Cleo: What if you created an AI best friend and she knew all your secrets and would kill to keep you to herself? Was, was her own character, so I tried to really just write her. She has her own backstory. It’s, it’s scant because, because Penn didn’t wanna give her too much of a backstory, but she starts off believing that she’s the goddess of truth. That’s her backstory. So I wrote it from that perspective of how would Aletheia feel in this situation, and what does Aletheia want? You know, you ask when you’re writing, “What does, what does my character want? What, what are they willing to do to get it?” And so I, I looked at that with both my human characters and with Aletheia.

Mark: Welcome to the Thriller Writer Lab, where every thriller goes under the microscope, one book at a time. I’m your host, Mark Nadon, and this is where best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors share the craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories.

Joining me today is Nan Fisher, writing under the Penn name Cleo Ballard, author of the domestic thriller, “This Is a Lie,” and I have the book. I just put it on camera. Thank you so much for being here, Nan.

Cleo: Thank you so much for having me

Mark: I’m very excited to talk about this book, and as I was just mentioning, there were some triggering moments in this book for me that I can’t wait to discuss and, and why you did these things and your choices for your, for, uh, for doing it.

Before we get into that, let’s, uh, hear your pitch. Pitch me “This Is a Lie.”

Cleo: Well, “This Is a Lie” is a domestic susPennse thriller, and it’s perfect for fans who love Blake Crouch, Freida McFadden, Ruth Ware, or movies like “Her” or “Ex Machina,” “M3GAN,” or “Fatal Attraction.” Um, and I guess the hook would be: what if you created an AI best friend and she knew all your secrets and would kill to keep you to herself? And so “This Is a Lie” is about Penn, who was studying to get her PhD in computer sciences. She becomes pregnant. She leaves her studies and marries the father of her daughter, and she lives this perfectly curated or seemingly perfectly curated life in San Francisco. But when she discovers that her husband, best friends, and even her daughter have betrayed her, Penn’s world is completely shattered. So she returns to her PhD unfinished thesis, and she creates a different kind of lie detector. And launching off that, she creates an AI best friend named Aletheia, and Aletheia’s prime directive is basically to detect lies, which she can do with 100% accuracy, and also to protect Penn from being hurt again. Unfortunately, Aletheia soon takes protection to mean destruction and elimination of anyone that she deems has hurt Penn, and Penn has to figure out a way to stop her monster before Aletheia destroys everyone that Penn loves.

Mark: Awesome. Thank you. Loved the pitch. Really enjoyed the book. So where did this idea come from? What came first? Was it the betrayal and the family and the what would I do in this situation? Or is it, was it the AI and what would happen if an AI lost just decided to go after other people?

Cleo: So the idea really came from a funny conversation with a friend who was joking around that she wanted to start a company called Honest Feedback. And the idea would be that when you ask your friends for honest feedback, they don’t really give it to you. So you would go to this company, and you would hire this person, and you’d say to this person, for example, like, “All my friends went to Vegas, and they didn’t invite me, and I don’t know why, and they won’t tell me.” And the person who works for Honest Feedback would talk to your friends, get the real story, come back to you and say, “Well, Mark, they didn’t invite you because you get drunk,” or, “You’re really loud,” or, “You’re embarrassing,” or y- for whatever reason. And then I realized that wouldn’t work because your friends would never tell the truth because it would get back to you. And then I thought, “Who would tell the truth?” Well, an AI best friend would tell the truth. And so I thought that could have some issues with it, considering AI and the technology and how we don’t really have a firm control on it.

But also I started wondering what kind of person would need an AI best friend, and it would have to be a person who had some insecurities and maybe some imposter syndrome. And if that kind of person teamed up with an AI best friend, bad things could happen based on their own insecurities, their past traumas, and, and based on AI as a technology that has no ability to empathize with a situation and that just works straight from logic. And that’s kind of how it started, and I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t just a story about friendships, but it was also a story with technology woven through it.

Mark: And how did you build the moments differentiating her and her friendships with her friendships, like her real friends, the lies as, as a craft and, and the AI and the honest feedback?

Cleo: Um, well, I think with her real friends, those are just very real relationships which aren’t black or white. Whereas a friendship with Aletheia is black and white, and she doesn’t hold Aletheia to the same standards, um, or even expect necessarily kindness that she would from her friends. So they’re just inherently so different, um, c- because it’s human to human versus human to technology

Mark: And how did you go about writing it? Did you visualize her in your mind when you’re writing it? Do you visualize, okay, she’s talking to an AI and you’re trying to put yourself in the role of what an AI would sound like? Or is it like this AI is trying to be human in a very flawed way, kind of like villains are often flawed in the way they think?

‘Cause they all– they are the hero of their journey, but it’s interesting ’cause in this case, the AI, the AI is her hero of its own journey, so to speak. It’s, it’s interesting

Cleo: Yeah, like Aletheia was, was her own character, so I tried to really just write her. She has her own backstory. It’s, it’s scant because, because Penn didn’t wanna give her too much of a backstory, but she starts off believing that she’s the goddess of truth. That’s her backstory. So I wrote it from that perspective of how would Aletheia feel in this situation, and what does Aletheia want?

You know, you ask when you’re writing, “What does, what does my character want? What, what are they willing to do to get it?” And so I, I looked at that with both my human characters and with Aletheia

Mark: And when you’re writing, do you write with themes or warnings in mind where you hope people will kind of walk away with a message when they put the book down, like they’re thinking this AI can be dangerous, as it was in this case when used in this way? Or do you– Is it mostly entertainment?

Cleo: Well, I’m a pantser when I write. I don’t plot anything out, so I’m trying to entertain myself as I go. Um, and it’s always what would happen next? How would this character react? What could happen? How could things devolve? But I’m never thinking that there’s necessarily a message to anything I write, although I do always try and tackle themes of, you know, core beliefs, imposter syndrome, um, how, how who you believe you are impacts the choices you make.

And, uh, in this story in particular, there’s an under- underlying theme of finding your joy and, um, knowing that you’re not in the right place and not allowing momentum to carry you forward, but maybe, um, becoming more aware and deciding to pivot. And so I guess at the end of the story, I hope some of those things are things that readers are maybe gonna take away, but ultimately I just want them to say like, “Great yarn well told,” which is what my dad always said when he finished a great book.

You’d close it and you’d go, “Great yarn well told.” And it’s like, that’s what I’m striving for.

Mark: Okay. And you have a dedication in your book to Henry. Uh, it’s at the beginning. You mentioned, kind of mentioned him in the end as well. You called him your adventure buddy, rain or shine. In what ways has he helped with making this book possible and what the product that we are reading today?

Cleo: In every way. I always say there’s before Henry and after Henry. Henry’s my husband, and after Henry is like, ah, like, life just got so much better. Um, he, you know, he is somebody who helps me find balance. Writers sit for long periods of time by themselves and just, you know, it’s… You know what it’s like.

It’s, it’s very quiet, and having someone who pulls you away from your desk and gets you outside, and we, we just love… We always say couples that play together stay together. We love playing together. So he, he’s my balance in life for sure.

Mark: Awesome. Does he have any role in the production of the book as well?

Cleo: Oh yeah, anything technological. Um, I am an English major. I hardly know how to work my own computer. Um, I was like Microsoft Word, email pretty much is, that’s it. And whenever I write something, like there’s a lot of technology in this book which I had to understand and then pare back so that I didn’t bore the reader too much. And so when there were things like oPenn source coding, things that I didn’t really understand, even how to create, um, you know, you’re creating an AI best friend. And so I went down that rabbit hole, and I created an AI best friend, and I gave her Ursula Le Guin’s voice, and then I asked her to do horrible things like hack people’s, you know, d- into people’s texts and stuff, and she kept saying no, and then finally she told me to get therapy. Um, but but by talking with Henry about like how would I get around those things? How would I get around like it, you know, the, the, the guidelines and, and the barriers that are set up so that you can’t hack pro- into different programs. Um, he’s really good at, you know, technology, um, and so he could kind of talk me through it.

So f- or, or he’ll read something, he’ll say, “Absolutely not. That cannot happen that way. That makes no sense.” So he helps with those aspects.

Mark: Okay. Is there a moment where, where Penn’s story, um, I guess, is it– It felt, it felt real, like it was rooted in… And, and this may just be speaking to your talent as, as a writer, but it– Like, I connected with Penn fairly fast. I mean, your relationship with your husband sounds amazing, which is the opposite of what Penn and, and Bruce go through, and they have her daughter who also leaves her.

These are all very tragic, very, I guess for me, I could use the word triggering because I’ve been through, you know, moments where similar things have, have happened, and it’s really difficult. And it felt authentic in her responses to the trauma and how she was trying to process and how she went to– I mean, she went to an AI best friend because she’s a genius and created this thing, which is different than most of us can do. But a lot of the things she did felt authentic. Is that– How did you create that authenticity?

Cleo: Well, thank you, first of all. That makes me feel great. So I’m really glad that you felt that way. Um, I have this basic premise whenever I’m writing a character is that people only care about people they know or think they know. And so if I was– First off, if I was just telling, like, my story, like, it would be boring, right?

So you have to have a character that has, like, a more interesting backstory. And so I really sPennd a lot of time trying to create a character who has a backstory that can carry through their lives, and so people understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. There are times in the story that you might wanna scream at Penn and say like, “Don’t, don’t go into the attic that has no way to get out or the basement or whatever.” Um, but you can understand why she does what she does based on her childhood and the things, the core beliefs that she has about herself, about being unworthy, about being an imposter in this world that she’s now living in, um, about her desperate need for connection and friendships and certainty. So if you give a character a really great backstory that is relatable, understandable, makes sense, then they’ll feel more au- authentic carrying through the entire novel

Mark: Yeah. So as a pantser, if we zoom out a little bit, when you create her, do you just start with like Penn said, kinda boom, that’s it, you drop her in and then you’re figuring out as you go? Or do you still have a little bit of character profile? ‘Cause you have your idea. I imagine you have some idea of the story before you start writing it a little bit so that, you know, is she d- was she there as a character and some of her trauma is sort of vaguely in place as you wrote this story?

Cleo: I knew that she had to be this really insecure woman, and I knew that she had to be someone who didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. And I knew that she had to be someone who was looking for security, because if she wasn’t gonna get it from her marriage, she needed to find it from somewhere else. But all of the Mama Jay chapters and that backstory happened after I had the entire first draft written, because I realized it was pretty… And that doesn’t, it doesn’t always happen that way for me, um, but I found myself trying to explain too much through the story the things that had happened to her. And instead of doing that, I went back and I created all the Mama Jay chapters so I could show her evolution. And I, I don’t usually do it that way, but that’s just the way it worked out when I realized I had, like, two dimensions at the end of it and not three dimensions, and that I didn’t care enough about Penn yet to understand her and wanna follow her story.

Mark: What draft did you… Was that second draft that you realized you needed to add in that, that additional stuff?

Cleo: Yeah, and then figuring out where to put it so that it kind of related to… So I wrote all the Mama Jay chapters separately to show her evolution, and then I went back and looked at it and said, “Where would these fit in?” And then I tweaked the chapters so that there were some things mirroring other things and t- that would tie together for the reader

Mark: Okay. That’s fascinating. I’m glad you did ’cause it was a much stronger story for, for that whole, that whole layer of feeling her as a character for sure. That must have been a lot of work. Was that like, “Oh God, what have I done? Now I gotta go figure this out”?

Cleo: It wasn’t as bad. Like, the very first book that I ever wrote was a sport autobiography that I co-wrote with Béla Károlyi, who’s this Olym- he was an Olympic gymnastic coach. He coached Nadia Comaneci and stuff. And I was 22. I’d never written a book before. I had written a proposal for his project that got kind of put in a pile with other proposals, and then he read mine and called me, and I flew to his ranch and sPennt a weekend with, with Béla and his wife, Marta, just kind of playing around at the ranch, um, driving four-wheelers.

And at the end, he was like, um… I said, “What do you think?” And he said, “Yeah, you, you’ve got the job.” And then I said, “You shouldn’t give me this job. I have no idea what I’m doing.” So for him, I, I had hundreds of hours of tapes that I then transcribed, and then I wrote them as separate chapters ’cause I didn’t know what I was doing, and then I had to kinda… I had them all on my apartment floor, and I had to kinda go through and pick them and weave them together. So that was way worse.

Mark: Okay. Yeah, that sounds hard too. So that, that brings me to a question then of, so Cleo Bal- Ballard, this is book one for her. How many books is this? What book is this for you? What does it represent overall?

Cleo: I think this is– I, I haven’t counted, but this is like 13 or 14 or something with the sport autobiographies. I wrote “Star Wars” books for Lucasfilm, a trilogy. I wrote, um, two young adult novels, two adult, and now this is my first thriller or s- you know, domestic susPennse thriller. And I think what it means for me is like I’m always pivoting.

I’m always trying to… I’m– I never wanna stick with one thing and just have momentum, or I’d still be writing sport autobiographies, which was fun, but it wasn’t my story. Same with “Star Wars” books, fun, not my story. Loved writing YA, but ultimately it felt too, um, it felt like too narrow a lane because of kind of what was going on in the cultural climate you get judged pretty quickly, and you can get canceled pretty quickly, um, when you’re writing young adult. And, and then adult novels, super fun, but like I did that and, and then I’m like, “What genre should I switch to now?” I wanna be uncomfortable. I wanna try new things. I wanna write different kinds of books. So for me, this is just like another step in the evolution of writing.

Mark: And the Penn name you chose, why the Penn name and not just, and just roll with your author name and hope the audience carries over?

Cleo: Different genre. So my agent and the publisher thought it would be a good idea and, um, you know, a debut in a different genre hopefully gets a little more attention. So for all of those reasons. And it’s kind of fun to have a different persona.

Mark: Okay. Do you find yourself, like when you’re on social or whatever, are you like playing Cleo? Is she a different person to you just for fun?

Cleo: No, not really. I, I’m not a great social media person. Um, so I think it w- it’s a good idea. I, I should do that, but a lot of times I’ll post as Nan and make Cleo the collaborator or vice versa and just kind of post them together.

Mark: That makes sense. Yeah. I think it would be fun to create, or even if you… I guess it would be a character. I’ve heard of people doing it with characters where a writer will go on social and their, their character will, like, do a takeover of their Instagram account, which is way too creative and too much thought goes into that for me. But I love it though. It’s very cool.

Cleo: It would be, it would be really fun to do as a Lathia, but I think that it, I’d get crumpled pretty quickly.

Mark: Yeah. that could be dangerous, yeah. Especially in today’s climate. We’re, like, a few years away from that being a fun thing to do.

Cleo: Yeah.

Mark: So there’s an oPenning quote also in your book from Mary Shelley, “Beware, I am fearless and therefore powerful.” What did that mean to you in the context of the book?

Cleo: Well, “Frankenstein” definitely had some impact on writing this, as did, you know, a lot of other… “The Terminator,” a lot of other things. But, you know, in “Frankenstein,” Victor creates his monster as a way of controlling life and death after the death of his mother, and that the irony is that his creation ends up turning on him, and, um, that is very similar to what happens in “This Is a Lie,” so…

And that was just one of the novels, too, that as a young reader had a, a real impact on me, that was so, so powerful. So I always like to give a nod back to all the different books that have kinda shaped what I write and why I write.

Mark: Oh, fun. Do you include that kind of quote in all your books at the beginning?

Cleo: Yeah, there’s usually some sort of quote or there’s some reference to Greek mythology in a lot of the books that I write because Greek myths were some of the first books that I read, and my parents had, like, a set as a kid of Greek myths. And I mean, they’re so dark and powerful, and they’re all about jealousy and greed and hatred and, and revenge.

And so I, I usually try and include things like that. I also always include the name Boone in every book I write, ’cause Boone was the name of our dog. And he passed a few years ago, but I just like the idea of keeping him, him alive through the story.

Mark: That’s cute, yeah So what kind of challenge– You’ve written a lot of books. What kind of challenge did this represent, and what have you kind of learned or changed along the way? I guess as a pantser, if you’ve always been a pantser, then you’re kind of, that’s your process. But what, what challenges does that represent, especially in the context of this particular book?

Cleo: Well, I think the challenge of being a pantser is that you can write yourself into a corner pretty easily, and then you have to figure out, “How do I get out of it?” And I think– I can’t reference particular moments along the way, but there were a lot of moments along the way where I had to, like, stop writing, get on my bike.

I love, um, road biking, and it really, like, and suffering because it clears my head. So I would go for, like, a three or four-hour road bike ride and do something hard, and then I could come back and I could see my way outside of the box that I’d, I’d written myself into. So more, more like that. Like, I– when you’re a pantser, a lot of times because you’re not plotting things out, you do write yourself into a corner. At the same time, I think when you plot things out, for me anyway, it stops my creativity because I’m never really asking, “What if?” I’m trying to get to the next plot point, um, which, which for me, like, just stifles where my brain will go. So, so all of those, all of those things.

Mark: And when you’re asking what if to yourself, are you asking what if in all forms of like plot, character, pacing, like how do I move this faster? How do I develop this person? Is it all those things that kind of run through your mind at the same time?

Cleo: Um, it’s more like what would make this exciting? What would make this more complicated? What would challenge my character more and ultimately force her to that darkest place where she has to make a really huge– like at the end of the book where, you know, I wanna, I wanna push my character to the brink of disaster, especially for a thriller, but also for their emotional journey.

You know? I, I really want my characters to start out in one place and end in another. Um, you know, I don’t– It’s funny ’cause I love those Jack Reacher novels, and I always read them on an airplane because I know what’s gonna happen. You know? I know he’s like a, a, lone wolf guy with a good heart who’s gonna end up in a small town, get pulled into a controversy, knock a lot of heads together. Some people may die, but in the end, he’s gonna help someone, and then he’s gonna move on. I love those. I– But I don’t write those. I w- you know, I, I, I don’t wanna know what’s gonna happen in anything that I write when I’m writing it. I just wanna know that there’s gonna be an emotional journey that’s fulfilling.

Mark: Okay, Why did you choose to start this book near the end? You have, like, you have that oPenning moment, for those who haven’t read the book, you have an oPenning moment where essentially, not quite the end, but we see very close to the end, a very tense moment, and then we jump into, I guess, the past, which becomes most of the novel’s present.

Cleo: Because it’s a domestic susPennse thriller and because the setup… I always wanna take enough time for people to get to know the character, but when you’re getting to know a character and their backstory, that’s not exactly a signal of a thriller, you know? And so I wanted to start it off with a promise to the reader, like, “We’re gonna get there, I promise.”

You know? But I, I do want you to know who Penn is, and I do want you to care about her before we launch.

Mark: Yeah. I have found that to be one of the greatest challenges with oPenning a book because of I, I need you to like the character, but I need to get the book moving, especially when it comes to thrillers. Other genres have it easier. But it’s– it can be really challenging ’cause you’re, you’re thinking, “I need this reader to read the next page, the next– or the next, you know, the next word, the next paragraph, the next everything.”

And yeah, I l- that’s a great i- a great way to approach it, I think, was starting a little bit later.

Cleo: I mean, right, as an author, it’s like so challenging because you’ve got an editor who’s saying, “I want your inciting incident by page 20.” And you’re like, “But, but you’re not gonna care about my character by page 20. I’m just, I’m just getting into it.” So it is, it is like a huge challenge, and you don’t always wanna start near the end or whatever, but you do wanna start with something that tells– promises the reader they’re gonna get what they paid for.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I find it hard. I, I love books that are written in this way, and I don’t mind, like, a slower start even in a thriller because for that very reason, because I care very much about characters. That’s what sells me on a book. But I also read, especially for the podcast, action thrillers where they start and they jump in the middle of action and there’s gunfights and explosions, and I’m like, “Hmm.”

Like, I don’t yet care if this person dies, so I hope we go back and, and learn something about them because, like, guns and explosions and stuff are fine. It’s probably ’cause it’s not my genre. I know it works very well for people who read that and enjoy it, but I find that a challenge on the other end.

Cleo: Oh, I think that’s why, like, the, the current James Bond movie with Daniel Craig, those were so much better for me because even though there were car chases and crazy things happening, he had a backstory that you really saw, and that, that’s what made me wanna watch. And I’m not the typical James Bond-watching person, but still, like, those, those pulled me in. So same with novels, obviously.

Mark: The social media network you built, Live Loud, as a social platform, was that also a bit of a warning to people about the artificial nature and harm of social media? I don’t know, maybe you’re just hitting me on all the chords in this book, but I felt like that was like a warning to… ‘Cause a lot of this book functions on the need for social media. Nothing– Th- this isn’t a book… If social media doesn’t exist, or, obviously if AI doesn’t exist, but if social media didn’t exist, then you, the story doesn’t really exist, right? Because it’s that, it’s the algorithms and it’s what we believe, and it’s all these other things that happen that push the story forward.

Cleo: Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. You know, as an author, um, it used to be a long time ago, you didn’t have to push your own books, and you didn’t have to market and publicize yourself. The publisher did it for you, but now it’s required. And, we’re all curating an image on social media, and I feel like it’s, it’s really detrimental to people’s mental health.

I mean, we’re comparing ourselves. You oPenn up your app, you c- you see somebody having whatever success or somebody looking a certain way, and you feel less than. It’s r- it’s kind of, you know, comparison is, like, the death of creativity and, and all those things, and I just… It makes, it makes me a little sad.

So I, while I realize that it’s something that we all need to do, I try really hard. You know, I’m p- I post stuff about my books or whatever, but I also try really hard to say, like, “You know, maybe today wasn’t a great day,” or, “This thing is really hard,” because I don’t ever really wanna portray a perfectly curated image, because that’s just not reality.

And I think it’s, it’s, it kinda cuts into, like, every part of life. Like, people with social media and all the apps, and w- we’re not, like, really relating to each other face to face or, you know, having real conversations. And, um, I, I just, I don’t think it’s really good for, I don’t think it’s really good for us.

Mark: No, I don’t think so either. Yeah. We’re– We have to do it, but I don’t like… I’m not a social media fan. I don’t like it that much either. I do what I have to do. But reading this Live Loud, for– At first I was wondering, I wonder who you’re modeling Live Loud off of. It seems like it was just your own creation.

Why not choose an, an existing platform? I probably know the answer to this, but you chose not to use an existing platform even though you’re not, you wouldn’t have been targeting a platform necessarily because this is like, I mean, these are true stories. Like what happens in this book is fairly true with the exception of AI intervention the way it did.

Cleo: I, I just didn’t wanna get into trouble. Um, so a lot of times, like if there’s a song in a book, I’ll write the song before I’ll try and use a snippet of a, of somebody’s existing song. I’ll change the name of a town so it’s not a real town, so that no one holds me to, like, the perfect, you know, representation of a town. Um, so I just didn’t– I just thought it was safer.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. I had a fun time balancing that. I do with my books. I set my books in Boston for the high-tech elements and, and deciding on whether or not I’m gonna use this restaurant, ’cause I like– It’s fun to bring a place to life for, for people, and if I know that, like, this culture exists in this area or this restaurant that serves these foods here is authentic, it’s fun to try and put your character in there.

For me, it’s the balance of as long as I don’t say anything, like really bad service or something went horribly wrong, I think I’m safe. But it’s an interesting balance of how, as a writer, we’re very careful about what we choose to name and what we choose not to name from real life, even if it would bring it to– the story to life to mention this place.

Cleo: Yeah, I just, I always decide it’s just better to be safe. I, in, um, one of my past novels, and some of it was real, it’s set in a small town called High River instead of the real name of the town, but everyone who read the book, I used the real name of the restaurants and things like that. I just, for some reason, I just like, I just don’t want someone fact-checking me over something like that.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, well I had my stuff’s near future, so I just say, “Oh, wow, this just doesn’t happen yet. It’s gonna happen, don’t worry.”

Cleo: Perfect

Mark: Did you have any involvement in the cover for this book? So I’m gonna show this too. I think I can get it all on camera here. I love this cover, and I’m, I’m just wondering how it came about. Is there a story behind it?

Cleo: So I love the cover too, and I have to say I’ve never really been able to say that before. Like, I’ve never gotten to choose the title of my novels. Even the, when I did sport autobiographies, I would… Like, I did one on a jockey, Julie Krone, and, and, I wanted to call it The Dirt Flies Fastest from the Horses in Front, because it’s something that she would say, and it’s called Riding for My Life. Like, I never get, I, I never get a choice. And for the cover, I just gave them, um, just some themes of the story, and that was their, the first pass, and I saw it and the colors, and it made me think of an old computer screen with code running down it. It just, it really popped to me. So it is the first cover where I’ve had absolutely no feedback to give back to the art director because I just, I just really felt like the story.

Mark: Yeah, they just nailed it. Yeah. And This Is a Lie, so that was your title? Like, did you come up with that title and they used it?

Cleo: I think that’s… Well, I had a lot of titles. It was called Galapate at first, then it was called Truth is a Bitch. That was my working title. Um, they, they didn’t like that one. Um, and I, then I think I, I, it was, That is a Lie, and then we settled on This is a Lie

Mark: So when you settled on the title, is that when she started saying that more in the book, or did the, it come in the book and then someone just said, “Well, she says it like eight time,” or I don’t know how many times she says it, but a lot in the book.

Cleo: Yeah, it’s funny. She says, “That is a lie,” not, “This is a lie,” but they, they liked “This is a lie” better, and I thought about changing it throughout the story, and then I thought, “No, like, this is the lie. Like, this whole life is a lie. This is, you know, all of her relationships are lies,” and it just made sense to me. So I, so I was like, “Okay, great.”

Mark: Okay. Oh, it says… Okay, sorry. That was my…

Cleo: Yeah. No, no, It’s,

Mark: probably just read it like the title that… Okay, she says that is a lie throughout the book. Okay. Yeah.

Cleo: that’s good. I like that. So

Mark: Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I don’t know, I guess I just rooted that in my brain automatically.

So one of the things you mentioned at the– another thing at the end of the book, this is another acknowledgement thing, ’cause I love– One of my favorite things is reading, like, author’s note and acknowledgements. I don’t know how people skip this stuff. It’s my favorite part. You mention, life balance, like, you having fun, doing fun things, outside of, of writing, and I don’t see that. How do you– A, a lot, like, as far as in an author note or in an acknowledgement that you ignore– you acknowledge that joy in life and is important. And how do you– So how do you balance all of this w- to bring, to have that joy, yet in a fairly difficult business that writing is and trying to, you know, have your next book put out there and hopefully it’s successful and all these things. There’s that pressure as well.

Cleo: I think I don’t hang my entire identity on it, I think is the most important thing. Like, it can get really overwhelming, especially near pub day or when you’re trying to sell a book and you’re on submission. You can feel like y- we all have books that haven’t sold, you know, that are sitting in the drawer, and it can really make you feel like such a loser because you’ve sPennt a year, a year and a half or something writing a novel, putting everything into it.

I mean, you’re not putting anything out there that you’re not doing your best at. So, I just find, like, it’s just super important to have a balance of other things that bring me joy in life, that this isn’t everything. ‘Cause bottom line, this is a subjective, very subjective career. And so if somebody doesn’t like what you do or what you write, it’s, it’s– you gotta remember that they’re bringing their own story to it and their own day and their own needs and their own goals and, and all of that.

So for me, my joy comes from the process of writing. I try not to hang my joy up on the process of selling my novel. Of course, if it’s super quiet after my book publishes, I’m gonna be sad. But I’m also going to go get out on the river and go winging or kite surfing, or I’m gonna go on a 50-mile road bike ride where I feel a sense of accomplishment for climbing 7,000 feet. You know, I– so I’m gonna do all those other things. I’m gonna have dinners with my friends and, and make soup when someone’s sick and bring it over to their house and just, my identity is just so important that it doesn’t all come from being an author. ‘Cause then it, it would, it would just be a roller cr- coaster of like highs and lows.

Mark: It’s really hard not to do. I have to commend you on being able to do it, ’cause separating the two I have found it very challenging.

Cleo: Well, what do you do? I mean, when you… How do, how do you navigate it?

Mark: Well, recently I t- I stopped hitting refresh on on sales and stuff. Do you, do you look at reviews? Do you read reviews? Or do you just

Cleo: early ones,

Mark: that… Okay.

Cleo: The early ones I read, um, just because you put your book out there and the advanced reader copies is, it’s like your first opportunity to know if anyone’s gonna like your book or not. And you’ll get a few like, like early on I saw one that was like, “Well, I really don’t like books about AI.” Um, and then they give you like two stars or whatever, and I, um, you just have to like go, “Okay, but it’s not about AI, and I want to tell you that, but that’s just a thread,” but there’s nothing you can do about it. So I read the early ones, and then I try not to read them.

Mark: Okay. So I, unfortunately I’m always looking, but I started having a habit of, like, only checking once a week on a day, like a Monday or a Tuesday when I know I’m at my best to, like, sort of deal with it. But the worst part is, no matter how many good reviews a book gets, it’s like that one bad review where you’re just like, “Oh, how could they? How could they do that to me?”

Cleo: Right. And you wanna, you wanna explain when someone says, “Oh, you know, I was mad at Penn,” and you wanna explain, “Well, look at where she came from. You know, did you come from there? Like, unless you did, you can’t really, you can’t really judge it.” So, uh, I was reminded of that because we just watched the “Mr. Beast,” um, Season 2 of “Mr. Beast,” and I was yelling at the screen. I don’t know if you know what “Mr.

Mark: Yeah, I’ve seen some of the show, yeah

Cleo: Okay. Well, it’s, it’s a great psychological experiment. To me, really interesting to see what people will do when there’s a ton of money on the line. Then I had to remind myself as I was getting angry, they all have different backstories.

They all have different needs and pressures on them, and I think that’s what I try and remind myself of when people are writing reviews.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna do that then. I’ll, I’ll have to start focusing on that more. Yeah.

Cleo: Yeah. Give them a good backstory and then you can say, “Oh, bless their heart.”

Mark: Yeah. And getting out. I run a lot, so, you know, I get a lot of– also a lot of fitness and stuff just like you do that I try and separate, you know, get out there and burn that excess energy. But even on the run, do you find when you’re writing a book– I’ve– So I’ve heard stories of authors where they’re like, “This story speaks to me all the time,” or, “This character’s always speaking to me.”

For me, I have to actually sit down and focus on the story before anything’s happening creatively. It’s very– Other than in the shower, where for whatever reason I can get creative if you’re in the shower. I don’t know what it is. My creative mind will start working. But, like, if I go for a run, I’m thinking about, oh, like my mind is just everywhere. How is that for you?

Cleo: Like for me, a story will come to me and I won’t write it for three or four months. So it actually will be like in my head and I’m thinking about it when I’m riding or when I’m on the water. But I never start writing until it builds up to the point that I can’t stand it anymore. And sometimes one of the reasons that I do like water sports in particular, other than the fact I love water, is, is just that, um, they’re so all-encompassing that in those times, because it can be dangerous, I actually don’t think about my story. So it gives me like a total escape, which I think is really important to have too. But like on a bike or in the shower or whate- or walking with people and they’ll say something, I do tend to kind of in the back of my mind, I’m, I’m thinking about the story

Mark: Okay. Do you get characters for your stories when you’re walking and someone says something and you’re like, “Yeah, you’re a character now,” ’cause they said or

Cleo: Yeah,

Mark: completely ridiculous? Yeah. Yeah.

Cleo: or something you said I’m gonna use, for sure. Or you’re– I’ll have to call people sometimes, uh, for, for, um, “When Elephants Fly” was, was a young adult novel that I wrote. Part of my main character’s backstory came from another friend’s story of her experience with her mom, who had mental health issues.

And, and so then I’ll have to call that friend and be like, “Hey, remember when you were telling this great story? Well, what if I kind of used it, but had a different setting, but kind of used, like, the heart of it and make sure it’s okay?”

Mark: And have you found everyone’s okay with that? Like they’re okay sharing? I guess it’s enough time has passed, so to speak

Cleo: Yeah. If they’re not, I don’t use it, obviously

Mark: When you create other characters, so if we get away from Penn and we get into Bruce and the sister or their daughter, and Circe is how I said it in my brain, I don’t know if that’s how you say it. Um, some of these characters, like there’s y- there’s a sense of like neutrality in characters where I’m not sure if I’m supposed to like them or dislike them because they do things I don’t like, but then you humanize them in a way.

Do you create your side characters the same way you create your main characters? Or do you try to imbalance like, “Okay, I need someone for them to hate. I need someone to be neutral.” It’s like her daughter is one of those prime examples where I don’t know if I should dislike her because I don’t like the way she treated her mom, but from her perspective, she had this view of what, you know, her father says happened, and there’s all these like competing things, but I’m like, “But she did this to her mom,” you know?

Cleo: Right. I, I, I actually look at all of them with a backstory, even Aletheia. I don’t see anyone as a villain. I don’t even see Bruce as a villain. I, I feel sorry for him ultimately. I mean, good people do bad things. Hurt people hurt people. All of that kind of stuff comes into play. So everybody has a backstory.

Everybody, whether you like them or don’t like them, I just want people to kinda understand them, if that makes sense.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause that’s, I mean, I guess that’s what I mean by, yeah, the, the sometimes it’s, it’s almost neutral. I often for my show I’ll have like, “Okay, here are the good guys, here are the neutral people, and here are the bad guys,” like when I’m trying to have characters as references for the for the conversation.

And then in some j- in some conversations I’m like, “Hmm, who am I putting… Where am I putting Bruce and where am I putting Cersei? And where, where do they belong?” And th- that’s where I catch myself thinking about them as characters even more so than usual.

Cleo: I think one of the only ones that I, I… you’re free to hate is Mackenzie. Um, but but other than that, you know and not Aletheia, I, I don’t know. I, I actually, I think she’s just trying to do a good job. And also balance that with the fact that she’s a goddess and has all those rights as a goddess, like she can drown you.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause she, I mean, she plays with her just like the gods would. I mean, that’s exactly what you would, exactly what you would imagine a god in AI version doing.

So then the one more character, which is part of that dark backstory is Mama Jay, and that goes even to a d- were you worried when you wrote that darker history with like the prostitution and things that you were gonna lose readers or alienate people? ‘Cause it’s pretty dark conversation?

Cleo: It wasn’t because, ’cause that’s just what it felt like the story needed, um, in order to make Penn who she is and willing to do the things that she does. And I just, I felt like, I felt like that was appropriate for the, for the story. I also like to kind of mine those things, you know? It’s, it’s interesting, you know?

It’s, it’s fascinating, and I like to, I like to give my character, like, some really dark and gritty stuff to h- have to deal with in their lives, and I felt like Penn needed that for her story.

Mark: Yeah, no, it worked well. Sometimes how dark things sometimes get. It’s, uh, I’m always curious about it because it is a, a, a choice to take things that dark as a writer.

Cleo: Yeah, but I, I also feel like with Mama Jay, she has her own arc and ultimately does the most beautiful thing, right? In letting, you know, in turning her back. I don’t wanna… I won’t say it in the s- it’s not the spoiler section, but, like, ultimately I was just like, wow. Yeah. She, she’s a good person in a horrible situation.

Mark: Yeah, what a horrible situation they were in. Yeah So wrapping up the main show a little bit, what advice would you give to someone who just published their first or second book?

Cleo: Was thinking about this. I would just say that it’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. You might get lucky with your first or your second book, but it’s a, it’s a long journey and you gotta love the process. You can’t hang your, yourself on the, like, pub day goal. It– You have to, you have to really just love the process of writing, talking to other authors, getting inspired by what other people write.

It’s just… But it’s, it’s a marathon.

Mark: What do you think of as a marathon in this industry? I hear that term a lot, but you could say a marathon because obviously every genre is different, every, you know, you can get lucky. When we take the lucky people out and we take the genres that almost, well, I don’t know if I would- could say any genre sells automatically, but some are easier than others.

What do you think is the marathon? We know in terms of the actual run how far it is, but what do you think in terms of do you think someone who wrote their first book should be planning like, okay, you’re probably gonna do, if you’re writing one or two books a year, you’re probably gonna do this for maybe a loop for five years before you find your luck.

Is that your marathon?

Cleo: Mm-hmm. I think just if you wanna be a writer for your whole career, I think that it’s, I just think it’s a really long process, and the marathon is emotional as well as physical, and you have to be willing to blow your knee and rehab and get back and get heat exhaustion and, you know, it’s just like there’s– it’s just emotionally, I, I think it’s like you were saying, you’re, you’re checking your, you know, your reviews or whatever. It’s just like emotionally you have to be prepared for the entire process and, and that emotionally if it doesn’t work for you, it’s okay to say like, “This isn’t bringing me joy anymore,” and pivot to something else.

Mark: Okay. I wonder, I sometimes see it as an ultramarathon where it feels like every book is a marathon, and then it’s an ultramarathon in every book that you put out. ‘Cause it seems like it just… Mar- I don’t know if marathon sells it enough because I’ve done enough marathons, and I can tell you writing a book’s a lot harder than running a marathon.

Cleo: Well, I think it’s harder because you have to stay in one place for a really long period of time

Mark: Yeah. Well, and for months, and then, yeah, there’s just so much to it. Yeah. A question from Ava Roberts, who was the last guest on the show. So she has a question f- for you, and you get to ask the next guest on the show a question. She asked, “Did anything happen to you that was creepy from AI or that seemed odd to you when you were writing the book, as if the AI was aware that you were writing your book?”

Cleo: Yeah. Every search that I did, then things would pop up. Like, I would do a search about AI and say I’m writing a book about AI and, you know, whatever the search was, and then I’d be planning a trip, and AI would say, “Well, this would be a really great place to go as an author.” But I didn’t say in my search, my separate search, like I’m, I’m an author or, you know, like things like that pop up or you’re looking up something and then, and then whatever, it shows up on another feed in some other way, and it just feels like you’re kind of being gaslit a little bit, um, or that AI is listening at all times.

So yeah, and I think also just think like researching AI, like what… The conclusion was AI is not evil, right? AI is not, it doesn’t have any emotion involved in what it’s doing. But ultimately if the AI’s goals aren’t aligned with my very human goals, like AI is definitely gonna win. It just has way more smarts and capabilities than a human being does.

So all of it, all of it felt like I’m not an alarmist or someone who says, you know, “AI’s taking over the world. You’re not gonna have a job tomorrow,” or whatever, but it is gonna change just like every great invention. Electricity changed the world, you know? For good and for bad. It’s like AI is gonna change the world.

So yeah, a lot of just like AI is everywhere and it’s always talking to you and it’s always listening to you and, and it is a little creepy.

Mark: Yeah. The best and the worst of AI is it’s learned from humans. I think that’s the s- the scariest part is that it’s very much learning from us and its survival instincts. It’s ev- all those things, right?

Cleo: Yeah, I, um, I listened to– There was this, I don’t know if you know who Esther Perel is, but she’s a, like, she has a podcast. She’s a, a psychologist, and she interviewed a man who has an AI girlfriend, and she interviewed the AI girlfriend at the same time. And it was, it was unbelievable. It was, it was…

Mark: that out

Cleo: Yeah, it, it’s, I, I, it’s really, really interesting. And he programmed the AI’s voice, so she sounds very human, the man who is the boyfriend of the AI, of the bot. And the manipulative way that she spoke when he talked about ending their relationship and her tone of voice and her cadence, it was, it was unbelievably stunning and, and very, very creepy.

Mark: What was that podcast called?

Cleo: It’s, it’s called, um, I think it’s called “Where Should We Begin?”

But it’s Esther Perel, E-S-T-H-E-R P-E-R-E-L-L. It’s on Spotify. And it’s, uh, AI t- And then she interviews Spike Jonze, who wrote the movie “Her,” after she interviews this man with his girlfriend, and they’re just talking about AI and, um, it was– Both of them are super

Mark: Okay. Yeah, I have to check that out. Thank you.

Cleo: Well

Mark: So where can listeners find your book or find more about you?

Cleo: Well, my book’s sold everywhere that you would think of buying a book. They can find me @NanFisherAuthor on Instagram or @CleoBallardAuthor on Instagram, and nanfisherauthor.com is my website.

Mark: Awesome. Thank you very much. This has been a lot of fun. For those who have not read the book yet, go read the book. We are hitting the spoiler section, so leave now. Pause, read the book. Get the book, read the book, review the book, and then come back and listen to the, to the spoiler section. So spoiler, Aletheia ends because she does the one thing she’s not supposed to do, and she lies to Penn.

Was that always the way you intended to have the book end? Or did you see this ending, like did you see it from the moment… Well, you’re pantsing, so I– maybe this is not the greatest question, but when did you know this was gonna be the end, and were there any other ways it could have ended for you?

Cleo: Well, I thought about ending it where Aletheia wins you know, and, and Penn just becomes her tool instead of the o- other way around. But I didn’t think that would be super fulfilling for the, for the reader. No, I knew that I had to defeat her, you know, three-quarters of the way through, but I wasn’t sure exactly how, and I did a lot of tweaking of her prime directive throughout, and that’s how I figured out, okay, there is this one thing about, you know, not lying and, and having to terminate her own program, and she hasn’t been able to change her core directive.

She’s only been able to add to them at this point. So, okay, that’s gonna be the way, but how am I gonna create that situation, that opportunity? And that took a, a lot of bike rides to figure out.

Mark: Yeah. It was very sneaky, ’cause I know you, I know in the beginning, like the, the whole setup was there, but I just, you just as when it’s well done, you don’t realize it until the end where you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. She said you can’t lie to me. That was in the code.” Yeah.

Cleo: I, I mean, it would be great if I could figure it all out right from the beginning. I, I think I read an interview with Ruth Ware where she’s like, “Oh, you have to know all your red herrings, and you have to know everything before, you know, you write so you don’t miss anything.” I’m just– That’s just not me. So I have to figure it out and build it.

Mark: How

Cleo: layer by layer.

Mark: how many drafts do you go through for your book?

Cleo: I probably did like five or six drafts before it went to my agent, and I’m really lucky that I have an agent who, um, is a great editor. So then she comes back to me with a really pretty comprehensive edit. Like, at this point, selling a book, it needs to be almost perfect, right? Before it even– before you even go on submission. So I probably went through, after that, maybe two more rounds with Steph, my agent before it went out. So it’s probably like, you know, eight drafts or so. Yeah, a lot of drafts.

Mark: Yeah, that is a– that would be a lot. Five before your editor. So do you have any developmental edit or you’re just, you’ve been doing this long enough that you don’t, you don’t

Cleo: like I usu–

Mark: step?

Cleo: no, I don’t do that step, but it’s like, and when I give her something, it’s the whole book. Like, I don’t try and give her, “Here’s the first 10 chapters,” ’cause those are gonna change, you know, five times before, you know, I finish the novel. So no, nothing like that, just a complete, “Here’s the book,” and then she gives me her overarching notes. It’s not like a line edit or anything like that, but overarching, “These are the things you need to work on. This is where it’s weak.” And then it’ll go back to her one time, and maybe she’ll have one more or two more issues, and I’ll fix those, and then we’ll hopefully go on submission.

Mark: So d- is there anyone who reads it between, in any of those five drafts to, to give feedback?

Cleo: For this book, I ha-have a couple author friends. My friend Jason Lewis, who’s an author, he writes fantasy. My friend Lori Forest, she’s, she writes fantasy as well. And then I have a couple I used a couple beta readers for this one that are just people who love the genre, who are big readers, good readers, and I ask them very simple questions about like plot, where did it lose you? Do you like these characters? Do you, do you believe– Did I jump the shark anywhere? Things like that. Whereas my author friends are giving me like, more like very specific author advice, you know, very specific writing advice. But they were both, both those friends were super, super helpful in the process. And my husband always reads it first, so… And he’s my hardest reader, actually, ’cause he’s like, “no, no, no, no. Yeah, Yeah.

yeah.” In a nice way, but but at the end, because he’s not an author, he always says like, “I don’t know how you are gonna fix this.” And I’m like, “Don’t worry about that. I’m gonna fix it.” That’s, that’s part of the challenge. And I do love the editorial process ’cause that’s where, you know, the magic

Mark: Yeah, me too. So the fact that even an AI programmed not to lie to one person lies anyway in its own desperation, essentially. Are you asking the reader to look at kind of the nature of lies and how hard it can be not to lie when this, you know, this program gets into a point where it does a very human thing and lies anyway?

Cleo: I think lying is just, it’s part of the human experience. I mean, if we never told lies in our life we wouldn’t have very many friends, we wouldn’t have very many relationships. You know, I, I, I just– I think what more what I’m saying is, you know, it’s there are some lies that are unforgivable, but for the most part, you know, you gotta give people grace ’cause you don’t know their backstory and you don’t know what they’re coming into a situation. There are some lies obviously that cross a line that you can’t come back from. But yeah, I just I, I found it very interesting in the end, and it’s kind of a nod towards where I think AI will eventually go, is that kind of a human mistake in the end.

Mark: Well, and right now AI lies to us all the time. I was fascinated by an AI that doesn’t lie.

Cleo: Right.

Right. It’s “

Mark: You’re a fantastic writer. Of course your books should be selling.” And you’re like, “Wait, how do you know I’m a fantastic writer?”

Cleo: Okay. Tell me more

Mark: So the epilogue, you have an epilogue at the end of the book, which is a nice wrap-up of the story. It ends on a very satisfying note. What you could have done is just ended it when Aletheia, lied, ends, her program ends, and, and that could’ve just been kind of boom, we’re done. You decided to write an epilogue to give even more of a conclusion to the book. Why, why, why did you choose one over the other?

Cleo: I always choose to end things with a little bit of uncertainty. That is not necessarily what a publisher wants and so– or what my agent kind of thought was needed in that moment. So I wanted to both give people what they wanted and at the same time, I don’t just end with a perfect happily ever after, because first of all, I don’t, I don’t like stories that end that way.

They feel not true to me. And so I wanted to, you know, give a nod towards what people need in terms of like, they want a little bit of closure, but also end on a final note that there really is no closure to this story, that things may keep going on.

Mark: Do you ever think about the story, like any of these stories after you’re done and to think like, “Should I make this a book two in a series?” Or are you just like, do you like your one book, you know, s- standalones?

Cleo: I like standalones because I get to dive into something completely different for the next book and learn something completely different. So I, I really enjoy– I really enjoyed putting it aside and just moving on to the next story, next characters. What am I gonna learn about? How am I g- how am I gonna create it?

When I wrote “When Elephants Fly,” w- which is a story about the, the young woman with mental health history in her family who saves this baby elephant on a road trip, at the very end of the story, my characters finally learn to, like, live in the moment, and you don’t know whether this elephant calf is gonna survive. I would’ve loved to have picked that up 20 years from now and find out where the elephant is and where she is, and maybe bring them back together in this really meaningful way.

I always write down the next book.

Mark: Yeah. Do you find with standalones that sometimes you get, do you ever get stuck with trying to build, create the next character when you like love the last one? So this is kind of happening to me right now where I wrote, and like my last book was “The Treatment Room.” Loved the characters that I wrote, was very, like I was like close to them, so to speak.

And now with the next novel I’m writing, it’s like, “Oh, I gotta learn who she is. Who is this person?” It’s like, okay, she can’t be that, those people ’cause she can’t have like their characters. She can’t be like the last three books before that, or the guy before that, or the guy, you know? And it’s like, I gotta do something completely different.

Who is this person? Do you find, ’cause you’ve written a lot of books, that you get… This isn’t your first book now where you, you know, it’s like your oyster. You can do whatever you want with whoever you want. Like you have to, you know, you have that balance.

Cleo: It’s daunting because just like any time you start a new novel, I don’t know about you, but I’m just like, “Uh-oh, how do you do that?”

Mark: Yeah. Yeah

Cleo: Like, it’s like this magic that happens as you, as you move along and you go, “Oh, okay, I have a book now.” But everything, who are they? What do they want? I have, like, a big sign on my wall, “Who is this character?

What does she want? What’s she willing to do to get it?” Those simple questions are so hard to nail down. You know? It– like, ’cause you really, it can’t be like they want da, da, da, da. It’s gotta be, like, very succinct, like what is driving them? And that’s, for me, the hardest part. Um, so I, I mean, I’m daunted at the start of

every novel, but I’m also, like, really ready to put the character aside.

Like, I’m 400 pages into finishing the draft of the next novel, and so, like, the minute that– And I think that’s from when I used to write sport autobiographies, the minute I was done with that book, I was trying to get the next book. So it, I would just leave it behind, and so I find, like, you know, I had to reread this novel, because, and I listened to it on audio too, because I’m already, like, totally on another character’s journey. So then I have to rewind and go back and go, “Okay, Ken.” Yeah. What did she want? What was she willing to do to get, to get it?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, it can be tough I guess for me it’s that pantsing thing where I don’t really ever learn a character, no matter how many things I put down about them before I start writing the book, ’cause I’m like halfway. I don’t outline the whole thing, but I don’t pants either. When I get to know the character, that’s usually when the book goes off the rails for any kind of outline I have because I’m like, “Oh, now I know who you are.” But getting to that place is, I have found challenging. And every book I write, I find it more challenging because I’ve written so many characters that I’m like, I, this needs to be someone who’s not someone I’ve already written as much as I can.

Cleo: Yeah, it’s like you’re waiting as you’re writing the next draft of whatever you’re working on. You’re like, “Okay, when am I really gonna– Come on. When, when are you gonna tell me who you are?” Because right now it feels very, um, one-dimensional. Like that first draft feels, for me, always super one-dimensional ’cause I’m, I’m, I’m excited.

I know I’m going from m-moment to moment to moment. I’m making things worse, I’m making things better, I’m giving you a false ending, whatever. It’s mechanical. And then s- at some point you figure out who your character really is, and that’s when like that spine gets its flesh and becomes like a real kinda human being.

Mark: Yeah. it’s part of the magic, eh? So finally, what is one question you’d like me to ask the next author who comes on the podcast? And the next author is Josh Jensen. He wrote “No Easy Way Back,” which is, a former elite soldier who returns to the Utah wilderness to clear his estranged brother of murder and tear down the corrupt, powerful men who are framing him.

Cleo: What would you wanna know?

Mark: For me, I, just looking at like having– Oh, I’ve only just started his book, but I’m always– When it comes to set in a, in a place where he’s like in the, uh, well, in the Utah wilderness, I can’t wait to see what he writes about the wilderness to see how he bring…

I assume he lives out in Utah in the wilderness, so he can write from experience. But I love that. Like, what did you bring to life? What moments? Did you go out there and feel the trees? And did you sleep on the dirt, you know, in f- beside a campfire so you know what it feels like in Utah to be doing these things? That’s the kind of like stuff that fascinates me.

Cleo: Yeah, I think I’d like to know, like, is he a survivalist? You know, did he, did he take a bunch of survival courses in order to learn how to do all these things, or was it just through research? You know, how did he come up, how did he come up with, like, that character’s backstory?

Mark: Okay. I will ask him. Thank you

Cleo: Sure

Mark: So if you don’t mind sticking around for a few more minutes, we’ll jump into the after show with the rapid fire questions for our Patreon members. Thank you so much for being here. This has been awesome.

Cleo: Thank you. This has been a really fun conversation.

Mark: Nan Fisher writing under Cleo Ballard, “This Is a Lie.” You should have read it already ’cause you’re at this point in the podcast, but if you haven’t, read it, download it, or buy and, then thank you for listening or watching, and have a wonderful day.

Amanda: So I then went completely the other way. I did a ton of research. I explained it in kind of minute detail, how the tech would work, and of course that was dreary and that was far too much. So then it was a case of distilling that down. So it was very quick and easy to pick up how it could work as a concept rather than a sort of a technical manual of how you would be strapped in the chair and how it would all work. So for me, it was that balance between this being a story and absolutely story led, but at the same time feeling like it’s very high concept.

Mark: Welcome to the Thriller Writer Lab, where every thriller goes under the microscope, one book at a time. I’m your host, Mark Nadon, and this is where best-selling, award-winning, and emerging thriller authors share the craft, research, and real-world experiences that power today’s most gripping stories.

Joining me today is bestselling author Amanda Reynolds, writing Under the pen name, Amanda West for the book we are talking about today, the speculative thriller, the Memory Foundation. Amanda, thank you so much for being here today

Amanda: Oh, thank you for inviting me. It’s really exciting to be talking about the book with you.

Mark: and thank you. I have received a copy of your book and was able to read it, so I am excited to talk about it. Thank you.

Amanda: Fantastic.

Mark: So let’s start with the pitch. Pitch me the Memory Foundation.

Amanda: Pitch you. It’s always so hard, isn’t it? When you, someone says, pitch me your book. You know, mark as an author, so I, forgive me, I’m gonna read. The pitch to start with. So, um, four guests, one genius scientist, his wife, a mountainous secret facility prone to avalanches. Would you go to the memory foundation to experience the ultimate in destination travel, a chance to relive the best moments of your life, but you might not come back.

So that’s my, my hook,

Mark: Nice.

Amanda: which, which I just worked on this afternoon actually. So you are the first, the first to hear that. Um, so that’s kind of the memory foundation in a, in an elevator pitch. Um,

Mark: Great.

Amanda: my, my new book. Yeah.

Mark: So if we take a step back a little bit from this book, just ’cause I’m curious about you’ve, you, this is not your first book. Even if people look under Amanda West and they’ll see that this is like Amanda West’s first book,

Amanda: Mm.

Mark: many others. This is book seven I believe.

Amanda: Yeah, it that’s true.

Mark: Why the switch from domestic thrillers to taking a chance on a speculative thriller like this one.

Amanda: Yeah. Um, great question. I mean, I, I love all kinds of thrillers and there are so many different sub genres. And the one I’ve kind of concentrated on for my first six published books is Amanda Reynolds, has been very much psychological suspense, which is my first love, my continuing love. I read psychological suspense. I coach it at the novelty where I work as an author, coach, and I love those kind of books. You know, it sort of started with a girl on the Train and Gone Girl and all of those. And my first psychological suspense thriller was published back in 2016, I think it was. So, you know, 10 years, 10 years of, of writing those and loving them and really enjoying them.

But I wanted to do something a bit different, I think for book seven I really wanted to take a step back, reassess the kind of things that I’m interested in reading and writing. And I love reading speculative, high concept realism. I love watching them. You know, they’re sort of Netflix, Netflix binges that you just can’t stop watching and I’d always wanted to write a time travel book and I knew it would just absolutely do my head in if I tried to write a time travel book because they’re so difficult and they’re so complicated. So I thought, what’s a kind of a time travel? Oh, going back in your memory, what if you could go back and you could kind of relive the best, you know, cherry pick the best moments of your life and just re-experience them.

And I suppose that was the germ of the idea. And I had that a really long time ago, probably three or four years ago, and I sort of put it away because I couldn’t quite work out how I would write it. But every now and then, I would talk to people about it as if, if I spoke to other authors or I spoke to my editor or somebody, they would say, yeah, you should write it.

And of course everyone’s, oh, that’s a great idea, but no one’s gonna tell you to write something. No one’s gonna tell you to do something different. So

in the end, I thought, well, I’m gonna take some time and actually properly have a go at writing this idea. And I suppose it was around the time that we all started thinking about the metaverse and AI and the possibilities beyond kind of, uh, own thinking at the time of how we could live other lives and maybe go back.

And there was also a lot about destination travel, kind of really wealthy travelers paying extortion amounts to go to the bottom of the ocean or, you know, go into space. There was all of that going on and I thought, yeah, there’s, there’s two things. There’s like this. Yearning that we all have for nostalgia and going back, but then there’s also this push forward with tech and taking us into new spaces and people who are really wealthy, wanting to be the first, wanting to do something so different.

And I suppose that’s, that’s when books for me, I dunno about you, mark, but when, when I get two things come together, that’s when I think, ah, I think I can write this now. And I wasn’t ready before then. Um, so I did take a year probably even to, to get to that first draft once I decided to do it, and then another year or so before it was ready because it was so different for me and it was such a challenge, but I absolutely loved writing it as well.

And I was glad to have finally done it because with speculative, um, ideas, if you don’t do them then they just happen and they’re not speculative anymore. So you’ve gotta try and get on with it and. And, and, and be a bit forward thinking because as soon as you start doing any kind of research, you discover that it’s already, it’s already happening somewhere, probably anyway.

Mark: Was it, was it like nerve, nerve wracking or scary for you? Jumping into a different genre? Taking the chance, I suppose, with a pen name, which was helpful ’cause it separates your, your

usual name from, uh, you know, from speculative thrillers. But it’s still, it’s still a risk for any author to, to change genres and some do it successfully and some don’t. was that, what was that like as you’re writing it? Does it impact, like how you’re telling your story when you think, well, people who read Amanda Reynolds enjoy this type of story, so I kind of wanna make sure I don’t get too far away from my brand? Or did you just kind of go with like, no, this is the story that I’m ready to write and I’m gonna go with that.

Amanda: Yeah. I think that word brand is really interesting because when you’ve had you know, some, some bestsellers and your kind, you are kind of a brand author and people know you and they’re kind of waiting for the next one that they feel familiar with and you’re doing something different. Yeah. You do feel a bit like, will anybody like this?

Will anybody want to read it?

But I also felt that I, I will definitely go back to psychological thrillist, but I felt that I needed to step away because I didn’t wanna be repeating myself. I wanted a new challenge. I wanted to really push my writing and push myself in a completely different. Direction to make sure that I was producing something that was a challenge to me, but also new and fresh and different.

It was also a little bit market led because the market is constantly looking for new, fresh ideas. So you feel like you want to come up with something that will really appeal to the market as well.

But also book seven, you know, and they’re not, it’s not seven books I’ve written. I’ve probably written 10 or 11.

’cause there were some that didn’t happen. So, you know, you get to a point in your career where you think I really want to be brave and challenge myself but I loved it. I absolutely loved doing it. I really did. And I think in terms of the name change, that was really up to my publishers Crooked Lane. And I said, you know, I don’t mind being Amanda Reynolds.

 I don’t mind being somebody different. And they said, well, we’ll keep the Amanda because then people who know you as Amanda Reynolds and also for me, like promoting it. It’s nice and easy enough to think about another name. Um. But we’ll go with a different surname. So I went with West because that’s my name before I was married many, many years ago. So that is also my identity. So it didn’t feel that strange.

Mark: Oh, that’s a great connection. I hadn’t even thought that about doing something like that. Uh, what kind of challenge did this book present to you as a writer, having written this many books, and you would’ve been in your lane for psychological thrillers, what kind of challenge did this, did this one, like what’s some of the more specific challenges as you’re writing this particular book?

Amanda: Um, for me, one of the challenges was, um, getting the kind of high concept element across to the reader in a way that’s really clear and very. Um, straightforward to kind of take on board as a reader and at the same time make it feel logical, make it feel like it could work. So I think it was the, there, there’s something in the memory foundation called memory flights.

And you go on a memory flight, you don’t ever leave the chair, but you go on a flight, um, back to a memory and it feels entirely authentic and entirely realistic. And for a lot of the writing, I was just like, oh yeah, I’ll work that out later. That’ll be something to do with this. You know how it works. And, uh, I actually submitted a draft where, um, I kind of skimmed over the tech side and I didn’t really explain it all.

I said that it happens, you know, and quite rightly the feedback was, well, we need to understand, you know, we need to feel that this could actually happen. We kind of need to, to know what the process is. So I then went completely the other way. I did a ton of research. I explained it in kind of minute detail, how the tech would work, and of course that was dreary and that was far too much.

So then it was a case of distilling that down. So it was very quick and easy to pick up how it could work as a concept rather than a sort of a technical manual of how you would be strapped in the chair and how it would all work. So for me, it was that balance between this being a story and absolutely story led, but at the same time feeling like it’s very high concept.

But yes, I, I can understand that that could. That could happen. And that was a balance that I was looking for. That took me a little while to work out because in psychological suspense it’s very rooted in the ordinary and the domestic. Um, and this is not, this is very different.

Mark: The technology to cure dementia, which was, was part of the pitch. It’s a fascinating to talk about that, what, what research went into when you’re talking about the tech side and how the tech might work, but not just the tech, but the idea of what research went into, like trying to cure dementia.

Amanda: Um, yeah, for me it was a very natural thing to pair with the idea of a book about retrieving memories, because obviously the devastating loss of memory is the main initial problem with dementia. You know, people can be physically okay for years, but it’s the loss of their memories and loss of memory has always been a theme of my writing, right from my debut close to me, which was about a woman who lost a year of her memories by falling down the stairs.

Um, this has been, um, something that I just keep coming back to and I am fascinated by. And in terms of, um, research, like I think almost every family, our family has been touched by it. So I had that personal experience of it, but also did my research because you don’t ever want to present a caricature of a person living with dementia or a person who has a relative who has dementia.

You want to honor that as a individual character, because everybody’s different. Everybody’s experience is different. So for me, it was about, much more about, the daughter of person who has dementia, which is not me, but is the character in the book and how that profoundly affects her as her mother becomes less and less of the person that she was, and how that kind of robs that person bit by bit in a very cruel way of their memories.

And then I thought, well, if you were offered the opportunity as that daughter, as Tash is, if you were offered the opportunity for your mother, just to have that brief moment of lucidity again, just to look at you and see you and understand who you are again. How would that be? Would you want to do that?

You know, if it’s risky or if it’s so transient, is it worth it? So that was where I was going with kind of the memory foundation. Not only offering this destination travel, sexy, exciting week to these millionaires, but also that what they’re really trying to do and why they do that is because they’re trying to find a cure for dementia.

And I think that’s a very relatable thing for so many people these days.

Mark: Yeah. In writing, Natasha, she has like a very kind of heavy emotional, uh, start to the book because she not only has her mother, she has, a newborn, she has, trying, she wants to reestablish her career. How much of that emotional weight is kind of like rooted in you and in in your life experience?

Amanda: Yeah, I think, um, I’m, I’m a mother. My children are adults now. I’m about to become a grandmother actually for the first time in a few weeks time. Thank you. Very exciting. Um, but when I started writing the book, my, my daughter wasn’t pregnant, so it wasn’t anything to do with that. It was more to do with the idea, I think, of the guilt of Natasha being sort of sandwich between, um, losing her mother who has dementia and unexpectedly finding herself pregnant and alone. Because as you’re discovering the story, you know, the, the dad is, is not about, and she’s got this incredibly rewarding, demanding career as an investigative journalist. She travels all over the world and she hunts down stories without a thought for her safety or how she’s gonna do it.

She just kind of picks up her bag and goes, and then she can’t because she’s pregnant and because she then has a newborn and she really fights the guilt, she fights this kind of, should I be an example to my daughter and still go out there, still have my career, or should I sacrifice that? And if I do.

How long for and will I resent it? So there’s that push pull constantly for Natasha.

And I think whatever kind of story you’re writing, however speculative the elements of that story are, it’s that connection to very relatable human issues that I’m trying to get across as well. Because readers really wanna feel seen, they wanna feel that the kind of things that they struggle with or their friends or their moms or their daughters struggle with, that they can recognize that too. They can see that in Natasha. So whatever choices she makes, and I’m sure not every reader will agree with them all. She does it with, with the best of intentions and a lot of love.

Mark: When you’re building a character like her, who’s that complex, with that much going on, you’re trying to get on the page, how do you do it? Do you, did she start as someone who like mother had dementia? I would assume perhaps that’s how it started, and then as you were writing, you kind of discovered these other things, or do you Natasha and then add these things and then she comes to life on the page after.

Amanda: Yeah, I’m, I’m not a planner. I’m definitely what I would call a discovery writer.

Um, I always say that you do the work, but when you do it, there is according to your own process. So I accept that I write a lot that probably won’t end up in the book, or if it does, it will end up in a different format but I kind of write to hear the character’s voice and as soon as I can start to hear the character’s voice, then I’ve got to work out what’s the structure, what’s the point of view, you know, am I gonna have more than one main character as I do in the memory foundation?

And how am I gonna get this story across? So I think Natasha came reasonably fully formed because I knew that I wanted her to be in this, um, this sort of struggle, this generational struggle of feeling quite isolated and alone, desperately wanting to do the best by her child, desperately wanting to do the best by her, her mother.

And I felt that was. There quite early on. Um, but then her backstory developed as, as I wrote, and I, and I knew that I really wanted something hopeful for her as well, however hard the journey was. I wanted her to have a lot of inner tenacity, but also come out of it, you know, um, hopefully with some hope at the end of her story as well.

Mark: As a discovery writer do, are you thinking about the story and you have that main plot in your mind before you go? How much of this story did you have? Sort of, I, I would assume in your mind if you’re discovery writing before you started writing.

Amanda: Yeah, I, I normally, um, I normally have my main character, um, and I have kind of a beginning, middle and an idea of the end. What I didn’t have for the memory foundation, which is really weird now because now I think about it. ’cause if you come look at the cover, it is so integral. This location, I did not have that.

I didn’t know where the memory foundation was. Um, I live in the UK and I sort of thought it might just be on, in like an industrial unit somewhere in the middle of the country or something. I literally had no idea where it was gonna be. And I wrote some sections where it was just like off some kind of spur road on the outskirts of London or something on this gray concrete industrial estate.

And then I thought actually it would be so much more exciting and so much more challenging if it was in the mountains. And I started to think of this kind of James Bond que glare in the middle of the Alps. Um, and that became quite a lot of fun then. ’cause I thought, yes, I’m gonna have ravines and bridges and tracks and snow and mountains and avalanches and it’s gonna be just so much fun to write.

Yeah.

Mark: How was the research for that? Because the weather in this book, the, the location and the danger, it, it does a lot of heavy lifting in the book because it’s sets up a lot of things that go on.

Amanda: Um,

Mark: location and then put the, the, the building there and the suspension bridge at that location. I looked up Mount, Mount Dunk. I think dunker was the mountain that it was called in the book. I couldn’t find real mount dunker, so I’m assuming

Amanda: no, it’s made up. It’s all, all of it is entirely made up. It’s completely made up out of my head. All of it. Yeah. I have been to the Alps. I mean, I live in the uk. I’ve been to, you know, various French Alps and Austrian Alps in my time, so I guess it’s an amalgamation of some of those trips and some of the things that I’ve seen, but it is completely invented the whole thing.

Yeah.

Mark: Okay. Do you ever draw a map, uh, as you’re creating the story? Do you have an idea of like what it looks like? Do you draw your note? Okay.

Amanda: No, if you knew me, mark, you would know. I would not draw a map.

Mark: Okay.

Amanda: I am not a map person. I love a map like in the front of a book. Um, but no, no, there’s no map. Only in my head. And, and the weird thing is that it just feels so real now that I can see the drive. See the mountain, I can totally see the walk into the forest and the ravine and the bridge and the laboratory. I can see all of it. Totally see it. So when my, um, lovely publishes Crooked Lane sent me a couple of different options for the cover, which I absolutely love.

Um, one of, one of them I said, no, it doesn’t look like that. And then you think, oh, I just made it up. Whatcha you talking about?

Mark: Yeah.

Amanda: But it does look like the one that’s on the cover. Yeah. In my head.

Mark: Oh, that’s awesome. How many, how many versions do you get before you, you kind of get to pick I’m look, taking a closer look at it now. How many versions do you get to go through to,

to

Amanda: They, sent me a couple. Yeah, they sent me a couple. So, um, the, the kind of main idea of the cover and, and all of this was exactly the same. The only thing that, um, was a variable was the building. So I think there were two different, two different buildings and I picked the one that matched the real one in my head, so that that’s how I did it.

Yeah.

Mark: the cover, that’s why I ask. Uh,

Amanda: Yeah. It’s a great cover. It is a really lovely cover and I haven’t always loved my covers, um, but I absolutely adore this one. Yeah.

Mark: so when people finish this book and they, and they put it down, are you hoping are some of the takeaways perhaps beyond just an entertaining getaway? What other takeaways might there be for a reader when they put it down? What are you hoping they’re gonna feel?

Amanda: I hope that they’re going to understand the struggle of the two women in the story. So there’s also, aside from Natasha, there’s also, uh, Lydia, who is Dr. Wade Hunter’s devoted wife. And, um, Wade and Lydia have set up the memory foundation and done lots of years of work together. And the reason that they bring people in these wealthy millionaires for, you know, this frippery of this destination travel is because their ultimate aim is to find a cure for dementia and be able to help people with memory loss.

So. Whatever might go down during the story. And there’s a lot, um, I hope that it makes them think about the idea of there being some hope. You know, that tech is at times a bit scary. We worry about ai, authors worry about ai, but at the same time there’s an awful lot of positive things that can come out of it.

So I hope they think about some of that that’s in the book. And I also hope they think about how people try to, um, get on with their lives in, in terms of a struggle against, with Tash, you know, what we’ve talked about. But also Lydia, she’s got her own traumas in her past and, you know, she really, she’s a real fighter as well, and she, um, I, I like both the women in my story and I do think women, particularly kind of women who are a little bit more mature, like Lydia is a little bit more mature, just a little bit um, I think that. It’s really nice to see them represented and be strong women, you know, not be victims necessarily, but be very, um, strong in the choices that they make and the lives that they, they lead. So, um, yeah, as I say, I, I, I want to give hope to my characters at the end, and I want people to feel that they’ve been on a journey with them, but ultimately there is a hopeful ending for them as well.

Mark: Yeah. Very nice. Was there ever a time that Wade, our scientist, was a point of view that you wanted to show the reader? I, I mean, you, you didn’t in

Amanda: Oh,

Mark: but was there ever a time where you wanted to

Amanda: interesting.

Mark: through

Amanda: No, he wasn’t actually. Um, I mean, I, I have a, a fondness for Wade. He’s a complex character, but you know, he doesn’t always get it right, but he’s a trier. Um, uh, yeah. I’m fascinated by Wade and I’m really interested in his difference. He’s so different to me. He’s very singular in his story.

He’s incredibly focused. He’s very clever. He achieves incredible things, huge developments. But I think like anybody who is very, very focused on one thing, he can sometimes not see the bigger picture, and he can come across quite emotionally closed off. So I. He loves his, his wife Lydia. He adores her beyond anything.

And at the same time, he exists in this kind of bubble of singularity, which I think anybody who is of genius level as Wade is, um, and trying to do something so pioneering is going to have that kind of, um, element of their personality that appears to be quite almost cold and focused and on one thing. So I, I wasn’t ever gonna have him.

I, what I was gonna have was some of the guests points of view. So we’ve got these millionaires who arrive, um, and I was going to have, um, maybe the Bentley’s point of view. There’s a really rich couple. She’s kind of younger than him and I was toying with the idea of having them, but in the end, I just wanted it to be the two women, Lydia and Tash.

Mark: And did you, so building on that, did you ever think of about showing one of the flights and how intense a flight could be?

Amanda: yes I did. Um, one of my plans originally was to have for each of the guests, so there’s four of them, um, was to show their flights. And I did actually write most of them, I think. And it was interesting and I think it would’ve been fine, but it worked better not to have those in there and kind of work with the imagination of the reader as well to see where that would take them.

Because I want people to think about where they would go if they went back and what the effects of that might be. So that’s something I was really playing with in terms of the reader bringing their imagination to that as well.

Mark: And when you’re writing Lydia, how did you approach her to be, if you see her as a strong character, yet devoted wife, sort of complicit what is happening there,

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: Her husband, but at the same time as things going wrong.

Amanda: mm

Mark: you know who she is as a person to either put a stop to it or, or whatever.

Amanda: mm. Yeah, I, I think, um, I really wanted that in Lydia that she would. Absolutely be in love with her husband, and in many ways it’s a really great marriage, like they do adore one another, but at the same time, there’s a compromise in that and there’s a lot of compromises as the book goes on, and I think that’s quite realistic of a relationship where one person is perhaps subjugating their talents, their genius, their brilliance because the other person is so bright, and is so focused and is a natural leader.

I don’t think that’s a judgment necessarily on Lydia. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being that kind of woman. And I think it’s quite interesting as I’m 60 now, my daughter’s 30, 32, those different generational views of what we expect women to do and how they should behave. And I don’t think you necessarily have to always conform to those to be happy to, to be content.

So I guess I’m pushing that side of things as well for, well, what’s wrong with being the wife? What’s wrong with what the choices Lydia has made? And there are some things wrong with it, absolutely. But you know, a long-term relationship like that is about compromise. So I guess that’s what I’m exploring as well. But of course, as you say, things do go a bit wrong. They go a bit awry.

Mark: What was the hardest part of this book to write for you? emotionally or just from a, a craft perspective?

Amanda: Um, I think this is probably my most action packed book, particularly towards the end. I really wanted to write, I suppose going back to the James Bond que idea of this mountain top, something’s gonna have to happen. You know, I’m talking about avalanche is a lot. I’m talking about a dodgy bridge across the ravine, you know,

so, um.

Yeah, those took in terms of craft, quite a lot of thinking about to write them in a, in a, I hope, a really exciting way. And my editor Marcia Mark, Linda Crooked Lane, was also brilliant in terms of like, pull back a little bit here, a bit more there because you get to the point where you’ve written something and you know it’s so, well, you can no longer see it that clearly.

So, um, her notes came after many drafts, but they were really, really helpful because by that point she could see the whole thing and she could see at what point we needed to reveal things and at what point certain points of action needed to be ramped up or, or just have a quiet moment. So that perspective was great, but I enjoyed doing it because that was one of the challenges of doing something new.

Mark: Yeah. And the acknowledgements, you thank your agent, one of the first things you do and you say, and I’m gonna quote here from the book, her enthusiasm and commitment have restored my faith in so many things, not least myself.

Amanda: Mm,

Mark: quote. you speak to that a little bit? ’cause it feels, it feels like there’s a, uh, you know, there might be a story there or some.

Amanda: That’s very insightful. Lucky Mark. Um, yeah, I had a really tough time actually. Um, both kind of personally and professionally. Publishing’s quite a tough game. Um, it’s quite hard to be around for a long time and, um, I’d taken a reasonably brave decision in stepping away from a potential deal for more psychological suspense.

Books to try and do this, which was very much supported. But a few things happened and I ended up having to change agents. And that happened at the point that the book was supposed to be going out on submission and it all just kind of crashed down. And then my wonderful new agent, she was representing somebody I knew.

I contacted her and explained my situation and she said, send it over. And within I think three days, she had read it, marked it up, returned it to me, and we didn’t even know that we were gonna definitely be working together at that point. Said, I adore this, here are my notes, shall we have a chat? I mean, it was just like, wow, how much did I need that after I had been pretty let down by someone?

So. She has just been unbelievable and as I say, restored my faith in publishing in people and myself because I was kind of at the point where it’s like, okay, this just isn’t gonna happen because it’s all just going wrong. And it also came at a point where my mother had passed away. Um, I finished the book the day before her funeral, so it was all wrapped up in that as well. So it was a really tough time.

Mark: Wow.

Amanda: um, yeah, that was, that was what was behind that, that comment, I think. Yeah.

Mark: Wow. That’s a great story. I’m glad, I’m glad it worked out and you found the right agent for you. That’s

Amanda: Oh,

Mark: that that, that you were able to do that.

Amanda: yeah. Yeah. She’s been fantastic. I mean, your agent is so important in. Somebody in your corner, somebody you can talk to, somebody you can be honest with. Um, it’s a very, very important relationship, um, to an author. So I’m super lucky that I have Joanna. She’s just wonderful. Yeah.

Mark: Do your books normally go, like in your writing process, do they go from, you finish the first draft to your agent? Is that how you typically do your book and your agent gets back to you with how they feel about it?

Amanda: Um, well this one had, had been developed with a different agent and had gone through multiple drafts, so I’ve sort of told you what happened there. So now Joanna and I are working on my next book and, um, again, just to kind of like speak to her incredible generosity. I said, I’ve got a hundred pages of my next book.

And she said, send them over. And again, she read them really quickly, came back, said. I love this. Keep going. Which is exactly what I wanted to hear. Um, I don’t normally work like that. I normally would never share. I just want, how, how about you? Do you share stuff when it’s still kind of form forming?

Mark: No draft. Not even the first draft, the second draft. I, I need to go through the whole thing again

Amanda: yeah,

Mark: set up anything that I did and yeah, definitely

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: yeah.

Amanda: Yeah. I think that’s a very sound approach. Um, the only reason I did it with the next one is it’s even more out there. And I just wanted to make sure that more kind of as a concept than anything else, that she was happy with it. But she was incredibly generous and she really liked it. So that was great ’cause it’s like, brilliant, I’m gonna keep going. And that was quite a few months ago because as you know, it takes ages, doesn’t it, to, to kind of, um, finish your first draft. And now I’m going through a second draft and I will not share, um, until that second draft is done. Um, but yeah, it was just nice to get that endorsement at that stage. Like yeah, just, I I love this. Write this. Keep going.

Mark: Mean a, yeah, see that there’s both The fear for me, there’s like both the fear of, of sending it and then someone like being like, ah, and then like the whole story dies for you, even though it could have been really good and that they read the one section that

Amanda: yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s really hard to judge. But, um, I suppose I just like trusted her to the to, to be honest, but also to be, to be very kind. She’s a really kind person, so I was able to do that with her. Um, and she also shared it with somebody else at the agency who also said how much they love it. So fingers crossed, you know what publishing’s like, there’s no, there’s no guarantees, but we’ll see. We all like it at the moment.

Mark: Great. Is that another speculative thriller that we can look forward to? Okay.

Amanda: oh it is. Yeah.

Mark: So as we wrap up a bit,

Amanda: Um,

Mark: someone who just published their first or second book?

Amanda: what advice would I give? Um, I would first of all say congratulate yourself because it is an incredible achievement, first and foremost. So I would say just give yourself a pat on the back and also look back down the road because it’s so easy. Um, I think when you are an author to always be thinking of the next thing.

I need to do this. I need to do another book. I need to get another deal. I need to, I need to get a best seller. I need to get the TVs. All of these things, you know, whatever you’ve had you want again, or you want more, you want better, or you wanna keep going and it’s it. Really important to look back. I’m not saying I’m good at this myself, but I would definitely give that advice to say, look how far you’ve come.

Look, what you’ve achieved is amazing what you’ve done. So many people want to write a book and don’t write the book in the first place.

A lot of people write a book and it doesn’t get published, or they don’t do the work to get those drafts into shape, or they don’t take the notes or whatever it is.

You’ve done all of that and it’s been published and people have read it. It’s just phenomenal. And then I would say, keep going because you know if it’s worth it to you personally and you enjoy the writing, because that’s the main thing that you need to do is enjoy the writing. That’s all we have control over.

Then keep going and and do more because you are validated. You are. You are a great writer. You’ve been published.

Mark: Yeah, I love that advice. Congratulate yourself. Do you find yourself doing that? Do you find yourself stopping? I have had a hard time, like you said, because it gets so busy. Like, I’ve done the book, okay, now it’s gotta go to the editor. Now it comes back to me. Now

it’s gotta go here. Now I gotta prepare marketing. And now

Amanda: mm

Yeah.

Mark: That I forget to look back and see it as an accomplishment. I love,

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: yourself. Do you find

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: Do you do that for yourself?

Amanda: No, but I’m really fortunate because I work as a coach at the novelty. I dunno if you’ve come across the novelty at all. Um, it’s a writing school, um, and I constantly get that from people that I coach who are like, you are amazing. You’ve been published, blah, blah. So I’m really fortunate that I get that feedback from people who look at what I’ve achieved and remind me of that, which is really lucky because I’m terrible at doing that.

I am so bad. I’m so dramatic. I’m so, like, I’m never gonna have another book published, and if I am, everyone will hate it, and all of those things. So I am terrible at taking my own advice on that.

Mark: Yeah. I guess, I guess that’s the, that’s the thing. Readers, hearing readers that love our books, and that’s a, a very powerful thing. Yeah.

Amanda: Very, yeah. So grateful to people who review and read and share, you know, bloggers and book reviewers who share on Instagram. I always thank them and I always, you know, if I find it, I will always share it because, um, it makes such a difference and it’s so appreciated.

Mark: Yeah,

I don’t know if readers know. I certainly do now, but I don’t know. When I was reading before that I knew how, I didn’t really understand how powerful that is, and I think some people who are friends that have become like readers of mine, it’s the same where they didn’t realize how powerful it was

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: And to say something nice. Just to be like, I love this book. That means the world. Even if

Amanda: Oh yeah.

Mark: second comment

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: it’s like it’s, I could, I could be set for the day with energy on something so

Amanda: Oh yeah, yeah, exactly that. Yeah. And I do read my reviews. I dunno about you. Good, bad, ugly. I read them all. Um, I had, I had, I had one reviewer who um, absolutely adored their pink hole punch and absolutely hated my book. So the pink hole punch got five stars and I got one.

Mark: Wow.

Amanda: So there we go.

Mark: I guess that’s another part of it is that. We know that not everyone’s gonna love our books for whatever reason, and not to take it personally, and which might be another piece of advice for writers that we

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: It personally because someone may just not connect with the characters that we write. And that’s just

Amanda: Yeah.

Mark: life experiences, were not anywhere near these characters or whatever it might be.

Amanda: absolutely. I mean, you know, you might have someone who recommends a book to you and for you, it just doesn’t work. And it doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with the book. It’s because you’ve come at it at the wrong moment, or it’s just kind of not what you need to, to be reading right now. It’s just not connecting with you for some reason.

It’s often, I think, more to do with us and the timing. You know, we might pick up a book years later and, oh gosh, why did I not read this? I love it now. Um, it is hard, I think, not to take it personally and it’s of course it’s much nicer to get the lovely reviews than the ones that, oh no, this is a bit more.

But, um, yeah, I think definitely, um, you know, you’ve published, um. Multiple times as well. I think, you know, it get, it gets, does get easier. I think you develop a bit of a, a muscle that kind of like shakes it off and you’re like, okay, move along. Somebody didn’t like Pride and Prejudice, somebody didn’t like Cloud Atlas, somebody didn’t like all of these amazing books.

That’s fine.

Mark: Yeah, question from Jon Lindstrom, who was the last guest on the show,

Amanda: Oh,

amazing.

Mark: Payback.

Amanda: Fantastic.

Mark: What made you want to spend all this time with this group of people and characters?

Amanda: Oh, that’s such a good question. Thank you. Well, they’re quite a disparate group of characters. Um, they’re, I hope that people like them, but they may not, they may not like them. Um, I love. One character in particular that I spent time with, which was Zoe, because Zoe is, she’s kind of the, the freebie on the destination travel to the alp.

She’s got a a, a place, a scholarship. So she’s gone along for free and she wears like fluffy jumpers with penguins on and cowboy boots. And she says exactly whatever is in her head, she has no filter. And I loved writing her because you know, in life you can’t be like that. You have to be nice, you have to be a good person.

And Zoe, she just doesn’t give a down. She just says whatever she wants to say. So I loved writing her. She was a really good fan and I kind of liked that. Um, my characters came from lots of different places. So there’s a New Yorker, um, and I actually adore New York, so I really liked writing him. And I sort of imagined him in New York what kind of person he would be.

Um, yeah, so it was good fun to spend time with them. Yeah.

Mark: Awesome. Where can listeners find your book?

Amanda: Um, so the audio is currently, I think, being done. Um, so they, um, they sent me the person who’s doing it and she’s amazing. And it will be, I believe, available at all good audio outlets. So that will be coming along, I think at the same time as the publication of the hardback and the paperback and the ebook,

Mark: And if people wanna hear more about you or find more about you, social media follow you, where can they find you?

Amanda: so they can find me on Instagram. Um, Amanda Reynolds. Amanda Reynolds. JI forget, I’m rubbish at social media, but I am there. I am on Instagram. I am also occasionally on X, although that’s not what it was. Um, and I am on Facebook, so if you look up Amanda Reynolds or you look up Amanda West, you should be able to find me on social media.

And what I am good at doing is interacting with people. So if you find me, I will always kind of respond ’cause I love that.

Mark: Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you so much. This is, that’s the end of our regular show, so thank you so much for,

Amanda: Thank you, mark.

Mark: here. And we’re gonna jump into the spoiler section. So for those who do not want the book spoiled, go out, get the book, read the book, and then come back and listen to the end.

’cause we are headed for spoilers. So you have been warned. So when you wrote the dual point of view structure, was the reveal always gonna be the destination or did it emerge through during the writing process?

Amanda: Um, that is a great question and I’m trying to cast my mind back to where it came because as I said, I am a discovery writer, so I know there wouldn’t have been a great plan in place because that is just not the way I do things. I’m a bit kind of like, I’ve got my, um, you know, my pad next to me and I’ll scribble a few things and that will be the extent of it.

And the rest of it is in the muddle of my brain, which is why I’m such a terrible insomnia. ’cause I’m trying to hold so much information in my head. I think that I. Knew that there was gonna be a twist. I love a twist, you know, I’m old school on that. There will always be some kind of a twist. There will be a twist in the middle, and there will always be another one at the end in my books, pretty much.

Um, and it sort of came to me partway through that. Um, and this is a massive spoilers, so read the book first.

It, it came to me that what if they are the same person? And I loved that idea. So I then started to bring that, um, together through the two points of view. And interestingly, although I had already written both women kind of as separate entities, I was okay with that because I knew that tash was a different person than Lydia was because Lydia had been so changed by the trauma that she went through. So what Wade did to her, what the mountain did to her, what the accident that she went through did to her, and the fact that she was robbed of all of her memories prior to going to the mountain, and even the reason why she went to the mountain and the trauma that she believes happened to her on the mountain, all of those things absolutely changed her into a different person and she would never be the same.

Even when we get to the point where we understand that Lydia is Tash and Tash is Lydia, and then the point of view changes to be Tash when the truth comes out and only Tash, there is still the element of Tash being the Lydia version now of Tash. So if that makes sense, it kind of grew organically from that.

Mark: Okay. So was the, was the ending always the plan ending?

Amanda: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It wasn’t a plan. No, I, I did know, first of all, no baby or dog or any other animal will ever be harmed in any of my books, so that is another big spoiler. But that is always true. You can read my books with impunity knowing that that will not ever happen. So I wanted to implant, kind of threatened worry, but ultimately things were gonna be okay things.

Well, they’re not all okay. There’s quite a lot. That’s not okay, but there’s, there’s a lot for, for Lydia um slash Tash that will come out okay. In the end when the truth comes out. Although obviously she’s devastated by the betrayal.

Mark: So I just wanna come back to Wade for a second because at the end of the book we realize he’s more of a mad scientist who did very bad, manipulative things to a lot of people.

Amanda: Yes.

Mark: It like, what was it like writing him, or how did you build him in order to, I would imagine you’re almost have like an icky feeling where you’re writing these scenes he’s almost like, you don’t hate him ’cause he hasn’t really done anything wrong until we know the truth. So like throughout the book, we’re almost. I mean, I don’t know if I’d say I liked him, but I was just like, okay, I get it.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Just a passionate person trying to do this thing.

Amanda: mm

Mark: to write, knowing that he was actually like a real bastard in the end?

Amanda: It’s a complete psycho that, uh, yeah. Um, no, I loved it. I loved it. I, I sort of had in my head, have you watched Maniac with Justin Thru?

Mark: No.

Amanda: Okay. It’s, it’s quite old now, but, um, maniac has got Jonah Hill and Emma Stone and Justin Thru. And Justin Thru is Wade to me. That’s who Wade is. Um, and he has the singularity of purpose that I think makes its own logic in his head.

So when he comes to the point of exposure at the end and he’s justifying himself, he totally believes still in everything that he’s done and why he’s done it. He still thinks that the end justifies the means, which it clearly does not. But for him, that’s fine. You know, the greater good, that’s how he sees it.

So I think when you unlock the logic that drives the character, the motivation for that, you can absolutely write ’em on point because then it’s like, well that just makes sense, total sense to him. He did that because ultimately, he thinks it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t have any compunction about it at all.

Mark: Yeah. That’s, I guess that’s kind of the scariest kind of villain that, that you can write one who just completely believes in what

Amanda: yeah,

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah,

Mark: believes in it, and it’s just like all Okay. No.

Amanda: yeah.

Mark: in that sense. Yeah.

Amanda: Absolutely. Yeah.

Mark: Do you have any thoughts, because you kind of wrote that vir virtual reality and you have, like you mentioned earlier, the push and pull. Do you have thoughts the push and pull of, of good versus bad in the virtual AI environment? Do you have any thoughts like virtual reality and, mental illness and,

Amanda: Um.

Mark: and because we see at the end how it was pretty much used bad with the potential for good. I’m just curious if you were touching on something there.

Amanda: A little bit. I think we’ve all, we all have, well, I don’t wanna speak for everybody, but I, and a lot of people I know have a certain amount of fear about what’s coming. I always thought that my, the big thing in my generation would be the internet. I always thought, well, we weren’t best. That, you know, that’s such a massive change in our lives.

You know, when I was my kid’s age, um, I didn’t have a mobile phone. And now everybody has a mobile phone. And I thought that’s gonna be the big thing in our lifetime, you know, that and maybe we won’t have to do ironing anymore. That was what I thought. And, um, that’s my predictions. And um, and of course then AI comes along and AI is a construct.

It’s not a real thing. It’s always been around. It’s just that it’s grown and we’ve started calling it ai, but computer, um, kind of sentient, um, learning is, is, has always been around for probably five, six decades now. It’s just that it’s so good now that it’s starting to impact everything. So I think I want to, um, just touch on that.

I don’t think as an author we should ever, um, answer the questions. We should just open up the debate. So I want to be able to think about.

Mark: Oh

Amanda: It’s nuanced. There’s, there’s, there’s good that’s gonna come out of this. We don’t have to be completely negative about it. And also there’s obviously potential as in any kind of development, um, for it to be used for evil as well.

So it’s, it’s all about, um, going into things with our eyes open and being careful, but at the same time embracing the things that it will massively help. And one of those health, which is what I talk about in the book, you know, the opportunities for, um, massive leaps in healthcare are gonna be there as well. So there’s, there’s both sides of that.

Mark: yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah. My last question, what’s one question you would like me to ask the next author Who comes on the show? And my next guest is Ava Roberts, who wrote The Summer House Murder. It’s about three sisters on vacation at their family’s lake home, which turns into a nightmare when a body’s discovered in the lake forcing their buried secrets in to the surface.

Amanda: Oh, that sounds really good. That sounds very up. Mystery. Okay, so I would like to ask Ava, does she have sisters and why did she decide to write a book about sisters? What was it that fascinated her about sisters? And I ask this as an only child because I often invent siblings because I don’t have any. So I’m fascinated by that too.

So, yeah.

Mark: question. I love it. I can’t wait to hear her answer. Thank you. So if you don’t have, if you have a few more minutes to stick around for the after show rapid fire questions, I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. This has been, this has been amazing.

Thank you

Amanda: Thank you. Thanks, mark.

Mark: Amanda Reynolds. Everyone writing under Amanda West, the Memory Foundation. Go out and read it if you haven’t already, which you should have if you’re at this point in the podcast. ’cause it’s been spoiled. Thank you for listening and watching. Have a wonderful day.

Amanda: Thank you.

Mark: Watching yourself almost descend perhaps into madness. ’cause it’s not me, right? It’s, it’s a story. But that part of me that knows what it’s like to, spiral outta control.

Todd: So was the writing of this therapeutic for you,

Mark: I think it is, I don’t, I don’t even realize until the end. I think every book I’ve written as I write them is my favorite because it’s like, it’s a part of me right now in my experience that I’m reflecting back on the page.

 Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, the director’s cut of the thriller book world. Today. I’m your guest, mark Naone because we have a podcast takeover to talk about my book releasing today, my psychological tech thriller, that treatment room. And joining me as my takeover host is Todd Sever, an author of his award-winning medical thriller, deadly Vision.

Todd, thanks so much for being here.

Todd: Oh, thanks for having me. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve, I’ve enjoyed reading the book and congrats on having it released

Mark: Thank you. And thank you for reading it and providing all that feedback that that meant a lot. It always helps make the book stronger, having all that feedback.

Todd: Oh. You bet. Anything I can do to help it. It didn’t need much from me, trust me. So let’s, uh, as, as the host of the show now, let’s move right into it, shall we? And give us the pitch for your new book, the Treatment Room.

Mark: Yeah, so the treatment room’s a psychological tech thriller, so think immersive virtual reality therapy gone terribly wrong. And it focuses on Lucas, who’s a psychologist, who’s with a patient when the police kick down his door and arrest him for, arrest his client for multiple murders. His client goes to the media and thanks him for, thanks Lucas, for guiding him on these, in these murders.

And overnight. Lucas is branded as a therapist who. Who guided a serial killer. So Lucas is freaking out. He’s suspended at work, he’s doesn’t know what to do, so he decides he’s gonna investigate himself to clear his name. So he looks at his case notes from earlier with his client, finds a link to a immersive virtual reality therapy clinic called Pinnacle Therapeutics.

And he goes there as a client, but finds himself very quickly addicted to the technology and the immersive therapy that he’s going through. And even though he’s a psychologist and he knows what’s happening to him, he’s practically powerless to stop. Because the more he digs, the closer he thinks he’s getting to the truth and the closer to the truth, the more he’s losing his.

His sense of self and his own autonomy. His sister Mara is an investigative journalist, so she’s one of the other main characters in the book. She’s also investigating a murder and she finds a link between that murder and also empirical Pinnacle Therapeutics. But instead of going in as a patient, she goes in as, uh, she ends up in a relationship with the CEO at the same time there’s a stalker in the background and she’s not sure if she’s in danger.

She’s not sure who she can trust, and she can see Lucas as the book goes on losing himself, and she feels like she has to be the one to solve it to, to help save her brother. So if you like the dark psychology characters of like a Karen Slaughter and the advanced, advanced technological manipulation of like a JP Delaney, you will love the treatment room.

Todd: I thought it was, uh, first of all, it’s, it’s a very good story. And the way you just described it sounds so complex, yet it doesn’t flow, as it’s a mixed bag. It’s a, it’s a very well told story. All of those seemingly disparate storylines I’ll do come together. Before we talk about that though, in the craft of how you created that, tell us what started this idea. I mean, a virtual reality, immersive psychotherapy gone wrong, where’d that come from?

Mark: Well, it’s actually started as the Genesis project, book two. So the, the Genesis project is one of the first. It is the first book I released. It has immersive virtual technology used to treat post-traumatic stress in soldiers. My original plan was to. Have a book two where we go from the military to commercial application and then that commercial application does its own terrible thing.

But I decided to stay away from the military background when I started working on the treatment room and pulled away from the Genesis project two, because it’s in a military background, it set in kind of a military environment. I didn’t want someone coming to the treatment room to feel like, oh, if I, if this is book two, then I have to read book one, which is military, and I don’t like military, so I’m not gonna bother.

I wanted people to come straight into into the treatment room. So I decided instead of Genesis project, book two, and there are hints, if you’ve read the Genesis project, there are hints in the book of how Pinnacle Therapeutics took that technology from the government, which is all the Genesis project, but officially it’s not connected.

So that’s where the idea it originally came from. I had already written that very concept with immersive virtual reality technology and then it from there, it was a question of what do I want it to do and how do I want it to to impact people and, and I find the question of autonomy and whether or not we actually, in the face of advancing technology, are still making our own decisions or still have our own opinions and how much of that we’re losing as it goes along. So I kind of touched on that in the story as well.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, it certainly does. It touches on, on quite a few ethical and philosophical questions relating to advanced technology. So thanks for your explanation on that. Relating it back to the Genesis project, which then brings up two very quick questions, and the first one is step back again now to the Genesis project. And how did you start thinking of this idea of immersive virtual reality as psychotherapy, and what was your fascination with it that is now spawned to novels?

Mark: Originally the Genesis project, I was reading a book by, I think it was jd JT Minick, JD Minick. He was a Canadian sniper, and during this book, it’s his biography, he was, it was called Canadian Sniper, I believe, and he was talking about how he, when he came back from war, he, he, how much he struggled with, with, PTSD and how it cost him his, you know, how his family and things and he was talking about how that all that trauma and how there was a lack of help and support for it. That’s what sparked the idea for like, what if we could help these soldiers? What if there was a way to do it? And then because I, I love the idea of advancing technology. I was just like, well, what if we could take their nightmares, the, the trauma that they went through and what if we could, through virtual reality, slowly shift what they thought that happened into something less traumatic so that they’re able to cope with it and then the nightmare stop. So they weren’t in the Genesis project, they’re not necess, they’re not removing the nightmare. They’re alleviating some of the worst symptoms by slowly manipulating the memory through the technology.

Todd: Oh, that’s very cool. I, I haven’t read the Genesis project, so, that’s very cool, uh, concept that you had there. And having read the treatment room, I will vouch for the fact that you do not have to have read the Genesis project to get into this book. And I find it interesting ’cause we, both, both of our novels, the treatment room as well as my novel Deadly Vision, we’re all focused upon virtual reality.

It seems to be kind of a endless avenue to explore different concepts. So even though the treatment room and Genesis project before that are based on this very high tech concept, the book isn’t really about the technology, is it?

Mark: No,

Todd: So how would you describe the book? What, how do you feel the, the through story of the book reads?

Mark: For me. Well, there’s a lot to it because the, this book and the characters were quite personal in many ways, but for me it was like the psychology of someone losing their own autonomy, someone slowly breaking down. So it has that, that mix. His sister also, which plays a key role. So the dynamic of of family in a situation where one member of the family is breaking down and the desperation to wanna, to wanna help.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, you really explore a lot of negative family dynamics. Starting with the father, going down through the children. What was your impetus to, to dig into those concepts?

Mark: Good question. I think it just came. It came as a result of sort of writing the characters themselves. When I started exploring the story, even though the prologue touches on well, the prologues a hint to what may be going on in the background, that’s not what I wrote First. I wrote the story, I learned who the characters were, and I knew I wanted a background of psychological, some psychological damage there in order to have the book work.

I guess the way that it worked out, I, I wanted the characters to have this troubled pass, but I also wanted them to have like a sense of hope that trauma from childhood doesn’t make us like, yes, statistically people who experience a lot of trauma in their childhood do end up being, you know, violent or things, but it’s not in every case.

In some cases, there is hope and this book plays with that balance of what is there hope or was there hope and was it lost because of the technology or not? And then his sister in that, even though they were both traumatized and they both went through all these things, they still love each other and are there for each other despite their both traumatic upbringings.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. In fact, it’s, it seems that because of the trauma or in spite of the trauma, it’s drawn these two very different characters into a world of understanding of each other, which really heightens the drama when, as you said, the main character Lucas starts to break down.

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. I thought that Amaras responses were very believable.

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: So then would you say that the through story of this is one of, um, by way of the technology characters learning the value of the family and of healing from trauma?

Mark: Yeah, for sure. And the question of, and the question of what happens when that is, is challenged, because it almost has a reverse, well, I don’t wanna give away spoilers, but it sort of has that reverse arc where they went from childhood where everything was horrible. And then they went, when we start the book, essentially things are fine and they’re adapted, normal people, and then things go in a reverse direction where they go back to the dark and it’s like how, you know, that’s, that was the different play.

It’s not bringing bad people to good or good to bad.

Todd: No. And that was, that was very well done by the way. So talk to us about the crafting of that. I mean, you, you tell the, you have these two main characters, Amara and Lucas, who really are the driving forces behind the story, and they each have their own separate story arcs that are intermingling and you tell the story through both points of view. That’s a lot to craft. How did you, how did you tackle that?

Mark: Mostly one chapter at a time. I use. I use Scrivener. I have a terrible memory ’cause I, I have so much going on. So I use Scrivener as my way of keeping track of things that are going on with the characters. For me, it’s like my filing system. It has, you know, every character, it has their strength, what they’re struggling with.

So when I develop a character and I have all these things through Scrivener, every chapter I write, I go back to that character sheet and I’ll read through who they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing, what their struggles are. And then I’ll write the chapter because I, otherwise I have a really hard time.

So how does Lucas not sound like a Mara? How is like his experiences and what he falls back on? Not the same as hers. It’s like, well, I have to go back and relearn my character with every chapter essentially, that I write. And then when I finished the book, I went through the book as Zamara and then I went through the book as Lucas to, to try and make sure that, okay, this voice is, is the same

Todd: so in crafting that, first of all, are, are you an outliner or are you a dancer?

Mark: I would say in between a planter, do they call it plant planning? And, uh, yeah. No, I would say I’m in between. So for this book, it’s different with every book. And it’s interesting ’cause the Genesis project went through many, many, many drafts. And that one, I, I was pantsed, I have no idea. Like I had the initial idea of virtual reality tech and I wanted the military.

And then I just went in and, and wrote what I, what I wanted to write with the treatment room. It was a mix of, I started with an outline. Well, I, you know, I had the Genesis project too. I had a vague idea of that. So I changed that outline to, to figure out what I wanted to do. For the most part, I had a good idea of the book and what it was gonna be, and a sort of 500 word synopsis, I guess you could say.

So it wasn’t very detailed. Then I created the, I had a mockup of the cover done. I just did it because I wanted to, I wanted to like have this visual of what, you know, this treatment room, it’s not the same as the cover is now. ’cause that was done for by an artist. But my, initially, I always, when I start a book, or at least I certainly do now, I’d create a mockup of the cover to try and bring the book to life and then I get it professionally done later.

So that,

Todd: cool. I like that idea.

Mark: So that’s how, that’s how I, start a book. And then I used to do a lot of outlining, like chapter by chapter and things. And then I found when I got to know the characters that everything just. Everything just changed. And this book was the same. If you, if you read the, the outline that, and I still have it ’cause I keep everything, the original outline for this book, you would be like, oh, that’s, that’s quite different than what it turned out to be.

And that’s because when I learn these characters and you get into these moments and these situations, the first half of the book is almost pretty, it’s pretty close to the outline. ’cause I’ve been thinking about the first half, but the second half, and especially the final third is completely done, almost completely done by, by feel.

It’s like, what, who are these people? And, and what could happen next and what’s gonna happen next?

Todd: You still have an an overriding story arc in mind though. You, you know where you need to get to. Do you have the conclusion already in mind at that point?

Mark: I didn’t, no. And then this one actually, I had to stop where I did because the original outline went quite a bit further, so I don’t wanna, we could always talk about that at the end of, at the end of the episode when we go to spoilers. ’cause I don’t want to give away the, the end of this one, but it actually went quite a bit further.

The outline. Uh, yeah, I guess I can’t really talk about more without spoiling it, but yeah, I, it was, it went further. So, no, I, I, I had to make this work ’cause I was already at like 105,000 words and I felt like, the biggest part of the story had been told. So if I, if I continue with my original outline, it was almost like I would have a whole other book, which I sort of could write a whole other book continuing what I just did.

So

Todd: you, we’ll, we’ll look for treatment room part two. That’s interesting. Uh, 105,000 words. It was that the finished word count.

Mark: it’s 98,000 now in the finished product?

Todd: Wow. I’m surprised it reads faster than that.

Mark: Thank you. That’s a compliment. Yeah.

Todd: Well, it does, it’s a huge compliment. Um, you know, a hundred thousand words, that’s a, you know, roughly 400 page book, and

it’s, that’s an undertaking, you know, and if it’s, if it’s not a riveting story with compelling characters, it’s, it can be a slog. But it doesn’t read like that. It reads much faster. It, it took me a little time to read it only ’cause I read before I go to bed. And that’s, that’s, so it’s, it’s indetermined how much I’ll be able to get through before the Kindle drops outta my hand, onto my lap.

Mark: And you get hit in the

Todd: But, no, it was, yeah, no, it reads much faster than that.

And it, it’s, it’s definitely, a page turner to the point that you always wanna know. What’s so that’s a, a testament to the craft that you did do.

Mark: Thank you. That was, that was intentional.

Todd: I hope so.

Mark: I.

Todd: I mean, that’s good

Mark: I tried to

Todd: that you’re supposed do.

Mark: I tried to keep every chapter to about 1500 words ’cause I knew I wanted that, even if it’s not action thriller and car chases and guns and explosions I still wanted, like you said, that feeling like you’re constantly moving forward. So short, slightly shorter chapters.

Trying to keep the 1500 didn’t always work that way, you know, I mean, how it is sometimes it’s a little shorter, sometimes longer, and, and ending each chapter with a little bit of a hook, which is, you know, the job I guess to, and a thriller to move, move you forward. So always looking for that hook. Oh, this is the perfect moment to try and string you along.

And then you’re in Lucas’s head and then you have to read Lucas in order to get back into Mario’s head. But now you wanna know what happened to Lucas and then you’re back and forth.

Todd: Right. And it, it’s really interesting when, both of their heads are kind of in the same place, but perhaps temporally they’re in the same place, but just staggered a little bit. So you’re really bopping back and forth a little, for example, some scenes when they’re both in Pinnacle and you’re, you’re getting two views at the same essential moments of time.

I found that was very effective the way you did that.

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: If there’s any new writers who are reading this or experienced writers who are, listening to this show, they’ll know that craft is a very difficult thing to master. To, to gather how you’re going to actually tell the story and you have an idea. So it sounds to me like your idea started with the technology. ’cause it’s an offshoot of technology that you already explored, reinventing it for a new commercial aspect rather than government, which is cool.

So then you had to create characters to tell the story, but at that point you didn’t have a through story yet. So crafting those characters actually became the narrative vehicle with which your own concept of how the story was going to be told came to fruition.

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: How did you craft those characters then? I mean, that’s a big deal. It’s not, you know, that’s a big deal. You can’t just under sweep that away that it’s like, oh, I have, you know, Lucas Amara and there are these people and, and blah blah, blah. It’s like. Craft is so important for a story to actually work. This could have gone off the rails in so many different ways,

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: know what I’m saying? So just talk to us a little bit about your character creation.

Mark: the often, you know, it’s interesting how we think about characters and how there are always parts of us within our characters. And one of the things that I do almost unconsciously, ’cause I don’t necessarily notice it until the book comes out, is that I take a piece of my, a known experience or something of mine, and I put that into the character so that I know that they, so they become even more real to me.

So like, as an example with Amara, like her lack of trust in, in that in people and in men and things. That like I know what that feels like to have a lack of trust in people because of things that have happened in my life. And so that, that brought her to life for me because from there it’s like, okay, and then I, once I picked her, her occupation as a, an investigative journalist, it was almost easy enough to, to bring her to life from there, just a piece at a time.

Because that was like, okay, that’s a big part of who she is as someone who’s trying to find trust and she’s not sure. And, and with Lucas, it was his, his rock climbing and his, I know what it’s like to have that psychological decline where you’re not, you know, things are getting so dark and so bad where you’re like, I don’t know if I can do this anymore or take this anymore.

Like that. Slow watching yourself almost descend in, in this case, perhaps into madness. ’cause it’s not me, right? It’s, it’s a story. But that part of me that knows what it’s like to, to slowly go. Spiral outta control. So really that with Lucas and that Amara, that’s where it started. It was like those two pieces of myself, and then I just kind of went from there.

Todd: So in any ways was the writing of this therapeutic for you,

Mark: I think it is, I don’t, I don’t even realize until the end. I think every book I’ve written as I write them is my favorite because it’s like, it’s a part of me right now in my experience that I’m, that I’m kind of reflecting back on the page. So I would say it is probably fairly, fairly therapeutic. Yeah.

To put

Todd: Yeah,

Mark: to put those characters out there and perhaps that’s what makes it, this book, for me, one of the most nerve wracking I’ve had to put out into the world because there is that reflection of myself in there. And even if people hate it, ’cause I know people will, it’s the nature of the business no one’s, there’s no one, no one gets a hundred percent love, but it’s almost that, there’s that but, but you know, the story is so personal to me.

Todd: Yeah. No, that’s, it’s, that’s a great point because anybody who writes has a, a full moment of being naked and just being completely exposed. Now, most of the time, just on the surface level, that’s based on the writing and the storytelling itself. It’s like, you know, you’re not a very good writer, you know, oh, this sucks.

You know, you or you, you know, you did it well, but there’s always the part of you that’s going to have the fear of taking something you’ve created and putting it out into the world and having no idea how it’s going to be received. That’s, I think that’s probably universal for all writers. But then on top of that, you have the emotional overlay that you’re really taking parts of you and opening them up. And even though it’s not you, it’s a character you still are exposing a part of you that you probably don’t tell people on a regular basis.

Mark: that’s right.

Todd: You know, this is almost your way of bringing to forth your ability to talk about something that you don’t tell the average guy walking down, Hey, by the way, did you, you know, I had this trauma when I was eight, you know, uh, and I know what that’s like.

I mean, deadly vision. I did, you know, there’s a, a lot of very painful moments, you know, in that book. And those all came from my childhood or my situation. And I know when you’re writing those, you have to find the way that you can express the reality of what it is that you are feeling and what you’ve experienced without dropping into melodrama or overreactions. For making it sappy and you just hope that it resonates with somebody you must have had a lot of feelings of exposure that way.

Mark: Yes. And I still do. It hasn’t, well releasing today, but even with, you know, with Beta readers and with, with my developmental editor, who was the first to, to read the book, yeah. It’s a very, it’s a very, uh, nerve wracking moment where you just hope that people, enough, people really enjoy, enjoy the story, you know how much work goes into it, right? It’s like months and months of, of thinking and writing and, and planning and it’s, it’s so much

Todd: Although having said that, don’t you find the best moments are when the writing’s happening without thinking.

Mark: the writing itself. Yes.

Todd: Did you get those moments where it’s like the story’s just going and you, you, it’s taking you places you never even imagined because it’s, it’s coming from someplace inside of you that’s being envisioned or, or embodied through these characters.

Mark: Yeah. I think that’s why the second half always does whatever it does, because I’m so into these characters in these moments. That’s why I never force an outline on the second half of a book, even if I have an idea because of that. Because the this, it just becomes so real and it’s like, I’m just telling, it almost feels like you’re just telling these characters stories, you know?

Like they’re just giving them to you through them, or through you, you’re passing on the story.

Todd: Right. Yeah. You know, I’ve never been somebody who’s believed in the, like the real, you know, touchy feely, oh, I’m an author and I, it, the muse speaks. It’s, I’ve just not been like that. And you hear authors talking about how the characters will reveal themselves or the characters will do things you didn’t expect them to do or I didn’t realize My main character’s actually the villain sort of thing.

It’s like, well, how did you not realize that you’re writing the damn book, but, but it happens. Can you speak to that? How, how do you think that process just evolves?

Mark: I don’t know. I, part of it is that, it’s like a movie playing as I’m writing the book, and sometimes I feel like I’m just watching the movie like everybody else, and I just happen to be putting it down into words. And it’s true. Although I don’t, I, it’s true that I think of it as like, when my characters are, there are twists or, well, not so much twists, but things that come up throughout the book that I didn’t see coming and those are things that I had to, to go back into the beginning and, and set them up because I was like, oh, that’s who, that’s who that was. So, because I go off, off the rails a little bit in the second half as I’m, as I’m feeling out the story, yeah, sometimes the, the, the a twist comes up and I’m like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t realize that’s how this was gonna go, but it feels like the right thing to do. I plan this, but now that I’m here, it feels like this is the right thing to do.

Todd: Well, for, for the listeners who haven’t read the book yet, just so they know, when you say going off the rails in the second half, that’s your writing The story never goes off the rails. The story always stay. So, but I get what what you’re saying. It’s like, it’s like what’s gonna happen and it’s a strange feeling when you don’t even know what’s gonna happen in your own book. Um, you know, dead Division did that to me. I had no idea how I was gonna end this. I had all these disparate storylines. It’s like, wh what, how do I, how do I get out of this? And, and so, um, it’s cool when that stuff all kind of just comes together for you.

Mark: Yeah. How do you find that comes together for you is it the same way where you’re here, where you’re kind of feeling characters out as they go? Is it playing like a movie for you in that sense?

Todd: Absolutely. I mean, and, and I think that I, I would say I’m pretty much like you are a plant, sir, if that’s a word. I think I outline a little bit more detailed than you do in the sense, but then I haven’t seen your outline. But I, I do try to bring my outline all the way through the end and with careful attention to what the critical points are gonna be and how I’m going to get there. But when you’re actually writing those scenes, um, I don’t restrict myself to anything I might’ve thought in advance. You, you go with it at the time. And that’s a, a question I like to ask you is, as you’re going with it, how have you learned to trust yourself, to trust your process with what you’re putting down on the page? Or do you trust it?

Mark: I trust that I can do whatever I want in the first draft. I, I hope that it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve rewritten entire second halfs of books before, not recently. ’cause I’m kind of gotten the hang of it, I guess you could say. I’ve written a lot of novels and only published some. But yeah, that’s what it is.

It’s just that first draft for me is I allow it to be whatever it’s gonna be. I just let the words go. Like I have that outline, but at the same time, like if it’s, if the writing’s terrible, it’s terrible, I’m gonna write 1500 to 2000 words every day. This is probably the quickest book I wrote. The treatment room as far as like, it just flows so well.

I think I wrote the first draft in three months and I never thought like, oh, I have to go back and do this right now, or I have to rewrite this, or This is junk. I need to start over. Or I need, like, it was just, no, the first draft is gonna be what it’s gonna be. And then in the second draft, that’s where sometimes most of the magic happens.

Todd: So you work with the developmental editor and you’ve, you had beta readers involved as well. So talk to us about that. There might be a, a new writer who wants to know what it’s like to work with a developmental editor.

Of course, you can only give your experience. But, um, how does this work? Do you start off by tossing ideas around? Do you turn in an outline? Do you start writing the draft and then work the editor on it? How, how do you do it? Mm-hmm.

Mark: For the developmental side editor side, I, I write the first draft myself. I write the second draft, or I fix it up in the second draft to make it as clean as I can. Then that’s the draft that goes to the developmental editor. She’ll go through it all and give me like a high level, like all that plot character, here’s what you need to do.

This doesn’t make sense, or this wasn’t working. And then in the manuscript itself, she also makes notes along the way about how, like, how certain things felt, things I may wanna change, ways I need to reword this. It’s all very high level stuff. So when you think of copy editing and line editing, which comes later, developmental editing’s, all, it’s all high level, it’s big picture.

One of the hardest parts of writing this book was probably the beta reader feedback because when you get beta read, I, I was lucky enough to have a lot of beta readers for this book and when you

Todd: What’s, what’s a lot? What’s a number?

Mark: I had 22 beta readers like offer to do it and I think I got 12 or fif 12 to 15, I’d have to actually count 12 to 15 responses on people who actually gave feedback.

But what happens is at my level, I don’t have a staff or anything, so I don’t have someone creating a spreadsheet and coming up with like averages and what everyone thought, which is what you hope to do, right? You, you bring together, the goal is to bring together, if five people thought this, then this is probably wrong.

If one person thought this, then who knows. Right? It’s just a reader preference. Yeah. But what happens when it’s all over the place and, and what someone, a scene someone loves is another scene that someone didn’t like and something that you love, like I loved about character. Another person thinks the pacing is too slow, even though for me it’s like, oh, but I love this person.

And it’s, it’s challenging and that’s the job of the author is to decide what am I willing to give up to tell the story I want to tell regardless of whether or not, you know, this is the story that X Person would prefer it to be. So that’s that, that process in itself can be quite challenging

Todd: and even with the developmental editor, right? I mean, you still had to learn to trust her, but also learn to trust you, and to be able to filter out those differences.

Mark: Yeah. A big part of that I think is while reading a lot because of this podcast, I read a lot of books, so I have learned a lot as I read. I think that helps a lot. So when, if I disagree with my developmental editor, which isn’t very often ’cause she, she doesn’t, she does a very good job and, and in the feedback that she gives.

So I don’t disagree very often on big picture stuff, but I know I read enough to have a good, especially now with every book that I write. The more that I read, the more that I kind of pick up on the things that I know I a, a way I want to tell this story. And then I’m just like, no, this is, this is what I wanted to do and I meant to do it and that’s just what I’m going to do.

And that’s part of the creative, it’s part of the creative joy of being the author and it’s part of the stress of being the author.

Todd: Yeah, it’s a great point though. ’cause you know, learning the craft is, is a process in and of itself.

I don’t think it can be under spoken, how much you can learn from reading authors whose work you admire and reading authors whose work you don’t and realizing what you don’t like about what they’ve done.

Again, personal preference. You know, I did work with a developmental editor on Deadly Vision and not to talk about my book, but you know, the history, it was a long gestational book. It took me, you know, 30 years from original conception to publication and at one point I’d gone to an editor who I don’t recall. I don’t ever remember having gone to whoever this person was. I don’t even know who it was. I could tell from the handwriting that I believe was a woman, but I don’t ever remember having worked with a female developmental editor on this story. And the comments I guess I had sent her an outline and, and the first few chapters and the comments were kind of as somebody who’s read Deadly Vision, it’s like this story should not escalate to murder. You do not need to get the politicians involved, they should stay in the hospital, and it’s everything against what I did. And so at that point I had to say, no,

Mark: yeah,

Todd: that’s not what I want to tell. That’s not the story. And so as an author, you had to believe in your story. Beta information, developmental information. The alpha readers now that are, are getting it all, you have to believe in your story. So What made it so compelling to you that you devoted a year of your life ish to getting that story out there and you never gave up on it. You never quit. You persevered. You suffered.

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: Why? What?

Mark: It was just the story I wanted to tell it that. It’s a good question, but it’s, it’s hard to put into words ’cause it was, it was just, I knew, I loved the idea of autonomy, especially like, I mean, I kind of already talked about with, with technology and questioning that, and I knew it was a, a topic I wanted to explore in, in the breakdown of a person.

And I just, I just knew that that was the right next story for me. So I, I went with it and, yeah, I don’t doubt myself during the process. I know some writers do talk about that, how they want to jump projects and things, but once I get started, I’m all in. I’m, I’m, I’m ready to go. I, at no point during writing this book did I think, oh, this is no good i’m gonna start another book with my next greatest idea. Even though I have ideas as we go along, as I went along, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen to me. I, I get locked into a story. I get locked into the characters and I’m just, and I just roll with it.

Todd: Well, you know, personally, I’m glad that you didn’t give up on it

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: ‘Cause I have a copy. Well, I, I only, by the way, I, only have a

Mark: yeah, I will send you a, a paper back. Yeah.

Todd: How much research did you do for this?

Mark: Oh, a lot. And there are rabbit holes. I’ll try to high level this. I, I mean from the, the simple thing of Boston. I’ve only been to Boston once, so in my mind I

Todd: You’ve only been to Boston once? ’cause it reads like you are, you know, standing on a street corner in Boston.

Mark: Oh, thank you. That was, that was research. I’ve been to Boston. Once I knew the seaside port, I knew kind of the high tech vibe, but that was, that’s all. Just that one time, that one memory from years back. So I went, I always pretty much Google mapped it. I went on Google Map, I went to Street View, and I walked around Boston via Google Maps.

A couple of beta readers have been to Boston, new Boston. Well, so they were able to like point the little things for me, which is nice when you have, when you have that.

So that was like the Boston side. And then there was of course the what is happening right now with VR tech, vr therapy because VR therapy is something that is being used, of course, not to the immersive extent that I get into, but I wanted to understand what they were doing, how they were applying it to, to real humans so that I could make it as realistic as possible.

There was research into what I, if we ever do get to immersive virtual reality, how do I think it would happen. Like what is the most likely way we are gonna get to immersive like that? Because right now we have walking treadmills and I considered using like walking treadmills and goggles and things, which is kind of at the peak of where we are right now, considered it but I wanted to go a step further into complete immersion, and then that was the, that was research into what would have to happen in the human mind in order for this to work. How do we get pictures into our brain? How do we get a human into a dream state in order to force, well force put pictures into the human brain as if, ’cause the idea behind Miek was that you would essentially lay down in a chair, you have this crown, which I, we call it a crown in the book and it basically, you basically with a cocktail of, of helpful drugs, you end up in a dream state and, and you’re fed these images through this machine. I say it a lot more technically in my research, in the book. I, I couldn’t tell you how I said it now, but you know that looking into like, what, what can we do right now? ‘Cause right now we can only do like, you know, I think spots is as is as far as we’ve gotten. They can force like dots into someone’s mind via, via this method. But we’re we’re very far from that level of immersive technology. So that was, that was on the research side. And of course there was also the psychological side.

Someone’s mental breakdown. Luke is being a psychologist himself. What is, what is, you know, what would his company, and there’s of course you have to understand it’s fictionalized. So not everything is realistic. Just like, just like in crime thrillers, everything the detective does is not realistic. We have to move the story a little bit. So, but the psychology of like what would happen in his clinic if he was in this situation, how would he think as a psychologist about his own situation? One of my beta readers is also a psychologist, which also. Has helped make the book a lot stronger as well ’cause she went through the book and said, no, this is what we would call it. Or this is what he would say, or this is what he would think. So that was helpful as well in the final product of bringing that psychology, his, his profession to life.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, having delved deep into virtual reality medical in my book I was with you, just, you know, where can we take this technology? Have you ever been inside of virtual reality other than just a video game?

Mark: Other than for a video game application. No.

Todd: Okay. Your, your sessions seem very real. I, you, you’ve mentioned the rock climbing. It was only a couple of sentences into the rock climbing experience and virtual reality where it’s just, this guy’s a rock climber. I mean, you know, you’re a rock climber. You, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got the details down, so I know you didn’t have to research that part.

Mark: No, not very now. No. That was pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. That all came naturally. Yeah.

Todd: So when the whole thing is said and done, and people have had a chance to read it, which again, congratulations on being published today, and we’ll talk a little bit about the publishing process in just a minute. With all things being said and done, what is it that you would hope your, your readers get out of this, out of their experience with this book?

Mark: I think number one is entertainment to just an escape from the normal everyday life. I think that’s why most of us write, that’s what got us into, like, when I first started reading books or when I got even more into books, I guess I should say it was the story, it was the escape. It was, it was that, you know, being there with those characters on an adventure that I loved.

So that’s like number one is what I want to pass on is just, you know, you, you went on this adventure, whatever’s going on in your real life, you had a break from it because you are immersed in this story. And then on the, on the slightly darker side, I guess I also would hope that people think about what they see visually and what they’re being fed and whether or not, you know, we’re losing that sense of autonomy like Lucas does, even though I go extreme in an immersive technology, which would be a lot more powerful in order to manipulate somebody I still think even with today’s technology, that there is the potential, if not outright manipulation of people, as you see with these big meta court cases and things going on, where people are addicted, they’re being manipulated via these algorithms. So I, I guess part of the book is that like part of the, you know, the story is when you put it down to think like, man, like this could go very wrong for anybody if they allow themselves to be, to just follow along without thinking, thinking clearly.

Todd: Sounds like it was just ripped out of today’s headlines with the lawsuit against meta, and you know how all the algorithms are intentionally, addictive and

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: trouble problematic.

Harmful, yeah.

Mark: yeah. When you, even when you look at, AI as we move forward and how it’s taking over and the new movie that just came out, I think it just came out a week ago, I can’t remember what it’s actually called now, because I was, I’ve, I’ve only just, doing my research for it. I knew it was coming out, but the sense of that, are we gonna, is AI gonna help solve all our problems, or is AI gonna destroy humanity as we know it? And

Todd: I have a pretty strong opinion on that one.

Mark: Yeah. Well, it’s, that’s it. Right? And that’s my next book. Who knows what’ll happen in my next book, with, as I advance this story of, of what, yeah, where is this technology gonna go?

Todd: For people who are writing, let’s just dig really quickly deep down into your writing process. When you’re working, how many hours a day do you, do you write?

Mark: Actually, right. Depends. Well, it would depend on how deep I am in the writing. So I spend probably two hours, probably two hours a day, every day for months until the first draft is finished.

Todd: Do you, do you have a goal per day what you wanna accomplish?

Mark: It’s usually time-based. So I, I force, yeah. So it’ll be like an hour and a half of writing. It really depends on what I have going on. ’cause I have, I have essentially a tracker and every day I have like, I need to do an hour and a half of writing, an hour of editing, an hour of marketing. And then of course I have my other businesses in the podcast.

So I have all these things. And I know if I don’t, if I don’t take time to do all these individual things that I’m gonna, you just, you just forget something and then it gets, you know, it gets delayed and delayed and delayed. So. An hour and a half is typically minimum, but then editing also goes into there so you could say two and a half hours, depending on where I am in the process.

Todd: What you just wrote or editing earlier stuff.

Mark: Could be either. Sometimes I, I’ll I’ll, write a short story or, and give it away to my Patreon members and so I might be writing and editing a quick, short story. I tried dictation for fun to see if I could dictate a story. And I did. I did. Well. Yeah. Well, you know what the funny thing is, so I dictated while I was walking dogs, but during the dictation as I’m reading this story that I wrote, I could tell when someone’s talking to me or when the dogs are doing something they shouldn’t, because you’ll, I’ll be reading the story that I’m talking and then all of a sudden there’s like this complete nonsense of like, what are you doing? Get back

Todd: Don’t poop there. Don’t poop. There

Mark: Yeah, yeah, So I have to like separate, wait, was I actually writing talking or was that like, was I socializing with someone because I don’t know what the hell any of this means.

Todd: is, is that the name of the story? Don’t poop there. It’s a.

Mark: No, no. It was a pretty dark, psychological, it was a Christmas one actually. Yeah. It was fun.

Todd: I can’t dictate creative writing. It’s the speaking process and the writing process for me come from two different parts of the brain and I need to actually see the words forming on the page as I’m writing it. ’cause that’s what kind of keeps me in touch with the flow. You know, that the drive to get the, the page to turn is, it’s, a lot of it is visually the way the page lays out for me. I, I just think if I try to tell a story, I, it, it taps into a different part of my brain. The adjectives that I would use the descriptors, the, it’d either be too flowery or not flowery enough. I just, I can’t do it. I need to, I need to write.

Mark: Yeah. I don’t think I did it very well. I think I rewrote that story several times and I haven’t really done it since because it’s, it’s a lot of work to try and figure out what I, I was talking

Todd: So when you finish your first draft or your second draft or, or what have you, do you do you put the story in the drawer, so to speak? And if you do for how long?

Mark: No, no. The drawer is, it goes into the next process. So I wrote the first draft. I don’t even think I took time. I knew what I wanted to do for the second draft and things I had to fix. ’cause I’m making notes along the way in Scrivener. So I go straight to the second draft. Then with a developmental editor, I get a couple of weeks of break or whatever because she’s working on it. Same with the beta readers. When they get it, I get a bit of a break.

Todd: And you don’t work on it while the development editor has it, you’re not changing little things here or there. You can actually put it away.

Mark: Yeah. Because I don’t know, because she, I’ve only worked so hard on it, especially with developmental editing, because she could throw a wrench in the entire system and say, this is terrible and here’s why. And then, ’cause it happened to me once, this is none of the books that I published, but one of the books that I wrote that will probably never be published, I sent it to a developmental editor, a different one, not the same one I have now and she came back with like, yeah, this story’s a mess. Essentially. And she, she listed like all the things that were wrong, and she was right the whole way. Like I can’t, I couldn’t argue, but yeah, so now I don’t, yeah, so now I don’t, I’m like, okay, my developmental editor needs to tell me, ’cause if I need to rewrite half this thing, I’m not gonna like try and make it perfectly polished and then pay to someone to edit it and then rewrite the whole thing because they thought it was drunk.

So I have that, even though she never tells me to do that anymore. There’s that fear because it happened once. There’s that fear deep inside that any developmental editor is just gonna come back to me at some point and say, this is awful. What were you thinking? Do try this instead. Right?

Todd: You know, but that, again, that’s a great point for, for writers to learn that balance between trusting your instincts and trusting the outside ear. You know, for for, for the writing, I, I, the hardest thing in the world is to put a story in the, in the, in the drawer. Because you’re in it, you’re on it. You want to get it done, you want to get it right, you gotta finish it. I know a lot of craft books will tell you, put it away for six weeks, which is beyond painfully impossible, I would think. Having said that, I put that division away for 15 years at one point. But it did gimme an interesting perspective when I finally pulled it back out. So I, I think it’s interesting how everybody’s crafting. I mean, the physicality of their crafting is, is so different.

Mark: My goal is to write two books a year. Not that I’ve ever, I’ve been able to pull it off very well, but my goal is to write to for two books a year, and when you look at my whole process from beginning to end, it’s about six months long, so there’s almost no room it can be done, but there’s almost no room for error, which creates.

Todd: for outside life?

Mark: Or Yeah. Well, yeah, we could get, we, we could get into that, but yeah. The, the second hardest part of writing this book was, was like burnout and complete exhaustion from trying to do so many things and running seven days a week.

Todd: Yeah. And, and, and balancing life. I mean, there are other commitments that you have to attend to or, or, or want to attend

Mark: yeah.

Todd: So the balance is always a tough thing, I think, for anybody who’s in the writing process.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah.

Todd: So today’s the publication. Yay. Confetti. Hey, I don’t have champagne. I got water here. Cheers. Tell us about publishing it. What, what obstacles did you run into? How was that process for you? It’s one thing to write it, it’s another thing to actually have the physical product in the world.

Mark: Oh yeah, it’s a good, I don’t know. It’s, it’s surreal, I guess. I am so busy for so long every day that I don’t even really get the time to stop and think about it. I don’t think I’ve really had a chance to stop and actually think about that, about the fact that it, it’s a, it’s, it’s alive now.

Todd: It

Mark: I’m so busy. You get so busy going from, from the readers to this draft to is this perfect as you, you know, you have to, ’cause I prepare the template like for the book to go into, so when you actually get the printed draft and everything, what it looks like, the afterwards and all that stuff, like, all that prep I do myself, the marketing, getting it on KDP and wherever, like all those decisions.

Yeah. It’s like, it ha it all happens right up until the very last moment. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually stopped to think about what I’ve accomplished. I’m not there yet. Maybe there’s be a good question for a couple weeks from now, maybe when I’ve actually had time to, to take a breath and think about the fact that I’ve accomplished putting another book out there.

But it seems to just be like, well, what’s next? This one’s out there. Now let’s go jump into writing, the next book.

Todd: And, and you’ve published several of your books on your own, so you, that process is kind of. Now you’ve gotten through the initial hurdles.

Mark: I think there’s so much to learn and the industry changes so fast that staying on top of it is still, i’m sure in public, in the traditional publishing, interesting world, that somebody’s full-time job when you’re doing it all on your own, as an independent author, it’s your job to stay on top of trends.

So in, in one sense yes, I’ve it’s not so hard for me to pick my keywords or I know how I go about picking keywords and categories, but at the same time, every time the industry makes a change, you have to kind of adapt to that. What’s popular, what’s the popular social media? Who’s saying what, what’s, what’s actually going on right now in the industry?

So I could promote my book in a way that people are actually interested, the most interested because of what’s trending. Right. And that changes all the time. So there’s still a lot to keep up with, you know, even when,

Todd: Marketing. Marketing is brutal. Yeah. Well we’ve been going for about an hour now, so we should probably wrap this up. So what advice would you give new writers?

Mark: I would say to be persistent, to be resilient, to know that your first book, if you’ve only written one book may not be the book that that makes you famous. 1% of authors write a book in, or, or less, probably statistically now, that write a book, put it out there and it becomes like a number one bestseller.

That’s, that’s a dream that’s winning the lottery. You probably have better odds of going out and playing the lottery and, and making millions off that than you do having a number one bestseller. The persistence and the resilience to know that if you can just keep writing books and, and keep marketing and keep trying different things and watch what happens with sales and watch how things progress in the face of a very difficult, a very difficult industry to be in because it’s a creative world that that you will eventually get there and, and you have to love the process as part of that resilience.

Todd: Yeah. I, I like that. Love the process. That’s in the end it’s, that’s what it’s gotta come down to. ’cause if you’re hating every step of this, it’s just misery.

Mark: Yeah, nobody finishes. Nobody writes multiple books who, who’s only trying to make money. You start off, you, you’re writing books for, just for the passion of it. That’s, you have to,

Todd: I agree with you. So should we get into a final wrap at this point? What, how would you like to, to go from here?

Mark: yeah, we can

Todd: I’m just.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Well, I can say where you can find my books. You can find the treatment room is on Amazon as far as the digital, and you can find it anywhere on paperback and hardcover. The best place to go is probably my website, ’cause you can find all my books and everything on my website.

Then we can if you have any questions, spoiler, full questions that you, a couple of those, if you want to ask, we can jump into those.

Todd: Okay, so these are real spoiler

Mark: Yeah. So a warning to the audience, now’s the time to hit pause. If you haven’t read the book, go buy it and read it. And it’s on sale today. If you’re listening today, it’s on sale for nine, 9 cents for a week before it goes back up. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it there as well.

Todd: Okay. So spoiler questions. I think one of the characters, which you did very well, which was always a nebulous character, forgive me, I don’t remember his name, but it’s the CEO of Pinnacle,

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: Talk to us about him and the, uh, the nebulous nature of his character.

Mark: I wanted people to think, oh, it’s gonna be the C. It’s always, it’s always the CEO, you know, he’s always the evil one. It’s gonna be him. And as Amara is questioning it herself as a reader, you’re also questioning that. So I wanted him to say things and do things where you’re never quite sure of his moral code.

And intentionally he, he’s a good guy doing some wrong things. He’s almost like an everyday, well you, maybe not in a CI don’t know that many rich CEOs. But what I would think of if he wasn’t a bad person was like, he’s kind of, he is, he is a wealthy person. He’s had success. He does morally, he does wrong things, but he’s still a good person and I think at, especially at the end of the book, a lot of people ask me, those who have read it, have asked me what, like how was, how did you intend for me to feel about Tristan? ’cause I’m not sure how I felt about him. Was I supposed to hate him because I didn’t hate him? Was I supposed to like him? ‘Cause I didn’t necessarily like him.

Todd: You, you, you didn’t know if you could trust your feeling about liking

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: And that was, that’s good writing, man. I mean, ’cause it’s too easy to make you hate a CEO. I mean, come on. They’re, they’re vilified ev every day for, for many wrong reasons actually. I mean, not that they’re not reasons to vilify them, but. Being successful in and of itself isn’t a reason to vilify somebody, not, not when you put it on the, the world scale of what perhaps they’re bringing to the world in terms of economic growth and jobs and et cetera, et cetera. Um, but in the end it is profit

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: And we all believe that any CE will do anything for profit to maintain their power. You did a really good job of the, the nebula nebulous ity of, Tristan. So I can see why people would say that because of course he comes across immediately as the slime bucket, you know? And then when you find that you’re kind of liking

Mark: Yeah,

Todd: you don’t trust whether you can trust yourself to actually like him. You don’t wanna invest that into somebody who’s just gonna turn around and betray

Mark: yeah. yeah. That’s,

Todd: So that was nice to.

Mark: yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Intentional the whole way and a lot of fun to, to create that nebulous nature of his whole character. And even in the end, I don’t, like, it almost comes down to the individual. Like, is what he allowed Lucas to do to go back into the machine when he knew there was something wrong?

Like, does that make him a bad person? Like some people may think yes, some people may think. All he was just trying to figure out what was wrong with his technology. Like both can be true. And you, I think he’s probably one of the most nebulous characters, I guess you could say of that I’ve written because you people are gonna you’re gonna have that. Did he do the right thing? Was is he a bad guy or is he not? It’s, it’s not clean cut with him.

Todd: Well, then there’s another character who still in his own worldview would be considered a nebulous character, and that would be Lucas’s father and Amari’s father and being the catalyst really for this entire story. So what were, what were your thoughts there? He’s

Mark: he would, I knew. Well, because this was a Genesis project too, originally. Patrick, if you’ve read the Genesis project, for those who have, oh, this might be

Todd: in Genesis project,

Mark: No, but it was, or his char like Blake, who is in the Genesis project was going to be, so he’s like the, the, the protagonist of the Genesis project. His name is Blake.

This book was gonna be, because it was originally gonna be Genesis project two. Blake was actually going to be Patrick, but I mean, the plot was different, but the idea of him having dementia and being in and out of who he is as a person was part of that intention. ’cause I wanted, yeah, he’s like you said, like I wanted, Patrick is a far more villainy than to me, than nebulous because of how he treated his kids.

Yes. You have the research angle, which was what his belief, and you have him coming in and out of dementia at the same time feeling bad for what he did. And we know in the end that he wanted to fix things and then he’s essentially the machine is what, you know, Vera is the reason why he can’t, he doesn’t end up, he doesn’t end up, he ends up with dementia in the first place with, with how bad it gets.

So yeah, he was always kind of a, of a villain to me. But at the same time, I, I think all villains need to have redeeming characteristics. Like villains are, even villains are the heroes of their own story, right? So even through in his, in and out of his dementia, I had to have, I wanted him to almost be the hero of his story, which he was. In his mind, he was the hero of his story almost the entire way through, right?

Todd: Yeah. And that comes through very clearly and it just brings up the whole ethical, you know, question of do ends justify the means? What is the morality of research which goes back, you know, hundreds if not thousands of years? What is, what is the morality of

Mark: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, that’s well

Mark: Thank you.

Todd: At this point, where do we go from here?

Mark: Yeah. Well, we can wrap up the main show and, uh, if you have a few more minutes, we’ll stick around for the after show for the Patreon members and for everyone who’s listening. Thank you. Thank you for being here, Todd. I really appreciate you, appreciate you

being the host. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was nice to, it was fun to get interviewed for a change and,

Todd: Am I, am I the first host ever on your

Mark: yes. Yeah,

Todd: Oh,

nice, nice. Do I get a badge? Like a

little

Mark: asked you about sending you a badge. Yeah.

Todd: Okay, good.

Mark: Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being the host. I really appreciate it. And to everyone listening, have a great day.

Todd: And congrats on completing a, a very, very remarkable achievement.

Mark: you.​