The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Try Not to Breathe by David Bell

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Try Not to Breathe by David Bell https://amzn.to/3NULM2y An ex-cop sets out to find her missing sister and discovers the shocking truth about her family... A traumatic experience in the line of duty forces thirty-year-old Avery Rogers to abandon both her relationship and her position as a Kentucky State Police officer. She retreats to a college town where she works an unfulfilling job as a security guard, breaking up fights between drunken frat boys. But a frantic phone call turns Avery’s life upside down. Her father—a retired cop who never fails to convey his disappointment in Avery—says her half sister is missing and in danger. Avery is sure Anna’s just crashing with friends, but her father strong-arms her into searching for the sister she barely knows. Anna Rogers is fed up with her family—a half sister who resents her existence and a domineering father who thinks it’s okay for cops to shoot unarmed civilians. She hits the road to attend a protest against police brutality, unaware of the danger that awaits her there. Just after catching a glimpse of Avery at the protest, Anna receives a shocking text. Now she’s no longer road-tripping; she’s running, pursued by an older sister she doesn’t trust and a violent stranger who has been stalking her for weeks. When Avery discovers Anna’s hiding place near a remote cave system, she risks everything to save her. Little do the sisters know that a secret is catching up to them—a secret at the very heart of their family history. About the Author David Bell is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen novels. His most recent books are TRY NOT TO BREATHE and SHE'S GONE. He is a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky and can be reached through his website

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. I'm Alex Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you being here because without you, I'd just be talking in a mic and people would be like, what's going on over there?

There's some noise or something. So thank you for tuning into the show. Hey guys, we have an amazing 16 book author on the show. We're going to be talking to him about his amazing stuff. But in the meantime, you must do the plugs. You must share the show because if you're not sharing the wealth, you're not sharing the wealth. I don't know what that means. Is there a thing when you're not sharing the wealth?

There should be some sort of shaming into that. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, LinkedIn newsletter. And also go see, what else is there? Oh, TikTok. We're trying to be cool on TikTok. It's not working, of course, because we're old and gray. And evidently, they're not into that sort of stuff over there. They're kind of into young and fresh.

And I don't know. We have some pretty smart content. So I'll just throw shade that way in the simplest way that I can. Today, we have an amazing author on the show, as always, a guest. And his newest book just comes out June 27th, 2023. So it's fresh off the presses. Try Not to Breathe. David Bell joins us on the show today. And we're going to be excited to talk to him about his newest, hottest book that comes right off the print. You can still get hot off the ink, I think, if that's your thing. I don't know.

Maybe it's not. Or you can get, can you get High Off the Kindle Ink? I don't know. Or Audiobook Ink? I don't know. Try it. See what happens. David Bell joins us on the show.

He's the New York Times bestseller of 16 novels. His most recent books are Try Not to Breathe and She's Gone. Try Not to Breathe is actually what I tell most of my enemies, too, as well. He is a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and can be reached through his website. Welcome to the show, David. How are you? Hey, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

There you go. And I think I remember several years ago, there was a Bowling Green massacre that was in the news. I think that was your Kentucky Bow uh that was uh i think that was your kentucky bowling green thing reference there but i don't know we'll leave that uh on the on the table uh give us a dot com so people can find you on the interwebs uh my website is davidbellnovels.com and i'm on social media at david bell novels like you i've taken the plunge into tiktok but yeah i don't show up in the algorithm because i'm over 19 years of age yeah right yeah there you go that's pretty much how it works i think uh we have the same problem on youtube so uh you've written 16 novels what motivated you

want to write this latest one try not to breathe it was it's about family i mean it's a suspense novel but it it really is a family story and most of my books are like that so it was really just thinking about how complicated families can be and how complicated sibling relationships can be and relations with parents can be um and that was kind of the starting place for this book. I might have some siblings that I would prefer if they could maybe breathe less. I don't know. Maybe they, I think they were cut off of some oxygen when they were younger. So maybe they need to breathe more. I don't know.

So give us a 30,000 overview. Who are the protagonists in your book and what are they up to? The two main characters are half sisters. The older one is named Avery. She is a former police officer who left the police force when she suffered a traumatic experience in the line of duty. She's suffering from PTSD and trying to put her life back together. The other main character is her younger sister, Anna, who is a college student. And Anna has kind of grown fed up with her life. She's not doing well in school. She's drinking and partying a lot.

At the beginning of the book, she decides to run off from her life, which forces the family to ask Avery to try to go find her. The two sisters don't really get along that well so it's one sister looking for another sister and she's not really that sure she wants to find her um but alas they do end up finding each other and a lot of deep dark secrets about their family spilling out in the process deep dark secrets people like that sort of stuff and uh would you call this a murder thriller psychological thriller thriller i call it a suspense novel um it's not necessarily a whodunit because you don't it's not like that kind of story um you you know who the bad guys are and you know what the bad guys are up to it's just a matter of are they going to catch um the main characters are the main characters going to get away um what set all this in motion years in the past that these two young women don't even know

about um all that stuff comes out by the end of the book oh they all find out they're adopted no i'm just kidding well i guess they're half sisters so i don't know i don't know i'm just making up jokes people that's not what's in the story uh so i'm still trying to clarify that i'm adopted in my family or that the other siblings i have are adopted but not family jokes um so why did you why did you pick the characters in the book what what drew you to them and uh the work they do i mean next cop etc etc i mean avery is really the protagonist of the story. And so this book is really a redemption story for her because she suffered this trauma in the line of duty. She nearly drowned and she left the police force and she's always felt like a failure. Her father is a decorated police officer. So she felt like she couldn't measure up to her father. She feels like her father judges her. We live in more enlightened

times now where we understand that what Avery is suffering from is post-traumatic stress disorder. Her father is one of those people who doesn't quite comprehend the notion of PTSD, and he just blames her for her failures in the line of duty. So it really is a redemption story for her where she has to come to grips with what has happened to her in the past. She literally has to face her fears in the present of the story and kind of figure out that she's been trying to live for her dad's approval all these years, and she's not likely to really have it. And even if she got it, does she really want it? So it's that kind of thing. Yeah.

So getting her as approval and making everybody happy. And it sounds like there's some deep, dark secrets they unearth and stuff with the origin story. Any plot twists or anything you can tease out or set up, just little tidbits or teasers that you want to share in the book? Well, the story, as the story goes along, you learn things about their father's police career. Like I said, he's been decorated heroically. He has had to retire from the police force because he was injured in the line of duty in an ambush that has never been solved. Over the course of the book, you learn some things about the way he conducted himself when

he was a police officer. Um, that's one of the big things that is learned in the book um and the two and the two sisters do learn a lot about their identity um kind of the tangled web that has led to the way their family is constructed now stuff they didn't fully understand when the book started yeah a story about a dysfunctional family it sounds like yes i mean and i imagine all families are somewhat dysfunctional but this this one is dysfunctional to a higher degree maybe than other families there you go well it's always good to have some dysfunction i mean otherwise what do you you you're just laying there in the psychiatrist's office going how did they hurt you and you're just like i'm good and you got nothing to complain about sorry well i mean if your parents were really nice to you

and really good to you, then you're probably not fully prepared for everything the world is going to throw at you, right? So you kind of want a little trace of dysfunction from your parents and your siblings so that you're ready to go out into the rest of the world. Otherwise, you go into some sort of panacea world where you're just like, everything's fine and perfect.

And you're just like, wait, who are these people? Yeah. You need to realize that not everybody's going to treat you well in life. And so your family sets that in motion. I actually had the experience in my birth where I went into the panacea of life and then went, who are these people? And why is everyone naked, including me?

So there you go. Everyone in the delivery room was naked when you were yeah usually it's just the baby who is yeah we're still working through it with my psychiatrist but uh you know it was one of those it was it was a compound of a cult i think or i don't know i'm just making up a joke as it were but say no more we we believed in uh in in natural childbirth that's it's the ultimate natural childbirth experience. Some people do that whole bathroom, bathtub, baby birth stuff. Yeah, the swimming pool, yeah.

No drugs or anything. Yeah. It's really, unless you're giving birth in a cave somewhere in Neon Hall land, wherever that is, and no one's dressed and there's like scrawl on the wall and i don't know somebody's trying to make fire some shit in the wheel that's that's natural childbirth at its core so we're my parents were really into uh whatever this is just turning into a bit uh anything more we can tease out about the book and what's inside of the plot? Well, I live in Kentucky, in southern Kentucky. I live an hour north of Nashville.

And in case people aren't up on all their information about Kentucky, Kentucky sits on the largest cave system in the world. So I will tell you that caves play a role in the story. And Kentucky is also known for its cultivation of marijuana. And that also plays a role in the story. And what I learned in doing research for the book is that one of the best places to cure your marijuana is actually in a cave. So caves and marijuana kind of go hand in hand. Um, and you find that stuff out as you go through the book.

Ah, so this kind of maybe, uh, is why there's kind of, it looks like there's maybe a cave or something in, on the, on the cover where a woman's hair blowing, I believe.

A cave plays a big role, uh, at the end of the book. And like I said, if, if you go around Kentucky, Kentucky, there are caves everywhere. You know, you can, we look for a house here and more than one house, you would go out in the backyard and there was a hole in the ground. And you said, well, what's this hole in the ground?

And they said, oh, that's the cave. It was kind of like it was a feature of the house that it had a cave in the backyard. Wow. Yeah. Caves and sinkholes all over the place here best place to bury a body i suppose uh you know just throw anybody you don't like throwing down the cable if that's what you're thinking yeah yeah that might that might come up in the book i don't know yeah like i mentioned like i mentioned uh earlier the judge says i can't

do that anymore so so this should be pretty interesting uh what yeah no this is a standalone book it doesn't involve any of your characters from your prior books no it doesn't it's it my books are all standalone um and um characters don't really repeat from one book to the other so um if by some chance and it's hard for me to believe that there's someone out there who hasn't read any of my books um they can start with try not to breathe um and they're not missing anything and then if they love it they can go back and read all the other ones um but no you don't you don't have to know anything you just start anywhere and find out what's going on there you go so what does the future hold for uh books are you working on something new i have two books in some state of completion. I have my next young

adult book finished, young adult novels. So my next young adult book is finished, which is called The Midnight Driving Club. And that is set in a fictional affluent community where the adults have all gotten together and decided that they don't want anyone driving until they graduate from high school. So these affluent kids don't drive. They don't take those risks. It's too dangerous. But lo and behold, a new kid comes to school and he says, hey, we've got to drive so he forms the midnight driving club which means these kids go out at night they get their hands on vintage 70s cars and they listen to 70s music and they drive all over town and with predictable results that young people driving vintage cars doesn't necessarily work out perfectly. Yeah.

Cruising. So, cause I remember how I drove when I was literally driving a vintage seventies car in high school, except we didn't call it vintage. We just called it crappy. So that's my next young adult book. And then my next adult book is also in the works. And that is called storm warning for now. The title will probably

change, but it's about a group of people who are living on a barrier Island off the coast of Florida in a really rundown apartment building that is about to be condemned and sold. As they're there stuck on this Island, a hurricane is bearing down on them. And the main character in the book, who's trying to keep his family together, is also trying to save the tenants of this building. Because just before the hurricane hits, one of the tenants ends up dead. And lo and behold, there's a murderer on the island. The power goes out. The causeway washes out.

They're stuck on this island with a killer no way to get off no way to call for help and they just have to ride the storm out with the killer running loose somewhere on there that sounds like a complete terror yeah yeah you know with the young adult book you know you put that on tiktok you probably get some action over there you know get the traction going on i i let young people talk about the book on Tik TOK. There you go. I mean, I do use it a little bit, but I'm, I know I don't use it the way you're supposed to use it because I don't, I don't dance and I don't do things like that, you know?

So I've got to do more dancing evidently or something. I don't know. Yeah. You know, I've got to do, I don't or something yeah yeah you know i've got to do i don't know throwing myself off a roof or something i don't know what the hell is it you know i got to do but clearly i'm too old for it i i i guess it's too old for youtube either they that youtube just kind of goes yeah uh i don't know you know my kids aren't going to watch your shows chris uh and they haven't learned to read dummy i would have thought youtube would i understand that young people would be on youtube but i would think that old people

would be on youtube too i mean it uh you know it kind of depends there's a i think there's a news group for a certain group of people on there that they go to for their news. And there's that bit. You know, we used to do really well on it. And when the populace used to determine who made great videos and who was interesting, and then once YouTube started selling it to movie studios and music makers and, you know, the trending page

went to basically pay for play, things changed immensely. We still get our royalty checks from them, and it's not too bad. But it's basically like TikTok. It's a 10- to 15-year-old audience. And I think there's some people on certain angles of the political spectrum that do want to do some news over there. But, you know i mean confirmation

bias what can you say um so uh very interesting stuff going on we're excited to see uh the new stuff from you and check out this book it sounds like quite the adventure uh give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs david my website is davidbellnovels.com and on social media it's all at david Novels Facebook Instagram Twitter and TikTok depend depending on your age you can pick the platform that you want to use uh and you can find me on any one of them there you go try not to breathe comes out or came out just barely June 27th 2023 David Bell thanks for coming on the show with us Dave we really appreciate it thanks for having me on it was good talking to you. There you go.

And thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Christmas. YouTube.com for just Christmas. LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. And Christmas one on TikTok. Give us some pity follows over there, will you please? Seriously, help an old guy out. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you next time.