Bookwild - Jakob Kerr's Gritty Technothriller Dead Money

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

This week, I got to talk with Jakob Kerr about his new technothriller Dead Money! We dive into hos his experience in Silicon Valley informed the book, why the tech industry is a prime thriller setting, and how he came up with one of the best intro paragraphs.Dead Money SynopsisDon’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.Anything at all.Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I got to talk with Jacob Kerr about his new techno thriller, Dead Money. This book is the book that helped me realize that one of my new favorite subgenres is the techno thriller. So if you've been hearing me talk about that, if you've been reading or watching more of that and you want some more of it, this is the book that you need. In her job as unofficial problem solver for Silicon Valley's most ruthless venture capitalists, McKinsey Clyde's gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech probe millions, she's so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets. But this time, she's in way over her head,

or so it seems. The Lightning Rod CEO of Tech's hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in dead money frozen in his will. As the company's chief investigator, McKinsey's boss has a fortune on the line. And with the police treading water, it's up to McKinsey to step up and resolve things fast. McKinsey's a lawyer, not a detective, cracking this fiendishly clever killing with its list of suspects that reads like a who's who of Valley Power Players

should be way out of her league, except that McKinsey's used to being underestimated. In fact, she's counting on it because the way she sees it, this isn't an investigation, it's an opportunity, and she'll do anything it takes to seize it, anything at all. I burned through this book.

over 400 pages and it felt like it was like a 250 page book. I was so glued to it. There's some really clever reveals at the end. I also really loved how Jacob's experience in Silicon Valley helped him kind of like weave all these little details about the tech industry into the story and really used the environment of Silicon Valley for a thriller because really it's a perfect environment for it. So I was so excited to talk to him. We get into when he had the idea for it, how it came together, how his experience informed it. So that being said, let's hear from Jacob. So I am so excited to talk about dead money. But I did want to get to know a little bit more about you here at the beginning. So what was the moment where you were like, I want to write a book?

or when did you feel like you thought you were a writer? I think, well, first, thanks for having me. Yeah. And yeah, I think like many writers, my journey began with reading a lot. You know, I was that kid who was always kind of camped out in the corner of the family vacation, avoiding my relatives and like buried in a paperback. I would even bring books to, you know, family dinners out at restaurants and kind of like read surreptitiously under the table.

Me too. So, yeah, I think probably many, many folks in your audience can relate to that. Yeah. But younger than I probably should have been, I was reading a lot of thrillers and sort of twisty suspense stories. And, you know, I started with Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and went to the big sort of commercial names and plowed through all of Grisham and Stephen King and Michael Creighton, Thomas Harris, all that stuff.

and I remember reading and then there were none by Agatha Christie when I was young again probably younger than I should have been but just being really blown away by the structure of it and finishing it and realizing like I didn't know a book could feel like a puzzle that you were putting together at the same time right and I think that's when I first started to realize you know I'd like to try this and I always had this kind of thought somewhere deep inside that was, you know, I want to try writing something like those books that I was first exposed to as, you know, like a 12, 13 year old, something that's, you know, twisty and fast-paced, but it has enough heft to it that it stays with you after you've finished for a while. And I spent most of my career sort of writing in other capacities, whether that was, you know, journalism or law school or my professional career, which has been mostly in communications. And then I think, like for many writers, the ideas just were rattling around in my head and they got so noisy that after a while you just have to

shut them up and get them out onto the page. And that was that was sort of my journey. That's really cool. It is fun, like, hearing about people who've, read like their whole life. And then eventually becoming writers too, which some people just keep reading their whole life, which is cool too. But I resonate with that. There was a, there was a movie theater that we used to grow up or we used to go to when I was growing up.

And it was like a really small one, like one, one theater room. Like it was a really old school one. But the employees there knew me as the girl who would like bring a book and read until the previews were over. So I was doing that too. Yeah. I worked at a very old school movie theater where I grew up in Seattle. That was like a second run theater. Yeah. And I probably saw the end of Gladiator like, I don't know, 300 times. So, you know, from our early age, these stories were kind of just flooding my system. Yeah. So once you started writing, what has your writing process been like, do you know where you're headed? Do you just start writing and see what

happens? How did it come together for you? Yeah, I've, the term that I've heard that I've come to appreciate is you have gardeners and then you have foragers, right? So you have like, gardeners who lay out their entire plot of land and figure out what's going to go where. And then you have foragers who just kind of wander into the, wander into the woods and see what they find. Right. Yeah. I'm much more a gardener. by nature, especially with the kind of story that dead money is where there are a lot of twists and the plot has multiple layers to it. I really needed to outline it in detail to make sure it all fit together. And that was a long, painful process, almost to the point where when you begin writing,

it feels like a bit of a relief in some ways. That feeling goes away quickly. Let's be clear. You know, I also wanted the twists in dead money to be ones that sort of you felt like they were there under your nose the whole time. Yes. You know, like layers within layers of story. And I'm sure there are more talented writers than me who can wander into the forest and just find that sort of thing. But for me, I had to sort of plot it all out well in advance and, you know, really, really make sure I had my garden set up well. Yeah. My caveat is I would say they're differently.

talented writers who came to go forage instead of garden. At least I love that analogy. I've never heard that one. And I like that that one's a little bit different than saying like plotters and pancers because it's kind of like the people I've talked to who it kind of comes to them. It probably is more like foraging. Like they're just like, I'll go see what's out there. So I like that term. But I'm with you. I'm like working on a first book. And I'm like, I can't, I had to know. I had to at least know like my, like, uh, I read Save the Cat writes a novel. So like just at least knowing those beats helped me be like, oh, okay. I think I could see how I could do this. Totally. No, you, for me, I'm the same way. I needed. The truth is that

I think everybody ends up, ends up falling somewhere in between, right? Yeah. I didn't, I didn't have every single pace point of dead money set out when I started. I think you do have to leave some room open for discovery, right? And I'm sure, you know, most foragers, like, they know, they know where in the woods they want to start, right? And they kind of have an instinct that they follow. So there's always a little bit of both. Yeah. But yeah, for me, it's, I need the, I need the sort of infrastructure in place so that I know where I'm going. Yeah, totally. With the characters, did you do any work getting to know your characters before you wrote? Or do you kind of get to know your characters as you're writing?

I kind of get to know them as I write. I think for me, the way that character works is, you know, this is one of the lessons that I've had to learn. Is I start with some part of myself. So that can be a really big part. That can be sort of like a worldview, you know, a philosophy. or it can be something really small, right? Just like an impulse I had one time or a feeling that I occasionally get, right? And then I try to tap into it and build the character from there, right?

So the seed is something from me. And then I sort of watch the tree grow from there as I go, right? Yeah. You know, I think it's hard for me to, I need that initial seed for the character to feel authentic. and, you know, I need that sort of starting point to grow from. But then, you know, usually I like to just kind of see where the character goes, put them into certain tense situations and imagine sort of how they would respond to them and let their actions kind of drive their development as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question.

Yeah. So with this one, I know you worked in Silicon Valley at one point. is kind of a two-part question, but what was your inspiration for the book? And then how did working in Silicon Valley kind of like inform your inspiration? You know, I think my, so in Dead Money, the main character, McKenzie, she is similar to me in that her career is in tech, but she has never felt wholly of it, right? She's got this kind of insider, outsider, you know, sort of perspective. and I feel, you know, I have still work in tech and I feel like I have, I still maintain that perspective. You know, I think I was extremely fortunate to spend a decade at Airbnb, just sort of accumulating observations. I was there when we were very, very small, you know,

like 50 people, and I stayed there for over a decade to when we were humongous. And, you know, my general observation was that outside of problems, human, like, outside of royalty, I don't think any group of people in human history has been treated better than the average tech employee. Like, you know, my, my wife, my wife worked in a hospital. She works in healthcare. And we did, we would exchange work stories at the end of the day. And it would always just reinforce how strange my workplace was and, and sort of how detached from the everyday reality it was. You know, like our office would shut down completely for two weeks every year for Burning Man.

Like we had, you know, a lot of the bells and whistles in the journey offices and dead money are taken directly from my experience, like a ball pit and massage therapists and Praseco on tap. And, you know, there was like a full-sized airstream trailer that you could have meetings in. That was inside, like, you know, it got craned into the office. And, you know, I realized I was accumulating all these

observations over time and I just sort of realized like, yeah, this is a good setting. It's sort of a larger than life setting for a story. And then what happened was in the mid-2010s, you had these companies like WeWork and Uber and Theranos where their founders were coming under a lot of scrutiny for their behavior, right? And that was from, you know, scrutiny from media, but also investors from their own employees. And I recall thinking to myself one day, you know, man, like some of these founders are so unpopular that if they got murdered in their office, there'd be like a million suspects, right? And then it was like a light bulb went off. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it kind of connected back to the mysteries

that I had grown up reading. And I realized, you know, it would make this for this very nice juxtaposition, right? You have this very optimistic, sunny place full of big, ideas and everything's glass and, you know, bright cartoony logos. But you have this underbelly of ambition and greed and billions and billions of dollars at stake. And it just would make for this kind of very rich, rich contrast. And that's sort of how the genesis of the story came about. Yeah. That's cool. I like the idea that you were like gathering observations. It was like unintentionally I started this book 10 years ago. Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, I wish I could say I had the foresight to like write these things down as they were happening, but I certainly did not. Yeah. But it just kind of, yeah, I just, I just was sort of osmised into me over many, many years. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense. I feel like especially like the first book you write, like at least in my opinion, like you want it to be kind of writing what you know. Because like then you kind of have some stuff to work with.

from the beginning. Well, this was the first book. This was the first book I've had published. I wrote some other stuff that was, you know, not. I mean, yeah, it's like I want people to understand this is not my first time, my first at bat at plate. Well, speaking of the beginning, the opening sentence I loved so much. So it says in McKenzie Clyde's experience, there are exactly two types or two,

ways of dealing with a rich asshole. And I feel like it just sets the tone so much for like what the whole story is going to be about. And it helps us kind of understand her really quickly. So did you play around with that sentence? Did it just come to you? How did that happen? Well, first, thank you. It's really nice to hear that. It came to me. I don't recall exactly when it was pretty early on in the writing process. And when it came to me, I realized like, oh, like, I was like, I like that. Yeah. And I just stuck with it. I never changed it. Yeah. Because to your point, I wanted something that would very quickly sort of tell the reader who McKenzie was, but also sort of set the tone of the overall story. And, you know, one of the things that I've learned the hard way during my writing

experience is that if you want to write something that has a lot of twists and surprises in the plot, you can't start with those. You really have to still start with the characters and then build out from there and let the twists kind of come to you as you go. Otherwise, it'll feel hollow. So, you know, that first line does end up kind of carrying a lot of meeting later in the story. but that piece of it didn't actually come to me until later when I was deeper into the story and, you know, was able to sort of connect back to it. Yeah, definitely. And then the rest, I mean, I'm not going to read the whole first page,

but it really does like go right into like what it's like to have to deal with these people with oversized egos all the time. And then her job is kind of like a fixer. which is in the synopsis. Like this isn't your typical HBO fixer. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Did you, did you know you kind of wanted to write with a character who was kind of a fixer within tech? I didn't know about the fixer piece of it. I, I knew I wanted her to be an insider outsider, right? Um, somebody who was sort of immersed in the industry and knew it really well. knew it, you know, forwards and backwards, but still felt like she was apart from it.

And carried a lot of disdain for it. And, you know, I, there were earlier iterations of the story in my head where she wasn't necessarily a fixer. It took me some time to kind of come to the place where I was like, okay, I think that this is the role that makes sense for the perspective. for her, for her attitude. And then, you know, figuring out how that would play into the overall mechanics of the story. I really liked that.

And it just kind of went from there. Yeah. That makes sense. One of the things I thought was really fun is you really included like all these like tech archetypes that we've kind of like come to know through media or whatever. So we have like the scorned startup partner. We have like really ambitious and stressed out founder. We have venture capitalists, the like hardcore coders who are like, I just want to come in and code.

I don't care about money. We have the tech pros who are like, my work is art. And then we have like, you also still get like your tech girls who are like gratitude and intentions and wellness retreats will save us all. So it was like kind of everyone in there. Did you want to kind of include everyone or were you just like writing what what was and everyone? kind of showed up. I think it was more the latter. I don't, you know, I don't, I didn't think about it super actively. I think it just sort of came out as a translation of my experience. You know, I think the truth is that for most of the 2010s, you could go to Dolores Park in San Francisco, which is this

kind of famous gathering place on weekends where people just sort of hang out and, and drink and smoke and, you know, just chill. God, I sound ancient when I put it that way. I want to drink and smoke and chill. I'm a couple of kids in, so I'm ancient at this point. Yeah, my Dolores Park days are way behind me. Yeah. But, you know, I think you could go to Dolores Park any weekend in the 2010s,

and you would probably meet all of those archetypes in the span of a couple hours. So, you know, it was mostly just a channeling of a lot of the different people that I encountered during my time in the industry and, you know, different, grabbing different pieces of different people and sort of amalgamating things together. And then also, you know, figuring out which, which sort of person would play the right role for what they need to do for the plot, right? So, you know, if one character is the sort of scorned

ex-partner to the founder like does that make sense given the role that I wanted him to have in the story right and and so on and so forth for the other characters too so that was a piece of it as well yeah yeah it was fun thank you're welcome that's a that's a deep well there's uh keep reading my books and you'll you'll have plenty of archetypes to to see i will keep reading them i was we just what did we just watch. Oh, we watched Blade Runner 2049 here recently. And then my husband was like Googling stuff because we'd read it. And he was like, is this that genre you've been liking lately? And it said tech noir. And I was like, that actually kind of is what that is. And I'm just like loving that is a really specific subgenre lately. Did you ever watch the show devs, D-E-V-S? No. But I remember hearing about it when

I watched Halt and Catch Fire. Yes. It's, um, it's, I really enjoyed it. It's kind of tech noir. Um, it's, it's not, it's not like as intensely sci-fi as Blade Runner, which I also loved. Um, but yes. Um, yeah, check out devs really good tech noir if you're into that. I'm going to.

You've got me sold on that. Um, there, so theme wise, there's also kind of this like conversation of how minorities, navigate tech, but I mean technically also the world in general, but in this case, in tech, there are a couple of quotes that really stood out to me. There's one, this is because women are forced to choose, choose whether to be honest with an ass like Tobias or swallow it in pursuit of the job, choose whether to take their maternity leave or fight for a promotion. And then there's another one where you reference like to effectuate change in modern

corporate structures. We must first assert our position within them if we want to change the composition of the then first we must take a seat at it. And I feel like it's it's that conversation of like, do you conform to the world that's unfairly against you so that maybe you can make it fair? Or do you rebel against it? Like what do you do? So was that like a theme that you wanted to explore when you started writing it? Yeah. Well, first again, thank you. And, you know, I think you're right that there's like attention there right um and what i wanted to get at was you know you you just sort of outlined an interesting choice right do you conform or do you rebel and the reality

is that in tech like many other industries you know a lot of guys that look like me never have to make that choice right right um and you know i tried to channel some of the just frustration and rage that I heard from my very close women friends and colleagues over many years, because I think tech does have a lot of sort of long-running problems with creating equal opportunity for all sorts of people within it, right? And it's not much different than a lot of other industries in that way, but it can sort of feel like a unique version of it in tech at times. You know, I think the story contains a lot of broader arguments about capitalism and sort of the unfairness of our world.

And it's a pretty cynical sort of viewpoint. And, you know, that comes straight from me. People ask me which character in the book is closest to me. And I always tell them it's McKenzie's mom, Janine. Oh, yeah. So, like, you know, her perspective is, is. very much my own. But in terms of the aspect of it that's specifically about how, you know, minorities and specifically women in tech can navigate this world, you know, I'm, I'm, first off,

there are plenty of, you know, brilliant women who have written more extensively about this topic. And I'm definitely not the person who should necessarily be like, you know, carrying the flag on this. But I was working in tech. when this book came out in 2013 called Lean In, right? And I remember how enraged it made many of the women I was friends with because, you know, there was the woman who wrote it. She was sort of arguably personally responsible for a product that, in my opinion, is the digital equivalent of double tar cigarettes.

And she took this very thorny systemic issue and tried to kind of commodify it into like a self-help little little buzz phrases and a lot of people were infuriated by that. You know, I think Michelle Obama said that shit don't work. So about leaning. There you go. So I remember, you know, even though I wasn't personally someone who was experiencing that rage myself, I remember hearing it and wanting to channel it into some of the characters in the story and their motivations because I could feel that there was like a deep vein there.

Yeah. I'm not going to give away spoilers, but there is even, I feel like there's even kind of a version of that book and that author in this book, a fictional version. And they also kind of have a conversation about it later on where you're like, oh, yeah, about that. So I do feel that theme. It also plays out a little bit later. later too. Because it is. It's like it's it's hard to know which choices to make when you're like up against stuff. And typically there's not like an easy solution to it. So so yeah, sometimes like

you're like you're saying commodifying it or simplifying it is like, um, that's not how it actually is. Um, so yeah, I like to have it played out. Thank you. Um, that speaking of some humor though, there is there's a moment where like kind of like a slam against someone is like he did but he doesn't think that big and the next sentence says like in tech it was perhaps the worst thing you could say about somebody we actually my husband and I work with a lot of people who love to be like it's because you're not thinking big enough and kind of so that same conversation about privilege like it's not always about thinking big enough like there are all kinds of other stuff but I also felt like that tension was just like really great for thriller, like for a thriller.

That feeling of like, you're not thinking big enough. So then everyone's in this frenzy to keep going for more. Was that something you kind of intentionally wanted to include? Oh, for sure. And yeah, I think there's another line where it's something like, you know, it's a lot easier to have this big picture perspective. If you're up in the penthouse, then it's, if you're like battling for elbow room on the street, right?

Yes. And, you know, that's, that's just something I sort of felt over my time in tech, definitely. And, you know, I sort of felt like thrillers or sort of these type of stories sometimes follow the money, right? Because that's where the stakes are the highest, right? So I think it's interesting. You could argue that like in the 80s, a lot of the best thrillers were set on Wall Street, right? or in the sort of financial world because that's what was booming. That's where all the money was.

It was super high stakes and cutthroat, right? And then in the 90s, you had big law and these huge court cases and these torts and, you know, John Grisham novels and all like, you know, thousands of movies that were courtroom dramas that came out in the 90s. And now the money is in tech. And for me, that's kind of where the stakes are the highest, right? you also have some unique factors within tech that I think made it made it good for a thriller story in that it's you have these vast sums of money you have billions right just sort of swirling around

in the industry but you also have sort of people who are just 20 something and fall ass backwards into it right it doesn't it doesn't all have to be you know like a wall street trader who is the third of his generation, right? It can be the guy who sells a painting to Facebook for their headquarters and then ends up having stock that's worth like $20 million, right? Yeah. So there's an accessibility to it that I think changes it too. And then everything just moves so fast in the digital age now, like things move so quickly that that I think also helps with the pacing of a story like this. So yeah, it was just all these factors kind of came together. And It's just reinforced in my mind, you know, this is a really good space in which to set a thriller story because it moves so fast.

There's so many people trying to just sort of like get their way into it. And the stakes are super high because there's so much money and fault. Right. Yeah. There really is. And I couldn't figure out how to put a question together because I didn't want to give any spoilers away. But and I think you even reference it near the end. some you might reference nesting dolls but the when you're saying tech changes so quickly there are

kind of like what's cool in the book is you also if you're not familiar with some of like the things that tech is already trying to do or what what what they're working on but that isn't available to the public you kind of go through like stages of those things as she's like figuring out what's actually happening so there's a lot of fun stuff that you learn through that process as well. But again, I don't want to give away anyone's motivations. But I kind of liked that part too. Like you're saying like things do change in tech so much.

So then the mystery or the like what who was after what could also kind of be like changing all the time too. For sure. And the pace of the innovation happens so quickly and the money flies around so fast that it's, you know, it's like, you know, today's. low-level programmer could be tomorrow's, like, founder, right? And tomorrow's founder could be the day after's, you know, wash-out, right? Yeah. Things just move so quickly because the technology is moving so fast that it just,

that also increases everybody's, like, sense of urgency, right? You know, and paranoia that whatever you're working on is you're not moving fast enough to sort of really, like, take advantage of it or that, you know, other people are moving faster than you and they're going to they're going to be it to the punch yeah yeah that you definitely referenced that and i was like that is like the scary feeling because not like you can loosely copy an idea in general and it's about which one really has like the luck of like opportunity timing like all of that stuff coming together and then it becomes the ride share app or whatever yeah that happened with Airbnb very early on actually

Yeah, I would assume so. There was a European group that basically copied Airbnb's platform and was like, yeah, we're just going to, we're going to do exactly what you're doing, but we're doing it in Europe and all these other places. And you can either buy us out or you can try to beat us. And the Airbnb founders, I remember at the time being like, can you do this? Like, this doesn't seem legal, but it, but it is. It's completely, it's just, you know, a race to the finish.

And so, you know, we, Airbnb ended up moving incredibly fast to try to expand internationally all, you know, super duper crazy speed. Just to protect their own idea, right? So that's, there's always an undercurrent of that in tech. Just this idea that like the bottom could drop out at any moment. So that also leads to, you know, really a nice tension for a thriller novel. It really does. Um, also like all of that pressure wins to this quote from the book, um, where it says, Tobias had one good idea years ago and he wasn't even the first to have it.

He was just the first person, barbarous and narcissistic enough to manifest that idea into reality. And so my husband and I kind of sometimes joke like it would be easier to be in business together if we were sociopaths. Like it would just be easier to be. successful if you weren't empathetic and you're kind of sociopathic or in this case even just like narcissistic enough that you're like I am going to be the one who makes this work. Yeah. So were those big egos kind of like attractive to include in something like a thriller too?

Oh, for sure. And yeah, absolutely. And I think your point is right on. You know, our system does not incentivize being nice or kind or empathetic, right? it incentivizes the kind of, you know, behavior that a lot of the sort of people on the top of the tech industry are the ways that they behave. I think your camera froze again. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, no worries. So yeah, I think one of the themes that I wanted to emphasize in the story, too, was that, you know, the tech industry really isn't so different from Wall Street or

any other big ruthless American industry, right? Sometimes tech is just smarter about how it packages itself, right? You know, on Wall Street, I think a lot of the ruthlessness is pretty brazen. It's just for the sake of money and everyone's open about that. And tech, I think there's this veneer sometimes of it's for something bigger than just money. It's about progress and a greater vision and the future and a mission. You know, but I, I, I, I, I don't think it ends up operating in practice any different than most other American industries. Right. And, you know, I wasn't, I think if anybody wants to sort of read a takedown of the tech industry

or a treatise on its many problems, there are tons of nonfiction books out there by many really talented writers. You know, I wanted that to be sort of an undercurrent of the story or a perspective that some of the characters had, but wanted to make sure it was entertaining first and foremost. But I do agree. It's, you know, the way I view it sometimes is like people talk about our sort of capitalist business landscape as though it's like a jungle, right? And, you know, I think tech, the tech industry, some of its products and its services that it's innovated have been so powerful and so revolutionary that tech really did have the potential to change some of the worst aspects of how that system. works, but it hasn't. Instead of making the jungle a gentler place, it's just become the apex

predator instead. Right. And, you know, I wanted that theme to come through in the story. And when you do have, I think a lot of the main character, McKenzie, her conversations with her mother really, like, touch on this topic, right? If you have the system that you know is unfair and you can see the ways in which it's sort of ruthless and broken, you know, how do you respond to that? Yeah. You have many different choices. And I think the characters in the story kind of make their own choices and see what the consequences are. Yeah. And they definitely do. We can't really talk about the ending, but did you know while you were writing that that's where you were headed? You know, it's hard to say. I don't. I don't I don't, it definitely came to me at some point during like the plotting process.

A lot of the writing experience for dead money was sort of like an out of body experience because I wrote it when we had two children that were both under the age of two. Wow. So like I was writing between diaper changes and nap times and in sort of this weird fugue state while I was writing it. But it definitely, a lot of the sort of layered structure of the plot came to me when I was sort of doing the initial gardening, right? But I will say, I know for certain that it wasn't the first thing that came to me. It came to me. I started with the characters, started with some initial ideas of like how I wanted the mystery to play out.

And then, you know, I tweaked it and changed it as it seemed to feel right for the characters I had created. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. If you can't tell, I loved reading it. Thank you so much. Everybody who loves tech is slowly, slightly interested in tech and those thrillers. We'll definitely love this one too. Yeah.

Even if you hate tech, you might like certain aspects of it. That's a good point. That's a good point. Can be a little cathartic. Yeah, it is like satirical. So if you also, if you like satire on tech, we'll amend it to say that. Sure. But it sounds like you are a big reader too.

So I have been asking people at the end if they've read anything recently that they loved. Yes, I have. It is completely and utterly, like it is so polar opposite from dead money that it's a strange recommendation. But for the first time I read Lonesome Dove, like a few weeks ago, like about 180 degrees different from Deadline, you know, like a classic like Western novel. And it took me a little while to get into it. But once I got going, it's now become one of my favorite books ever. So I love when that happens. Yeah. I like, I, it's, I'm weird with my genres, I just sort of like bop around from from different spot to different spot.

So that's cool. Yeah. I wish. Sometimes I still wish. I mean, I say it like I don't have a thousand books on my TV. But sometimes I'm like, man, why don't I get into this genre? Which I read quite a bit of the subgenres and thrillers, I guess. Because I used to be like, oh, I'm not a mood reader. I only read thrillers. And then I was like, oh, no, they're like different ones that I end up reading. But you might have convinced me maybe i need to read lonesome dove now too have you ever read the long mire novels um they're about a sheriff their mysteries um about a sheriff in a small town in wyoming and they're you know uh i've really enjoyed them um it's just it's like characters that you want to hang out with and it just has like a cool a really cool vibe to it um it's much again much different than dead money it's

They're not as kind of rapid or twisty, but they're just, they're really atmospheric. And the characters are great. I believe it's Craig Johnson is his name as the author. So it looks like. Yeah, Longmeyer, the Longmire series, the first book is called The Cold Dish. And those are really great as well. Nice. And then.

Oh, yeah, these, I thought I, this was made in a TV show with A&E. I think it has been. I thought that's what I was. I thought I remembered the name associated with a TV show too. That's cool. Yeah. One other recommendation. I imagine you've read Blake Crouch.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, recursion. I think, like, Dark Matter was made into the TV show recently, and it was, you know, rightly so, like super popular. But I believe it's called recursion. Let me make sure I have the name. Yeah, it's the yellow one. Yes, the yellow one.

For my money, that one was even. better. I mean, they're both great, but like, recursion is an awesome, awesome story and I highly recommend that too. Yeah. I loved that one. It plays with like memory and I mean, you could argue, it does play with time. I guess that's what I'll say. Yep. And it is so mind bendy. Yeah. And I have been, I've just been on a mind bending kick lately. So I'm seconding you on that one. I cannot imagine what his plot outline looked like for for recursion. And I'm just like very much in awe of it. So yeah. Yeah, I would I would check that one out too if you haven't. Yeah, that one was great. Upgrade was the same way where I was like he had so many things at play going on. Yeah. Yeah. I love

his books a lot. Me too. Well, where can people follow you to stay up to date with everything? Yeah, people can follow my website is just www.j.j.com j-a-k-o-b-e-E-R. I have a newsletter on there. I'm also on Instagram, Jacob underscore Kerr. You know, it's, it's just strictly book stuff on there. All Things Dead Money. And yeah, it comes out January 28th. And, you know, thank you again for having me. It's been really great chatting. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to put all of that in the show notes for people. Awesome. And then hopefully, hopefully you can come back and talk about another tech noir. That would be awesome. I would, I let's let's knock on wood. Yeah.