The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

You're Invited by Amanda Jayatissa What could be worse than your ex-boyfriend marrying your childhood best friend? Getting accused of her murder… From the author of My Sweet Girl comes a dangerously addictive new thriller about a lavish Sri Lankan wedding celebration that not everyone will survive. When Amaya is invited to Kaavi’s over-the-top wedding in Sri Lanka, she is surprised and a little hurt to hear from her former best friend after so many years of radio silence. But when Amaya learns that the groom is her very own ex-boyfriend, she is consumed by a single thought: She must stop the wedding from happening, no matter the cost. But as the week of wedding celebrations begin and rumors about Amaya’s past begin to swirl, she can’t help but feel like she also has a target on her back. When Kaavi goes missing and is presumed dead, all evidence points to Amaya. However, nothing is as it seems as Jayatissa expertly unravels that each wedding guest has their own dark secret and agenda, and Amaya may not be the only one with a plan to keep the bride from getting her happily ever after…

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. 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 this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show remember the chris voss show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you the best kind of family there is today we're going to talk about the amazing author who has a new book coming out August 9, 2022.

I think you're going to want to hear from her. I think this is another book from her. So we'll talk to her about what she does and how she does it. In the meantime, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Go to all of our groups on facebook linkedin twitter instagram tiktok all those places that you can find the chris fos show uh also uh go see us at chris

fos leadership institute.com and all those crazy places on the internet that we're at uh today she's the author of the newest book coming out august 9th 2022 you're invited the novel by amanda giathysa gonna be on the show with us talking to about her newest book uh she grew up in sri lanka uh completed her undergrad at mills college california and lived in the uk before moving back to her sunny little island she works as a corporate trainer owns a chain of cookie stores and is a proud dog mom to her two spoiled huskies. Welcome to the show, Amanda. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. And thanks for coming. GiveUsA.com where people can find you on the interwebs. It's very easy. It's just my name, AmandaGiathessa.com. And then this is your second novel, is that correct? Yes, that's right.

The first one came out in the fall of last year. It was called My Sweet Girl. It was also a thriller. And now You're Invited is coming out on the 9th of August. It's just two weeks before publication, and I'm steadily getting more and more excited as the days go on. There you go. There you go. It's included as the most anticipated and summer reading list by BuzzFeed, The Every Girl, and I think Fodder.

Am I pronouncing that correctly? Fodder. I think so. Yeah. Fodder, Fodder, whatever. So this is your second book. What motivated you to want to write this? Well, this one was written, interestingly enough, during lockdown.

So I had to do something, right? So I was like, oh, might as well write this book. That was a thriller of itself right there. Oh, yeah. I had the idea for it before lockdown, though. So, You're Invited is based around a big Sri Lankan wedding. And I had the idea for it when I was at a big Sri Lankan wedding myself. I was sitting down, enjoying the wedding, admiring the decorations and, you know, listening to the music and eating,

of course, and admiring the beautiful couple. And just for a moment, my eyes just drifted over onto the groom's mother. And I saw it for just this second, this look of just frustration and anger just quickly fluttering over her face. She pulled it back very quickly, but I noticed it for just a moment. And I thought to myself, gosh, there must be so much that goes on behind the scenes of these big events. And then, of course, the thriller writer in me thought, hey, wouldn't it be fun to throw in a dead body and see what happens? So that's where the idea came from. You're fun to party. Oh, yeah. I'll throw in a dead body.

So remind me to, I don't know about any wedding invitations I might ever get from you. Or inviting anyone I might have a wedding or something. Oh, no. Sri Lankan weddings, if you do get a chance to go for one, I always encourage everyone to go just because they're such – it's in a league of its own. You know? Wow. It's festivities like – it's just – they just get wilder and wilder every year, I think. So are dead bodies – throwing in dead bodies a regular thing there?

No, thank goodness. I'm yet to experience that so far that's only been in my imagination thank goodness um but uh yeah i know the the parties are great it's just when you it's just when you reach the point where you're like hey let's throw a dead body with that you're like hey man would you like some tacos uh can you throw in a dead body like what's going on over there? I'm just teasing. Just a little sprinkling of mud. It keeps everything fresh, you know?

Wow. Okay. There you go. Hey, folks, just a quick break in from the show. Hey, be sure to check out my new courses at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. That's chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com forward slash courses, or you can just click the courses tab. You can see we've got new courses up for how to start a podcast and video training that can get you up to date on everything we're doing. Of course,

my speaking, my coaching and everything else, but be sure to check out the new course that we have up for starting your own podcast after 13 years, kind of sharing some of the secrets of what I know. So be sure to check that out at chrisfossleadership.com forward slash courses. So talk to us about your main character, who she is and what she's up to in the book. Sure. So the main character's name is Amaya. She, at the time the book starts, she's living in LA and has cut ties with her best friend from college. But she finds out through social media that her ex-best friend is engaged to her ex-boyfriend. So, you know, she's feeling all the feelings and decides to fly down to Sri Lanka where the wedding is taking place in order to stop the wedding by any means necessary. Of course, the bride goes missing, presumed dead, and all fingers point towards Amaya.

And she has to sort of prove her innocence, if she is innocent, and get herself out of this situation. So it takes place sort of in Colombo, in high society Colombo 7, which is a very interesting sort of little subculture, a little bubble of its own. And, you know, so there's a lot of gossip. There are a lot of these Sri Lankan aunties, you know, who say things like, I don't need to gossip, but just so you know, I heard this story about we all come across those well-intended sort of aunties with their words of wisdom. So I had a lot of fun writing it. I'm learning a lot on this podcast. I'm learning a lot on this podcast.

Never go to exeses weddings just in case yeah I mean that just seems like a bad idea on its own but hey she had her reasons for going I don't know why but just just you know I never thought that I would be accused of something you know

I would go to congratulate have fun with that I'm celebrating you have to deal with it now. I'd be kind of conflicted if I went to any way. I mean, I have wonderful exes, but I'd be kind of conflicted. I'd be like, should I warn him or should I just figure out? Just show up, right? Should I just hold a funeral for him?

Like, see you, bye. Have fun with that. But this is definitely a spin. The byline is, she'll wish she'd never RSVP'd. So she did actually RSVP to the wedding, huh? Oh, well, yeah, the marketing team came up with a little byline. Oh, the marketing team put that up. I loved it.

Yeah, yeah. There's been a lot of interesting wedding puns that have come up. I'm sure. I had someone say the icing on the wedding cake is now she's accused with murder and stuff like that. There's like a wedding cake with someone with a knife going after

the bride. That's always good. I would go to that wedding. That sounds like fun, actually, as long as I'm not the one getting stabbed. I'm cool with it. Oh, yeah, sure. Go for the drama.

Why not, right? I knew getting married was dangerous, but, Ben, you just took it to another level. I'm even more scared to ever get married now. So we can't, of course, give away the ending or the middle parts of the book, but what made you choose the characters? Was there

anybody in real life that you referenced the characters from or any Hollywood stars that you were thinking of? Good question. So Amaya, the main character, she is a very anxious sort of person and we have this running joke, my husband and I, that I tend to sort of that made sense because I was very angry and frustrated at the time I was writing. Like I said, with You're Invited, I wrote it sort of in the second year of lockdown when we were hoping like, you know, early 2021, we were hoping things would get back to normal.

But they were still not really, especially not in Sri Lanka where I live. And I was myself very, very anxious. So definitely there's a lot of that anxiety that seeped in through the book. But I can say that a lot of the more fun parts of the book, like the gossip and especially the aunties, are definitely mixes of aunties that I have met in Colombo society. And the gossip, a lot of it is based on real stories that I have heard over the years. So if you ever read any of that and you think, oh, my goodness, that is so over the top,

a lot of it is actually things that we don't know if it actually happened, right? But it's definitely things that people talk about. Wow. Wow. Does your husband sleep with one eye open? No, he's great. He's like, hmm, have you considered killing this character this way? So very, very supportive, which is great.

Occupational hazards of living with a thriller writer means, you know, yeah, it was really funny once I remember he bought this big box. It was like a shipping container-ish box home. And, you know, we took all the stuff out of it. And then he's like, hey, like, we should get rid of this box, right? And I'm like, yeah, sure. And I was staring at it for a while. And he's like, what? I was was like you think a dead body could fit in there like bless his heart he just he gave me one of those looks like are you are you for real yeah are you one of those are you one of those folks who's always watching csi shows i know anytime i meet somebody who watches the csi shows i kind of have my eye on them. Yeah, the CSI shows.

Well, I also read a lot. I read a lot of true crime stuff, follow a lot of true crime accounts. I read a lot of thrillers. I read a lot of horror. Just, I don't know. You know, if you look at my sort of habits, you'd think I was a deeply disturbed person. But I promise you, I'm really nice. A disturbed person would say that though, right? And offer you candy. So, hey, I don't know.

I'm not sure. I'm starting to wonder, but no. So with your first book, it was loved by readers obviously and did well. I, I imagine, you know, what you were talking about earlier, where there was a lot of, you know, angst and stuff during COVID lockdown. Do you think that contributes to a better thriller? You know, having that being, living in that kind of feeling?

I've definitely heard a lot of writers say so, and I think I'd agree. There's a sense of almost like claustrophobia that kind of ends up weaving in and that's the thing with thrillers is that they tend to work out when there are these sort of closed settings feeling like they're closing in on you um maybe choking you with like that atmosphere and um a lot of the thrillers that I've read recently that I've felt that way, surprise, surprise, were written during lockdown. A lot of the thrillers coming out right now, I think, because of the timelines and the way publishing works, were books that were written, you know, in 2020 and 2021. Yeah.

There's a lot of books that got written in lockdown. I wrote my book in lockdown, but mine's like a scary thriller. I don't know. Maybe there's some terror mine's a scary thriller. I don't know. Maybe there's some terror when you read my book. I don't know. Maybe there is terror. I don't know. No one's putting up a review yet that says this is completely terrorized. Did you write this during COVID? We had a lot of great authors

on the show that they're like, I was locked down, so I wrote a book. It seems like, I don't know, maybe we need more lockdowns. We need more great books. Anything more you want to tease out or you think any scenarios that are in there you can tease out that maybe can entice people to pick up the book? Sure.

So another big theme that sort of is moving in through this story is this idea of friendship breakups or like female sort of female friendships and friendship breakups, which is an idea that has really kind of stuck with me for a long time. And I've been trying to figure out, I think a way to weave it into my writing

because, you know, if you look at the media today or if you look at just the way we handle romantic breakups, we are very supportive of it, right, as a society in the sense it's totally acceptable for you to sit out on your couch, eat a pint of ice cream, listen to, I don't know, Celine Dion or whatever romantic music you listen to and cry and all your friends will rally around you. And there is that support system when it's a romantic breakup. But I feel that something like friendship breakups aren't discussed enough, even though oftentimes they can be even more painful than romantic breakups. And when I look back on some of my own on friends that i've

you know that i'm sadly just not friends with anymore because of you know numerous reasons we've gone different walks of life or just circumstances are such um no murder thank god um i just i feel like i have to put that in there. But yeah, these breakups really, really hurt and sometimes have definitely stayed with me longer than any romantic breakups have. And I just, I thought, because at its core, this is the friendship between two women, you know, and almost the betrayal that you feel around i mean someone who was your best

friend who shared a significant part of your life with you and now she's turning around and marrying your ex like how how could she and how deeper is that betrayal almost than the betrayal from her ex-boyfriend so it definitely does tie with that theme as well that's's true. That's a, there's a real betrayal there that goes on. Uh, and, uh, does she, I don't know if you can tell us,

did she find out if like, uh, maybe they were seeing each other the whole time that she was together with him or, or, uh, she finds out a lot of things. I'm not going to tell you. Um,

you have to read the book. Yeah. Okay. Now people definitely want to order the book cause they want to find out what was going on there. Well, it sounds wonderful. Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go? No, I think that's the main crux of it. I just want to encourage people, if they can, the book takes place in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is an amazing, amazing place. If you ever get the chance to visit, you totally should. And if you get the chance to attend a Sri Lankan wedding, amazing place. If you ever get the chance to visit, you totally should. And if you get the chance to attend a Sri Lankan wedding, definitely go for it. I promise you that most, there's a 99% chance that there will not be a dead body. It says here, are they normally a week long? No, not usually. So it's a little different from Indian weddings in the sense that so Indian weddings have sort of a lot of different celebrations and it's spread out over a week.

In Colombo, traditionally, you would have the wedding, which is thrown by the bride's side of the family. And sometimes around that, you might have little other sort of other little events like they would in Colombo High Society, as they did in this book, where they have various cocktail parties and bridal showers and bachelorette parties and the whole sort of works. And then the bride and the groom typically would go off on their honeymoon and they would come back. And then the groom's family would throw a rivaling event where it is just as big, just as grand, just as over the top as the wedding itself, as their way of welcoming the bride into their family. So I think the slight difference, I think, between Western weddings and sort of the weddings that you might see in Sri Lanka is that sometimes it's almost less about the couple and more about the families that are joining each other.

And it's sort of a celebration of sometimes tension and this undercurrent of disagreements and things like that that happen with it. It is never a relaxing affair, I don't think, if you're the bride or the groom or the immediate family. But they're always fun to attend. And hey, if you're a guest, definitely go for one. Oh, I'll go as a guest so I can just watch all the – Yeah, go as a guest. I'll sit back and – yeah, the bride's groom's brother got in a fight with the dads of the other ones. Because, yeah, that's a whole – mixing the families, that's kind of dangerous.

It's like mixing two family regions or something, right? Yeah, of course. And you have to invite everyone. So, for example, when my husband and I got married, so in Sri Lanka, again, just a side note, in Sri Lanka, a small intimate wedding is 100 people. What? Yeah.

You don't get, like, hotels won't have, like, venues won't have packages for less than 100 people most of the time. Wow. Well, and my husband and I, of course, when we were planning, I remember a long time ago when we got married, we thought this was preposterous. We were like 100 people. There's no way.

And we sat down. And if you just combine my family and his family. Holy crap. You got your 100 people. And yeah, uh, so it is. And then we, I remember we were,

we invited maybe 130 people. It was something like that. And it was considered to be a very small, very, very small affair there. And like we, yeah, we had to leave people off the guest list.

Some of them might still be mad at us. We don't know. I, you know, that reminds me. I should just get married or fake a wedding just so I can leave people off the guest list that I don't like. And I want them to know that I don't like them. That might be a thing to do. I don't know. And then people will bring you wedding presents, too.

That's always a plus. Oh, yeah, wedding presents and stuff. In fact, I got people that send me their things for wedding presents. And I'm like, okay. Like, I don't know. I'll send you a gift certificate to a divorce attorney. I don't know. So romantic.

Yeah. Well, it's an American thing. We love divorce over here. It's the latest rage. But, no, that's crazy. I can't even think of 100 people I liked and I'd want at my wedding. I can't even think of five people. We don't like all of them.

That's not one of the things that's a requirement. There we go. So you invite them to the wedding as punishment? You're going to have to buy me a gift and you don't like me and I don't like you. But you're coming to the wedding. It's a family thing. It causes so much drama if you

leave people out and people get offended. It's a whole thing. Or it's drama if they come and they get in a fight. Maybe you're like, hey, we can't get married now because my mom got in a fight with your mom. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong there, I think.

I don't know. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong. And that's why there's a thriller written about it now. It's probably why you guys get better marriages over there as opposed to America because now you really have to be committed to that sort of thing. At the end, after there's been some sort of family brawl at your thing, we're like, well, we still love each other, so we really have to hold on to each other because we've got them as relatives. Anyway, I don't know.

Those are the jokes. Those are the jokes. So it's been wonderful having you on the show, Amanda. Thank you very much for coming on. Oh, thank you, Chris. I've really enjoyed myself. I hope I didn't scare you too much. No, I'm a continent away from you,

so I'm good. But you seem lovely. It's just that anybody whose go-to is throw a dead body in there. You never know. If you ever come over to America, I'll just go to public places where you're at like huge weddings but yeah we'll have to check out the huge uh sri lanka weddings you got me intrigued now where where i'd love to go be a fly on the wall on one and i'd have to have like i'd have

to have like a mapping list of like who all the relatives are i'd be like oh oh look someone's fighting over there so So there you go. Throw in a dead body. It's less about the fights and more about the very judgmental aunties. I think that's the real fear. Because they sort of sit there, and you know that they're judging everyone that walks by. You can see the once over, the ups and the downs, and the whispering going on. Can you believe that so-and-so did

something? Oh, my God. Can you believe what she's wearing? Or it's like the food is not so great. It's always something. Wow. There you go. The aunties. That could be a whole book in and of itself. The wedding aunties.

What was the movie? The Wedding Crashers or something? There could be the weddingding Aunties book. And it's just aunties that go to weddings and cause problems and stir up rumors and trouble. That's a whole new book. That sounds like a thriller. And then you just throw in a dead body, as you put it. Yeah, yeah. And away you go.

So there you go, guys. Order up the book. Let's get your.com one more time so people can have that on the interwebs. Sure. It's amandajayathisa.com so it's just my full name and if you want to find me on twitter or instagram or tiktok or any of those places um again it's just at in my full name which is amandajayathissa there you go pick up the book wherever fine books are sold but don't go in those alleyway bookstores they're're kind of dangerous. You're invited. August 9th,

2022 by Amanda Gia Thyssa. You can order up that book and be the first one to get it in your book club. So you can read it first and then you can tell everybody what happened. I don't know. Don't do that. So we certainly appreciate you guys coming on the show today and tuning in. Be sure to

share your family, friends, relatives. Go to all the places we are on the interwe the show today and tuning in. Be sure to share with your family, friends, relatives. Go to all the places we are on the interwebs. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. Don't throw in any dead bodies, and we'll see you next time.