From Celebrity Journalist to Crime Thriller Writer: Meet Nick Kolakowski
Join host Dave Temple for episode #220 as he takes us on a wild and thrilling ride in the world of crime fiction as we chat with the incredibly talented Nick Kolakowski!
Nick has a new book out, "Where the Bones Lie," that’s packed with dark humor and gripping storytelling. He shares his journey from travel journalist to novelist, revealing how his experiences shape his characters and plots—like a master chef whipping up a deliciously twisted dish!
Dave & Nick dive into the art of writing, character development, and the importance of humor in suspenseful narratives. Plus, stick around for some juicy bonus material at the end—you won’t want to miss the tasty extras we’ve saved for you!
So, if you haven't heard of Nick Kolakowski yet, just know that he is a total gem in the crime thriller world. Dave especially enjoys taking a quick side-road with one of his favorite artists, Peter Max. At the same time, Nick shares a hilarious story about a rather embarrassing incident involving Peter Max - yes, that Peter Max!
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Double Down Media
- DaturaBooks.com
- PeterMax.com
- McSweeney's Lit
- Cuckoo Chicken (NYC)
- TheThrillerZone.com
Keywords: thriller podcast, Nick Kolakowski, crime fiction, where the bones lie, writing process, author interviews, storytelling techniques, journalism and fiction, writing humor in thrillers, character development, indie authors, mystery novels, suspense stories, writing advice, celebrity journalism, California detective novels, crafting query letters, book recommendations, publishing tips, writing resources
Mentioned in this episode:
$295 Special for April ONLY!
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THE STORY FACTORY
Today's episode of The Thriller Zone with Dave Temple is sponsored by The Story Factory, an entertainment company representing many of the biggest fiction and non-fiction authors in the world.
The Story Factory
Presenting Adrian McKinty's new thriller in the Sean Duffy Series.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Thriller zone, episode number 220.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Dave Temple, and today's show is chock full of surprises.
Speaker A:Not only do we have Nick Kolakowski on the show and along with a great conversation, but we're going to offer some bonus material at the end of the show.
Speaker A:It's what I call Stick around for closing credits and some tasty secrets.
Speaker A:Now, if you know anything about Nick Kolakowski, then you know this cat can, as I'm fond of saying about certain authors, he can flat out write, as you will see if you choose to pick up a copy of where the Bones Lie.
Speaker A:So let's get to it with Nick Kolakowski right here on the Thriller Zone.
Speaker A:I can't believe it was January of 22 the last time we chatted.
Speaker B:Wow, that's really.
Speaker B:Time really flies.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but with all this time on your hands, Nick, why the aren't you writing more books?
Speaker B:I'm such a Type A, and I had such a sort of set routine before, you know, I guess even the last year when we had our first child.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Now it's just kind of trying to desperately write here and there for like little 15 minute bits when I can.
Speaker B:And it's still.
Speaker B:Cumulatively, everything adds up.
Speaker B:Like I'm still productive.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, it's.
Speaker B:It seems like every passing year it gets harder and harder to find those big blocks of blessed time to actually write.
Speaker A:Well, if it's any consolation, you haven't changed a minute in three years.
Speaker A:You look fantastic.
Speaker B:Oh, thank you.
Speaker B:So do you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, I love your setup behind you.
Speaker B:It's changed that a little bit since last time.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:You know who this is?
Speaker A:Bonnie Chance.
Speaker A:And if you get this right, I'm going to send you a candy bar.
Speaker B:Oh.
Speaker B:Oh.
Speaker B:And it's so.
Speaker B:It's so vaguely familiar.
Speaker B:Who is it?
Speaker B:Tell me, because I'm not.
Speaker B:I'm not going to guess it.
Speaker A:Peter Max.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:I've got a great story about Peter Max.
Speaker B:I don't know if you want to share it on the show or not.
Speaker A:This should do.
Speaker A:It's my show.
Speaker A:We do what we want to do.
Speaker B:So, a number of years ago, I worked for a company called Double Down Media, which did luxury glossy luxury magazines for Wall street traders.
Speaker B:We did Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, and a magazine for people who owned their own private jets called Private Air.
Speaker B:And at one point, we commissioned Peter Max to do portraits of like, the top 30 dealmakers.
Speaker B:From that year, like, the.
Speaker B:You know, the billionaire hedge fund managers and so on.
Speaker B:And as part of that whole.
Speaker B:We would.
Speaker B:We were unveiling those portraits in Las Vegas.
Speaker B:Like, we had a whole thing set up at, I think, Caesar's, but it was, like, in, like, this private room.
Speaker B:And we invited all these guys to come to, like, look at their portraits and hopefully buy them.
Speaker B:Because Peter Max, you know, whatever they sell for, he was.
Speaker B:He's a salesman in addition to.
Speaker B:Or a businessman in addition to being a painter.
Speaker B:So, you know, obviously his part of doing this for us was to get these guys to pay whatever they were going to pay for their own exclusive portrait after it also ran magazine.
Speaker B:So we get there, all the portraits are revealed.
Speaker B:All these guys didn't become, like, multimillionaires and billionaires for no reason at all.
Speaker B:And so they immediately start haggling, the poor, harried assistants, like, down from whatever price Peter Max wanted to sell them at to these bargain low prices.
Speaker B:And they kept saying, like, you know, there's no way you're ever gonna be able to sell this to anyone else.
Speaker B:I'll walk out right now if you don't give me this for, like, 10 grand or, like, way below whatever it was asking.
Speaker B:So, yeah, that was sort of a disaster.
Speaker B:But the.
Speaker B:The funny part of it was Peter Max's main assistant.
Speaker B:I'm blanking on what his name is now.
Speaker B:Me, a couple of other editors, and some other various hangers on.
Speaker B:After this whole boondoggle gets wrapped up, we.
Speaker B:We go off to party.
Speaker B:So we're going to the Hard Rock Hotel, which is not on the Strip.
Speaker B:It's, like, up and over like that.
Speaker B:So we all get to this guy's car, and he's driving this, like, tiny little rental, and there's not nearly enough room for me.
Speaker B:And I am.
Speaker B:I've been up for, like, 20 hours at this point, trying to, like, finagle all these details, so the only place I can go is the trunk.
Speaker B:So Peter Max's assistant is locking me in a car trunk along with, like, these bottles of alcohol and everything else.
Speaker B:I'm just like.
Speaker B:This is.
Speaker B:I don't know if this is cool or humiliating or, you know, what, but, like, I'm in a car trunk.
Speaker B:It's kind of Vegas in a certain way.
Speaker B:You think about, you know, mob informants being thrown into the back of a Beamer.
Speaker B:So that's.
Speaker B:That's my Peter Max story.
Speaker B:Just because, like, it was my first real experience with kind of that Peter Max, Jeff Koons level.
Speaker B:Of, like, you're not only a painter or a sculptor or whatever, but you're an economic engine unto yourself.
Speaker B:And, like, there's this whole machine.
Speaker B:So anyway, that's.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker A:Not much different than Andy Warhol back in the day where he commercialized art.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker A:Well, just to put a button on that, I was doing a radio show, and I had heard that Peter Max was coming into town.
Speaker A:And I'm like, I had always been a fan back in the day when he did the Beatles cover and he was doing sides of Airplanes.
Speaker A:I was collecting stickers that I would put on all my notebooks at school.
Speaker A:And so I heard he's coming to town, and I got to meet him.
Speaker A:Not only this, and I'm not going to bore you with this, but if you flip this painting over.
Speaker A:When I met him, I must have fanboyed out.
Speaker A:And he said, david, come here a second.
Speaker A:And he turns the canvas around, says, stand right there.
Speaker A:Sketches me in a caricature and says, all my love, Peter Max.
Speaker A:And signed it and dated it.
Speaker B:Oh, that's so cool.
Speaker A:And I was like, yeah.
Speaker A:I'm like, dude, I don't care what it.
Speaker A:I was making quite a bit of money back then, so it was no matter the cost.
Speaker A:But it was that moment of Peter Max inscribing something to me on the back of that art.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:It's invaluable.
Speaker B:That's incredible.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:What a story.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker A:Let me shoot out of the gate with this book.
Speaker A:You know, I heard.
Speaker A:I got wind of this book.
Speaker A:Oh, God.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:It was weeks and weeks ago.
Speaker A:And I'm like, you know what?
Speaker A:I gotta put Nick on my radar.
Speaker A:And then we started getting in touch, and I.
Speaker A:I ripped through this bad boy.
Speaker A:Now, you know something about me.
Speaker A:I tend to hide some of my favorites.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I just.
Speaker A:And I'm gonna do this in a little bit, but I want to get into the meat and potatoes of things because people's attention span isn't what it used to do.
Speaker A:Not let me forget, because there's folks that are like three breaks in here, three lines that I stopped and I read it and I read it again, and I'm like, okay, I gotta highlight that.
Speaker A:And it's just the way you take a phrase.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker A:You have such a unique craft of just.
Speaker A:First, you're a great storyteller.
Speaker A:Yeah, how you doing?
Speaker A:But then you just take.
Speaker A:You have great little ways with Phrases which I'll share in a minute.
Speaker A:Also, to tee you up, I am a substack subscriber of yours.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker A:Ink Stained Wretch is the title.
Speaker A:Where did that come from by the way?
Speaker B: ack in the day, this was like: Speaker B:I set up a personal website for freelancing, copy editing, copywriting, things like that.
Speaker B:And it's an ironic phrase from one of my former editors in chief who once yelled at me that I was an ink stained wretch because I was trying to give one too many strategic editors pictorial opinions during a, during an all hands bullpen meeting.
Speaker B:He's just like, you're an ink stained rich.
Speaker B:Get back to work.
Speaker B:And so that always, that always stuck.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:I'm gonna come back to this because it, it's gonna, folks are gonna, the listeners who are writers are gonna gobble this up.
Speaker A:But I want to start back with something.
Speaker A:Everybody, anybody who knows you knows you're about crime.
Speaker A:Little dash of horror.
Speaker A:Where the bones lie.
Speaker A:Payback is forever.
Speaker A:You've been nominated for the Anthony the Derringer short story Scorpions features this best mystery and suspense last year.
Speaker A:So this cat folks has got the creds, but I want to dig down because you've been featured in Washington Post, McSweeney's Thuglet.
Speaker A:How did your experience in journalism.
Speaker A:And I know we've, we covered this in the show three years ago and.
Speaker A:But I want to know about journalism, freelance writing, how that has helped your approach to fiction.
Speaker B:It's pretty straightforward.
Speaker B:So I was lucky enough to enter journalism a little teeny tiny bit before the massive collapse that gripped that whole industry like kind of at the tail end of the aughts.
Speaker B:And when I got into it, I was kind of thrown into the deep end head first.
Speaker B:But I was primarily a travel journalist initially as travel journalist and a celebrity journalist, I guess.
Speaker B:Celebrity interviewer.
Speaker B:I'm not sure what you call that kind of creature.
Speaker B:But one of the things that was great about it is that it put me on the road probably about three weeks out of any given month.
Speaker B:And I went all around the world.
Speaker B:I went to Japan, I went to Central America, Cuba, Europe, et cetera.
Speaker B:And so this was a few years before I started fiction writing in earnest.
Speaker B:But what all those experiences gave me was kind of this massive database, tarball, whatever you want to call it, in the form of however many like 30 or 40 notebooks that I carried with me at the time on the road, filled with just like location details and interesting people like I was always jotting in notebooks, even if it didn't actually end up in whatever article I was assigned to write.
Speaker B:And so when you read my fiction, every book, every location characters go to, whether it's like Nicaragua or LA or whatever, is a place where I've actually been.
Speaker B:And a lot of my characters are obviously heightened for fiction, but oftentimes they are some combination of people who I've met before, worked with, interviewed, et cetera.
Speaker B:You know, again, like with crime fiction, you kind of have to give your characters often, you know, a unhinged secret that they're desperately trying to like hide from everyone else or some sort of like lethal capability or something along those lines.
Speaker B:But you know, I try to ground it in people I know to a certain extent.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that's, that's kind of where all that, all that has, has come from, how it's influenced it.
Speaker A:Well, and on a similar note, you know, you've done novels, you've done short stories, you've done articles.
Speaker A:How does your writing process differ?
Speaker A:And I don't know if this is a Captain Obvious question, so if it is, just bear with me, but is there a.
Speaker A:How do you approach it differently?
Speaker A:Because you've got the novel, we'll call it 90, 85, 90 to 120,000 words versus, you know, short stories, maybe, you know, you know, 10, 20, 30.
Speaker A:How does that writing process differ when you're approaching those two different genres?
Speaker B:It's, it's a really good question.
Speaker B:So I, I always see short stories as relatively monolithic.
Speaker B:And what I mean by that is, and, and granted, you know, I'm not George Saunders by any extent in the imagination, there's, there's, there's loads of short story theory that people will dig into for hours if you open a bottle of wine in front of them and tell them to, to opine loquaciously on the subject.
Speaker B:But from my rather kind of simplistic perspective, a short story is a buildup that leads to kind of like a single point.
Speaker B:It's almost like a really good stand up comedian doing their stand up routine where everything eventually leads to a punchline of some sort.
Speaker B:And so what I'll often do with short stories is I'll have the punchline and then I'll unwind from there.
Speaker B:I often start with kind of the climax to whatever the same with Scorpions, the story that was just in the most recent Best Mystery, Best American Mystery and Suspense Bams.
Speaker B:That story, for example, just started with this idea that I wanted.
Speaker B:I'm desperately Trying not to give anything away to people who haven't read it yet.
Speaker B:But I wanted the rug pulled out from underneath somebody by their best friend and working from there, kind of extrapolated back and through and all these other details that I want to add about kind of the state of current policing and some other things that I've just kind of been percolating in there for years.
Speaker B:With a novel, obviously there are people who do very good at kind of like the singular buildup to the one punchline.
Speaker B:But, you know, obviously when you're working at kind of that greater length, that 100,000 words, 80,000 words, what have you, you have to build in all these other sort of touch points and flips and build ups and twists in order to kind of keep the audience's interest sustained, because it's extremely hard to sustain that same kind of singular line all the way through.
Speaker B:Jordan Harper, at one point, for those who don't know, he's the absolutely brilliant writer behind so many excellent books.
Speaker B:Everybody knows Last King, California, et cetera.
Speaker B:He says that a novel, and I'm being horribly reductive here, but that a novel, especially a mystery or a thriller, is a series of.
Speaker B:It's one large question and answer, like who done it?
Speaker B:But within that there's a constant cycle of smaller questions and answers constantly kind of rolling.
Speaker B:And his goal with every chapter is like, what's the question?
Speaker B:What's the answer?
Speaker B:Every sequence, what's the question?
Speaker B:What's the answer?
Speaker B:And kind of building up suspense that way and kind of pulling the audience forward.
Speaker B:Um, and that's kind of roughly now just what I try to do with novels.
Speaker B:You try to build up these smaller things within this larger thing that kind of keeps the audience moving forward no matter how long it is.
Speaker A:So I love that.
Speaker A:And it's so good.
Speaker A:And it reminds me of.
Speaker A:And I'm gonna give you a heads up, Bear, bear with me on this language.
Speaker A:But there is a.
Speaker A:I'm taking a little bit of Blake Crouch from Save the Catch Cat and myself, like, I always work on this and excuses.
Speaker A:It's like, what the fuck?
Speaker A:And then the what the now he says, add in beats where it says, oh, oh.
Speaker A:So I go, what the oh, what the oh, right?
Speaker A:So when I'm getting into those hairy situations, I want the reader to go, oh, holy.
Speaker B:Right, yeah, that's the way to do it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, yours is way more eloquent.
Speaker A:And my father, rest his soul, Pastor Temple would look at me and go, son, you couldn't come with other Words than that, anyway.
Speaker A:Well, one of my absolute favorite things about this book is the injection of humor.
Speaker A:And you're saying to yourself, wait a minute, how can you have a crime thriller in that old California detective feel and intersperse with humor?
Speaker A:But I find, much like you'll see in movies all across the world, that about the time that you're in that holy shit kind of moment when humor is injected, it doesn't is.
Speaker A:It does not detract.
Speaker A:It actually gives you a breathing point and an ability to relate before the next fear comes.
Speaker A:Does that make sense?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And I feel it's a very old technique.
Speaker B:I mean, going back to the part that we all remember of the old style, Sean Connery, James Bond movies is the quip.
Speaker B:The quip that he inevitably gives after some villain has been dispatched.
Speaker B:And then Stallone and Schwarzenegger manfully carried that Forward into the 80s and 90s with commando and all the rest of those movies.
Speaker B:And that's not necessarily where I'm drawing it from, but, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Every writer has their toolbox.
Speaker B:And it's really unfortunate if as a writer, you only have like one tool, the hammer, and you keep hitting the same thing over and over again.
Speaker B:Carrying that analogy forward, I guess the humor would be the drill, the Phillips head, something like that, where it allows you to bolt on variety.
Speaker B:Again, it goes back to almost like the question and answer and the idea of rhythm and the shit and the fuck and so on, where, yeah, you want to keep the audience's mind moving, you want to keep them sort of propelled forward.
Speaker B:You want to change the game on them.
Speaker B:So, like that the eye kind of fixes on things basically to prevent them from getting bored.
Speaker B:And a good way to do that is through humor.
Speaker B:Humor is also really hard to nail.
Speaker B:And so one of the things that I did with this book is that I'm not a natural.
Speaker B:I've written comedy for McSweeney's and some other venues, but I'm not a natural at comedy, unlike many writers I know.
Speaker B:And so I actually have a note book over here where when I come up with comedy bits, they are gold, and I store them if I think they're half decent.
Speaker B:And this is.
Speaker B:This book is one of those cases where as I was writing, I was like, what can I use?
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I was, you know, what can I use?
Speaker B:What quip can I apply in the situation?
Speaker B:How can I balance this out?
Speaker B:What kind of simile is particularly funny?
Speaker B:Because I wanted to.
Speaker B:There's a lot of things in this book that are heavy.
Speaker B:I mean, there's a lot of dealing with familial guilt.
Speaker B:There's a lot of ptsd.
Speaker B:There's a lot of trauma.
Speaker B:And in order to kind of keep the pace up and keep the audience moving through it, I mean, like, humor was essential.
Speaker B:And so I was.
Speaker B:I was desperately leaning onto that.
Speaker B:The other thing.
Speaker B:And it's funny in terms of your.
Speaker B:Your.
Speaker B:Oh, shit, oh, fuck analogy.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm making this episode way rated R.
Speaker B:While I was writing this book, Rob Hart, who's the author of the really excellent Assassin's Anonymous, the Warehouse, a bunch of other books, we were driving to Virginia, which is a long time in a car to be trapped with.
Speaker B:There was a bunch of us in the car.
Speaker B:So there's four riders in a car.
Speaker B:And, like, it's.
Speaker B:It's good opportunity for tradecraft.
Speaker B:It's also a really good opportunity to, you know, really over the top with the jokes.
Speaker B:But anyway, he gave this really sterling piece of advice to me, which is like, limit your shits and your fucks.
Speaker B:And what he meant by that was, when you're.
Speaker B:My characters tend to be a little bit on the profane side.
Speaker B:But what he said is one of the most effective tools for him is to save the profanity for those big twists, only for those huge moments, only for those climactic things.
Speaker B:He said almost treat it like a PG13 movie where you only get one or two per film.
Speaker B:And he said if you drop it strategically, you know, again, in terms of the audience, like, it's.
Speaker B:It's a switch up, it heightens the impact.
Speaker B:And so immediately after we had this conversation, I'm in front of my laptop, we're in this beautiful cabin in the.
Speaker B:Literally the middle of nowhere, and, like, I'm just doing, like, a word replace for every single profanity I can find.
Speaker B:And, like, so I limited it down to.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think there's only like, three.
Speaker B:And they all come during those, like, strategic pressure points.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:In the book.
Speaker B:And I thought that was really.
Speaker B:I mean, in terms of, like, tact, a lot of writerly advice I think gets a little bit nebulous.
Speaker B:But that was like.
Speaker B:In terms of, like, good tactical advice.
Speaker B:That's the thing that I now tell people when they ask, you know, and of course, if they write cozies, they're immediately offended, you know, because, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But otherwise, well, what I like about that and what triggers my thought, Nick, is that when I see a standup comic and they Come out of the gate swearing like a sailor.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I got no problem with swear words.
Speaker A:It's just a word in our English language, but diminishes it for me a little bit.
Speaker A:It feels lazy, like any.
Speaker A:Well, anybody can do that.
Speaker A:So that when I find them actually removing that and then punctuating just a couple of moments to your point that are just dead on, then the heft of that word that is then out of character really makes the impact.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker B:It's a good technique.
Speaker A:All right, I'm going to take a short break because I need to take care of my sponsor work here.
Speaker A:When we come back, we're talking about an article out of Substack.
Speaker A:And I'm going to hit my favorite lines out of Nick's book.
Speaker A:Of course, it's where the Bones Lie.
Speaker A:Stay with us.
Speaker A:And welcome back.
Speaker A:I'm with Nick Kolakowski.
Speaker A:The book is where the Bones Lie.
Speaker A:And as promised, I'm going to read some of my favorite lines.
Speaker A:By the way, I did want to ask you if you.
Speaker A:And this would be very personal, but that book that you referenced before the break that has your classic humor lines.
Speaker A:Do you ever share those or do you.
Speaker A:Do you think you could pick up the book and pull out one line that you went, oh, I could.
Speaker B:I could.
Speaker B:While you're, while you're sorting that out, let me see.
Speaker A:Do this.
Speaker B:Let me see if I can find a good way as we search for ours.
Speaker B:See, this is moleskins carried around.
Speaker B:I've got.
Speaker B:The problem is that they're not labeled either, so.
Speaker B:And you've also got my handwriting.
Speaker A:Oh, God, I can't read that.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:Horrific.
Speaker B:I guess it.
Speaker B:You know, if anyone ever actually steals one of these things for whatever God forsaken reason you're never gonna be able to find.
Speaker B:So, for example, mankind cannot live on library vending machine pretzels alone.
Speaker B:I mean, like, some of these are just like.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B: ght this was funny circa like: Speaker B:I would say let's move on.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:You're passing nothing.
Speaker B:Yeah, nothing's really chopping.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Well, now there's a scene early on that I won't give anything away, but it has to do with a particular food I'm not aware of.
Speaker A:And I lived in LA three different times, so I'm kind of surprised.
Speaker A:Unless this is you.
Speaker A:You just took your randomness and made.
Speaker A:Made this up.
Speaker A:The sight of all those empty JoJo Korean fried chicken containers, it triggered a ravenous hunger they had the best chicken tenders for miles around, in my humble opinion.
Speaker A:And their special sauce was more addictive than heroin.
Speaker A:It was the perfect food to order when you were so stoned you thought the cat was communicating with you telepathically.
Speaker A:I love that line.
Speaker A:Is there a real JoJo's Fried Chicken?
Speaker B:This is actually a suggestion for people who live in New York.
Speaker B:There is a cuckoo chicken, which is down the street from me in New York here, which has indeed the finest Korean fried chicken tenders you will ever eat, probably this side of Seoul, combined with a Thai chili glaze sauce, which is absolutely.
Speaker B:Not too sweet, not too hot, absolutely impeccable.
Speaker B:So that's.
Speaker B:And I think when I was writing that particular passage, like, I mean, my wife and I try to resist as hard as we can because it's not exactly great for, you know, not great for the arteries.
Speaker B:But yeah, it's, it's, it's actually a New York based place.
Speaker B:And then the, the pot line.
Speaker B:Um, many years ago, a friend of mine who was, who was a notorious stoner actually called me in a panic because he was desperately high and said that the cat was trying to telepathically communicate with him, but the message wasn't quite coming through.
Speaker B:I'm standing there with my phone being like, what?
Speaker B:Like it's some sort of like, work situation.
Speaker B:So that again, I mean, I'm not sure that was ever in a notebook, but that always stuck with me.
Speaker B:But no, it's JoJo's is cuckoo.
Speaker B:And cuckoo is anyone who comes to New York, you're in the mood for fried chicken.
Speaker B:You cannot do better.
Speaker A:Next time I'm there, I'm looking you up, we're going down there.
Speaker B:We are.
Speaker B:We absolutely are.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:All right, here's another one.
Speaker A:This is just a great turn of a phrase.
Speaker A:I woke up feeling like a black hole had pierced the core of my being, draining all hope and light.
Speaker A:Not to get too dramatic about it or anything, it wasn't the Black Hole's first Visit.
Speaker B:So Dash McLean, who's the.
Speaker B:Or Dash Fuller, who's the.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:Who's the main narrator of the book and who's a former Hollywood fixer who then becomes an amateur detective, is going through a lot of PTSD because as a fixer, he had to go through a lot of bad situations.
Speaker B:He's a guy kind of like the wolf in Pulp Fiction, who you call if you're a movie star and you have a dead body in your garage at 3am that needs handling or, you know, your, your Young pop star has been arrested with, you know, a kilo of cocaine in their trunk.
Speaker B:And when I was writing it.
Speaker B:So, I mean, there's a lot of cliches and tropes in detective fiction, many of which I love dearly.
Speaker B:And one of is obviously your narrator, who is sort of stuck in a tailspin.
Speaker B:And that tailspin obviously is often substance driven.
Speaker B:And so the black hole was me trying to kind of come up with a way where I'm handshaking with the trope.
Speaker B:But I also wanted to do something that was kind of a slightly different spin on it.
Speaker B:And the good thing about it too is that then thematically, the black hole's reappearance is something I could then thread throughout the rest of the book, like the black hole looming.
Speaker B:But yeah, no, I like it that that's a phrase that actually stuck through a lot of edits.
Speaker B:So I remember, I mean, I fought to have that stay in there.
Speaker B:So I'm glad that.
Speaker B:I'm really glad you dug that.
Speaker A:It really hit me.
Speaker A:Well, there's one more.
Speaker A:It was high tide, the breakers thumping, a narrow strip of sand like a Titanic heart.
Speaker A:A soothing sound as old as time.
Speaker A:If you were a first time visitor to Earth and saw the ocean, you'd think perfection.
Speaker A:And then you turn to look at the coast with its endless concrete and burning lights and machines belching smog and think, why did this go so wrong?
Speaker A:The philosophical tint of that in amongst all the murder and mayhem was just impeccable juxtaposition.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:And that's very personal because my sister in law lives in Long beach and so I've spent a lot of time if you know, Long beach, there's that whole strip and then there's that thing floating offshore.
Speaker B:I'm not exactly 100% sure what it is.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:I don't know if it's like oil related or whatever.
Speaker B:It's like this huge superstructure that you can just barely see off it.
Speaker B:And then you know, behind you you've got the bluff with like all those like multi million dollar houses overlooking the water.
Speaker B:And I, at one point it was, it wasn't nighttime, it was the rain and I wandered down there.
Speaker B:I'm not sure why.
Speaker B:It was like mid afternoon on like a Wednesday, so mostly empty beach and had that exact thought and like was looking out at the water and thinking, okay, if I can narrow this away, like just like the beautiful like extending all the way to Asia and then turn around and it's just like it just, you know, It's a.
Speaker B:Because Long beach is fundamentally an industrial port.
Speaker B:So I mean, it's also.
Speaker B:You got.
Speaker B:I mean, there's some beautiful houses and old style apartment buildings, but it's also a mess at the edges.
Speaker B:And I just, I had that thought.
Speaker B:It's always sort of, you know, a character of mine eventually was going to included in their own thought process.
Speaker A:I'm glad that some of my favorites ended up being very significant, poignant moments of yours.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, good eye.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And my last one, which I'm not going to read, I circled it and, and put a note here.
Speaker A:I said perfect conclusion.
Speaker A:Side note, by the way, at 281 pages, I'm an enormous fan of sub 300, so.
Speaker B:Yes, me too.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I did not read this because it's.
Speaker A:Let's put it this way folks, it's worth the price of admission to get to that closing two paragraphs.
Speaker B:Yeah, I wanted to, I mean, going back to Rob Hart for a minute.
Speaker B:Rob wrote this amazing series called the Ash McKenna series.
Speaker B:I don't think it has like a larger name than that, which is about an amateur detective.
Speaker B:He starts out as kind of a brawler and then through five books becomes a much more skilled detective.
Speaker B:And there's a couple of other series I like along those lines.
Speaker B:I really like Alex Segura's Pete Fernandez books, which similar sort of deal in Miami.
Speaker B:Journalist becomes detective.
Speaker B:And so, and not spoiling that paragraph, which I'm also really proud of, but I also, I mean the whole arc of this book is somebody who is not great at detective work.
Speaker B:He's no Philip Marlowe, he's no Continental Op, he's no Bosch by any extent of the imagination.
Speaker B:And he's sort of feeling his way through.
Speaker B:And what made it exciting to me was to have somebody with no experience run into some pretty heavy situations from a detective perspective and have some skills of his own, along with his detective partner Madeline, who also is, is, you know, has seen the rougher side of life.
Speaker B:But sure, because they don't know what they're doing.
Speaker B:They don't know like detective best practices.
Speaker B:They screw up.
Speaker B:They do interesting, but not necessarily like the most brilliant things.
Speaker B:And that often gets him even deeper into trouble, which I love.
Speaker B:So yeah, that's, that's that when people get to that paragraph, that's where that whole thing comes from.
Speaker A:I think that is very easily my favorite thing about this book is the fact that it, and I'm going to use this word as a compliment, it wasn't overly polished, meaning his expertise was not overly polished.
Speaker A:He was a very real and approachable character.
Speaker A:I like the fact that he kind of ran by the wits seat of his pants and he made do as he could, but he was not afraid.
Speaker A:His bravado, and it wasn't a false bravado, his true bravado in the face of danger was viscerally compelling.
Speaker A:And here's why.
Speaker A:He had this underlying tone.
Speaker A:Maybe I just made this up.
Speaker A:Or maybe you said it.
Speaker A:It's kind of like that feeling when a man has nothing to lose, he will risk anything to get what he wants.
Speaker A:And that's what he felt like to me.
Speaker A:And having just gone through cancer and then had it come back and beat it down again with a stick, it made me realize, and I live now under this mantra, Nick, that I got nothing to lose.
Speaker A:I mean, I dodged a bullet.
Speaker A:And it gives you this great sense of bravado, when in reality, we should have the bravado anyway, because it's just a ride that we're on, doing the best that we can.
Speaker A:Does that make sense?
Speaker B:It does.
Speaker B:I mean, and congrats on dodging that amazing.
Speaker B:That scary bullet.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Dash is a character who everything for him is terminated.
Speaker B:You know, his career has been terminated, or he terminated his career because he couldn't deal with it anymore.
Speaker B:You know, and he's utterly without any sort of meaningful connection in a lot of ways in the world.
Speaker B:And initially, that throws him into the pit of despair.
Speaker B:And then as he goes along, he sort of realizes subconsciously and then much more consciously that, you know, the field is barren now.
Speaker B:He can sort of build a new house, build a new structure for himself.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:I mean, one of the things, when I was writing this book, I wanted to do so much of the noir I love and so much of the detective fiction is about the tailspin.
Speaker B:It's about, like, sort of, you know, finally, you know, you have your character who goes from the gutter to, like, the full impact in death or, like, jail or whatever, however you want to end, you know, your typical noir novel.
Speaker B:I wanted to do a character, and actually Madeline as well.
Speaker B:Two characters who aren't necessarily spiraling up to a place where everything is going to be great from here on out, but two people who are sort of on that road to rebuilding, that road to recovery, that road to, as you said, that realization that, you know, they're here, this is the ride, and that, you know, you can, in their case, fix yourself, which I really.
Speaker B:I really love doing well and I.
Speaker A:Think you've just answered my question.
Speaker A:Question that I have not even asked yet.
Speaker A:And it was this.
Speaker A:I'm like, this is a.
Speaker A:This book is an homage to the, you know, classic California detective novel, which I'm an enormous fan of.
Speaker A:I always have been since way back, which is why one of my books, the Poser, I thought, oh, I'll.
Speaker A:I'll try that in my hand at that.
Speaker A:And I didn't do it nearly as eloquently as you.
Speaker A: better term, modernize it to: Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:My.
Speaker B:My entry into to reading in general when I was a little kid started when my dad gave me a copy of Philip Marlowe's Troubles My Business.
Speaker B:I must have been like nine or ten.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:That was my entry point.
Speaker B:And then, you know, obviously after that, Dashiell Hammett, you know, I like all the McDonald, like, all the classics to kind of start out, but I was also terrified to approach.
Speaker B:I mean, I've written a lot of crime and noir fiction, but nothing had ever featured a detective before.
Speaker B:And the reason for that is because terrified.
Speaker B:When you stare at sort of the greats, it's really easy to get very intimidated by that, you know, and Connolly and everyone else, and try to figure out, you realize that you're never going to be able to top the Big Sleep, you know, or the Maltese Falcon, or choose whatever your particular favorite California detective novel is, but you can at least try to provide something that's kind of a unique twist on it, or that's your specific take on it that hopefully stands out from the towering pile of books out there.
Speaker B:And the one thought that I had was a.
Speaker B:I was going to draw a lot of my experience as a celebrity reporter in with Dash, because when I was covering that whole thing, like, I met a lot of fixers, I met a lot of PR people.
Speaker B:You know, you pick up a lot of the stories that are told in this book are stories that I heard firsthand from people.
Speaker B:But then the other part of it is that in classic noir fiction, sort of the duality is you've got California being presented to the outside world as, like, this place of palm trees and sun and so on.
Speaker B:And then the characters, inevitably, whether they've been there for years or just got off the bus, discover that there's this whole seedy side to it.
Speaker B:I mean, you see it in Elroy in terms of LA Confidential, with all the engineers coming off into LA and getting steamrolled, et cetera.
Speaker B:But that's the California, and that's the California dichotomy.
Speaker B:And like, the fear of, like, the 50s, the 60s, the mid 20th century.
Speaker B:And now California, like everywhere else, is sort of going through a very unique 21st century where we've got.
Speaker B:And this comes up in the book, you've got wildfires, fear of climate change, infrastructure issues, all these other kind of things have come up as sort of the boogeyman or the state of play or whatever term you want to throw in there.
Speaker B:And I wanted to do a book that took kind of the classic California tropes, but then very consciously wove them in with all this new stuff, which is why, I mean, throughout the book, there's this omnipresent smell of smoke.
Speaker B:And then as you get closer to the end, there's.
Speaker B:There's an actual real wildfire threat.
Speaker B:But, you know, when you're driving around California, it's like, I remember a little while ago, like, driving up to past the Getty and seeing like an entire scorched hillside and then just, you know, have like a thousand acres or whatever, it burned.
Speaker B:And just.
Speaker B:It's one thing because, I mean, I've been trapped in wildfires, like on the Arkansas.
Speaker B:Not trapped, but I've been around forest fires, like out near the Arkansas border, middle of nowhere, Idaho, like, middle of nowhere places.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But there's something about it happening in an urban environment that to me at least, was profoundly frightening because we've designed these urban landscapes to sort of be apart from nature.
Speaker B:And now nature is sort of pushing in.
Speaker B:So it's things like that that I wanted to kind of infuse into this vision of it and hopefully make it stand out from everything else.
Speaker B:Cause you just can't compete head to head against a lot of, like, the great California literature that's come out.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:There's so much to unpack there.
Speaker A:I'm going to go in reverse order if I can.
Speaker A:First of all, I've lived through the Northridge Earthqu so I know what that scare is all about.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've been around the fires, not the likes of which was recently, which was magnificently devastating.
Speaker A:And in San Diego, we still got drifts of the smoke, you know, two hours later, practically.
Speaker A:Next.
Speaker A:I like the fact that you are enamored with the former greats.
Speaker A:However, and I say this as though we're not saying it to you, you are there.
Speaker A:In my opinion, you are in that league.
Speaker B:Oh, thank you.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Because you're Just simply a current or fresh voice of a storytelling style that has been passed on.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Big Sleep.
Speaker A:Is it one of the greatest?
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Was there somebody before that?
Speaker A:Maybe.
Speaker A:Was it derivative of another story before?
Speaker A:Before, Before.
Speaker A:Probably.
Speaker A:Will there be other versions of it after?
Speaker A:Of course.
Speaker A:And while you mentioned Bosch, Michael Conley.
Speaker A:Michael Conley has a particular style.
Speaker A:It's very particular and it's very specific.
Speaker A:Yours is equally specific and concise and slightly different.
Speaker A:Your weaving of humor sets you apart and it's a dark humor, which I appreciate.
Speaker A:So I say to you and to others listening, run with reckless abandon toward your particular voice and your, Your voice, if you're true to yourself, will shine through.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:I'm really touched by that.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:Yeah, I take that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Now, before I forget, and by the way, Dash Fuller, when I, When I first saw that name, I'm like, it made me think of a.
Speaker A: Like a: Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Hi, my name is Dash Fuller.
Speaker A:Could I interest you in a.
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:This compelled me so much.
Speaker A:I, I ran it off, I highlighted it and I'm going to save it in my writing.
Speaker A:Not.
Speaker A:And look, I read a lot of Substack and by the way, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the proliferation of Substack.
Speaker A:I was on the phone with recently Mark Gottlieb, who's going to air tomorrow, and we were talking about the different ways that we can help our platform.
Speaker A:So I'd love to hear your thoughts about that.
Speaker A:But I want you to drill down on me.
Speaker A:This is building your fictional characters, core lessons from Seven and more.
Speaker A:Side note, and I'm going to shut up.
Speaker A:Number one, you were on with Authors on the air.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Guys, you mentioned Seven, probably one of my favorite films of all time.
Speaker A:I remember when that came out, I was like, who?
Speaker A:The what?
Speaker A:The how what what?
Speaker A:Yeah, it was so viscerally, organically, physiologically compelling and nerve wracking from the very first.
Speaker A:The way they took.
Speaker A:And I think I heard this somewhere along.
Speaker A:They took a key and went down a piano string for some of that, you know that sound.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:Between the score and the way the titles were created.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:So can you.
Speaker A:Without me sitting here going through this, I'd love to hear.
Speaker A:Can you just.
Speaker A:Can you synopsize the.
Speaker A:The purpose, the story behind.
Speaker A:Because folks, this is so good, you got to hit Nick's Substack.
Speaker A:It's called, as I mentioned earlier, Ink Stain Rich.
Speaker A:But can you break this down?
Speaker A:For me?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker B:So Andrew Kevin Walker, who, Who wrote Seven as I, I.
Speaker B:And I'm.
Speaker B:I'm going from memory here he was, he worked in Tower Records in Times Square, the 80s.
Speaker B:And so Seven, for all its horrible urban, you know, whatever, is apparently his highly ironic love letter to his years spent living in New York City.
Speaker B:But several years ago, I found an annotated version of the script.
Speaker B:And in the script he talks about character building.
Speaker B:And his sort of core to character building is that every character has two opposing forces pulling at them throughout the narrative.
Speaker B:And for example, in the case of Somerset, who's the detective who's played by Morgan Freeman in the movie, he's pulled by the urge to retire, flee the city, versus the urge to kind of keep going and keep doing what he can to fix everything.
Speaker B:And those two parts are at war.
Speaker B:And that advice at the time gripped me so hard that what I do now is with every character, I write their name and then I split the page and then I have.
Speaker B:There are opposing forces, whatever that is.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's very hard to figure out for certain characters, in which case sometimes I tell myself I have to kind of think about that character a little more, kind of refine them a little bit more in my head.
Speaker B:But the idea is that when you have a character who's pulled in two conflicting directions, even if they don't come out and state outright like, you know, I want to be a chef, but I also want to do this, or whatever your particular scenario is, it creates sort of this.
Speaker B:As long as it's in your head, it creates kind of this, this inner tension because it drives them in terms of their action, in terms of what they tell people, in terms of how they frame themselves to the world.
Speaker B:And I find that that sort of tension gives them kind of more energy and more.
Speaker B:More inner life.
Speaker B:So that's, that's advice that I've always stuck to.
Speaker B:And I think in the case of Seven, it's also really powerful because I'm not spoiling too much, but there's.
Speaker B:Should I spoil a movie that's like 30 years old?
Speaker B:Because.
Speaker A:Go ahead, rock it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Hey, folks, by the way, there's the official spoiler.
Speaker A:You don't want to hear it, then go away.
Speaker B:So spoiler alert for a 30 year old movie.
Speaker B:But Kevin Spacey as like probably one of the creepiest serial killers since Hannibal Lecter ever committed to film, near the end of the movie, has this bizarre side where he tells Brad Pitt, who's looming over him with a Gun that, you know, he tried the life of a simple man.
Speaker B:And he's saying this is a threat because he's about to reveal something really terrible.
Speaker B:But it makes me think that the dichotomy for that character, John Doe, is that on one hand, it's keep serial killing or not serial kill, and do his best to not give in to his impulses.
Speaker B:And even though that character doesn't have a lot of screen time, I've always felt that that also creates that tension with him, that you have somebody who's kind of struggling a little bit with himself.
Speaker B:And I think that comes out to a certain extent.
Speaker B:And the argument that they have in the car leading to that scene and so on.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So, I mean, it's something I like to do.
Speaker B:And I think it's also, like I said, I mean, it's a good thought exercise before you start writing because if you can't figure out that character is, like, conflict.
Speaker B:If you can't figure out their polarities, then sometimes it's worth thinking a little bit more sometimes about and just kind of like, seeing if you need to refine the character a little more in your head.
Speaker B:So there's that advice.
Speaker B:And then in the other part of the column, I talk about Matthew Weiner and the Mad Men writing review room, where, I mean, and that show is infamous for it's, like, the nuances it gives the characters and kind of the psychological depth.
Speaker B:And in that instance, it's actually.
Speaker B:This is like, kind of like the triple pirouette versus, like, the simple backflip at the Olympics.
Speaker B:Only this is the Olympics of character building.
Speaker B:Their idea is that every character has, like, their public version, their private version that they show to friends, one of them.
Speaker B:And then the secret version, which is, like, the.
Speaker B:How they see themselves almost.
Speaker B:So, like, Don Draper is the super efficient, like, ad man in public.
Speaker B:In private, he's, like, a drunk and, like, a womanizer and somebody who can barely keep it under control.
Speaker B:And then the secret part of him is that he's a rural dude from some place who's not all that sophisticated.
Speaker B:So, you know, I mean, that's another.
Speaker B:I mean, I have not gone to that triple depth in terms of characters, but I think the Andrew Kevin Walker advice is a nice, quick and dirty way to help firm up your characters and give them some tension.
Speaker A:Yeah, just so frigging good.
Speaker A:And you mentioned another one.
Speaker A:James Salas's Drive.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Derive was a movie.
Speaker A:I remember sitting there watching the movie starring Ryan Gosling.
Speaker A:I was so mesmerized.
Speaker A:Between the simplicity of his demeanor and the cold, cool, calculated in which he operated along with that.
Speaker A:That theme music from Cliff Martinez.
Speaker A:I left that theater, I went and bought the soundtrack.
Speaker A:I listened to that soundtrack until I thought I was going to burn it out.
Speaker A:I went and saw the movie again, listened to the soundtrack, ended up buying the movie.
Speaker A:I mean, it was.
Speaker A:It was one of those things.
Speaker A:I don't know what it was, but it was a perfect storm of storytelling and talking about juxtaposed responses in a particular character.
Speaker A:Remember when.
Speaker A:And it was such a brilliant move.
Speaker A:Who is the comedian who plays the heavy in Drive?
Speaker B:It's Albert Brooks.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so you got Albert Brooks, who's been known his entire career for being probably one of the best, most popular, most famous comedians of all time, plays this character so quietly dark that you're.
Speaker B:That you.
Speaker A:You can't help but lean in and watch his every move.
Speaker A:And then that one scene with the.
Speaker A:The knife and the arm and anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Just brilliant filmmaking.
Speaker A:And this is what the point is.
Speaker A:I feel like it sounds like I'm rambling, but I'm not.
Speaker A:When I see.
Speaker A:When I read your breakdown of these examples in the substack and then I'm of course finishing the book in record time, it made me do two things.
Speaker A:One, for the love of Pete and everything.
Speaker A:Holy.
Speaker A:Have you gotten any bites on getting this turned into a film?
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:So the answer is, I'm between agents right now.
Speaker B:So as soon as I cycle up and I'm feel like I'm fairly close to landing another one.
Speaker B:And when I do, like, that's the.
Speaker B:That's step number one is doing that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I wish with all that I am.
Speaker A:I'm an indie filmmaker.
Speaker A:I only have one, but I have like half a dozen shorts and my brain is just hardwired for that.
Speaker A:I wish I had the financial wherewithal.
Speaker A:And I've only felt this way about maybe a dozen books in the four years that we've been doing this show.
Speaker B:Three.
Speaker A:Almost.
Speaker A:Almost approaching 300 episodes.
Speaker A:This is one.
Speaker A:I'm like, oh, God, I wish I could option this to make it because it's.
Speaker B:Well from you to the universe.
Speaker B:I hope so.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:So that's number one.
Speaker A:Number two, I think at the very closing paragraph, which I did not read, which is a perfect closer, is it safe to me ask this and if you don't want to answer, feel completely free, or if you want me to just scratch this out.
Speaker A:But it really feels like it's a perfect little tee up.
Speaker A:Am I.
Speaker B:You are.
Speaker B:You're absolutely right.
Speaker B:So before this book was finished, I kind of had ideas for at least another two.
Speaker B:And the.
Speaker B:The sequel to this is outlined, of course.
Speaker B:I mean, pulling the trigger depends on sales.
Speaker B:But I mean, it's.
Speaker B:It's all this.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The sequel's ready to go down to like the.
Speaker B:The chapter by chapter breakdown.
Speaker B:And then the third one is kind of more loose.
Speaker B:So with the potential sequel.
Speaker B:So after I was a travel and celebrity writer.
Speaker B:Journalist.
Speaker B:I was a tech journalist for a long time.
Speaker B:And the next one would kind of go up into Hammett Territorial now, I guess it's Silicon Valley territory.
Speaker B:And it would be the whole Northern California tech scene, which is in its own way as insular and sort of as gritty in some ways as Hollywood.
Speaker B:So I mean, that.
Speaker B:That's where the sequel would go.
Speaker A:Well, I want to be first in line to read it, and I want to be first in line to chat about it.
Speaker B:Yes, absolutely you will.
Speaker A:Well, this has been chock full of goodness, Nick.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me on.
Speaker B:It's always a pleasure.
Speaker B:It's been.
Speaker B:It's been too long, as you were saying before, and it's always great to be back three years.
Speaker A:Well, I don't think that the next one will take that long.
Speaker B:No, hopefully not.
Speaker A:I do have to finish, as I always do.
Speaker A:You know what I close with best writing advice.
Speaker A:Now, I would love to impress you and tell you that I remember the writing advice from 3 Advice three years ago, but I don't.
Speaker A:So it can either be changed or not changed.
Speaker A:I don't care.
Speaker A:But if you were closing to our aspiring writers and saying, hey, folks, listen up, this is what I would.
Speaker A:If I could only give you one piece of advice.
Speaker A:Here it is.
Speaker B:So the advice is pretty simple.
Speaker B:This.
Speaker B:This, this time around, I was a pantser.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:E.
Speaker B:I kind of like wrote as the muse took me for all of my previous books.
Speaker B:This is the first book that I outlined.
Speaker B:And even if you're a pantser, even if you're comfortable with that, I.
Speaker B:I fully advocate that you give outlining a try because especially if you're doing a mystery with a lot of little moving parts and red herrings and whatnot, it saves you so many rewrites.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, I mean, outlining outline, early outline, often tr.
Speaker B:Outline will change.
Speaker B:And that's okay because the ending to this changed from the outline to the final book.
Speaker B:But having that scaffolding is absolutely the best gift you can give yourself as you're heading into your main kind of novel writing period.
Speaker A:Superb advice and two things.
Speaker A:One, take the pressure off yourself and tell you that it doesn't have to be like Jeffrey Deaver who is well known for 300 pages outline.
Speaker A:Tell yourself you're going to give it a ten page outline, five page outline.
Speaker A:Heck, do, do it.
Speaker A:Do a one.
Speaker A:Listen, I'm jumping on your advice.
Speaker A:I'm sorry, but what I'm trying to do is take the pressure off and just go, whatever that thing is.
Speaker A:But I'm with you.
Speaker A:I think, I think that the amount of time that it saves you and you're going to give yourself the permission to be able to go, I'm going to stick with it.
Speaker A:Or I'm not, you know, I'm going to be close.
Speaker A:But it's kind of like taking a trip.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:Here's something that date you, you know, you grab a map.
Speaker A:Remember what those are, folks.
Speaker A:Grab a map and go, okay, I'm going to take a trip.
Speaker A:I'm going to go from point A to point B.
Speaker A:But you know, okay, just give me the highways and the.
Speaker A:But if I want to take a beat off the beaten path, I'll just do that as I go.
Speaker A:But at least have some kind of a guide to get me there.
Speaker B:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker B:I mean it's just like I said.
Speaker B:I mean the ending changed radically between the outline and the whatnot.
Speaker B:But I mean it's, it, it saved me so much time in retrospect.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, Nick, tell, tell everybody where they can actually get a copy of where the Bones Lie.
Speaker B:You can get it literally anywhere.
Speaker B:The, the Penguin Random House website has all the various links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org it's probably at your local indie bookstore.
Speaker B:When it came out the other week, we took a little tour.
Speaker B:It seemed to be, you know, on, on various shelves in various places.
Speaker B:Detoura Books, which is the, the main publisher, also their website.
Speaker B:So Google the name.
Speaker B:It's anywhere.
Speaker B:It's anywhere you'd like to buy your books.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Well folks, I love to close with this.
Speaker A:He has a blurb at the top.
Speaker A:And we have a great conversation with the, with Mr.
Speaker A:Mark Gottlieb tomorrow on the show about blurbs you'll want to tune in.
Speaker A:But Meg Gardner, number one New York Times bestselling author and probably the biggest fan of the thriller zone fma.
Speaker A:Toot that horn.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker A:Says, yeah.
Speaker A:A road trip into California's gleaming, seething underbelly.
Speaker A:Movie stars, mobsters, wildfires.
Speaker A:Buckle up and hold on for a Heady ride.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker B:Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker B:Just, yeah, it's just that made my, when she sent that quote back to me, I just like, ah, you know, just like, it's like being touched by angels.
Speaker B:So it's like, so, you know, it's great, folks.
Speaker A:Learn more@nickkolakowski.com on the screen here below.
Speaker A:And Nick, once again, always a thorough pleasure.
Speaker B:Yes, this absolutely was.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:I loved this.
Speaker A:Thanks again, Nick.
Speaker A:Always a good time.
Speaker A:Now folks, tomorrow join us for a bonus episode of the Thriller Zone when my good friend Mark, Mark Gottlieb joins me for an in depth conversation about agenting the publishing biz.
Speaker A:And perhaps one of the absolute highlights of our chat.
Speaker A:Mark is going to share with you a step by step crafting of the perfect query letter as you search for the right agent.
Speaker A:It's worth the price of admission.
Speaker A:All right, so join us for that tomorrow with Mark Gottlieb.
Speaker A:And of course, if you want to stick around for our bonus green room, so to speak with Nicole Lakowski, there's a couple little treats for you.
Speaker A:Again, this is your host, Dave Temple saying thanks for listening and I'll see you tomorrow for another edition of the Thriller Zone.
Speaker A:Are those ancient condoms right behind your head?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, these are supposedly.
Speaker B:I mean, I don't know how old they actually are, but my, my parents picked them up.
Speaker B:They're bamboo sword holders from Japan, supposedly.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:And that's an etching I got in Florence.
Speaker B:And then over here, that's a shot from the Malecon in Havana where a photographer and I were walking.
Speaker B:That shot was taken at noon on an extremely crowded walkway filled with hundreds of people.
Speaker B:But his eye was so good.
Speaker B:He found like the one isolated shot of one person jumping in the air so they seem sort of suspended.
Speaker B:It just reminds me about like, you know, whatever reality is.
Speaker B:Like there's multiple subjective realities within a reality.
Speaker B:I mean, I just, I love that shot.
Speaker B:We're good friends, so he gifted that to me.
Speaker B:I love that shot.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:And is also.
Speaker A:Is that a Nick Kolakowski bobblehead right behind you?
Speaker B:Yes, it is.
Speaker B:I have, I have a very weird story about this.
Speaker B:This is, this is.
Speaker B:I had, I had a former boss who I was, I work for a tech company.
Speaker B:This, this was a number of years ago and she's no longer with the company, but she was laid off.
Speaker B:And then three days later, everyone in my team developers newsletter, people so on, all received these plain white boxes on their desks and we all open it and everyone got a replica of themselves as a doll.
Speaker B:And no note, nothing like that.
Speaker B:And it turned out that as a gift, right before she was laid off, because she didn't realize she was gonna be laid off, she had.
Speaker B:She went to some custom company and had little dolls made of all of us.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I have a.
Speaker B:I have a little doll facing out.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:Yeah, I said bobblehead.
Speaker A:But, no, it's a.
Speaker A:It's more like an action hero, Nick.
Speaker A:I mean, let's just be honest.
Speaker A:Your number one podcast for stories that.
Speaker B:Thrill the Thriller Zone.
