The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – No Second Chances: A Novel by Rio Youers

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

No Second Chances: A Novel by Rio Youers From Rio Youers, the acclaimed author of Lola on Fire, comes a blistering high-octane thriller about desperate love, vengeance, and the precarious pursuit of fame. “A rip-roaring Hollywood noir that smashes the pedal to the metal and keeps it there. The best villain since Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels . . . This one is hot.” –Stephen King Luke Kingsley’s glory days are behind him. A star on the rise, his life and career imploded after his soul singer wife, Lisa Hayes, disappeared without a trace, silencing a very public and tumultuous marriage. Most people, especially an avenging PI, think Luke got away with murder. The last thing he expects is to be pulled back from the brink by a starstruck stranger. Wannabe actress Kitty Rae has chased her dreams all the way from Kentucky to Hollywood. Saving a washed-up actor’s life wasn’t one of them, but she believes in Luke—as much as she believes her own career is just one lucky break away. For now, she works for Johan Fly, a charismatic, wealthy, and seriously unbalanced drug dealer to the rich and famous. When Johan discovers that Kitty has been skimming the product, he vows to make her pay. As Luke steps up to help Kitty, he uncovers a web of violence and corruption, as well as a single, enticing clue about his wife's disappearance. Barreling across the Mojave Desert, Luke and Kitty set off to find the long-lost Lisa. But Johan, hungry for vengeance, is hot on their trail. There’s no limit to what he will do to find them. And in a world where fortune favors the ruthless, there’s also no limit to what Luke and Kitty will have to do to survive.

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. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. Who knew we'd do another, but you knew we were going to do another one because we've always done another one. That's what we do around here. Anyway, guys, be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, and relatives. Have you reached out to your loved ones and said, be part of the Chris Voss Show family, the family that loves you and doesn't judge you. Knock on their doors on Saturday morning, just like the Mormons, and say, hey, have you heard about our Lord and Savior Chris Voss Show? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. That'd probably get shot, especially in some of the neighborhoods I'm sure most of you live in. Anyway, guys,

I was rude to say about my audience. Wow. I don't know. Maybe you live in highfalutin neighborhoods and they just have guns. You never can tell these days. Anyway, guys, go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Also go to all of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places the kids play at these days. Also, subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter. It goes out daily, and it's crazy how popular that thing is on YouTube. And the 132,000-member group on LinkedIn as well. You just find it in the Chris Voss Show or my book, Beacons of Leadership.

So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

Or order the book where refined books are sold. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. He's a multi-book author. In fact, I believe this one's in a series. We'll find out here in a second. He has a book that's coming out on 2-22-22. That would be February, by the way, for those of you who can't count. The book is called No Second Chances, a novel by Rio Ewers. He's on the show with us today. He's going to be telling us about his amazing book. And he is the critically acclaimed author of Lola on Fire, Westlake Soul, and Halcyon. His 2017 thriller, The Forgotten Girl, was the finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for the Best Crime Novel. He is a writer of Sleeping Beauties, a comic book series based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King and Owen King.

Rio lives in Ontario, Canada. Rio lives in Ontario, Canada, eh? I was setting up the eh joke, pulling off the aboot in the eh, and I blew the Canada. How did I do that? With his wife and their two children. Welcome to the show, Rio A and I blew the Canada. How did I do that? With his wife and their two children. Welcome to the show, Rio. How are you? Great. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Chris. It's great to be here. There you go, A. And my apologies to my Canadian crowd.

We did not mean to offend O Canada. What's funny is a friend of mine who's a Canadian, but he's stateside here. He was talking about Canadian insurance. His girlfriend went skiing and he broke his arm. And so he posted the difference in cost for when his son broke his arm in U.S. and Canada. And he was talking about it. And so I posted the video of Rush of Geddy Lee and the two guys from the Great White North, if you remember that. I'm a child of the 80s. Right, that's right.

We were talking about A A and he was complaining about how after leaving Canada, his girlfriend is pissed at him because he says A all the time now, which I think is awesome. So anyway, back to now that we've got the Canada platform reestablished, give us your plugs if we can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Rio U is I'm really only in two places. It's kind of where I hang out. First one being Twitter, Rio underscore Uers. You can find me there. Honestly, it's been a lot of book plug-in recently and not really anything else. But that's what you've got to do, right? You've got to put in the work. And I'm over on Instagram as well. Yeah, just look me up, Rio Uers. And I'm the only one around, so you're not going to have any trouble finding me. There you go. So give us the foundation of what motivates you want to write this well really I mean I mean who isn't interested in celebrity who isn't interested in Hollywood and Hollywood parties and what the Hollywood elite get up to and the good and the not so good so that was always kind of wanting to sort

of explore that in a novel was always at the back of my mind. And I guess I had, with No Second Chances, the characters actually came first. There was always this desire to write a novel set in Hollywood. But while I was working on Lola on Fire, which was the novel that preceded No Second Chances, I had these two characters pop into my head. And one was Luke, turned out to be Luke Kingsley, who's this washed up actor, cancelled, has obviously done something wrong. And he's fallen from grace, and he's trying to get his career back on track. And the other character was turned out to be Kitty Ray, who's a young woman who's arrived in Los Angeles with her eye on the stars. I didn't know much more than that about them. And I just let them hang out there. And I'd sort of touch base with them every now and again, hoping that there was a story that

they would sort of stumble into. And then when I finished Lola on Fire, I started to Luke and Kitty a little bit more fully. And then another character by the name of Johan Fly, who's no second chances. He's the antagonist of that he's the bad guy and when he entered the scene i knew that was when the chemistry started to happen between these three characters and the story spun out of there and then i sort of linked it this desire to sort of set a book in in hollywood with the i'll be honest with you i wrote this book during the thick of covid19 and being able to escape every day to a place with sunshine and palm trees wasn't such a bad thing. You know what I'm saying?

So it came along at a good time and I had a great time with it. I had a great time with those characters, especially Johan. He is one crazy dude. So what sort of a category is the book in? And you've written a lot of different books. Is it part of your other books or series or characters or is this the standalone no i started out really in in publishing i started out as a horror writer i wrote you know short stories and novels with small presses but as i branched into the the major leagues the big presses is i i favored more straight thrillers so this is well to be fair my first two

novels which were with macmillan with a major new york publisher were i would call them supernatural thrillers so they weren't horror as such but they were thrillers with that sort of supernatural thread running through them it wasn't too over the top. It was just kind of there under the surface. And then with Lola on Fire, which was my first novel with Harper Collins, that was straight balls to the wall action, Hollywood style cinematic thriller. I just basically wanted to take the formula that works so well in movies like Kill Bill and John Wick and see if I could do that in book form. And I think I pulled it off actually, which was no mean feat. And so this follows on from that. It's not part of a series. No Second Chances isn't related, although it is in the same universe because I make it, I drop a few little Easter eggs, but you certainly don't have to read

Lola on Fire first to enjoy No Second Ch second chances they're not really related in any way other than the same author that's about it so yeah straight actions really if you if you're if your jam is like quentin tarantino movies and look no further this is it's in that sort of elmore leonard quentin tarantino it's got that vibe going on wow yeah i love quentin tarantino movies they're usually always awesome i think there's been one or two bombs but so yeah i love quentin tarantino movies they're usually always awesome i think there's been one or two bombs but so yeah i usually always love his movies he's such a he's such a great thing would you say it's kind of it takes place in hollywood is it kind of like uh what was that once upon a time in america i think was his recent movie is it kind of gets into the hollywood hills

or the hollywood scene oh yeah it definitely gets into the hollywood scene with luke he's this uh like i said a disgraced actor in fact when i was putting some notes together for the book i realized i sort of arrived at the conclusion that luke had been defamed because his wife who's a famous soul singer went missing mysteriously and they had a very tumultuous, very public relationship. So naturally, everybody believes Luke killed his wife and they couldn't find the body. So he's essentially got away with murder. So therefore, his career hit the trash can pretty hard. I remember watching Once Upon a Time in America

and the character that Brad Pitt plays, Cliff Booth, who's Rick Dalton's stunt double, he actually is also accused of killing his wife. And I thought that was quite... I was thinking along those same lines. Obviously, Quentin got there before me, but I didn't steal it. That's a great idea. That's what I need.

Everyone's written Hollywood noir, so there's always... Exactly. Someone's got to have killed someone somewhere so i don't think that's ever gonna end until hollywood i don't know i don't know falls into the sea or something even then they'll probably still write about underwater so there you go what are some other teasers we can tease out about the book maybe plot twists or something uh something teasable that people can go oh that sounds like something I should check in on. Yeah, well, Johan Fly, he's our antagonist.

He's a 28-year-old YouTuber, social media sensation. So he appears really quite, he's the son of a Danish billionaire. So he appears really quite squeaky clean on the outside, and everybody kind of loves him. But obviously, he's hiding really quite a fierce darkness. He's, like I said, son of a Danish billionaire, but he truly feels a connection to his Viking ancestry. He models himself after the Vikings. He fancies himself to be like a modern Viking.

So he's got the long blonde hair and the tattoos and the braided beard. And he carries a replica Viking axe around with him. Oh, really? Yeah. And he gets up to some mischief with that axe. There's a pretty good – it's not many – you know what? There are a lot of sort of contemporary thrillers set in Hollywood. There are a lot of contemporary thrillers, obviously, with murder and intrigue and mystery and car chases and everything else. And mine does have a car chase in it as well.

Ah. But there are – you've mine does have a car chase in it as well. Ah. But there are ones. You've got to have a car chase. You know, I remember this piece of writing advice I heard once. Never put a car chase in your novel because you just won't be able to pull it off. I put two in the next novel I wrote. That'll show them. Don't tell me to not put a car chase in my book.

Car chases are awesome, man. I know they're awesome anyway. So anyway, there's a car chase in this one. But yeah, so you've got a little bit of everything going on but you don't see many vikings in modern day thrillers so real vikings well he he really believes he is so there you go i mean he's going he's going full viking he's yeah he's a bit of a bit of a crazy dude and with with vikings come some pretty vicious viking seraphs this is all plausible too because i've lived in california and la right i've been

to all the parties where everybody stands around and goes yeah i yeah i was on a set today with steven spielberg and and blah blah blah and you're like yeah you saw them from the extra table buddy you're all roped off you saw them probably in the distance there with your binoculars from your extra booth but yeah everyone stands around and they're working on a script or they're working on it's a total scene down there and what's funny is if you're not an actor when you go to those things you don't have any sort of bs sort of pitch they would always they always go around the circle an actor i'm an actor i was working on this project for it's always some big projects it's never like i'm working on some

theater thing that no one's gonna see out on elm or something it's always i i'm trying to pitching a deal right now with uh mel gibson or something it's never like uh some shitty thing that they're working on and they come around to me and they go what do you do and i'm like i just hang out and do stuff yeah right or anything they just look at you like tsk tsk and i'm like you guys are full of shit on everything you do anyway it's funny just the whole hollywood yeah sort of atmosphere down there it's crazy man well right in the book obviously i felt at times a little bit out of my depth because i don't really know Hollywood. I grew up in the UK and I live now in snowy Ontario. So I'm a long way from Hollywood.

And there's a scene in the novel where, which takes place at a Hollywood party. And I was really nervous about it because I thought, God damn, I've never been to a Hollywood party. I don't know what a Hollywood party looks like. But then I figured, well, 99% of the people who read this book won't have gone to a Hollywood party. I think I'll be all right here. I think I can get away with it. So a little bit of creative license,

a little bit of imagination, and just using bits and pieces that I've picked up here and there. I know people who have been to a Hollywood party. There's not much to it. It's just a really group of people who are over, uh, really narcissistic.

Maybe that's the right way. I will take your word for man. If I ever end up with a Hollywood party, you know, maybe I'll email you afterwards and say, Hey, you were right. I've had Michael Bolton looking at me across the part.

It's funny when you go to see celebrities that are on the downslope of the ABC level. And they'll, and you'll go to a party where there'll be a bunch of them, like a Grammy Awards or something like that. There'll be ones where no one's talking to them anymore because they're on the downslope of the D-list or whatever. And they'll look at you. You ever look around

a party and you always catch that same person's eye? Right, yeah. And they're always looking at you and you're like, what? And no matter what you do, anytime you turn your head, you're like, there's a dude looking at you and you're like what and no matter what you do like anytime you turn your head you're like there's a dude looking at me again it was michael bolton and he kept looking at me like hey man i'm still a celebrity man you should probably come talk to me and i'm like right i kept looking at him like no i don't care about your music yeah that looks like michael bow and i am definitely not talking to that guy

i was like no we're talking to linkedin the band linkedin i was like yeah am definitely not talking to that guy. I was like, no. We were talking to LinkedIn, the band LinkedIn. I was like, yeah, so we're talking to the new kids on the block here. Not the new kids. I wouldn't talk to them either. But yeah, it was really funny. I did make a, of course, I did make a beeline for the 80s star. I forget her name. She was always in Playboy all the time.

She was in the movie Scream. She had that famous run scene at the beginning of Scream. But she was wonderful. But yeah, it's always funny. you go to some i remember i went to some and and there was what was a guy from parks and recreation and he just kept looking at me all night long and i was like i'm not going over there i just don't care right it's like hey i'm a celebrity over here over here big sign anyway it's really funny how it goes Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go? It's very cinematic. It's an action thriller.

I just like, you know, with books, with my readers, I really want them to have a good time. So it's kind of like a grab the popcorn and let's go. And I think the novel hits the ground running, and then it just keeps going. And in the second half of the book, actually the second half of the book is set in in a small town in the mojave desert and then we venture actually out into nevada as well and that's when the heat is truly on in the desert figuratively and literally

so yeah it's a good it's a cinematic thrill ride and if that's you if that's your thing then come on board and have a good time with it. There you go. There you go. So give us your plugs one more time as we go out so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, I'm Matt on Twitter, Rio underscore U-ers, and I'm on Instagram. I think that's Rio underscore U-ers as well, Y-O-U-E-R-S. Okay. That's my surname. Thanks for coming on, Rio.

We really appreciate it, man. Hey, no, it's been great. High energy. I love that stuff. That's fantastic. That's what we do. It's the coffee. So the coffee and the cocaine.

I'm just kidding. I don't do coffee. I don't do cocaine either. Don't do that, folks. It's bad. Stick with coffee. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold. Don't go to those dark alleyway bookstores.

Go to the fine bookstores because you can get shipped in those dark ones. Go to the fine bookstores and order up or order online. You can do that as well. You don't have to go in there anymore. You don't have to get COVID. No second chances. A novel. 2-22-22.

I love saying that. February 22nd, 22-22. So you can order up now and get a jump start on your book club. Rio Ewers has been on the show with us. Thanks for coming on, Rio. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for everyone for being here. Did I thank everybody yet?

That guy in the back? No, thanks. You can leave. But everybody else, you're awesome. We love you and all that good stuff. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button on all those.

YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places where the cool kids are playing. Stay safe, be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited

for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book, wherever fine books are sold.