The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh https://amzn.to/3SOAIXI In this chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh, a remote estate in New Zealand’s Southern Alps hosts a reunion no one will ever forget. Seven friends. One last weekend. A mansion half in ruins. No room for lies. Someone is going to confess. Because there should have been eight. . . . They met when they were teenagers. Now they’re adults, and time has been kind to some and unkind to others—none more so than to Bea, the one they lost nine long years ago. They’ve gathered to reminisce at Bea’s family’s estate, a once-glorious mansion straight out of a gothic novel. Best friends, old flames, secret enemies, and new lovers are all under one roof. But when the weather turns and they’re snowed in at the edge of eternity, there’s nowhere left to hide from their shared history. As the walls close in, the pretense of normality gives way to long-buried grief, bitterness, and rage. Underneath it all, there’s the nagging feeling that Bea’s shocking death wasn’t what it was claimed to be. And before the weekend is through, the truth will be unleashed—no matter the cost. . . .

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.

Thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, folks. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate having you guys on the show and being a part of it as well. As always, the show that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least on its heart, is the show that loves you but doesn't judge you because she never does. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. She's a multi-book author and has written some amazing stories.

She's going to blow your mind with her latest one that she's come out with. It's coming up November 21st, 2023. You'll be able to pre-order it and get a product. Be the first to read it as well. Under editor's pick is Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense, which is what we call Fridays around here at the Chris Foss Show. In the meantime, we just encourage you to go to referring your friends, family, neighbors, relatives. Find, just stop people on the street and say, have you subscribed to the Chris Foss Show?

You know, that might not be a good thing to do, like in places like New York. But if you're in a nice homely place, you know, like, like, I don't know, Montana or something might be okay to stop and say that. And if you're, if you ask nicely, people will do whatever you say. I think pretty much, um, tell them to go to goodreads.com for it says Christmas, youtube.com for it says Christmas, linkedin.com for it says Christmas, Christmas one on the tickety-tockety and chrisfossfacebook.com. She is the author of the newest book, as we aforementioned. November 21st, 23 is coming out. There Should Have Been Eight.

Oh, boy, that's a cliffhanger of a title. By Nalini Singh. She joined us on the show. It's talked about her latest book. She was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. She spent three years living and working in Japan where she took the chance to travel around Asia. She now lives in New Zealand and is always plotting new trips and probably new trips

with her book. If you'd like to see some of her travel snapshots, you can look at her travel diary page. She's worked at a lawyer as a lawyer, a librarian, a candy factory general hand, a bank tip, an English teacher, but not necessarily in that order. Some might call that inconsistency, but I call it, or she calls it, grist for the writer's mill. That's the one thing about authors and writers. life stories and things that they go through through life who can help shape them where they can pull great subject data and plots and twists and characters, et cetera, et cetera. Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great.

Thank you for having me on your show, Chris. Thanks for coming, Nalini. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? So the best place is my website, nalinysingh.com. On social media, I am on Instagram and Facebook under author Nalini Singh. I do have a Twitter handle, but I haven't been active on there for a few years, so it's not a great place to chat to me. But yeah, Facebook

and Instagram, yeah, I am on there quite regularly. There you go. And you have quite the epic authorship going on. How many books do you have? I think it's over 50. I actually have to count. Holy crap. And it covers a lot of different genres, doesn't it? Yeah.

So I started with straight contemporary romance. So this year is actually my 20th anniversary in publishing in terms of my published books. So my very first book was published in 2003. And so I started in straight contemporary romance. Then I moved into paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance. And now I also write straight thrillers based in new zealand so which so i've got three of them now which you can see behind me there you go yeah thrillers now are these all standalones for the most part yes these are all standalones i um so i write i'm known for running writing long series and romance and my brain is full of series.

So I decided to write just standalone thrillers and, um, challenge myself with that. And it's been really fun just having just a self-contained world, um, you know, within each book. Ah, there you go i even see on amazon it's teasing out a blank kind of a blank uh just text based uh book cover here for you i believe your upcoming book in july 23 2024 primal mirror yes yes that's part of my side changing series so yeah that's next year yeah you cover all the gambits i'm looking down the list of your website when it says books, and it's got thrillers, rock kiss series, hard play series, audio books, internationally silhouette desire, printable book list.

That's probably what I need at this point. So there you go. So what made you want to write this latest book? And tell us a 30,000 overview of what's inside. So I love thrillers, first of all. I love thrillers and mysteries and even in my romance there's quite often a thread of mystery and um but this particular book and the previous two thrillers I've written is really deeply inspired by the New Zealand landscape and it's very beautiful um and it has a lot of remote spaces you know empty spaces um and i remember a few years ago a bunch of us writers were having a conversation about why you know you got nordic noir um you know these sort of dark room mysteries set in the nordic

countries why not new zealand noir because we kind of fill all the criteria. And so it's a little bit of that. But yeah, just definitely the environment deeply inspires me. This particular book is set in an alpine area that we travel through. And it's stunning. It's just astonishingly beautiful. All golden grasses, white snow-capped mountains. Not a human in sight. And at one point, we saw a sign for coffee,

so we just turned off the road to check out this coffee place in the middle of nowhere, and it just kept going and going. Never turn off the road. Never turn off the road. And we're like, this is a horror movie right now. So that sort of really inspired me for this book because i thought what if you turned off and you know what's at the end of the road so this this particular book is about um a group of high school and university friends so originally they were eight um and when

they meet up for this sort of reunion you know they know, they're sort of in their late 20s. One is missing. And the whole story is what happened to the eighth one. What happened to number eight? Hence the title, There Should Have Been Eight. Yeah, I learned not to drive down off the main road into back roads after I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hey, there's a shortcut over there stay on the main road there right that's always the that's always one of the themes of many horror movies stay on the main

never get off the main road never leave the pack either um so there you go uh so uh as you delved into the book um how how did you pick your characters? Why did you pick seven teenagers or eight teenagers, technically? What made you land on that number, maybe? It just came very naturally. I had the protagonist,

the main person whose eyes we see the story straight away. So she was just a very, very strong character in my mind. And, you know, the first line of the book is, but I'm afraid of the dark. And then we find out that she's going blind. What? Yeah. And, you know, she's afraid of the dark.

So she was just this super powerful character, you know, emotionally, there's a lot there. And then she just brought everyone along with her. Like, as I explored her, I just found these other people that were really important parts of her life. And we just ran with the story from there. And with my writing, I like to go a little bit into the dark and see where the characters take me even though your character is afraid of the dark yeah so it it was i mean this book has a little bit of a gothic element to it you know they're in this ruined mansion there's there's sort of creepy passageways and things going on in the walls and um yeah and yeah the characters just just all fit they they came

together and it just felt like a friend group that would exist and um yeah there you go how do you do you feel like this book is departed or improved uh not not to say that your writing needs improvement but you know writers evolve and and uh and and develop their work and their craft uh how would you say this maybe differs uh from your other books i think in terms i would say in terms of my thrillers i feel like i really hit my stride in the thriller space with this book like it feels very strongly a thriller my very first one I wrote had, you know, an element of romance in it. A very thin thread.

It was mostly, you know, suspense. And then the next one got more thrillerly. I'm just making up that word. Thrillerly. Okay, poeticalizes. You can do what you want. You're an author. Yeah.

And I feel like with this book, I really hit the beats of the genre. You know, it does have that sort of slowly creepy element so it's not that kind of pulse pounding thriller it's the kind of thriller where it builds slowly to a crescendo and then hopefully grips the reader by the throat and yeah grips the reader by the throat. That's the first time I've heard an author say that. So you were going for it there. I am going for it.

There's a few surprises in this book. With no holding back. I love it. So you like setting areas in New Zealand and stuff. Was there any mansions that you'd seen in New Zealand that kind of flipped you on to this or did you just kind of come up with it out of your head from commagulation of different experiences? Yeah, it's more amalgamation. So it's not based on

one particular building I saw. So I saw this beautiful sort of Victorian era type places or very aged kind of buildings in very good condition. But I also saw some really sort of run down, ruined structures in the back country. And I kind of amalgamated it all together. What if it was kind of ruined and nobody bothered to fix the burned section but the other half is still habitable and so they just decide to make an adventure out of it and stay in this place in this really beautiful landscape in this sort of mansion that has a very dark history because you

know things happened in that fire that's marked the building so so yeah it was it's taking pieces of what i see and putting it all together to create you know this fictional place there you go i learned that from scooby-doo and uh never going to the the bad side of the mansion stay in the good side where the lights work you know and things don't go bump in the night if you will uh so there you go uh what are some other elements we haven't talked about that you were excited to put in the book that you think will uh we can tease out to readers um so i love working with secrets you know in the history of people i i think you know people are so fascinating you can make a house as scary as you can but if you don't have interesting characters to take you through that house it will fall flat and so it's the complexity

of the characters that really makes it and it's trying to see behind the mask people wear you know everyone has a distinct personality they have maybe with their significant other or with their best friends or with people they don't like and it's like which masks are these people wearing are they actually friends you know and it's it's really really fun to peel that back and find out who is actually showing their true self and who isn't and who is maybe you know got a Jekyll and hyde thing going on so um it's really really interesting for me as a writer to write those characters um and i like reading them too in other people's books there you go there you go secrets and uh maybe a little

backstabbing or uh betrayal in the book yeah absolutely. In a haunted house or something. A very disturbed house. But also, you know, there's a balance to it because they did start as friends. All of them. So there are some very warm memories and I think it provides a stark contrast

to what's going on now in this cold. You know, they're trapped in this house because the weather turns. So I got the idea for this we had a polar blast one spring and it's you know new zealand's really close to antarctica um and so sometimes we get a polar blast coming off antarctica and it just freezes the country basically so we had this one spring and the south island got snow like in the middle of spring and everything you know shut down and um so this is what happens in this book they end up in this unseasonable seasonable snowstorm and so they're trapped in this place and it's so cold and it's dark and the heating's gone and and it's a contrast to the hazy summer memories they

have together as you know as teenagers so it's it's it just shows how life can change people and um and also just from a fun perspective it's really interesting to work with weather in a thriller because i think in a thriller where that can make such a big difference to the feel of the book. What would you say the favorite part of your writing process was when you were writing it? Oh, I really liked that initial phase of just super intense, just trying to find out what's going on because I like to surprise myself as

well. So I love that, that part. And so that what I call the skeleton draft, you know, the, it needs, it is just the bare bones of the book and then fleshing it out that those

two parts are my favorite, probably in even ways. That initial burst, and then they're just sitting there and intensely crafting the book so that the skeleton becomes not only a skeleton, you know, has flesh. It has all the elements you need for a book. Do you think you're going to stick with the thriller genre, or are you going to flip back and forth between the different genres you've written in and just kind of keep it doing what you want? Yeah, I like having both. Like right now I'm doing a lot of romance and also doing the thrillers and I'm really enjoying that.

And I think I will probably just keep flipping back and forth because i enjoy i i feel like it refreshes my brain each time i do something yeah like instead of just doing one thing the whole time i switch and then i get a whole new burst of energy because it's completely different writing experience um i'm doing different kinds of research. I'm working with different kinds of characters. And it's just, it's, yeah. And then when I closed the chapter one, I moved to the next one. And it's, again, it's, wow, this is new again. This is something different.

So, yeah, I'll keep doing that. There you go. You're just moving between them all and keeping it fresh. We hear that a lot from authors like yourself that have different strains or threads going where they can, you know, they can play on different ones and then you go over here and then come back to it and, you know, it refreshes you, fills back up your bucket, if you will.

So I know you mentioned that you hope it grips readers by the throat. What do you hope readers come out with it at the end? I guess the same sort of a throat, a throat, a throat mark of the grip. Maybe just a bit of a pounding heart because what happened or I think the end, I hope it makes them think because,

but in a good way, it's in the way where you wonder at the end of a movie like did that just happen and then you think about it and you go back and you rewind and you rewatch it and I hope they reread the end and makes them want to reread the end because there's something in there that I feel is really interesting. I don't want to spoil it, but yeah, I hope it gives them that, oh, what did I just read? And then go back and check. Did that really happen? Those make the best movies and plots and stuff.

This sounds like it might make a great movie too. I actually think it would make a really good movie because it's basically a locked room mystery, except the mystery is the locked room is this house that they're trapped in so it's it's you know it's got that claustrophobic feel and it's got these um these people you know that's very limited number of people and one of them has done something so it would make i think a movie. You know, very atmospheric as well because of the location. Yeah, so if there's any, you know, producers listening to this, you know, call me.

Please reach out. Yeah, I imagine the isolation element is a big part of it. And as you said, you know, being in a small space. But imagine the isolation. You know, you can't call for help. You're in the middle of nowhere you're down the deserted road yeah i mean it's so fun to play with the isolation elements because in this case um they need medical help at one point but there's no way to get it because even the helicopters can't fly in that weather like they're you know the air ambulance can't get to you and there's they're

so remote that you know the nearest fire station is like some distance away so even if they somehow get out a message no one's going to get to them wow very quickly so it's it it changes the whole dynamic of what's happening because the clock is ticking down so fast because some people don't have time to wait for help to come. So, yeah, it's really fun. And it's fun to look at a landscape and imagine not just the beauty and the daylight, but also what could happen after dark

when we don't have all this technology to help us. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been fun to have you on. Give us your final pitch out to readers, the order of the book. Yeah. If you would like to read a locked room thriller

set in a beautiful, stunning alpine environment that turns dangerous very quickly, and if you like um secrets and um you know stories about friends and things going terribly wrong um there should have been eight um and yeah it's available everywhere in any format you wish to buy it so um yeah give it a go and if you want to check out a bit of it without committing you there's an excerpt on my website and the audiobook publisher usually has you know like a sample of the audio on their website as well so yeah give those both a go and my website again is nalini singh.com

super easy and i hope you check it out there you go guys uh well thank you very much nalini it's been fun to have you on thank you so much for having me chris there you go nice talking to you there you go and in in order up all of our other books as well folks check them out it's remember it's christmas time coming up here uh people watching this 10 years from now it's not Christmas. That's our YouTube. It's available November 21st, 2023, so you can pick it up soon and buy, you know,

5 billion copies, give it out to all your friends and neighbors, relatives, all that sort of good stuff. There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh. Definitely order it up and check out her other book. She's got quite the library. I was just going through it here on Amazon. It's quite amazing.

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Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.