LIVE AT THE QUEEN'S READING ROOM FESTIVAL (with Harlan Coben)

0:00Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. Hi, I'm Danny Fortson from the Times Tech Podcast, which is currently sponsored by ServiceNow.

0:36ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting systems, data, and AI so workflows more smoothly across organizations. The platform integrates with different clouds, models, and data sources, bringing them together in one place. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

0:59Harlan Coben: If you felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the WeGovi pill and the WeGovi pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, HERS makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget. If eligible, you'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit 4hers.com slash eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.

1:36Harlan Coben: That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. 4hers.com slash eligible. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. Wegovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovi clinical study information and restrictions. Visit ForHers.com.

2:08Greetings. Welcome, everybody. Jane and I just having a little bit of a catch up there. Jane's been away on her holidays, so the list is long of things we need to discuss. But that's all about us and that's not why we're here. And it's not why you're here either. But it is absolutely lovely to see so many of you here, to hear, well, really, from one of the world's most successful novelists. I don't know, how many people in the room think they might have a book in them? Right. Harlan? OK. Anybody else? Yes? OK. Right. Well, all you need to know about how to write a bestseller and make a fortune is in this book.

2:46so I honestly it's also we should say we've both read the book it's funny as well isn't it is funny and it's absolutely terrific and as we were saying to Harlan only a couple of moments ago wouldn't it have been ironic if he'd written a really shit book about how to write a book but it's not that it's absolutely terrific and it is highly readable and we're going to try and pack as much as is humanly possible into our interview with him in the first 25 minutes and then we want to open the floor to all of you so don't be shy give your armpits a bit of an airing put your hand up if you want to ask a question and just don't be the person who leaves the room thinking oh my god i wish i'd asked that this is absolutely why we are all here it is also very lovely to see you if you're members of the offer community you can admit that in public now who would like to do that yay it's good but not everybody so there's some i don't know there's some work to be done this afternoon isn't it there really is um i should say uh this is fee glover i'm jane garvey and we are part of well we're the are we the epicenter of the off-air community we kind of are i suppose we're going to have to take that jane yes well i've said it so we'll take it uh off-air is a podcast available uh four days a week courtesy of the times you'll find it in all good podcast places wherever you get your podcasts from that's correct isn't it that is and it's we've always said this it's moderately successful and it continues to be moderately successful thanks thanks to you and some of the absolutely amazing emails and contributions we get uh from people who listen and feel part of something we also feel part of it too don't we say we do we do feel part of it that's we're contractually obliged to say part of it but we also but we genuinely do feel part of it at which point we will bring in the man you've come to see and the person you've come to hear from Harlan Coburn

4:41Now it is a slightly yes thank you very much indeed for dealing with our stage

4:46Harlan Coben: they have like real curtain and fake curtain is that a British thing? It's an aristocratic thing Harlan Just trying to figure it all out I love the way as well there's a kind of emergency phone there at the corner of the stage I don't know That's in case things don't go well with the podcast and I need to leave quickly. Have somebody set off the phone to ring. You've got your people there. I really hope the phone doesn't ring during this session. Harlan, how are you? Because you've come from quite a long way today. I just literally landed two hours ago, I think, three hours ago at Manchester Airport.

5:21Harlan Coben: But I'm thrilled to be here. This is just like New Jersey. My home reminds me of Newark. It's very similar to the setting here. You've been to Newark Airport, so you guys know it's very similar. to this. Chatsworth is very shabby, isn't it? Shabby chic, I would say, yes. It doesn't scrub up at all. What a place. Is it your first time at Chatsworth? It is, so I'm thrilled to be here. Thrilled that all of you are here. Thank you all for coming out and supporting the Queen's Reading Room. Can we start just by asking, who asked you to write a book about how to write a book, or was it something that came from you?

5:54Harlan Coben: In fact, a lot of people ask me not to write a book. I had just written the year before. I had written, usually write one novel a year. And last year I wrote two because I wrote mine, and I also co-wrote a novel with Reese Witherspoon. And I just couldn't quite turn around and write yet another one fast. And I had done a master class-y kind of a thing on writing, and I thought that would make an interesting book. And my publishers were kind of like, yeah, maybe. But if you could add memoir, and I really wanted to add memoir into it. So I think it's part memoir, part writing guide, but I think what I realized when I was doing it was how much, I always joked sort of that I'd make it all up, right?

6:35Harlan Coben: Oh, what do I know about murder and mayhem? I just make it all up. And as you know from reading the book, literally every aspect, every idea I've come up with has come from something in my real life and how weird my real life actually was. So it was kind of, yeah, so it's half memoir, I think, and half writing guide, I hope. and creative got it. Even if you'd like to paint or sculpt, I have friends of mine who write music and play music who have found things in it. So I'm hoping. We'll see. We will talk more about the art of storytelling, but just take us back to your childhood. Tell us a little bit about your family and can you tell us about the book annex, which I think is a term that maybe our British audience might not understand.

7:17Harlan Coben: Yeah, because it's actually a term most Americans don't understand either. First of all, as I mentioned before, I was born just west of here, just west of Chatsworth in Newark, New Jersey. So it's great to be back home with all of my friends and family. And I was raised about seven or eight miles outside of it in a town called Livingston, in really kind of a classic American suburb. I had two brothers and mom and dad and the usual sort of American middle class, American dream type environment, which is where I set most of my novels. But my town was very strange. So we had two myths when I was growing up.

7:56Harlan Coben: You know how you always have myths in your town when you're growing up? One was that behind Riker Elementary School, behind the barbed wire fences, was a nuclear missile base. And the second was behind the Ritchie the Boot Boyardo Mafia house. There was a furnace where they burned bodies. And when I grew up, I found out that both of those rumors were true. Absolutely true. So this is sort of the neighborhood I grew up in. And so when you think of why does he do so many secrets and things that don't appear to be what they are, maybe it starts right there. And were there loads of books in the home?

8:32Did everybody read?

8:33Harlan Coben: Yeah. My parents were – well, so my parents never read to me. You know, this is the big thing nowadays with parents who are supposed to read to their kids all the time. My parents, I don't recall ever even once, like them sitting down and reading to me. but they weren't because they weren't faking it. They were very authentic. We had thousands of books around the house. Everywhere we went were books. Our bedrooms were decorated in early American fire hazard. I mean it was just all over the place. And our big activity, you mentioned the book annex, our big activity on Sundays because it was also very inexpensive to do, we would drive into New York City, we would go through the Lincoln Tunnel and it was a book annex which is kind of like a bookstore but has on sale books.

9:17Harlan Coben: And you would go into the store, and they would give you a brown paper bag. An American kind of grocery bag, if you've ever seen those. I don't know if you guys have the same here or not, so I always had the American part. And you could fill it for$5. So my entire family would spend the entire day in their browsing. And then we would bring the books to my dad, who would pack it like it was a game of Tetris, you know, using up every... There was not any space left over for that thing went right to the top and that would be a very inexpensive and fun and book loving way of spending our Sundays Well it definitely paid off didn't it?

9:57I hope so We're going to jump a bit just for the purposes of time but the point at which you wrote your first novel I thought was really interesting and it's not as if you had written novellas or submitted to short story competitions or anything like that, you just went

10:13Harlan Coben: I dove right in the deep end. Yes. Tell us about that time. So I was working in the Costa del Sol of Spain. I bet you some of you, when you were younger, took those trips to Tourmalinos and Benamadina Costa and Fuenjarola and all of those. My family worked in the travel business. It was a travel agency. And so I went there to watch their clients one summer when I was like 20 years old. I was terrible at it. It was a disaster. But while I was there, I thought, and I was bored out of my mind, which is very important, I think, for a writer to learn how to be bored. I think that's one of the reasons a lot of us became writers, because you tell yourself stories, but that's another topic.

10:51Harlan Coben: I started to write a book. I decided I would write a book about being this American tour escort, trying to handle these very, very difficult American tours. Even then, especially maybe then, Americans were really difficult on vacation. And so I did. I bought a notebook in the Costa del Sol, and I wrote an entire novel. Between there and when I came home from that trip, I would say in six to eight months, without ever writing a short story, without ever exploring fiction, I wrote an entire novel. And that novel was awful. It was terrible. It was pretentious, pompous, self-absorbed, the things the first novel should be.

11:28Harlan Coben: But that's where I got the virus. That's where I realized this is my thing. This is what I want to do. I think a lot of people, I would have to include myself, have this fantasy that I could write a book. What I became painfully aware of reading your book is that in order to write a book, you have to write. That's rule number one, isn't it? Rule number two in the book, but yes, it's rule number one, that you have to write. So I mentioned three things that make a writer, but number two of those three things is perspiration. And that is you actually have to write. And only writing counts as writing.

12:02Harlan Coben: Creating characters isn't writing. Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Research is not writing. Having coffee with your friends is not writing. Talking to your writing group is not writing. Joining a writing group is not writing. Updating your software is not writing. Buying a notebook in the gift shop today because you think you're going to write is not writing. Only writing is writing. Only the moments you actually produce words on a page or a screen count is writing. Everything else is flotsam and jetsam. The only when you get your butt in a chair and actually produce words, that's what counts as writing.

12:34Harlan Coben: And that's where we lose a lot of people. You have been told in a beautiful, funny way. So talk us through the rules of writing then. In at number one is inspiration. Well, I have the three quick rules, yes. Number one is inspiration. You have to be inspired to write. Well, duh, we all know this. We can just move on. Perspiration, we just did. But the third and really most important is desperation. And that is, I'm not fit to do anything else. Like hold a real job. Neither are you two, which is why you do what you do. I mean, I'm forgetful. I'm disorganized. I never know where I'm going. My poor publicist over here has to lead me.

13:17Harlan Coben: I'm like a child. And she's like, don't even look at the schedule. Just do what I say. Okay. And I'm happy that way. You know, like, less I know better. I'm not good at anything else. And so the fear that one day I would have to have a real job, that terrifying fear is one of the things that brings people to write. I was once on a panel with a bunch of American writers, and we were asked, if you weren't, we get this question a lot, if you weren't a writer, what would you be? And my friend says, a U.S. senator. I'm like, oh, please. I'd be a duvet cover. This is it. This is all I got. And so that desperation that you have to write and the non humorous version of this is you just have to write.

14:02Harlan Coben: You have to tell a story. I can't wait for you to read this book. Even after all these years, that's the part that still excites me. The writing excites me, but it's not a book until you read it. A writer without a reader is a man who claps with one hand until that you read this book. It's like the I make it's like the Berkeley tree in the woods with tree falls and no one hears it. this make a sound. If I write a book and no one reads it, it doesn't. And when one of you reads this, you and I connect on a kind of one-on-one basis, different from everybody else. And that jazz is going to be still to this day.

14:32Yeah, just to say, I can't believe you've sussed us out so quickly. That was about 12 minutes to work out that we're fit for nothing else, but well done. It's the fact that I took heart from it, the fact that it was your 10th book that actually was your breakthrough, your breakout book. How did you find the motivation to keep writing, waiting, to be a big success?

14:54Harlan Coben: Well, one of it is, I mean, I'm not necessarily a person with great perseverance or any of that. One is I just loved it. I just knew this was my thing. But the more honest answer is this was in the days, my first book came out in the late 80s. So my first few books came out during an era when we didn't have the internet or Amazon. So I had no idea what a pimple on the ass of publishing I was. I thought I was doing fine. I had a little paperback book. It sometimes was in a store. And I thought I was the cat's ass. I thought I was so cool. So today I would look on Amazon. I would see I'm ranked number 3 ,287 ,000.

15:32Harlan Coben: And I'd want to kill myself or whatever. So back then, I think naivete was one of the things that helped me. Can you also tell us a bit about your, by that time, family setup? because you aren't a writer that has a beautiful study in the house or a log cabin that you go to. You hadn't left another job, and your family life was very busy, wasn't it? Yes, so the day that Tell No One, which was my first New York Times bestseller, hit the bestseller list, was the day my fourth child was born. So she's the only birthday I remember. so I had a newborn a two year old, a four year old and a seven year old at that time so you had to leave the house to write a home office was just not going to work for me and that's one of the things I don't have a home I have a home office now and I try to use it more because I didn't mind leaving the kids but when I leave now and the dog look at me like, wait where are you going?

16:37Harlan Coben: we're just hanging here, why are you going out to work? So now I work a little bit more at home, but for years I never worked in the house. Can I just ask you something that female authors get asked a lot, female creatives get asked a lot, which is the pram in the hall that prevents your creativity from flowing once you've had kids. Some women get it, some women acknowledge it, some women don't have it at all. But actually I don't think men are asked that very often, how having children affects their creative flow. It definitely did because I know a lot of times you will see couples say, oh, we split it.

17:14Harlan Coben: It's really even the child raising. My wife and I split it and we all know that's bullshit. It's always the wife. It's always. But I would say the only couple I know where that wasn't the case was us because my wife actually had a real job. She's a pediatrician. By the way, I highly recommend marrying a pediatrician if you're going to have kids. They come to me, I'm like, whoa, whoa. Dad doesn't know anything. If you're not feeling well, mom is the expert. If you need help with a sentence, come to dad. Everything else, go to mom. But mom was not home. And so I was the stay-at-home dad. Legitimately, you had to drive the kids and take care of the kids and do the carpool.

17:52Harlan Coben: And I know when I picked them up and things like that, I was the only dad really there all the time. And I also got to play like dumb blonde dad. So because I was the only dad, I can get away with murder. I'd come into the school office and forget my kids' lunch, and the ladies behind this would be, oh, it's so cute, Mr. Coben. You're trying. It's really sweet. A mom would do the same thing. They'd be on the phone to the police telling them to take their children away. You know what I mean? Like, I would just be like, they would call me saying, Mr. Coben, yes, you forgot to pick up Ben. He's been here over an hour after the school.

18:25Harlan Coben: Oh, I'm sorry. I was getting lost. That's fine, Mr. Coben. That's cute. A mom is three minutes late. They're already, you know, calling an ambulance in to pick him up. So I got away with a little bit of murder doing that. I've forgotten the name of the female author that you reference in the book. I think she had five children. Mary Higgins Clark. Mary Higgins Clark. She had five children. She used to get up at what time? So Mary Higgins Clark, I don't know if many of you read Mary Higgins Clark, where the children was her big book. She was a huge bestseller in the United States. I assume she was a bestseller here as well.

18:55Harlan Coben: So when Mary, in the 1960s, had five children when she was 38, her husband died. The next day her mother-in-law died. And the insurance didn't come through. So Mary woke up still wanting to have a dream of writing, and Mary had never had a bestseller. I don't think she had a book out yet when she was 30 yet, because Mary didn't hit the bestseller list until she was in her mid-40s for the first time, and then she sold over 100 million books. So Mary would wake up, and she would write at the kitchen table from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., then get the kids up, get them to school, and go to a full-time job in New York.

19:27Harlan Coben: So I use that as an example of don't tell them you don't have time to write. It's not a priority for you. Don't use the term, I don't have time to write. Use the term, it's not a priority for me. And it's not, because we all get 24 hours in a day. And some of us are busier, some of us are not, but we all get 24 hours in a day. And if writing is not a priority for you, then it's not. Move on with yourself. That's my tough love portion of the program. Your book is absolutely full of fantastic kind of mottos and legends about life. One that I loved is, you bring your own weather to the picnic. Discuss.

20:01Yeah.

20:01Harlan Coben: Well, it's kind of funny because I've always said this to my kids. You bring your own weather to the picnic, which is frankly here, right? I had a backache this morning. It's a long flight. But I'm just so happy to be here. You bring your own weather to the picnic. We all know this. We all know our attitude does a lot. And then I was curious because my parents never said this to me. And I had no idea where I got this from. So I was researching the book. I started to Google. And I'm the only one credited with saying it. so I don't know if I just made it I really don't know if I just made it up or not but I'm taking credit for it now so you bring it because I was wondering I got to give somebody credit for it and I looked it up and I really did a deep dive the only person credited with saying it is me so I'm going to steal it if I either stole it or I didn't they always say bad writers imitate good writers steal but I stole that line from somebody it's a great line I am listening to tell no one at the moment I'm a recent convert to the audiobook.

21:01Absolutely love them. Do you understand why Tell No One was your breakthrough? And just, if you can, explain how that book starts, because it just draws you in instantly.

21:12Harlan Coben: Well, first of all, I'd written seven straight Myron Boletar novels. And no offense to the people in this room, no matter how much we tried to tell you, I know it's about a sports agent in America, but you're going to love it. None of you wanted to read it. You know, when I told you the plot line for Tell No One, everybody wants, can I briefly tell, well, no, we don't have the time for that. But yeah, so tell no one a man loses, his wife is murdered, he can't get over her death, eight years pass, he gets an email, he clicks a hyperlink, he sees a webcam, and his dead wife walks by. You're in. That's it, like I said, you're in.

21:49Harlan Coben: That's a much better sales pitch. And there's this funny sports agent named Myron. and he's got this psychotic sidekick named Wynn, and I can watch your eyes roll over. So I think a lot of it was that, because after that, then the Myron Bolotar book started to sell much better. People did go back and find them. And are they good, when you think about those books now? Do they deserve to be more successful? Well, deserve to be more successful. Your career is what your career is. I mean, so much is luck, and so much is fate, and so much is timing. And I hate when people think they're super special or deserve things.

22:19Harlan Coben: So it's not a terminology that I'm comfortable with. I've never written a book that I look back on now and regret, except maybe my first two because I was so young. And I don't really regret them. It's more like, have you ever found that paper you wrote when you were in a university you thought was so brilliant? And you read it now and you go, wow, this is crap. What was I thinking? That's how it is a little bit with old books. I think if I asked you to listen to an old radio thing or interview you guys did or something you've done years ago, don't you have that feeling a little bit? Oh, we enjoy listening to our back catalogue.

22:52Is that what you do all day long? Pretty much.

22:54Harlan Coben: Just sort of play yourself in the background. Most weekends we get together and just listen to ourselves and our archive.

23:03Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor, or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Hi, I'm Danny Fortson from the Times Tech Podcast, which is currently sponsored by ServiceNow.

23:39ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting systems, data, and AI so workflows more smoothly across organizations. The platform integrates with different clouds, models, and data sources, bringing them together in one place. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. If you felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the WeGovi pill and the WeGovi pen.

24:17Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, HERS makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget. If eligible, you'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life.

24:32Harlan Coben: Ready to reach your goals? Visit ForHERS.com slash eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. ForHERS.com slash eligible. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. WeGovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, WeGovi clinical study information, and restrictions, visit 4hers.com.

25:04Let's talk about some more rules of writing. So here come your four places where you get ideas to start a novel. and, oh, bless you, as the title of the book absolutely recognises that you are the master of the plot twist. So we've got, number one, What If, the writer's prompt, number two, memoir, personal life, number three, news stories, real crimes, or what you're reading and hearing about, and number four, one idea isn't enough, you combine and blend ideas. Yes. And it's your blending of ideas, isn't it, that can create these incredible plot twists and twists. You say you can only write like that.

25:48Do you really believe that you can only write like that?

25:51Harlan Coben: No. I mean, I could write any... I've written... Because I've written op-eds for the New York Times and things like that. So... And this book's really not a plot twisty book. I like suspense. And my definition of suspense is very easy. Makes you want to turn the next page. However you want to do that, I don't want you to ever be bored I don't want you to not want to turn that next page I twist, that's my thing Lee Child, my friend who's going to be here in a little while, Lee and I once did an event together and somebody said to Lee I quote this in the book because it was so great when he said it, don't you want to write something, why don't you write something other than Reacher, and he goes, I'm the guy who gives you Reacher, my job is Reacher if you want to read something else there's other authors, read that I'm Reacher so I'm your plot twist guy if you don't like a lot of twists if you want a nice straight linear plot I'm not your guy probably not to say I can't do it but that's not what I do I like a lot of plot twists it's fair to say that I over twist sometimes it's a fair criticism when I come up with a good idea during a book instead of saving it for another book I usually find a way of putting it in that particular book so that's just how I am built and how I work Would you ever write a more, and I'm choosing my words carefully I think, a more literary work under a different name No.

27:15And you wouldn't?

27:16Harlan Coben: Yeah, I'd write it under my name if I wanted to write it I could write whatever I want and I really do I mean, yes we have to classify things so we classify these as my books as thrillers sometimes I'm called the domestic thriller guy the family thriller guy, well yes and no, Myron Bolotar isn't married, doesn't have any kids or anything like that so not really that. Oh, he's a detective guy with Myron Bolotar. Well, no, I'm not. I also do other things. I've had male leads. I've had female leads. I've done all the things I want to do. What I love about mysteries and thrillers, I don't look at it as a genre.

27:50Harlan Coben: I look at it as a form. To me, it's like saying a haiku or sonata. And within that form, you can do anything you want to do. You can talk about family, redemption, love, friendship, all the things that matter to us. But what's great about the form is you're still telling a story. that's a rich tradition. I challenge you right now to think of your favourite five books that are over 100 years old, and I guarantee you all five, at least four, will have a crime in it. Yeah. The quote from Elmore Leonard that you use in the book, try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. And I am a person, I just don't read descriptions of countryside.

28:27I hate to, it's just, I'm a real, I'm a Philistine. I just, you know, I'm just, I just want to find out what happens next. so Elmore Leonard knew what he was almost like he knew what he was talking about

28:39Harlan Coben: Elmore Leonard was a genius a great writer, a great dude maybe you remember Gets Shorty which was probably his most famous but he wrote I think 70 or 80 novels it doesn't mean you can't have themes, you have to have themes it doesn't mean you can't have descriptions, you have to have descriptions that's what makes a novel, otherwise it's a screenplay or a story but all those things have to be compelling, so it's not necessarily all plot, it doesn't mean plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. It means make everything compelling. Ask yourself on every page, sentence, paragraph, word, is this compelling? Is this moving the story forward?

29:15Harlan Coben: Is this something you want to read? It could be a description. It often is. But it has to be a description that's more than just it's red or it's the countryside and the sun is setting and all that. Give me a little more flavor. Give me color and texture in that description. You say, and I'm probably going to miss quite a note here, we're always 17 years old waiting for our lives to begin. What happens in a writer's mind with age though? Because with it comes experience, wisdom, you've known trauma, you've experienced grief. So how does that work with the 17 year old's dreams? It's, look I think we all tell me if I'm wrong here but when we say that saying we're always 17 waiting for our lives to begin.

30:02Harlan Coben: Don't you feel that way? I mean, everybody here nods along. It's not like this is a unique thing for writers. We all feel this way. We all feel like we're still waiting. No matter how old you get, I assume, I'm 64 now, so I assume I'll be feeling this way forever. We're always 17, waiting for our life to begin. The really important part of that for me and for you, I think, is, okay, when I was young, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That dream is over. That's not happening. I am not getting drafted by the Boston Celtics and playing pro basketball. But if your dream is to write a book, or your dream is to sculpt or paint or whatever, that dream is still alive.

30:43Harlan Coben: Recent books, When the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens, which was a monster hit. She was 70 years old when that book came out a few years ago. 70? 70, 7-0. This is your big book, I don't know if it's here yet, Theo Golden by Alan Levi. It's been a big book. He's 70 years old, that book came out. I know authors who are 75, 80 years old. so if this is your dream and this is you know i'm not a rah-rah kind of a guy i know it probably surprises you but this is this dream is not over so if you still feel like you're 17 ready for your life to begin in terms of writing it is and in terms of writing you can start today you can go to that shop and buy a notebook and start writing right now and then next year i'll come and watch you sit sitting right here i'd love that there is a quote we can't ignore because the netflix connection is real and i'm conscious of the time as well but uh you do say my novels are better than my TV shows.

31:33Yeah, I think they are.

31:34Harlan Coben: I think novels in general are better than TV shows. Yeah. So, you know, with the exception of The Godfather, One Flew Over to Cuckoo's Nest, L.A. Confidential, I think maybe one or two others I can think of, I think novels in general are better. And the problem I think a lot of people have is they, I think the mistake people make when they do adaptations is that they try to make it the novel. I don't. I just want the TV show to be as entertaining as possible. I don't care if it has fidelity to the book. So like when I did The Stranger here in the UK, first of all, I do a lot of my shows here in the UK.

32:11Harlan Coben: My books are all set in New Jersey. I just did one that's set in America called I Will Find You. It just came out. And I've done ones in Spain, Argentina, France, Germany. I love that. I love making the changes that are necessary, that I think are necessary to make the show better and to sing. But they're a very different animal. And I just prefer reading, and probably most people here do too. Let's open the floor for questions. Questions, questions, questions. Don't be shy. There's always got to be the one first person who does it. Yep, who would like to start ourselves? There she is, our hero.

32:43Harlan Coben: Go, go, go. Go ahead. When you get to where you are, do you just kind of submit the book and people say, oh, that's fantastic, thank you very much? So the question is about editing. So when I was nobody that didn't edit it much because I was nobody, and now that I'm somebody, they don't edit so much because I'm somebody. I've never needed much editing. I work really hard in handing in a very, very clean manuscript. And the way my plots are designed, it's hard to change too much around without it all kind of crashing down, which we find out why we make the adaptations. Like, oh, there's a reason he put that here.

33:15Harlan Coben: You know, we take that out and it's like Jenga. The whole thing comes crashing in. I take very, very little editing. That said, when I hand in a book, the way I write, my first draft, my first chapter of my first draft has already been written 10 times before I handed it. I do a lot of rewriting. I don't know any writer who doesn't rewrite. Well, I was one person, but we don't talk to him. You know, he's that guy. Sit at that end of the bar, please. You know what I mean? Even Lee Child, who sometimes will say he doesn't edit. He doesn't mean that. He goes back, he does edit all of the sentences, the prose, he polishes that all up.

33:52Harlan Coben: He just means in terms of his timeline of his story, which is a different thing. So I look at editing as, you know, and also if you're not, this is the problem with writing groups for me, and I get it, support groups, if they make you write, wonderful. But the opinion of a friend might be valuable and it might be utter and complete nonsense. And you have to be your toughest critic. There's no critic I've ever had who gets madder and hates my work more than I do. So I'm really hard on it. So I myself don't get a lot of editing, but that's not because I'm big or small or anything like that, it's always been that way.

34:26Harlan Coben: I hand in a pretty clean manuscript. There's very little difference between, I actually thought this was gonna be more heavily edited because this was more stream of consciousness and it's sort of out of order and I just kind of wrote it, but there was very little we ended up doing on this one as well. But that's a personal thing. Some people have really close relationships with their editors, I talk to them all the time on the phone while they're writing. I never talk to them while I'm writing. I send my publishers like the first 50 or 100 pages so they know I'm on some kind of right track. And then I don't want to talk to them until it's done.

34:56Harlan Coben: That's how I do it. Yes, the lady at the back. Do you think it's easier to write a book if you have an interesting life rather than if you need a mundane life? It's a good question. The question was do you think it's easier to write a book if you have an interesting life versus a mundane life? I actually think my life, despite what you'll read in this book, and you'll read some pretty weird stuff in this book, including my grandfather who vanished for two years but we'll talk about that another time I don't think it matters in fact I think it's almost better there's a Flaubert quote that I love where it says be regular and orderly like bourgeois in your real life so you can be violent and original in your work I think that's sort of how I've done it my home life is very very quote unquote normal four kids, a wife I said I'm picking up the kids in school and things like that.

35:47Harlan Coben: So I haven't done the crazy things. So I would say no. I think the real important thing is to have a frigging imagination. Make stuff up. I mean, like people are always like, oh, I have to experience this. Look, I've written about a lot of guys getting beaten up. I'm not going to get beaten up to figure out what that is like. I'm just going to imagine it and talk to people about it and things like that. Good question. Thank you. And it's also so true, isn't it? that some of the best books are about a mundane life as well. If you look at Elizabeth Strout's, it's about the domestic and emotional detail.

36:20It's not all flashbacks.

36:22Harlan Coben: It's also a great lesson for writing is to try to find the one thing. If you're describing this room, you try to find the one thing to you that stands out when you describe something, the one little thing that brings it all to life. And there's no such thing as a mundane life, is there? Because I think there's another part of the book Where you say behind every door is a universe. Yeah. And we all live in odd households with strange people. And we might well in the future. And we have done in the past. And so there is a book in all of us. Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the great human conditions is it's a paradox that we all believe that we are sort of uniquely complex.

37:01Harlan Coben: And no one really knows what we're thinking or feeling. But I know what they're thinking or feeling. Right? We all think that. We talk to somebody. I can read them. But they really can't read me. and by definition that can't be true but that's part of the human condition but that's also something to remember when you're writing another question please don't be shy, don't be shy well I'll ask something in the meantime whilst the armpits need to be exposed have you found the more successful you've become that that has any effect on your creativity other than time demands no, I still I really still like what I'm doing Billie Jean King, the great tennis player, and maybe some of you watched the U.S.

37:42Harlan Coben: Open the last week or so. Actually, we're filming there, which is a wonderful experience. But Billie has a quote that they show a lot on that thing, where she says, pressure is a privilege. And so the higher up my career has gone, the more quote-unquote pressure there is, the more I really love it. I love thriving on the pressure. I will find you just hit number five on their all-time Netflix list they sent to me. so they're going to want something. Bring it on, man. The more pressure, the better. Pressure is a privilege. Also, this pressure is like I'm playing with house money pressure. Pressure was like when I was starting out, just hoping to get published.

38:20Harlan Coben: I mentioned in this book that for my first Myron Boletar novel, I got an advance of$5 ,000 American dollars. But by the time the fourth came out three years later, I don't want to brag, I was up to$6 ,000. Just like that. just like that so that was pressure can you please tell the story about the man I think you were at college with who asked you to write a blurb for his book that hadn't been published little known author well just tell the story he actually had a book published but nobody had heard of it so I went to a very small college only 420 kids per grade so about 1600 of us and one of my fraternity brothers I'm sure you've probably seen the movies what fraternities are like but they're nothing like the movies One of them asked me if I would read his book and blurb it.

39:06And I read it and I liked it and I blurbed it.

39:09Harlan Coben: And the name of the book was Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. So I'm not even the biggest selling author at my small fraternity at Amherst College. And I remember going into a bookstore. It's hard to remember how big that book was. The largest selling novel of all time. And the first year I came in and I had no second chance out. And I remember walking into a bookstore. I won't mention name in a bookstore, but its initials are B and N. And I was number two, and Dan was one. And a full year later, when Just One Look came out, I was two, and Dan was still one. And I called Dan. I'm like, Dan, you know, like, enough.

39:46Harlan Coben: Stop being a hog. And we're still good friends, by the way. Who do you read at the moment? Do you have any recommendations? Oh, my God. Her name just flew out of my head, and I feel terrible. Kristen... It's a book called A Good Person. Does anybody know that book called A Good Person? It was so good. I love anti-heroes because I don't write them. I don't know if I could write them up. Oh, I'm going to feel really terrible. Oh, no, you've just come off a long line. We'll get to your question. Go ahead. Don't worry. So as an unsuccessful author myself,

40:20what was the trigger that set you on the path to your success?

40:25Harlan Coben: I don't know. I mean, again, I think a lot of it is luck. A lot of it is staying in the game. I mentioned I could have given up after one, two, three, four, whatever, how many books, and I was making the whopping$6 ,000 or whatever. But I didn't. And it's a baseball analogy. If you stay at the bat long enough, you keep fouling them off. Eventually, you might get a hit. And a lot of it is luck, timing. And I just described that tell no one. And when a breakout book happens, and I saw it going to happen, I warned Dan Brown before it happened, because it messes with your head. he didn't quite see it as soon as I read it and I saw I could hear the buzz going around our publishing house I'm like dude just put your head down and write the next book because your head's about to get really messed with because it does mess with your head there's just something about a book most books that break out there's something about it that just resonates and if we knew what it was then everybody would be able to do it I know you know when Conley wrote the poet when when David Baldacci wrote Absolute Power.

41:27Harlan Coben: There's a Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. When the Crawdad sings. It's just something happens. And I don't know exactly, but usually when I read it, I know why. I may not even like the book, but I know why. The one thing they seem to all have is something about it is compelling reading. Something about it is hard to put down. Better than that, I don't know. A Good Person by Kirsten King. That's it. That's it. Kirsten King. Yeah. It's really good. But as my daughter says, my daughter was one who recommended it to me. And she said, it's like Jocelyn. It's like a novel where Jocelyn was the lead. And Jocelyn was like her troubled friend growing up in high school, who was always like boy crazy and thought all the boys liked her.

42:08Harlan Coben: And they never did. And you could see it. Anyway, it's really fun. And I just finished that one. And she's not well known yet. I think it's her debut novel. So I'd never like to pick. Also, I pick my friends. One of them, I miss out. They get mad at me. So I'll get a Lee Child to go, whoa, whoa, dude, you mentioned Connolly and Lehane and not me. You know, that kind of a thing. Yeah, and they don't need your help. They certainly don't. That's a great recommendation. They certainly don't. Is Jocelyn all right now? Did things work out for her? I don't know, actually. We'll pass on that. Please do.

42:38Any questions from this side? This side of the, I was going to say, auditorium. Yeah, you guys aren't doing it much. There we go. Yes, yes, please. I struggle with dialogue. You do it really well. You're to begin this.

42:49Harlan Coben: Thanks. Thanks. I try to make, I mean, I have a whole chapter on here in dialogue. Dialogue's my favorite thing to write, because you can accomplish so much. I think one of the keys, if you're writing, is to make your dialogue do more than one thing. It should be entertaining and fun to listen to. And like the dialogue, you really want to overhear at a pub. You don't want your character to be a good person, or a nice person, or a likable person. They could be detestable. But are they the person, if you're at a pub, you want to lean in on? So I try doing it that way. I try making it quippy and back and forth.

43:21Harlan Coben: I try adding a lot of humor because sometimes some of the subjects are dark. But it should do something else. It should propel the plot forward. It should really, more than anything else, tell you about the character. The way a person speaks tells you more about character than anything else. So think when you're doing it, how much can we add in there? How can it do more than one thing? They shouldn't just have a great conversation, even if it is. and again each sentence should almost be like a mini novel where I want to know what the answer to that whatever that person has just said I want to hear the response to it thanks what do you do on days when it's just really really difficult to write I have a tremendous amount of self-loathing it works for me very very well we are all insecure I mean only you know only bad writers think they're good.

44:14Harlan Coben: So most days I do think I suck. And most writers, good writers that I know, we are, we are really insecure. And we're always like, and I'll be sitting there, I'm writing, like, I'll be writing a book, I'll be going, Oh, my God, this is such shit. I was so good before. What happened to me? Five minutes later. This is sheer genius. That book's just and that will happen within five minutes of one another. And this is just what I live with. I live with the insecurity. I live with the voice of guilt in my head. The muse is not an angelic voice. It's a Jewish mother's voice. What? You don't call? Friday night?

44:52Harlan Coben: You don't stay home? You don't talk to me? I mean, why aren't you home? I made you something to eat. Come on. So it's always nagging you. There's always a voice in my head that says you should be writing. Always. Whatever I'm doing, I'm driving the carpool. And so that's just part, I think, of what you live with if you want to be a writer. One of the things that when I read it I couldn't quite believe it you write on holiday, you never give yourself a break from writing, you genuinely think your holidays are better when you're writing in them so you probably can't switch it off. Well I can switch it off in a sense of but I don't even as I look out here I'm looking for your story I'm looking for one of the things I hope this book will teach you is what I call the writer's mind frame, because it's actually a pretty good thing to live with.

45:41Harlan Coben: Where every person you see is a story, every person you see, I just tell my kids a very simple thing. Every human being you meet has hopes and dreams. It's such a small thing to think about, but it's so true. And then you start thinking deeper when you're a writer. Did those dreams come true? Did they not? Are they broken hearted about it? Do they still store it in the back of their brain someplace and hope it comes back? And you just keep doing this, and eventually, a story starts to emerge. And so that's kind of how I try to live my life all the time. And I'm encouraging you not to go quite as far as I do.

46:14Harlan Coben: But the vacation thing, so here's the thing about life. I'm giving you all these life lessons. Life is about balance. We all know this, right? You're eating well, your relationship with your partner, your spouse, your friends, you know, are you exercising, all of those things. I could have all those things working really well. But if I'm not writing well, that balance, I'm going to lose the balance. that balance eventually is going to go away. I've made balance part of those things that I have to have working well so that I need that to make sure I write and so that I can keep my life balance.

46:48Any other questions? I can see so many of you on the cusp. Yes, yes. Do you think it's possible to be a good author?

46:56Harlan Coben: Sure. I don't know if... Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I think, as I read here also, if you ask 10 writers how they do, you get 11 different answers. There's some that are quite casual about it and do very, very well. Most writers I know, the vast majority, even if they don't express it, feel kind of like how I do. They say it in other ways, and writers are really full of shit whenever I go to these talks. They're saying what sounds good rather than what is good. I'm old enough now and just went through this. So I'm telling you what the truth versus sometimes what I normally would have said, which sounds a little prettier and more artistic-y and all that sort of a thing.

47:35Harlan Coben: But yes, and also you don't have to be a best-selling author. You could just write for yourself. That's therapy if you write purely for yourself. To me, that's not writing. That's like saying I write only for myself. I don't care if anybody reads it. It's like saying I talk only to myself. I don't care if anybody hears me. Writing for me is about communication. Like I say, I don't exist as a writer if I wrote this book and no one reads it. That's something different than writing to me. It's more therapy. But that's absolutely fine, whatever your dreams or goals are. So no, you don't have to be this way, I don't think.

48:10Harlan Coben: It helps. And if you're producing, I've written 38 novels. Maybe I would have written three if I wasn't quite that obsessive. Yes. Is there such a thing as a bottle or tater? No, I'd say about 99 % of the ideas I have never bear fruit. It's like throwing a bunch of seeds out on this floor. Because it's a floor, it's not going to sprout or grow anything nice, but maybe one will. So I actually have a file of ideas that we'll never see and should never see the light of day. And like when I was describing the Tell No One, that idea took months for me to come up with. And then I had to come up with the solution because I know the ending's beforehand.

48:53Harlan Coben: But that's, yeah, most ideas aren't good. I'm opening my brain here, so I'm always like, well, what if that happened? 95 % of the time, 99 % of the time, it goes away. Do you discuss your ideas with your wife and children? Rarely. And I warn against, by the way, if you're a writer, I warn against talking about what you're writing. I think that's a real danger. So, you know, I see people come up to me and say, oh, I wrote a book, here's what it's about. And I can almost see it's like a balloon deflating. I'm writing a book right now. I am dying to tell you what it's about. The only way I'll get that satisfaction is to actually write it.

49:37Harlan Coben: No, it's the only way I'll give myself that satisfaction. If you get anything satisfactory, like if you join a little writer's club, even though you don't have a novel done, but you join like Mystery Writers of America or whatever else because it makes you feel a little bit more like a writer, it's fake. The only way you should be able to feel that satisfaction is to finish the book and have another human being read it, because when that happens, you'll understand what I'm talking about. It's one of the great feelings in the world, and I'm extremely fortunate and still love it that you people are here right now, and some of you will take this book home and read it, and that still jazzes me.

50:13Harlan Coben: When it stops, I'll stop. Do any of your kids write for a living? They do. My daughter Charlotte is a TV writer. She has her own show that was on Amazon Prime here in the UK, and is now on Tubi called Dead Hot. She also writes on my shows, but now after training her, she's too much in demand to do as much as I want. She usually does, though, maybe two episodes of all the British shows. For me, it's almost like a favor at this stage of the game. I have four kids. My second runs my production company, Final Twist Productions. And the other two are scientists. One is an actual rocket scientist at NASA.

50:53Harlan Coben: He works in flight control at NASA. And my baby is getting her master's in genetics. So those last two, I guess, are more mom, the pediatrician. The first two are more dad. Well, how fantastic. God, what a bruise. That's incredible, by the way. I mean, blimey. Have all your dreams come true, then? No, because this is so... My career has so far surpassed anything I could have imagined happening. I would have never risked this. I mean, I talk in the book about incremental ambition, which I think is such an important thing. So my whole dream in life was to just have one book published by a real, this is in the days before we could do self-publishing, just have one book published by a real publishing house and one day walk past a bookstore and see my, that was my dream or my goal.

51:43Harlan Coben: And then it was like, okay, two. Two books just to see it wasn't a fluke. okay scratch out a non-embarrassing amount of money maybe out of it okay if i could just hit 15 out of 15 on the new york times best love just for an hour just for an hour okay top 10 and that's how i've so my dreams come true yes i mean in terms of my career it's every everything is gone much better than i could have ever hoped or even imagined uh final question probably because i know that people will have two o 'clock sessions to get to, or maybe you've got tummy rumbles as well as we've gone over the lunch hour. Any other questions?

52:23Don't leave if you've got a question inside you. It's so much better out.

52:27Harlan Coben: There's always when you ask for one more question, that's when the hands are all. Yes, and also because I've said stomach rumbling and everyone's now going, yes, I am quite hungry. I am quite hungry. What an absolute pleasure to talk to you, Harlan. Thank you, guys. It was so nice talking to you. Really, really entertaining. Thank you. Jane and I both really enjoyed the book. There's a kind of stream of consciousness that you do at the end of the book, which I felt was very much Harlan Coburn's kind of life ambitions and lists and whatever. It's just, I had to read it twice. It's just fantastic.

52:59Thank you so much.

53:00Harlan Coben: I appreciate that. And if you're actually a really, really unpleasant, ambitious, ruthless guy, my God, you can pull off the nice, entertaining, fantastic guy. What a treat to be in your company. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks everybody. Thank you all for being here. Thank you.

53:33Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

54:37Transcription by CastingWords The story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Hi, I'm Danny Fortson from the Times Tech Podcast, which is currently sponsored by ServiceNow. ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting systems, data and AI so workflows more smoothly across organizations. The platform integrates with different clouds, models, and data sources, bringing them together in one place.

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55:22Welcome to the haunted library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls Join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts