Interview With USA Today Best-Selling Techno-Thriller Novelist David Poyer

  

 

Praise for David Poyer’s Tiller Galloway Series:

 

“Riveting enough to terrify experienced divers."

– Publishers Weekly

 

"Fans of Clive Cussler will love this thriller."

- Library Journal

 

"White-knuckle diving scenes, constant action."

- Kirkus Reviews

 

"Local atmosphere and a good knowledge of treacherous currents keep things on course."

- The London Times 

“Plunges the reader into a briny brew… a scary adventure.” 

 – New York Times Book Review  

1.       What is your newest book, Yucatan Blue, about? Lyle “Tiller” Galloway is the black-sheep hero of four previous underwater thrillers, set in various locales. They include HATTERAS BLUE, BAHAMAS BLUE, LOUISIANA BLUE, and DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA. Each book stands on its own, as does this one.  

In YUCATAN BLUE, Tiller’s suddenly wealthy with the proceeds from his haul of gold from North Florida and subsequent real estate investments on Hatteras Island. But now the IRS is asking how a blue-collar oilfield diver and ex-con drug smuggler ended up so rich, and his lawyer advises him to leave the country, at least for a while.  

Fortunately, Tiller has a “job offer” in Mexico, helping an old flame hunt for a mysterious site associated with the collapse of the Mayans circa AD 900.  But it’s not on land, but deep beneath a cenote-fed lake in the thick jungle of remote South Yucatan. 

In the face of a peasant revolt, corrupt federales, murderous looters, and the mortal terror of deep rebreather diving, Galloway, Max, and July Toll struggle to penetrate the sunken temple complex.  But they’ve stumbled on more than the solution to an ancient mystery.  Unless they can stop it, the same evil will be unleashed on the world that destroyed the Mayan Empire a thousand years ago 

2.       It is the fifth in a series of Tiller thrillers. What ties them together? I’d say, two things: First, the character of Tiller Galloway, a reluctant yet competent commercial diver who’s trying to go straight after a prison sentence, but keeps getting pulled back into compromising situations. Second, the lovely yet dangerous world of diving, whether for sport, cave diving, wreck exploration, salvage, industrial diving, or underwater archaeology!  

3.       What served as the point of creation or inspiration for The Tiller Galloway Underwater Adventure series? Diving off Hatteras many years ago on U-85 and other wrecks, and wanting to craft a novel that drew on the rich oral history and legends of the Outer Banks. That triggered the first in the series, and Tiller, Shad, Sticky, Bernice, Max, July, and the crew took it from there! 

4.       You have had over 50 novels published. Which ones stick out - -and why? My personal favorites, for different reasons, include THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN, a novel of 1936, which is about as good as I get as a writer. Reviewers compared it to Steinbeck’s work. TOMAHAWK, for exploration of the ethical side of military service and weapons development.  And STEPFATHER BANK, a dystopian yet comic look at where our economy is heading.  But of course, every reader has his or her own favorite! 

5.       How would you describe your writing style? I try hard to keep sentences straightforward, but I’m not above using terms of art or technical explanations when the plot or credible dialogue requires it.  One of my early mentors, Frank Green, said over and over: “The reader is always in trouble.” I get that! I try to keep my readers in mind through all five-to-seven drafts that these novels require. I coach writers from time to time, and that’s a lesson I try to hammer into their heads too!  

6.       Did you have any challenges to overcome in writing the latest installment in this series? I’d had the plot in mind for a long time. When I finally got the chance to go pyramid crawling and cenote diving in the Yucatan alongside my archaeologist brother-in-law, I jumped at it.  The real challenge came later, in deciding how to balance possibly supernatural elements with the realistic tone of the series. But in the final draft I pulled back and left it unclear what exactly Max and Tiller experience, and whether it is real or induced by drugs or high-pressure nervous syndrome during deep diving.  

7.       As a retired captain of the US Navy, diver, sailor, and marine engineer, how do you exploit your real-life experiences to create authentic, action-oriented, underwater adventures? I’ve never done a memoir, though I’ve taught memoir in creative writing classes. That’s because I’ve embedded so much of my own experiences in my novels. Primarily, these are the 22-volume Navy series (The Dan Lenson novels), the Hemlock County series set in Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and the Galloway books, which draw on my diving experiences and interviews with other divers. I wouldn’t call it “exploiting” – it’s more like using the background and some of my experiences and people I’ve known to add verisimilitude to a story. Or IS that exploiting?  

8.       What kind of hero did you draw in Tiller Galloway, whom some see as a dark character? Well, yeah, he’s got a dark side. That was clear when I first “met” him. After losing his family, torpedoing his Coast Guard career, running cocaine, then losing his freedom to a prison sentence . . . yeah, he’s dark. And he definitely has a substance abuse problem. But he has a little light left inside. Outside forces keep pulling him back to dealing and smuggling. He has his own yens to battle as well. But in the end, I think, he cares for those he loves, and tries to do the right thing . . . in his own way!  

9.       Character. Action. Dialogue. Which is most important and how do they all work together in your books? Oh, difficult question. I start with character and present them with a challenge. The downstream work all follows from that! Dialogue, I work over endlessly for draft after draft. Narrative perspective is important to me. I don’t think too many thriller writers working today fully employ it. And of course, the setting also plays a big part in these books. Setting helps convey tone, I feel. And there are still some dark places on the earth left. Those are the locales people like Tiller seem to end up at.  

10.   How do you build up suspense? Mainly through the challenge and the danger. Fortunately, whether it’s industrial diving on the seafloor of the Gulf, or caves deep in North Florida, or in this latest book, deep unexplored cenotes in the Yucatan, danger is never far away. Your equipment fails, you die. Run out of air or mixed gas, you die. Make a wrong decision, you die. Trust the wrong people, you die. Claro?  

11.   This newest book involves archaeological theft on the black market. What do you want readers to know about that? That it’s a huge business, not just in the Middle East, but in Mexico and Central America. Mayan pots and sculptures sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Aside from being looted cultural items, they fund crime, drugs, and weapons smuggling throughout the region. Very little of that is fictional; it’s all unfortunately true. Don’t buy looted art!  

12.   The story in Yucatan Blue pits ordinary people against forces far larger than themselves. What do you hope readers experience when they reach the climactic ending? The felt knowledge that it’s never over until it’s over. That there’s always a way out of the darkest situations if you can keep your head, control your breathing, and think. And of course, trust your dive partner . . . as Tiller does July in our final scenes deep beneath the limestone crust of Yucatan! 

13.   Mayan history and mythology are a part of your new book. What is so fascinating about their culture? We’re finding out more and more lately about how advanced this supposedly “primitive” culture was. How carefully they used their environment, and how they managed sustainable yield for a massive population in what today is a scrape of dirt and jungle over base limestone. How much they understood about the heavens and time. How intriguing and different their mythologies were compared to the Greek and Roman stories we’re familiar with. But more chillingly, how they regarded human beings as essentially plastic, as formable or pliable, to be remolded mentally and even physically to fit into what was essentially a changeless, eternal vision of society. That’s so foreign to us today! But with modern technology, it might be the way we’re going . . . another book there maybe? 

14.   Each of your books in the series have different geographic settings. How did each of these locations play a role in the stories that you tell? Tiller’s story begins in his home island of Hatteras, and now and then – as at the opening of YUCATAN BLUE – we find him trying to return. (Sorta like Odysseus?) I wrote guidebooks and articles about the Outer Banks, and you’ll find the stories I was told embedded or transformed in my novels. From there, we took him to the Bahamas, where Don Juan Nunez, his old boss, forces him to recover a cargo of sunken cocaine . . . only it isn’t what’s really there. That too is based on what I found in the islands. After those events, Tiller and Shad have to decamp to avoid Nunez’s revenge. Where better than deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, earning big bucks as oilfield divers? A retired oilfield diver took me to Louisiana and got me an intro to that hardheaded hard hat community. And after that, an old friend’s widow needs Tiller’s help in North Florida to sell a cave-diving business.  

      Now, in this latest story, the IRS is sniffing around, and Tiller and his son Max are headed out of the country without knowing if they’ll ever be allowed back. Fortunately, an old flame needs his help on an archaeological expedition deep in the Mexican jungle. So, you see how the setting determines the challenge, but also how personal relationships steer Tiller this way and that as he tries to fight back from the darkest places in his life. 

15.   You are an award-winning, critically-acclaimed, best-selling author. But is success measured, for you, by these things – or something else? Really, for me, it’s more about bringing a good story to an appreciative reader! One seldom gets rich doing that, but it’s personally rewarding.  To my longtime fans, thanks so much for letting me pass my life doing what I love! And enjoy this new page of Tiller Galloway’s checkered career! 

About The Author: USA Today best-selling author David Poyer has over 50 published novels, receiving critical acclaim from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and The London Times. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide. His work has been translated into Japanese, Dutch, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Italian, and rights have been sold for films and audiobooks. He has also had plays produced in America and Switzerland. For more information, please see: www.poyer.com.

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About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 8,600,000 page views. With nearly 5,700+ posts over the past 15 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2026, 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum