February 2, 2025 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: February 2, 2025
Award-winning/best selling NJ author Harlan Coben’s “Missing You” 5-episode Netflix series was #1 globally for two weeks. But even HE gets writer’s block!
Award-winning/best selling NJ author Harlan Coben’s “Missing You” 5-episode Netflix series was #1 globally for two weeks. But even HE gets writer’s block!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I want to introduce you to a household name when
it comes to books and also TV, Harlan Coben, who
is by the way in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
He is a best selling author, an award winning author,
and his Missing You, a five episode limited series that
(00:35):
premiered on Netflix January first, earlier this year, was number
one globally for two weeks. I mean on Netflix, number
one global. First of all, Congratulations, Happy New Year. I'm
still allowed to say that in February because I haven't
seen you for a few years.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Him doing Shelley. Nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm seeing you, you know. Okay, So, not only do
you have the Netflix series, you have a new book
that's coming out March twenty fifth, Nobody's Full, and you're
working with the wonderful Reese Witherspoon on another book coming out.
(01:19):
Is that also going to be fiction or what?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, it's a novel.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Reese actually came to me with an idea, and when.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
She came I was kind of thinking before she told
me the idea.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I'm like, how do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon you know,
I don't collaborate. I don't think it's going to work.
Blah blah blah. And then she tells me the idea
and I'm like, ooh, that's really good. We could do
something with that. And she and I have been working
on it since.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I'm not I cannot tell say one word about the book,
but I mean until the publishers say it's okay.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And I'm thinking even before the book comes out, already
thinking movie because of Reese Witherspoon, although it could also
be a streamer.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, it could be the one.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
I don't know what we'll do with it after that,
but you know, we have plans for it, and we'll
see what goes on.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's very exciting, very exciting, a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
She's great.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Tell me where it all started with you. I mean,
you grew up in Livingston, right, and you grew up
with Chris Christy.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I was born and grew up in Livingston. Chris Christy
was in my class in high school. We played on
the same Little league team when we were ten. In fact,
we're both inducted into the Little League Hall of Excellent
or Hall of Fame. We both threw out the first
pitch at a game, which, trust me, they did not
make those selections.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Based on play.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
It was I think because two guys were on the
same team that maybe two people have heard of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
So yeah, I've known. But Livingston is you know where
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, So were you surprised that he went into politics?
I mean, what was he like as a kid.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
No, I wasn't surprised really.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Our senior year of high school, I was president of
the student council. He was president of the senior class.
He was president of our class a lot of different years,
and I would say I probably practiced more what he's
supposed to be preaching, which was laissez a fair government.
I did absolutely nothing as president of the student council.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But he was always very active in student government.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Yes, if you were my class at Livingston High School
had six hundred kids per class back then, and I
would say if people were asked who would go into politics,
most people would have picked Chris.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And what about you? When did you get the bug
to write? When did you even figure out ah, I
can do this. I'm good at this.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
When I was in college, I worked a job for
a company called Club ABC Tours, which is owned by
my family, where I went to Spain, and I took
care of tourists there when I was eighteen nineteen years old,
which is far too young, by the way to do that.
And I remember thinking, man, someone should write a book
about this experience, because it's really weird.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And I did.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I sat down my senior year of college and I
just wrote a whole book. And the book was terrible.
It was pompous and self absorbed, in what a lot
of first novels are. But then I got the writing book.
It's almost like a virus, and I started to write
the novels that I loved reading, which I call if
people call them crime fiction or mystery or whatever, thrillers,
I call them the novel of immersion. I want to
(04:33):
write the book that you take on vacation but you
don't even want to leave your hotel room because you
have to know what happened. I want to write the
book that you take to bed at eleven o'clock at
night and say I'm just going to read for ten
or fifteen minutes and the next thing you know, it's
four in the morning and you're cursing me.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
That's the kind of book I read, and that's what
I hope to write.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So what were your favorites growing up?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Oh, you know, as a as a kid, A Rowald Dolls,
Charlie and Shaw Factory. C. S. Lewis's Narnia series, Madeline
Engel's Wrinkle in Time.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Those are a few of the books that I really
loved as kids. And then when I read.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
A copy of my dad's Marathon Man by William Goldman
on the side of his bed, and I remember, this
is the first time I had read an adult filler.
Were I actually kind of said to myself and you
could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't
put this book down. And I think subconsciously even then,
I was thinking, wouldn't be What a great life, brilliant involvement,
What a great.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Thing it would be to be able to do this
for a living.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Okay, I'm taking you took me somewhere in my mind
with the book by your father's bed, because by my
father's bed and my mother's bed was Lady Chatterley's lover.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Now my parents head that book. I think that those
books a little bit more than from us.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I am speaking with Harlan Coben. He is, of course
a best selling author. He is a member of the
New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is an award winning author,
and his Netflix series Missing You, which debuted January first
(06:16):
five episode limited series debuted globally number one for two weeks.
So where do you get your ideas for the mysteries
and the thrillers? Does it come from real life stories
or what?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Pretty much pretty much asking what if all the time.
So in the case of Missing You, the one that's
the Netflix series, the current most current Netflix series. Friends
for telling me. This is a few years ago, and
I wrote the book, you know, talking about using dating
apps and all those sort of things, and my mind
always goes to a what if What if something went wrong?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And I was thinking, what if the man that you
really loved just vanished on you?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Extreme goes that you couldn't find him as phone was
disconnected for all you knew he was dead, and then
eleven years later, you're just kind.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Of going through one of those dating.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Apps, swiping, swiping, swiping, and boom, there he is and
your debates should you reach out, should you not? You
reach out, and then your entire life blows apart, crime, murder,
all the things that you never really knew were going on.
All the secrets are being buried, unleashed, And so that's
the start of missing you, both the book and the
(07:29):
TV series.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And I did that a lot.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
The series before this, a lot of people watched it
was called Fool Me Once on Netflix. It was on
the New Year's released last year, and that was similarly,
my friends were all getting these nannycams to watch their
kids when they're not around that I was thinking.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
What if something went really wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
What if your husband was murdered and one day you're
checking that nannycam a few weeks after he's after his
murders to make sure your young daughter it's okay, And
you see in the nanny can your husband playing with
your daughter.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
What would you do? And then your life blows apart.
So these are the kind of ways that I make
it sound like it takes ten minutes.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
This is three months of work, Shelley. But these are
some of the ways that I start an idea and
then what story are you going to tell? It's usually
about friendship, about love, it's about family and redemption, and
you kind of cram that all in And unless you
have a book or a TV.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Series, do you ever get writer's luck?
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Of course, every day, but it's some of the it.
To just fight through it was part of the process.
If it comes too easily, it's probably not any good.
It's always a struggle. Only bad writers think they're good.
We all struggle with insecurity. We all struggle with every day.
That first word all the time is of waste in
our head, that tells us we're terrible, that we suck,
that we're not good at this.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And actually talk to it.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Not long ago, Stephen King sent me something he wanted
me to read, and he was nervous about my reaction,
and I go, dude, you're Stephen King?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Are you telling me? This never goes away? This fear
he never goes away? It does?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I think you're starting to phone it in. So it's
part of what a writer has to live with. So
if you're out there trying to write and you're paralyzed
by that voice in your head that says I suck,
I'm no good at this, we all have it. The
difference is that we still write through it that, you know,
there's a funny kind of hubris. We're on the one hand,
you say I suck, I'm terrible. On the other hand,
you say, I'm going to write a five hundred page
(09:23):
book and you're going to pay me to read it.
So you have both things, and that may soundly contradiction terms,
but both things exist within the writer.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Do you have a like a structured day when it
comes to writing.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I don't. I try. I keep trying. Like you know,
John Grisham has this very structured day. John wakes up
at the same time every day. He has a little
cottage behind his house that has no internet access whatsoever,
and he goes there and he writes from X to
Y and stops and certain amount of pages. And that's
how John does it. I try, but I never quite
(09:59):
do it that way. I can write any place. I
get tired of looking at the same spot, so I
don't really have an office. I write in public places
a lot. When I wrote a book called The Stranger,
which is also a Netflix series.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This is going back ten or fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
It was when we first had ride shares like Uber
and Lyft, and I took one to New York for
the very first.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Time, and I felt really guilty about spending the money.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
You know how we all trying to depend it in
our head, like, oh, well, by the time I pay
for the Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Bridge and I pay for parking, it's not that bad.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
But I'm sitting in the back and I'm feeling guilty,
and I take out my pad and pen and I
start to write.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
And I wrote really well.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
So for three weeks I took ubers everywhere I went
until I finished the book The Stranger, So any place
can work for me.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And what about when you have ideas. Let's say you
have an idea while you're driving. When do you write
down your ideas? Do you use your phone to just
put it in notes? What do you do every which way?
I've done both of those. If I'm driving, it's kind
of hard to write.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yes, Sometimes if somebody's with me in the car, I'll say,
do me favor, Just text me and I'll tell them
what I want them to text me.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That's what I do when I'm driving.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Sometimes I can just record it on a phone, and
then sometimes I just have to remember, as hard as
that is, but yeah, every different way, you just have
to always be prepared. I always carry around some way
of communicating with myself. It used to be a pad
and paper, but now it's sometimes easier to just use
the notes on a phone, just because only so many
(11:30):
things you can keep in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Do you have any kids? I have four, four kids. Okay,
what are they all doing well?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
My oldest is a writer. She writes on a lot
of the TV shows.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
She's writing two episodes of the of the New One Runaway,
she wrote on and I think of all of them
pretty much the last four or five. And she has
her own TV series. It's called Dead Hot and America.
It's on two B. It was done by Amazon originally,
but right now it's for free on two B. So
if you but Dead Hot to B, you can watch
my daughter, Charlotte Covin's TV series. One anuther some works
(12:04):
for my production company. The one works at NASA in
Wow Lee and mission control. He's in flight control at
NASA right in that main room there, is twenty five
years old. And my youngest, who's twenty three, does some
kind of genetic counseling working with als patients that I'm
not sure I quite understand. My wife's a pediatrician, so
she understands that a little better than I do. But
(12:26):
whenever she tries to explain it to me, I'm like, whoa, whoa,
Dad's not that smart.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's the guy who makes stuff up for living. Remember,
So slow down.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I did a little digging, and I hear that you are,
you know, very close to your heart is the Michael J.
Fox Foundation. Tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Why, Well, Michael's a dear friend, and you know, people
wonder is he sort of as wonderful as you sort of.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Think he might be.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And what's interesting about Mike is he's actually better you
think he is. That he is that cool and special
in the sacrifice is that he's made to hope to
help find a cure for Parkinson's. You know, it's an
organization that is really going to use the money and
use it well. And I've been at events where people
are doing other things involving research in medical fields, not
(13:17):
even with Parkinson's, and I've seen them thank MIC because
a lot of the breakthroughs that they've made in Parkinson's
disease has also benefited in so many ways different finding
different cures for various diseases. So I know it's an
organization where the money is going to be well spent,
and I know the leader as close to a hero
(13:38):
as you can have. You shouldn't have heroes in our society.
You shouldn't put people in that kind of pedestal. But
if one deserves it, I'm thrilled to see you might
get the Metal of Freedom. Recently, I really encourage people
to look into the Michael J. Fox Foundation for trying
to find a cure for Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
By the way, my husband and I recently binged The
Good Wife and he was just so we're kind of
late sometimes to series, but if you want to be binging,
and you don't have to go that deep because Missing
You on Netflix is five episodes. Harlan Coben, we have
one minute left. What have we not touched on that
(14:17):
you want our audience to know?
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Well, nothing, I just you know, I have a new
book coming out, Nobody's Fool in March, which is a
sequel to the TV series for me Ones.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's actually not a sequel to the book. It's weirdly not.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
The sequel to the TV series takes place a year later.
And yeah, I've actually had two more Netflix shows coming
out the next couple of months.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
From one from Poland and one from Argentina.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
In Polish and Spanish, though they are dubbed or subtitled
for people who want to watch them here. So if
you put Netflix dot com Harlancoben all the shows, there's
nine shows right now, will be eleven by the end
of March, and hope you enjoy them.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, one of these days you can have your own service.
You know, just the Harlan Coben streaming service could happen.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I want to introduce you to a household name when
it comes to books and also TV, Harlan Coben, who
is by the way in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
He is a best selling author, an award winning author,
and his Missing You, a five episode limited series that
(00:35):
premiered on Netflix January first, earlier this year, was number
one globally for two weeks. I mean on Netflix, number
one global. First of all, Congratulations, Happy New Year. I'm
still allowed to say that in February because I haven't
seen you for a few years.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Him doing Shelley. Nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm seeing you, you know. Okay, So, not only do
you have the Netflix series, you have a new book
that's coming out March twenty fifth, Nobody's Full, and you're
working with the wonderful Reese Witherspoon on another book coming out.
(01:19):
Is that also going to be fiction or what?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, it's a novel.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Reese actually came to me with an idea, and when.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
She came I was kind of thinking before she told
me the idea.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I'm like, how do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon you know,
I don't collaborate. I don't think it's going to work.
Blah blah blah. And then she tells me the idea
and I'm like, ooh, that's really good. We could do
something with that. And she and I have been working
on it since.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I'm not I cannot tell say one word about the book,
but I mean until the publishers say it's okay.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And I'm thinking even before the book comes out, already
thinking movie because of Reese Witherspoon, although it could also
be a streamer.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, it could be the one.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
I don't know what we'll do with it after that,
but you know, we have plans for it, and we'll
see what goes on.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's very exciting, very exciting, a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
She's great.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Tell me where it all started with you. I mean,
you grew up in Livingston, right, and you grew up
with Chris Christy.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I was born and grew up in Livingston. Chris Christy
was in my class in high school. We played on
the same Little league team when we were ten. In fact,
we're both inducted into the Little League Hall of Excellent
or Hall of Fame. We both threw out the first
pitch at a game, which, trust me, they did not
make those selections.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Based on play.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
It was I think because two guys were on the
same team that maybe two people have heard of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
So yeah, I've known. But Livingston is you know where
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, So were you surprised that he went into politics?
I mean, what was he like as a kid.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
No, I wasn't surprised really.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Our senior year of high school, I was president of
the student council. He was president of the senior class.
He was president of our class a lot of different years,
and I would say I probably practiced more what he's
supposed to be preaching, which was laissez a fair government.
I did absolutely nothing as president of the student council.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But he was always very active in student government.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Yes, if you were my class at Livingston High School
had six hundred kids per class back then, and I
would say if people were asked who would go into politics,
most people would have picked Chris.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And what about you? When did you get the bug
to write? When did you even figure out ah, I
can do this. I'm good at this.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
When I was in college, I worked a job for
a company called Club ABC Tours, which is owned by
my family, where I went to Spain, and I took
care of tourists there when I was eighteen nineteen years old,
which is far too young, by the way to do that.
And I remember thinking, man, someone should write a book
about this experience, because it's really weird.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And I did.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I sat down my senior year of college and I
just wrote a whole book. And the book was terrible.
It was pompous and self absorbed, in what a lot
of first novels are. But then I got the writing book.
It's almost like a virus, and I started to write
the novels that I loved reading, which I call if
people call them crime fiction or mystery or whatever, thrillers,
I call them the novel of immersion. I want to
(04:33):
write the book that you take on vacation but you
don't even want to leave your hotel room because you
have to know what happened. I want to write the
book that you take to bed at eleven o'clock at
night and say I'm just going to read for ten
or fifteen minutes and the next thing you know, it's
four in the morning and you're cursing me.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
That's the kind of book I read, and that's what
I hope to write.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So what were your favorites growing up?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Oh, you know, as a as a kid, A Rowald Dolls,
Charlie and Shaw Factory. C. S. Lewis's Narnia series, Madeline
Engel's Wrinkle in Time.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Those are a few of the books that I really
loved as kids. And then when I read.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
A copy of my dad's Marathon Man by William Goldman
on the side of his bed, and I remember, this
is the first time I had read an adult filler.
Were I actually kind of said to myself and you
could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't
put this book down. And I think subconsciously even then,
I was thinking, wouldn't be What a great life, brilliant involvement,
What a great.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Thing it would be to be able to do this
for a living.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Okay, I'm taking you took me somewhere in my mind
with the book by your father's bed, because by my
father's bed and my mother's bed was Lady Chatterley's lover.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Now my parents head that book. I think that those
books a little bit more than from us.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I am speaking with Harlan Coben. He is, of course
a best selling author. He is a member of the
New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is an award winning author,
and his Netflix series Missing You, which debuted January first
(06:16):
five episode limited series debuted globally number one for two weeks.
So where do you get your ideas for the mysteries
and the thrillers? Does it come from real life stories
or what?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Pretty much pretty much asking what if all the time.
So in the case of Missing You, the one that's
the Netflix series, the current most current Netflix series. Friends
for telling me. This is a few years ago, and
I wrote the book, you know, talking about using dating
apps and all those sort of things, and my mind
always goes to a what if What if something went wrong?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And I was thinking, what if the man that you
really loved just vanished on you?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Extreme goes that you couldn't find him as phone was
disconnected for all you knew he was dead, and then
eleven years later, you're just kind.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Of going through one of those dating.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Apps, swiping, swiping, swiping, and boom, there he is and
your debates should you reach out, should you not? You
reach out, and then your entire life blows apart, crime, murder,
all the things that you never really knew were going on.
All the secrets are being buried, unleashed, And so that's
the start of missing you, both the book and the
(07:29):
TV series.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And I did that a lot.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
The series before this, a lot of people watched it
was called Fool Me Once on Netflix. It was on
the New Year's released last year, and that was similarly,
my friends were all getting these nannycams to watch their
kids when they're not around that I was thinking.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
What if something went really wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
What if your husband was murdered and one day you're
checking that nannycam a few weeks after he's after his
murders to make sure your young daughter it's okay, And
you see in the nanny can your husband playing with
your daughter.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
What would you do? And then your life blows apart.
So these are the kind of ways that I make
it sound like it takes ten minutes.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
This is three months of work, Shelley. But these are
some of the ways that I start an idea and
then what story are you going to tell? It's usually
about friendship, about love, it's about family and redemption, and
you kind of cram that all in And unless you
have a book or a TV.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Series, do you ever get writer's luck?
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Of course, every day, but it's some of the it.
To just fight through it was part of the process.
If it comes too easily, it's probably not any good.
It's always a struggle. Only bad writers think they're good.
We all struggle with insecurity. We all struggle with every day.
That first word all the time is of waste in
our head, that tells us we're terrible, that we suck,
that we're not good at this.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And actually talk to it.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Not long ago, Stephen King sent me something he wanted
me to read, and he was nervous about my reaction,
and I go, dude, you're Stephen King?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Are you telling me? This never goes away? This fear
he never goes away? It does?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I think you're starting to phone it in. So it's
part of what a writer has to live with. So
if you're out there trying to write and you're paralyzed
by that voice in your head that says I suck,
I'm no good at this, we all have it. The
difference is that we still write through it that, you know,
there's a funny kind of hubris. We're on the one hand,
you say I suck, I'm terrible. On the other hand,
you say, I'm going to write a five hundred page
(09:23):
book and you're going to pay me to read it.
So you have both things, and that may soundly contradiction terms,
but both things exist within the writer.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Do you have a like a structured day when it
comes to writing.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I don't. I try. I keep trying. Like you know,
John Grisham has this very structured day. John wakes up
at the same time every day. He has a little
cottage behind his house that has no internet access whatsoever,
and he goes there and he writes from X to
Y and stops and certain amount of pages. And that's
how John does it. I try, but I never quite
(09:59):
do it that way. I can write any place. I
get tired of looking at the same spot, so I
don't really have an office. I write in public places
a lot. When I wrote a book called The Stranger,
which is also a Netflix series.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This is going back ten or fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
It was when we first had ride shares like Uber
and Lyft, and I took one to New York for
the very first.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Time, and I felt really guilty about spending the money.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
You know how we all trying to depend it in
our head, like, oh, well, by the time I pay
for the Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Bridge and I pay for parking, it's not that bad.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
But I'm sitting in the back and I'm feeling guilty,
and I take out my pad and pen and I
start to write.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
And I wrote really well.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
So for three weeks I took ubers everywhere I went
until I finished the book The Stranger, So any place
can work for me.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And what about when you have ideas. Let's say you
have an idea while you're driving. When do you write
down your ideas? Do you use your phone to just
put it in notes? What do you do every which way?
I've done both of those. If I'm driving, it's kind
of hard to write.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yes, Sometimes if somebody's with me in the car, I'll say,
do me favor, Just text me and I'll tell them
what I want them to text me.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That's what I do when I'm driving.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Sometimes I can just record it on a phone, and
then sometimes I just have to remember, as hard as
that is, but yeah, every different way, you just have
to always be prepared. I always carry around some way
of communicating with myself. It used to be a pad
and paper, but now it's sometimes easier to just use
the notes on a phone, just because only so many
(11:30):
things you can keep in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Do you have any kids? I have four, four kids. Okay,
what are they all doing well?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
My oldest is a writer. She writes on a lot
of the TV shows.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
She's writing two episodes of the of the New One Runaway,
she wrote on and I think of all of them
pretty much the last four or five. And she has
her own TV series. It's called Dead Hot and America.
It's on two B. It was done by Amazon originally,
but right now it's for free on two B. So
if you but Dead Hot to B, you can watch
my daughter, Charlotte Covin's TV series. One anuther some works
(12:04):
for my production company. The one works at NASA in
Wow Lee and mission control. He's in flight control at
NASA right in that main room there, is twenty five
years old. And my youngest, who's twenty three, does some
kind of genetic counseling working with als patients that I'm
not sure I quite understand. My wife's a pediatrician, so
she understands that a little better than I do. But
(12:26):
whenever she tries to explain it to me, I'm like, whoa, whoa,
Dad's not that smart.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's the guy who makes stuff up for living. Remember,
So slow down.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I did a little digging, and I hear that you are,
you know, very close to your heart is the Michael J.
Fox Foundation. Tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Why, Well, Michael's a dear friend, and you know, people
wonder is he sort of as wonderful as you sort of.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Think he might be.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And what's interesting about Mike is he's actually better you
think he is. That he is that cool and special
in the sacrifice is that he's made to hope to
help find a cure for Parkinson's. You know, it's an
organization that is really going to use the money and
use it well. And I've been at events where people
are doing other things involving research in medical fields, not
(13:17):
even with Parkinson's, and I've seen them thank MIC because
a lot of the breakthroughs that they've made in Parkinson's
disease has also benefited in so many ways different finding
different cures for various diseases. So I know it's an
organization where the money is going to be well spent,
and I know the leader as close to a hero
(13:38):
as you can have. You shouldn't have heroes in our society.
You shouldn't put people in that kind of pedestal. But
if one deserves it, I'm thrilled to see you might
get the Metal of Freedom. Recently, I really encourage people
to look into the Michael J. Fox Foundation for trying
to find a cure for Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
By the way, my husband and I recently binged The
Good Wife and he was just so we're kind of
late sometimes to series, but if you want to be binging,
and you don't have to go that deep because Missing
You on Netflix is five episodes. Harlan Coben, we have
one minute left. What have we not touched on that
(14:17):
you want our audience to know?
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Well, nothing, I just you know, I have a new
book coming out, Nobody's Fool in March, which is a
sequel to the TV series for me Ones.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's actually not a sequel to the book. It's weirdly not.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
The sequel to the TV series takes place a year later.
And yeah, I've actually had two more Netflix shows coming
out the next couple of months.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
From one from Poland and one from Argentina.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
In Polish and Spanish, though they are dubbed or subtitled
for people who want to watch them here. So if
you put Netflix dot com Harlancoben all the shows, there's
nine shows right now, will be eleven by the end
of March, and hope you enjoy them.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, one of these days you can have your own service.
You know, just the Harlan Coben streaming service could happen.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
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