Speaker 1: I guess it's just a radio thing. One thought per break.
Why have only one podcast when there are fifty thousand
things moving around us all at one time. Why are
you shoving that into a potato bag aro? Dot net?
A r E dot net, seventeen unbelievable podcasts they're waiting
for you. Are you doing doing fantastic? Always excited to
share a conversation with you because you're in that mode
of always exploring and what you're doing with nash Fall's
Let me tell you something. I think this is going
to be a big one with your female listeners and
your female readers, because I am seeing so many women
pick these books up now and they're calling him their stories,
and I'm going, go, David Man, You're really You're reaching
out to more people than the first time we shared
a conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is more of a domestic thriller. It's certainly
different from any book I've written before. It's got a
family at the center of it, a husband, a wife,
and a daughter, and I just, you know, I wanted
to break out what I've written so many books over
the years. My job is to challenge myself on my
comfort zone. I'd ever written a character like him before.
He's just an every man. He's really good at business,
not really good at anything else. And I just wanted
to see if I knocked him right on his ass
and took everything he took everything he had away from him,
could he get back up and move forward?
Speaker 1: So, now, when you write about an everyday guy with
with with a family and everything, do you find yourself
sitting at a Starbucks or a grocery store just observing
people to find out who is my Nash?
Speaker 2: I do that every day, every minute of my life.
You know, my whole my whole world is about observing
and going and meeting people and sitting and listen over
you know, listening to conversations and seeing them make people tick.
Some of my best writing has a little Greek deli
near my office, and I go there and in the
corner and I'm writing, but I'm also observing and listening
and taking things in. It's just I love to do that.
I'd always have.
Speaker 1: So then when you have someone like Victoria Steers to me,
this is a new villain because I did not know
this before I jumped into this book, that we're going
to talk about this. This is a completely different level
of play.
Speaker 2: It is. Yes, she and Nash are the two dominant
characters in the sequel to this. It comes out in April,
and he gets the first three two chapters of Hope Prizes,
the sequel to Nash Falls in the hardcover of Nash Falls.
They dominate certainly in Hope Prizes, and they are equally matched.
And I also, without giving too much away, I sort
of mid stream. I had an idea what I was
wanted to do with Victorious Steers, and all of a sudden,
I just did a woint eight and I've done something
with her character in the sequel I've never done with
a character before, and you know, see if I can
pull it off.
Speaker 1: Well, you make Walter Nash feel like that he's somebody
that I've probably bumped into either downtown Charlotte or or
we were at a grocery store, and I just feel
like that I have bumped into him somewhere.
Speaker 2: I wanted people to feel that they knew him or
new people like him, because that lends a credibility and
a connection between the reader and the character that I
think is really important in a story like this. You've
got to feel for what this guy's going through. You know,
you've got to root for him because the whole world
has turned against him and he's a good guy just
trying to survive. And I think if I can make
that connection with the reader, they're really going to enjoy
the book a lot more.
Speaker 1: Well, not only that, but see themselves.
Speaker 2: It could happen, you know, and it could happen anyone.
You know, if somebody could show up and blow up
your entire life. The way the world is so interconnected people,
you know, we have our phones and we're out all day.
We could glimpse something, we could film something without even
knowing it, and all of a sudden, the authority show up
and say, hey, you need to do this for us,
and it's going to meet an end of your life
as you know it, but you have to do the
right thing. What would you do? You know, that's the
question people ask after reading Nash Falls, and what would
you do if you were Walter Nash?
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you walk into the fire or do you
pretty much pick everything up and get the hell out
of the.
Speaker 2: Way exactly right. You know, it's a tough decision.
Speaker 1: So what kind of person is the guy that would
walk into the fire? Because I would do that. It's like, really,
that's what you want my challenge to be. Well, if
I don't do it, how am I supposed to film
my journals up?
Speaker 2: That's right, you know what I've made. I made it
a decision where he is the sort of guy who's
very moral. He's you know, right and wrong. He understands that,
and I think he did it for a couple of reasons. One,
it was the right thing to do just for the country,
but also it was maybe the right thing to do
for his family. He wanted to protect his family, and
that's why he did it, and that's why I built
into the book that he was a family man. Yeah,
he's a very successful businessman, but he's a father and
he's also a husband, and that really counted with him
more than the business side.
Speaker 1: Did you find yourself putting him in positions of being
more visible because I'm starting to see a lot more
fathers out there in the real world with their kids
and with their family, whereas with my dad, Nah, wasn't
going to happen.
Speaker 2: I think that the world has changed, you know, generations
have changed, and we're seeing we're seeing you know, dad's
become more involved with their kids. And I was involved
with my kids, even though you know, as a writer,
I was gone a lot. I was traveling all over
the world promoting books and stuff. But I tried to
never miss the important moments with my two kids they're
both grown now, because that was important. You know, I'm
a writer, but being a father is far more important,
at least for me. I wanted to show that. I
wanted to show a dad out there doing things and
with the family because I think that's more reflective of
the modern world.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because I'm an author, but the thing is is,
I would love to see your notes on how you
create these identities, because it doesn't just happen. You've got
to sit there and build it, like like some like
like the playoffs of the NBA or even college. You
got to sit there and put everything together. And this
has got to happen up up up about It's almost
like a game of creating music.
Speaker 2: It is, you know, you're you're creating, you know, a
sculpture out of clay that you know, a hard lump
into something memorable, and my job is to make it
look seamless. But it is anything but seamless or easy.
It's just a lot of swoot equity and going back
and forward, making mistakes, going back, rebuilding, tearing down, going
back and rebuilding again, over and over until you get
you get it where it needs to be.
Speaker 1: So then how do you make Nash so every day
in the way that he's not perfect? And most people
like to make their superheroes, well, we want to have
Superman perfect?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for him, I think I'm far more interested in
just people who are not you know, the White Knights
and the perfect. He makes mistakes because we're all make mistakes.
He got knocked on his butt. We all get knocked
on our butt, So that gives the connection I don't
want to make, you know, I find it very boring
to find someone who never makes a mistake, never fails,
because that's just not life, and it doesn't make your
root for the person. Sometimes it makes your root against
the person. You know, you know, perfect bastard, get out
of here. So I like the fact that Nash fails.
He doubts himself, he makes wrong decisions, he's he lacks
confidence sometimes because he's in an utterly new world where
he has no idea what he's supposed to do, and
it's frightening. But at the same time he's trying. And
I think because he's trying the best he can to
right wrongs and to help his family, I think reader
is going to be there with him.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with David Baldocci coming
up next, the name of his new book, Nash Falls,
the first in a series. We are back with David Baldocci. Well,
you got such an everyday moment here, because I mean,
you know something with Victoria as well as Nash and
she finds out that he's helping out the FBI. That
happens in the everyday world, and relationships shatter, they do
not ever heal because you went against something that I
didn't think you should be doing.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was you know that, And that does happen.
You know in this day and age when you've got
phones everywhere, you've got social media, there's no safe place anymore.
You have cameras filming all the time. So you know,
the FBI could say, well, this is going to be secret,
no one will find out. Of course, people are going
to find out, and they did find out with Walkonnash
and put him in a terrible situation and flip the
book and the story on top of itself and had
to go into a totally different direction.
Speaker 1: And he's got to go in there and he's got
to remember what his relationship was with Victoria. To me,
that got my attention because I'm somebody who lives in
the present place of now and you're stepping back and
I'm going, oh, oh, oh, let's see how this plays out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really you know this The plot is multifaceted,
and I went at it from a lot of different angles.
I went step took a step forward, took three steps back.
I just wanted to try to play out in real
life because this I put him in a situation where
nothing was going to go smoothly. It was all going
to be a total mess in chaotic at times. And
the best he could do is survive those moments and regroup,
try to become a little bit more proactive instead of reacting,
and try to make a decision with to keep breathing
going forward. That's the best he could do.
Speaker 1: So now, with the family around him, is natch the
kind of character that says, Okay, kids, you probably know
more than me on this digital stuff, so why don't
you teach me something so I can use it in
the future on one of my projects.
Speaker 2: I think he's a man who knows his limitations and weaknesses,
so I don't think he's ever a person who would
not would turn away help when it was offered.
Speaker 1: See, this is every bit the reason why this is
going to be a great series, because you're making this
guy the guy that it's like, I want to know him,
I want to go to his barbecue.
Speaker 2: It is He's very relatable and I wanted to build
him that way. I'm going to bring him back in
quite a few books I not. I like spending time
with him. It's a very interesting character for me, and
so I hope people I hope people really relate to him.
Speaker 1: As that writer, do you sit back and look at
pictures of different people to see if you can capture
their personality? And because I mean it's almost because I
mean the continuity in this is amazing. I don't know
who's doing your continuity on that, but you're spot on
all the way through.
Speaker 2: Well thank you. I am immerse myself in every book,
so I know every detail, everything that's going on from
page to page, chapter, chapter. You know, from page one
to page four, dred and twenty because it's my life
at that moment in time, and that's where I need
to be. So if I don't know what's going on,
I can't make the continuity work, then I'm not doing
my job. So that's what it's very important to to
immerse myself in that world.
Speaker 1: So then that means that you're in control of the pace.
And when you're sitting there on that computer and you're
putting a very dangerous situation to life in those paragraphs
which we're going to one day rehab, how do you
how do you find the pace in your breathing in
order to say, slow it down, don't give them too much,
let them feel this this anxiety, now get them. It's
almost it's like you're waiting for us to have that
little and the boom hit me.
Speaker 2: I know, you know, after writing almost sixty novels, it's
almost an instinctual feel. And plus I'm a reader as well.
I've wade thousands of books over the course of my life,
and I understand pace, and I understand turning the tap
off and turning it back on and giving them a
little bit and then hitting them with the whopper and
knock them, you know, c across the room. So I've
gotten developed a good feel for that in my mind.
You know, every beats, almost like watching a movie frame
by frame, every beat. I know where I'm going to go.
I know what I want him to do, and I
know what I want the result to be for either
the viewer if you're watching it, or the reader if
you're reading it. So I've got a good feel without
over the years.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that name, Walter Nash. Okay, so when
I hear Walter, I'm thinking of my father's generation and Nash.
I had an uncle Nash, So it's almost like, Okay,
why is this happening. It's almost like my father and
my uncle are in the same room with me, and
that's who I envision inside this book when I'm reading it.
Speaker 2: Well, you're a spot on because Walter is an old
fashioned name, and I and that for me, he's sort
of in many ways an old fashioned guy. And you know,
I don't know, na I just love the name Nash,
and I wanted to have a character with that name,
and it just really clicked because he's old school. You
look at him, he's a businessman. You know, he goes
to work every day, he works on these deals people
don't understand, but he gets paid a lot of money
to do it. And lots of people across the world
do that, and they seem to be sort of stayed
and boring, and you know what they do, they do,
and so Walter naturally shit that. And then what I
wanted to do was I just wanted to take that
world completely away from him and see if he could
still survive.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the font in the book, because I
believe that it doesn't matter what generation you're part of.
Font is everything, and you have all and I may
have talked to you about this in the past, the
font that you have inside your books, it is so
welcoming to the eye. There's no squinting, there's no challenge
to it. It's it's almost like, oh, this was written
for me. He did this for me. Screw everybody else,
this is for me.
Speaker 2: We always try to make the you know, the reading
easy and pleasurable. I don't you know, I don't want
to make it hard, whether you read it in the book,
you read it on a you know, an electronic reader.
It's all about I don't want that to distract from
a story. I want to put you in a place
where you're completely comfortable, and I can make you incredibly
uncomfortable with the story.
Speaker 1: Well, I love I love the place where on the
front cover And this had to have been a lot
of thought too. And this is marketing where a thriller
is in very small lettering over here in the left
hand side, which to me is the most important part
of any type of page, left hand side, right where
the thumb would be. Boom, got your attention, You bought
the book. We're on our way to second book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the covers are really important, even you know, I've
written so many books, but I tell it the art
department of my publisher. Look, pretend this is my first
novel and that nobody knows who I am. They never
picked up one of my books before, And let's engage them.
And how are we going to engage them? Because covers
are the first impression of book makes with any reader.
Speaker 1: Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because David twenty minutes with you is not enough, It
never is.
Speaker 2: They can go to David Baldocchi dot com for all
the stuff going on in my publishing life and then
wish you well Foundation dot org about our literacy charity. Yes,
you can find out more about that too. Yes.
Speaker 1: So do you ever sit back? This is between two
authors here now, do you ever sit back and look
at the beauty of like this current book and then
go back to your first book and say, my god,
look at the growth and just the beauty of my books.
Speaker 2: I do you know, I've never taken me of this
for granted, it's quite like the evolution you get. You
gotta take a few moments to you know, actually enjoy
it and embrace it.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay? Thank you? Enjoyed it as always