 I guess as the interviewer, it's up to me to start, and I'm going to start by saying I had not heard of Peter, nor had I read any of his books prior to agreeing to do this interview. So it's a damned lucky thing, but I really liked the book before she knew him, because it would be really hell doing an interview with somebody whose book you really hated. It's not the case. It's a terrific book. Anyway, he's the author of Before She Knew Him, which is a psychological thriller. And that's a term that I think most people have heard of. I mean, it's a lot of thrillers come out today under the uberic of psychological thriller, but I'm just going to mention the names of Peter's four previous thrillers. All the beautiful lies, her every fear, the kind worth killing, and the interesting way, at least in me, titled The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, I kept imagining TikTok. That was the only title that was sort of originally mine that was kept by the publishers, and it was my first book, and I thought, oh, you get to pick your titles, and then I found out very quickly that as an author you don't get to pick your titles. Your editor in the marketing department, you can pick them. I mean, you can luck out, and then they asked, but they reject a lot of titles, and they end up going for something that they think sounds good for marketing. So that's, as you said, the only interesting title there was the one I picked. To me, anyway, it's the most interesting of the titles. I have the same experience. I have two books that start with The Girl on the, or The Girl in the, and that was my publisher really wanting to capitalize on that. I'm going to have a whole conversation about girl books and how, yeah, they pushed me for more girl titles as well, so. I think they're probably going to be more coming. Before we get further into, before she knew them, could you tell us a little bit about you and all that David Copperfield stuff? My David Copperfield stuff isn't very David Copperfield, but I grew up in Massachusetts, in a town called Carlisle, which some of you might have heard of. It's right next to Concord, which all of you have probably heard of, and I was just one of those kids who read everything I could get my hands on, so, and especially if it had anything with a mystery in it, or anything dark, or any bad people, and all that sort of stuff was just what I loved, and so, you know, I loved Roald Dahl as a kid, and then, you know, I was a precocious reader, so at 10, I started to grab my parents' beach books, you know, that they were reading at, you know, like Jaws, which, you know, I wasn't allowed to see Jaws in the movie theater, I was too young, but I was able to read the book, and if you read the, if you know anything about that book, it's very different than the movie, and that has a very sorted affair between the character, Chief Brody's wife, and the character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie, which is not in the movie, the affair, so I learned a lot from that book at age 10, and then I read the other one I really remember is Coma by Robin Cook, which was a big thriller at the time, and it was set in Boston, and it was really creepy, scared me to death, but, you know, the more I got scared, the more I wanted to read adult books, so I was just that kid who read adult thrillers, and grew up to be an adult who tries to write those kind of books as well, so. Do you do any writing as a kid? Oh yeah, I mean, I wrote little stories, and I wrote, I wrote a lot of poetry, again, I mentioned Roald Dahl, I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and, you know, the Oompa Loompas songs from the movie, those in the book, they're poems, and I was obsessed with those poems, I read them again and again, so I did try a lot of my own poetry, so I was always writing, I wrote a lot of poetry, even through my 20s, my 30s, I wrote a lot of short stories, sort of dark stuff, and then I think in my 30s I was like, well, I want to see if I can write a book, just see if I can start one and finish it, and that started my bookwriting career, and as soon as I wrote a book I was like, this is my favorite thing to write, you'd think it would be, I don't know, harder than a short story, but in a weird way, like once, I find, I mean, once you're in a book, and you're sort of in the midst of it, I love, I love that process of getting up every day and continuing the story, so I think, you know, that's where I'm most comfortable as a writer. I agree with that, I've never written a short story in my life, but look at Shabrio, I see you went to Trinity College, which I assume means Hartford, Connecticut, and not Dublin, not Dublin, right, and then you started at UMass, Emerson, Emerson, did you get an MFA or anything? I did get an MFA at Emerson College for poetry, this was sort of in my 20s, and that was my primary interest was poetry, and yeah, so I studied there, and I did workshops, but I did workshops in fiction, and I did two really great workshops in screenwriting, and I haven't gone on to do a lot of screenwriting, but screenwriting is great for structure, because when you're writing a movie, it's all about structure and when things happen, and I think that was really helpful, and I had a great teacher, Chris Keane, and I think that was really helpful when I started writing books to really think about, you know, what moves the story along, and he had a lot of great advice, like, your movie, this has to be the most important moment in your character's life, like, he had a lot of great advice about how to tell a story that people would want to watch or read. Is one of your books, this one perhaps, option for a movie? Yeah, I've had, I currently have three options out, if you don't know what an option is, it's, they sort of rent your property for a period of time, it's like a year or a year and a half, and they also say really exciting things to you, like, we're so excited to make this movie, and these are the actors we're thinking about, and then you don't hear from them for the next year and a half, and that's my experience so far, it's great though, I mean an option is great because it's a little extra money that they throw at you and you don't do anything for it. Very little extra money. Yeah, but, you know, if it happens that's great. What I'm excited about, I'm not that excited because I don't know if it'll happen, but the new book before she knew him is actually the first one that's been optioned for a TV series, and it's, they're seeing it as like an eight part series that they would sort of pitch to the streaming services like Netflix, it's the people who just did you, which did very well on Netflix, which I actually think, I think that's a great idea, like, I think a lot of novels work well in that eight episode arc. That's tough, I think, to squeeze a 3, 400 page novel into an hour and a half movie without losing something. Sometimes the movie's better than the book, but usually not. I actually, they, so on Kind Worth Killing, which is my second book, they actually wrote a script and then they actually sent me the script, which is they don't always do, and I thought it was pretty good, but it's, I mean, they just had to cut and cut and just streamline it. And I think there's something about turning a novel into a shorter series that can be better, so. We'll see. I mean, you know, again, it's, you hear stuff and whenever you hear stuff, it's very optimistic because I think, unlike book people, and maybe you have this experience, book people are very practical, like publishing houses, they're like, we're going to put out this out there and we'll see how it does, and hopefully we'll sell a few copies, and Hollywood people are like, I actually met Hollywood producers and they were like, you are hot right now. And so when you hear that, you go, yeah, I'm hot. Yeah, like, I must be hot, because they're telling me, you know, he's a hot property or whatever. I didn't know what they meant. I didn't know if they meant me or my book, but it all sounded good to me. They talk different, I mean, and then nothing happens, so. You must have cooled off. Yeah, I cooled off considerably. Yeah, we'll see. Maybe I'll get hot again. Which of your books won the New England Society Award? Yeah, The Kind Worth Killing. Do you know that award? Did you win that award? I didn't win that award. In fact, I had never heard of that award until I read your bio. It's a very strange award. It's a society that's in New York City, and it was started like 200 years ago by people, basically people who miss New England, who lived in New York City, so they started a society to get together, you know, back when it wasn't as easy to travel back to New England on Amtrak train in four hours. And yeah, so I won the best, the book that represented New England, something like that. They have a luncheon. And I think you get, you know, you get a small, you get $50, which is sort of like very New England, I think. Cheap. Very cheap, yeah. I'm going to ask you to tell us about your book, but literary agencies, you well know, and some of you may know, use a term called the elevator pitch, which is how one is supposed to approach an agent if you don't happen to have one with the short summary of the book that will excite them enough and hook them enough into the idea. And it maybe takes a minute or two, but let's pretend we're on the top of the Empire State building. So it'll take a little longer to get down the elevator pitch. Could you provide an elevator pitch? Yeah, so an elevator pitch, well, do my, the really short elevator pitch is that a woman in a suburban neighborhood is convinced that her neighbor is a killer, but no one will believe her. And I think that's my true elevator pitch in the sense that, you know, you're riding with an agent in between a couple floors and you have to sell it really fast. The slightly longer one is this woman, Henn, has recently moved with her husband to suburban Massachusetts, a place called West Dartford. And she, they meet their neighbors, another married couple, and they go to dinner at their house and she sees an object that convinces her that her neighbor is a murderer, but Henn has a history of mental health issues. She is bipolar. And during a previous episode, when she was in college, she had falsely accused a fellow student of a crime they didn't commit. And that's on her record. So she's in a sense a very unreliable witness, even though she is currently doing well with her diagnosis. So, and it's not a spoiler to say that she is in fact right. We learned very soon in the beginning of the second chapter when it flips to the perspective of Matthew, the neighbor, that he is in fact a killer. And so that the book becomes more, Lessa, is she right about whether her neighbor is a killer and more about their relationship moving forward? And it's called a psychological thriller. Could you tell us what in your view, at least, is the difference between a psychological thriller and a plain old thriller? Yeah, I should have been prepared. I actually just wrote about this. I mean, I think a plain old thriller is like finding out who the killer is. There's a lot more action. I think a psychological thriller just relies a lot more on why why are the villains or even the protagonist doing what they're doing. So it's a lot, it's a heavier emphasis on on the wise and the reason, the reasoning behind the crime. And I also think they tend to be fall a little more into the gray area between black and white. So if you think of a very, I think of James Bond as being like a pure thriller in the sense that James Bond is on the right side, and he's trying to stop some megalomaniac from destroying the world. And there's not a lot of psychological nuance there. Doesn't make it a bad thing. So I think for me this most most of what I'm interested in, I'm really interested in ordinary people who are on the cusp of doing something bad or tip over into that area. So I really like that gray area. And I think that's what makes me more psychological. As you said, your your key character, your heroine hen suffers from bipolar disorder. What made you decide to give this particular disorder or any disorder for that matter? Well, I mean, there was a there was a reason, a plot reason. Well, I'll give a little background on the book just because it is the original idea for this book came from a movie I saw, which a movie from 1954 called Witness to Murder starring Barbara Stanwyck and George Sanders. It's a totally forgotten film, but I caught it on probably Turner Classic movies about five years ago. Actually came out the same year as Rare Window, but and it's also about a witness to a murder across the street. Have you heard of this movie? I have heard of it. I haven't watched it. Well, you haven't watched it because it's not a very good movie. I watch a lot of not very good movies. Well, you should watch this one. And I do too. And I watch anything with Barbara Stanwyck and anything that's a thriller. And so the reason this so just quick thing, Barbara Stanwyck's this interior decorator in Los Angeles. She looks out her window one night and she sees George Sanders across the street strangling this blonde woman. And she calls the police and the police come and she tells them what she saw and the police go across the street and they knock on George Sanders door and George and they say, excuse me, sir, your neighbor just said she they saw you killing a woman. He goes, oh, that's ridiculous. I haven't killed a woman. And they go away. He's killed a woman. She's in there. And it's and one of the reasons the movie doesn't work is if you know Barbara Stanwyck, she's utterly believable. And she's a straight shooter. And the you know, the police should obviously believe her. And if you know George Sanders as an actor, he's clearly a murderer. I mean, he's this charming oily guy who kills people. So it gets so silly that at one point, the police, she keeps saying I think he's really a murderer and the police actually have her put into an insane asylum, because she's accusing him of this crime. So eventually she has to, you know, prove it herself or whatever. After watching this movie and thinking about why it didn't work, I thought, well, one of the things that didn't work is she was a reliable witness. But what if she really I got thinking like what if a witness really did have a history of having accused someone of something that made them an unreliable witness. So so there was a plot point or plot reason behind wanting this event in the past of my character. And I did also want to write a book with a character who has bipolar. I have someone very close in my life who's bipolar. And I wanted to do some slightly different things with that with that character that I feel like I haven't seen in a lot of thrillers. I feel like there's a lot of thrillers right now with unreliable narrators in which the protagonists are dealing with mental health issues or agoraphobia or alcoholism. I wanted to have her have this in her past. But I wanted to import that I thought it was important that she be doing really well right now. And in fact, she doesn't doubt herself. It's not one of those stories where she's like I wonder if I'm imagining the whole thing. She's her meds are working. She's doing well. It's other people who don't believe her. And I also just wanted to show someone with bipolar who who was functioning very well. And that wasn't it wasn't used in that special way. And I also didn't want it to be. There's one other way I think pop culture is now using mental health. I think of Homeland with Claire Danes if anyone's seen that. There's a sort of way in which mental health can be used as a as a superpower almost like it makes them better at catching the villains. I think Will Graham and the Red Dragon the Thomas Harris books. So I wanted her to just be an ordinary person dealing with a mental health issue. And I hope I caught that in the book. But that was my intention. I think you did catch it very well. But I will also say, I guess by definition, murderers are psychopaths or have some other mental health issues. This book you identify the killer as you said fairly early on in the book. Can you tell us about the psychology of the killer? Or would that be too much of a spoiler? Yeah, I think I think I can talk a little bit without going into the big spoiler territory. But again, maybe it's a trademark of psychological thrillers. But the book spends a lot of time in the head of the killer Matthew. He comes from a really damaged background with a sadistic father who basically kind of tortured him and his brother and his mother. And in response to this, he he envisions himself as someone who saves women from bad men. And to do that, he'll he'll kill men. It's how he met his wife. She was someone who was being abused in in the apartment building he was in. And he dispatches of the guy. He's he's very he thinks he's very practical. He thinks he's just ridding the world of of, you know, abusers. But he also has it's it's also a serial killer type of thing. He really does have this sort of blood loss. And he's just channeled it. So and then there are more complicated things about him, especially involving his brother. So which I won't go into. But I did like, you know, I like to think about, I don't know if it's empathy, but I mean, I do like spending time in villains heads. And I think it's important to try and understand as a writer, it's important to try and understand like how do people become the way they become how do bad people become the way they become. And I so I thought a lot about him as a as a child, and what he went through with his father and how that made him the way he is today. Okay, of course, there's always the classic child as this young psychopath who kills his baby dog or cat or what have you. Yeah. I'm not going to go there with that. As I was reading the title before she knew him, I was wondering if the him referred to hens husband Lloyd, or to Matthew, who turns out to be the killer, or to both of them, in which case you could have called it before she knew them. I think it definitely means Matthew the killer, although it could mean I mean, I think you could take it in different directions. And so this title, this is a good example of what we were talking about with girl titles. So they are, they wanted the pronoun she in the title of the book, my publishing house. So they really like this title. I think I like this title. Okay, I preferred my title, or a bunch of other titles. But it worked for me because I think at one point she thinks how when she's talking about Matthew, before she knew him, she felt like she already knew him, like she was going to meet him one day. And that's sort of a feeling she had. And so that was interesting to me. But I do think they are really because I'm your library patrons, your readers, you guys have seen this trend of the girl books, and they're trying to capitalize in on that. And so the other words are looking at are she pronouns, women, I mean, they're putting putting all of those. And you've so you've had you have two girl books out, two girl books, I finally escaped from girl books with novel number six. But yeah, I to give the publisher a little credit, we consider a whole bunch of titles and they say what they like best. And I listen to me, but they don't necessarily title what I like best. I think they listen to me too. I think I think if I, and a couple titles I've said, you know, I really don't like that and they wouldn't do that. I mean, they're nice enough not to make you unhappy. But ultimately, they are talking to their marketing department. And they're thinking about what we'll sell. So it's a little bit. And starting with the girl with the dragon tattoo, I guess was the first one. And I guess it was the first of the girl books wasn't there. So what's really so my first book was a girl book. And I, I named it after I was thinking in terms of like pulp books from the from the 50s and 60s, particularly like John D McDonald. He has a he had a book called The Girl and the plain brown rapper. I thought of it as a sort of a pulpy title. And then when it came out, someone said always trying to capitalize on at the time it was girl with the dragon tattoo. And then of course, there is gone girl on the girl on the train and all these other ones have come along. But I had originally used that title thinking about thinking it sounded like something from the 1960s. I'm gonna switch back to your plot a little bit. One of the characters I found curious, as well as interesting was hands husband Lloyd. It struck me that Lloyd, you present Lloyd is not a particularly sympathetic character. And I was wondering what your rationale was, because wouldn't it take some level of being a sympathetic character to marry somebody who you know suffers from bipolar syndrome? I think Lloyd is I think he's like a semi lazy guy, like he's basically a good guy, who's just fighting sort of selfish. He might be like a weird criticism of like, maybe myself, not a very nice guy. He's not a bad guy. He's but he's there's something about him. He's just he's decent, but he's gonna take the easy way out. And I think I learned that about him as I as I wrote the book at first. I didn't really know that much about him. And I just you know, by the end of the book, I didn't really particularly like him. But he's not he's not evil. He's just very likable. Very likable. Yeah. Obviously, the main character hen is suffering from bipolar and bipolar is a very common condition. Did you do a whole bunch of research into bipolar and the meds forward and they haven't come? Well, some of that is just through my like a personal family experience and knowing that but I've read quite a bit about bipolar and I've read a very good book about that is K redfield Jameson's An Unquiet Mind. And she's also written a book that about the links between creativity and bipolar called something on fire or something like that. But she's very good writer who suffers from bipolar herself and is also a psychiatrist. So yeah, I mean, I did a little bit of research, but in general, I'm not I'm not a sort of research person. I'm just reading the Jameson book is a yeah, yeah, I have a schizophrenic in my second book and I read a bunch of memoirs by schizophrenic. Yeah. I mean, that's the best. That's the best research is to actually just read a book and kind of absorb it as opposed to picking out details that you're going to use. I think sometimes you can over research something, you know, you're reading a book and suddenly you're like, Oh, someone did research and they're doing all these specific things. Now, I think it's better as you suggest with the the Jameson book to read memoirs of people who have suffered from this because you're creating somebody who suffers from this. Who are your favorite authors? And what do you like about their work? Um, aside from me, of course. James and well, Patricia Highsmith is a huge influencer of me, the mid century writer who wrote famously Strangers on a Train, Talented Mr Ripley, but I've read all her books and I love her and I you know, she's she's someone who often doesn't have likable characters and often is in the gray area I'm talking about of morality. I love her. I love John D. McDonald, who I just mentioned. He's someone I read quite young and got into. He's kind of forgotten now, but he wrote the Travis McGee series, but he his standalone books are really terrific. Ruth Rendell, who just recently died as an English thriller writer. I love her books. She wrote Great Who Done It's with psychological insights as well. I'm trying to think who else you know, the big influences. And you know, Stephen King was a huge influence as a New England writer and just reading him as a young reader. He wrote, you know, we know him as this horror writer, but he also just writes great details about characters and captures small towns and and all that sort of thing. I'm sure you guys have heard of him, right? Published five novels. Do you have a personal favorite? This one, actually, the new one. I know that in some ways Kind Worth Killing has been my successful novel. It's got in the mood. That's when I get emails, I get it about Kind Worth Killing. I think that really connected with a lot of people. And I think my favorite, my favorite character I wrote was Lily Kentner. She's a main character in Kind Worth Killing. And she's a she's a sociopath that I get a lot of emails from people who tell me how much they like her. Which is an odd thing, you know, is it wrong to like this character? I get these emails. So I think I'm most proud of having written her because I think she's her name again, Lily Kentner. She's the main character in Kind Worth Killing. So I'm most proud of her. But I think in terms of books, I'm really happy with this before she knew. Before we go to questions, and I'm sure folks have a lot of questions I'd like to ask you can tell us anything about the book you're working on now. I assume you're working on another one. Yeah. It's kind of done. I mean, it's it's actually off to the editors right now. So I'm in that like nervous waiting to hear from them mode of what they think. It's it plays around a lot with my love of like classic mystery fiction because the main character is a man who works at a mystery bookstore. And he runs a blog out of this bookstore. And years earlier for his first post on the blog, he wrote a list of the eight most perfect murders in mystery fiction. And he's forgotten about this list at this point. And a few years later, an FBI agent shows up and says, you know, it looks like someone's using your list to kill people in emulating these these mysteries. So I had a lot of fun with it in terms of coming up with, you know, these books that there's an Agatha Christie in there. There's a Patricia High Smith. All sorts of books that I love. Time to go to questions or anything else you would like to say before we do that. I'm happy to answer any questions. Just out of curiosity, you mentioned early, early on that in this new book that you're in the head of the killer question, actually, how do you get ahead of the killer without being able to mention your stuff? That's how you get in the head of the killer. One, you know, so I'll I mean, it's imagination. So you're, you're, you're not that person, obviously. So it's empathy and imagination. But in some ways, you're, I'm trying to tap into that like small part of myself. You know, when you're, when someone's done, did something wrong to you, you know, years ago, and there was that five minutes when you're like, I could have killed this person. And then because you're not a killer and you're a, you're a law abiding moral citizen, those five minutes pass and you get over it. So I just try and tap into that and stretch it so that, you know, try and, try and get into that part of myself that would, that would let that fester and eventually want revenge. So I, I'm trying to like, you know, imagine what it would be like. So in the case of Lily Kettner, she is a character who is not a serial killer in the sense that she needs to kill people. She's someone who's not bothered by killing people. She sees it as equivalent to stomping on a bug. She thinks there's so many people in so many lives out there that if someone deserves to die, she's, she's willing to do it in a practical way. So I just try to imagine what it would be like to live free of those moral boundaries. What would that feel like? And I think that's your job as a, as a novelist in a way. Most of my books, I don't know if you've read any or not, but a lot of the story is told from the point of view of the killers. Killers are at least as important, I think in most of the books, as characters, as the, the police series, as two Portland detectives who work together and solve these crimes. But we spend in each of the books at least as much time in the head of the killer. In fact, I've been faulted for letting the reader know who the killer is fairly early on, which is one of the reasons I asked you that question. But I think it's very interesting to delve in mind the psychological sicknesses that lead somebody to commit murders and why they commit murders and how they view the fact that they're killing murders is something that they should do, if not as a profession, at least as a frequent hobby. I thought you were about to ask us if either of us actually killed people. When you started that question, I haven't, no. Nor have I. The writer named Chelsea Kane was once asked what she does for a living. She says, I kill people for money, and that's probably a good answer for any mystery writer. Questions? Yes. Yes, so I'm someone who makes it up as I go along. So what I start with is always a premise. So in the case of this, it's these neighbors, one of whom knows a secret about the neighbor and can't tell anyone or can't tell people and they won't believe her. And that's my premise. And then I think about the characters and who they are, and then I start writing. Now, I think there's people who say this, like I just make it up as I go along and the characters take over the story. I mean, as I'm writing, I'm always thinking ahead. So I'm thinking about scenes I want to have or where I want things to go, but I'm not outlining. I'm not saying this chapter has to be this. I'm keeping it pretty free and loose. And sometimes when I write, actually most of the time when I write, I have an idea of an ending that I think would work. And so I'm sort of shooting for that. And sometimes that changes by the end of the book. But in other words, I'm just filling, I'm filling it in as I go and letting myself sort of free associate and think what would the characters do and try and keep it loose that way. It's to me, it's the best way to write for me. It does lend itself to a moment in the middle of writing every book where I'm sort of at page 150 and I'm overcome with this sort of existential dread that I've gone 150 pages and I don't know how I'm going to finish this. It's sort of a black pit. And then if you crawl out of it, I think you think suddenly you hopefully you have this realization like this is where it's going. And that's a great moment. So this is the process that I like. Have you ever changed your mind about who the killer is on page 150 or thereafter? I haven't. But usually I do know the back, I know the back stories. I've changed my mind about like someone dying. I did in this new book, I had someone die. And then I kept writing and I was like no, no, no, I actually they need to be in the story longer. So I've changed my mind. But I haven't changed my mind about who the killer is. You know, I haven't. Have you? I did in my first book. That was the only book in which I did go halfway through the book absolutely convinced that I knew who the killer was and why the son of a bitch had done the nasty things he'd done. And then I said it's too obvious. This is not going to, this will bore the pass off anybody. So I sort of did a whole bunch of rewriting and changed my mind about who the bad guy was. So any more questions? Do you start at chapter one or do you sometimes have a scene in mind that's somewhere in the most story to begin with that? You know, or is it always sequential? Yeah, for me, it's always sequential. And it's funny because sometimes you will have a scene in mind that you want to get to. And I'll just wait. Like I'll just write my way up to it and then do it and try and keep it in my mind. Which doesn't make sense. I mean, I should write it down if I already have it in my mind. But my theory on ideas, the big idea of the book and then the little ideas in the book as it goes along is that if it's a good enough idea, it'll stick in your mind. And if you forget it, then it was meant to be forgotten. So I don't take a lot of notes. I don't write notes as I go along. I just try and keep thinking about the book and hopefully the good stuff will bubble up to the top. So I always write sequentially starting in chapter one straight to the end. I always write sequentially as well. Having said that, I always write sequentially. I have been known more than once to take a chapter that somewhere in the middle of the book and move it somewhere else in the book. So I guess that means it's not literally sequential. But like Peter, I am not, you know, the writer's world is divided into the people who do outlines and the people who are called rather cutely, Pansers, which is short for Seed of the Pads. And I think I know I am, and it certainly sounds like Peter is a Seed of the Pads kind of guy who has an idea of what the story is about and then just starts writing it. So that personal belief is I think that's the best way to write a book. So do you think it's the best way to write a book? Do you think it's the best way? Yeah, I do too. James Patterson did a TV masterclass thing in which he describes how you, the viewer, for a small feat can learn how to become a famous mystery writer. And apparently I assume he does this or he has his co-writers do it, writes a very, very detailed outline of the entire story. I could never make that work because it would just drive me crazy. And I tried it in my first book and I was off the outline on my page three. So anyway. It kind of takes the fun away from the writing. I mean, there is something, if you had a full outline of exactly what was going to happen and then you're writing it, it just kind of becomes a strudgery of like, you're not going to be, as you're writing, you're not going to have that moment like, oh, wow, this could happen next. Exactly. Which is to me, it's always about, you know, when something clicks along the way and you're like, wow, this could happen and you're like, that's a good, and that's such a great feeling. Yeah, it's becomes wooden, I think. And I guess there are a fair number of wooden novels out there. I don't know if they're all written by people that outline or not. Yes. Can you talk about the typical process of working with an editor? It would be interesting to hear from Jim as well. But the editors are not, they don't do the editorial work we all think of them doing. I mean, some might, but I have a very editorial agent. So my agent and I work really hard on a book. He gets my first draft and he comes back with a lot of suggestions. And I work with him. He reads a second draft. His wife, who is the co-owner of the agency, reads a draft. So by the time it goes to my editor, it's been through a lot of editing. And my editor has notes, but they're pretty few. Like he doesn't really go through the book and work with me. It's not like that, it's William Shawn. It's not like that William Shawn and F. Scott Fitzgerald working together on a book, putting the pages on the floor. I think editors jobs these days, especially in a big house, a big publishing house, is their job is to sell, see if you think I'm correct in this, their job is to sell their client list to the sales force. Pretty much and get their sales force behind the books on their list. They do a lot with marketing. I love my editor and he has good suggestions in my book, but we don't. It's a pretty minor editorial relationship. Exactly the same experience. So in my case, both with my agent and with my editor, who was represented by the same publisher, or published by the same publisher, Harper Collins. But she has, my editor has made some suggestions which have improved my books, but they're generally fairly minor. It's the kind of suggestions that can be taken care of in a day, two, and most a week. But I'm very pristicity about my writing. I go over it and over it and over it and over it until I think it's as polished as I can possibly make it. And that's just the way I am. And I think probably the way you are. Yeah, I mean, revision is there's every, every writer out there is revising a lot because that's, I mean, the first draft is, is not done. It needs a lot of, a lot of revision and some of that sereditorial work and some of that's just on your own. I can, I can say that I don't really have a first draft because I go over each chapter six or seven times before I get to the next chapter. So by the time I get to the last chapter, the whole thing's been gone over a zillion times. Anyway, sorry. Yes, ma'am. So I'm curious at the beginning of the talk we interviewed, we talked about girl books and publishing houses wanting to have female pronouns in the title. So are the overwhelming majority of readers of these thriller crime books women? So the number I'm getting right now or the number that I've heard is 80 percent. Yeah, I've heard anything from 65 to 75. And, and this is not, and this is all reading too. I mean, just they are like women readers are holding up the, are floating the publishing industry. Male readers are disappearing. Be fair, I think a lot of male writers at least, so it's claimed, are more nonfiction readers and more female readers or more readers of fiction. At least that's what I've been told. I think that's probably true and I, but, but I also, well in our field it's definitely women. And some of that is book club driven, which is this great, I mean it's always been around but I mean I think it's taking off in a way in the last five, six years this phenomenon of people returning to book clubs and, and some, and some sort of influencers like Reese Witherspoon and people out there who are making suggestions for, for book club reads and, and so on. So there's... Oprah's been around for ages. But yeah, I guess Oprah really restarted that, you know, when she did the book club, the original book club. So, yeah, I, it's, it's definitely, I, I hear from more readers who are women than men by far. One thing I would add to that is that in my second book, as I started plotting out what my second book was going to be, I was thinking of making the victim a male and I discussed it with my agent and she said, no, no, they want the dead person to be a woman. The victim has to be a woman. I said, why? I, she had no real idea, but she said women victims sell a whole lot better than male victims. Well, that was true that I didn't believe that has something to do with women traditionally being held down, the whole feminist movement and, and so for women to read about the bad guys and they get caught. I think in terms of authors, it's probably pretty close to a 50-50 split in the mystery field. I mean, an awful lot of very good female writers, but I think they're also hopefully present company not accepted very good male writers out there doing their thing. There's lots of psychological reasons why, you know, why do people love thrillers? Why do people love dark thrillers? You know, books that, books that scare you. And so there can be a lot of psychological reasons about that's true that that dead women sell books. And that's always been around. It's a good title, actually. I mean, look at the pulp covers from the 50s, 60s. I mean, it's, you know, beautiful dead women. You know, and then there's a lot of talk out there. There's some interesting think pieces that have been put out there saying, is this, you know, are there too many brutalized women in mystery fiction? You know, it's becoming a topic. That's interesting. I wonder if the Me Too movement as a whole will have any impact on that and perhaps have more male victims and possibly at the hands of women killers, I don't know. But so far that has not been a major factor. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you very, very much for attending. I enjoyed it. I hope Peter did. Yeah, great conversation. Thank you all.