Tess Gerritsen Talks Characters: How Her Books Nearly Write Themselves!

So let's talk about this little dandy.

You're a magician, Tess.

Can I just say it?

Well, thank you, but I have to give all credit to my characters.

I sort of feel like they did it themselves, and that's when that happens.

It's magical for a writer.

You just feel like you sit back and let these people take over and tell the story.

Hey there, it's your buddy Dave Templa here on the Thriller Zone with a return visit from one of my absolute favorite authors, Tess Garretson, author of the new hit thriller the Summer Guest.

So, first of all, thank you for pushing play on today's 216th episode of your number one thriller fiction podcast, available wherever you get your podcast and of course, on YouTube, where we're trying our darndest to hit 2,000 subscribers.

So please be sure to subscribe.

Now kick back and enjoy as we sit down with Tess Garrison on the Thriller Zone.

It's so nice to see that smiling face.

Well, it's.

It's a very cold day today, so I'm glad to be indoors.

Yeah.

What?

Yeah, give me the stats.

We'll compare weather notes.

Well, I woke up this morning.

I think it was like 14 degrees.

We still have snow on the ground, and I don't know when spring is coming.

Ooh, yeah, rain.

And it's.

Let's check that because, I mean, this is really cold for us.

Yeah, it's 57.

Wait, where are you?

San Diego.

Oh, that's not fair.

I grew up in San Diego, so.

Yeah, it's the best weather in the world.

Isn't.

Does not get any better.

Well, of course, the talk of the town is the Oscars.

Did all your people win last night that you were hoping that would win?

I am.

I am embarrassed to say that I really watched only a small number of those movies.

I just haven't been to the theater in a long time.

So.

I mean, all I can say is I watch Wicked.

That was it.

You know what I did appreciate?

I don't recall.

I think it was the guy who won all the awards.

And wait a minute, let me pull out my ballot here, because.

Yeah, because I.

Yeah, that way I have not seen that.

And it.

And it cleaned house.

But I loved how he said about getting back into the theaters.

Yes, yes.

And.

And it's.

We've gotten so used to it.

I have gotten so used to streaming stuff sitting on my.

On my living room couch that I just have not been in a theater.

So if it hasn't been released on streaming, I probably haven't seen it.

Yeah.

Did you see the.

The fake commercial that Conan did where they.

They put up all the cell phones and into one great big screen?

No, I didn't.

You know, I saw the opening.

I saw.

I saw Conan's first remarks.

I saw the speech by Kieran Culin, which was hilarious with his wife there.

Yeah.

And then.

And then I got distracted, so unfortunately didn't.

I'm going to have to watch the whole thing later.

Well, it did go.

It didn't feel as painfully long as they generally do.

I think that's because Conan kept it moving along.

But let's talk about this little dandy.

Last time when you were on the spy coast, as you'll recall, I was raving about it.

I loved that book.

And I said, quote, I cannot wait until you come back around with another martini club, and bam, here it is.

Yeah.

This was so good.

You ha.

You're a magician, Tess.

Can I just say it?

Well, thank you, but I.

I have to give all credit to my characters.

I sort of feel like they did it themselves.

And that's when that happens.

It's.

It's magical for a writer.

You just feel like you sit back and let these take over and tell the story and.

See, you're getting ahead of me down here.

My last.

One of my last notes, I.

I was skimming, scrolling, stalking, whatever you want to call it.

Instagram saw you on an interview and you said, I come up with an idea that bothers or upsets me, and I don't plot things out, but listen to the characters to tell me and let them reveal the story to me.

Yes, yes, it is.

It's very true.

Magical.

And it sounds a little schizophrenic, but sometimes that's.

That's the best way to do it.

If you.

If you think that sounds schizophrenic, then I'm in same mental ward with you, metaphorically.

Because when I write, I do the same thing.

And people like my wife, who is completely the wired the opposite way.

She spreadsheets and analytics, and she goes, how does that happen?

I said, I literally sit down and if I'm quiet, they just talk to me.

And she looks at me like, okay.

It's very true, though.

I wish I could write the way your.

Your wife thinks because.

Makes things so much easier.

I.

I don't know.

You.

You and I are all prob.

Down blind alleys, and our characters lead us down roads, and they say, oh, never mind, back up.

You know, so it takes me a long time to get through that first draft because in essence, it is almost like writing an outline.

It's just that they're telling you what to say.

And I'm going to spend 30 seconds on this test because as we're now in eighth season, 200 and I think you'll be 216, 17 episodes.

I have gone back and forth.

Chris Hottie hates it when I use this phrase, but pants or plotter.

And I'm amazed at the difference.

The columns of two people that say, oh no, Jeffrey Deaver.

If I don't have a 300 page outline before I start, I'm not going to be able to make it.

People like you and myself.

Oh, no, no, no.

I got an idea where I'm going to start and I probably have an idea where I'm going to end.

But it the magic ev and releases itself in the middle.

And the way we do it, the pantsers among us, we undergo a lot of frustrations in the middle of it.

Because I get stuck with writer's block all the time.

You get midway through and you don't know where it's going next.

But it's the only way I've been able to write.

I've tried to do outlines.

I have written up to 10 page outlines and I never stick to them.

Well, let me do this.

I'm going to put you on the spot.

How many total books now do you have that you have written that have been superlatively successful?

P.S.

all of them.

How many to your credit?

You know, I have to think about.

I think I'm working.

I think I'm writing the 33rd book now.

Okay, folks, listen to this.

33.

I think Tess, young Tess here has got a pretty good idea for how things work.

And here's the key for her.

And so I'm always saying to people, just find what works for you.

Exactly.

There's no wrong way to write a book.

It's really, you know, I think the experience of being, becoming a successful novelist is really all about getting comfortable with your process and not beating yourself over the head saying, I should have done this a different way.

Just do it the way you want to do it.

I like to say, I'm an old dog.

You can't trade.

Teach me new tricks.

And even though I try, I just, I have to do it the way I did when I was 7 years old.

If it ain't, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yeah, that's right.

All right, so the setting is Purity, Maine, for those who are brand New to Tess's Martini Club series.

So the, the setting, Purity Main the people, retired spy Maggie Bird and her fellow ex CIA operatives known as the Martini Club.

Now the problem, a teenager goes missing during a summer visit.

And then what happens, Tess?

Oh, well, Maggie's next door neighbor becomes the primary suspect.

So this kind of pulls her into the mystery.

She believes her neighbor is innocent, and then she ends up clashing with Chief of Police Joe Thibodeau, who is, you know, the local cop.

She is officially supposed to be working on it.

Not these group of amateurs.

And so we watch this, this mystery get on un, you know, unfold.

And we see two different investigations.

One from the Martini Club and one through the police.

Couple of things.

I love me some Maggie Bird.

I, I just, I feel like I could pull up a, a chair and a cup of coffee with her.

But this, this Joe Thibodeau, she.

Thibodeau.

She is.

I love how in the first book Spy coast, she comes out of nowhere and she's like, I'm not having any of this.

I got this.

No, no, no.

Get away.

And then all of a sudden, now they're kind of merging together and forming a somewhat alliance.

Although there is always that faction friction, if you will, where Joe wants to say, guys, it's kind of my thing.

And they're like, yeah, we got this.

Yeah.

And you know, that's.

There's so many levels of conflict in this book.

And I, I love writing conflict.

I mean, of course that's, that's what we always search for as writers.

So the conflict is not only between the official investigators and the unofficial investigators.

It's youth versus experience.

It's summer people versus locals.

It's rich versus people who don't have any money.

And so we're watching this whole mystery unfold with multiple conflicts.

Where did.

I think we, we may have covered this in our last session, which was about almost a year ago, I believe.

And for those of you who are listening, brand new to Tess, perhaps if that's even possible.

Brand new to the Martini Club, let's put it that way.

Where did this gaggle of ex CIA spies come from?

Where I kind of hesitate Tess to go, oh, where do your ideas come from?

I'm not saying that is exactly, but I love to find out where the inspiration, that little spark that goes.

Okay, here's a new group of people.

This happened 35 years ago when I moved to Maine.

That's when the spark happened.

So we had just moved to Maine.

My husband opened up a medical practice and part of having new patients is finding out what their occupational history is.

So we live in a kind of older community.

And he would get these retirees who'd say, I used to work for the government, but they could not talk about what they did for the government.

And when he got a couple of these patients, he thought, what is happening here?

It was a local real estate agent who said, they're all retired CIA.

And that made us go, where did we end up here?

I found out later that I had two retired spies living on my very short street.

The one that I was living on before, one of my son's good friends.

His parents, I discovered, were both married.

They were married CIA agents working in Vietnam during the war.

So it's like I'm surrounded by them.

And I began to think, you know, differently about my neighbors.

Who are they, you know, what, what kind of life do they really have?

So 35 years later, 30 plus years later, I'm older myself, I, I see retirees and I think more and more about what it's like to get older.

And that's where this gaggle came from.

They are essentially my neighbors.

So, of course, it begs the question.

And I, and I realize that everybody has sworn to secrecy in their own world, a little faction of the world.

But my, I guess my question is, do you find yourself or have done, indeed done this, and worked your way into a relationship where you, in some form or fashion said, okay, come on, between us girls, just give me a hint.

Just, you don't have to give up names, but just tell me what that world was like.

They don't talk about it.

I, I know who some of them are.

And actually, you know, it's a small town.

We all know who some of them are, but we don't pry.

And I think that's one of the reasons they feel comfortable in the state of Maine, is people are really respectful of privacy.

I also discovered that even their own children don't know what their parents did.

There was an article recently written by a journalist who tried to come up with.

His article in the Yankee magazine was, who are the spies in Mid Coast Maine?

And he could not get any of them to talk to him, but he was able to reach the daughter of one of them, and she said she had no idea that her mother was a spy until very late in her life.

So they, they, they do keep their.

Secrets well, and they wouldn't be good at their jobs if they didn't.

So I get that.

And, and you just said something that really triggered and I really appreciate it.

It gives me a little bit different insight.

Who likes.

No.

Who likes nosy neighbors?

So especially not here.

No.

So, yes, I think Yankees.

Yankees are pretty respectful of your privacy.

We're not.

We're not gonna go and pry if you.

We can tell.

You don't want to tell us.

Yeah, well, I live in Hollywood adjacent, where everybody's peeking over your fence, so I get it.

Everyone loves a missing person's case.

Of course, dual timelines is a big hook these days, and I love them.

I, I.

You know, here's another thing my wife and I differ on.

She doesn't like flashbacks.

She goes, oh, don't keep going back to go forward.

Just keep going forward.

I'm like, but there's so much little nuance to back.

It's backstory.

It's just.

We're not.

We're not taking down erroneous roots to confuse you.

It's just backstory that gets peppered in.

So to that point, what challenges have you encountered while balancing these dual timelines, if any?

Yeah, you know, dual timelines, I think, are harder to read, which may be why some readers don't like them.

I didn't use them really in the summer.

Guess this is much, very much present day.

But I used it a lot in the Spy coast because of what my character said.

My character.

You know, my very first line in my head from Maggie Bird was, I'm not the woman I used to be.

And that got me going.

I went, who did you used to be?

So it did.

I had to see her in the current day, and then I had to see how she got to that point.

So it required some flashback into her work as a covert agent in her youth.

And now we're.

You know, I wanted to start off with us seeing her in her 60s, so that book required flashback.

And luckily, this particular book, Summer Guests, did not.

Except for that.

That opening chapter, when you see what happened decades before.

Yeah, I like it, by the way.

You bring up a really interesting point.

And I spend entirely too much time thinking about this.

One of my favorite things in the whole wide world.

And who doesn't love this is first sentences, or even I'll even give you, like, first paragraph.

But that first sentence, I will find myself.

Do you ever do this test, go into a bookstore like I did just this past weekend in poison pen in Scottsdale and open a book and just see what that first line is, Open another book, see what that first line is?

Because, boy, that is.

That's.

That's off to the Races.

That's the magic right there.

It really is.

And very often my first line is like the last line I actually write because, you know, you finish the book, you think, now I know what it's about.

Now I know what that first line is.

And if, you know, a killer opening line can really just get the story going for the reader anyway.

Oh, I never thought about that.

So, yeah, if you get to the end of the book and you.

You have that whole culmination happen, and then you look back and you go, so what kind of woman was she?

Boom.

Move it up to the front.

Yes, yes, exactly.

So, I mean, I think that, like, the first line of Maggie was, I'm not the woman I used to be.

I don't even know if I used it.

But that in my own mind was.

Was the first line.

And for the summer guest, the first line is out of the blue.

It's.

It's so.

It's.

You know, that juxtaposition is, you know, something bad is happening.

But he's just having a blueberry muffin.

Hang on one second.

I want to.

Because I love that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here it is.

Purity, Maine, 1972.

On the last day of his life, Purity police officer Randy Pelletier ordered a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin at the Marigold Cafe.

Right there, you're sitting there going.

You're.

You're swept into the.

Oh, coffee and a.

Wait a minute.

On the last day of his life.

What?

And then you're.

You're pulled in and you're off to the races, and there's no stopping you.

So you know where that chapter is going to go.

But, boy, this is one thing you do, Tess.

You.

You shoot out of the game.

I have not read every one of your 30 plus books.

Sorry to say, but I've read enough.

Damn you.

Damn it.

But what I wanted to say is that your work always explores themes of.

And especially here with the Martini Club.

Friendship, loyalty, passage of time.

So I found myself going, how do these themes manifest in your character's relationship and the mystery, if that makes sense.

Well, you know, I think that the big theme of a lot of my books.

You're absolutely right.

Is friendship.

With Rizzoli and Diles.

It was that slowly evolving friendship over 13 books.

And, you know, when we sold that television series, I remember that the producers said, this book is about two ladies.

It's not about the crimes.

It's about, we love these ladies.

And that was what pulled me into actually writing the second book for Martini Club.

Is I want to be part of this club.

I love these five people.

I wish I could be there drinking martinis and sharing gossip from the old days.

So in a way it answers a yearning for a lot of us for connection.

To have a group of core people who are so connected they'll go into battle together.

You know, that's just that ultimate loyalty, that ultimate love.

Even if it's just the love of friendship to return to these people again and again and watch them hold each other up, you know, do things for each other.

It's almost, you know, I always feel like, yeah, marriage is probably that really bonds somebody.

But the true bond is what happens in the battlefield.

It's what happens in, you know, when you're sitting in that bunker together and you know that you both could die.

I think that there's a bond there that what I wanted to explore and that's what happens with these five people.

And I think that's why, on a side note, why I'm so attracted to these military themed shows.

Zero duck, 30 13th hour, fill in the blank.

Because it's a bunch of guys that have number one, got a mission to do.

Number two, part of that bigger mission is to watch their partners backs.

And I love that bond.

It's an inseparable bond.

I've talked to military guys and gals through the years and they talk about.

No, it's, it's, it's almost closer than a sibling or a marriage partner.

And that's what I've always been attracted to.

And then when you were just saying that, it made me think about.

We were again referencing Scottsdale this past weekend, out to see my wife's folks.

They're in a retirement village and we're sitting on the porch having cocktails, cocktail hour.

And folks are coming by and everybody's just, hey, how you doing?

Come on by on their golf courts.

Good to see you.

How's your evening?

And we, Tammy and I turned to each other because we live in a slightly different environment than that and we thought we really miss that.

We really like that.

We like that simplicity, neighborly.

You're looking out for your neighbors, you know who they are.

That's one thing I love about this martini club community.

That's what it is.

It just happens that these friends are, they're not young anymore.

They went through the ring when they're younger age, but they have not lost that connection.

So here they are and they're making a new connection with a young police officer.

So, you know, these.

Maggie does say something in the first book about how every person you love is another weakness.

It's another chink in your armor, and it's not a good thing to have.

But she cannot help connecting with people.

She cannot help forming a bond with her neighbor, for instance.

Yeah, and I get that.

And I've.

I've seen a similar theme along that line in spy novels, both movies, TV series, etc.

You know, you got to keep.

What am I thinking of?

The one that just had the agency recently?

And everybody has to keep that tall brick wall around them, but, boy, there's a sadness to that, too, isn't it?

Yeah, that's a sadness.

And that's.

I think the first book was.

What I was really exploring was not just this.

It wasn't the tradecraft.

It wasn't the mechanics of being a spy.

It was the.

What is the emotional toll of working in a field where you cannot tell the truth, where you question every friendship?

Is that a real friendship or is that a fake friendship?

So that was.

The first book was all about the.

You know, how hard it is to be in that world.

And this book is like, okay, that world is behind us, but we've kept these friendships, and we're going to move forward into the future knowing what we know with about each other.

Yeah, I love that.

And speak in a future.

Since you used that word, I would be remiss if I didn't say ask.

Martini Club.

We'll have to come back.

I mean, if you went.

Was it 13 books, Rizzoli?

Was that.

Do you feel like you got at least the Baker's Dozen in your pocket for the Martini club?

I have the next one.

I don't know about a baker's Dozen, but right now I've just finished the first draft for the next book, which is called the Shadow Friends.

Nice.

And this is more on Ingrid, who's.

I like to call her the Hermione of the group.

She's always the clever one.

And we find out she has an ex lover who's coming back into her life, and it's going to threaten her marriage and pull her back into the world she thought she retired from.

Oh, there you go again with that conflict that you mentioned earlier in the show.

Conflict?

I mean, if you don't have it, you don't really have a story, do you?

No, you don't.

And I also like to say that every book has one word that describes the overriding emotion for that book.

For the Spy coast, the emotion, I would say, is regret, because Maggie is regretting some of the choices she made and how she ended up in this point.

The shadow friends.

I would say the one word is longing.

Longing for what could have been.

Mm.

So she loves her husband Lloyd, but here's this hot young spy back in, well, he's not so young anymore.

Back in her life.

And, you know, she thinks about what could have happened.

There you go.

He may not be young anymore.

However, memory has this funny little trick about it that keeps you remembering the way it was and you hold on to the way it was way more than the way it is.

Right.

And you know what?

At 70, you can still be hot.

Sure.

Right?

Yeah.

I think we both got long ways to go before that happens.

Well, I love how just to.

As we kind of start wrapping up, I love, you know, your early career as a doctor influence medical thrillers.

Duh.

So now with this Martini series, do you see that same background in some form or fashion shaping the way you approach, say, problem solving, forensic details?

I would have to imagine.

I mean, you had such a vast knowledge of medicine that has to, it has to carry over quite handsomely.

Well, I don't use medicine so much in these books.

I mean, except for the autopsy scenes.

When there are autopsy scenes.

There you go.

I think much more valuable to me was what I studied in undergraduate.

I was an anthropology major.

And I feel that every group of new characters is a new culture.

And so just delving into the belief systems and, you know, and the behavioral systems and just what do they do every day?

That really my biggest strength is being able to look at it from an anthropological point of view.

So, for instance, when I wrote that book Gravity, I found it really helpful to think of engineers as their own separate tribe.

And how do they think and how do they speak?

So I'm applying that to my spy culture.

What are their values?

And all factions are some kind of a tribe when you think about it.

Everybody has their tribe.

So you have to feel like you can work your way into that tribe and get into their mindset to be able to write these characters.

One thing I so respect about you and your work is how you've written across multiple genres.

Not everybody can do that.

I'm going to use the word most is going to be somebody.

Go, come on now.

And most isn't really fair, But a predominant amount of writers tend to get in one lane and stay in that lane.

And I respect about you, I mean, you've had medical thrillers, crime fiction, romantic suspense, historical fiction.

And so I got a two part question, looking back, do you See a common thread that ties your work together.

And does this summer guest represent, in some form or fashion, maybe a culmination of those themes?

The one thing that ties it all together is suspense.

No matter what the genre, whether it's even, you know, Gravity, which was my science fiction book.

There were no bad guys in that book, but it was still suspenseful.

So that's the one thing that I think is in common.

The reason I go across genres is I get bored.

I just, you know, I hate being put in a drawer.

And I can't stand people saying, you've got to write another Rizzoli Niles Books book.

I mean, no, I had to write the Bone garden, which was 1830s and it was the history of medicine.

I had to write a ghost story, which.

An erotic ghost story, which shocked a lot of my readers, but that's what I did.

So, I mean, just the idea comes to you, even though nobody wants it, nobody expects it from you.

Sometimes as a creator, you just can't avoid doing it.

You have just said in three sentences, my.

What.

What.

What gives me the most profound appreciation of you as a talent and thing that I resonate the most with you.

And.

And it is this.

And I.

God, I love this about you, Tess.

Why in the wide world of fiction do we not give ourselves permission in some form or fashion to go, hey, I want to do this next one.

Hey, I want to do this.

Now, I know that there is writing to market.

I understand that you need to be in a lane because your agents and publishers are going to KN that door.

I understand all of that, but.

And granted, we.

We all can be test Garretsons, but you have followed your dream, had success, scratched all your itches, and loved the journey.

So a.

I applaud you.

I applaud you.

You're absolutely right.

The business does not like that.

This.

This business wants us to do the same thing, but a little different.

Every book.

And you get that I want the same thing, but a little different.

And probably the choices I made were not always the best for my sales.

I mean, every book that I wrote that was not what people expected, did not do well.

But you have to do those books, otherwise you get stagnant.

And sometimes that chancy book you took ends up being a new direction for you that builds another completely different market.

It.

So I understand the desire by the publishers to get the same book every time, but it doesn't always jive with what we as creators need to do for ourselves.

I put a quote in the beginning chapter of A new book I'm working on and it's Ralph Waldo Emerson's and I would love to impress you and be able to pull it up and quote it, but it has to do with marching to the beat of your own drum, which I have been the quintessential example of that growing up as a preacher's kid, you're brought up in the church.

You're told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, what not to do, why not to do it, more often, not why not to do it.

And.

And I have also also said to myself, but damn it, this is the drum I want to bang.

And as far as we know, we only got one life so far.

I want to bang it the way I want to bang it.

So I'm echoing your sentiment, simply jumping on your band wagon, playing in your band, beating my drum to your band, saying, rock on, chillabong.

Take the risk and jump off the cliff and see what happens.

Exactly.

Well, always so, so thrilling.

I'm so glad Megan keeps me in touch with you.

I do have one piece of business question that I is burning through my head.

So if you got two more minutes, I want to ask you.

I realize that you have been with Thomas and Mercer for just these, just.

This new Spike series.

Who were you with before?

If I met Valentine, I mean, I published with, I've been with Random House, I've done, I've done Simon and Schuster, I've done, you know, I've been probably five different publishers.

The reason I went with Thomas and Mercer was that it, it came with a television deal.

So I was, I was a little bit hard to resist.

When Amazon made the offer, they said, by the way, Amazon Studios would also like to sign on.

So it was hard, I mean, not to say yes.

It's in development now at the Amazon Studios.

See, okay, there we could.

I want to go out on this on a high because a lot of people will say, I'm not going to go down that path.

I'm just going to say it this way very succinctly.

There are people who believe there.

You should only play in the sandbox of the Big five.

We'll call it Big Five.

Although it's always knocking on three or four doors.

Then there are those who say, ah, I'm just gonna self publish.

I don't wanna fool with it.

And I'm like, okay.

There is some truth to that.

However, you don't have quite the breadth that you could.

So my point is, I personally think, and I can't get in trouble saying this cause I'm self published and nobody can tell me what to do.

But with Thomas and Mercer and Amazon, I think it's the most brilliant move possible because guess what?

Last time I checked, they control an enormous amount of the books.

Well, that wasn't actually my first thought, but what was my first thought was I loved the editor and I have worked with her before.

Gracie Doyle, fantastic editor.

I knew there'd be support for it, certainly digitally.

There are downsides, of course, as Barnes and Noble is never gonna carry your book, but at least for the first book.

I sold more copies of that first book than I have with the big five for the first year.

So yeah, the sales are great.

And then there's, then there's that television series in development.

Well, you had me at TV because my dream of dreams since I've been thinking about this since the late 80s, early 90s when I started writing.

And I told this to James Patterson, who kicked off season eight.

And I said, james, Jim, you're the, you're the guy who really set me on that path going, I think I can do this.

You're the storyteller that I, I kind of feel like I can be.

So the point is now you're dealing with a company that goes, oh yeah, hey, come over here and play in this sandbox.

Because we got the book coverage, but TV deals.

Amazon's kind of the big kid on the block now.

Yeah, it is.

But as I said, it's really about the people you work with.

And I just happen to love my editor and I love the people.

I love Megan Beatty.

I mean, they up paired me up with her as my publicist and it's just, it just seems to be a really great team in my opinion.

She is the best in the business.

I.

You know what, I.

I totally agree with you.

She is fantastic.

And here's.

Not only is her.

I'm gonna blow this horn because I really think the world of her, but it's her heart.

She's got heart in the game.

We've met a number of times, gone to a lot of different events together.

And when you meet somebody when you know their heart is in it, they're not just pushing books or tallying numbers or, you know, clicking whatever.

They're in it for the love of the game.

And I really appreciate that about her.

And kudos to you.

Yeah, I do appreciate it.

And it really makes a difference when the publicist loves the book and has, and you're right, has her heart in it.

Well, as we close every single time.

You know, this and I.

And we kind of already covered it.

We covered at the beginning, but I'm going to bring it back around.

Best writing advice as we always people listen to the show and they go, oh, it's Tess going to say his best writing advice?

Lay it on us, girl.

Listen for your character to talk to you.

That's it.

Just be very quiet.

Don't have any music playing.

Sit in your office and wait for that voice to say something because that is what kicks off the story.

Yeah.

I think also embrace the silence so you can hear the voices.

We've gotten a little bit too busy.

Sometimes I think, yeah, I don't listen to music when I'm writing.

It's all it has to be silent.

Yeah.

Good for you folks.

Learn more@tess garretson.com the book again the Summer Guests.

And you are going to love this as much as you did, if not more so than the Spy coast test.

Will you come back around again?

I sure will.

Shadow guests will be out probably in a year and a half.

Sweet.

Always, always a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thanks again, Tess.

Hey, folks, join me next Thursday because we're now on Thursdays.

As you know, it's thriller Thursdays.

Join me as we welcome Marshall Karp, author of Don't Tell Me how to Die.

It's going to be a great, great visit.

Until then, be sure to drop us an email@the thrillerzonemail.com you can always swing by our website@the thrillerzone.com leave a message, leave a review, be sure to subscribe.

And all that good stuff.

I'm Dave Temple, your host, and I'll see you next time on another edition of the Thriller Zone Zone, your number one podcast for stories that thrill the Thriller Zone.