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Brad Thor's heartbreak led to bestselling author career

Brad Schmitt
brad@tennessean.com
Book author Brad Thor

As a boy, Brad Thor always watched the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers, but it wasn't the main characters who sucked him in.

It was their horses, Silver and Trigger. They were so loyal, such good sidekicks.

Then, the Chicago boy got to ride.

His family owned a lakeside home in southern Wisconsin — and that's where little Brad Thor fell in love with horses.

"I found them to be beautiful and majestic," he said.

When the boy was 9, his parents got divorced. "Black Stallion" came to the rescue.

Thor read that Walter Farley book series and every other book he could get his hands on, a way to medicate the sting of mom and dad splitting.

"Those horses, they were independent and powerful, and that's how I saw myself as my parents were getting divorced," he said.

Really? A 9-year-old boy is watching the world he knows crumble around him, and he felt powerful?

The "Black Stallion" novels helped 9-year-old Brad Thor cope with the divorce of his parents.

"Well," Thor said, "it probably is how I wanted to see myself. I probably wanted to see myself as carefree, nothing to worry about but running."

The "Black Stallion" series ignited the boy's voracious appetite for reading and, eventually, a passion for writing.

He's now a bestselling author of thrillers, including "Blowback" and "The Last Patriot." And he and his wife and children are now Middle Tennessee residents: Thor says he likes the family-friendly environment here.

But it took Thor awhile to embrace his passion.

"I did everything I could to run away from a career in writing."

After going to the private Francis W. Parker School in Chicago — where actors Billy Zane and Anne Heche were classmates — Thor's dad, who had served in the Marines, pushed him to study business at the University of Southern California.

One problem: "I hated business administration; it was so boring."

During an economics class, a professor started talking about flowers and vases, and Thor snapped.

"I closed my books and stood up. I would rather take a bullet between the eyes than be a middle-level manager in a flower store," he said.

After moping around for three days, Thor went to see a college counselor, who gave him a career aptitude test.

Brad Thor loved horses from an early age.

"I scored off the charts for writing and publishing. That reaffirmed what I'd always known, that I had a deep, deep love for writing."

So he switched majors to creative writing and after college, Thor packed up his computer and headed to France to live with a friend and write his great novel. Before long, though, he sent the computer back and just traveled all around Europe.

And not for nothin'. Thor eventually parlayed that trip into his very own public television show, "Traveling Lite," in 1994.

His second tour of Europe was his three-month honeymoon in 1998, and his wife asked him in Italy one night a daunting question: What one thing did he want to do before he died?

Thor told her he wanted to write a book. She said she'd do whatever she needed to make that happen.

Later on that same trip, the couple shared an overnight train compartment with a brother and sister from Atlanta. She turned out to be a sales rep from mega-book publisher Simon & Schuster, which became his literary home.

Thor's first novel, spy thriller "The Lions of Lucerne," came out four years later, in 2002.

"Now I know what it's like to climb your first mountain, run your first marathon," he said.

"I will never be on my deathbed and say I have that regret."

Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.

Brad Thor to sign new book at downtown library

Popular thriller author Brad Thor will release his latest, "Code of Conduct," on Tuesday.

He will discuss the book and sign copies at the downtown library, 615 Church St., at 6:15 p.m. July 13. The event is part of the series Salon@615, a partnership of Nashville Public Library, Humanities Tennessee, Parnassus Books and the Nashville Public Library Foundation.

The event is free but it is ticketed.

More information and tickets are available at http://www.parnassusbooks.net/event/salon615-brad-thor-author-code-conduct.

Brad Thor's books

"Code of Conduct" (2015)

"Act of War" (2014)

"Hidden Order" (2013)

"Black List" (2012)

"Full Black" (2011)

"The Athena Project" (2010)

"Foreign Influence" (2010)

"The Apostle" (2009)

"The Last Patriot" (2008)

"The First Commandment" (2007)

"Take Down" (2006)

"Blow Back" (2005)

"State of the Union" (2004)

"Path of the Assasin" (2003)

"The Lions of Lucerne" (2002)