The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – First Born: A Novel by Will Dean

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

First Born: A Novel by Will Dean From the acclaimed author of The Last Thing to Burn, a psychological thriller about the dark secrets that emerge when a woman’s twin sister is murdered, with his signature “intense, gripping, taut, terrifying, moving, and brilliant” (Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author) prose. Sisters. Soulmates. Strangers. Molly Raven lives a quiet, structured life in London, finding comfort in security and routine. Her identical twin Katie, living in New York, is the exact opposite: outgoing, spontaneous, and adventurous. But when Molly hears that Katie has died, possibly murdered, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. As terrifying as it is, she knows she must travel across the ocean and find out what happened. But as she tracks her twin’s final movements, cracks begin to emerge, and she slowly realizes her sister was not who she thought she was and there’s a dangerous web of deceit surrounding the two of them.

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. 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 the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here once again we have a massive returning guest that we've had on the show before i think we had him on i I think it was last year.

These years are blasting by me and it's pretty crazy. But we have some of the greatest authors on. In fact, they just reschedule stuff. It's crazy. I've got stuff booked out until December for books coming out. And I'm like, holy, some of our authors are just prolific in what they do. Today we have another amazing author on the show. Yeah, Will Dean is with us today.

We had him on for this first book that he had called The Last Thing to Burn. And I got to tell you, you got to read that book. It starts out just gripping you from, I think, the first page or two pages and won't let you go. And he's out with his new book. And this is going to be coming out July 5th, 2022, evidently. The title of it is called Firstborn. And it's a novel that's going to be coming out, a psychological thriller about the dark secrets that emerge when a woman's twin sister is murdered. And it's got a signature intense, gripping taunt, terrifying, moving, and brilliant, according to Lisa Jewell, number one New York Times bestselling author.

And he is on the show today to talk about his book. Will Dean first grew up in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom and lived in nine villages before the age of 18. After studying law at London School of Economics and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a wooden house in a boggy clearing at the center of a vast elk forest. And it's from this space that he compulsively reads and writes his debut novel. Dark Pines was selected for Zoe Ball's book club on ITV,

shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and The Guardians, not the Booker Prize, was named Telegraph Book of the Year. Welcome to the show, Will. How are you? Hello, Chris. It's good to be back, man. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. There you go. And it's great to have you back as well.

I remember our discussion about your living there in the oak forest, in a boggy clearing, and you're kind of living the life that maybe a lot of us do where you're semi-unplugged, or are you semi-unplugged? Is that a good assessment? Yeah, we're pretty much off-grid. So I have a well over there where we get our water from. We chop wood for heating and cooking.

We grow most of our own food. Especially this time of year, we grow all of our own food. And from where I'm set, I can walk, I can hike pretty much a full day in any direction. I'm still in the same forest. Wow. That probably worked out good for COVID, right? Honestly, man, we didn't really the thing is the weird thing is sweden didn't do anything with covid so it was kind of like living in this big experiment anyway and then in the woods yeah there was no difference so it

was kind of weird yeah yeah they did that whole thing where they're just like fuck it we're just going for uh what was it it's where they just they just go and let people get sick and all that stuff. But I think it backfired on the older people. But let's move on to your book. So you've got this amazing book. What made you want to write this one? So with this one, I had the idea about three years ago. And I saw almost like a picture of the globe with two sisters on the phone, two identical twins on the phone, Molly Raven in London, who is very anxious and controlling and complicated. She's got a little

apartment full of fire alarms and fire blankets, fire extinguishers. And then her sister in New York, Katie, who is flamboyant, gregarious, party goer, flies around all time to to has a boyfriend has a full life studying at columbia in new york and i saw the sister in london get a phone call from her parents saying that her twin her identical twin had been found murdered in new york and i just realized like how is she gonna how is molly raven gonna handle this getting on a plane for the first time getting her passport out of her fireproof safe for the first time getting her passport out of her fireproof safe for the first time flying over to new york being completely overwhelmed by the noise and the expense and the the craziness of the city and then her getting there and

realizing she never knew her identical twin as well as she thought she did oh and and is there a possibility of murder with her identical twin? There is, yeah. That's established pretty soon on, so that's not a spoiler. Yeah, for sure. The police are heavily involved. She's trying to kind of comfort her parents, deal with the grief, and at the same time put a puzzle together of what her what her dead twin's life was really

like so she starts kind of talking to her dead twin's boyfriend her tutor all these people and she she finds a lot of secrets out and like halfway through the book it takes a little bit of a change in tone and she suddenly grows in confidence and starts to seek revenge on the people that wronged her twin ah murder you say ah doing that 2020 guy or whoever it is that does that ah tell us more so it sounds like she's was was she one of those people who's like what do they call that whether the shut-ins and they won't leave the house? Agoraphobia or something like that. I think that's for spiders. She's not quite like that. Yeah, that's used in a lot of thrillers.

No, she's not. She's got a job, like an admin job. She has a fairly normal life, but she's just very calculating risks, situational awareness to the max. She walks down the street in New York, and most people her age are just having fun, looking for restaurant and she's there like looking at the scaffolding looking at the water towers looking at planes looking at like trucks getting too close to the curb she's constantly analyzing the risks yeah you you're doing amazing with this i was just looking here

on amazon they're they're launching your hardcover at $36.99, dude. That's pretty awesome for a novel, man. You've already got like 276, so that's in dollars. 276 ratings. It's not out until July.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm lucky I've got a great editor. Emily Bessler at Simon & Schuster is incredible, so I have a good team. That is awesome. I mean, 276 reviews and it's not even out yet. That's amazing. So this thing's going to be pretty popular.

I can tell when it hits. I mean, yeah, it's going to be awesome. People loved your prior books. So she kind of develops and does some of that sleuthing ability or watching for danger ability end up turning into a bit of a detective? It does in a very dark kind of sinister way. So I got a DM from someone the other day saying that it was like a cross between Gillian Flynn and the talented Mr. Ripley. And I like that. That's kind of where it sits.

It's quite dark and things happen that you don't expect. But it's all rooted in the psychology of twins because I find twins so interesting. You know, when I was researching it, I heard from two twins, two identical twins who had never really touched each other since they were young kids. One of them said it was too weird, too freaky to hold hands with the other twin because it's like looking at yourself in the mirror. I found that really interesting. That's a really interesting thing. I mean, I always thought twins were like really buddy-buddy, but I guess, you know.

Well, with those two, they were really close. They talked to each other constantly throughout the day, like sharing really mundane snippets of information, but they can't touch. That was the thing that was just like, no, I can't do that. I can't give my twin a hug because it's like hugging myself. Did you meet a lot of – go ahead'm sorry no sorry i it's two other twins and this made it into the book actually one said that she bought a dress she didn't tell her twin the other twin bought the same dress weirdly at the same time and then she saw her twin wearing the dress and she was

like oh my god that's how i actually look in the dress it's not how i look in the mirror that is how i look and how i move in the dress i'm never wearing that dress oh wow it's kind of when women show up at a party and someone else has got the red dress or the black dress on or whatever they're like oh my god they have the same dress you know yeah but imagine that but it's like you wearing it that's the weird yeah yeah that would be weird to look at yourself in the mirror did you interview a lot of twins for the for the book i didn't interview any twins but i i just did a huge amount of research like reading blog posts from identical twins and also just siblings i'm really interested in that sibling rivalry thing like with this with these two they were treated exactly the same until they were four years old and then the fun one after that was kind of labeled the fun twin and she was treated as the fun light-hearted entertaining one and the other one

was labeled like the serious difficult twin and i find it interesting how that resentment can manifest later on in life you know yeah and it plays out in the characters and stuff were there any were there any movie stars you had in mind when you're writing the book or anyone in your real life that you were thinking of as some of the characters you're writing about in the book honestly no i think now that i'm talking to production companies i need to start thinking about casting choices but i never think like that a lot of authors do i know that and that's probably a good idea but i i write in first person so i see the world so in this book i see the world of new y through Molly Raven's eyes. So I don't really know what she looks like even.

I'm just looking at how she deals with the world and how she deals with her dead twin's tutor who was hitting on her, how she deals with her dead twin's neighbor, some incel who lives in the basement who was really creepy around her. So that's how I see that world. Wow. And so I want to ask about the incel or is that going to lead me down a road no you can ask you can ask the incel doesn't the incel didn't do it then man i can't tell you that i can't say that but he's an interesting

character he's because he's an ex-incel that's the interesting thing so he's been rejected by the incel community he was a big part of it a big big YouTuber. How did he get rejected by the incels? I mean, I thought they were the rejects of the rejects. Well, this is the interesting thing, right? I'm interested in subcultures. And I went down a rabbit hole with this subculture. I didn't really know they existed until this book. But this guy was a big incel.

And then he suddenly kind of started working out and started seeing girls. And then he got rejected by the incel community. And now he's, yeah. So now he's a a youtuber but a lot of people don't like him and yeah so i can't maybe the incel people will kill him the that's their next book the i heard he blew the i blew the ending for the next one oh that that's kind of funny i i didn't think yeah you probably get rejected by the incel community go the other way it's so interesting the insult community i just i just look at it what the hell have we done over the last 60 years so what are some other teasers about the book is there any stories or tidbits you can tease out for us that you think people find interesting or maybe someone who who gave me a quote said that it's part murder mystery part psychological

thriller which i think is spot on so the first half is very much Molly being in New York out of her depth. And to give you an example of how she is out of her depth or how paranoid she is, when she flies for the first time, she starts researching, can I take a parachute on the plane, like a commercial airplane? She takes knitting needles that are duct taped together in her coat because you're allowed to do that on a plane i didn't know that she takes like all these improvised weapons that that are allowed that she kind of makes on the plane because she's so terrified of like hijacks and stuff and when she's in new york she walks around she knows she

can't walk around with a baseball bat but she knows she can walk around with a baseball bat and a baseball and get away with it so there's a lot there's a lot of that i researched a lot like navy seals talking about situational awareness and how to how to defend yourself in a place like new york where you're not allowed to defend yourself in other ways it's really interesting but in terms of like teasers this is the twistiest book I've ever written. So it is very, yeah, Gillian Flynn, Talented Mr. Ripley. It turns on its head a few times. And I never expected that when I was planning it. That all came as a surprise to me. Is it like being in one of those M. Night Shyamalan movies

where you won't know until the end? Kind of. But the thing with him is, like, The Sixth sense was a was a masterpiece right it's such a good movie especially when you watch it the second time but then he went and tried to do that with every subsequent movie and that's difficult to pull off it went downhill after that yeah it just got worse and worse and worse i think the mel gibson movie was the last one i could stand it was so obvious how the ending was going to be it It was just like, you've overplayed this. But yeah, that was, yeah. You can only do that so many times.

I don't know. Did Hitchcock do that? I don't remember. Was there any? Well, he did with suspense. I love the way he did suspense. So he used to say that the best way to write a suspenseful novel is to have two characters at a table. And there's a bomb under the table.

And the reader knows there's a bomb but the characters don't because you can string that scene out for for hundreds of pages i'm just talking and you know that there's a ticking time bomb that's that's the genius of suspense and i think he's absolutely right yeah what was so amazing about his work was he didn't really believe in actors he believed in directors and writers i guess but he was so critical and so ugly towards actors and he really felt like he he wrote well enough and directed well enough that it didn't matter the actors he could put in his movies he he he could just kill based upon you know what he did i remember seeing recently the, the, the, the psycho building and how it was shot and the back end of it and, and how it was built so that he could do that,

you know, that, that famous shot from top down from the stairs and stuff. It was pretty, it was pretty interesting to see because he really, he really pioneered some of the cinematography back in the day. 100%. Yeah.

I love, I love the way that he shot his movies. And also I watched the other day, I rewatched the exorcist and the love the way that he shot his movies. Also, I watched the other day, I re-watched The Exorcist and the way they shot that movie as well with the steps. Just that building was incredible. That was a hell of a movie. Scared the hell out of me.

Such a great movie. But yeah, there's some scenes in there that don't make me jump every time. Like when the girl comes running down the stairs upside down on her hands. She's like, ah! I know, man. And I feel sorry for the actress.

Because, like, what a thing to – sorry, we're not talking about my book anymore. But what a thing to act when you're, like, 12 years old, you know? Yeah. How do you move on from that in life? Yeah. Yeah. I think my six ex-wives are the same way. Every now and then they run around like that.

So are most of your books psychological thrillers? Remind me if they are or aren't. They're suspense. Yeah, I think they're just dark and unsettling books. Yeah, they're suspenseful. I don't think every novel needs a big twist, but I think when you come up with one, it can be really satisfying.

Like a Gone Gold twist or a Shutter Island twist. It's a beautiful thing when it happens. So who hurt you? No, I'm just kidding. What makes it so that you aspire to these types of novels that are built this way? It's just what I read.

As a kid, I think Roald Dahl was a big inspiration. As a little kid, I really freaking dark those books. I come from a family, a blue-collar family with no books in the house whatsoever. Not a single book.

My mum was good enough to take me to a mobile library truck a lot. I used to get Stephen King novels. she didn't know that they were completely unsuitable for like an 11 year old but I would read these things his books back then were really big but I would get through them and so he's a big

inspiration as well just going to a dark place and I felt like I was in this small town and I felt like an alien growing up I wasn't one of the cool kids at all. For me, reading fiction was my escape until I got out of that small town. And still

now, I love reading dark fiction, unsettling fiction. It doesn't have to be a thriller, but anything where it's like, this author's taking me to a really interesting place where I'm going to feel uncomfortable. I like that. You like the freedom of being able to dig those different places and write that way? this author is taking me to a really interesting place where I'm going to feel uncomfortable I like that I guess I don't really think about it like that

the reason I write and I'm just lucky that I get to be a full time writer here in the woods but the reason I do it is for that first draft buzz when I'm telling myself a story for the first time that's never existed before. Yeah. And I write my first drafts in three or four weeks, which is unhealthily quick.

And I'm just in a kind of fever dream state. I'm just enjoying it. I'm like a kid again, you know? And then when I'm done, then all the rewriting starts, which is just a nine-to-five job. But that first draft is a lot of fun. Yeah. You just pound it out. That's awesome, man. You just have that gift for it. Well, it sounds like it's going to be a fun book. And

it's already popular 276 ratings. It's not even out yet. What is it out next week? I think? Yeah, next week, a week from now. So this should be pretty awesome. Anything more you want to touch on will or tease out about the book before we go? I don't think so. i am happy if people read it and enjoy it i'm getting a lot of letters and emails on this book already from bloggers and stuff which is great because i don't normally get that people are emailing me and dming me at a particular point in the book it's always the same point that's quite fun ah so if anybody wants to get in touch when they get to that point i'm happy to happy to talk. Find out what that is. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on, Will. We really

appreciate it. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. On Instagram, Twitter, Will Dean author, TikTok. And on YouTube, I'm Will Dean Forrest author. And on there, I give, it's not about my books. Will Dean Forrest author is about me giving other writers tips on how to get an agent how to get published how to make money from being an author now i recall that yes you have like a youtube channel on it as well right yeah so i'm i share my like query letter that got me an agent because it's hard to get a literary agent it's tough and so i wanted to just like give that up so it would help other people and try and give people a little bit of confidence that they can do it.

Because a lot of writers are from literary families in London and New York, and I was not that person. And I never thought I'd be able to be a writer. So anybody else like me, I want to give them a little helping hand or a bit of confidence that they can do it as well. There you go. There you go. I remember watching your videos. Thank you very much, Will, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Chris. Great to be back. Thank you. And continued success, my friend. Thanks, my honest, for being here. Be sure to go check out all of our properties on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places the cool kids are playing. Chris Voss at YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss.

And then the big LinkedIn for all that sort of stuff. And the Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. And then the big LinkedIn for all that sort of stuff. And the goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.