September 11, 2025 • 49 mins
Lisa sat down with Chris Whitaker, who flew in from London, at Joss & Main! Chris was there to discuss his latest novel, All the Colours of The Dark. He shared writing tips, insight to the TV show adaptation and the Chris Rock slap!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. So I need to tell the story of
how this happened, Shannon, who's front and center here. A
(00:24):
friend this past spring said, Hey, I'm going to the
Jenna bush Hagar Book Festival in Nashville. You should come.
It would be really fun and you can meet a
lot of the writers and you have your book club,
so let's do it. So I talked to another friend,
my friend Nicole, to come along, and we had never
been to Nashville, and we bought the VIP tickets to
(00:46):
the Jenna bush Hager Book Festival. And who was there
but Chris Whitaker. And Chris's book was a Jenna bush
Hagar book pick. Jenna read with Jenna. So we were
talking and you're so lovely, and I thought to myself,
you know what, I'm just going to put myself out
there and I'm going to ask him to do Lisa's
(01:06):
Book Club in Boston. And that's how it happened. And
you are so kind and so generous, and you said absolutely,
let's do this, right.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, it was an easy one.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
You know, I'm in a five star hotel.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
We want to thank the Newberry Boston too, the Newbury
Hotel of Boston, because they did hook them up. But
I have to say the director of marketing is like
a huge fan of yours, so I'm telling you it
wasn't hard because she was like, oh my god, Chris
Whitaker is coming to the hotel.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So yeah, they upgraded me as well.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I know it. I know where it's like super excited.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Genuinely, I would have said yes anyway because you are
so lovely and you do so much for books, and
I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. No, so this is like such a coup that
we have you. So I don't know if you know this,
but All the Colors of the Dark has sold almost
two million copies and if you tack on the you're
number one paperback Near Times bestseller. And this has been
quite the ride for you, Right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's been an interesting year. Yeah, I've so, I've been
on tour since last June when the hardback came out,
and that was June twenty four, so I've been to
now twenty eight states. I live in just outside London
and would have done twenty eight states in a year
of like seven different tours in Australia and New Zealand
(02:32):
and all of Europe.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So can you take us back to when you found
out that you were a Jenna Pick? Like how did
that occur?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Jenna actually read the book for TV first as a producer,
maybe like a year before it came out, and I
didn't know, like sometimes with the celebrity book clubs, you
don't know if they're actually reading the book, and you
wonder how much time reseas and how much time Oprah has.
And so I took the meeting with Jenna, and she
just knew everything about the book, like she knew it
(03:05):
better than all of the other producers that I'd met with.
And so I found out probably about six months before
it came out that it was it was going to
be a pick. But they make you sign like a
blood oath. You cannot tell anyone that it's going to
be a pick.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So yeah, I think her dad read it too, right.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Her dad read it And then I say, I actually
got to meet him, which was really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, I know, I saw that I was on his Instagram.
You posted all the pictures. But yeah, this summery can
he went for it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
So I went there because I was doing a thing
for the Barbara Bush Foundation and did and I was
going to this cocktail thing in like the compound that
they live in, but it was in one of the
smaller houses, so I didn't know if he would be there.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And you have to do a Secret.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Service check, background check, and I've been arrested a few
times when I was so I thought that I.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Thought, there's no way that I can to get through
it this.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And so we rolled up to the gates and the
gates opened and I got in, and then and then
President Bush just turned up, gave a very good speech
off the cuff. He's really funny, really charming, and then
shook my hand and said, do you want to come
and see my paintings in the house?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And I didn't, really, No, I did, I did. I did.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I went with him and we had to look
around the house and the artwork.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And how many paintings did he have.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
That he had painted? They were on the walls like loads.
He was so talented, really really.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It's amazing that what a cool experience.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So when we when we met at the book festival,
we had a chance to chat a little bit about
All the Colors of the Dark, and I asked you,
how did you come up with this story? And you
had such an interesting answer about seeing a photograph of
a place in Missouri. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, So i'd written the last book, we Begin at
the End, and the first two thank you the one
person that's read it, thank you. So my first two books,
I wrote a book called to All. It's a book
called All the Wicker Girls. They kind of they did
well critically but didn't sell well, like loads of books.
And then We Begin at the End was this New
(05:17):
York Times bestseller and kind of life changing. But I
had the idea for this one before i'd finished that one.
And there was a really simple top line, pitch and
it is two abducted teenagers fall in love in the
pitch black basement they're being held in, having never seen
each other. The boy escapes, can't find his way back
to the girl. So it set up kind of like
(05:38):
a mystery and a bit like a love story. And
then I began writing it, and I needed a location
and I couldn't find anywhere. All my books are set
in the US. I knew it'd be set in the US,
and I'm quite visual, and I saw this photograph of
Dogwood Canyon in Missouri, and it was just a gut feeling,
(06:01):
you know that I need to at least that it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Needs to be in the book, this place.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I began to research Missouri and it fit in
loads of different ways what I was looking for demographically, geographically,
and I was supposed to write it in a year,
and five years later it came out.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Your publisher must really like you, right, So your backstory
and I don't know if you guys know this, but
he's You've had a lot happen to you. As a
young boy, you were abused, and then as a teenager
you were actually mugged and knifed several times. So these
(06:41):
sort of things that have happened to, these childhood traumas
really helped you create the character Patch in this book.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They did? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
They, But I didn't realize I was kind of drawing
on this experience when I was writing the character until
it became really difficult to write because in the book,
he's abducted, or he sees a girl being abducted, he
steps in, saves her, and he gets taken instead, so
they kind of switch places, and then he's held in
a pitch black basement for three hundred days. And I
(07:14):
found it so difficult to write, and didn't draw any
of the parallels between myself and this character until like
about two years into writing the book. But you know,
I'm someone that shouldn't be a writer. You know, I
shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be I shouldn't be meeting
the president. You know, it's not something that happens to
kids like me. I grew up in a really rough
(07:36):
part of London, and I went to a school where
no one becomes a writer. I went to school with
Amy Winehouse, but they say they recognized her talent and
came and kind of plucked her out and sent her
to stage school, and they left me behind. And so
I just had a group of friends who got into
(07:57):
a lot of trouble all the time. And I remember
the night before my economics exam, I went out and
I got so drunk that I missed the exam the
next day. And so that kind of put pay to university.
And I remember my I got a grade end in economics,
which I didn't know was a grade yes, and which
my economics teacher said, the end stands for no future,
(08:19):
which is yeah, which is like the meanest thing you
can say. And annoyingly, he died before I got really successful.
I left a book on his grave.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So that sucks. Inspirational though, the fact that you didn't
go to university and that you didn't have formal training
and writing and here you are writing New York Times bestsellers.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, but I don't, right, So I definitely wouldn't have
been a writer had I not been stabbed when I
was a teenager, because I was I was nineteen and
I was out working in London dropping leaflets through people's doors,
and someone came up to me and asked to borrow
my cell phone. And I knew I was going to
get mugged because I grew up in London. It was
a weird thing to ask, but it was also one guy.
(09:06):
And I've been in loads of fights as a kid,
so I thought, I'll fight you instead of giving you
my phone. You know, what's the worst that can happen,
And the worst that can happen is he brought out
a big knife and stabbed me, and it was such
a big knife. It went through my side and came
at my back, and I still didn't give him my phone,
and I wondered why that was. But it was really
(09:30):
formative because when I was a kid, my mum's boyfriend
was really violent with me, broke my arm when I
was a kid, and I hated that feeling of being
like a victim when I was a kid because at
nine year old me and ten year old me couldn't
do anything, nineteen year old me could keep fighting it.
I probably would have died rather than give the guy
on my phone. But afterwards was when I had loads
of problems. So I had loads of stitches and was
(09:51):
physically okay, but mentally didn't know what PTSD was, you know,
I didn't know what I was having such a hard time,
and I ended up in the library because the library
was like my safe place when I was a kid,
because my mum used to work three jobs and so
gave me a key to the house when I was eight,
and I hated to going home in the winter because
the house was dark, so I used to go and
(10:12):
sit in the library because the library was open late.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So I went to the library after I.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Was stabbed, and I borrowed a book on writing as therapy,
and it talked about this therapeutic exercise where you take
the trauma and you write about it, and you change
the people involved to fictional characters.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You follow all of these rules. So without a doubt, I.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Wouldn't have picked up a pen and written anything had
I not been stabbed.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Probably wouldn't have been stabbed, had I not have my
arm broken.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
I can follow all of these things that have happened
to me, both good and bad, that have led me
exactly here now talking to you about a book that
sold two million copies. You know that I wouldn't have
been able to write had these things.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Not happened to me, right, exactly, So writing basically saved
your life. I mean that's what you keep.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It did, Yeah, like again and again. But like so
I was.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I was nineteen, and I had done writing his therapy,
but I still had no desire to be a writer.
You know, I didn't know what I wanted to do
with my life. And I remember I was nearly twenty
and I've been doing the writing is therapy for a year,
and I remember my dad sitting me down saying, you've
got to do something with your life. And then I
picked up a newspaper and there was a picture of
(11:21):
a stockbroker and this guy had a ferrari and a yacht,
and I thought, I'm going to be a stockbroker, you know,
you know what could be simpler for them? For the
boy with a N in economics. You know, I'm going
to go and be a stockbroker. And I did you know,
I went and got thrown out of every bank in London,
and eventually one of them took pity on me and
gave me a job in client entertaining. So it was
(11:43):
my job to go out and get drunk and take
drugs and I was really good at it for the clients.
So I did that. And for context, there is there's
a strip club in London called Stringfellows and I went
in there so much and was such good friends with
the dancers that they came to my wedding.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And that's a true story, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It to my ex wife.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
So if you look at the photos of the wedding,
the entire back row of the church is the dancers
from stringing that, but I really wanted to be a trader.
Traders take the company money, reinvest it, and I used
to beg my boss let me sit on the trading desk.
I did it for about a year, and eventually he said,
on Monday morning, you can be a trader, but if
you lose twenty thousand dollars, you stop trading. So I
(12:31):
came in on Monday morning and I lost two million
dollars and I did it in like five minutes at
the beginning of the day. And I remember saying to
my friend who worked in the back office, don't tell anyone.
I'll make it back, which is illegal. And he didn't
tell anyone, and I couldn't make it back.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I just kept coming in every week and losing a
bit more money, until eventually I came in one day
and there was a big boardroom table. There's a glass wall,
and I could see all the lawyers sitting around it,
and there was an empty sea at the end of
the table for me. So I sat down, and they
knew what had happened, and they cut me a deal.
They said, if you pay back half the money yourself,
(13:09):
we won't go to the police. So I signed a
contract and I was twenty four, and I was in
a million dollars of debt, and I was planning this
big wedding because everyone thought I was this successful stockbroker.
And I went back to writing this therapy, you know,
for the next day. It took me five years to
pay the money back, and I kept writing for five
years until I was nearly thirty. I was out of debt,
(13:32):
and I had everything that I thought that someone like
me would never have, you know. I had a really
nice house, nice car, I was married, had a kid,
and I was really miserable. And one day I was
nearly thirty, they offered me a promotion, and I quit
my job and decided to try and become a writer
because writing was the only thing that made me happy.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Can you explain your process of what you go through
when you're writing a book, because I read that you
spend sometimes years just talking to your characters and going
on through it sounds right, but it seems really important
to how you write. So it say that.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
With this book, I did, you know, I had all
these problems with this book. I was I was going
to the seventies before I was born. I was going
to Missouri and never been to Missouri, and it was lockdown,
and that, you know, everything felt so different in lockdown,
you know, it was like the world was on fire,
you can shut the noise out. So I thought, I
had these two characters patch and saying, these kids that
(14:32):
I wanted to write about, and I wanted to get
to know them in the same way that you would
get to know people in real life. Like if you
think about how you got to know your friends and
your partner, it's through conversation.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's to asking questions listening to the answers.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So I sat down and for a year wrote nothing
but dialogue between these two characters, and then brought in
some other characters. And so by the time I came
to tell the story in year two, I knew everything
about these two characters. You know, I knew exactly what
Patri was do it If he was walking to school
saw a girl in trouble, he would jump straight in
without thinking about it, get himself into loads of trouble.
(15:06):
I knew what his best friend would do if he disappeared.
She would kind of move heaven and earth to find
him and be the person that never gives up. And
it was the only way that I could write this book.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Are you the kind of writer that will get up
and write in the morning and then you put it away,
or either the kind of writer that writes in the
middle of the night annoyingly.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I do both because I don't sleep very well and
so I don't have like a real set routine. I'd
just write constantly, and it was it became a problem
with this book because if the book isn't going well,
and a lot of the time when you're a writer,
it doesn't go well, it doesn't feel good, you know,
the story is not quite working. I let that bleed
(15:50):
over into my how it affects me, you know, And
I know I'm quite distant with my kids, and you know,
not the best partner. Definitely not a good person to
be friends with, because I cancel plans all the time
because if the book isn't doing going well, then I
don't want to see anyone. Yeah, and I did that
for years.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
You know, why did you have chapters? You have like
almost two hundred and fifty chapters in this book, like
some of them being one page. What was the reasoning
behind that?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That came about? Because I write out of order, so
kind of like how they film TV. I will sit
down and write whatever I feel like writing on any
given day.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And so, did you know the end before you started?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I always know the end of all the books.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I just isn't that amazing? A lot of writers say that,
why is that? Do you think?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think it's because you know what you want to
do with the characters. You know.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
With this book, I had this. I wanted to answer
the question, if you're a kid that has a difficult
start in life, can you still write the ending to
your own story? You know, because a lot of the
time in my life I felt like kind of like
I was written off as a kid, and I'm going
to I'm never going to achieve what I'm supposed to do.
And so I wanted to answer that question. And I
(16:56):
knew how to answer that question with these kids. I
knew the only way to answer that question was to
follow them into adulthood. So the book spans twenty seven years,
and when I was writing it, I found it so
hard to write the patch scenes in the basement that
I would write maybe for an hour, and then switch
and write something nicer, like them sharing their first kiss
or going to prom And so when I came back
(17:19):
in year three to putting the book back together, kind
of like hey, you put a jig saw back together.
I had all these shorter pieces of writing, so when
I was building the chapters, you know, there were natural
breaks constantly. And also, it's a book that spans twenty
seven years. You know it's going to be long. You
want to keep the pace up. You want people to think.
You know, a chapter isn't daunting. If you're going to bed,
(17:39):
you want to read one more chapter and it's a
page for two pages, it's.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Not I liked that.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Actually I did to.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, it's not a big commitment.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, you're right, and it was more of like a
complete thought and then you could kind of put it
down and go to bed.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I liked that. So another thing that is so unique
about you is that you're London, but you write about
places in the United States, like Missouri, like California, like Montana,
and you've never been to any of those places, but
you get it perfectly right. What is your secret?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's hard work, it's research. I haven't kind of obsessive
nature when it comes to writing and researching. I chose
America because when I did writing it's therapy. You had
to set your writing in the last place you were happy.
And as a nineteen year old i'd just been stabbed,
I was looking back at my life for the last
time I was happy, and I looked back to before
(18:38):
I had my armbroken when I was ten, and when
I was eight years old, my dad took me and
my brother to Disney World in Florida. So America was
like my happy place, Like my life was falling apart
in London, but I could sit down and mentally travel
four thousand miles to this place, you know, where I
was happier, where I could have this freedom to tell
these stories that I wanted to tell. But then you
(18:59):
have all these problems because if an American set a
book in London, I would be very critical of it.
I would be looking through it thinking, that's not my London.
You don't know London like I know London. So you
have to get it right, and to get it right
you have to spend years researching.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And I worked in a library.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It was my best job that I've ever had, and
I used to when the library closed, I would just
drown myself in maps and travel guides and old newspapers
and paintings and.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Everything you can think of.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And I found a website where you can listen to
people speak, which is as boring as it sounds, but
you can You could choose like you could choose someone
in Boston, and you could listen to someone read a
transcript and you can pick up on speech patterns like that,
so when you're writing dialogue you can get inflections, right.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That's so interesting. So he's been traveling now for the
past year and a half promoting the book. So you've
obviously visited some of the places that you've written about.
Are they as beautiful and wonderful as you had imagined
some of them? What wasn't or what places didn't really? Do?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
You know what I was talking about this earlier.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
They only send me generally to really rich places because
people have.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Loads of money and buy loads of books.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So when they're putting a tour together, I see the
most beautiful places in America. Like the tour began in
Aspen in Colorado, which is yeah. And then I went
to Nantucket.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, he was with Ellen and Tim talks Box. He
did their podcast, which is great.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So that and I went to Palm Beach, which is.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Like, yeah, great, Kenny Bunkport, Kelly Bunkport.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, just nice place.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Boston. Yeah, but I hear you really like Boston.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I could live in Boston. Yea, yeah, Well.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It's like kind of like London, right a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And my daughter like, she she's five, and she started
to speak a bit Boston, just out of the blue.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Instead of saying Garden, she said Gaden and I thought, yeah,
you could move it. She would fit right in.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah. He tried to get to into Fenway Park today
and they had like our last night and they had
a my Chemical Romance concert going. But but you'll have
to come back and you'll.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Have to I guess from the people going in.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, do you as just a person when you are
watching you know, I don't know if you watch television,
but do you watch crime dramas? Do you watch thrillers
or what's like or do you watch like The Bachelor
or like Love Island or you know, like or I
don't know, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
The Sopranos, like yeah, well that's yeah. So the narrator
of the audio book for All the Colors of the
Dark was in the Sopranos.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So yeah, and I found out after I had chosen him.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I chosen him because of that reason, but he was
the best, and I met him and got to ask
him loads about the Sopranos, and I met the Sopranos
super fan.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
How did you come up with the name All the
Colors of the Dark?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Was that you? I didn't know?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I didn't I'd written the book for four years without
a title, because it's so difficult to like, I've never
named any of my books successfully, Like you can call
a book one thing, and then the sales department get
involved marketing, it will get changed and all the Colors
of the Dark. The UK and the US hadn't agreed
on much during the editorial process. It was quite difficult,
(22:24):
and so this was the first title they agreed on.
And it really fits the book because it's about it's
about extracting positivity and kind of light and color from
something that seems overwhelmingly bad, you know, like I'm a
kid that wouldn't have picked up a pen and written
a book had I not been stabbed. In the book,
Patch is a kid that wouldn't have He paints his
(22:45):
idea of what the missing girl looks like, and he
discovers he's a successful artist. He goes on to become
a wealthy, successful artist. It's not a spoiler. He's a
kid that wouldn't have picked up a paintbrush and found
out he had this gift and it completely transforms his
life in the same way that I think it's transformed mine.
So that the title fits perfectly.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I think so too. There is a TV project in
the works. Can you give us sort of behind the
scenes of what's going on with that with this book specifically.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yes, I can so.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Like before the book came out, I took loads of
producer meetings, which is I thought I was going to
have to go and pitch the book, but you actually
fly all over the place and they pitch their ideas
to you, like big TV companies. And that was when
I met Jenna, but I'd also met I met with
Will Smith's production company. But this was like a week
(23:37):
after he had slapped Chris Rock and so I kept
saying to my agent, you know, I have to mention
the slab, and they were like, don't mention the slab.
And then I went to the meeting and they mentioned
the slab, but they spun it in such a funny way.
They said, really such a passionate guy, but sometimes the
(23:58):
passion ball was over into us that.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
But it's a good pr person.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
They weren't the right fit, and I didn't want to
get the slap right exactly. So I really I really
loved sun Agel, who was a producer of HBO for
she would for ten years when they made Game of Thrones,
you know, all the big Banner shows.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
She was the boss there. And I loved Jenna, and
I loved.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Universe or where Geordie Geordie's book Club he works. So
I asked me, being naive, I asked my agent if
they would all work together, and they said yes, because
if you don't ask, you don't get. And so I
have this dream team producing and they've written two episodes
and it's looking like it's going to be four seasons
of TV from one book, so a lot and.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Who would be like the dream cast for you? Who
would play Patch?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Do you know what?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I never agree with any of the and I get
sent a lot. People send me their ideas, and because
the characters are so real to me, they feel like
real people, I can't put a Hollywood face onto them. Yeah,
but I think Austin Butler would be a good patch.
Saying is a really difficult one, you know, saying.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Is people's ideas. Daisy Edgar Jones, Oh she would be great.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, I can't do it. I was mentioned at the
beginning and the guy from the Bear, Jeremy someone someone.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, yeah, hm, and you're going to executive produce.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, but I think, you know what, I think that's
a throwaway title that doesn't mean.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Anything like that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, I know it's kick.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
But I took it.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So they sent me the first two episodes and this
is the truth, and I thought my role as an
exec producer meant I could change it all.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So I crossed everything out and.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Rewrote the whole two episodes and I sent it back
again and they just completely ignored it. It was like I
hadn't even sent the email. But I was talking to
someone that has been through this process, a really big
author that has been through this process a load of times,
and he said, the best way to think of it
is there's a big brick wall. You're on one side
and the TV companies on the other. You throw the
(26:03):
book over and they throw over a bag of money,
and then you both go yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And so that's really helped to think of it like that.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I think so, So when do you think this will
come out?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Like a year at least a year away. TV is
very slow.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Okay. I was talking to Chris before we started and
he's working on another book. Can you talk about it?
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I am.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
It's called The Timekeeper and it's a love story and
it looks at the idea of time and fate and
how much control we really.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Have over those things. And it should be with you
in about twenty years.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
That's what I was going to say. Your publisher is like, okay, whatever,
but you have like street cred now, so you can
probably just say, oh, I just waited.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
For a broken their spirit. They no longer asked me
where my deadline.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Is so funny. So we were talking before about what
you like to read, and I want you to share
a book that you said you absolutely loved with group here.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So there is a book called Buckeye that has just
come out by Patrick Ryan and it came out last week.
I think it's that the new gena pick and it
is perfect. It's a perfect book, and there's not many
of them in the world.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Do you think that All the Colors of the Dark
is a perfect.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Book I do.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Do you know why I never get nervous for anything ever,
Like my ex wife says, it's sociopathic. I can do TV,
it doesn't matter whatever it is. I just don't feel anything.
But when All the Colors of the Dark was coming out,
I was nervous, and it was because I knew it
was the absolute best that I could do. And I thought,
(27:41):
if people don't like this book at the moment, cannot
give any more. So I felt kind of vulnerable for
the first time ever. And so that's you know, I
couldn't change a word in the book.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, your characters in all of your books are so
there are the underdogs a lot of times. But how
do you create ate this this sense of connection with them?
It's just so real, right, and you just feel you
feel like you know Saint, You feel like your your
(28:12):
friend in school was Misty or you know, you knew
a patch growing up, right, Like, how do you do
that so well?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I think it evolves.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
You know, it feels like they're strangers at first, and
you just you begin to look forward to spending time
with them in the same way that you would with
your real friends. And you know they got me through
such a difficult time. I had the worst lockdown.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I am.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
The day before we bought a new house and the
day before lockdown we took the roof off the house
because we were doing a big project. And the next
day we couldn't get a roof, so wow.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And then my daughter was born, so we had a
new born baby.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
There's a video on my phone, newborn baby screaming and
it's just raining and I'm trying to cover it. And
then I still trade in the stock market amazingly, and
the phone rang and it was the financial police in
the city, the FCA, and they said they were going
to arrest me for stock market manipulation, and they did.
(29:12):
They did arrest, but it was the strangest arrest because
I went into my lawyer's office in London and it
was lockdown so you couldn't go anywhere, and the police
arrested me remotely on zoom and they so they said,
while they were reading me my rights, I had the
very strong urge to close the laptop and.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, so this is a true story.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, so it's kind of I was kind of living
this nightmare, you know, like, and it was it was
this book that got me through it. Like, it's a
funny story that I tell now, but at the time
it was. It was a reminder to me that, you know,
like we begin at the end was a New York
Times bestseller, this was going on. This was a reminder
that for kids like me, you know, your one mistake
away from ruining everything.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Do you remember what chapter you wrote right after that happened?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I wrote Sammy?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Actually, I really There's a character called Sammy in it,
and he is a womanizing drunk and I wrote some Sammy.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I love sim That's interesting. Yeah, do you have a
favorite character like or do you? Okay, that's a question.
But then also to follow up, do you dream about
your characters at night?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I don't dream about them I ever.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Do you ever think about them when you're walking down
the street?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, constantly. I do that constantly.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And I won't lie if there is a part of
the book that's not going well, if there is a
paragraph that I don't like, I won't be able to sleep,
and I'll lie there and I'll get up at four
am and change the paragraph and go back to bed.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And I do that constantly. It's exhausting, and it's there.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are you not a good sleeper. Yeah, I told them
to take trasido and that's what I take. Works for me,
I know, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
But yeah, my best my favorite character. I think Saying
is the best character that I've ever written. And I
mean that in the sense that she is the best
person you could ever meet. You know, we should always
say lucky as they have a Saying in our life.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Right to have a friend like that, so say it
would be your answer. Wow, So I asked you, so,
what was the last show you binged on TV?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I don't have that much time. I tend to watch
things on planes on aeroplanes. But I watched like crappy movies.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's like a crappy movie that you liked.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Well, no, it's not crappy.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
But if if Wedding Crashes is ever on, I have
to watch it.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I love it. Yeah, I really love it.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah it was your favorite American actor.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
That is a really tough one. I'm a Vince worn fan,
you know, since I love Swingers. I love that movie.
It's so much.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
I would not have picked that for you really good. No,
how about a favorite British actor actress?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
So I would go Paul mezcal Irish he's great.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, Normal People.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I don't know if anyone watch Normal People, but that
is perfect television. That's a series that I could watch
again and again, you know, every few years.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Is so good and I love the book as well.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So do you get invited to like lavish London parties now,
like if.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
I'm ever there in London? And I do, but I'm
never there. I'm always around touring.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, yeah they have, they've had you like working like
so much. But that's great because you get to visit
all these fun places. He's actually going out to Montana
after this, yeah, tomorrow morning, Yeah, which is a setting
and yeah, and we begin at the end, yes, so
I feel like that should be amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
And then I go to Vegas. It's well, I've never
been to Vegas.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, this is good. Do you guys have any questions
for Chris anyone?
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
It's you know, I never go into too much detail
about skin color and what people look like, but I like,
you know that people can make up their own minds.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, okay, normal Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I've had loads of people suggest that, and Sammy as well,
and you know, come up with different ideas and different endings,
and I won't ruin the ending, but I had one.
I was doing a thing with Jenna and someone put
their hand up and said the patch the character was Jesus,
and like, really truly believe that I had written this
character as Jesus. And there's there's a bit later and
(33:47):
she thought he was walking on water. And it's just
some people see what they want to see or what
they need to see.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Maybe anyone have le Lisa, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Do you think you're a risk taker at heart? Because
hearing your call your backstory, it just seems like you
never gave up. You always put yourself out there, Like
would you describe yourself?
Speaker 3 (34:42):
No, I think I think it was you know, like,
looking back at it, I think it was crazy to
quit my city job, you know, like I carry I
have all this guilt for it for years because it's
really hard to be an author. It's really hard to
make money. Most people don't make any money as a writer.
So quitting my city job and and then what I
worked three jobs for the next decade, and I missed
(35:03):
so much of my kids growing up, and it felt
like this selfish thing to do. But then I did
an event with Nita Prose, the author, and.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
She reframed the way I look at it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
She said, if you're on an aeroplane and it starts
going down and the oxygen mask dropped down, you're with
your kids, what do you do first? You have to
put your own mask on so you can help your family.
And me leaving the city behind and leaving that life
behind was me putting on my oxygen mask and say
I felt better about it. But certainly the younger me,
(35:33):
you know, definitely reckless. You know, I just didn't ever
consider consequences, you know, and just seem to get in
trouble a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
But I think your backstory is so helpful for so
many people. I mean, none of us have perfect lives.
We all make mistakes, and to keep going back and
to keep trying to figure out what's going to make
you happy is what you really did in the end
in a really peaceful way. I mean, writing became something,
really it did.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, but it could easily not worked out true, Yeah,
And but I think I still probably would have been
happier working three jobs and writing all night. And I
would certainly write even if no one were to ever
read a word or I'm writing because I need it,
you know, I feel like it's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, any other questions, Yeah, I just wondering. Books you
have favorite.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Is better than I do.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Actually, I think every book gets better, Like there's no
way I think this is by far the best one,
and then we begin at the end closely behind. And
you know, it's funny in publishing because everyone is looking
in publishing for like the shiny new debut, and they
throw loads of money at the shiny new thing, and
invariably your first book isn't your best book because like
(36:50):
everything else you do, the more you do it, the
better you should get the more you get paid. In publishing,
it's the other way around. So I'm really glad that
it was my third book that did really well and
my fourth book that really really well because my best
book did the best.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Do you feel pressure now with the next one to
kind of raise the bar?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I think that, you know, they keep trying to give
me deadlines, and they'd like, yeah, it was so that
the deadline for the new book was Christmas twenty four,
I don't know, and then it was Christmas twenty five,
and I just I think that because I've been through
so much in my life and I've been in loads
of dead and I've been in trouble, and I just
(37:29):
don't respect the deadline.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I just not.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's not that I love my team. I love my team,
I love my agents, I love my publishers. But it
will take as long as it takes. And you know,
if they want me to write the best book that
I can, it will take as long as it takes.
And you know, I owe it to everyone that spends
that harder money on the book. You know, it should
be the absolute best that I've got author a favorite
(38:02):
classic author. You know, I'm really not well read. Shockingly,
So the book the book that kind of changed my life.
Like I was working in the city, I was nearly thirty,
and I read a book called The Last Child by
an author called John Hart is an American author, and
it's a book. It's this beautifully written story about a
missing child. And I read it, and then that night
(38:24):
I googled John Hart and I read this interview with
him and he talked about how he was a successful
lawyer and one day just quit his job to do
something that made him happy.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
So the next day, I quit my job because this
American that I had never met did it. And then
and then.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I got to do I got to speak to John
Hart and tell him that he kind of changed my life.
And I was doing an event in Charleston, and I
knew that John Hart lived in Charlottesville. And I looked
at the map and they were like that far apart.
So I said to my publisher, can you send me
to John Hart? And they said it's a nine hour drive.
(39:00):
I can you send me anywhere? And they sent a
car drove me nine hours. And I went and met
John Hart, who's like my hero, and he said, oh, come,
we'll have lunch together. I'm in a small book group
with me and my friend John and this other guy,
and we'll go out and we get really drunk.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
We have a boozy lunch.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And I got there and I went to the lunch
and his friend John was John Grisham.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, so I had I had this really boozy lunch
John Grisham.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
It was really fun.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Ah, this has been such an adventure, right, such an adventure.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, do you know what?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I've forgotten his name, the other guy, but he was
he was lovely and an. But you know the glare
from John Grisham.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Ye, what was he like? Was was he everything you
thought he would do?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
He was like, it's just really funny.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So I think we think how hard this is to
get into a conversation. Bear in mind, we weren't talking
about it. John Grisham managed to drop in the fact
that he was once named the sixth sexiest man in America.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Okay, you know who else was? Ben Mezrich was People
Magazines sexiest bachelor from Boston, and we still talk about it.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
So Grisham managed to get that in, and I really
respect to it, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I guess, well, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Almost never like it's a difficult process because sometimes when
you get your edits, it can read like a long
list of everything that you've done wrong, and you need
quite thick skin and you can't be precious about it.
And I know loads of authors that are too precious,
but I think you have to really respect them. Like
my editor is a New York legend called Amy Einhorn,
and she did Big Little Lies and The Help and
(40:47):
so many amazing books, and so she's like the best
in the business. But she told me that I couldn't
have a child in the dark for three hundred days.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
She said, readers won't like it. It's too long.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
And I knew that I needed it and I needed
you know, and I knew that I could because it's
not written gratuitously and most of the scenes are kind
of funny because he's held with this girl and we
watched them fall in love. So it was the one
time that I kind of kicked back and and I
rewrote a lot of it and gave it back to
her and we got there in the end.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But well, that time frame, because Shannon and I were talking,
was kind of ambiguous because some people thought it was years.
Some people thought it was a year. So you're saying
it was almost a year.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
It was, yeah, three hundred days, but it's left kind
of yeah, but it's just it's just a very short
part of the book. Interesting with this book or just
in general, do you know what, I don't know. I
(41:49):
think everyone British grew up watching American TV, you know,
so yeah, we grew up watching the X fives and
things like that, you know, and the Simpsons and and
just yeah, and just.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But you know, the Sopranos, is the only one that
sticks out in my head as being you know, kind
of it does the impossible, you know, it humanizes these
people that are kind of monsters and makes you root
for them and want the best for them.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
And it's really clever. How it's done.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Do you write Longhand like I know that some writers
in notebooks? Or do you do like the computer?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Like, how do you know?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
So I write across three screens, which is kind of
a hangover from being a trader.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I'm used to a lot of a lot of screens.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Yeah, And on the middle screen will be the manuscript
what I'm writing, and on the left hand screen will
be photographs of the scene I'm writing. And I always
I use the example of Saint walking in the woods
in Missouri, because she does that a lot in the book.
So I have photographs of Missouri in the seventies, the
woods everywhere all over the left hand screen. On the
right hand screen will be a list of everything that
(42:48):
Saint can see and hear and feel, and so it
will be what kind of birds are singing, what flowers?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You know, what do they smell? Like?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
If she steps in to the ground, will she leave
a footprint? And so I, and then I overwrite the
scene massively. You know, I'll write the scene in such detail,
and then I'll cut it again and again and again
until you're left with a single paragraph that makes you
feel like you're standing right next to Saint taking the
walk with her. And I do that for every scene
in the book, and so that's why it takes so long.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So interesting. Is there someone in your life that you
would give your pages too to read?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
No one, and if you know what, it really bothers everyone.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, that is friends with me and and partners, and
you know everyone wants to read it first, and no
one will get it.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
My agents. I have two agents uk Us. They are
the first people that will get the book.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
So interesting. Oh that is such a good question. I
would maybe Paulie.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I love Pauli, but yeah, but Tony, you know I
fall in and out in love with throughout this season.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Did you like the ending?
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I did like the ending?
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yeah, I know lots of people didn't, but I like, yeah,
I don't need everything tied up in me. But I
like that things are a snapshot of time, you know,
like you joined the characters at one point, you leave
them another point that life went on before we met them,
and we'll go on after we meet them. Who's yours
out of interest? And that's the genius of the show
(44:31):
that they can do that to you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Any other question, there is one.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I think it's about overwriting, and I do it. Like
I think the book is about one hundred and thirty
five thousand words. I wrote about five hundred thousand words
during the process. And it's just about fully immersing yourself
in it. Like there's a part of the book where
Patch gets a job in a mine. He leaves school
and gets a job in a mine, and I knew everything.
I could have been a miner in Missouri in the
(45:31):
early eighties. I spent a month learning everything about mining.
And that is a single paragraph in the book. It
got cut down to like five lines. It was a
throwaway scene. But to me, there are no you know,
there's no throwaway scenes in the book. You know, I
will overwrite and do that level of detail. And I
learned about pirates and beekeeping and playing the piano and
painting and everything my characters know.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
I need to know what was the most favorite thing
that you learned, Like, what when you were researching, was
it beekeeping.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Or do you know what a lot it's a there's
purple honey in the book. It's only made in North Carolina,
I think it is, and nowhere else on earth, and
they still can't quite work out why. But it looks magical,
and loads of people, like when I do signings I
just did Washington two days ago, people will bring me
(46:21):
jars of purple honey. Really yeah, and if you hold
it up to the light, it looks like it's from
a different world. It doesn't taste very good, but it's
not as sweet.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, Jody Peker, we read mad Honey and that's sort
of a similar like made from like rhododendrons or something
the use. But yeah, so I think beekeeping is fascinating.
Always love funny. I've seen it in books. Any other questions.
(46:53):
Do you have any advice?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I think I'm the worst person that.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Young people of today. Yeah, you know what the only
writing if they're trying to tell stories that the advice
that I would give everyone is don't start at the beginning.
You know, there's so much pressure at the beginning of
a story, you know, to get it right to hook.
People say, you can't possibly know what you're doing at
(47:19):
that point, skip straight ahead and write the thing that
you really want to write, you know, the scene that
you are really looking forward to.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
I would skip ahead. And I so my kids.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Their schools keep kind of they keep writing to me,
phoning me, asking me to come in and talk to
the kids. And my kid my sons beg me not
to go in to school like that, like the fear
in their eyes, and you know, and now I use
it as like, you know, if I want them to
do something, it's like a threat. I will come in
and talk with your story. So probably best not to
(47:50):
invite me.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
I had to say, that's one of the best pieces
of advice I've ever heard from any writer is don't
start a like, start with something that you really want
to talk about and what you love. Right, but it's
so awesome.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, and it's fine. I don't like I get asked
about writer's block.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
You know what do I do When I get writer's
block and I know it I'm stuck with what I'm writing.
I will go and write something that feels completely different,
and invariably that scene will make its way back into
the story, maybe three hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Down the lots.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
One more, one more question.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yes, he was like Christopher's junkie friend that botches the
hit on phil Leotada.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
This is my encyclopedic nerdy knowledge. Yeah yeah, is that guy?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Well this was fabulous.
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. So I need to tell the story of
how this happened, Shannon, who's front and center here. A
(00:24):
friend this past spring said, Hey, I'm going to the
Jenna bush Hagar Book Festival in Nashville. You should come.
It would be really fun and you can meet a
lot of the writers and you have your book club,
so let's do it. So I talked to another friend,
my friend Nicole, to come along, and we had never
been to Nashville, and we bought the VIP tickets to
(00:46):
the Jenna bush Hager Book Festival. And who was there
but Chris Whitaker. And Chris's book was a Jenna bush
Hagar book pick. Jenna read with Jenna. So we were
talking and you're so lovely, and I thought to myself,
you know what, I'm just going to put myself out
there and I'm going to ask him to do Lisa's
(01:06):
Book Club in Boston. And that's how it happened. And
you are so kind and so generous, and you said absolutely,
let's do this, right.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, it was an easy one.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
You know, I'm in a five star hotel.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
We want to thank the Newberry Boston too, the Newbury
Hotel of Boston, because they did hook them up. But
I have to say the director of marketing is like
a huge fan of yours, so I'm telling you it
wasn't hard because she was like, oh my god, Chris
Whitaker is coming to the hotel.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So yeah, they upgraded me as well.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I know it. I know where it's like super excited.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Genuinely, I would have said yes anyway because you are
so lovely and you do so much for books, and
I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. No, so this is like such a coup that
we have you. So I don't know if you know this,
but All the Colors of the Dark has sold almost
two million copies and if you tack on the you're
number one paperback Near Times bestseller. And this has been
quite the ride for you, Right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's been an interesting year. Yeah, I've so, I've been
on tour since last June when the hardback came out,
and that was June twenty four, so I've been to
now twenty eight states. I live in just outside London
and would have done twenty eight states in a year
of like seven different tours in Australia and New Zealand
(02:32):
and all of Europe.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So can you take us back to when you found
out that you were a Jenna Pick? Like how did
that occur?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Jenna actually read the book for TV first as a producer,
maybe like a year before it came out, and I
didn't know, like sometimes with the celebrity book clubs, you
don't know if they're actually reading the book, and you
wonder how much time reseas and how much time Oprah has.
And so I took the meeting with Jenna, and she
just knew everything about the book, like she knew it
(03:05):
better than all of the other producers that I'd met with.
And so I found out probably about six months before
it came out that it was it was going to
be a pick. But they make you sign like a
blood oath. You cannot tell anyone that it's going to
be a pick.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So yeah, I think her dad read it too, right.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Her dad read it And then I say, I actually
got to meet him, which was really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, I know, I saw that I was on his Instagram.
You posted all the pictures. But yeah, this summery can
he went for it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
So I went there because I was doing a thing
for the Barbara Bush Foundation and did and I was
going to this cocktail thing in like the compound that
they live in, but it was in one of the
smaller houses, so I didn't know if he would be there.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And you have to do a Secret.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Service check, background check, and I've been arrested a few
times when I was so I thought that I.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Thought, there's no way that I can to get through
it this.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And so we rolled up to the gates and the
gates opened and I got in, and then and then
President Bush just turned up, gave a very good speech
off the cuff. He's really funny, really charming, and then
shook my hand and said, do you want to come
and see my paintings in the house?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And I didn't, really, No, I did, I did. I did.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I went with him and we had to look
around the house and the artwork.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And how many paintings did he have.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
That he had painted? They were on the walls like loads.
He was so talented, really really.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It's amazing that what a cool experience.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So when we when we met at the book festival,
we had a chance to chat a little bit about
All the Colors of the Dark, and I asked you,
how did you come up with this story? And you
had such an interesting answer about seeing a photograph of
a place in Missouri. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, So i'd written the last book, we Begin at
the End, and the first two thank you the one
person that's read it, thank you. So my first two books,
I wrote a book called to All. It's a book
called All the Wicker Girls. They kind of they did
well critically but didn't sell well, like loads of books.
And then We Begin at the End was this New
(05:17):
York Times bestseller and kind of life changing. But I
had the idea for this one before i'd finished that one.
And there was a really simple top line, pitch and
it is two abducted teenagers fall in love in the
pitch black basement they're being held in, having never seen
each other. The boy escapes, can't find his way back
to the girl. So it set up kind of like
(05:38):
a mystery and a bit like a love story. And
then I began writing it, and I needed a location
and I couldn't find anywhere. All my books are set
in the US. I knew it'd be set in the US,
and I'm quite visual, and I saw this photograph of
Dogwood Canyon in Missouri, and it was just a gut feeling,
(06:01):
you know that I need to at least that it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Needs to be in the book, this place.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I began to research Missouri and it fit in
loads of different ways what I was looking for demographically, geographically,
and I was supposed to write it in a year,
and five years later it came out.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Your publisher must really like you, right, So your backstory
and I don't know if you guys know this, but
he's You've had a lot happen to you. As a
young boy, you were abused, and then as a teenager
you were actually mugged and knifed several times. So these
(06:41):
sort of things that have happened to, these childhood traumas
really helped you create the character Patch in this book.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They did? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
They, But I didn't realize I was kind of drawing
on this experience when I was writing the character until
it became really difficult to write because in the book,
he's abducted, or he sees a girl being abducted, he
steps in, saves her, and he gets taken instead, so
they kind of switch places, and then he's held in
a pitch black basement for three hundred days. And I
(07:14):
found it so difficult to write, and didn't draw any
of the parallels between myself and this character until like
about two years into writing the book. But you know,
I'm someone that shouldn't be a writer. You know, I
shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be I shouldn't be meeting
the president. You know, it's not something that happens to
kids like me. I grew up in a really rough
(07:36):
part of London, and I went to a school where
no one becomes a writer. I went to school with
Amy Winehouse, but they say they recognized her talent and
came and kind of plucked her out and sent her
to stage school, and they left me behind. And so
I just had a group of friends who got into
(07:57):
a lot of trouble all the time. And I remember
the night before my economics exam, I went out and
I got so drunk that I missed the exam the
next day. And so that kind of put pay to university.
And I remember my I got a grade end in economics,
which I didn't know was a grade yes, and which
my economics teacher said, the end stands for no future,
(08:19):
which is yeah, which is like the meanest thing you
can say. And annoyingly, he died before I got really successful.
I left a book on his grave.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So that sucks. Inspirational though, the fact that you didn't
go to university and that you didn't have formal training
and writing and here you are writing New York Times bestsellers.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, but I don't, right, So I definitely wouldn't have
been a writer had I not been stabbed when I
was a teenager, because I was I was nineteen and
I was out working in London dropping leaflets through people's doors,
and someone came up to me and asked to borrow
my cell phone. And I knew I was going to
get mugged because I grew up in London. It was
a weird thing to ask, but it was also one guy.
(09:06):
And I've been in loads of fights as a kid,
so I thought, I'll fight you instead of giving you
my phone. You know, what's the worst that can happen,
And the worst that can happen is he brought out
a big knife and stabbed me, and it was such
a big knife. It went through my side and came
at my back, and I still didn't give him my phone,
and I wondered why that was. But it was really
(09:30):
formative because when I was a kid, my mum's boyfriend
was really violent with me, broke my arm when I
was a kid, and I hated that feeling of being
like a victim when I was a kid because at
nine year old me and ten year old me couldn't
do anything, nineteen year old me could keep fighting it.
I probably would have died rather than give the guy
on my phone. But afterwards was when I had loads
of problems. So I had loads of stitches and was
(09:51):
physically okay, but mentally didn't know what PTSD was, you know,
I didn't know what I was having such a hard time,
and I ended up in the library because the library
was like my safe place when I was a kid,
because my mum used to work three jobs and so
gave me a key to the house when I was eight,
and I hated to going home in the winter because
the house was dark, so I used to go and
(10:12):
sit in the library because the library was open late.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So I went to the library after I.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Was stabbed, and I borrowed a book on writing as therapy,
and it talked about this therapeutic exercise where you take
the trauma and you write about it, and you change
the people involved to fictional characters.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You follow all of these rules. So without a doubt, I.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Wouldn't have picked up a pen and written anything had
I not been stabbed.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Probably wouldn't have been stabbed, had I not have my
arm broken.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
I can follow all of these things that have happened
to me, both good and bad, that have led me
exactly here now talking to you about a book that
sold two million copies. You know that I wouldn't have
been able to write had these things.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Not happened to me, right, exactly, So writing basically saved
your life. I mean that's what you keep.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It did, Yeah, like again and again. But like so
I was.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I was nineteen, and I had done writing his therapy,
but I still had no desire to be a writer.
You know, I didn't know what I wanted to do
with my life. And I remember I was nearly twenty
and I've been doing the writing is therapy for a year,
and I remember my dad sitting me down saying, you've
got to do something with your life. And then I
picked up a newspaper and there was a picture of
(11:21):
a stockbroker and this guy had a ferrari and a yacht,
and I thought, I'm going to be a stockbroker, you know,
you know what could be simpler for them? For the
boy with a N in economics. You know, I'm going
to go and be a stockbroker. And I did you know,
I went and got thrown out of every bank in London,
and eventually one of them took pity on me and
gave me a job in client entertaining. So it was
(11:43):
my job to go out and get drunk and take
drugs and I was really good at it for the clients.
So I did that. And for context, there is there's
a strip club in London called Stringfellows and I went
in there so much and was such good friends with
the dancers that they came to my wedding.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And that's a true story, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It to my ex wife.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
So if you look at the photos of the wedding,
the entire back row of the church is the dancers
from stringing that, but I really wanted to be a trader.
Traders take the company money, reinvest it, and I used
to beg my boss let me sit on the trading desk.
I did it for about a year, and eventually he said,
on Monday morning, you can be a trader, but if
you lose twenty thousand dollars, you stop trading. So I
(12:31):
came in on Monday morning and I lost two million
dollars and I did it in like five minutes at
the beginning of the day. And I remember saying to
my friend who worked in the back office, don't tell anyone.
I'll make it back, which is illegal. And he didn't
tell anyone, and I couldn't make it back.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I just kept coming in every week and losing a
bit more money, until eventually I came in one day
and there was a big boardroom table. There's a glass wall,
and I could see all the lawyers sitting around it,
and there was an empty sea at the end of
the table for me. So I sat down, and they
knew what had happened, and they cut me a deal.
They said, if you pay back half the money yourself,
(13:09):
we won't go to the police. So I signed a
contract and I was twenty four, and I was in
a million dollars of debt, and I was planning this
big wedding because everyone thought I was this successful stockbroker.
And I went back to writing this therapy, you know,
for the next day. It took me five years to
pay the money back, and I kept writing for five
years until I was nearly thirty. I was out of debt,
(13:32):
and I had everything that I thought that someone like
me would never have, you know. I had a really
nice house, nice car, I was married, had a kid,
and I was really miserable. And one day I was
nearly thirty, they offered me a promotion, and I quit
my job and decided to try and become a writer
because writing was the only thing that made me happy.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Can you explain your process of what you go through
when you're writing a book, because I read that you
spend sometimes years just talking to your characters and going
on through it sounds right, but it seems really important
to how you write. So it say that.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
With this book, I did, you know, I had all
these problems with this book. I was I was going
to the seventies before I was born. I was going
to Missouri and never been to Missouri, and it was lockdown,
and that, you know, everything felt so different in lockdown,
you know, it was like the world was on fire,
you can shut the noise out. So I thought, I
had these two characters patch and saying, these kids that
(14:32):
I wanted to write about, and I wanted to get
to know them in the same way that you would
get to know people in real life. Like if you
think about how you got to know your friends and
your partner, it's through conversation.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's to asking questions listening to the answers.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So I sat down and for a year wrote nothing
but dialogue between these two characters, and then brought in
some other characters. And so by the time I came
to tell the story in year two, I knew everything
about these two characters. You know, I knew exactly what
Patri was do it If he was walking to school
saw a girl in trouble, he would jump straight in
without thinking about it, get himself into loads of trouble.
(15:06):
I knew what his best friend would do if he disappeared.
She would kind of move heaven and earth to find
him and be the person that never gives up. And
it was the only way that I could write this book.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Are you the kind of writer that will get up
and write in the morning and then you put it away,
or either the kind of writer that writes in the
middle of the night annoyingly.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I do both because I don't sleep very well and
so I don't have like a real set routine. I'd
just write constantly, and it was it became a problem
with this book because if the book isn't going well,
and a lot of the time when you're a writer,
it doesn't go well, it doesn't feel good, you know,
the story is not quite working. I let that bleed
(15:50):
over into my how it affects me, you know, And
I know I'm quite distant with my kids, and you know,
not the best partner. Definitely not a good person to
be friends with, because I cancel plans all the time
because if the book isn't doing going well, then I
don't want to see anyone. Yeah, and I did that
for years.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
You know, why did you have chapters? You have like
almost two hundred and fifty chapters in this book, like
some of them being one page. What was the reasoning
behind that?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That came about? Because I write out of order, so
kind of like how they film TV. I will sit
down and write whatever I feel like writing on any
given day.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And so, did you know the end before you started?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I always know the end of all the books.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I just isn't that amazing? A lot of writers say that,
why is that? Do you think?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think it's because you know what you want to
do with the characters. You know.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
With this book, I had this. I wanted to answer
the question, if you're a kid that has a difficult
start in life, can you still write the ending to
your own story? You know, because a lot of the
time in my life I felt like kind of like
I was written off as a kid, and I'm going
to I'm never going to achieve what I'm supposed to do.
And so I wanted to answer that question. And I
(16:56):
knew how to answer that question with these kids. I
knew the only way to answer that question was to
follow them into adulthood. So the book spans twenty seven years,
and when I was writing it, I found it so
hard to write the patch scenes in the basement that
I would write maybe for an hour, and then switch
and write something nicer, like them sharing their first kiss
or going to prom And so when I came back
(17:19):
in year three to putting the book back together, kind
of like hey, you put a jig saw back together.
I had all these shorter pieces of writing, so when
I was building the chapters, you know, there were natural
breaks constantly. And also, it's a book that spans twenty
seven years. You know it's going to be long. You
want to keep the pace up. You want people to think.
You know, a chapter isn't daunting. If you're going to bed,
(17:39):
you want to read one more chapter and it's a
page for two pages, it's.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Not I liked that.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Actually I did to.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, it's not a big commitment.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, you're right, and it was more of like a
complete thought and then you could kind of put it
down and go to bed.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I liked that. So another thing that is so unique
about you is that you're London, but you write about
places in the United States, like Missouri, like California, like Montana,
and you've never been to any of those places, but
you get it perfectly right. What is your secret?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's hard work, it's research. I haven't kind of obsessive
nature when it comes to writing and researching. I chose
America because when I did writing it's therapy. You had
to set your writing in the last place you were happy.
And as a nineteen year old i'd just been stabbed,
I was looking back at my life for the last
time I was happy, and I looked back to before
(18:38):
I had my armbroken when I was ten, and when
I was eight years old, my dad took me and
my brother to Disney World in Florida. So America was
like my happy place, Like my life was falling apart
in London, but I could sit down and mentally travel
four thousand miles to this place, you know, where I
was happier, where I could have this freedom to tell
these stories that I wanted to tell. But then you
(18:59):
have all these problems because if an American set a
book in London, I would be very critical of it.
I would be looking through it thinking, that's not my London.
You don't know London like I know London. So you
have to get it right, and to get it right
you have to spend years researching.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And I worked in a library.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It was my best job that I've ever had, and
I used to when the library closed, I would just
drown myself in maps and travel guides and old newspapers
and paintings and.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Everything you can think of.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And I found a website where you can listen to
people speak, which is as boring as it sounds, but
you can You could choose like you could choose someone
in Boston, and you could listen to someone read a
transcript and you can pick up on speech patterns like that,
so when you're writing dialogue you can get inflections, right.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That's so interesting. So he's been traveling now for the
past year and a half promoting the book. So you've
obviously visited some of the places that you've written about.
Are they as beautiful and wonderful as you had imagined
some of them? What wasn't or what places didn't really? Do?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
You know what I was talking about this earlier.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
They only send me generally to really rich places because
people have.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Loads of money and buy loads of books.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So when they're putting a tour together, I see the
most beautiful places in America. Like the tour began in
Aspen in Colorado, which is yeah. And then I went
to Nantucket.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, he was with Ellen and Tim talks Box. He
did their podcast, which is great.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So that and I went to Palm Beach, which is.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Like, yeah, great, Kenny Bunkport, Kelly Bunkport.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, just nice place.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Boston. Yeah, but I hear you really like Boston.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I could live in Boston. Yea, yeah, Well.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It's like kind of like London, right a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And my daughter like, she she's five, and she started
to speak a bit Boston, just out of the blue.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Instead of saying Garden, she said Gaden and I thought, yeah,
you could move it. She would fit right in.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah. He tried to get to into Fenway Park today
and they had like our last night and they had
a my Chemical Romance concert going. But but you'll have
to come back and you'll.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Have to I guess from the people going in.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, do you as just a person when you are
watching you know, I don't know if you watch television,
but do you watch crime dramas? Do you watch thrillers
or what's like or do you watch like The Bachelor
or like Love Island or you know, like or I
don't know, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
The Sopranos, like yeah, well that's yeah. So the narrator
of the audio book for All the Colors of the
Dark was in the Sopranos.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So yeah, and I found out after I had chosen him.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I chosen him because of that reason, but he was
the best, and I met him and got to ask
him loads about the Sopranos, and I met the Sopranos
super fan.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
How did you come up with the name All the
Colors of the Dark?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Was that you? I didn't know?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I didn't I'd written the book for four years without
a title, because it's so difficult to like, I've never
named any of my books successfully, Like you can call
a book one thing, and then the sales department get
involved marketing, it will get changed and all the Colors
of the Dark. The UK and the US hadn't agreed
on much during the editorial process. It was quite difficult,
(22:24):
and so this was the first title they agreed on.
And it really fits the book because it's about it's
about extracting positivity and kind of light and color from
something that seems overwhelmingly bad, you know, like I'm a
kid that wouldn't have picked up a pen and written
a book had I not been stabbed. In the book,
Patch is a kid that wouldn't have He paints his
(22:45):
idea of what the missing girl looks like, and he
discovers he's a successful artist. He goes on to become
a wealthy, successful artist. It's not a spoiler. He's a
kid that wouldn't have picked up a paintbrush and found
out he had this gift and it completely transforms his
life in the same way that I think it's transformed mine.
So that the title fits perfectly.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I think so too. There is a TV project in
the works. Can you give us sort of behind the
scenes of what's going on with that with this book specifically.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yes, I can so.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Like before the book came out, I took loads of
producer meetings, which is I thought I was going to
have to go and pitch the book, but you actually
fly all over the place and they pitch their ideas
to you, like big TV companies. And that was when
I met Jenna, but I'd also met I met with
Will Smith's production company. But this was like a week
(23:37):
after he had slapped Chris Rock and so I kept
saying to my agent, you know, I have to mention
the slab, and they were like, don't mention the slab.
And then I went to the meeting and they mentioned
the slab, but they spun it in such a funny way.
They said, really such a passionate guy, but sometimes the
(23:58):
passion ball was over into us that.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
But it's a good pr person.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
They weren't the right fit, and I didn't want to
get the slap right exactly. So I really I really
loved sun Agel, who was a producer of HBO for
she would for ten years when they made Game of Thrones,
you know, all the big Banner shows.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
She was the boss there. And I loved Jenna, and
I loved.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Universe or where Geordie Geordie's book Club he works. So
I asked me, being naive, I asked my agent if
they would all work together, and they said yes, because
if you don't ask, you don't get. And so I
have this dream team producing and they've written two episodes
and it's looking like it's going to be four seasons
of TV from one book, so a lot and.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Who would be like the dream cast for you? Who
would play Patch?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Do you know what?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I never agree with any of the and I get
sent a lot. People send me their ideas, and because
the characters are so real to me, they feel like
real people, I can't put a Hollywood face onto them. Yeah,
but I think Austin Butler would be a good patch.
Saying is a really difficult one, you know, saying.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Is people's ideas. Daisy Edgar Jones, Oh she would be great.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, I can't do it. I was mentioned at the
beginning and the guy from the Bear, Jeremy someone someone.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, yeah, hm, and you're going to executive produce.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, but I think, you know what, I think that's
a throwaway title that doesn't mean.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Anything like that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, I know it's kick.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
But I took it.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So they sent me the first two episodes and this
is the truth, and I thought my role as an
exec producer meant I could change it all.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So I crossed everything out and.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Rewrote the whole two episodes and I sent it back
again and they just completely ignored it. It was like I
hadn't even sent the email. But I was talking to
someone that has been through this process, a really big
author that has been through this process a load of times,
and he said, the best way to think of it
is there's a big brick wall. You're on one side
and the TV companies on the other. You throw the
(26:03):
book over and they throw over a bag of money,
and then you both go yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And so that's really helped to think of it like that.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I think so, So when do you think this will
come out?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Like a year at least a year away. TV is
very slow.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Okay. I was talking to Chris before we started and
he's working on another book. Can you talk about it?
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I am.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
It's called The Timekeeper and it's a love story and
it looks at the idea of time and fate and
how much control we really.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Have over those things. And it should be with you
in about twenty years.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
That's what I was going to say. Your publisher is like, okay, whatever,
but you have like street cred now, so you can
probably just say, oh, I just waited.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
For a broken their spirit. They no longer asked me
where my deadline.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Is so funny. So we were talking before about what
you like to read, and I want you to share
a book that you said you absolutely loved with group here.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So there is a book called Buckeye that has just
come out by Patrick Ryan and it came out last week.
I think it's that the new gena pick and it
is perfect. It's a perfect book, and there's not many
of them in the world.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Do you think that All the Colors of the Dark
is a perfect.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Book I do.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Do you know why I never get nervous for anything ever,
Like my ex wife says, it's sociopathic. I can do TV,
it doesn't matter whatever it is. I just don't feel anything.
But when All the Colors of the Dark was coming out,
I was nervous, and it was because I knew it
was the absolute best that I could do. And I thought,
(27:41):
if people don't like this book at the moment, cannot
give any more. So I felt kind of vulnerable for
the first time ever. And so that's you know, I
couldn't change a word in the book.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, your characters in all of your books are so
there are the underdogs a lot of times. But how
do you create ate this this sense of connection with them?
It's just so real, right, and you just feel you
feel like you know Saint, You feel like your your
(28:12):
friend in school was Misty or you know, you knew
a patch growing up, right, Like, how do you do
that so well?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I think it evolves.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
You know, it feels like they're strangers at first, and
you just you begin to look forward to spending time
with them in the same way that you would with
your real friends. And you know they got me through
such a difficult time. I had the worst lockdown.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I am.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
The day before we bought a new house and the
day before lockdown we took the roof off the house
because we were doing a big project. And the next
day we couldn't get a roof, so wow.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And then my daughter was born, so we had a
new born baby.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
There's a video on my phone, newborn baby screaming and
it's just raining and I'm trying to cover it. And
then I still trade in the stock market amazingly, and
the phone rang and it was the financial police in
the city, the FCA, and they said they were going
to arrest me for stock market manipulation, and they did.
(29:12):
They did arrest, but it was the strangest arrest because
I went into my lawyer's office in London and it
was lockdown so you couldn't go anywhere, and the police
arrested me remotely on zoom and they so they said,
while they were reading me my rights, I had the
very strong urge to close the laptop and.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, so this is a true story.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, so it's kind of I was kind of living
this nightmare, you know, like, and it was it was
this book that got me through it. Like, it's a
funny story that I tell now, but at the time
it was. It was a reminder to me that, you know,
like we begin at the end was a New York
Times bestseller, this was going on. This was a reminder
that for kids like me, you know, your one mistake
away from ruining everything.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Do you remember what chapter you wrote right after that happened?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I wrote Sammy?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Actually, I really There's a character called Sammy in it,
and he is a womanizing drunk and I wrote some Sammy.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I love sim That's interesting. Yeah, do you have a
favorite character like or do you? Okay, that's a question.
But then also to follow up, do you dream about
your characters at night?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I don't dream about them I ever.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Do you ever think about them when you're walking down
the street?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, constantly. I do that constantly.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And I won't lie if there is a part of
the book that's not going well, if there is a
paragraph that I don't like, I won't be able to sleep,
and I'll lie there and I'll get up at four
am and change the paragraph and go back to bed.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And I do that constantly. It's exhausting, and it's there.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are you not a good sleeper. Yeah, I told them
to take trasido and that's what I take. Works for me,
I know, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
But yeah, my best my favorite character. I think Saying
is the best character that I've ever written. And I
mean that in the sense that she is the best
person you could ever meet. You know, we should always
say lucky as they have a Saying in our life.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Right to have a friend like that, so say it
would be your answer. Wow, So I asked you, so,
what was the last show you binged on TV?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I don't have that much time. I tend to watch
things on planes on aeroplanes. But I watched like crappy movies.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's like a crappy movie that you liked.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Well, no, it's not crappy.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
But if if Wedding Crashes is ever on, I have
to watch it.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I love it. Yeah, I really love it.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah it was your favorite American actor.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
That is a really tough one. I'm a Vince worn fan,
you know, since I love Swingers. I love that movie.
It's so much.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
I would not have picked that for you really good. No,
how about a favorite British actor actress?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
So I would go Paul mezcal Irish he's great.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, Normal People.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I don't know if anyone watch Normal People, but that
is perfect television. That's a series that I could watch
again and again, you know, every few years.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Is so good and I love the book as well.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So do you get invited to like lavish London parties now,
like if.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
I'm ever there in London? And I do, but I'm
never there. I'm always around touring.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, yeah they have, they've had you like working like
so much. But that's great because you get to visit
all these fun places. He's actually going out to Montana
after this, yeah, tomorrow morning, Yeah, which is a setting
and yeah, and we begin at the end, yes, so
I feel like that should be amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
And then I go to Vegas. It's well, I've never
been to Vegas.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, this is good. Do you guys have any questions
for Chris anyone?
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
It's you know, I never go into too much detail
about skin color and what people look like, but I like,
you know that people can make up their own minds.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, okay, normal Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I've had loads of people suggest that, and Sammy as well,
and you know, come up with different ideas and different endings,
and I won't ruin the ending, but I had one.
I was doing a thing with Jenna and someone put
their hand up and said the patch the character was Jesus,
and like, really truly believe that I had written this
character as Jesus. And there's there's a bit later and
(33:47):
she thought he was walking on water. And it's just
some people see what they want to see or what
they need to see.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Maybe anyone have le Lisa, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Do you think you're a risk taker at heart? Because
hearing your call your backstory, it just seems like you
never gave up. You always put yourself out there, Like
would you describe yourself?
Speaker 3 (34:42):
No, I think I think it was you know, like,
looking back at it, I think it was crazy to
quit my city job, you know, like I carry I
have all this guilt for it for years because it's
really hard to be an author. It's really hard to
make money. Most people don't make any money as a writer.
So quitting my city job and and then what I
worked three jobs for the next decade, and I missed
(35:03):
so much of my kids growing up, and it felt
like this selfish thing to do. But then I did
an event with Nita Prose, the author, and.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
She reframed the way I look at it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
She said, if you're on an aeroplane and it starts
going down and the oxygen mask dropped down, you're with
your kids, what do you do first? You have to
put your own mask on so you can help your family.
And me leaving the city behind and leaving that life
behind was me putting on my oxygen mask and say
I felt better about it. But certainly the younger me,
(35:33):
you know, definitely reckless. You know, I just didn't ever
consider consequences, you know, and just seem to get in
trouble a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
But I think your backstory is so helpful for so
many people. I mean, none of us have perfect lives.
We all make mistakes, and to keep going back and
to keep trying to figure out what's going to make
you happy is what you really did in the end
in a really peaceful way. I mean, writing became something,
really it did.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, but it could easily not worked out true, Yeah,
And but I think I still probably would have been
happier working three jobs and writing all night. And I
would certainly write even if no one were to ever
read a word or I'm writing because I need it,
you know, I feel like it's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, any other questions, Yeah, I just wondering. Books you
have favorite.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Is better than I do.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Actually, I think every book gets better, Like there's no
way I think this is by far the best one,
and then we begin at the end closely behind. And
you know, it's funny in publishing because everyone is looking
in publishing for like the shiny new debut, and they
throw loads of money at the shiny new thing, and
invariably your first book isn't your best book because like
(36:50):
everything else you do, the more you do it, the
better you should get the more you get paid. In publishing,
it's the other way around. So I'm really glad that
it was my third book that did really well and
my fourth book that really really well because my best
book did the best.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Do you feel pressure now with the next one to
kind of raise the bar?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I think that, you know, they keep trying to give
me deadlines, and they'd like, yeah, it was so that
the deadline for the new book was Christmas twenty four,
I don't know, and then it was Christmas twenty five,
and I just I think that because I've been through
so much in my life and I've been in loads
of dead and I've been in trouble, and I just
(37:29):
don't respect the deadline.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I just not.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's not that I love my team. I love my team,
I love my agents, I love my publishers. But it
will take as long as it takes. And you know,
if they want me to write the best book that
I can, it will take as long as it takes.
And you know, I owe it to everyone that spends
that harder money on the book. You know, it should
be the absolute best that I've got author a favorite
(38:02):
classic author. You know, I'm really not well read. Shockingly,
So the book the book that kind of changed my life.
Like I was working in the city, I was nearly thirty,
and I read a book called The Last Child by
an author called John Hart is an American author, and
it's a book. It's this beautifully written story about a
missing child. And I read it, and then that night
(38:24):
I googled John Hart and I read this interview with
him and he talked about how he was a successful
lawyer and one day just quit his job to do
something that made him happy.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
So the next day, I quit my job because this
American that I had never met did it. And then
and then.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I got to do I got to speak to John
Hart and tell him that he kind of changed my life.
And I was doing an event in Charleston, and I
knew that John Hart lived in Charlottesville. And I looked
at the map and they were like that far apart.
So I said to my publisher, can you send me
to John Hart? And they said it's a nine hour drive.
(39:00):
I can you send me anywhere? And they sent a
car drove me nine hours. And I went and met
John Hart, who's like my hero, and he said, oh, come,
we'll have lunch together. I'm in a small book group
with me and my friend John and this other guy,
and we'll go out and we get really drunk.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
We have a boozy lunch.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And I got there and I went to the lunch
and his friend John was John Grisham.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, so I had I had this really boozy lunch
John Grisham.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
It was really fun.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Ah, this has been such an adventure, right, such an adventure.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, do you know what?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I've forgotten his name, the other guy, but he was
he was lovely and an. But you know the glare
from John Grisham.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Ye, what was he like? Was was he everything you
thought he would do?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
He was like, it's just really funny.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So I think we think how hard this is to
get into a conversation. Bear in mind, we weren't talking
about it. John Grisham managed to drop in the fact
that he was once named the sixth sexiest man in America.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Okay, you know who else was? Ben Mezrich was People
Magazines sexiest bachelor from Boston, and we still talk about it.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
So Grisham managed to get that in, and I really
respect to it, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I guess, well, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Almost never like it's a difficult process because sometimes when
you get your edits, it can read like a long
list of everything that you've done wrong, and you need
quite thick skin and you can't be precious about it.
And I know loads of authors that are too precious,
but I think you have to really respect them. Like
my editor is a New York legend called Amy Einhorn,
and she did Big Little Lies and The Help and
(40:47):
so many amazing books, and so she's like the best
in the business. But she told me that I couldn't
have a child in the dark for three hundred days.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
She said, readers won't like it. It's too long.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
And I knew that I needed it and I needed
you know, and I knew that I could because it's
not written gratuitously and most of the scenes are kind
of funny because he's held with this girl and we
watched them fall in love. So it was the one
time that I kind of kicked back and and I
rewrote a lot of it and gave it back to
her and we got there in the end.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But well, that time frame, because Shannon and I were talking,
was kind of ambiguous because some people thought it was years.
Some people thought it was a year. So you're saying
it was almost a year.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
It was, yeah, three hundred days, but it's left kind
of yeah, but it's just it's just a very short
part of the book. Interesting with this book or just
in general, do you know what, I don't know. I
(41:49):
think everyone British grew up watching American TV, you know,
so yeah, we grew up watching the X fives and
things like that, you know, and the Simpsons and and
just yeah, and just.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But you know, the Sopranos, is the only one that
sticks out in my head as being you know, kind
of it does the impossible, you know, it humanizes these
people that are kind of monsters and makes you root
for them and want the best for them.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
And it's really clever. How it's done.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Do you write Longhand like I know that some writers
in notebooks? Or do you do like the computer?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Like, how do you know?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
So I write across three screens, which is kind of
a hangover from being a trader.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I'm used to a lot of a lot of screens.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Yeah, And on the middle screen will be the manuscript
what I'm writing, and on the left hand screen will
be photographs of the scene I'm writing. And I always
I use the example of Saint walking in the woods
in Missouri, because she does that a lot in the book.
So I have photographs of Missouri in the seventies, the
woods everywhere all over the left hand screen. On the
right hand screen will be a list of everything that
(42:48):
Saint can see and hear and feel, and so it
will be what kind of birds are singing, what flowers?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You know, what do they smell? Like?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
If she steps in to the ground, will she leave
a footprint? And so I, and then I overwrite the
scene massively. You know, I'll write the scene in such detail,
and then I'll cut it again and again and again
until you're left with a single paragraph that makes you
feel like you're standing right next to Saint taking the
walk with her. And I do that for every scene
in the book, and so that's why it takes so long.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So interesting. Is there someone in your life that you
would give your pages too to read?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
No one, and if you know what, it really bothers everyone.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, that is friends with me and and partners, and
you know everyone wants to read it first, and no
one will get it.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
My agents. I have two agents uk Us. They are
the first people that will get the book.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
So interesting. Oh that is such a good question. I
would maybe Paulie.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I love Pauli, but yeah, but Tony, you know I
fall in and out in love with throughout this season.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Did you like the ending?
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I did like the ending?
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yeah, I know lots of people didn't, but I like, yeah,
I don't need everything tied up in me. But I
like that things are a snapshot of time, you know,
like you joined the characters at one point, you leave
them another point that life went on before we met them,
and we'll go on after we meet them. Who's yours
out of interest? And that's the genius of the show
(44:31):
that they can do that to you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Any other question, there is one.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I think it's about overwriting, and I do it. Like
I think the book is about one hundred and thirty
five thousand words. I wrote about five hundred thousand words
during the process. And it's just about fully immersing yourself
in it. Like there's a part of the book where
Patch gets a job in a mine. He leaves school
and gets a job in a mine, and I knew everything.
I could have been a miner in Missouri in the
(45:31):
early eighties. I spent a month learning everything about mining.
And that is a single paragraph in the book. It
got cut down to like five lines. It was a
throwaway scene. But to me, there are no you know,
there's no throwaway scenes in the book. You know, I
will overwrite and do that level of detail. And I
learned about pirates and beekeeping and playing the piano and
painting and everything my characters know.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
I need to know what was the most favorite thing
that you learned, Like, what when you were researching, was
it beekeeping.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Or do you know what a lot it's a there's
purple honey in the book. It's only made in North Carolina,
I think it is, and nowhere else on earth, and
they still can't quite work out why. But it looks magical,
and loads of people, like when I do signings I
just did Washington two days ago, people will bring me
(46:21):
jars of purple honey. Really yeah, and if you hold
it up to the light, it looks like it's from
a different world. It doesn't taste very good, but it's
not as sweet.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, Jody Peker, we read mad Honey and that's sort
of a similar like made from like rhododendrons or something
the use. But yeah, so I think beekeeping is fascinating.
Always love funny. I've seen it in books. Any other questions.
(46:53):
Do you have any advice?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I think I'm the worst person that.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Young people of today. Yeah, you know what the only
writing if they're trying to tell stories that the advice
that I would give everyone is don't start at the beginning.
You know, there's so much pressure at the beginning of
a story, you know, to get it right to hook.
People say, you can't possibly know what you're doing at
(47:19):
that point, skip straight ahead and write the thing that
you really want to write, you know, the scene that
you are really looking forward to.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
I would skip ahead. And I so my kids.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Their schools keep kind of they keep writing to me,
phoning me, asking me to come in and talk to
the kids. And my kid my sons beg me not
to go in to school like that, like the fear
in their eyes, and you know, and now I use
it as like, you know, if I want them to
do something, it's like a threat. I will come in
and talk with your story. So probably best not to
(47:50):
invite me.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
I had to say, that's one of the best pieces
of advice I've ever heard from any writer is don't
start a like, start with something that you really want
to talk about and what you love. Right, but it's
so awesome.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, and it's fine. I don't like I get asked
about writer's block.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
You know what do I do When I get writer's
block and I know it I'm stuck with what I'm writing.
I will go and write something that feels completely different,
and invariably that scene will make its way back into
the story, maybe three hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Down the lots.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
One more, one more question.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yes, he was like Christopher's junkie friend that botches the
hit on phil Leotada.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
This is my encyclopedic nerdy knowledge. Yeah yeah, is that guy?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Well this was fabulous.
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