Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to a time to thrill with me, your host, Amie Austin. It is February, February somewhere. Teachers tying and this month I have the great pleasure of interviewing New York Times bestselling author Tony Anderson. I, I swear to God, I met Tony I don't know how many years ago I, last hour at a beach retreat. I'm sure you're thinking these beach retreats have like hundreds of people and they don't. And I haven't even interviewed half the people who go, I guess we're an ever revolving cast because, well, because we probably are. So maybe there's like a total of 50 of us that have gone on these retreats together. It's hard to say. But last year was only 15 of us in January at the beach. Anyway, so this is Tony Anderson. She writes romantic suspense, or I think what she calls romantic thrillers. And it's super interesting because I think she's the only author I know.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Who'S.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: In the romance community because the beach retreats, all of us started in romance who did not start with straight romance. But I guess we'll learn more in this interview because honestly, I don't know then how she got into the group of all of us. If she indeed didn't write straight romance without any other elements in the beginning, we will find out. Oh my God. I have so many questions for her. Tony is English. Tony lives in Canada. Tony moved across Canada. And I have so many questions. You may remember I interviewed Nancy Warren, who is, her parents were English. They moved to Canada. She's now living in England. And there seems to be a lot of back and forth in these Commonwealth nations. And it was true for Australia. Us Americans, we don't get out as much.
So without further ado, New York Times bestselling author, Tony Anderson. Okay, wait, before we get to Tony, I forgot the most important thing. In exactly one week, the murders began is coming out. I'm so excited for you to read this nicole long book.
She finally really evolves a lot in this book and has to look at her own issues as well as the system that she's part of.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: It's great.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: It has murder, it has mayhem, it has all sorts of things. And it's out in one week. If you haven't preordered it, go get it now. So it pops up on your kindle at midnight in whatever time zone it pops up in. I can't wait for you to read it. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Many of you email me. I'm sure all of you will email me. It's time. Go get it. And now, without further ado, New York Times bestselling author, Toni Anderson.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Hi, and welcome to a time to thrill. It's me, your host, Amy Austin. This month, I'm so excited because I'm interviewing New York Times in USA Today bestselling author Toni Anderson. Hi.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: Hi.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: I'm so excited. Thank you so much for doing this. I've wanted to ask you for a while, but then you were moving and then life got away from me. And then I woke up one day and I thought, Tony.
[00:03:40] Speaker C: I know. Yeah, well, life is really busy.
I'm thrilled to here.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Okay.
I'm like a rabbit. So I have about a million questions I want to ask. But let me start with how. Okay. Have you ever written, I don't mean straight, like heterosexual, just plain romance? Because you're the only author I know in the romance community that I can think of who does not have like a treasure trove that we know of. We're about to find out of like 50 harlequins you wrote before you switched to thrillers or crime or suspense or however you want to call it?
[00:04:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I did try to write for a harlequin, but obviously the fact that I can't write straight romance means that it's probably why they would always say, no, thank you, but no again. But yeah, I tried to write harlequins. I tried to write presents.
Everybody ends up with a dead body. There's always a dead body turning up. And I'm like, oh, this isn't going to work.
So the answer is, I don't have any straight romance. And I did try to write, okay, I'm going to do this. Nobody's going to die. I'm just like, okay, I have no idea what happens now because romance, I feel romance is a lot harder than people think it is to write because you do have to concentrate on inner journeys. And for me, I would get to chapter three and I'd be like, okay, we're good. Everybody's happy.
Because really, what's the problem? You two are meant to be together. So let's just get this over with.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: I laugh because this is true. I will say this. So I've written at this point now in my career, it's about half.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Half.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: But the romances were all in the beginning. So it's like 50% romance and 50% legal thrillers. But I do love romance. So when you were growing up, did you read a lot of, let's just say, straight romance, romance without other elements.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: I did because growing up it was kind of weird. So I kind of come from a very poor working class background and books were difficult to access. So any book that I have I would have read a thousand times. But then I discovered probably in my early teens, probably way before I should have done my granny's mills and Boone collection. And I just went through that thing like just glommed the whole lot in as short a space of time as possible. And then I discovered that the local library. So I would go to the library and I would get out all them, basically twelve books at the time and they would think it was for my grandmother and I would just read the lot.
I definitely grew up but adopted romance early. And I did totally fall in love. I love romance novels.
And then when I moved to, and the UK is a different market too, so it's hard to find anything, at least in the. Hard to find anything that wasn't either. Very straight romance as in Milton, Boone. And again, that straight romance is also a title you like. I don't want to use that word now, but just pure romance. That's where it's run too, right?
[00:07:22] Speaker B: I can't think of when I was asking you, I can't think of a way to describe it but I just mean romance with no other elements. No good word for it.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: During the 90s, me and my husband moved to, he wasn't my husband then to Canada for the first time and discovered basically romantic suspense in the Waterloo public library. So from Karen Robards and Suzanne Brockman and Nora Roberts and a lot of the big names in the were filling that space and just my whole world was just completely changed. I was like, oh my God, that's the best ever. And before that I was kind of a fantasy reader because UK, it's very acceptable to read fantasy apparently in the UK at that point, but not so much romance.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Oh, that's so interesting. So my first romance was my grandmother's house. Just I don't know if I was poking around.
She read a lot of different things but I was poking around and I discovered romance and I was know, I don't know what got me about that versus all of the other things she had, but I remember it took my breath away. And then I read many. It was not good. I mean it was like punishing kisses. And he know he loves her because he never said so. It was not great.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: Not the hero treats the heroine really badly and you're supposed to fall in love with them. I don't know what it is about. And I do like the fact that nowadays we are much more able to separate the fact that this is a fantasy and it's not how you want to be treated in real life.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Right.
But there was something I'm still looking for to figure out what that is so many years later, because it was the 70s, what was so compelling about those books? And they were like the Harlequin Romans. They couldn't have been more than 40,000 words. And the women were always, like, secretaries or something. And the guy came in and was very mean to her, and then she fell in love with him, and then they were in love. I've read them as an adult, and I don't quite get it, what it was so compelling about it. But as a child, I found them compelling. And then I read many of them because the library had them. But also you could go to what we called them, tag sales back then, but garage sales, yard sales, and people would sell them in bags for $0.05 each. And that fit within my allowance.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: So I read, I remember the title.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: I think, of the first one I read was, I think, sonora Sunrise or something. I mean, I still remember the like, and it was a cowboy. And they go out into the desert, and he basically, he's again, mean to her the whole time. And then at some point she realizes that she loves him. But it's like, literally, I don't quite know. I think he's mean, but he's hiding his real feelings. But really, it's like, what's the point? That's chapter three. What's the point? Get over this.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: No, the first one I read was the taming of Tamsin, and they were british because the name, I had never heard it before then. And she worked for him. I don't know if his wife died, his secretary died, somebody died. Somebody's like, you should work for him. And he sat up in his room working and threw papers under the door, and she slid food the other way and they fell in love.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: How does that happen?
[00:10:46] Speaker B: I don't know, but I keep it on my shelf just to remind me. Just as a reminder, I would love.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: To get a copy of my first one. I'm going to have to look for it.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Well, that's the first thing I did. You remember when Amazon was new and it was all used books? That's the first book I bought on Amazon. I was like, got it because I never forgot the title. So her name was Mary Wibberley was the author. It was the first book I bought on Amazon. I was like, oh, my God. I can have this at my. Like, it was amazing to a great. Not a. Not a great representation of healthy male female relationships.
Okay, so I have so many questions.
How can I say this? You commonwealth people seem to move about quite often in a way that Americans do not. We're not like in Canada, in know, in the UK, but many of you seem to move about much more fluidly than we do. So what made you move?
That's a lot of people move the other way now. Most people I know, I mean, I know a lot of people I know their parents came from the UK and they moved to Canada, but that was the wild west. Know, we need to know. That's not the issue now. So what made you move?
[00:12:14] Speaker C: It's been jobs. It's always been kind of related to work. My trained as a scientist. So the first time, first of all, I think as a kid, I always had wonderlust. And I think reading fed into that you're traveling to other places even though you weren't going anywhere. So I had dramatic wonderlust that was only I didn't really leave the country until I was, I think, 20 when it's the first time I even went to France. And everybody else I knew had gone already been to France. That was a piece of cake.
But I hadn't. So I was always filled with wonderless and I always wanted to see the world. But then when I started my science career, when my second postdoc was in Ontario, and so I went and my husband, who was then my boyfriend, came with me, and that's how we kind of started. And then he was doing the same sort of job as me. And then his next job was we went back to Scotland. But his postdoc was set between Scotland. And it was amazing. And it was kind of how I started writing, too, but started, but how I kind of pursued it. But there was no way I was going to let him go to Australia and leave me behind with two little kids. So I was like, hard to get a job saying a science position, a research position, saying, well, I'll be off for six months of the year because I'll be visiting Queensland.
And it was his job. Gary got offered a job in Manitoba, and that was almost 20 years ago now. So this is the longest we've been anywhere in terms of living. Abia.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Okay. I have so many questions. How was Australia? So I was going to go, well, then Covid, and then I was going to go last year, and I just didn't have the energy believe it or not for that long of a flight.
The longest flight I've done so far is to China. And I know it's not much longer, but I was just like, oh, it's like the one or 2 hours more. I was like, I don't know, it's hard. I haven't done it. No good reason, but I want to go desperately.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Yeah, you know what? The flight is the worst aspect for me, but I've only ever done it with little kids and it's literally a nightmare. I did it pregnant with a two year old and I've done it pregnant with an 18 month old and then with a ten month old and two and a half year old and whatever the difference is between them. Three, I guess you'd be three then. And it was just the worst thing ever, traveling with these kids. And other people always say to me, and I think I just made me moan a lot because they're all saying, oh, it was fine, it was easy. And I'm just know I had. All of a sudden it was broke down doing this, just one journey. But Australia itself is amazing and it's somewhere I always wanted to visit. And we were based in Queensland and we have very dear friends of ours who live there too. So it's kind of the best of both worlds because you have built in friends living there, so you kind of have that in. In a way. But also it's just.
I don't know, coming from the UK and. Okay, I've been to Canada and again, yeah, his Commonwealth is so Australia. There was lots of familiar things about it. In fact, I think it's more english sometimes than.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Ways, but I think Canada is really heavily influenced by that country below.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. But it was lovely. But I did discover one thing that made me realize that I probably could never live in Australia. That was the bugs. And I have never seen spiders that size and just bugs in general.
It was just pretty much horrifying to me.
My husband's scared of snakes and I'm scared of spiders, but I really don't mind the snakes, even though they're probably much more dangerous. But yeah, that was an adjustment for me.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: I can imagine. I've heard, I've heard.
But most of my friends now live in large cities, so like Perth or Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide, as I now know, and then New Zealand as well. But these are things. It's on the bucket list. It keeps getting pushed down, but I'm getting there. So then how did you decide to write? Because one of the things I think that's most interesting about writers. Let me say this. Most people I meet in life are like, I'd love to write a book, or the great american novel, as it were for Americans. And then I'm always like, okay, I had those fantasies, too, as a child. But then the number of people who get from that to, I'm going to sit down and write a book is way smaller than I would have thought. And I just want to know what made you make that leap or what gave you the self belief that I can sit down and do it.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
It's funny, because when I grew up, even though I was reading a lot, I never imagined that I could be a writer or an author. It just didn't cross my mind. And then I remember I used to keep all these diaries and journals to myself when I was a young teen. And then my sister read them and she told everybody everything in them. And I stopped writing anything for like a decade because I was so traumatized.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: By the whole experience.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: I mean, she'd be horrified by that. I don't know if she remembers that or not, but for me it was just like, oh, my God, I was such a private person. She told everybody who crushes and everything else. I was like, okay, that's great. I'm never going to do that again.
And then I think when I got to Canada and because I discovered these books, but then I'd read them all, I suddenly thought, well, I could just start writing and just write my own entertainment. And I think, so it started off very much as, I'll write for myself.
And then it moved into, no, I can actually write a book. And whether I published it or not, I don't know if I ever thought I was going to publish this thing when I started writing it, but I did just know that I think I was figuring out as I went along because I had a phd and I knew how to write science stuff and I read a million books, so I figured I should be able to figure this out. I think that's one I like, figuring things out, which may be why I write thrillers and mysteries and I don't know if I ever had the self belief. I'm not sure I have a huge amount of self belief, except I do know that I can do it. So I don't know if you're the type of person who can actually have a lot of self confidence, but at the same time be plagued with doubt. That's who I am.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: No, I will say looking. I was doing some graphics this morning and I was like, oh, let me go into author Central and look at the latest reviews and only the good ones. You know what I mean? Like, I have a mind. And so I was looking in there for the reviews, and so I got a few, and I did one graphic, and then I did something else because I got bored. But all I could think of is, okay. When I look at the reviews, I'm always convinced somebody's going to be like, why does this woman think she can write a book? This is not a book. This is, like, collection of letters and sentences, and she somehow thinks she's put together a book.
I looked this morning, I looked at five of them.
It was a recent book, bub. So there's going to be a lot more reviews. And so it was like, okay, so there's some five star reviews and one four star, and then they're like, but what is a four star?
[00:20:15] Speaker C: You know what I mean?
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Then I got down the rabbit hole and I was like, okay, nobody said she can't write a book, so maybe it's okay.
But then I thought, but then I closed it and then went to work on the book I'm working on, because it's the beginning of a book. When it's new and shiny and I'm having the time of my life, it'll stop very quickly. But the first 20,000 words are the biggest delight of my life. And I'm, like, only 11,000 words in. So I'm like, oh, my God. I have, like, another couple of weeks of delight, and then it will not be delightful. But then I was like, but I start every book going, well, at least I can write a book. So it's like I have the sort of belief I can write a book, but also the belief that I can't write books. It's very confusing in my mind to try to have confidence to say that you can do it. And I've done it a lot of times, but also, somebody's going to find me out and be like, oh, my God, you dear girl, I'm so sorry that you thought you could write.
You should really find something else to do with your day.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Yeah. And when you read reviews, there's always somebody going to be criticizing something. I actually was looking at something today. I accidentally saw a review and it was five star, but then I read it, and it's always talking about, my editors need to do this, this and that. And I'm thinking, well, I've got three editors, and if none of these editors, who are all professionals, can pick up these things that you hate, then maybe it's either style or maybe, I don't know. I'm really wrong about this stuff that you think you're convinced you're right about.
I appreciate people's opinion, but at the same time, sometimes I'm just like, I don't know if I should value your opinion more than I value myself. And three editors.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: I have that also because I have a book out to the editor right now. She's doing it today, so I know I'm going to get it this evening.
I've had all of these thoughts today.
The other thing that I struggle with reviews is that sometimes they poke at the thing that I know I'm the worst at.
The thing I'm best at, I know, is dialogue. And the thing I'm worst at is, like, endings.
And then people will sometimes email me and there's a character who I'm writing about now whose story was, I thought, sufficiently finished for the book that it was, and now I'm going to really get to her four books later, whatever, but people email me and they go, well, what about Lulu? And I'm like, oh, my God, we're getting there. But somebody else died. We had a whole investigation. She was just mirroring what was going on. But we will get there. But I can'tie. Up every character in like a 14 book series in every book. Like, you're not going to get all the loose ends, but it's the endings. I know I'm not the best at endings, and I know that's the one thing people are like, it was so great. And then she got to the end and I'm like, yeah, I know.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: I'm always told that.
I know. I rush my endings to a degree.
The endings that actually appear in the books are probably about 6000 words longer than my original ending because I've already added everything. Well, I'll normally add a scene at the end that I don't write until the book is kind of more or less done. And I know what I want to say at the end and where it's going. And I also. Then I'll have my editor tell me, I really think you need a little bit more closure on this aspect.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I've learned to appreciate the epilogue is all I'm going to say.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yes.
But I think because I'm writing more books and because my books happen, they're very condensed. So I've got 19 books that are written in this series and it starts in November 1 year, and then we have an entire. So then we have to next Christmas for 13 months. And now I'm only in February, so it's like 14 months long for all these books. So the timeline is very condensed. And I cannot then give everybody the weddings that they want, or the.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: People.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Have met, they've been in love for a week, and they know they're already. They're committed. I know they're committed. Everybody knows they're committed. They've had a week of trauma to fall in love. And then I can't tie everything up in a neat epilogue all the time. I mean, I try my best.
I feel like I do an okay job. But the next book is probably going to start tomorrow, so it's tricky. It's a difficult balance.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: I do the same, and sometimes I wonder if people need a break. It's like she just left this sex trafficking ring and now there's a murder. And I'm thinking maybe she needs a pause to collect herself, because I look at what the timeline is already. It's well fixed. I mean, I have a whole. I use it on timeline, but I have the timelines well fixed. I use that, too, very much in stone, so nobody's getting a pause. But I do think about it sometimes because she just goes from thing to thing to thing, and I do feel bad for her. So I guess the question I have is, now that you're right, you've written a body of work, how can I say this? Are you still writing for yourself, or do you think you shifted to writing more for readers?
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Both. I still think it's both.
But I am aware of reader expectations, obviously.
But I think I write for myself because I like, and I probably am my own worst enemy, that I like kind of complicated plots, and then I like to surprise myself with, and this is my ego talking. But how clever? And some people might think they're not clever at all, but for me, I'm like, oh, wow, cleverly, I sewed that little thing up. And sometimes I do think it's clever, and other times when I haven't quite nailed it. And I think that because I have a book with my editor right now, and I know there's things that I need to tie up within it, so I'll never think that I've completely nailed it.
So I am writing with readers in mind, knowing, like, I'm not going to kill puppies.
Not that I actually want to kill puppies, but you know what I mean. There are certain things I would never do because I know readers really hate it. I have killed cats and snow leopards. And things.
But that was part of the plot. It was the plot.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: That's fascinating. There was actually a book two years ago, I started to read, and I knew he was going to kill a dog, and I quit the book. And I thought everybody said it was great, and I'm sure you said it was great. I said, but I don't think I can do this. And I think I had to just. I had to. Nope. Right out of that one. I don't have the tolerance that I actually. I don't have the tolerance of killing of pet. That's actually my thing.
You can kill all the people in the world, but two pets, I'm like, I'm out. And I don't know what that is, but I get it, because as a reader, I'm like, oh, I loved you, but I'm out.
Yeah.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: I don't know what it is either, but I don't know why. We can torture human, like, fictional human characters, but torturing pets is just that step, too.
But it is something that I would shy away from unless I was writing a horror.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: Which I don't.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: I can barely read horror. It gives me nightmares. So I just don't do it because I learned early on, like, when I was 13, and I was like, I can read Stephen King and all the. During the. When that era was really big, and I was like, or I can't. It turns out that's not a thing. It's not that the writing is not good and the story is not good. It's just that I would like to sleep undisturbed.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: Yes, I agree.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Okay, so if you never wrote romance only, is there a reason that you include romantic elements? Because there are other people. So let me say this, okay? I'll speak for myself. I written romance and I written crime fiction. Never the twain shall meet. Like, there's literally no crimes in the romance, and there's very little romance. Well, I don't know. No, she's on her fifth guy. That's not a romance.
She cannot complete a successful relationship, so there's no romance in the crime. She's a serial monogamist with poor choices.
I'm actually reading it now. I'm like, such poor choices. So many poor choices.
But it's neither here nor there. At the time, I didn't realize she was going to have a series of poor choices. I thought it was just one at a time. But is it your love of romance that makes you include the romantic elements or what made you blend the two? I mean, you're not the only author, obviously, who writes that way, but most of the authors I know who did that added the crime later.
[00:29:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's what I'm most drawn to.
Well, definitely as a writer it was, as a reader, less. So now I probably read less romantic suspense than I used to when I was beginning my writing journey.
And I know a lot of people know migrate from romance romantic suspense into straight thrillers, and I know I could do that and I might be doing something like that, except for I'd still have these characters and they'd still be having their, you know, I think it'd be more along JD Robb type of.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: So I was thinking.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: I really, I love the romance relationship, or maybe just the relationship arcs. And I think that if I'm just writing a straight crime thriller, I'm not sure I would get as much out of it.
Some people would think they're probably better books because I know that's how some people think. But I really love having the romantic angle in there, too.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I'll ask you this, because you were just talking about it in terms of the timeline, then do you worry about. I think about this, and when I read romantic events, I don't write it. I don't have that capacity. But do you think about the level of satisfaction in the love story, given either the time or the fact that they were also diffusing a bomb?
I was reading something the other day and I was like, I wonder if this is just trauma bonding? And I was like, so how does this play out when they're not chasing a bad guy, diffusing a bomb, jumping out of a house.
[00:30:57] Speaker C: The movie speed where they put us at those relationships start under pressure, are never going to work or whatever. I love that at the end. But I guess because it's fictional, I don't really worry about it too much.
My characters are going to be fine. They're just going to be fine.
There's a few things that I don't like as a reader. I don't like when authors go off and even in the future, a few books or a few years later kill off a character, because that, for me, ruins that whole happy ending. And I kind of resent that. Even though authors can do what they like, obviously I am not going to tell an author how to write a book. It's their choice. But for me, it does kill that satisfaction that you get from reading a book. And now I've forgotten the question. Sorry, Amy, I'm completely.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: No, it was about the satisfaction of the romance and you were saying fictionally, since they're not real, you don't have to spend any time thinking, well, if they're living together and, I don't know, picking out four tiles or at the store debating what kind of cheese to.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Get, then cooking dinner.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Right, exactly. All the mundane things that one has to deal with in a relationship that is not necessarily romantic.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
I think I tend to skip over that.
I noticed that a few of my books, I like to make people really rich, and I think there's part of that is because that helps with the fantasy of keeping people happy because then you don't have to cook the dinner or clean the house or stuff like that, which really is part of life that we do have to do such a big part.
I think, again, that feeds into fantasy and you do get some people, not all of my books by a long shot, but I'll start writing a book. And suddenly I realize that the character is the son of the governor of Vermont or something. And that happened and then therefore the nephew of the president. And it all works with the book. But it was not part of my plotting process until it started to happen. And I'm like thinking, oh, well, that was interesting. But again, I think I like to have some of my characters have some affluence so that they can, some of these mundane worries we don't have to worry about. So when I was growing up, I remember reading books like Catherine Cookson and basically the working class poor during the, what would it be, the 18th century, 19th century?
And basically everybody was dying. Of course. It was very real and gritty and heartbreaking most of the time. And yeah, I don't want to write stories that are heartbreaking. So maybe that's probably why I'm georgian romance.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Oh, that's so interesting. I'm actually thinking about this because I don't know if you know, like Stephanie Land, she wrote made, but she has a new book called class that came out, I want to say November. I just finished it on the airplane, to be honest, last week. And I was comparing it and I was reading that. And I also recently saw a documentary about the free screeners that you get in LA. I was watching one about poverty in rural Arkansas, and I was like, oh, between that and the Stephanie land books, I was like, that's really this. There's not going to be a space, know, amateur sleuthing or a romance that's free and unfettered from food insecurity. So I was just thinking, I realized I was thinking a lot about the privilege that's necessary in the books in order for the story to be either fantasy. Not in the fantasy, but a fantasy, or compelling. Because if you're worried about where your next meal is coming from or if you have enough heat, then solving crimes is not like the next leap.
[00:35:21] Speaker C: No. Definitely not. No. Falling in love with the hot guy down the road.
It's more about security, like, say, than true love. I don't know. True love.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
But it's because I read everything. And so then I was down in this spiral, and I was like, well, Stephanie Land, whose books are based on her real life, gets some criticism about the life choices she has made, and I was not she. It's not whether or not she's going to open a cupcake bakery. You know what's not?
[00:35:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: That's not where she was. Just. It's just interesting to think about that, because I do have a main character who started off. I don't want to say poor. She started off in student debt, which is different than abject poverty, because you can just stop paying the debt and also still eat.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: But now I realize the debt hanging over her head is not the same as not being able to eat.
But I do like some obstacles. I don't know. I was just thinking about it. But then there's also billionaires, which is. It's at the other end of the spectrum.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: Yes. Book.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: But I spend a lot of time thinking, probably more thinking than writing, and I should probably spend more time writing.
So what made you write? Because one of the things you do, which I would actually never do because it requires research and I don't want to do it. But what made you write about the FBI, as it were, and something that's very specific and bound by a lot of norms. And I don't write amateur sleuths, but I love the idea of just being able to bumble into a scene and do whatever you want with that, with no rules.
I write lawyers, so they have rules, but they're not a circumstance, and they don't carry guns, so that makes it a different milieu.
[00:37:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I think I was very attracted to setting books in the US because the readership's there. But also, believe it or not, it's a very interesting place.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: I don't know about that. I know we have a lot of crime, and we have a lot of crime and guns and, like, chaos in that sense.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Maybe that's what. Yeah, maybe that's interesting, but it's more than wanted. So I deliberately wanted to set something in the US. I wanted to have a series that had kind of an overreaching arc that gave me some structure. And so the FBI, because it was federal, so it's everywhere within the United States, it provided that. And then, I mean, my first books that I wrote that involved the FBI, I hadn't done the research because literally I started writing in the. Where, you know, the website was kind of like, was there a website? But if it was, it was very unix. And a couple of.
So when I was finally sat down, I'd started to write books when I was doing my postdoc in Canada. But then I really started when we moved back to Scotland. So I was sitting in kind of this little attic bedroom trying to google the FBI, and I felt like the most ridiculous person ever. So I didn't reach out to them, which I do now. So I just used all the resources that I could find, which was very limited at the time, to few biographies and my imagination, I think, and what I'd picked up, I guess, what you absorb throughout the years. But when I was able to feel confident enough, as I am actually a writer, and reach out for some real research questions with some solid answers, how they might actually do certain things, I did feel that it certainly added to the books, but it also added to my knowledge base. And so the more research I've done, I've kind of fed into that. And the kind of choices I've made still fulfill me, I think. Because for a start, my first hero is an assassin who I feel like he's one of the most loved within my series. He's the most loved character, even though I'm like, technically he's a serial killer. But in reality.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Now you've unearthed my fundamental problem with law enforcement sometimes because it's a double edged sword, and I don't like either. Both edges of the sword.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah. So he's not law enforcement, but his partner is. Woman he falls in love with is. Which adds the real conflict in that first book. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with law enforcement. I think writing law enforcement nowadays, well, I mean, I think it's always been problematic, but nowadays we're maybe even more aware of all the problems that we are possibly reinforcing by writing the books that we write. And so I do have this definitely idealized way of what the FBI should be like. And having met a few FBI agents and read a lot of their biographies, I think, by and large, the integrity is there. And it's hard for me to comment as an institution because it's, like, way beyond my ability to comprehend out the inner workings of the FBI. But I think certainly the agents that I've met, they seem to be very dedicated and serious people who are trying to do the right thing. That's what I feel.
But obviously, within that, there is the whole. So many issues. Writing any law enforcement character as your protagonist is tricky.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I have one, and he came very late. And, yeah, I struggle. I struggle with so many things.
Well, I'll ask you this, because maybe you know what compels people to be in the FBI? Because I always feel that the pay is not commiserate with the risk or, I mean, not everybody's know, nobody's at risk of dying every day. I'm not saying that, but with the risk and the work, I always pay more.
It's like when I first found out that homicide detectives, at least in rust belt places or places like Baltimore or Cleveland or Detroit, made like, 30, $40,000 a year. And I thought, are you serious?
I would not do that. For that amount of money. I need a lot more before that has to be a mission.
No.
[00:42:21] Speaker C: Well, I don't know. I can't answer. Obviously, I can't answer. But from all the reading I've done, it seems to be, literally, they want to be of service, and I think there's also. I would imagine there's kind of a shiny factor. Know, they want to be the hero figure to a mean, I'm guessing. But, you know, you kind of wouldn't join the FBI unless you felt like you could make the world maybe a better place. I don't know. I feel that. That more than. Gosh, I hate to, but the training and application process for a small police department, wherever it is in the world, is not going to be the same to what they have. There's a lot more.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: But I don't think the pay is not like. It's like, I don't know, like ten times as much. So it's a lot of work and a lot of hours. It just feels so.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I think people definitely. The pay is definitely not huge. You mean a corporate stuff?
Yeah, corporate, but private institutions are always going to pay more. But then where would you get that experience? I guess the other thing is for an FBI agent or any of those federal law enforcement branches is they can use that and they can retire what is 20 years? Yes, you can retire 20 years and go and do loads of other things.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Which pays far better. I always wonder.
But now that you say this, maybe I don't have a compulsion to make the world a better place. That may also be true. I was thinking that's probably not my thing. So then without that compulsion, maybe you.
[00:44:01] Speaker C: Do it through your writing, obviously.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Well, yes.
I have some lofty idea that if people just realize how bad, whatever the thing is, the social issue I'm talking about is, then let me move to action. And I will say this for the reviews I read, people are like, I had no idea it was like that.
But I don't know what to do. I don't know what happens with that awareness. And I'm not saying people should. I'm not out there. Also, like writing a reader's note. Also, now write your congress. And I'm not saying that at all.
I just want people to be aware because I always feel like there's a lack of awareness about random social issues. In the beginning, I wrote about foster care and just some of the things that people don't talk about enough as far as I'm concerned, but that do exist in a way that affects a lot of people. But that's just the thing that bothered me at the time I started writing books. If I started writing now, I might write something completely different.
[00:45:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know if you would or not. I think some people, there are social issues that come up, even in my book. There's the whole death penalty thing for the first book in my main series.
Within it, there's this big arguments for and against the death penalty with facts thrown in as little as possible, but so you don't slow down the pace. But the fact that it costs so much more to keep people on death row than it does to actually imprison them for life and all the other issues that go on with that.
There are some meaty issues within it, but I'm very aware of. I don't want to preach to people, which I think is a very fine balance between, and I'm sure you do it brilliantly.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: I don't know.
I got one review once where somebody said, I wish you wouldn't. What did she say? Did she email me? I feel like somebody emailed me and said, I wish you hadn't talked about this thing. I don't even remember what the thing is. I'm sitting here. I don't actually know. I remember the email, of course, and I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to back down from that one.
[00:46:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I find I get weird emails about people can be very tolerant except for one thing, and then they'll email you and say, I wish I'd never read your books, and I'm never going to read your books again because you included the last one, was the term psy head.
And why do we need this term? I looked back at the paragraph it was in, and it was perfectly appropriate because she said modestly, it was very appropriate for the conversation they were having. And they were literally labeling each other.
So it wasn't like just out of context. But I have pages and pages of acronyms at the back of my books, which I wish I didn't have, but I do because people will ask for them, so therefore they're there.
I did reply to this reader. I said, there are, like, 200 acronyms in this book, and that is the one thing that you had to stop to look up and that tripped you up. And I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I wish I remember what the email is about. It bothered me at the time, but obviously not as much as I thought because I literally can't remember. But I was just like, yeah, but you bought ten, so we're good, right?
We're even Steven. If you quit at book ten, that's fine. Like, we're even Steven.
[00:47:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that's the thing. I like the fact that readers feel that they can email to a degree, but then as soon as anybody thinks they're actually going to influence what you write or how you write it, that is the line that I don't think I would never cross. And I certainly wouldn't write to another author and say, I think you really need to do it this way.
I just feel that that, for me, is a boundary that shouldn't be crossed. And yet people do it all the time.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: All the time. Yes, all the time. That's so interesting. I think that.
Yes. So I get a lot of reader email. I still have not figured out why, because I feel like the reader email is not commensurate with the number of reviews on a book. And I'm like, so there's that. I'm always like, well, years ago, I would have said you could write this as a review. I actually don't now because I do write about some serious issues and people do confess things to me that I wouldn't be like, well, I wrote about child trafficking, and I'm sorry that you were trafficked, but also, can you leave five stars on Amazon? I don't do.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: Would be. That would be a very difficult email to receive, right? Oh, my goodness, yes.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: I get a lot of them, which is fine, actually, to be honest, I mostly don't mind it. I also don't read them immediately because sometimes I'm like, oh, this is going to be like a trauma thing, and I can't start my day with this. So I will read this tonight after I've written and had dinner, you know what I mean? And then I'll read your email. But I don't start with those. So I do get a lot of those and I do appreciate those because I feel like it's important to talk about those issues. And we buried many issues for way too long. But that said, I know that some things I write make people uncomfortable, but I can't see a world where I would change it. Actually, that thought never crossed my mind. I think to myself, it's unfortunate that made you uncomfortable, is what I really think, and then I don't think about it again.
And also, one person, I'm sure we talked about this like months ago, I think, but the few readers who write are not the majority.
Yes, and they don't speak for the majority. So now that I have a much better sense of that, it rolls off. For the most part. It rolls off. Actually, they're not too insulting. I mean, there's some, like, I don't appreciate your use of that word and then that I can have a conversation about, but for the most part, I do let them roll.
So I have a question about setting books in the, what I'm thinking, I have set every book in the US. Yes, but my books are very. Well, you have the federal angles. Since I write about lawyers, there really are quite limited, they're very geographically limited. So my legal thriller series all takes place in very, I know it's very specific and nobody leaves. They can't leave.
But what made you think about the US? Because I do. Okay, let me say this. I read a lot of actually british crime fiction, which I'm always utterly fascinated by. And I've read like Jane Harper, for example, in Australia, Canada. I've literally never read a crime book in Canada. And then I wonder, what would that be about? Like, I don't really have to think about that now. I want one. Now I want one because now I want to know what the underbelly of canadian crime.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
I've written, I mean, my initial books were, well, my very initial book was set in Montana because, of course, pick something that you don't know at all.
So that was that book, actually, I ended up publishing. And it does very well. People do like it. But I've written a couple of books in Scotland, a book in northern Canada, and then I wrote two books in Montlake which were based on island, so that.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: I know, but I feel like Vancouver is different. I can't believe I said that. Having been to Vancouver and having been to other places in Canada, Vancouver feels different.
Why? I don't have a good answer. So wait, what was the Northern Canada book?
[00:51:54] Speaker C: So that was called Edge of survival and that was a Karina book. So I had three Karina press books early mid two thousand s, I guess.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: When Karina was the thing. Yes.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: What's the word? When they start.
One of their inaugural books was one of my books. So they launched one of their launch books and that was one of my special books.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Okay. I didn't know this about you because in my head, Karina is Shannon. I can't think of her last name right now.
[00:52:29] Speaker C: Shannon Stacey.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. In my head, that's synonymous with Karina because that was the. Okay. Yes. Okay.
I have not seen this edge of wow. Okay.
I'm familiar with all of your books.
I did not know about this.
And to me you're just like the cold person. The cold. Anyway.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: Yeah, cold everything. Cold. Cold everything but edges of earth was very much based on research work that I did, the research project I did up in northern Labrador. But then I made my heroin, my poor heroin was diabetic. So that was a really interesting experience to write that book because it's classic. Write what you know. Except for me, it's always, let's make this as complicated as you can, even if you know exactly what's going on. So I know he was a diabetic in that era as well. So nowadays it's much easier with. I say easier, I don't mean that in a. That's probably quite condescending, actually. But I think from the people who have diabetes that I've spoken to, the pumps make their lives much easier.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: No, I had diabetic friends in college and that was like the late 80s, early ninety s, and there was a kit and everything now. And now I have a friend who has a pump on her arm. And so she has said that it is light world away and she's like children now have. She has type one. So children now have a whole different world than her measuring and figuring it out.
[00:54:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, my poor heroine was in the sticks in the middle of nowhere, and she's managing diabetes and the hero thinks she's a junkie because she's injecting herself. So I have all that whole stuff going on.
But I really do love that book because I gave my two main characters, such conflict. And he was an SAS, former SAS guy, but now he's a helicopter pilot in northern Labrador. And he has PSD. But he has PSD to the point where he really has. It's not like, I don't even know, it wasn't PSD light. He was really struggling. So at the end of the book also, they do definitely get together, but he has to go into basically treatment first before they really get their happy ever after because that was literally too much for you. Couldn't solve that by falling in love. He had issues.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:55:03] Speaker C: Serious issues.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Magic, whatever. The magic penis, vagina, whatever it is. The magic thing was not going to change who they are. I think that's so interesting because I do wonder.
Okay, so I've read probably thousands of romances, but some of them actually, I was looking last night, so I have jet lag. So I was up too late or too early. I know. I was like, well, what can I read, like, romance wise? And so I'm reading recommendations at like 02:00 a.m. Which is not what I should have been doing, but I was looking for romances with healthier, psychologically healthier heroes and heroines because there were a number of ones I've read. I feel like, like in the 90s where I thought to myself, I think these people will get divorced. Like, I don't think they have sufficiently dealt with their stuff enough to have a healthy relationship. So there was an era like the punishing kisses era where you were just like, I guess everybody's happy. I don't know. I actually never thought about it when I was younger. And then as romances, as the characters got more complex and a lot of the books got longer, so they went from like 40, 50 to 60 to 80. So they had to have more complex backstories and more complex reasons that they couldn't immediately fall in love and have a happily ever after. I started to have a lot more feelings about whether or not they were sufficiently dealing with their stuff.
And especially a new adult with a lot of rape victims. I was always like, I feel you. It's going to rear its ugly head again.
I spent too much time now thinking about trauma and its age. Age is killing me. But thinking about, well, no, because I've seen the arc of life longer than I had when I was 22. So now I've seen way more years of how things turn out from how people started out. And so I spend a lot more time thinking about, oh, that trauma is going to come right back up it may be five years, it may be 25 years, but that's going to bubble right back up and then what happens?
But in fiction, I guess you don't have to deal with it. But now, as a reader, I do spend more time thinking about it. And I was reading a book today, and I thought I started at 02:00 a.m. And I was like, oh, the trauma is a car accident. I was like, oh, that's very specific. I think we can heal that. You know what I mean?
[00:57:21] Speaker C: As opposed to, as you were saying, like being child trafficking, which is huge trauma.
There's so many levels.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: And I don't know. I mean, people don't deal with trauma in different ways. So I know some people it affects. That's like, physiologically, there's some things, people affect other people more than others. But I do spend time wondering about all the romances I've read and whether people can survive with a relationship, survive that well.
[00:57:50] Speaker C: And then there's the whole studies of epigenetics, where you basically inherit trauma from your ancestors, too. So you're looking at that, it's like, oh, my God, how do we make it?
[00:58:03] Speaker B: I do. I think a lot about. I think way more about it than I ever did. And also I think it's more in the world, and there's more books about those kinds of things. When I was younger, there were far fewer books, and now it feels like every. And this is probably my Instagram algorithm, every Instagram thing is like, can people survive this abuse, trauma, whatever? And I'm always like, I wonder, and now I told you I'm reading about cheating. So now I'm all down into whether or not what happens after people leave cheaters. And from reading the website, it doesn't seem to go well. They seem to have a lot of self doubt for years and years to come.
[00:58:40] Speaker C: Yes, of course, that's one of the things. This hero, which I don't get a lot of complaints, but I know it's kind of a complete taboo, but I did it anyway. In that edge of survival, he basically sees the heroin. He's in the helicopter, so driving, piloting, and I think he knows almost immediately that he could fall for this woman. So he sleeps with her best friend, who's also there. And it's like, literally, he is complete self destruct.
Obviously, in romance, don't have them sleep with anybody else, but both the best friend and him are self destructive characters. So for me, it worked totally, and I think it works in the book, but I know there are readers that would hate that.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Yes, I have one cheating romance. And the emails, people bought it because it had a compelling title. But the emails, man, some of them were like, oh, it was not good.
It was a lot. It was a lot. People either were, this happened to me, or you're going to hell for writing.
It was a polarizing book, and it sold well in 2014. But I don't know. I don't think I'd ever do it again. It was a story that came to me, and I really wanted to tell it.
[01:00:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Where we are because of it.
[01:00:10] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: In the subsequent book, that one did well. The subsequent one, I think, just tanked. And I was just like, I don't have regrets if I did it over again. I don't know, actually. I don't know. I'm trying to think how I would market it differently. And actually, I don't even have an answer. So maybe there's no solution to that.
Maybe not a soft love triangle. I don't know. I thought the person, okay, she cheated on her husband. I thought her husband was so compellingly awful that people would accept it. But apparently my idea of compellingly awful and other people's idea of awful is not the same.
[01:00:49] Speaker C: I have actually had that experience, too. But my poor heroine, who's her husband, actually, he was abusive, and then he commits suicide or kills himself in front of her.
But that's her trauma. It's a massive trauma. She's carrying, but she deliberately sleeps with someone when she's separated from her husband as part of her process of moving on and healing. And that's the. The hero that comes up later is the. The guy she slept with.
But I do get emails saying, you know, she. I think she's probably one of my most unlikable heroines, even though, not to me, but to some people, because she was technically married at the time that she slept with this other guy.
[01:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't believe I'm talking about this. I haven't thought about this since 2014, but I remember sitting here, like, where I am now in Budapest, and the editor, it was this publisher. Well, that's a whole different conversation at the time. Wanted to soften the husband at the beginning, and I think I did make some of the edits. And I still think about this sometimes. I'm like, should I go back and just have him be as he originally was? And I was like, but even then, I'm not sure if it's awful enough where readers would feel that her behavior was justified. I felt her behavior was very justified, but she is the most unlikable heroine. Her name is Hannah. People hate her. It's fine.
It's fine. I love her. People don't like her, and it's like almost ten years later. So I've let it go, but for a couple of years, when emails are still thick on the ground, it was a constant irritant in my life. It was just like, really?
[01:02:40] Speaker C: Okay, I know they're holding your fictional characters to these very high standards, but.
[01:02:50] Speaker B: She needs to get away from this guy.
I think until she met the second guy, she didn't realize how bad the first one was and that she could have something different. She wasn't going to be compelled to live this pattern. But apparently, however, I told it wasn't compelling enough to get people on our side, and I acknowledge that that may not be the case. And it's fine. I still love that book. It may be one of my favorites.
How many years have you been writing and publishing?
[01:03:24] Speaker C: Let me think. A long time.
So basically the same age as my daughter. I was writing before I was pregnant with my daughter, but it was much less focused on, I am actually going to make this work. So some 20, 23, 24 years.
My first book was published in 2002 with a small press, 2004 with a small press, and then again, those books, if small presses and even Karina press wouldn't have earned me enough to live on. So I was looking after the kids because it was during one of my many moves. So the moves have kind of fed my writing career in various stages. So when we moved from Scotland to Canada again to Manitoba, the age of school went from, like, age four in the UK in Scotland to age six here.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:04:26] Speaker C: So I suddenly had the kids for another two years.
And I just said to my husband, I said, well, I'm using this. This is going to be writing. I'm going to write. I'll look after the kids, too, because, of course, that's so easy.
[01:04:40] Speaker B: I've tried it, too. I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of hazy years I'm going to be. Frankly, I feel like there's a couple of years I don't remember much, but there's a book, but I don't remember. If you asked me about it, I was like, there was a lot of sleep deprivation and a child and a book, but that's all I can.
[01:04:58] Speaker C: You know, I say that Disney, Walt Disney probably raised my children as much as I did. I make that joke a lot, but sometimes I look at them thinking, I don't know, is this true or not? Because I was there. I was the one burying them everywhere and doing the thing and taking them to school and everything. But I do wonder, did I do that? It's constant mom guilt, especially working mom guilt. I work from home. But did I give them enough tension? They wouldn't have wanted me over them all the time anyway, but making glitter things or whatever.
Yeah.
[01:05:32] Speaker B: So I had a no screen time policy, which that's why the flights were awful. We're not going to get into that. I relaxed that.
I think I took two long flights and I was like, yeah, he can watch all the movies he wants. I can't believe I'm trying to entertain this. I had a crick in my neck from turning my neck to look at him for like 11 hours. And I thought, never again.
Never again. Oh, my God, never. But I will say this, my child.
I remember the first time he made fun of me. So maybe he was two or three, and I asked him something and he's like, mommy, I'm you. And he sits up and he pretends to be typing and he says, I'm in the middle of something. And I was like, I know, but I realized I must have said it so often. And I asked him later, I said, how long is my middle of something? Because in my head I was just going to finish the sentence and then I was going to get his food diaper, I don't know, whatever. But he said it was like sometimes 1015 minutes before I could get out of it.
[01:06:29] Speaker C: And I didn't realize that, but that's kid time, too.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I know it may have been.
[01:06:35] Speaker C: Too five minutes, but he said it.
[01:06:39] Speaker B: Always felt so long. And I was always like, as soon as I finish this sentence, paragraph, page, then I will stop and do whatever. And it's true, I would stop, but the time between him asking and me doing. There was a lag.
[01:06:55] Speaker C: There was a lag. But, yeah, I think that's really a problem. Is that really a problem that you just had to wait or my kids had to wait for your attention?
[01:07:06] Speaker B: No. Now I don't. But there was a lot of guilt for a number of years and even so much guilt during COVID So during COVID he set up, like, shop in the dining room. I don't know why he could have been in his room with the door closed, but he set up shop in the dining room and was doing zoom and he set up shop and he did something and he's like, I'm going to do this. Exactly the way you do work. And it was so interesting. And I thought, oh, I'm not as invisible as I thought. I felt like the work was invisible. And then I would get up and close the door and then come down and cook food in the kitchen or play in the playroom or whatever. But it wasn't nearly as invisible as I thought.
Or he was super observant. So the writing for him, I now know this, but the writing is so deeply entrenched into who I am. But I feel like it came in later in my life. Because he meets you. I'm like, you know, I used to practice law and I used to had jobs, and I went outside the house and did all these other things. And he's like, yes, but that's not my experience of you. And I thought, that's true.
Wow.
[01:08:08] Speaker C: I know. But part of that is because of him too, though, right? Having your kids also change how you're going to live your life.
Because I had to stay home.
[01:08:20] Speaker B: I mean, I didn't have to stay home, obviously, but I did stay home.
I think the writing actually developed because I was home. So it finally gave me that freedom to, well, now I'm here all day.
He did nap a lot in the beginning.
In the beginning. So for the first couple of years, that's the hazy part. I was able to write when he was napping or when he was on my lap or when he was nursing. And all of these things, there were long stretches of time where I could write. And that's really when I picked up the pace because it made me structured more in my life, more.
So the other question I have about your books, and I think it'll probably be my last question, is, now that you can, how can I say, looking back through time, now that you can look back over your entire catalog, as it were, do you find some common.
[01:09:14] Speaker C: Themes.
[01:09:17] Speaker B: Whereas you didn't consciously set out to write whatever?
[01:09:22] Speaker C: I've noticed that when I'm writing my character, the sheets that I use to start conflict tables and stuff like that, that I always have a character who is good enough. They always believe they're not good enough, but they always end up being good enough. And I've noticed, like almost every book, somebody has to prove that they're good enough. So I wonder if that could be my personal theme throughout. I'm trying to prove it in every book, that I'm worth it.
[01:09:52] Speaker B: No, how can I say? I do think that there is some truth to that. I'm not saying about you, but I'm finding that the more writers I talk to, there's some truth to the themes reflecting what's going on unconsciously for them.
[01:10:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so.
I don't even know if I can get away from that. So it'd be interesting. I have been trying to work out different conflicts, but the bottom, I reduce them all down. I keep going back and back, back. Okay. Proving they're good enough, proving they're Worthy. Okay, we're here again.
But I guess I do like the whole love conquers all in the end. Or that there are happy endings.
It might be not the theme, but I like knowing in fiction especially, that I can create a satisfying ending.
[01:10:48] Speaker B: Okay, so my last question is going to be the oddest one. Have you written in a helicopter?
[01:10:52] Speaker C: I have, yes.
[01:10:53] Speaker B: Okay. Because you write a lot about helicopters and I have feelings about how. Okay, airplanes, I understand how they work. There's loft. You know what I mean? I understand the physics of airplanes while I understand the physics of helicopters. I don't feel they're safe because fundamentally, if they stop working and they drop, as opposed to a plane which can glide.
[01:11:12] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, they're very dangerous.
[01:11:16] Speaker B: But you use a lot of use people ride, ride, pilot, whatever, helicopters in your books. And I always think to myself, yeah.
[01:11:25] Speaker C: It was actually my first career choice in my whole life was I wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Oh, my God.
Yes. I didn't realize it came out so much. Oh, my God.
[01:11:36] Speaker B: Okay, sorry.
I don't.
[01:11:40] Speaker C: Other people.
[01:11:40] Speaker B: I just feel like you're helicopter heavy, and so that's why I was going to ask you if you've ever ridden, you can helicopter over to the Grand Canyon. Actually, I've never been to the Grand Canyon, but sometimes when I travel, like, a helicopter is a choice. And I always think to myself, no, I don't think they're inherently dangerous.
[01:11:59] Speaker C: Well, actually, I think I really believe they are.
When I was doing that research, I'd been in a helicopter before, just some air show in the UK years ago. But then when I was working in northern Labrador, I was being shipped via a helicopter from a ship. It was an icebreaker. That's the word I'm looking for. From an icebreaker to the research site and back every day. And the safety, there's so much you really have to worry about, your safety. And the thing that attaches some of the blades on the top is called the Jesus nut. And I just think because basically, if that comes off, you're done. Yeah. And it was things like landing on the ship, if they're going to crash. They will abort and land and go into the ocean. And you're like, so you're going to kill me rather. Yeah, we'll kill you rather than everybody else. And I get that logically.
[01:12:54] Speaker B: Logically.
[01:12:56] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:12:57] Speaker B: Did you enjoy the helicopter? I have so many questions.
[01:13:01] Speaker C: Yeah. You know what? I'm kind of scared of heights in a degree which I wasn't before I had children. After I had children, I suddenly am more scared of heights. But I find being in a helicopter is such a different experience than just being on the edge of a cliff.
Yeah.
I do love being in helicopters. Yes.
[01:13:24] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Okay, so it's you.
I'm thinking she uses helicopters and maybe there's other authors. I'd have to actually think about it now, but I was like, Tony seems to be about the helicopter.
[01:13:36] Speaker C: I feel like she might have to have another helicopter in my next book because I haven't had one for a while.
[01:13:42] Speaker B: Just. Okay, wow.
I may get in one before I die, but I don't think that there's a bucket list of many things I would like to experience. Helicopters are not on the list.
[01:13:56] Speaker C: No.
Would you skydive?
[01:13:59] Speaker B: I thought about that yesterday.
Okay.
When I'm writing a book, my mind tends to wander.
So I literally thought about it yesterday because I was thinking about these, like, bucket list items.
Probably not, but I wouldn't say no, but it'd have to be low.
In California, we skydive. It's like 10,000ft or something. But somebody saying that they skydive, I don't even know what that would be. From 18,000, I thought, a, is that a thing? And b, no, because that just seems like that's so much longer.
[01:14:32] Speaker C: That's really high.
[01:14:34] Speaker B: I know. I couldn't figure out why. And I didn't ask any more questions because I was like, yeah, also, no.
Some reason. 10,000ft. Because, you know, when the plane hits sound up, they make the ding. And there's something about 10,000ft that seems utterly feasible, but anything. 10,005ft, I'm like, no.
And even when I was landing recently, when the plane gets to 10,000ft, I go, okay, we're good. Now. I don't know why that feels good.
[01:15:03] Speaker C: Survivable.
[01:15:04] Speaker B: It feels survivable. And that's not even true. We were at 1300ft because it was foggy. Well, it was flying.
[01:15:10] Speaker C: Well, it was foggy.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Both London in here. And it was so foggy. So I was surprised by the landing because I was reading and then I was like, oh, we're landing. Like, okay, I guess I should have looked out the window, but there's nothing to see. But I thought to myself, 1300ft, I thought that's probably not even that survivable.
And yet we're going to land in 3 seconds. I understand how it's going to work, but there's the gliding. There's the gliding. And the helicopters have.
[01:15:36] Speaker C: No gliding.
[01:15:38] Speaker B: It's like a whirly.
[01:15:39] Speaker C: You're like, they look fragile, right? They really do.
[01:15:43] Speaker B: They look fragile. Although I looked at an Emirates plane the other day because we were on the Runway a long time and I thought those are getting kind of large. Even I feel that's physics defying.
[01:15:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:15:54] Speaker B: Because it just seems so huge.
[01:15:56] Speaker C: Yeah, it doesn't make sense when you look at them. But my brother used to teach, he's retired now. Used to teach physics to the RAF pilots so he could explain it to me when I was in high school. But I never understood it.
[01:16:12] Speaker B: But I love it because it seems perfect. And I was like, oh, so there's a velocity and you take off and that's why you have to hit a certain speed. Like, I thoroughly understand it and it feels utterly safe. Helicopters so much, but you do you.
So I want to thank you so, so much for taking the time to do the interview.
You've satisfied my curiosity on so many levels.
[01:16:40] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Oh my goodness.
[01:16:43] Speaker B: So let me say this so for the listeners. I will include links to the books that we talked about in the show notes, as well as to Tony's socials and such. So again, Tony Anderson, thank you so much for taking the time.
[01:17:02] Speaker C: Thank you.
[01:17:11] Speaker B: This has been a time to thrill with me.
[01:17:13] Speaker A: Your host, Amy Austin. If you enjoyed today's episode, I hope.
[01:17:17] Speaker B: You'Ll share, rate and review on apple.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: Podcasts or wherever you listen. It will help others to find and enjoy my conversations with brilliant women creators. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app. In addition to hosting this podcast, I am also the author of the Nicole.
[01:17:35] Speaker B: Long series of legal thrillers.
[01:17:37] Speaker A: The first three books in the Nicole long series are now live. You can download, outcry, witness, major crimes, and without consent to your e reader right now. The fourth book in the new series.
[01:17:49] Speaker B: The murders began, is available for pre order wherever you get your books.
[01:17:54] Speaker A: I am also the author of the Casey quit series of legal thrillers. These titles are available wherever books are sold, your local library, and also an audiobook. You can also find this podcast on Facebook at a time to thrill. Thanks for listening and I'll be back with you soon with more great conversation.
