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I also made a resolve not to see any of the films. I have not watched a Bond movie since 1979. The first thing I said was I was not going to be influenced by the movies. I did see Never Say Never Again on an airline, but I don't consider that a true Bond film it's just Thunderball all over again. I had a bit of an advantage, or disadvantage, depending how you look at it - the normal fans on the street do not remember the original Fleming books, and there's a great abyss between the books and the films. And it's strange; they go on making [series continuity] mistakes in the films. The readers remember the films, primarily. Not the original books. Quite recently, a publication for intelligence professionals carried a piece that"Q had died, that the man Q was based upon had died. They actually used a headline that said, “lan Fleming's 'Q' Dead,” and as you know, Ian Fleming never called the character Q.* It was Major Boothroyd. I actually wrote to the publication and said that they were perpetuating a myth.

Glidrose placed certain limitations on the author before he began to write the first book:

The main thing that reared its ugly head was that I must remain within the formula. There are small things, like M must not swear. I think I've succeeded in slightly breaking Bond's pattern, because no intelligence operation would ever employ a man whose habits were so died-in-the-wool as Bond’s.' I wanted to give him more of a life outside his profession, which didn't work to begin with.

I put two things in the first book; one of them, he's climbing a wall or something some­where, and I had some line of a movie come back into his head. It was the Michael Caine movie, ‘The Man Who Would Be King’. Kipling. And it went through the editing process, and no one said anything, but it simply disappeared from the manuscript! Just completely disallowed without a word! And I put something else in, but I've forgotten what it was. Fleming had him be a great jazz fan, and I've tried to allow that to go on. It gives him a bit of a life outside the adventures.

I mentioned that I requested to evolve my own style - Glidrose said no, that I must stick with the formula. Therefore, I consciously started out with the idea of using a completely different style than my own voice. It's not my voice. It is a formula.

There's a computer program called Corporate Voice. It is a stylistic and grammatical analytical program. It's used to analyse and compare writing styles. When you're using it as style analysis, you've got a very good hit at 90%. Mine was 97% when compared to Fleming. In other words, unbeknown to me, I have been slavishly copying Mr Fleming's style. I wrote to the Corporate Voice people and told them I wasn't consciously trying to copy Fleming's style; that I was trying to use a different voice.

It strikes me now, of course, that you can't. Consciously, there is no way I can identify with Bond. In my own works, I identify completely with my characters. I live in their bodies. But it doesn't happen with the Bonds. The character is not mine. The character belongs to Mr Fleming. He is Mr Fleming's. Everyone around him is Mr Fleming's. This must come as a great shock to the people who have said my style is nothing like Mr Fleming's, because apparently it is scientifically, anyway! This amazes me, because we use a different technique altogether.

When I'm doing the Bonds, I'm very objective about the material. I'm never in there, either in bed with Bond or shooting it out with him, or being tortured, or whatever. I can't get inside his head. Sometimes I get angry when the book isn't going right, and I don't do that with my other works. James Bond is not my man. There is a sense of detachment. It is rather like watching a scene being played out. A good analogy is that it's more like directing a play than writing a book. The cast is all there and you’re simply putting the lines into the characters' mouths and putting them through the motions. But in my own books, I'm on the stage with those characters!

As history has shown, the gamble that both Glidrose and John Gardner took has paid off. The three-book contract became six, then six became nine, and nine became twelve.

There will be two more. I personally believe that will be all. I could be proven wrong. The publishing world is in a sad state; it's practically impossible now to predict how well something will do. The Bonds did very well at first, but they've been slipping. I think a lot of that is due to Putnam not supporting them as well as they could. This was especially true with THE MAN FROM BARBAROSSA, which they did not like at all.

Personally, it's my favourite of the bunch. I tried something very different with that one — I didn't stick to the formula. Putnam complained a great deal and, as a result, it wasn't supported. I was extremely disappointed about that.

Nevertheless, many of the Bonds have appeared on the New York Times' best seller lists, some for several weeks at a time. Paperback sales are especially good. When I made the suggestion of a book of Bond short stories (there are two such anthologies by Fleming), Gardner was intrigued.

I haven't been offered it. I suppose it could be number fifteen. That being the case, if that ever happens, that could be interesting. In that one, I'd pick the times. I'd take him back to the Sixties for one; the future for another. That would be fun. That's a good idea, actually! I hope they wouldn't require an outline for the short stories!

In reading the Gardner Bonds, I strongly recommend that readers completely forget the Fleming books and think of the new series as what it is an altogether different set of Bond stories in a different time. An analogy could be the original Star Trek TV series vs. Star Trek - The Next Generation. The new show has a completely different 'feel', the sensibilities behind it have been updated, and the characters are very different. But it's still Star Trek. Some folks like it, others don't.

It's all subjective, and if one forgets personal prejudices, the new series can be enjoyed on its own merits. The same is true for John Gardner's Bond.