The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Night Island (The Lost Night Files) by Jayne Ann Krentz

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

The Night Island (The Lost Night Files) by Jayne Ann Krentz https://amzn.to/3U12YH1 The disappearance of a mysterious informant leads two people desperate for answers to an island of deadly deception in this new novel in the Lost Night Files trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz. Talia March, Pallas Llewellyn, and Amelia Rivers, bonded by a night none of them can remember, are dedicated to uncovering the mystery of what really happened to them months ago—an experience that amplified innate psychic abilities in each of them. The women suspect they were test subjects years earlier, and that there are more people like them—all they have to do is find the list of others who took that same test. When Talia follows up on a lead from Phoebe, a fan of the trio’s podcast, she discovers that the informant has vanished. Talia isn’t the only one looking for Phoebe, however. Luke Rand, a hunted and haunted man who is chasing the same list that Talia is after, also shows up at the meeting place. It’s clear he has his own agenda, and they are instantly suspicious of each other. But when a killer begins to stalk them, they realize they have to join forces to find Phoebe and the list. The rocky investigation leads Talia and Luke to a rustic, remote retreat on Night Island in the Pacific Northwest, where the Unplugged Experience promises to rejuvenate guests. Upon their arrival, Talia and Luke discover they are quite literally cut off from the outside world when none of their high-tech devices work on the island. It soon becomes clear that Phoebe is not the first person to disappear into the strange gardens that surround the Unplugged Experience retreat. And then the first mysterious death occurs. . . . About the author The author of over 50 New York Times bestsellers, JAYNE ANN KRENTZ writes romantic-suspense in three different worlds: Contemporary (as Jayne Ann Krentz), historical (as Amanda Quick) and futuristic (as Jayne Castle). There are over 35 million copies of her books in print.

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 roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for being a part of the show.

As always, we have the most amazing authors on the show, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the billionaires, the CEOs, the White House presidential advisors, you name it. We have the smartest people on the show. And the reason we do is because none of them are me. I'm the idiot boy with the mic. And that's the only way I got on this show. So that's how you do it.

That's why people start podcasting, think that explains some things anyway guys we have an amazing multi-book prolific author you're going to be excited to hear from joining us on the show for her new book in her series but in the meantime we have to beg plead grumble you know we got to pay some bills around here please refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss linkedin.com fortress chris Goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. YouTube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Chris Voss 1 on the tickety-tockety and ChrisVossFacebook.com. She is the author of the latest book to come out January 9th, 2024.

Here we are. Wow. 2024. It is called The Night Island, part of the Lost Night Files. Jane Ann Krentz joins us on the show today, and she is the author of 50 plus New York Times bestsellers. That's really hard to do, folks. She writes romantic suspense in three different worlds, contemporary, historical, and futuristic. And she's got, I'm going to call this 35 million plus copies of her book in print. She told me she lost count long time ago. And yeah, I mean, she just pumps out great books and that's it. That's all you need to know. Buy the new one.

Jean, welcome to the show. How are you? I am great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. This is really fun. Authors don't get out much, you know. That's true. And we try to make the show really fun and informative and make people laugh. So we're glad to have you as well. Congratulations on the new book. And give us a 30,000 overview of what's in the new... The elevator pitch, right? There you go the thing i'm worst at but the premise i can tell you is that three women walked into a abandoned hotel thinking they were there for a job interview and they wake up the next morning in the middle of an earthquake and a fire and they have no memory of what happened

to them during the night that's fridays around here. There you go. But they realize they've got psychic powers they did not have before they went into this hotel. Nobody believes them, of course. So they decide to get the answers for themselves. And what do they do? They start a podcast. I mean, what else would you do, right?

Serious? Wow. Alright, there you go. I started mine without any psychic powers. I'm jealous now. But now you have them. Joy? I think the beauty of the podcast story is that, in a way, it's our modern version of the amateur sleuth. Yeah.

It's the whodunit. I think people have always loved that story. Yeah. The Hardy Boys and who are the girls? And I think there was the hardy boys there was the amateur sluice when in when i was growing up as a kid and i think there's a girl's version yeah yeah they were yeah and there's miss marple and it goes from there it's yeah there you go so the pi story the private investor it's it's basically the private investigator story without

the license ah there you go. Licenses are expensive anyway. They're rated. So this is part two or book two of the series, The Lost Knight Files. Tell us what The Lost Knight Files series is about. It's a trilogy. There were three women involved in this incident that happened, and each one is getting their own story. And in the end, which is what I'm writing now, I'm going to try and pull it all together.

This is when all those great ideas you had along the way, you suddenly have to actually make sense out of. That describes my life. I'm still working on the making sense part. And so The Lost Knight Files, are these the same characters through both books? Well, each heroine kind of takes the front four stage, the stage with her romance and her her individual mystery. Each each story has its own in in-house mystery, so to speak, or a mystery that's solved within the confines of that of that story.

And then there's this overarching story. Yeah, I don't do this at home. It's really, it's not the smartest way to make a living. I actually, when I realized I was, I got the instructions for your show and all the advice to generate lots of good energy. How much coffee did you have before the show?

Coffee. I finally, I finally sat down and figured the only thing people ever want to know from authors is how to get published right yeah yeah and now you don't even need to know that because anybody can publish a book themselves online however however i did come up with a list of yes six handy dandy tips to surviving as an author so so if the show lags call on me and i'll i'll give you a tip or two all right sounds good we'll we'll use you for that so what tell us a little bit for those who are not familiar with you let's lay a foundation let's introduce you to them tell us about your

past growing up what led you to want to be a writer motivated you getting this into this sphere and geez you you're you're all over the place with different genres or different futuristic, past, future. I think you're multidimensional, I guess, in that sense. Are you working on that too? Tell us all about that, how you got down this road. Well, I think I just blundered my way into it, which is the way most authors kind of get there. Basically, I was always a reader. And I think a lot of authors will tell you that, that they were heavy library users back in the day. But I think there comes a point at which you want to tell the story, whatever the story is that attracts you. And everybody's got a core story, I think. You want to tell that story your way. And when that happens, that's the turn back.

Turn back before it's too late. Save yourself. But if the need hits and you're into it, it becomes an addiction, doesn't it? I mean, you just got to get it down. That's how I got into cocaine. So there you go. So you stumbled into it. How did you know you were good at it?

And it was, you know, because some people try and be writers like me and they suck at it but people still buy the books but how did you know you were good at this is your thing you found your was it was there any you know some people will put out a few books and nothing hits and they sometimes have to find the right character or formation or the right vehicle did you go through any of that yeah i think everybody does it's even whether you're going through indie publishing or new york publishing there's a lot of rejection involved in one in one format or another and most people if they can't quit they do yeah then there's editing that's a whole new level of rejection. You know, you hand them 50,000 words and they hand back like one page and they go, this is the good part. Well, remember your job as the writer is to tell the story. And nothing else can substitute for that.

And nobody else can substitute for that. So telling the story is my main goal. And when I'm happy with it, I I think we write for ourselves first is that how it is for you I am I mean I I don't care about anyone else I gave up a long time don't worry about it I'm like that's kind of where I came to at the eve of the publish of my book I I sat down I went you know what I don't give a I'm just not even gonna care if anybody likes this book or not I wrote my story it It's on paper. I don't have to tell the stories anymore.

People are like, hey, what is the story of your life? Go read this stupid book. I don't have to deal with it anymore. I'm just like, I don't care. The great thing about a book is it's there for all eternity or however long Amazon stays in business. It is now. That's for sure. I think the power comes from

telling the story first for yourself. You just have to hope like heck that enough people can get into it and stay with it to buy the books. There's really nothing you can do to make people like your stuff. And people, well, you can hold a gun to their

head too, that works, but don't do that, people. That's just a joke. It's a small way to build an audience, a slow way to build an audience. Very slow way to build an audience, and you have to dodge the police too. But no, I mean, like we always say on the show, stories are the owner's manual to life. And whether it's fiction, nonfiction, TV, movies, books, the story is the ways we learn, you know, and we educate ourselves and we learn to look at things. Maybe we already know them. We look at things from different paradigms and different glasses and different colors and different mixtures. And, you know, they, I mean,

that's why I do the show. And even after thousands of interviews, I mean, every show I have an epiphany. I, I'm able to look at things from different viewpoints and go, huh, that's interesting. But you know what? I think that's an important point. It actually happens to be one on my list of six points, which is that people ask you, where do you get the idea, right? How do you do it? But don't you think it comes from curiosity? We start just asking questions.

And that's how the story starts to come together you start looking for answers and that's that's how you build a story there you go you know i'm working on my second book right now and i've been really stuck partially it's like different ways i want to go and i'm writing non-fiction so i actually have to i it's i should just go do fiction because fiction seems like i don't know that it would be easier, but at least I can just make up crap. With nonfiction, I have to actually live in reality and facts and crap. But I recently was stuck and so I sat down and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to start asking questions of what I would ask the executives

and business people that I want to talk to about this or that I want to talk about. And so I kind of wrote down all these questions and it really helped open up a dam that was blocking me. So you're right. Those questions are really important. Yeah. I'm firmly convinced that's where the energy comes from. Yeah. And then I haven't written since I wrote the questions down. We'll see how that turns out. So tell us about some of your other books in your book series. Are you going to keep staying on the Lost Files line, or are you going to hop around to some other buildups that you have? Now, this is a trilogy, so it's got a beginning and an end,

and then I'll be moving on. But I will say that I have a core story, and that core story is basically romantic suspense. I can't plot without a murder or two. And my relationships in the stories are always founded on the risk of trust. So the two things that keep coming up in my work again and again aside from a basic plot that that's a mystery plot are issues of trust and issues of reinvention. My characters are always in the process of having to reinvent themselves for whatever reason. Life has gone downhill fast and

they've got to survive and those two themes are just whatever setting I use, whatever characters I write, those two themes, I look back and it's always there. There you go. Trust and murder. Have you seen a therapist about that? I've seen them and they've seen me. So do you know what book you're going to go back to? Have you written the third book yet?

I'm writing the third book now. There you go. So you got it all mapped out in your head. You got it laid out. No. I don't write that way. I wish I did. But you know what?

I don't get my best ideas until I'm actually writing. I've tried to outline up front. I've tried my best to do a complete synopsis. Then I start writing the book. Did you find the same thing in nonfiction? Yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone's like, write a synopsis. I'm like, I'm just going to barf on the page and figure it all out later. That's what I did. What was funny was I had a book accountability group and everyone tried to edit and make sure all the commas were in the right place as they went. And I just spewed it all. I just let it all hang out for, and that

worked. And, and I think that to me, I know I hate people that can do that. I don't know about you, but I look down on them and discuss, I don't, I don't, I'm just kidding. But you know, doing it your way where you, you know, there's you, you can, you can, you can work with the flow and it can build the story. I'm stuck on ergonomic, but it can build a story in the flow of things and you can go. We do the same thing with the show. We don't really have, like people say, can you sense the questions? Like we don't really work that way. We kind of see, okay, we try and build the questions out to the flow of the show.

And so, I don't know, does that sound accurate? Yeah. No, I think different people work different ways. I have author friends who absolutely can outline and stick to that outline right to the very end. I think that would be very handy. Handy talent to have, wouldn't it? Because then you don't have to sweat every day when you get up about what you're going to write that day. There's a lot of anxiety in my approach.

Those guys are just missing all the fun. Yeah. And adventure. That's how I'm thinking of it. So what do you find usually inspires you through the day? Maybe if you're a little stuck or you're working on something, but it won't quite push through for a concept or idea, what do you find helps you get unstuck? I think it's a mistake to think about the whole project. It's overwhelming. I go from scene to

scene and I think of scenes and chapters really, which which are my chapters are fairly short, maybe one scene or two scenes max. And really, chapters have come down to scenes for me. And for me, that's a short story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And I find that very satisfying to think of it that way, because then I'm not thinking about the whole overwhelming story that I have to write. And I'll just make this part work today. There you go. Eat the elephant one bite at a time, I like to call it. Just one bite, chew it, and you wake up one day

and you're the elephant. You've ate the whole elephant. I like that. I'm not big on elephant meat, mind you, but I do it. Right now the vegans are writing me. But no, i love that analogy any any time where there's business writing or anything i i do you know i'll get overwhelmed i'm i don't know if it's a depression thing or whatever but i'll get that overwhelming

thing you're just like oh my god this thing and you're just like just start eating the the the you know the the giant tree one bite at a time. Wait, vegans are going to hate me for that too. Damn it, I can't win. No, you're going to lose. Just don't go there, Chris. I don't think there's any way to win that one. So what's your writing process?

We kind of alluded to it a little bit, but do you write in the morning? Do you write at night? Do you try and force a certain time period that you write? I'm a morning person, one of those annoying morning people. And that's my energy for the day. If I don't do it in the morning, it probably won't get done, sadly. I think the afternoons work for things like research or maybe putting together some ideas for the next day. But the creative part is going to be in the morning or not at all.

There you go. There are bad days. Yeah. Did you have to do any research, go to any islands for research or anything like that? Maybe did you have one? No, I'm serious. Like, did you have one in mind? Well, I live in Seattle and the San Juans where this takes place are off just out there nearby.

And a lot of them are basically just rocks with trees on them with nothing on them. So they made a perfect location for a leftover and now closed down government experimental laboratory. And I love to plot with the psychic vibe. For those out there who are thinking, oh, she writes paranormal, I do. But I want to be clear that I don't do the psychic vibe. For those out there who are thinking, oh, she writes paranormal, I do. But I want to be clear

that I don't do the supernatural version. I don't do witches. I don't do ghosts. I don't do vampires. But I do like the psychic vibe. And I think it's because I think it was just one step beyond intuition. And we've all got some version of intuition

and it isn't hard to make the leap to the next level of intuition and so my characters often the plot often involves a psychic vibe and i went to do you're talking about research so you go to do the research on this paranormal in america and you up the cupboard, it just comes falling out. It's like, there is no telling how much money the government spent chasing paranormal energy, trying to figure out how to harness it, trying to figure out how they could make psychic spies. I mean, it just, it went from the 1930s. It didn't shut down until the 70s. And I wouldn't put money that it hasn't, that it's still going in some clandestine way.

There's probably something to that. Well, the Russians were into it. I mean, it wasn't like it was just a few crazies running around. It was considered a serious avenue of science to pursue so you know what's funny is i wish it was still on my desk i threw it away to prove it but last night i went to dinner and there somebody put a little psychic flyer for a psychic on the window of my car and i and i posted on facebook and i wrote the joke i'm like shouldn't the psychic use their powers to know that there was wrong marketing to put it on my car because I'm going to toss this?

Like that one psychic chick who used to have that TV show and she filed bankruptcy. It's like, did she see that coming? I know, the classic joke. Why didn't she see that coming? So what got you interested in psychics and stuff was there any anything in your childhood or growing up or anything in a vague way um in a in a gentle way i guess i would say my mom was a a hippie before hippies were a thing right into yoga before anybody else was into yoga into meditation before yeah that kind of thing and she also she always

had a profound belief that um we put out energy into the world and there's energy out there and some of it's bad and some of it's good and when i think about it i can i can the logic i could come to is the energy in music which doesn't actually touch us but we all know it has energy and frequencies yeah yeah and the energy that we feel in other people i mean how many times do we say i don't want to be around them they just bring me down low energy bad energy their negative energy i need positive people that kind of my first 10 divorces and you you learned something from this, right? No. Oh, okay. That's why there was 10.

Slow learner. I like that joke. I can't help you there. You set me up perfectly on that one. Thank you. Thank you. That's why there was 10. That's what I do. I'm the guest that sets you up for the joke.

That's why I get the big bucks. We make a great team. We're going on the road. There you go. Now, throughout your books, have you always used psychics, That's why I get the big bucks. We make a great team. We're going on the road. There you go. Now, throughout your books, have you always used psychics, or is it just for this series? Not always, but in the past few years, I've been leaning more and more in that direction.

Have you ever gone to one? No, I don't actually believe in them. It's fiction, Chris. It's fiction. I don't know. I mean, you know, you're kind of hijacking their industry. Maybe you should, I don't know. Respectfully.

I do it respectfully. There you go. There you go. But maybe you should just go to one for fun. Maybe you should go to one and say, hey, I bet you can't guess the plot of my next book. It turns out they've got five of my books in the back room, and they know exactly what I write. Crystal ball. I can see your cover's red.

So there you go. You're like, whoa, holy crap. Man, I don't know. Maybe I should start writing about psychics. I do think that probably the trick with being a good psychic is somebody who can really read another person, read the clothes, read the expression, read the body language. You can do a lot with that, even without being a psychic.

I can. I take them on first dates to figure out what kind of mess I'm getting into, and then they can interpret for me too. Yeah, he's really broken. But I just usually carry a red flag with me on first dates, so that works out well. So any of your other series we want to plug that maybe you you you do you know what you want to go to once you complete the third book well whatever my

contract says wow and fundamentally chris this is a business true yeah i i have three names that i currently write under and that was tip number six on my list, which is don't do it. Do not use pen names. Go back. Save yourself. This is bad, bad, bad. I wound up with several pen names, and I use them because now I can use them

to delineate which worlds I'm writing in, the futuristic world or the historical world or the contemporary world. But in this day and age, you just cannot build three brands like that. You need to consolidate. And for an author, that means don't disrupt the flow with lots of different names. I can't tell you how many new authors want to do that. So they can write one thing under one name and one thing under another name. But my advice is don't go there.

There you go. We had one author on who's really prolific like yourself, and she had written a lot of romance novels under one name, and then she got bored with it or something, and she's like, I want to write historical fiction, but without the sex on the beach every five pages sort of thing. And romance novels. And so she did that, and she used a different name.

And I guess eventually her whole fan base figured it out, and now it's a conundrum. Yeah, what would happen if she just stuck with the name? You're going to lose some fans while you pick up a new audience. I think they love her. They just figured out that, oh, she's over here now. We'll buy her books. But now she has to walk around being two people. But for me, that's multiple personalities.

The thing that really holds an audience, it pulls an audience and holds an audience, is the voice. And a lot of readers will follow that voice anywhere. They just like the storytelling voice and the nearest way i can explain it is think about audio and if you know if you're if you know people who read audio all the time they'll tell you the narrator makes or breaks the story yeah it does it does that's how it and when you're writing, that's your voice, and it makes or breaks your story or your career. You've given me epiphany that that's why people do that. People love great storytellers, and they love the voice that's in the story.

I always thought that was kind of, I never gave it much thought. And when I was writing my book, I had someone who had my voice and knew me very well who wrote for who's did the editing and I had a few friends that were professional editors and they're like hey yeah we want to edit the book Chris you know we know you were friends on Facebook blah blah blah and so I'm like well here's a page here have fun with it and show me what you could do I guess I don't really understand this whole voice thing and boy they wrote it and it sounded like number one it was in a female voice it did not sound like any of me and my stories are in the book and that's when it really hit me like a ton of bricks I'm like I think I think I think of it

like a I think of it like an accent you don't really hear it yourself but everybody else does and then when you saw it changed you recognized it so that was a that was actually a good learning experience a lot of authors never make that connection they just think they're doing it all wrong there you go it's like when i was it's like when i was young for the first half of my life where i didn't know i was stupid but everybody else knew i haven't so there you go so what do you hope people from the book gene and what do you hope readers come away from with a good story with a solid romantic relationship and a solid plot the definition of romantic suspense for me is that you can't lift out one element and not

and have a story left you can't take out the romance and not, and have a story left. You can't take out the romance and still have a coherent story. And you can't take out the mystery and have a coherent story. And that's what separates it from mysteries or suspense with a romantic element in the background. And you know you could lift it out and it wouldn't mess up the story.

And it's what separates romance that has a slight mystery going on in the background. It really is its own genre, romantic suspense. I've been addicted to it since Nancy Drew, and that's what I write. Is that what got you interested in the field was Nancy Drew? Probably, yeah. There you go. There you go.

There you go. Awesome. Romance and murder. Once again, sounds like my first 10 marriages. So there you go. Give us your.com, Jane Once again, sounds like my first 10 marriages. So there you go. GiveUsYour.com, Jane. Where can people find you on the interwebs? JaneAnnKrentz.com.

There you go. Thank you very much for coming to the show. It's been a lot of fun to have you on and great. And please come back for your future books. We'd love to have you. I would love to. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And thanks, Manas, for tuning in. Order up her book wherever fine books are sold. The Night Island, The Lost Knight Files, book number two. It's so important you read that first one, too. Get both of them. Get all of them, damn it. Just order all of her books on Amazon. I think you should be able to press a button for that, can't you?

I don't know. That should be legal. Good plan. There you go. Came out January 9th, 2024. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, all those crazy places. We're on the internet. Be good to

each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. That should have us out.