Bookwild - Jan Gangsei's Dead Below Deck: A Backwards Timeline, A Deadly Cruise and Complex Female Friendships

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

This week, I got to talk with Jan Gangsei about her salacious new thriller Dead Below Deck! We dive into how the idea came to her, how she chose to structure it, and what drew her to YA.Dead Below Deck SynopsisIt was supposed to be the best-ever girls’ trip: five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, eighteen-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She’s nowhere to be found the next morning even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces . . . showing Maggie pushing her overboard.But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, a passport that isn’t hers, and Giselle’s diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board: jealous Viv, calculating Emi, even some members of the staff.What really went down on the top deck that night? Maggie will have to work her way backward to uncover the secrets that everyone—even Giselle—kept below deck or she’s dead in the water. 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 

I actually did write it backwards. Weirdly, that's kind of how it played out in my head. So I just rolled with it. Like, it didn't work to me going forwards. It was just like, from the very beginning, it was like, okay, this is just moving back in time. And it's not something I think I could have pulled off probably 10 years ago when I was starting. Like, I feel like I had to get more experience in the actual plotting and plot points and reveals and, you know, how narratives should flow. But it was really a lot of fun.

This week I got to talk with Jan Gangsy about her new Yide. a thriller Dead Below Deck. It is told backwards, which is one of my favorite plot lines, and deals with the complicated friendships between a group of girls who are on a yacht. And someone ends up dead. It was supposed to be the best ever girls trip. Five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, 18-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She's nowhere to be found the next morning, even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces showing Maggie pushing her overboard. But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that

she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, and a passport that isn't hers, and Giselle's diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board. Jealous Viv, calculating Emmy, even some members of the staff. What really went down on the top deck that night. Maggie will have to work her way backwards to uncover secrets that everyone, even Giselle, kept below deck or she's dead in the water. This one is so fast-paced. I feel like being told backwards, it's even more fast-paced somehow, and I was just devouring it to figure out what actually happened to Giselle. I had a lot of fun talking with Jan about where she got the idea for this and how she structured writing a backwards novel.

So that being said, let's get into it. I am so excited to talk about Dead Below Deck with you, Jan. But I wanted to get to know a little bit about you first. Sure. So when did you know you wanted to be an author? When did you know you wanted to write a novel? Yeah. So, gosh, I don't know.

I feel like I'm like every other author on the planet that I've been writing since I was a little kid. You know, I have stuff in my storage area of my little first books. that were made out of rubber stamps, you know, that my mother filled out for me because I couldn't even like write myself yet. So yeah, I feel like I've wanted to be a writer for a long time. I always loved to read. I didn't really start thinking as much about writing an entire book until until I was an adult. I just, I think I had to live a little first and experience things and learn how to write. So yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I saw in your bio that you were or are, I don't know if it's current, a journalist that covered

like political and police beats, have you found that your job or your work there affects how you write novels? Definitely. I'm not currently a journalist. That's what I did when I got out of college. I interned for a television station while I was in college and then I went to work for a newspaper when I graduated and I think it definitely does influence how I write. I tend to be, I tend to fall on the spectrum of being a much more leaner writer, which I think kind of fits with that journalism background that you know, you want to fit more into, you know, whatever your column length is that you're using. So I tend to be a little bit more leaner writer and when I go back to revise, I need to go in and, you know, expand and add a little more interiority. That's one thing that

I have to work on because I tend to write a little bit like I'm reporting sometimes, like, oh, here's what happened and here's what happened. So, and then Oxford commas are basically the bane of my existence because I had to train myself not to use them as a journalist because that's like AP style. You don't use Oxford commas in most cases. And obviously in writing a book, you do. So I think I keep a copy editor busy. Right. I hadn't even thought about that because I've talked to a couple of authors who have also been journalists too, but I hadn't thought of how even like the literal like rules of writing are different. It's just different styles, you know? So yeah, there's definitely a transition.

And even going into journalism, I had to get out of my head like the paper writing type of thing from college, you know, like here's how you write a research paper. Here's how you write this. And then, you know, the Oxford comma once again. The Oxford comment. I'm going to be sending you all the memes I see about Oxford Comment. Yeah. So for novels, what does your writing process look like? So typically this means, like, are you a plotter?

Are you a pancer? Like, how do you approach writing a story? I think I kind of fall somewhere in the middle. When I first was starting, I was definitely just a total pancer. And I think that's because I was basically figuring out my own style and what worked for me. I do a lot more plotting now, especially I think when you're writing a mystery or a thriller, you kind of have to have some kind of general outline, for me at least, of where you're headed. I sort of liken it a little bit to like it's a GPS. Like with Dead Blow

Deck, I knew exactly how I wanted it to end. I had to figure out how I wanted to get there. So it's kind of like I plug my little GPS point in and then I head off on my journey and there's usually a detour or two. You know, sometimes things just come out as you get to know characters. But, you know, I feel like I need some, I need the basic plot points there. And then I kind of pants it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I'm a plancer. I like that combo. Yeah. The more people I talk to, the more it's like people are kind of a combination more than anything, where it's like they might have kind of like you're saying you have the ending in mind or like some people might have like three or four scenes in mind and then they kind of figure out the rest as they go.

So I think that like hybrid kind of seems seems a little bit more common. Not that not that it matters how anyone writes a book. I know. I'm always impressed by the people that like can plot everything out and have like sticky notes and things everywhere all, you know, like a whole board. I'm like, wow. I would not stick to that. I'd get halfway through and be like, oh.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah, it's probably a balance that everyone has to figure out. as they're writing. What draws you to writing young adults fiction or young adult thrillers? Yeah, that's a great question. It's funny because I think when I first sat down to write, that was the age that just really felt natural, like middle grade and young adult. I think it's just such a pivotal time in your life. When you're a young adult, everything is new.

You know, you're experiencing a lot of first. And I think there's just a there's just such this core search for identity that is so key to being a teenager that, you know, you still go through it as an adult, like figuring out who you are, what your place is in the world, right? But like when you're a teenager, it's so much more powerful. And I think that just kind of slots so well into the mystery thriller genre, because in a mystery, right, you're trying to find out, like, who did it. So like the who am I question sort of translates over into being a who done it. So I feel like it's a great way to. explore all those powerful emotions to figuring out who you are and your place in the world.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I read or when I read in my dreams I hold a knife, I talked with Ashley Winstead about like what's fun about writing dark academia. And she's kind of that similar answer where like you're right, it kind of starts in your teen years, not necessarily college, where you're like, who am I? And like since there's so much much that's unsteady inside yourself. I think it's easier to like get into trouble or to like get in over your head because like you just don't know any better. Yeah. So I do think that's really fascinating concepts. Definitely. I agree. How do you get to know your characters? Do you kind of get to know them as you're like writing, filling in the plot points that you don't have planned out? Or do you kind of like

try to get to know the characters before you start writing? I think it's again kind of a little bit of both. Like I have a general, I usually give myself a good paragraph of who my character is before I really start writing. But as I start working with the character and living inside their head and plotting out what they're doing, they become more real. Like I kind of like, and it's kind of like, you know, having a child where in the beginning they're just kind of like this, you know, little baby that doesn't necessarily have a lot of opinions that they share. but then as they grow and you get to know them, they separate into this whole, you know, person of their own. And I feel like that's how, at least for me,

writing a character and a book kind of turns out, the more I get to know them, the more I have them in different situations. I begin to understand their motivations more, why they do the things they do. And, you know, and it's fun to think about, like, what kind of music would they listen to, what kind of, you know, television shows would they watch or stream

or, you know, just like a lot of different background questions for myself. Yeah, that makes sense. With Dead Below Deck, what was your initial inspiration for it? It sounds like maybe it was the end, so maybe you can't talk about it much. But is there anything not spoilery that was the inspiration? Yeah, no. Actually, this was, I think, my pandemic book, right before the COVID pandemic really hit full force. My family and I, we went on this cruise from New York to the Bahamas. It was a whole bunch of us went. It was, we had a blast, but it was truly, we got back.

And I think within two weeks, everything started changing, shutting down. So it was like this line in the sand of like the before and the after. And I think, you know, once lockdown started and I was home and school was canceled, you know, I sit in there and I was like, it would be so nice to just go back to when I didn't have any idea what was coming. And that kind of plant of the seed of an idea in my head of these, you know, privileged girls that go on a yacht trip and it ends badly. And then it goes backwards to the beginning, which kind of like launched the idea for writing the story backwards. So it's like, what if you could just hit a rewind button and go back to the beginning?

So there's a lot of that kind of combined. And then, you know, the characters sort of came into play. Yeah. I was actually, I was going to ask you, too, structure-wise. it is told backwards, which is like always really fun to me for a couple different reasons. But first, I did want to ask. So it sounds like did you write it the way that it appears, or did you write it linearly and then turn it into backwards, if that makes it? That's a great question. I actually did write it backwards. Weirdly, that's kind of how it

played out in my head. So there's two narratives that interplay with each other. So the main narrative, Maggie, who's the person accused of pushing the heiress Giselle off the yacht, her story is told backwards. And instead of chapters, it's like broken up by like the day of the trip and the time and the location of the yacht to try to help orient myself and the reader as they're going along through the story. Then the other narrative is Giselle's journal that starts in the past and works its way up to the departure day of the yacht until they kind of convert. at the end. So there were two that kind of went side by side and I actually wrote them for the most part together, just going back and forth. Eventually I did reorder a few things a couple of times like, you know, slotted in more journal entries or took out various chat. You know, so there was some

changing along the way, but pretty much the order that the book is in is how I wrote it. Wow. That's wild because what's always interesting to me about stories that either timeline hop, which that is what this is, is we were in different positions with Giselle's diary or stories that are told backwards. It's so fascinating how they still can feel like they hit the right plot beats. So like even though it's not in order, you're still like kind of getting a big like a reveal or something at that halfway point. So I'm always fascinated by how people make that work. And it sounds like some people can make it work even just by writing it backwards. Yeah, it was interesting because like I said, it really just thought was how the story came to me.

And so I just rolled with it. It didn't work to me going forwards. It was just like from the very beginning, it was like, okay, this is just moving back in time. And it's not something I think I could have pulled off probably 10 years ago when I was starting. Like I feel like I had to get more experience in the actual plotting and plot points and reveals and, you know, how narratives should flow. but it was really a lot of fun. I actually enjoyed writing that way. That's really cool. I meant to ask you earlier, I saw also in your bio that you grew up on Nancy Drew books. And so did I. I mean, I feel like a lot of our mystery thriller fans out there probably did. But a couple of questions. How does Nancy Drew inform

your creativity and your writing today? And do you remember, do you have a favorite Nancy Drew book? Oh my gosh, that's a good question. If I have a favorite one, I mean, I have, you know, the one that I always remember was that first one with the mystery and the old clock and all that definitely jumps out at me. I think like reading Nancy Drew when I was younger, like she was just such a power, like in my mind at least, I don't know if in retrospect it seems different, but she was just such a strong, powerful female character. And I love that about her that she, you know, she had this cool car. She solved mystery. She, you know, she was like, she was a good example, I felt like, of, you know, what what a young woman could do. And so, yeah, I just loved her stories. And I actually got to write one. I know we're like the Carolyn Keynes were supposed to. Yeah. But I did, I did get to write a Nancy Drew, which was kind of a neat, you know, full circle moment.

Look at list item. So that was so. Yeah. I know you can't talk about it a lot, but I'm glad you know. I'm happy. I at least know you wrote one of them. Yeah, yeah. exclusive here. Um, so what in, well, it might have been you said you've gotten back from a cruise. What, what made you want to set this story on a luxury yacht? Yeah, I love the idea of, um, it's a great, like, closed room setting, right? You have all of your suspects to what's happening. all located in one place. So that was part of the appeal. The cruise definitely inspired me. And I just like the whole idea of taking these characters and getting them completely away from their normal routines, their homes, their family, their friends. Because I think a lot more

of people's true characters come out when they're on vacation too. There's a little bit of like, I'm going to let my hair down and do whatever I want, dance on the tables. It's like, you know, you become a slightly different person or maybe you become a little bit more like yourself when the usual people that aren't there to watch you are there. So I like that whole idea of just taking them in a little pod and moving them away from their normal. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's really isolated like you're saying it's like a locked room mystery in that sense. But it's like really it's isolated in this really like glamorous extremely wealthy way. Right. But that still kind of doesn't protect them from everything that's happening. Was that intentional at all? Or is that just kind of like the setting was the setting?

No, I mean, I kind of wanted a little bit of that contrast that, you know, they weren't necessarily protected because they were on this glamorous, you know, yacht that, you know, there was so much privilege involved. And just to kind of juxtapose the backgrounds of the girls without getting too spoilery. But, you know, you have. have this immense privilege and then you have other characters that don't have it. So there's resentments, there's feelings of, you know, entitlement and, you know, feeling just a lot that kind of comes to clash when you put everybody in this kind of situation where they're confronting one person's very, very extreme wealth. Yes. Yeah. And there, the relationships between the girls are very layered and intricate, was there, and you may not be able to talk about what it was, but was there anything that surprised you as you were writing the complexities of their relationships? Oh, that's a good question. Anything that surprised me? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's funny

because I think when you write characters and you have somebody in your head that like, oh, this person's going to do this thing and it may not be a good thing that you begin to understand them. in a different way. I know these are hard to answer without like spoiling anything. Yeah. If you can't, that's okay. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean the way that they interact with each other, like I feel like even though a couple of them were very different in a lot of ways, they were also very similar. So it was interesting to me to have like, you know, there were two sides of the same coin basically that, again, I know it's hard to answer that without going to spoilery. That's okay. That's totally okay. Yeah.

We were kind of talking about it, though. This story really does explore power dynamics and the difference is there. And the difference in how an heiress going missing is treated compared to if she was a, like, quote-unquote, normal person. Right. How did you kind of want to shape the reader's perceptions of the characters and the mystery with, like, all. of that at play. Right. So yeah, obviously, you know, she's the daughter of a super powerful senator who's, you know, planning to run for president. She's, she's also just, you know, someone who's like featured in People magazine and just has been a celebrity pretty much her whole life. So when she

disappears, it's, you know, the media converges. There's just all this attention on it where, like you said, if it was, you know, random person, it might get, I would say some attention just falling off a yacht or missing at sea usually garners some media attention but there's so much more focus on her because of who she is yeah there really is so hold on sorry i'm having oh that's okay our allergies are so bad oh they're yeah they're rough here right now i don't know where you are but we've just i'm in indiana where are you indiana indiana yeah it's and it's still warm in November. I think that's part of what's like, and it's humid outside. I know, but it's 81 here today. What is happening right now? Oh, okay. So with the journal entries, that's that was kind of like

writing from another person's POV. Right. Kind of like you were writing from two people's POV. Was there one that you enjoyed more, or were there like certain aspects about each point of view that you enjoyed writing? Oh, interesting. Yeah, I think there were certain aspects of each point of view that I liked. You know, they, they were different styles of writing, like with the journal. It's a little less of a narrative and more of just one person's thoughts. And, you know, in Giselle's journal, like in the back of my mind,

she's kind of like a creative writer. So she tends to write a little bit more like, you know, she puts in, you know, dialogue and things like a little bit longer than your typical, like journal entry like I saw I felt or whatever. But it was kind of neat to have the two different. perspectives because it is just a slightly different type of writing style and you know with giselle was a little bit always in her head versus Maggie there was a little bit more action with their character and recounting of what other people are doing and so yeah I like

reading both of them it was fun to just explore two different characters in two different ways mm-hmm yeah totally they they're obviously they kind of as you're saying the chapters like also are kind of denoted by where the ship like what day it is and where the ship actually is and where they're um going why can't i think of the term that's like where they go on ground make landfall oh their first stops yes that there we go in my head it's early yeah uh so then there are multiple spots that they stop at too so are those all that you've been or did you do any research for some of those stops? Yeah, I've actually been to all of them.

And I used to live in Key West. So I kind of always knew I wanted the yacht to go there because Key West is definitely a place that's very dear to my heart. So that played a big role in the book. And that's actually the last place on land that Jezell is seen. So that was fun to include that. That's kind of when things are really working their way to a head. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so and I've been to the Bahamas and Grand came in, so I was able to draw a little bit off of just knowledge from having visited those locations too. Yeah, that's cool. I just interviewed a couple months ago, a writing duo named Rachel McGuire. They just wrote something called On the Surface, and it's about a couple that YouTube is like a YouTube couple that cruises and just lives on the road. I said I read that, actually. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yes, it is. But I was, it's so, I haven't traveled to many places. So it's always really fascinating when a book like kind of takes you out of, I mean, I'm in Indiana. Like there's corn

everywhere is basically what I have. So I'm always fascinated by that. And they had traveled to some of those locations too. It's kind of cool when the author has because there is like another layer of realness to it as well. Definitely. Yeah. No, and I agree. I mean, I grew up in Vermont mountains and cows, you know, so yeah, that was a lot of my travel was in books and, you know, just chance to escape to other locations. Yeah. Do you think that was also that you mentioned, like, it was your pandemic book and it was kind of like, that kind of maybe inspired the like, what if we could rewind with something? But was it also like, can I just like, back into a cruise or something.

Absolutely. That was kind of the very beginning of it. I was like I really would just love to be out on the ocean away from everybody just with my family and close friends just off. Take our little pad and just float out to sea. So yeah, that absolutely played into it. I think that was some of the very beginning seeds of the idea. Yeah. Started with that.

It is nice. Sometimes you just, it's not that this book isn't dark either, but sometimes you need like, like suspense and some thrills but like also to kind of like feel like you're in a nice environment right right a little escapism yes so if people are looking for that this one's definitely uh perfect for that as well um what was the other question i just thought of one as you were talking man it just slipped right away from me i had to take bened drill because of my allergies So we're fighting. Oh, seriously.

I understand. I'm glad I haven't sneezed. Right. What was it? What was my other question? That was probably what. Yes. So one of my other favorite books that's told backwards is all the missing girls by Megan

Miranda. Yeah. That one is obsessed with that story structure. Yes, absolutely. I recommend that to everyone still. And it sounds like you do. too. It was one of her earlier ones. It was. And actually, we used to, at the time that came out, we shared a literary agent who's

since retired. So I just, I remember Megan from like very early on when she was writing YA. And then that was her first book transferring or, you know, shifting into adult mystery. She's, she's just a lovely person on top of being a great writer. She's just one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely, I want to meet her someday. That would be a amazing. Yes, if you get a chance, she's just absolutely delightful, a very sweet person. Yeah, and it was my first experience with that telling something backwards. And what I think is kind of interesting about it is it really does raise the suspense even more because you're having to kind of like keep track of things in a different way, like in your own as you're reading it too.

And so I just feel like it really added to the suspense of it all. But that, did make me also want to ask what draws you to writing suspense and thrillers as well? Yeah, I mean, I think I love to read suspense and thrillers, so I think that's probably half of it. That's just the type of story that I really love. So I definitely think that's a huge part of it. And they're just, they're fun to write. They're fun to read. And I, you know, I like exploring the, it's a great way to get into the psyches of your characters and figure out what motivates people to do things they do. And it's kind of interesting when you mentioned like the suspense building in a different way

in a backwards story. I think part of that is like you as the reader, as you're reading a story backwards, you're gaining knowledge while the character loses it, right? Because you know more than they do as the book progresses, which is like an opposite type of narrative. Because normally you're just picking up clues along with the um along with the narrator so you know they can get to chapter three and reflect what happened on you know in chapter one whereas you're like oh i happen to know this happens here and then it gets chapter three but they have no clue what's coming down in chapter one so kind of a neat way to tell it i think because it just changes the dynamic with you as a reader and the characters as they go through the story yeah especially when it's completely backwards like

you're saying, but I'm going to do it again. Everyone who listens hears me talk about the affair probably like every two months on this podcast. But the affair on Showtime was one of the first shows, not like the first show, but one of the first shows that really did that you start off with like the really terrible event. And then you go way back like weeks or months ahead. and the way that it handles it is like then at the beginning of each episode you're getting like police interviews after a terrible event but then you're just trying to figure out what even how that even came to be because when you go way back you're like how could those two people have done something to each other and it's kind of that same feeling that you're pointing out I hadn't thought

of it is like it's also it also is so engaging as a story structure whether it's books or TV shows or movies because you do know more than the characters because you know like the big bad thing that's about to happen. Right. Now it's more of a like why done it and how done it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

And that's a good way to describe it. I've seen backwards narratives describe like that that there are less of who done it and more of the why did it happen. You know, obviously with dead below deck, there's a little bit of question about who done it too because Maggie doesn't remember anything. from the night before because they were having a bit of a party. Yeah. And she woke up just a tad bit hungover and...

Right. Yeah. How is it working with a character who didn't have a memory of like a really important event? Right. Well, yeah, I mean, it made it interesting because obviously she doesn't know what happened. Although in a backwards narrative, I'm not spending a lot of time with what she does and doesn't know at that point in time. because it's moving back in time. So I think that was also why the backward narrative worked better in that story

because it's not her running around trying to investigate what happened. It's just moving backwards as kind of the pieces get put together. Yeah. And kind of behind the scenes in the present day, she's actually reading the journal. So as the journal is moving forward, the ideas that she's sitting in her stateroom by herself, reading it and pieces are starting to click. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it is fun. I love the use of journals like that. There was Ruth Ware, her one perfect couple here recently. Yes, I just read that too. Yeah, the way she used the journal entries. Yes, yes. Just wild. It's kind of fun. Yes, it was.

Yeah. I'm a huge Reefair fan too. I love her books. I love her. She's amazing. It does sound like you read a lot to those. I do read a lot. I've been asking everyone at the end if there's anything they've read recently that they just really loved. Oh, wow. There's a ton. I did, I actually did just read one perfect couple. I just finished Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson. I'm getting ready to start the Midnight Club by Margo Harrison, which I'm really looking forward to. That's kind of got a couple, like, I don't know if you've seen anything about that book. It's about a group of Gen Xers that go to a college reunion and they're basically offered a drug that allows them to relive their younger days. But there's like a murder miss or there's a

mystery worked in there. I haven't started it yet. It just looks so intriguing. I want to be able to really sit down with it. So I'm super excited about that one. Yeah. I think I had heard of it. Yeah. Now that I'm looking at the cover though, I'm like, I don't think I had. Yeah, it's just it It just sounds really different. And I'm excited to read that one. And one of my favorites, I read this one. It's probably been a couple of years. But have you read Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Julian McAllister?

That is on my like 10 before the end of the year. Like, I really want to read it. Okay. It's another one that plays with narrative structure, but it's done in a way that I've never seen. It moves backwards. But the character is conscious of their backwards move. They basically wake up every day a little further back in the past. And it starts out with the woman witnessing her son,

kill somebody outside the window. And then it just keeps, she keeps hopping back, trying to figure out how to leave messages for herself or stop what happened or figure out what happened. And then there's another timeline that's layered in there. It is just brilliant that by far one of my favorite mysteries. And I recommend, that's the one I recommend to everybody. that's good to know because so I did I did I do like buddy episodes too with just books to grammars as well right and two or three weeks ago I did an episode of like hyped books that like

we haven't got that I haven't gotten to that I want to read and wrong place wrong time was on there and then I was talking with oh I was on someone else's podcast yesterday and we were talking about mind bending thrillers and how like for me what I also love about ones that make you have to think really hard is I feel so like locked in and so engaged in what's happening since you have to mention. So then I was talking about wrong place, wrong time yesterday. And now you've brought it up. And I'm like, you definitely need to read it. I think I, I'm not even sure I stopped. I probably had to pause to do something. But it was one of those that I just kept going. And it, it's just so good. And there's so, there's so much like emotion layered in that too. Like I think it really resonated with me as

mother as well because it's this woman who just desperately wants to protect her child who's done something horrible at the very beginning that she sees and so it was just so well done nice and with some fun surprises in it that's always good too there's a love story you know it's just yeah i need to i'm i just started a book called the silent watcher by victor i don't know if it's it's Mathos or Methos, because he's going to be on the podcast in a couple of weeks. So I just started that one, but I'm starting to think I need to do wrong place, wrong time after that. Yeah, yeah, I loved it.

Yep. I'll be interested to hear what you think. Yeah, I'll definitely let you know. I've talked about it so much. It's like time for me to have an opinion and read it. Right. Where can people go to follow you to stay up to date with everything? So I'm on Instagram.

I admit I'm like not the most prolific poster anywhere, but I'm there. I'm on X formerly Twitter. I definitely don't post as much on there anymore. The writing community is kind of filtered away. In its early days it was fun. There were a lot of, you know, like authorly chats and things that happened. But I do have a Threads account as well. But I kind of feel like everything dispersed a little bit.

Instagram probably is where I'm trying to shift myself over to. Yeah, that's awesome. I think all of us are kind of like that at this point. Yeah, floating around like a bunch of balloons in the air. Yes. Well, I loved getting to talk to you about this. Yeah, thank you. I'll put all those links in the show notes so people can keep up with everything you're doing. And otherwise, thanks so much for coming on today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was great talking to you.