The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unleashed Holiday by Victoria Schade

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Unleashed Holiday by Victoria Schade https://amzn.to/489Bwe1 “Reading Unleased Holiday was sheer joy. I chewed up the pages.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber When an old rival reappears right before the holidays, a professional dog trainer must decide if the melting frost between them can make up for their ruff past, from the USA Today bestselling author of Dog Friendly. Chelsea Higgins is doing just fine. She’s heading into the holidays at the helm of a thriving dog training business, and she’s got a mellow senior dog at home to keep her warm at the end of the day. What more could she need? Enter certified gym bro Andrew Gibson: Chelsea’s former nemesis, and now the newest neighbor in her business complex, who also wants to expand into the vacant space Chelsea’s been eyeing for months. Who cares if it’s the season of joy? Let the turf war begin. When an unfortunate (and literal) run-in with Andrew’s lawless dog leaves Chelsea with a bum wrist, the two strike a deal: Andrew will help Chelsea rehab the injury if she’ll work with him to train his adorably uncivilized boxer. Their typical bickering soon turns to bantering, and Chelsea finds herself inexplicably drawn to the man she thought she had nothing in common with. As she gets to know Andrew and his parents, she realizes she needs to refocus on her own family, especially with a milestone Christmas speeding toward them. But Chelsea can't help wondering if she and Andrew are training for keeps, or if this unexpected Christmas gift is just too good to be true.

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, the Chris Voss Show.

I'll let her round off to finish there. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We really appreciate you guys being here. As always, when you hear the Iron Lady sing it, you know that the show is live. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show. The family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law, because she never liked the look of your face anyway, and you shouldn't have married her daughter. But that's between you and her and them and your problem not mine but she said that she keeps writing the show

so i don't know what that's about anyway guys we have always the most amazing authors i'm seeing our guests shake her head we have the most amazing authors on the show and they bring you bring you their knowledge their insight their experiences their, enlighten and brighten your life and give you what we call the Chris Voss Show glow of whatever. I don't know. It could be radiation. Who knows? We have an amazing author, multi-book author, I should say, on the show with us today. Victoria Shea joins us on the show.

Her latest book just came out september 26 2023 and just in time for the holidays it is actually entitled unleashed holiday which is a whole probably has a whole different plot than what you experienced at thanksgiving when uncle ted you know started drinking again anyway her book is entitled unleashed holiday and she has a plethora of books We'll find out how much, there's so many I couldn't count that high Because I flunked second grade Victoria Shade has been a dog trainer And writer for over 20 years During that time her dog duties have included

Working behind the scenes on Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl As the lead animal wrangler Appearing on two seasons of the Animal Planet show Faithful Friends And creating dog training content And appearing in educational videos animal wrangler appearing on two seasons of the animal planet show faithful friends and creating dog training content and appearing in educational videos for a variety of pet centric websites victoria's favorite way to share her dog knowledge is through her books whether in a how-to manual like bonding with your dog woven into her novels like who rescuedcued Hugh and My Dogs Rescued Me, and Lost, Bound, and Forever.

Welcome to the show, Victoria. How are you? Chris, that intro had me laughing. My God, you're like joke a minute. Well, we try. We try and run it like a radio show, you know, the old timey stuff. Yeah, I remember. Every now and then I'm funny.

Well, give us the duck gums. I would love it. Yeah, I love it. Tell us where, yeah, I love it. Tell us where people can find you on the interwebs. Oh, I love starting with that. Okay, I am a huge Instagram person. They can find me at Victoria underscore shade. My dogs are the stars there.

They're the stars everywhere, basically. Facebook is, do people still use Facebook? It's Victoria Shade author. Not on really X anymore. What else is there? I was on TikTok. Yeah, Victoria Shade throwing shade at Facebook there. Just a little bit.

A little bit of shade. S-H-A-D-E at the Facebook. And I mean, there's no use in throwing shade at Twitter. Elon Musk is doing that enough as it is. So welcome to the show. Congratulations. How many books do you have? Again, you have a numerous amount of books. I think you can count this high. So it's five novels and two how-to manuals. Oh, that's two hands right there. I can't do two hands. I'm good with one. But after five, it gets confusing because then it's addition. So I don't know what that means. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your newest book, Unleashed Holiday? I'm going to preface this by saying, even though I have a sales background,

I do the world's worst elevator pitches for my own books, even though I wrote them. So you're not going to be knocked off your socks are not going to be knocked off for this but I'll give you my best so Unleashed Holiday is an enemies to lovers story about two people with a really bumpy history it's a dog trainer and a personal trainer and they have a lot of beef and a lot of history and they're thrown together because their businesses wind up in the same building so these two people have these big feelings very complicated feelings if you're getting my drift seems like hatred but maybe there's more to it there's something simmering and throw in all of the holidays between what halloween all the way through christmas we've got goats we've got dogs

and that is a holiday i'll buy it just for the goats i don't know what that means i get my dogs goat milk raw goat milk it's good it's really good for them yeah there you go so these these these two are nemesis towards each other and i don't know just this may be some of the is maybe some of their conflict with each other a bit of latent maybe subconscious sexual tension, maybe. Is that part of the issue? It's not just latent. We'll just say that there's one night that they both kind of want to put behind them in their past.

Oh, it's one of those. One of those nights. It's a lover. So, you know, I think anytime you have a lot of hatred, there's in hatred. You know, indifference is like yeah no big deal but if you really really hate someone you have passionate feelings whether you want to admit it or not so how did that is an excellent point it sounds like my first 10 divorces uh the you just described them perfectly um but so so there is a way to find love out of hate. There's hope. I might be able to get back with all of them.

But loves. Yeah, that's probably never going to happen. That's what I've been told, at least by the attorneys that are screening order. There you go. So now what part did the dogs play in this? Because evidently they're up to something. Yeah. Dogs are a big part in all of the books I write.

You know, as a dog trainer, I can't help but weave in some always dog characters and then also dog training background. So I never hit my readers over the head with it, but anyone who reads my novels will pick up dog training tips. Oh, they're multifaceted. They are definitely multifaceted. You always learn a little something along with the romance. And in this particular book, my main character, Chelsea, is a dog trainer. So dogs are a part of her everyday life. And Andrew, the love interest slash antagonist slash enemy, he has a white boxer that's deaf.

And he realizes that he's a little out of his depth with this dog who's kind of out of control and he has to eat some humble pie and ask chelsea for help and that's kind of the beginning of them uh their journey ah yeah you know multi-faceted books so people can read your books and they can they can read them for the romance novel part of it. And then, you know, there's some dog training in there. It sounds like the same way that I used to read Playboy, just for the articles. Sorry, I had to get that joke in there. There's a little spice too.

Some things you can't throw away. So bickering turns to bantering. Chelsea finds herself inexplicably drawn to the man she thought she had nothing in common with. And I imagine this takes place over the holidays? Yes. From Halloween, we've got, or Halloween, or Swoloween. Remember, we've got the dueling businesses, the personal trainer and the dog trainer. So her party is called Halloween, and his is called Swoloween. And then we have Thanksgiving, And you mentioned a drunk uncle.

There's definitely an uncle causing trouble in the Thanksgiving in my book. And we end with Christmas. Wasn't Swoloween what led to that night that they all regretted? I don't know what that means. Maybe there was some drink lean. Might have been some alkaline that caused that too. There was alkaline involved so yeah i want to stay away from that or not and there's always new year's coming up so there's still time

including new year's in the book but i just did it with christmas there you go you know that's for the second book or the next book so through all through all your novels do you are these always new characters are there is there any sort of series running through them there's no series i my what my second book who rescued who i am still to this day that was released in 2020 people are telling me we need to see what happens next so if there ever will be a series it will be based on my second book, Who Rescued Who, which is set in England. And everyone adores that book. But no, I mean, these are all standalone. So you can pick up any book and read and laugh and swoon.

Yeah, there you go. And so you can enjoy them. You know, people love love stories. People love good to bad stories. I'll send a copy of them to all my exes and see if there's a shot. There's always that. I'm like, hey, if they can work it out in their book, there's a chance, right? There are always lessons to learn, even in fiction.

There you go. Fiction also explains my first 10 marriages because they never existed. So let me ask you this. Have you ever trained huskies or put them in your books? I have not put Huskies in my books, but I have trained a few over the years. There was one I recall in my early career. Boy, as you can imagine, what a puller. This dog, talk about sled dog, but I triumphed.

It was, yeah. Did you? Oh, sure. Yeah. Every dog, you know, dog friendly, science backed, positive dog training can transform any dog from puppy to senior who feel, you know, you feel like can't teach an old dog new tricks with positive training. You can.

I have two Huskies in there. Huskies are strong minded. They have their own set of thoughts and stuff. Hey, guys, we're shipping you to Victoria's for a few weeks. Get you trained. But it's not just training the dogs. It's training the handler as well. That's true.

That's the thing. You know, the dogs are easy. It's dealing with the other end of the leash that can be complicated. I used to see that a lot on who's that guy the the dog whisperer oh yeah where more more times it was kind of about the people like you know i'm like these people are idiots this is why the dogs are bad you know i don't know yeah yeah definitely yeah i think with the same thing with the who's that nanny who would go in and help people with their kids that were being shitty?

And part of the problem was just really the parents. Yeah, it was a train wreck. The beginning of those episodes were fascinating because you would see how you're like, you're doing it wrong. Yeah, yeah. And you just, you know, I see that in the stores. People oblivious and their kids are running around burning stuff down and murdering people. Or as we like to call it Fridays around here, but no Huskies Huskies are kind of their own thing.

You know, like you, you give them commands and they just look at you and they're like, that's cute. We'll think about that. And now we're going to do what we want to do. But if you understand, there's kind of a thing to them where they,

they as sled dogs, when they're told to be, you know, continue mushing across the ice, they're designed to shut down and override their commands to save the dog team. They're designed to think for themselves. But they're definitely a challenging dog. They sadly end up in a lot of shelters.

And then they're incredible escape artists and Ruli. They're so beautiful. They are. escape artists and Ruli and they're so beautiful that they are think about the great mind underneath all that the eyes and the beautiful fur yeah and then they and then and then you just end up eating fur you wake up with a mouthful of fur every day and just go that's great what have we touched on about Unleashed Holiday that we can tease out novels are kind of hard because you can't talk about the middle or the end. Anything more you want to tease out about them or the characters? Yeah, I mean, there's always something.

I think the fun of this novel is it's a slow burn rather than it being like insta-love. I mean, they do have a history together and they do have that one night that they both are trying to forget. But it's, they have to get to a point where they really understand each other

because they think they know each other. But as they start working together, you know, as Chelsea starts training his dog, who is named Dude, by the way, she learns more about Andrew. And then on the flip side, Dude accidentally injures Chelsea. And they work out this trade He pulls her down and she hurts her wrist So part of the whole bargain Is not only is she helping to train

Unruly dude Andrew is going to help her rehab her wrist Because There are all these opportunities For them to get to know each other better And maybe flirt a little bit And realize How wrong they were. You know, there's some pride and prejudice going on in this book because they think they

have this understanding of who the other person is only to discover that they were completely wrong. Huh. I should try this with more people who are nemesis in my life. Maybe the sex is better. I don't know. Depends on who it is, I think, because you could get in trouble. That's true.

That's true. I mean, and sometimes, you know, the restraining order is in the way. But, you know, I met those couples that they're like, I'm like, you guys fight a lot. And they go, but the makeup sex is great. And you're like, I don't know. That's, you know, if you're having to call the cops every other night, I mean, come on, really? I mean, but then you kind of go, hmm, I wonder what that's about. Anyway, so what's up next for you?

Future books, anything in the can, anything you're working on? I'm definitely working on something. I'm about halfway through as of yesterday, my next book, and I can't talk too much about it. It's, you know, there are dogs but i was just gonna pull that joke are there other dogs yeah oh yeah sorry sorry to step on your line there uh yes there are dogs and romance there will be dogs there will be dogs always maybe maybe you should do what was that was the line from that famous movie there will be blood maybe you should do a book called

There Will Be Dogs. I don't know what it means. Well, let me tell you, people are so worried speaking of blood and my books. People think, not necessarily this one because the cover, you know, it's cartoony and fun. Some of my other books have photographs on the cover of dogs.

I will be asked so frequently, does the dog die? No, never never it's happily ever after oh that's good release i would never write you would crush some people oh i know and there are books out there doing that i don't i don't do that yeah there yeah that that gives me a good question for you do you feel like your romance novels better or have an added touch because you know i mean we have a lot of romance novels that come on the show. But I don't know that they usually involve pets too much or make them kind of a real featurette, especially on the cover.

Do you feel that maybe people are drawn to your work a little bit more because of the dog? I think the dog-loving audience is definitely drawn. But, shocker, not everyone likes dogs. I still can't wrap my head around that concept. No one cares about those people. Right. Yeah. Especially if they like cats.

There's no reason. No, cats are good. I love cats. There's a kitten in my next book. I love those. Yeah, like that you. Why not those? Does the dog eat the cat? I'm just

kidding, people. I'm just being mean. There you go. No, cats are wonderful things. I think it's good for people to have pets. The only thing I don't like about cats is they're a lot like girlfriends. They love you 50% of the time and hate you the next and want to destroy you. So

that's kind of how they work. It depends on the cat. I mean, some of them are aloof and some of them are dog-like and very loving. Yeah. Some are just evil. I mean, there's just, I've seen, I watch all the videos where they knock stuff off and they're, you know, they chew on your

TV monitor and break it and you know, they're just mischievous, not evil. They're mischievous. I don't know. I don't know. This is, uh,

cats are good for people who like cats. Let's put it that way. But yeah, I mean, dogs, I think, I think your books definitely must, must cut apart. Pretty cool.

With the element of having dogs in them, because people love, people love dogs, love dogs and people that don't love dogs don't matter. So I don't think they're, I don't think they qualify as people either. That's a good slogan. You know, what's that old saying? If you ever have your dog and they don't like a certain person, that's usually a sign.

Not always. I do. I don't necessarily agree with that because sometimes maybe it's the type of person that the dog's never met before so rather than writing this person up like maybe someone with facial hair and a hat and the dog isn't familiar with that type of person so i wouldn't use that as law it's interesting to consider but i think i think what my belief system is is people who don't like dogs like they they just, I don't know, maybe they don't get dogs or something. I just kind of see them as, I don't know, not fully developed human beings and emotionally or something, but I don't know.

I could be prejudiced and probably am. They might not have had exposure to, that's the other thing, you know, in one of my books, she was frightened by a dog as a child. And that happens a lot too too where you have a bad experience early on and it forms your impression until you're lucky enough to have the chance to meet a dog who changes your perspective, which

is exactly what happens in the book. I was frightened by a dog as a child. It looks like a shark tooth on my wrist. A giant leopard bit me when I was very, very young. Really? Yeah, but here I am all these years later. Making a career out of it. You're getting revenge.

There you go. So, I mean, do you ever think about putting huskies in your book, or why do you hate huskies? Oh, I don't hate them at all. It's funny. Lately, a lot of people have been requesting their breeds. I'll get

I just did a signing over the weekend and someone was like, what about Yorkies? Can you put a Yorkie in the book? I'm filing away all these breeds I need to start adding into my book. You're going to have to write a lot of damn books for all the varieties of dogs out there. I would love that.

That's my dream. There you go. You go through all the spectrums of dogs. I don't even know how many variations of dogs there there. I would love that. That's my dream. There you go. You go through all the spectrums of dogs. I don't even know how many variations of dogs there are, but I don't know. There you go. I've been called one on Tinder, but that's a different story. Anyway, anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go or future works that you're doing? I guess just pick up Unleashed Holiday for the dog lover in your life. It is lighthearted, but there are some deeper themes with family and, you know, different family challenges. It's like I said, it's funny. You will laugh.

You will swoon. There's romance. And I think it makes the perfect gift. If you want a signed copy, my local bookshop, can I shout them out? Yeah, please do. Yeah. The Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania has signed copies. And if they happen to run out, just put a little note in your order, and I will make sure to sign it for you. Plug for supporting your local independent bookstore.

Now more than ever, we need to do that. So, yeah. And if your bookstore doesn't carry it, you can always request it, and they will be able to get it for you. There you go. Get them in. I see some other books here, too, that sound really good. Bonding with Your Dog. That's my first book.

That's why I always take my dogs to the bar with me so we can bond. Secrets of a Dog Trainer. Problem Solving for a Well-Behaved Dog. I like the bonding with your dog. It took me a while to really understand dogs and dogs really saved me as a human being because i was a horrible being a horrible human being i mean i haven't changed that much but but no they really helped put me in touch with my soul and my balance and just everything and she taught me to be a warm loving human being which i'm still struggling with and

regretting but they learning learning to bond with your dogs is so important and they teach you so much they teach you they teach you how to be a better human i mean they they really are the best people dogs are i don't know i always i was telling this on facebook i said you know i'm pretty sure at this point that we can determine that dogs are aliens. And they're just kind of here to visit us and help us out along the way. And then about 10 years or 15 years is about all they can take of us before they have to return to whatever planet they're from. Just be like, okay, enough with these people. I mean, we can only help them so much. We'll send somebody

else to tag team and do the next step because I tried. It's a really unique perspective. I like it. They're the ones that go to heaven. We're stuck going to that rainbow bridge or whatever.

Anyway, guys, thank you very much, Victoria, for coming on. Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs. VictoriaShade.com. It's S-C-H-A-D-E. Instagram, Victoria underscore Shade. Facebook, at Victoria Shade Author. And I think that's it for all of that. There you go.

Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for our audience to tune in. As always, take care of your dogs. Get to know them, bond with them, love them. Don't be one of those people who puts them in the backyard, damn it your dogs get to know them bond with them love them don't be one of those people puts them in the backyard damn it chains them up forgets about them i will come for you anyway guys thanks for tuning in order a victorious book where refined books are sold it's unleashed holiday it just came out september 26 2023 and get all of her books and you know the beautiful thing about her books is they make great Christmas gifts.

So that's coming up. Buy a whole set of them. You can, you know, get those great Christmas deals and all that good stuff and give them away for the holidays. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.