The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Kings County by David Goodwillie

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

> Kings County by David Goodwillie Davidgoodwillie.com Overview It’s the early 2000s and like generations of ambitious young people before her, Audrey Benton arrives in New York City on a bus from nowhere. Broke but resourceful, she soon finds a home for herself amid the burgeoning music scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But the city’s freedom comes with risks, and Audrey makes compromises to survive. As she becomes a minor celebrity in indie rock circles, she finds an unlikely match in Theo Gorski, a shy but idealistic mill-town kid who’s struggling to establish himself in the still-patrician world of books. But then an old acquaintance of Audrey’s disappears under mysterious circumstances, sparking a series of escalating crises that force the couple to confront a dangerous secret from her past. From the raucous heights of Occupy Wall Street to the comical lows of the publishing industry, from million-dollar art auctions to Bushwick drug dens, Kings County captures New York City at a moment of cultural reckoning. Grappling with the resonant issues and themes of our time—sex and violence, art and commerce, friendship and family—it is an epic coming-of-age tale about love, consequences, bravery, and fighting for one’s place in an ever-changing world. About The Author David Goodwillie is the author of the novel American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Goodwillie has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, and Newsweek, among other publications. He has also been drafted to play professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby’s auction house. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives in Brooklyn.

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. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us on YouTube. And also be sure to give us a review on iTunes. We have some great reviewers that we certainly love that put some great reviews up over the past week. You can go to iTunes, go into the reviewer section,

and give it five stars if you would, please, and tell people you like it. That helps us get more eyeballs to the show as well. You can go to the CBPN, of course, or youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss, if you want to watch the video version of this thing. And we've got the most excellent author on today. We've got a lot of great authors lately that the publishing company has been sending us. But this gentleman's written several books, and he's going to give us some interesting insight.

His name is David Goodwillie. He's the author of The American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the memoir seemed like a good idea at the time. He's written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Newsweek, among other publications. He's also been drafted to play professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby's Auction House. He's a graduate of Kenyon College and lives in Brooklyn, and he's the author of the newest book, The King's Country, a novel.

And this is pretty awesome. Welcome to the show, David. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me, Chris. I've got to get the product placement here perfectly. It's King's County, which is actually the real name of the borough of Brooklyn. Awesome.

Nobody knows. And you only find out when you get your jury summons for the first time, and it says King's County Courthouse. And that's how you find out what Brooklyn's real name is. You know, when I was reading it, I was like, there's counties in Brooklyn? Yeah. That didn't – I was like – The borough is a county.

So, like, Manhattan is New York County. Queens is Queens County. But nobody ever knows that. No, I was called Brooklyn. But I'm not from there. And you are. You live in Brooklyn. I am in Brooklyn right this second. Yeah. So David, give us some plugs where people can order your book on the interwebs and find out more about you. Sure. It actually comes out tomorrow, July 28th from Simon & Schuster. And you can find out more information

on davidgoodwillie.com. And that's G-O-O-D-W-I-L-L-I-E. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. It's just at Goodwillie, my last name. And you can order it. You know, we all, every author loves um if you go to an independent bookshop and order it because they're struggling right now only about half of them are open in the country um but some of them have curbside service some of them you can get in

and uh depends where you live but uh definitely try to order from your local bookstore if you can obviously amazon bookshop.org uh wherever you get your books independent uh support the independent folks especially right now with this covet 19 crap going on absolutely so this is a book that's uh kind of a love letter to to brooklyn and new york city back in the early 2000s is that correct that is correct yes nice so uh what what got you started in book writing you've written a few books so before we get into it let's get into a little bit about you, if you don't mind. Sure. Every writer has a very different path to becoming a writer, a book writer.

I didn't start writing until I was like 30 years old. I moved to New York after a very brief and unsuccessful baseball career and had the weirdest jobs in the world. I was a private investigator for the world's largest investigative firm, unsuccessful baseball career and, uh, um, you know, had the weirdest jobs in the world. I was a private investigator for the world's largest investigative firm, which is called Cole associates, which does like, uh, they don't follow like cheating spouses around. They follow like money around the world at a very high level and ransom and

stuff like that. And that was, I kind of wanted to like find out what the underbelly of the city looked like, and that was a great way to kind of do that. I thought I was going to be a great investigative journalist and all that stuff. And then I got into the auction world at Sotheby's. I wrote the dot-com boom up and down. But I'd moved to New York to become a writer, to be in the arts, and I just didn't know anyone in publishing.

I just didn't have that entree into it. And then, of course, you get to be old enough, you figure out that writing something might actually help. So I turned 30 and decided I didn't have the confidence, nor did I really know how to write a novel. But I'd had this really weird eight years post-college. And maybe I could write a book about early failure and about trying and failing and finally getting to a place where you get, which is of course the book you end up with. And that was my first book called seem like a good idea at the time.

And it's a, it's a, like a, it's like the Seinfeld of books. Like it's kind of about nothing and everything at the same time. And it's a very episodic story about becoming what you want to be, but also about the idea that not all of us should know what we're doing at age 22. And maybe we shouldn't be married at age 23, and all this stuff. And that maybe life should be figured out a little bit before we settle into these more routine parts of our adulthood. And that's what that book was. And then after that, all of a sudden, I was a published author. And, you know, for someone who wants to be literary,

a novel is the kind of gold standard. And then I started writing novels after that, and this is my second novel. So it was a roundabout way to becoming an author. But also, unlike most arts, like, there are no great 23-year-old writers. Like, there are great 23-year-old actors and actresses. There are great 23-year actors and actresses there are great 23 year old painters musicians but like there needs to be a kind of a lived life situation to becoming an author you need something to actually be able to talk about uh in the books there you go my problem is i'm getting sold i'm starting to forget stuff like right so you got this really meaty there's

about 10 years there where you can really get something done. I don't know why Hemingway shot himself at 52 or 53. You've had an interesting career. I mean, professional baseball, being drafted for that. Private Investor Year, it's kind of funny. I watched Chinatown for the umpteenth time last night. Yeah. What a movie. And then Sotheby's Auction House.

Like that whole resume right there is kind of like yeah it just kind of and one thing led to another because I had had this baseball uh kind of career Sotheby's in the late 90s was you know Sotheby's is very fancy auction house it sells million dollar paintings and jewelry and all that stuff but as the internet was taking off in the late 90s they wanted to be uh they wanted to sell everything they could so they started selling like uh more interesting but lesser priced items like rock and roll memorabilia and sports memorabilia and i kind of just knew sports stuff like i'd grown up collecting baseball cards and understood what the value of a bay booth signed baseball kind of was and what i't know, I very much learned on the job.

But it was, you know, and it's like anything in New York. You know, you learn about society, too, at Sotheby's. You learn about, like, kind of the culture of the city and how everything works, even though it's the strangest entree, which would be sports, into that world. So it was great. But, you know, I did it for two years and then realized it wasn't, you know. It was also kind of a glorified garage sale.

You're selling just people's stuff again and again. And I'm not sure that that's what I wanted to do with my life. Well, you know, selling other people's crap, I suppose. I mean, yeah, $20 million crap, but still. What's crap to them? They're obviously unloading it, right? They've got a coke problem and they need the cash. I don't know.

All kinds of reasons people get rid of their stuff. In Sotheby's, they call it the three Ds, death, death, and divorce. Oh, yeah, divorce, the divorce thing, yeah. The three big reasons right there. I'll do that. I can't even afford to be married. Yes, drugs. Maybe drugs is the fourth D.

Maybe drugs is the fourth D. There you go. So this, I imagine being a private investigator in New York and the scenarios you're talking about, that really gave you an interesting kind of gritty sort of, you know, stuff to help you write this book, right? Very much so. All my books have been very New York-based, which I never mean to do,

but it's the world I know. And being a private investigator allows me, I had to get into all kinds of circumstances and neighborhoods and jobs, work I knew nothing about. And when you move to a city like New York, you very quickly find your, your crowd and your, your geographic like center. And you can kind of live here for a very long time without exploring stuff and without meeting people outside of your orbit. And doing that, you know,

I met all kinds of people. I met the richest of the rich. I met the poorest of the poor. I met the municipal New York with the courts and, and the downtown governmental parts of new york and city hall and then um worked in all kinds of boroughs and i was the kind of you know kroll associates is what it's called it's the largest investigative still agency in the world it's like a private government almost and actually the um the comedian nick kroll is the son of the founder. Nobody really knows that. Oh, wow. They kind of operate like a big law firm where they have all these satellite offices around the world. When

Saddam Hussein left Kuwait, he took all their gold and the U.S. government didn't care. Kuwait, once the dust literally settled, looked around and wanted their money back. They hired Kroll Associates to go trace, do the economic tracing to find the actual gold bars, stuff like that.

I wasn't working on those cases, but I worked on mob cases around downtown New York. And that stuff was absolutely fascinating. And it is the exact kind of thing, to get back to your question, that led me to become a writer. I always kind of have this thousand yard view of everything in my life. And,

and I'm always interested in all of those kinds of, um, how scenarios might play out and stuff. Awesome. So, so let's get in the meat of, uh, Kings County, a novel. You guys can check it out on Amazon and other independent sellers. It's out, uh, today or tomorrow, tomorrow. It's out tomorrow. You can probably pre-order it still. And it's got a lot of great praise on it. I've been reading the back of the book and some of the other things that were online for it. So it looks like it's going to be a hot one. I hope so. It is a love story at the end of the day about two people who moved to New York

and are very unlike each other and fall deeply in love. And I've always been interested in the New York origin story. What makes a person move to a city like New York from a small town or from a suburb when so many other people stay behind and doesn't have to be New York, it can be Chicago, LA, Austin, wherever, but there's something about that person that takes that risk and moves to a city. And I've always found, and this is a gross generalization, but the most interesting people to me in a city are the ones that didn't come

from that city and have this story, a knockabout story of getting to New York. And it meant that much to them, whether they want to be in finance or in the arts, it doesn't matter. It's like this, there's just some extra thing to those people. And so the two main characters, it's a woman named Audrey Benton, who works for a music label in Brooklyn at the exact moment that the indie music scene is taking off in the early 2000s in Williamsburg and those neighborhoods near Manhattan. And Theo Gorski, who is a guy from a mill town in Massachusetts, whose dream it is to kind of rise above his station

and break into the patrician world of books, which is still, to this day, quite white and upper class, and is just now starting to diversify. But these two people fall madly in love, but of course they have paths that trail after them. And those paths end up being the plot of the book because they can't quite outrun them. And it comes to affect their relationship greatly. And the book is about them.

But as you said, it's also about New York City and a specific time in Brooklyn between 2000 and 2010 when indie music, kind of the last gasp before hip-hop took over the world, bands like The Strokes and Interpol and Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, these bands were kind of all geographically based within one or two square miles of each other. And it was fascinating. I actually lived in Manhattan. I didn't live in Brooklyn at that time. But I would go over there and you could tell there was a movement happening and it

was geographically based. And everyone who was into that was coming from everywhere else to that specific place. And it happens, I think, about once a decade. And you can go all the way back to the 50s in Nashville, the 60s in San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, the 70s in Laurel Canyon in LA, the 80s in Detroit, the 90s in Seattle, and then on and on and on. And in the 2000s, it was Brooklyn for sure. And it's, to me, fascinating

when you happen upon an American cultural moment because they don't happen that often. And I would also posit that that might be the very last one musically because after that, music became fully digital and it wasn't the geographic thing anymore. Everybody can make songs on their laptops right now, just like I'm talking to you through my laptop.

They are. And so you don't need that camaraderie anymore. You don't necessarily have to be in one place. And so to me, that was fascinating to live in a city and watch that a bit from afar, but still be a part of it. And so that context is what these two characters are living amidst, is this great artistic kind of flowering. So that's always been fascinating to me and the reason this book became.

I think so, too. I grew up, when I was young, it was always about getting to the big city. And you always had this romanticism, and I think a lot of people do, about moving to New York or going to L.A. and making it big, if you want to be an actor, actress model, I suppose. Of course there's, you know, great modeling in New York, or at least there used to be, I don't know if it's still what it, what it was at one time. It seems like everyone on Instagram is a model these days.

They can be in their living room too now. Yeah. Even I'm posting my bikini pictures. So, but no one wants to see that. But no, there's always this romantic. But no one wants to see that. But no, there's always this romanticism people have about moving to New York. I think I kicked it around sometime in my youth. And everyone has that dream of going there and making it big. And you see the real estate that you have to start out with if you first go there. I mean, you definitely have to have some money. Or you're definitely going to be uh you know the city can swallow it looks like it can swallow

you and it can swallow you yeah i get asked a lot when i'm usually you go on a book tour uh this year obviously i'm not because of circumstances but uh uh you go on a book tour and i'm reading in chicago or wichita wherever it is always somebody asks, I want to be a writer. Do you think I should move to New York? And the answer, I think, is quite obviously, no, you don't. You can write from anywhere. And sometimes some perspective and some space is a good thing to have. But at the same time, I found for me, and I didn't go to graduate school for writing,

but I still found that being in the community, in the city where it was all happening, was a huge help. All the publishers are here, all the magazines are here, all the newspapers are here, all the agents are here. And it's still, and most industries are, a people industry. No matter how great your writing is, no matter what, it helps to meet people. It helps to go to parties and take that risk and go up and introduce yourself to somebody and say, Hey, I read your magazine. I would love to send you something. Or, you know, I read the books that you're an agent for. I think, you know, could I email you tomorrow? And, and that's still to this day, how people get their breaks. I mean, it's the same thing for acting. It's the same thing in music. Like you have to have the talent. Once the email comes through to that person, you have to

written something good, but you need that break and then you're going to get them face to face with people as opposed to emailing them from afar. That sounds like when I lived in LA and like everyone would want to give you the screen or their screenplay. I mean, I don't want to be the agent in that circumstance. I wouldn't want to be either because you're just getting pitched. But, yeah, and then the name dropping.

I was on a set yesterday with Clint Eastwood, and you're like, what was the extra food table like? I think acting is definitely the worst. Reality can work for that. But it happens in every industry, and there's pretenders, and there's the people that are really talented, and they're usually the ones that can't speak up at parties because they're freaked out and sweating profusely in a corner.

But, yeah, of course that happens. I would just always stand there, and, you know, they get around to me like, well, what did you do today on the set, Chris? And I'd be like, I don't know, I had a real job or something. I don't know. It's funny. But, no, it's really cool that you have like, I don't know, I have a real job or something. I don't know. It's funny. But no, it's really cool that you have this and the romanticism. I mean, that's the thing that New York has always kind of had that, that big city, the

big lights, the everything about it. There's, there's always something that's bigger than life about New York city. And, uh, I think, you know, like I said, I learned a couple of things. I learned that there's, you know, counties in the boroughs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had no idea. I was just like, I don't know. But I'm some backwoods from the west side of America. As you were saying earlier, this book is very specific,

and it evokes the place i'm writing about i don't mind uh i will sacrifice i don't need to have like da vinci code plot plot plot page turn page turn i want character development i want my readers to know where the story is taking place and have them feel like they are in the story that they know the environment that the action is taking place in and i don't mind and this comes with a bit of experience, I think, as a writer, I don't mind taking my time a bit to get the reader fully invested in the story to the point where the restaurants and the books are real restaurants, the streets are real streets.

There'll be every once in a while a celebrity cameo that's like actually the person that was probably there at that moment. And I'll make up stuff. It's fiction actually the person that was probably there at that moment, you know, like, and I'll make up stuff. It's fiction, of course. But that is important to me is to get that reader to totally trust what you're writing and what you're giving them as a context and as a geographic place. And I love how you put in the detail. Like I told you, I had to read it kind of slow because there's a lot of details there, and it paints this beautiful picture, especially at the start of the book, that made me feel kind of – what was that club in the 70s?

Club 57 or – Studio 54. Studio 54. I was close on three points, right? I'm getting old, man. It's all that Coke we did in there. No, I'm just kidding. There certainly wasn't a lot there yeah

yeah so their actual logo was a moon with a coke scope yeah there you go so when i was reading the first chapter and getting into it that's kind of the feel even though it's in the 2000s yeah but i was just kind of feeling that sort of vibe where it was that that you know the whole club thing the scene and everything else it opens up and uh there's a band uh it opens up a band has just had a huge performance it's a breakout performance and it opens up in a which is actually a real place called the boom boom room at the top of the standard hotel in the me pack and district of new york city uh and it opens up the band is coming to celebrate at this huge club at midnight after their show.

And there's all these people coming and going, their managers there, and he's all screwed up. And like the, the band is really this bunch of Brooklyn brothers and friends and they don't want to be there, but they have to be. And it's the scene that I've always wanted to write.

And I think it's one of the hardest to write, which is a big party scene or a big scene where you're introducing 10 or 15 characters at once, but you're also kicking the plot off. And you're also trying to, you know, there's like five different things you're trying to do as an author that if you can pull off, it's great. And this gives you this immense, like, kind of roaring start to the book, but is always very difficult to do because you got to keep everybody straight. You don't want the reader wondering who's, who's this, who's that,

what's going on. I don't understand. But that was, I'd always wanted to start a book like that. And this was my big chance to do that. And so you are thrown into this club with music going and some guys trying to order drinks and you can't get to the bar and like all this annoying stuff that is intensely New Yorkie happens in that first chapter. And then the book kind of slows down for a minute and you get to know the characters. But I wanted to just throw the reader into this kind of ridiculous New York scene.

Well, the description is everything I've ever experienced at clubs. The craziness, the insanity, you know, everything coming at you at once. You're there either chasing girls or, I don't know, well, you're there either chasing girls or i don't know well you're always there chasing girls but yeah you know you're always there for the possibility just like you moved to uh you moved to uh i want to say vegas because there'll be a little move to vegas i mean i feel like vegas is the last place even new york doesn't really have clubs like that vegas still does but it's it's always a weird thing because everybody's just there for the weekend right yeah it's always transitional yeah it's so transitional but uh new york doesn't really

the club scene in new york has finally started to evaporate i think which is is it really so it's just becoming a tourist town it was very classist at the end because it was just you know you paid money to get in it was you know three hundred dollars for a bottle of vodka nobody could afford it except for you know guys in paid money to get in. It was, you know, $300 for a bottle of vodka. Nobody could afford it except for, you know, guys in the finance world. And then it was called Models and Bottles. And it was just really lame. And there was a, like Studio 54, there might have been a big, and I was thankfully a bit too young for it, but in the late 70s,

there was, the people they let in were the most interesting looking people. The ones who were dressed crazily or just, you know, had ridiculous hairdos or just had the style or were funny and those are the ones that got in along with the diana ross's and paul simons and whatever the world back then but uh club seeing the club scene and kind of morphed into kind of tragic comic ridiculous thing and lost its edge and of course in new York, when something loses its edge, it becomes pretty lame pretty quickly. And so cocktail bars and stuff started up after that,

and just, you know, the nightlife thing goes on. There you go. New York is a fun place to visit. I mean, it's fun. It's an interesting life, especially in the nightlife. We flew in one time for JBL and Harman Kardon, and we were at some hotel, and we were pretty much locked down because we were drinking every night until about 4 a.m.

And there was even like a nightclub scene at the hotel in the lobby. Yeah. You can arrive and like not even need a guide for you just wander out and you end up somewhere that you remember for us like we were we're at the we're in the hotel and like the girls would just come in and we're like we don't have to leave because there's girls here and uh they would just come in and you're like so where you're from they're like oh we drove out you know from you know an hour or two away and you're like you oh, we drove out from an hour or two away. And you're like, you drove in and you went, instead of going to a club, you went to a hotel

and you're just hanging out in the lobby. I don't think there's richer people passing through expensive hotels. It's just, when I go on a book tour, it's always much more interesting to read to people that aren't from or in New York. And I'm in St. Louis or some city and my book wants them, that makes them want to go to New York. And that to me, it's also nice to have people from New York be like, Oh,

your book's totally true to life. But that's, it's more fun to have people kind of a bit wide eyed being like, wow, that really made me want to go to New York or maybe not want to go to new york at all i believed that i was there with you whatever it is it's it's some visceral response to new york which i enjoy well there's always that romanticism about new york i mean every you know between sinatra and yeah seeing you about it and everybody the dream of going to the big city i mean it's the top pinnacle of of america when it comes down to it it's where all the money is pretty contemporary stuff but it is littered with history there's a scene in this book where the the girl is walking down uh

28th street i think it's 28th street and you know she works in music but she works in indie music and a very contemporary thing but she comes across this plaque on the sidewalk and it said this is the original tin pan alley and she's like and you know tin pan alley the gershwin the you know the old kind of you know songbook of america and it was in this random street where these buildings where everybody wrote these songs and um she didn't, but she stops and looks at it. And it's just like two worlds passing each other. And I love those New York moments because they happen in real life all the time. You see an old faded image of an advertising poster from the 20s.

It's still on a wall somewhere next to like graffiti that was just, you know, it was beautiful tagging graffiti that was just put up a week ago. And it's just that kind of that's New York to me. The history kind of living alongside the contemporary world. And the fantasy or the romance or the

I don't know what other good word is for that of moving to New York and going through the process of the characters in the book too and the challenges and that's the thing I've always wondered. If you go there, it's a hell of a crapshoot. You don't, you know, I mean, I've had some people that are like, I'm just going to go there and find success.

And you're just like, how? And it's like, I don't know, I'll just go there first. And you're just like, it's jumping off the deep end, but good luck to you. And so the characters kind of go through that process where they where they're walking from you know their background in new york and and uh feeling the way around and and you know stumbling and everything else both of them are here for 10 years i think before they meet each other almost and uh those 10 years they go through almost everything that you can imagine but they find each other and that's kind of where the book starts,

and it has flashbacks going back to their previous years before they meet each other. But then, like, they meet each other, and that's when the hard part almost starts, because they fall so deeply in love that, like, once that starts to get derailed because of the woman Audrey's past, you're like, oh, my God, they went through all of this,

all that stuff in New York, the joblessness, the, you know, kind of, you know, the issues with friends, with romance, all this stuff to find each other, and then they're going to, like, not make it as a couple. And, like, that's, you know, that's New York for you. It throws stuff at you again and again and again. And it's luck. It's perseverance.

It's your personality. It's the industry you decide to get into. It's whether how ambitious you are. All this stuff kind of combines to make a New York story. And, of course, it's such a cliché, but there's so many of them. And it's always fascinating to me, always. If you read the history of New York and the people from the teens and 20s and 30s are having the exact same experiences if you read old novels that people are today.

They're trying to find that first job. They're getting ripped off at apartment buildings. They're, you know, stuck in the wrong neighborhood at 2 in the morning trying to figure out how the hell to get home. That stuff still happened back then, and it's just this great continuation. In the same way, if you're a baseball baseball fan that the stats from babe ruth's era i mean still mean something today like it's a very it's a great continuation of the story which i was left new york city the giant mountain the cultural mountain or something you have to climb and and throw yourself into but it's an

interesting journey and it's a great it's a great book you've written here. Um, that tells the story of these guys and, and you know, the wonderful love story of life where you, you, uh, you know, there's, there's gain and then there's loss and we all seem to go through those cycles. Right. And we were talking before we started the show a little bit about, uh, writing and how you get into it, what you want to write about. For me, I start very specific, kind of almost specifically with one word that I want to write about that I haven't before. And I would consider myself like a literary author, I guess, although I like to write suspense

and mystery, and there's all of that in this book. But I want to write something very different every time too. And that's very important to me. I don't want to write the same character 10 times in a row. And this book would be about, I would say love. And I wanted to write that love story. And it was the central tenant of it. As I was writing the book over several years, the book before this was political and it was about a couple who become kind of political radicals on the left and get in a lot of trouble.

And my next book will, I think, be about money and how money affects people down through generations. But it's a very interesting way to decide what you're going to write about and who you're going to be and how a city influences you is to take very broad subjects and boil them down. And then, you know, you're talking about when you kind of are quite interested in writing yourself. I don't know if you tell your listeners that, but a lot of listeners are interested in writing

and want to figure out how do I start? How do I get going? And it can be as easy as taking one word or taking an idea or taking a person you want to write about if you want to write memoir or non-fiction and um and starting that way starting very broadly and the story kind of comes from these basic ideas these walks i take around the city these characters i can't get out of my head people in real life who you're just like they can be total people you hate or people you love but people you can't get out of my head, people in real life who you're just like, they can be total people you hate or people you love, but people you can't get out of your head that you kind of need to like, you can release them a bit through writing. And that to me is

one of the reasons I am a writer. And what keeps the job very interesting for me is every time I write a book, it's something new. And it's almost like having an entirely new job because I do do a ton of research and you get into this world for a few years that you then are done with and you leave behind. And hopefully we have a book at the end of it, but you then start another one. And that's what keeps it interesting. That's what keeps the city fresh for me, all that stuff. One of the things I really am disappointed about my life. I mean,

I don't know why some people say they don't have regrets, but I didn't mean to bring your writing into this. No, no, not my, I don't have regrets about writing, I don't know why. Some people say they don't have regrets. I didn't mean to bring your writing into this. No, no. I don't have regrets about my writing because I haven't published yet, but it's just going to be a business book of all my stupid stories. I've been an entrepreneur since 18, known my own companies since 18. I wish I'd written all the books I had of employee stories because I've had thousands of employees. I wish I could have saved all the stories, and they're starting to get lost in the 53-year-old brain I wish I could have saved all the stories and they're starting to get lost in the 53 year old brain, but I could have written four books off of just employee stories alone.

Uh, it would have been like a Harvey McKay, you know, just endless thing. And it'll probably be a Harvey McKay style book of all my stupid stories. Um, but, uh, um, getting back to, uh, what we were talking about I segued and now I lost track 50 play is not that old Chris oh man dude you can't drink like you used to and I used to be able to write really beautifully like me and Hemingway have a thing with drinking and writing. But no, it's an interesting path.

So American Subversive was the political book. And that one, New York Times, done a book of the year. And then you did the memoir, seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm kind of interested in that too as well because you have such an interesting path with your resume. Yeah, the memoir was, as we were talking about a little bit, it was about all these crazy jobs and relationships and basically a New York life in your 20s and when you really are just trying to figure it out and trying to stay above water.

Some people do, of course. My roommate in college wanted to be a doctor and he became a doctor some people do of course like my roommate in college wanted to be a doctor and he became a doctor and there was never any question what he was going to do but i wasn't that lucky or unlucky depending and like i didn't have it figured out and i'm not sure you're supposed to have it figured out when you're 20 years old i think that people should go to college in their 20s and not in their teens because i'm so like i became more and more interested in learning in my 20s and 30s and am i and i kind of wasted my college career uh not wanting to be in the classroom i think people get more interested in the world later on in life but that's another

subject for me uh that was about all of these kind of sidelines you take getting to where you want to be and in relationships too and with your family you just like learn stuff and gain perspective i think in that in your 20s it's such a a dramatic time uh and it's not you're not wasting it even though it seems that you're just are wasting it at the time um women are much more uh just ahead of men at that time like i think that just like uh and they have things figured out a bit more and you just feel as a dude you just feel a bit lost sometimes and you're some you know family expectation is still such a big thing in the world although i think that's lessening a bit uh but you just you know um and i think the more creative people are, the more trouble

they have figuring out who they want to be and what they want to do and stuff. And, and that book I kind of wrote to be like, Hey, I think it's, you know, I think it's okay to not have it all figured out. I think you need a goal at the end of the day, of course, but you need to support yourself, but like take the pressure off yourself a bit and like live a bit of life. And like, you know, the world doesn't end for you at 35, like just, you know, chill and like figure it out and it's going to usually work out. There you go. You know, that, that reminds me of where I got lost on my segue.

The one big regret I have in life is not really identifying that life is a collection of stories. That's really what you are you're kind of a story catcher yeah and and uh the fabric of stories and and the fabric of life and i never really understood that i just always want one of those movies tvs and books and you watch them and i know that's something to do but but uh it never really occurred to me until i was about 50 and i'd been writing stories because when i used to drink a lot, I used to write a lot. And most of it's just crap. I posted about my opinions and went around Facebook and stuff.

We've all seen that or put on this podcast if you go back a few hundred episodes. But the thing I realized is that this is really the beauty, the tapestry of life is stories and the collecting of them and the things you learn from them. And to me, that's the real fabric of life. I don't know. I think so. I'm in real life always interested in the storytellers, the people just not necessarily full of shit, but just like the ones who are vibrant and alive and, and, and, and, and you know, New York's full of them, everywhere's full of them, but New York is full of them. And those are the people I gravitate towards.

Those are the people I love to hang out with in my own work life. I love to try to tell those stories. I love to like take everything in in the real world and kind of, you know, make something coherent out of it and spit it back out in books if I can a little bit. But the problem with books is that they really have to be glued together. You have to have a narrative arc. You have to have an idea of how to tell a story succinctly, even though this book is 400 pages. But like in a kind of way that a reader is going to keep turning those pages.

And that is what learning to write, I think, really means. A lot of people are good with words. A lot of people have great stories to tell, but you have to figure out how to glue it all together and how to tell it. And, of course, when you sell a book, you have an editor you work with, and that helps a lot. But you have to have a feeling for that. And it's something you can learn, actually.

It's something you can go to school for and learn. It's something you can read other books and figure out how these writers are doing it. And I think when I first realized I should maybe be a writer is because I was reading books in a different way than I watched a movie or that I went and listened to a band. I read books kind of trying to figure out what the writer was doing or why he or she was making certain choices in the narrative. Where I go to a movie and it's entertainment for me. I want to sit back and I don't really care how it got made

or who the cinematographer was or what choice was, you know, what the director's cut has that the regular movie doesn't. I don't, like, I don't care. And I feel the same way about music. If it's great, I just want to listen to it and lose myself in it. But books, I don't care. And I feel the same way about music. If it's great, I just want to listen to it and lose myself in it. But books, I kind of wanted to get underneath and underneath the hood and figure out what stitched it together, what the author was trying to do, what works and

what doesn't and why it works and doesn't. And that to me, I started thinking to myself, well, if I feel that passionately about it, maybe I should be be like actually trying to do it myself and um so yeah like life is stories and very much so uh but writing is figuring out how to tell that story and put the images in people's heads i mean that's that's the biggest challenge you don't have the you know it's very easy to put stuff up in video and audio format and present it because you know you can see what it is but when you're writing a book and a novel like yours um you have to paint the pictures in people's heads and so you've got to be able to put them there and and and flush them out like you say

the character development and and create the imagery that keeps people engaged in in what was going on and uh to me that's that's quite a bit more of a bigger challenge than a movie or a – Well, I get asked all the time why I'm not writing screenplays because we're living in quite literally the golden age of television. Like TV is great. TV shows are smart right now. They're engaging. They're just – a lot of them

are coming from books obviously but like tv writing i think is the best it's ever been in my lifetime and uh and of course some movies but most most of the good stuff is now serialized tv and um but it's still somebody else's thing right the writer is writing for the actors and for the director to then figure out the writing is the skeleton and the actors turn it into the art the book it's all the author still right it's all creating that world and visualizing the world for the reader and and that difference to me is still no i i also don't really know how to write screenplays or tv stuff i haven't done much of it but uh uh it's not quite as interesting to me as writing novels and delivering a piece of art fully formed.

What's the, what's the line from get shorty. You just write a bunch of shit and start out with once upon a time. And then at the end you put fade out. Yeah. A lot of rewriters and rewriters. That's all you do I always love that line that he has from get shorty the movie but yeah if the book Kings County paints a beautiful layout and especially the beginning I mean you feel like you're in a club the whole club experience and then going through

everything else and I may learn everything about uh new york by the time i get done or at least the salient parts but you know i've wandered new york in the middle of the night i've been in that situation where the taxis are gone and you're just like you're you're down at some you're at some whiskey bar and you're like how far is the hotel we gotta hike and the uh the male character in the book uh theo gorski is a great wanderer he's a kind of what the french used to call a flaneur, like a person who just would rather walk to get someplace than take an Uber or subway. And that's a very rare – it used to be everybody did it.

It's a very rare thing now. But he takes the time to – he's so thrilled and also mystified by the city that he wants to experience it in full all the time, as much as he can. And he looks up at the buildings and nobody else looks. He notices the terracotta, like stuff that people don't see or don't stop to see. Everyone I know

goes places, as I'm sure everybody in the world does now. You get an Uber right out front of your apartment, delivers you right to the restaurant or club or wherever you're going, and you don't experience the in-between. You don't experience the to the restaurant or club or wherever you're going. And you don't experience the in between. You don't experience the city you're in or the town you're in. And I made his character that way because I wanted to bring the city back into the equation of the book. I wanted to have that visceral experience.

I wanted people to slow down in the same way that writing books is a little weird in this day and age of 10 minute attention spans, like spending four years on something is so foreign to people. Like I still, like I, you know, friends that are in their twenties who were like, why dude?

Like, there's so much other stuff to do that. It doesn't take four years. Like, no, like, but is there really like, are you going to remember that stuff?

Is it like, you know, yeah, your Tik TOK video is going to be there forever. I don't know. Like that important. I don't know. It's you know, yeah, your TikTok video is going to be there forever. I don't know. Like, is that important? I don't know. It can seem anachronistic to be writing novels in this day and age,

but I also tend to think they're still important and that they mean a lot to the people that read them. I think so, too. I mean, the media that we've done on The Chris Voss Show, like our YouTube videos, they've been up there for like 11 years and I get emails every time someone comments on one and I'll get emails from stuff we did in like

2012 2011 sometimes they think those products are still current they'll ask me for advice but I get like and sometimes I just get on there and do discussions about stuff and I'm just like what the hell is going on in my video? I'm just amazed at how much people consume media and the breadth of interest and the breadth of the thing.

But yeah, I wish I'd figured out the story thing earlier. I kind of had, I had a, you know, I would come home from my office every day and owning companies. We had multiple companies, over 100 employees at any given time and every day i come home with stories and i come home with my girlfriend and be like oh man you can't believe what happened today and i mean there was just always some crazy employee story i had or some crazy business story yeah and i would come home and i'd like have two or three stories on unload on her. And then I'd be like, what happened to you? And she was the manager for a flight attendant for flight attendants for Delta.

And, uh, and then she'd have to step in and fly if they called in sick and crap. Um, so sometimes she would, you know, my day just going to work, she'd been in three cities and, you know, three different airplane rides with several hundred people that are crazy. And, and, and then, you know, she'd be hanging, you know, she'd stay overnight in New York or Chicago or wherever. And, and, and so I'd be like, so what stories do you have? And she's like, nothing. I'm like, nothing happened to you today. Like, no, you went to three cities, saw, you know, 600 people or whatever in planes, and you have zero stories?

And she's like, no, nothing. I've always thought that flight attendants, like, the great flight attendant memoir is just sitting there waiting to be written. Oh, yeah. There's so many in-flight stories of absolute insanity. Like, people are not on their best behavior on airplanes. And we really get to see a cross section. I mean, we see it every day in viral clips now, right?

Like it's just, I mean, the stories are sitting there waiting to be told. And I'm sure there are great memoirs. I just haven't read them. But like that is a, yeah. And so that made me appreciate stories. I didn't really get at the time and I'd been telling stories for a long time, but I never really appreciated the meaning of what I was doing. In fact, I sat down with my niece and nephew when they turned 18 this year,

and I said, look, life is a collection of stories. Go out and think of yourself as a story collector because you're going to learn stuff. That's why I love this show is because I can have people on that I can learn from. I can learn their journey, the map of what they did and how they did it. And I think when I was younger, I thought that, well, there was like only certain ways to really make it in life or something. I don't know, like kind of a narcissistic sort of view. But now you learn that the fabric of life is quite expansive and multifaceted

and it's a complex journey. And sometimes at the end of life, that's, that's really all you're going to remember. Like I, I'm going to be remembering all the stories, hopefully when I'm sitting on the porch and some of the things I learned from those stories. At the end of the day, uh, one of my favorite episodes of yours was when you had, uh,

Eddie Bob Jr. on, uh, to talk about James Baldwin. And I thought that was a wonderful episode. And I was listening to him. And of course, I'd read The Fire Next Time in school, but I hadn't really thought about it. And of course, with everything going on today, that podcast episode made me go back and pick that book up again. And so at the beginning of all these stories,

at the beginning of all this interaction is the book so often. And it's still there for the historical record whether it's fiction or non-fiction and um you know that's what just here a man like james baldwin what he's going to be remembered by is the written word and of course there's some great videos of him as we were discussing too but like his thoughts or his purer thoughts are on the page. And, you know, the world of books is to me a wonderful and complete world. It's great. And it's so funny about how you could literally resurrect him today

and everything that he was talking about, pretty much the same sort of problems we're having. It's like a ghost talking from 55 years ago going, you're still here, you idiots. But no, I mean, that's the beauty of book writing and what you've done with your novels, your memoir and stuff is putting this down and people appreciate this stuff,

whether it's a current issue or whether it's memorizing. Like I mentioned last night, I watched Chinatown. And I watched Chinatown a million times. I don't think I ever watched it from beginning to end. And so I actually watched it from beginning to end because there's parts that I missed. And, wow, just to revisit that story, even though I haven't seen it for a lot of times. But a lot of people just dig into why a story is important and how it works. Does your next book, are you thinking about making a novel?

You mentioned it might be about money or finance. My next book, so it is very difficult to write about the current environment, contemporary America, I think, right now. A, everything is changing so quickly. A book for me takes a few years to write, three or four years to write sometimes. And A, you have the problem of technology, right? So technology that we're using now in five years is going to be ridiculous in

the book. My first book has telephone booths in it and 25-year-olds can be like, what the hell, what? You have a scene in a phone booth? Like, what is that? And it sounds absurd to us, but like, it's not absurd to them. They don't even know what you're talking about. And so that makes something a bit anachronistic right off the bat, because just technology is moving so, so fast. But like, you know, we're all just engulfed in the world of trump right now is that something people are going to want to revisit five years from now or are they going to be like

oh god i don't want to talk about that anymore or like a coronavirus or whatever it is just like it is very difficult to like a lot of writer friends i know are writing dystopian books right now about viruses taking over the world because the ones that are already out are doing so well because they kind of foretold what's going on and uh i might i i'm gonna try my hand at uh i think a little bit of literary or a bit of historical fiction uh i'm very interested in a specific robbery that happened in europe at the end of world war ii where the money went missing and i want to trace that missing money in fiction because nobody actually knows in real life where it went and see how money affects people

and what choices people make for good and bad when they are faced with financial situations that they're not used to. And to me, it's such an interesting part of the world that it's probably very difficult to, um, uh, to write about in fiction to make dramatic. Uh, but I, I'd like to give it a go. I always like a really good challenge and I want to always do something I

haven't tried before. And of course money does make the world go around. Uh, and so, yeah, I'm just starting to do a lot of research on that. Uh, now that I've finished this, this one. There you go. Well, this would be a good escape hatch for people to take and pick up your book, Kings County, we'll give it a plug there, because it can go to a better time that we were, you know. Certainly we could all use a love story right now.

We could all use a love story, and, yeah. And, you know, part of this we we look at that's why i love stories and like of course i love the guests on my podcast like yourself is is their experience and what they learn and going through uh what are challenging times for them and and a lot of times we come back to that um you know i've had times where i poured out my soul uh when people died around me when my dogs my dogs died was a really hard time for me. I had one dog that was like a year and a half in cancer hospice care. And so I bled out a lot during that journey onto social media.

And what was interesting for me was, at first i was like worried about sharing it i'm like maybe i'm oversharing this experience but then i was like i i gotta get this out or it's gonna fester um and what was interesting to me how many people came back from my stories and went that really helped me that really inspired me i realized that i hadn't got closure from my dad's death and just like all this all this uh i don't know what you call it, but this expansion of touching people and moving people. And I think that's what people get from love stories, of crisis stories, of, you know, everyone has that fantasy of,

like you say, coming to New York or moving to the big city. And so they always wonder what that journey is. And, you know, a lot of people like me chicken out and don't go for it but they can read your book and they can live through the fantasy if you will there's always some vicarious living in literature absolutely but it's not always the answer i mean there's plenty of you know great life in the rest of america as well but yeah i mean that's what definitely this book is about the times i've gone to new york i kind of have a perspective because for about 10 years i really tried hard to be a good photographer nothing great but i really tried to be a photographer and

so when we went to new york or uh chicago what i would do is i'd literally just wander and i usually like to wander later in the evening when streets are you know i'm not have to deal with people and crap because i don't like people that much i mean i like people but i'm not a big crowd dude like new york yeah and uh and so uh so i got a chance to wander new york at night and uh see the empire state building take pictures of it uh eat at the pizza places and wander the streets interact with people. To me, that was just the real, that real sort of gritty sort of fabric. And I loved it. In Chicago, when I go to Chicago, a lot of times if I can figure out how to pull it off, they actually have like a car service that will zip you to the airport.

And they'll pick you up anywhere on any corner. And so what I'll do is I'll have my day bag with me and my cameras. And then I'll just, I just wander Chicago. Like I don't, like I don't need to have an agenda. Like I just go, like, I think the first time I went, I was like, okay, we got a pizza, go to the big park. And my friends are like, you just want us to drop you like in the middle of Chicago somewhere.

And I'm like, yeah, just do it. And then I just wander. Just pick up the ambiance. A lot of people don't, like you mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't do that. They don't look up in New York. It's a place where you can feel comfortable

alone. You can eat alone at a bar and not feel like a weirdo. You can walk alone and see groups of people and not... It's weirdo. You can walk alone and see groups of people and not be, you know, it's just a place where amongst the millions, like, you can also be solitary. And it's really cool in that way. Yeah. In fact, now I'm hungry for that pizza.

I started a budget on it because I was like, oh, I'll try this pizza. Because you got to try it all, right? Yeah, of course. And you got to soak up the city. But, yeah, and I think it's great that it's captured and stuff like this. So, David, we could talk forever, and I'd love to have you back on the show anytime you want to have on. Maybe we should do a little workshop on how to be a writer

and how to write books. I don't know if you are. I'm still learning myself. But there's the journey, the story of the journey, and that's how to write books. I don't know if you are. I'm still learning myself. But there's the journey, the story and the journey, and that's how we get there. So anything more you need about Kings County, if you want to give it some final plug? I would just say

thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for having a long-form show where a writer can actually discuss the work. So much of the publicity we do is like a tiny three-sentence thing in People magazine or Entertainment Weekly, and nobody ever knows, or somebody holding up your book on publicity we do is like a tiny three sentence thing in people magazine or entertainment weekly. And like nobody ever knows or somebody holding up your book on Instagram and nobody ever knows about the book.

So it's really, I appreciate the long form format of this. And I would just say, yeah, it's Kings County. This is what it looks like. There you go. Tomorrow,

July 28th. And that is the Williamsburg Bridge right on the cover, which plays a large role in the book. There's a bit of a murder mystery at the heart of it, which I don't want to give much away, but it is a book, hopefully, that strikes that balance between the nice character-driven love story and a kind of suspenseful mystery novel as well.

I really hope you enjoy it. My website's davidgoodwillie.com. You can buy it at all the places from there. And yeah, Chris, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. I have loved these long term, these long things. I got some authors saying to me, is it a whole hour? And I'm like, yeah.

But the beautiful part is people get to know you. And I think that sells books better too, because people go, who's the guy writing this thing? I always want to know the story behind the book. It's fascinating to me how an author arrives at what they write, and this allows for that. Yeah, and it's a great time to read books like this because you can go back to a nice romantic area pre-coronavirus and everything burning down. You can remember how it used to be. Although what's interesting is they were going through their own crises at that time,

and that seemed like an existential sort of experience, I'm sure. Yeah, right now the city's not quite as fun right now as it was back then. Well, I'm glad you guys are doing better than you were. I'm glad you guys are getting there, and hopefully we can get you guys stayed there because that was quite the experience to watch you guys go through all that. I also just – I listened – one of the episodes I listened to recently was your episode back in March when the coronavirus was first hitting. Oh, wow.

It's an amazing episode where you came on and you were like, I'm not sure what the future's going to be or what the world's going to look like, but buckle your seatbelts and be nice to each other. It was an amazingly heartfelt episode. It was, I think, only 20 minutes long, but I loved it.

Thank you. It kind of stands the test of these months very well. Thank you. I'm glad you said that because I often wondered about some of those episodes, and I actually had to take some time off because I was lost. But a friend of mine had posted, who's a brilliant close friend of mine, and he said somewhere around that time, he goes, there are two things you do right now, either be a lifter or find a lifter.

And so I'd gone through about 48 hours of depression when it really became evident, you know, and I i gone through about 48 hours of depression when it really became evident you know and i was losing like lots of money like just you know shows and stuff and everything i do they're pretty much guaranteed money for me every year and you know one week you're just like well i guess i don't need that forty thousand dollars so i'll just fuck myself and you said this thing about like keeping in mind uh you know um other parts of the country that you know if you live somewhere where it hadn't hit yet it just doesn't feel like it's a real thing and like you know it feels like very far away even

though we're all watching the same tv shows and there's news uh i remember i so i got corona back in march and a lot of people I knew got it very quickly because it spread in New York like that and that week or two when Tom Hanks got sick and everybody, where nobody thought everybody was getting it, but everybody in New York City was getting it, and I remember the rest of the rest of America being like

that's so weird, like it's totally unaffected to us now, and now things have flipped, and in New York it's almost normal. And in the rest of the country, and I know Utah where you are, like there are outbreaks all over the place. And it's very easy even for me who got it. I didn't get it too bad, but I was sick for a couple weeks,

to forget how just in peril and how dire it is. And so I would just add to what you said. Always remember that even if it's not on your block or affecting you, it's a lot of other places. Yeah. It's interesting how it got politicized, but that's a whole other thing. And the callousness of it. But I just got done reading Mary Trump's book, read it one day.

Also Simon Schuster book i would point there you go the simon schuster plug there you go um the uh uh in in uh you know the whole interesting thing of that but yeah for a couple of those episodes i was really trying to find my voice where i was trying to find how do i be a carrier because i you know i really have a platform and and stuff and trying to carry people but then you a carrier? Because, you know, I realize I have a platform and stuff and trying to carry people, but then you're, like, lost in the whole thing. Maybe there's a book there of what that experience is like. But, you know, I was trying to help people,

and then I started pulling from my toolbox of 2008. And, you know, we still have a lot of ugliness to go through with the economy and everything else we've done. But, and then of course there's this great juxtaposition or I don't know, maybe you call it a fork in the road where we have to find out what happens in November and, and where this country goes and where the coronavirus goes actually,

I think is dependent upon that. So that will be, that will make for some interesting history books, I'm sure. And it's affecting us all. So hopefully we figure out a will make for some interesting history books, I'm sure. And it's affecting us all. So hopefully we figure out a way that all come together a little bit. It has been, you know, maybe you should write a love story about time in the coronavirus. Tinder in the coronavirus or something. There's been a lot of breakups that I'm through my friends, but there's also been a few get togethers and some kids on the way. So it's been a lot of breakups through my friends, but there's also been a few get-togethers and some kids on the way.

So it's been a bit of everything. You know, that's funny. It's funny because one of my friends' wife told me, she goes, there's going to be a lot of divorces after this. Once we get out of this and on the other side, there's a lot of people that got really sick of each other being locked in absolutely so maybe there's some great stories there all i know is i really should be going to school to be a divorce attorney right now because there's some business coming um i really wish i'd been a divorce attorney back in the day when they legalized uh when they legalized gay marriage because because i'm like wow just, they just doubled my business. Awesome sauce,

you know, but, uh, there's going to be a lot of divorces coming after this. And I don't know, a lot of heartbreak stories or something. I don't know. A lot of stories to tell.

Thanks for sure. So what do you think? Do you, do you think we can turn this into a movie? Uh, well, I, I sit,

we'll see. Uh, most of my books have been optioned, uh, and then there you go. So we'll see. It's most of my books have been optioned, uh, and then there you go. So we'll see. It's a lot of things have to go right for something that hit the big screen, but, um, you know, they're working on it out there. There you go. That might be an interesting thing. Kings County, the movie,

see it in theaters near you. I'll come back on and I'll bring an actor with me and we'll talk about it again. There you go. I'm thinking, I don't know. You, I guess you'll have to work out who wants to play what part and stuff and stuff. Yeah. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on. A great discussion. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be sure to check out Kings

County by David Goodwillie. And you can take an order up. It'll be available tomorrow. You can get it on Audible in all those different formats. On Audible, it's every platform, e- real hardcover book everything anything you want i really recommend the hardcover book because you really want to read it slow because the details

that you go into and the experience and then and then you're trying to flush out the characters at the beginning and so i had to slow down reading it because i was like okay who, who are these people and what are they doing? And that gives you a better understanding of how the book plays out as you go through it. So I encourage my audience to check it out. Also, if you're in my audience, you hopefully saw this either on youtube.com, ForgeHouse Chris Voss. If not, you can. You can also go to the CBPN, check out online podcasts. You'll also see this episode appearing on Book Author Podcasts and Chris Voss Podcasts if you're wondering why I have a different announcement in the show for the beginning of that.

And we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to check it out. We've got lots of great authors that are coming on the show, like David, and we'll look forward to seeing him again as well, hopefully in the future, especially for future books. I think that was on the plugs. That's it, people. Wear a mask, stay safe, and we'll see you next time.

I ran out of plugs.