David Baldacci's Leap from Legal Thrillers to Historical Fiction

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:01:32

Hello and welcome to the Thriller Zone. I'm your host, Dave Temple, and I'm glad you're here, because today, you know, today is a very special day.

Every once in a while, you set a goal for yourself of someone you really want on the show. And I set my intention for this particular guest a long time ago, probably about a year ago. And I kept thinking, well, all they can do is say no.

And guess what? They said yes. So today, David Baldock, number one New York Times bestseller of 150 plus million books, is on the show.

This book, Strangers in Time, is something you will want to cozy up with a cup of tea and silence around you and just chill out and enjoy. It's a departure from his standard legal stuff, but I'm telling you something, it shows what an incredible historical fiction writer he can be.

Anyway, enough of me babbling. How about you and I get into the Thriller Zone with David Baldacci? Very few people do. I want to. I don't know why this is. There's.

There's two people that have become. That have been on the show that I wanted to start with the title of Mr. Mr. Baldacci and Mr. Patterson. I don't know why.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:02:50

Please. No.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:02:51

Yeah. And I'm older than you, so, you know, David.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:02:54

David is fine. David.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:02:56

Yeah, it's the dueling Davids on the Thriller Zone.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:03:00

Right.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:03:00

Well, we're going to be talking about Strangers in Time, which was, as I put in, I was doing some social media on you yesterday, David, talking about what I thought about this book, just to give a little tease of the show that's to come. And I was talking about this departure because I'm flashing back and I was doing this morning when I was on the treadmill.

I'm like, oh, God, when did I first discover David's work? And I'm going back and I'm like, it's got to be mid-90s. So I'm like, okay, that's about right. 96, I think, was absolute power, right?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:03:32

That's right, yes.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:03:33

And I thought at that time, I remember going, who is this cat? Now, this guy, this is. This is a guy who really knows his stuff. And this was. You were just a Scotia after, I want to say, John Grisham.

And I'm thinking about this is when I really got absorbed by reading. And you, you know, it's. It's. It's you and absolute power. It's John Grisham, it's James Patterson, it's Patricia Cornwell, Michael Crichton.

And you were Right there. In my opinion, at that perfect time for a stratospheric launch of your career.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:04:07

Yeah, I was, he was very, very lucky. You know, those, the moons are not in alignment all that often.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:04:13

And you were way. Now you were, you were practicing law right up to that time. Were you writing at the same time?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:04:20

Yeah, I was. I, I mean, I had a, I had to keep my day job. I was married, I had one child at that point, so, you know, we need to have income coming in.

And I, I kept on practicing for about a year after the book was sold, and I was working on my second novel.

And then I went in to tell my partner, I said, I, I don't think I can be a good lawyer and a good writer trying to juggle both of these careers at the same time. So I think I'm going to have to leave. And he said, look, if it had been me, I would have faxed in my resignation on day one.

So thanks for hanging out for a year. Wow.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:04:52

Now, so. But it takes a long time to become the kind of established attorney that you were. So which came first? Were you, were you always like a closet writer?

And you're like, this is really what I do, but I've got to, you know, bring home the bacon.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:05:08

Yeah, I was the former. I've been writing since I was a kid.

When I was in law school, my classmates at UVA were trying out for law review and Moot Court, and I was trying to sell short stories to Playboy magazine, you know, so that's what I wanted to do with my life. Although, quite frankly, as a, as a lawyer, the only arrows I had in my quiver were words.

And I have to say, some of the best fiction I ever wrote is when I was a lawyer. You know, I just had to tell the best story based on the facts that I had.

And so the transition from writing, you know, being a lawyer full time to writing full time was pretty easy because it was just, again, an existence filled with words.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:05:44

Well, for those folks who may not know, David Balduch, and I can't imagine that being the case, I, I, I'm going to give you a little inside scoop now. I'm going back and I'm looking at your list of books because I'm, I did some homework. 52 novels, four shorts, seven children's books.

But here, that's, that's a lot of writing. That's a lot of words, David. But what caught my attention was the fact.

And you started off kind of the, what always has felt like the pattern I'm going to write one book a year.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:06:13

Here we go.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:06:13

It's going to take me a year. And. And that was the thing in the late 80s, early, all the way through the 90s.

this cat's writing. At around: 2007

And then a couple of times, I won't bury you with details. Then you went to three books a year. My question is, how so, you know.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:06:44

Around that time,: 2007

And I'm never going to do that. So I had finished a book early and I had an idea for another book and then I wrote it fairly quickly.

And I thought, you know, this is a pace because I'm the sort of guy, when I finish a novel, it's not like I could take six months off. I'm like, what's next? And I'm always at my worst when I'm in between stories. So that's just what drives me. My motor on storytelling doesn't stop.

You know, it's not a job or a passion or even a hobby. It's like, it's what I identify as. So a two book a year deal worked really well for me. That was sort of my pattern. That was my schedule.

That's how that's the pace I wanted to work at. And sometimes the three books a year is just. I had surprise books. Not even my publisher knew I was writing.

I just had an idea for a book and I wrote it and I sent it up. And they were like, jesus, where the hell did this come from? We'll slot it in somewhere. And I said, fine, you know, I'm off writing the next one.

See you. So, well, see, this, to me, is.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:07:46

The personification of a genuine writer. I hear people go, oh, God, I've got to write a book a year and I've got to slog through this.

And I'm like, you make it sound like it's not that enjoyable.

You know, the writers that I've run across, and I'm approaching four years with this podcast and almost 300 episodes, I find that the people just like yourself, you just nailed it right there. No, no, no. I've always been writing this is, this is who I am. So I often wonder to people who are, you know, I'm spending. And then you find this.

I'm spending four years with this. I'm gonna rewrite it. And I'm like, David's already had six ideas since you've started your conversation with me.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:08:28

It is really, it's just how my mind works. And, you know, people say, where do you get all your ideas from? I said, it's pretty simple.

I wake up every day and I walk out the door and I don't want my face stuck to this thing. I'm actually curious about life. I travel, I read a lot, I talk to people.

I'm endlessly curious about how the world works and how people fit into that equation.

And when you do that and you fill up all your little knowledge pots across the spectrum, it's kind of easy to come up with original ideas because no one else has the same knowledge pots you do, and they don't make the same selections you do. And sometimes I write a book just to answer a question. I don't think life is answered. I did that with a 620, man. So it's lots of reasons.

What drives me to write it is that insatiable motor that I have. But also the world is out there and you just have to be ready to receive the opportunity of living. And I've come up with ideas.

Just some people I've seen walking down the street or getting on a bus and going into a building. And you just have to have your imagination ready to laser sharp focus on an opportunity. And then bang, off you go. And so that's really how I'm wired.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:09:32

It always cracks me up when I listen to other podcasts and they go, where do you, where do your ideas come from? And I'm like, if you wake up and put your feet on the floor and move through the day, you're gonna have about a dozen of them hit you.

It just depends on which one feels like the right thing to the rabbit hole to go down.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:09:51

Exactly. Exactly right. It's, it's, you know, it's a cornucopia. But most people, they don't focus on that.

They're, they look, they're looking inward and not outward.

You know, when I, I've just finished book tour and I go and I give talks, funny talks to big crowds of people, and I think to myself, I'd much rather be out in the crowd watching everybody else. You know, it.

That yin and yang of writers spend most of their time in isolation and but there's a little bit of, you know, you get a little bit of the ham sensation when you get up in front of people. And I like that, too. As a trial lawyer, you know, we're all hams. Yeah, I.

I would prefer to be in the back of the crowd watching everybody and seeing, you know, how they talk to each other, what things happen, you know, how human beings interact really is what drives me, my focus and my concentration.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:10:32

You brought up a really good point when you brought up the phone. And, man, I think about this constantly. We just.

My wife and I just flew back from Northern California this weekend, and we went through the airport and I said, honey, look around. I'm like, see if you notice what I see. I promise you, David, and I know you know this as much as you travel.

I'm gonna be conservative and say 80% of the people I'm looking at are doing this. And I'm like, do you remember the days, David, when we were actually viewing and experiencing and relishing life without the digital babysitter?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:11:10

I do. You know, I. I fly a lot, too. And part of me is always thinking, you know, the pilots are up there on their phones while they're on autopilot. I.

I send this little video around to people that I found on YouTube that addresses your point. And I send it to them and I tell them, and I said, and I. And I asked them what is missing from this. And I don't tell them where the video is from.

It's actually from like: 1994

s out. Nobody's doing this in: 1994

And I wish it were like that again.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:11:58

Yeah, I hate to say it because I'm going to be talking out of both sides of my mouth, because one side I want to say, people, get off the damn toy. And the other side of me goes, you know, we. We're. We're filling all these tiny little moments with, well, I'm bored. I'm standing in line.

I've got to do something. How about saying hi to your neighbor? I don't know.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:12:17

Yeah, well, it's also. It's like burning out our you know, long ability to read long form fiction too.

You know, now people in college are not actually being assigned to read books or being assigned to read summaries of books because their brains can't focus for 400 pages, which scares the living hell out of me.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:12:35

You're jumping ahead to a question I was going to have and that is do you find, and I brought up a point specifically when you launched in 96, this was pre a whole lot of the electronics. So I remember the day when you would relish, oh, is it four or five hundred pages? Oh, it's six hundred. Holy crap, let's go now.

It's like, you know, and I'm, and I'm guilty of this probably because I'm reading three books a week probably for the show and I'm like 4:33. Dave, you're really, you're really pushing my patience. Could you not tell the story about 299?

But a question is, do you feel that that is almost single handedly between, between the electronics, phone and the, the way that video is being crunched at such a compression and fed at us so quickly that it is literally rewiring our brain?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:13:32

It is.

I mean, if you go to watch a video on YouTube or you go to even go to a movie theater, you get two hours of what a director wants you to know about a book. Is the only venue that I know that you can sit down and the book is not finished until the last reader reads it.

Because every reader is going to come over with their own conclusions. Because it allows the reader's imagination to fill in a lot of gaps that the writer just can't fill in until the reader finishes it.

Movies don't allow you to do that. Nothing else allows you to do that other than books.

You know, that's why when we were still in the dark ages until Gutenberg invented the printing press and when books became widely available, that's when all of a sudden we came into the enlightenment. And it's because books allow us to exercise our brain to the maximum in all good ways.

You know, we're not just a client, you know, sitting back, spectator, receiving information and not having to think about any of it.

Books you have to participate in and it builds your brain to astonishing levels and also not only builds your brains to where you can think better and also, as I've said many times, and I did on the tour, books instill in you the greatest human attribute of all and that's empathy. Because you will meet far more people on the pages than you ever will in real life. You'll travel to books in places you won't in real life.

We've traveled in books to places you can't go in real life, like the past and the future. And it builds empathy and understanding and consciousness and all good things.

And if you don't read books and you don't have empathy, it leads to all the worst in all of us. So that's why I preach to people.

Just because you pick up books, not reading, you know, Baldacci on the beach for fun, it's actually building the depth of your humanity. It is.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:15:07

Wow, that's a lot to unpack. And so reflective of this particular book, strangers in time. 2. Two things have popped into my head.

You know, you always hear people say, oh, which do you like better, the book or the movie? Well, I like the movie. I'm like, I like the book.

And I'm like, why would you not like the book when you are the director interpreting the entire story and able to build the entire universe in which you're enveloped, you know?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:15:36

Yeah, it is. I know. I get that too. And again, they're very. They're apples and oranges.

Nothing, you know, having your work adapted to screen is fine, but the book is sui generis. There's nothing that will take away the original because it can add depth to it that a movie can't do.

Always looked as a book as three to four dimensional movies typically are two dimensional. Again, you don't really participate in the movie at all. You're not asked to figure things out.

You're just supposed to be sit there as a silent witness to what's unfolding. But books interpreting words and language in a novel, that requires a lot of work on behalf of the reader.

It's like this bond of trust between the reader and the writer that if you spend the time on what I'm writing, you will come out at the end somehow better for it. That's sort of a deal you make. But it takes work. And because it takes work, a lot of people are like, I don't want to do it. I'm, I'm. I don't want to.

You know, I want my two minutes of pop, and then I'll move on to something else and get another pop. You know, it's kind of like, well, yeah, that's what meth does too. Wouldn't recommend that either.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:16:39

No, it is amazing that, you know, flashback, just, just 10 years. I'm not even talking about 30 or 40. 10 years. We weren't doing that super fast scroll now you can't even. And it's.

So I said this to Tammy, my wife, the other day. I'm like the, I'm, I'm frustrated. I'm mad at myself. Like, it's little hits of. What's the, what's the chemical? Dopamine.

It's like, yeah, little hits of dopamine. And I'm like, It frustrates me because I'm like, I don't want that.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:17:07

I know. I've gotten rid of ibaps, too.

And I have, like, this trigger on my phone that tells me when I've reached a certain number of hours on it, and then I just stop. And, you know, and it, it bothers me sometimes how quickly I reached my limit.

What we see online is ultra processed food digitally, and ultra processed food was put together chemically to give you that Papa dopamine. You know, these guys are really smart. Same thing happened with cigarette manufacturers. They did the same thing. And so you're absolutely right.

You get a pop of this because it's, it's Pavlov, you know, here's the treat, boy. Here's the treat, boy. Just keep going. Keep strolling. You're going to get another treat. And we fall for it.

And I, I, it just kills me that I, I see people out there, you know, clued to that thing for no, no reason other than it actually is highly addictive. They're not really learning that much from.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:17:53

This stuff to this very point. We're almost 15 minutes in. Attention spans may not keep them here. So I got to make sure I hit strangers in time. As you'll notice, there are.

There are moments in the book that jumped out of me, and so I tend to. And it's an arc, so I feel perfectly okay with this. I would never destroy a regular book. Mr.

Baldacci and I wrote a little blurb of what I felt about this book.

sonant experience set against: 1944

How I was introduced to you back there in 96. And I wanted to ask. And as I'm reading and I'm going to get to these two points that I really want to attach to what.

And I know you've stepped off the legal train, so I'm not idiot enough to go, why aren't you writing just all legal trollers in this but what, what, what brought this particular book to.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:19:00

You about, you know, 10 years ago, my wife gave me a blank page journal, probably longer than 10 years ago for Christmas. And I was like, you know, I tell people, don't give a writer blank paper on a major holiday. You're never going them again. Maybe that was her point.

I don't know. She's. She's. She's much smarter than I am. And I started writing a book called Calamity of Souls that came out last year.

was historical fiction set in: 1968

And I titled, you know, the first chapter of Boy Called Charlie.

And I wrote the first 150 pages of both those books by hand in those journals because I think better in cursive, sometimes the keyboard gets in the way of actually what I want to get from here onto the page. And both those books took me well over a decade because I would stop writing on them. Didn't know if I was going to finish it.

I was working on other books, I would go back to them, read some pages, get re energized. But really with Strangers in Time, I've been in Anglophile for a long time. I've been to the UK countless times.

I love the people, the culture, everything about it. What I really wanted, and I thought it was important, particularly these days.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:20:17

All right, let's take a short break, and when we come back, we'll hear the rest of that story as David Baldacci shares more about Strangers in Time here on the Thriller Zone. Stay with us. Welcome back.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:20:28

I wanted in this book to show that humanity has been faced with daunting challenges when it didn't look like we were ever going to come out the other end of the tunnel intact, but we did. And so that was the first point. The second point was that human beings are social creatures.

And it's really important for us to particularly go through bad times, not alone and isolated, which can only deepen the hurt, but go through it with people we can trust and rely upon and have faith in. And I thought, you know, how do you get an original take on, you know, this is like the 4 millionth book written on World War II.

So I decided to give you the atmosphere of the war, but I wasn't going to dwell on the war. I wanted to talk about three people, you know, Boy from the West East End, a girl from the West End and a bookseller in the middle.

They've all had losses, they're bereaved. They have all got sort of secrets in their past they have to deal with, which we all have crap we have to deal with.

And then I was going to make them lose what little they had, you know, and they were like.

It's almost like when you go into the army, you know, they strip you of everything that makes you a human being and they build you into the war machine they need. Right. So I stripped them everything they had and then asked them to survive. And how did they do that?

Well, they came together, you know, individually, I don't think they could have made it, but together they had a shot. And I just wanted this to be a lesson to people that, one, we face calamity before, and two, you don't have to go through it alone.

In fact, your chances of success are much greater if you go through it with people you actually care about and can trust.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:22:00

Well, if you'll allow me. And it's so funny. There's so much good. It's atmospheric, it's introspective, it's emotionally resonant. I love the character development about.

And human resilience. That was the thing that I kept going about. But for those who are questioning, oh, should I pick this up? Yes, let's just start there.

But it start at the very beginning and I was thinking to myself, how can I describe to my audience who are thriller fans, hardcore through and through, Give them an example of what you're looking for, of what you're going to be presenting. And this paragraph at the beginning jumped out at me because it gives so much tone and character.

The poor cherished their possessions because they could invariably see all of them at the same time. The rich did not miss that for which they had four spares. Thus, Charlie had no compunction relieving from affluent folks a bit of their surplus.

Yeah, there's like 10 things going on in those three sentences that tell you. Class, struggle, sets the tone, empathy, introspection, survival.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:23:15

Yeah, I, you know, for me, when I was writing scripts for a while and I. I adapted one of my own books for movie. Wish you well. I really thought about the economy of words. I thought in my earlier books I was too verbose.

I said in a hundred words what I would have said with more discipline and more work and 10. So I've gotten to the point where I call it the Gettysburg Address way of writing.

The Gettysburg Address is the greatest political speech in this country's history. It was only like 360 words long. Lincoln only took 2 1/2 minutes to speak at Gettysburg dedication.

The congressman of Pennsylvania spoke before him, spoke for two and a half hours. Nobod. Remember what the hell that guy was or what he said.

But I've always thought that every word in the Gettysburg Address had earned its right to be in there. And while I'm never going to approach that level of eloquence, I try to do the same thing.

So in those sentences you just read, I needed to do a whole lot of things.

I needed to show people the desperation of Charlie, the circumstances facing him, the fact that the rich made out far easier than the poor during World War II in London.

But also, and this was probably the most prevalent point I was trying to get across at that point in the book, was that even though he was a thief, Charlie had principles, he had morals. And. And that also led into his, you know, his connection with. Out with Ignatius Oliver and what he did when he went back to the shop later.

I wanted, you know, I wanted you to follow this young man because even though life had been absolute hell for him, he never had any opportunities to do anything much like the people he grew up with in Bethnal Green. But he still had morals, he still had love in his heart, and he was still a kid who wanted to do the right thing at the same time trying to survive.

And I felt, you know, the words in those three sentences did everything I wanted them to do, but it was important to get that out early because I wanted people to have that touchstone to follow as you were going through the rest of the novel.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:25:14

Well, I found it so interesting, David, and I'm so glad you said that because of all the words in this, And I'm guessing 110, 120, you know, that jumped out at me and then this one. And if this is too much of a giveaway, you can tell me and I'll cut it out. But this, if you want to say, hey, what is it about? It's close to the end.

Together they had confronted a collective hardship that at times seemed beyond anyone's capacity. It spoke well, indeed of the resilience of the human spirit when one had friends with whom to share the sometimes calamitous burden of existence.

Yeah, Mic drop.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:25:58

Yeah, I mean that, you know, people go back and look at their lives, that will describe pretty faithfully what a lot of us have to go through. Some people suffer a lot more than others, but everyone suffers I don't care how much wealth you have or don't have, where you came from.

Everybody suffers through, you know, points like that in their lives. But I think it's really important, particularly in a day and age now with technology, where more and more people feel isolated.

You know, I see all these reports of young men who have no friends and they feel isolated, and that's not a good thing because bad things come out of isolation because all of a sudden people start going down weird rabbit holes they never come out of again. So for me, I think it's really important. Again, we're social creatures, and we are built to deal with each other.

We are built to sort of come together, find commonality, and to make it through hard times. You know, family. It's easy to be a friend during good times. You know, the full measure of friendship, I think, is borne out through bad times. And I.

I so wanted that point to resonate from this story because that's really the reason I had these three characters. And I put that through the steps that I did during the novel with the outcome that was. That was had in the. At the end of the novel, too.

I wanted to be.

Even though it's about war and terrible things and people were dying all over the place at the end of the novel, I hope the emotion people take away from it is hope, you know, because that's what I intended.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:27:19

Well, and this is. I. I hope I'm kind of close in this. It. Especially the way you described that if it made me feel a similar way, that I'm.

When I'm watching Saving Private Ryan. Yes, the.

The war is happening all around you in a way that a director had never quite done before, and you're completely surrounded and overwhelmed by all of that.

Yet the story is really about finding one person and sending them home and the struggle of all the men who come together, realizing that it's going to be the bond of friendship that will make the bond of survival.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:27:59

I'm glad you brought up Private Ryan. I've often thought about that movie. I love the movie for lots of different reasons.

I would change one word in the title, but I think it means the same.

Because in the midst of a war where men are killing other men in enormous numbers and doing things to them that in peacetime, they wouldn't even contemplate what that story was really about. It was not finding. It was not saving Private Ryan. It was saving humanity. That's what it was.

So in the middle of a war where your job is to kill other People as fast and as quickly and as many as you possibly can. If you come out of that war without your humanity, it's not going to get a good place for you.

It's certainly not going to get a good place for the people around you. So really what was, I think they were saving that move was humanity.

Because right in the middle of this terrible conflict, you had people trying to do the right thing, person to person. And that was really the whole point of it.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:28:50

And nobody carried the core of that exact idea better than Tom Hanks and the way that he approached, viewed, absorbed, moved through life.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:29:01

Right, Yeah, I know, and I loved it too. He was an everyman. Even had, I think his name was Miller, Sergeant Miller. You can't come up with that. Like the most common name in America.

There's like 5 million millers in America. Midwest. Just a lunch pail kind of guy. He did his job as a soldier, but he did his job as a human being even more in that movie.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:29:20

Yeah, well, this book does that in spades.

I mean, there, there are moments where you, you want to hug Charlie, you want to, you know, you want to be his best friend, you want to teach him things. Again, I'm going to, to this phrase about emotional resilience and human resilience, facing adversity.

It was just a, you know, I was reading it and I was thinking about my mom and dad who grew up.

They were born in 31, so they were going through some of the tail end of a lot of this and they, their perspective of life helped me appreciate life in a different way. Because the way they would hoard things and save things, I, I would often go, why, that's worthless.

But when you didn't have anything or you had it taken away constantly because of the stress and strife.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:30:13

Yeah, everything was precious that you had to possession of. I, you know, I read a lot of letters much like the WPA did in this country during the Depression over in, in England.

They had, they were, I had a scene where they had artists who were painting some of the devastation. That was a real thing. But they also was this cache of letters wrote describing their experiences during the blitz and the other years of the war.

And some of them were just amazing. You would have one guy who wrote, yeah, you know, my house was bombed this morning and totally destroyed.

And he goes, but I was only a half an hour late to work, so that was a good thing.

And I'm like, you know, that tells me all I need to know about, you know, the spirit of the people Back then, I know that, you know, keep calm and carry on.

It's cliche, but at the end of the day, people found the wherewithal to get through the day when most people would, if they had suffered, but those people had suffered, they would be on the floor in a fetal position, unable to do anything, you know, for the rest of their lives. But, you know, so the house was bombed, but he was only a half an hour late to work. That just.

I held that line in my mind as I was writing the novel, and it was sort of like a touchstone for me, which is important when you're diving. There's so many emotional fragments in a novel like this, so it gave me a lot of clarity.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:31:29

David, I took your master class back when. And that if anyone has never done that, it's worth the price of admission.

I learned more in one sitting with you than I could learn in reading 10 books. Because you have such an eloquent way of.

Like you've done on this interview in 29 minutes, getting to the heart of the matter, being very succinct, not verbose. And I think. Did you not say in one of your sessions, and this was quite a bit of time ago, so bear with me. Do you not hold a.

Do you not put a phrase on a piece of paper and hold it just like you just said? That kind of is the general theme of the story. So as you're writing, you always want to make sure you're true to that theme.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:32:15

Yeah, it's important, I think, because if you don't have something like that, you can go sideways quickly and build a lot of things in the story that are unnecessary and actually detract from the overall effect you're going for.

You know, when I was a lawyer and my daughter's graduating law school in about a month, and she's already been in court on some cases as a student attorney. They allow them to do that in Maryland for some people who otherwise couldn't afford lawyers. And she asked me, I'm going into court today.

What are some. You know, with some advice. And I said, keep it simple. Keep it absolutely simple. I don't know if you're.

I don't care if you're speaking before a judge or a jury, and you don't give them 10 things to hang their hat on. Eight things, four things, three things.

You give them one thing to hang their hat on, and you hammer away at that as eloquently as you can, but always come back to that point. And that's really all Human beings need to move forward in a way, in a positive way.

So in the novel, you know, it's 400 pages long or more, having a clarifying thread that you can then extrapolate out and build on. You know, you start with this and at the end of the novel you have a mountain. Hopefully the mountain does everything you want it to do.

If you start out with a lot of different things, you never rise high, you just rise wide.

And at the end of the day, there's really nothing that resonates at the end because people are like, I have no idea what the hell I even meant with that. You know, there's like 87 things I sort to think about. All I want is I got. I have one theme and I build on that theme in a hundred different ways.

But at the end, it's up here and that theme still resonates.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:33:47

And isn't that kind of the key to creating a character's arc, especially when you're talking about the protagonist? So if you're looking at Charlie, what does Charlie want? What's the one thing he wants? And that want really very seldom changes. You know, he.

He wants a pair of shoes, some food in his belly.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:34:06

Yeah.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:34:07

And while that may sound over simplistic, it's all the lessons and the way you layer those lessons in until the very end is so, so beautiful. And it was such a refreshing.

And I'm listen, I'm a hardcore thriller writer, but it was such a refreshing turn to step into the shoes of people that I had never considered in a time that I wasn't around and didn't fully understand. So it gained me, it gave me a great appreciation.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:34:40

I'm glad that's the effect that I wanted.

And again, when I grew up, I grew up in the tail end of Jim Crow in Richmond, Virginia, the old capital Confederacy with all the Confederate monuments and everything. I grew up in a world of total racism, surrounded by racists. And I could have grown up like that.

I knew a lot of people who did, friends and family, but my parents took my brother and sister out of the library every week and I traveled the world without a plane ticket or a passport.

And the one thing that any type of prejudice, discrimination or racism has, I always like to call it the boogeyman hook, you know, so fear those people. They don't look like you and they think differently and they want to harm you.

And if you haven't read about them in books, you'll be like, Jesus, yeah, you're right. I'm going to be like that. But my response to that was, nope. I've read all of. I've spent lot. I spent time with them on the page.

I know exactly who they are. They're just like me. They want the same things that I want. So the boogeyman argument is not going to work with me.

I've always felt like books were body armor against bigotry. They just really are, you know, because when you spend time with people on a page, it's an intimate experience.

And then it's very hard for someone else to come forward with spacious arguments to try to convince you that those people are not good people. So that's why books are so important in people's lives.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:35:57

Yet another familiarity, that similarity that we share besides the name David, is that you grew up in Richmond. I grew up in Lynchburg. We're within months of the same age, so we had that same growing up experience. And I remember those days. I mean, Lynchburg. Hi.

Where do you think lynch came from? Anyway, the. I want to. There's two things I always close with.

One question that I want to make sure I hit, but there's two things I want to scoot in real quick. What was it about your mother growing up that played such a pivotal role in encouraging your storytelling?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:36:37

So I. When I was like five or six years old, I used to argue with everybody about everything.

And they started calling me the Austin Avenue, the street I grew up on. Lawyer. Years later, I actually became a lawyer. But I also was the kid who never stopped talking yarn stories.

It was my job in our neighborhood to come up with all of our adventures, our journeys, the battles we would fight. I would give out lines to people so they would know what to say. And I love that.

So one day when I was maybe 8 or 9, my mom came to me and said, honey, you know, here's a journal. I know you love to read. I know you like these stories you're talking about all the time. Why don't you try writing some of them down?

I think it'll be fun for you. So I did. And it was like this epiphany. I was like, my God, pen hit the paper. I never looked back.

And from that day forward, I've been writing consistently for almost 60 years now. And years later, I went back to my mom and I said, mom, thank you so much. What a gift you gave me that day changed the whole direction of my life.

And she said, honey, I'm so glad it's worked out for you. But quite frankly, I just wanted to shut you the hell up. So even moms need a little peace and quiet. And then she dropped this Southern phrase on me.

I still remember it. She goes, you got gotten on my last nerve, boy. So, yeah, yeah, I, I, I credit my mom with that. So there you go.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:37:51

And if they, if they set the press the, the preface to that statement as bless your heart, but you are getting on my last nerve, then you know, you got a double whammy, folks.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:38:03

Double whammy. I think my mom was letting me down easy.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:38:06

Yeah, bless your heart.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:38:09

All right.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:38:09

And the other thing is, and I love this about you and I think you've done this for a long time be writing, you've always expressed a strong commitment to philanthropy and your Wish youh well foundation has done remarkable things. Can you tell me, and it's supporting literacy programs.

Can you give our audience just a little taste of what that is and what you've been, how you've been able to impact people's lives with that?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:38:31

Yeah. So we really, we accept grant applications from organizations all across the US, all 50 states. And our mission as statement is very simple.

Eradicate illiteracy in the U.S. which is a huge problem. It's not an ESL problem. It's, it goes across all stratas. American born, ESL, urban, suburban, rural.

And we fund as many programs across the country that fit our mission statement as possible.

And our goal then is to make people read at the highest levels they can because that will dictate how well they're going to do socially and also economically. If you can't read at a high level, you're never going to achieve your potential as human being.

Even more than that, your kids are going to grow up functionally challenged at a literacy level because if your parents are illiterate, chances are you're going to be literacy challenged and you're going to plateau out far below where you could have achieved otherwise. Plus, at the end of the day, we count on citizens to be well read, well informed, process information, make good decisions at the voting booth.

And that is one sole requirement of a sustainable democracy, that people are informed. The last election, I think 50% of young men under the age of 25 watched Joe Rogan in the last two days and then made their decision.

I'm not saying they voted for the wrong person. I'm not saying. But I'm saying the process should be a little bit different than that.

And listening to one person is probably not the best thing to do. Read a lot, cover the issues, be consistent, know what's going on Year after year, month after month, and then you can make better decisions.

But if you can't read, then you can't do that. And I've always equated the verb to read with a word. To think. It's impossible to do one without the other.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:40:13

Yeah, well, you saw the grin on my face because you knew I would. Was thinking we could go down that rabbit hole, but I don't know that it would do a whole lot of good right now.

Plus, we don't have enough time because you and I would probably go off on tangents until the cows came home. So I will. Right? Am I right?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:40:32

You're. You're right. Tangents are fun. They do take time.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:40:34

Yeah. So let's do this. I want to close being respectful of your time. Best writing advice for aspir writers. And I'm going to interject this real quick.

I remember going back to a master's class and I'm like, when you gave the writing advice, which I will not say, I was like, well, of course. And I'm going to be curious if it holds true when you share it now, because there are a lot of aspiring writers in my audience, and they. They.

This is their favorite part of the show. What's David Baldacci going to say is the best writing advice? So hit me with your best shot.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:41:06

Yeah, the old adage is. And I think is what I said in the masterclass. I certainly believe it. The old adage is right. What.

You know, I would modify that and I would say write what you'd like to know about, because you need passion in your tank. You need a full tank of passion to write anything.

t this amazing horse from the: 1930

She was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome during the time she wrote the novel, knew nothing about horses, but fascinated by this horse.

So over the course of a decade, she learned everything there was to know about horse racing in the 30s, everything to know about Seabiscuit because she had a passion about it, because she didn't know about it, but she wanted to know about it. Ended up writing one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read.

So what I mean is, yes, you can write about things you know about, but there's an excitement of. There's this mystery out There I'm so interested in this. I want to learn about it.

And once you get into the research of it and immerse yourself in that world, all of a sudden your characters pop, your prose gets better, your plots get better, and things seem to hum along a little bit better. Just because you're interested in what you're trying to do, you're not chasing a trend. You're not writing a code book because Dan Brown wrote one.

You're not writing a Jurassic park because Michael Crichton did it. You're writing about something because you, the writer, are interested in it. And that is going to come through in the pages.

And interest and passion always makes stories better. You got to have it.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:42:37

So nicely put, do. And yeah, that's exactly what you said in master class.

Do you feel like, you know, with 100 and, what is it, 150 million copies of your books worldwide and like I said, almost 60 books or more and with no signs of slowing down, I'm sure we're going to be seeing another one come out at the end of this year. Do you. I. I would love to get your input on this because this is something I don't think I've heard anywhere that you say, speak about. About. Do you?

How do you see the world of publishing different today than you did when you started? Because we started the conversation about 96. You were, you were a perfect storm. Right place, right time, great writer, savvy, business savvy.

But the world has changed. The publishing world has changed so much in that time.

How do you feel it is today and where do you, if you have an idea where it's going, what is that?

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:43:32

I think that, you know, we have a lot of wonderful writers coming up who are getting attention they might otherwise not have. But at the same side, it's really hard to break out as a new writer now. You know, I came along at a really good time.

Now there are just so many competing factors and at the same time, a lot of what's happened in publishing, a lot of writers started out with mass market, you know, and they were able to build an audience doing that. Mass market is dead. You know, reader like now said they're not even going to do mass markets.

And I fear for the business of publishing because it seemed like we had these multiple silos and we added a few along the way. We had hardcover and trade paper and mass market and audio, and then we added ebooks. And I was like, great, now we have more silos.

Now the silos are disappearing one by One by one, mass market is gone. Ebooks have plateaued. Now we don't have CDs anymore, but you have audio so that you can listen to this, and that's great. This is now growing.

Okay, that's wonderful. But two years from now, will this be the only thing that we have? Our hardcover is going to be gone, our trade's going to be gone.

You know, we're just going to be able to listen to books. So that's challenging for publishers.

I'm not really sure how we work our way out of that, but I do think that we can, as a citizenry, just try to inform young people, old people and everyone between the power of actually opening a book and reading it, which I think is slipping through the people's grasp right now. It's not a priority for anyone anymore.

You know, we have a dedicated group of people who read consistently, but it keeps shrinking as people keep dying off. I don't want to see that happen. I want people to be excited about books and open them up however they do. They listen to them.

They can read them on an ebook, they can read them on a hardcover. It doesn't really matter so long as they keep reading. Publishing in just the world in general needs to tell people that reading is fundamental.

Not just, you know, for your intelligence, but it's fundamental for humanity. It's really the only way we can reach.

There's no way we can personally go through our lives, life, and experience the entire spectrum of human existence. We have to fill the rest of it in through reading about people who've done things we have not done in our lives.

And that's what fills out the rest of our humanity. And if we don't do that, then I don't know where we go. So I feel good about some parts of the publishing world and new writers coming up.

In the business of writing, I feel very nervous right now because silos keep disappearing.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:45:44

I think it's so interesting that, you know, when ebooks came on the market, everybody made this mad rush to it. Now I'm old school, dude. I just send me, you know, people, publicists would say, let me send you a PDF. I'm like, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, I want to hold the paper. I want to. I'm. I'm that old school. Maybe old is the word, main word, and school is a byproduct. But, you know, first of all, I want to.

I want to take notes. I want to. I want to feel it. I want to go back to it. I want to experience it's. My way of experiencing it more wholeheartedly. So I am with you.

I fear that, you know, as we said early on, between the shrinking attention spans and the pure volume of competition and the fact that the big five became four, became three, became. Who knows what it is today that we're just, we're in for a world of hurt.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:46:39

Yeah. My son was telling me like, YouTube is probably the best deal Google ever made. They bought YouTube for like $6 billion a number of years ago.

It's probably worth over a trillion dollars now, but it is the go to place now. I don't know, they, he said like there are a billion downloads to YouTube every day.

You know, I can only imagine the server farm electricity that costs. But people are spending a lot of time.

If they spend half the time that they spend watching YouTube videos reading books, I guarantee they'd be far better. Yeah.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:47:11

Well, folks, the book is Strangers in Time.

You want to learn more, go to davidbaldacci.com and I, I will admit I tried to keep my geek factor at bay, David, but this has been a, a genuine honor. I'm so grateful for your time.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:47:25

I enjoyed it very much. David, thank you. It's always great to talk about these issues anytime, Anytime.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:47:30

Well, I'm, I, I would be remiss if I did not ask. I mean, it's only April. What's going to happen for DB Coming down the pike in the next six months or so.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:47:40

So I got a new book coming out in November, brand new character. I thought I could put it all into one book, but it's going to be a two book series with a guy named Walter Nash.

The first book comes out in November and the second book comes out, which I just finished, is coming out in April. I wanted it really back to back so people couldn't lose the continuity of the story. And it's one that really resonates with me.

I've never written this kind of character before, but it really, I really writing these two books, it didn't feel like work to me. It just felt like the point where I needed to be at my life at that moment in time. And I'm really excited about it.

shoe Detective from. It's now: 1958

porary times and two weeks in: 1958

I tell people, I, you know, some of, like you said, some of my writer friends call up and say, I've got another deadline. I'm hating life. This. I said, ho, ho, whoa, whoa. Take a breath, step back, shut up and listen to this. We are paid a lot of money to make stuff up.

So basically we are paid a lot of money to remain 8 years old our entire life. So don't talk to me about deadlines or anything else. Just go out and keep having fun.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:49:04

I love that. I love that. Well, I, I hope you'll consider coming back to the show.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:49:08

Show, yes, absolutely. I, I loved, I loved our conversation. This is, this is my sweet spot, you know, this is my wheelhouse.

This is where I like to be when I'm talking about books. Shows like yours are where I want to be.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:49:20

Well, the only way this can get any better. And I say this, my, my listeners are going to go, geez, Dave, let that go. But it's face to face.

So if there's ever any way I can get sit across a table from you with camera and microphones, I'm going to make that happen. If I got to come roll up on your doorstep and go, come on, Davey, let's. So let's, let's get going.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:49:39

I look forward to that. Absolutely.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:49:42

Wow, what a highlight of this podcast. You know, it just goes to show, folks, set your intentions, aim for the stars and hope that it happens.

Plan like it'll happen and dreams do come true. Boy, I feel like Mr. Pollyanna, you know, every once in a while. No, well, I'm not going to say every once in a while.

Pretty much my entire life I have set intentions. I'm big on setting intentions. And about a year ago I set my intention to get David Baldacci on the show.

One thing this podcast has taught me, got to have a little bit of patience and tenacity.

And here we are about a year later and I'm sitting down with only one of the biggest writers of all time, number one, best selling author David Baldacci. And wait till you see what he has written if you're brand new to finding out about Dave.

He started off with legal thrillers and this historical fiction is going to have you scratching your head going, how does he do it?

But you're going to cozy up with a tea in a quiet room, you're just going to enjoy it now before we scoot out of here, let me tell you about something that's happening tomorrow, a bonus episode. And I think you're going to be impressed. You want a quick, fast little read that feels kind of like Jack Reacher.

Gary Questenberry is going to be on the show. Show. And let me tell you something, this guy down to earth, good dude. He's actually going to sponsor the first week of May. So we appreciate that.

If you would like to be on the show, you can do that. Just write us@the thrillerzonemail.com Once again, that is the thrillerzone gmail.com.

drop us a note, tell us about your book and we'll see what we can do for you.

DAVID BALDACCI: 00:51:24

All right.

DAVID TEMPLE: 00:51:24

Until next time, I'm your host, Dave. Tom Apple, thanks so much for being there. It's so much fun. I'll see you next time for another edition of the Thriller Zone.