Bookwild - Family, Fear and the Final Frontier: Jeff Rake's and Rob Hart's Detour

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

This week, I talk with Jeff Rake and Rob Hart about the first installment of their new series Detour. Jeff shares how he got the idea for the story originally for TV, but when he mentioned it to a friend they said it sounded like a novel. When he got connected to Rob, their partnership was instantly born, and they went on to write an entire full-length novel without meeting in person until the very end.They share what their process was like, how they developed such a large cast of characters, and how being fathers themselves shaped the family themes in the book.Detour SynopsisRyan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble—just a cup of coffee. But when this cop spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt.As thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward offers him the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians chosen to accompany three veteran astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, yet with the encouragement of his loving wife—and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son—he crews up and ventures into a new frontier.But as the ship is circling Titan, it is rocked by an unexplained series of explosions. The crew works together to get back on course, and they return to Earth as heroes.When the fanfare dies down, Ryan and his fellow astronauts notice that things are different. Some changes are good, such as lavish upgrades to their homes, but others are more disconcerting. Before the group can connect, mysterious figures start tailing them, and their communications are scrambled.Separated and suspicious, the crew must uncover the truth and decide how far they’re willing to go to return to their normal lives. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week I got to talk with Jeff Rake and Rob Hart about their series, their first in their series, called Detour. And if you have been listening for a while, you know I'm a big Rob Hart fan. And you also know how excited I was for this book. And it is just as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Here's what it's about. Ryan Crane wasn't looking for trouble, just a cup of coffee. When this cop spots a gunman merging from an unmarked van, he leapsed into action and unknowingly, saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations from an assassination attempt.

As thanks for Ryan's quick thinking, Ward offers him the chance of a lifetime to join a group of lucky civilians chosen to accompany three veteran astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn's Moon Titan. A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, yet with the encouragement of his loving wife and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son. He crews up and ventures into a new frontier. But as the ship is circling Titan, it is rocked by an unexplained series of explosions. The crew works together to get back on course and they return to Earth as heroes. When the fanfare dies down, Ryan and his fellow astronauts notice that things are different. Some changes are good, such as lavish upgrades to their

homes, but others are more disconcerting. Before the group can connect, mysterious figures start tailing them and their communications are scrambled. Separated and suspicious, the crew must uncover the truth and decide how far they're willing to go to return to their normal lives. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins. So this one is very mind-bendy. There's a lot to keep track of, which is something that I love in books as well. And I also really enjoyed the audiobook version of it. So if you like audio, I think you will love this full cast narration. That being said, let's hear from Jeff and Rob. Well, I am here with Jeff Rake and Rob Hart,

and you guys have heard me talking about talking to Rob Hart for years, but I'm super excited to talk with Jeff too about their new co-authored book detour. So thank you guys for coming on. Our pleasure. Yeah, thank you for having us. So the thing I always wonder first, especially with co-authors, is kind of like, how did you guys meet? How did you come up with the idea? And how did you decide to work on it together?

Sure. I'll start on that one. So about three years ago, I was finishing up a TV show that I was producing. And by the way, I've traditionally been a TV writer. This is my first book. Yeah. And so back three years ago, when I wrapped up that show, I was just kind of in a very Machiavellian way trying to brainstorm what's my next show going to be? What's my next big idea?

And I, you know, I just went into brainstorming mode and worked long and hard on that, eventually came up with something that I was excited about. And, you know, when you're a TV writer and you come up with an idea, you go into your agent, run it by them, make sure they're excited about it also. and I did that. And the pitch went well and they were excited, but one of my agents said something surprising to me. He said, you know, as you just pitched that idea, it sounded like a book, sort of sounded like a novel. What if you write it as a novel, write the book?

And then maybe down the line, you'll adapt it for television. And, you know, I was excited about that, but also incredibly intimidated. Like I said, I've never written a book before. sounded, you know, incredibly challenging and something that I literally wouldn't know how to do on my own. And then in the conversation, you know, the agent said to me, well, you don't have to write it by yourself. People pair up with writing partners. What if you paired up with an author and you could write it together?

Well, that sounded much better to me. and even though I was skeptical that I could find somebody who I'd be compatible with, who would have kind of the same taste that I have, who I could get along with. And we said, well, just give it a shot. And between the agents and the publishers, they sent me some books to look at authors who they loved and respected and had worked with in the past. And so I received this pile of books. And early into the pile, like I think maybe the second, possibly third book I read,

I came across this novel called The Warehouse by Rob Hart. And obviously the rest is history, but just to spell it out, I read Rob's book and I fell in love with it. I read it in two days and that's something I probably have never done in my life. It knocked me out. And it was so perfect for me on so many levels or it told me that Rob was so perfect for me because, you know, it was this kind of near future thriller. My concept was a near future thriller. And but more importantly, the characters just blew me away.

He went so deep into his several protagonists. And I related on such a personal level. And it just felt exactly like the book that I wanted to write. And so as soon as I could, I got on a Zoom with Rob Hart. And I was in L.A. he was in Staten Island and we talked and just like that it was kismet but i'll let him finish that that part of the story yeah i just uh i got a text out of the blue from this woman angeline rodriguez who i had worked with previously uh so when i was when the warehouse was being published my editor

uh julian had an assistant it was angeline and and she was one of those people that i'm like oh man like she's really good like she's going to be a star like i'm excited to see where she goes and she ended up going to the agency where you know jeff is to wm8 and so in this whole process uh you know she texts me she's like can we jump on the phone and i was like uh oh what did i do you know like in a while and she's like look i got this guy he needs a co-writer i don't know if you have the bandwidth i don't know if you're interested you know he did the tv show manifest and i'm like oh that's cool uh i was like yeah you know send me the pitch and i'm i'm sitting they're reading the pitch and immediately i'm like oh my god i got to work on this like this is so awesome

it was uh because it's exactly what i like it's it's a big swing sci-fi idea but it's supported by really really strong characters and yet we got on that zoom and just it was it was like talking to an old friend you know um because i think the challenge is you know i kind of knew going into it like jeff is a tv writer and tv writing is a very collaborative medium so i'm like the guy knows how to work people that's good but you know are we are we going to are we going to mesh personally and um yeah and and and we did you know and it ended up being such a fantastic working relationship nice that i love like when you meet people like that where you're like oh it's this easy to talk to this person kind of like in this case because it sounds like you have shared interests in the kinds of stories

you tell and just like stories in general because that was how i felt uh actually when i met one of my co-hosts like four years ago it was the first time when I met garr it was the first time I talked to someone who read as much as me because I just wasn't meeting them in person and I was like oh this is what it's like to be an introvert but then like meet someone that you vibe with like it's like really easy to talk with them so I love when that happens for bookish people um but you did mention it's like kind of a high concept uh sci-fi uh story but also has a lot of really good character work in it And we're mostly following Ryan Crane, but we are also following other people who get called on this mission. So did you, how did you kind of decide how many characters to include?

Or was there just like a moment where you're like, okay, these were the people that we needed? So when I originally outlined the story and created the character profiles, I was guided by a couple things. So I knew it was going to be a space mission. And so I knew we needed, you know, kind of a critical mass of crew to go up on the mission. And one of the conceits of the book is that, you know, there are astronauts going on this mission to Saturn's Moon Titan. And so I figured, you know, we of course needed a critical mass of actual astronauts, but one of the conceits of the book was that there were civilians going up. on this mission as well. So, you know, I don't exactly remember how I landed the number six, which is what we ended up within the crew. But I think it was as rudimentary as me saying to myself,

something like, well, let's set up three astronauts and three civilians, and then we would have a balance. You mentioned Ryan. So he's kind of our, the lead of our ensemble, if you will. And he's, you know, he's an every man. What people will come to discover is that, you know, he's not an astronaut. He's a cop. And an act of heroism that he pulls off early in the story earns him a spot on the shuttle flight in kind of an unlikely way. And so from there, I just wanted to kind of round it out around Ryan, who, you know, essentially. is defined by his ordinariness.

He's a cop. He's not even a detective. He's just kind of like a regular person, husband, father. Every man has his own kind of fears and anxieties, neuroses, has a disabled child among other hardships that he and his wife face on a daily basis and trying to figure out how to give his son the best life that he can have. And then we just kind of built around him. You know, I wanted the character to be as eclectic as possible. And, you know, Rob helped me build those out.

Rob, you want to talk about a few of those other characters? Yeah, you know, I mean, right off the bat, I got to say, too, it was like it was so cool going into this where there was such a strong, like, web of characters together, you know, the way that they complimented each other and conflicted with each other, you know, and, you know, and Ryan was obviously a fun character to write because I think there's a, that aspect where me and Jeff are both dads

and I think there's both that feeling for both of us that we want to like, you know, protect our families and, you know, you're kind of digging into that. But then we had you know, the other astronauts like Alonzo and Della and Mike who were just like

really, really fun characters to write because you've got them all at sort of like different I guess levels of their career and different roles you know like Mike is like the the sort of like the gruff veteran and and Della's the kind of like the mom of the group and Alonzo's the kid that like the hot shot kid who's you know still very good at what he does and then you know and then we've got Padma and Stitch who are the two other civilians who again were just really fun quirky characters to write and you know I and and I keep saying this but but the one that I didn't get was Stitch like I kind of struggled with him initially looking at the at the at the thing. And when I first talked to Jeff, I was going to be like, I want to talk about this character. I'm not sure about him. And then I thought about it. I'm like, no, no, let's do this. Like, let's take on the challenge. And now I can't tell you the number of people who have been like

stitches my favorite character. Yeah. That's great. I love that. Like my friend Delilah was like, you must protect him at all costs. I did love him. And Padma has like her own, kind of unique tensions going on to based off like what she's wanting to do versus like working with a big maybe evil corporation there's always that that tense element there um you mentioned like you guys were kind of talking about like what what should we do with this character how did you guys work on it because it sounds like you guys are on separate coasts so what was the collaboration like long distance the whole time. In fact, Rob and I often remind ourselves that we did not meet in person until we may have been finished with the entire first draft.

We met many months into our relationship and had a cup of coffee in New York City. But at the beginning, I was creating outline beats for the story before Rob and I even came in contact with each other. So, you know, I started, I built out character profiles, I built out story beats, and tried to create as big and thorough an outline of a book one. And I should just clarify. So Rob and I are in the fortunate position right now of already having a second draft. Sorry, I should say, a first draft of book two. That's a different thing. And but at the very beginning, even before I knew we might be able to try to pull off a two or possibly even three book series.

It was just me by my lonesome, you know, coming up with character profiles and story beats. So I did some heavy lifting at the beginning that I finally met Rob and we became partners. And then we worked on the outline together and we just kept, you know, finding the beats in between the beats. I've talked about a bunch of times that at the beginning, I had written out what I thought was every story beat that I could conceive. But I realized I was missing so much. And I literally couldn't figure out what were all the in-between moments where, what was I missing?

And then Rob, you know, Rob kind of put me through, you know, a PhD and how to write a book. And together we just found, you know, all the beats between the beats and finally got it to where we thought we had a roadmap for the whole thing. And we got to work and Rob was typically the first to the page and would send me pages. And I would work on the pages and send them back to him. You know, just a long distance back and forth process. And, you know, over time, I would get a little more courageous and I would try to do a little more original writing.

And as we got into the end of book one and into book two. But, you know, just back and forth. When I think about us writing the book, I remember. reminded of Elton John and Bernie Toppe and writing songs in the 70s, Elton in London and and Bernie in Malibu. So, you know, just like it, just like that. Yeah. Yeah, we had a, it was a good groove, you know, because I, I mean, we're both always working on a bunch of stuff. And and for me, I'd be like, you know, I'd be writing another book at the time. So I'd like write a bunch and send it to Jeff. And in the time that he was going over his side of it, then I would go work

on something else. And then by the time I was ready to be done on that, he would send me back what he was working on. So yeah, we just ended up getting in like a good flow state. Yeah. So what I thought was kind of fun too is it is sci-fi, but it kind of has some like psychological and mystery elements a little bit too. So what was it like kind of building out like both of those things like this near future

world and like also kind of still having that like suspenseful uh plot movement too i mean it was it was a lot it uh it took a lot of work to kind of get all those pieces together and and a lot of that came i think in the beginning part of us sitting down and really breaking it down doing like zooms and outlining but um you know i think that we were kind of aiming for something that was sort of like a mystery box kind of like manifest or lost where it's like you you want the the character and the reader to be the same level of confused about what's going on. And it was, there were definitely some moments where I remember sitting there and going like, how do I bring all these pieces together? Like, this is too much.

That was actually like the one thing about the project that that kind of scared me at first is that this is, you know, we've got so many POV characters, plus we've got the interstitial chapters. I've never written so many POVs at one time. The most of them are done is three on the warehouse. and all of a sudden I've got like, you know, 80. And I'm just like, how do I find the balance here? But I think that, you know, I was helped along by the fact that like Jeff is just a natural storyteller. Like he understands intrinsically how all these things fit together.

So, you know, using that roadmap, it was easy to kind of get into that space of like, okay, this is how this works. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Makes sense. You mentioned manifest, though. So I do have a somewhat funny question. But with Manifest, it's there are people on a flight and then when they, when the flight lands of basically five years passed in the time that they were on the flight.

And then obviously with this one, they go into space. And then when they come back, the world feels different. So my silly question is for Jeff, are you scared of traveling? That's a totally fair question. And I'm not not scared of travel. I look I think a lot of us who even travel frequently just still feel that little pang of yeah on the ease every time we take off and land and I'm and I you know I'm I'm I'm I'm one of those people but but the underlying inspiration for the story is less about fear of travel

fear of airplanes and more about family and separate separation and when I first came up with the manifest idea. I was on family vacation and, you know, brainstorming TV ideas. And that's what led to the manifest idea. It was like a nightmare scenario for a loving family. And, you know, that the theme of family and togetherness and separation definitely informed, you know, the story here.

We, we, multiple families and multiple, you know, heroes who, you know, heroes who, have different types of families and family struggles and, you know, the highs and lows of being a part of a family unit. And, you know, that's certainly a play here as well. Yeah. It was making me think, too, kind of like when Ryan's having the conversation with his wife initially, where he's like, should I do it or not? And she's like, that's like a really long time still. So it kind of reminded me of interstellar in that sense too when he's trying to decide like do I leave my kids but like for him it's kind of an interstellar it's kind of like well the world might cease to exist if I don't do this so I need to do it and then with detour it was interesting to me because it was also making me think like you said

you guys were both fathers and uh that's very much a part of this story too is like with his disabled child it's almost like purely out of desperation he almost needs to do it to be able to like keep taking care of his family, which was kind of reminding me even at present, like with the state of like health care, health insurance, all of that. Like, sometimes we have to do stuff we don't think we want to do when we are taking care of our family. So can you kind of talk about like some of the motivations for the characters in that sense? Yeah, well, I think we, I mean, we definitely fudge the timing a little bit. Like you can't get to tighten, you know, It's got a two-year round trip.

Yeah. That was one of those things where like, and I actually just re-watched interstellar. And the thing I love about it is that like all the science is very, very accurate. It checks out. Right. And things like time dilation and travel times. And I was like, you know, well, we can't, we can't have them gone for like five years.

Like that's too much, you know. But if I could, if I can make up that we created like an ion engine that makes us go faster, like, yeah, we could do it two-year trip. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think you spoke to some of it in your question. It's like those anxieties of, you know, it's hard to provide to your family, especially, you know, the situation that Ryan's in as kind of like, you know, he's a cop, but he's a little bit on the outside of the force because he's, he's an honest cop and that's not playing in his department. And, yeah, that that desperate feeling of like wanting to help someone, like wanting to help his son. and then he's got this guy, John Ward, you know, dangling like, we might be able to if you just do this thing for me, you know.

So, I mean, I was thinking about it in my own terms of like, you know, what would it take for me to get to just leave my daughter for two years? Yeah. I mean, knowing that it's going to be at least two years, and that's if nothing goes wrong. Yeah. And, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be a lot to really do that. It's got to be something that is going to better, not just my life, but her life in a very, very, very significant why. Yeah, that makes sense. It was making me think that actually I saw the running man in theaters too here a couple months ago.

And that was like the same thing where it's like he's to a point where like he's going to do this desperate thing because he cares about his kids essentially. So speaking of there are like you're saying, there are some sci-fi novels that are like, very strictly try to be completely right on all of the science. And then there are some that don't. And I enjoy both. There are somewhere I'm like, I don't need it to be scientifically correct. But was there any like research that you guys did do to like kind of like build the astronauts, understand astronauts and just to understand going into space?

Right. Well, I mean, I would say at the outset that the goal was for the book to kind of be a populist novel, kind of for any reader and to have just enough, you know, science in it to ground the story, make it feel credible. And yet, you know, the balance of, you know, chapters that are science-based and chapters that are family-based, you know, I'd say it's 50-50 at the most, and it's possible the book has more pages that are kind of leaning heavier into family drama than into the science. That said, we very much wanted the science to play real. And for any sci-fi readers who picked up the book,

we didn't want them to kind of disregard the credibility of the story because the science didn't feel right. And that's where Rob came in. And I'll let Rob, you know, I don't know if it's bragging or if it's admitting that he's a super science nerd. And it was very easy for him to kind of dig into the weeds. of the science side of the premise. Yeah, you know, I operate on this bandwidth of, you know,

nothing has to be 100% accurate, but it does have to be believable. So as long as it's believable, we're in good shape. And so there's a lot of things here that I kind of like off the top of my head knew like, oh, this would be really interesting to include here. And then it would take like a little bit of research just to make sure that I was using it accurately. But, you know, it's an opportunity for me to kind of dig into things that I'm really nerdy about.

Like I really, I'm really interested in space travel. I'm really interested in quantum physics. So, and I'll read in those areas just kind of for fun. Yeah. And then when it's like, okay, by the end of the book, when, you know, we're starting to throw out all these theories about what's going on, like that was like, this is so much fun. Because now I can start talking about weird, like, you know, cosmological theories and astrophysics and all this weird stuff.

And it's, you know, like I feel like if Neil DeGrasse Tyson read this book, he would probably want to have some words with me. I think the average reader will be able to, you know, understand it and get the gist and not feel bogged down, but still kind of have some fun with it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It is a very approachable or accessible sci-fi novel for people who are sometimes intimidated by them. I think they can handle this one. The other kind of along with that, there was some of like padma's storyline and who she's working for whose name i did not write down um but she that some of the the company that is like trying to get to tighten there's some that felt like some similarities to the kind of interesting version of like a space race that we're

kind of in presently so was there any were you like drawing from any of like where we're at kind of currently and culturally with people who want to get to space Yeah, I think that, you know, it was no accident that the John Ward character has some personality traits that overlap a little bit with Mr. Musk. And, you know, I mean, Ward is not Musk, but yes, we were kind of trying to kind of make it feel as contemporary and relatable. And so, you know, there's a little ripped from the headlines going on in terms of, you know, the kind of corporate tech, you know, rocket-based science culture so that it just kind of like what's going on in the world right now. And I think that was just more to just, you know, make it feel relatable to the reader. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It feels pretty grounded. And it makes it feel very grounded. And it makes it feel very near future because it does feel kind of similar to what we're seeing about those topics.

The other thing, there's like, obviously, like, they return and the world just doesn't feel right. There's something wrong. And so I feel like, like, trust who you can trust and, like, who you're suspicious of. And, like, how do we trust people when we're in, especially, like, they're in a situation where they're having to, like, solve problems. in space as well too and they like all kind of just met each other in general so were you kind of intentionally wanting to kind of work with like trust and suspicion or did that kind of just like come about because of what the plot is you know it's it's interesting it's um you know the the big struggle is like how do you promote a book when you don't want to give away like the big twist

yeah and like we've struggled with that through the whole process where the original uh the advanced reader copies that we sent out had different um back cover copy copy. But we found that people were read because we were trying to obscure the story as much as possible. And the first couple of readers were getting like the wrong impression of it. And they were like, oh, this is what I thought it was going to be. I don't like this. So we had to pivot a little bit. But, you know, I think in terms of trust, it's like, I mean, look, like you put a bunch of people like that together in a high stress situation. There's going to be trust issues no matter what, especially because you have this clash between people who are professional astronauts versus people are civilians.

And it's all driven by Ward's desire. Ward is one of those people who's like, I'm so rich, I do what I want. Like no one's going to tell me no. And if you tell me no, I'm going to take all my toys and I'm going to go home. So he's kind of putting people in an impossible situation, which then puts everyone else in an impossible situation of, you know, space travel is super dangerous, especially for a mission that's never been undertaken before. So, you know, it was playing with those issues of trust, I thought was a really fun place to start. And then as that trust started to get a lot stronger and start to develop, then we get to kind of twist things and like, you know, change how those people are interacting with everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. And that's for sure. I, yeah, I would just be freaking out if I, like, you're gaslighting me with the fact that it is going to be.

like I think it's going to be two or is it going to be three do you know we're hoping for three you know we're contracted for two right now but we've talked with with the random house folks about you know expanding to a third and we had more story to tell and we had kind of a natural second cliffhanger for the second book and they seem to be creatively on board so hopefully that's going to work out exciting yeah because what I was going to ask was like um basically what I had read was that it would at least be two and it does end on a cliffhanger at least not everything is answered so for anyone who needs to prepare themselves for that as an ending you now know um but did you have like the whole idea when you were thinking about it

for the show and then you guys like decided where to stop or uh was this really like kind of like your idea for the first season and then you were like, I will figure out the rest next. Yeah, I think we had, I mean, obviously we didn't have everything. There's so much discovery along this way. But, you know, in our base roadmap that we started with, we kind of had the story all the way to what will be the ending, whether it's two books or three books. You know, we kind of have a complete story in terms of macro beats. But what Rob and I came to discover when we were writing book two is that there was so much more character work that we wanted to do. And then we also expanded our point of view to spend more time with other characters who, at the outset, we didn't realize we were going to be so interested in leaning into.

So a fun surprise that you'll come to discover when you read the second book is that we kind of expand our purview and focus on some more key family members than just our six heroes. And we just got really thrilled about that and excited and wanted to dig in more. And as that took up more real estate, we realized that what was going to be a second book could be a second and third book. Anything else on that, Rob? Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of the overarching points were really there when we started, but then it's kind of that fun thing about writing is that even if you have a roadmap, you're kind of discovering things you should go. Right.

And so there were things that as we were writing, like Jeff was saying, it was like, ooh, like this could be cool. Like we can expand here. We could do something bigger. And I think that, yeah, when we were really like turning our attention toward breaking the second book, I think that's when it started to feel like, man, like, there's so much cool stuff we could do here that this just feels like it's more than, than it's like that book is going to be like a thousand pages long. So why not see if we can just split it into a third? So yeah, we're hopeful.

I mean, it's very exciting for me, too, in terms of, you know, I've never gotten to write a book that said to be continued at the end. Because, you know, the rule when you're writing a series, you know, when it's a regular novel, it's, it's, it's, it's, everything's got to be self-contained. So if someone picks up, like, the third book in the series and they read it, they're not going to feel like they miss something. Like there could be a larger overarching story, but it's still that that book itself has to feel contained. So it was so cool, like that Penguin Random House was on board about this being like, you know, an ongoing story. So it gets to the end to be like, oh my God, I didn't resolve so much. I feel so bad. But also this is cool. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of TV too because you very you do very often hit the end of a season and like that they're

baiting you to come back for the second season essentially there's a little bit of baiting going on here yeah yeah i'm not mad about it because now i'm really intrigued by this other character work in the second or second and third one um my my other one question was did anything surprise you like you jeff about like the process of writing a novel with Rob. And then with Rob, was there anything like that surprised to you that was kind of different about this time around working with Jeff? I was filled with a ton of surprise from the beginning to the end just because I was learning.

I was learning. So, you know, I thought it was going to be really hard. And it was, but once Rob kind of, put me through boot camp you know I caught on and it ended up just being thrilling and so much fun and you know having a partner

in anything once you hit it off and kind of discover that you share the same point of view about the voices and the tone you know for us it happened to become very seamless so you know

I ended up being pleasantly surprised that, you know, what I imagined would be just a painstaking ordeal. Not because, whether I was writing by myself or with a partner, both of those have obvious potential pitfalls. And we just, we just kind of lucked out. So, so, I was just, you know, so, you know, pleasantly surprised that we worked so well together. And that made the job. Yeah. It could have been a very hard job a lot easier. Yeah, and much the same way. You know, this is my third collaboration.

And not to say that the other two were bad, but just this felt like the easiest one because it was like, I mean, I think we talked about this a couple of days ago that there was really no point where the two of us just hit an impasse or hit a wall. It was always like, even in the moments where we had just different ideas, it was a simple matter of talking it out. And again, I think that's, it's a testament to the fact that, like, even though me and Jeff tell our stories in different ways, you know, and it's almost a little bit of a different language, TV writing versus novel writing. Right. Jeff still understands story in such a, such a fundamental way that whenever we came across something, it was really easy to say, like, okay, let's look at this, let's understand why

we're doing it, and let's kind of take it from there. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I really enjoyed it. I'm super excited for however many more there are. I will read them all because I still have questions myself. But I do always at the end ask if there's a book you read recently that you loved or if there's a book that you just always recommend to people.

Oh, the book I just finished reading, which actually kind of dovetail somewhat with Detour, I guess, is I think it's called The End of Everything by Katie Mac. And she's a cosmologist and it's about the various theories for how the universe, like the universe itself is going to come to an end, whether it's like, you know, the big crunch or heat death or the big rip or all these sort of, you know, horrible nightmare scenarios where in billions and billions of years, everything is going to kind of cease to exist because that's just the way physics is moving. And it's really interesting because it also gives you a really strong understanding of how everything kind of came together. together too. Like I think it was one of the most incisive explanations of the Big Bang that I've ever heard. So yeah, it was just super nerdy, but written in a way that was very easy to understand. I just, I got a kick out of it. Yeah. And it's short. It's like 220 pages. So yeah, I feel like that's palatable. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Going in the opposite direction. This feels like apples to are

oranges, but I'm halfway through Larry McMurtry's famous Western Lonesome Dove. Oh, yeah. And it's just exciting to read something that is so epic, so dense. And, you know, he does such a wonderful job of exactly what I did not understand how to do before I started working with Rob, which is just, you know, painting, painting, the picture. It's so full of internal insights and yet at the same time so full of, you know, using his metaphorical paintbrush to make you understand the landscape of this, you know, barren, rural, you know, Western era, environment lifestyle,

You know, the poverty and yet the beauty, the loneliness, and yet the camaraderie. It's just the ultimate example of an author using mere words to paint a three-dimensional picture that I never understood, you know, how to do. And now, you know, Rob has helped me kind of develop some of those skills. So it's an inspiring read. Yeah, that one is like, because it's like a thousand pages, right? That one is. Everyone talks about it.

But I might need to listen to it. Maybe if I listen, I can kind of switch in and out. Or I just need to remind myself, I read two 500 page books all the time. So maybe I just need to hurt it that way. Yep. Well, I definitely need to add that to my list, bump it up on my list. But I love detour. I love you two writing together.

And hopefully we get as many books as you guys want from it. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Thank you very much, Kate. Yeah, thank you.