The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bayou Beloved (Butterfly Bayou) by Lexi Blake

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Bayou Beloved (Butterfly Bayou) by Lexi Blake When a woman returns home to Louisiana's Butterfly Bayou, her high school crush finally notices she exists, in a small-town contemporary romance from New York Times bestselling author Lexi Blake. Quaid Havery always planned to follow in his father’s footsteps. He went to law school and then came home to take over his dad’s legal practice. Being the only lawyer in small-town Papillon, Quaid is pretty sure he’s seen everything. After all, he was once asked to sue an alligator for defamation of character. He’s prepared for anything the town can throw at him, until he encounters Jayna Cardet. She’s gorgeous, smart, funny, and unlike any woman he’s met before....Except he has. Jayna never thought she’d return to Papillon, but when her life gets turned around she must learn to live in the close-knit community again. She certainly never dreamed she would practice law in her little town, but she finds herself in the courtroom, and the opposing counsel is her former high school crush, Quaid. It wouldn’t be so bad if the man had developed a beer belly, but Quaid is more handsome than ever. And instead of ignoring her like he did in high school, he’s made it plain that he wants to get to know her. Thus begins a courtship destined to end in a wedding or a war. Either way, the locals are popping some corn and eagerly awaiting the outcome.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

I hope you're here for the brain brain brain brain bleed uh because uh i'm clearly been bleeding here for a while i'm probably in full uh some sort of atosis whatever i have no idea what science means anyway guys we have an amazing author on the show lexi blake is on the show she's a prolific romance writer and writes for uh amazing books uh and we'll get into her library and everything else that's going on there as always we guilt you at the beginning of the show was a little bit shaming to refer the show to your family friends and relatives uh go to goodreads.com there's amazing stuff over there brilliant authors post their stuff on goodreads.com you can interact with them over there they're not paying for this advertisement

but i'm just a little bored with doing the plugs. So I figured I'd extend one a little bit. Go to YouTube.com where they have crazy videos and then smart videos like ours that you'll learn stuff. And then go to LinkedIn.com. Subscribe to the newsletter over there. And that's where all the smart people really are when it comes down to it. And on the Chris Fosch Show podcast as well. I should admit our audience is pretty brilliant.

So we'll get into Lexi Blake and her amazing books, but first we want to do a little monologue comedy here to cover. According, this is from the AP News, Associated Press, if you can't spell AP. And the news topic today is a cocaine cat escaped its owner and will now live at the Cincinnati Zoo. What's going on in this world, folks? We've got cocaine cats.

We've got the cocaine bear, which is running through movie theaters right now. Is there like a problem that we need to address in America where, you know, there's so many of us that evidently have a drug problem that it's now moved on to our pets? Like, what's going on there? And where are these animals getting money for cocaine? evidently have a drug problem that it's now moved on to our pets like what's going on there and and where where are these animals getting money for cocaine like is this why they're rummaging through my garbage and stuff like that like i mean who's who's crossing this over where uh these it's actually an african serval cat i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that right but he had cocaine in

his system they actually uh this is the first time that the city Animal PCA or whatever has found animals with cocaine. They found a monkey that had meth in his system. I don't know what's going on, but clearly I'm surprised this isn't happening in Florida. I think that's my biggest issue.

How is this happening in Cincinnati? This sounds like something you should have in Florida. Somebody should check those gators for cocaine because they got a big nose and they could probably do a lot. Anyway, don't do cocaine, people. That's the essay of the show. Anyway, onward and forward.

Lexi Blake is once again on the show. Her newest book, Bayou Beloved, Butterfly Bayou series is coming out on March 28th, 2023 as a beautiful, I believe that's a Labrador on the cover. We'll have to find out if it's into cocaine, I guess. We got her on the show. We're going to be talking about her amazing books and some of the things that she writes.

She writes a lot of stuff in the romance genre. So those of you who have the ladies out there will probably enjoy our conversation with her. She is a New York Times bestselling author. She lives in North Texas with her husband and three kids. Since starting her publishing journey in 2010, she sold over 3 million copies of her books. She began writing at a young age, concentrating on plays and journalism. It wasn't until she started writing romance that she found success, and she likes to find humor in the strangest places and believes in happy endings. Well, evidently, the cocaine cat probably

had a few too. Welcome to the show, Lexi. How are you? Thank you, and I am utterly fascinated by all the cocaine animals. Yeah, what's going on there yeah i don't know but i think it's we as a society must face this i can't wait for a cocaine alligator maybe a cocaine shark cocaine sharks i mean there was that one crazy what was that shark series movie shark nato oh oh yeah shark nato it was amazing like see they didn't understand science either. Yeah. Well, I mean, science be damned. I realize that Hollywood is sometimes accused of being out of ideas.

And they did the cocaine bear. But now I guess you get the cocaine cat, servo cat. So I don't know. I'm going to have to start drug checking my pets. No, no, um, no cocaine is going to be found in any of the animals in Bayou Beloit.

There. There you go. Just a beautiful Labrador in the cover. So, uh, give us your.com. So Lexi, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs.

Um, I'm on pretty much all the social medias. Um, as author Lexi Blake. Anybody, my website is lexiblake.net. There you go. And how many books have you written there? You have a lot of books. I am, I think I'm at 105 right now. Really? Wow. It took me 55, 54 years to put up my first book. And at this pace, it'll be another 54. It'll be 108 for the second book.

So you're me a long time. You're killing it. Um, but then it's like, it's like I took all that energy that I wasted in my twenties and thirties. Yeah. And just like shoved it all in. There you go.

There you go. Well, so did the cocaine cat and the cocaine bear. That's right. So maybe there's cocaine involved. Maybe maybe maybe you drink a lot of coffee that's usually my drug of choice um so let's see uh what motivated you want to write this recent book um you did 110 you're just like fucking no um i did have a contract i was supposed to write it but um what what i find is i usually um come up with an idea this is the six in a series so i have this group of characters that i've already written and that to play in the background in the other books so usually one of

them comes up and says hey it's my turn to have a book. And in this particular one, it was, um, the, one of the lawyer, the lawyer in the book, it's a very small town. There's one lawyer. And so I thought, wouldn't it be fun to give him another lawyer to bounce off of? Sure. Do you, uh, normally write about, uh, lawyers or, uh, I know I am more known for writing about spies ah spies spies you say um so what uh this is part of a series am i correct yes okay and the it's the butterfly by you yeah okay what what is the overview of the bio butterfly by you series if i can it's basically it's what we call a small town romance so um the the world building all takes place in this tiny little town that we kind of i like to world

build the same way i would an urban fantasy or a fantasy book i mean you know obviously we're not gonna have magic or anything but we have places and the town has a feel and it becomes kind of a character in this particular case it's in southern louisiana so it's got a kind of cajun feel to it um and then you go through characters and and in this particular one everybody has a dog everybody has a dog everyone probably should a dog. Everyone probably should. The more I get to know people, the more I like dogs. I like you, Lexi. You're awesome. The

President Company, whatever that line is. President Company excluded. So give us an overview, a 30,000 view of the plot of your news book. So basically, Quaid is a lawyer who has been working in town he's comes from a very wealthy family he kind of took over his dad was the lawyer for the town before jana

comes from a very poor background she got out of the town became a lawyer was big in new orleans and then lost everything in a divorce and circumstances happen. And now she's living back in her mom with her mom and she ends up taking on some, this crazy case. Um, and he's the opposing counsel. And so that's kind of where we start from. There you go. And so it's a romance novel. So, you know, I'm fixated on the dog. And a legal thriller. There you go. So it's like a romance version of, oh, is that one with Vinny and.

My Cousin Vinny? Yes. My Cousin Vinny, yeah. A little more like that. Only maybe more romantic. Maybe, I don't know. So they end up, and this guy is her uh high school yes they knew each other in high school although he doesn't actually remember her

which does not like necessarily endear her him to her again she had a huge crush on him in high school now of course she walks back in and he's like well hello and she's like no yeah yeah because her plan is she's going to get back out of town she's going to clear up all this mess and then she's going to leave oh and then they fall in love maybe of course of course and she's got a lot to deal with with her mother. So she's kind of got a lot to deal with from her. She kind of has to figure out why she had struggled so much in town. And some of that is her.

Some of that was her. And this is a lot of me processing my childhood. I do a lot of therapy in my books. Oh, really? I do. Enormous amount. I think that's what I do on Facebook. I do a lot of therapy in my books. Oh, really? I do. Enormous amount. I think that's what I do on Facebook. I do a lot of therapy. I just let it all bleed out, and everyone goes, you're really messed up. That's in the podcast, too. We use the podcast for therapy as well. I don't know. I think it's a narcissist delivery or something for me. But so, you know, so this is a thing where she's basically going to someone she had a crush on and, you know, more romance than ever.

What do you feel kind of separates this from some of your other novels? I think this one is much more that this whole series is more family drama um i usually write these kind of big international thriller style romances where the fate of the world is happening and when i need a convenient dramatic thing to happen i just blow something up it's a lot harder when you can't blow anything up yeah i think michael bay does that drama i think michael bay does in his movies a lot too just blow anything up. Yeah, I think Michael Bay does that in his movies. I think Michael Bay does that in his movies a lot too. Just blow something up. Just blow something up. And then you talk about the feelings that people had

when something blew up. Yeah. I just blow up the feelings. That's what I do. I'm into that. Yeah. I do that on Facebook as well. So this is an interesting tie-in

because I didn't plan this when I was doing the cocaine alligator joke, but there's actually a bit of a story in here about an alligator and your characters. Can you tell us if there was cocaine involved and expand on that a little bit more? There is. His name is Otis,

and he is, what you've got to understand, I don't know if you've ever been to quirky little Gulf coast towns in South. There's a lot of quirkiness. My best friend grew up there. I spent some time down there. So this is like,

you know, new Orleans and then you go keep going South. So there is a lot of quirkiness around there. And so they have a town alligator named Otis and he kind of runs through all the books and i mean he's almost like like at times it's like he knows like he is a romantic and he knows when to lay across the only road leading out of town to stop the hero who has misunderstood the heroine wow so yeah he's of a, what do they call it? A deus ex machina.

Yeah. Oh yeah. What is, what is that? God, it's a reference to, in a play you would, um,

the God would come down and solve all the problems in old Greek plays. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still waiting for that to happen in my life. I also have a thieving raccoon. A thieving raccoon? Yes.

His name is Brian. And yeah, he steals cell phones. I think by the nature of raccoonery is thievery. I might be stereotyping the raccoon. I just think it's that. I mean, have you checked with their community? Because you might be offending them. I probably should. I mean, you shouldn't shame them for? Because you might be offending them.

I probably should. I mean, you shouldn't shame them for being thieves, even though they technically are. I used to have a whole nest of raccoons coming to my canyon home. And they would not come into my home. They weren't welcome or invited. But they would steal the dog food out of the dog pen that was in the backyard. And they were just little thieves. They ruined everything.

So, so we, we have clarification where any of the raccoons or alligators involved in the story and on cocaine, I suppose we need to ask that. They were all cocaine free. All of their criminality just, I mean, probably comes from a really rough background.

Yeah. And probably childhood trauma or something. Maybe, maybe the bog they were in just wasn't, was a ghetto bog or something. I don't know. It's there's a joke there somewhere. Um, so, uh, there's not much we can of course get disclosed. What, what, what, uh, are you using the same characters in the bio, uh, or in this butterfly bio series

or are these all different characters as people read through them? No, they're very much a recurring cast of characters. So in this particular one, the hero first shows up in the very first book in the series where he's basically, it's a bunch of the men of the town who have a poker night once.

And they do a lot of talking during their poker night and Quaid happens to be one of the guys there. So he's been hanging around for a long time. You ever thought about writing children's books? You know, on the thieving raccoon? That sounds like one of those

Dr. Seuss sort of books maybe that could go that way. Could be. Yeah. All right. Well, I'll send you a contract over to get some royalties off that. That's right. And maybe I can post something up in those books. That's 110 books right there.

That's right. Dr. Seuss and the thieving raccooneries. You know, I mean, maybe the reason they're thieving raccoons is they're stealing for cocaine money that could be that oh my god you might have just cracked this open i didn't even plan any of this tie into the monologue so i don't know just i can work a cocaine bear into everything i'm gonna tell you in my june book that's already done i have a cocaine bear reference i am fascinated by cocaine bear. There you go.

It's interesting how that has caught on. And I guess that's why this other story hit the AP because people just like the idea of a cocaine bear going crazy. And I guess that's based on a true story a little bit too. So I don't know, man, what's going on in the world. So anything more we should know about your, uh, protagonists in here and,

and, uh, what they're up to? Well, the funny thing is the actual, so the actual court case that this whole thing is surrounding, um, I take a lot from my actual real life.

So in this court case, um, basically the plaintiff is very angry that the defendant has taken down a tree. That is technically on his, in his property. He runs a gas station and she is, has a house.

She just has a house that's behind the gas station. So he takes down the tree and now all of the gas station lights come into his house i mean her house and and her her ground is a little higher up so she decides the well so she loses the first case because it's there and then she decides you know what this is geraldine and she is 78 years old she decides that if he can do all of that and he can take away her tree that hides everything she will have nude parties oh and so she brings all her friends over and so the second case is him is the defendant trying to get her to shut down her nude parties because it's scaring away his gas station customers and how old is she again she is 78. wow okay well you know you still got some looks at 78. yes so it's very quirky and very

like but this all came about because one day i i didn't realize how close i lived behind a gas station because of the trees this really happened to me i did not know have the parties i didn't have the nudist parties in response? I just yelled and screamed about it. Well, there's still time. I'm thinking that would run away his gas station. It really would. That's me taking stuff absolutely from real life. Well, this is definitely an interesting romance novel.

If there's somebody running nudist parties at their house, that's a whole new level of romance. Oh, people who read me would not be surprised. Really? So this is a recurring theme? This is an everyday thing for me. Wow. All right. Well, this is why you're popular and you put out a lot of books.

Yeah, evidently you have a huge nudist colony following. Hopefully. That's okay. I like this. We're expanding the audience in the Chris Voss Show. We're going to have a nudist colony. And hopefully some cocaine bears will pick this up. Yeah, I think we already have an addiction service there.

We have a few people on that run addiction recovery services. We should put an ad for this at the end of the day. If you're a bear, if you're a bear or cat, and you think you're tired of the ups and downs of the cocaine partying, you know,

call this 1-800 number. That's right. For the late night. Other bears are here to help you you are not alone you're not alone you're not alone there's other bears in in the thing uh you know but maybe maybe you know maybe the bear is just trying to get out of of hibernation he's like hey i don't want to sleep man so i'm going to take some cocaine all winter and get through this and then i'll just party while everyone's asleep. You know, it's like what I do in Vegas late at night. Anyway, I don't know what that means.

But this is a pretty interesting story. So she has a nudist party. She just feels, because one of the things they say is, you know, nobody's stopping you from, her thing is I want him to put up a new tree. And he's like, nobody's stopping you from her thing is i wanted to put up a new tree and he's like nobody's doing that nobody's stopping you from being in your backyard nobody and so she's like okay fine and nobody's stopping her i would sue her for having to be the person who walks by and sees the nudist party. Technically, in Louisiana, I believe you are allowed to be whatever you

want in your backyard as long as you have a fence. See, that's why I haven't traveled to the South. I saw the movie Deliverance, and I've been scarred ever since. So I avoid any place that has a slang that says, you've got stupider mouth, boy. I stay away from any of that. So I avoid that in

Florida, Pretty much specifically I don't It's a lovely place with wonderful people We've lost all five listeners in Florida Evidently that aren't on meth Anyway That aren't on the bath salts I don't know why this turned into a drug show

With a drug recurring The funny thing is one of the characters in this His brother The hero's brother Actually has an addiction problem a drug show with a drug recurring. The funny thing is, one of the characters in this, his brother, the hero's brother, actually has an addiction problem that he is solving, that he is working through, and that's part of the family drama, is that he

and his brother repair their relationship, and here I am. I think we all need to go on rehab at this point. I'm going to be selling the show to everybody. We're all addicted to something. And a lot of people are addicted to your books and reasonably so. Now, one thing I noticed when I went to your website, I was trying to figure out which book is the newest book that's being released.

You have a lot of books coming out. Do you want to plug those away? I do. So I had a book called, I had, well, uh, well, this book is by your beloved. I have to do this. My publicist would tell me to do that. And then I have, um, a book called,

um, unexpected bliss coming in May. That is that in my quirky Colorado town called bliss, Colorado. And I have a book called tempted, um, coming out. That's just,

that's with my spies and then the other two books I have coming out this year are, one is Start Us Up, which is kind of a women's fiction. And then I start a new series called

the series is Masters of Mercenaries, and the book is called Love the Way You Spy. Love the Way You Spy Ah Love the Way You Spy There's some other new releases The Dom Who Came In From the Cold Yes, that was my February release

That finished off Masters of Mercenaries Reloaded Yeah We were joking before the show that a lot of these spies Run around with their shirts open So, The Rebel Guardian I guess We're joking before the show that a lot of these spies run around with their shirts open. Yes. So, The Rebel Guardian, I guess. Yes, that was last year. Ah, far from bliss.

And that's an urban fantasy series, so it's a little different from the other stuff I do. And you've got a lot of book series going. Like, we have authors on that, you know, they've only done like 60 books books and they'll have like two or three lanes of book series that they're doing. You've got a lot going on. I let my brain kind of go where it wants to go. Um, the, the urban fantasy is actually the one,

the reason I started writing again, I had written when I was younger, I wrote like one book every 10 years in my 20s 30s well no one book every I wrote three books between my 20s and my 30s um then I ended up having my third child which was supposed to be it was I nearly died on the table and i swear something happened when i got back i wrote nine books that year wow with an infant child and those books were the thieves books which were my urban fantasy series huh so that kind of that series got me back into writing my husband was like you have to either do something with this or like, this can't just be like, you need to do something with this.

So that's when I started publishing. He actually, the way he motivated me, because he is a lovely, amazing man. But he said, this is starting to feel like me playing EverQuest. And I was like, oh no, sir, this is not EverQuest. And so I, yeah, I found a publisher. Well, it's great. You've developed quite the fan base and quite the audience, and I'm sure they eat up all your stuff as soon as it comes out.

They seem to enjoy it. I like the spoiler. We do a little spoiler zone because I love a good twist, and I always like for them to get to the twist ah so it's is it twist usually at the ending it's like one of those uh M. Night Shyamalan movies not necessarily sometimes it's about right in the middle where you find out that the person you thought they were is really a counter agent or yeah this happens on a lot of my dates the person you find out you find out differently

yeah it's like it's like tinder for spies it's like tinder for spies there you go are spies your favorite topic you like to write about um i i have done it so long that it feels easiest for me to write that way um And Lord knows the world gives you enough to work in. To work in realistically in a book. So I think that that's kind of my happy place, but I also really

enjoy taking the break and getting to write some other stuff. There you go. Do any of the spies have pets that have cocaine problems? I think they should. We don't know. Maybe that's the next twist. I'll send over a contract for the royalties on the next book if you cut that.

Well, this has been really insightful, Lexi. Anything more you want to tease out about the newest books or whatever else you have coming up here in the future? I'm really excited about the August book. I'm going to about the, the August book. I, I finished and I'm going to finish it tomorrow. This is,

if I mean, you, you know, this is with a small press, so they can get a book out faster than the years that it takes. I wrote by you gloved way back, but it's called start us up. And I'm really excited about writing its first person present tense and it's got a lot to do with the tech world and kind of what it means to be a woman

in in that kind of world and i'm excited about that you should incorporate that chat gpt that's like really popular it is about ai yeah yeah I was working on an AI at the time. Yeah. It's like no one will shut up about it on my Facebook page. But see, now I worry that I'm making it out to be like this really nice AI. So that's the way AI would look in this particular women's fiction world. Whereas if it was in Masters and Merchants, that AI would be taking over the world. Yeah, there you go.

You make it evil. Because everyone bets that it's going to become evil eventually when of course it will there is no question when are we going to get an ai on cocaine yeah there you go ai and cocaine that's my new uh hey somebody google uh ai cocaine.com it's probably sold out um because some gang who jacked up on Coke, bought it. But no, I mean, that would be funny, man. And it's like sniffing a lot the whole time, rubbing its nose. That's right.

Giving you whatever texture. So this will be pretty awesome. I'm sure your fans will love it and they'll look forward to it. Lexi, give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Lexiblake.net is my actual website address. And then I'm on all the socials as author Lexiblake. There you go. Lexi, thank you very much for coming on.

We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. And as always, PSA, boys and girls, stay away from drugs. They're bad for you, especially you know the mary joanna ones don't do that i wouldn't uh but the other stuff uh stay away from the hard stuff just stick to like uh you know coffee and tea and and uh and and you make good positive affirmations and stuff

i don't know do whatever you want people i just don't hurt other people. That's all we ask. She is the author of the latest book to come out March 28, 2023. Bayou Beloved, part of the Butterfly Bayou series by Lexi Blake. Pick it up wherever fine books are sold and if you order it now, you can beat your book club where you can tell them you read it first.

Anyway, folks, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. Stay off cocaine, especially with your pets, and we'll see you next time.