Meet the Masters: Borgos and Byrne in the Thriller Zone
On today's 238th episode of The Thriller Zone with host Dave Temple, we're diving into the world of thrilling literature with two amazing authors: James Byrne and Bruce Borgos.
We’re all about the casual vibes this episode, but don’t let that fool you—there’s some serious storytelling magic happening here!
We chat about their latest works, including James’s "Chain Reaction" and Bruce’s "The Blue Horse," both packed with suspense, deep characters, and unique settings that feel like characters themselves.
Plus, we tackle the challenges of tech hiccups in podcasting—because who doesn’t love a little chaos?
So grab your headphones, sit back, and join us in this light-hearted yet insightful romp through the art of writing, where we share tips, laughs, and the occasional literary gem!
Takeaways:
- Today's episode had a few technical hiccups, but the casual vibe made it all fun!
- If you're planning to join the podcast, make sure to have a good mic and lighting.
- We discussed two thrilling books: 'Chain Reaction' and 'The Blue Horse'—both packed with excitement!
- The uniqueness of characters like Porter Beck and Aloysius Limerick shows how diverse thrillers can be.
- It's important to write for yourself first; if you're not entertained, neither will your readers be!
- Editing is crucial—sometimes the best lines need to be cut if they don't serve the story.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Foreign welcome to the Thriller Zone.
Speaker A:I'm your host, David Templin.
Speaker A:As you can see, it's casual Friday, except it's Wednesday.
Speaker A:We have had a couple of little technical issues here of late trying to hook up with today's guests.
Speaker A:So today's performance technically is not going to be tip top like we usually have it.
Speaker A:We had a connection problem on one end so we went to a different program, still had the problem, called in my wife Tammy, thank goodness, and we hooked it up on Zoom.
Speaker A:However, as you will see, all three of us are not on the camera at the same time.
Speaker A:So it could be a little confusing at first just telling you all that so that you know what the story is.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Dave Temple.
Speaker A:Welcome to episode who.
Speaker A:Who knows what it is, but it's summertime.
Speaker A:So as you can see, it's a little bit casual around here.
Speaker A:A couple of quick notes.
Speaker A:If you want to be on the show, I'm gonna really suggest strongly that you have a microphone that works in addition to your laptop.
Speaker A:I think you're going to really appreciate it.
Speaker A:You're going to sound better.
Speaker A:Have a little light on your face.
Speaker A:Whether it's a window or a spotlight or a lamp.
Speaker A:It really does help.
Speaker A:And WI fi, if your wi fi sucks, so will the show.
Speaker A:So just a word to the wise is sufficient.
Speaker A:Today's show, two guys, you're going to see me announce it again.
Speaker A:James Byrne with Chain Reaction.
Speaker A:Bruce Borges, the Blue Horse Barry.
Speaker A:Very excited to have both of these guys on the show.
Speaker A:And as always, if you would like to be on the show, probably more after the summer vacation break that we're going to have here very soon.
Speaker A:Love to hear from you.
Speaker A:The thrillerzonemail.com so without any further ado, how about you and I get on into the Thriller Zone?
Speaker A:If you knew what it took us to get here, you would be going.
Speaker A:I'm glad this show's free.
Speaker A:No foreign it's been.
Speaker A:Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Speaker B:Oh, thanks for having us back yet again.
Speaker A:We tried this folks last week and we had some tech issues.
Speaker A:James is in downtown Portland in a high rise.
Speaker A:It's a very handsome condo.
Speaker A:And Mr. Borges is in a very gorgeous alpine ish cabin in the middle of where?
Speaker B:Southern Utah, in the mountains, about 8,000ft.
Speaker A:Oh, that's nice.
Speaker B:Why I'm wearing a jacket.
Speaker A:Well, I'm glad we were able to make this happen.
Speaker A:It is not without some challenges.
Speaker A:But that's one thing about this trusty Thriller Zone.
Speaker A:You just keep going.
Speaker A:Now you guys can jump in here anytime you want.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:We're on Zoom.
Speaker A:Zoom is not my ordinary territory.
Speaker A:I like Riverside fm.
Speaker A:Nothing against Zoom, but we had to resort to this.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:I just saw Tammy.
Speaker A:Tammy's name is down here.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:Hi, I'm Tammy.
Speaker A:Just.
Speaker A:Just ignore that we're on her account.
Speaker A:But anyway, we're talking about two fabulous books.
Speaker A:James is back.
Speaker A:James is new to the show.
Speaker A:Chain Reaction is this little bad boy.
Speaker A:And then Bruce is back with the Blue Horse.
Speaker A:Everybody knows my good buddy Mr. Borges, but I'm telling you, these are two stacked books of reading deliciousness.
Speaker A:Jump in, guys.
Speaker C:Well, we're glad to be here.
Speaker C:Bruce's book just came out.
Speaker C:Mine came out in January.
Speaker C:And we're thrilled to be with you, Tammy.
Speaker B:It's always good to see you.
Speaker B:But let me just say real quickly, if.
Speaker B:If you're new to James's writing, just like he's new, a little bit new to Dave and maybe some of your listeners.
Speaker B:He is a fabulous writer.
Speaker B:His books, especially this series featuring the amazing Des limerick, are just a treat to read.
Speaker B:I mean, so exciting and so well crafted.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:I'm also a huge fan of Bruce's current series.
Speaker C:And we have the same publishing house, we have the same editor, and we're.
Speaker C:We are now a team.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we used to have the same agent.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker A:Who sadly recently passed.
Speaker A:But let me.
Speaker A:Let me ask you this, because we.
Speaker A:And I'm going to repeat things that we had in our first conversation that got removed because of tech issues.
Speaker A:So I'm gonna.
Speaker A:We'll just pretend it's all from Brand New Fresh.
Speaker A:How did you guys meet and what started this bromance love affair?
Speaker C:Every year at the World Mystery Convention, which is also known as bouchercon, the Minotaur, St. Martin's folks have a cocktail party and a couple years ago is in the delightful city of San Diego, which I don't know well at all.
Speaker C:And everybody who's edited by a guy named Keith Kayla, we all gathered around him, and Bruce and I met there.
Speaker C:And one of the things that we kind of oddly discovered about the writers who are edited by Keith is that Keith seems to go out of his way to edit.
Speaker C:Nice people, people you want to meet.
Speaker C:There was a guy named Steve Hussaini was there too, and it was just we ended up hanging out the, like, I don't know, four or five of us for the entire cocktail party.
Speaker C:We just more or less ignored everybody else.
Speaker C:And it was.
Speaker C:And it was grand fun.
Speaker B:Yep, absolutely.
Speaker A:I was at that particular bow Shakhan, because it's right here in my backyard.
Speaker A:But I had several things in the air, so I bopped in, got to meet some people, got to see Bruce.
Speaker A:Did not get to meet you.
Speaker A:J.
Speaker A:And then was on my way.
Speaker A:But Bruce, you.
Speaker A:You've been at this.
Speaker A:This is number four.
Speaker A:Three.
Speaker A:Three on.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's number three in the quarterback series.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:But it's.
Speaker A:You have other books before that.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Let's just do this.
Speaker A:Let's just shoot out of the gate with.
Speaker A:What is Porter up to now?
Speaker A:One thing, refresh my memory because I've read a few books since then.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:Was Detective Charlie Blue Horse his girlfriend in the last book?
Speaker A:That I don't.
Speaker B:Yes, she was.
Speaker B:And so just a quick synopsis.
Speaker B:Porter Beck is the sheriff of a very rural county in Nevada called Lincoln County.
Speaker B:He recently, in the last few years, returned from a career in army intelligence and ended up taking the job of sheriff that his dad had held for more than 30 years.
Speaker B:And Lincoln county very interestingly sits right next door to the very top secret area in the Nevada desert that the federal government occupies and does strange things in.
Speaker B:So it's right next to Area 51 and all the alien stuff.
Speaker B:And so he.
Speaker B:He continually encounters some really interesting cases and situations.
Speaker B:And then, yeah, he met Charlie Blue Horse in the second novel in the series called Shades of Mercy, and that she has become his girlfriend and a pretty serious relationship developing there.
Speaker B:And then we move into the Blue Horse where Porter is trying to figure out who is taking out some of the people associated with the government's roundup of wild horses, which is not a popular thing because of the way that those roundups are conducted.
Speaker B:And there's a big contingent of people on the other side who are trying to stop them, but lots of nefarious things going on.
Speaker B:So that's kind of where we.
Speaker B:We get to.
Speaker B:When we get to the Blue Horse.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:Let me ask an odd question.
Speaker A:It's probably asked 10,000 times.
Speaker A:Who came up with Area 51?
Speaker A:When did that start?
Speaker A:What's.
Speaker A:Why.
Speaker A:Why is that little tiny spot.
Speaker A:So we'll use the word magical in air quotes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Area 51 is a place that was not publicly acknowledged by the government, I believe, until the late 90s.
Speaker B:It was rumored to be a place for several decades.
Speaker B: It actually began in the: Speaker B:And the first thing that actually happened at Area 51, after they fenced it all off from the other part of the Nevada test site where we were blowing up all the atomic weapons above ground and testing all of those.
Speaker B:The first thing that happened there was we brought in the new U2 plane surveillance plane, and that's where we kept it.
Speaker B:We needed a secret place to test it.
Speaker B:And the Nevada desert is a huge expanse of land if you don't know that.
Speaker B:So it's very easy to fly planes in an area like that that is not heavily populated at all and keep it a secret.
Speaker B:So that's the first thing that happened there.
Speaker B:And then of course, as we know, you know, all you have to do is watch the X Files on TV to realize lots of other stuff occurred there over the subsequent decades.
Speaker A:I think I mentioned to you in one of our earlier conversations.
Speaker A:I'm working on a novel right now that is based in almost solely in Las Vegas for a number of different reasons.
Speaker A:And I have found what I find so interesting for some bizarre reason.
Speaker A:And I've traveled back and forth across the country during my radio career and stopped in a lot of cities, in towns and states.
Speaker A:And Nevada is its own, its own particular kind of world.
Speaker A:And what I like about this area in your book, it's.
Speaker A:It's a character in and of itself.
Speaker A:And that's kind of the way I'm doing it in my book.
Speaker A:I mean, Vegas, for instance, is its own microcosm.
Speaker A:But Nevada in general seems to be its own little world.
Speaker A:And I, and I really dig that about how you weave it in as a character.
Speaker B:I think it's, you know, I think we said probably last time, there's a lot of low hanging fruit for me to grab as a writer to talk about rural Nevada.
Speaker B:Again, it's.
Speaker B:Most people are acquainted with Las Vegas and Reno, but outside of that, you know, people who live anywhere east of here especially and have never visited the state really have no idea of everything that, that that happens here and how big the state actually is.
Speaker B:So you're right, Dave.
Speaker B:There is plenty of opportunity to take Nevada and all of its interesting things and really describe it to people in such a way that it becomes a character.
Speaker B:I mean, it's very scenic in a great deal of the state.
Speaker B:Yeah, where my books take place is really high desert for the most part, but there's plenty of mountains.
Speaker B:Nevada is actually the most mountainous state outside of Alaska.
Speaker B:And most people don't know that it has more peaks, more peaks over 10,000ft than anywhere else.
Speaker B:I think too, maybe other than like Colorado or Alaska.
Speaker B:So the terrain itself is really a marvelous thing to incorporate into these stories.
Speaker B:And in it, it also impacts what my characters can do.
Speaker A:All right, before I jump over to Dana, I want to say one of my favorite things about Porter Beck was that how you and we talked about this, it doesn't follow that traditional thriller mold.
Speaker A:He's more introspective.
Speaker A:I don't want to say sensitive, because that makes you think one thing, but introspective.
Speaker A:And so it always makes me wonder what drove you to not use that classic hard action archetype, you know, whether it's a Jack Reacher or, you know, fill in the blank.
Speaker B:Well, I think the reason I did that primarily was because we all have seen very strong characters in.
Speaker B:In modern Western literature.
Speaker B:I. I'm thinking of C.J.
Speaker B:box and Greg Johnson, you know, the Walt Longmire and Joe Pickett characters.
Speaker B:And although Joe Pickett's not a.
Speaker B:He's not a Superman either.
Speaker B:But I always thought there's plenty of pages and books already taken up with.
Speaker B:With heroes in those stories who are almost indestructible in some ways.
Speaker B:So I thought, well, here I have this very rugged setting, and I do have a.
Speaker B:A somewhat rugged guy, but he's by no means a superman at all.
Speaker B:And he has problems.
Speaker B:And he has.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:In Porter's case, he has a vision problem.
Speaker B:He cannot see at night.
Speaker B:You can see pretty well during the day.
Speaker B:But he suffers from night blindness, which is a degenerative disease, and that is slowly taking its toll on him.
Speaker B:And, you know, he is by.
Speaker B:He needs help.
Speaker B:He needs the help of his deputies and other people.
Speaker A:Well, now let's flip the page a little bit to Dana and.
Speaker A:And Dana, I've got this two part question that's burning a hole in me and Desmond.
Speaker A:All right, how do I say this?
Speaker A:Aloysius.
Speaker A:Aloysius.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:Aloysius Limerick based on Chain Reaction number one.
Speaker A:How in the wide world of sports did you come up with that name?
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's delicious in and of itself.
Speaker A:And how did you come up with his rare mix of part rogue, part philosopher, part sleuth?
Speaker A:So we'll go one, two.
Speaker C:I just love the genre.
Speaker C:I love the single male action adventure that the Lee Child, the Reacher genre.
Speaker C:And I wanted to try my hand at it, but I couldn't do what everybody else had done.
Speaker C:I needed to make this guy different.
Speaker C:So, like, like Bruce and like Porter, I tried to find ways to make my characters stand out a couple of ways.
Speaker C:He's very, very good in a Fight.
Speaker C:Very strong fellow, powerfully built.
Speaker C:But one, he's English, he's, he's from the uk.
Speaker C:And secondly, he, although he doesn't sound like it, he's got this bit engineering technical background.
Speaker C:And then third, I decided if I have this guy who's big and tough and good in a fight, why don't I give him the stupidest name I could think of?
Speaker C:Because it just, it would be so easy to slip into toxic masculinity with this kind of character if he was perfect.
Speaker C:So I came up with Limerick because I'm an Irishman myself and limerick is a fun word.
Speaker C:And then I wanted, I desperately didn't want to use a Joe or a Jake or a Jack because there are about 12 million of those in this genre.
Speaker C:So Des is good because it's one syllable and it's got a Zed in it.
Speaker C:And that, that's fun.
Speaker C:And then finally, Aloysius, it's just simply the silliest name of all time.
Speaker C:And so when you put them together, you get this absolutely ridiculous name.
Speaker C:And almost every book at one point somebody says to him, no, seriously, what really is your name?
Speaker C:And he's like, it's a perfectly good name.
Speaker C:This is my name.
Speaker C:It let me undercut, let me add a second flavor to the sauce until it was just a one note character.
Speaker A:So well done.
Speaker A:So go ahead and give me the, the spin on Chain Reaction.
Speaker A:So folks who were debating, and I apologize, I didn't realize it came out in January.
Speaker A:I knew it was spring ish, but go ahead.
Speaker C:Okay, so this is the third of so far four books.
Speaker C:The fourth one is with my editor and coming out next year.
Speaker C:Des is 35 years old.
Speaker C:He's retired from AM Military.
Speaker C:I never say which one it is.
Speaker C:And he's come to the United States and he's roaming around with a guitar on his back and just getting into trouble.
Speaker C:And, and in the military, he was a breach artist.
Speaker C:His job was to be a gatekeeper.
Speaker C:He can open any door, keep it open for as long as it's necessary, and control who does and does not get through it.
Speaker C:That was his, his, his expertise.
Speaker C:So in this book we find him lured to Las Vegas where a terrorist incident is going on.
Speaker C:And that's about the first third of the book.
Speaker C:And soon we realize that there's a whole, whole different thing going on beneath that.
Speaker C:That the terrorist incident is sort of a setup for another set of crimes that is being masked beneath it.
Speaker C:So we spend this book.
Speaker C:First book was in LA.
Speaker C:Second one was in Oregon, where I live.
Speaker C:This third book, NJ, New York City.
Speaker C:And I, like, unlike Bruce, has the ability to have an actual character in his setting.
Speaker C:And he's.
Speaker C:And he paints it so incredibly well and so thoroughly that I feel like I've been there.
Speaker C:But DEZ bounces to a different venue and in every book which allows me to have him always be a fish out of water.
Speaker A:Well, I admire something that you both have done.
Speaker A:Of course, you both have now said it in that you, you turned your back on the average norm.
Speaker A:The thing that we grew up watching.
Speaker A:The James Bond, the Jason Bourne, the Jack Reacher and, And you've, you know, you, you're.
Speaker A:You're marching to the beat of your own drum.
Speaker A:One of my favorite things to do.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so I, I so appreciate and respect that.
Speaker A:And you made a good point, Dana.
Speaker A:It is true about Bruce's book is the way he paints the story is.
Speaker A:And every and all good writers do this, but for some reason, Bruce, I don't want to say he's got the market cornered, but he really does have a beautiful way of setting scene.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And making me feel like I'm living inside of it.
Speaker A:You do the same thing yours feels.
Speaker A:I like the way you structure your characters and the character and the way they speak and the tiny little nuances like the opening scene in the book about they're in this car ready to get into this hairy situation.
Speaker A:So you both have really exceptional storytelling skills.
Speaker A:And I can now understand now better why you become such close friends.
Speaker C:I do think our writing style is.
Speaker C:Well, first off, how we write is vastly different.
Speaker C:The process by which Bruce writes would make me have an aneurysm.
Speaker C:And the process by which I write, he would.
Speaker C:He laughs his tail off and I tell him how I do it.
Speaker C:But nonetheless, we have gotten to that same point where we have these very character driven stories that are actually different at one level, but kind of similar at another level.
Speaker A:Well, wait a minute.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker B:I was just going to say, to add to that, I think one of the things that we do similarly in our writing style is we don't over describe things.
Speaker B:We try to put in just enough detail to give the reader a good sense of what we're talking about or a place that one of our characters is in without overdoing it.
Speaker B:Which is not something I'm terribly fond of as a reader.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Which is probably why I don't write that way.
Speaker B:I don't like too much description.
Speaker B:I like to leave something open to the reader's imagination.
Speaker B:So you know, we drop these.
Speaker B:These.
Speaker B:These very brief descriptions of breadcrumbs along the way to give the reader a sense of what we're talking about without spending three pages on it.
Speaker A:I remember the day.
Speaker A:The days back in.
Speaker A:Let me see if I can reach this.
Speaker A:The old gray mirror ain't what she used to be.
Speaker A:Late 80s.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Mid to late 80s, early 90s.
Speaker A:I'm thinking of Tom.
Speaker A:Tom.
Speaker A:Thomas Wolf.
Speaker A:Tom Wolf.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm thinking of Bonfire, the Vanities.
Speaker A:I'm thinking of later.
Speaker A:The Man.
Speaker A:Man.
Speaker B:Man.
Speaker A:Allowed manner.
Speaker A:Whatever the hell it is.
Speaker A:Point being, you could open.
Speaker A:You could open a Thomas Wolf book.
Speaker A:Chapter one.
Speaker A:You could be six chapters in.
Speaker A:And he's just described walking into the room.
Speaker A:Do you remember those days?
Speaker B:I do.
Speaker B:And, you know, he's very good at it.
Speaker B:You have to be really, really good at that.
Speaker B:There's a.
Speaker B:There's a lot of options who are.
Speaker B:And they can keep you engaged.
Speaker B:I'm not one of those people.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So my bigger.
Speaker A:So I remember this one particular scene.
Speaker A:I think it was Bonfire, the Vanities.
Speaker A:He's just describing the.
Speaker A:A guy waking up with a hangover.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And having been a sizable drinker back in my old days, I would just read that and go, oh, my God, he nailed it.
Speaker A:But here's my point.
Speaker A:I don't want to lose the point.
Speaker A:Those days are.
Speaker A:I don't want to say they're gone because it's to, you know, to.
Speaker A:How are you like to read your books?
Speaker A:But I've noticed between the shortening attention spans, the more the battle for those attention.
Speaker A:Those shortening attention spans, people just kind of want to cut to the chase faster.
Speaker A:And I don't know, is that me?
Speaker A:Because I'm impatient, because I'm trying to read so much because we've gotten conditioned by.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know.
Speaker A:He walked into the room and it's a brightly lit room and there's tapestry and he's wearing a certain kind of shoe.
Speaker A:But I don't need that detail.
Speaker A:Where's the gun?
Speaker A:And who's gonna get shot?
Speaker C:I do think.
Speaker C:I do think there was a style of literature at a time and I.
Speaker C:We often joke about the James Michener school.
Speaker C:Chapter one, the Earth cools.
Speaker C:You know, it's like.
Speaker C:And by page 185 were introduced to our protagonist.
Speaker C:And that was a school of.
Speaker C:That was a way of doing it.
Speaker C:Leon Uris wrote sort of that way too.
Speaker C:And I do think that.
Speaker C:And I'm going to say that you're probably right.
Speaker C:That it's an attention span, and it's a social media and an Internet world in which I don't think either of us have the luxury of waiting 15 pages for something interesting to happen.
Speaker C:Because my wife gets books from our local library system, and she opens it and reads chapter one.
Speaker C:And if you didn't get her chapter one, she closes and gives it back to the library.
Speaker C:And she's not out of scent.
Speaker C:So that's our challenge today.
Speaker A:Remember the days when you would go, God, I'd go to a bookstore and I'd buy a stack and I'd get home, and I'm like, oh, my God, I cannot wait.
Speaker A:And then you realized, I got a couple of dogs in here, and because I paid for them, you can be sure I'm gonna read them.
Speaker A:But those days are kind of gone.
Speaker A:And I like your wife's philosophy.
Speaker A:I like the way you like.
Speaker A:Oh, it's just.
Speaker A:And we had this conversation last time.
Speaker A:We were talking about how I used to give you.
Speaker A:I'd give you three, four, maybe five chapters.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:Then it became, you know, again with time and with age, in this four years of the show.
Speaker A:I'm like, let's see what you can do in the first chapter.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:It's your prologue.
Speaker A:And here's the challenge.
Speaker A:Can you get me to do this?
Speaker A:Oh, and if you can, I'm still with you.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And both of these books did that.
Speaker B:You're right, Dave.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's the big challenge.
Speaker B:Especially in our genre, we write things, stories that have urgency to them and that have deadlines associated with, you know, our protagonist figuring things out.
Speaker B:And our readers are all driven to look for those things and to look for them very quickly.
Speaker B:So, yeah, if we don't deliver in the first couple of pages, our book doesn't even get off the shelf.
Speaker A:Yeah, you.
Speaker A:You both got a chance to meet my lovely wife, whose name is right here because she saved my ass by breaking out zoom and the other stuff didn't work.
Speaker A:And she.
Speaker A:I love.
Speaker A:I have loved.
Speaker A:We've been together, what, 10 years now?
Speaker A:And I've watched the pattern of her digesting series of televisions shows.
Speaker A:And she'll say, every.
Speaker A:With time, she has come to a place where she goes, oh, ticking clock.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, what's that, honey?
Speaker A:She goes, there's the ticking clock.
Speaker A:And I'm like, bravo, young lady.
Speaker A:So now she's starting to pick up ticking clock and notice.
Speaker A:Hey, notice how that last chapter or I. E. Scene made me want to see the next one.
Speaker A:I'M like, now you've got it.
Speaker A:It's beautiful.
Speaker A:Let's see, let's, let's dive into, let's just couple more things because we've been at this for a while, trying to get our show going.
Speaker A:Blue horse.
Speaker A:The blue horse wrestles with generational guilt.
Speaker A:What, what's, what's got you thinking about this?
Speaker A:Bruce, get on, get on the couch.
Speaker A:Make yourself comfortable.
Speaker A:It's therapy time with the Dave and Dana.
Speaker B:So as you mentioned earlier, Dave Porter Beck is pretty introspective and he comes from a lot of secrets in his past which, which start to be revealed in the first book, the Bitter Past, hence the title.
Speaker B:And there's a lot of things that are secretive, not only in those areas of Nevada that I described that are run by the federal government, but in people's lives.
Speaker B:And he's no different.
Speaker B:And guilt is one of those emotions and one of those things which at times plague us all.
Speaker B:Regret and things that we didn't do or we should have done differently.
Speaker B:So those are always good tools to use, I think, in a story, provided that you don't overdo it because they're very interesting and very relatable.
Speaker B:So yeah, it's, it's a big part of.
Speaker B:Generational guilt is a big part of this whole series really.
Speaker A:Or if you grew up in the church with a father as a pastor like me, you, you know your fair share about guilt, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Jesus.
Speaker A:Well, I want to bounce over here to, to the chain reaction corner and, and say one thing about James.
Speaker A:What I dig about your style is that the way you do this.
Speaker A:And we, you know, we touched on this earlier.
Speaker A:You dance between action and satire the way limerick disarms with a phrase.
Speaker A:I love that, that, that just witty repartee.
Speaker A:Is that one of your, your own personal hidden secret talents?
Speaker C:I. Yeah, I mean I am an ex theater guy, so I have a pretty good sense of how to do dialogue and how to make dialogue carry freight.
Speaker C:You don't want dialogue for dialogue's sake.
Speaker C:It always needs to give you some character revelation or needs to have a clue towards a reveal later on.
Speaker C:So that, that helps a lot.
Speaker C:Secondly, I just really wanted to have a loquacious, fast talking guy with street patois.
Speaker C:He sounds pretty uneducated because I had never read that before and I thought it would be really fun to have.
Speaker C:We have our fair share of stoic heroes and I just thought wouldn't it be fun to have a guy who just won't shut the hell up.
Speaker C:And the other thing that was really fun to do with this character was when it comes to having sex, he's instantly 15 years old and he's the least cool guy in the world, the least suave, the anti bond.
Speaker C:He's always like, sex.
Speaker C:That would be marvelous.
Speaker B:Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker C:And I thought I hadn't read that before.
Speaker C:Wouldn't that be fun to have a dude who's so insanely uncool?
Speaker C:So those are just.
Speaker C:They were things that entertained me.
Speaker C:And Bruce and I have talked about this in the past.
Speaker C:We're our own first audiences.
Speaker C:We both write books that will entertain us.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:That's the first goal.
Speaker C:And I. I really wanted a character that would make me.
Speaker C:That would make me laugh.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think, James, the one thing that's really fascinating that I think the audience here would get a kick out of is describe how you learned how DEZ would speak.
Speaker B:How did you pick up that dialect?
Speaker C:Yeah, some of it is from former amateur theater days, some of us watching a lot of British television.
Speaker C:And then I got really, really lucky.
Speaker C:I had a friend, and you've probably had her on the show, Meg Gardner, who lived in England for.
Speaker C:For quite a while.
Speaker C:And I asked Meg if she would look at an early manuscript and correct my British isms.
Speaker C:And there's an editor at Minotaur St Martin who is British, and she also read it.
Speaker C:So I'm.
Speaker C:I, first off, I have a pretty good ear for.
Speaker C:For dialect.
Speaker C:And then I also had two beta readers who said, no, I think you're fine in that.
Speaker C:The other thing, and I've never revealed this to the audience, is that DEZ grew up in what you and I would call orphanages in parts of England, Ireland and Scotland.
Speaker C:And the reason I did that is that nobody could ever say, oh, no, no, nobody from Ireland would say that.
Speaker C:Only somebody from Scotland would.
Speaker C:And I'd say, I'm.
Speaker C:I'm inculcated.
Speaker C:I'm fine.
Speaker C:I've got.
Speaker C:I got that.
Speaker C:So if there's some English isms, if there's some Irish isms and some Scots isms in there, I'm okay with.
Speaker C:I. I can pass muster with any of that.
Speaker A:Yeah, that opening prologue, folks, if you pick up a chain reaction, you're gonna.
Speaker A:You're gonna get it right away.
Speaker A:And I'd sit here and read it for you, but I don't want to bore you.
Speaker A:But, yeah, you turn a phrase and just little phrases that, you know, get.
Speaker A:Sends it home.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Now, there is a line.
Speaker A:Don Winslow drove out here a couple Summers ago, we were talking about one of his books, and he, he said a line.
Speaker A:I've never forgotten it.
Speaker A:And I try to remember it every time I sit down to the keyboard.
Speaker A:And that is, every line must pay rent.
Speaker C:I like that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I'll tell you what.
Speaker A:Damned if that doesn't.
Speaker A:I, I, I don't have it on a sign.
Speaker A:It should be a little note right here attached to one of my four monitors.
Speaker A:It says that very thing because.
Speaker A:And Bruce, you and I've talked about this before.
Speaker A:It's interesting how we.
Speaker A:Oh, I just came up with a really cool line.
Speaker A:I love that line.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah?
Speaker A:Well, does it fit?
Speaker B:Does it.
Speaker A:I'm not sure it fits.
Speaker A:Doesn't really matter.
Speaker A:It's such a sexy damn line.
Speaker A:But if it doesn't really move that story forward, you're really just kind of taking up space.
Speaker A:What do you guys think about that?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think there's no question.
Speaker B:And we all, all three of us know that too, Too painfully.
Speaker B:You, you sometimes write stuff like you said, Dave, and you just sit back and you go, gosh, out of all the stuff I've written today, that that's the most brilliant line.
Speaker B:And yet when you go back and look at it again and you're, maybe you're doing your edits, you go, well, yeah, it's a nice line, but it really doesn't, it doesn't move the story forward, or it doesn't even move the paragraph forward.
Speaker B:It's, it's, you know, it's just sitting there.
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's taking up space.
Speaker B:And in this business, if you're not your own editor, and you're not your own best editor, you're probably not doing this well enough.
Speaker B:We all have editors, you know, help us hone these, these manuscripts before they go out.
Speaker B:But you have to make those painful decisions occasionally.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's like, oh, no, I'm gonna have to take that out.
Speaker B:But you do it.
Speaker A:How many times have I.
Speaker A:Go ahead, James.
Speaker A:What are you gonna say?
Speaker C:I was gonna say, we both are.
Speaker C:Edited by a guy named Keith.
Speaker C:And Keith, in one of my first books, they ever said to me, hey, on page 32, you have this scene from so and so's point of view.
Speaker C:But on page 314, so and so needs to know that too.
Speaker C:Would you consider changing the pov?
Speaker C:And I thought, good Lord, he understands my story at a granular level that I don't.
Speaker C:Oh, my God.
Speaker C:And we are insanely lucky to have.
Speaker C:I take all of his edits come in the form of suggestions, and I take 97% of his suggestions because they're simply that good.
Speaker B:Yeah, they're.
Speaker B:They're great.
Speaker A:And what's his name again?
Speaker C:Keith.
Speaker C:Kayla.
Speaker A:Kayla.
Speaker B:H L, A.
Speaker C: an encyclopedic knowledge of: Speaker C:So, I mean, he.
Speaker C:We're.
Speaker C:We're super lucky.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:He did the same thing with me on my first book.
Speaker B:I had a joke in there that, you know, Porterbeck likes to tell jokes, and he's a funny guy.
Speaker B:He's got a quick wit, and he's.
Speaker B:He's very.
Speaker B:He's got good timing, good comedic timing.
Speaker B:But Keith sent me back his edits, and like.
Speaker B:Like James said, you know, I typically take just about all of those right at face value and don't make any changes.
Speaker B:I like those suggestions.
Speaker B:But he said, I think you don't need this joke.
Speaker B:And I said, oh, no, no.
Speaker B:I was like, that joke in my mind is essential.
Speaker B:But then I.
Speaker B:And so I made that comment back to him and his response to me, he said, okay, I like all of these changes that you adopted or made, and I like this suggestion, but you still need to get rid of this joke.
Speaker B:It's not doing anything for the story.
Speaker B:You've already established the reporter can tell a joke, and, you know, but this is not the best place for that.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And he said.
Speaker B:He said, believe me, some people are not going to get it.
Speaker B:He said, that's the most important part of it.
Speaker B:Some people won't get it.
Speaker B:Either change the joke or get rid of it.
Speaker A:There is a line you guys have both been around this business long enough to know.
Speaker A:And I think about this every time I put my ass in a seat in a theater.
Speaker A:If you're doing something on that screen that takes me out of the story, that makes me go, wait a minute.
Speaker A:What does that mean?
Speaker A:What did he mean by that?
Speaker A:Well, you have just burned up some important real estate because you've.
Speaker B:Now.
Speaker A:Now, here's what's got to happen.
Speaker A:I've got to stop, and I got to go.
Speaker A:What do you mean by that?
Speaker A:And then you got to get me back into the story.
Speaker A:And what have I missed in the time that it took me?
Speaker A:I'm not saying I'm gonna sit there and go for 10 minutes.
Speaker A:You know what?
Speaker A:I don't know exactly what he meant by that, but I could assume, you know.
Speaker A:But the point, Ben, is to his Point, did it.
Speaker A:Did it move me forward?
Speaker A:Did can everybody get it?
Speaker A:That's a really, really, really solid point.
Speaker A:And I never thought about it, but, boy, which is why beta readers, besides editors, which is their profession, are what I think are so important with beta readers, because they might.
Speaker A:You might have 10 people read it and one person go, I have no clue what that means.
Speaker A:Then you have to stop and go, is it in my best interest to leave that?
Speaker B:Right, yeah.
Speaker A:We have kicked that blue horse.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:What scares you, James, most as a storyteller?
Speaker A:That A, your fiction might be prophetic, or B, no one is listening until it's too late.
Speaker C:The prophetic thing is weird because I drew.
Speaker C:I'm a.
Speaker C:By training a journalist.
Speaker C:I came out of newspaper newsrooms and I wrote a book that was called, eventually going to be called Crashers, and it was about ntsb, the teams that investigate airline crashes.
Speaker C:And I got it finished, and I got a literary agent in New York, and the agent called me and said, oh, my God, this is a great book.
Speaker C:It's going to be a hardback paperback.
Speaker C:It's going to do really well.
Speaker C:We're going to take it to Hollywood.
Speaker C:This is great.
Speaker C: And that was in August of: Speaker C:And one month later was 9 11.
Speaker C:And this was a book about terrorists bringing down multiple airliners.
Speaker C:And a third of the book took place in New York City.
Speaker C:So that book became thus the most unmarketable book in the world because all the publishers are in New York City, or not all of them, but a whole lot of them are.
Speaker C:And so that was a case where I had to take the story and I had to take the book and put it on a shelf for seven years.
Speaker C: to Minotaur Saint Martin's in: Speaker C:And then I wrote another book for Keith, and I wanted to set it in the safest place possible, somewhere in the Middle east that hadn't changed in a long time.
Speaker C:That was very, very stable.
Speaker C:And I thought finally, well, Syria.
Speaker C:Nothing ever changes in Syria.
Speaker C:And that, you know, Arabic spring hit me about three weeks after the book landed.
Speaker C:And so sometimes you just stumble into the.
Speaker C:The world orbiting out from underneath where you started your book.
Speaker C:And the.
Speaker C:When that happens, you just have to say, well.
Speaker A:I think that's just a great lesson in life, James, that you can.
Speaker A:That we should be a little more flexible and just roll with the punches.
Speaker A:Because so much of this world is fluid.
Speaker A:And I mean, this world right here.
Speaker A:You know, see, people talk about, where do you come up with your great ideas?
Speaker A:To those people, I want to backhand them, but I say, oh, you know, if I'm waking up in the day, I'm probably going to have a dozen.
Speaker A:But when something great comes along, you just go, okay, not a big deal.
Speaker A:I got plenty more that came from.
Speaker A:Put it on a shelf and keep moving forward.
Speaker A:I want to ask you something as we start to kind of wrap up you, both of you guys, if you could go back to your younger selves and sit down and have a conversation about two things.
Speaker A:The passion with which you chase your dream of writing and the business in which you have to occupy in order to be successful.
Speaker A:If you could go back and give those, you know, kind of those insights, knowing what you know now, what would you say to those youngins, that young Bruce and that young James as they were starting out?
Speaker A:Bruce, you're first.
Speaker B:Well, I would.
Speaker B:I would certainly tell myself, you have the right instincts.
Speaker B:This is what you should be doing.
Speaker B:But you need to believe it more because it's so easy when you're younger.
Speaker B:I'm like so many authors that I know who really didn't start seriously writing fiction until a little bit later in life because they had life to contend with and, you know, everybody needs a job and bring home a paycheck and all of those things.
Speaker B:But I. I wish that I had had the confidence much earlier to pursue this and, and literally spend a great deal more of my time, you know, trying to.
Speaker B:To go after that.
Speaker B:Had I done that, I. I think, you know, I probably would have a lot more books out there by now.
Speaker B:So that would have been my big piece of advice to me, James.
Speaker C:I probably would have told my young self that the, the trick, and we've talked about this, about writing for yourself, being your first reader.
Speaker C:Don't go don't ask what is hot, don't ask what is popular.
Speaker C:Don't ask what genre is making the most money.
Speaker C:None of that matters.
Speaker C:At the end of the day, you're going to spend the better part of a year with these characters and with this plot, and it better be entertaining you.
Speaker C:So don't go and chase whatever cute teenage vampire is the hot market of the day.
Speaker C:Only write stories that are for the one purpose only of entertaining yourself.
Speaker C:If you do that, then you might go ahead and find a literary agent, and then you might find an editor, and then you might find booksellers, and then you might find an audience elsewhere.
Speaker C:But if you don't do that first, you ain't going to do the other stuff.
Speaker B:Yeah, and one of the things, Dave, before you, before you go on, I think just kind of adds on to that nicely is that, you know, you always hear the advice, write what you know.
Speaker B:Well, when you're, when you're really young, you don't know anything about anything and you don't have any life experience.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I, I think one way to, to take that a little bit differently is write what you're interested in.
Speaker B:So, like James just said, I mean, if you can find something that you first and foremost have, have an interest in, you can make it interesting.
Speaker B:I don't care how much you know about it right now.
Speaker B:You can learn it, you can do the research, you can, you can make it interesting to people if you have enough interest in it.
Speaker C:That's really great.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You made me think of two things as you were describing your younger self's conversations.
Speaker A:I started piddling about back when I was living in LA in my first tour of duty and I was doing a satellite radio show.
Speaker A:And I remember one day, satellite radio is different than live radio as you can imagine it, live radio, it's, you know, 7, 15, 15 after 7 o'.
Speaker A:Clock.
Speaker A:We'll check weather right after this.
Speaker A:But coming up on the Today show is la, la la la la la la la.
Speaker A:Everything is very vermin, but in satellite radio you have to speak in generic terms because I was in eight different time zones, so I couldn't say, hey, good morning, it's Dave here playing your favorite country hit or whatever.
Speaker A:Because in this time zone, it might be evening and in this format, format, it might have shifted to album rock.
Speaker A:That's not the point.
Speaker A:The point is just being present and aware of, you know, what you're doing.
Speaker A:The other thing is, so as I was just kind of bored with that situation, I'm like, I'm just going to go down the hall and pick up my secretary's typewriter, I'm going to take it down the studio.
Speaker A:I got another four hours of this nonsense to do.
Speaker A:So I started banging out little tiny short stories just for shits and giggles.
Speaker A:And that's how I started.
Speaker A:But it was a year later, and here's my point I'm trying to get to.
Speaker A:I remember sitting there going, I'm now living in New York City doing the number one morning show, and I'm sitting in my apartment after the show and I'm just banging out stories.
Speaker A:And I was a big James Patterson fan at the time, and I'm like, I think I can do this.
Speaker A:And I keep writing.
Speaker A:I'm like, this is really kind of good.
Speaker A:But I didn't have the confidence that it really, truly was good.
Speaker A:And because I didn't share it with anyone, I didn't have any feedback.
Speaker A:So I agree with you.
Speaker A:I'd say, like, man, if you just have a inkling that you think you're good at it, just, Just pursue it.
Speaker A:Somebody somewhere is going to tell you that it sucks and that maybe you should do something else or it's going to catch on.
Speaker C:Anyway, I have to say, I was at a writing conference this weekend and I was presenting and I ran into a woman who heard me present the year before, and she said, you said one thing at the conference last year.
Speaker C:And I typed it out when I went home and I put it in my conference lanyard and I've hung on the wall behind me.
Speaker C:And what I said to her is, I don't want to ever hear anybody in this room refer themselves as a would be writer or a future writer or somebody who wants to be a writer.
Speaker C:If you're slapping nouns against verbs, you're a writer.
Speaker C:And start identifying yourself in the mirrors, look at that writer who's shaving, and start thinking of yourself as a writer.
Speaker C:And she said, I put, I am a writer, typed it out, put it on a lanyard behind it.
Speaker C:And she said, a year later, she's still using it as inspiration, which was one of the most gratifying moments of my career that I had.
Speaker C:I'd said something that was less dumb than a lot of other things they say, and it affected somebody.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:And something that, you know, I think most writers would appreciate.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:Well, and it's absolutely.
Speaker A:And it's so funny, the lack of giving ourselves permission.
Speaker A:I don't know where that silliness comes from because I always look at it this way, this is going to be a little.
Speaker A:Might feel a little obtuse, but bear with me a second.
Speaker A:So I remember as a kid growing up in the church again, thinking to myself, do you think if, if, if there is a God, and God instilled in me a particular desire and talent, do you think I would say, zing, there you go.
Speaker A:And you, I, I'm a pretty good writer.
Speaker A:And then you start to writing and then one day he goes, yep, you're not going to be any good at it.
Speaker A:I'm like, that doesn't really make any sense.
Speaker A:If the, if the desire is there and the ability is kind of coming along, Then I'm probably a pretty good chance I'm gonna be halfway decent at this.
Speaker A:I don't know if that's too obscure, but you see what I'm saying.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:And we talked about this last time.
Speaker B:You know, nobody's born Mozart.
Speaker B:You know, in the writing world, for the most part, it takes a lot of reps. You gotta.
Speaker B:You gotta put in hours and hours and hours of practicing, writing.
Speaker B:Just like the violin or the piano, it's no different.
Speaker B:And like you said, Dave, if you believe that, I, I, you know, I've got a little bit of a talent for this, and you.
Speaker B:You like doing it, then the more time you spend doing it, the better you will get.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's like my.
Speaker A:It's like my golf game.
Speaker A:Where.
Speaker A:Where do you think in the wide world of sports do you think you.
Speaker A:I'm just gonna take a bag out today.
Speaker A:When's the last time you went out, Dave?
Speaker A:It's been about four or five years, but I think I've got this.
Speaker A:And you go out there and you smack it, and you're just screwing off and horribly.
Speaker A:Well, did you put in the time?
Speaker A:No, not really.
Speaker A:Well, then how can you get any good?
Speaker A:Yeah, all right.
Speaker B:Did you take lessons?
Speaker B:Did you find somebody who's really good at it or a professional in that and take some lessons, Learn how to do it?
Speaker B:That's what.
Speaker B:It's the same with writing.
Speaker B:You gotta.
Speaker B:You gotta.
Speaker B:You gotta learn those things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I don't think writing is an art either.
Speaker C:I really think of it as a craft.
Speaker C:I've just.
Speaker C:And it's not that dissimilar from cooking.
Speaker C:I love to cook, and I love to write.
Speaker C:And the more you cook, the better you get.
Speaker C:The more you write, the better you get, and the more you figure out the easy paths in the craft.
Speaker C:Just.
Speaker C:Bruce is a.
Speaker C:He nailed it.
Speaker C:You've just gotta stick to it and put in the hours, do the reps.
Speaker C:Absolutely right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, I feel like we've already been given our best writing advice, but if you've got any little cherry to toss on top, I'd love to hear it.
Speaker C:If anybody ever tells you there's only one way to write, you should nod politely, shake their hand, walk outside, find their car and pee on their tires, because it's just not true.
Speaker C:And I've heard so many writing coaches and been seen so many writing things where they.
Speaker C:Everybody must outline or.
Speaker C:All writers must do X, no writer must ever do Y.
Speaker C:And ED is nonsense.
Speaker C:There's a million ways to do this.
Speaker C:And when you find your zone, and you'll know it's your zone because all of a sudden you write eight or 10 pages and the next day you read them and you think they're really good.
Speaker C:That's your zone, whatever that is.
Speaker C:That's the right way to write.
Speaker B:Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Speaker B:You know, find what works for you.
Speaker B:James mentioned earlier that we, the two of us, have completely different writing styles in terms of, you know, our process.
Speaker B:Actually, we have two different processes, and that's fine because it's what works for us.
Speaker B:There is no secret sauce to things you have to do to become a good writer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You have to put in the time.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:But that doesn't mean you have to do 5,000 words a day.
Speaker B:It doesn't mean that you have to write every day.
Speaker B:There's a lot of people in this industry will say, you must write every day.
Speaker B:I don't care if it's five words or 500 or 5,000.
Speaker B:Must write every day.
Speaker B:I. I don't think that's true either.
Speaker B:You know, I take time off.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Life gets in the way.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Sometimes I just want to take a break and let my brain cool down.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:So you just gotta find what works for you and stick to that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I was teaching a class one time and a young woman said, I.
Speaker C:My problem is that I'm.
Speaker C:I have lazy, horrible work ethic.
Speaker C:I will.
Speaker C:I have a day job, and one weekend I will try and sit down and write and nothing happens.
Speaker C:And the next weekend I'll try and sit down and write and nothing happens.
Speaker C:And the next weekend I try and sit down, nothing happens.
Speaker C:And then I'll have that weekend where I generate literally 100 pages and I don't know how to get out of this horrible, horrible habit.
Speaker C:And I said, show of hands in the room.
Speaker C:If you did a hundred pages in a month, would you be happy?
Speaker C:And everybody said, well, of course.
Speaker C:Don't change what you're doing.
Speaker C:Just don't allow yourself to feel guilty about it.
Speaker C:If you said, I am not allowed to be guilty about it.
Speaker C:This is my way of writing.
Speaker C:You got yourself a system.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:One other thing that I would mention to people is this is me personally.
Speaker B:I don't believe in writer's block.
Speaker B:I don't know what that is.
Speaker B:I've never experienced it because I've always told myself, just start typing.
Speaker B:Even you know, I've got some idea in my head, just start typing.
Speaker B:What you.
Speaker B:What you vomit out first is probably going to be crap.
Speaker B:But if it's not there in crap form to begin with, you can't make it better.
Speaker B:So just start typing.
Speaker B:It will come.
Speaker B:You don't have to.
Speaker B:You don't have to spew perfection right out of the gate.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:We don't have writer's block in journalism.
Speaker C:We call it unemployment.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:Perfect is the enemy of good.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Golly day.
Speaker A:We have learned so much.
Speaker A:We are.
Speaker A:We're smarter people now, Folks.
Speaker A:You want to learn more to go to bruceborges.com and or jamesburnthriller.com the books are.
Speaker A:Course we're going to throw them up here.
Speaker A:Chain Reaction by James and the Blue Horse.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Look.
Speaker A:Oh, how nice is that?
Speaker A:We're going to show.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Guys, I'm so glad we were finally able to pull this off.
Speaker A:I think everything's working.
Speaker B:Thank you for your patience.
Speaker C:This is great fun.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker A:So much fun.
Speaker A:Your number one podcast for stories that thrill the Thriller Zone.
