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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
#498 | Meg Gardiner | With A.M Adair |Inside Crime Fiction: Meg Gardiner on Crafting Riveting Thrillers
Author Meg Gardiner joined the show to talk about her collaboration with Michael Mann on "Heat 2," discussing how they adapted Mann's cinematic style into novel form. Meg shares insights into her writing process and character development.
We also explore Meg's interest in true crime and its influence on her "UNSUB" series. She also discusses her latest book, "Shadowheart"
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the show. We're back on the protectors. It's been a little bit a couple weeks, but we have an excellent authors but one excellent primary author today meg gardner. Meg, you have written part two of a very incredible book. But I do want to talk about something before we get to like heat two and all that other stuff. I, you know I really wanted to get you on a show to talk about heat two, he absolutely favorite movie all. But then I'm like you know what I? I started the audible for unsub a couple weeks ago and now I'm hooked on unsub. I'm hooked on caitlin, I'm hooked on this whole thing and I'm like I, I, you know I love thriller books. They're great. I love the military thriller books, action and stuff, but it has been so, I shouldn't say refreshing, but so refreshing to have a bonafide, solid serial killer book. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:I know what you mean about it's refreshing. It's like people ask me my inspiration. I say I don't want to use the word inspiration when we're talking about, necessarily, these kinds of criminals. But I can tell you what sparked an idea.
Speaker 1:Well, what sparked it?
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm thinking like Zodiac Killer and, like you know, the Lunars and everything else, but there are so many like interesting serial killer cases out there that one of them really, and part of it is that I grew up in California while the Zodiac was terrorizing the state and was a little kid when I saw a police sketch in the newspaper, you know. But all it was was a picture of a guy with a bag over his head and a bizarre symbol on the front, and I'm kind of like Daddy, what's that? Which is why my father had to explain what the Zodiac was, and I really haven't unlocked my windows ever since. So I think, like everybody else, I'm fascinated by who these predators are and who the people are who are willing to take on the weight of trying to unmask and capture them.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, your protagonists are solid. Your protagonists are solid like hero types that could take care of themselves. They're not like the wounded victim. And putting these two and you have to be able to be like, okay, the serial killer has to be cunning yeah, we know, serial killers are always a cunning thing but to be able to get under their skin. Because when you're talking about a protagonist who, for instance, caitlin's worked narcotics, she's worked all these other types of crimes. Her dad was involved with the serial killer case for decades. It kind of affected her whole life.
Speaker 1:She knows what it's about, yeah, in order for this guy to get under her skin and to give her chills. You as the reader, or for me as a listener, I'm like this is good. It grips me. You never know which way it's going to turn. And we're talking about Unsub, because that introduces us to this character. Now, where did you build this character off of? Oh, there's Amos her off of.
Speaker 2:Oh there's, there's a book, it's I. Um, I knew that if I was going to write a story with a killer who had disappeared for 20 years and come back, then it really needed to focus on the investigators. And that was going to be a detective of some sort and I thought it was going to be the daughter of the guy who couldn't catch the killer the first time around, which is where Caitlin came from. And, like you said, I wanted her to be solid. I wanted her to be a real fleshed out, three-dimensional human being who you know she's standup, she's a, she's a, but you know she's, she'd be your friend, she, she's.
Speaker 2:She doesn't wear a cape. She's pretty much aware of that. She's driven, she digs the job. She knows that she can't let herself get too involved in it, because that's what happened to her dad and things went off the rails for him. So I wanted her to be young and green. In UNSUP, she calls herself, she says she's as green as pea soup, but she still wants to be in on the investigation. So I wanted her to be room for her to try to contain her sense that she should be personally involved. There's no way she cannot become personally involved in the case in some way. But I wanted to have fun with her too. I mean, these books they're about you know big time cases. But I want Caitlin to be seen as someone you would want to be friends with, that you might want to tell her to ease down a little bit every now and then go walk the dog, for feet's sake but you know, you bring up like some good things.
Speaker 1:There is, like you know, I, when you read these books, especially when it comes, like you know, the protagonist going after a killer and well, what's broken in their background? What? How are they broken? And it wasn't the usual. Okay, she's like an alcoholic narcotics abuser who frequents nightclubs or something. This is like she has, like you know, the cutting and other stuff like that. She has like a background where she had some mental health problems and a space off. You know you could offer her dad being broken. Then we found out that her dad's not broken because of anything like alcohol abuse or anything else like that, but other things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can't get too spoilery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, spoiler alert, Jason. Come on, hey, come on.
Speaker 2:No, but it is I mean that's part of the story in the whole series that Caitlin has been estranged from her father because he spiraled into some dark place and lost his job essentially, and has been working construction and odd jobs for years and she thinks that maybe he just couldn't handle the stress and that turns out to be a huge miscalculation on her part. To be a huge miscalculation on her part and um recognizing that she has to, uh figure out how to reassess her entire history and um figure out who needs to make amends to whom when you're developing a character like you know, you know we'll get into heat too.
Speaker 1:For just a brief oh my gosh, listen, listen. Michael man and his technical expertise when it comes to all these movies, like collateral, to miami, vice, to anything, believe me, top notch. But he always seems to base it off of someone realistic.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's where I wanted to talk to you about Caitlin. Did you base this off of someone or some people that you may have known in the past?
Speaker 2:No, or currently, caitlin is my creation. But that said, of course, I grew up in California. So did Caitlin. I lived in the Bay Area for many years. That's where I grew up. I I love the area. I kind of wanted to give props to, to, to the East Bay, which doesn't get a lot of love because it doesn't have the skyscrapers or the, you know the, the big shine that San Francisco does. So I wanted to do that. But the, the villains are all in all in every book in the series have been pulled. There's a thread that I've pulled from some actual true true crime case that I then just spin off into into complete fiction. But I wanted to ground all the stories in some some sense of the kind of crimes that have really gotten under my skin.
Speaker 3:I was curious about that because the Zodiac kind of influenced the first book and then, if I remember correctly, it's Ted Bundy, the Night Stalker, and I'm not sure what direction you're going with Shadowheart. Who did you use?
Speaker 2:Shadowheart is the brand new one. There are a couple of killers. There was well there's rumored to be one killer who leaves happy faces at all his crime scenes, and there's a killer, a truck driver, called the Happy Face Killer, who is behind bars and fairly recently there was a convict. He's now passed away, but Samuel Little was convicted of two killings, I believe, in Los Angeles, and after he was imprisoned he started spontaneously confessing to a bunch more. And he actually is the person who started drawing his supposed victims. And that's where I found out about the case.
Speaker 2:It was like seeing a news story of an FBI press release with all these charcoal drawings that were shockingly excellent of almost all women who had, he said he'd killed over the course of the past 20 years across the country, dozens of people, and each drawing was individuated. It was eerie, it was haunting. There was something extremely vivid and disturbing in the faces of each of these, these people that he was drawing, whether it was hunger or want or loneliness or something. And it turned out that the FBI was able to corroborate a whole bunch of those claims, those claimed murders, and it turned out that some of the next of kin did not have any idea that their, that their loved one, had been killed. They just knew that someone had gone off, you know, had hitchhiked, you know 20 years ago, gone off with a boyfriend or something, and the in a number of cases the law enforcement didn't hadn't recognized that these were murders. Because you know they found, uh, you know they found remains nine months later in a in a ditch, and thought perhaps someone had died of exposure or an overdose.
Speaker 2:So that the idea that there were so many people out there who nobody seemed to know that one person had cut this like it's, gone across the country with a scythe and taken these people out, that just kind of that creeped me out. I thought it was very haunting and then I thought, okay, that sounds like a case that Caitlin would, would, would get involved with. So the story takes off in all kinds of directions from there. I wanted to. I wanted to pick up on the actual, some of the actual bits of the real true crime case I was interested in. Well, I was moved by how many families felt either desperate or surprised to find out about their loved ones, how some people that they had never been reported missing.
Speaker 3:That's almost like I mean that's in the story right there. I mean that is incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that's why. That's why I I started thinking about who would be involved in in my fictional story, if you, if you look at the side of the, the families who might be wondering what had happened to someone in there, some relative of theirs. And that's where I came up with this. The teenager Finch, finch Winter, who is adopted, has no idea what her background is, she says. Every day she walks the sidewalks in New York City on her way to high school, looking at everybody, wondering who she might be related to. And then, when she finds out that this killer in the story has claimed a victim in New York City about the same time she was adopted, she wonders if that could have been her birth mother. And, of course, just what Caitlin needs is an 18-year-old high school senior who's full of gumption and energy and conviction, just ready to go a million miles an hour to prove what she thinks.
Speaker 1:Meg, I'm not going to give any spoilers here, but some of the people you've killed off in Unsub, I thought they were going to be like prolonged characters. I thought they were going to be like, and once people start reading this, they're like, oh, I think they were going to last for another. Like books, I'm like, oh, this is going to be an awesome partner on the side. It's going to be almost like you know someone that's going to be helping out, but no, killed him off. Boom.
Speaker 2:You know someone that's going to be helping out, but no, killed them off boom. Well, you know what? Um, looking back, maybe I didn't realize the series was going to go. I'm like this is you? Want to make everybody think that it's all planned and now you're going like dang, couldn't. Couldn't that person have been just like a second faster and managed to jump out the window? Then we'd have a sidekick uh-huh, no sidekick there.
Speaker 1:Now it's, like you know, speaking of unsub and this is I. Really, if you're listening to this, you know how much we love books. We love really. Believe me, if you're looking for a new series, I really want you to start on unsub. It's, it's a very easy. It's gotta be an easy read. I listen to it and when I listen to it feels like I mean, hillary huber did an incredible.
Speaker 1:I feel like I was in a movie and you know that was the same fantastic narrator and, believe me, I did heat two as as the audible two and I felt like I was literally in the movie. I'm probably going to go back and listen to it again because it's unbelievable. But I do want to say plucking Caitlin, the protagonist from the locals and you know me, I was a fed for 20 something years, 23 years, special agent and other types of jobs in that 23 years. But hey, investigations at the federal level you're always doing different things and stuff. But plucking someone that has that local experience, who knows how to deal with regular people, who has the same common denominator as a lot of the people out there, it's a great aspect of the story, you know, cause it's not everybody just is plucked from, like you know, 18 year olds and all of a sudden they're like this master in forensic science and all this other crap. I really liked that aspect of it.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. I mean, I knew that I was. It is fiction and it's stretching it slightly to say that Caitlin is plucked out of her first homicide investigation and recruited the FBI. But that's where.
Speaker 1:I wanted her to go Okay.
Speaker 1:I was trying to leave out the fbi part, okay, but listen, you know you can't. There are people who are like 22, 23, 26 years old, even in their 30s, who are just this. They have this incredible knack for investigations, and amy would say the same thing. It's almost like investigations are like intelligence gathering. It's all about dealing with people and putting all these pieces at a puzzle together. And when you're looking at any type of crime, there's always pieces of the puzzle you want to put together Serial killer, it could be that phone number, it could be like hey, how did they get from point A to point B? All these other different aspects, did someone see them? And it doesn't matter if they, what they're, where they get the education from or anything. Street smarts are game number one and dealing with people at the local level, you're dealing with such a different national. I mean, you know I'm preaching you guys, but but dealing with normal, everyday people and learning how to talk to them, you could build such good cases.
Speaker 2:That's great. I really appreciate hearing that from an investigator Because and I remember I don't know if you know the author, Ian Rankin he's Scottish, writes the Rebus novels. But he said when he was thinking about writing crime or thrillers he thought he wanted, he really wanted, to have a cop, because cops can talk. If you're a good cop, you can talk to anybody and you can get anywhere. So that was an inspiration to me.
Speaker 1:You can't put people in jail behind a keyboard, and I've always told people that Because you go into the office and, like you know, I used to work drugs back in the day, back in the early 2000s, and I used to tell people I'm like, you can't sit behind a keyboard and put people in jail. You have to actually go out and talk to people. You need to flip people, you need to develop sources, you need to follow people, you need to look at things, you need to look at things with a different angle and you need to work with other people, because then you get their perspective. That's why I liked the idea that her boyfriend was ATF, because she's like hey, look, I don't want you to be involved in this case, but, by the way, what the hell is this? You know? All of a sudden she's like you know what, screw it.
Speaker 1:But there wasn't like this moral, this moral thing. That's what I liked about it. It wasn't like cliche. Good, that's what I was looking for. Your book is not cliche, thank you. It's not lazy, that's what I should say.
Speaker 2:Good, I'm glad you felt that way. That means a lot.
Speaker 1:That'll be my Amazon review, not lazy.
Speaker 2:Not lazy. I try to make that my motto day to day.
Speaker 3:Well, the series is brilliantly done, but I mean you've spent some time. It might not have been as a cop, but you were a lawyer.
Speaker 2:I was a lawyer. I was not a criminal lawyer. I'll say that up front. I did commercial litigation. Some people will roll their eyes and say, oh God, could that have been more tedious and time consuming, but every day it was extremely interesting. It was. The only miscreants I was really up against were possibly co-counsel or opposing counsel generally.
Speaker 3:This was in LA. This was in.
Speaker 2:LA yeah. You could call for characters regardless, oh, of course. So every day was an adventure, and so I know the court system, I know how, I know how it works, but I had no interest really in and you know, practicing criminal law and eventually, especially after I had three small children, I decided that perhaps I didn't want to argue for a living decided that perhaps I didn't want to argue for a living, so I was lighting a candle at too many ends already.
Speaker 3:I was like my kids are experts on arguing. They don't have to make sense at all, but they'll keep arguing.
Speaker 2:I know, but some lawyers have that personality and they thrive on it. I have friends and classmates who just relish going into court, like getting into the ring, and they're just like rocky getting ready up on their toes. But I decided I would shift sideways.
Speaker 3:Is that when you started teaching writing?
Speaker 2:I started teaching. I loved it. I got to teach a class at the University of California, santa Barbara. I taught legal research and writing, and they gave me carte blanche to develop a course, and so I was shocked to discover how enjoyable it was, how much I um, how much I really dug it. And then I, of course, then I. My ulterior motive was well, I'm in the writing program. When can I start writing my own stuff?
Speaker 3:so what was it? What was that process like, when you decided okay, now is the time I am sitting down, I'm writing my first book. Was that China?
Speaker 2:Lake, China Lake. I guess China Lake is my first published novel. You notice that I put an adjective there in front of novel.
Speaker 3:So I am assuming that means there were other things that did not make it to.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course, of course, of course there was. I. I thought well, you know, I know how to write a brief. Lawyers write all day, every day. We're not in court. This is going to be a cinch. And I found like it was switching sports, or it was like getting out of a F1, ferrari and into a F35. Oh sure, it's got. It's got controls. What are we going to do? So I had to. I had to train myself in this whole new, in this whole new field, and it took a while. And I, you know, I I wrote one novel that you know was based on.
Speaker 2:It was centered around a sting. It was kind of like an Ocean's Eleven sort of thing, A million characters just bantering, back and forth, twists, and all this. And I told a friend that I was writing a murder mystery and I explained the whole thing and she said that's great. There's only one problem. You know what? Nobody in the story dies. So if that's a murder mystery, I think you missed something. You're going to write detectives? Oh my gosh. But eventually, eventually it worked out. But you have to figure out where the bar actually is. I thought that it was. You know, it was like jumping over a six inch curb and it's not. It's like pole vaulting. You got to look up there and say you know, I've got to train myself to figure out how to actually clear that bar so that the book is is publishable.
Speaker 3:And then they cheat and they move the bar higher. The next one it's terrible.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we know everybody's going to go pick up on sub and then they're going to. They're going to start the whole series. I need to ask about how did you get involved with heat too?
Speaker 2:That was if you're not watching, if you're just listening. That was me, with this huge grin, I mean listen, I'm 50.
Speaker 1:How old am I now? I'm 51. I grew up.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, I grew up.
Speaker 1:You're looking very over.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks.
Speaker 3:You're 25 again 51.
Speaker 1:But Michael Mann has been such a staple in my career and everything you know, from the Heat to everything else, and then when I heard that Heat 2 was going to be a book, I was like what? And then you start listening to it. I'm like how are they going to do it? And then I was like, oh Okay, so let's hear it.
Speaker 2:So let's hear it. So let's hear it. Everybody knows what heat is, or they'd better.
Speaker 1:They better.
Speaker 2:Classic 1995 crime drama. Although Michael Mann says it's not a crime movie, he says it's a. It's a drama Robert De Niro, val Kilmer, al Pacino, natalie Portman, ashley Judd, michael T Williamson, danny Trejo about Master Bank Robber and his crew and the relentless cop who pursues him. And they're not predator and prey, they're predator and predator. It's you know, they're up against each other. So it's about their conflict and their the rapport they develop and then the deadly confrontation that inevitably ensues. And these characters have been in Michael's head for decades and he knows them extremely well. He only tells like about three weeks in the lives of these people, about three weeks in the lives of these people. And he knew that there was decades before and for the survivors a lot more time to come after, after that movie.
Speaker 2:So he had been wanting to to tell that story and we share a literary agent. So he spoke to Michael and Michael said you know he, he's an ex, you know he's an excellent writer, he's a, he's a brilliant writer. All his work had been in screenplays and for television until then. So he wanted to write a novel but he said he hadn't. He hadn't written a novel before and was interested in talking to a novelist about whether somebody wanted to collaborate with him. So Shane, my agent, gave him Unso whether somebody wanted to collaborate with him.
Speaker 2:So Shane, my agent, gave him Unso. That's spectacular. And after that he wanted to talk to me. So we talked and hashed out the story he had for the film. He had written biographies for all the major characters.
Speaker 1:Huh, go figure. I mean like the intricacies of the his characters are like you know, for collateral I still I still show that clip of tom cruise training like the people, because I'm a firearms instructor now so I always I'm like you know, that's a great clip if you could take an actor and turn him into someone who could actually shoot. And the same thing for Miami Vice is when you put this thing as a film. You know he had former US Customs Special Agents, like I used to be out there doing the drug things and I used to always tell people Mike, that's kind of what we did back in the day. We would do these controlled deliveries, we would have these undercover operations where we would deliver narcotics for the drug dealers, and it's realistic. I mean, granted, the movie's not crazy realistic, but overall though I mean if you take out the big she and my bang, bang stuff the overall concept is spot on that's great to hear.
Speaker 1:I love that movie I've watched that movie so many times. That's like like this I'm like, I don't care what people say. Like, listen, the 80s, michael Mann inspired in the eighties, with these characters, where Al Pacino's character Hannah is a Chicago homicide detective.
Speaker 2:Neil McCauley and his crew, who are based on real people from from Chicago who what kind of scores they were pulling off, and he wanted to have an idea of you know. He had ideas for each section of the book that it would be a prequel and a sequel, so we had to hash out a whole lot. It's a. It's a.
Speaker 2:It's a sprawling saga of a book and then, once we got the, the story at least partially nailed down, you know, I said let me take a crack at writing the first few chapters, because if he didn't like my writing, we need to know right away.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's intricate too. It's very, and that's what I loved about that book.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. It took a while and it was challenging, it was daunting. I felt a huge sense of responsibility to the story and to the characters that these were um, these felt like real people that he um, that he cherished. None of them are saints, of course everybody's uh what about?
Speaker 2:miscreants. They're all um, nobody's on the straight and narrow completely, but uh, I had to find a way inside of all of them. We wanted to make sure that we knew how things really might work. I know he talked to customers agents for Heat. He had former SAS come in and work at the LA County Sheriff's Range with the actors on a lot of the firearms stuff and for Heat 2. So there's a big section with a bank tunnel job. We need to talk to a bank robber.
Speaker 3:Retired.
Speaker 2:Long decades, decades, decades retired, has served his debt to society and moved on with his life, but he was a font of information.
Speaker 1:Now, is there any scoop on like is a movie going to happen, or is this kind of like top secret? I mean?
Speaker 2:Well, the script is being written. Michael's writing the script.
Speaker 1:So Love it, just kind of like top secret, I mean. Well, the script is being written, michael's writing the script, oh so, um, love it. Well, if they need, if they need an old federal agent, they're just hanging out in the background. I'm, I'm here, I mean that's like that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:so it was, it was great it was, it was, it was challenging and it was, uh, it was a huge project and I was really proud of it and I'm just absolutely delighted that it's connected with readers the way it has, that people have embraced it. It's just been stunning.
Speaker 1:The certain, the certain way these books go, and that's, you know, not to go back to unsub, but I really liked the idea of the concept of that being a series, whether it be TV, whether it be a Netflix or whatever. I like to see something different and there's it's it. To me it seems different because we're not getting, like I said before, it's not cliche or lazy and there's enough intricate personality traits of caitlin. It could, you know, with the right character or with the right actress, it I think it would be solid. I mean, what do I know?
Speaker 2:I'm just a I totally agree, I'm just a consumer, but you know I do not.
Speaker 1:Aim is the one aim is the one in film school over here. What's it? Come on, let's go. Let's hear what you have to say.
Speaker 3:I'm fascinated by this whole process. I think it was fortunate that you know Michael Mann had you as an outlet, because I imagine, like you said, he'd been living with these characters. But when you're trying to, when you write a script, you get your, you're relegated to what you can show on screen. So he never had an outlet for the rest of it.
Speaker 2:That's exactly why he wanted to work with a novelist. He has collaborated, you know, quite successfully with other screenwriters, but he knew that he was moving into a new arena. So he wanted to work with someone who I had the experience writing, you know a hundred thousand word novels, for a screenplay is not even half that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, 120 pages max, Otherwise people are not reading you. But that had to have been great to have him, as you know, a source for all that information. But then you know, to get into the heads of those characters. I know you like to make playlists. Did you have anything for Heat 2?
Speaker 2:I think we each had our own playlist and it shows up in a couple of places where I have Chris Jeherlis, the Val Kilmer character I have him listening to. Well, michael has him listening to the Doors that he knows, the Doors inside and out. I have him listening to Van Halen, yeah, so you're borrowing Jason's plan Van Halen and. Tupac, that's who we're having.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking like Val Kilmer, that's Jim Morrison right there. What's up? What an incredible world. I was going to say interesting, but it's got to be incredible, like with your background, kind of like you're into law, then boom, now you're into this whole like world, different world law.
Speaker 2:Then boom, now you're into this whole, like world, different world that's. That's the wonderful thing about being able to to write for a living the kind of writing I do, that I can explore all these worlds. And especially working with Michael Mann, who is known for his you know his devotion to research, to to digging down to the core, to find those nuggets of authenticity, to understand people's lives, world, family, where they live, how they survive. That's going to inform my own writing, going forward, to making sure that it always comes back to the characters, to knowing them from the inside out. And for that, you know, for for that book it did take me I really had to focus and make sure that I was understanding where he was coming from and where these people were.
Speaker 1:But it was great. Well, when the law thing is, it's huge. To me, a lawyer is almost like an investigator and even if you're doing a corporate law or anything, you're always putting pieces the puzzle together. And, speaking of pieces of the puzzle, three-time Jeopardy. You know I was looking at your bio. I'm like this is random Jeopardy. How does that happen too? Do you like just say hey, we're going to?
Speaker 2:do it. How does it happen? You watch Jeopardy. At the end they say do you want to be a contestant? You have three years of watching and say I can, could do better than that.
Speaker 3:You'd better put up for shut up uh-huh so did you just go out like bar nights, a bunch of trivial pursuit, just to be ready? It's like how do we research and get ready for this?
Speaker 2:actually I, um, I knew that, you know that I that my brain just still has an, you know, a big trivia lobe in it so that there was probably a bunch of garbage in there that would spill out no matter what. But there were things, things I tried to. Once I knew I was going to be on the show. I had a few weeks to try to like, look up, like okay, what it was Alex Trebek, what are the topics that Alex Trebek likes? Canada he was from Canada, canadian provinces, the US Civil War, things like you know what are his favorite topics? Bone up on you know Union generals. While you're at this, remind yourself who wrote what plays. I did buy a trivia book to read on the way my husband drove me to the studio, which is about 100 miles. I figured I can read a 500-page trivia book in that time. It helped.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 3:Meg, that's some serious research, that is devotion and serious research.
Speaker 1:Well, done, panic.
Speaker 2:It helped, that's some serious research.
Speaker 3:That is devotion, and serious research Well done.
Speaker 2:It was panic. I didn't want to embarrass myself.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that would be me. Listen, you want to put me on Wordle? I'll be doing Wordle all day long. I can put five words, five letters together. Oh, meg, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking about, like Uns and Caitlyn, and Heat 2 and Jeopardy. But the problem is here. I'm addicted to this character in these books now. So you can't stop. You can't stop. It's going to be. Caitlin's got a job. I think she's looking forward to a pension eventually.
Speaker 2:So she's going to want to. She's going to want to stick to stick with her employment and, unfortunately, human nature is not going to change. In the next, in the next 20 years, she's going to have, she's going to have work.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. You know it's like I keep looking for new series. You know I had the Michael Connelly's and when he's done I'm like jumping over to the thrillers and Mark Rainey's and I'm like, okay, well, now I have another one, so what else? And now we have Amos books, what's up?
Speaker 3:I was actually curious. You know you've had this experience of helping a screenwriter test the waters in the novel world. Have you considered screenwriting? I mean, jason needs a series, so what better person to do the series?
Speaker 2:I have. I'm busy right now with more novels, so so so, yes, right now my actually Michael and I are writing another thriller.
Speaker 1:Oh, there we go, that's a thriller, so it's.
Speaker 2:It's not heat, it's a, it's a standalone, it's an international manhunt thriller. Oh, there we go. That's all I can say.
Speaker 1:Fugitives. I did fugitives for a few years.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll be calling you later on then, jason. I like it.
Speaker 1:Oh, believe me. Oh, you know what, Once we hit end here on the recording, I'll tell you something funny. Okay Well, I appreciate you coming on the show and Aima thanks again for always co-hosting.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me and Meg. It is truly truly been an absolute joy, a thrill, to be talking to you. Congratulations, and I can't wait to see what you do next.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks so much, guys, it's been a pleasure, thank you.
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