🎙️ From Comedy Central to Courtroom Noir: Art Bell on Reinvention, Writing & What She’s Hiding.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, and welcome to what is now Season sixteen
of the Writing Community chat show. With over three hundred
and sixty plus we're guessing around that anymore, I really
need to do an update. We've got some fantastic guests
to check out if you haven't seen them all, which
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have, and we've got a
fantastic guest to start off the new season with us tonight,
so we're looking forward to that massively. How are you doing, Chris?

(00:23):
How has your week been?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, it's been a good week.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
I feel like we've obviously been on here an awful lot,
obviously building the business side of things, and we've done
a few lives on social media this week and stuff.
So it's been a good week of talking all things
books and all things writing. And obviously we talked a
little bit this week about how difficult it is to
write comedy and how I've struggled with it as well

(00:48):
a little bit. So it'd be great to speak to tonight's
guest and get some really valuable insight into that world.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I was thinking about you saying that the other day,
and about our guest tonight, and I thought, what a
perfect opportunity for you to ask those questions you know
that will benefit the audience and yourself. So yeah, I'm
looking forward to that. And we did a lot, you know,
we started a new cic business part of this show,
which you know, five years in doing the show, we've
now turned it into a business. So there's lots of

(01:16):
plans we've got going there. And one new thing we
did this week we start doing TikTok Lives and we
did a lot of conversations around writing and books and
all of those good things, and we picked up some
new followers there and we're growing that audience, which hopefully
will transition into our new kind of YouTube audience and
family as well, and it's great to chat to them.

(01:37):
We've even had some guest recommendations and submissions from those viewers,
so it'd be interesting to see how that, you know,
comes across. And maybe once I've checked out a few
of those recommendations and submissions, you know, we might have
a few new guests from the TikTok world coming on
the show.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, and obviously not very far away now to Harrogate,
where we're going to be interviewing the likes of Mark Billingham,
you know, live again in the beautiful space of the world,
which is Harrogate and yeah, working alongside pamt Millan and
promoting their authors and their books as well.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
So you know, it's an exciting.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Well, even though we're not in July yet, it is
an exciting time with season sixteen.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, I mean you say, you know, not this month
kind of thing, but it's it's July or Monday, and
we're going on the seventeenth, so we're looking about three
weeks away right now, and that's going to come very quickly,
especially with all the prep we have to do. So yes,
we've got a lot to do. Anyeah. In the chat,
hello to you. I hope you're doing well. How's your

(02:42):
week been? Let us know if you could. Excited to
see you all in the comments, and please do enjoy that.
For those who are watching this, thank you, and those
who watch it back or listen back. It is exclusively
lie you for Substack paid members. The reason that is
now a thing is that we have started the show
and we are trying to build the show as a business. Sorry,

(03:05):
we started as a business to really help authors and
develop it that way. So by being a paid substack
member to watch the show's live and engage live. You
really help us build that get the ball roaming slowly
in terms of funding it, and there's a lot of
things that we have planned, including big festival next to
see if we can get the funding for that through grants,
then this could be something big. I do have three

(03:27):
interviews that we need to look into and set dates
for with funding people. I'm not sure what they're actually called.
Funding people, Chris, and that's where it's going to start.
So by doing it live, watching live and supporting, then
you are doing a huge favor to us and supporting
the show. So thank you for those who are doing that, and.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Thank you to those people obviously watching on YouTube and listening.
A lot of people on the Tiktoks Live this week's
were saying, oh, we listened to the show at the weekend.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
And things like that.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
So, however, you come to the show, whether it be
through your eyes or your ears, which greatly appreciated, and
I'm sure to the night's guest, you're definitely going to
enjoy all the insight they have to offer.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
And I will get that guest on in a second,
and he says it's been good, a good week, which
is nice to hear. Productive on the writing front, which
is great to hear. For those of you who have
not seen it yet, there's a new video on YouTube
and we've got a new sponsor which is Amazon KDP,
so fantastic. We are being sponsored by them to promote
the Amazon Storyteller Kindle Award, which is now open and

(04:34):
you can submit. So if you want to know more
about that, go and check out that video on YouTube
or on our substack. There is a free post there
all about that and about last year's winner, who is
our recent guest, Jadie Kirk, so fantastic, congratulations to him.
He is going to be on the judging panel, so
we will pick his brain about that as well. And yeah,
it's a really good opportunity. So all you need to

(04:55):
do is into KDP and basically that's it and make
the right tags. But we put all the information in
the video. We'll play a bit later on and elsewhere
as well, so check out the substack if you can.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Brilliant, I think it's about time we get tonight's guest.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
On absolutely, so without further ado, everybody, I will introduce
tonight's guest and we'll get chatting, So remember your questions,
have a think throughout the show, and get ready to
send them.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
In at the end.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
So tonight's guest is someone whose fingerprints are all over
modern entertainment, from making us laugh with the creation of
Comedy Central, to gripping us with gravel to Gravel coverage,
or as president of Court TV. But he didn't stop there.
He turned his storytelling talents towards writing, first with his
memoir Constant Comedy, which became a twenty twenty Best Book

(05:46):
Awards finalist, and now with his debut thriller What's She Hiding?
You can see it there above Chris's head, a gripping
modern noir that's already getting serious buzz from the fans
of Harlan Coben and Laura Dave. He's a mastermind of
reinventioning reinvention, a sharp observer with both absurdity and drama.

(06:07):
He's a brilliant writer who's just getting started in this
next chapter. So please welcome to the show. Art Bell, Hello,
how are you doing.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Hi? I'm good, how are you great to be here?

Speaker 1 (06:18):
By the way, Thank you so much and thank you
for joining us and spending your time with us. We're
doing well and excited to chat to you. So I
hope we're going to have a good good time here,
which I'm sure we will, and very interested to find
out about your journey and your new book that we
got shining above Chris Wholey's head or to the side. Okay,
I'm ready, so art again, thank you, But we love

(06:42):
on this show to kind of rewind the tape a
bit and find out where things began for you in
terms of creation. But there's obviously a brilliant story and
a journey there already, so we want to take it
right back if we can, and address the elephant in
the room as it were, as you've probably already discussed
this a thousand times, but we'd love to know about
it central creating that first of all, what was the

(07:05):
inspiration for it? How did it kind of happen? And
you know, with the doubts ever there as like a
writer to procrastinates quite often, was it something you believed
could happen? And was that Jenney like an exciting when
I wasn't quite daunting at the time.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
Okay, you got about twelve questions and there yeah, sorry, no, okay,
I'm going to tell a little bit about the story.
The inspiration was me because when I was a kid,
I love comedy, and I'm sure you guys did too,
And I watched comedy on television anytime I could. And
one time I was like six or seven years old,
and I noticed that the comedian on the air was

(07:41):
making it was a live show, was making my father
laugh and my brothers laugh, and everybody in the audience laugh,
and thirty million people at home laugh. And I thought, Man,
this comedy thing's pretty powerful. It really gets people's attention.
So I got I became what a friend of mine
calls a comedy nerd right through high you know, I
just I just lapped it up. I never I did.

(08:04):
I did a little bit of performance, but I wasn't
really a stand up guy. I wanted to write mostly,
you know, So I did some writing in high school,
went to college same thing. Did a lot of sketch
comedy work with friends of mine in college, and did
some theater too, which was fun. And I actually got
to sing with an entire orchestra, which was one of

(08:25):
the great moments of my life. Especially I don't think
it was one of the great moments for the audience's
life because I never really worn't learned how to say.
I mean, they gave me lessons before I did it.
But anyway, I digress. So I'm in college and you
know a lot of friends of mine are going out
to LA to be comedy writers because we were all
writing together. And I said, I'm not going to do that.

(08:47):
And I was an economics major, so I said, well,
I'm going to go to Washington, d c. And become
an economist, which is exactly what I did for three years.
That was a very smart period of my life. I
was very intelligent that and I was working with very
smart people. And at the end of the three years,
I decided I did not want to be an economist
for the rest of my life. So I went back

(09:08):
to business school. And in business school, this is a
little crazy. I said, hey, where are all the people
like me who are kind of creative and interested in
that hangout. And they said, well, we have this thing
called the Follies. It's written by the students and we
put on the eye. So I went and I went
to the first meeting and it was so funny because
you know, I was there to get into the entertainment

(09:30):
industry and a lot of these guys were from the
entertainment industry, like actors, dancers, and perfours, and they wanted
to get into banking. So it was a great group. Anyway,
we put on a couple of shows. I was head
writer for two years and was in the show and
it was very funny and I thought, Hey, I really
know this comedy stuff pretty well. And when I got

(09:51):
out of grad school, I wanted to work at a
comedy channel, but there wasn't one, and I thought, what
the heck. There's an OL all news channel, there's an
all music channel, there's all lots of stuff. Channel sports,
ESPN was there, but there was no comedy network. And
I thought that's the craziest thing. So I went to

(10:11):
work and I started talking about it with people and
they basically told me, ah, you're crazy, can't be done.
It's not going to happen. And they give me a
million reasons, mostly cost. Cost was a big deal because
comedy suspective expensive. Anyway, I went to work at CBS
that was not very much fun. Then a friend of
mine called me and said, I'm over at HBO. Now

(10:34):
HBO then this is the early early to mid eighties,
was like Netflix now. It was like the future of television.
And he said, everybody's walking down the hall saying we're
going to change television. You got to come over here.
So I got a job over there, using my finance
and economics background. It was my first choice. But there
I was, so I started pitching it. Same story. Nobody cared.

(10:55):
You know, it's not it's not going to happen. To
make a long story short, I got up enough nerve
to pitch the head of HBO programming I And remember
I was like at the lowest end of the totem
pole and she was at the highest. She's scary. But
I went in and she listened to me for about
five minutes, and then she said, it can't be done, Arthur.

(11:18):
You know nothing about television, you know nothing about comedy.
It cannot be done. And I'll tell you why. She
gave me about twelve reasons why it'll never happen. Her
name was Brigid. So I walked out of there and
I thought, man, she's wrong, She's just wrong. I wasn't.
I wasn't. You asked if I was determined. I was
always determined. So I went upstairs to my office and

(11:40):
I started writing my resume and I figured, Okay, I'm
going to go somewhere else because I don't like me here.
And I was going to staple my plan for the
Comedy Network, which I call Comedy Channel at the time,
to the resume. When my boss walked in. He he said,
what are you working on? Gave it to him and
he said, wow, this looks great. He said, you know,

(12:00):
the chairman of HBO should really hear about this. I said,
you think so, and he said yeah, and he said,
let's go see him right now. I said right now.
I had no presentation. I wasn't dressed very well. This
guy was ahead of HBO. He was one of the
most powerful guys in television and Hollywood. Anyway, we walked
into his office uninvited and pitched the channel and he said, well,

(12:25):
it sounds sounds cool. Let's do it now. We didn't
do it right then. We had to do some research
and everything else, and I had to give a big
presentation a couple months later to all the senior executives
to tell them about my idea for the Comedy Network,
showing the financials and you know, play a tape that
we put together and all that kind of stuff. And

(12:48):
at the end, Michael said, it sounds sounds really good.
He says, but I'm going to go around the room
and I'm going to ask everybody, every one of my
top executives what they think individually. And he did. And
I went why he did that? And I realize now
that he did that because he didn't want any of
his top executives to say, you know what I heard
the I heard the presentation, I thought it was a

(13:09):
loser when I heard it. He wanted everybody on board,
and he wanted everybody record on board. Now people usually
ask me here, what did what did Bridget, the head
of programming say when he got to her, and she said, Michael,
I think it's wonderful. And that was that. So we
put it together and listen, I could tell you the

(13:31):
whole story, but just one of the reasons I wrote
the book, which, by the way, the whole title is
Constant Comedy how I started Comedy Central and lost my
sense of humor. And the reason I called it that
is because you know, people, especially younger people today, watching
Comedy Central, they look at it and they figure, oh,
it's always been around. I mean, no big deal, right,

(13:52):
it's been here forever. It hasn't been here forever. And
the first year when we launched. In the first year,
it was a disaster. I mean, we got terrible reviews.
Everybody was watching because it was HBO, you know, everybody
was trying to see if it was going to be successful.
But we got terrible reviews, and I went to work
every day thinking I was going to be fired. And

(14:15):
that was the first year. I can go on from there,
but you can either read the book or hear the
whole story. But that's basically why it came interviewing.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
There's a very translatable message in there for authors and
what you've been through, and that is persistence and resilience.
The fact that you believed that you had something worthy
and something good and you didn't stop when someone said no.
And I think that's a really important message, especially when
people are trying to pitch their books or agents getting

(14:44):
knockbacks and the like. So having that kind of mentality
I think is obviously key to your success at that stage.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
I think that's right, and I look back and think, wow,
I was I was. I was obviously young and reckless,
because you know, it took a lot to be that
persistent in the face of that much adversity. Yeah, And
I will say that people who've read the book often say,

(15:14):
you know, I gave it to my teenage son because
it's really about perseverance. This book, it's really about not
stopping when people try to stop you, or not being
thrown by criticism. And that's really what the story was
a lot of.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
So what would be a message to anyone who's facing
that kind of challenge where they've got something they believe in. Yeah,
they might be kind of betted down by the nine
to five and all those things that are stopping them
and pushing them back and rejections. What message could you
give them? Advice?

Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, I actually have a list of ten things that
I used to tell people, and I cannot reproduce the list,
but among them are things like, if you have an
idea and you're really pursuing it, it's not only about persistence,
but there's a few good rules. One, get an elevator
pitch that is exciting, meaning something short and quick that

(16:11):
you can deliver with all the enthusiasm of I just
had this great idea, Okay, you can't just phone it in.
That was number one. Number two find allies you know,
and it doesn't matter who the allies are. It could
start with your wife or your girlfriend. It could be
friends of yours, it could be friends in the business,

(16:32):
could be people in your company. But find people who
say yeah, I don't know why then people aren't saying
this is a good idea. I think it's a great
idea because you need people around at the right You
don't know when they're going to be useful, but at
the right time they're going to be possibly be able
to show up and say no. I really think it
is a good idea, and I could see ways to
do it. Number three, don't be afraid to fail. I mean,

(16:55):
you can't go in there saying, you know, oh my gosh,
this thing may never work, and if it doesn't, unscrewed, Well, no,
you're not. I mean, you know, usually you can pick
yourself up, continue with your job, get a new job.
I mean, I know I'm rattling those things off like
it's easy to get a new job, but you know,
you really have to know that you're going into this

(17:17):
thing with a good chance of failure. So anyway, those
are my top three. Yeah, great advice.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
I'm really interested to know, like how you kept the
right inside whilst being so engrossed in the sort of
the day to day business and the financial side and
all that pressure that came.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
With that job.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Like if you could take us back to like when
writing first became sort of prevalent in your life and
when you realize you were good at it, and then
sort of navigate us through that process.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
Okay, well, this part may not please you very much.
I was not a comedy writer. I in this in
this case, you know, putting Comedy Channel together, which became
Comedy Central, and I can talk about that if you like.
But I was an entrepreneur. That's what they had just
named it. That's when you start a company inside a company.

(18:10):
Remember this was like the early late eighties, I guess.
So I was doing like everything at once. I mean
I was really I wasn't a president. They named somebody
else president. But since I knew everything about what I
wanted this to be and I had the vision, which
is important, I had my fingers and everything. Now I
will say this and you'll see this in my memoir.

(18:32):
The first thing they did was team me up with
the head of comedy at HBO. His name was Stu Smiley,
which is I think a perfect name for that. Anyway.
So I'm introduced to Stu and the first thing he
says to me is what do you know about comedy?
And the answer was nothing. I mean, here's a guy

(18:52):
who has been working in the comedy business for ten years.
He knows all the comedians, he has all their home numbers,
he knows their managers, he knows their agents, he knows
how to get in touch with him at a moment's notice.
And I was like, you know, as he said, the
kid with the big idea, I mean, that's really, that's
really how I was regarded for a long time. I mean,
talk about trying to get into a very insular little group,

(19:18):
which is the comedy business, especially at that time. You know,
it was tough. It was a little bit tough, and
I had to prove myself. And obviously I was not
going to prove myself as a writer because I wasn't
a writer. I mean I wasn't writing comedy. I had
a love of that and I thought I knew a
lot about it, but they hired a head writer. For example,
we hired a head writer named Eddie Gordetski, who by

(19:40):
the way is still writing in Hollywood, who was a
very funny guy. He was in his twenties at the time.
Young guy, crazy guy. But I really saw the difference
between amateurs and professionals. I mean, and you know, I
still have friends who are comedy writers. Is that the
right sentence? I still have friends who are still comedy writers. Anyway,

(20:03):
These are some of the funniest guys I can ever
sit down with. I mean, I sit down and have
dinner with some of my mom of florin, you know,
in three minutes, because they are really funny guys, and
they really know how to write comedy sitcoms or movies
or whatever they're writing. Now that said, I will credit
myself with this. I do put humor into my books.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
And and that's that's been noted even in my in
my thriller, What She's Hiding. Uh, there's there's a probably
more humor than you find in the average thriller, which
I tend to find ah to be not very funny
at all anyway, But it's been noted that mine, Mine

(20:43):
has some some funny stuff in it, and that that
really makes a difference anyway. That's you know, that's what
that's that's how I ended up being part of the
comedy business. Uh. And it took a little bit of
uh convincing of the people to get them to believe
that I knew what I was doing enough to get

(21:05):
this channel off the ground. M.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, that's yeah, you're going to the sorry interrupted you.
Oh yeah. So obviously that that transition from going from
the business side of things and Comedy Central to writing
your memoir. At what point did you think I've got
a story I need to tell here in a book format.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
That's a good question. By the way, you should note
that I did end up as a head of programming
and marketing for Comedy, so I wasn't you know, I
was involved in putting whatever was on the channel on
the channel, So I did have a bigger and bigger
role in all that. Your question is how did I

(21:50):
come to write the memoir? Well, I like telling stories,
and I obviously had been telling stories about Comedy and
Comedy Central for twenty years. And when I left the
television business and had to decide what to do, I said, Man,

(22:12):
I'd really like to write. I had done some writing
when I was younger, as a kid, basically, and my
wife said, you know, go take a course at Sarah
Lawrence Writing Institute. So I signed up for memoir, not
thinking I was going to write anything good, but I
just figured this may be fun. So I'm telling stories
about my childhood and writing those up, and I'm getting
better as a writer, because you know, that's what happens

(22:34):
when you have good teachers. And then one day I
wrote I wrote a story about the head writer at
Comedy Central named Eddie Gordetski, and he was mad at me.
He thought he should be doing my job. This is
early days, and so he invited me to lunch and
I said, okay, I'll come to lunch with you. So
he invited me to lunch and I met him at

(22:54):
this place and it was a strip club. And we
go into the club and we're the only people there,
including I mean, there was the stripper. And we're sitting
right at the stage and I'm in a suit. It's
about ninety five degrees outside, and Eddie is, you know,
in his usual T shirt. And he did that to
unnerve me. He thought, you know, okay, I'm going to

(23:16):
unnerve this suit mother. But I did everything I could
not to be unnerved, and I think I got away
with it. Anyway. I wrote that story up and it
was very funny, and the people in the class at
the time kind of looked up and said, wow, that's
a great story. You got other comedy stories, And I said, yeah,

(23:38):
I got a lot of them. So I started just
writing up incidents or episodes or whatever, and you know,
also including the story I told about how it got started,
you know, again with no intention to do anything with it.
But then after a while I said, you know, there's
a book here. I mean, this is like, I got
a lot of stuff here, and so I put it

(24:00):
together with you know, I paid attention to things like
character and story orc and put it together a little
bit like a thriller. I wanted it to be a
page turner, like what's going to happen? You know, everything's
going wrong for this guy. What's going to happen? And
that's that's how I did it. A lot of great
stories in there, though, a lot of great stories about
live television. I know, we're live now, which is crazy,

(24:21):
but anything can happen when you're live.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, yeah, I mean that's what I think. There's lots
of different versions of comedy, but real stories and humor
in stories that are real, I think go a lot
further in certain situations. So I think that's why people
are really related to that story, and that's why you've
got so much a praise. So yeah, and then obviously

(24:46):
you go on and start writing fiction, which we talk
about in the minute. But over all the creative kind
of aspects that you've worked in, is there any sort
of true love or do you kind of like all
of the creative aspects that you work with.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
I gotta tell you, you know, I look back on
what I did in my career and what I'm doing
now and no regrets. I mean, it was always listen,
it was you know, sometimes it was hell on earth,
but I mean generally it was just so much fun.
I remember being in a cave with the head of

(25:23):
ad sales going to somewhere, going to the airport or something.
And this was also early days, and we weren't doing well.
We're just you know, things weren't going great, but we
were really kind of making it happen. And we got
in a cab and he looked at me and goes,
isn't this fun? We're happen the greatest time, And we
started laughing and high fiving because it was so much fun.
It's so much fun to make something. It's so much

(25:46):
fun to make anything. Well, you guys know you make
you know, you got a podcast going here, and it's
so much fun to see how that develops and take
your little successes, take the very small successes that happened,
and turn them into big successes in your own head,
because that's how you keep going. So to answer your
question directly, I've enjoyed all of it. I am currently

(26:07):
really enjoying writing. I think that's that's loads of fun.
But it's certainly much different than working on a team with,
you know, with a lot of funny people to try
and get something done. And also, by the way, you
didn't mention this, but I did work at court TV,
who as president of that, and that was a much
different experience, but a much more and a much more

(26:27):
serious experience, but also great fun again building something.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, I was going to ask then with what she's hiding,
it's obviously thriller based and you worked with a lot
of court cases. So is there any sort of connection
between the two.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
Absolutely, and it's it's the connection is one of the
things that I did when I got to Court TV,
because it was not a successful channel. When I got there,
is looked at what they were doing and what they
were doing well. And one of the things they were
doing well but not doing a lot of was true

(27:03):
crime documentaries. Now, this is a long time ago. True
crime documentaries weren't what they are today, you know, and
I feel that we had a lot to do with
making them popular. But these documentarians, man, they were storytellers.
Now you can imagine that my friend Eddie Gordetski, the comedian,
he's not telling stories so much as making jokes. You know.

(27:25):
It's a different craft, you know. So there wasn't a
lot of story, and you know with the beginning, middle,
and end and crafting the you know, certain plot points
and all the things you need to tell a great story.
But there I was suddenly working with documentarians, and these
people were taking disparate elements and real people and turning

(27:48):
them into characters that rival fictional characters. And what I
mean by that is to make a real character out
of I'm sorry, to make a character out of a
real person. You know, you have to bring out the
interesting stuff and leave behind the nuts. So interesting stuff
I mean that's obviously I'm sort of there's some documentary

(28:08):
guy out there saying, are you kidding me? But I
mean rough justice, you know. And I had to do
the same thing with my memoir. I had to make
character characters out of these people, not just describe them.
You want to make them come alive anyway. So, yes,
I'm at court TV and I'm learning how to tell
a story. That's that. I spent six eight years there,

(28:30):
and I also got to know the criminal justice system.
And by that I mean not only you know, lawyers,
I knew a lot of lawyers, but cops, detectives, forensic scientists,
and I really learned to respect them all. You know,
I didn't have the same kind of admiration for the

(28:54):
criminal justice system, especially cops on the beadle detectives. You know,
you see them on TV or you deal with them,
whether they're giving you a parking ticket or whatever. But
you know, these guys, they're very dedicated, they're very smart,
they're very you know, they know what they're doing. It's
just and so you know, people say, well, you went
from comedy to court, what was that like? It was great.

(29:14):
I was fascinated and I I think one of the
things that you know, if there's anything I like about myself,
it's my ability to become fascinated with whatemever I'm doing.
And I became fascinated. So yes, I took that, I
took my understanding of the criminal justice system, and and

(29:37):
you know, learning how what I learned about how to
tell a story, and that all went into my writing
and what she's signing. I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
So I was going to say, obviously, you've talked a
lot about learning and obviously how your experience drew you
to thrillers, but how did you Obviously you can recognize
a good story, but how did you learn to write
a good story?

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Well, you know, listen, I think you're we're all listening
to and reading and watching stories most of our lives.
I mean, you know, some people do more watching, some
people do more reading. But you know the people who,

(30:25):
for example, do sitcoms. And I know this because I
have friends who do sitcoms. The way they broke into
sitcoms was they sat in front of the television and
watched ten thousand hours of sitcoms to understand how that worked. Now,
that's a very specific kind of writing with a very
specific story requirements and everything else. But to the same extent,

(30:46):
you know, I always read a lot. I love fiction.
I particularly loved as a kid noir fiction, you know,
and that had that was a big influence on on
on my book and on my writing. But I love
Dash Hammond and I loved you know, I love The

(31:06):
Postman Always Rings Twice, and I love the Maltese Falcon,
and I loved all those stories. They are great stories,
and a lot of that went into my understanding of
or my conception of what kind of fiction writer I
wanted to be. This book, by the way, is a
little waish. It takes place in modern times, and you

(31:29):
probably heard the term neon war, which I guess is
modern war. But I think I infused a little bit
more of the war feeling in this, and that was
because of my love of the early war stories. Yeah,
so that's to answer your question. That's how you learn.
You watch and you read, and you try and think

(31:52):
about what makes that good, what makes that it ending worthwhile,
what makes that beginning worthwhile, what makes that character so lovable?
And you think about it a lot, that's all.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, you mentioned characters earlier, and about creating really compelling
characters and engaging characters. So before we go into the book,
it was a bit more like craft out of you here.
What's your tip for writing a good character?

Speaker 4 (32:21):
Well, observing people, I think is my biggest tip. You know,
some people actually transcribe bits of conversation that they hear
they keep a notebook, and I don't do that. But
I have kind of a crazy memory, and I can
remember a lot of things that people say, and I
think that dialogue is a great way to convey character

(32:42):
as opposed to exposition. You know what. You know, you
could say, well, you know, he walked in he was
dressed like this, and everybody said he was a really
funny guy with a sarcastic sense of Here. Who wants
to hear that? Yeah, you know, what you want to
see is him saying something sarcastic and humorously. So, you know,
it's really a matter. Even in novels, even in memoirs,

(33:05):
you want that dialogue to build the character as much
as you can. You know, there's that old saw. Uh,
I forgot the old one. You know, don't describe it,
just present.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
It is a show. Don't tell shot tell.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
You know, I forgot it because I don't need it anymore.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
I know what you're saying about the different types of writing,
because we came up with a great idea for an
online sitcom based on writers and we still haven't even
attempted it yet. But you know, it's it's because it's
a different challenge, and I think you're right about learning.
Anyone who wants to write in a different genre or
a different style, then you've got to You've got to

(33:50):
take that time and process to learn. You can't just
run at it head first and hope to get success
at the first run. So I think that's the more
good advice.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. I mean, with what she
hides and what she's hiding. I said, I loved Noir,
but I went back before I as I started it
and read some Noar, some more I had read, some
more I hadn't read, and learned a lot about Noir
that I didn't see when I was reading it as
a as a younger guy.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
So with that, just before we get on the onto
the book, what was it about Noir that you wanted
to bring to Noir that wasn't there in your eyes?

Speaker 4 (34:34):
Well, what I wanted to bring from Noir was first
of all, the hero I mean the person that was,
you know, in the middle of everything. And the noir
heroes are pretty interesting because they are fairly cynical about life.
They live in a world and think about the noir

(34:55):
world of grifters and double crossers and crazy criminals, and
you know, their world is not a happy place. And
also I noticed that so much of noir, and I
hadn't noticed this before, is about love stories. I mean

(35:18):
their love stories. I mean, people know the multese falcons,
so you can think of that, for example, and everybody says, oh, yeah,
that's about him. And he's running around he's trying to
find a multese falcon and who killed his partner and
all this, but he is falling in love during the
entire book with this woman who turns out I hope
this is not a spoiler alert from the nineteen thirties

(35:40):
book who turns out to be to be the woman
who killed his partner. I mean, what a great story.
But my point is that character was what, you know,
a little bit of what I wanted to capture that citizen,
that world of like everything's coming act you that you
don't know what to expect. The other thing I wanted

(36:03):
to bring to war, and this to this book especially
that wasn't generally in war is violence. How people deal
with violence, How ordinary people deal with violence. I got
interested in that when I was in high school because
I read an essay by a guy named Harry Cruz,
and I read it in either Playboy or Esquire or

(36:24):
one of those magazines, which but anyway, he wrote a
he was a writer, and he wrote an article called
The Violence That Finds You and became a very famous essay.
I think you can find it today. And it was
about him walking into a bar in Wyoming or something,
and some guy starts to pick a fight with him,
and he doesn't want to fight, and he's backing off,

(36:46):
and he's looking for ways to get out of this
fight and he can't. And that's the moment he realizes
that sometimes you're going to be in violent situations and
you've got to deal. And that's one of the things
I'm wanted to bring to this book, how an average guy.
And I started with an average guy. You know, he's
a lawyer in New York, not you know, doing anything

(37:08):
but trying to be successful, and he faces violence for
the first time in his life and how is he
going to deal with it? And that's that's one of
the things I.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Explore amazing right. What we're going to do is we'll
quickly play that trailer that we've created for the Amazon KDP,
So check that out, and then after we come back
from that, we will learn all about watching hiding from Art.
If he can showcase that for us, pitch is what
the word I'm looking for, and then we'll get into that.

(37:39):
So here is the advert for the KDP. Hey, Wright,
is what if it and published could earn you a
massive twenty pounds?

Speaker 4 (37:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Imagine.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well you don't need to imagine because that's exactly what's
on offer with Amazon's Kindle Storyteller Award twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
This amazing only three prize is back for its ninth year,
and it's.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Open to anyone who self publishes a book like Kindle
direct publishing in any genre.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Any genre.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, whether you've written your first or your tenth novel,
it doesn't matter. If it's unpublished and written in English,
then you can enter that award with a chance of winning.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah, and it's really easy to enter. So just publish
your book through Kindle Direct Publishing between the first of
May and the thirty first of August and make sure
it's enrolled in KDP Select.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yep, I think you'd be absolutely mad not to, as
a twenty thousand pound prize would help any author boost
their career massively. And our previous guest and last year's winner, JD. Kirk,
said that he took his career to the next level
after winning that award and taking it home.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, and it did.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
These books are everywhere, so in order to enter, head
to Amazon dot co dot you can a forward slash
Storyteller to find out more. The Kindle Storyteller Award is
open now, so publish enter, Okay, story out there.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, we'll support you all the way. You know we
will do that, So we'll leave you with this good luck.
The WCCs together is one we get it done so
that you are get your story into the KDP awards. So, yes,
everybody know what she's hiding? What is that all about?

Speaker 4 (39:28):
Okay? It starts with, as I said, a lawyer in
New York City. He's in his office and his ex wife,
who he hasn't seen or heard from in years, comes
into his office and she says, I need a lot
of money fast, or I'm in a lot of troll

(39:53):
and he says, yeah, really great, get out of here.
I don't believe you. And she says, no, no, they
said they're going to kill me if I don't get
this money. And he says, I don't believe you, and
he throws her, not throws her yet, you know. Finally
he gets her out of the office and as she's leaving,
she says, they're going to kill you two and he says, okay,

(40:16):
that's funny. Please leave. She leaves. That night, he goes
home to his apartment. It's been tossed, and he starts
to think, oh, man, maybe she was right, maybe she
is in trouble, and maybe I'm in a little trouble.
But he doesn't know what kind of trouble it is.
And he starts looking for and can't find her to
find out what kind of trouble it is, and he

(40:37):
starts realizing that he is in big trouble because he's
accosted by a mobster. And I'll leave it at that
as a setup. What happens after that is really him
trying to figure out where his ex wife is, what
the problem is how to solve it, and along the

(40:59):
way he teams up with some friends and some people
who help them throw it.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
It sounds like Netflix would be begging for that story.
It's fantastic.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
So a great set in a great premise, and your
main character, Henry, obviously, as you said, is pulled into
this world of chaos. So what drew you to that
particular style? Well, that style of story.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
You know, it's funny and people ask me how I
started the book, and I didn't sit down and write
a book. I sat down and write a short story.
And I had that precipitating incident because I thought that
would be wild. You know, a guy who's in trouble
and doesn't know why. Now, Hitchcock did that in I
believe it was north By Northwest, Cary Grant was being

(41:47):
pursued and he didn't know why. You know, that must
be the most horrible feeling. So the idea that you
have to not only get out of trouble but find
out why you're in trouble appeal to me, and that's
why I set it up that way. As far as now,
I'm going to digress a little bit. We're talking about story,
but character is everything. Character is everything, and you got

(42:12):
to start with great characters. And I really wanted to
make him fun, you know, a great character, very readable character.
And I wanted his ex wife to be really reminiscent
of the femme fatale of the noir forties and fifties.
You know, obviously she's not. And you have to treat
women in literature. I was like a chore. I mean,

(42:35):
you can't. You can't write women the way they were
writing him in the forties and fifties. Obviously things of
things have changed dramatically, Thank goodness, I will throw in
for my own safety. No no, but I wanted her
to be a real, a real bad, bad person.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
I wanted her to be if you're going for it,
we can swear it.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
No no, no, no, no, it goes beyond that because she's
it's not that she's she is just a fascinating psychopath ultimately,
you know, and and that's that's what's that's what was
fun to write about her. Now, I will say, to
get back to my previous problem that I was apologizing for,
there is a very there are two other women in

(43:22):
the book that are very strong and very good women,
and I like writing about women, and so this this
book's a lot of this book is about the characters.
It's about Henry and his relationship to his ex wife
and his relationship to is these other two women who
come into his life at around the same time, and

(43:44):
the characters have to carry it, you know. You can't
just tell a story, you have to you have to
make it about the characters.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
So I'm interested. Then, a lot of people who write
their first fictional novels quite often put a bit of
themselves into the story, whether it's a character or history
or kind of you know, experiences. So in terms of
the people them, you've got strong female characters and your male.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Uh character comes up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
It's kind of pulls from your own style and your.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Life, first of all, the main uh assert. Secondly, people
ask me about the women in the book because they're
very interesting, the three of them, uh, and they're very different.
And they say, well, is it's Leslie, you know, the

(44:37):
woman we were just talking about. Is she based on
anybody you knew? Because she sounds wow, that'd be crazy,
who not as such? But I have known all kinds
as we all have known all kinds of women in
my life, and I've observed carefully, and so you know,
there's some there were some bad moments in my life
with women that I threw threw in the into of

(44:58):
her character. But no, she's not based on any one person,
nor are the other two. I just you know, again,
it's about observing people and observing women and and uh
and men and and trying to figure out how to
build the characters.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
The reason I kind of asked that was because weirdly,
in all my stories, I've written strong female lead characters,
and it's it's from what I believe is growing up
with strong female characters in my personal life and seeing
them on TV and movies such as you know, Alien
with Ripley and Vasquez and things like that, where the
strong female characters are in the forefront of what I

(45:39):
grew up with. So I was just wondering if that
was a connection for you, and that's why I asked
that question.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
Well, absolutely, And you know I have gone on record before,
so I'm not just saying it here, saying you know,
women are the superior gender. I mean, they just are.
You know, there's they're so much better attuned to the
world than men. There's there there are personalities and they're
you know, I realize i'm generally, but I am always
in awe of women's capabilities and the fact that they've

(46:06):
been kept down for the last fifteen hundred years is
astonishing but not surprising because men are physically stronger, so
that works in keeping women out of things. But you know,
it's just amazing to me how capable women are when
you give them a chance. So the strong women in

(46:27):
this story, and that's not really based on any any
person I grew up with or anything. I mean, you know,
you know, our first impression of women comes from our mother,
and that's usually complicated, let's say, but you know, I
mean you meet women along that. But there's it's not

(46:48):
just it's not anyone woman who impressed me. It's just,
you know, that's just my observation over my over my life.
And that's why I was happy to include strong women
in this I will say this. I mean, we haven't
gotten to this part yet, but I didn't build the
characters by like writing character sketches or saying, you know,
who am I going to base that on or who's

(47:09):
that going to be? Like, I just started writing, and
I just waited to see what happened, and.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
So I take from that your your what they call
a panster, where you just let the story and evolve
as you write it.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
I am a Dade in the world passer and I
was doing that before I even knew the term. And
it turns out, and you guys know this because you
interview a lot of authors, like half the authors out there,
half the fiction writers do that. It's like it was.
It was mind blowing for me to find that out.
But anyway, so when people say, well, you know Henry,
I said, well, Henry wrote himself. You know, he just

(47:45):
kind of kept doing whatever he was doing, and I
and I, you know, then you get a real feel
for the character as you're writing.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
I truly believe that panstas generally are you know, growing
up loving story, like you said, and like I love
story as well. Maybe a little less structure than plot is,
but the fact that you've seen a lot of the story,
you've you've watched state, you've read it, all of those
things come into play, so your mind kind of automatically
picks up what could happen next, and that's why the

(48:15):
characters lead you in that direction.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
I think that's right. I think that there's a lot
of built in understanding of how these these things should
proceed and how the character should be proceeding. But there's
also a lot of surprises involved. I used to I
used to come up after writing and my wife would
be in bed. I'd say, I just wrote myself into
a corner. I don't know what I'm going to do.

(48:38):
I mean, that's that's that's the risk you take because
you can't look up at the board and say, hey,
you know that index card says we got to get
there so from here. So that's easy because there's no
index card there.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
There's just imagine me writes and he's like, oh no,
she did not just do that.

Speaker 4 (48:57):
Well, I tell you I had a few of those experiences.
I had a few of those experiences. Which is my
favorite is and I don't want to blow the whole book,
but a character walks kind of comes into the story
over the phone who was not supposed to be even
involved that much, And after the phone call, I said, hey,
I like her, and I started writing her in and

(49:20):
she turned out to be everybody's favorite. Everybody says, oh man,
we love her, you know, And that was sort of
an accident and that's that's what's good about this process. Cool.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Right, We're going to move on to the third part
of the show, which is community questions. If you have
any questions for our guests tonight, art please do send
them in and we'll ask our staple questions, which is
also very interesting. So, Chris, do you want to start
this off with those?

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (49:51):
So if you could take any character from fiction and
make that character your own, which character we just choose
and what would you do with it?

Speaker 4 (49:59):
Okay? I thought a lot about this for ten minutes
before we started, and you know what I thought. I
thought it would be really fun to take Jake from
Chinatown because he was such a great character in the movie,
and it would be fun to be his boy Friday.

(50:23):
You know that I would be his assistant sort of
in whatever form that took, but just the guy, the
other kid that he relied on, following him around and
you know, trying to help him out because he was
pretty much a one man band in the story in Chinatown.
But and then I thought, man, wouldn't be fun if

(50:44):
you got to gig in New York because I like
to worry about New York, not La because I don't
know La that moll and he had to go to
New York and he didn't know anything about it, but
I was from New York, so I could help him out,
and that would be the story. You know, We'd be
running around Solmon whatever case he was working on, and
running around New York, and and I'd be hanging out
with Jake sort of.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I like that. Brilliant. Okay, if you could change the
ending to anything, and this is opening up to you know, TV, film, book,
any story ending, what would he change and what would
he do with it?

Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, First of all, as a writer, writers cherish their
endings and readers cherish the endings, and for the most part,
I've cherished the ending. So this was a hard question
for me. But here's what I came up with. We
talked about I think it was north By Northwest, and
at the end, again Stiler, you know, he gets the

(51:41):
Cary Grant gets the girl. It was even more He's
saying and they're on a train and they've just gotten married,
and the last shot is that them getting him, pulling
her into bed and the train goes into the tunnel.
That's the last shot, the train going into the tunnel.
And I always said, come on, Alfred Hitchcock, you know

(52:03):
that's a little too on in those don't you think
even for you could have done better than that shot,
because it's just such, it's just such a laughable, laughable,
ridiculous excuse for an ending. So that would be it.
And I love Alfred Hitchcock.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Do you think people in that situation, you know, in
the writer's room would actually discuss those options and someone
would maybe sat there too terrified to tell him you know,
maybe this is the wrong thing, or do you think
that's actually discussed quite firmly.

Speaker 4 (52:33):
I wouldn't be the one who want to have to
tell Alfred Hitchcock. I thought that was a lame ending,
But I think it may have been discussed. I don't
know for sure. He wrote a great book, by the way,
A true foll wrote a trifolio Hitchcock, you know, where
he interviews him. I don't remember if they talked about
that ending. I suspect Listen, Alfred Hitchcock said that the

(52:57):
best thing about making movies was planning them, not making them.
So you know, he was a plotter, and he had
everything on index cards or storyboards as it were, so
he knew early on that that was his last shot,
and he liked it and he was working towards it.
So good for him, but I I just can't give
him credit for that one. Now that said, you know,

(53:20):
you didn't ask me, and we don't have much time,
I guess, but endings are important, and I always think
of the graduate. They shot three endings for that movie,
and now that was a book. I don't remember what
the book's ending was, but the ending on that movie
was the most spectacularly wrought ending I've ever seen on
anything that I can recall. You know, a lot of

(53:41):
books I read, I don't remember the ending. I remember them,
characters in the middle and everything else. That ending was
spectacular and it kind of left the audience going.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
WHOA, which is what you want? Of course? Okay, with
the time in mind, I'll ask a question from Annie
and then Chris. If you want to finish us up
with the last couple? Who can do that? She says?
Is there any genre that you would not write in
or create?

Speaker 4 (54:10):
Yeah? I don't think I'm going to do romance. I
just you know, I've read a little bit of it
because I have friends or a friend who writes it,
and I can't say I understand it or enjoy it
or you know, I'm not going to discredit in any way.
It's just not my thing. I've tried science fiction, by

(54:31):
the way, which is really fun to write, and my
kids loved it, but nobody else seemed to as in
the story was never published. I thought it was good.
But and I've written horror, and I don't like to
do things twice, so writing in different genres. I did
young adult, which is fun, but they want you know,

(54:54):
people are talking about sequel here, so I got to
figure out if I'm going to write how I'm going
to write now.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
If you don't like to do things twice, then is
there potentially a different genre altogether that might come up
in the future.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
Well, as I said, I got this ya thing sitting
in my drawer, which is novelistic. I don't know if
I'll do anything with it right away. Again, I got
to tell you, you know, I launched the book. You know,
it was published a couple of months ago. It's a
lot of work. You know, You've got a lot of
stuff to do. So I have not been writing my
brains out lately.

Speaker 5 (55:31):
Yeah, yeah, just before we go, I'm going to try
and pick your brain for a comedy.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
But I'm not going to ask you about writing comedy.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Because I think you've talked obviously about observing and how
important that is. But let's say somebody's got first draft
and their editing comedy. Have you got a tip there
for the editing process that they could potentially use and
maybe not just comedy, maybe obviously with the thriller writing
as well, just an addits and tip.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Well, one editor said, uh, I think it was actually
Elmore Leonard who said take out all the parts that
people don't want to read. And I always thought that
applied to comedy too, which is take out all the
non funny parts. I mean, if you're writing comedy, you
want to kind of make sure that you're you're writing
to something that will deliver some kind of comedic punch.

(56:29):
And of course in sitcoms and uh, there's always setups
and characters and everything else. But some of those sitcoms,
you know, you think about how many lasts per minute
they were. I mean, that stuff just they kept coming,
that kept coming. You don't have to do that when
you're putting comedy into a thriller, which I did. I
didn't put comedy, but you know, there were some funny
things in it. You don't have to have that level

(56:50):
of comedy. But just generally, editing is about, you know,
you've heard lose your darling, kill your darlings. It's really
about sticking to what's important and realizing when you're overwriting
or when you don't need something, it's really taking stuff out.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
M really Yeah, good advice.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
And again, Chris, I'm sure obviously you'll wrap the show
up in a great way, but obviously, personally, I feel
like it's been a great interview. Loads of really good
tips and hints and tips in the book as well.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
I'm sure loads of people.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
Obviously people have put in the comments how interesting it is,
and I'm sure loads of people will pick it up
as a result of watching and listening to this show.
So thank you from me personally for joining us tonight.
It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
It's been a pleasure for me too.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Yes, thank you for that, Chris. What I'd like to say,
just before we do go, where can people find out
more information about yourself? Where can they get this brand
new book or last couple of months book, and just
where can they stalk you on social media?

Speaker 4 (57:59):
That sounds thrilling right there. I'm on Instagram and so
you can learn about me there. I have a website,
artbellwriter dot com and you can get in touch with
me through that. You can buy my books through that.
Of course, my books are available on Amazon, and it's
in bookstores as well. But it's on Amazon and Barnes

(58:22):
and Noble website and all the other good places you
buy books. So check out my website that I'll tell
you everything you need to know about me, lead you
to my books, and lead you to some other interesting stuff.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Amazing. Well, you've had a fantastic career you now journeying
on the fiction writing side of life, so I hope
it goes fantastically well for you, and there's hopefully plenty
more to come. So so much for sharing your story
with us. We really enjoyed it, and yeah, I hope
you have too. Thank you, I sure have brilliant everybody.

(58:56):
Have a fantastic weekend, and please do check out that.
If you have a manuscript sitting around and you want
to submitted to Amazon KDP, please do so, and we'll
support you if you need help with that. Get in
touch in any kind of way. But apart from us,
and thank you very much for tuning in and we'll
see you all next week.

Speaker 4 (59:14):
Thank you,

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