The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Remember Me Gone by Stacy Stokes

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Remember Me Gone by Stacy Stokes Lucy Miller’s family has the unique ability to remove people’s painful memories—but Lucy isn’t prepared for truths she will uncover in this twisty speculative thriller, perfect for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Neal Shusterman. People come from everywhere to forget. At the Memory House, in Tumble Tree, Texas, Lucy’s father can literally erase folks’ heartache and tragic memories. Lucy can’t wait to learn the family trade and help alleviate others’ pain, and now, at sixteen, she finally can. But everything is not as it seems. When Lucy practices memory-taking on her dad, his memory won’t come loose, and in the bit that Lucy sees, there’s a flash of Mama on the day she died, tinged red with guilt. Then Lucy wakes up the next morning with a bruised knee, a pocketful of desert sand, and no memory of what happened. She has no choice but to listen to Marco Warman—a local boy she’s always wondered about, who seems to know more than he should. As Lucy and Marco realize there are gaps in their own memories, they team up to fill in the missing pieces—to figure out what’s really going on in their town, and to uncover their own stolen history along the way. But as the mysteries pile up one thing becomes certain: There are some secrets people will do anything to keep.

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

We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for being here. As always, refer to the show to your family, friends, relatives, neighbors. Hey, we're coming here in the Nugget Podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for being here. As always, refer the show to your family, friends, relatives, neighbors. Get everybody in on the show. Go knock on the door on Saturday morning as I say of you, heard of our Lord and Savior, the Chris Voss Show Podcast. No, don't do that.

Please don't do that. That's not going to end well. Anyway, guys, be sure to go to youtube.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. Just grab their phones and just subscribe to the show. Is that even right? Is that ethical? We'll have to bring the attorneys in on that one. Let's have you go to YouTube.com, though, and hit the bell notification button. Tell your friends to do it, too.

It completes you and brings you into a family that loves you, but the best kind of family that doesn't judge you. I need a shirt that says that. Go to all our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, as well. Subscribe to that LinkedIn group. Holy newsletter. That thing is killing it over there in our big 132,000 LinkedIn group as well. 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. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. She's the author of the new book. The last time I checked, she's the author. Well, we'll double check with her when she gets on the show. But according to Amazon, it says it right here. Stacey Stokes is on the show with us today.

She's the author of the new book, Remember Me Gone. It's coming out March 22, 2022, which is a great way to remember that. You can preorder that book and be able to get it first on your book club to take and read that. Also, see us at Goodreads.com for Jess, what is it, goodreads.com, 4ChessChristmas as well. It'll probably be over there. So anyway, we're going to be talking to her about her amazing new book that's coming out. You'll want to definitely pre-order it.

Stacey Stokes is a lifelong lover of stories, a former improv comedy geek, and a marketing professional by trade. She graduated with a degree in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin and holds a master's degree in business from the Wharton School. Stacey lives with her family in the Bay Area. Follow her on Twitter at Stacey Stokes. Welcome to the show. Stacey, how are you? I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it.

Congratulations on the new book. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the internet, please. Yeah, you can find me at stacystokes.com and you can follow all my social media handles are Stacey A as in Apple Stokes. There you go. And what motivated you want to write this book? Yeah, I'd say writing in general. It's been a lifelong dream of mine since I was a little kid when I was attempting to write stories as a child dream of mine since I was a little kid when I was attempting to write stories as a child that were terrible. I kept at it throughout my adult life and finally realizing that dream now. So that's kind of the short of why I wrote this one. This particular book, though, I have a love of speculative fiction stories where things are

grounded in our world, but just a little bit off kilter. So I'm thrilled that this book is going to be out in the world because it hits right into that space where it's grounded in our world, but something's just a little weird and off kilter. I don't know. Our world's kind of a weird and off kilter these days anyway, right? So maybe it fits. Totally fair. Can't be there. In the past few years. So give us an arcing overview of the book, if you would. Yeah. So the story's about Lucy. Her family owns the memory house in a small town called Tumble Tree, Texas, where people come to have their unwanted memories erased. And she has thought her whole life that she was going to take over the memory house and erase people's

unwanted memories, just like her father. But then she discovers that her own memories have been erased and something in her small town is not as she seemed. And it really makes her question whether or not memory taking is not only what she wants to do, but if it's a good thing at all, as she starts to discover what happened to her and what's happening to the town. Oh, wow. So they basically have some sort of fictional feature where you can go and have your memories erased. I can see how that would be beneficial. I think a lot of us have some memories we'd like to go have erased, but then I can see how it would create a hole. And is that the confliction is it creates kind of a hole in your history and later you're just,

you're like, what the hell was that about? Kind of. And well, in theory, the way that Lucy thinks it should work is once the memory is gone, all things surrounding that memory are gone and you go back to your life as if that thing you wanted to erase never happened. There are exceptions. So there are people, they call them echoes, that sometimes show up at the memory house after their memories have been erased because something, a sliver was left behind and something feels wrong and they feel pulled back to the town, even though they're not really quite sure why. And they have to re-erase their memories, which is how she starts to get inklings that maybe her own memories have been erased because there's some lingering things and lingering

doubts there. Yeah. Because how would you know your memories were erased if your memories were erased? Right. Is that how it works? Exactly. Ah, this sounds interesting because, yeah, that could create a lot of issues. Now, in your book, if you have your memories erased at the memory house, is that also like, say you want to erase like an ex or something, does that erase their memories about you or just your memories about them just your memories about them so yeah i've had to deal with the the lingering

ex in other ways ah so if you meet the ex in the street and the ex is like hey remember that one time we went to the soda shop there and you're like who the hell are you and what the hell is that about that that probably creates some problems huh would. I think you just came up with a whole topic I could do for a sequel. There you go. There you go. I mean, yeah. I mean, I kind of remember that, what was it? What was that one movie where it was a space aliens movie where they hold the thing in front of your thing and they erase your memory of whatever you just saw? Oh yeah, Men in Black. Yeah, Men in Black. Yeah. So that would, I can see where that would create some issues, man.

That's got to be some amazing story stuff. So Lucy goes through this different things. What are some other things you want to tease out about the book? Or maybe you think readers will want to, maybe stories or favorite parts that you like that will stick out to? Yeah, well, I would say if you're a fan of mysteries or thrillers, I think this book would appeal to you because what she essentially unearths is there's a plot going on in her small town and there are secrets that certain people are trying to keep buried. So there's, I think, a pretty good bad guy in the mayor. It's very clear from the beginning that the mayor of the town, there's something sinister going on there. So if you enjoy good,

bad guys, mysteries, I think there's a lot here for you. Not only does she unravel the mystery of what are the memories that were taken from her, but she finds and uncovers a whole plot happening in the town. Now, are there multiple memory houses or did they have the monopoly on this one? They have the monopoly on it.

As far as I know in this world, maybe there's some others, but this one in Texas is the only one. I should figure out how to create one of these because I can see a lot of business coming. Most of the memory house I use is just called denial. I think that's what most people rely on these days. And if you're going to go somewhere.

Denial in a river in Egypt. So she goes through this stuff. What sort of fans do you think this book will appeal to mostly? Yep. So it's a young adult novel because the main character, Lucy, her age is 16, but I actually think it will appeal to people and readers of all ages. Again, if you like mysteries, if you like thrillers, if you like speculative fiction and that idea of what if that's essentially what it says. What if there was a house on the outskirts of the country where somebody could erase your

unwanted memories? What kind of things could go awry there? Yeah. Like, I don't know. Would it be fun to just erase your whole memory and start over again? I don't know. That's probably a bad idea because you learn stuff from your memories. Well, that's exactly what the story taps into. So she starts off thinking this thing is great. What they do is wonderful, that people need help. And she's not wrong. Certainly people have trauma and things that they want to be erased and maybe should be erased.

But she also realizes that when you erase the bad stuff, you have to erase the good stuff. And you also lose the ability to learn from the past and learn from your mistakes. So we're in some ways set to just keep repeating the same thing over and over again if we don't have the ability to learn. The one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. But yeah, that's right. We learn, we learn most of, I think what we, what we learned from our mistakes and going, yeah, we shouldn't do that again. Or hopefully we do. It seems like we keep repeating them. The, but yeah, yeah. I come to think of it. I mean,

it sounds like a great idea, but then you're like, well, I would lose those lessons. Like I always tell my nephew who's like in his twenties, I'm like, I would trade you in a day in life for anything, but I would want to have everything I learned so far with me when I go. Cause I don't want to be a person who doesn't have that when they're 20 or I really don't want to make all the mistakes again, just to learn them and be 50 again. So that's pretty cool. Now, is this your first book? It is my, my first major published book with a big press. Awesome sauce. So this is going to be pretty exciting for you. Get this book out and you've probably been writing for a while. I have. I mean, my whole life I've been writing something, but it was probably about 10 years ago

that I sat down and really started to put pen to paper and complete some manuscripts instead of just scribbles here and there. It's good to see this come to fruition. Yeah. It sounds like we've got a burgeoning author here and lots of future books that can come out. I've already given you an idea for your second book. You have. I mean, I can see this going a lot of different places. I mean, because, yeah, it's a real dichotomy.

Was Lucy your favorite character in the book, or was there a favorite that you liked? I find a lot of novelists that come on the show, they sometimes have favorite characters. Yeah, certainly Lucy is near and dear to my heart. The book is told from her perspective, which was fun to write because when somebody's memories are missing, it makes them a very unreliable narrator to have because what's true and what's not true. And we may or may not actually get to experience her losing a memory or two along the way with the reader, I think will be pretty fun where things that she doesn't and you see that happening in real time. But I'd say my favorite character to write, there is a girl in the book named Manuela, who starts off as an enemy of sorts

for Lucy, and they eventually find out that they have more in common than they think is, and they team up essentially to figure out what's going on. And she's just full of attitude and charisma. And she was really fun to write, especially when you think of tension filled scenes where there's a lot of action happening and a lot of tension. She's in some ways the comedic relief,

which I just enjoyed. There you go. So this sounds like a lot of fun and really interesting. The nice thing about being 54 that I'm at is you start losing and forgetting everything at this point. When I wrote my book last year, I was going through my memories and I'm like, I know there was more here. Like what happened? And stuff started coming back to me as I started digging around. I'm like, oh yeah, that happened. I did that. And oh yeah, that happened.

I did that. And so, yeah, I mean, just let, you live long enough, you start forgetting everything because there's just so much crap coming at you. So that's funny. Anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go out? I don't want to give any spoilers away. Yeah, that's funny. Anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go out? I don't want to give any spoilers away. Yeah, that's the hard part. I always, sometimes I'll ask novelists, I'll be like, so what happens at the end?

They're like, Chris, I can't tell you the ending. I will add that there's some twists and unexpected turns. We've had some great reviews coming in through a number of different trade publications. And the feedback I've been getting is fast page turning. Once you pick it up, you can't put it down. So again, mystery, thriller, fast pace, leaves you guessing. And while I've shared a lot about it,

there are still a lot of unknown surprises waiting for you on the pages. Awesome sauce, awesome sauce. This sounds pretty exciting. So give us your plugs again so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, well, first plug, remember me gone, add it to Goodreads.

If you read it, I would love it if you would leave a review anywhere where they take reviews. And if you want to learn more about me, you can visit stacystokes.com or you can follow me, Twitter, Instagram. All my social handlers are at Stacey A. Stokes. There you go.

Thank you very much, Stacey, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much, Stacey, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you. Order up the book, guys. Wherever fine books are sold, don't go into those alleyway bookstores, remember. Go check out the book, Remember Me Gone, March 22, 22. It'll be out. You want to pre-order it so you can beat everyone on the block in your book club for it and all that good stuff. Go to goodreads.com. Fortunatelychesschrisfoss.

Hit the bell notification. Just see what we're reading and reviewing. Also go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. All our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places. Thanks again for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.