Hi Hank, welcome to the What to Read Next podcast.

So happy to be here. Thank you. What an honor.

So excited to have you here. I've been a huge fan of your work. My friend Amy from Novel Gossip has been sharing. She's been like, oh my gosh, you need to read her books. And then I read them and I was like, holy crap. These are pretty books. So thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Oh, about myself. How

Yes.

have? Oh my gosh. I've been a television reporter for 43 years.

Yeah.

myself with hidden cameras and confronted corrupt politicians and chased down criminals and gone undercut. And in disguise, and I've won 37 Emmys for investigative reporting. You see some of them

Yeah.

displayed behind me, but at one point, about 20 years ago, amazingly so I just had a really good idea for a novel and I thought, I'm gonna write a book. And I came home, I remember this so clearly. I came home and I said to my husband, sweetheart, I've got a great idea for a novel. I'm going to write a thriller. And Jonathan says. Great honey. He says, do you know how to write a thriller? And I thought, how hard can it be? I said, how hard can it be? And I soon seriously learned how hard it could be. But I was absolutely obsessed. I was compelled. I was determined there was no way that anyone was going to get me away from this very computer. And I worked and worked, and that became. Primetime, my first novel which won the Agatha Award for best novel of the year, and that was 20 years ago. I'm on book 16 now

Oh my.

writing a book essentially a year ever since. It's just so interesting and it, isn't it because I had a great career. I, I was doing well. I adore my job as a journalist, everything was fine, but that one moment of a one good idea just changed everything.

Yes. And it changed for the better 'cause readers like me appreciate that you're keeping us fun and happy with a book a year of something to look forward to. So, so I appreciate that. So talk to us about like your latest release, which is, I think the author's worst nightmare. Yes. You get the dream of the best letter out of your debut and everything's looking shine happy. But then on book tour, which you have been on going on book tour, things happen that may not be what it seems to be.

Well, it's so interesting because yes this book Stars Tessa Calloway, who is a woman like many of us. She's smart. She knows what she's doing. She has a good heart and a good soul, and a good brain. She has a husband who's we think fine. Two adorable children, a job in the corporate world, and one day. She just decides that she's had enough of it,

Yeah.

world. She's tired of being invisible. She's tired of being ignored. She's tired of being the one who has the good ideas and then somebody else takes credit for them. And when they go bad that she has to fix everything. So. On page one, and this is no spoiler on page one of all. This could be yours. Tessa walks out live on Instagram. She quits her job to follow her dream, to live her one life the best she can, and do what she's always wanted to do. And that is right, a novel. So she quits her job and as chapter one starts three years later. Tessa has a surprise, but Superly bestselling debut novel. She is a rockstar author. She is followed around by fans and long signing lines and bookstores love her. And libraries love her. It is absolutely a dream come true, and she is sent. On a nationwide book tour, a glamorous nationwide book tour so she can share her books as all authors do with librarians and with booksellers and with readers, and meet new friends and spread the word about the book. And it's absolutely glorious every day. It's exhausting and crazy, but she absolutely loves every second of it. I mean, it is everything she always wanted. soon she begins to realize that she has a. Stalker. Someone who is out to not only ruin her career, but destroy her adorable family that she's had to leave back home. So what starts out as a fabulous, glamorous nationwide book tour turns into a very dangerous, deadly. Sinister cross country cat and mouse Chase with the author running for her life. I've been told that all this could be yours is a careful what you wish for Thriller, and I think that's exactly right. You can come on book tour with me in this book. I've taken everything about book tour and made it absolutely terrifying. I have author friends who say they're glad that they waited till they got home to read it, because if they read it on book tour, it would creep them out.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I actually don't go to a tour, I don't, I like just the idea of actually, leaving your house, leaving your space, being in a crowded community and being adoring fans and then putting yourself in that bowl and roll. Position. I think in some ways it reflects sometimes the toxicity of the community. Like we see the grass is greener. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. And then you see the other side of the toxicity of things can go wrong and Tessa has secrets that she doesn't wanna, she doesn't want people to know. And you're, your secrets actually are the weapon.

I think that's really wise of you and a really smart reading of the book because what makes this book so terrifying is that. Something is clearly going wrong for Tessa on book tour. She's not imagining it. And what she fears is that she's the problem. It's her

Yeah.

She's caused this, that it's all a result of what really felt like a Faustian bargain a deal with the devil

Yeah.

made some years ago. And she's kept this secret for all these years. And now it seems like someone out there might know Tessa's deep. Dark Faustian secret, and they are about to reveal it publicly. And if they do, if she can't stop it, then everything that she has ever dreamed of her career and her life and her family will absolutely be ruined. So the state, the stakes are super high. Every minute of every day for her. She's the sole breadwinner for their family. She doesn't sell books. Her kids and her husband don't have food and they don't, they can't

House.

and everything falls apart.

Yeah.

Her, their brand new house. You're so right. The house that I. Her husband surprised her with when she got the book advance. He's oh, this could be yours, and showed her a brand new house that he had purchased without her knowledge. So

Yeah.

Do we love Henry? Is this a wonderful thing or is this terrible that someone's bought a house for you and you have no idea with your book money? So now your entire life. I mean, it's hard enough, as it's hard enough to sell a book under the best of circumstances, but Tessa is under a tremendous amount of pressure to sell this book. And what makes it worse is those dark secrets from the past that you refer to are ready to quash this whole dream.

Yes. I really appreciate this take on, author book rule and the high stakes that, you know, pursuing a writing career. Because I think sometimes we see writing career as oh wait, I'm gonna write all the time. I'm gonna make all these money. And the reality is I've talked to plenty of authors and that's not the case. That's not the, you may have the advance, you may have the best seller in Book one, but maybe another book, maybe a flop or maybe you, it's not linear, it is not Plan Ahead. And Tessa, in some ways had, bank everything on this particular thing. And yes, it was a success, but what if it's not? And what,

I mean, it's not, you're so right about that. It's not linear, it's not predictable,

no.

not reliable. Every single moment. I mean, imagine this at every single moment of every single day, every single thing can go wrong and you and supremely wrong, and you just have no control over it. So authors always talk about it, that the only thing we have control over is that we are writing the very best book that we possibly can.

Yeah.

know you've heard this, but after that. When the book gets out into the world, yes, it's fantastic. It's lovely to go to libraries and bookstores. I live for it. I embrace it so fully

Yeah.

to share all this could be yours and all my books. With every reader and everyone who loves books and storytelling and everybody in our. World. On the other hand, you go to my website, you know exactly where I am, you know what bookstores I'm going to or what libraries I'm

Yeah.

cities I'm going to. You go to my Instagram or Facebook and I can't make gravy. It just beyond me somehow. Or that ducks come to our backyard, my life and you know my whereabouts. And I want you to know that I'm delighted that you know that I want to have. A connection with my readers on more than a reader lead level, but at every minute of every day, my very public life. And it was public and as a reporter as well. single day of every author's life, they're vulnerable to someone who may want to harm them. And when I say, come to Poison Pen Bookstore and see me at seven o'clock, or, or come to page 1 58 books and see me for the luncheon. Readers. I mean, I want you to be there, but on the other hand, you all know exactly where I'm going to be. You know exactly where I'm not going to be, and you know where my family is and you know that I'm not with them. So you see all those puzzle pieces that on the face of it, seem absolutely fabulous and delightful and dream come true. Do have a supremely dark side, and that's what I sort of mind. For all this could be yours. It only takes place, and I know you notice this, it only takes place. It's like on book tour with the author. It only takes place in airports, airplanes, Ubers, hotels, libraries, and bookstores. So you really get the feeling of the pressure and the stakes and the and the exhaustion and the idea that you just absolutely know. Do not know what's going to happen next or who. Is going to ask you that one question that you just don't want to answer. So you're juggling all the time, your time, you're walking this tightrope

Yeah,

joy for your lovely, precious book. Like all this could be yours. And your fear that your dark secrets, if you have any, are going to come to light. It's so funny, I've been on book tour. With my book called All This Could Be Yours, which is about a author on book tour with a book called All This Could Be Yours. So it's super meta

it's super.

personal and it's really been quite a joy to share it with everyone I have to say.

Yes. I love the fact that it's the stakes, as you mentioned, that you're dead lag, you're just in different time zones, you're tired, sleep deprived, and I think it high, sleep reparation is a form of torture and I think in some ways in hide, like I think you have created a perfect container for suspense novel that you just not sure what's gonna happen next. You're have this space where it's. You're just trying to get by, what city am I in? And then be like, Hey, the stakes are higher.

That's so interesting. I've never heard that, but you're, what you said, a perfect container for a suspense novel. And I love that phrase. That's exactly right. Because in real life and in my book, all this could be yours, Tessa is far away from her family. She's three time zones away from her family. So her entire metabolism of her life is different. Timing is completely different from her husbands and from her kids, and she's trying to be a mom, a good mom, and a good wife via FaceTime and Zoom, and that's impossible enough. Not to mention that she was realizing that her husband is sort of curating the video that she's allowed to see on FaceTime and Zoom. He's not showing her. The kids, he's not showing her the house. He's not showing her the new neighbors that seem to be stopping by at all hours of the day or night, and she just catches only little glimpses of the reality that she's left behind of her family that's making changes and having a new life and dealing with their new house and their new neighborhood and their new friends. Without her. So everything in their lives, Lenny and Zach are nine and 11. is a cool, fabulous, smart husband who's in incredibly, let's put it this way, optimistic that everything is going to turn out okay, except he just can't hold on to a job. So Tessa. Can't come home. She cannot come home. She has to stay out on the road and sell books all the while knowing that not only is she terrified on the road, but she's terrified about what may be happening back home.

Yeah. Yeah. So listeners just pick the book. The audio board's excellent too, so you can pick it as an audiobook if you wanna listen to it's short chapters, it's quick and easy. Or you can just pick the book, physical ebook and any form. But it's, I think it's a perfect container, but don't do it when you're a book tour,

I love the audio book. I'm so glad you brought that up. She, Sarah Molo Christensen did a great version of Tessa. In the audio book. I wanted her just to sound like a regular person.

Does.

Could be any of us, and Sarah did just such a great job with that, and I thank you for bringing up the short chapters. I love books with short chapters. I want you to miss your stop on the subway, right? Because you just wanna hear one more chapter or you stay up a little bit later just to hear one more chapter. So it's a fast-paced, high stakes, propulsive, cat and mouse thriller. And that's, perfect for short chapters.

I love this. All right, Hank, let's talk about your reading life, because I love your book recommendations that you're gonna be sharing with us. Talk to us. What kind of books do you tend to read?

Well, Harlan Cobin told me to write the kind of books you love to So I love it. Fast, high stakes thriller about a smart woman who sort of gets the rug pulled out from under her and needs to by her wits and by her determination, and by her intelligence, and by her bravery reclaims her power, gets some justice and reclaims her power. And so at the end of all, this could be yours, I want you to think, oh, I never saw that coming. But also, yeah, that's exactly how this should have ended. I want you to, I mean, Tessa. Is relatable and you'll love her and you'll root for her and you'll see yourself in her and you'll be with her on this journey. And that's the kind of book I love to read, where you're just total immersion thriller where you just can't wait to find out what happens next. And it's interesting, isn't it, in all your reading as well, how many different ways there are to create that propulsive, riveting story.

It's I think there's a magic. I've talked to about 500 authors at this point, and there's a magic of every single person may have similar stories, but the way they interpret, the way they share the storytelling, the way they build the characters or the characters build themselves and tell you their story. It's fascinating. And so it's it's just a good escape, but it's also a good place to find, to learn things about yourself, like find. Empathy and find places where okay, no, this is a red flag. This is not what I wanna look for.

I think one of the interesting things about what you're talking about is that when you're reading a book, you're solving someone else's problems.

Yeah.

in someone else's life. You're seeing the world, you're walking a mile in their shoes. A, as we say, and it's the author's responsibility to have, I want the reader, I was just, lemme put it this way. I was just at an event with John Sanford who wrote the Pray Series and he's absolutely wonderful. And he says that writing a book is the author. Creating a dream and then inviting the reader to live the dream with them. And that's what my goal is, to get you to be in this dream and live the dream and feel what it feels like to go through what Tessa feels like and understand. Why she makes the decisions that she does and what happened in her past and to feel joy with her when she comes to a solution and to her triumph in the end. I have to, this is not a spoiler, but in a Hank book, I think the Hank DNA is that the main character always trium. In the end, and I think, especially in these dark days, that's what we're looking for. We're looking for that feeling of it's not only getting what you want, but it's feeling great about it and feeling wise about it, and feeling happy and empowered with yourself that something that you absolutely love has worked and that other people are happy as well, and that justice is done. And that's what I'm really going for in my books.

Yeah. I love this idea of you start rooting for the person, you start rooting. 'cause the people are morally gray. Like we're not black or white, we're not good or bad. We're not. And I think rooting, and especially in suspense, we're rooting for the one person to like, come out alive first and then actually try to figure out like a process of how they come about, how they actually survive, basic survival. And that's what we're rooting for.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting because if if someone asked us, if someone asked you to write a book called All This could be yours and me to write a book

Oh, it's totally different.

We could do it, but they'd be different, right? Because they're a total of our experiences and our joys and our sorrows and our. Fears and our hopes and our dreams and our understanding of the world and our take on the and our past, right? All goes into it. And so that's exactly the same thing that happens with the good main character, is there all that layer, all those layers and all that texture and all that history is there in these characters. And we grow to understand them and understand their motivation. And I think that's so important.

I think understanding the motivation, understanding like how do you interact with something based on your history, based on your trauma, based on your familiar, like how your childhood, how you interact with one situation. Every person does it differently. There's, you know how they say. Fight, flight or freeze. I'm a freeze person. I did not know that it existed until I was like, no, I froze most of the time. But most people may fight or may just run away from it. And it's and a character can inform that interaction and that space and that, idea. And I think each author will bring their own experience and understanding from the character's point of view the story. So we can easily have the same idea, but our stories are gonna be very different from each other. And that's.

heard that phrase, fight, flight, or freeze. And now I'm, now, I'm obsessed with thinking about that.

Yes.

so much, Laura.

Yes. Awesome. All right, so let's tie some book recommendations. What can the readers pick up after reading all your 16 backlist spot titles and everything? You know what Hank, would you recommend our leader, our readers, to our listeners to pick up for?

Well, thank you. I'm really proud of all this could be yours, it

Yeah. Yes.

today bestseller, so that was

Yeah.

joyful to me. I got the news at six in the morning on the day the list came out, and it was a good thing I wasn't on the quiet car of the train because I was just really. up and down and applauding in my little hotel room in wherever I was. So that is really a joy to make the USA Today bestseller list for all. This could be yours. I do have, there's some books that I absolutely love, some ones that for are a little bit older and some ones that are a little bit newer. I think one of my favorite books of All Time is Wrong Place. Wrong Time by Jillian McAllister. Have you read that book? Do you

Yes. Yes. It's such a it's a storytelling. I think Jillian is another one who does like a con, like a storytelling of like suspense and trying to figure out the situation and then going backwards and going forward and how to solve the problem. I think this is like a good, what to read next after reading your books,

I mean, I she's brilliant. She's a wonderful storyteller and in wrong place, wrong time. As you say, the story goes backwards and it's not only, I mean, it's interesting as I'm thinking about this, a an apropos of all this could be yours. Julian's book is a fabulous suspense novel, but in the end, you learn something about human nature and about how we behave and about memory, and about being grateful for our place in the world. And in all this could be yours again, a fast-paced, propulsive, suspense novel, but it's also a love letter. To libraries and librarians and bookstores and book sellers and readers, and I really burst into tears when I wrote the end of it because it was so meta and so personal and made me really realize how grateful I am for book world and for storytelling and for all of us who inhabited it. So I think when a book is a good story, but also more than that, I think that's really what we're going for.

Oh, I love this. Tell us where I can find out mine.

Oh, I'm on Instagram ridiculously. You can find me on Instagram all the time. It's terrible. Sometimes I even wake up in the morning and check my Insta page. Is that awful? It's at Hank p Ryan and I am always there. I'm on Facebook as well at Hank Philippi, Ryan author. My website is hank philippi ryan.com, and if you click on contact. On my website, it comes directly to me. There's nobody in the middle, there's no assistant, there's no anyone. If you email me through contact@hankphilliperyan.com it will come right to me. I absolutely love hearing from readers. This is a. It's also a great book club book. All this could be yours for every woman who had a dream, for every woman who is tired of their job, for every woman who realizes they have one life and it's time for them to follow their dreams that's really my goal with all this could be yours. So I'm eager to share it with all of.

Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. I'm so excited for listeners to continue picking up your books and just reading and just enjoying this, just all this could be yours for the first, if there are new readers to you, the first of many books they can go back to because I read some of your backlist titles and they're just. Is spectacular. So thank you.

my goodness. Can you come with me everywhere? I love hearing this. so much. Yes. And to make it clear, all this could be, yours is a standalone, so you can First and then go back through the back list as well. And I

it's

you do. That would make me so happy. Thank you for that.

awesome. Well, thank you for being on the show.

My complete pleasure. It is such an honor to be here, Laura. And thank you for all you do.

Awesome. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the What to Read Next podcast. If you enjoy our bookish conversations and want more recommendations, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also, head and over to the watch Next blog for a list of books mentioned in today's show. Happy reading.