The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Map to Paradise by Susan Meissner

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

A Map to Paradise by Susan Meissner Susanmeissnerauthor.com Amazon.com 1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle. With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He’s her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation. Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don’t see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who never leaves the house possibly have gone? As they try to find out if something has happened to him, unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they can still call their own. But it’s a fragile pact and one little spark could send it all up in smoke…About the author Susan Meissner is the USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than three-quarters of a million books in print in eighteen languages. Her novels include The Nature of Fragile Things, starred review Publishers Weekly; The Last Year of the War, a Library Reads and Real Simple top pick; As Bright as Heaven, starred review from Library Journal; Secrets of a Charmed Life, a 2015 Goodreads Choice award finalist; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten women’s fiction titles for 2014. She is also RITA finalist and Christy Award and Carol Award winner. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing.

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, my host is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Chris Voss, welcome home. Ladies and gentlemen, there are things that make this official. Welcome to the Big Show. As always, for 16 years, 23 in our episodes, we makes official. Welcome to Big Show. As always for 16 years, 23 in our episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss show, just the most amazing minds of people and people sharing their wonderful stories. And then some idiot with a mic.

It must be me. Anyway, we have an amazing young lady on the show today. She's going to be talking to us about her new book that's coming out or just came out today. Congratulations, Susan. We have Susan Meissner on the show, and her new book is called A Map to Paradise. And we're going to be getting into some of the deets, as the kids like to say. The kids don't like to say that, it's not really true.

I just made that up. Susan is a USA Today bestselling novelist with more than a million books in readers' hands in 18 languages. Wow. Her critically acclaimed award winning works of historical fiction have been named to numerous lists, including Publishers Weekly annual roster of 100 best books, Library Reads, Top Picks, Real Top Picks, okay, and Real Simple annual tally of best books books list top ten book of the month and Amazon's editor pick her newest title is

a map to paradise a novel about belonging friendship and finding one's way home and is set in California during the early and scary years of the Cold War she lives in Pacific Northwest with her husband and yellow lab Winston. Welcome to the show. How are you, Susan? Susan Larkin Thank you for having me. I'm really happy. Today's a great day. It's launch day for the new book. I'm excited for it to be out in the big wide world. Pete Slauson Congratulations. Congratulations. How many books do you have in print now?

Susan Larkin I think we're at 23. Pete Slauson Good job. Wow. That's amazing. I'm still working to get one out or two out. Susan Meisner It's never too late. Never too late to give it a go. Pete Slauson It took 54 years to get the first one out in 52 years.

At 102, I'll put out my second book. Congratulations on that, Susan, and your launch date today. Give us any dot coms, any social media you want people to follow you up. Susan Meisner-Siegel Sure, I'm easy to find on the web, SusanMeisnerAuthor.com, on Instagram, Susan Meisner Author, and on Facebook at Susan.Meisner. So those are the places you'll find me. Pete Slauson So give us the 30,000 overview. What's in the new book, A Map to Paradise? Susan Meisner-Siegel So, it is a book set in the Cold War, the early

years. They were actually rather scary years. People think of the 1950s as kind of happy years that were full of great, you know, great fashions, great cars, excellent music, but they were also years of great fear because the Cold War was new. It was scary. Everybody knew we had the bomb and everybody now knew that USSR had the bomb too. So everybody was afraid of the bomb. And yeah, McCarthyism was real. It was rampant. It touched places like Hollywood of all places, which really surprised me that there

would be a witch hunt for communists in Hollywood, but there was. And there were also a million displaced people after World War II ended. That was also part of the mix of the 1950s. And so this book kind of marries those two things together, the witch hunt for communists in Hollywood, and the fact that there were these millions of displaced people. And so I bring some characters together that are experiencing some of those things and they all get together on a cul-de-sac in Malibu. Pete It all comes together in a cul-de-sac in Malibu. Sounds like the intro to the TV show. Melanie Coles I like that idea. Pete Slauson They were all, they were all, they were all vagabonds according to the Hollywood Blacklist. And so, they met on a road, I don't know,

I can't do it right. Anyway, yeah, this was an interesting time. McCarthyism, the Hollywood Blacklist. And so, tell us about your main character. Melanie Coles So, it's kind of a cast of three. They kind of share the weight of the book, but people might think of Melanie Cole, the actress who's blacklisted as kind of the lead in this book, if you will. He only ever wanted to be a movie star. She had just made her big break and was like headed for superstardom. And then she's blacklisted by guilt by association. She's not a communist. She's not even sure what one thinks.

She wasn't paying attention to that in high school, but she's connected with somebody who was also on the blacklist. And back then that's all it took. If you were on familiar terms, if you will, with somebody on the blacklist, then you were an easy target. So she's hiding out in Malibu, trying to wait it out. She wants her career back. It doesn't look very good. And she's also out in Malibu trying to wait it out. She wants her career back. It doesn't look very good. And she's also kind of licking her wounds. It's a hard time

for her. And Malibu is a paradise, right? It's beautiful. It's ruggedly beautiful, but it's not paradise for you if that's not where you want to be. Pete Oh, yeah. Cheryl Yeah. Pete And no one wants to talk to you, associate with you because you're blacklisted. Cheryl Right. Pete I mean, it destroyed a lot of people, that blacklisting thing. We need more politicians in this world that will actually say to each other, have you

no decency, sir? So what gave you the idea behind the proponent of the book? And is this a new standalone story, but the characters aren't continued from something else? Yeah, pretty much all of my books are that way. You can pick up any book anytime and not have to worry about any of that. Each are their own story. And I guess what interested me is for the last decade, we've had some excellent World

War II books. I mean, a lot, many, and they're wonderful and they all deserve to be here. But I wondered if maybe people were wondering what happened after that, what happened after the war. It was a rather definitive moment for humankind and how are we changed by World War II and the 1950s. And you can see this is how we were changed. The Cold War was a war, but it wasn't like the one we had just fought. And you know, we were allies with Russia in World War II and now we're not. And now Russia has become the USSR and they have all these countries, they're huge.

They are a menacing threat and people were, they were unsure of what to, we don't know what to make of this. We don't know, is there gonna be a takeover and are there people right here in our neighborhood who have these, you know, subversive thoughts and are they going to, you know, help usher in a communist takeover? I know it sounds crazy to think that was going through people's minds, but it was.

And the fact that it happened in Hollywood, I just thought that was just, it was so interesting because Hollywood is, it's not higher education, it's Hollywood, you know, it's the dream factory, right? But back then it was, that's where social commentary came from. We didn't have Facebook, we didn't have podcasts. The way we found out how people were thinking and what mattered to people was through the theater and the cinema. And, you know, I guess it makes sense that people were looking to Hollywood because that's where people were writing and producing thought pieces in the form of movies and television shows.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that there were all these displaced people too, that interested me for the same reason. It was a huge humanitarian crisis and to be displaced, there were 800 DP camps in Germany alone after the war and 11 million displaced persons. And at the end of it, there were a million that could not go back home.

It was just not an option for them. It meant returning now to an Eastern block country. And if you had been brought over as forced labor for the Reich, you are not welcome back home. And if you did go back home, you could face arrest or deportation to a gulag. And the United States brought in 400,000 DPs over a period of four years. And so one of my characters is one of those people. Pete That's pretty interesting. So, tell us about you. When did you first know you were a writer?

And you know, how did you get into the business as it were throughout the course of your life growing up? Dr. Jennifer Lange Yeah, you know, I think I've always been driven to write my thoughts down. My mom says when I was little, I was making up poems in the back seat of the car before I could even write, before I even know how to form letters on paper. I was making up poems in the back seat of the car. So it's always been part of my DNA.

And all throughout school, even elementary school, I was writing little stories and poems. I still have those, they're awful. But what they tell me is that I've just always, it was, it's like an itch that had to be scratched my whole life. And, you know, when I graduated from high school, I didn't know that you could make what you love your career and still love it. I think that was of the mindset that if I made writing my career, that I wouldn't have an escape, I wouldn't have a place to go when I wanted to get away from work. And

I know now that you can definitely do what you love and you can still have hard days, of course, but at the end of the work week, you still love what you do. And it took me a while to figure that out, but I finally did. And then I got my first job working at a newspaper. And that's how I got my foot in the writing world where you actually do it for a living was writing for a newspaper. Yeah. And that was a great way to start actually. I learned how to be grief, I learned how to grab readers early, and I learned how to keep to a deadline. And all of those things are helpful now that I'm writing novels.

And then my first novel I wrote in my 40s and I've never looked back. It's my lane, it's where I was meant to be all along. I'm glad you found it and so are probably a lot of your readers that are out there in the forums. So how did you get your first gig? How did you land your first gig at writing your first book or someone paying for one of your first books to be written? Yeah, you know, that was 20 years ago. It's a lot different now.

I didn't have an agent. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have an agent. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any connections. This is before Google or any people. The only way to be discovered really was being in the right place at the right time and all the stars aligned. I had written a book and a small publishing house in Oregon picked it up and I was just grateful to have a place. I'm grateful that they did because I kind of cut my teeth on my first

novels are no longer in print. And I'm okay with that. I was really kind of finding my way. I was actually learning how to write by writing. They're not terrible. They're not terrible books by any means. But I feel like what I'm writing now is a whole lot more insightful. and I think I bring more to the table now that I've been at it for 20 years, but I just got lucky. I got published without an agent and that probably happens less frequently now, but it did happen back then.

Yeah, everyone's publishing books nowadays. In fact, the AI thing has made it worse. Oh yeah. The AI books that are trying to flood the systems. Now, I lived through this era of terror. It was in the 50s post-war, but, you know, I grew up in the early 70s. I was born in 68. And so I went to school doing the nuclear drill, where you would climb under your steel desk hoping that that would save you from a nuclear bomb. So we lived in fear of Russia.

That's what makes things really hard nowadays in 2025. But we lived in fear of Russia. Russia communism was bad. And you were even then in the 70s, we were worried about Russia and communist influence. And yeah, you you kind of live with this mindset that life could end at any moment with a nuclear war. And it seemed very imminent. We were just shy of the Bay of Pigs and John F. Kennedy and the crisis at Cuba. And so I lived through that. What do you like about historical fiction?

What is it that draws you to it? Because you do a lot of books in that format. I do. Yeah, I kind of came to it in 2008 with my ninth book, I believe. I had an idea for a historical fiction dual timeline book. And when I wrote that book, it brings in the same language trials. I found that, oh, that was, I loved that. I loved the research. I loved going back into the past from the safety of my living room. And I think the past teaches us, it's a tutor.

It shows us what we value. It shows what we're afraid of. It shows what we're willing to do when we're afraid. It shows us what we're afraid of. It shows what we're willing to do. When we're afraid, it shows us what we're all about. What are we willing to go to the map for? And I think all of our best lessons are in the past too. And historical fiction keeps it alive. You know, there are a lot of people that aren't going to sit down and read 800 page nonfiction work on what the Cold War was like.

But they'll pick up a novel and read about it. And if I've done my job and given the reader an accurate view of what it was like to live in 1956 in Southern California, then I've taken them back to the past. They can experience it in a great way because it is safe. It is time travel that is safe. And you can visit it and view it and feel it. And any lessons that we picked up from that time, you can, you can, they can be yours as a viewer.

And I think that's its best value really. Only historical fiction can do that. It can take you to the past and show you the past. Yeah. It has that prebuilt construct of scenery, I guess, is the word. And it can give you the backdrop. There's lots of historical fiction authors we've had on the show and it's always interesting because they can take stuff and fill in some of the blanks sometimes on some stories

that there wasn't a lot of data on them, but they can kind of flush them out and you know, make their own narrative around it or their own sort of story around it. But it's interesting writing stories. When you develop your characters, how do you, do they just come to you? Do they start talking to you? How does that usually work for you? Yeah, that is a nut to crack, that is. I feel like, I almost feel like a hack every time I begin a new novel because that part

of it is the most difficult because my characters are not real. I don't take a historic figure from our past and build a story around that person. I would love to do that. I'm not sure I ever will. It's not my shtick. But creating somebody out of nothing is a lot of work and I want to get it right. I want you to believe these characters really did exist, even though they're figments of

my imagination. So I do something that I'm not afraid to share with people and that is I give them the Enneagram test. So I will pretend I am Melanie Cole, this actress who's just been blacklisted, and I'll take the Enneagram test as if I'm her. And if all of my characters end up with my number, I'm a two, wing three, then I know I haven't taken the test well, because they can't all be me. They've got to be their own people.

And I don't want people thinking that's the same character she had in her last book. And I'll take it until I feel like I have a good handle on how this person thinks, because your Enneagram number, I don't know if you know about the Enneagram. No, tell us what that is for people. Yeah, I think it far outdates Myers-Briggs, for example, but it's a way of dialing into your personality traits. And there are some traits that show up a lot and so you can build a personality profile with that number. Like a two, like me, we're helpers, we're empathetic, we want people to be happy and everything that's good about us is also our downfall because somebody who wants others to be happy can often, you know, they can

be, you can't please everybody all the time and that can be your downfall. And you can be too empathetic and insert yourself into someone's trouble when they don't need it. You know, they don't need your insertion into their life. And so there are good things and bad things about all the Enneagram numbers. And like for example, a one, they're more perfectionists. And I'm really glad there are ones out there because they keep the world spinning, right? But they can also have their downfalls too.

One can be very hard nose, they can be inflexible, they can be a little hard to work with. And there are lots of free Enneagram tests out there. I use the free one. There's many, you could just Google it and have some fun with it. But you'll find that once you find your number, it pretty much stays with you. Even if you find a different test and take a different one, you'll find that you

probably are going to end up with the same number because who you are is who you are. Who you are is who you are. Yeah. I took one of those tests one time. I got a negative four. That would be fun. That would be fun. Yes.

There should be like a little thing about the negative Enneagram numbers. You have zero personality. But you know, I hear that from dates all the time, so it's fine. I'm thinking maybe I should send them the Enneagram test so I can find out who I'm dating. So for those of the audience who are listening to this, it's spelled E-N-N-E-A-G-R-A-M if you're trying to figure out how to spell Enneagram. Some of my first guesses were with an I. But yeah, check out the personality test. Anything coming up that you have you're working on, maybe teasing out that you want to tease

out any future books you're working on? Dr. Patti Sturgeon Yeah, the one I'm working on now is set in the 1960s, which if you can believe, that is now historical fiction. Which is a little hard to understand, it's hard to grasp because I was born in the 60s and now my birth decade is considered historical fiction, but anything 50 years or older is considered in the realm of historical fiction. So yes, we have a whole new set of books probably coming out that are set in the 60s because it's considered fair game for historical fiction.

But this one, I don't have a title for it yet and I'm just writing it right now. So it's a little ethereal. The characters are still kind of floating above my head and I'm trying to lasso them and have them come down and talk to me. But it's set during the year before we landed on the moon. So we're looking at 1968, which was a horrible year. It was a really tough year, 68 was. That was the year of the Tet Offensive.

It was the year of the two assassinations, Dr. Martin Luther King and RFK and the campus know, the campus riots and protests. It was just, it was a tough year all around. And then, you know, people were, they needed hope, they needed something to look up for. And so we had this, you know, we had the Apollo missions, which, you know, in July of 1969, it's like, we kind of broke open this almost like this cloistered oppression that we were feeling on our planet by bursting out of it and landing on the moon. It made us all look up. I think there's something within us that launched with the transcendent.

This book is kind of all about that. It's characters who need to look up. They're experiencing some hard times and, you know, you can't always change your circumstances, but you can change how you look at them. And they just need to look up. They need to find something to be hopeful for. And the lead up to the moon is what that book is, that's the setting for it. It was a difficult time back then.

Yeah. The big earthquake in 70 and 68 was a nightmare. I was born. I think I caused it. It was, it was a difficult time back then. Yeah. Big earthquake in 70 and 68 was a nightmare. I was born, I think I caused it. Oh yeah, you were born that year. That happened. Yeah, that was one good thing that happened. One good thing. But I was born in January, so I probably brought everything.

It was my fault. I have a negative four personality. It's a problem. I'm just that kid who shows up and they go, who are you? And I go, no, my name's Damien. I was born in 68, get ready for some shit. Give us your final thoughts and pitch out to people to order the book. You have to know you better on social media, any.com, all that good stuff.

Yeah. So again, you can find me at SusanMizerAuthor.com and my book is available wherever you buy your books. I encourage you to patronize your independent bookstore. And if you don't have one near you, then go to bookshop.org. They actually give back to independent bookstores. You can support bookstores that way. And if you're an audio book reader, it's on audio.

And if you love eBooks, you can find it on all your digital platforms. And if you are a member of a book club, I always invite book club people to get in touch with me. And if I can pop in and visit with you while you are discussing my book, I'm happy to do that for free. Just reach out to me and we can try and make it happen. Pete Slauson You'll keep these millions of readers happy. And I'm glad you found a thing that you excel at.

Storytellers are just the greatest people in the world, in our world, because they keep us entertained, they keep us educated. There's things you'll learn from these different stories and lessons. Stories are the fabric of life. Oh yeah, well said. Thank you for saying that. It's absolutely true. You got it.

And we need to read more books, people. I've seen some of your stories on the. And we need to read more books, people. I've seen some media. You need to read some shit. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming. I'm like shaving. You're going to read some shit or else. Don't make me come over. Don't make me pull this car over this podcast, car over pokes and come back

there, stop touching each other. Order up her book. Susan's book, wherever you find books are sold. It's out March 18th, 2025. It is called A Map to Paradise. Thank you, Susan, for coming to the show. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge has Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Forge has Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, and TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other, stay safe, we'll see you next time. And that should have us out. Great