an outline. Turns out my father got a consulting job in Puerto Rico -- also turns out I landed a new job but wouldn't be starting for another month -- so I headed south and paid him a visit. A long one: few weeks in PR, then a week at a place I found advertised on the Web, called Cooper Island. Along the way I verified what I'd read about Tortola, the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, local West Indian culture, and the mix of odd-duck expats and blissfully drunk tourists who swing through the place in a never-ending flow.

A year of early mornings later (dedicated to sneaking back to that place in my imagination while I worked yet another annoying day job) and I had a draft. A really bad, incomplete draft, but it was something. A friend of mine gave me some advice on how rough of shape this thing was in, and after disagreeing in my usual knee-jerk manner, I gave in, and spent almost two years rewriting the first draft from the ground up. Only a few more page-one rewrites, and hell, I had something partially worthy of showing to somebody who might be able to find me an agent. When I showed the then-current draft to just such a professional, I was advised that maybe just one more rewrite would do. By then I'd almost gone insane, and chose, instead of departing for the Caribbean and checking out from society as I tended to want to do...well, I chose to do another goddamn rewrite. Turns out that last pass got me a great agent, who found me a great publishing house, with an even greater publisher and editor -- who might even have seen that spark of rage that had started it all, despite the writing that took place in between.

I went back to the BVIs a few months later and told the tale of the publishing deal the islands had inspired...a nice feeling indeed. I felt, watching the wake trail back behind the boats that took me from place to place, that I had been there every day for the past few years. In fact, I had, in my mind, on my laptop, on my yellow notepads I scribbled on while the Starbucks cup stained its brown rings on the paper, usually untouched, still full to the rim, after my two or three hours were over and I was forced to sneak into the office, late for work yet again. My hope is that the book connects with a few people who felt all those frustrations I felt, and still feel. Life can be tough, the daily grind can slowly kill you...you've got to do what you want to do, to take control of things, but it mostly seems as though this, for the ordinary soul, is an impossible feat. Have a read, though -- take a look at this book Painkiller -- and you'll see that you're not alone, mired as you are in that frustrated place of stasis and servitude I know as intimately as any man knows anything.

You can also click here to read The Interrogation.