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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the fob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is waiter Harlan Covid. Harlan, I'm good

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Speaker 1: to be here. So where exactly are you right now,

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Speaker 1: New Jersey About a half hour outside of my hat.

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Speaker 1: And to what degree is COVID affected you in your lifestyle? Well,

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Speaker 1: me personally, not so much. Social isolation is what we

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Speaker 1: writers do. Uh, I'm fat. I had more people home

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Speaker 1: and was busier because my kids who were all rage

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Speaker 1: in age from eighteen to twenty six, and four of them,

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Speaker 1: three of them were here. But they've all kind of

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Speaker 1: gone back to their lives in various ways. So I'm

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Speaker 1: back to being an empty nester. But you know, worried

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Speaker 1: about the world, worried about my kids, worried about all

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Speaker 1: that stuff. But my day to day life is probably

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Speaker 1: less affected than the population. And to what degree are

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Speaker 1: you taking all quarantining? Seriously? Very we we do all

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Speaker 1: the steps I don't see. And again, you know, to

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Speaker 1: be fair and non political, it's easier for me. You know,

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Speaker 1: I have a fairly nice set up at home. Um,

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Speaker 1: I'm used to being at home. I don't really have

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Speaker 1: to go out and see people so I'm not a

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Speaker 1: very social person, you know. I think all writers are

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Speaker 1: a little bit of introverts, and maybe a socially a

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Speaker 1: depth introvert, but introvert after all. So I take it

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Speaker 1: very seriously. I haven't done anything at all that one

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Speaker 1: might call risky. To what degree do you find the

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Speaker 1: pandemic inspiration for your writing? I would say zero. I

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Speaker 1: think it's the opposite. In fact, that was I was

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Speaker 1: in the middle of a book when the pandemic hit,

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Speaker 1: and because you really don't know how the pandemic is

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Speaker 1: going to go, and especially back then, I decided instead

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Speaker 1: of making I usually did. The book is very contemporary.

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Speaker 1: I made it in the year two thousand nineteen, so

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Speaker 1: I can make sure I could have boyd the pandemic altogether.

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Speaker 1: I think at first, certainly, I felt that my job

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Speaker 1: was to give you a divide diversion from the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: the shows and the books, to be a diversion from it.

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Speaker 1: So right now I don't find it in the least

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Speaker 1: bit inspirational, and I think it's hard to write about

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Speaker 1: right now except in a very short window because we

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Speaker 1: don't know where it's going. You know, I could write

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Speaker 1: a book that just took place in the month of

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Speaker 1: March or April, but I don't know where we're going

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Speaker 1: to be in September, October, and neither is anybody else.

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Speaker 1: But you're a last bestseller just recently came out Boy

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Speaker 1: from the Woods. You do Virgin too. Politics. How did

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Speaker 1: you make that decision? Well? Politics, I really tried very

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Speaker 1: hard to be as as nonpartistan as possible. Um I

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Speaker 1: do as a writer in general, not because you know,

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Speaker 1: because you're gonna turn this. I don't want people to

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Speaker 1: go into my books thinking, oh, he's a right wing cook,

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Speaker 1: he's a left wing nut, whatever it is. It takes

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Speaker 1: away from the story. Um, I try to do it

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Speaker 1: in a more subtle way. And the politics here, I

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Speaker 1: think we're more about certain extremism than it was, and

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Speaker 1: about cult type figures that we take on sometimes every side,

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Speaker 1: more than I was saying, you know, the right bad,

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Speaker 1: left good kind of thing or left bad, right good.

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Speaker 1: So I just you know, my books are contemporary, so

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Speaker 1: I'm dealing with what I'm seeing in public. So for

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Speaker 1: The Boy from the Woods, it's whatever's kind of going

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Speaker 1: on and run away to what was going on in

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Speaker 1: the world of seeing a lot of people doing, for example,

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Speaker 1: DNA ancestry websites. I thought that would be good. I'm

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Speaker 1: seeing people who are doing with viral videos. I see cults.

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Speaker 1: I see this sort of political behavior where it's really

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Speaker 1: more about tribalism. Um. I think the app thing sometimes

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Speaker 1: with the politics is to call like the Yankees and

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Speaker 1: the Red Sox. Like, if you're a Yankees fan and

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Speaker 1: you find out your manager is a cheat or and

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Speaker 1: a horrible person and was killing people, you don't become

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Speaker 1: a Red Sox fan, right, You're still going to cheer

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Speaker 1: for the Yankees no matter what. And that's where our

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Speaker 1: politics has gone. And so I was more exploring I

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Speaker 1: think that than you know, tax breaks or whatever else. Well,

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Speaker 1: the book only came out recently. When did you start

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Speaker 1: writing the book right about now? I would say last year.

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Speaker 1: I usually started right about now, which you know we're in,

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Speaker 1: uh the summer. Usually lately I've been starting it around

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Speaker 1: the summertime, and I finished about nine or ten months later,

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Speaker 1: and then it comes out a year after that. So

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Speaker 1: it would have been uh, two years ago right around

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Speaker 1: now I was started the book, and that is a

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Speaker 1: traditional lag time in the publishing industry. How do you

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Speaker 1: feel about that in today's digital world, certainly someone of

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Speaker 1: your renown. Well, I've done certain ones where I had

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Speaker 1: been tighter um, where I finished one book for example,

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Speaker 1: I think in July and we had it out in September.

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Speaker 1: Publishers can turn it around faster, and they claim and

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Speaker 1: we see that like the Bolton book, or we'll see

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Speaker 1: that with nonfiction book. There really with fiction book they

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Speaker 1: can do it too. They don't want to because they

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Speaker 1: want to. They take it's better for marketing if they

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Speaker 1: have time to make copies and getting people like your hands,

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Speaker 1: so maybe you'll put it on your podcast or or

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Speaker 1: or your newsletters. So they're trying to publicity. They want

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Speaker 1: it earlier. They can do it. They can do it faster.

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Speaker 1: It's not easy in terms of timely. But I hope

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Speaker 1: all the novels I write in some way, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: last more than six months. Anyway, they're not they're not

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Speaker 1: fruit on the shelf. So hopefully you know, you can

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Speaker 1: still read my books from when I started, and even

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Speaker 1: though they may seem dated, they're supposed to be during

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Speaker 1: the year, still capture that year. But the spirit and

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Speaker 1: the story and things like that that shouldn't really change.

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Speaker 1: The technology might change, the politics might change, but the

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Speaker 1: story shouldn't change. Let's just stay with technology, not the

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Speaker 1: content of the book. But what's your viewpoint on digital publishing,

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Speaker 1: the kindle pricing, accessibility. You have a take on that, Well,

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Speaker 1: this may sound a little bit like a duck, but

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Speaker 1: it's not. If we are a business, I am the

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Speaker 1: content side of the business, and as a content provider,

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Speaker 1: I don't care if you listen to it on audio.

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Speaker 1: I don't care if you digitally do it. I don't

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Speaker 1: care if it's paper, I don't care if it's stone tablets.

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Speaker 1: My theory is, if my story is good enough, you're

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Speaker 1: going to find it and you're going to want to

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Speaker 1: listen to it. So I really focus hard on the story.

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Speaker 1: It's all I focus on because matter two, I'm not

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Speaker 1: smart enough to be able to tell you what's going

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Speaker 1: to happen in the book world. And I've heard of

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Speaker 1: my whole career. You know, for a while Barnes and

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Speaker 1: Noble was going to destroy the industry about taking over

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Speaker 1: and boarders is going to destroy the industry. Oh wait, no,

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Speaker 1: it's Amazon. Amazon is gonna destroy the industry. Oh e books,

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Speaker 1: E books are gonna put paper out of business, and

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Speaker 1: they're all wrong. And if it's I'm like a child

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Speaker 1: when I hear that. And I regularly recommend this to

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Speaker 1: writers and content producers, creators, whatever you want to call yourself.

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Speaker 1: I stick my fingers in a year and I got

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Speaker 1: la la la la. I can't hear you. All I

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Speaker 1: can control is how good my story is. So if

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Speaker 1: my story is going to be good enough, you're going

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Speaker 1: to find it. So I don't really worry. I don't

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Speaker 1: care how you get it. Um, you know, the last

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Speaker 1: few years, audio is really exploded. I don't know exactly why,

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Speaker 1: but the last two or three years, audio has really exploded. Um,

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Speaker 1: the book had exploded for a while. Now the book

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Speaker 1: is actually a little bit on decline, even this last book, Bob,

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Speaker 1: but you might find really interesting. So my book came

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Speaker 1: out March seventeenth, which is the very start, literally the

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Speaker 1: start of when we went into quarantine. So I was

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Speaker 1: about to go on book tour. I obviously canceled it,

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Speaker 1: and all the stores closed, right, all the stores closed,

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Speaker 1: And yet my physical book sales were actually up, and

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Speaker 1: my e book was up just a little bit a

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Speaker 1: little flatter. But my physical books is actually up more

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Speaker 1: than my book. I would have thought it would be

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Speaker 1: the opposite. Everybody's staying at home. They're gonna get kindles

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Speaker 1: or or nooks or whatever. You're gonna audience on order

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Speaker 1: it that way. But that wasn't the case. The physical

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Speaker 1: book has come back the last few years after getting

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Speaker 1: you know, after the book jumped up to have fifty

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Speaker 1: or six even of sales. Now if you flattened or

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Speaker 1: moved down where the physical book seems to be going up.

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Speaker 1: This is anecdotal information, but that's how I I'm seeing it. Well,

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Speaker 1: the music business been the canary in the coal mine

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Speaker 1: for digital disruption, and certainly there's been a big issue

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Speaker 1: in books talking about this, which is a what is

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Speaker 1: the value of a book? And be that leads to

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Speaker 1: the pricing. Have you felt any pressure on your end

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Speaker 1: or you're so successful that your deals are independent of

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Speaker 1: those constraints. Well, I don't know, you know, I'm not

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Speaker 1: so successful. I'm sure like everybody everything else, I'm you know,

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Speaker 1: price is a factor buying my books or whatever else. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, it's a very interesting thing.

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Speaker 1: So people will often say the books should be much

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Speaker 1: much cheaper because you're not printing any paper. You don't

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Speaker 1: have to do this, you don't have to do that,

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Speaker 1: and so the books should be much cheaper. But the

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Speaker 1: other side of the coin is that twenty years ago,

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Speaker 1: I told you, where you're standing right now, you can

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Speaker 1: press the button and have a book just appeared to

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Speaker 1: you right now the second how much would you pay

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Speaker 1: for that convenience? And I bet a lot of people

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Speaker 1: would have said, well, hell, that's magic. I pay a

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Speaker 1: lot for that. So I don't really know. I find

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Speaker 1: the book, you know, again, market, I think maybe it

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Speaker 1: works here sometimes, you know, I just so. I think

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Speaker 1: The Woods, the one that's the new Netflix series, I

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Speaker 1: don't know it still is, but for a little while

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Speaker 1: it was being priced the e book form for only cents.

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Speaker 1: So if you're you're savvy shopper, you can find things

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Speaker 1: like that. Um So you know, if somebody told me

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Speaker 1: I can get it that quickly, that automatically I can

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Speaker 1: carry you know, if you have a kindle or nook

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Speaker 1: or or don't, you can carry a thousand books, a

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Speaker 1: thousand books. What would you pay for that if I

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Speaker 1: told you that a few years ago. So I'm not

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Speaker 1: so sure that it's as simple as you're not made

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Speaker 1: using a paper anymore. It should be much cheaper. I

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Speaker 1: can't put on my bookshelf afterwards. It should be much cheaper.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Now, going back to your point about

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Speaker 1: you don't care how people access your work, let me

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Speaker 1: say if I said a hundred million people in America

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Speaker 1: would be reading your book, but you'd make a hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars, or ten thousand people would read your book

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Speaker 1: and you'd make two million dollars. Which choice would you

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Speaker 1: make now? I would choose the first. I can't say

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Speaker 1: what it before, but right now money is not really

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Speaker 1: much of a factor for me. But I'll tell you

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Speaker 1: my my, my chicken, my chicken. Ass answer to that is,

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Speaker 1: I've never chased the dollar. I've always chased the reader,

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Speaker 1: the reader's heart, because I've always found the dollar follows anyway,

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Speaker 1: so they really I've always been one and the same.

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Speaker 1: I've never made a deal where I tried getting the

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Speaker 1: last dollar and not caring. I want readers. Um. If

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Speaker 1: that makes me commercial horror, it makes me a commercial horror.

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Speaker 1: I think every reader does you know the one the too?

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Speaker 1: Every writer has this in common. I don't care if

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Speaker 1: you're talking to the most commercial writer for the most

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Speaker 1: literary writer. Every writer I know wants better reviews and

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Speaker 1: wants more readers. And if they don't, they're lying. I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: they're lying. If you have if you have a guy

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Speaker 1: on here saying I just care about you know, really

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Speaker 1: great quality, I don't care if anyone reads it their lyne.

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Speaker 1: You right to produce, You're you're right to have communication

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Speaker 1: with somebody. It's it's the Berkeley tree falling in the woods,

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Speaker 1: and nobody hears it doesn't make it sound. Um, So

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Speaker 1: I do both. I've always said, if the reader or

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Speaker 1: the viewer likes what I'm doing, the money is gonna follow.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's gonna follow. If I go out thinking,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I could get more money here, but

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Speaker 1: less people will see it. I've never made that deal

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Speaker 1: in my life, so um, I don't think I would

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Speaker 1: do it now. Okay, you're you started before or just

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Speaker 1: at the advent of this whole digital craziness in the Internet.

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Speaker 1: One thing we know in the last ten years is

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Speaker 1: there's a lot more clutter. Everybody's vying for attention. Therefore,

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Speaker 1: no matter who you are, it's harder to spread. First,

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Speaker 1: there's the issue of reaching your fans, letting them know

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Speaker 1: you have new work. Do you feel this at all

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Speaker 1: that it is harder. Let's just use the vernacular to

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Speaker 1: have virality with your work. Yes, I mean, and first

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Speaker 1: of all, everything also is the cycles of life, but

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Speaker 1: we know and the media cycles are much shorter, so

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Speaker 1: you have a very short window. Book openings have become

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Speaker 1: similar to movie openings, where in the old days I

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Speaker 1: think you would move up the charts, so to speak,

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Speaker 1: you know, and maybe the same with music. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but you start maybe a fift team and move up

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Speaker 1: to twelve, up to ten. How is my first New

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Speaker 1: York Times bestseller? Now You're opening week is your biggest

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Speaker 1: week by far. It's like an opening of a movie.

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Speaker 1: So the first week that an author has a new

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Speaker 1: book out, if he doesn't hit one, then he's not

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Speaker 1: hitting one unless the next week is a real disaster

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Speaker 1: for everybody else. You jump on one, then you start

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Speaker 1: flipping down, and after a few weeks you know they're

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Speaker 1: they're moving on to the next thing. So part of

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Speaker 1: it is this whole culture that we see in movies,

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Speaker 1: we see in music, and we've seen everything where you're

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Speaker 1: just not in the news. Um, quite as long. Books

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Speaker 1: are always hard to get attention for anyway. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: every once in a while, once or twice a year,

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Speaker 1: a book seems to get people's attention and and they,

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Speaker 1: you know, look at it. But for the most part,

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Speaker 1: it's very very hard. So um, I don't really do

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Speaker 1: much different myself. Uh. And I recommend to new writers

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Speaker 1: don't don't lose your mind with the marketing. I know

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Speaker 1: it's so hard, but I haven't seen maybe you have, Bob,

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Speaker 1: because you're in a little better at this During this time,

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Speaker 1: I haven't really seen like a book that's made it

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Speaker 1: just on its in fact, that the guy's got a

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Speaker 1: great Twitter account or is really funny on instant I

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Speaker 1: think it's the opposite almost. I actually think that Instagram

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Speaker 1: and my Twitter accounts are negative. A few years ago,

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Speaker 1: giving a quick example, I'm friends with Gillian Flynn, who

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Speaker 1: of course wrote Gone Girl, which is a huge book.

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Speaker 1: And I would say that people who would ask me

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Speaker 1: this question, and people are always looking for the easy out,

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Speaker 1: not writing the book, isn't reading that a book. Writing

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Speaker 1: on a book isn't easy out. Figuring out that magic

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Speaker 1: key that that will get me a lot of readers

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Speaker 1: by acute tweet is so I said, well, look, the

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Speaker 1: biggest book the last year two has been Gillian Flynn's

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Speaker 1: Scout Girls. So look at her Facebook account, look at

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Speaker 1: her Twitter, look at her Instagram. See how she's done it.

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Speaker 1: She didn't even have one. I think now she hasn't

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Speaker 1: a Twitter that she almost never does anything with, but

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Speaker 1: she didn't even have when she had zero online presence.

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Speaker 1: Dan Brown, I think is very little online presence, um.

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Speaker 1: Grisham just starting up a very little online presence. So

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Speaker 1: I don't think that there is much of a correlation

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Speaker 1: there for books. And again, that's not TV, that's not movies,

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Speaker 1: it's not music. But in terms of books, I don't

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Speaker 1: think it's It's not helpful that question how active are

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Speaker 1: you on social media and what is your intention with

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Speaker 1: social media? Um, I'm actually probably more active than most

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Speaker 1: best selling authors. Part of it is, UM, I don't

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Speaker 1: mind it. I sometimes kind of enjoy it. I have

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Speaker 1: a real love hate relationship with it. UM, and I'm

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Speaker 1: dealing with it like everybody else. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: I feel about it. One day I think it's the

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Speaker 1: worst thing in the world that I gotta stay away

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Speaker 1: on the next day. I'm a little bit um addicted

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Speaker 1: to it, so I don't. I'm still working out where

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Speaker 1: I am on that on that spectrum. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: I have a Twitter, I have a Facebook, I have

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Speaker 1: an Instagram. I do very little on the Facebook other

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Speaker 1: than the mostly it's marketing kind of stuff. Twitter and Instagram.

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Speaker 1: I feel like you have to open up a little

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Speaker 1: bit more. It's just not fair necessarily. I think people

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Speaker 1: get bored if I'm just putting up pictures of my

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Speaker 1: books or my TV shows, So you have to be

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Speaker 1: a little bit. I'd do a dog a lot, because

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Speaker 1: no one gets upset about the dope anything. Political people

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Speaker 1: seem to get upset about on one side or the other.

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Speaker 1: Now we live in a world where everybody is accessible.

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Speaker 1: That does not necessarily mean you need to respond. Do

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Speaker 1: you interact with people? I sometimes don't. I always regret it,

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Speaker 1: always regret it. I did actually yesterday with somebody and

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Speaker 1: I just was after you know, a friend of mine,

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Speaker 1: Richard Osmond from England, had tweeted this brilliant thing about

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Speaker 1: don't give the idiots, don't respond to the idiots, that's

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Speaker 1: all that gives them air, and I did. I responded

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Speaker 1: to an idiot, and I gave him a hair and

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Speaker 1: then I was like, okay. Now I also block if

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Speaker 1: someone will come on, for example and say, uh, someone

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Speaker 1: did you well, you know, why did you make the

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Speaker 1: woods in Polish? I hate foreign language things. This is

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Speaker 1: a piece of ship. I just blocked. I didn't followed

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Speaker 1: with it. He's on. He probably is a fan of

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Speaker 1: my books. He's been following me a long time, and

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Speaker 1: you know, and then of course you get the rep of, oh,

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Speaker 1: you can't listen to criticism. I don't have to listen

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Speaker 1: to criticism. I don't want to. It's my page. But

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Speaker 1: when people are rude like that, now I just now

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to reach a state dry, just blocking and

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Speaker 1: move on. What I always say is temper center. The

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Speaker 1: public is certifiably insane. The only problem is you don't

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Speaker 1: know what ten percent that is. People who seem totally

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Speaker 1: reasonable end up like you can't get rid of him,

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Speaker 1: and it's crazy. The other thing is, even if you

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Speaker 1: correct someone on facts, they won't accept it. Well, the

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Speaker 1: sky is black today, No it's blue. No, you're wrong, blah. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I retweeted some a friend of mine. I put something

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Speaker 1: about the Confederate statues, and you know the difference being

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Speaker 1: the Confederate statues were to honor these people. You know,

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Speaker 1: people keep saying, oh, how can you leave up concentration cancer,

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Speaker 1: which is such a disingenuous false equivalency. So the person

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Speaker 1: put it and I retweeted it, and somebody says, I

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Speaker 1: didn't think you'd want to upset all of your you know,

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Speaker 1: your right wing readers or your Republican rea years ago.

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Speaker 1: Tell me what that tweet you don't get? I mean,

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Speaker 1: tell me what that sweet you disagree with? Do you

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Speaker 1: think that the Confederacy and the Holocaust sent No, I'm

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Speaker 1: my relatives in the Holocaust, Like, so, what's your problem

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Speaker 1: with the actual thing? And then they go off on

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Speaker 1: some tangent. You know, it's like they they so there's

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Speaker 1: no point in doing it because it doesn't matter. You

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Speaker 1: can't win the argument, you know. So I agree, I

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Speaker 1: agree totally. But just staying with that one concept, to

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Speaker 1: what degree in your books and your interactions, are you

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Speaker 1: worried about alienating potential fans potential readers. Um, I don't

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Speaker 1: real about alienating potential readers or yes, on internet, on

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Speaker 1: social media, do worry about that? In books? I don't

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Speaker 1: in books. As I said before, I intentionally don't potentially

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Speaker 1: take sides also that I don't necessarily agree with because

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Speaker 1: part of being a writer, big part of it, One

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Speaker 1: thing I hope we all have is you have to

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Speaker 1: be empathetic, not sympathetic, and not necessarily in a positive way.

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Speaker 1: But I have to get how that person thinks. And

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Speaker 1: I have to create created characters, especially in the villains, um,

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Speaker 1: where you should be able to understand them. In fact,

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Speaker 1: one of the things I joke is I've been working

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Speaker 1: much too hard on my villains over the last few years.

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Speaker 1: I realized villains don't have to be all that complex

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Speaker 1: or interesting or sympathetic. They could just be complete monsters

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Speaker 1: that's we're seeing every day. Um. But I want to

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Speaker 1: do that. So UM, I've argued for a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff convincingly, I've taken it. In one book, I took

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Speaker 1: a pro hunting side that I thought was really kind

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Speaker 1: of fun. So but that's part of the job, is

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Speaker 1: you you know you, I'm not. I'm not really here

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Speaker 1: to teach you or moralize that. That kills a book,

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Speaker 1: and may they may be lessons in it, But if

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Speaker 1: you said that, to do that you're right, and you're

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Speaker 1: gonna kill yourself. You're gonna really quick kill your book.

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Speaker 1: Going back to marketing, you were mentioning that your book

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Speaker 1: tour was canceled from someone on the West Coast music

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Speaker 1: movie entertainment spectrum. It really looks like bookmarking is antiquated.

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Speaker 1: So I must ask when you do these road shows,

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Speaker 1: do they have any impact? In my view? No, I

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Speaker 1: think there are waste of time. I've told my publishers,

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Speaker 1: so I tried cutting them down. Um some years they

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Speaker 1: left me. Some years they don't. There's I think there's

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Speaker 1: a couple of things that they do. Um one is

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Speaker 1: and this is why I personally am not that opposed

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Speaker 1: to doing them. And I you know, part of it.

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Speaker 1: You know, you're part of the team and you have

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Speaker 1: to do that. But I do think it helps the

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Speaker 1: independent bookstores. I do think if I can go to

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Speaker 1: your store and you can sell four hundred copies of

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Speaker 1: a hard covered that cost bucks, that's a big day

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Speaker 1: for you as an independent bookstore. That gets people in

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Speaker 1: your stores, that gets people interested in reading that. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's a way of introducing other authors to people. UM

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Speaker 1: So part of it, I think a lot part of

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Speaker 1: when when your author, you know, is already selling well,

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00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 1: that he's doing it is to give cover for other

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Speaker 1: writers as well. So I think I think that my

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Speaker 1: publishers have never told me this, but I do think

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Speaker 1: there's probably something be not not not quit pro quote.

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Speaker 1: But I do think there's something where if we send

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Speaker 1: you this big name, we will also take this newcomer

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Speaker 1: who no one's really gonna know, but you can promote

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Speaker 1: them in your story. You can put their book in

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Speaker 1: your window for a week. You can make sure you

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Speaker 1: get that guy gets attention to. And so in terms

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Speaker 1: of the overall ecosystem of independent bookstores and and and

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Speaker 1: Barnes and Nobles and the and the chains, because it's

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Speaker 1: not many of them left, um, I do think it

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Speaker 1: helps them more than it helps me. And I have

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Speaker 1: no problem with that. So I'm happy. I'm happy to

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Speaker 1: do that. Um. I also don't mind interacting with readers.

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Speaker 1: You know, to quote a song, to quote to puteh

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Speaker 1: Keed Vogelberg, the audience is heavenly, but the traveling is hell. Right,

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Speaker 1: That's right. I love that line. That's how I look

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Speaker 1: at torting. I got It's not you know, despite what

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Speaker 1: authors a whine about it's not that hard to have

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Speaker 1: people walk up to you and say, God, I love

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Speaker 1: your books. It's really not that hard. If where's your

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00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:02,639
Speaker 1: whole freaking for that, enjoy it right and enjoy the

425
00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:05,120
Speaker 1: moment for them. You know it's gonna be different because

426
00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:07,960
Speaker 1: I was always I stand up from my entire book

427
00:22:08,520 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 1: book run because I know people want photographs nowadays, and

428
00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:13,680
Speaker 1: I think it's so awkward they do that photograph where

429
00:22:13,680 --> 00:22:16,840
Speaker 1: you're sitting down and they're leaning over awkwardly. So I

430
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:19,720
Speaker 1: stand up, put my arm around everybody, have the camera

431
00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:21,679
Speaker 1: ready with a guy so they can get the picture

432
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:23,960
Speaker 1: that they want. They really took the time to come

433
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:26,760
Speaker 1: out and see me. That's a tremendous on it really,

434
00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:30,440
Speaker 1: and a tremendous drill. So that's the other side of touring.

435
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,920
Speaker 1: But in terms of your overall question, does it help

436
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:39,720
Speaker 1: Harlan Coben sell books, My view is no, because, first

437
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 1: of all, if you're coming to a Harlan Coban book signing,

438
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:46,000
Speaker 1: there's a chance of buying my book anyway. So who

439
00:22:46,040 --> 00:22:47,960
Speaker 1: else comes to my signings? People who don't like my

440
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:50,679
Speaker 1: books as ever heard of me, So you know what

441
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:53,360
Speaker 1: I mean. So I think that. I do think it's

442
00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:56,399
Speaker 1: but again, it's probably good for the whole ecosystem, and

443
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 1: I'm happy to help with that. So what is effective

444
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:03,360
Speaker 1: marketing for one of your books? The truth is, I

445
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,919
Speaker 1: think with books from my books, I don't know anymore.

446
00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,080
Speaker 1: I think in my books it's very hard for me

447
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: to go too far up or too far down. It's

448
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:13,920
Speaker 1: hard to break out more than once or twice. So

449
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:17,040
Speaker 1: Tell No One was my breakout book. Tell No One

450
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 1: changed my life overnight. Was it the book or the

451
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:24,400
Speaker 1: movie of the book. The movie was out five years

452
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: after the book, so it was Why do you think

453
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 1: that was your breakout? I had written seven Myron Bolletar

454
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,520
Speaker 1: novels in a row before that, and while they did well,

455
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: it was very hard to convince, especially the female reader,

456
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:42,080
Speaker 1: who is the majority. I think stole readers. Probably my guests,

457
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: of my readers, and most readers in the world are females.

458
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: And no matter how much they told you, tell them

459
00:23:48,119 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 1: you're gonna love this. It's about a sports agent. He's

460
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:54,639
Speaker 1: a sports agent who solves crimes. That's just not a

461
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 1: good book. But when you tell somebody here's what. Tell No.

462
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 1: One's about a man and a woman or married. The

463
00:24:00,520 --> 00:24:03,399
Speaker 1: wife is murdered. Eight years later, he gets an email

464
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: and sees his murdered wife on a webcam. Is she's

465
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:09,439
Speaker 1: still alive? You're buying the book? That's it in a nutshell.

466
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: That was the poster for the movie eight years ago.

467
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 1: Dr Beck's wife was Dr Beck's wife was murdered eight

468
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 1: years ago today you got an email from That was

469
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 1: the movie poster, and it helped the movie explode out

470
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: in France. So, um, I think that was the reason.

471
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 1: And then they went back and they were by the

472
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: Myron Boulturs, and then you know, and then the Myron

473
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: Boltar end up having a good following. But that was

474
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: the thing I said. I think I think that's why

475
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: what literally got I mean there's literally millions of books

476
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,199
Speaker 1: a year. What literally got the attention that book? Was

477
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: it hand selling in a bookstore? Was it viralty? Was

478
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: what was done that made that work? No one likes

479
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: to hear this, but it was something in the book, Um,

480
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: because it happened not just here, it happened all over

481
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: the world France. Who became a number one best seller?

482
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,439
Speaker 1: Actually the better Like I remember my publishers saying, well,

483
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 1: I think it was just great cover. The that a

484
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 1: really great cover for it, but France had a crappy

485
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 1: cover that kind of leaked it out. And then one

486
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 1: magazine wrote it up really well and next thing, you know,

487
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:15,440
Speaker 1: in France and ended up being doing better relatively speaking,

488
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 1: and it did in America, it did well in the UK,

489
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: it did well in Spain, it did well in poland

490
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 1: did well in in a ton of countries. So there

491
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: was something about that hook in that book that made

492
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 1: it happen. In the end of the day, books are

493
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: all are still still word of mouth are the two

494
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: biggest things that could have happened to her. Being an

495
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 1: OPRAH book club took now being a Reese Witherspoon book

496
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,439
Speaker 1: club pick. But outside of that, and even then, you

497
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: know how you know, I'll ask you, Bob, how do

498
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: you find your books? It's almost always somebody telling you

499
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 1: that people. It's almost the opposite. You don't trust people

500
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:54,120
Speaker 1: who are hyping you. And you see a full page ad,

501
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,199
Speaker 1: you say, who is this impacting? I would listen to

502
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 1: this right that that it could be, you know, so

503
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: I don't. I think in the case of Tell No One,

504
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: some countries that went slower, some countries that went faster.

505
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: But it's something about that book got people buzzing, and

506
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: I could say, see it. You can almost see it happening.

507
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: I can. I'll tell you an interesting story. I went

508
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 1: to college. I was a fraternity brother with Dan Brown,

509
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci Code author um, who was a friend

510
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:23,680
Speaker 1: of mine. And so tell No One broke out several

511
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,160
Speaker 1: years before DaVinci Code came out, maybe five or six

512
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: years before. And when Da Vinci Code, Dan sent me

513
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: an early copy to blurb, you know, and when you

514
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 1: get those copies and you write the blurb on it

515
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,399
Speaker 1: if you like it. And I started to see it

516
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: happened to Dan before Dan did. And I remember speaking

517
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 1: to Dan not long before the book came out, and

518
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: I said, dude, this is going to change your life.

519
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,399
Speaker 1: I can. I'm seeing it. I'm just hearing the industry

520
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:49,959
Speaker 1: start to buzz about it and talk about it. And

521
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 1: I don't know how you create that. You can try,

522
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: but it's a book. Isn't resonating. It's not gonna happen,

523
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 1: which is which is the way it should be, right,

524
00:26:57,400 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: I mean it should be. I've seen so many books

525
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: that people are trying to hype via money. It doesn't work.

526
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: But when people are telling you they liked the book,

527
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: be it Da Vinci Code, Last few Years, being Gone Girl,

528
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 1: being a girl on the train, be it this zero

529
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 1: and the claud Dad sings. Whatever that book is, people

530
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 1: are liking it and telling their friends. Rarely is the

531
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: book something that people aren't liking and they're managing to

532
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 1: get people to buy anyway. Well, that begs the question,

533
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,720
Speaker 1: that's a little dicey. What's your view on James Patterson?

534
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: I have no I have nothing negative to say about

535
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: about Jim. I've known I've known Patterson um for a

536
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: long time. He's honest about what he's doing. I think

537
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: at the stage of the game, UM, he was a

538
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: marketing guy. Um from day one he understood he understands

539
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: how to market better than anybody. Uh. He has a

540
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: bunch of different people working. I don't. But I don't

541
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: really study him or follow him. So it's not like

542
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: I know him better than my opinion on him would

543
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 1: be any better to listen to than anybody else's. I

544
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: don't really, I don't. It sounds maybe I don't really

545
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: care what my colleagues are doing in that way. The

546
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 1: guys that I do like and then I hang out with,

547
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: I sort of I really do wish them. Well. Um,

548
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of fake, but there's two signs to

549
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 1: one is this boat rises and things together. If you

550
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: read a Michael Conley or a Lee Child or whoever

551
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: it else it is, and you like them, you're gonna

552
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: want to read more and maybe that one of those

553
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,719
Speaker 1: books will be mine, and vice versa. Um, no one

554
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: has to fail so that I can succeed. That's my motto.

555
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm not good of a person that

556
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: I always pick it, but it's a great it's a

557
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: great motto to have nobody has to fail so that

558
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: I can succeed. It's really hard in the writing game.

559
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: I think for people who are upcoming not to get jealous,

560
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: not to look at what somebody else has. There's always

561
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: gonna be somebody ahead of you. Do. There's always gonna

562
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: be somebody ahead of you. So I try to use

563
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: that to fuel me and not to get bitter or

564
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: to get angry. Tell no one is your breakthrough novel.

565
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: And of course it doesn't necessarily happen instantly you're already

566
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: working on something else. But frequently when someone has a

567
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: huge success and people are paying attention. It's inhibiting in

568
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 1: terms of further work. Did you experience that, well? It is.

569
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen it happen with a lot of writers.

570
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: I was extraordinarily lucky. I had just finished Gone for

571
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: Good when Tell No One broke out. I had just

572
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: finished the book before because I'll tell you I was

573
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: thirty nine, so I wasn't a kid when it happened.

574
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: And it messes with your head. Success does mess with

575
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,959
Speaker 1: your head. I don't know how these young guys who

576
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: are actors or musicians handle it. I really don't because

577
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: the mess with my head. Luckily, I happily married, I

578
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: had my fourth kid was born the day that I

579
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: hit the New York Times Best Start Let's for the

580
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: first time, Um July eleven, two thousand one, coming up

581
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: on the anniversary. So um, I got all of that.

582
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 1: So what I did learn and I advised writers if

583
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: I see a writer like my saw DaVinci Code about

584
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: to break out, I'm like, my warning to writer is

585
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: put your head down now and start writing, because once

586
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: it hits, it is going to be tough. If you're

587
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: gonna be paralyzed for a little while. And the advice

588
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: that I give the writer who has this lucky enough

589
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: to have this happen, is just get it out, because

590
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: they're gonna slam it no matter what. I mean, they're gonna,

591
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: you know, the critics are gonna and the same thing

592
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: with musicians, right, they're gonna sharpen depends. They're going to

593
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 1: crap on you. And then you can have a career,

594
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: get to your third or fourth album, and then you'll

595
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: be all right. You'll be over that, over that home

596
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: to what to do you? Are you a student of

597
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: the game? Do you follow especially now there's so many statistics,

598
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: especially on Amazon. Do you follow that pretty closely? I don't. UM.

599
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 1: I did for a little while, maybe twenty years ago,

600
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years ago. Um. You know, I was first

601
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: trying to hit number one, and I was getting close

602
00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:43,239
Speaker 1: a couple of times, so I would sort of follow it.

603
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:45,479
Speaker 1: This last book, I haven't followed at all. I mean,

604
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: I get a call on a Wednesday saying, you hit

605
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: the New York Times listener X your lot. So but

606
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: either that, I don't anymore, and I tell you for

607
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: them again. The advice for the new writers, don't um.

608
00:30:57,880 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: I was lucky when I started out. I was a

609
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 1: paperback original guy at Dell, which is a big name,

610
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 1: but it's a small I mean, it's a paperback original.

611
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: So I my first Myron Bouletar novel, I got five

612
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: thousand dollar advance, and not to brag, but by the

613
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: time I wrote my fourth, I was up to six thousand.

614
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: So but here's the thing. Because I had no information

615
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: it was a major publishing house. There's two copies in

616
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: almost every bookstore and paperback. I thought I was the

617
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: cat's ass. I couldn't look at my Amazon rankings back

618
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: and this is when I first started Amazon. Really, I couldn't,

619
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: you know, watch the watch my Amazon rankings, like their

620
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 1: stock ratings, and see how it was going up. And

621
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 1: now I thought I was doing great. If someone told

622
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 1: me the aspect, then I probably would have killed myself.

623
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: But I just wrote the next one. I didn't worry

624
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: about how well it was doing. I was still in

625
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: the game, you know. Was that that I hadn't struck

626
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: out yet? I was. I still had my swings left.

627
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: It's like you're a battered I had ten ten swings

628
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: at ten strikes instead of when or too, So I

629
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: just kept put my head down and right. So I

630
00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: tell her it's don't you know, don't spend all the

631
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: time looking at Amazon yet book is not going to

632
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: break out. It's not if that book hasn't broken out yet.

633
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: Nothing you do by looking at all these things is

634
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: going to help your career. The only thing that's really

635
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: going to help your career is writing the next one

636
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: and making it better and somehow getting more people to

637
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: read you. So I really I was blessed. We didn't know,

638
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: you know, meals and ratings, We didn't have book scam.

639
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: Now that um, I know, there's people who tell me

640
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: you can call into books scam and find out way.

641
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't even want to know, because, first

642
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: of all, what number is good? Someone shit to you,

643
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: I sold eight thousand copies of your book last week.

644
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 1: Is that's a good or bad? I don't know. I

645
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 1: still don't know, So I don't want to know. As

646
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: long as everybody's happy I'm hitting one my first week

647
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: out usually I'm good. Not I mean to know anymore?

648
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: What else do we need to know? Okay? And do

649
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: you read your reviews? Yeah? Most of the time. I

650
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: don't read Amazon reviews or any of that. Goodness to

651
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 1: the numbers are too big to even try. I'll sometime,

652
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: so I haven't done it. I don't think for a

653
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: book for Boy from the Woods, I've even looked CHET,

654
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: but I will look every once in a while. But

655
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 1: it's always the same. I'm always four to five stars.

656
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:10,959
Speaker 1: Most people are, you know, happy with it. And then

657
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: there's the people who say, oh man, he really changed

658
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: this time that and I hated that, And then the

659
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 1: person who says he wrote the exact same thing again,

660
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna change. There's never anything I gotta you're going

661
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: through my reviews for the last twenty books, you'll see

662
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. I'll be between three point nine

663
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: and four point one, and it will be the exact

664
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: same thing. So if I saw one book and someone

665
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: would tell me that all of a sudden, dope down

666
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: to a one or was at four point nine, I

667
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: guess I would pay a little more attention to why

668
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: or whatever else. Um. And if I'm reviewing New York Times,

669
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: yeah I read it, you know, but I don't. I

670
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: don't take it to heart anymore. I know it doesn't

671
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: change my life. A great review is not going to

672
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: change my life. In A shitty review is not going

673
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: to change my life. I know that now. Uh does

674
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: a review in a major publication, the wallpo of the

675
00:33:55,520 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: New York Times? Does it help at all? Um? For me?

676
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: I look, everyone has to help. Um how much it helps,

677
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: I don't know if it helps as much as it

678
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: used to. I don't think so. Uh. Like rom was

679
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 1: starting out or in the mid to late nineties, a

680
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: really good spot would be People magazine. They would do

681
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: four or five books to have a photograph of the book.

682
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: People really paid attention to it. It got a fair

683
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: amount of sales and hits. UM. But there's no one

684
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: thing anymore, not even like my Today Show appearance, that

685
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,359
Speaker 1: makes a book zoom the way it did in the say,

686
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,719
Speaker 1: the early nineties, early the mid nineties. I'm sure if

687
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: you're an unknown you're getting a full page review in

688
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Um, that's going to help you,

689
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: in the front page of the New York Times, book,

690
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: of course, But other than that, you know, even good

691
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: reviews in the New York Times. I see books vanished

692
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. So I don't I just don't think that.

693
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: I don't know the answers. I don't know what makes

694
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: it anymore. It seems to be a lot of things

695
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,959
Speaker 1: that have to come together to reach a certain level,

696
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 1: but be happy at other levels too. It's not everybody

697
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: has to be a number one or number in. I

698
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 1: wasn't for a long time either a number of top

699
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: best seller. You could just be doing well and eventually

700
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: you're in the game. Maybe something happens movies for a

701
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: long time movie times. I mean, you know how much

702
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: bigger did George R. R. Martin become after the TV

703
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: show Game of Thrones came out? How much bigger did

704
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:21,400
Speaker 1: Charlene Harris become after True Blood? Sometimes it has a

705
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 1: big effect on books, sometimes it doesn't. You don't really

706
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 1: know to what degree are you in news and internet junkie.

707
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: I guess I would say average. I don't know what

708
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: average is anymore. I pay attention to it, especially right now.

709
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: I'm dying to be bored. Though I really wish I'd

710
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:41,440
Speaker 1: go back to the days might didn't have to look

711
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: at it every day and feel like I'm watching the

712
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 1: world and uh again. I compared to sports, I think

713
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: sometimes we watch it like it's our team, and did

714
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 1: our team out a good game? It's good, a good

715
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,720
Speaker 1: inning to be scorning ones that did our team score

716
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: some runs? Um, it's a sad, it's a satisfact. How

717
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: about you know? I don't know? Okay, So what comes first?

718
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: Do you have the idea, do you flesh it out?

719
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: Do you start writing? What's your process? Um? I usually

720
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: start with an idea, um, and then I try to

721
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, good hook and the ending and

722
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: that's and then I asked, who's going to tell that story?

723
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: So it's usually three steps. So when people say, are

724
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,120
Speaker 1: you going to write more? Myron Bolts, are you're gonna

725
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: write more? When I after I think of the story idea,

726
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 1: I'll ask who's going to tell it? In the cas

727
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: tell no one. So I had this idea that I

728
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,279
Speaker 1: loved about a man wife is murdered, he can't get

729
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: over her death, he still loves her. Eight years past,

730
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:40,880
Speaker 1: he gets in the email, he clicks the hyperlink, he

731
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: sees the webcam and his dead wife walks by. I go, oh,

732
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:46,320
Speaker 1: I love this. But I realized I had written seventh

733
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: straight Myron Boultard. He couldn't tell he didn't have a

734
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: wife who died eight years ago. So who am I

735
00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 1: going to create? Well, let's make him an interstity pediatrician

736
00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: because my wife is one of those, so I get

737
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: the research that way. It's just simple, you know. Then

738
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: I started thinking about that character, um, and of course

739
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 1: I have to know I in my case, I know

740
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,359
Speaker 1: the end most a lot of authors bon't. I know

741
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: the last twist. I knew when you've read The Boy

742
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 1: from the Woods. I knew it was going to be

743
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: on You know who did it? Who did what? Before

744
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: I started the book, I don't know everything, but I

745
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: know pretty much who did it and the meanning. How

746
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get there. I have no idea how I'm

747
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: going to travel it. I have no idea about things

748
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: I see on the road, but I usually know the

749
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: beginning of the ending before I started. Okay, how long

750
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 1: how long does that process take before you actually start

751
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 1: writing the book? I say to I say, like right now,

752
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:42,359
Speaker 1: I'm I'm doing one book a year. I would say

753
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:46,720
Speaker 1: two or three months are downtime thinking about it, coming

754
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: up with the idea, Like I've finished a book, um

755
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: a month or two ago. Uh, which is my next

756
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 1: one called Win, which is about my character Win for

757
00:37:57,280 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: the first time, he's going to tell the story himself.

758
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: He's been Myron bulletar sidekick, and now he's gonna tell

759
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: his own story. And when I finished it, you know,

760
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 1: I thought of nothing for a while. It's like your

761
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: boxer and you just finished the twelfth round and you

762
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: threw everything you could. You've got nothing left, not a thing.

763
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 1: And then slowly, as time goes on, you know you're recovering.

764
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: You're the bruises are going down in the distance. You

765
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,839
Speaker 1: start seeing another opponent you've gotta start facing. So now

766
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: I've started the wheel to turn. I've decided the next

767
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: book is going to be a sequel to The Boy

768
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,320
Speaker 1: from the Woods. Because I left a lot of this.

769
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:32,919
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you his origin story, and I feel

770
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: like I should. Um, so his next book will be

771
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 1: his origin story, which I kind of already knew when

772
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 1: I started this book. So it's a little bit easier

773
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: to start laying out. Okay, so the wheel start turning.

774
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: Then you see there are two or three months of downtime.

775
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: How long after the wheels start turning do you start

776
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: to actually write the book. It depends. I'm hoping to

777
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:57,240
Speaker 1: get started in the next week or two. The TV

778
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: stuff interrupts me. Now, which is different from me than

779
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: a has been in the past, um, so I haven't

780
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: found it really hurts it at all. So my guess is,

781
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: I'm hoping, you know, next week of the week after

782
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 1: I've come up with the idea, I wrote my two

783
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,919
Speaker 1: page synapses that I send my publisher UM to see

784
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: if they liked this idea and make sure that they're

785
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: on board. Two Um, and now I'm sort of I'm

786
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: ready to go. I gotta start. I gotta start, you know,

787
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: thinking about what are the first few chapters going to be?

788
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: How am I going to start it off? Okay? What

789
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: about now? Has your publisher ever said we don't like

790
00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: the idea? Never? Okay, not yet? Okay. So when you

791
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: write the book, you're figuring out as you're writing all

792
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: the points in the middle pretty much. I mean again,

793
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 1: I compare to a journey. I'm in New Jersey, I'm

794
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 1: coming out to you in l A. I may go

795
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 1: Route eighty, but chances are i'll go via the Suez

796
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: Canal or stop in Tokyo, but I'll end up in

797
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: l A. But I may know a few places along

798
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: the way I definitely want to stop at, so I'll

799
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:03,439
Speaker 1: know that, and then some character stuff I will leave

800
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 1: to the end, not to give anything away. On the

801
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: very last page of Boy from the Woods, I wasn't

802
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 1: exactly sure what he was going to do with this

803
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: one decision. It's not the answer to the mystery. It's

804
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: a personal decision that wild the Boy from the Woods makes.

805
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: I kind of thought I did, but I said, you

806
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: know what, let's just get there, write it, and as

807
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 1: you're writing, and to see what he decides to do.

808
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: And he actually did what I thought he was going

809
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: to do. But I wasn't sure until I actually started

810
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:31,879
Speaker 1: to write it. So some things were organic, something's kind

811
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: of come to you, and some things are planned. And

812
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:37,760
Speaker 1: is it about rewriting or is it about the first draft?

813
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,320
Speaker 1: In terms of story, it's all about the first draft

814
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:45,760
Speaker 1: for me. Um in terms of the under the fine tuning,

815
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: UM rewrite and rewrite a lot. I rewrite every day,

816
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:53,719
Speaker 1: so I don't write, you know, straight ahead. I go

817
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: back at the start of each day and I rewrite, reread,

818
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: and rewrite what I wrote the day before. So I

819
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: start that way, and then every seventy five pages or so,

820
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: I go back to the beginning of the book and

821
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: reread it from there to make sure I still am

822
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:12,359
Speaker 1: you know, it helps me get momentum. Is like getting

823
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: a running start to jumping, you know, like a long jump.

824
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 1: So I do that. So at a time I finish

825
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: a book, the first chapter is probably rewritten eight or

826
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: nine times. Ready. Um. Later stuff happens faster, and it's

827
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 1: easier to write once I get there because I've been

828
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:32,799
Speaker 1: seeing it emerge for months on end. So the end

829
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: comes a lot faster to write than the beginning and

830
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: needs less rewriting. Do you enjoy this process? It's a

831
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: really good question, and it's one I don't know the

832
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: answer to. UM. A lot of writers have been given

833
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: credits for this. I give it. I first heard it

834
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 1: from Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, but I think

835
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: Dorothy Parker probably gets it most where she says, I

836
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 1: don't like writing. I like having written, UM, and I

837
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: think it's the same for a lot of it. I

838
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: think it's kind of the same for painting, and it

839
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: made me the same for recording. But I don't think

840
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: so not music slightly different. But if I said, you know,

841
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 1: we have friends and maybe you're one of them that

842
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: love the paint. I love to paint. Oh my god,

843
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: I love the paint. I'll spend the whole day painting,

844
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, if that canvas

845
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: is blank, did you enjoy it? If at the end

846
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: of the day, I have no words to show for

847
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:22,919
Speaker 1: what I did all day, I don't think I would

848
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: say I enjoyed it. So it's a you know, now

849
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 1: we're getting into philosophical questions of creation versus creating and

850
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: all that. But what I write if no one ever

851
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: saw it, and no one ever read it, and I

852
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: never looked at it again, I don't think I would. Um,

853
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 1: that's that. That's that's being brutally honest. So I don't

854
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,760
Speaker 1: think i'd necessarily enjoy that. But I love writing books,

855
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 1: and I love that moment when I'm in the in

856
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: the thralls of it. But I love it because I

857
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:54,320
Speaker 1: know what's going to be is going to produce something.

858
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: It's like I'm building a house. If I build a

859
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: house and the end of the day I did, I

860
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: was hammering and I'm looking at coming together and I'm

861
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: really thrilled with it. But then the next day it's

862
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: completely gone and nothing's there. Did I enjoy it? I

863
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: don't know. Larger philosophical questions and very interesting in terms

864
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 1: do you have a rigid schedule in terms of writing,

865
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: I don't. I try, um best now in the mornings.

866
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:19,360
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I was best in the evenings,

867
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: um my best days. Or when my kids were younger,

868
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: I would take them to whatever school. My wife a pediatrician,

869
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 1: so she had a real job. But I would take

870
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,280
Speaker 1: them to school and I dropped them off or whatever

871
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 1: and go to a coffee shop to be there by

872
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: about eight or a fifteen. And if I could work

873
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: eight to noon straight, that would be a fantastic day,

874
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: get a couple more hours in the afternoon if I

875
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: was lucky. Um, Now it's harder, it's a little more hodgepodge,

876
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: and I might have to be a little bit more

877
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: self motivated. You know, a lot of the old motivations

878
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:54,320
Speaker 1: are gone. It's you know, will you ever be a success?

879
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 1: Will you ever have in theother novel published? Will you

880
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 1: ever you know hit a best seller list? We ever had?

881
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: Tenderly ever get to one? Do you know? Are you

882
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 1: gonna be able to feature family? Those motivations are pretty

883
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,240
Speaker 1: much gone. Um. So the motivation I have left really

884
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: is that I still love to tell stories. I still

885
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: love that communication with people, and also fear the fear

886
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: that what am I if I'm not this? UM? That's

887
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 1: I think it's a big part of all creative process

888
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 1: that the fear that we are that, UM, I have

889
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: no other marketable skills. I have to get a real

890
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: job if I didn't do this? What else am I

891
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: if I'm not this? The good things that in my

892
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: life that have come about by being a writer, like

893
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: being on your podcast, vanished if I don't continue to write.

894
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: So those motivations still move me UM as well. Okay,

895
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:47,120
Speaker 1: do you say, oh, I don't write on the weekends

896
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: or every day is up for grabs? Do you have

897
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:51,799
Speaker 1: a specific amount you want to accomplish? Are there certain

898
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: days you accomplish nothing? There's certain days I accomplished nothing,

899
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: especially media days. If I'm you know, uh, the Woods

900
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 1: came out out for Netflix on the maybe three weeks ago,

901
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: so like two or three days trade. I was on

902
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 1: Zoom with Poland doing you know, in Europe, doing news stories.

903
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: So I know those days it's not gonna happen, But

904
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 1: I think about it every day. I take notes every day.

905
00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: There's never time I'll go out by the pool that

906
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,760
Speaker 1: I won't bring a notebook with me or a laptop

907
00:45:18,840 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: with me. Even if I don't open it, It's on

908
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: my mind all the time, and I feel tremendous guilt

909
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:28,359
Speaker 1: if I'm not doing it, if I'm not producing. So

910
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: you write at home, you have four kids, you have

911
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: a wife. Can you be interrupted? Um? Well, for a

912
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:38,919
Speaker 1: lot of years I didn't. I mean by four kids

913
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,480
Speaker 1: are grown now so they're not home. But when the

914
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:44,319
Speaker 1: kids were home, it's one of the reasons I used

915
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: to write a coffee shops or libraries or wherever I

916
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 1: could other than being home. Home is not necessarily the

917
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:53,879
Speaker 1: best place to write, especially the people around. But here's

918
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: the thing with writing. You'll use any excuse to avoid wedding,

919
00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 1: any excuse. So if I'm home, I'll sit there, I'll go, oh,

920
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: you know, all right, but first, you know what, this

921
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:05,800
Speaker 1: house needs aluminum siding. I end up put aluminium sliding

922
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 1: on that house. Then I'll get back to writing. So

923
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 1: if I'm out of the house in the old days,

924
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,400
Speaker 1: two I would go to places that did not have

925
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: any internet, which the whole world does now, and so

926
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be distracted or have excuses. A lot of

927
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: that is shutting out that noise um. I always wrote

928
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 1: on vacation. I used to joke because my kids were

929
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: in college. We took a couple of vacations, and I

930
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:32,800
Speaker 1: would joke saying, if you wake up at six the morning,

931
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: seven morning, you can get a lot of work done

932
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 1: before your kids wake up, like six hours work, because

933
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 1: my kids wouldn't wake up to one and after now.

934
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:43,760
Speaker 1: So I liked writing on vacation, like wading people's around around.

935
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,200
Speaker 1: My wife used to joke there'd be times that the

936
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: kids would call her work about something and she said, well,

937
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: why don't you have dad? Where's dads me home? Yeah?

938
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: Dad songs the next room, But why don't you ask him?

939
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: I don't know, he looks like he's busy. So sometimes

940
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:58,800
Speaker 1: my kids really had a lot of respect for my work,

941
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: and sometimes they didn't. Okay, but are you fearful of

942
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: did they mean? You're basically kind of answer the question.

943
00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: They knew if you're working, don't interrupt you. There was times,

944
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: I mean, like, especially towards the end of the book,

945
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: I grew a playoff beard. I don't talk to anybody,

946
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:17,320
Speaker 1: I don't change clothes, I smell they throw a banana

947
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 1: at me, so I have something to eat and then

948
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: they run away. Um so they yeah, I guess they

949
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: could send to something. I'm not to said they didn't

950
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: do it, but they were pretty good most literally my kids.

951
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it says I raised them right in this way.

952
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:32,279
Speaker 1: They were never very needy. When they were very little.

953
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,239
Speaker 1: It was one thing, but they were like, oh, well,

954
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 1: you know, we want to talk to dad, we want

955
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: to hang with dad. They were that way. You know.

956
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: I never had to go to their schools. I never had.

957
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:42,839
Speaker 1: I still can't name one teacher any of the four

958
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: had in high school. Don't just one jerk, but I

959
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:47,879
Speaker 1: forgot his name right now too. So I was never

960
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: that kind of even though the kids did really well.

961
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: My youngest is a brown and they're kids, you know,

962
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: oh into grade schools. I think it was her mom

963
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: maybe more. My kids just didn't really need me that

964
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 1: much that way. Okay, So where did you grow Livingston,

965
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: New Jersey was right outside of new Ark. I was

966
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 1: born in Newark, New Jersey. And what were the circumstances

967
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:11,839
Speaker 1: of your growing up? Uh, you know, it was sort

968
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 1: of idyllic. Uh. Sixties and seventies, mostly seventies are my memories.

969
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: Because I was born in sixty two. So I grew

970
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: up in the seventies and the eighties. Um, what did

971
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:26,520
Speaker 1: your parents? My dad was? My dad worked as he was,

972
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: he was a practicing attorney, but he worked for his

973
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: vice president of a company that did laundry for like

974
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: restaurants and stuff like that. That was that was sort

975
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 1: of his job. My mother always had different, different jobs.

976
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: She was a school teacher I was very young. She

977
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: ran a travel agency when I got a little bit older.

978
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:49,200
Speaker 1: She always worked, Um, and she was. My mom was

979
00:48:49,239 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 1: a tremendous early feminist. Um you know, our bit of

980
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: bumper sticker when I was a kid, saying, which I

981
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: think is still genius women whose tick to be equal

982
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: to men, lack ambition, which a genius women's place in

983
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 1: the house and sentate. We had all that stuff in

984
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: these My mom was very much and I wrote an

985
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: est day on her. She was the very first female

986
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: littleague umpire in the early seventies. Really, so she was

987
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 1: a Yeah, she was a firebrand. Both my parents died young. Um,

988
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: how relatively young. My dad was fifty nine, my mom

989
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 1: was sixty. Well to what did mean? You know? My

990
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:26,359
Speaker 1: father died at seventy and when he passed. My mother said, well,

991
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: his dad died at seventy He never thought he'd ce

992
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: seventy two. What degree do you have that in the

993
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:34,479
Speaker 1: back of your mind? A lot. I'm not turning fifty

994
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:39,799
Speaker 1: nine next year, so I'm fifty eight right now. So yeah,

995
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:43,320
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it haunts um he died. You

996
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: had heard issues, and a number of years ago I

997
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:50,319
Speaker 1: met a great guy who was who was involved in

998
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 1: the hard stuff, and he said, if thoroughly checked me out,

999
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 1: and he said, you don't have your dad's heart. So

1000
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:56,560
Speaker 1: that gave me a sense to release because I've always

1001
00:49:56,560 --> 00:49:59,359
Speaker 1: felt that was sort of mine, my curse. But yeah,

1002
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: it was something that you kind of forget. So how

1003
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: many kids in the family. I have four, my butter

1004
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: to two butters, one older, one younger, so you're the

1005
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 1: middle kid. I'm the middle kid too, although my siblings

1006
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: are girls. So usually the hopes and dreams are in

1007
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 1: the first one. The youngest one wants attention to the baby,

1008
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:22,760
Speaker 1: and you're in the middle, and you're kind of ignored,

1009
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 1: both in good and bad ways. Was that your experience? No? No,

1010
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: I mean my older brother my younger brother are both geniuses,

1011
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:35,360
Speaker 1: so both uh. I went to Yale undergraduate of Harvard Law,

1012
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 1: perfect both perfect essay T scores. My brother graduated Harvard Law.

1013
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,319
Speaker 1: I think it's twenty one, so both of them were.

1014
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: I was, relatively speaking, the dumb one in the family. Um,

1015
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,200
Speaker 1: but I also was the one with personality. Uh. I

1016
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: don't really think the birth orders were also fairly far apart.

1017
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: I was four years younger than my older brother and

1018
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,880
Speaker 1: five years older than my youngest brother, so there was

1019
00:50:59,920 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: a pretty good spread there between all of us, so

1020
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: we didn't really compete. We never were on the same

1021
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: team's UM, so maybe that kind of helped a little

1022
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 1: bit with that sort of a thing. Are you popular?

1023
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:23,680
Speaker 1: You have a lot of friends. I was, I was president.

1024
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:25,800
Speaker 1: You know. The funny thing is my senior year of

1025
00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: Livingston High School, I was president of the student council

1026
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 1: and Chris Christie was president of the senior class. So um,

1027
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: and I was actually practice what he preached. That was

1028
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:40,240
Speaker 1: a lazy affair government. I did not think as president casil,

1029
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: I just didn't do a damn thing. But I was

1030
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: captain the basketball team. I was president student council, so

1031
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: you know, I I would say I was in the

1032
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:50,359
Speaker 1: mix certainly. It wasn't like a nerdy introvert who as

1033
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,319
Speaker 1: a writer. I was athletic. I played college basketball as well.

1034
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to go to Amherst Um.

1035
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: I wanted a small were school where I could probably

1036
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: you know, and actually because of my basketball UM and

1037
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: having good grades, I could get into you know, Amerson.

1038
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: I wasn't probably good enough to play Division one, so

1039
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 1: I wasn't like I could have used it. I was

1040
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, a very good student, like a

1041
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: lot of kids in my school. We're back in those days.

1042
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 1: So what made me stand out was my basketball, and

1043
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 1: Amirst wanted me UM for that, and it was sort

1044
00:52:26,280 --> 00:52:28,680
Speaker 1: of the best school I thought I could make academically,

1045
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: and I liked the small school environment. I had a

1046
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: fairly big high school, one of a few people whose

1047
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:37,160
Speaker 1: college had a lot less people in the class um

1048
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: in high school amirates at that time, I think, you know,

1049
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: it was a really magical place for me there. I

1050
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: learned a lot there, had a great liberal arts education

1051
00:52:44,280 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 1: with no prerequisites whatsoever. Um, you didn't have to take

1052
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:50,399
Speaker 1: a math, you don't take a science and take any

1053
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: of that sort of thing. Well, that bigs a question,

1054
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,919
Speaker 1: did you take math or science? I took one math

1055
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:57,840
Speaker 1: class and no science. I basically almost all the classes

1056
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: I took were also because I was lazy. Um, I

1057
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: took all. I took a lot of political science and

1058
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 1: history and American studies and things. Where yet do I

1059
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: two or three five page papers a day, which I

1060
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: could a week or a semester, and I can always

1061
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:14,840
Speaker 1: take those, you know, if I did no work, I

1062
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: didn't like reading any of the reading or whatever, I

1063
00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 1: could always take those and get a B plus versus

1064
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:21,840
Speaker 1: having you to take a test where you really have

1065
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: to work. So part of it was being lazy. But

1066
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 1: you know, I already I kind of thought I had

1067
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 1: a knack for writing, necessarily realizing I'd want to be

1068
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:32,080
Speaker 1: a writer. Yet I wasn't one of those guys who

1069
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:35,400
Speaker 1: always knew UM. And I really enjoyed those classes. I

1070
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:38,919
Speaker 1: we had some great professors, small classes where you really

1071
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: have a lot of give and take a lot of

1072
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:43,279
Speaker 1: the Socratic method. And really, I think what Amer's taught

1073
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: me more than anything else, which has been helpful with

1074
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: what I write is critical thinking and problem solving, which

1075
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 1: is a lot of what my books really are. I

1076
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 1: was probably better mess student in high school than I

1077
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: was an English student. But it's not really that. The

1078
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: writing was really about being able to see problems and

1079
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 1: solve them. Did you play basket ball all four years? Yep? Yep?

1080
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: In fact, I was a Jewish All American, Yes, right,

1081
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:10,720
Speaker 1: I was. It was There's not five Jews who played

1082
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:13,319
Speaker 1: college basketball and made a team. I guess. Okay, So

1083
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: when your college career is over, do you play anymore ball?

1084
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 1: Do you feel the absence? What goes on? I played

1085
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:22,319
Speaker 1: up until I was in my late forties, and then

1086
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: I had a knee injury, and my friend, who was

1087
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: a northopedic surgeon, said, you can keep playing like your

1088
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,359
Speaker 1: friends and end up on my table where you can

1089
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 1: retire now and maybe not end up on my table,

1090
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 1: and so I retired. I didn't push it after that,

1091
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:37,800
Speaker 1: so I've never had to have any surgery or anything

1092
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:39,440
Speaker 1: like that. But I played up until I was I

1093
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: think forty seven or forty eight. I played and pick

1094
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:43,919
Speaker 1: up and I do miss that every once in a a while.

1095
00:54:43,960 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: I still had that yearning, but you know, I've also

1096
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:50,320
Speaker 1: accepted it. It's times. Well, since you're a basketball player,

1097
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:53,319
Speaker 1: that pigs a question. How tall are you I'm six

1098
00:54:53,360 --> 00:54:58,800
Speaker 1: f legit six four right right, asupposed everybody that lives. Okay,

1099
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: you're in Amherst. What's it like being a Jew and Amherst?

1100
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:06,400
Speaker 1: It was. It was interesting because because I grew up

1101
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: in Livingston, New Jersey, which is a very Jewish town,

1102
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:12,640
Speaker 1: so I hadn't really experienced all that much anti Semitism,

1103
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: and an Amhurst, I started to a little bit nothing heavy,

1104
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:17,919
Speaker 1: but I remember in the first week or two they're

1105
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: hearing people saying, stop trying to jew me down, stop

1106
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:22,920
Speaker 1: being a Joe, gave me the money, those sort of

1107
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:28,400
Speaker 1: things that I found somewhat shocking. Um uh, because it

1108
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: was the first time I wasn't in a area that

1109
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 1: was a majority of Jewish. But it really wasn't like,

1110
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't like the movie school Ties or

1111
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:39,280
Speaker 1: anything like that. It wasn't like it was that horrific.

1112
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:44,439
Speaker 1: And there were other ones, so um yeah, I don't

1113
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 1: think it was been fairly lucky. Also being an athlete

1114
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:49,919
Speaker 1: and that kind of a thing where I never really

1115
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:55,360
Speaker 1: experienced anything dreadful or serious. Okay, so you're in college,

1116
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: any thought of what you're going to do for a living. None,

1117
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 1: I mean, I was a political science major, which is

1118
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: a euthemism for I have no idea what the funk

1119
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:06,080
Speaker 1: I want to do with my life. I was going

1120
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 1: to go to law school because my brother all Rebutter,

1121
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: gone to law school, my father had gone to law school,

1122
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,760
Speaker 1: and my aunt, my uncle, everybody had been a lawyer,

1123
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like the natural next step. Um.

1124
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 1: And then my grandfather had a business that he needed

1125
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:22,320
Speaker 1: help with, so I deferred. I was actually gonna go

1126
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 1: to Universe of Chicago law school. I deferred one year

1127
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: and in two years, and then I never went to

1128
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:30,320
Speaker 1: think of this. Okay, so you're working in his business

1129
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: doing what it's a travel business. I was setting up

1130
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: tours overseas and writing the brochure and doing the marketing,

1131
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: UM and stuff like that. Base you know, we had

1132
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 1: a travel club. We would set up tours to Italy

1133
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: or France or Asia wherever, we packaged them, sell them

1134
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: to sell them to different people, to our members. And

1135
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: that was what I did, Yeah for eight years? From yeah,

1136
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 1: I did it for how long? Eight years? So when

1137
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: did the belt of off that you wanted to be

1138
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:04,600
Speaker 1: a writer? My senior year of college when I first

1139
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 1: started to do and That was how I sort of

1140
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:08,879
Speaker 1: talked about it going to law school. My grandfather sort

1141
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: of said, if you go to law school, you're probably

1142
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:13,399
Speaker 1: not gonna ever write here why you're there, you can,

1143
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 1: you know, work in this job, you can, you can

1144
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,480
Speaker 1: try to keep writing. Um, And I did, And then

1145
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 1: I guess I had a book or two out before

1146
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:25,880
Speaker 1: that business imploded, and and then I went out on

1147
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:29,960
Speaker 1: my own. Well that begs a question of finances, because

1148
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 1: if you're making five or six K a book, how

1149
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:36,520
Speaker 1: are you making rents? So to speak? Well, it's an

1150
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: interesting time. Um. You know, my wife was working as

1151
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:41,880
Speaker 1: a pediatrician. So first of all, made I made. I

1152
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:43,760
Speaker 1: helped grow the business to the point where I was

1153
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: making decent money with the family business for a little while. Um.

1154
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,040
Speaker 1: But then it did come to a stage when that

1155
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:53,479
Speaker 1: when that left that, I had a very good job

1156
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: offer for a regular executive butt on a suit every

1157
00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:01,480
Speaker 1: day kind of a job in Stanford, Connecticut. And I

1158
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:03,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it. And I was going to

1159
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:07,040
Speaker 1: do it because I had fighting family. My my wife

1160
00:58:07,120 --> 00:58:09,280
Speaker 1: is probably their first kid. I guess around then, and

1161
00:58:09,320 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: remember I said to my wife, I'd really like to

1162
00:58:11,200 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: give this writing a shot with what the savings we

1163
00:58:14,200 --> 00:58:17,439
Speaker 1: have and what you're making as a pediatrician. She's working

1164
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 1: the publicly, she's working in a hospital. So it wasn't

1165
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: like a ton um, can we do? You think we can?

1166
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:25,360
Speaker 1: We can do it, And I don't know how anybody

1167
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 1: does without a supportive spouse. I had a super supportive spouse.

1168
00:58:28,600 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 1: My wife was fantastic. She said, yeah, I give it

1169
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:35,080
Speaker 1: a go, and you know, but I mean so for

1170
00:58:35,120 --> 00:58:39,959
Speaker 1: a little while, I just enough to contribute, not those days,

1171
00:58:39,960 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 1: not the five or six thousand dollar stage, but then

1172
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,360
Speaker 1: you know, obviously became a worthwhile investment in the end.

1173
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:47,280
Speaker 1: But this is another thing that you know, you said

1174
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: to right at the point where people sort of think,

1175
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:52,560
Speaker 1: if you don't hit it right away or you're supposed to,

1176
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: you gotta move on to something else. And yes, publishers

1177
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:57,919
Speaker 1: may not be as patient as they were in those days,

1178
00:58:58,080 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 1: but I don't think my publishers were patient. I think

1179
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:03,280
Speaker 1: I just so far under their under their radar, they

1180
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 1: just didn't kind of notice. You know, it just was

1181
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:08,720
Speaker 1: being renewed at five thousand dollars a book for a

1182
00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:11,200
Speaker 1: few years, and then I won a couple of awards,

1183
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 1: and you know, I changed agents, and some things happened

1184
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:17,040
Speaker 1: where I made where I was able to to move

1185
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: up the ladder a little bit, and then it was

1186
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: fifty thousand and a hundred thousand, So you know, it

1187
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 1: was that it was a slower, slower step. But I

1188
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 1: get emails from people it's like, you know, I've written

1189
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: three self published books and digital. How can I'm not

1190
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: selling like you and Patterson? You know that's not how

1191
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: it works. There's as a tremendous impatience nowadays, and um,

1192
00:59:39,720 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: I almost like grumpy old man. But it's okay. It

1193
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 1: was my tell No. One was my tenth published novel,

1194
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: was my first New York Times bestseller, my tenth So

1195
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 1: as long as you're let's drew down a little bit.

1196
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: When you're working with your grandfather, are you writing at

1197
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 1: that time? I am. My first two books were published

1198
00:59:57,800 --> 01:00:00,240
Speaker 1: while I was still working, which is not a thing.

1199
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:02,439
Speaker 1: I don't know. You don't have to quit your job

1200
01:00:02,520 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: to write. I don't know. That's just not true. Um.

1201
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:08,800
Speaker 1: In fact, it's pretty much. I think the opposite. You

1202
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:10,440
Speaker 1: have more of a hunger because you want to get

1203
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:14,280
Speaker 1: the hell out of that job. So, um, I were

1204
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,120
Speaker 1: you know, if it was gonna take you twelve months

1205
01:00:16,160 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 1: to write a book. If you're working full time, maybe

1206
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:19,960
Speaker 1: it's like your four team months. And if you are

1207
01:00:19,960 --> 01:00:21,800
Speaker 1: one of those people are gonna tell me you're too busy,

1208
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:24,360
Speaker 1: then writing is not that important to you. I'm sorry,

1209
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:27,520
Speaker 1: it's just not. Mary Higgins Clark is the example. My

1210
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 1: dear friend who passed this yere, who I love dearly,

1211
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:33,080
Speaker 1: taught me so much about life. But Mary Higgins Clark,

1212
01:00:33,640 --> 01:00:36,200
Speaker 1: when she was thirty six years old, has five children,

1213
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: and her husband died the very next day. Her father,

1214
01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 1: her mother in law dies. So Mary, this is back

1215
01:00:42,120 --> 01:00:44,880
Speaker 1: in the fifties or early sixties, thing of the fifties.

1216
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 1: Still it's left the five kids, no husband, no prospects,

1217
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:52,560
Speaker 1: no one. She worked full time, so Mary would wake

1218
01:00:52,640 --> 01:00:55,120
Speaker 1: up and she would write at her kitchen table from

1219
01:00:55,120 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 1: five am to seven am before the kids woke up.

1220
01:00:57,920 --> 01:00:59,600
Speaker 1: So don't tell me you don't have time to write,

1221
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: because it's horseship, you know, turn off the TV, wake

1222
01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: up an hour earlier, skip lunch. So when I was writing,

1223
01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: when I was working full time, I was writing almost

1224
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: as fast as I'm writing now. I just had it.

1225
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: I would be thinking about it when I had that time, boy,

1226
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: I would use it. And when did you write when

1227
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:22,680
Speaker 1: you had that full time job? Lunchtime, early mornings, but

1228
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:25,240
Speaker 1: mostly in that day because I was younger, mostly at night.

1229
01:01:25,520 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 1: So if I finished work at five o'clock or whatever else, Um,

1230
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:32,400
Speaker 1: I would write from you know, seven to ten pm

1231
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:35,360
Speaker 1: or eight to eleven PM or nine to midnight something

1232
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: like that. Ye skip the TV. Yeah whatever is How

1233
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:44,280
Speaker 1: did you meet your wife? We've been to get her

1234
01:01:44,320 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 1: since I was in college where I was. I was

1235
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 1: a sophomore and she was a freshman at Amer's College

1236
01:01:48,600 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: and then both played college basketball. That's how we met. Wow.

1237
01:01:53,160 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 1: Now that begs a question, especially since you have Jewish

1238
01:01:56,120 --> 01:02:00,600
Speaker 1: references in your latest book. Is she Jewish? She is not?

1239
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 1: That was a mixed marriage, early mixed marriage. How about

1240
01:02:03,960 --> 01:02:10,960
Speaker 1: the kids? No, do your parents say anything? Um? My

1241
01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:14,160
Speaker 1: parents are not very religious people. Um. And again my

1242
01:02:14,240 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 1: dad died before I got married. Um. They both liked

1243
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 1: their tremendous amount my wife, so it really was probably

1244
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:24,680
Speaker 1: more of an issue on her side where she was Catholic. Um,

1245
01:02:25,560 --> 01:02:27,439
Speaker 1: you know, on our side. It was back in those

1246
01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:29,600
Speaker 1: days that people it wasn't a mixed marriage, were not

1247
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: a big thing. This was I got married. They were

1248
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: just starting. It was like I remember, we had a

1249
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 1: search for a rabbi and no rabbis would do it

1250
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:41,240
Speaker 1: because we want to do a mixed ceremony. Um. So

1251
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 1: it was tricky, but it was hard maybe the beginning

1252
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:48,040
Speaker 1: when we first started, but we both I think softened

1253
01:02:48,080 --> 01:02:52,680
Speaker 1: our stances on both of those being not very religious. Okay,

1254
01:02:52,720 --> 01:02:55,640
Speaker 1: let's talk about telling no one the movie the book

1255
01:02:55,680 --> 01:03:00,320
Speaker 1: is successful. What's the genesis of the movie out? First?

1256
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 1: You know, I told the movie rights to that before

1257
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 1: the book came out in America. Had you had you

1258
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 1: sold book right movie rights to any book previously? I

1259
01:03:10,840 --> 01:03:13,560
Speaker 1: had had small options on my Myron boultitar series, but

1260
01:03:13,640 --> 01:03:17,840
Speaker 1: nothing like this. This was like a three studio auction

1261
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:22,200
Speaker 1: and it went for a lot of money. Um. And

1262
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:25,000
Speaker 1: it was more money than I've ever made on books combined.

1263
01:03:25,360 --> 01:03:29,560
Speaker 1: Remember being in a bookstore on book tour in Scottsdale

1264
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: getting calls. You know, Columbia moved up to here, Warner

1265
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:35,360
Speaker 1: Brothers moved up to here. So it was this is

1266
01:03:35,400 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 1: almost a year before the book came out. I'm talking

1267
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:40,400
Speaker 1: about the early buzz. People just read it and saw

1268
01:03:40,520 --> 01:03:43,960
Speaker 1: the potential for it. So I ended up selling it

1269
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: or optioning a company optioned it in the US. It

1270
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 1: was a long story. It was a weird offshoot company

1271
01:03:51,320 --> 01:03:53,760
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's kind of The first script

1272
01:03:53,760 --> 01:03:57,000
Speaker 1: was written by two well known guys I won't mention

1273
01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,280
Speaker 1: your names that people can google and sometimes and find

1274
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:01,160
Speaker 1: it and it really they hated the first script. But

1275
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: I also I understood right early on that you you know,

1276
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 1: when you sell a book, you don't really get to

1277
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: decide that sort of the thing. Um, And here's the

1278
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 1: thing people don't realize. It's really hard. Always been really

1279
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 1: hard to get a movie made from the book, really hard.

1280
01:04:18,840 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: It's hard today still with all the streaming, and it

1281
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 1: was really hard back then with all that money behind

1282
01:04:24,720 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: and all of the meat, all the stuff that was

1283
01:04:26,560 --> 01:04:29,000
Speaker 1: going on, all the talent behind it. Um, it was

1284
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 1: really hard to get to that green light. They kept

1285
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:34,800
Speaker 1: changing they changed this director and that, and they kept

1286
01:04:34,840 --> 01:04:38,000
Speaker 1: going back and forth. I tell the story too long,

1287
01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:41,120
Speaker 1: but there's a there's a moment at the three year

1288
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: mark when I had a chance of getting the book

1289
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:45,120
Speaker 1: back for a while, they were willing to give me

1290
01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 1: a lot more money to keep it again. But I've

1291
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,000
Speaker 1: been starting to get a call from this crazy French

1292
01:04:50,040 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: guy named Gia Ken and I didn't know, you know,

1293
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:54,680
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really follow I didn't at the

1294
01:04:54,720 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: time follow French and had no idea who Ken is

1295
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:00,400
Speaker 1: and somebody. Then then he had a tier in a

1296
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:03,880
Speaker 1: movie called The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kennedy was

1297
01:05:03,920 --> 01:05:05,800
Speaker 1: the second lead in that. If you've ever seen that

1298
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:09,280
Speaker 1: movie The Beach, he was the French guy that hangs

1299
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 1: out with Leonardo DiCaprio the home movie and version of Ludan.

1300
01:05:13,960 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: So he was, you know, he was sort of the

1301
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:18,280
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt of France, and he was. He had directed

1302
01:05:18,360 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 1: one movie he sent me a copy of. I was like, wow,

1303
01:05:20,400 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 1: this is what was really good. It's got tremendous potential

1304
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 1: Pomony Doll and he was telling me his ideas for

1305
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:30,080
Speaker 1: the movie. And it's kind of like it's gonna be

1306
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: into an American film. There's nothing much I can do

1307
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:34,320
Speaker 1: about it. But when I had that chance of three

1308
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:36,360
Speaker 1: year mark and I saw how bad the scripts were,

1309
01:05:36,760 --> 01:05:38,880
Speaker 1: I just didn't believe they were going to do it.

1310
01:05:39,280 --> 01:05:42,720
Speaker 1: I said to Gione, if you can match the option money,

1311
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:45,080
Speaker 1: I'll tell Hollywood no and I'll give it to you,

1312
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 1: and everybody told me I was absolutely nuts. But I

1313
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:51,080
Speaker 1: also knew that if France was going to put up

1314
01:05:51,080 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: that kind of option money, Unlike Hollywood, which could piss

1315
01:05:53,640 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 1: away that kind of money, the French could not. It

1316
01:05:56,320 --> 01:05:58,320
Speaker 1: would have to be made. They just could not do

1317
01:05:58,440 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 1: that unless they're gonna make the movie. And so I

1318
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:03,520
Speaker 1: went with my gut on it. And it's one of

1319
01:06:03,520 --> 01:06:06,120
Speaker 1: the few times my gut was rook because we made

1320
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 1: a really he made a marvelous movie out of it.

1321
01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:10,800
Speaker 1: We had a great time making it. We're still friends

1322
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:13,440
Speaker 1: with all the people on and I still communicated with

1323
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 1: a lot of It was a labor of love. No

1324
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 1: one expected it to do what it ended up doing,

1325
01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:21,240
Speaker 1: you know. And it ended up being the top grossing

1326
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 1: foreign film in the US that year, which no one

1327
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:26,600
Speaker 1: expected it to do. We couldn't even get anybody first

1328
01:06:26,840 --> 01:06:29,720
Speaker 1: to show it in America, um, because I said, oh,

1329
01:06:29,760 --> 01:06:31,920
Speaker 1: you know, if if people want to watch a French film,

1330
01:06:32,200 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 1: they want to watch Emily or something like that. They

1331
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: don't want to watch a thriller. Why would they want

1332
01:06:36,400 --> 01:06:39,360
Speaker 1: to watch a French thriller? Again, a million American thrillers,

1333
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: but once it was shown here. It caught on and

1334
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:45,000
Speaker 1: became the biggest grossing foreign film of the year UM

1335
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: that year in America and has become something of a

1336
01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 1: of a cult classic, which has really been fun. To

1337
01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 1: what degree were you involved in the production of the

1338
01:06:53,720 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 1: movie more than most writers but not I didn't write

1339
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:02,920
Speaker 1: the screenplay. Giam ran a lot by me. UM. We

1340
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: talked about it a lot, but I didn't really have

1341
01:07:06,640 --> 01:07:10,120
Speaker 1: an official, an official role. I was on set a

1342
01:07:10,200 --> 01:07:14,280
Speaker 1: number of times. We talked about it a lot, UM,

1343
01:07:14,360 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: but this really was Giama's vision for the for the story,

1344
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 1: UM and he kind of he really knew what he

1345
01:07:20,640 --> 01:07:25,200
Speaker 1: wanted to do early on, and UM, I didn't really

1346
01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:27,440
Speaker 1: have too many disagreements. One of the things, for example,

1347
01:07:27,600 --> 01:07:31,720
Speaker 1: was most thrillers are dark. UM and Gillam had this

1348
01:07:31,840 --> 01:07:34,560
Speaker 1: idea that we should really have this dark story but

1349
01:07:34,680 --> 01:07:37,080
Speaker 1: with huge bright colors, something I still do with my

1350
01:07:37,120 --> 01:07:40,480
Speaker 1: shows today. Yeah, you know that the lake is beautiful,

1351
01:07:40,560 --> 01:07:44,720
Speaker 1: that seemingly's walking past, the pink roses are exploding out,

1352
01:07:45,120 --> 01:07:50,640
Speaker 1: it's colorful, wonderful cinematography by Christopher Austen's time, and all

1353
01:07:50,640 --> 01:07:54,080
Speaker 1: of those sort of things, and having the story dark

1354
01:07:54,200 --> 01:07:58,160
Speaker 1: underneath it Um, it was really fun. I remember going

1355
01:07:58,200 --> 01:08:00,800
Speaker 1: to a dinner in Paris where he had pictures of

1356
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:02,480
Speaker 1: all the actors he was going to show me who

1357
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: was going to play the role, and how nervous he

1358
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:06,240
Speaker 1: was to sort of show it to me. Um. So

1359
01:08:06,280 --> 01:08:08,439
Speaker 1: we had a great time making the film. I don't

1360
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: think any of us. I certainly didn't think it was

1361
01:08:11,080 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 1: going to be as big as they ended up becoming. Now,

1362
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:19,679
Speaker 1: from an outsider's viewpoint, it's nearly a decade before your

1363
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:22,600
Speaker 1: next visual production comes out, and Tell No One was

1364
01:08:22,640 --> 01:08:24,639
Speaker 1: a giant hit. What was going on in that period.

1365
01:08:26,120 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 1: It's like I said, it's hard to get things made. Um,

1366
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:31,880
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing. I'm like, wow, let Tell

1367
01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:33,880
Speaker 1: No One. You know in France that did so well.

1368
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:36,400
Speaker 1: I'm sure Hollywood's gonna be knocking on the door and

1369
01:08:36,439 --> 01:08:39,639
Speaker 1: making everything now. It's going to be you know. I

1370
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:43,040
Speaker 1: was feeling very confident, but it didn't happen like that.

1371
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:46,040
Speaker 1: You know, it happens. It's very strange, like we were trying.

1372
01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:48,800
Speaker 1: We're still we are still trying to remake Tell No

1373
01:08:48,920 --> 01:08:52,000
Speaker 1: One as an English language version of it. That movie

1374
01:08:52,040 --> 01:08:54,519
Speaker 1: was made in two thousand six. I think it came

1375
01:08:54,520 --> 01:08:56,400
Speaker 1: out it came out in the US and two thousand

1376
01:08:56,439 --> 01:09:01,640
Speaker 1: and eight we have had Liam Neeson, ben Athleck um

1377
01:09:02,040 --> 01:09:06,640
Speaker 1: uh oh my god z. The names are all passing me,

1378
01:09:06,760 --> 01:09:10,000
Speaker 1: passing through me. Um who have been We had like

1379
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:13,799
Speaker 1: four or five major directors, four or five major stars attached.

1380
01:09:13,840 --> 01:09:17,400
Speaker 1: We've written, they've written scripts, Chris Terryo who wrote one script,

1381
01:09:17,439 --> 01:09:20,599
Speaker 1: the guy wrote Argo. We've had just for some reason,

1382
01:09:20,640 --> 01:09:23,559
Speaker 1: it just hasn't happened. And I wish I had a

1383
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:27,519
Speaker 1: better answered meant that that's just the fickle way um

1384
01:09:27,600 --> 01:09:30,240
Speaker 1: that Hollywood is. I've had a lot of them close

1385
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:33,280
Speaker 1: and then something would happen and it would fall through

1386
01:09:33,320 --> 01:09:35,519
Speaker 1: where it would actually be kind of terrible, and I

1387
01:09:35,520 --> 01:09:37,519
Speaker 1: would sort of not necessarily not with tell no when

1388
01:09:37,520 --> 01:09:39,559
Speaker 1: something the other ones sort of managed to be able

1389
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:41,280
Speaker 1: to pull the plug myself because I could see it

1390
01:09:41,320 --> 01:09:44,040
Speaker 1: was heaving in the direction I didn't want it to go. Now.

1391
01:09:44,080 --> 01:09:46,800
Speaker 1: Other than John Grisham, a lot of people write a

1392
01:09:46,800 --> 01:09:51,200
Speaker 1: lot of books and they're not made into visual productions,

1393
01:09:51,400 --> 01:09:54,400
Speaker 1: whereas What Ship Your Stride? It seems like, you know,

1394
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:58,960
Speaker 1: there's a couple of years, but they're made overseas. Why

1395
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:06,160
Speaker 1: did that happen? Well, the manor receives for now um

1396
01:10:06,200 --> 01:10:10,519
Speaker 1: again because I think the French the French movie did

1397
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:13,360
Speaker 1: really well. Tell no One and I joke on the

1398
01:10:13,439 --> 01:10:16,160
Speaker 1: Jerry Lewis of crime fiction. I go very well in France.

1399
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:19,720
Speaker 1: For some reason. France is my biggest country relative to

1400
01:10:19,800 --> 01:10:23,280
Speaker 1: the size of the population um, Bigger than the US,

1401
01:10:23,360 --> 01:10:26,640
Speaker 1: bigger than anywhere else. So I've had a great relationship

1402
01:10:26,680 --> 01:10:29,680
Speaker 1: with France. Once I had that movie, I started in

1403
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:33,280
Speaker 1: great relationships with the cinema over there, and so I

1404
01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:36,519
Speaker 1: did two other TV series which were both enormous French,

1405
01:10:36,960 --> 01:10:41,679
Speaker 1: The Enormous Business in France and Once the British Person

1406
01:10:41,760 --> 01:10:45,639
Speaker 1: saw a woman named Nicholas Schindler. One of the things

1407
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:48,040
Speaker 1: is that I decided at some stage of the game

1408
01:10:48,400 --> 01:10:50,400
Speaker 1: that I didn't want to just option my stuff to

1409
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:54,080
Speaker 1: Hollywood and and sit back. I was at an age

1410
01:10:54,160 --> 01:10:56,920
Speaker 1: right it was not gonna be influenced by Hollywood, so

1411
01:10:56,960 --> 01:10:58,880
Speaker 1: it wouldn't affect my book writing, which it would have

1412
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:00,800
Speaker 1: a number of years ago. So I I ignored it.

1413
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:02,640
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why nothing was being made was

1414
01:11:03,439 --> 01:11:05,760
Speaker 1: I had the attitude I'm just going to option I'm

1415
01:11:05,760 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: gonna have nothing to do with it after that, which

1416
01:11:07,640 --> 01:11:10,439
Speaker 1: is what Hollywood actually want. So there's a joke is

1417
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:12,760
Speaker 1: you run up to a barbed wire fence, you throw

1418
01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:14,800
Speaker 1: the book over, they throw the money over. You run away,

1419
01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:17,080
Speaker 1: they run away. You know they always joke. You know

1420
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:20,360
Speaker 1: who cares what the movie was? Uh? Cash, there's the check,

1421
01:11:20,400 --> 01:11:22,880
Speaker 1: cash clear um. And I reached the stage right, that

1422
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:25,599
Speaker 1: wasn't what I wanted anymore. I wanted good stuff made.

1423
01:11:25,640 --> 01:11:27,280
Speaker 1: I didn't care if I made a penny from it,

1424
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:30,280
Speaker 1: but I wanted some good stuff made. So about four

1425
01:11:30,360 --> 01:11:32,040
Speaker 1: or five years ago, I decided I was going to

1426
01:11:32,120 --> 01:11:34,840
Speaker 1: get involved, and I met some a woman in England

1427
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:38,120
Speaker 1: named Nicholas Schindler who has a happy valley less tango

1428
01:11:38,120 --> 01:11:43,320
Speaker 1: in Halifax, queer as folk wonderful quality productions. Uh not

1429
01:11:43,479 --> 01:11:46,000
Speaker 1: high budget. We can make it on our own. We

1430
01:11:46,040 --> 01:11:49,040
Speaker 1: can make it ourselves. The networks will leave us alone.

1431
01:11:49,640 --> 01:11:52,439
Speaker 1: And so I've now done three series with her, we're

1432
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:55,120
Speaker 1: working on the fourth, and they've become bigger and bigger

1433
01:11:55,160 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 1: as time has gone on, and she's been a pleasure

1434
01:11:56,960 --> 01:11:59,920
Speaker 1: to work with. From that, Netflix seeing that, and because

1435
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:03,920
Speaker 1: I sell a lot of books overseas, Netflix realized, well,

1436
01:12:04,360 --> 01:12:07,080
Speaker 1: you know, we can make these shows and other countries.

1437
01:12:07,680 --> 01:12:10,880
Speaker 1: We can really pound our memberships in those countries because

1438
01:12:10,880 --> 01:12:13,080
Speaker 1: they're gonna be so pleased, and yet we can also

1439
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:15,679
Speaker 1: show them all over the world. And this was really

1440
01:12:15,720 --> 01:12:18,200
Speaker 1: heavy for me. I love this idea. I don't want

1441
01:12:18,200 --> 01:12:21,840
Speaker 1: my adaptations to be the exact same as my books,

1442
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:24,960
Speaker 1: so I've embraced that. That said, there will be some

1443
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:28,479
Speaker 1: American productions down the line as well, but right now

1444
01:12:28,640 --> 01:12:30,360
Speaker 1: we just got a Polish one. Next will be a

1445
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:34,160
Speaker 1: Spanish one, probably soon a French one. Um, and I

1446
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:36,680
Speaker 1: love that. I mean, it's been really great for me

1447
01:12:36,720 --> 01:12:38,800
Speaker 1: and I've been able. I haven't had a show yet

1448
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:40,640
Speaker 1: where I go. I'm really ashamed to this, so this

1449
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:43,160
Speaker 1: is really really bad. Some shows are better than others,

1450
01:12:43,479 --> 01:12:46,920
Speaker 1: but I've I've personally been happy met with them all.

1451
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:53,759
Speaker 1: So the first English production is The Stranger the Five First. Okay,

1452
01:12:54,479 --> 01:12:56,479
Speaker 1: now some of these you they were they were not

1453
01:12:56,520 --> 01:13:00,680
Speaker 1: based on a previous book, correct, So what was the

1454
01:13:00,720 --> 01:13:05,360
Speaker 1: process there? But Nicola came to me she wanted to

1455
01:13:05,360 --> 01:13:07,479
Speaker 1: to option one of my books, and one of that

1456
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:09,679
Speaker 1: book was optioned. It did a problem. You option a book,

1457
01:13:10,320 --> 01:13:12,719
Speaker 1: somebody will hold on to it for three years or whatever,

1458
01:13:12,800 --> 01:13:15,120
Speaker 1: not do anything with it. It tries me crazy, um

1459
01:13:15,160 --> 01:13:18,639
Speaker 1: and still pay you. But you know again, I've never

1460
01:13:18,680 --> 01:13:21,080
Speaker 1: been driven by the dollar. I've been driven by wanting

1461
01:13:21,120 --> 01:13:23,720
Speaker 1: to make something good. So when Nicola came to me

1462
01:13:23,760 --> 01:13:26,479
Speaker 1: to want to get this particular story, we started talking like,

1463
01:13:26,720 --> 01:13:29,840
Speaker 1: I've always had this idea, but it's it's I've always

1464
01:13:29,880 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 1: seen it visually. I may write it as a novel,

1465
01:13:32,320 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 1: but as four lead characters, and it's kind of hard

1466
01:13:34,560 --> 01:13:36,640
Speaker 1: as a novel. And I told her the idea for

1467
01:13:36,680 --> 01:13:38,840
Speaker 1: the five and our eyes lit up and she's like,

1468
01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:40,040
Speaker 1: do you know the ending? I'm like, yeah, I know,

1469
01:13:40,200 --> 01:13:41,559
Speaker 1: I know the ending. I know at the beginning of

1470
01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:44,760
Speaker 1: the end. And I think fifteen minutes later we had

1471
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:48,280
Speaker 1: Sky Network buying it. It was that very fast Sky

1472
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:51,760
Speaker 1: Network bordered that's down. Netflix hasn't here in the US

1473
01:13:51,840 --> 01:13:55,679
Speaker 1: and Sky hasn't in the UK. So that's how it started.

1474
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:59,080
Speaker 1: I had this idea and then um, I had you know,

1475
01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:01,479
Speaker 1: we want to do another went together at the time

1476
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:03,720
Speaker 1: we thought it was going to be for Sky. Um,

1477
01:14:03,840 --> 01:14:05,680
Speaker 1: so I came up with another another idea that I

1478
01:14:05,720 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 1: was working on, but I also didn't think would be

1479
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:10,840
Speaker 1: a good novel, necessarily great novel that would be very

1480
01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:13,479
Speaker 1: visual and that became a show called Safe, and then

1481
01:14:13,479 --> 01:14:17,640
Speaker 1: we did The Stranger. So okay, so these are originals

1482
01:14:18,240 --> 01:14:22,200
Speaker 1: other than coming up with a concept. How involved are you? No,

1483
01:14:22,240 --> 01:14:24,320
Speaker 1: it's not just the concept, it's the whole story. I'm

1484
01:14:24,520 --> 01:14:27,679
Speaker 1: I'm the whole story. I write the whole story pretty much.

1485
01:14:28,080 --> 01:14:31,479
Speaker 1: We all have better guys do the actual scripts. Um,

1486
01:14:31,520 --> 01:14:34,240
Speaker 1: and sometimes guys who's doing episode six will be doing

1487
01:14:34,280 --> 01:14:36,160
Speaker 1: at the same time as a guy doing episode three

1488
01:14:36,760 --> 01:14:38,599
Speaker 1: or the woman. We've had half in half pretty much,

1489
01:14:39,120 --> 01:14:41,559
Speaker 1: but all the whole story is mine, from beginning to end,

1490
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:45,240
Speaker 1: all the outline, you know, I work with maybe two

1491
01:14:45,320 --> 01:14:47,720
Speaker 1: or three other people are the writer's room, but I

1492
01:14:47,800 --> 01:14:50,439
Speaker 1: run the writer's room. I run So it's these are

1493
01:14:50,479 --> 01:14:53,200
Speaker 1: not like, oh, here's an idea, UM, you guys do

1494
01:14:53,280 --> 01:14:56,760
Speaker 1: something with it. I'm on every day. I watched over

1495
01:14:56,800 --> 01:15:00,439
Speaker 1: three D audition tapes for the five Safe and The Stranger.

1496
01:15:00,520 --> 01:15:03,040
Speaker 1: Each one of them I watched three each to do

1497
01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:06,760
Speaker 1: this to do the casting. UM. By the by the

1498
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:08,160
Speaker 1: time we do The Stranger, they would send me hair

1499
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:10,040
Speaker 1: styles in the morning for me to make sure I'm

1500
01:15:10,040 --> 01:15:13,360
Speaker 1: okay with UM. I watched the I watch them every day.

1501
01:15:13,439 --> 01:15:15,280
Speaker 1: If they're shooting in the UK. Are you in the

1502
01:15:15,360 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 1: U S Or the UK when they're doing this US?

1503
01:15:18,360 --> 01:15:20,800
Speaker 1: But they can every morning. But they just got my

1504
01:15:20,880 --> 01:15:25,040
Speaker 1: months from Spain. Every day, like I watched the Russians

1505
01:15:25,080 --> 01:15:28,200
Speaker 1: from the day before. We just started refilming. Um, we've

1506
01:15:28,200 --> 01:15:30,240
Speaker 1: been doing the show called The Innocence based off my

1507
01:15:30,280 --> 01:15:33,479
Speaker 1: book The Innocent in Spain. The last you know, we

1508
01:15:33,640 --> 01:15:37,000
Speaker 1: stopped for COVID. We just started up yesterday. So every

1509
01:15:37,040 --> 01:15:38,720
Speaker 1: day when I wake up, I have an email in

1510
01:15:38,720 --> 01:15:41,680
Speaker 1: the morning that has all three hours of whatever they

1511
01:15:41,840 --> 01:15:44,519
Speaker 1: stayed filmed for me to watch the scenes, and I'll

1512
01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:47,400
Speaker 1: then comment. I'll say, well, you know what, let's have

1513
01:15:47,439 --> 01:15:49,040
Speaker 1: the guy hit a little more of this or do that,

1514
01:15:49,720 --> 01:15:52,280
Speaker 1: or it's just perfect, keep doing what you're doing. So

1515
01:15:52,720 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 1: I watched it. I watched them all every day. For

1516
01:15:55,360 --> 01:15:58,000
Speaker 1: the English language ones, I have a lot. I am

1517
01:15:58,040 --> 01:16:00,759
Speaker 1: the I am technically speaking, what we call the show runner.

1518
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:04,720
Speaker 1: And someone writes a script, to what degree do you

1519
01:16:04,760 --> 01:16:08,680
Speaker 1: tweak that script after it's written completely? I mean as

1520
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:11,200
Speaker 1: a team, because it's very hard they're writing at the

1521
01:16:11,280 --> 01:16:14,240
Speaker 1: different times. We have to make sure that you know,

1522
01:16:14,240 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 1: if you're writing episodes six and someone else is writing

1523
01:16:16,160 --> 01:16:18,720
Speaker 1: episode three that you have the same voice, and it's

1524
01:16:18,720 --> 01:16:22,120
Speaker 1: a voice that's consistent with what we're doing. I've had

1525
01:16:22,160 --> 01:16:24,160
Speaker 1: the same head writer in terms of scripts. The guy

1526
01:16:24,240 --> 01:16:26,960
Speaker 1: named Danny Brocklehurst broke with me on all three of

1527
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:29,680
Speaker 1: those English language shows. And the next one we'll do

1528
01:16:29,920 --> 01:16:32,280
Speaker 1: the same. We'll I'll rest write the first and the last,

1529
01:16:32,400 --> 01:16:34,920
Speaker 1: so we have that kind of bookmark and we have

1530
01:16:35,080 --> 01:16:38,240
Speaker 1: the voice that we we want. But Danny that working

1531
01:16:38,520 --> 01:16:40,840
Speaker 1: very hard and very close together with a guy named

1532
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:43,920
Speaker 1: Richard C. So you know, it's a very small writer's room.

1533
01:16:43,920 --> 01:16:46,800
Speaker 1: Tho shows have on the six A ten writers. It's

1534
01:16:46,880 --> 01:16:50,639
Speaker 1: usually um, the three of us with Nicolaus isn't there too?

1535
01:16:50,680 --> 01:16:54,280
Speaker 1: And called the core four and we've done basically those

1536
01:16:54,280 --> 01:16:56,880
Speaker 1: are people who outline the show most of the story.

1537
01:16:57,200 --> 01:16:59,519
Speaker 1: My job is most of the story. Dannie will do

1538
01:16:59,600 --> 01:17:02,200
Speaker 1: a lot of the dialogue and the a cute setup

1539
01:17:02,240 --> 01:17:05,080
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it's more of a team effort.

1540
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:07,240
Speaker 1: But the story is usually made. And to what degree

1541
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:12,880
Speaker 1: you involved in editing? All right? Um? You know they

1542
01:17:12,920 --> 01:17:15,720
Speaker 1: usually will send me rough edits and we again as

1543
01:17:15,720 --> 01:17:17,240
Speaker 1: a team meet and say, you know, we need more

1544
01:17:17,240 --> 01:17:20,639
Speaker 1: of this, less of that. Of this of that. Um,

1545
01:17:20,680 --> 01:17:23,439
Speaker 1: so I'm not in the editing room, although I have

1546
01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:27,040
Speaker 1: been actually sometimes, but um, you know, we we when

1547
01:17:27,080 --> 01:17:29,240
Speaker 1: the editor sends the stuff out, we have a lot

1548
01:17:29,280 --> 01:17:32,960
Speaker 1: of notes. It's it's a fairly active process. I kind

1549
01:17:32,960 --> 01:17:34,679
Speaker 1: of enjoy it. You know, I've spent my whole life

1550
01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:37,320
Speaker 1: alone in this room, this room basically you know that

1551
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:40,439
Speaker 1: we're sitting in now, and it's really been kind of

1552
01:17:40,439 --> 01:17:44,320
Speaker 1: cool to be able to collaborate with other people. Actors too.

1553
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:46,760
Speaker 1: You know, they contact me because I had the whole

1554
01:17:46,800 --> 01:17:49,360
Speaker 1: backstory on the guy, and actors laid backstory that they

1555
01:17:49,439 --> 01:17:53,639
Speaker 1: probably not necessarily need to know. But um, it's been

1556
01:17:53,680 --> 01:17:56,200
Speaker 1: a it's been a really kind of a cool process.

1557
01:17:56,240 --> 01:18:01,920
Speaker 1: But traditionally movies, uh see, these TV shows take a

1558
01:18:01,960 --> 01:18:05,240
Speaker 1: lot of time. How has that affected your schedule relative

1559
01:18:05,280 --> 01:18:09,679
Speaker 1: to writing books? Polittic Having a team helps. We also

1560
01:18:09,720 --> 01:18:11,880
Speaker 1: are all of us are no nonsense. I'll be honest.

1561
01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:15,160
Speaker 1: I don't understand why things take as long as they do,

1562
01:18:15,479 --> 01:18:19,719
Speaker 1: especially in Hollywood, but just in general, Um, every person

1563
01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:22,160
Speaker 1: has written a script based off my one of my

1564
01:18:22,240 --> 01:18:24,840
Speaker 1: books has taken longer to write the script than it

1565
01:18:24,840 --> 01:18:26,679
Speaker 1: took me to write the books. I can't understand why

1566
01:18:27,240 --> 01:18:29,720
Speaker 1: I gave you the whole goddamn story. I shouldn't take

1567
01:18:29,760 --> 01:18:32,760
Speaker 1: you more than than six weeks. So part of it

1568
01:18:32,800 --> 01:18:35,000
Speaker 1: is that the people that I work with were no nonsense.

1569
01:18:35,040 --> 01:18:38,200
Speaker 1: We actually do the work, and so I don't think

1570
01:18:38,240 --> 01:18:40,200
Speaker 1: we have to stay up twenty four hours a day,

1571
01:18:40,640 --> 01:18:43,599
Speaker 1: laur any of that we'd be I'm completely obsessed with it,

1572
01:18:44,040 --> 01:18:45,960
Speaker 1: and so are the people that work with. We all

1573
01:18:46,160 --> 01:18:50,360
Speaker 1: hate this term. We all share the vision um. But

1574
01:18:50,640 --> 01:18:54,840
Speaker 1: I do think that a lot of writers and screenwriters

1575
01:18:55,800 --> 01:18:58,280
Speaker 1: waste time and as part of the business. And it's

1576
01:18:58,320 --> 01:19:00,760
Speaker 1: almost like, well, I tell you, sure, I wrote one

1577
01:19:00,760 --> 01:19:02,960
Speaker 1: script will mention for who Are based off one of

1578
01:19:03,000 --> 01:19:04,840
Speaker 1: my novels and ends up not being made. So maybe

1579
01:19:04,840 --> 01:19:07,360
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that good. But when I finished it

1580
01:19:07,840 --> 01:19:09,720
Speaker 1: my age at the time, So what do you mean

1581
01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:11,880
Speaker 1: you finished it already? Like it was how long it

1582
01:19:11,960 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: was like two months? Two months? Ag? Well, you can't

1583
01:19:14,320 --> 01:19:16,400
Speaker 1: say that. Let's just say it's not done yet. We'll

1584
01:19:16,479 --> 01:19:19,080
Speaker 1: send it in a few more months later. So I mean,

1585
01:19:19,160 --> 01:19:21,479
Speaker 1: let's tell that. So I think a lot of times

1586
01:19:21,479 --> 01:19:23,760
Speaker 1: people are hustling for new business and doing other stuff

1587
01:19:23,800 --> 01:19:26,280
Speaker 1: other than just sitting and writing. So that's my answer

1588
01:19:26,280 --> 01:19:28,200
Speaker 1: to how we're able to do as much as we're

1589
01:19:28,240 --> 01:19:30,280
Speaker 1: able to do even though it didn't get produced. Writing

1590
01:19:30,280 --> 01:19:33,960
Speaker 1: a script is a different skill, and it's mostly dialogue.

1591
01:19:34,400 --> 01:19:37,360
Speaker 1: Did you find that a hard transition? Is it something

1592
01:19:37,400 --> 01:19:39,680
Speaker 1: you say? Well, I respect that, but I don't want

1593
01:19:39,720 --> 01:19:44,080
Speaker 1: to do it. No, I don't. The problem for me

1594
01:19:44,120 --> 01:19:47,160
Speaker 1: for scriptwriting is mostly from adapting my own thing. I'm

1595
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:49,080
Speaker 1: I'm too close to it, and I understand that, and

1596
01:19:49,080 --> 01:19:51,120
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not the one who should be doing it.

1597
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:53,599
Speaker 1: But a lot of my books have a tremendous amount

1598
01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:56,840
Speaker 1: of dialogue in them anyway. Um, so I didn't necessarily

1599
01:19:57,400 --> 01:19:59,639
Speaker 1: find all the difficulty. Maybe that's why maybe it wasn't

1600
01:19:59,640 --> 01:20:03,240
Speaker 1: not good of a script. I don't know. Um So

1601
01:20:03,360 --> 01:20:06,599
Speaker 1: I don't find I don't necessarily find it difficult. I'm all,

1602
01:20:06,840 --> 01:20:09,040
Speaker 1: you know. I tried. It's very hard. I tried, being

1603
01:20:09,200 --> 01:20:11,840
Speaker 1: very open minded. I said, I don't want the book

1604
01:20:11,920 --> 01:20:15,080
Speaker 1: to be the same as the TV series The Stranger,

1605
01:20:15,160 --> 01:20:18,080
Speaker 1: for example. Um, and this, I didn't do this. Everything

1606
01:20:18,120 --> 01:20:20,519
Speaker 1: I did to politically correct. That's not the reason. In

1607
01:20:20,600 --> 01:20:23,280
Speaker 1: the book The Stranger, the person is giving the secrets.

1608
01:20:23,560 --> 01:20:26,000
Speaker 1: It's kind of a nerdy teenage white male, which made

1609
01:20:26,040 --> 01:20:27,960
Speaker 1: sense when I wrote the book ten years ago or whatever,

1610
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:32,559
Speaker 1: but visually it didn't work for me. Visually, even when

1611
01:20:32,640 --> 01:20:36,760
Speaker 1: we tried men of all sorts, of raised queens and colors,

1612
01:20:36,960 --> 01:20:39,880
Speaker 1: were kind of thinking of that person walking in that room.

1613
01:20:39,920 --> 01:20:42,960
Speaker 1: In that first scene with which at Armitage they were,

1614
01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:46,000
Speaker 1: the stranger drops the bomb about his wife baking your pregnancy,

1615
01:20:46,240 --> 01:20:48,680
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I think we need a woman. I

1616
01:20:48,720 --> 01:20:50,320
Speaker 1: think we need someone who's going to go in there

1617
01:20:50,680 --> 01:20:54,519
Speaker 1: and just be like super cool and super hip. And

1618
01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:56,360
Speaker 1: then we got Hinnah John Camman. As soon as I

1619
01:20:56,360 --> 01:21:00,240
Speaker 1: saw her performed like, that's exactly what we want. That's

1620
01:21:00,240 --> 01:21:02,040
Speaker 1: not how I wrote the character in the book, and

1621
01:21:02,080 --> 01:21:05,439
Speaker 1: that's okay. That's it was better. You know. We did

1622
01:21:05,439 --> 01:21:07,360
Speaker 1: that with the movie Tell Low One too. I told

1623
01:21:07,400 --> 01:21:09,680
Speaker 1: Giam we had this as a Korean hit man in

1624
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:11,760
Speaker 1: the book, and that guy was in other books. I

1625
01:21:11,800 --> 01:21:14,360
Speaker 1: said to Gilm, we can't use him. So he ended

1626
01:21:14,439 --> 01:21:17,839
Speaker 1: up using this very muscular woman and she was scary

1627
01:21:17,880 --> 01:21:19,840
Speaker 1: as hell in the movie Tell No. One. So a

1628
01:21:19,840 --> 01:21:22,120
Speaker 1: lot of times we changed things, and in your fourth

1629
01:21:22,160 --> 01:21:26,280
Speaker 1: most corners, it makes it stronger, not not not not worse. So,

1630
01:21:26,320 --> 01:21:28,160
Speaker 1: what how long does it take to do one of these?

1631
01:21:28,320 --> 01:21:32,800
Speaker 1: Uh ten episode series or eight episode series? Um? It

1632
01:21:32,880 --> 01:21:36,920
Speaker 1: all depends, I think. Right now we're writing, for example,

1633
01:21:36,960 --> 01:21:39,240
Speaker 1: so we're gonna do. I had a choice of the

1634
01:21:39,280 --> 01:21:41,080
Speaker 1: other thing. We sort of a choice of doing a

1635
01:21:41,160 --> 01:21:45,080
Speaker 1: Stranger season two or a whole new book. And yet

1636
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:47,080
Speaker 1: this is the third time I've kind of had that choice.

1637
01:21:47,080 --> 01:21:49,160
Speaker 1: In the third time, I've chosen to go with the

1638
01:21:49,200 --> 01:21:52,559
Speaker 1: whole new story. The problem for me is, you know,

1639
01:21:53,280 --> 01:21:56,040
Speaker 1: I could do The Stranger again, but I don't know

1640
01:21:56,080 --> 01:21:59,280
Speaker 1: if I could do it better. Um. I don't know.

1641
01:21:59,479 --> 01:22:01,720
Speaker 1: You know I could if I thought about it. Um,

1642
01:22:01,760 --> 01:22:05,559
Speaker 1: So I create the series with one season in mind,

1643
01:22:05,760 --> 01:22:08,240
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think it's fair, for example, to

1644
01:22:08,280 --> 01:22:09,840
Speaker 1: not give you the answers at the end of the

1645
01:22:09,880 --> 01:22:12,719
Speaker 1: five or The Stranger and just set up the season two.

1646
01:22:13,040 --> 01:22:16,080
Speaker 1: That's just not what I'm doing. So I prefer to

1647
01:22:16,479 --> 01:22:18,880
Speaker 1: make it just one season, so right, and doing a

1648
01:22:18,920 --> 01:22:20,800
Speaker 1: season two of The Stranger, I don't rule it out.

1649
01:22:20,840 --> 01:22:23,479
Speaker 1: Maybe one day down the line, but we're doing you

1650
01:22:23,520 --> 01:22:27,440
Speaker 1: can do my book stay close. We've written one episode

1651
01:22:27,520 --> 01:22:32,000
Speaker 1: so far. We'll probably start filming early next year. Um.

1652
01:22:32,040 --> 01:22:35,200
Speaker 1: And then Netflix never. Netflix is very secretive. They never

1653
01:22:35,680 --> 01:22:38,840
Speaker 1: I literally find out a month or two beforehand. When

1654
01:22:38,880 --> 01:22:40,680
Speaker 1: it comes out, they don't even tell me. They're very

1655
01:22:40,680 --> 01:22:45,360
Speaker 1: speaking about releases. Okay, Now recently, as I say, you've

1656
01:22:45,360 --> 01:22:48,400
Speaker 1: had this Polish series The Woods, how did it end

1657
01:22:48,479 --> 01:22:51,160
Speaker 1: up being made by poll? Into? What degree were you involved?

1658
01:22:51,280 --> 01:22:56,760
Speaker 1: To what degree are you happy? Um? So the deal

1659
01:22:56,800 --> 01:22:58,960
Speaker 1: that I find a deal with Netflix about it, I

1660
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:01,559
Speaker 1: guess a year or two ago, know, um to have

1661
01:23:01,800 --> 01:23:04,439
Speaker 1: all the books that were still available that we're not

1662
01:23:04,520 --> 01:23:08,200
Speaker 1: in my series, UM go to Netflix to be made

1663
01:23:08,200 --> 01:23:10,840
Speaker 1: into hopefully into series that we can try and develop

1664
01:23:10,880 --> 01:23:13,200
Speaker 1: into series. You don't expect them all to be made.

1665
01:23:13,200 --> 01:23:14,920
Speaker 1: But we're doing a pretty good clip right now, the

1666
01:23:15,400 --> 01:23:19,880
Speaker 1: right we're going. Um. And they were The idea was

1667
01:23:19,920 --> 01:23:23,280
Speaker 1: for the International Division to control in the International Division

1668
01:23:23,320 --> 01:23:27,040
Speaker 1: to make the decisions. So my first meeting with Netflix

1669
01:23:27,080 --> 01:23:28,800
Speaker 1: and I went to their office is is they have

1670
01:23:29,400 --> 01:23:31,519
Speaker 1: They just had a lot of brilliant people. And they

1671
01:23:31,560 --> 01:23:33,400
Speaker 1: have a guy who does Netflix poem. The guy does

1672
01:23:33,439 --> 01:23:36,680
Speaker 1: Netflix Germany, you know, Spain, whatever it is. And we

1673
01:23:36,760 --> 01:23:39,759
Speaker 1: sat around and we saw which country would be best

1674
01:23:39,760 --> 01:23:43,320
Speaker 1: for which ones, and then well let's see what they

1675
01:23:43,360 --> 01:23:45,799
Speaker 1: come up with. Let let them send us in the pitch,

1676
01:23:46,120 --> 01:23:48,599
Speaker 1: the producers in the pitch, and it's you know, they

1677
01:23:48,640 --> 01:23:51,840
Speaker 1: have appeal, will continue it on our way. So we've

1678
01:23:51,840 --> 01:23:53,640
Speaker 1: had a lot and some we've decided to go with,

1679
01:23:53,920 --> 01:23:57,000
Speaker 1: some we haven't. And two of the first two well,

1680
01:23:57,000 --> 01:24:00,800
Speaker 1: the first we're Netflix Spain looking at the innocent wanting

1681
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:02,639
Speaker 1: to do that, and I love the pitch they came

1682
01:24:02,720 --> 01:24:06,320
Speaker 1: up with, and Netflix Poland especially having the idea which

1683
01:24:06,320 --> 01:24:08,799
Speaker 1: I didn't write the book doing of the two different

1684
01:24:08,840 --> 01:24:12,120
Speaker 1: time zones. Um I flashed back to the camp in

1685
01:24:12,160 --> 01:24:14,200
Speaker 1: the in my case of the eighties, but they had

1686
01:24:14,240 --> 01:24:17,960
Speaker 1: the idea of doing very Polish kind of summer camps

1687
01:24:19,080 --> 01:24:21,960
Speaker 1: and current day with two different casts and all that,

1688
01:24:22,040 --> 01:24:23,800
Speaker 1: and I just thought that was a really cool way,

1689
01:24:24,560 --> 01:24:29,000
Speaker 1: um of telling the story. So uh, that's sort of

1690
01:24:29,000 --> 01:24:31,080
Speaker 1: how we decided that. You know, other countries were looking

1691
01:24:31,080 --> 01:24:33,519
Speaker 1: at it too, and then they talked about it. You

1692
01:24:33,520 --> 01:24:36,479
Speaker 1: know that the negotiation. This country decided to take that one,

1693
01:24:36,800 --> 01:24:39,720
Speaker 1: other countries decided to take that one. I'm happy with

1694
01:24:39,760 --> 01:24:43,080
Speaker 1: what the pitches on it. Sometimes I'm not um and

1695
01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:45,120
Speaker 1: then we go from there. We tried and we try

1696
01:24:45,200 --> 01:24:47,840
Speaker 1: to to to make it good enough that that that

1697
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:50,720
Speaker 1: that Netflix ends up wanting to make it okay. So

1698
01:24:51,080 --> 01:24:54,200
Speaker 1: the last one being the Woods. After the pitch the

1699
01:24:54,280 --> 01:24:58,439
Speaker 1: pitches accepted, To what degree are you involved that one

1700
01:24:58,800 --> 01:25:02,360
Speaker 1: the least? Again, I don't speak any Polish. I don't

1701
01:25:02,400 --> 01:25:07,280
Speaker 1: know a lot of the cultural references and significances. You know,

1702
01:25:07,320 --> 01:25:09,559
Speaker 1: you're a music guy, so you'll probably appreciate this. I

1703
01:25:09,640 --> 01:25:12,200
Speaker 1: look at it like I had a hit single, hit song,

1704
01:25:12,600 --> 01:25:15,120
Speaker 1: I wrote and recorded a hit song, and now a

1705
01:25:15,160 --> 01:25:18,120
Speaker 1: Polish band wants to cover. I don't want it to

1706
01:25:18,160 --> 01:25:19,760
Speaker 1: sound the same as me. I want them to bring

1707
01:25:19,800 --> 01:25:21,960
Speaker 1: the Polish into it. I want them to bring Polish

1708
01:25:21,960 --> 01:25:25,960
Speaker 1: culture and Polish sensibilities and what makes this band unique.

1709
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:28,200
Speaker 1: I don't who help wants them to cover the song

1710
01:25:28,240 --> 01:25:32,440
Speaker 1: and sound exactly the same as my fand so. Um

1711
01:25:32,680 --> 01:25:34,880
Speaker 1: there's things about the scripts I did not like when

1712
01:25:34,880 --> 01:25:36,840
Speaker 1: they first sun it to me. There were things I

1713
01:25:36,880 --> 01:25:39,800
Speaker 1: thought were not gonna work that worked better. Um, there's

1714
01:25:39,840 --> 01:25:42,400
Speaker 1: a so some things I'm also wrong on, which I

1715
01:25:42,640 --> 01:25:46,320
Speaker 1: find out if you watch the TV show. The lead woman,

1716
01:25:46,479 --> 01:25:50,479
Speaker 1: Laura is married to an older man that wasn't the book,

1717
01:25:50,479 --> 01:25:52,400
Speaker 1: and the book she was single when I first turned,

1718
01:25:52,439 --> 01:25:54,280
Speaker 1: I'm like, why she marries an older man. I kind

1719
01:25:54,280 --> 01:25:57,080
Speaker 1: of wanted to have it and that those things work

1720
01:25:57,120 --> 01:25:59,599
Speaker 1: the best. I love the guy I want to bring

1721
01:25:59,680 --> 01:26:01,439
Speaker 1: I want to bring them back in their own series.

1722
01:26:01,479 --> 01:26:03,919
Speaker 1: I'm lovely they're gonna play Leon. He was so terrific.

1723
01:26:04,240 --> 01:26:08,400
Speaker 1: So sometimes I'm wrong and and I get that. So um.

1724
01:26:08,439 --> 01:26:10,160
Speaker 1: That was one change that they wanted to make. That

1725
01:26:10,200 --> 01:26:12,680
Speaker 1: they that they that I wasn't sold on, but they

1726
01:26:12,720 --> 01:26:16,360
Speaker 1: convinced me. At the end of the day, I have

1727
01:26:16,479 --> 01:26:18,960
Speaker 1: to I I in that case, I didn't stand up

1728
01:26:18,960 --> 01:26:21,599
Speaker 1: to a lot. I let them kind of do their things,

1729
01:26:21,920 --> 01:26:23,600
Speaker 1: some of which I would would change now, and so

1730
01:26:23,720 --> 01:26:26,320
Speaker 1: much I did change in the editen I saw the edit, um,

1731
01:26:26,360 --> 01:26:28,679
Speaker 1: but most of which I'm really happy with the series.

1732
01:26:29,360 --> 01:26:33,639
Speaker 1: If you like Saithe and and and Uh and The Stranger,

1733
01:26:34,040 --> 01:26:35,960
Speaker 1: if you want that fast pacing, this is not that

1734
01:26:36,200 --> 01:26:38,839
Speaker 1: the show few. This is a it's more character driven,

1735
01:26:39,160 --> 01:26:42,760
Speaker 1: it's more atmospheric. Um, it's deeper. I think in many ways,

1736
01:26:42,760 --> 01:26:46,000
Speaker 1: it's more emotional, but it doesn't give that wham bam,

1737
01:26:46,240 --> 01:26:49,439
Speaker 1: let's twist here, let's twist there. Um Like my books

1738
01:26:49,479 --> 01:26:51,760
Speaker 1: and and and I think The Stranger did so it's

1739
01:26:51,840 --> 01:26:54,120
Speaker 1: very which I'm happy about. I don't want to repeat

1740
01:26:54,120 --> 01:26:57,120
Speaker 1: The Stranger either, so it's a very different series. I'm

1741
01:26:57,439 --> 01:26:59,840
Speaker 1: really happy with how it turned out. I tell people

1742
01:26:59,840 --> 01:27:03,800
Speaker 1: that cannot watch it, it's a terrible dubbing job. They

1743
01:27:03,840 --> 01:27:06,320
Speaker 1: did a terrible dubbing job. We were very rushed because

1744
01:27:06,360 --> 01:27:09,599
Speaker 1: it was COVID going on. Please don't watch it. Please

1745
01:27:09,640 --> 01:27:12,600
Speaker 1: watch it in its original polish with subtitles, and I

1746
01:27:12,600 --> 01:27:17,120
Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy it. Um just going back again, how

1747
01:27:17,120 --> 01:27:20,920
Speaker 1: do you juggle all this with your writing? I do

1748
01:27:21,000 --> 01:27:22,479
Speaker 1: that now. I do mornings. That did that, So I

1749
01:27:22,520 --> 01:27:25,880
Speaker 1: wake up early and the emails are here from the

1750
01:27:25,960 --> 01:27:28,200
Speaker 1: from the TV shows, usually in the morning, and I

1751
01:27:28,240 --> 01:27:30,280
Speaker 1: do them first as almost getting a bit of a

1752
01:27:30,360 --> 01:27:33,320
Speaker 1: running start, and then I'll do the stuff afterwards. So

1753
01:27:33,439 --> 01:27:35,920
Speaker 1: for today, for example, we're working on another show. I

1754
01:27:35,960 --> 01:27:38,840
Speaker 1: had a zoom with my Core four about the show

1755
01:27:38,840 --> 01:27:41,000
Speaker 1: that we're doing, because we had some questions is what

1756
01:27:41,240 --> 01:27:43,439
Speaker 1: you know we're filling in the gaps? And then they

1757
01:27:43,479 --> 01:27:44,840
Speaker 1: kind of come to me saying, well, we don't know

1758
01:27:44,840 --> 01:27:46,720
Speaker 1: how's he gonna get from here to there. So we

1759
01:27:46,760 --> 01:27:48,920
Speaker 1: met for an hour and did that, and that's all

1760
01:27:48,960 --> 01:27:51,800
Speaker 1: I did on a TV thing today. Um, I haven't

1761
01:27:51,880 --> 01:27:54,800
Speaker 1: yet watched my rushes from Spain, but I don't really

1762
01:27:54,800 --> 01:27:56,680
Speaker 1: have to do that much with Spain anyway. We have

1763
01:27:56,680 --> 01:28:00,559
Speaker 1: an unbelievable director and unbelievable talent there. I don't really

1764
01:28:00,560 --> 01:28:03,280
Speaker 1: have to watch that very closely. So you know, it

1765
01:28:03,400 --> 01:28:05,960
Speaker 1: is their shows in the end of the day, it's

1766
01:28:06,000 --> 01:28:09,080
Speaker 1: their shows. With my story, I'm more involved than just

1767
01:28:09,120 --> 01:28:11,600
Speaker 1: the guy who sold this novel, but it depends on

1768
01:28:11,640 --> 01:28:14,639
Speaker 1: the country and what I and what I think they need.

1769
01:28:14,960 --> 01:28:17,439
Speaker 1: I I wanted to push the Polish to be a

1770
01:28:17,439 --> 01:28:20,720
Speaker 1: little bit more like me in the sense of being

1771
01:28:20,760 --> 01:28:23,920
Speaker 1: a little bit faster moving, And what we ended up

1772
01:28:23,960 --> 01:28:26,080
Speaker 1: with was faster moving than the first cut, which was

1773
01:28:26,200 --> 01:28:30,360
Speaker 1: really really atmospheric. Could you like that atmosphere? You would

1774
01:28:30,360 --> 01:28:32,000
Speaker 1: have loved the first cuts? But I'm like, no, dudes,

1775
01:28:32,080 --> 01:28:33,640
Speaker 1: we can't have him take two minutes to get to

1776
01:28:33,720 --> 01:28:35,840
Speaker 1: his office. It's got to be thirty seconds to get

1777
01:28:35,880 --> 01:28:38,519
Speaker 1: to his office. So you know it's a negotiation or

1778
01:28:38,640 --> 01:28:42,080
Speaker 1: back and forth. Yes, But in terms of writing your books,

1779
01:28:42,600 --> 01:28:45,200
Speaker 1: how do you work that in when you're working on

1780
01:28:45,240 --> 01:28:50,040
Speaker 1: all these TV programs. I just do. But so, but

1781
01:28:50,240 --> 01:28:52,840
Speaker 1: here's the other thing. Uh, that's all I do. I

1782
01:28:52,880 --> 01:28:55,320
Speaker 1: have no other life. I have no I mean I

1783
01:28:55,400 --> 01:28:57,720
Speaker 1: golf that a little bit. I don't know. I have

1784
01:28:57,840 --> 01:29:01,640
Speaker 1: no hobbies. I don't like to do anything. I'm not

1785
01:29:01,680 --> 01:29:06,959
Speaker 1: a collector. Um, I'm a pretty boring guy. I'm not social.

1786
01:29:07,479 --> 01:29:09,320
Speaker 1: So how many how many hours do you need to work?

1787
01:29:09,320 --> 01:29:11,040
Speaker 1: And all this stuff? That's all I do. So I'm

1788
01:29:11,040 --> 01:29:13,120
Speaker 1: home all day to day. Right, I'm taking an hour

1789
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:15,320
Speaker 1: or two doing this stuff, then an the restaurant. Okay,

1790
01:29:15,320 --> 01:29:17,080
Speaker 1: your wife is a doctor that tend to seat up

1791
01:29:17,080 --> 01:29:19,160
Speaker 1: a lot of time. But in terms of oh, it's

1792
01:29:19,200 --> 01:29:22,320
Speaker 1: Saturday night, let's hang with friends. Whatever that does or

1793
01:29:22,360 --> 01:29:26,799
Speaker 1: does not happen. Well, not during COVID it hasn't happened.

1794
01:29:27,000 --> 01:29:29,120
Speaker 1: But yeah, Saturday night, you know we will we have

1795
01:29:29,200 --> 01:29:31,080
Speaker 1: with him a friends who was wedding on a Saturday night.

1796
01:29:31,080 --> 01:29:32,880
Speaker 1: I'm not, but I'll wake up early the next morning

1797
01:29:32,880 --> 01:29:35,599
Speaker 1: on Sunday and all write why not? What what else

1798
01:29:35,600 --> 01:29:39,080
Speaker 1: am I gonna do? All of my down all the downtime,

1799
01:29:39,520 --> 01:29:43,200
Speaker 1: you know, I write. I try, and I'm always feeling guilty.

1800
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:45,599
Speaker 1: When I'm on the golf course. For example, I'm having

1801
01:29:45,640 --> 01:29:47,559
Speaker 1: a few good moments because it's one of the few

1802
01:29:47,560 --> 01:29:50,040
Speaker 1: things I do enjoy. There's always a voice in my

1803
01:29:50,120 --> 01:29:52,840
Speaker 1: head that, you know, what, you should be home writing,

1804
01:29:53,320 --> 01:29:55,400
Speaker 1: And even when I'm there my friends no one, I

1805
01:29:55,479 --> 01:29:57,599
Speaker 1: get distracted, and all of a sudden, I like, go, oh,

1806
01:29:57,880 --> 01:30:00,919
Speaker 1: wait a minute. You know if he goes that room instead.

1807
01:30:01,600 --> 01:30:03,360
Speaker 1: It's just how you know, it's part of it is,

1808
01:30:03,760 --> 01:30:07,440
Speaker 1: It's how the mind works. The views isn't a angelic

1809
01:30:08,160 --> 01:30:11,040
Speaker 1: voice sitting on your shoulder. It's more like your mom's voice.

1810
01:30:11,200 --> 01:30:14,439
Speaker 1: What no call? It's Friday night? You don't call your mother?

1811
01:30:14,760 --> 01:30:18,640
Speaker 1: Why are you going out? What are you going through? So? Um?

1812
01:30:18,720 --> 01:30:20,120
Speaker 1: You know, people, I felt tilling, like, how do you

1813
01:30:20,200 --> 01:30:21,360
Speaker 1: have to do that? What else do I do it?

1814
01:30:21,400 --> 01:30:24,200
Speaker 1: What else do you do? So that's all I do?

1815
01:30:24,439 --> 01:30:27,040
Speaker 1: So um, I don't really and I don't go shopping.

1816
01:30:27,040 --> 01:30:28,960
Speaker 1: I don't go to the mall. I may have a

1817
01:30:29,000 --> 01:30:31,800
Speaker 1: lunch with a friend once a week. Um, but what

1818
01:30:31,840 --> 01:30:35,120
Speaker 1: else is there to do? So during that downtime? This

1819
01:30:35,160 --> 01:30:37,840
Speaker 1: is why the internet so bad. I kind of stay

1820
01:30:37,880 --> 01:30:39,519
Speaker 1: to hell off the internet. That's where you waste How

1821
01:30:39,560 --> 01:30:41,360
Speaker 1: many hours do you waste the day looking at your

1822
01:30:41,360 --> 01:30:45,679
Speaker 1: social media stuff? Don't do it right? Instead? And how

1823
01:30:45,720 --> 01:30:48,280
Speaker 1: have you a reader? Are you both now and through

1824
01:30:48,320 --> 01:30:53,200
Speaker 1: your whole life? Um, I've been to I'll tell you now.

1825
01:30:53,240 --> 01:30:56,320
Speaker 1: I'm getting better here. Beginning of COVID, I was really distracted.

1826
01:30:56,360 --> 01:30:58,280
Speaker 1: I couldn't read, write at all. I'll read it much

1827
01:30:58,280 --> 01:31:00,559
Speaker 1: at all. Couldn't write much heat at first few weeks.

1828
01:31:01,000 --> 01:31:04,599
Speaker 1: But that settled back in faster than than the reading.

1829
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:09,160
Speaker 1: I think reading is harder than ever. I do think that, um,

1830
01:31:09,320 --> 01:31:11,320
Speaker 1: that the Internet is training us not to be very

1831
01:31:11,320 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: good readers, and I think I am sometimes I have

1832
01:31:14,320 --> 01:31:17,080
Speaker 1: to guard myself against that where I am stopping every

1833
01:31:17,120 --> 01:31:19,639
Speaker 1: two or three pages to check my phone. I don't

1834
01:31:19,680 --> 01:31:21,200
Speaker 1: know that I'm checking my phone for. What do we

1835
01:31:21,280 --> 01:31:23,760
Speaker 1: check our phones for. It's like the old bays, you remember, Bob,

1836
01:31:23,760 --> 01:31:25,479
Speaker 1: when the mail would come and we would go to

1837
01:31:25,479 --> 01:31:27,799
Speaker 1: the mailbox excited. I think ever came that was exciting,

1838
01:31:28,360 --> 01:31:30,080
Speaker 1: We look at the man. It's the same thing now

1839
01:31:30,080 --> 01:31:31,720
Speaker 1: on the internet we have we were looking for that

1840
01:31:31,800 --> 01:31:35,920
Speaker 1: little that little hit. But growing up, were you a

1841
01:31:36,000 --> 01:31:40,120
Speaker 1: big reader of books? I was a reader. I wouldn't say, yeah,

1842
01:31:40,160 --> 01:31:42,679
Speaker 1: it's not if you look back, my friends aren't gonna

1843
01:31:42,680 --> 01:31:44,519
Speaker 1: go oh. Harlon always had his nose in a book.

1844
01:31:45,000 --> 01:31:48,519
Speaker 1: I was a decent reader above certainly way above average.

1845
01:31:48,880 --> 01:31:52,240
Speaker 1: But again I wasn't the nerdy reading kid, the book

1846
01:31:52,320 --> 01:31:54,800
Speaker 1: kid that that wouldn't be what I would have been.

1847
01:31:55,439 --> 01:31:58,400
Speaker 1: People would know, would would say about me. I read

1848
01:31:58,439 --> 01:32:00,360
Speaker 1: a fair but I read a fair amount. I had

1849
01:32:00,360 --> 01:32:03,599
Speaker 1: a very active imagination. I was always trying to think

1850
01:32:03,640 --> 01:32:07,200
Speaker 1: of stories. My mind works that way. Whenever I'm watching something,

1851
01:32:07,560 --> 01:32:10,040
Speaker 1: it's not just figuring out what how that show is

1852
01:32:10,080 --> 01:32:12,280
Speaker 1: going to do, which I can usually do, but also

1853
01:32:12,360 --> 01:32:15,639
Speaker 1: things are eight other ways they could have done it. Um, well,

1854
01:32:15,720 --> 01:32:17,439
Speaker 1: they could have done this, and you know other things.

1855
01:32:17,520 --> 01:32:21,760
Speaker 1: That's just how um whatever natural abilities you're giving, that's

1856
01:32:21,800 --> 01:32:23,640
Speaker 1: one of the ones. I was good solving, because I

1857
01:32:23,680 --> 01:32:26,160
Speaker 1: said word problems in math, had a very good math

1858
01:32:26,320 --> 01:32:29,160
Speaker 1: s a T score. I can see those sort of things.

1859
01:32:29,240 --> 01:32:31,920
Speaker 1: I can see what's coming ahead, and so that sort

1860
01:32:31,960 --> 01:32:34,120
Speaker 1: of stuff always played in my head. And can you

1861
01:32:34,160 --> 01:32:39,000
Speaker 1: tell us the exact time and what was going through

1862
01:32:39,040 --> 01:32:43,160
Speaker 1: your mind when you decided to become a writer I

1863
01:32:43,240 --> 01:32:46,639
Speaker 1: had for the same family business ended up working. When

1864
01:32:46,640 --> 01:32:48,960
Speaker 1: I was in college, I spent two summers in Spain

1865
01:32:49,640 --> 01:32:51,960
Speaker 1: being the tour guide to the tour escort that watched

1866
01:32:52,240 --> 01:32:55,960
Speaker 1: the Americans that came over. So this was eighty one

1867
01:32:56,160 --> 01:32:59,040
Speaker 1: eight two right around there. So when you went on

1868
01:32:59,120 --> 01:33:02,120
Speaker 1: vacation like this, the strips, you know, groups of fifty

1869
01:33:02,160 --> 01:33:04,759
Speaker 1: would come over. I was in Acosta del Soul of Spain.

1870
01:33:05,200 --> 01:33:06,919
Speaker 1: I was the guy who picked up at the airport.

1871
01:33:06,960 --> 01:33:08,880
Speaker 1: I drove you there. I made sure you've got your room.

1872
01:33:09,240 --> 01:33:11,240
Speaker 1: I sold you optional tours. I told you how you

1873
01:33:11,280 --> 01:33:15,080
Speaker 1: can go to you know, Marbello or Managa or Seville.

1874
01:33:15,600 --> 01:33:18,880
Speaker 1: And my job was to watch you. And I thought

1875
01:33:19,160 --> 01:33:21,960
Speaker 1: it was a weird summer. It was a very weird that,

1876
01:33:22,200 --> 01:33:25,120
Speaker 1: like most people wouldn't just make an interesting story, I

1877
01:33:25,120 --> 01:33:28,080
Speaker 1: should write a book about this experience. And I came

1878
01:33:28,120 --> 01:33:30,559
Speaker 1: back my senior year college and I did. I wrote

1879
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:33,080
Speaker 1: an entire novel my senior college on my own. I

1880
01:33:33,120 --> 01:33:36,439
Speaker 1: tried getting a professor who would taken on as as

1881
01:33:36,479 --> 01:33:38,760
Speaker 1: a thesis or something like that, but I hadn't taken

1882
01:33:38,800 --> 01:33:41,240
Speaker 1: English classes, so no one would take me on. So

1883
01:33:41,280 --> 01:33:42,719
Speaker 1: I just kind of wrote it myself and the book

1884
01:33:42,760 --> 01:33:46,320
Speaker 1: was probably probably complete crap um. But from that I

1885
01:33:46,360 --> 01:33:49,240
Speaker 1: got the writing bug um and started to write what

1886
01:33:49,320 --> 01:33:51,439
Speaker 1: I loved, which were not what I call a novel

1887
01:33:51,479 --> 01:33:53,160
Speaker 1: of the mersion. You can call a mystery or crime,

1888
01:33:53,200 --> 01:33:55,840
Speaker 1: but I call it the book that you can't put down.

1889
01:33:55,840 --> 01:33:58,479
Speaker 1: The book you take on vacation to santra Pe, but

1890
01:33:58,560 --> 01:34:01,080
Speaker 1: you'd rather stay in your hotel because he can't wait

1891
01:34:01,120 --> 01:34:03,880
Speaker 1: to find out what happens. And so I wrote three

1892
01:34:03,960 --> 01:34:06,479
Speaker 1: or four before one got published when I was I

1893
01:34:06,520 --> 01:34:08,760
Speaker 1: think it's twenty six and I was accepted for publication.

1894
01:34:09,240 --> 01:34:10,600
Speaker 1: For the best way to learn how to write was

1895
01:34:10,640 --> 01:34:14,240
Speaker 1: stact your weather novel. Sort a look at those as failures. Um,

1896
01:34:14,320 --> 01:34:16,160
Speaker 1: you know, the first time you got into basketball accord

1897
01:34:16,160 --> 01:34:18,040
Speaker 1: and you take a shot, I don't character Michael Jordan's

1898
01:34:18,080 --> 01:34:20,599
Speaker 1: if you know, shout a basketball before it's gonna miss,

1899
01:34:21,120 --> 01:34:24,160
Speaker 1: You're gonna be terrible. So I thought the best way

1900
01:34:24,160 --> 01:34:27,519
Speaker 1: of learning to write, in hindsight is just right, write

1901
01:34:27,520 --> 01:34:29,920
Speaker 1: a whole novel, Write two or three whole novels, and

1902
01:34:30,280 --> 01:34:33,120
Speaker 1: don't get mad they don't get published. Understand, that's that's

1903
01:34:33,120 --> 01:34:36,800
Speaker 1: your apprenticeship. Well, Harlan, this has been wonderful on so

1904
01:34:36,880 --> 01:34:40,080
Speaker 1: many levels, the tales of writing, the tales of your life,

1905
01:34:40,120 --> 01:34:43,120
Speaker 1: your insight. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

1906
01:34:44,120 --> 01:34:46,240
Speaker 1: Thanks Bob's great to finally meet you. In person, and

1907
01:34:46,560 --> 01:34:48,880
Speaker 1: you have been during uh green the newsletter for a

1908
01:34:48,920 --> 01:34:51,160
Speaker 1: long time, so it was great to hang it down

1909
01:34:51,439 --> 01:34:53,840
Speaker 1: until next time. This is Bob less sense