Professor collaborates with Tom Clancy

When asked to collaborate with well-known American novelist Tom Clancy, UCF professor Peter Telep accepted after he "pried himself down off the ceiling."

Telep wrote military thrillers for publishers G. P. Putnam's Sons and Berkley Books, also Clancy's publisher. The two share the same editor, who teamed them up for their new action novel, Against All Enemies.

Telep teaches screenwriting, creative writing and fiction writing, and his repertoire includes scripts for the hit television show The Sopranos and nearly 40 novels. Telep told the Central Florida Future what it was like to work with Clancy and his professional plans for the future.

Central Florida Future: Tell me about Against All Enemies.

Peter Telep: The novel introduces readers to CIA operative Maxwell Moore, a former Navy SEAL who has become an expert on Middle East terrorists and is following up a link between the Taliban and a Mexican drug cartel. It's an action-adventure thriller novel with lots of clandestine operations and hardcore military battles.

CFF: What was it like working with Tom Clancy?

Telep: Tom is the acknowledged master and inventor of the "techno-thriller" genre as we know it today. Having an opportunity to collaborate with him was thrilling. He is a generous and decisive writer who has shown what a keen eye he has for connecting the dots between world events, thereby making intelligent guesses about future political and military events.

CFF: What's your favorite Clancy work?

Telep: For me I think it's a tie between The Hunt for Red October and Without Remorse.

CFF: Do you prefer collaborations like Against All Enemies or working independently?

Telep: I think collaborations are terrific. Writing is a very lonely profession, and it's valuable to get immediate feedback from someone else with a vested interest in the work. Hell, two heads are always better than one. I do, however, prefer to write my first draft scenes alone, then share when I'm finished. I think two writers in one room together can result in very low productivity, as each one over-edits the other!

CFF: How does your experience writing The Squire Series, your first series, compare to your experience with Against All Enemies?

Telep: Believe it or not, the research required for my first series was rather significant, so in that respect the books are similar in that they required huge amounts of time to research technical aspects prior to the writing.

CFF: What goes into creating a title for a novel?

Telep: Titles, if they don't come to you immediately, can become a tremendous burden, and you can drive yourself mad trying to come up with the exact one. In our case, Against All Enemies fits the theme of the book and evokes a sense of conflict.

CFF: What does teaching at UCF bring to your writing?

Telep: I find a remarkable reciprocity between writing and teaching. I take my writing challenges with me into the classroom and share them with my students. I don't ask my students to tackle anything I wouldn't be willing to do myself. When students face challenges in their own writing, I can often cite an example from my own work and say, ‘Hey, I know what you are facing here; I tried to do the same thing in a book I wrote last year.' So, yes, I absolutely love teaching. I think it's the best job in the world. It's incredibly rewarding, and I'm able to pay forward what I can.

CFF: What are your plans professionally for the future?

Telep: I'm hoping to write another book with Tom Clancy. We'll see if that comes to pass. Meanwhile, I have several other novel ideas and quite a few ideas for new classes I would like to develop. I'm hoping to teach a class about writing for video games very soon.

Against All Enemies will be released June 14. To check out the book's trailer and more on the novel's hero, ex-Navy SEAL Maxwell Moore, go to www.tomclancy.com.