Chris Pavone, TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON: A Novel
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[0:58]Chris Favon is the author of Two Nights in Lisbon, a novel.
[1:02]He is also the author of Five International Thrillers, and of course Two Nights in Lisbon is his
[1:08]most recent, which was an instant New York Times USA Today and indie bestseller,
[1:13]plus one of Apple Books' best of the year.
[1:16]His novels are in development for film and TV, and have been translated into two dozen languages.
[1:20]His debut, The X-Pats, One Both the Edgar and Anthony Awards.
[1:25]Chris grew up in Brooklyn, worked as a book editor for nearly two decades,
[1:28]and lives in New York City, and on the north fork of Long Island.
[1:32]Hi, Chris.
[1:32]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:34]Have time to read books, to discuss Two Nights in Lisbon, and your whole career, and everything else.
[1:39]Thank you so much for having me, Zippy.
[1:40]It's great to see you.
[1:41]This is particularly rewarding, given that I was rejected from interviewing you.
[1:46]Early on, when I had just started my podcast, so you're one of them.
[1:48]But not by me.
[1:49]Not by you.
[1:50]I won't hold it against you, but this is like one of those moments with like
[1:55]happened with Anna Quinlan Rose.
[1:56]Like, I did it.
[1:57]I finally did it.
[1:58]It's taken me like years.
[2:00]So I feel that way with you.
[2:01]Anyway, so just a private, private joy for me.
[2:04]I read The X-Pats with my book group years ago and was obsessed, could not put it down.
[2:10]We all like discussed the whole thing, and it was just wonderful.
[2:13]So anyway, but now you're back with Two Nights in Lisbon,
[2:15]Instant New York Times, Bestseller.
[2:17]Would you mind telling listeners what it's about?
[2:20]You know, that's a good question.
[2:21]I sort of would mind, but I'll tell them what it's not about.
[2:25]Okay, okay.
[2:26]So I can tell, I can tell them what it's about if you want.
[2:28]Oh, I'd love to hear what you...
[2:30]Well, so here's the thing.
[2:31]I wanted this book to look like a book that's about one thing, and it's really not.
[2:37]I wanted this to look like a book that opens like a thriller about a man on a business trip
[2:45]who takes his wife along to this business trip in Lisbon, and he goes missing.
[2:51]And at the beginning of this novel, it looks like it's a story about that,
[2:55]about this guy, and about this woman's, his new wife's quest to find him.
[3:00]And over the course of the narrative, it gradually evolves that the book is really about something
[3:06]completely different.
[3:07]And the cover of the book and the flap copy and the blurbs and all the marketing,
[3:12]nothing about that actually suggests what the book is really about, and that's purposeful,
[3:18]because I want a certain type of reader to be able to come to this book,
[3:23]because it's the type of book that they like to read, because it's an international thriller,
[3:27]because it's about the sky, because they're going to bring to the reading experience a lot of
[3:33]different expectations about what's going to be going on here, and for those readers to find
[3:38]themselves completely mistaken about what's going on in this book.
[3:42]So it's sort of like a Trojan force of a book that the real subject does not become a
[3:48]parent for a while. And I feel like that's most important for a type of reader who I actually
[3:55]want to trick and to read this book, because it's a subject that they would not voluntarily pick
[4:00]up a book to read about. Wow. So how did you arrive at this? Did you always know you wanted to
[4:06]take the reader through this path to the actual story?
[4:10]Well, when I started writing this book, I knew that when I started writing this book,
[4:14]the idea came to me during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. And it occurred to me at that moment,
[4:22]which I could not stop watching, even though it depressed the hell out of me. And for me,
[4:27]there are certain aspects of Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and Donald Trump's campaign and his
[4:34]entire presidency that have nothing to do with politics at all, not red state issues versus
[4:40]blue state, not black lives versus blue or hawks or doves or anything like that, but simply
[4:46]matter of decency and looking at things that are crimes and calling them crimes. And during
[4:54]the Kavanaugh hearings, my spirit sank so much about the giant shrug that was being offered by so
[5:02]many people in this country and so many people in Congress who looked at this thing that
[5:10]to me is something that's disqualified to hold any major position of responsibility and chose to not
[5:18]care. And I feel like we've all become trapped in these very, very hardened silos where every day,
[5:28]where exposed to news and so-called facts and opinions that are only exactly our own,
[5:39]that we are never given the opportunity or we never give ourselves the opportunity to find
[5:45]any evidence to the contrary. And every day, we go out there into the world of consuming
[5:51]social media and radio and newspapers and television and we're confronted again and again and again
[5:56]with opinions we already have. And we never are forced to look at any conflicting evidence.
[6:03]And so our positions just become more and more hardened and we start thinking that the people who
[6:08]other positions are more and more deranged. And I think we've lost track of a common sense
[6:14]of agreement on the fundamental facts of the world. And while that was a long way of getting
[6:23]of why I wanted to do this in this book, but that's it. I mean, that's the thing of it,
[6:27]is that I feel like we're so dismissive of so many things that there are television stations and
[6:34]newspapers and online presidents that I will not engage with at all. I will not glance at the headline,
[6:42]I will not even remotely entertain the possibility that anything they have to tell me is anything
[6:47]even remotely approaching the truth. And I feel like half of this country feels exactly the same way
[6:51]about all the things that I consume. And I'm not going to say that I yearn for the good old days,
[6:58]there were no good old days. But I do yearn for the days when there was a set of common facts
[7:04]that we had read upon in this world that two plus two did equal four. And that sexual assault
[7:10]is a crime. Wow. Well, that was powerful. I love it. I'll just ask you like two questions and we'll
[7:15]be done. This is so easy. Can we back up to how you got started and like your life? Like, where did
[7:22]you grow up and how did you become a writer? And I know you were an editor for a very long time.
[7:26]Like, can you tell us the past here? Oh, absolutely. I grew up in Brooklyn and I went away to
[7:33]Cornell for college. And I did not major in English. I was a government major. And I came back to
[7:38]New York somehow convinced that I wanted to be a writer. But I didn't want to be the type of
[7:45]novelist who spends his career teaching creative writing to freshman seminars in the middle
[7:52]of nowhere. And I didn't want to work in an advertising agency trying to get my big break
[7:57]to write a sentence about deodorant. I didn't. I felt like those are the types of careers,
[8:03]at least for me, that you're all in on the writing. And if it doesn't work out, then what
[8:09]do you end up with? And I didn't want to end up that way. And I feel like trying to become
[8:14]novelist is an extremely risky endeavor. It works for almost nobody. And even for the people
[8:20]for whom it does work, but look at them and you think, wow, that person has a very successful
[8:24]careers and novelist, they probably don't make a living at it. And they never really have. And so
[8:29]I didn't want to be all in that way. Instead, I decided that I wanted to work in publishing. I thought
[8:35]ideally that the job I should get was as an assistant at the New Yorker. Because that's
[8:42]that's where the money is right there. But they were unimpressed with my plus average and my
[8:49]non English major and my complete lack of connections or relevant experience. So unsurprisingly,
[8:55]they were one of many, many magazines that did not hire me. I had some pretty random jobs for
[9:00]a year working in professional publishing. And I worked for a newspaper that was sold by homeless
[9:05]people. And then I got a job as an assistant at Dell Puzzle Magazine's, which published
[9:11]mostly crosswords, which I loved. And I still do. I love puzzles. And my love of puzzles is
[9:17]actually a big part of how I construct books. But I knew that I didn't want to have a career in
[9:23]puzzles. So after a year of working there, I marched my little self over to the parent company's
[9:30]human resources department or personnel, as it was called and said, is there anything else they
[9:35]can do with this company? And Dell Puzzle Magazine's was part of this big conglomerate called
[9:41]Phantom Double Day Dell, a bunch of publishers. And I got a job as a copy editor there. And I started
[9:47]on a Monday as people tend to start. And because I didn't have any experience, I was given the
[9:52]easiest thing that a copy editor could be given, which was a manuscript for children's book. And
[9:57]Double Day didn't really publish children's books like Once Every Couple.
[10:00]because an editor was doing a favor for somebody.
[10:03]And I did my little work on the children's book.
[10:06]And I asked a query and I marched the manuscript down the hall
[10:10]and I gave it to the assistant who messaged it
[10:13]to the author who looked it over,
[10:14]who messaged it back, who gave it to the editor,
[10:16]who marched down the hall.
[10:18]Herself and came to my office and knocked on the door
[10:21]and said, hi, are you Chris?
[10:23]And this was Wednesday, I'd started on Monday.
[10:26]And I looked up and I said, yeah, I'm Chris.
[10:28]And she said, hi, I'm Jackie O'Naszis.
[10:32]And that was my introduction to book publishing.
[10:34]And over the years that I worked there,
[10:37]I continued to work there until she died,
[10:41]which was coincidental.
[10:43]I didn't leave because Mrs. O'Naszis died.
[10:45]But I was an assistant there.
[10:47]And all my friends at the company were also my age
[10:51]and similarly broke.
[10:52]And people were working night and weekend jobs
[10:55]at Banana Republic and babysitting
[10:57]and doing things like that in order to pay the rent.
[11:00]And it was so affirming that this person
[11:04]who could be doing anything shows to do this with her life
[11:08]and not just for a year or two.
[11:11]She was not a dilaton.
[11:12]This is what she did for three decades.
[11:14]Is she went to a book publishing house
[11:16]and she acquired books and she pitched them in meetings
[11:20]and she stood there in the conference room
[11:22]and clapped for the boss just like everybody else.
[11:24]And she didn't come to work on Fridays
[11:26]and she didn't come to work in the summers
[11:28]and nobody begrudge to that
[11:29]because she came to work ever
[11:31]because ever she walked in the door.
[11:33]And that was fantastic.
[11:35]And I worked on everything that doubled I published
[11:38]that my job was to do a little amount of work
[11:40]on 150 books a year.
[11:44]And that was the first time in my life
[11:45]that I'd ever read contemporary desksellers.
[11:50]I was 23 years old, something like that.
[11:53]And as young people do, I read
[11:55]I thought of only as serious books
[11:58]and it was literature with the capital L.
[12:00]And suddenly it was my job to read other types
[12:03]of things, every type of thing really.
[12:05]And it was every year our biggest responsibility,
[12:09]everybody was to turn John Grisham's annual TypeScript
[12:14]into two and a half million heart covers on bookstore shelves
[12:17]as quickly and as type of free as possible.
[12:21]And I had a very small role in making that happen
[12:25]and part that involved merging the authors set
[12:29]of proofread pages or types of pages
[12:31]with the proofreader set of pages
[12:33]and resolving any discrepancies
[12:36]and creating a master set of first pass pages,
[12:38]which I would pack into my bag
[12:40]and take into the elevator in Times Square,
[12:42]get a taxi in Little LaGuardia
[12:44]and get on the Delta shuttle
[12:45]which at the time in the early 90s,
[12:48]you got on this airplane with no ticket
[12:51]and you found an empty seat
[12:53]and you paid on port, that was fantastic.
[12:55]And got off in Washington
[12:58]where a driver from the printing plan
[13:00]would pick me up and take the two hour drive
[13:02]out to Berryville, Virginia
[13:04]where I would hand this master set of pages
[13:06]to the type setter and then wait around
[13:09]for the second pass,
[13:10]all because that rhythm roll was faster
[13:13]than overnight FedEx and every day counted.
[13:16]And those early Grisham books,
[13:18]this was the very big, the third, fourth, fifth books,
[13:22]those were revelatory to me.
[13:26]They were books about important issues
[13:29]about big tobacco and the death penalty
[13:33]and sexual assault.
[13:34]And they were, the political issues were not grafted
[13:38]upon a thriller nor the other way around.
[13:41]The thriller existed because of the political issues
[13:44]and the political issues were only there
[13:47]in service to the thriller.
[13:49]And the whole thing was just so brilliantly constructed
[13:53]and unput downable as reads.
[13:55]And it had never been the type of book
[13:58]that I had considered before.
[13:59]I thought that this was all romances and things like that.
[14:03]I didn't know what the hell was going on in best salaries.
[14:05]I was so ignorant.
[14:06]And I thought that these books were genius.
[14:09]And I realized that I had been looking at novels
[14:14]in a different way, in maybe a wrong way.
[14:17]And it's also at this time that I stopped trying
[14:20]to divide books between good and bad.
[14:23]And I started thinking more in terms of things that I like
[14:26]and things that other people may like
[14:28]and things that nobody will like.
[14:30]But not value judgments of good book or bad book.
[14:33]And I resolved that I thought I could write
[14:36]this type of book one day.
[14:38]But it took me a long time to get to doing it.
[14:41]And it took me really until I was 40 years old,
[14:46]right before I turned 40.
[14:48]I'd been a book editor for a while.
[14:51]I'd had a very satisfying career.
[14:53]My wife also works in publishing.
[14:55]And she came home from the office one day
[14:58]and said, what would you think of living in Luxembourg?
[15:01]And at this point in my life,
[15:03]I'd only ever lived in New York City and I never considered
[15:08]moving anywhere else.
[15:09]And my brother, my little brother,
[15:12]I lived for a few years in China.
[15:14]And I'd never even seriously considered moving
[15:16]to the east side.
[15:17]And I thought it was giant hole in my personal experience
[15:23]and bravery in general.
[15:24]And I was so excited for this opportunity
[15:27]to go live somewhere else and be someone else.
[15:30]I was 40 years old when we moved.
[15:31]And we have twin boys, they were 40 years old and a dog.
[15:36]And I became a completely different person.
[15:39]And I left behind my career and my friends
[15:44]and my family and everything I know how to do.
[15:47]And you've lived in New York, really your whole life, right?
[15:50]And I've escaped a little, but yes, mostly, yeah.
[15:53]When you've lived in a place a long time
[15:54]or at least since you were a child
[15:57]and you're so familiar with everything.
[15:59]And you feel like there's nothing you don't know how to do.
[16:02]And it's no problem you don't know how to solve
[16:05]or at least find the person who can solve it.
[16:07]And I felt like in Luxembourg,
[16:11]it had never occurred to me how comfortable I was in New York.
[16:15]And it had never occurred to me how hard life can be
[16:19]even for someone whose life isn't hard.
[16:21]Like, I didn't have a job there.
[16:23]I didn't need to work in Luxembourg,
[16:25]but I was home with four-year-old children,
[16:27]which I'd never done before.
[16:29]I was living in a country where I didn't speak a language
[16:31]where I had no friends,
[16:32]where I didn't know how to do things fundamental,
[16:34]like take out the garbage
[16:36]or get somebody to fix a broken toilet or something.
[16:39]Like everything, everything was challenging
[16:43]in a way that nothing had been challenging before.
[16:46]My set of concerns in Luxembourg
[16:47]was completely different than my set of concerns
[16:50]had been in New York.
[16:51]And I had to do a bunch of things
[16:53]that I never contemplated doing.
[16:55]I had to make a whole new set of friends from scratch, from zero.
[17:00]And that's hard.
[17:01]That's hard when you're 10 years old,
[17:03]it's hard when you're 25,
[17:05]and it's definitely hard when you're 40.
[17:06]And I never had to do it until I was 40 years old.
[17:09]And I'd never had that experience
[17:11]of just arriving someplace where I don't know anybody.
[17:14]And so I started writing about that.
[17:16]And for a few months, I was writing a book
[17:19]that was extremely whiny and very, very bad.
[17:22]And I couldn't, it had not occurred to me
[17:25]how to construct this story in a way
[17:27]that would be interesting to other people.
[17:29]I thought that I had a setup that was intriguing
[17:32]that X-Pats and Luxembourg,
[17:34]which I was one of, I thought that sounds interesting.
[17:37]Like, if somebody just says that to me,
[17:39]sure, I wanna know more.
[17:40]I will ask a question like, what's going on?
[17:43]But what's going on is the thing that I didn't have
[17:46]at the get go.
[17:46]All I had was the title, which was the X-Pats.
[17:50]And I struggled through a few months of writing,
[17:53]just writing, just pushing through to get things on the page
[17:56]before it occurred to me that I could turn this into a thriller.
[17:59]So I think your original question was how did I get
[18:02]started in this?
[18:03]Oh, keep going.
[18:03]So then we know you decided,
[18:05]so you figured out how to make the X-Pats
[18:07]to thriller and then what you just said and wrote it
[18:09]and then it became a bestseller, easiest, easy peasy.
[18:12]Well, not exactly, but I'm also, you know,
[18:15]I think it's an extremely important decision
[18:18]for novelist to decide what type of writer am I going to be.
[18:23]And most people, almost nobody gets to change lanes.
[18:30]You pick a lane and that's your lane.
[18:32]Maybe you move a little bit in one direction
[18:34]or a little bit in another direction.
[18:35]Maybe you go faster and maybe you go slower.
[18:37]Maybe you're good at it.
[18:38]Maybe you're not.
[18:39]But if you write a first novel that's a thriller,
[18:43]you don't get to write a second novel
[18:46]that is speculative fiction.
[18:48]You don't get to write a third novel.
[18:50]That's literary fiction.
[18:51]You don't, that's not how publishing can work.
[18:55]That's not how publishing can operate.
[18:57]Publishers don't want it that way.
[18:59]Booksellers don't want it that way.
[19:01]And it's not just like, it's true.
[19:03]I think not just in publishing, but in everything.
[19:05]You don't, you don't get to choose every couple of years
[19:08]to do something else and ask the world to respect
[19:12]that you're going to be good at it.
[19:13]Like, you can't be an ENT and then become a heart surgeon.
[19:17]Like that, nobody will go to you for that.
[19:19]Like, tell, no, you're used to looking up noses
[19:22]and you're going to cut up in my heart.
[19:23]I don't think so.
[19:24]Like, maybe your original training was the same,
[19:26]but that's not how this works.
[19:28]And I feel like novelists, nobody's doing it.
[19:31]Nobody's like to sit stake, but you're asking readers
[19:34]to trust that you know how to do a certain type of thing.
[19:37]And I think you're then obligated to give them
[19:41]increasingly better versions of that thing.
[19:44]And they can be different versions of that thing.
[19:46]They can be wildly different versions.
[19:48]Some novelists write the same book every year for 30 years.
[19:50]And everybody says, why don't they?
[19:51]I don't know if the novelists have said it's like for that.
[19:54]But readers are satisfying that people love reading series.
[19:57]People love reading books where they expect it.
[20:00]thing is going to happen. I'm not one of those readers and I'm not one of those writers either,
[20:03]but I do feel an obligation to write the same type of book, at least in the broad,
[20:10]broad terms. And so before I really seriously sat down with the expats as a thriller,
[20:18]I had to think about, is this something I really want to do? Is this the type of writer?
[20:23]I really want to be. It's certainly not the type of writer that I was imagining when I was
[20:27]20 years old and I was thinking I wanted to be a writer. I was not thinking that my goal
[20:32]would be that people would buy the mass market paperback of my book in airports and then leave it
[20:37]in the hotel room. But that is my goal now. Like that is, that's the reading experience that I want
[20:43]people to have. I want people to pick up this book in the airport, not be able to put it down on
[20:47]the airplane, not be able to put it down their first night in the hotel and then leave it there
[20:51]because there's a mass market paperback. Like it's not something you need to own. I have
[20:56]disabused myself long ago with the notion that I want to go out to the world and prove to everyone
[21:03]how brilliant I am because I know that I'm not. And I don't feel like I have anything that I
[21:12]want to prove to readers or colleagues or friends of mine. The thing that I want to do in these books
[21:19]is write really compelling stories that make people think. But I don't want people, I'm not
[21:24]aiming for people to walk around thinking, oh, that guy's a genius. And I think I'm comfortable
[21:30]in that realm of being a type of commercial novelist where my goal is to write the very, very
[21:35]best type of thriller that I can think of. Thrillers for smart readers, thrillers for people who
[21:41]want to be engaged in real issues and not just the irrelevancies of some cop pursuing some
[21:48]serial killer and things that don't exist in the world at all. I don't want to write those types
[21:52]of books. And I don't have anything against those books. I read plenty of those types of books.
[21:56]Sometimes that type of story can feel super irrelevant to me. And in the current age of really,
[22:04]really bisected politics and high feelings about everything. And a lot of people going out into the
[22:12]world and trying to do something and make the world a better place or at least a less bad one,
[22:18]I have felt compelled also to pivot a little bit in my writing and to make, to write these genre
[22:25]stories that are a little less irrelevant than a lot of genre stories tend to be. Which again,
[22:30]I don't dismiss the value of them. And I think a lot of people come to reading fiction,
[22:37]especially genre fiction, as an escape from the real world that specifically what they're looking
[22:44]is to not be engaged in the real issues that we confront every day. And I completely respect that.
[22:51]And I understand that that's huge, not just in books, but in every type of entertainment.
[22:57]It's just not how I engage with literature or stories at all. So I've been trying to write these.
[23:04]I wouldn't call them serious, but they're books that have a more serious edge and are more
[23:10]closely tied to real issues that we confront in society. And each one of my books is about that.
[23:16]And whether the theme is marriage or work or betrayal, they're all about something important to us.
[23:24]And it's not just a story of adrenaline that ends with a good guy prevailing.
[23:31]And you don't think that mastering a particular genre and learning how to do it at the very top
[23:39]level of a craft is an act of genius.
[23:43]No, well, I don't know. What is...
[23:46]I mean, what writer, who did you want to be? I feel like you're trying to say like,
[23:53]well, I'm writing these books. I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm smart. I feel like
[23:58]complete opposite of... I feel like it's case in point in supporting the argument that you are.
[24:04]Like, who would you feel like somebody else is holding up to say, like, well, I'm not this guy.
[24:10]Do you have some... Do you know what I mean?
[24:13]Yeah, I do. I feel like the mark of genius in the arts and literature and creativity of any sort
[24:21]is inventing something new. Is writers who invent a new way of storytelling or new way of
[24:27]using language or a new voice or things that haven't been done before looking at the world
[24:33]and saying, I can do something completely different here and create a new language,
[24:39]create a new visual language, creating a new musical language, create a new sound,
[24:43]create a new feeling in people. And I don't want to not sell myself too much,
[24:49]but I don't feel like I do that. And I don't feel like that's been my goal.
[24:54]I'm trying to write a really, really good version of a form that already exists in the world.
[25:01]And I feel like there are writers and a lot of them are struggling writers and not a lot of them
[25:06]are very successful financially who do go out into the world and invent something new. And in my
[25:12]generation, I have felt like that is probably Jennifer Egan, a different type of book every book,
[25:21]contrary to everything I was just saying before about how you need to pick a lane. And I think
[25:26]that type of bravery is also part of it. And I feel like she has dwelt in these different
[25:35]arenas in each of her novels that somehow really, really related to one of them.
[25:43]So, listeners, sorry about that. We're back. I had a slight Wi-Fi outage. And I'm so sorry,
[25:48]but now back for the conclusion of my interview with Christopher. Thank you for your patience.
[25:53]Anyway, Chris, you had just finished telling me about how Jennifer Egan is more of a genius than you are.
[26:02]Well, I still believe there are lots of different types of genius in the world. And particularly
[26:07]in the literary world, it is like facing a ghost to try to become somebody who readers regularly
[26:14]turn to and who can break out from the muck. And that is a genius skill of its own. So, you know,
[26:20]not to say that everybody brings their own unique things. And I think to many people
[26:25]being able to do what you have done is an active genius. So, I'll just leave it at that.
[26:29]Well, thank you. That's very nice of you. And I do appreciate it.
[26:32]By the way, I've been wondering what happened to your brother who went to China? What is he
[26:36]doing now? Like, what's his story in life? He is a high school teacher. He did not stay in China.
[26:41]He came back to New York. He had a bunch of adventures. He lived in Alaska for a while,
[26:46]and he became somebody who is teaching primarily kids who spoke Chinese to speak English,
[26:53]which there are a lot of New York City right now. And he actually teaches at the high school
[26:58]that I went to, but he did not go to. I also briefly taught as a substitute teacher at the high
[27:04]school, which is called Midwood High School at the middle of New York, in the middle of Brooklyn.
[27:08]And it was not an experience that I like to try. My parents were New York City public school teachers
[27:13]as were almost all of their friends. And so, I grew up seeing all of these teachers around me
[27:19]and having a lot of respect for a lot of them. And then, of course, I had a lot of respect for
[27:25]my own high school teachers. But then, when I became one of them, and I was only 21 years old,
[27:30]when I walked back into Midwood as a substitute teacher and sitting in the break room with the
[27:38]teachers and finding out how much some of them disliked their jobs. And it was like the students,
[27:46]it was so devastating to me. And it was one of those revelatory moments. And like when I thought,
[27:53]wow, there are just some things that I could not ever remotely see clearly coming until they were
[27:59]right here upon me. And this teacher, like being a depressed person, I just had no idea.
[28:05]You know, I felt like I've always carried that with me that the surprise of finding
[28:13]that people are not who you think they are. And to me, that was so shocking then. And one of the
[28:21]experiences I had as a young person working publishing in 1995, I think it was, I sort of helped
[28:29]Pat Conroy bring the book called Beach Music to the finished line, loved Beach Music. I wrote
[28:35]about it in my book. I loved it. Yeah. It was, it was really, really late. And Pat was doing a very,
[28:41]very big revision on it. And he was having a hard time doing this. And he was living in San Francisco.
[28:48]And double day really needed to publish this book for financial reasons. And it was just,
[28:53]it was unsustainable that he could just continue to not finish up work on it. So the publisher
[28:59]moved Pat from San Francisco to a hotel on the re-side to finish working on this book in an
[29:05]environment where he could be sort of controlled as in babysat. And the babysitter was me. And I
[29:12]woke up every day and left my apartment on West 75th Street and walked across Central Park. And at
[29:19]901 in the morning, I would knock on his hotel room door where he was living. And he had a
[29:24]kitchen in his hotel room. And he was cooking all the goddamn time. And he would, he found so many
[29:29]things to do other than work on this book. And it was sort of my job. And I was 26 years old to
[29:34]remind him, hey, man, like you're here to, to finish this book and not like experiment in trying to
[29:42]recreate some great pasta dish you had in Rome last year. And Pat was a really, really
[29:49]tremendous talker, but he was also an incredible listener. And one of the things that he wanted
[29:55]from me was to go for walks in Central Park to take a break from
[30:00]working and this was in February and March and we would go for long walks and he would just pepper
[30:06]me with one question after another about everything about my childhood, about my parents,
[30:11]about driving around in Mexico and Guatemala, which we did and about my job and my girlfriend
[30:16]and whatever. He just wanted to know everything and it was sort of frustrating to me because here I
[30:22]was this aspiring writer spending all this time through this super famous accomplished novelist
[30:27]and I didn't couldn't get a question and edge wise because all he wanted to was ask me about
[30:31]me and then it was on our last day together. He finally got around to giving you some advice
[30:37]and we were walking through the zoo in the rain and he turned to me and he actually put his hand
[30:43]on my shoulder and he said, listen to other people's stories and listen very carefully and that's
[30:50]when I realized that this time that we've been spending together was not a distraction for him.
[30:56]It was work. He was working. He was getting my stories out of me because he was looking for something
[31:03]to use and I didn't feel used in any way by that. I felt like he told me what he was doing. He
[31:11]told me that this is what he does and this is what he's been doing for half century and I took
[31:17]away that lesson to listen to other people's stories and to try to see here what it is that
[31:25]they're really saying and they really are when they're talking about a problem or an event or concern
[31:33]and I've tried to put a lot of those, all of those. That's what my books are filled with
[31:39]are the types of stories that I've gotten from other people and there are plot twists that I
[31:45]make up that are borderline ludicrous because I feel like that's what we want out of a thriller like
[31:53]if you're writing completely true to life fiction. That's not thrilling. It's not mysterious
[31:58]and very often it's not actually compelling for other people to read about. I don't want to listen
[32:04]to most people tell the story of their life for 12 hours like that's just not how I want to be
[32:09]engaged in the world. I feel like I want more plot twists and more action and happen in most lives
[32:15]including my own and so I add plot elements and peril to heightened certain types of stakes
[32:24]but I feel like the books are never really about that. They're about real human concerns behind
[32:31]whatever the hell's going on in the plot and those are the things that I've gotten from listening
[32:36]to people in my life and primarily from listening to women. Wow, very interesting. I love it.
[32:42]Listening puzzles, combination of all these factors and here that's how you did it amazing.
[32:48]Chris, thank you so much. Sorry again about the interruption in the middle. Thanks for hanging in
[32:53]there and it was a delight talking to you totally fascinating and really really really interesting.
[33:00]Thank you very much today. It's great to see you. Thank you. Okay bye bye.
[33:05]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[33:09]forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:14]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[33:19]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact texture sound for
[33:23]the sound editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[33:28]now trim music.