It allowed me to be a 7-year-old kid again. Fantasy allows you to fully have an unfettered imagination. My love of fantasy books when I was a kid. Since this book is a bit outside of that genre, where did you draw your inspiration from? It’s fantastical, it’s magical, it’s surreal, but it’s also grounded much in everyday life.Ī lot of your work stems from your time as a lawyer - crime, corruption, detective dramas. … One day, a young girl, Vega Jane, decides she needs to see if there is something on the other side of the Quag and she makes plans to leave.

… You’ll learn a lot about this village called Wormwood, and on the outside of Wormwood is a place called the Quag, which is very dangerous. It’s not really a dystopian novel like you’d see in “Divergent” or “Hunger Games.” People in this society are free to go and do what they want. What sort of adventures do readers have to look forward to in “The Finisher”? Janus is the Roman two-faced god, and I thought I was being very two-faced, because I was deceiving people as to who I really was. I wanted them to fall in love with the material and buy it because of that, and that’s why I used a pseudonym. … I wanted them to think this is a first-time writer who didn’t have a fan base.

I wanted people to read the book and enjoy it and want to get behind it and publish it for the story, and not necessarily because of my name. I read that when you submitted your young adult fantasy book, “The Finisher,” to a publisher, you submitted under the name Janus Pope instead of your own name. Baldacci will visit the Nashville Public Library on July 10 for the series to talk about his newest book, but here’s a little insight about his first experience in fantasy for young readers. Bestselling author David Baldacci is known for his crime mastermind and books like “King & Maxwell” and “The Target,” but his most recent work, “The Finisher” is a fantastical foray.

David baldacci the finisher series