The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Jersey Death Squad: A Journey to Kill Jessie Freeman by Mark Meding

Episode Date: June 22, 2024

The Jersey Death Squad: A Journey to Kill Jessie Freeman by Mark Meding https://amzn.to/3RzTrVB This is a story about four friends who grew up together in rural northern New Jersey. The four are close enough to be brothers- chosen family- whose loyalty and love for one another becomes a powerful force in their lives growing up. But when the boys witness a tragic accident befall a local police officer, they are severely impacted, especially upon learning the full extent of the injury. As the boys witness the impact of the tragedy on their friend's wife and family, they create a pact: if any one of the boys should ever become a mental or physical burden to their friends or family, the remaining friends need to end their life. Decades later, once the boys grow up to be men, they are devastated to learn that due to a horrible accident, one of them meets the condition they had described in the pact. The remaining friends connect with one another and set off on a journey to get to their soul brother to fulfill their fateful obligation. A compelling, frequently funny story about reconnection, friendship, and love that asks the question....?? can the boys fulfill the pact and murder their friend this many years later and with so much to lose? ??

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. 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 rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your family. As always, you can further show your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chance Chris Voss, linkedin.com, 4Chance Chris Voss, Chris Voss, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. We have an amazing young man on the show with us today. He's got his newest book out called The Jersey Death Squad, A Journey to Kill Jesse Freeman.

Came out May 1st, 2024. Mark Benning is going to be joining us on the show here in a second. We're going to be talking to him about his insights, his new book, and why you're going to want to pick it up from wherever fine books are sold. Mark is a New Jersey native living in North Jersey, currently with his lovely wife and sweet dog Lola. He's a very creative person. He's a musician, moss artist, publishing author, and the director of a technology company. His approach to life is to find a creative angle, no matter what he's involved with. He does not believe that we ever have a perfect life. There is more to learn, more to do, and ways to do life better.

I don't believe that he doesn't believe that he will ever reach the finish line in life, and he feels that we can do better every day. We certainly can. That's why we have people like him on the show. Besides doing technology, he's also the drummer for a band named southern stew who's a southern rock cover band i would hope so because if they're like doing i don't know a new wave might be kind of weird with that name southern stew so there you go welcome to the show mark how are you thank you so much i really really am very grateful to be here i'm great i am great

having a great having a great time with the book lots of great gigs coming up with southern stew so yeah things are good thanks there you go so give us the dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs my my website is mark medding author and that's m-e-d-i-n-g author.com you can find me on facebook instagram i do I do have a TikTok account and LinkedIn, of course. And my books are sold. My book is sold on, sorry, Audible. It's in paperback and it's also on Kindle, all on the Amazon platform. So easy to find, pick a platform and go for it. There you go. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of this new book that you just put out. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate you asking me the

book. This book came from a personal experience that I had when I was a kid. I grew up in the seventies, eighties, you know, at a time where, you know, you got on your bicycle in the morning and you went out and found your friends and spent all day in the woods and creating adventures and various other things and seeing what trouble you could get into and all of those wonderful things and at the time I grew very close with with a couple of friends and we through through an experience we had we decided to create this pact that if any one of us would ever become either mentally or physically disabled or a burden to our family and friends that kind of thing that the other members of the of the pact would have to take that person out and yeah that's the premise of the book that's

that right so yeah don't let the title scare you i mean it's the jersey death squad a journey to kill jesse freeman yeah it comes out pretty hard but that's kind of the the comedy of the book even though there's a pretty intense storyline there's a ton of dark comedy so these boys they grew up you know and it's you know i don't necessarily think it's it's just a jersey thing but there's a certain way that we grew up, breaking each other's chops constantly and all that stuff. And so there's a lot of that in the book. And then so the flip side to the premise of this book is so the pact is made when they

were in their teens. So flash forward 30 years later, these boys are now men with lives and things like that. Still, the bond is very, very, very strong and very close. And the love that they have for each other is quite strong. But life has moved on. But one of the members of the group, of the pact, ends up kind of qualifying for the terms of the pact, right? Something happens, and the whole journey is the men find out what happened to their friend, and for whatever reasons,

they have to drive from New Jersey to Colorado. And that's really the journey, you know, is really in the car and the experiences and the adventures and the flashbacks to the anecdotes of stories that some of the experiences and the adventures and the flashbacks to the anecdotes of stories that some of the experiences they had a little bit of trouble that they got into when they were kids there's flashbacks of that and it really really paints the picture about what friendship and it was like back then I think it's still like that now but it's a little different with the kids maybe but back then you know you there was so much going on in your life that you know

we relied on each other to get through those things and that bond was unbreakable there you go there you go right and it and that flows through the book and the love the love that these boys have for each other still 30 years later you still as you read the book even though there's incessant chop busting there's so much love and respect and loyalty yep it's it's it's it you said in the green room you were saying it's a it's a mix between two different genres or two different popular shows right the one of the reviews I got because the boys are from North Jersey you know there's a lot of that that that

North Jersey if any of you have ever watched The Sopranos not everybody in New Jersey talks like that by the way but just just just a you know just to let you know but these guys they the main character that narrates the book is the Scotty Carollo, and he's a forget-about-it kind of guy. You know, hey, yo, what are you doing? Hey, what's wrong with you? That kind of thing.

So it's a cross between, it's been described as a cross between The Sopranos and The Stand By Me, if you remember that movie. The Sopranos and Stand By Me. I mean, what a great mix and show that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. So what else is there? You mentioned, too, it's won some awards. We're working on it.

We're getting there. We're ranked on Amazon at this point at number 188, which is pretty huge, considering I just launched the book back in May. Sales are going very well, and that's good. People are really drawn to it. So we're we're pardon me we're trying to break a hundred we want to get in the top 100 and so right now i'm ranked at 188 and pushing hard to get the word out about the book so doing doing podcasts like this and

did some radio shows and things like that just to get the word out there you go it's you know a lot of fun to launch into a book so this is your first book correct that is out there you go it's you know a lot of fun to launch into a book so this is your first book correct that is correct there you go what is what is tell us about your journey through life i mean what was the map you went on you i mean you've gone from technology now to where you're writing novels right i'm still in technology uh but you know my my overall connection to create has always been there I've been a musician for a long time and not professionally or anything like that but I've always played music with friends and stuff like that it's always been a thing for many years and you know I've always

gotten into art and I've always I've created a concert series and I used to have house concerts in my house and I was always finding creative ways to bring people together that kind of stuff fellowship whatever and you know I you know through the and the reason why I got to this point to write this book is probably to stop annoying my my wife about it because because I just kept saying over and over again how I just thought that this was such a a great story like it could be a great movie or something like that and I had this thing in my head for god had to be 10 years maybe longer about this idea and about

two years ago I just started putting pen to paper and because i was because i was drawing from a lot of personal experience and you know some of the characters or blends of people in my life you know developing all the characters and the plot and all that stuff wasn't that hard it was when i really had to dive into the dialogue that's where it got you know that's where the rubber met the road as they say and but i've always been a somewhat creative guy in my own way and yeah yeah the so when did you first start writing two years ago all right so did you write before that was there any inkling that you had this talent no i had a story and that's what spawned the writing to be quite honest with you and not even realizing that I had an ability to do it I just like I said a couple years ago I

started putting pen to paper and off I went and then this turned out you know when when you have a story that's so relatable and it motivates you you know it motivates you to really want to get the story out and and that's that was my main goal was like it was and i and i got completely filled up by it and excited by writing it was daunting but it was it was fun there you go it's it's it's interesting we've had so many people like yourself who've who've gone through life and and they do one thing and then all of a sudden they just take a pension for writing sometimes they were always writing from their youth and then one day that just the bug hits them was there was there a proponent that was there anything that happened like a lot of people wrote over covid like covid

created so many authors it wasn't even funny funny. People are just like, I guess I'll write something. You know, my personal life was filled with lots of chaos most of my life and stress and things like that. And about eight years ago, a little over eight years ago, I decided to do something about that. And I really started to work on myself and clean house and take care of things that were in my way that were blocking me from even being able to get to the point where I would be able to write something or even be fully present for something like this. Honestly, I mean, this journey might have started 20 years ago if I wasn't in my own way. You know, sometimes the biggest obstacles we have in our life are ourselves that is true and I can I can attest to that I think I've always been my biggest obstacle for anything that's been good in my life and

I'm always a biggest obstacle but it's because they ate too many tacos clearly goes clearly. I find myself on my way constantly like a little bit in front of the mirror. I like it. I feel you. Yeah. You didn't have to agree with me though. No, I can only see it from the mirror. That's true. I'll take that defense.

I can relate. We've all been there. We've all been there. Always need to get the hell out of her own way including that gut so what's the what's the outlook do you see future books are you working anything new um i have so many ideas that i'm like like spewing out of my head so i gotta focus my my main focus and goal right now is to really put this book out there because the response I've gotten has been phenomenal. People are just like, I couldn't put it down. Once I

started, I was flipping the pages because I just needed to know what was going to happen. And, you know, it's all you can really ask for when you write something like this. And that's when I wrote it. I wanted that kind of energy to come from it. So I'm just throwing all my eggs in the basket right now of getting this out there. And naturally, you know, when things kind of take off on their own and kind of start happening,

I'm going to circle back. Somebody mentioned that they would love to see a sequel to this, see what happens after. And I've kicked that idea around. And then I have another idea that's completely sequel to this do what happens after and i've kicked that idea around and then i have another idea that's completely unrelated to this book that's you know kind of there's a little bit of a spiritual bent to it but an adventure yeah the you know there's we have so many authors on they create these these i don't know what you call them lines or lineages of their characters

and sometimes they have multiple lineages or multiple lines of characters and plots and sometimes they even interweave the multiple different ones they have into where they cross over and i'm sure there's like a term for it but it's pretty wild and people like that one thing people really get into the characters of books you know i don't want to tell you what to do i'm just giving you suggestions but no i appreciate that yeah now if you like that kind of writing where it's there's heavy character development in this there's a lot of there's you really learn about the the characters through through past experiences that they've been through and and stuff like that you really learn a lot and and it's character very character driven and and the

storyline there's a lot of banter and dialogue between the characters because they're in a car driving to you know colorado you know there's just a lot of stuff that comes up so you learn about them in the beginning a little bit as the characters develop but then you really start to really get to know them and understand them as the time as you start to read through the book and that was the ride I wanted people to be honest Wow you know and then you understand like how these four different people that are four completely different characters have kind of connected in a way that you normally wouldn't think they would because they're all different but

yet there's a bond that's unbreakable yeah really cool how how how do you tell the story is it through each of the boys voices and views or is there a narrator over at all or yeah no thanks thanks for asking that there is a narrator out of the four boys. There is one of the characters is Scotty. And Scotty ends up being the narrator of the book. And he's a real, it's Scotty Carollo. And he's got a real New Jersey kind of way about him. He's Italian. And his dialect and his communication is what kind of brings out the dark comedy in the book. There's some really funny points in the book. There you go.

So it should be pretty interesting and a lot of fun. What was that? Stand By Me, was it? You said it was like? Sopranos meets Stand By Me. Stand By Me. That was a book that a lot of kids identified with. I mean, a lot of young men, a lot of men identified with that.

Because we used to do that, you know, as being the latchkey kids back in the day. I don't know if the kids nowadays would do that. They wouldn't be wandering through the woods finding bodies. Yeah. Well, I don't know about you, but, you know, I spent as little time in my house as possible when I was young. I was out the door as soon as I could. I didn't have a choice. My mom was like, you kids get the hell out of the house and don't come back until dinner.

Yeah, go kick a can down the street or something. We were latchkey kids. I don't think my parents even knew what I did for most of my childhood, how many miles I rode in my bike. Oh, no idea. I'd ride, like, to different counties and stuff. Yeah. Like, nowadays, what I did in a day would give most parents a freaking heart attack. Heart attack.

Where'd he go? Oh, my gosh. I know it wouldn't be, because I know, you know. But, yeah. I'd ride my bike all the time and come home bloody and i'd just be like oh yeah yeah yeah that was that was the joke too is you know you didn't come home unless you were hungry or hurt i love it you know or unless mom started calling your middle name around dinner right yeah yeah you know i heard somebody once on on facebook make a joke about how parents had to be reminded that they had kids.

That there was actually a PSA. Yeah, there was. I see it every now and then. I'm like, motherfucker. Do you know where your children are? It's 10 o'clock. Holy shit. I haven't seen them since 8 o'clock this morning.

That's right. We have children? Do we have children, Margaret? Yeah, it had Andy Warhol. It had Andy Warhol. I think David Bowie. It had all these stars on it. Cyndi Lauper, I think, was on it.

And I saw it, like, I don't know, a month or two ago. And it was pretty fucking wild. What was it? And it was the PSA of, it's 10 o'clock do you know where your children oh yeah oh and they had all these stars that were doing the psa you know and it was andy andy warhol i believe it was cindy lopper it was grace jones i think david buffett was on it like all these rock stars and famous people were like do you know where your kids are so really had to like market to like the parents to really pay attention do you know where your kids are do you know where your kids are so really had to like market to like the parents

to really pay attention do you know where your kids are do you know where your kids are i mean i would stay out as long as i could and and even then after dinner i'd go out again but we were latchkey kids but you know i my friends did all that stuff that you talk about in the book so we did the blood brothers thing where we i think we got it from tom sawyer or huckleberry finn or something is that where we got blood brothers so we cut our we cut our palms and we tied them together so we became blood brothers we did that hunting with a friend of mine i'm still friends with them to this day i'm not sure i'd die for them but our our pack send a card yeah our pact with my friends was a little less sophisticated.

It was more we were drinking Southern Comfort and smoking weed. But, you know, it still has the same impact when you're 15. There's no bloodshed. I remember it was weird because we became friends years later on. We found each other through Facebook. And I had forgotten about it. He reminded me. reminded me he goes you know we're blood brothers and i was like what and he reminded me and i was like yeah we did that in the woods huh yeah wow and but yeah the the stuff that we used to do is crazy so the great thing about books like this is they hearken back to the era they They remind us of the innocence of childhood, or maybe when we weren't so innocent at that point in childhood,

what we were gallivanting around, breaking into things. And I don't know, we were always wandering around construction sites and things. You know, Chris, you just touched on something that was another goal of this book, and you just kind of nailed it a little bit when you said you know it was such an it was such like looking back on it now it was such an innocent time it was such a pure it just felt pure to me you know the friend there was no distraction of social media there was no distraction of there might have been distractions in our homes and whatever of course you know my my life wasn't perfect and neither was anyone else's.

But that aside, we had each other and it didn't matter what was going on. We had each other. And that was like our salvation of dealing with anything else. We were like, as long as... And that innocence and that time of... It feels very pure to me. Even today, it was just hanging out, going into the woods. Like you said, I mean, I lived in a town called Oakland, New Jersey, and where this book is actually set.

I call it Oakburg in the book. But, you know, my whole backyard was nothing but woods. And we used to just get on bikes and, you know, go down to the river and hang out. And, you know, it's funny, too, because, you know, you mentioned the parents. You know, there was no plan. It was just like, we're going to go. And, you know, sometimes you end up three towns away somehow because of something. But, yeah, I mean, couldn't be more pure and free, I felt, you know.

Yeah, yeah. It was such a great time and so many memories. And it's really too bad kids don't have that experience because, you know yeah yeah it was such a great time and so many memories and and it's really too bad kids don't have that experience because you know we learned survival tools like you know how to how to how to wrap a bandage around your foot if you stepped on a nail at a construction site you know we drink out of hoses we probably god knows what we ingested with all those hose drinking and yeah i hope the water was clean back then i don't know i would never trust those water now drink out of hoses we probably god knows what we ingested with all those hose drinking and yeah i hope the water was clean back then i don't know i would never trust those water now i know that i know that in here where i'm visiting in utah they run gray water through the hoses

so they really yeah so they they're like hey don't drink that stuff they have a two different tier water system they have water for your yard and they have water for whatever else you want. At least I assume it's separate. You hope, right? Flint, Michigan, you never know. But, yeah, all that hose drinking we did, I don't know, we probably drank, I don't know, a hundred bugs and spiders and who knows what else. I mean, sometimes you just drink from that hose like you'd come across the desert.

It was weird. You just walk into people's homes. Walk right up to their house. I know. Like today, forget about it. You get shot if you did it today, like in Texas or someplace. You get shot. What are you doing?

Stealing my water out of my hose. It's free. You ever watch Sebastian Maniscaliscakel no yeah that the comedian no i probably have seen his stuff i'm bad with names i'm good with faces yeah he's does a he does a whole bit about when he was growing up and somebody came to somebody popped over it came to the house it was you know it was an event it was company people are here right oh my god get get out the senka and the etmans and and and then he he says now today when someone rings the door bell it's like everybody get down who's here invite anybody did you invite anybody did you

invite somebody what's going on here who's at our door yeah different time these days yeah i mean even if you got hurt like i remember like sometimes i'd be somewhere in a neighborhood that wasn't my own and you know if i like you know trashed my bike or got hurt or whatever i could knock on somebody's door and ask to use their phone and call my mother you know hey you know and they are and then they would take out their own bandages and clean it up and make sure you were okay you know like just such a special special time and there's a lot of that there's a lot of that tone in the book that's great that's great that's good memories yeah people were more helpful back then i mean you could be nowadays you could be dying bleeding out on

someone's front porch and they're never gonna open open the door. I remember one time in Utah, in the small town I lived in, they would just pour oil on the roads and then they'd just dump gravel down and then just let the heat and whatever soak it into the road. And they just put the new gravel down. And I was riding my bike with a bunch of newspapers and the newspaper bag went up into the fork somehow and i endowed the bike oh yeah i was moving at top speed because this is a bmx bike that i spent a lot of money on so i fell onto my side and was sliding through this gravel across and i was

moving so fast and there was a lot of papers with me too i literally slid across the whole intersection it was a small street but it was a basically the whole end to end and then i had to jump up there's a car bearing down to me and throw me and my bike into a ditch and so i get up and i literally have gravel embedded into my elbows my knees and probably other parts but basically it was so far embedded into the flesh that you could run your hand over it and it wouldn't come out it was like still like really in there oh my god and i i basically just ran on all fours knees and elbows across the across drug across this thing yeah took half the gravel with me and so i crawled up to the nearest house which was these little ladies this retired lady and an old man and they had their porch open and i looked like somebody who

walked in off zombie land yeah i had had a long sleeve shirt on, thank God. I don't know what it did. Everything is hanging off me and torn open. I suppose if there had been more zombie movies back then, they would have been Walking Dead. Right, he's coming. They were really nice. They helped me out.

They called my parents. That was a fun trip to the ER room to run up my parents' bills. They hate me ever since. Countless times, man. Countless times. It's funny we lived through it all. Oh, my God. How many times I wiped out doing jumps.

You know, remember creating those wood jumps? We did everything to get air. Everything was about getting more air. Not very well constructed. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was always like that. I mean, I crashed my bike. I crashed my bike so many times I became artistic at crashing.

Like my crashes would move in slow motion. They would slowly. They wouldn't just be like, boom, you crash. I'd be controlling them in the crash. But in the end, you'd wipe out. But yeah, you're always jumping off of something. You like how much air can we get how high can we go and then we had the ramps the freestyle ramps where you go up the one side and you take air and you come back down the other whether you're on the bike or not yeah absolutely those are great days we there should we should pass a law that every kid has to go through that experience, I think.

They at least need to get a little road rash. A little road rash. You know? None of this helicopter parenting crap. Ride a bike and hit a pothole and upend and feel that experience just once or twice in their life. You haven't lived until you've endoed a bike. Oh, my God. Into your face.

I used to go down this hill in Oakland. It's called Yopo, and it's like a hill like this. And we used to get, so I'd have one guy standing on the axle of the back wheel. And then another person on the handlebars. And the three of us would fly down this i mean going like you wouldn't even believe like just insanity man one fraction off and we were goners no helmets no pads no nothing just that's the stuff that we were doing when our parents were home not even knowing what the heck we were up to you know do we have kids do we yeah should we you know what is this tv commercial telling us we should look for our

kids what's that about that's right yeah you know you have kids when all of a sudden the the you know the the ambulance is called and you have to meet them at the hospital. Oh, yeah. Oh, we have kids? The hospital called. Don't return their calls. Don't return their calls. Just let it ring through. Put on the voicemail. Yeah, let them stay there a couple days.

That's what I do. I just figure they'll get adopted there at the hospital if you leave them long enough. That's what happened to my kids. So it's been fun to have you on the show. Give us your final thoughts and pitch outs. Tell people where they can order the book on the interwebs and of course dot coms for you absolutely yeah the book is is definitely an adventure it's fun it's a quick read you can find it on amazon and kindle paperback or on audible which by the way they just want to mention the audible narrator

this guy anthony ziello it, and he's just phenomenal. Brings Scotty to life like you wouldn't believe. He really got the New Jersey dialect down. My website will be up within the next day or two. But it's Mark Medding, M-E-D-I-N-G, M-A-R-K-M-E-D-I-N-G, author.com. And that's it. You know, I think you'll enjoy it. If you can relate to the stories and the growing up and the friendships and everything, then

this book is for you. Absolutely. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you having me.

There you go. Thanks for tuning in. As always, folks, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. The Jersey Death Squad, A Journey to Kill Jesse Freeman. Out May 1st, 2024. And watch for more good stuff to come from Mark Medding. Thanks so much for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you guys next time. Thank you.