[SPEAKER_01]: there and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm best selling author Bianca Moray, and I'm joined by CC Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi everyone, I'm really, really excited about today's guest who is one of the world's most popular storytellers.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's the author of more than twenty instant do york time-specelling novels, including the Edgar nominated cop-time
[SPEAKER_01]: and standalone novels the good daughter and pretty girls.
[SPEAKER_01]: And internationally bestselling author, she has published in a hundred and twenty countries with more than fourteen million copies sold across the globe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pieces of her is a number one Netflix original series.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will Trent is now a hit television series
[SPEAKER_01]: starting Roman Rodriguez on ABC and further projects are in development.
[SPEAKER_01]: She is the founder of the Save the Libraries Project, a non-profit organization established to support libraries and library programming.
[SPEAKER_01]: A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my pleasure to welcome Karen Slorter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Karen, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so wonderful having you here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, before we go into the interview for our listeners, I'm going to give you the flat copy for the novel we're discussing today, which is we are all guilty here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to North Falls, a small town where everyone knows everyone or so they think and told the night of the fireworks when two teenage girls vanish and the town ignites
[SPEAKER_01]: For Officer, Amy Clefton, it's personal.
[SPEAKER_01]: She turned away when her best friends door-to-needed help, and now she must bring her home.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as Amy comes through the puzzle, the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every teenage girl has secrets, but who would kill for them, and what else is the town hiding?
[SPEAKER_01]: That Karen, this is the first book in the North Falls series.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to ask, is any part of this based on a previous novel or previous series?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Emmy is a completely new character.
[SPEAKER_00]: The town is fictional, so there's a lot of world building going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really mostly about this family, this Clinton family, who controls this one county, Clinton County and Southwest Georgia.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I was blown away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could not believe that this was the first novel in a series.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the world building, it felt like it was the tenth novel in a series.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was backstory for multiple characters that you would just drop in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't important to the plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like for example, we get told that Emmy almost died in childbirth.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really not important to the story or plot development, but you've got it in there and it feels so real that it felt like
[SPEAKER_01]: This time was real, apart like these characters were real, and I know an author of your caliber can do this easily.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we wanting to pick your brain here now for is for emerging authors who are trying to do the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your process when it comes to world building?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because so many people think world building only applies to fantasy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this novel required a lot of world building.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you take us through that from start to finish?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, world building happens a lot, particularly in standalone novels where you've got to immerse the reader completely in this world you're building in a believable way, even if it is fantasy or romance or whatever your genre.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've always been an author who believes in giving the details, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's never a character who's like the typical, you know, in Star Trek, we always know that the guy wearing the red shirt is going to be killed in the first ten minutes of the show, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the way around that is to make everybody's life in a book matter and give them something that makes them memorable or important or a detail that feels familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing you said earlier in your question is it implies that it's easy and it really isn't even after writing twenty-five books coming up with new different interesting characters is the challenge of being a writer who's done this many books.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also the great joy because I've always wanted to, particularly when writing about gendered violence, make sure that everyone's life seems important, everyone's life matters, and even the smallest character who's connected to a crime has some sort of detail about them that makes the reader know that they're a real person or connect with them on a real level.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in terms of the process, what comes to you first when you're coming up with a new series, is it that the character comes to you first, like Amy, for example, and then you start flushing her out, do you do character work sheets?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a case of, you know, first the town comes to you in the premise and then you try and find the characters who will best serve that story?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it just depends on the novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I'm writing a will-turn novel that world and those characters are pretty well-built, and the challenges to say something new and interesting about them, that rewards new readers and old readers alike.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I was thinking about this story specifically,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd started with Emmy, and thinking about the world she lives in.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first series of books was Grant County.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote six books in that series, and when I started out, I didn't know there was going to be a series, and sort of the same with Will Trent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hoped it would be a series, but with this, I knew Norse Falls would be a series, and so I was able to make the town
[SPEAKER_00]: A little larger than Grant County, because one thing I ran into was why we didn't even live in this small town where they were rapists and murderers and pedophiles and cults.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very conscious this needed to be more in America what we would call a medium-sized city and there's a
[SPEAKER_00]: a factory that gives a lot of good jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an outlet mall.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a technology college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's all different areas, socioeconomic areas.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it gave me a bigger pallet from which to draw stories from, but also I was able to plant these seeds in this first novel that will later grow into stories for books.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the seeds are incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: For our listeners, we are always talking about curiosity seeds, plant the seeds, water them slowly later when you reveal whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a payoff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were so many things in here that Karen did that I was like, oh my goodness, she would drop something tiny.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, for example, there was just a throwaway line about manners, a phase.
[SPEAKER_01]: just like a throwaway line and I was waiting for that to become relevant and it never became relevant in terms of the plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just sit there in your brains exploding because you like this, all the nose, these people so well and she's giving us this and it's not even important.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you think about it, you understand how this affected hers in Gerald's relationship and he's drinking without you even telling us about it, we're filling in those blanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those curiosity seeds are so important.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the writing Karen, do you first set create the whole world?
[SPEAKER_01]: Understand who all the characters are?
[SPEAKER_01]: Understand what the town looks like have a map before you begin writing or do you write and create the world as you need to as you're going along?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I do a lot of my writing in my head, so I was thinking a lot before I started even writing the first word about what this town would look like, what Emmie's world would look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it really sprouted out from that first moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the first chapter, you get
[SPEAKER_00]: the perspective of a teenage girl and she is looking at this town that's sort of an idyllic you know in America we idolize these small town communities and but most of us don't live there right we just have this idea about how great this pastoral setting is and it's really not great if you're a teenager and you want to do things I mean you're interested in stuff outside of this town
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted to talk about North Falls and Clipped in County from the perspective of a teenage girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get into Emmys head and you see a different side of the county.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as she interacts with people like Hannah, you get a deeper understanding about how screwed up the Clipped in Family really is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we grew up with it thinking it was normal and it's actually not normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of those things came to play when I was thinking about the story, but really
[SPEAKER_00]: having the young girls at the center of this mystery gave me the opportunity to open up a greater understanding of what the town is like, how they responded to the crime specifically, and that introspection that goes on when a bad thing happens in a small town.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, talking about beginning with medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So often on the podcast, we say, try not to begin with the character who you're not going to see later on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Try not to introduce a POV character later on who was not there early.
[SPEAKER_01]: You did both.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get due to comes in quite a bit later.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just get thrown in without any context which was incredible in terms of starting with medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always
[SPEAKER_01]: wanting to pick an author's brain in terms of intentionality because you could have started with medicine and even though she's the one who disappears, we could have stayed in her peer via occasionally just to up the tension or to try and figure out where she was or
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a little bit later in the story, well, early in the story, but you chose not to do that, so you chose to start with medicine and then move across to Amy and then later to Amy and Jude.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in terms of that intentionality, was it that you wanted the focus to be on the search and on Amy, why rule out that as a possibility for the story?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's just not how the story unfolded for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think primarily I don't really believe in rules, because if you're good at what you do, then rules don't really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can always break them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, look at Cold Mountain, which is a phenomenal story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that the format in which it was written was just completely unconventional, but it worked as a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the reason I started with Madison is I wanted to be squarely in her worldview
[SPEAKER_00]: As we start this this crime and I'm a big believer in the mystery of character in my writing and you know you touched them at a little bit with Marna.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a mystery to what their lives were like.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a mystery to their loss of children.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the mystery of what's in me going to do next and how is she going to figure this out and how is this going to affect her relationship with Hannah and with her father and her mother and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know all these little pieces that come into play and I think if you understand mystery of character and you you trust yourself as a writer to rely on that there's a lot of tension that can be built just from what are they going to do next.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the listener as well, in terms of these little curiosity seeds, we were getting things all the time in terms of knowing that Emmys upbringing was different to her brothers who's older than her and it's kind of hinted that her father Gerald wasn't a really good person, but now he's the pillar of the community and you constantly are trying to fill in the blanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: to try and figure out how did they get from there to where they are now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is how the reader becomes actively engaged in a story.
[SPEAKER_01]: When they are coming up with theories to try and explain things and every time you give us one little thing like murder, the throwaway line will like, oh, this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this why?
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, the father had these issues in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: So study this book in terms of curiosity seeds and in terms of specificity and continuity, which is also something Karen does so brilliantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a line of Mona, she puts on the shower and then she answers a call and she's got to deal with that and then she's got to go and switch off the shower.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that does nothing for the plot, but it immediately gives us something to imagine at specificity
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's their continuity.
[SPEAKER_01]: As well, every time a character gets hurt or they wounded or they stuff from running, Karen brings that through in the rest of the writing so brilliantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what makes us believe these characters are real.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pay attention to all of that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that something you come back to later?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it just something you pay attention to in the first draft?
[SPEAKER_00]: I always pay attention to it because it informs what their next choice will be, you know, and in order for it to be believable, you have to, you know, if somebody gets injured or if they're stiff from running or whatever, you have to have the physical memory of their body.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the choices they make in the present time periods you're working in, you know, and as far as believability, I think there are so many things that happen every day
[SPEAKER_00]: that feel mundane, but later, you know, if you look back on them, they actually had a huge impact on how your day turned out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I always keep in mind as I'm writing is, okay, well, it's not just one of these things happening in isolation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Amy has a fight with her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: She needs a moment to cool down.
[SPEAKER_00]: She ignores Madison.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all these little small choices she makes add up to one big mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, if you look back at it, you think, well, how would she know, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: How would she know that these were big mistakes when they all just felt like little small choices she was making?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and this is where we're always talking about on the podcast in terms of the dominoes tipping over.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot have a series of satellite events that don't affect each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here, the dominoes tipping over was so obvious.
[SPEAKER_01]: She has a fight with her husband, she ignores medicine and it leads to everything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can see how each thing tips over and creates this much bigger thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Karen, when it comes to writing your characters, do you use a form of like method acting technique in that each time you sit down and begin a new scene?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you put yourself in Emma and go, okay, in the last scene, she was injured, she's feeling bleak, she's feeling hopeless and you kind of put yourself in that headspace as you begin the new one or are you more an author who views your characters from the outside?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely more internalized in my writing because I think it's important to try to feel what they feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Particularly if you're talking about writing the crime novel, I mean, as a woman, I'm very conscious the crimes I write about happen every single day, every minute of the day, you know, if particularly gendered violence against women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I know that when I'm writing
[SPEAKER_00]: Madison or Cheyenne story, our Emmy story or Jude story, they're women out there who are living this life right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to make sure that I am being as involved in that and that I'm honoring their experience, but I'm also making sure the character
[SPEAKER_00]: makes choices that are true to their character.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's clear from your writing as well because this feeds off from that is that you really understand the psychology of criminals, the psychology of victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of statistics and studies that you bring through in terms of predators, children who are kidnapped, school shooters, etc.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you speak a bit about incorporating that research into your work or letting it actually inform
[SPEAKER_01]: your work in terms of plot and character development etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I would say that any writer, you can be precious about research.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a lot of times I'll spend weeks or months looking into one topic and it's one sentence in a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not writing textbook.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to make sure that the story is moving forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels propulsive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's you're not stopping.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just download a bunch of data.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do talk about the statistics with childhood veterans because I think that's really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a police officer will be hyper aware of that kind of thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we all, we all know about stranger danger, but fewer than one percent of all child abections in the United States are actually at the hands of a stranger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually it's apparent or an uncle or a neighbor or pastor, someone who's already in the child's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very rare to have this, you know, stranger come from outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should be
[SPEAKER_00]: telling children to be more careful of Uncle Bob than the guy in the pickup truck.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, it's something that I felt was really important to Amy to have in her back pocket, as she's investigating this disappearance because it also puts a clock on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know if you know statistically a child's chances of being found alive diminish with each tick of the clock that really puts pressure on the investigation and you know we have that happen again a second point in the novel and that's when Jude comes in and she's actually someone who wrote the book on these statistics so she's highly informed about the probability of a child being found alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also telling the reader that in terms of the character knowing that also creates opportunities for read hearings, it creates opportunity for surprise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the reader knows, okay, these are the statistics and this is perhaps what the police are focusing on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then all of that gets subverted in terms of finding out, okay, it wasn't that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that gives you another opportunity for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But something that I was just blown away by and I read them over and over was like your interrogation scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just masterful in terms of the back and forth in terms of pacing, tension, upping the stakes while also incorporating this ecology of the character and the different ways in which police interrogate people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you speak about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, it helps that I've got a character who's a criminal psychologist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, when you have a investigator from the FBI at which Jude is, the training they go through is much more sophisticated than what you would find in the local police force.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the state of Georgia, you have to have far more training to be a hairdresser than you do to be a police officer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's true in many, many states are in the country, if not all.
[SPEAKER_00]: states, you know, the training that we give police officers is very scant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we give them funding to do courses so they can do secondary education.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of these courses are not scientifically accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're getting a lot of wrong information.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of those things that's very popular in policing now is interrogation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And giving police a certain list of words that someone uses that you would interpret as they're being guilty.
[SPEAKER_00]: so if someone calls nine one one which is emergency services and says oh my my boyfriend has been murdered it as opposed to saying my boyfriend is dead well if they say murder that means they're a suspect if they say dead that means they're not a suspect I mean which is just junk science so you know a lot of times when the FBI comes in they're dealing with people who interrogate you don't necessarily know what they're doing but they're very sure that they do know what they're doing so
[SPEAKER_00]: With you, I wanted to show the difference of that training offers and just how nuanced that could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in less subtle hands or less educated, I mean, there's such a thing as expertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've sort of forgotten that in the age of the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the person who is an auto mechanic and goes online at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about constitutional theory and all the other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not an expert.
[SPEAKER_00]: The person who has gone to school for it and spent decades of their life doing it is the actual expert and that's very important as a writer to talk to those experts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with Jude in particular, I wanted to make sure I was showing what an interrogation looked like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Particularly when, you know, it's a tough call to rule someone in or rule someone out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And police are not very good at questioning their gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they might feel someone is guilty, but there's a difference between feeling their guilty and being able to prove it and how you interpret the information they give you can be distorted through that lens.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you get in authenticity readers in terms of people to read it to see that it is an authentic scene or is it that you've done so much research and spoken to the experts beforehand that you are able to write it authentic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't let anyone read my work until it's published other than my editor, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk to the experts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the thing to remember is I have to speak with authority in my books.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I need to know the rules before I break them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not writing a text books, but I am writing a thriller.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, this comes to play in my will trend series because I have a character Sarah Linton who's also in my great county series who's a medical examiner and she's a pediatrician also.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though I know quite a lot is an armchair detective about forensics and about medicine, I absolutely defer to my doctor who's the expert when I say, okay, well, how would this happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he might send me five pages
[SPEAKER_00]: that explain the different steps for this one procedure and I've got to figure out how to put that in half a paragraph or a paragraph and make it, you know, explosive and pulse pounding and all these things and that's where the work of being a writer comes in, but it's so important to know what you're starting from before you can turn it into something that's gripping great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, very much so.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more research you do, the more tempted you are to throw everything into prove that you did all your research.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is about using those five pages and turning it into a paragraph or a sentence to really give that specificity and authenticity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're almost at the end of our interview, Karen, I want to ask what you did so brilliantly with Gerald.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of distinguishing his speech patterns and his dialogue from other characters was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he doesn't use pronouns.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't go I'm going to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just like going to need to do this or whatever and so you don't even need dialogue tags.
[SPEAKER_01]: or action beats to figure out who's speaking because he speaks so differently from the other characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we speak a bit about that as well in terms of intentionality?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that something that comes up front?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you edit after the fact for consistency to make sure that his dialogue is completely different to the other characters?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you approach that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, he's like Emmy, he's fluent in silence, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he lets things sit with him for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's so important when you're writing to make sure each character has their own voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, as the book moves on, there's something very horrible that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, this is a thriller in the first part of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Amy does a bit of code switching when she's with her father, you know, she kind of mimics healthy talks as opposed to how she talks to her son, how she talks to her best friend, how she talks to Jude, how she talks to her brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when she's talking to her father, she picks up on the cadence in a way that, you know, they've spent so much time together.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has so much respect for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she does pick up on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's something that takes just paying attention to how people speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love Erin Sorkin, but every show he writes, like the West Wing, everyone talks the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after a while, you think it's not possible even for like the most educated people in the entire world to talk the same way, the same cadence, the same
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, six paragraphs of dialogue.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to make sure in a book that everyone has their own specific way of speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, sometimes you're dealing with a bad guy who speaks a certain way or, you know, there's this code switching that goes on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, that's the fun of being a writer, is figuring out whose voice speaks to what strengths.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I've got their short hand, just the word okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's loaded with so much meaning throughout.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you paying attention later, you'll start to realize that the okay word is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give too much away there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you a big eavesdropper?
[SPEAKER_01]: Karen, in public, do you listen in on other people's conversations to get their cadence or not really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I love eavesdropping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not on purpose, but people are very loudly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've noticed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, people have had to start having very private conversations on speakerphone and public, which is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say I listen but not by choice, that I've always been someone who loves when someone is doing something really bad and I get to witness it because it's something that I'm going to incorporate into a character down the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so for our listeners, we are linking to we are all guilty here on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you get it from there, you support an independent bookstore while supporting the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Karen, thank you so much for this amazing conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you taking the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi everyone, today's guest is the New York Times Wall Street Journal and USA Today, best selling author of fifteen novels, including the best selling thriller, fog and fury, and the Good Morning America Book Club selection the last one.
[SPEAKER_01]: She is also the author of best selling thrillers, including what fire brings, what never happened, and these toxic things.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a two-time finalist of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for and now she's gone and we like here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my pleasure to welcome Rachel Hazel Hall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the show Rachel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for inviting me on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here to chat with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to be talking about a lot today because here is the thing Rachel has got so much experience in this industry and she has longevity in an industry in which a lot of authors are like one and done and people are like thank you move on.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are really going to pick her brain because also she writes across different genres.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot to unpack but the book
[SPEAKER_01]: that she is promoting is the cruel dawn which will link to on our bookshop.org affiliate page, get the book there and you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Rachel, we're going to start first with crime fiction because that's what you started with.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what drew you to that and how did you find your voice within the genre?
[SPEAKER_02]: What I've always been fascinated with people and why we do the things we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember, you know, I was a reader, like so many of us, and reading way ahead of schedule, so reading things that I probably shouldn't have a channel oven to oven just over.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's how it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kept a diary.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like most third graders here in America, you're introduced to the kind of writing by reading the diary of Anne Frank in for great.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: I find it understood what the Holocaust was, but they're great.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't really understand what that is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was also, it was girl.
[SPEAKER_02]: My age was keeping a diary of her life and oh my goodness, it's my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my old only.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got a diary and started
[SPEAKER_02]: taking notes and, you know, entries of what my day-to-day was, probably in folks that, you know, when I was gone, so we discovered my, my, my priorities and what I'm to publish it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that started my entry into being observant and couple that with where grew up, grew up in a very, very working class neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was, you know, I had some active crime going on and we lived in an apartment near an alley.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's always bats for happening in alleys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think anything good has ever happened in alleys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would hear that, you know, screams of women and the helicopters, the police helicopters and shooting and all the rest of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, a very religious kid, could not understand why people were doing these bat things that would send them to hell.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you don't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll go to hell.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a bad place.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That made me even more observant than what I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And with crime, it helped me see the stories, and here are the questions that I always ask, but in a way that I had an ending.
[SPEAKER_02]: The crime that I experienced for life had no ending.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't get to see
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, the bad guy arrested or the woman's family finally some kind of dumps us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so all of this was like this big swirl of things that wanted to live somehow in my head and writing was the way I always spoke out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the only way that I felt I could communicate without being interrupted.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I chose it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of a natural thing, a way of looking at life.
[SPEAKER_02]: about me to tell the stories and share my own fears and discover that I want the own scared of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: because it's so tidy and satisfying in a way that life isn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you say, the bad guys get to come up and you see some kind of justice prevailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really what draws so many people to the genre who love reading the genre, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's like very different from the fantasy genre.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what made you want to write in that space?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what have you found the biggest difference or difficulty in terms of that kind of storytelling?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was initially, it was opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was asked by the publisher who had been following my career all this time and was to launch a new imprint.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she asked if I was interested in writing Romanticine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't know what it was, but one I wanted to work with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And two, I'm always looking for a new way to tell stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this offered me the opportunity to learn to reach new readers and to not see
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, infused crime writing into fantasy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think crime can be anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the people in someone is a big problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: So why not this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was, you know, familiar with romance, but more so fantasy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am a gamer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when the, when I got the deal, I was playing the Witcher in Elving Ring.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've always been in the world of fantasy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's an English American literature major.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, familiar with the world created by Tolkien and even going for the back of Chaucer and, you know, all those writers back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, yeah, it was a challenge, an opportunity, the chance to tell the stories that I enjoyed in a new kind of way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would say the biggest challenge for me was the romance part.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I write crime scenes, not sex scenes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, when there is romance in my stories, it usually turned out bad because he's the guy who killed her.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think so.
[SPEAKER_02]: learning the pacing of a romance and not being cynical about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the biggest challenge for me and that still remains the challenge for me because I do look at human behavior with an eyebrow cocked.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I see how people use romance and love as a weapon.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I am learning how to, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: be cool about roaming it, so I think it'd be a good thing instead of, you know, a means to an end for some poor and spectacular victim.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people can be so flippant about romance, but it's so tough.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is tough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is tough.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always respected writers who anyone who dares to sit down and write, you know, lots and lots of words in a way to get other people to read it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always respect that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my respect for romance has increased a lot because it is a gift.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, all of it's a gift, but I haven't really paid much attention to the romance realm until studying and looking at the books and the writers and their skillset.
[SPEAKER_02]: Until I start writing, we're gonna see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, people think it's frothy and frivolous and you know, there's people who are terribly snobbish about it, but honestly, I think it's one of the hardest genres to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how did you feel Rachel about the world building?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because normally when people move from crime or something that's so entrenched in reality and et cetera, they struggle when it comes to the world building.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that something that came easy to you?
[SPEAKER_02]: In a way, it was a little difficult because even though I create worlds and like in fog and fury, the whole town that exists in that story is a malagamation like thought to different towns.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it doesn't really exist or dust.
[SPEAKER_02]: At least in crime, you commit the murder.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what the rules are.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you know, up and down, you know, that's a zebra over there and that's a wolf over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: These creatures exist.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have touched on to roast.
[SPEAKER_02]: So being told that, yeah, if you're writing fantasy, I fantasy, you have to create this world.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, well, what does that even mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it was challenging.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: After I accepted the challenge, after I stopped reviewing a whole, what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to come up with the philosophy and the religion and the sociology of this place.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really became a fun thing because again, my education and being reading since the beginning of my birth, I got to pull all the stuff that I've ever learned ever into building this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, really create the system where I am God, which you can't do really in, well, you can't do it all in crime because crime is very, you know, fact, true world-based.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, once I moved past the challenge and just even thinking of surrounding something like creating a whole universe, it became really, really fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for the second book, the Cool Dawn, it was great coming back to the world I created for the last one and building it out
[SPEAKER_02]: even further.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it was, it was a ball.
[SPEAKER_01]: That leads to the next question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've written both standalone thrillers and series and now you're writing a series in the fantasy space as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the different challenges or the different freedoms of each and do you prefer one over the other?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't figure out if I prefer one of the other.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the great things about series is building that world out and I like building characters who are dynamic.
[SPEAKER_02]: My characters and my series characters do grow from book to book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do have them hard and back to a part that's learned in the prior books.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're constantly growing and nothing is ever forgotten and I like that because I see my world like the real world where we grow up and we learn lessons and we make the same mistakes and you know we're different people from day to day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the best thing for me about series.
[SPEAKER_02]: It constantly creating very dynamic characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also like the new start of a new issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like seeing something.
[SPEAKER_02]: I keep an ever-known file of all the crime stories that have ever interest me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know one day I will get to all of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I look forward to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where it's like, I have figured out that weird story about, you know, seeing that random thing and time magazine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I know what story I'm going to write about that weird wall.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I like that about standalone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Being able to go here and there and over there to, you know, uncover new kinds of life and how a character who always, my characters tend to be me in some ways
[SPEAKER_02]: How she will go about in this world that is just really, really crazy enough side down.
[SPEAKER_02]: How will she write that world?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, both, I guess I'm just like, I love writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love storytelling.
[SPEAKER_02]: If anyone lets me do it, anywhere they want me to, I will do that for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want it done in, you know, in Lemrex, I'll write it in a Lemrex.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever you want me to do, I will do a high cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I got you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll do that too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just love the opportunity to tell stories and to, you know, in the new world way, sit around the campfire with people and tell them, don't go over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's dangerous things over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think that speaks to your longevity because there are a lot of writers that are very precious about being edited that are very precious about writing a specific kind of literature and who are like, I'll only write in this realm and I won't muddy my
[SPEAKER_01]: hands on these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like this speaks to why you've been successful for so long because it is a love of right and prepared to play in the sandbox, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of it also is my daytime job.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still work a day job.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm fundraising science writer for
[SPEAKER_02]: a large large medical academic center.
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of my job is to go straight for some of the executives and writing proposals where it has to sound scientific, but very raised friendly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm used to switching past and switching voices and I get paid to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, when we send something out to a donor or to a family member,
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't see Rachel, Housel Hall wrote that they see the institution wrote the letter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I am used to and comfortable with not having to, you know, have the signature thing that Rachel does because the point is communication.
[SPEAKER_02]: The point is telling the story and engaging people so that they, you know, go along for the right and in my day job that means making gifts to improve the lives of patients and in my novel writing, it's to
[SPEAKER_02]: Listen to the story I tell about something that concerns me and probably concerns you too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I don't want.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to bring people in and I want to meet them where they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And books and writing have allowed me to do that for, you know, fifteen books now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a privilege to do this and it's lovely to speak to somebody who agrees with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we continue here is a message from our sponsor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so can you tell us after having done this for so long?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was there a moment that felt like you had made it as an author, or has it moment even come yet?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I find as a writer that the goal post keeps shifting constantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So tell me, does it eventually stop?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it always going to be that way?
[SPEAKER_02]: It never starts.
[SPEAKER_02]: You think by now that it would start, I would look up and say,
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is done in what's next on the list.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there are more.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am better at saying this is pretty cool now than what I used to be when the last one was selected for the Good Morning America December Book Club Pick.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was I would think the culmination of all good things have happened to me and I have proven myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, relax.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a moment, it almost worked.
[SPEAKER_02]: But even quickly, we're off, and I was off again saying, oh, why can't I ever be blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I need to keep doing this to feel blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_02]: To help me with that, though, I keep a win jar.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a pink mason jar on my desk over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the wins that come over here from big things like
[SPEAKER_02]: talking to you on this podcast to going on tour, you know, to San Diego Comic-Con.
[SPEAKER_02]: I write that on a post-it note, hold it up and put it in my jar.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a visual cue to me that you actually have done something.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've done really cool things.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're farther along than so many people celebrate.
[SPEAKER_02]: And after in the year, I take all my little wins, put it in a baggy, put the date on it, and I put it in my dance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if I ever needed to, I can open those up and look through them to maybe feel good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's more seeing that collection over the year and that jar having something in it that serves as a reminder that, you know, I am doing something because, you know, neurotic people and I'm a list checker.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always about what's the next thing that, I mean, I have literally three to do lists.
[SPEAKER_02]: All my desk right now along with posted notes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have an issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: What did writers do before posted notes?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I wouldn't have known.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were, we thought no, I was born before the posted notes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe, oh, we didn't have the memo pads, a little scratch pad.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you just, I'm sorry, be everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess like thousands of years ago, they had a rock face and some things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we will always find something, as writers will always find something to scribble up, always.
[SPEAKER_01]: For our listeners, I really love what Rachel said, Jen, I really want you to take away from this because all the wins, the small wins, add up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether you
[SPEAKER_01]: wrote a paragraph that you damn proud of, whether you got something back from your beta readers that they absolutely loved, whether you got rejected by an agent, but they wrote something encouraging.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this whole journey is full of so many pitfalls and disappointments and soul-crushing moments that it's so important to celebrate every single win.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm actually now going to steal this from your Rachel.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm getting myself a job.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be doing this because I think I need to be reminded as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you tell us about what is your writing routine look like on a typical day and are you more of a plata or are you more of a pencil?
[SPEAKER_02]: I am a plotter again, control free, check and list all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And because I am a baby jobber and I am a mom, even though my daughter is now in her last year college, you know, I am still trained to do mom things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I get up every morning, except Christmas morning and when I'm on true vacation, I get up at four o'clock every morning to write.
[SPEAKER_02]: From four o'clock to around six thirty, I write and then I do the business of writing, you know, emails and all that, social media and all that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I go to work from, you know, seven thirty eight to about three.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now that I don't have to do all the soccer practices and leadership and all that, you know, stuff for my daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will do some writing that doesn't require a thinking.
[SPEAKER_02]: So transcribing, editing, something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I go to bed at nine, seventeen every night because I get up since four.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do that every day, except I said Christmas morning, I don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when we go on actual vacation away, then yeah, otherwise, I am an outliner besides being the controls rate, but the outlining helps because
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I only get so many fights for the Apple a day and I want to be able to cross off.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wrote that chapter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I fixed that thing over there to feel like I've advanced some in the creation of this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's worked.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm looking forward to one day doing novel writing full time, but until then, even when that happens, I will still wake up at four o'clock because at four
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't do the dishes over laundry or any of those things that make you feel guilty for just sitting and doing something you enjoy because I actually do enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for clock is, when my mind is the freshest, I give myself the best words and then I give my employer what's left of that and also still pretty good words.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I make sure that I tend to my own writing needs first.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, the muse will show up when you show up, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you train yourself to that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're showing up, every morning at four a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: the muse knows, okay, I've got to sit down with Rachel.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to be there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm given her plenty of time to rest by going a bit at nine, seven, ten, every night.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get to beauty sleep.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, falling asleep to the golden girls with her watch every night.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she has no excuse.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when she is tired or whatever is having a problem, I still write because I know
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to get to come back to it and I'll be able to fix it and she'll be with me on that journey if she decides to sleep in and this let me flail.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Walter mostly who's one of my writing heroes said something about the reason why he writes every day and that's because something new happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we learn something new every day and when you're writing every day you get to capture up things.
[SPEAKER_02]: You learned, and it's reflected in your writing, and if you don't get it down, then a lot of times, it'll go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, oh, I want to, I want to capture that stuff I learned.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the world is especially far in fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: So much happens that I don't want to miss anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to, you know, neglect that part of the discovery, if it's going to make my story shine and be more authentic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how do you approach building suspense in your stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the key to keeping readers on age regardless of the genre?
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to make sure that I'm breathless when I'm writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though, have you ever seen a movie or documentary where you know the ending?
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're still like, oh my god, is it going to happen now?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to happen now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to do that in that it's part of my outlining process.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of it is things like that looking at the outline and graphing when it's a calm moment and making sure that the green turns to red and that kind of mathematical thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also it's just, I would say, feeling.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that feeling comes from reading a lot of other people's stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am reading screenplay as all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: what I'm feeling secure in myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will read my friend's stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say when I'm feeling secure myself because you know, when you read someone else's stuff in your feeling like you're a hat, you don't ever want to pick up a pen again.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I'm feeling secure and confident, I will read my friend's stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very good at that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will go through forensically how they did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of it is educating myself, watching movies, which screenplays are really, really incredible, but they are formulaic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for someone like me, who likes outlines and check boxes and all the rest of it, studying a screenplay is a perfect kind of way of getting more formula down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Knowing that on the page, it needs to be so dense.
[SPEAKER_02]: The words can't be so dense if you're trying to go for a certain vibe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say, or writers, or trying to figure out how to do suspense, one, reading other people's stuff, reading screenplays, but also a pay attention to your own life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was just sitting in a hotel parking lot because I was visiting somewhere and I was putting directions in to my phone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the building next door to me, empty vacant lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was no reason why anyone would be in this lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a car pulls in there into this vacant lock.
[SPEAKER_02]: The guy gets out and goes looking for something over by the perimeter of the fence.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I started recording because there's no reason he should be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is he looking for over at the fence that he comes back finally with the book back with a map set.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he puts the map set in the trunk of his car and drives off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like,
[SPEAKER_02]: What's a net map sack?
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You may have lost it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It may have, you know, who knows.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I took that opportunity to just stop what I was doing and pay attention to this random thing that was happening on Sunday and, you know, capturing that down in my ever note and remembering when it comes time for a scene where my character needs to just be doing something regular and every day that actually happened to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So mining your own life
[SPEAKER_02]: and the substantial moments in your own life helps with creating assistance on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that because if you're actively engaging in forming theories about something in your own life, like when you see something in your life, okay, this is my theory, this is why they're doing this et cetera.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you know, the read is going to be doing the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you've got them actively engaged coming up with theories, you've hooked them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They no longer pass a recipients of story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, many of us think, oh, my life is so boring.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, even those boring person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could find something weird in random and exciting and terrifying about them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as writers, we have to train ourselves to think that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is a natural brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I was always curious as a kid, but you have to keep that part of your brain going.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes it gets exhausting because you're saying, phantoms and shadows everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, that's why sometimes dreams.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take the notebook of the voices.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, that's why I go on vacation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tend to read nonfiction when I go on vacation because I don't want to figure out the trip as I'm trying to relax.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is the part with writers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've forgotten how to just read full pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've forgotten how to be just led along.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we always like ways to trick ways is going.
[SPEAKER_01]: she's mentioned this on page whatever so it's going to be important later on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have time for one more question Rachel, so your characters often feel very real, they flawed, they complex, multi-layered.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you craft characters like this?
[SPEAKER_02]: I look to the people around me, I look to women around me, I look at to myself and how
[SPEAKER_02]: We go into spaces all the time women do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have to be concerned about our parents, you know, our positives to color our skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do these genes make me look fat and my being too aggressive.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as a black woman, especially, you're always constantly when we go into new space, checking it out for most of your
[SPEAKER_02]: that you present and represent not just you but your family and your community and your race and every and God and all in the queen you're very much aware of how people are looking at you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I am always taking notes on how we interact with each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want women when they're reading a theme to say that's happened to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even something tiny like wearing white and spilling like the smallest speck of coffee on your white pants.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not anybody can see it, but you're aware of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now this tiny speck is now the side of the planet.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just understanding how feeling translates into
[SPEAKER_02]: every interaction you have with someone else, with even yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am always auditing myself and the people around me and, again, being observant in how we deal with each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how I do it, telling you to the real thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a Canadian, I wanted to just say, thank you for saying it was the size of Canada and not the size of the fifty-first states.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like Canadian, this will, well, thank you for that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Rachel, thank you so so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was wonderful chatting to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to unpack so much which I really appreciate again for our listeners.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are linking to the cruel dawn on our bookshop.org affiliate page and don't forget to get the first book called The Last One in the series and then go back and read all of Rachel's backlist because that's the amazing thing of discovering a new author who has so many books out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rachel, thank you so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, it just takes one yes.