The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Murder for Liar by Verlin Darrow

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Murder for Liar by Verlin Darrow https://amzn.to/3MhClbH Tom is dangerously close to discovering where his threshold is-the point of no return for his sanity. His encounter with the killer represents one more bizarre hot potato he's forced to juggle instead of filing away neatly. It's not one too many, but what if the next one is? And could all the coincidences that keep happening to Tom be nothing more than that? Could a young woman named Zig-Zag really be an angel? How could a dog lead Tom to one of the most important clues? The questions pile up, much as the murders do.

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Not even I know where it's going until it starts. So it's just a ramble from a madman across the water. Go to YouTube.com for us as Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com for us. Chris Voss, go to linkedin.com for us. Chris Voss, subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter. It's pretty cool and it's growing. It's like a weed. It grows on its own, except it's a weed for smart people. Anyway, guys, we have another amazing author and novelist on the show. He's got an amazing new book. He's a multi-book author. I should plug as well well we'll talk about him and his books he is the author of the newest book that's uh just barely came out let's see was it two days ago one day ago one day ago uh murder for liar it just came out on

paperback on may 15th 2023 verlinlandaro is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about this amazing new book and what went into it and some of his other books that he's taken and done. He's an amazing gentleman, and we were talking before the show. He's got an interesting bio. Verlandaro is currently a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in La Selva Beach, California. They diagnose each other as necessary.

I thought it was kind of funny. We were talking before the show about how him and his wife were both psychotherapists and how that works out. And evidently, they found a way to work right out. He is a former professional volleyball player in Illy, country, western singer and songwriter, import store owner, NCAA coach, sheet metal worker, newspaper columnist, taxi driver, and night janitor. Wow, he's like the jack of all trades, and now he's an author, so there you go.

And he joins us today on the Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the show, Verlin. How are you? Thanks. I'm doing well this morning. I appreciate being here. There you go. You've done quite the tour of duty, uh, on careers there.

Yeah. You know, I just kept trying to find something that worked and, uh, sometimes things worked for a little while and then they wouldn't work. And then I had to graduate myself out of it and try something else. And when you say jack of all trades, that implies I was good at all those things. And I certainly wasn't. Well, you know, that's the thing we do in life. We, you know, we try on different things and we

see what sticks with us. Uh, why did psychotherapy become your, uh, the thing that you stuck with? Well, there's kind of an odd answer to that. I was, uh, kind of an assistant guru in a small cult, believe it or not. Really? Yeah, really.

That wasn't in your bio. Well, it's in the longer bio, but I didn't want to turn people off immediately because cult has such a negative association. It was actually a benign outfit where everybody was helped quite a bit except for one person who was definitely anti-helped. Wow. But anyway, I just followed orders, and he assigned me to start an

import store in another town. And so I did with a partner. And after about a year, she begged out and said, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be with you anymore. The hell with you, basically. And he came and said, do you want to keep doing this on your own? And I said, no, I never want to do it. You just made me. And he said, oh, well, that's what I thought. Why don't you go to school to be a therapist? So I did. did so i did i didn't even know what the letter stood for that you know the phd yeah well in this case it's something called lmft and but it had different letters back then it was a uh i don't remember and it had c and c in the name i think for child and couples or something so i was there about two weeks i couldn't very well ask because everybody else had been a psychology major and was,

you know, I planned this career carefully. I had to talk my way into it. I called the dean up and said, you know, when's the next session start? And he said, basically, you know, a week from Tuesday. And I said, oh, I guess I'll have to wait till it comes around again or whatever. And he said, oh, why don't you come in and talk to me? So on Sunday, I was told to be a therapist. On Thursday, I talked to the dean and he said you could get in.

And then the following Tuesday, I'm in school to be a therapist. So I don't think that's the usual story. Well, there you go. Well, you seem to have made it work and you're married to a psychotherapist. I would probably pay to see those arguments. Can we get that on Netflix or something? I don't know if they're a lot better than anybody else. Oh, okay.

All right. So do you still say happy wife, happy life like most married guys? No, I've never heard that phrase. That's not true. I don't apply that phrase, but you know what? I'm always happier when I'm married. I like being married. It's good.

I have a lot of married friends that say happy wife, happy life. And I argue with them about that context. Well, I am sort of devoted to trying to make my wife happy, but not just so that she doesn't give me grief just because what the hell is there to do that's any better than that? I mean, yeah, it's as long as it's not a threat. So give us a.com so people could find you on the interwebs. I'm Verlandero at, notwebs. I'm Verlandaro at not at anything. I'm

Verlandaro dot com. Yeah, there you go. I was thinking of my email address, which is fine too. That's in all the stuff online about me. If anybody wants to email me, I'm fine with that. There you go. So you've written a total of four books now? Yep. Yep. Just keep churning

them out. There you go. And all novels, I guess, are they different standalone novels? Yeah, they are. They're all standalone. They're a little different. The first one was a private investigator mystery. It takes place outside Santa Cruz,

California in a retreat center. The second one's a really wild fantasy thriller taking a bunch of spiritual stuff and exagger California in a retreat center. The second one's a really wild fantasy thriller, taking a bunch of spiritual stuff and exaggerating in a crazy kind of all around the world manner. And the third one's about a 10 year old child prodigy who goes seeking a book of wisdom. And then there's this one, which, you know, of course, I'll talk about more here.

There you go. Murder for liar. So give us a 30,000-foot overview of the new book. Sure. There's a psychotherapist, kind of a screwed-up guy, a little bit like me when I was younger before I started getting any sense around any of this. And he has a really bizarre character come in as the client who's telling him a bunch of crazy stuff about who he is, and he's not really just a psychotherapist and a bunch of stuff.

It turns out he gets drawn into a series of murders and he has to investigate, as it were, just to keep his sanity because so much crazy stuff is happening in terms of coincidences and people that are doing and saying things that don't make logical sense. He has to keep kind of trying to expand his mind to make sense out of it. And, and he never knows what's real and he worries whether he's going crazy. Um, but like most books, it works out in the end. Nice. That is pretty awesome.

Uh, and so what, uh, what made you, what is the title murder for liar based on? You know, I just like clever titles. And typically I go for two words that are kind of juxtaposed, like blood and wisdom, or coattail karma, where they make people think a little bit about hey, what's the relationship between these words? Maybe I interest them there. But I couldn't think of anything for this one.

So then I started thinking about sort of cutesy little paraphrases that would stick in someone's mind. And of course there's murder for hire as a little phrase that goes way back. So I started playing with hire. I came up with liar. It's not very good grammar and it's not really a straight mystery book per se, even though it has murder in the title. It's more psychological thriller, psychological suspense. But what I've learned from titles and covers is that they're just to get people to start reading it. And then once they do, I don't think too many people resent the fact that the the title wasn't exactly on the mark you know

oh there you go murder you say so there's murder involved huh and there are murders and there are people lying well it's something people do i hear hi voksters fahs here with a little station break hope you're enjoying the show so far we'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business

and running companies as a CEO, and be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. Oh, yeah. Is there a lot of murdering or is there a murder and then uh do we have a protagonist that has to solve everything there's there's a four or five murders they all kind of happen in the background although there are some physically threatening dangerous situations that the protagonist goes through um it's it's you

know it's not the kind of thing like uh you know i don't know the amateur sleuth lady goes out of her driveway and finds a body that her neighbor fell into the rose bush and now she has to sort it out at this kind of personal individual kind of level it's much more like there's some sort of conspiracy of events being orchestrated that's connected with all this that that he's getting jibed around from. There you go. There you go. And tell us more about the protagonist. What sort of character are they? Well, he's a great big guy.

He's pretty isolated and alienated. He'd been in a bad accident, and he had his burns on his face. And following that, he's just sort of given up on life in the sense of expecting much good stuff to happen. He just plods along being a therapist. He's not necessarily of given up on life in the sense of expecting much good stuff to happen. He just plods along being a therapist. He's not necessarily bad at it. And we're up in his head seeing the way that he thinks as he's trying to help people and as he's trying to sort out. And I think that part's pretty realistic.

This is the way that character as a therapist would think about things as far as I can tell anyway. Once again, projecting my younger self into my older self's body um and he's sort of ripe for something to come along for him to grab onto and get going with and and he's also kind of vulnerable because in many respects he has a lot of needs that aren't getting met so if you want to run a conspiracy with somebody like this you've got some vulnerable points to work, you know? And he's smart. He's smart and he's, this is ironic. I'm trying to find the word for being articulate. There you go.

There we go. There we go. I do that all the time. That should not be a word you go hunting for, though. It belies the very meaning of it. Yeah, well, it takes some extra thought to be smart or intelligent. Yeah. Oh, he's stuck up in his head.

That's really his main problem, actually. Ah! He's way stuck up in his head, and he's not in direct connection, having direct experience with the world, which is a depressing kind of place to be. There you go. So there's a serial killer running around town. People tend to like these sort of thrillers. Absolutely. I'm not giving too much away away i'll just say at least one there you go there you go and uh so a lot of different things that go through the book we of course can never give away

the middle and and uh what what did you find excited you about this story or what was some of the research you did uh and to develop it well going back to my cult days i actually had some similar experiences to what he had oh really someone approached him that seemed to have sort of powers or extra special stuff or was charismatic just you know some stuff that you couldn't really ignore and i was locked in a very logical box where that's all there is to life and there's nothing behind the scenes. And, you know, why would I go be a spiritual seeker or read a Buddhist book or whatever? And then I got approached and somebody was telling me, hey, you're special.

Hey, you're more than a regular person. Hey, you're this. Hey, you're that. And drawing me into this situation where I was sort of the first disciple and somewhat the Judas goat to draw the other people in, because I was a nice guy, and if I was a nice guy connected to him, then maybe that made it okay for other people to go connect with him or whatever. So anyway, it was kind of healing, because I wrote this from the perspective, to some degree, of trying to work out all the leftover stuff associated with that. It takes a couple of years after you go through something like that to sort of get back to feeling centered you

know yeah and so it sounds like kind of a lot of your experience as a psychotherapist uh you intertwine the book and the character yeah yeah i keep i i really try despite the intensity and kind of extreme circumstances of the book i try and write it from the point of view of what would a regular how would a regular person deal with all these extraordinary circumstances so the book, I try and write it from the point of view of what would a regular, how would a regular person deal with all these extraordinary circumstances? So the one going through them does not necessarily have any kind of, it's not every man in the sense that, you know, most people are giant and depressed with burn scars, but it's every man in the sense that here's how I would react if this happened to me. Here's how I would react if this happened to me here's how i would react if that happened to me i mean you know i don't really identify with the character he doesn't speak for

me he says a lot of stupid shit i would never say but at the same time the way he reacts to things i feel like i know about that stuff that's it it feels like sort of a a rarefied topic to have lived through and be able to write through there you you go. There you go. How much of, how much of, did you include any characters that you knew or maybe use Hollywood characters as a reference point? Or how did you come up with the characters and develop them? They were pretty invented.

Some of, some of them, there are some, you know, sessions and therapy and some of those people are sort of amalgams of various people I've worked with. There you go. But for the most part, they invented themselves, actually, is a better way to say it. I start with one idea, and then sort of one idea for who this character is going to be in the book.

And then each time somebody says something to them, I find out, well, what would a character like that say back? Because it just falls out of me. I don't really plan a lot around the character stuff. I'd like to have a better answer for that in the sense of, oh, I was picturing Nick Nolte in this role, or here's my sister playing the psychic. But they're really in any of that for me. Yeah. I imagine being a psychotherapist, you have so many different characters and people that come around around you different scenarios i've certainly worked with a lot of extreme

situations and wild people in my younger days i worked in a a few kind of fairly intense settings and i took on all comers as a private practice person so i would get the people where the therapist would turn them down because i wouldn't say they're too crazy, but they were too challenging to deal with in the room, maybe because of personality disorders. And then later I worked in some institutional settings where, you know, HMOs and that kind of thing where I got a great diversity of ethnicities. And, you know, I mean, who signs up for an HMO?

It's often higher functioning people, but they still have a lot of problems, just different ones. So between that and all the different careers I had before, I feel like I've had exposure to just a ton of different kinds of people and maybe more understanding about them than most because I had to figure them out to try and help them in the room. Yeah. It's like, why are you so screwed up? That's pretty much what my therapist says to me every week. And then he says. Pretty much the bottom line, but asking it as a why doesn't tend to get you anywhere. That's pretty much what my psychotherapist says to me every week. And then he says, pretty much the bottom line,

but asking it as a why doesn't tend to get you anywhere. That's true. He, he, he keeps trying to get me to get that lobotomy scheduled. And I think I can understand that. I, for most of my life,

I figured I'd be better off with one too. Yeah. I mean, it certainly would, you know, I mean, I drew all the side of my face anyway, so I might as well just finish the job.

Good taking. There's that. Well, anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go that we haven't touched on? Well, sure. I just want to reiterate that, you know, it is a suspense novel, and the idea is that you want to keep turning the pages. So far, I've had two professional reviews come out, Seattle Book Review and some site online that's supposed to be pretty good, but I never heard of.

And they both said they had trouble putting the book down, and they were really looking forward to finding out what happened next. And that's because sort of everything that happens is a mini mystery. It can't really be figured out until you get a little further down the book. And then there's another mystery, and that can't be figured out.

It's not like there's one fell swoop mystery that we're working towards gradually. It's things keep happening out of the blue that are just weird that the guy can't make sense of. And the reader is long for the ride, so they're confused, and they can't make sense out of it, but not at an uncomfortable level, hopefully. So the bottom line is it's fun to read. It has a lot of ideas embedded in it. confused and they can't make sense out of it but not at an uncomfortable level hopefully so you know the bottom line is it's it's fun to read it it has a lot of ideas embedded in it at this point i'm sort of a secular buddhist having been through my other kind of experience where i'm you know i just see the world in terms of we're all in this together and the bottom line is kindness and you know that that's a lens that informs me as the writer not so much the

characters per se but it's back there so i'm i'm weaving in as this character is having to go to advisors and stuff to figure out what to do and to see his own therapist i'm weaving in my idea of wisdom and suggestions coming from all the things i've learned so i think it has more substance at an ideal level than a lot of these kinds of books it's not purely a thriller where you know at the end of it you feel kind of like well that was great it was sort of like eating a piece of candy and it tasted great and now the candy's out of my mouth so to hell with it you know hopefully some of it'll stick to people's ribs you know that's my goal anyway i always try to embed a lot of ideas in the books there you go there you go well it's uh it's definitely interesting uh

from the depths of it all and uh uh you know there's so much you can learn about all of this um you know it's it's uh interesting how we we learn life through stories and stuff and everything that goes into it. Anything more you want to say before we go? Well, just in response to that, I also think that people understand themselves in terms of stories. They have a story about what my childhood was. I have a story about how my second marriage turned out. And I tell myself that story and I kind of settle on it without recognizing there are alternate stories I could be creating that work better for me. There are more accurate stories. There are more updated

stories. And a lot of therapy sometimes it's just getting people to rewrite the stories that they've gotten kind of stuck with that don't actually work for them very well. You know, I could sit here and think, oh gosh, I'm such a doofy looking guy. Maybe that was something I decided when I was 14 or whatever. If I keep thinking that through my life, I'm going to be really self-conscious trying to do an interview like this and instead of that how about a story of doesn't matter that much what i look like anymore you know kind of covers all the bases even if i am goofy looking yeah i love i and i'm not agreeing with you you're goofy looking by the way i just i was saying yes to what you said. I always joke with people, and I'll tell self-fat jokes,

a million fat jokes, and people will be like, yeah, and I'm like, well, you didn't have to agree with me. But I know I'm kind of a little overweight there. I had one too many burgers. But it's interesting to me how we learn through stories and how that's kind of our operating owner's manual. And I think my audience has heard me talk about the ad nauseum, so I'll leave it at that. But yeah, it's, it's, uh, I mean, if we've got my stories, I don't know what, who I'd be.

I'd just be like, Hey, I'm some dude, some fat guy. And it wouldn't, it wouldn't be books to read. It's wonderful reading books. That's true. It is. If the story, if the story doesn't carry it i usually lose interest i mean i can only tolerate so much description so much backstory so much character development so much musing out loud for me in people's heads i need this i need a plot that

grabs me and i like the plots that are driven by dialogue which is is kind of the thing i'm best at too dialogue that really sounds natural and, and surprising and funny. And, you know, once again, the stories, the bottom line with a book is I don't read nonfiction because it doesn't really have stories. That's true. That's true. Some people don't get nonfiction. Uh, and of course some, some of the, uh, some of the nonfiction has good stories too, especially if you read like political science and crap that goes on. Well, that's true, but it's limited to reality, you know. That's true.

Writing fiction on the next page, you can put anything in there you want that serves the story. And some real life stories unfold as though they're a book, and they may be even better than what you could come with in a book. But others have these, you know, I don't know. That's just me. I mean, everybody reads what they read and don't read what they don't read. There you go. There you go. Well, this has been wonderful to have you on. Very insightful. And, uh, and I thought it was kind of interesting because you had a, you had a, you, you've got a wife who's a psychotherapist.

You're a psychotherapist. It sounds like you guys have made it work. Well, we have, we have. And part of that is just being armed with the various tools. I think what makes that challenge, I know you're kind of wrapping up, but what makes it challenging, I think, for anyone is once you get triggered and somebody says something that's one of your buttons, you go into kind of an altered state where you don't have your normal toolkit and you do a lot of sort of fast reacting kind of stuff. We still get into that, even though we can sit there ahead of time and make a list of what's the best way to respond if somebody triggers you. It's just like, boom, boom, you're out there. Now, hopefully you can catch it before it keeps going down the line too far. And that's a lot of trouble.

Otherwise, there's murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You got to try and catch it early. But I don't know of anybody that doesn't still have some triggers that doesn't still get into a mode that's sort of not as good as they could do it yeah whether a therapist or anybody you know i don't think i survive a psychotherapist on psychotherapist relationship because anytime she'd get upset with me i'd i'd pull out a little notepad and be like how long you've been feeling this way yeah what was your relationship with your mother

yeah exactly yeah but how do you feel you know i'll tell you when i try how do you feel with my wife that doesn't work at all because she she knows you're psychoanalyzing her well no she thinks she's already implied how she feels oh she hasn't said it and i'm supposed to listen and a lot of people do that they expect sort of at least this mild kind of form about my mind reading where you did something that upset me you must know what you did because you did it so how much do i have to go into explaining a whole bunch of stuff to you i just want you to hear that that's no good stop doing it you know do you ever say stop psychoanalyzing me i'm not your client you ever get that she said that to me because i've done it i've never had to say it to her i don't know now if i should let

her see this interview you know i mean she's a wonderful person, I'm sure. She absolutely is. I'm very happy. I just like playing on married people's dynamics. I've never been able to afford the divorces, so I'm still saving up millions of dollars. Once I do, then I'll get married.

I just never got tired of being happy. What can I say? I do a lot of marriage jokes because I'm single. It's great that you guys have made it work. One of my problems too is if I ever got an argument as a psychotherapist versus a psychotherapist, after

an hour I'd be like, I'm sorry, but our hour's up. I'll have to see you next week on whatever this is about the stocks on the floor or whatever. It would certainly be funny for any onlookers, but I'll tell you how it would not work with your partner. I would pay to see the arguments.

I think this is something that should be on Netflix or one of these shows, these reality shows. There are a fair amount of therapist-therapist combinations. Are there really? You're kind of spoiled. You want somebody who feels like a peer around communication and therapy and relationship stuff and you don't want to have to sort of teach somebody how to do it when you're you know i used to run relationship groups i used to run

communication groups it's like you know for years if you feel like you're an expert about something your other partner is always going to feel in a one-down position because actually they are. Maybe I should go to school for psychotherapy. Note to self. It could help. It probably could help, but it probably mostly I just find everything wrong with me. Oh, yeah, that happens too. We already know what all those problems are. Even my audience is like, this guy's crazy.

When you get in abnormal psych classes, all of a sudden you have every diagnosis. You just start reading them all and thinking, oh, that's me, that's me, that's me. It's like in medical school. I think it's the same thing with illnesses. I don't know. But that wears off after a while. I just accept the fact that I'm psychotic. And there's a lot of voices in the head.

And the judge says, as long as they stay away from the one that says kill, kill uh uh my parole will go fine no i'm just kidding that's a joke people i always tell um everyone knows that joke uh so anyway uh thank you very much for coming on the show we really appreciate it thanks for having me i kept everything in that murder theme see there that's the callback you kind of did and i appreciate that you i appreciate that you're easier to talk to and you're not fussing, but you're just acting natural. I mean, not everybody's like that behind a mic. I like it. Well, we have fun.

We do what's called info entertainment. So we inform people, educate them, make them know more stuff, give them great stories, give them brilliant authors, and in the end, hopefully they laugh their ass off and enjoy it more. Because when it's boring, it's not that interesting. That's just the way it works. Uh,

so, uh, Verland, give us your.com. So people would find you on the interwebs, please. Uh, sure.

Uh, it's just Verland arrow.com with low, low letters. And, uh, you know, I'm on Amazon and I'm there and I'm here and I'm there. And if you Google me, there's a bunch of stuff.

So it's not that hard to find out more if you want to find out more. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show, sir. You bet. Thanks for having me. Do you press the button to end it or do I? Uh, give us one second to wrap. Uh, thanks to my audience for tuning in as well.

Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Foss. See the new AI podcast and leadership podcast over at chrisfossleadership.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

And that should have us.