Off Air... with Jane and Fi - LIVE AT THE QUEEN'S READING ROOM FESTIVAL (with Harlan Coben)

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Welcome to Thursday! Fi’s still off with illness and Jane remains in Liverpool, so frankly, morale could do with a boost... Luckily, we’ve got just the thing. Tonight, we bring you Jane and Fi live at The Queen’s Reading Room Festival, in conversation with best-selling writer Harlan Coben. You can buy tickets to the Cheltenham Literature Festival here: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/jane-garvey-and-fi-glover-with-anneka-rice You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFi Our most asked-about book is called The Later Years by Peter Thornton. If you want to contact the show, ask a question or get involved in the conversation, please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings. Welcome everybody. Jane and I just having a little bit of a catch up there. Jane's been away on her holidays, so the list is long of things we need to discuss. But that's all about us and that's not why we're here. And it's not why you're here either. But it is absolutely lovely to see so many of you here to hear, well, really, from one of the world's most successful novelists. I don't know. How many people in the room think they might have a book in them? Right. Harlan. Okay. Anybody else? Yes. Okay. Right. Well, all you need to know about how to write a bestseller and make a fortune is in this book. So I honestly, it's also, we should say we've both read the book. It's funny as well, isn't it? It is funny and it's absolutely terrific. And as we were saying to Harlan, only a couple of moments ago, wouldn't it be an ironic if he'd written a really shit book about how to write a book? But it's not that. It's absolutely terrific. And it is highly reading. and we're going to try and pack as much as is humanly possible into our interview with him in the first 25 minutes and then we want to open the floor to all of you so don't be shy, give your armpits a bit of an airing

put your hand up if you want to ask a question and just don't be the person who leaves the room thinking oh my God I wish I'd ask that this is absolutely why we are all here it is also very lovely to see you if you're members of the off-air community you can admit that in public now who would like to do do that. Yay! It's good. But not everybody. So there's

some, I don't know, there's some work to be done this afternoon, isn't it? There really is. I should say, this is Fee Glover, I'm Jane Garvey, and we are part of, well, we're the, are we the epicentre of the Offair community? We kind of are. I suppose we're going to have to take that, Jane.

Well, I've said it, so we'll take it. Offair is a podcast available four days a week, courtesy of the times. You'll find it in all good podcast places. Wherever you get your podcast from, That's correct, isn't it? That is. And we've always said this.

It's moderately successful, and it continues to be moderately successful. Thanks to you and some of the absolutely amazing emails and contributions we get from people who listen and feel part of something. We also feel part of it, too, don't we? We do. We do feel part of it. We're contractually obliged to feel part of it. But we genuinely do feel part of it. At which point, we will bring in the man you've come to see and the person you've come to hear from,

Harlan Coben. Now, it is a slightly, yes, thank you very much indeed for dealing with our stage. Why is it fake? They have like real curtain and fake curtain. Can somebody, is that a British thing? It's an aristocratic thing, Harlan. Okay, thank you. Just trying to figure it all out.

I love the way. As well, there's a kind of emergency phone there at the corner of the stage. I don't know. That's in case things don't go well with the podcast and I need to leave. Okay. I have somebody set off the phone to ring. You've got your people there. I really hope the phone doesn't work during this session.

Harlan, now, how are you? Because you've come from quite a long way today, haven't you? I just literally landed two hours ago, I think, three hours ago at Manchester Airport. But I'm thrilled to be here. This is just like New Jersey. Mine's me of Newark is very similar to this setting here. You've been to Newark Airport, so you guys know it's very similar to this.

Chatsworth is very shabby, isn't it? Shabby, I would say, yes. It doesn't scrub up at all. What a place. Is it your first time at Chatsworth? It is, so I'm thrilled to be here. Thrilled by all of you are here. Thank you all for coming out.

Supporting the Queen's Reading Room. Can we start just by asking, who asked you to write a book about how to write a book? Or was it something that came from you? In fact, a lot of people asked me not to write a book. I'd just written the year before I had written, usually I'd write one novel a year.

And last year I wrote two, because I wrote mine, and I also co-wrote a novel with Reese Witherspoon. and I just couldn't quite turn around and write yet another one fast. And I had done a masterclassy kind of a thing on writing. And I thought that would make an interesting book. And my publishers were kind of like, yeah, maybe. But if you could add memoir, and I really wanted to add memoir into it.

So I think it's part memoir, part writing guide. But I think what I realized when I was doing it was how much, I always joked sort of that I'd make it all up, right? Oh, what do I know about murder and mayhem? I just make it all up. And as you know from reading the book, literally every aspect, every idea I've come up with has come from something in my real life

and how weird my real life actually was. So it's kind of, yeah, so it's half memoir, I think and half writing guide, I hope. And creative guide. Even if you like to paint or sculpt, I have friends of mine who write music and play music who have found things in it. So I'm hoping.

We'll see. We will talk more about the art of storytelling. But just take us back to your, childhood, tell us a little bit about your family, and can you tell us about the book annex, which I think is a term that maybe our British audience might not understand. Yeah, because it's actually a term most Americans don't understand either. First of all, as I mentioned before, I was born just west of here, just west of Chatsworth in Newark, New Jersey. So it's great to be back home with all of my friends and family. And I was raised about seven or eight

miles outside of it in the town called Livingston in really kind of a classic American suburb. I had two brothers and mom and dad and the usual sort of American middle class, American dream type environment, which is where I set most of my novels. But my town was very strange. So we had two, we have two myths when I was growing up. You know how you always have myths in your town when you're growing up. One was that behind Reiker Elementary School, behind the barbed wire fences was a nuclear missile base. And the second was behind the Richie the Boot Boyardo Mafia House. There was a furnace where they burn bodies. And when I grew up, I found out that both of those rumors were true. Absolutely true. So this is sort of the

neighborhood I grew up, I grew up in. And so when you think of, well, how does he do so many secrets and things that don't appear to be what they are? Maybe it starts right there. And were there loads of books in the home. Did everybody read? Yeah. My parents were, well, so my parents never read to me. This is the big thing nowadays with parents are supposed to read to their kids all the time. My parents, I don't

recall ever even once like them sitting down and reading to me. But they weren't faking it. They were very authentic. We had thousands of books around the house. Everywhere we went were books. Our bedrooms were decorated

in early American firehouse. I mean, it was just all over the place. And our big activity, you mentioned the book annex, our big activity on Sundays, because it was also very inexpensive to do. We would drive into New York City, we would go through the Lincoln Tunnel, and it was a book annex, which is kind of like a bookstore, but it has on sale books. And you would go into the store, and it would give you a brown paper bag, an American kind of grocery bag, if you've ever seen those.

I don't know if you guys have the same here or not, so I always had the American part. And you could fill it for $5. So my entire family would spend the entire day in their browsing and then we would bring the books to my dad who would pack it like it was a game of Tetris, you know, using up every. There was not any space left over for that thing, went right to the top. And that would be a very inexpensive and fun and book-loving way of spending our Sundays. Well, it definitely paid off, didn't it? I hope so. And we're going to jump a bit just for the purposes of time.

But the point at which you wrote your first novel, I thought, was really interesting. And it's not as if you had written novellas or submitted to short story competitions or anything like that. You just went, shhok! I do it right in the deep end. Yes. Tell us about that time. So I was working in the Costa del Sol of Spain. I bet you some of you, when you were younger, took those trips to Tourmalinos and Benamadino Costa and Fonarola and all of those.

my family worked in the travel business was a travel agency, and so I went there to watch their clients one summer when I was like 20 years old. I was terrible at it. It was a disaster. But while I was there, I thought, and I was bored out of my mind,

which is very important, I think, for a writer to learn how to be bored. I think that's one of the reasons a lot of us became writers because you tell yourself stories, but that's another topic. I started to write a book. I decided I would write a book

about being this American tour escort trying to handle these very, very difficult American tourists, even then, especially maybe that. Americans were really difficult on vacation. And so I did. I bought a notebook in the cost of Del Sol, and I wrote an entire novel between there and when I came home from that trip. I would say in six to eight months, without ever writing a short story, that ever explorering fiction, I wrote an entire novel. And that novel was awful. It was terrible. It was pretentious, pompous, self-absorbed the things the first novel should be, but that's where I got the virus. That's where I realized this is my thing, this is what I want to do. I think a lot of people, I would have

to include myself, have this fantasy that I could write a book. What I became painfully aware of reading your book is that in order to write a book, you have to write. That's a terrible rule. Rule number one, is it? Rule number two in the book, but yes, it's rule number one. That you have to write. So I mentioned three things that make a writer, but number two of those three things is perspiration. And that is you actually have to write. And only writing counts as writing. Creating characters isn't writing. Outlining is not writing.

Coming up with ideas is not writing. Research is not writing. Having coffee with your friends is not writing. Talking to your writing group is not writing. Updating your software is not writing. Buying a notebook in the gift shop today because you think you're going to write is not writing. Only writing is writing. Only the moments you actually produce words on a page or a screen count as writing.

Everything else is flotsam and jetsam. The only when you get your button in a chair and actually produce words, that's what counts as writing. And that's where we lose a lot of people. You have been told in a beautiful, funny way. So talk us through the rules of writing then. In at number one is inspiration. Inspiration. I have the three quick rules, yes.

Number one is inspiration. You have to be inspired to write. Well, duh. We all know this. We can just move on. Perspiration, we just did. But the third and really most important is desperation. And that is, I'm not fit to do anything else.

Like hold a real job. Neither are you to, which is why you do what you do. I mean, I'm forgetful. I'm disorganized. I never know where I'm going. My poor publicist over here has to lead me a lot. I'm like a child, and she's like, don't even look at the schedule, just do what I say. Okay, and I'm happy that way.

You know, like, less I know better, I'm not good at anything else. And so the fear that one day I would have to have a real job, that terrifying fear, is one of the things that brings people to write. I was once on a panel with a bunch of American writers, and we were asked, if you weren't, we get this question a lot, if you weren't a writer, what would you be? And my friend says a U.S. senator. I'm like, oh, please. I'd be a duvet cover. This is it. This is all I got.

And so that desperation, that you have to write. And the non-humorous version of this is, you just have to write. You have to tell a story. I can't wait for you to read this book. Even after all of these years, that's the part that still excites me. The writing excites me, but it's not a book until you read it. A writer without a reader is a man who claps with one hand. until that you read this book

it's like the it's like the Berkeley tree in the woods with tree falls and no one hears that this make a sound if I write a book and no one reads it it doesn't and when one of you reads this you and I connect on a kind of one on one basis different from everybody else and that jazz is going to be still to the stay

yeah just to say I can't believe you've sussed us out so quickly that was talking about 12 minutes to work out that we're fit for nothing else but well done it's the fact that I took heart from it the fact that it was your 10th book that actually was your breakthrough, your breakout book. How did you find the motivation

to keep writing, waiting to be a big success? Well, one of it is, I mean, I'm not necessarily a person with great perseverance or any of that. One is, I just loved it. I just knew this was my thing. But the more honest answer is this was in the days, my first book came out in the late 80s.

So my first few books came out during an era when we didn't have the internet. Or Amazon. So I had no. idea what a pimple on the ass of publishing I was. I thought I was doing fine. I wasn't, you know, I had a little paperback book. It sometimes was in a store. And I thought I was the cat's ass. You know, I thought I was so cool. So today I would look on Amazon, I would see I'm ranked number 3,287,000 and I'd want to kill myself or whatever. So back then, I think naivete

was one of the things that helped me. Can you also tell us a bit about your, by that time, family set up because you aren't a writer that has a beautiful study in the house or a log cabin that you go to, you hadn't left another job, and your family life was very busy, wasn't it? Yeah, so the day that I, my day that Tell No One, which was my first New York Times bestseller, hit the bestseller list, was the day my fourth child was born. So she's the only birthday I remember. So I had a newborn, a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 7-year-old at that time. Yeah.

So it was a... So you had to leave the house to write. Yes. So I didn't... Yeah, and a home office was just not going to work for me. So you... And that's one of the things... You know, I don't have a home...

I still... Well, I have a home office now, and I try to use it more because I didn't mind leaving the kids, but when I leave now and the dog, look at me like, wait, where are you going? We're just hanging here. Why are you going out to work? So now I work a little bit more at home, but for years I never worked in the house. Can I just ask you something that female authors get asked a lot? Yes.

Female creatives get asked a lot, which is the pram in the hall that prevents your creativity from flowing once you've had kids. Some women get it. Some women acknowledge it. Some women don't have it at all. But actually, I don't think men are asked that very often, how having children affects their creative flow. It definitely did because I know. I know a lot of times you will see couples say, oh, we split it. It's really even the child raising.

My wife and I split it, and we all know that's bullshit. It's always the wife. It's always. But I would say the only couple I know where that wasn't the case was us, because my wife actually had a real job. She's a pediatrician. By the way, I highly recommend marrying a pediatrician if you're going to have kids. They come to me, I'm like, whoa, whoa, dad doesn't know anything.

If you're not feeling well, mom is the expert. If you need help with a sentence, come to dad. Everything else, go to mom. But mom was not home. And so I was the stay-at-home dad legitimately who had to drive the kids and take care of the kids and do the carpool. And I know when I picked them up and things like that,

I was the only dad really there all the time. And I also got to play like dumb blonde dad. Like, because I was the only dad, I can get away with murder. I'd come into the school office and forget my kid's lunch and the ladies behind this. Oh, it's so cute, Mr. Coben. You're trying. It's really sweet. A mom would do the same thing. They'd be on the phone to the police telling them to take their children away. You know what I mean? Like, I would just be like they'd call me saying, Mr. Coben, yes, you forgot to pick up then. He's been here over an hour after the school. Oh, I'm sorry. I was getting lost. That's fine, Mr. Coven. That's cute. A mom is three minutes late. They're already, you know, calling an ambulance and to pick him up. So I got away with a little bit of murder doing that. I've forgotten the name of the female author that you reference in the book.

I think she had five children. Mary Higgins-Claard. Mary Higgins-Claught. She had five children. She used to get up at what time? So Mary Higgins-Clark, I don't know. Many of you read Mary Higgins-Clark where the children was her big book. She was a huge bestseller in the United States.

I assumed she was a bestseller here as well. But Mary, so when Mary in the 1960s had five children when she was 38, her husband died, the next day her mother-in-law died. And the insurance didn't come through. So Mary woke up, still wanting to have a dream of writing. Mary had never had a bestseller. I don't think she had a book out yet when she was 30 yet, because Mary didn't hit the bestseller list

until she was in her mid-40s for the first time, and then she sold over 100 million books. So Mary would wake up and she would write at the kitchen table from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Then get the kids up, get them to school, and go to a full-time job in New York. So I use that as an example of,

don't tell me you don't have time to write. It's not a priority for you. Don't use the term, I don't have time to write. Use the term, it's not a priority. for me. And it's not, because we all get 24 hours in a day. Some of us are bus or some of us are not, but we all get 24 hours in a day. And if writing is not a priority for you, but it's not, move on with yourself. That's my tough love portion of the program. Your book is absolutely full of fantastic kind of mottoes and legends about life. One that I loved is you bring your own weather to the

picnic. Discuss. Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny because I've always said that to my kids. You bring your own weather to the picnic, which is frankly here, right? I had a backache this morning. It's a long flight, but I'm just so happy to be here. You bring your own weather to the picnic. We all know this. We all know our attitude. Does a lot. And then I was curious because my parents never said this to me. And I had no idea where I got this from. So I was researching the book. I started to Google, and I'm the only one credited with saying it. So I don't know if I just made it. I really don't know if I just made it up or not, but I'm taking credit for it now. So you bring it, that's, you know, it's only, because I was wondering, I got to give somebody credit for it.

And I looked it up and the only, and I really did a deep time, the only person credited with saying it is me. So I'm going to steal. If I either stole it or I didn't. You know, they always say bad writers imitate good writers steal. But I stole that line from somebody. It's a great line. It is a great line. I am listening to tell no one at the moment. I'm a recent convert to the audiobook, absolutely love them. Can, do you understand why Tell No One was your breakthrough? And just, if you can, explain how that book starts, because it just draws you in. Well, it was, first of all, I'd written seven straight Myron Bolotar novels.

And no matter, no offense to the people in this room, no matter how much I, we tried to tell you, I know it's about a sports agent in America, but you're going to love it. None of you wanted to read it. Okay. When I told you the plot line for Tell No One, everybody wants, can I brief quickly, quickly tell? Well, no, I'll just wait on the time for that. But yeah, so tell no one, a man, a man loses, his wife is murdered. He can't get over her death.

Eight years past, he gets an email, he clicks a hyperlink, he sees a webcam, and his dead wife walks by. You're in. That's it. Like I said, you're in. That's a much better sales pitch than there's this funny sports agent named Myron. He's got this psychotic sidekick named Wynn. and I can watch your eyes roll over. So I think a lot of it was that

because after that, then the Myron Bolotar book started to sell much better. People did go back and find them. And are they good when you think about those books now? Did they deserve to be more successful? Well, deserve to be more successful. Your career is what your career is. I mean, so much as luck and so much as fate

and so much as timing. And I hate when people think they're super special or deserve things. So it's not a terminology that I'm comfortable with. I've never written a book that I look back, on now and regret, except maybe my first tube because I was so young. And I don't really regret them. It's more like, have you ever found that paper you wrote when you were in a university you thought was so brilliant? And you read it now and you go, wow, this is crap. What was I thinking? That's how it is

a little bit with old books, I think. Like, if I asked you to listen to an old radio thing or interview you guys did or something you've done years ago, right? Don't you have that feeling a little bit? Oh, we enjoy listening to our back catalog. Is that what you do all day long? Just sort of play yourself in the background. Most weekends we get together and just listen to ourselves and our archive. Let's talk about some more rules of writing. So here come your four places where you get ideas to start a novel and, oh, bless you, as the title of the book absolutely recognises that you are the master of the plot twist. So we've got number one, what if the writer's prompt, number two, memoir, personal life. Number three, news.

stories, real crimes, or what you're reading and hearing about. And number four, one idea isn't enough. You combine and blend ideas. And it's your blending of ideas, isn't it, that can create these incredible plot twists and twists. You say you can only write like that. Do you really believe that you can only write like that? No. I mean, I could write any, I've written, because I've written op-eds for the New York Times and things like that. So, and this book's really not. a plot twisty book. I like suspense and my definition suspense is very easy. Makes you want to turn the next page. However you want to do that, I don't want you to ever be bored. I don't want you to not want to turn that next page. I twist, that's my thing. You know, Lee Child and my friend

who's going to be here in a little while, Lee and I once did an event together. And somebody said to Lee, because I quote this in the book because it was so great when he said it, you know, don't you want to write something, why don't you write something other than reacher? And he goes, I'm the guy who gives you reacher. My job is reacher. If you want to read something else, does other authors read that. I'm reacher. So,

I'm your plot twist guy. If you don't like a lot of twists, if you want a nice straight linear plot, I'm not your guy probably. I'm not your narrow. Not to say I can't do it, but that's not what I do. I like a lot of plot twists. I like a lot of, it's fair to say that I over twist sometimes. It's a fair criticism.

when I come up with a good idea during a book instead of saving it for another book I usually find a way of putting it in that particular book so that's just how I am built and how I work Would you ever write more, and I'm choosing my words carefully, I think, a more literary work under a different name? No. And you wouldn't.

Yeah, I'd write it under my name if I want to write. But you could, you could. I could write whatever I want. I mean, and I really do. I mean, yes, we have to classify things. So he classified these as my books as thrillers. Sometimes I'm called the domestic thriller guy, the family thriller guy. Well, yes and no.

Myron Bolotar, isn't married, doesn't have any kids or anything like that. So not really that. Oh, he's a detective guy with Myron Bolotar. Well, no, I'm not also doing things. I've had male leads. I've had female leads. I've done all the things I want to do. What I love about mysteries and thrillers, I don't look at it as a genre.

I look at it as a form. To me, it's like saying a haiku or sonata. And within that form, you can do anything you want to do. You can talk about family, redemption, love, friendship, all the things that matter to us. But what's great about the form is you're still telling a story. That's a rich tradition. I challenge you right now to think of your favorite five books that are over 100 years old, and I guarantee you all five, at least four, will have a crime in it.

Yeah. The quote from Elmore Leonard that you use in the book, try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. And I am a person, I just don't read descriptions of countryside. I hate to, it's just, I'm a real, I'm a Philistine. I just, I just want to find out what happens next. So Elmore Leonard knew what he, it's almost like he knew what he was talking about. He did.

Elmo Leonard was a genius, and also a great writer, a great dude. Maybe remember Get Shorty, which was probably his most famous, but he wrote, I think, 70 or 80 novels. But yeah, it's a, it doesn't mean you can't have themes, you have to have themes. It doesn't mean you can't have descriptions, you have, to have descriptions. That's what makes a novel. Otherwise, it's a screenplay or a story. So all those things, but all those things have to be compelling. So it's not necessarily all plot. Doesn't mean plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. It means make everything compelling. Ask yourself on every page, sentence, paragraph, word. Is this compelling? Is this moving the story forward? Is this

something you want to read? It could be a description. It often is, you know, but it has to be a description that's word in just it's red or it's the countryside and the sun is setting and all that give me a little more flavor give me color and texture in that description you say and i'm probably going to miss quite a note here we're always 17 years old waiting for our lives to begin what happens in a writer's mind with age though because with it comes experience wisdom you've known trauma you've experienced grief so how does Does that work with the 17-year-old's dreams? Look, I think we all, and tell me if I'm wrong here,

but when we say that saying, we're always 17 waiting for our lives to begin. Don't you feel that way? Don't you? I mean, everybody here nods along. It's not like this is a unique thing for writers. We all feel this way. We all feel like we're still waiting. No matter how old you get, I assume, I'm 64 now.

So I don't know, I assume I'll be feeling this way forever. We're always 17 waiting for our life to begin. the really important part of that for me and for you, I think, is okay, when I was young, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That dream is over. That's not happening.

I am not getting drafted by the Boston Celtics and playing pro basketball. But if your dreams to write a book, your dreams to sculpt or painter or whatever, that dream's still alive. Recent books, When the Crawd Dads sing is by Delia Owens, which was a monster hit. She was 70 years old and that book came out a few years ago.

Seventy. This year, big book, I don't know if it's here yet, Theo of Golden by Alan Levi, which has been a big book. He's 70 years old. That book came out. I know authors who are 75, 80 years old. So if this is your dream, and this is, you know, I'm not a rah-rah kind of a guy. I know that's probably surprises you.

But this dream is not over. So if you still feel like you're 17, ready for your life to begin, in terms of writing, it is. And in terms of writing, you can start today. You can go to that shop and buy a notebook and start writing right now. and then next year I'll come and watch you sitting right here. I'd love that. There is a quote, we can't ignore because the Netflix connection is real,

and I'm conscious of the time as well, but you do say my novels are better than my TV shows. Yeah, I think they are. I think novels in general are better than TV shows. Yeah. So, you know, with the exception of the Godfather, one flew over to Cuckoo's Nest,

L.A. Confidential, I think maybe one or two others I can think of. I think novels in general are better. And the problem I think a lot of people have is they, I think the mistake people make when they do adaptations is that they try to make it the novel. I don't. I just want the TV show to be as entertaining as possible.

I don't care if it has fidelity to the book. So like when I did The Stranger here in the UK, first of all, I do a lot of my shows here in the UK. My books are all set in New Jersey. I've just done one that's set in America called I Will Find You, it just came out. And I've done ones in Spain, Argentina, France, Germany. I love that. I love making the changes that are necessary, that I think are necessary

to make the show better and to sing. But they're a very different animal. And I just prefer reading and probably most people here do too. Let's open the floor for questions. Questions, questions, questions. Don't be shy. There's always got to be the one first person who would like to start a lady with the scarf. Go, go, go. Go ahead. When you get to where you are, do you just kind of submit the book and people say, oh, that's fantastic. Thank you very much. So the question is, about editing. So when I was nobody that didn't edit it much because I was nobody, and now that I'm somebody, they don't edit so much because I'm somebody's acting. I've never needed much editing. I work really hard in handing in a very, very clean manuscript, and the way my plots

are designed, it's hard to change too much around without it all kind of crashing down, which we find out why we make the adaptations. Like, oh, there's a reason he put that here. You know, we take that out, and it's like, Jenga, the whole thing comes, some, comes questioning. I take very, very little That said, when I hand in a book, the way I write, my first draft, my first chapter of my first draft has already been written 10 times before I handed it. I do a lot of rewriting. I don't know any writer who doesn't rewrite. Well, I was one person, but we don't talk to him. You know, he's that guy?

So at that end at the bar, please, you know what I mean? Even Lee, Child, who sometimes will say he doesn't edit. He doesn't mean that. He does edit all of the sentences, the prose, he polishes that all up. He just means in terms of his timeline of his story, which is a different thing. So I look at editing, you know, and also if you're not, this is the problem with writing groups for me, and I get it, support groups, if they make you write, wonderful. But the opinion of a friend might be valuable, and it might be utter and complete nonsense,

and you have to be your toughest critic. There's no critic I've ever had who gets madder and hates my work more than I do. So I'm really hard on it. So I myself don't get a lot of editing. But that's not because I'm big or small or anything like that. It's always been that way. I handed a pretty clean manuscript.

It's very little difference between... I actually thought this was going to be more heavily edited because this was more stream of consciousness and it's sort of out of order and I just kind of wrote it. But there was very little we ended up doing on this one as well.

But that's a personal thing. Some people have really close relationships with their editors. I talk to them all the time on the phone while they're writing. talk to them while I'm writing. I send my publishers like the first 50 or 100 pages so they know I'm on some kind of right track and then I don't want to talk to them until it's done. That's my that's how I do it. Yes, the lady at the back. Do you think it's easier to write a book if you have an interesting life rather than a few years? It's a good question. The question was do you think it's easier to write a book if you have an interesting life versus a mundane life? I actually think my life despite what you'll read in this book and you'll read some pretty weird stuff in this book, including my grandfather. who vanished for two years, but we'll talk about that another time. I don't, I do think it, I don't think it matters.

In fact, I think it's almost better. There's a Flaubert quote that I love where it says, be regular and orderly like bourgeois in your real life, so you can be violent and original in your work. I think that's sort of how I've done it. My home life is very, very, quote unquote, normal. Four kids, a wife, I said picking up the kids in school and things like that.

So I haven't done the crazy thing, so I would say no. I think the real important thing is to have a friggin' imagination. Make stuff up. I mean, like, people are always like, oh, I have to experience this. Look, I've written about a lot of guys getting beaten up. I'm not going to get beaten up to figure out what that is like. I'm just going to imagine it and talk to people about it and things like that. Good question.

Thank you. And it's also so true, isn't it? Some of the best books are about a mundane life as well. If you look at Elizabeth Strouts, it's about the domestic and emotional detail. It's not all flashed around. It's also a great lesson for writing is to try to find the one thing, rather than if you're describing this room, you try to over, you know, find the one thing to you that stands out when you describe something,

the one little thing that brings it all to life. And there is no such thing as a mundane life, is there? Because I think there's another part of what you say, behind every door is a universe. And we all live in. odd households with strange people and we might well in the future and we have done in the past.

So there is a book in all of us. Yeah, definitely. One of the great human conditions is, it's a paradox that we all believe that we are sort of uniquely complex and no one really knows what we're thinking or feeling but I know what they're thinking or feeling.

Right? We all think that we talk to somebody I can read them but they really can't read me. And by definition that can't be true but that's part of the human condition but that's also something to remember when you're writing. Another question, please.

Don't be shy, don't be shy. Wow. Well, I'll ask something in the meantime, whilst the armpits ready to be exposed. Have you found the more successful you've become, that that has any effect on your creativity?

Other than time demands, no. I really still like what I'm doing. Billy Jean King, the great tennis player, and maybe some of you watched the U.S. Open the last week or so. actually we're filming there which is a wonderful experience but Billy has a quote that they show a lot on that thing where she says pressure is a privilege and so the higher up my career has gone the more quote unquote pressure there is

the more I really love it I love thriving on the pressure I will find you just hit number five on their all-time Netflix list they sent to me so they're going to want something bring it on man more pressure the better pressure is a privilege also this pressure is like I'm playing with house money pressure. Like pressure was like when I was starting out, just hoping to get published. I mentioned in this book that for my first Myron Bolotar novel, I got in advance of 5,000 American dollars.

But by the time the fourth came out three years later, and I want to brag, I was up to $6,000. Just like that. Just like that. So that was pressure. Can you please tell the story about the man, I think you were at college with, who asked you to write a blur.

for his book that hadn't been published. A little known author, well, just tell the story. Well, he actually had a book published, but nobody had heard of it. So I went to a very small college, only 420 kids per grade, so about 1,600 of us. And one of my fraternity brothers, I'm sure you've probably seen a movies, what fraternities are like, but they're nothing like the movies. One of them asked me if I would read his book and blurb it, and I read it, and I liked it, and I blurbed it, and the name of a book was Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

so I'm not even the biggest selling author at my small fraternity at Amherst College. And I remember going into a bookstore, it's hard to remember how big that book was, the largest selling novel of all time. And the first try came in, and I had no second chance out, and I remember walking into a bookstore, I won't mention name in a bookstore, but some initials are BNN. And I was number two, and Dan was one. And a full year later, when just one look came out, I was two and Dan was still one.

And I called Dan, I'm like, damn. You know, like, enough. Stop being a hog. And we're still good friends, by the way. Who do you read at the moment? Do you have any recommendations? Oh, my God. Her name just flew out of my head and I feel terrible.

Kristen, it's a book called A Good Person. Does anybody know that? A book called A Good Person. It was so good. I love anti-heroes because I don't write them. I don't know if I could write them up. Oh, I'm going to feel really terrible. Oh, no, you've just come off a long,

we'll get to find. question. Go ahead. Please. So as an unsuccessful for myself, what was the thing that's, what was the trigger that set you on the path to your success? I don't know. I mean, again, I think a lot of it is luck.

A lot of it is staying in the game, right? I mentioned I could have given up after one, two, three, four, whatever, how many books when I was making the whopping $6,000 or whatever. But I didn't. It's a baseball analogy. If you stay at the bat long enough, you keep fouling them off. Eventually, you might get a hit.

And a lot of it is, you know, luck, timing. And I just described that tell no one. And it just, when a breakout book happens, and I saw it going to happen, I warned Dan Brown before it happened, because it messes with your head. He didn't quite see it. As soon as I read it and I saw,

I could hear the buzz going around our publishing house. I'm like, dude, just put your head down and write the next book because your head's about to get really messed with. because it does mess with your head. There's just something about a book. Most books that break out, there's something about it that just resonates.

And if we knew what it was, then everybody would be able to do it. I know, you know, and Conley wrote the poet, when David Baldacci wrote Absolute Power, there's a, you know, Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, when the Crawadad sings. It just something happens.

And I, you know, I don't know exactly, but usually when I read it, I know why. I may not even like the book. but I know why. The one thing they seem to all have is something about it is compelling reading. Something about it is hard to put down. Better than that I don't know. A good person by Kirsten King. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it's it's. It's a, it's a, it's a, as my daughter says, when my daughter was one recommended it to me and she said, it's like Jocelyn, it's like a novel where Jocelyn

was a troubled friend growing up in high school like who was always like boy crazy and thought all the boys liked her and they never did and they were and you could see it. Anyway, it's really fun. And I just finished that one, and she's not well known yet. I think it's her debut novel, so I'd never like to pick, you know, also I pick my friends. One of them I miss out, and they get mad at me,

so I'll get a, I'll get a, I'll get a Lee Child, like, whoa, whoa, dude, you mentioned Connolly and Lahain and not me, you know, that kind of a thing. Yeah, and they don't need your help. They certainly do. That's a great recommendation. Is Justelin all right now? Did things like out for her? I don't know, actually. We'll pass on that.

Any questions from this side? side of the, I was going to say, auditory. Yeah, you guys aren't doing it much. There we go. Yes, yes, please. I struggled with dialogue. You did it really well. You'll get to begin this moment.

Thanks. I try to make, I mean, I have a whole chapter on here in dialogue. Dialogue's my favorite thing to write because you can accomplish so much. I think one of the keys, if you're writing, is to make your dialogue do more than one thing. It should be entertaining and fun to listen to. And like the dialogue you really want to overhear at a pub. You don't want your character to be a good person or a nice person. or likable person.

They could be detestable. But are they the person if you're out of pub you want to lean in on? So I try doing it that way. I try making it quippy and back and forth. I try adding a lot of humor because sometimes some of the subjects are dark, but it should do something else.

It should propel the plot forward. It should really, more than anything else, tell you about the character. The way a person speaks tells you more about character than anything else. So think when you're doing it, or how much can we add in there? How can it do more than one thing?

They shouldn't just have a great conversation, even if it is. And again, each sentence should almost be like a mini novel where I want to know what the answer to that, whatever that person has just said, I want to hear the response to it. Thanks. What do you do on days when it's just really, really difficult to write?

I have a tremendous amount of self-loathing. It works for me very, very well. We are all insecure. I mean, only bad writers think they're good. So most days I do think I suck. And most writers, good writers that I know, we are really insecure. And we're always like, and I'll be sitting in, I'm writing. I'll be writing a book.

I'll be going, oh, my God, this is such shit. I was so good before. What happened to me? Five minutes later, this is sheer genius. That book's just, eh. And that will happen within five minutes of one another. And this is just what I live with. I live with the insecurity.

I live with the voice of guilt in my head. The muse is not an angelic voice. It's a Jewish mother's voice. What? You don't call? Friday night? You don't stay home? You don't talk to me?

I need, why aren't you home? I made you something to eat. Come on. So it's always nagging you. There's always a voice in my head that says you should be writing. Always. Whatever I'm doing, I'm driving the carpool. I'm doing.

And so that's just part, I think. of what you live with if you want to be a writer. One of the things that when I read it, I couldn't quite believe it, you write on holiday, you never give yourself a break from writing. You genuinely think your holidays are better when you're writing in them. So you probably can't, you can't switch it off.

Well, I can switch it off in a sense of, but I'm done, like, even as I look out here, I'm looking for your story, I'm looking for, One of the things I hope this book will teach you is what I call the writer's mind frame because it's actually a pretty good thing to live with. Where every person you see is a story, every person you see, I just tell my kids a very simple thing. Every human being you meet has hopes and dreams.

It's such a small thing to think about, but it's so true. And now those hopes and dreams, then you start thinking deeper when you're a writer. Did those dreams come true? Did they not? Are they broken hard about it? They still store it in the back of their brain someplace and hope it comes back. And you just keep doing this and eventually a story starts to emerge. And so that's kind of how I try to live my life all of the time.

And I'm encouraging you not to go quite as far as I do. But the vacation thing, so here's the thing about life. I'm giving all these life lessons. Life is about balance. We all know this, right? You're eating well, your relationship with your partner, your spouse, your friends. Are you exercising, all of those things? I get up all those things working really well.

but if I'm not writing well that balance I'm going to lose the balance that balance eventually is going to go away I've made balance part of those things that I have to have working well so that I need that to make sure I write and so that I

can keep my life balance any other questions I can see so many of you on the cusp yes yes sure I don't know if well I don't know I mean I don't know I think as I read here also So if you ask 10 writers how they do, you get 11 different answers.

There's some that are quite casual about it and do very, very well. Most writers I know, the vast majority, even they don't express it or feel kind of like how I do. They say in other ways, and writers are really full of shit. Whenever I've been going to go to these talks, they're saying what sounds good rather than what is good. I'm old enough now and just went through this. So I'm telling you what the truth versus sometimes what I normally would have said, which sounds a little prettier and more artistic-y and all that sort of a thing. But yes, and also you don't have to be a best-selling author.

You could just write for yourself. That's therapy if you write purely for yourself. To me, that's not writing. That's like saying, you know, saying I write only for myself. I don't care if anybody reads it. It's like saying, I talk only to myself. I don't care if anybody hears me. Writing for me is about communication.

Like I say, I don't exist as a writer if I wrote this book and no one reads it. That's something different than writing to me. It's more therapy. But that's absolutely fine. Whatever your dreams or goals are. So, no, you don't have to be this way, I don't think. Helps, but, you know. And if you're producing, I've written 38 novels.

You know, maybe I would have written three if I wasn't quite that obsessive. Yes. Is that such a thing as a bottle or tater? No, I'd say about 99% of the ideas I have never bear fruit. It's like throwing a bunch of seeds out on this floor. Because it's a floor, it's not going to sprout or grow anything nice, but maybe one will. So I actually have a file of ideas that will never see and should never see the light of day. And like when I was describing the tell no one, that idea took months for me to come up with.

And then I had to come up with the solution because I know the endings beforehand. But that's, yeah, most ideas aren't good. I'm, you know, I'm opening my brain here, so I'm always like, well, what if that happened? 95% of the time, 99% of time it goes away. Do you discuss your ideas with your wife and children? Rarely. And I warn against, by the way, if you're a writer, I warn't against talking about what you're writing. I think that's a real danger because, so, you know, I see people come up to me or say,

oh, I wrote a book, here's what it's about. And I can almost see it's like a balloon deflating. I'm writing a book right now. I am dying to tell you what it's about. The only way I'll get that satisfaction is to actually write it. Now, see, the only way I'll give myself that satisfaction. If you get anything satisfactory,

like if you join a little writers club, even though they don't have a novel done, but you join like mystery writers of America or whatever else because it makes you feel a little bit more like a writer, it's fake. The only way you should be able to feel that satisfaction is to finish the book

and have another human being. read it because when that happens, you'll understand what I'm talking about. It's one of the great feelings in the world, and I'm extremely fortunate and still love it, that you people are here right now, and some of you will take this book home and read it, and that still jazzes me. When it stops, I'll stop. Do any of your kids write for a living? They do. My daughter, Charlotte, is a TV writer. She has her own show that was on Amazon Prime here in the UK, and is now on Tooby, called Dead Hot. She also writes, on my shows, but now after training her, she's too much in demand to do as much as I want.

She usually does, though, maybe two episodes of all the British shows. For me, it's almost like a favor at this stage of the game. I have four kids. My second runs my production company, Final Twist Productions. And eight or two were scientists. One is an actual rocket scientist at NASA. He works in flight control at NASA. And my baby does, is getting her master's in genetics. So those last two, I guess, are more mom, the pediatrician, the first two are more dad. Well, how fantastic. God, what a brood. That's incredible, I mean, blimey. Have all your dreams come true, then? No, because this is so, my career so far surpassed anything I could have imagined happening. I would have never risked this. I mean, I talk in the book about

incremental ambition, which I think is such an important thing. So my whole joy. So my whole joy, in life was to just have one book published by real, this is the days before we could do self-publishing, just have one book published by a real publishing house, and one day walk past a bookstore and see my, that was my dream or my goal, and then it was like, okay, two, two books, just to see it wasn't a fluke.

Okay, scratch out a non-embarrassing amount of money, maybe out of it. Okay, if I could just hit 15 out of 15 on the New York Times best of it, just for an hour, just for an hour, hour. Okay, top 10. And that's how I've, so my dreams come true. Yes, I mean, in terms of my career, everything has gone much better than I could have ever hoped or even imagined. Final question probably, because I know that people will have two o'clock sessions to get to,

or maybe you've got tummy rumbles as well as we've gone over the lunch hour. Any other questions? Don't leave if you've got a question inside you. It's so much better out. there's always when you ask for one more question that's when the hand's all. Yes, and also because I've said stomach rumbling and everyone's now going I am quite hungry, I am quite hungry. What an absolute pleasure to talk to you,

Huller, really, really entertaining. Jane and I both really enjoyed the book. There's a kind of stream of consciousness that you do at the end of the book which I felt was very much Harlan Coben's kind of life ambitions and lists and whatever. It's just, I had to read it twice. It's just fantastic. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

And if you're actually a really, really unpleasant, ambitious, ruthless guy, my God, you can pull off the nice, entertainment, fantastic guy. What a treat to be in your company. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another off-air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, two days. till four on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app.

Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.