Harlan Coben

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the fob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is waiter Harlan Covid. Harlan, I'm good
to be here. So where exactly are you right now,
New Jersey About a half hour outside of my hat.
And to what degree is COVID affected you in your lifestyle? Well,
me personally, not so much. Social isolation is what we

(00:30):
writers do. Uh, I'm fat. I had more people home
and was busier because my kids who were all rage
in age from eighteen to twenty six, and four of them,
three of them were here. But they've all kind of
gone back to their lives in various ways. So I'm
back to being an empty nester. But you know, worried
about the world, worried about my kids, worried about all
that stuff. But my day to day life is probably

(00:52):
less affected than the population. And to what degree are
you taking all quarantining? Seriously? Very we we do all
the steps I don't see. And again, you know, to
be fair and non political, it's easier for me. You know,
I have a fairly nice set up at home. Um,

(01:14):
I'm used to being at home. I don't really have
to go out and see people so I'm not a
very social person, you know. I think all writers are
a little bit of introverts, and maybe a socially a
depth introvert, but introvert after all. So I take it
very seriously. I haven't done anything at all that one
might call risky. To what degree do you find the

(01:35):
pandemic inspiration for your writing? I would say zero. I
think it's the opposite. In fact, that was I was
in the middle of a book when the pandemic hit,
and because you really don't know how the pandemic is
going to go, and especially back then, I decided instead
of making I usually did. The book is very contemporary.

(01:55):
I made it in the year two thousand nineteen, so
I can make sure I could have boyd the pandemic altogether.
I think at first, certainly, I felt that my job
was to give you a divide diversion from the pandemic,
the shows and the books, to be a diversion from it.
So right now I don't find it in the least

(02:16):
bit inspirational, and I think it's hard to write about
right now except in a very short window because we
don't know where it's going. You know, I could write
a book that just took place in the month of
March or April, but I don't know where we're going
to be in September, October, and neither is anybody else.
But you're a last bestseller just recently came out Boy
from the Woods. You do Virgin too. Politics. How did

(02:38):
you make that decision? Well? Politics, I really tried very
hard to be as as nonpartistan as possible. Um I
do as a writer in general, not because you know,
because you're gonna turn this. I don't want people to
go into my books thinking, oh, he's a right wing cook,
he's a left wing nut, whatever it is. It takes

(03:00):
away from the story. Um, I try to do it
in a more subtle way. And the politics here, I
think we're more about certain extremism than it was, and
about cult type figures that we take on sometimes every side,
more than I was saying, you know, the right bad,
left good kind of thing or left bad, right good.

(03:21):
So I just you know, my books are contemporary, so
I'm dealing with what I'm seeing in public. So for
The Boy from the Woods, it's whatever's kind of going
on and run away to what was going on in
the world of seeing a lot of people doing, for example,
DNA ancestry websites. I thought that would be good. I'm
seeing people who are doing with viral videos. I see cults.
I see this sort of political behavior where it's really

(03:44):
more about tribalism. Um. I think the app thing sometimes
with the politics is to call like the Yankees and
the Red Sox. Like, if you're a Yankees fan and
you find out your manager is a cheat or and
a horrible person and was killing people, you don't become
a Red Sox fan, right, You're still going to cheer
for the Yankees no matter what. And that's where our

(04:04):
politics has gone. And so I was more exploring I
think that than you know, tax breaks or whatever else. Well,
the book only came out recently. When did you start
writing the book right about now? I would say last year.
I usually started right about now, which you know we're in,

(04:25):
uh the summer. Usually lately I've been starting it around
the summertime, and I finished about nine or ten months later,
and then it comes out a year after that. So
it would have been uh, two years ago right around
now I was started the book, and that is a
traditional lag time in the publishing industry. How do you
feel about that in today's digital world, certainly someone of

(04:47):
your renown. Well, I've done certain ones where I had
been tighter um, where I finished one book for example,
I think in July and we had it out in September.
Publishers can turn it around faster, and they claim and
we see that like the Bolton book, or we'll see
that with nonfiction book. There really with fiction book they
can do it too. They don't want to because they

(05:08):
want to. They take it's better for marketing if they
have time to make copies and getting people like your hands,
so maybe you'll put it on your podcast or or
or your newsletters. So they're trying to publicity. They want
it earlier. They can do it. They can do it faster.
It's not easy in terms of timely. But I hope
all the novels I write in some way, um, you know,

(05:30):
last more than six months. Anyway, they're not they're not
fruit on the shelf. So hopefully you know, you can
still read my books from when I started, and even
though they may seem dated, they're supposed to be during
the year, still capture that year. But the spirit and
the story and things like that that shouldn't really change.
The technology might change, the politics might change, but the

(05:51):
story shouldn't change. Let's just stay with technology, not the
content of the book. But what's your viewpoint on digital publishing,
the kindle pricing, accessibility. You have a take on that, Well,
this may sound a little bit like a duck, but
it's not. If we are a business, I am the
content side of the business, and as a content provider,

(06:13):
I don't care if you listen to it on audio.
I don't care if you digitally do it. I don't
care if it's paper, I don't care if it's stone tablets.
My theory is, if my story is good enough, you're
going to find it and you're going to want to
listen to it. So I really focus hard on the story.
It's all I focus on because matter two, I'm not
smart enough to be able to tell you what's going

(06:35):
to happen in the book world. And I've heard of
my whole career. You know, for a while Barnes and
Noble was going to destroy the industry about taking over
and boarders is going to destroy the industry. Oh wait, no,
it's Amazon. Amazon is gonna destroy the industry. Oh e books,
E books are gonna put paper out of business, and
they're all wrong. And if it's I'm like a child
when I hear that. And I regularly recommend this to
writers and content producers, creators, whatever you want to call yourself.

(06:58):
I stick my fingers in a year and I got
la la la la. I can't hear you. All I
can control is how good my story is. So if
my story is going to be good enough, you're going
to find it. So I don't really worry. I don't
care how you get it. Um, you know, the last
few years, audio is really exploded. I don't know exactly why,
but the last two or three years, audio has really exploded. Um,

(07:22):
the book had exploded for a while. Now the book
is actually a little bit on decline, even this last book, Bob,
but you might find really interesting. So my book came
out March seventeenth, which is the very start, literally the
start of when we went into quarantine. So I was
about to go on book tour. I obviously canceled it,
and all the stores closed, right, all the stores closed,

(07:42):
And yet my physical book sales were actually up, and
my e book was up just a little bit a
little flatter. But my physical books is actually up more
than my book. I would have thought it would be
the opposite. Everybody's staying at home. They're gonna get kindles
or or nooks or whatever. You're gonna audience on order
it that way. But that wasn't the case. The physical
book has come back the last few years after getting

(08:05):
you know, after the book jumped up to have fifty
or six even of sales. Now if you flattened or
moved down where the physical book seems to be going up.
This is anecdotal information, but that's how I I'm seeing it. Well,
the music business been the canary in the coal mine
for digital disruption, and certainly there's been a big issue
in books talking about this, which is a what is

(08:28):
the value of a book? And be that leads to
the pricing. Have you felt any pressure on your end
or you're so successful that your deals are independent of
those constraints. Well, I don't know, you know, I'm not
so successful. I'm sure like everybody everything else, I'm you know,
price is a factor buying my books or whatever else. Um,

(08:49):
I don't know, you know, it's a very interesting thing.
So people will often say the books should be much
much cheaper because you're not printing any paper. You don't
have to do this, you don't have to do that,
and so the books should be much cheaper. But the
other side of the coin is that twenty years ago,
I told you, where you're standing right now, you can
press the button and have a book just appeared to

(09:10):
you right now the second how much would you pay
for that convenience? And I bet a lot of people
would have said, well, hell, that's magic. I pay a
lot for that. So I don't really know. I find
the book, you know, again, market, I think maybe it
works here sometimes, you know, I just so. I think
The Woods, the one that's the new Netflix series, I
don't know it still is, but for a little while

(09:32):
it was being priced the e book form for only cents.
So if you're you're savvy shopper, you can find things
like that. Um So you know, if somebody told me
I can get it that quickly, that automatically I can
carry you know, if you have a kindle or nook
or or don't, you can carry a thousand books, a
thousand books. What would you pay for that if I
told you that a few years ago. So I'm not

(09:53):
so sure that it's as simple as you're not made
using a paper anymore. It should be much cheaper. I
can't put on my bookshelf afterwards. It should be much cheaper.
I don't know. Now, going back to your point about
you don't care how people access your work, let me
say if I said a hundred million people in America

(10:17):
would be reading your book, but you'd make a hundred
thousand dollars, or ten thousand people would read your book
and you'd make two million dollars. Which choice would you
make now? I would choose the first. I can't say
what it before, but right now money is not really
much of a factor for me. But I'll tell you

(10:38):
my my, my chicken, my chicken. Ass answer to that is,
I've never chased the dollar. I've always chased the reader,
the reader's heart, because I've always found the dollar follows anyway,
so they really I've always been one and the same.
I've never made a deal where I tried getting the
last dollar and not caring. I want readers. Um. If

(10:59):
that makes me commercial horror, it makes me a commercial horror.
I think every reader does you know the one the too?
Every writer has this in common. I don't care if
you're talking to the most commercial writer for the most
literary writer. Every writer I know wants better reviews and
wants more readers. And if they don't, they're lying. I'm sorry,
they're lying. If you have if you have a guy
on here saying I just care about you know, really

(11:20):
great quality, I don't care if anyone reads it their lyne.
You right to produce, You're you're right to have communication
with somebody. It's it's the Berkeley tree falling in the woods,
and nobody hears it doesn't make it sound. Um, So
I do both. I've always said, if the reader or
the viewer likes what I'm doing, the money is gonna follow.

(11:40):
It's just it's gonna follow. If I go out thinking,
you know what, I could get more money here, but
less people will see it. I've never made that deal
in my life, so um, I don't think I would
do it now. Okay, you're you started before or just
at the advent of this whole digital craziness in the Internet.
One thing we know in the last ten years is

(12:01):
there's a lot more clutter. Everybody's vying for attention. Therefore,
no matter who you are, it's harder to spread. First,
there's the issue of reaching your fans, letting them know
you have new work. Do you feel this at all
that it is harder. Let's just use the vernacular to
have virality with your work. Yes, I mean, and first

(12:22):
of all, everything also is the cycles of life, but
we know and the media cycles are much shorter, so
you have a very short window. Book openings have become
similar to movie openings, where in the old days I
think you would move up the charts, so to speak,
you know, and maybe the same with music. I don't know,

(12:43):
but you start maybe a fift team and move up
to twelve, up to ten. How is my first New
York Times bestseller? Now You're opening week is your biggest
week by far. It's like an opening of a movie.
So the first week that an author has a new
book out, if he doesn't hit one, then he's not
hitting one unless the next week is a real disaster
for everybody else. You jump on one, then you start

(13:04):
flipping down, and after a few weeks you know they're
they're moving on to the next thing. So part of
it is this whole culture that we see in movies,
we see in music, and we've seen everything where you're
just not in the news. Um, quite as long. Books
are always hard to get attention for anyway. Uh. You know,
every once in a while, once or twice a year,

(13:26):
a book seems to get people's attention and and they,
you know, look at it. But for the most part,
it's very very hard. So um, I don't really do
much different myself. Uh. And I recommend to new writers
don't don't lose your mind with the marketing. I know
it's so hard, but I haven't seen maybe you have, Bob,

(13:46):
because you're in a little better at this During this time,
I haven't really seen like a book that's made it
just on its in fact, that the guy's got a
great Twitter account or is really funny on instant I
think it's the opposite almost. I actually think that Instagram
and my Twitter accounts are negative. A few years ago,
giving a quick example, I'm friends with Gillian Flynn, who

(14:07):
of course wrote Gone Girl, which is a huge book.
And I would say that people who would ask me
this question, and people are always looking for the easy out,
not writing the book, isn't reading that a book. Writing
on a book isn't easy out. Figuring out that magic
key that that will get me a lot of readers
by acute tweet is so I said, well, look, the
biggest book the last year two has been Gillian Flynn's
Scout Girls. So look at her Facebook account, look at

(14:28):
her Twitter, look at her Instagram. See how she's done it.
She didn't even have one. I think now she hasn't
a Twitter that she almost never does anything with, but
she didn't even have when she had zero online presence.
Dan Brown, I think is very little online presence, um.
Grisham just starting up a very little online presence. So
I don't think that there is much of a correlation

(14:50):
there for books. And again, that's not TV, that's not movies,
it's not music. But in terms of books, I don't
think it's It's not helpful that question how active are
you on social media and what is your intention with
social media? Um, I'm actually probably more active than most
best selling authors. Part of it is, UM, I don't

(15:11):
mind it. I sometimes kind of enjoy it. I have
a real love hate relationship with it. UM, and I'm
dealing with it like everybody else. I don't know how
I feel about it. One day I think it's the
worst thing in the world that I gotta stay away
on the next day. I'm a little bit um addicted
to it, so I don't. I'm still working out where
I am on that on that spectrum. Um. You know,

(15:33):
I have a Twitter, I have a Facebook, I have
an Instagram. I do very little on the Facebook other
than the mostly it's marketing kind of stuff. Twitter and Instagram.
I feel like you have to open up a little
bit more. It's just not fair necessarily. I think people
get bored if I'm just putting up pictures of my
books or my TV shows, So you have to be
a little bit. I'd do a dog a lot, because

(15:54):
no one gets upset about the dope anything. Political people
seem to get upset about on one side or the other.
Now we live in a world where everybody is accessible.
That does not necessarily mean you need to respond. Do
you interact with people? I sometimes don't. I always regret it,
always regret it. I did actually yesterday with somebody and

(16:15):
I just was after you know, a friend of mine,
Richard Osmond from England, had tweeted this brilliant thing about
don't give the idiots, don't respond to the idiots, that's
all that gives them air, and I did. I responded
to an idiot, and I gave him a hair and
then I was like, okay. Now I also block if
someone will come on, for example and say, uh, someone
did you well, you know, why did you make the

(16:36):
woods in Polish? I hate foreign language things. This is
a piece of ship. I just blocked. I didn't followed
with it. He's on. He probably is a fan of
my books. He's been following me a long time, and
you know, and then of course you get the rep of, oh,
you can't listen to criticism. I don't have to listen
to criticism. I don't want to. It's my page. But
when people are rude like that, now I just now
I'm trying to reach a state dry, just blocking and

(16:57):
move on. What I always say is temper center. The
public is certifiably insane. The only problem is you don't
know what ten percent that is. People who seem totally
reasonable end up like you can't get rid of him,
and it's crazy. The other thing is, even if you
correct someone on facts, they won't accept it. Well, the
sky is black today, No it's blue. No, you're wrong, blah. Yes,

(17:21):
I retweeted some a friend of mine. I put something
about the Confederate statues, and you know the difference being
the Confederate statues were to honor these people. You know,
people keep saying, oh, how can you leave up concentration cancer,
which is such a disingenuous false equivalency. So the person
put it and I retweeted it, and somebody says, I
didn't think you'd want to upset all of your you know,

(17:42):
your right wing readers or your Republican rea years ago.
Tell me what that tweet you don't get? I mean,
tell me what that sweet you disagree with? Do you
think that the Confederacy and the Holocaust sent No, I'm
my relatives in the Holocaust, Like, so, what's your problem
with the actual thing? And then they go off on
some tangent. You know, it's like they they so there's

(18:02):
no point in doing it because it doesn't matter. You
can't win the argument, you know. So I agree, I
agree totally. But just staying with that one concept, to
what degree in your books and your interactions, are you
worried about alienating potential fans potential readers. Um, I don't
real about alienating potential readers or yes, on internet, on

(18:25):
social media, do worry about that? In books? I don't
in books. As I said before, I intentionally don't potentially
take sides also that I don't necessarily agree with because
part of being a writer, big part of it, One
thing I hope we all have is you have to
be empathetic, not sympathetic, and not necessarily in a positive way.

(18:45):
But I have to get how that person thinks. And
I have to create created characters, especially in the villains, um,
where you should be able to understand them. In fact,
one of the things I joke is I've been working
much too hard on my villains over the last few years.
I realized villains don't have to be all that complex
or interesting or sympathetic. They could just be complete monsters

(19:06):
that's we're seeing every day. Um. But I want to
do that. So UM, I've argued for a lot of
stuff convincingly, I've taken it. In one book, I took
a pro hunting side that I thought was really kind
of fun. So but that's part of the job, is
you you know you, I'm not. I'm not really here
to teach you or moralize that. That kills a book,

(19:29):
and may they may be lessons in it, But if
you said that, to do that you're right, and you're
gonna kill yourself. You're gonna really quick kill your book.
Going back to marketing, you were mentioning that your book
tour was canceled from someone on the West Coast music
movie entertainment spectrum. It really looks like bookmarking is antiquated.

(19:50):
So I must ask when you do these road shows,
do they have any impact? In my view? No, I
think there are waste of time. I've told my publishers,
so I tried cutting them down. Um some years they
left me. Some years they don't. There's I think there's
a couple of things that they do. Um one is

(20:13):
and this is why I personally am not that opposed
to doing them. And I you know, part of it.
You know, you're part of the team and you have
to do that. But I do think it helps the
independent bookstores. I do think if I can go to
your store and you can sell four hundred copies of
a hard covered that cost bucks, that's a big day
for you as an independent bookstore. That gets people in

(20:34):
your stores, that gets people interested in reading that. You know,
it's a way of introducing other authors to people. UM
So part of it, I think a lot part of
when when your author, you know, is already selling well,
that he's doing it is to give cover for other
writers as well. So I think I think that my
publishers have never told me this, but I do think
there's probably something be not not not quit pro quote.

(20:57):
But I do think there's something where if we send
you this big name, we will also take this newcomer
who no one's really gonna know, but you can promote
them in your story. You can put their book in
your window for a week. You can make sure you
get that guy gets attention to. And so in terms
of the overall ecosystem of independent bookstores and and and
Barnes and Nobles and the and the chains, because it's

(21:19):
not many of them left, um, I do think it
helps them more than it helps me. And I have
no problem with that. So I'm happy. I'm happy to
do that. Um. I also don't mind interacting with readers.
You know, to quote a song, to quote to puteh
Keed Vogelberg, the audience is heavenly, but the traveling is hell. Right,

(21:46):
That's right. I love that line. That's how I look
at torting. I got It's not you know, despite what
authors a whine about it's not that hard to have
people walk up to you and say, God, I love
your books. It's really not that hard. If where's your
whole freaking for that, enjoy it right and enjoy the
moment for them. You know it's gonna be different because
I was always I stand up from my entire book

(22:08):
book run because I know people want photographs nowadays, and
I think it's so awkward they do that photograph where
you're sitting down and they're leaning over awkwardly. So I
stand up, put my arm around everybody, have the camera
ready with a guy so they can get the picture
that they want. They really took the time to come
out and see me. That's a tremendous on it really,
and a tremendous drill. So that's the other side of touring.

(22:30):
But in terms of your overall question, does it help
Harlan Coben sell books, My view is no, because, first
of all, if you're coming to a Harlan Coban book signing,
there's a chance of buying my book anyway. So who
else comes to my signings? People who don't like my
books as ever heard of me, So you know what
I mean. So I think that. I do think it's

(22:53):
but again, it's probably good for the whole ecosystem, and
I'm happy to help with that. So what is effective
marketing for one of your books? The truth is, I
think with books from my books, I don't know anymore.
I think in my books it's very hard for me
to go too far up or too far down. It's
hard to break out more than once or twice. So

(23:14):
Tell No One was my breakout book. Tell No One
changed my life overnight. Was it the book or the
movie of the book. The movie was out five years
after the book, so it was Why do you think
that was your breakout? I had written seven Myron Bolletar
novels in a row before that, and while they did well,

(23:35):
it was very hard to convince, especially the female reader,
who is the majority. I think stole readers. Probably my guests,
of my readers, and most readers in the world are females.
And no matter how much they told you, tell them
you're gonna love this. It's about a sports agent. He's
a sports agent who solves crimes. That's just not a
good book. But when you tell somebody here's what. Tell No.

(23:57):
One's about a man and a woman or married. The
wife is murdered. Eight years later, he gets an email
and sees his murdered wife on a webcam. Is she's
still alive? You're buying the book? That's it in a nutshell.
That was the poster for the movie eight years ago.
Dr Beck's wife was Dr Beck's wife was murdered eight
years ago today you got an email from That was
the movie poster, and it helped the movie explode out

(24:20):
in France. So, um, I think that was the reason.
And then they went back and they were by the
Myron Boulturs, and then you know, and then the Myron
Boltar end up having a good following. But that was
the thing I said. I think I think that's why
what literally got I mean there's literally millions of books

(24:42):
a year. What literally got the attention that book? Was
it hand selling in a bookstore? Was it viralty? Was
what was done that made that work? No one likes
to hear this, but it was something in the book, Um,
because it happened not just here, it happened all over
the world France. Who became a number one best seller?
Actually the better Like I remember my publishers saying, well,

(25:02):
I think it was just great cover. The that a
really great cover for it, but France had a crappy
cover that kind of leaked it out. And then one
magazine wrote it up really well and next thing, you know,
in France and ended up being doing better relatively speaking,
and it did in America, it did well in the UK,
it did well in Spain, it did well in poland
did well in in a ton of countries. So there

(25:23):
was something about that hook in that book that made
it happen. In the end of the day, books are
all are still still word of mouth are the two
biggest things that could have happened to her. Being an
OPRAH book club took now being a Reese Witherspoon book
club pick. But outside of that, and even then, you
know how you know, I'll ask you, Bob, how do

(25:46):
you find your books? It's almost always somebody telling you
that people. It's almost the opposite. You don't trust people
who are hyping you. And you see a full page ad,
you say, who is this impacting? I would listen to
this right that that it could be, you know, so
I don't. I think in the case of Tell No One,
some countries that went slower, some countries that went faster.
But it's something about that book got people buzzing, and

(26:09):
I could say, see it. You can almost see it happening.
I can. I'll tell you an interesting story. I went
to college. I was a fraternity brother with Dan Brown,
the Da Vinci Code author um, who was a friend
of mine. And so tell No One broke out several
years before DaVinci Code came out, maybe five or six
years before. And when Da Vinci Code, Dan sent me

(26:29):
an early copy to blurb, you know, and when you
get those copies and you write the blurb on it
if you like it. And I started to see it
happened to Dan before Dan did. And I remember speaking
to Dan not long before the book came out, and
I said, dude, this is going to change your life.
I can. I'm seeing it. I'm just hearing the industry
start to buzz about it and talk about it. And

(26:50):
I don't know how you create that. You can try,
but it's a book. Isn't resonating. It's not gonna happen,
which is which is the way it should be, right,
I mean it should be. I've seen so many books
that people are trying to hype via money. It doesn't work.
But when people are telling you they liked the book,
be it Da Vinci Code, Last few Years, being Gone Girl,
being a girl on the train, be it this zero

(27:11):
and the claud Dad sings. Whatever that book is, people
are liking it and telling their friends. Rarely is the
book something that people aren't liking and they're managing to
get people to buy anyway. Well, that begs the question,
that's a little dicey. What's your view on James Patterson?
I have no I have nothing negative to say about
about Jim. I've known I've known Patterson um for a

(27:33):
long time. He's honest about what he's doing. I think
at the stage of the game, UM, he was a
marketing guy. Um from day one he understood he understands
how to market better than anybody. Uh. He has a
bunch of different people working. I don't. But I don't
really study him or follow him. So it's not like
I know him better than my opinion on him would

(27:55):
be any better to listen to than anybody else's. I
don't really, I don't. It sounds maybe I don't really
care what my colleagues are doing in that way. The
guys that I do like and then I hang out with,
I sort of I really do wish them. Well. Um,
that sounds kind of fake, but there's two signs to
one is this boat rises and things together. If you

(28:16):
read a Michael Conley or a Lee Child or whoever
it else it is, and you like them, you're gonna
want to read more and maybe that one of those
books will be mine, and vice versa. Um, no one
has to fail so that I can succeed. That's my motto.
I'm not saying I'm not good of a person that
I always pick it, but it's a great it's a
great motto to have nobody has to fail so that

(28:37):
I can succeed. It's really hard in the writing game.
I think for people who are upcoming not to get jealous,
not to look at what somebody else has. There's always
gonna be somebody ahead of you. Do. There's always gonna
be somebody ahead of you. So I try to use
that to fuel me and not to get bitter or
to get angry. Tell no one is your breakthrough novel.

(28:58):
And of course it doesn't necessarily happen instantly you're already
working on something else. But frequently when someone has a
huge success and people are paying attention. It's inhibiting in
terms of further work. Did you experience that, well? It is.
I mean, I've seen it happen with a lot of writers.
I was extraordinarily lucky. I had just finished Gone for
Good when Tell No One broke out. I had just

(29:19):
finished the book before because I'll tell you I was
thirty nine, so I wasn't a kid when it happened.
And it messes with your head. Success does mess with
your head. I don't know how these young guys who
are actors or musicians handle it. I really don't because
the mess with my head. Luckily, I happily married, I
had my fourth kid was born the day that I

(29:39):
hit the New York Times Best Start Let's for the
first time, Um July eleven, two thousand one, coming up
on the anniversary. So um, I got all of that.
So what I did learn and I advised writers if
I see a writer like my saw DaVinci Code about
to break out, I'm like, my warning to writer is
put your head down now and start writing, because once
it hits, it is going to be tough. If you're

(30:00):
gonna be paralyzed for a little while. And the advice
that I give the writer who has this lucky enough
to have this happen, is just get it out, because
they're gonna slam it no matter what. I mean, they're gonna,
you know, the critics are gonna and the same thing
with musicians, right, they're gonna sharpen depends. They're going to
crap on you. And then you can have a career,
get to your third or fourth album, and then you'll
be all right. You'll be over that, over that home

(30:22):
to what to do you? Are you a student of
the game? Do you follow especially now there's so many statistics,
especially on Amazon. Do you follow that pretty closely? I don't. UM.
I did for a little while, maybe twenty years ago,
ten fifteen years ago. Um. You know, I was first
trying to hit number one, and I was getting close
a couple of times, so I would sort of follow it.

(30:43):
This last book, I haven't followed at all. I mean,
I get a call on a Wednesday saying, you hit
the New York Times listener X your lot. So but
either that, I don't anymore, and I tell you for
them again. The advice for the new writers, don't um.
I was lucky when I started out. I was a
paperback original guy at Dell, which is a big name,

(31:03):
but it's a small I mean, it's a paperback original.
So I my first Myron Bouletar novel, I got five
thousand dollar advance, and not to brag, but by the
time I wrote my fourth, I was up to six thousand.
So but here's the thing. Because I had no information
it was a major publishing house. There's two copies in

(31:25):
almost every bookstore and paperback. I thought I was the
cat's ass. I couldn't look at my Amazon rankings back
and this is when I first started Amazon. Really, I couldn't,
you know, watch the watch my Amazon rankings, like their
stock ratings, and see how it was going up. And
now I thought I was doing great. If someone told
me the aspect, then I probably would have killed myself.

(31:46):
But I just wrote the next one. I didn't worry
about how well it was doing. I was still in
the game, you know. Was that that I hadn't struck
out yet? I was. I still had my swings left.
It's like you're a battered I had ten ten swings
at ten strikes instead of when or too, So I
just kept put my head down and right. So I
tell her it's don't you know, don't spend all the
time looking at Amazon yet book is not going to

(32:07):
break out. It's not if that book hasn't broken out yet.
Nothing you do by looking at all these things is
going to help your career. The only thing that's really
going to help your career is writing the next one
and making it better and somehow getting more people to
read you. So I really I was blessed. We didn't know,
you know, meals and ratings, We didn't have book scam.
Now that um, I know, there's people who tell me

(32:29):
you can call into books scam and find out way.
I don't. I don't even want to know, because, first
of all, what number is good? Someone shit to you,
I sold eight thousand copies of your book last week.
Is that's a good or bad? I don't know. I
still don't know, So I don't want to know. As
long as everybody's happy I'm hitting one my first week
out usually I'm good. Not I mean to know anymore?
What else do we need to know? Okay? And do

(32:50):
you read your reviews? Yeah? Most of the time. I
don't read Amazon reviews or any of that. Goodness to
the numbers are too big to even try. I'll sometime,
so I haven't done it. I don't think for a
book for Boy from the Woods, I've even looked CHET,
but I will look every once in a while. But
it's always the same. I'm always four to five stars.
Most people are, you know, happy with it. And then

(33:10):
there's the people who say, oh man, he really changed
this time that and I hated that, And then the
person who says he wrote the exact same thing again,
wasn't gonna change. There's never anything I gotta you're going
through my reviews for the last twenty books, you'll see
the exact same thing. I'll be between three point nine
and four point one, and it will be the exact
same thing. So if I saw one book and someone

(33:31):
would tell me that all of a sudden, dope down
to a one or was at four point nine, I
guess I would pay a little more attention to why
or whatever else. Um. And if I'm reviewing New York Times,
yeah I read it, you know, but I don't. I
don't take it to heart anymore. I know it doesn't
change my life. A great review is not going to
change my life. In A shitty review is not going
to change my life. I know that now. Uh does

(33:52):
a review in a major publication, the wallpo of the
New York Times? Does it help at all? Um? For me?
I look, everyone has to help. Um how much it helps,
I don't know if it helps as much as it
used to. I don't think so. Uh. Like rom was
starting out or in the mid to late nineties, a
really good spot would be People magazine. They would do

(34:15):
four or five books to have a photograph of the book.
People really paid attention to it. It got a fair
amount of sales and hits. UM. But there's no one
thing anymore, not even like my Today Show appearance, that
makes a book zoom the way it did in the say,
the early nineties, early the mid nineties. I'm sure if
you're an unknown you're getting a full page review in

(34:36):
the New York Times. Um, that's going to help you,
in the front page of the New York Times, book,
of course, But other than that, you know, even good
reviews in the New York Times. I see books vanished
out of nowhere. So I don't I just don't think that.
I don't know the answers. I don't know what makes
it anymore. It seems to be a lot of things
that have to come together to reach a certain level,
but be happy at other levels too. It's not everybody

(34:58):
has to be a number one or number in. I
wasn't for a long time either a number of top
best seller. You could just be doing well and eventually
you're in the game. Maybe something happens movies for a
long time movie times. I mean, you know how much
bigger did George R. R. Martin become after the TV
show Game of Thrones came out? How much bigger did
Charlene Harris become after True Blood? Sometimes it has a

(35:21):
big effect on books, sometimes it doesn't. You don't really
know to what degree are you in news and internet junkie.
I guess I would say average. I don't know what
average is anymore. I pay attention to it, especially right now.
I'm dying to be bored. Though I really wish I'd
go back to the days might didn't have to look

(35:41):
at it every day and feel like I'm watching the
world and uh again. I compared to sports, I think
sometimes we watch it like it's our team, and did
our team out a good game? It's good, a good
inning to be scorning ones that did our team score
some runs? Um, it's a sad, it's a satisfact. How
about you know? I don't know? Okay, So what comes first?

(36:01):
Do you have the idea, do you flesh it out?
Do you start writing? What's your process? Um? I usually
start with an idea, um, and then I try to
figure out, you know, good hook and the ending and
that's and then I asked, who's going to tell that story?
So it's usually three steps. So when people say, are

(36:22):
you going to write more? Myron Bolts, are you're gonna
write more? When I after I think of the story idea,
I'll ask who's going to tell it? In the cas
tell no one. So I had this idea that I
loved about a man wife is murdered, he can't get
over her death, he still loves her. Eight years past,
he gets in the email, he clicks the hyperlink, he
sees the webcam and his dead wife walks by. I go, oh,

(36:43):
I love this. But I realized I had written seventh
straight Myron Boultard. He couldn't tell he didn't have a
wife who died eight years ago. So who am I
going to create? Well, let's make him an interstity pediatrician
because my wife is one of those, so I get
the research that way. It's just simple, you know. Then
I started thinking about that character, um, and of course
I have to know I in my case, I know

(37:05):
the end most a lot of authors bon't. I know
the last twist. I knew when you've read The Boy
from the Woods. I knew it was going to be
on You know who did it? Who did what? Before
I started the book, I don't know everything, but I
know pretty much who did it and the meanning. How
I'm gonna get there. I have no idea how I'm
going to travel it. I have no idea about things
I see on the road, but I usually know the

(37:27):
beginning of the ending before I started. Okay, how long
how long does that process take before you actually start
writing the book? I say to I say, like right now,
I'm I'm doing one book a year. I would say
two or three months are downtime thinking about it, coming
up with the idea, Like I've finished a book, um

(37:50):
a month or two ago. Uh, which is my next
one called Win, which is about my character Win for
the first time, he's going to tell the story himself.
He's been Myron bulletar sidekick, and now he's gonna tell
his own story. And when I finished it, you know,
I thought of nothing for a while. It's like your
boxer and you just finished the twelfth round and you
threw everything you could. You've got nothing left, not a thing.

(38:13):
And then slowly, as time goes on, you know you're recovering.
You're the bruises are going down in the distance. You
start seeing another opponent you've gotta start facing. So now
I've started the wheel to turn. I've decided the next
book is going to be a sequel to The Boy
from the Woods. Because I left a lot of this.
I didn't tell you his origin story, and I feel
like I should. Um, so his next book will be

(38:35):
his origin story, which I kind of already knew when
I started this book. So it's a little bit easier
to start laying out. Okay, so the wheel start turning.
Then you see there are two or three months of downtime.
How long after the wheels start turning do you start
to actually write the book. It depends. I'm hoping to
get started in the next week or two. The TV

(38:57):
stuff interrupts me. Now, which is different from me than
a has been in the past, um, so I haven't
found it really hurts it at all. So my guess is,
I'm hoping, you know, next week of the week after
I've come up with the idea, I wrote my two
page synapses that I send my publisher UM to see
if they liked this idea and make sure that they're
on board. Two Um, and now I'm sort of I'm

(39:19):
ready to go. I gotta start. I gotta start, you know,
thinking about what are the first few chapters going to be?
How am I going to start it off? Okay? What
about now? Has your publisher ever said we don't like
the idea? Never? Okay, not yet? Okay. So when you
write the book, you're figuring out as you're writing all

(39:40):
the points in the middle pretty much. I mean again,
I compare to a journey. I'm in New Jersey, I'm
coming out to you in l A. I may go
Route eighty, but chances are i'll go via the Suez
Canal or stop in Tokyo, but I'll end up in
l A. But I may know a few places along
the way I definitely want to stop at, so I'll
know that, and then some character stuff I will leave

(40:03):
to the end, not to give anything away. On the
very last page of Boy from the Woods, I wasn't
exactly sure what he was going to do with this
one decision. It's not the answer to the mystery. It's
a personal decision that wild the Boy from the Woods makes.
I kind of thought I did, but I said, you
know what, let's just get there, write it, and as
you're writing, and to see what he decides to do.

(40:24):
And he actually did what I thought he was going
to do. But I wasn't sure until I actually started
to write it. So some things were organic, something's kind
of come to you, and some things are planned. And
is it about rewriting or is it about the first draft?
In terms of story, it's all about the first draft
for me. Um in terms of the under the fine tuning,

(40:46):
UM rewrite and rewrite a lot. I rewrite every day,
so I don't write, you know, straight ahead. I go
back at the start of each day and I rewrite, reread,
and rewrite what I wrote the day before. So I
start that way, and then every seventy five pages or so,
I go back to the beginning of the book and

(41:06):
reread it from there to make sure I still am
you know, it helps me get momentum. Is like getting
a running start to jumping, you know, like a long jump.
So I do that. So at a time I finish
a book, the first chapter is probably rewritten eight or
nine times. Ready. Um. Later stuff happens faster, and it's
easier to write once I get there because I've been

(41:28):
seeing it emerge for months on end. So the end
comes a lot faster to write than the beginning and
needs less rewriting. Do you enjoy this process? It's a
really good question, and it's one I don't know the
answer to. UM. A lot of writers have been given
credits for this. I give it. I first heard it

(41:48):
from Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, but I think
Dorothy Parker probably gets it most where she says, I
don't like writing. I like having written, UM, and I
think it's the same for a lot of it. I
think it's kind of the same for painting, and it
made me the same for recording. But I don't think
so not music slightly different. But if I said, you know,
we have friends and maybe you're one of them that
love the paint. I love to paint. Oh my god,

(42:10):
I love the paint. I'll spend the whole day painting,
But at the end of the day, if that canvas
is blank, did you enjoy it? If at the end
of the day, I have no words to show for
what I did all day, I don't think I would
say I enjoyed it. So it's a you know, now
we're getting into philosophical questions of creation versus creating and

(42:30):
all that. But what I write if no one ever
saw it, and no one ever read it, and I
never looked at it again, I don't think I would. Um,
that's that. That's that's being brutally honest. So I don't
think i'd necessarily enjoy that. But I love writing books,
and I love that moment when I'm in the in

(42:50):
the thralls of it. But I love it because I
know what's going to be is going to produce something.
It's like I'm building a house. If I build a
house and the end of the day I did, I
was hammering and I'm looking at coming together and I'm
really thrilled with it. But then the next day it's
completely gone and nothing's there. Did I enjoy it? I
don't know. Larger philosophical questions and very interesting in terms
do you have a rigid schedule in terms of writing,

(43:12):
I don't. I try, um best now in the mornings.
When I was younger, I was best in the evenings,
um my best days. Or when my kids were younger,
I would take them to whatever school. My wife a pediatrician,
so she had a real job. But I would take
them to school and I dropped them off or whatever
and go to a coffee shop to be there by

(43:33):
about eight or a fifteen. And if I could work
eight to noon straight, that would be a fantastic day,
get a couple more hours in the afternoon if I
was lucky. Um, Now it's harder, it's a little more hodgepodge,
and I might have to be a little bit more
self motivated. You know, a lot of the old motivations
are gone. It's you know, will you ever be a success?

(43:54):
Will you ever have in theother novel published? Will you
ever you know hit a best seller list? We ever had?
Tenderly ever get to one? Do you know? Are you
gonna be able to feature family? Those motivations are pretty
much gone. Um. So the motivation I have left really
is that I still love to tell stories. I still
love that communication with people, and also fear the fear

(44:14):
that what am I if I'm not this? UM? That's
I think it's a big part of all creative process
that the fear that we are that, UM, I have
no other marketable skills. I have to get a real
job if I didn't do this? What else am I
if I'm not this? The good things that in my
life that have come about by being a writer, like

(44:35):
being on your podcast, vanished if I don't continue to write.
So those motivations still move me UM as well. Okay,
do you say, oh, I don't write on the weekends
or every day is up for grabs? Do you have
a specific amount you want to accomplish? Are there certain
days you accomplish nothing? There's certain days I accomplished nothing,

(44:56):
especially media days. If I'm you know, uh, the Woods
came out out for Netflix on the maybe three weeks ago,
so like two or three days trade. I was on
Zoom with Poland doing you know, in Europe, doing news stories.
So I know those days it's not gonna happen, But
I think about it every day. I take notes every day.
There's never time I'll go out by the pool that

(45:16):
I won't bring a notebook with me or a laptop
with me. Even if I don't open it, It's on
my mind all the time, and I feel tremendous guilt
if I'm not doing it, if I'm not producing. So
you write at home, you have four kids, you have
a wife. Can you be interrupted? Um? Well, for a

(45:36):
lot of years I didn't. I mean by four kids
are grown now so they're not home. But when the
kids were home, it's one of the reasons I used
to write a coffee shops or libraries or wherever I
could other than being home. Home is not necessarily the
best place to write, especially the people around. But here's
the thing with writing. You'll use any excuse to avoid wedding,

(45:57):
any excuse. So if I'm home, I'll sit there, I'll go, oh,
you know, all right, but first, you know what, this
house needs aluminum siding. I end up put aluminium sliding
on that house. Then I'll get back to writing. So
if I'm out of the house in the old days,
two I would go to places that did not have
any internet, which the whole world does now, and so
I wouldn't be distracted or have excuses. A lot of

(46:19):
that is shutting out that noise um. I always wrote
on vacation. I used to joke because my kids were
in college. We took a couple of vacations, and I
would joke saying, if you wake up at six the morning,
seven morning, you can get a lot of work done
before your kids wake up, like six hours work, because
my kids wouldn't wake up to one and after now.

(46:39):
So I liked writing on vacation, like wading people's around around.
My wife used to joke there'd be times that the
kids would call her work about something and she said, well,
why don't you have dad? Where's dads me home? Yeah?
Dad songs the next room, But why don't you ask him?
I don't know, he looks like he's busy. So sometimes
my kids really had a lot of respect for my work,
and sometimes they didn't. Okay, but are you fearful of

(47:03):
did they mean? You're basically kind of answer the question.
They knew if you're working, don't interrupt you. There was times,
I mean, like, especially towards the end of the book,
I grew a playoff beard. I don't talk to anybody,
I don't change clothes, I smell they throw a banana
at me, so I have something to eat and then
they run away. Um so they yeah, I guess they
could send to something. I'm not to said they didn't

(47:24):
do it, but they were pretty good most literally my kids.
Maybe it says I raised them right in this way.
They were never very needy. When they were very little.
It was one thing, but they were like, oh, well,
you know, we want to talk to dad, we want
to hang with dad. They were that way. You know.
I never had to go to their schools. I never had.
I still can't name one teacher any of the four
had in high school. Don't just one jerk, but I

(47:45):
forgot his name right now too. So I was never
that kind of even though the kids did really well.
My youngest is a brown and they're kids, you know,
oh into grade schools. I think it was her mom
maybe more. My kids just didn't really need me that
much that way. Okay, So where did you grow Livingston,
New Jersey was right outside of new Ark. I was
born in Newark, New Jersey. And what were the circumstances

(48:07):
of your growing up? Uh, you know, it was sort
of idyllic. Uh. Sixties and seventies, mostly seventies are my memories.
Because I was born in sixty two. So I grew
up in the seventies and the eighties. Um, what did
your parents? My dad was? My dad worked as he was,
he was a practicing attorney, but he worked for his

(48:29):
vice president of a company that did laundry for like
restaurants and stuff like that. That was that was sort
of his job. My mother always had different, different jobs.
She was a school teacher I was very young. She
ran a travel agency when I got a little bit older.
She always worked, Um, and she was. My mom was
a tremendous early feminist. Um you know, our bit of

(48:53):
bumper sticker when I was a kid, saying, which I
think is still genius women whose tick to be equal
to men, lack ambition, which a genius women's place in
the house and sentate. We had all that stuff in
these My mom was very much and I wrote an
est day on her. She was the very first female
littleague umpire in the early seventies. Really, so she was
a Yeah, she was a firebrand. Both my parents died young. Um,

(49:17):
how relatively young. My dad was fifty nine, my mom
was sixty. Well to what did mean? You know? My
father died at seventy and when he passed. My mother said, well,
his dad died at seventy He never thought he'd ce
seventy two. What degree do you have that in the
back of your mind? A lot. I'm not turning fifty
nine next year, so I'm fifty eight right now. So yeah,

(49:39):
it's a it's a it haunts um he died. You
had heard issues, and a number of years ago I
met a great guy who was who was involved in
the hard stuff, and he said, if thoroughly checked me out,
and he said, you don't have your dad's heart. So
that gave me a sense to release because I've always
felt that was sort of mine, my curse. But yeah,
it was something that you kind of forget. So how

(50:02):
many kids in the family. I have four, my butter
to two butters, one older, one younger, so you're the
middle kid. I'm the middle kid too, although my siblings
are girls. So usually the hopes and dreams are in
the first one. The youngest one wants attention to the baby,
and you're in the middle, and you're kind of ignored,

(50:22):
both in good and bad ways. Was that your experience? No? No,
I mean my older brother my younger brother are both geniuses,
so both uh. I went to Yale undergraduate of Harvard Law,
perfect both perfect essay T scores. My brother graduated Harvard Law.
I think it's twenty one, so both of them were.
I was, relatively speaking, the dumb one in the family. Um,

(50:46):
but I also was the one with personality. Uh. I
don't really think the birth orders were also fairly far apart.
I was four years younger than my older brother and
five years older than my youngest brother, so there was
a pretty good spread there between all of us, so
we didn't really compete. We never were on the same

(51:07):
team's UM, so maybe that kind of helped a little
bit with that sort of a thing. Are you popular?
You have a lot of friends. I was, I was president.
You know. The funny thing is my senior year of
Livingston High School, I was president of the student council

(51:28):
and Chris Christie was president of the senior class. So um,
and I was actually practice what he preached. That was
a lazy affair government. I did not think as president casil,
I just didn't do a damn thing. But I was
captain the basketball team. I was president student council, so
you know, I I would say I was in the
mix certainly. It wasn't like a nerdy introvert who as

(51:50):
a writer. I was athletic. I played college basketball as well.
So how did you decide to go to Amherst Um.
I wanted a small were school where I could probably
you know, and actually because of my basketball UM and
having good grades, I could get into you know, Amerson.
I wasn't probably good enough to play Division one, so

(52:12):
I wasn't like I could have used it. I was
sort of, you know, a very good student, like a
lot of kids in my school. We're back in those days.
So what made me stand out was my basketball, and
Amirst wanted me UM for that, and it was sort
of the best school I thought I could make academically,
and I liked the small school environment. I had a
fairly big high school, one of a few people whose

(52:34):
college had a lot less people in the class um
in high school amirates at that time, I think, you know,
it was a really magical place for me there. I
learned a lot there, had a great liberal arts education
with no prerequisites whatsoever. Um, you didn't have to take
a math, you don't take a science and take any
of that sort of thing. Well, that bigs a question,
did you take math or science? I took one math

(52:54):
class and no science. I basically almost all the classes
I took were also because I was lazy. Um, I
took all. I took a lot of political science and
history and American studies and things. Where yet do I
two or three five page papers a day, which I
could a week or a semester, and I can always
take those, you know, if I did no work, I
didn't like reading any of the reading or whatever, I

(53:17):
could always take those and get a B plus versus
having you to take a test where you really have
to work. So part of it was being lazy. But
you know, I already I kind of thought I had
a knack for writing, necessarily realizing I'd want to be
a writer. Yet I wasn't one of those guys who
always knew UM. And I really enjoyed those classes. I
we had some great professors, small classes where you really

(53:38):
have a lot of give and take a lot of
the Socratic method. And really, I think what Amer's taught
me more than anything else, which has been helpful with
what I write is critical thinking and problem solving, which
is a lot of what my books really are. I
was probably better mess student in high school than I
was an English student. But it's not really that. The
writing was really about being able to see problems and
solve them. Did you play basket ball all four years? Yep? Yep?

(54:03):
In fact, I was a Jewish All American, Yes, right,
I was. It was There's not five Jews who played
college basketball and made a team. I guess. Okay, So
when your college career is over, do you play anymore ball?
Do you feel the absence? What goes on? I played
up until I was in my late forties, and then
I had a knee injury, and my friend, who was

(54:25):
a northopedic surgeon, said, you can keep playing like your
friends and end up on my table where you can
retire now and maybe not end up on my table,
and so I retired. I didn't push it after that,
so I've never had to have any surgery or anything
like that. But I played up until I was I
think forty seven or forty eight. I played and pick
up and I do miss that every once in a a while.
I still had that yearning, but you know, I've also

(54:47):
accepted it. It's times. Well, since you're a basketball player,
that pigs a question. How tall are you I'm six
f legit six four right right, asupposed everybody that lives. Okay,
you're in Amherst. What's it like being a Jew and Amherst?
It was. It was interesting because because I grew up
in Livingston, New Jersey, which is a very Jewish town,

(55:09):
so I hadn't really experienced all that much anti Semitism,
and an Amhurst, I started to a little bit nothing heavy,
but I remember in the first week or two they're
hearing people saying, stop trying to jew me down, stop
being a Joe, gave me the money, those sort of
things that I found somewhat shocking. Um uh, because it
was the first time I wasn't in a area that

(55:30):
was a majority of Jewish. But it really wasn't like,
you know, it wasn't like the movie school Ties or
anything like that. It wasn't like it was that horrific.
And there were other ones, so um yeah, I don't
think it was been fairly lucky. Also being an athlete
and that kind of a thing where I never really
experienced anything dreadful or serious. Okay, so you're in college,

(55:55):
any thought of what you're going to do for a living. None,
I mean, I was a political science major, which is
a euthemism for I have no idea what the funk
I want to do with my life. I was going
to go to law school because my brother all Rebutter,
gone to law school, my father had gone to law school,
and my aunt, my uncle, everybody had been a lawyer,
and it just seemed like the natural next step. Um.

(56:17):
And then my grandfather had a business that he needed
help with, so I deferred. I was actually gonna go
to Universe of Chicago law school. I deferred one year
and in two years, and then I never went to
think of this. Okay, so you're working in his business
doing what it's a travel business. I was setting up
tours overseas and writing the brochure and doing the marketing,

(56:38):
UM and stuff like that. Base you know, we had
a travel club. We would set up tours to Italy
or France or Asia wherever, we packaged them, sell them
to sell them to different people, to our members. And
that was what I did, Yeah for eight years? From yeah,
I did it for how long? Eight years? So when

(56:59):
did the belt of off that you wanted to be
a writer? My senior year of college when I first
started to do and That was how I sort of
talked about it going to law school. My grandfather sort
of said, if you go to law school, you're probably
not gonna ever write here why you're there, you can,
you know, work in this job, you can, you can
try to keep writing. Um, And I did, And then
I guess I had a book or two out before

(57:21):
that business imploded, and and then I went out on
my own. Well that begs a question of finances, because
if you're making five or six K a book, how
are you making rents? So to speak? Well, it's an
interesting time. Um. You know, my wife was working as
a pediatrician. So first of all, made I made. I

(57:41):
helped grow the business to the point where I was
making decent money with the family business for a little while. Um.
But then it did come to a stage when that
when that left that, I had a very good job
offer for a regular executive butt on a suit every
day kind of a job in Stanford, Connecticut. And I
didn't want to do it. And I was going to

(58:03):
do it because I had fighting family. My my wife
is probably their first kid. I guess around then, and
remember I said to my wife, I'd really like to
give this writing a shot with what the savings we
have and what you're making as a pediatrician. She's working
the publicly, she's working in a hospital. So it wasn't
like a ton um, can we do? You think we can?
We can do it, And I don't know how anybody

(58:25):
does without a supportive spouse. I had a super supportive spouse.
My wife was fantastic. She said, yeah, I give it
a go, and you know, but I mean so for
a little while, I just enough to contribute, not those days,
not the five or six thousand dollar stage, but then
you know, obviously became a worthwhile investment in the end.

(58:45):
But this is another thing that you know, you said
to right at the point where people sort of think,
if you don't hit it right away or you're supposed to,
you gotta move on to something else. And yes, publishers
may not be as patient as they were in those days,
but I don't think my publishers were patient. I think
I just so far under their under their radar, they
just didn't kind of notice. You know, it just was

(59:05):
being renewed at five thousand dollars a book for a
few years, and then I won a couple of awards,
and you know, I changed agents, and some things happened
where I made where I was able to to move
up the ladder a little bit, and then it was
fifty thousand and a hundred thousand, So you know, it
was that it was a slower, slower step. But I
get emails from people it's like, you know, I've written

(59:28):
three self published books and digital. How can I'm not
selling like you and Patterson? You know that's not how
it works. There's as a tremendous impatience nowadays, and um,
I almost like grumpy old man. But it's okay. It
was my tell No. One was my tenth published novel,
was my first New York Times bestseller, my tenth So

(59:49):
as long as you're let's drew down a little bit.
When you're working with your grandfather, are you writing at
that time? I am. My first two books were published
while I was still working, which is not a thing.
I don't know. You don't have to quit your job
to write. I don't know. That's just not true. Um.
In fact, it's pretty much. I think the opposite. You
have more of a hunger because you want to get

(01:00:10):
the hell out of that job. So, um, I were
you know, if it was gonna take you twelve months
to write a book. If you're working full time, maybe
it's like your four team months. And if you are
one of those people are gonna tell me you're too busy,
then writing is not that important to you. I'm sorry,
it's just not. Mary Higgins Clark is the example. My
dear friend who passed this yere, who I love dearly,
taught me so much about life. But Mary Higgins Clark,

(01:00:33):
when she was thirty six years old, has five children,
and her husband died the very next day. Her father,
her mother in law dies. So Mary, this is back
in the fifties or early sixties, thing of the fifties.
Still it's left the five kids, no husband, no prospects,
no one. She worked full time, so Mary would wake
up and she would write at her kitchen table from

(01:00:55):
five am to seven am before the kids woke up.
So don't tell me you don't have time to write,
because it's horseship, you know, turn off the TV, wake
up an hour earlier, skip lunch. So when I was writing,
when I was working full time, I was writing almost
as fast as I'm writing now. I just had it.
I would be thinking about it when I had that time, boy,
I would use it. And when did you write when

(01:01:16):
you had that full time job? Lunchtime, early mornings, but
mostly in that day because I was younger, mostly at night.
So if I finished work at five o'clock or whatever else, Um,
I would write from you know, seven to ten pm
or eight to eleven PM or nine to midnight something
like that. Ye skip the TV. Yeah whatever is How

(01:01:41):
did you meet your wife? We've been to get her
since I was in college where I was. I was
a sophomore and she was a freshman at Amer's College
and then both played college basketball. That's how we met. Wow.
Now that begs a question, especially since you have Jewish
references in your latest book. Is she Jewish? She is not?

(01:02:01):
That was a mixed marriage, early mixed marriage. How about
the kids? No, do your parents say anything? Um? My
parents are not very religious people. Um. And again my
dad died before I got married. Um. They both liked
their tremendous amount my wife, so it really was probably

(01:02:21):
more of an issue on her side where she was Catholic. Um,
you know, on our side. It was back in those
days that people it wasn't a mixed marriage, were not
a big thing. This was I got married. They were
just starting. It was like I remember, we had a
search for a rabbi and no rabbis would do it
because we want to do a mixed ceremony. Um. So
it was tricky, but it was hard maybe the beginning

(01:02:45):
when we first started, but we both I think softened
our stances on both of those being not very religious. Okay,
let's talk about telling no one the movie the book
is successful. What's the genesis of the movie out? First?
You know, I told the movie rights to that before
the book came out in America. Had you had you

(01:03:06):
sold book right movie rights to any book previously? I
had had small options on my Myron boultitar series, but
nothing like this. This was like a three studio auction
and it went for a lot of money. Um. And
it was more money than I've ever made on books combined.
Remember being in a bookstore on book tour in Scottsdale

(01:03:29):
getting calls. You know, Columbia moved up to here, Warner
Brothers moved up to here. So it was this is
almost a year before the book came out. I'm talking
about the early buzz. People just read it and saw
the potential for it. So I ended up selling it
or optioning a company optioned it in the US. It
was a long story. It was a weird offshoot company

(01:03:51):
and uh, you know, it's kind of The first script
was written by two well known guys I won't mention
your names that people can google and sometimes and find
it and it really they hated the first script. But
I also I understood right early on that you you know,
when you sell a book, you don't really get to
decide that sort of the thing. Um, And here's the
thing people don't realize. It's really hard. Always been really

(01:04:15):
hard to get a movie made from the book, really hard.
It's hard today still with all the streaming, and it
was really hard back then with all that money behind
and all of the meat, all the stuff that was
going on, all the talent behind it. Um, it was
really hard to get to that green light. They kept
changing they changed this director and that, and they kept
going back and forth. I tell the story too long,

(01:04:38):
but there's a there's a moment at the three year
mark when I had a chance of getting the book
back for a while, they were willing to give me
a lot more money to keep it again. But I've
been starting to get a call from this crazy French
guy named Gia Ken and I didn't know, you know,
I don't I don't really follow I didn't at the
time follow French and had no idea who Ken is
and somebody. Then then he had a tier in a

(01:05:00):
movie called The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kennedy was
the second lead in that. If you've ever seen that
movie The Beach, he was the French guy that hangs
out with Leonardo DiCaprio the home movie and version of Ludan.
So he was, you know, he was sort of the
Brad Pitt of France, and he was. He had directed
one movie he sent me a copy of. I was like, wow,
this is what was really good. It's got tremendous potential

(01:05:23):
Pomony Doll and he was telling me his ideas for
the movie. And it's kind of like it's gonna be
into an American film. There's nothing much I can do
about it. But when I had that chance of three
year mark and I saw how bad the scripts were,
I just didn't believe they were going to do it.
I said to Gione, if you can match the option money,
I'll tell Hollywood no and I'll give it to you,

(01:05:45):
and everybody told me I was absolutely nuts. But I
also knew that if France was going to put up
that kind of option money, Unlike Hollywood, which could piss
away that kind of money, the French could not. It
would have to be made. They just could not do
that unless they're gonna make the movie. And so I
went with my gut on it. And it's one of
the few times my gut was rook because we made

(01:06:06):
a really he made a marvelous movie out of it.
We had a great time making it. We're still friends
with all the people on and I still communicated with
a lot of It was a labor of love. No
one expected it to do what it ended up doing,
you know. And it ended up being the top grossing
foreign film in the US that year, which no one
expected it to do. We couldn't even get anybody first

(01:06:26):
to show it in America, um, because I said, oh,
you know, if if people want to watch a French film,
they want to watch Emily or something like that. They
don't want to watch a thriller. Why would they want
to watch a French thriller? Again, a million American thrillers,
but once it was shown here. It caught on and
became the biggest grossing foreign film of the year UM
that year in America and has become something of a

(01:06:48):
of a cult classic, which has really been fun. To
what degree were you involved in the production of the
movie more than most writers but not I didn't write
the screenplay. Giam ran a lot by me. UM. We
talked about it a lot, but I didn't really have
an official, an official role. I was on set a

(01:07:10):
number of times. We talked about it a lot, UM,
but this really was Giama's vision for the for the story,
UM and he kind of he really knew what he
wanted to do early on, and UM, I didn't really
have too many disagreements. One of the things, for example,
was most thrillers are dark. UM and Gillam had this

(01:07:31):
idea that we should really have this dark story but
with huge bright colors, something I still do with my
shows today. Yeah, you know that the lake is beautiful,
that seemingly's walking past, the pink roses are exploding out,
it's colorful, wonderful cinematography by Christopher Austen's time, and all
of those sort of things, and having the story dark

(01:07:54):
underneath it Um, it was really fun. I remember going
to a dinner in Paris where he had pictures of
all the actors he was going to show me who
was going to play the role, and how nervous he
was to sort of show it to me. Um. So
we had a great time making the film. I don't
think any of us. I certainly didn't think it was
going to be as big as they ended up becoming. Now,

(01:08:14):
from an outsider's viewpoint, it's nearly a decade before your
next visual production comes out, and Tell No One was
a giant hit. What was going on in that period.
It's like I said, it's hard to get things made. Um,
I thought the same thing. I'm like, wow, let Tell
No One. You know in France that did so well.
I'm sure Hollywood's gonna be knocking on the door and

(01:08:36):
making everything now. It's going to be you know. I
was feeling very confident, but it didn't happen like that.
You know, it happens. It's very strange, like we were trying.
We're still we are still trying to remake Tell No
One as an English language version of it. That movie
was made in two thousand six. I think it came
out it came out in the US and two thousand
and eight we have had Liam Neeson, ben Athleck um

(01:09:02):
uh oh my god z. The names are all passing me,
passing through me. Um who have been We had like
four or five major directors, four or five major stars attached.
We've written, they've written scripts, Chris Terryo who wrote one script,
the guy wrote Argo. We've had just for some reason,
it just hasn't happened. And I wish I had a

(01:09:23):
better answered meant that that's just the fickle way um
that Hollywood is. I've had a lot of them close
and then something would happen and it would fall through
where it would actually be kind of terrible, and I
would sort of not necessarily not with tell no when
something the other ones sort of managed to be able
to pull the plug myself because I could see it
was heaving in the direction I didn't want it to go. Now.

(01:09:44):
Other than John Grisham, a lot of people write a
lot of books and they're not made into visual productions,
whereas What Ship Your Stride? It seems like, you know,
there's a couple of years, but they're made overseas. Why
did that happen? Well, the manor receives for now um

(01:10:06):
again because I think the French the French movie did
really well. Tell no One and I joke on the
Jerry Lewis of crime fiction. I go very well in France.
For some reason. France is my biggest country relative to
the size of the population um, Bigger than the US,
bigger than anywhere else. So I've had a great relationship

(01:10:26):
with France. Once I had that movie, I started in
great relationships with the cinema over there, and so I
did two other TV series which were both enormous French,
The Enormous Business in France and Once the British Person
saw a woman named Nicholas Schindler. One of the things
is that I decided at some stage of the game

(01:10:48):
that I didn't want to just option my stuff to
Hollywood and and sit back. I was at an age
right it was not gonna be influenced by Hollywood, so
it wouldn't affect my book writing, which it would have
a number of years ago. So I I ignored it.
Part of the reason why nothing was being made was
I had the attitude I'm just going to option I'm
gonna have nothing to do with it after that, which
is what Hollywood actually want. So there's a joke is

(01:11:10):
you run up to a barbed wire fence, you throw
the book over, they throw the money over. You run away,
they run away. You know they always joke. You know
who cares what the movie was? Uh? Cash, there's the check,
cash clear um. And I reached the stage right, that
wasn't what I wanted anymore. I wanted good stuff made.
I didn't care if I made a penny from it,
but I wanted some good stuff made. So about four
or five years ago, I decided I was going to

(01:11:32):
get involved, and I met some a woman in England
named Nicholas Schindler who has a happy valley less tango
in Halifax, queer as folk wonderful quality productions. Uh not
high budget. We can make it on our own. We
can make it ourselves. The networks will leave us alone.
And so I've now done three series with her, we're

(01:11:52):
working on the fourth, and they've become bigger and bigger
as time has gone on, and she's been a pleasure
to work with. From that, Netflix seeing that, and because
I sell a lot of books overseas, Netflix realized, well,
you know, we can make these shows and other countries.
We can really pound our memberships in those countries because
they're gonna be so pleased, and yet we can also

(01:12:13):
show them all over the world. And this was really
heavy for me. I love this idea. I don't want
my adaptations to be the exact same as my books,
so I've embraced that. That said, there will be some
American productions down the line as well, but right now
we just got a Polish one. Next will be a
Spanish one, probably soon a French one. Um, and I

(01:12:34):
love that. I mean, it's been really great for me
and I've been able. I haven't had a show yet
where I go. I'm really ashamed to this, so this
is really really bad. Some shows are better than others,
but I've I've personally been happy met with them all.
So the first English production is The Stranger the Five First. Okay,

(01:12:54):
now some of these you they were they were not
based on a previous book, correct, So what was the
process there? But Nicola came to me she wanted to
to option one of my books, and one of that
book was optioned. It did a problem. You option a book,
somebody will hold on to it for three years or whatever,
not do anything with it. It tries me crazy, um

(01:13:15):
and still pay you. But you know again, I've never
been driven by the dollar. I've been driven by wanting
to make something good. So when Nicola came to me
to want to get this particular story, we started talking like,
I've always had this idea, but it's it's I've always
seen it visually. I may write it as a novel,
but as four lead characters, and it's kind of hard
as a novel. And I told her the idea for

(01:13:36):
the five and our eyes lit up and she's like,
do you know the ending? I'm like, yeah, I know,
I know the ending. I know at the beginning of
the end. And I think fifteen minutes later we had
Sky Network buying it. It was that very fast Sky
Network bordered that's down. Netflix hasn't here in the US
and Sky hasn't in the UK. So that's how it started.
I had this idea and then um, I had you know,

(01:13:59):
we want to do another went together at the time
we thought it was going to be for Sky. Um,
so I came up with another another idea that I
was working on, but I also didn't think would be
a good novel, necessarily great novel that would be very
visual and that became a show called Safe, and then
we did The Stranger. So okay, so these are originals
other than coming up with a concept. How involved are you? No,

(01:14:22):
it's not just the concept, it's the whole story. I'm
I'm the whole story. I write the whole story pretty much.
We all have better guys do the actual scripts. Um,
and sometimes guys who's doing episode six will be doing
at the same time as a guy doing episode three
or the woman. We've had half in half pretty much,
but all the whole story is mine, from beginning to end,
all the outline, you know, I work with maybe two

(01:14:45):
or three other people are the writer's room, but I
run the writer's room. I run So it's these are
not like, oh, here's an idea, UM, you guys do
something with it. I'm on every day. I watched over
three D audition tapes for the five Safe and The Stranger.
Each one of them I watched three each to do
this to do the casting. UM. By the by the

(01:15:06):
time we do The Stranger, they would send me hair
styles in the morning for me to make sure I'm
okay with UM. I watched the I watch them every day.
If they're shooting in the UK. Are you in the
U S Or the UK when they're doing this US?
But they can every morning. But they just got my
months from Spain. Every day, like I watched the Russians
from the day before. We just started refilming. Um, we've

(01:15:28):
been doing the show called The Innocence based off my
book The Innocent in Spain. The last you know, we
stopped for COVID. We just started up yesterday. So every
day when I wake up, I have an email in
the morning that has all three hours of whatever they
stayed filmed for me to watch the scenes, and I'll
then comment. I'll say, well, you know what, let's have
the guy hit a little more of this or do that,

(01:15:49):
or it's just perfect, keep doing what you're doing. So
I watched it. I watched them all every day. For
the English language ones, I have a lot. I am
the I am technically speaking, what we call the show runner.
And someone writes a script, to what degree do you
tweak that script after it's written completely? I mean as
a team, because it's very hard they're writing at the

(01:16:11):
different times. We have to make sure that you know,
if you're writing episodes six and someone else is writing
episode three that you have the same voice, and it's
a voice that's consistent with what we're doing. I've had
the same head writer in terms of scripts. The guy
named Danny Brocklehurst broke with me on all three of
those English language shows. And the next one we'll do
the same. We'll I'll rest write the first and the last,

(01:16:32):
so we have that kind of bookmark and we have
the voice that we we want. But Danny that working
very hard and very close together with a guy named
Richard C. So you know, it's a very small writer's room.
Tho shows have on the six A ten writers. It's
usually um, the three of us with Nicolaus isn't there too?
And called the core four and we've done basically those

(01:16:54):
are people who outline the show most of the story.
My job is most of the story. Dannie will do
a lot of the dialogue and the a cute setup
stuff like that. So it's more of a team effort.
But the story is usually made. And to what degree
you involved in editing? All right? Um? You know they
usually will send me rough edits and we again as

(01:17:15):
a team meet and say, you know, we need more
of this, less of that. Of this of that. Um,
so I'm not in the editing room, although I have
been actually sometimes, but um, you know, we we when
the editor sends the stuff out, we have a lot
of notes. It's it's a fairly active process. I kind
of enjoy it. You know, I've spent my whole life
alone in this room, this room basically you know that

(01:17:37):
we're sitting in now, and it's really been kind of
cool to be able to collaborate with other people. Actors too.
You know, they contact me because I had the whole
backstory on the guy, and actors laid backstory that they
probably not necessarily need to know. But um, it's been
a it's been a really kind of a cool process.
But traditionally movies, uh see, these TV shows take a

(01:18:01):
lot of time. How has that affected your schedule relative
to writing books? Polittic Having a team helps. We also
are all of us are no nonsense. I'll be honest.
I don't understand why things take as long as they do,
especially in Hollywood, but just in general, Um, every person
has written a script based off my one of my

(01:18:22):
books has taken longer to write the script than it
took me to write the books. I can't understand why
I gave you the whole goddamn story. I shouldn't take
you more than than six weeks. So part of it
is that the people that I work with were no nonsense.
We actually do the work, and so I don't think
we have to stay up twenty four hours a day,
laur any of that we'd be I'm completely obsessed with it,

(01:18:44):
and so are the people that work with. We all
hate this term. We all share the vision um. But
I do think that a lot of writers and screenwriters
waste time and as part of the business. And it's
almost like, well, I tell you, sure, I wrote one
script will mention for who Are based off one of
my novels and ends up not being made. So maybe

(01:19:04):
it wasn't all that good. But when I finished it
my age at the time, So what do you mean
you finished it already? Like it was how long it
was like two months? Two months? Ag? Well, you can't
say that. Let's just say it's not done yet. We'll
send it in a few more months later. So I mean,
let's tell that. So I think a lot of times
people are hustling for new business and doing other stuff
other than just sitting and writing. So that's my answer

(01:19:26):
to how we're able to do as much as we're
able to do even though it didn't get produced. Writing
a script is a different skill, and it's mostly dialogue.
Did you find that a hard transition? Is it something
you say? Well, I respect that, but I don't want
to do it. No, I don't. The problem for me
for scriptwriting is mostly from adapting my own thing. I'm

(01:19:47):
I'm too close to it, and I understand that, and
maybe I'm not the one who should be doing it.
But a lot of my books have a tremendous amount
of dialogue in them anyway. Um, so I didn't necessarily
find all the difficulty. Maybe that's why maybe it wasn't
not good of a script. I don't know. Um So
I don't find I don't necessarily find it difficult. I'm all,
you know. I tried. It's very hard. I tried, being

(01:20:09):
very open minded. I said, I don't want the book
to be the same as the TV series The Stranger,
for example. Um, and this, I didn't do this. Everything
I did to politically correct. That's not the reason. In
the book The Stranger, the person is giving the secrets.
It's kind of a nerdy teenage white male, which made
sense when I wrote the book ten years ago or whatever,
but visually it didn't work for me. Visually, even when

(01:20:32):
we tried men of all sorts, of raised queens and colors,
were kind of thinking of that person walking in that room.
In that first scene with which at Armitage they were,
the stranger drops the bomb about his wife baking your pregnancy,
and I'm like, I think we need a woman. I
think we need someone who's going to go in there
and just be like super cool and super hip. And

(01:20:54):
then we got Hinnah John Camman. As soon as I
saw her performed like, that's exactly what we want. That's
not how I wrote the character in the book, and
that's okay. That's it was better. You know. We did
that with the movie Tell Low One too. I told
Giam we had this as a Korean hit man in
the book, and that guy was in other books. I
said to Gilm, we can't use him. So he ended
up using this very muscular woman and she was scary

(01:21:17):
as hell in the movie Tell No. One. So a
lot of times we changed things, and in your fourth
most corners, it makes it stronger, not not not not worse. So,
what how long does it take to do one of these?
Uh ten episode series or eight episode series? Um? It
all depends, I think. Right now we're writing, for example,
so we're gonna do. I had a choice of the

(01:21:39):
other thing. We sort of a choice of doing a
Stranger season two or a whole new book. And yet
this is the third time I've kind of had that choice.
In the third time, I've chosen to go with the
whole new story. The problem for me is, you know,
I could do The Stranger again, but I don't know
if I could do it better. Um. I don't know.

(01:21:59):
You know I could if I thought about it. Um,
So I create the series with one season in mind,
I don't. I don't think it's fair, for example, to
not give you the answers at the end of the
five or The Stranger and just set up the season two.
That's just not what I'm doing. So I prefer to
make it just one season, so right, and doing a
season two of The Stranger, I don't rule it out.

(01:22:20):
Maybe one day down the line, but we're doing you
can do my book stay close. We've written one episode
so far. We'll probably start filming early next year. Um.
And then Netflix never. Netflix is very secretive. They never
I literally find out a month or two beforehand. When
it comes out, they don't even tell me. They're very
speaking about releases. Okay, Now recently, as I say, you've

(01:22:45):
had this Polish series The Woods, how did it end
up being made by poll? Into? What degree were you involved?
To what degree are you happy? Um? So the deal
that I find a deal with Netflix about it, I
guess a year or two ago, know, um to have
all the books that were still available that we're not
in my series, UM go to Netflix to be made

(01:23:08):
into hopefully into series that we can try and develop
into series. You don't expect them all to be made.
But we're doing a pretty good clip right now, the
right we're going. Um. And they were The idea was
for the International Division to control in the International Division
to make the decisions. So my first meeting with Netflix
and I went to their office is is they have

(01:23:29):
They just had a lot of brilliant people. And they
have a guy who does Netflix poem. The guy does
Netflix Germany, you know, Spain, whatever it is. And we
sat around and we saw which country would be best
for which ones, and then well let's see what they
come up with. Let let them send us in the pitch,
the producers in the pitch, and it's you know, they
have appeal, will continue it on our way. So we've

(01:23:51):
had a lot and some we've decided to go with,
some we haven't. And two of the first two well,
the first we're Netflix Spain looking at the innocent wanting
to do that, and I love the pitch they came
up with, and Netflix Poland especially having the idea which
I didn't write the book doing of the two different
time zones. Um I flashed back to the camp in

(01:24:12):
the in my case of the eighties, but they had
the idea of doing very Polish kind of summer camps
and current day with two different casts and all that,
and I just thought that was a really cool way,
um of telling the story. So uh, that's sort of
how we decided that. You know, other countries were looking
at it too, and then they talked about it. You

(01:24:33):
know that the negotiation. This country decided to take that one,
other countries decided to take that one. I'm happy with
what the pitches on it. Sometimes I'm not um and
then we go from there. We tried and we try
to to to make it good enough that that that
that Netflix ends up wanting to make it okay. So
the last one being the Woods. After the pitch the

(01:24:54):
pitches accepted, To what degree are you involved that one
the least? Again, I don't speak any Polish. I don't
know a lot of the cultural references and significances. You know,
you're a music guy, so you'll probably appreciate this. I
look at it like I had a hit single, hit song,
I wrote and recorded a hit song, and now a

(01:25:15):
Polish band wants to cover. I don't want it to
sound the same as me. I want them to bring
the Polish into it. I want them to bring Polish
culture and Polish sensibilities and what makes this band unique.
I don't who help wants them to cover the song
and sound exactly the same as my fand so. Um
there's things about the scripts I did not like when
they first sun it to me. There were things I

(01:25:36):
thought were not gonna work that worked better. Um, there's
a so some things I'm also wrong on, which I
find out if you watch the TV show. The lead woman,
Laura is married to an older man that wasn't the book,
and the book she was single when I first turned,
I'm like, why she marries an older man. I kind
of wanted to have it and that those things work

(01:25:57):
the best. I love the guy I want to bring
I want to bring them back in their own series.
I'm lovely they're gonna play Leon. He was so terrific.
So sometimes I'm wrong and and I get that. So um.
That was one change that they wanted to make. That
they that they that I wasn't sold on, but they
convinced me. At the end of the day, I have
to I I in that case, I didn't stand up

(01:26:18):
to a lot. I let them kind of do their things,
some of which I would would change now, and so
much I did change in the editen I saw the edit, um,
but most of which I'm really happy with the series.
If you like Saithe and and and Uh and The Stranger,
if you want that fast pacing, this is not that
the show few. This is a it's more character driven,

(01:26:39):
it's more atmospheric. Um, it's deeper. I think in many ways,
it's more emotional, but it doesn't give that wham bam,
let's twist here, let's twist there. Um Like my books
and and and I think The Stranger did so it's
very which I'm happy about. I don't want to repeat
The Stranger either, so it's a very different series. I'm
really happy with how it turned out. I tell people

(01:26:59):
that cannot watch it, it's a terrible dubbing job. They
did a terrible dubbing job. We were very rushed because
it was COVID going on. Please don't watch it. Please
watch it in its original polish with subtitles, and I
think you'll enjoy it. Um just going back again, how
do you juggle all this with your writing? I do

(01:27:21):
that now. I do mornings. That did that, So I
wake up early and the emails are here from the
from the TV shows, usually in the morning, and I
do them first as almost getting a bit of a
running start, and then I'll do the stuff afterwards. So
for today, for example, we're working on another show. I
had a zoom with my Core four about the show
that we're doing, because we had some questions is what

(01:27:41):
you know we're filling in the gaps? And then they
kind of come to me saying, well, we don't know
how's he gonna get from here to there. So we
met for an hour and did that, and that's all
I did on a TV thing today. Um, I haven't
yet watched my rushes from Spain, but I don't really
have to do that much with Spain anyway. We have
an unbelievable director and unbelievable talent there. I don't really
have to watch that very closely. So you know, it

(01:28:03):
is their shows in the end of the day, it's
their shows. With my story, I'm more involved than just
the guy who sold this novel, but it depends on
the country and what I and what I think they need.
I I wanted to push the Polish to be a
little bit more like me in the sense of being
a little bit faster moving, And what we ended up

(01:28:23):
with was faster moving than the first cut, which was
really really atmospheric. Could you like that atmosphere? You would
have loved the first cuts? But I'm like, no, dudes,
we can't have him take two minutes to get to
his office. It's got to be thirty seconds to get
to his office. So you know it's a negotiation or
back and forth. Yes, But in terms of writing your books,
how do you work that in when you're working on

(01:28:45):
all these TV programs. I just do. But so, but
here's the other thing. Uh, that's all I do. I
have no other life. I have no I mean I
golf that a little bit. I don't know. I have
no hobbies. I don't like to do anything. I'm not
a collector. Um, I'm a pretty boring guy. I'm not social.

(01:29:07):
So how many how many hours do you need to work?
And all this stuff? That's all I do. So I'm
home all day to day. Right, I'm taking an hour
or two doing this stuff, then an the restaurant. Okay,
your wife is a doctor that tend to seat up
a lot of time. But in terms of oh, it's
Saturday night, let's hang with friends. Whatever that does or
does not happen. Well, not during COVID it hasn't happened.
But yeah, Saturday night, you know we will we have

(01:29:29):
with him a friends who was wedding on a Saturday night.
I'm not, but I'll wake up early the next morning
on Sunday and all write why not? What what else
am I gonna do? All of my down all the downtime,
you know, I write. I try, and I'm always feeling guilty.
When I'm on the golf course. For example, I'm having
a few good moments because it's one of the few
things I do enjoy. There's always a voice in my

(01:29:50):
head that, you know, what, you should be home writing,
And even when I'm there my friends no one, I
get distracted, and all of a sudden, I like, go, oh,
wait a minute. You know if he goes that room instead.
It's just how you know, it's part of it is,
It's how the mind works. The views isn't a angelic
voice sitting on your shoulder. It's more like your mom's voice.

(01:30:11):
What no call? It's Friday night? You don't call your mother?
Why are you going out? What are you going through? So? Um?
You know, people, I felt tilling, like, how do you
have to do that? What else do I do it?
What else do you do? So that's all I do?
So um, I don't really and I don't go shopping.
I don't go to the mall. I may have a
lunch with a friend once a week. Um, but what

(01:30:31):
else is there to do? So during that downtime? This
is why the internet so bad. I kind of stay
to hell off the internet. That's where you waste How
many hours do you waste the day looking at your
social media stuff? Don't do it right? Instead? And how
have you a reader? Are you both now and through
your whole life? Um, I've been to I'll tell you now.

(01:30:53):
I'm getting better here. Beginning of COVID, I was really distracted.
I couldn't read, write at all. I'll read it much
at all. Couldn't write much heat at first few weeks.
But that settled back in faster than than the reading.
I think reading is harder than ever. I do think that, um,
that the Internet is training us not to be very
good readers, and I think I am sometimes I have

(01:31:14):
to guard myself against that where I am stopping every
two or three pages to check my phone. I don't
know that I'm checking my phone for. What do we
check our phones for. It's like the old bays, you remember, Bob,
when the mail would come and we would go to
the mailbox excited. I think ever came that was exciting,
We look at the man. It's the same thing now
on the internet we have we were looking for that
little that little hit. But growing up, were you a

(01:31:36):
big reader of books? I was a reader. I wouldn't say, yeah,
it's not if you look back, my friends aren't gonna
go oh. Harlon always had his nose in a book.
I was a decent reader above certainly way above average.
But again I wasn't the nerdy reading kid, the book
kid that that wouldn't be what I would have been.
People would know, would would say about me. I read

(01:31:58):
a fair but I read a fair amount. I had
a very active imagination. I was always trying to think
of stories. My mind works that way. Whenever I'm watching something,
it's not just figuring out what how that show is
going to do, which I can usually do, but also
things are eight other ways they could have done it. Um, well,
they could have done this, and you know other things.
That's just how um whatever natural abilities you're giving, that's

(01:32:21):
one of the ones. I was good solving, because I
said word problems in math, had a very good math
s a T score. I can see those sort of things.
I can see what's coming ahead, and so that sort
of stuff always played in my head. And can you
tell us the exact time and what was going through
your mind when you decided to become a writer I

(01:32:43):
had for the same family business ended up working. When
I was in college, I spent two summers in Spain
being the tour guide to the tour escort that watched
the Americans that came over. So this was eighty one
eight two right around there. So when you went on
vacation like this, the strips, you know, groups of fifty
would come over. I was in Acosta del Soul of Spain.

(01:33:05):
I was the guy who picked up at the airport.
I drove you there. I made sure you've got your room.
I sold you optional tours. I told you how you
can go to you know, Marbello or Managa or Seville.
And my job was to watch you. And I thought
it was a weird summer. It was a very weird that,
like most people wouldn't just make an interesting story, I
should write a book about this experience. And I came

(01:33:28):
back my senior year college and I did. I wrote
an entire novel my senior college on my own. I
tried getting a professor who would taken on as as
a thesis or something like that, but I hadn't taken
English classes, so no one would take me on. So
I just kind of wrote it myself and the book
was probably probably complete crap um. But from that I
got the writing bug um and started to write what

(01:33:49):
I loved, which were not what I call a novel
of the mersion. You can call a mystery or crime,
but I call it the book that you can't put down.
The book you take on vacation to santra Pe, but
you'd rather stay in your hotel because he can't wait
to find out what happens. And so I wrote three
or four before one got published when I was I
think it's twenty six and I was accepted for publication.
For the best way to learn how to write was

(01:34:10):
stact your weather novel. Sort a look at those as failures. Um,
you know, the first time you got into basketball accord
and you take a shot, I don't character Michael Jordan's
if you know, shout a basketball before it's gonna miss,
You're gonna be terrible. So I thought the best way
of learning to write, in hindsight is just right, write
a whole novel, Write two or three whole novels, and
don't get mad they don't get published. Understand, that's that's

(01:34:33):
your apprenticeship. Well, Harlan, this has been wonderful on so
many levels, the tales of writing, the tales of your life,
your insight. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Thanks Bob's great to finally meet you. In person, and
you have been during uh green the newsletter for a
long time, so it was great to hang it down
until next time. This is Bob less sense

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