The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – See-Saw by Arthur Day

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

See-Saw by Arthur Day https://www.amazon.com/See-Saw-Arthur-Day/dp/1966088035 Arthurdaywrites.com See-Saw involves love and murder in the age of Covid. Tran female Dianne Vargas and her partner, MJ McCaal, plan to marry but first they must solve a double murder outside a local bar. Unknown to Dianne a maniac, who has been paid to kill her, is stalking his victim

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. 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 role. a rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Vosz, here from the Christmas Vos Show.com. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the iron-ladenings of that makes official,

welcome the big show, as always, the Chris Voss show. For 16 years, 27-hour episodes, we've bringing the most smartest people, the most smartest minds, sharing their journeys, their stories, their lessons of life that you can use to improve your life, or at least, for the most part, entertain you. We do try to entertain you. There you go.

So please refer the show to family of your friends. Go to Goodreads.com. Fortress Christchristch, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect

the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.com. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success.

Today, an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his three book trilogy series, and we're going to get into it with him. We're going to lead off with his last latest book called Seesaw out December 2nd, 2024 by Arthur Day. Arthur has written five books, Seesaw, Death of Dawn, When Fear Knox, The Velvet Tramp, Samson, and Delilah. And he currently lives in Simsbury, Connecticut. Welcome to the show, Arthur. How are you? I'm fine, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? Can find me on Amazon and thriftbooks.com. Have I chance you have a website or social media? You also want people to follow you on? Yes, I do. I don't offhand remember the name. Okay. If you sued us dot com after the show, we'll put it, on the link on the Chris Voss show on the on the website there so we were going to find you so stay right now oh is it okay and then give us a 30,000 overview please of what's inside this book inside of seesaw yes or the whole series however you want to present that the series deals with

a series of murders that are solved by the protagonist mj mccall and his partner diane Vargas, I call it the Vargas trilogy. And they solve various murders. And in the process, they fall in love. Huh? Which is amazing because they are very, very different people. At the beginning, neither one of them thought that the other one was going to fall in love with them.

Well, I have that problem all the time. Women just fall in love with me. And I say, no, I'm not interested. and they just stalk me. No, I wish that were the case. It's not. But I figure we all know that by now. There's no women that would ever stalk me.

So give me, tell us about these characters that are in the book. I mean, this is a trilogy. Was there a reason you made it in a trilogy, too? Now, the Diane Vargas is a trans female. And her partner, MJ McCall, a. a straight hetero male and at the beginning of course they didn't know

MJ didn't know that Vargas was trans female found that out during the course of the book and to his surprise the big scene of course after she discovers that she's lying in a bed with and she has a penis

he he shrugs it off and says that's cool and she says, no, it's not cool. You can't just shrug it off, you asshole. Oh. Well, I mean, he's trying to just, you know, be, you know. He's trying to be swall about it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, what do you want? He doesn't want to see him for a while and he doesn't like that. But they do get together and continue on their journey. Mm-hmm. And they become a romantic couple. that point? They do over not so much at that point, but the next book they do. Okay. So the first book is entitled, let's see here, Death at Dawn, LGBTQ meets Main Street. So is that what the

trans references? The LGBTQ meets Main Street? What the trans references? Was there a reason you chose the characters in the book that you chose in the scenarios you put them into? What was the motivation behind that? Well, I was looking for a story and characters that would fit the story. And it occurred to me that we spent a lot of time disliking other groups of people for sexual, political, religious, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. We should be able to meet and talk and even more than that. And for some reason, it never really works. But we're all people we're all one nation if you cut us we all bleed red and so i was trying to point out that very different people sexually don't necessarily have to hate each other it's true they loved

each other if you depend on somebody you really don't care whether what they have in their pants yeah i just care about how much money they have in their pockets i had to do that too well mj has made a pie on Wall Street. Oh, I'm interested now. And Diane, Diane is a real estate agent. She makes a good income. So they do well together.

Yeah. So what gave you the idea to create this character? What was the proponent behind it? Did you say, hey, you know, maybe there needs to be more books written about romance with LGBTQ trans people in them? Yeah, yeah, I did. And I was out early walking one morning. and that's when I came up with the idea to do a trans female protagonist and hitch her up with a hetero male.

Was there anything in your life, your experience? Have you ever met trans people? Maybe you had a friend or something. What was the, like, the inspiration for the books? There was no real inspiration. I've never met one, although I've had experience with both male and female. but not one together, so to speak. All right.

And so had you written other books before this? I wrote Samson and Delilah. That was my first. And then Winfior Knox was the second, followed by the trilogy, the Vargas Trilogy. And that was that, five books in all. Five books and all. Now, the other two are separate from the

three-book trilogy, correct? That is true. Okay. Yep, they were written before the trilogy began. Ah. And so they go through this thing, and how do you interact with your characters? Like, we have some novels that come on the show, and they have characters that talk to them, drive them crazy, and basically, you know, write the book, basically.

Some people have to, you know, churn the characters and develop them, and it's a little bit more work because you don't have your characters yelling into your ear. How do your characters appear for you? My characters basically dictate what I write. Once I've got the character down, I can't very, very well go out of character and say something that they wouldn't say. So they're sitting on my shoulder saying, write this, write it now, write it now. I've heard it a bunch of times. I wish I had it, but I don't have it. Why did you choose this to make this a thriller genre? It was not planned.

I didn't sit down one morning and say, oh, I think I'll write a trilogy. The first book ended and seemed to be a good one. And then I came up with, I was reading a headline about white slavery and how young girls are, sexually abused and mistreated. And I thought that would be an excellent way for the Vargas McCall team to keep going.

Oh. So I use that as a background. Actually, it's a foreground, too. Oh, wow. They try and find out where this girl disappeared to, and they stumble upon this estate, that this rich guy has founded and it's got barbed wire all around it type of thing. And so they're trying to get her out of there. And at the same time, there's another murder in progress.

There's a killer that's stalking her. She doesn't know it. And at the end, of course, the killer shows up and tries to kill her, wounding MJ in the process. And then he, in turn, killed. Oh, well, that's not good. No.

A lot of death. A lot of death of destruction at the end. Is there a reason you're attracted to writing in that genre? Is there, you read a lot of books there in the genre? If there is, it's subconscious. I really don't know. As we go through the story and stuff, why did you decide to write a trilogy? Well, as I said, the first book pretty much

wrote itself. And then I was researching the next, and I was researching period, and came across the subject of white slavery, which I thought was germane. Everybody should know about that. And so I started using that as a background theme for the next book. Well, that's good to have. And did it initially start as a trilogy, or did you just kind of play out that way? It just played out that way. Sometimes you write a book. Sometimes the book writes you. Ah.

Sometimes, I like that story. Sometimes you write a book. Sometimes the book writes you. Tell me what that means for you. That's a great analogy. It means I get interested in a subject and I just keep going from there. It's a subject and I can fit the characters into it. Boom.

Mm-hmm. Boom. Over the course of a year or two, the book is written. And you find that you have a pretty easy time doing that? It's not always easy, no. As you know from your experience, podcast host is not always easy. It's not always easy. Usually the hardest thing is waking up in the morning.

You're like, I got to go be fun of today. bring me more coffee so when this started out did it start out as a trilogy or did it take you did it start out as a single book and you're like hey this story

started out as a single book yep I started out with when fear knocks and it didn't occur to me to start another one on the same theme with the same people

until I'd finished when fear knocks oh you know people love character development and they love series. That's one thing I've noticed. They should definitely they should definitely get

murder death at dawn. Death at John. See if it takes them along to the next couple of books. That's how I feel in the morning actually like Death at Dawn until I have my coffee, pulling that call back on the coffee again. So the other question

I had for you was, what role do you think writers play in a world where there is almost everything instantly available. You know, YouTube, you can watch a movie on demand, yada, yada, yada, yada. What world do writers play? You know, I think we really provide a background to people that want to know more and more specifically about a certain subject or subjects provide the intelligentsia, I guess you could call it.

People that like to read, I have a step cousin who, reads prolifically. So reading has not gone out of fashion. She had a room that's just covered with one big library, really. So there are people that love books. And sometimes writing the printed word gives them a reason to be entertained, to learn, to educate themselves. there are various reasons why they like books because not everything is on a podcast not everything is on google

thank god not everything's in a podcast we've been doing this for 17 years of 2700 episodes i thought we did everything that's not possible i'm sure you've discovered there's always something else yeah my back hurts that's well i know and i can't feel my legs But that's okay. That's probably something else. Anyway, it's probably a head wound or something from Vietnam. So as you go through these stories, you know, a lot of people are looking to escape in fiction, nonfiction, reading, TV, movies, video games for big escape. Why do you think escape is some of the things in art books are kind of trashy with no literary merit?

I'm taking your words from your questionnaire. Well, I hope that my books have some literary merit. Yeah. They're written for people to be entertained and learn about a subject such as LGBTQ or white slavery or the country blowing up over COVID. Oh, that was a big deal, yeah. I remember that. That was a crazy time. That was crazy. Let's not do that again, folks, for another hundred years.

I think we waited a hundred last time. That was horrible. Yeah, that was not. Cities burning. Nobody knew quite why. Oh, yeah. People dying and refrigerator trucks everywhere. Yeah. So as we go down that, what do you think, do you think that art follows life or does life follow art? I think art follows life. If you're not going to write about life, you don't have much in the way of art.

Even if your creation has nothing to do with reality, it still follows life because you're alive, you're creating it. So it is part of your life and you want to express it in your way. So it's definitely art following life. Art following life. You know, I mean, is, but is, but is, but is, but is, but is, uh, art an expression of life or is an interpretation of life or how would you describe? Everybody has an interpretation of life. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, is it art that creates. When we draw up, we interpret life, as we see it, life that's around us, life, the people that we meet, people that we consider family. all of this is interpretive. There is no hard and fast. You do this, otherwise you're dead. Ah, well, I think that's how the ICE is working in 2026. Yeah, it could be. I really shouldn't laugh about that.

It's kind of weird what's going on, but we'll stay out of politics, I guess. Where does the book, Seesaw fit into your philosophy of our art, writing, literary merit, et cetera, et cetera. It takes current events and tries to both inform and transform the plot of the book so that it entertains the reader. Entertain the readers. It probably didn't make a lot of sense. It actually did to me. Do you want to expand on it?

On the same theme that art follows life. If you can see what's going on around you and pick parts of it that you think wouldn't be both entertaining and educational for your reader, then you have something that follows life. And hopefully people like. And if it follows life and people like it, you're in. You're in. you know art is such a great expression it took me a long time to kind of figure that out like sometimes

i always thought like the art i like is the only right art like i'm a photographer and sometimes i see other people's photography and i and i and i try and learn from their photography everyone's style or take maybe a piece of it and put in my little toolbox and uh sometimes i see things that i really like i'm like god i wish i could shoot that way i want to try and work on that and then other times I'm like, yeah, I see what these mistakes they're making. But, you know, then I started realizing that that's their art, you know. Their art may, maybe I don't like the way they lit the scene, you know, but that's their art. They're doing whatever they do is you're trying to start a story.

I don't like every book I read. I don't like every description that I read. But it is, it is part of life, part of art, and part of me. Yeah. It's part of the whole delio there. And, you know, that's just the great thing about art. Let's see. The other question I had for you is, what's going on with you in the future?

Are there any forthcoming books? Do you see an extension to your trilogy? I've thought about the next book. I haven't started it yet. But I'm thinking of having MJ, I'm a single man again. finding love in an unexpected place, again, with an unexpected person. Oh. But I don't have the details in my mind yet.

Okay. Sounds like my dating history here. I've been single all my life. I never know who the hell I'm going to meet. And even worse with the ladies, you know, it takes about six months to figure out who the actress is. And then one day you find out the actress veil drops. like, oh, oh, so this is who I'm dating. I just always assume I'm dating the PR agent.

And I'm like, well, this is nice. And people tell me stuff like, I'm this and I'm that. And I'm going, well, we'll see. I just treat people like a Polaroid and see how they develop. I'm always just like, okay, cool story. We'll see. Sometimes the story leads and sometimes I believe it. Yeah.

You know, people tell me I believe all sorts of bullshit. And I'm just like, okay, we'll see. Polaroid never lies eventually, right? So are you, do you find your work is, are you happy with your work? Sometimes artists, you know, have a bit of self-loathing sometimes. And what's the old, what's the old thing about artists? The one they've had artists, the reason they're ever happy is they're always complaining. They're always looking at their belly button and complaining about their life.

But that struggle, that pain sometimes creates the best art, you know, Van Gogh cutting off his ear and stuff like that. Yeah. You know, are you pretty happy with the work you do and you find it positive about it? Sometimes I write trash. I know it's trash. I write it anyway.

I think everything I write is trash. I have to rewrite it and rewrite it. Uh-huh. And I sit there and grind my teeth. And sometimes I get up from the desk and go do something else and come back later. Just to see if that's a good. I feel that's a good strategy whenever I'm working on art. Like if I'm editing photos, there's sometimes a point where I just go,

all right, I got a step away from this. Yeah, absolutely. You know, get that fresh perspective, give it a couple days. You know, sometimes. Sometimes if you can't write and you're sitting there staring at the paper, it doesn't do anything for you. It's just staring at paper. Yeah.

You might as well pick up the daily paper and stare at that. that's when I usually find that's when I usually find I'm in that I'm in that shining moment with what's his face where I'm typing all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy remember that from the Shining movie Sometimes a lot of play

We need to work Yeah you should write coffee cups and T-shirts That's a good segue So when did you know that you were a writer. When did you first, you know, the epiphany first come to you where you're like, hey, I should start writing. I've really always been writing. I have two daughters and I wrote poems for one and songs for the other. Uh-huh. And it wasn't until I was 60-ish, call it 60, 61, somewhere in there that I actually wrote something I thought was worth publishing.

Yeah, that's pretty wild So you got practice writing a little stories for your children And my mom started writing to me when I was in her womb Was it kind of like one of those things where you started really early writing to them as kids? Yeah, I don't know about writing in the womb, but I definitely started early. Yeah, she was writing to me. Well, she had me in the womb. Just want to clarify that.

But I was probably writing in the room. I was in the womb and I was putting those scratch marks, the 1, 2, 3, 4, slash 5, 1, 2, 3, 4 slash 5. It's like a prison. It's prison. When you know in your prison, you mark the wall so you know how many days you've been in prison. That's what I was doing in the womb. I was like, hey, is it nine months yet already? I've been locked in this cell.

What's going on? The food's awful. Let me out. Let me out. She's got gas. And this is not the good way. And you say, oh, let me back in. Yeah, that's true.

As a man, you spend your lifetime trying to do that. There's some men do. So you like the stories. You like the books and people writing for you. What sort of feedback do you get from your readers? Actually, I get a lot from just a few. I read the book. They like the book.

They comment on it. Or sometimes, their real life. There are people that I know in my life that have read the books and commented on them and sometimes it's good comments. Sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's not. You know, yeah, everyone's got an opinion on the internet. And it's always funny. The people who write the worst stuff, you know, the most hateful, like, your work sucks, right? They're the people, they never read. fully read anything.

Like, if they read the book, they read the back cover, or they read the intro, or, I don't know, the first page. And then they go sling monkey shit. And you're like, you didn't even read the book. Like half the time you talk to them, you're like, did you read the book in full? I think a lot of people that call me up and say, wow, wow, you've got real talent.

This is great. I don't think they've even read the back cover, let alone the book. Oh, do they? Really? I get a lot of people that do that. They go, your podcast is amazing. I listen all the time and stuff. And then they write a fake review and they screenshot the,

they haven't hit the button to put the review in. They send me a screenshot of what they wrote. And then I'll go check the reviews. And I'm like, yeah, they never posted that. And they try and use this way to get on the show. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? If you're going to play that disingenuous game, you're not going to get on the show.

It's just a dumb move to me. I guess they think you're stupid You know, so they play you like that's all right I don't know I'm just like yeah Why don't you just I don't know I just it's really disingenuous I feel so but that's my opinion I guess

Anything more we need to talk about Before we go out for you Can't think of anything I think we've covered all of the Essential facets of writing Creating Loving Mm-hmm

loving is always good have some love and all that good stuff so let's see um as well thank you very much for coming on what was your website again you you quoted a website a dot com Dave Dave write D-A-Y right D-A-Y right D-A-Y rights R-I-G-H-T-S W-R-I-T-E-E-S oh okay rights okay yeah dot com There's a few ways to interpret that. DAY. Right.com. D-A-Y-Rights.com.

I think I'm getting a wicks. This domain has flown away. So I may not have this typed in right. Anyway, after the show, we'll get together and we'll get this right. Give me any other places you want people to find you on the interwebs and a final pitch out to people to pick up your book. I think I have an earlier show on YouTube. know if it's still on YouTube. You can type in my name and see what comes up.

I'm looking forward to seeing your show on YouTube. Oh. And thinking out what a fool I've made of myself. Oh, no. You've done fine. You've done excellent. You've been a wonderful guest. And you've done a great job.

And I think people are excited. The people love trilogies and series. I had a real attack of nerves just before we went on air. Oh, did you? Oh, we're really nice. We don't bite and we try and make you look good. I had somebody ask me one time. They go, you do.

You're very successful. Yeah, I had someone who wrote me one time, and I think they just had an anxiety attack, and they wrote me, and they go, I decided not to your show. It was like an hour before. And they go, I think you're just going to try and attack me with attack questions, and you're going to got you, gotcha, you stuff. Like, oh, we caught you lying or something. And I'm like, have you watched the show?

It's not a gotcha show. We're not here. Okay, my daughter just handed me the, I made a mistake. It's not unusual. The website is arthurdaywrites.com. Okay. Okay. A-R-T-H-H-U-R-D-R-D-R-D-R-D-A-R-D-A-R-D-A-R-R-D-R-R-R-D-R-R-A-R-RAT. There we go. I've got the right one up here. The Publish Works is a

storyteller. All right, so we've got that out for the audience there. Well, thank you very much, Arthur, for coming in the show. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yes. And we'll look forward to future works. Folks, order up his book where refined books are sold. The latest one we talked about was Seasaw with out December 2nd, 2024, you can get the other books in the series as well.

There's Death at Dawn, LGBTQ meets Main Street, and the Velvet Trap. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTokity, and all those crazy places.

Looks like we had some family come in and give you some support. Go, Dad, from Lucy. and go grandpa from Hard Hat Kid. So we got the whole family in here. Good, good, fun. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain.

lead. All right, Art, great show.