In this exclusive conversation, we sit down with Guy Morris, a former Fortune 100 executive turned award-winning novelist, songwriter, inventor, and adventurer. His journey from corporate boardrooms to life-threatening adventures has shaped his voice as a writer of gripping thrillers. With experiences ranging from leading global corporations to facing cartel threats and shark diving, his insights bring depth and authenticity to his stories. In this interview, he opens up about his motivations, the lessons he’s learned, and the inspirations behind his work.
1. What motivated you to transition from a corporate executive to a full-time author?
My team used to call me ‘the machine’ because of my tireless work ethic, but even old machines need to retire at some point. Retirement meant facing a few truths.
One. At a profound level, I have an extremely dysfunctional relationship with leisure. Seriously, I feel a constant, compulsive need to be productive. A little mad-scientist can be a good thing, right? Right?
Two. Considering my options for a third-act career, it was important for me to find a platform where I could continue to add value to society, but I was done using my talents to make others wealthier. I took over a small non-profit for children with cancer for a few years as I settled into a new role as author.
Inspired by authors such as Michael Crichton, who used fiction to open the minds of millions to serious issues of technology and science, I turned to writing for the freedom to research and speak to the global concerns pushing humanity to the edge.
2. How did your experience in Fortune 100 boardrooms influence your storytelling?
Experience at the top of the world opened my eyes. Like many college grads, I entered the workforce with an idealistic view of world systems, economics and power. While I continue to see good and potential in individuals, my innocence was lost after witnessing too many executive and board-level decisions that might harm others, pollute the planet, deceive shareholders or corrupt political systems for ‘shareholder value’, which I soon learned to translate into ‘executive bonuses’.
I came to grips with our global potential to solve all the problems facing humanity, which are always held back by the cancers of greed, tribalism, hubris, and power. I was in the room when the board of a major international oil company learned how fossil fuels were leading to climate change, only to witness a decision to cover up and misinform. In the room at a major teach giant when executives discussed how social media could cause irreparable damage to our society, I saw them dismiss the dangers as ‘unproven’. As an early advocate of machine intelligence during the 80s and 90s, I now see how machine intelligence could be used for manipulative and malicious purposes. These events and others forced me to search my soul and think of my family, grandchildren and neighbors.
These experiences also taught me the value of a narrative in communicating complex ideas and insights to executives, clients and employees.
3. How have your roles as songwriter, inventor, and adventurer shaped your voice as a novelist?
Everything we do, say and believe reflects on our shared humanity. We live in isolated perspectives of a shared reality, seeking validation of our humanity from others through literature, music, theater and film.
Songs are not simply musical compositions, but a universal language that crosses over cultures. Even more so, powerful lyrics connect us with deeper parts of ourselves we often cannot articulate. As a composer, I would sometimes struggle over a single line or a single word that would resonate.
Likewise, the best inventions often create new human experiences, or relieve a common pain. While adventures to other nations were a masterclass for me in understanding and appreciating the broader human experience of diverse cultures, beliefs, history, food, and architecture of the world. I learned the true story is never about the technology, or conflict, but about how it changes the human experience.
4. Can you share a pivotal moment from your career that inspired you to take risks?
To be honest, it was hard to define a single moment. My acceptance of risk as a necessary evil began when I left home at age 15, functionally illiterate, determined to make a better life. A few years later, I was miraculously accepted into college, a full 24 units short of minimum requirements. Married to a very sick spouse and a toddler, while everyone around me thought I would fail, I had only one chance to prove them wrong.
When I desperately needed a scholarship for grad school, I made a wager with the dean of the college that I could build a macroeconomic model that would outperform every other model in the school. As it turned out, my model, based on an unproven theory, out-performed the Federal Reserve and changed how the world builds economic models to this day. I created the first algorithm to predict the GDP impact from technology-driven productivity gains.
Then again, in the early 80s, working for a 25 billion international corporation, I claimed I could build a PC-based computer model to manage the $200 million, 75 department, three continents, corporate budgeting process, when these programs previously required mainframes and a staff of ten. It was a career-ending move if I had failed.
There were many other examples. Risk-taking defined my career and became the path for this poor boy from the street to change his stars.
5. How do you research true stories, technologies, and global events for your thrillers?
In truth, many of the experiences stem from my own real-life encounters with executives, generals, the FBI, DARPA, friends from all over the world, and once, a Zeta cartel death threat. Beyond that, once I define the important themes to explore, I start with reading a few books from experts, from which I generate a list of key questions. These questions guide additional research online, interviewing experts, or searching library archives. For the Curse of Cortes, I once visited a library in Guatemala, and took photos of key pages to get translated later.
To fill gaps, I will travel to various locations, or pull from my business travels. In my book, SWARM, several chapters occur in Hyderabad, India, where I managed a team of 35 people while I was with Microsoft. The Image took place in Italy after a three-week trip to consider the location and logistics of several scenes. Research into factual events adds intrigue, authenticity, and believability.
6. How do you balance fact with fiction while maintaining suspense?
Careful and intentional planning. Because my goal is to leave the reader with provocative questions, I start with the key themes or provocative issues I wish to explore (the facts). Research often leads to history or little-known facts that make the story more interesting.
Once I know my themes, the key researched facts are assigned to specific characters to own. To avoid a one-sided view, another character has to own the counterpoint, which allows for a more balanced exploration of the issue and creates tension. To ensure that I maintain the pace, plant seeds for more info and suspense later, and deliver the factual information in a logical build-up, I plot facts and action through every chapter.
In fact, I spend far more time researching and planning than writing the first draft. With every step of learning something new (research), I ask myself my favorite question. What could go wrong? Or where does this fit in the story? These questions lead the characters into a suspenseful scenario. Suspense has to be planned, set up, amplified, and rewarded, but should always lead to more tension, or more questions, which lead to more suspense. It rarely happens by accident.
7. What themes do you most enjoy exploring in your thrillers, and why?
Except for the Curse of Cortes, which was an obsessive exploration of a true historical mystery, every plot in the SNO Chronicles series builds from the convergence of three themes. The genuine dangers to society of unregulated artificial intelligence and advanced tech, the corruption of geo-political systems, especially the rise of American fascism, and prophecy in plain sight. Prophecy does not describe an angry deity coming to destroy humanity, but rather a warning of how, through our cancers of greed, hubris and lust for power, we will destroy ourselves.
The convergence of these themes allows us to explore the fallacies of technology, science, politics, war, banking and religion, through those cancerous influences, which in my view, is the vortex driving our daily news cycle to a frenzy.
To ensure we stay focused on our shared humanity, our characters must be intelligent, witty, courageous, but deeply flawed. Their love, humor, integrity, and shared commitment create a template for global cooperation in the face of adversity.
8. Which of your novels was the most challenging to write, and what did you learn?
My most recent release, The Image, was the most challenging in terms of understanding and simplifying the technologies related to black holes, the quantum nature of consciousness, and dealing with the political crises in Ukraine and America. Extremely volatile topics require courage and balance to be truthful.
In the process, I stumbled upon the lost history of the Shroud of Turin to the first century, when it was called The Image of Edessa, and they minted Byzantine coins after the image. Researching quantum physics reinforced that science and religion are both incomplete attempts to explain the quantum entanglement between our consciousness and the broader, hidden dimensional universe we cannot perceive.
That said, The Curse of Cortes took me over 12-years to research because I wanted to solve a real historical mystery. I wanted to solve the mystery of why Henry Morgan would abandon over a billion-dollar treasure, along with three ships and six hundred souls never seen again. Morgan survived, went insane and burned his logbooks. My research connected his insanity to the origin of the Mayan creation myth. Trying to write a book that embraces 13,000 years of history, archaeology and myth was not easy.
The primary lessons were twofold. The factual foundation of myth. And more profoundly, our common history of inhumanity to others in the name of a false religion, while reinforcing the power of love and true faith to overcome the most extreme evil.
9. How do your real-life adventures, like facing cartel threats or shark diving, influence your writing?
LOL! Gee, I can only hope these experiences make my writing more engaging, more authentic and exciting to the reader. It’s hard for me to imagine how other authors write scenes of facing death unless then have actually experienced a gun barrel pushed into their skull and felt those surges of fear and adrenaline. In some respects, I believe this is the reason I write thrillers. To combine the diverse aspects of my life, from intellectual insights, the corruption of power, to the adrenaline surge of cheating death more than once. I have lived a blessed life. My adventures, or more specifically, the ability to find humor in the face of peril, are key both to that blessing and my writing.
10. How do contrasts in your life—from child homelessness to corporate jets—help create relatable characters?
This question is the most difficult to answer, both personal and profound. No matter how often I would sit in an executive suite office, I never could completely forget where I came from or the sacrifices it took to be there in the moment. Faced with the overabundance of privilege in others, I never drank the Kool-Aid that I was anything more than a humble homeless kid who got lucky.
No longer comfortable with the ignorance of poverty, I was equally aware and uncomfortable with the pride and insensitivity of power. Caught between these two realities, my characters, especially the protagonists, could never be the mindless, soulless, patriotic soldiers we find in so many thrillers. I needed a flawed hero. The battle within me to challenge and speak truth to power while keeping hold of my humanity is reflected in my characters. The difference between being a smart-ass and a jackass.
11. How has being a Coast Guard charter captain shaped your perspective on adventure and leadership?
When I earned the CGC license, I was living aboard a 50-foot sailing yacht with my son. On weekends, I chartered the ship to pay for the expensive maintenance. When you are fifty miles offshore, you can’t call a tow truck if you get into trouble. As a captain, you are always keenly aware that every soul onboard is relying on you to make sure they get home to their families. Even when there are mechanical problems, communication problems, or when a sudden storm or heavy fog arises, leadership and preparedness are your only tools.
I was used to taking risks with my own life. Taking risks when someone else’s life is on the line teaches that leadership is not about control or power, but accountability and responsibility to the safety and well-being of others.
12. How did awards and recognitions impact your confidence as an author?
One of my favorite sayings is, ‘Don’t be afraid to suck at something new.’ Forty years of power points, executive briefs, policy statements did not prepare me to write compelling fiction. Before I published my first book, I hired a Simon Schuster pro to rip it up and show me how to stitch it back together. Her 50-pages of notes plus hundreds of manuscript notes showed me how much I needed to learn. Okay, I’ll say it, I sucked.
There are millions of well-written books. Only a few win awards. In my mind, an award is a recognition that a book is not just well-written (a learned skill), but has something to say that touches people, provokes them to think or feel something genuine (insight).
While these awards have given me confidence that I no longer suck at the skill level, each and every award also reminds me that my readers expect a certain award-winning standard of quality and thoughtfulness. Every new book has to be as good or better than the last one. Each award leads me to raise the bar a notch higher. Is that insanity or self-abuse? Probably both, but excellence is never an accident.
13. What inspired you to form the Author Event Network?
A business decision. I learned that writing an award-winning book is the easiest and least expensive part of the process. Marketing, promotion and generating sales take an enormous investment or great connections. I had neither.
With a commitment to my wife not to drain our savings to promote my books, I sought a high ROI approach to build a readership, optimize my profits, and earn enough cash to publish more books. Since 2020, AEN cash flow has produced four thrillers, with two non-fiction books in progress. Both will hand off to the editor or publisher before the end of 2025. AEN generates the cash flow to produce more product. The larger my book list, the higher my annual revenues, even on old titles. AEN drives revenue sustainability year over year.
Online promotions and advertising are a money pit that rarely provides a positive return on investment, except for certain genres. The Author Event Network (AEN) provides me with over 60 days per year of book signing events. Selling direct earns 3-4 times my margins on Amazon per book.
By necessity, to create these low-cost opportunities for me, the structure also creates an amazing community of award-winning authors who can join me. AEN has enabled dozens of authors to more than double their annual revenues from online or bookstore sales alone. Great synergy.
14. What lessons do you hope readers take away from your thrillers?
Patriotism, nationalism, politics and even aspects of religion are all false idols when compared to truth, honesty, compassion and genuine faith. The modern world has all the resources, intelligence, and technology necessary to change the human condition. The only reasons we don’t are the cancers of tribalism, greed, power and pride.
Science and religion are not adversaries but partners in understanding both the creation and the creator. The principle of quantum entanglement connects the layers and unseen dimensions of the universe much as faithful believe prayer connect us to the heavens. Same principle, different terms. Deep personal faith and religious ritual are not the same.
No matter how out of control the world appears as our global systems fracture, we are never without options, a voice or a choice in how we respond. Never. We can choose humor, compassion and our humanity over power, wealth and status, all fleeting goals.
15. What new projects or adventures are you exploring next?
After The Image, I wanted to write two non-fiction books about the factual foundation for two of the big themes of the AI thriller series.
The first to come out will be ‘Prophecy Analytics: How to Discern Prophecy in Plain Sight with Mathematical Validation’. Essentially a description of a framework and algorithmic program I developed to decode the book of Revelation. A non-dogmatic approach that ignores traditional eschatology in favor of a factual analysis, correlations and probabilities. Ironically, this approach is far more effective in making sense of this fantastical text. The book successfully decodes the age of the Gentiles, seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, the two beasts, the dragon, image of the beast, mark of the beast and antichrist, each of which exists in plain sight today, or in history.
The second book, which will go to the editor by year-end, will be called ‘Humanity and the AI Tsunami–A Survival Guide.’ AI Tsunami will be targeted to consumers and small business owners to provide a comprehensive overview of machine intelligence history, types, risks, benefits, job impact, social impact and strategies to survive and thrive in the coming decade of the AI-economy and tech oligarchy.
Starting in January 2026, I return to dig deep into research and planning for the next thriller targeted for 2027.
Here is Author’s official website: https://www.guymorrisbooks.com/