Making It Up with Kate White, author of I Came Back For You

"I loved it... Cosmo was a fabulous job in every sense of the word. It was like being on a television show everyday... but I could start to see, wow, this is all collapsing... I'd already written eight of my thrillers and mysteries while I was at Cosmo. I thought I'm going to get out while I still have the chance." — Kate White 

Kate White is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nineteen novels of suspense: 11 standalone psychological thrillers and eight Bailey Weggins mysteries. A former Glamour magazine Top Ten College Women Contest winner and cover girl, Kate had a long career in the media world, which included running five national magazines. For 14 years she was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, which under her became the most successful magazine in single copy sales in the U.S. Kate’s first mystery, If Looks Could Kill, was a Kelly Ripa Book Club pick, a #1 bestseller on Amazon, and an instant New York Times bestseller. 

Among other things, Kate and Carter discuss why Kate left the magazine industry, being aware of market trends, and her research on grief for her novel. At the end of their conversation, they make up a dark story using a line from Emily Littlejohn’s Lost Lake. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Writers, hello. This is Carter, and welcome to this episode of Making It Up, the Conversation series, where two writers sit down and talk about whatever comes to mind. I've been having a lot of fun with this podcast over the years, and I am getting close to 250 episodes. And I've met some pretty amazing people along the way. My uh guest today absolutely being one of those. Before I get to her, just a quick note: a couple, a couple housekeeping items with Unbound Writer. I've got a class coming up that I'm going to be teaching at Craft Fest in Thriller Fest in New York City called The Visible Writer. Uh, but I will also be offering an online seminar of this same class on May 30th. Uh, The Visible Writer is about how to be seen as a writer. Uh, you think that writing a good book is just enough? That is no longer the case. Writing a great book is the minimum thing you have to do as a writer. I'm going to teach you all about all the things you have to do to be visible and make people associate you with your writing and doing it all within a realm that feels comfortable and organic and natural to you. Um, and we are also firming updates. They probably will be announced by the time this episode comes out of my Unbound Writer uh retreat in Paris, France in 2027. I'm going to be do that, doing that with Clemence Michelin and Alex Finlay, two brilliant, brilliant writers uh in the suspense genre as well. Um, and and some more writers that we're going to announce as we kind of firm things up. All of this information you can find at unboundwriter.com. So be sure to check that out. I also do individual one-on-one coaching if that is something you are interested in. All right, today. Today I talked to the amazingly talented Kate White. Uh so Kate is the New York Times and best-selling um author of 19 novels of suspense. Um, and her latest one just came out in March. It's called I Came Back For You. Um, it's gotten tremendous reviews and sold a lot of copies so far. Um, so Kate, Kate is fascinating. You know, I I I I obviously knew of Kate, but I don't think I had ever met her before. Um, but she started, you know, she as you'll hear in the episode, she always wanted to be a writer, um, but kind of post-school got into the media world. She actually was a former glamour magazine uh cover girl. Um, but then she went into running magazines. So for 14 years, she was actually the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, um, which under her became the most successful magazine in single copy sales in the entire US. So she had her finger on the pulse of what was happening through Cosmo, Cosmopolitan magazines. Um, and as she as she reveals in our conversation, she started to see the writing on the wall a little bit in terms of the print media industry and declining sales, and maybe uh a future that looked a little bit glum uh for that. So, kind of at the top of her game, she said, I'm leaving and I'm gonna write books. Um, which there's a lot of beautiful hubris attached to that thought. Um, and she nailed it. Her very first book was a Kelly Rip, a book club pick, and became an instant New York Times bestseller, and she hasn't looked back since. Um, so it's she's I mean, she writes both standalone psychological thrillers as well as she's written a series. Um, and she's just been interviewed and on the TV and written for all sorts of different publications. So she's a big deal, is what I'm I'm trying to say. Um, but a great conversation I had with her. Um, very, very open uh about her thoughts about writing and sustaining a career in an industry that is terribly hard to do that because of the massive swings and the psychology involved to do that. Um, but you know, it all boils down to happiness, finding the joy in the writing, finding the passion. Uh, and she sums it up nicely when she kind of said, you know, I think I would do this whether people were reading me or not. Um, and so that is the definition of a writer, I think. Uh fantastic conversation. Really glad to be able to spend some time with her. This is my chat with Kate White. So I don't I don't know if we've actually ever met. You know, I meet a lot of people through this, but also through, you know, Thrillerfest and Vouchercon and all that kind of stuff, but who knows?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I think I've seen you across a crowded room, but maybe we've never shaken hands.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

That that sounds about right. Well, you've been in this, you've been in this game for a while. How many? I know you just had um your last book just released in early March, right? I came back for you.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

What number is that for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

It was 19, and then I handed in 20 in at the end of January. So it, you know, all of a sudden it adds up. And I I'm kind of stunned when I go back.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

I, you know, when I was film filling out forms for the big lawsuit, uh, the AI lawsuit.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Oh, the anthropic thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah. Um, and I looked at the date of my first book. I thought, wow, that was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah, wasn't it? Uh, like 2002, 2003, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah. Um I think it was 2002.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's you've had one of the, and I'm sure you've talked about it, ad nauseum, but you've had one of the more interesting journeys. And I love hearing about kind of the writer's journey. And I'm always convinced that if you're a writer at heart, it's going to come out of you one way or another. And for me, it came out just very weirdly when I was in my 30s with no aspirations of being a writer. I've seen people who have wanted to be a writer since they were eight. And then you have someone like you who, you know, was in modeling and then magazine editing, and really what I can tell, very entrenched in a very successful and powerful, and I'm assuming satisfying career. And then, you know, I think the line in your bio is like, well, you wanted to leave that to go write books, which is when you think about it, the craziest thing you can do.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yeah. Yeah. Because uh, I have the kind of job where you get a clothing allowance and it was all your none of that in writing.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, yeah. Uh, well, to be honest, you know, I do meet a lot of women in the psychological suspense field who, you know, some of them were publicists or some of them, you know, I met somebody lately who was in the tech world, but I always wanted to write mysteries from the time I was a little girl. And like a lot of women, I read Nancy Drew. And, you know, back when I was in high school, I did a bunch of different kinds of writing. I I wrote a play that was put on in my high school. I I put out the my own new uh magazine, and I I was fascinated with the magazine world and the book world and all of that, but I I just loved suspense. And then uh when I got to college, uh, I began to realize, well, you got to pick a lane. You just can't be all these kinds of writers.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

And you got to be practical when you think about lanes in college and you're thinking about your future and what's going to maybe make some money.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Right. And then my college, I was in the first co-ed class in almost 200 years, and they picked me to be their entry in the glamour magazine top 10 college woman contest. And I ended up winning, and it was a great experience. And so uh that kind of that kind of helped me pick a lane because they more or less implied that if you want to apply for a job at Glamour, we're open. And it just seemed like a sure thing than saying, yeah, let me just start writing novels. And I I was so happy in magazines, I loved it, some more than others, but you know, Cosmo was a fabulous job in every sense of the word. It was like being on a television show every day.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Like people like, um high pressure too, I would think immensely high pressure.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Oh my gosh. Because we were the number one magazine on newsstands. So every week when they called it your newsstands numbers, it was like I felt like I was a trader on Wall Street.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And but um the magazine business began to collapse. And because I was in such a high-ranking position, I was had access to the numbers not only in our company, but uh other companies that are traded. So you you I could start to see, wow, this is all collapsing. And you know, the the everyday players wouldn't have known that, but I could see it. And so I just made the decision. Look, I'd already written eight of my thrillers and mysteries while I was at Cosmo. I thought I'm gonna get out while I still have the chance. And, you know, just to backtrack a little bit, you know, when I was right before I I became the editor of Cosmo, I did I did write my first mystery with the idea of I'm at this point, I'm I'm gonna run out of time. And if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it now. So I got up really early on Saturdays and Sundays before my kids got up. And and then during the week before after I dropped them off to school, uh, I would get in. And the Cosmo gang did not get in before 9 30. So that gave me a little time to write in the office.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

So it's there's a lot to unpack there. That's pretty fast. So I'm assuming you got out probably really before print editions really kind of all converted to online editions, um, as actual newsstand sales were starting to decline and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Right. It would just, it was just starting. But I had been in it long enough that I could see there was an interesting phenomenon, and maybe this is worth noting in other areas too, that things would drop and then they would seem to level out. But that would be a warning. There was a new bottom coming. And there was a period right before I left, Kim Kardashian had been a big seller for me and Lady Gaga. And, you know, like all magazines, and we were doing better than any other in our field, they were dropping and then they leveled out. And but I knew, okay, the next bottom is coming. And that's when I decided to leave. And um it was a few years later that even someplace like Cosmopolitan, it it it got rid of most of the print editions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Well, well, maybe that's because you left and it just no, no, no. It just started floundering.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, they they turned it over to someone who wasn't really very good, but the person who's doing now, this young woman is doing a great job. So I think online it's great, it's a very vital force. But who, you know, I don't read any print magazines anymore.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Do you? I know, no, I don't. I don't, I'm ashamed to say. Uh, but I'm also kind of interested in in, you know, you made this comment. Of course, I read Nancy Drew like a lot of other women, and I always wanted to be a writer, but there's a big chasm between you know, the millions of people who love to read as little kids, particularly something like Nancy Drew, and then having that weird leap in your head of like, I don't just enjoy this, I want to do this. Because I think for a lot of people, it's just like books just appear, like we don't think there's actually real people behind them making them. And today, of course, that's probably true. Um, but how did you, you know, what do you think it was that made your brain kind of click into I want to produce this, I don't want to just enjoy this.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Yeah, that is such a such an important point because even when I knew I wanted to do it, I was starting to go to, you know, panel discussions in my twenties and thirties, even to with about fiction. And there would be these people on the panels, it's almost like they didn't want anybody else to get in the field. They were so uninspiring. And I'm sure you've seen things like this where they would say things like, if you're not writing every day, you don't you're you you don't really want to be a writer. And I thought, well, I'm not writing every day. And what I came to see over time was some of it is getting things, getting your system down and also being sure you're writing in the right genre. And I once I started to try to do it for real, I understood that my genre was going to be suspense fiction as opposed to anything else. And I also had done a lot of research on time management and tried to get to the bottom of my own procrastination issues. And the big breakthrough for me were were two things writing every day. And John Grisham, I just saw online on Facebook a post he did about you've got to write every day. And not everybody has to do that, but I think if you if you're if you haven't really gotten your foot in the door yet, you do need to write every day. And the other thing that made such a difference for me was in the beginning just writing for 15 minutes a day. Because I if I told myself, oh, you're gonna write all morning, I would procrastinate. Yeah. And those were the big breakthroughs for me. And so I I encourage people, you know, get figure out your system.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

I I think you're totally right. And I think, you know, there aren't, I don't think there are a lot of rules in writing, but I do think writing consist I think consistency is is uh a steadfast rule in order to, you know, even break in. And when people hear writing every day and they're not really writing yet, that feels overwhelming to them until you say something like, I just started with 15 minutes a day. That's all it takes. People look at it like it's a workout, like I can't work out for three hours straight. I can't write for three hours straight. I don't have that kind of muscle, but I can write for an hour straight and I can do it 365 days a year, and I can produce a book.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

What were the big hurdles for you that you know that took you from dreaming about doing it and thinking in your mind you wanted to do it and finally doing it?

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Well, I had the I had the the the profound pleasure of not having ever wanted to do it, so I didn't have that weight. I literally just started one day. I posed myself a riddle because I was bored in this class, and I tried to answer this riddle that I made up, and I couldn't. And it just nagged at me. So it was the tenacity, and then in 30 or 90 days, I had a 400-page manuscript, and then it became like, oh, I think this is the universe telling me something.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

So I think that so the writing part and and the problem solving of it all was never a challenge for me. The challenge was like, How do I get better? How do I overcome all these rejections? I got an agent with my first book, but my first three didn't sell, so it was like years and years and years of not hearing anything positive. And to me, it just became I just like this. It's a passion of mine. And I think if you have that passion, it it overpowers ultimately all the negativity associated with this really challenging job.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah. And you know, you're talking about something before that makes me think of this. I I was a a huge success as the editor of Cosmopolitan because I really did a lot of research. I was telling my husband the other night at dinner a little bit about how I looked at data. And even before we had software that could help us look at it. And you can't believe everything, but you start to see certain patterns.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

And I think it's important to, when you are a writer, to be willing to step back and look at the data that's presenting itself to you and make some judgment calls on it. You know, I was just rereading uh parts of Lee Child's first Jack Reacher book, The Kelling Floor. And he talks, he's done an introduction for the book, uh, because you know, kind of the re-release of not re-release, but uh, you know, an anniversary edition. And he talks about how he really looked about the at the marketplace, what was out there, and he wasn't gonna do this or he wasn't gonna do the buddy thing. And he studied the marketplace. And I think it's really important if you're gonna be a writer and hope to be a professional writer and do it forever, to be willing to step back and avoid these two dreaded words, yeah, but uh when your agent gives you a piece of advice instead of saying, yeah, but you know, listen, what is she trying to tell you? What are sometimes your readers trying to tell you that you know, not be as defensive and to really try to study what sometimes the the data is telling you. Now, if you just love to write, don't care if anyone reads you, you don't need to do that. But if you want to sustain a career as an author, you have to pay attention to the messaging you're getting.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

I totally agree. You know, I used to be a business consultant, so I'm I my mind is very data-centric and I'm very curious about it. And and I think one of the issues is the publishing industry is exceptionally opaque and it's you know, it's getting better, but it's really hard as an author to really understand what the trends are.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Um, and I also think they won't tell you anything. No, they won't tell you anything. I'm so used to being able to look at stuff from my magazine career and and start to make some assessment based on it. Like even if you were to say, well, what covers are working, you know, do you feel now? And there there was a period of time where I began to realize just looking at sales data that I could sort of find on my own, uh looking at Amazon, that suspense novels with with faces of women on the cover did not overall sell very well. Oh, it's like so interesting. We don't want to see the the face, and we want to be able to kind of imagine the character in our own mind. Maybe that's it. But I I I didn't really see any. I mean, there would be something like the silent patient where you'd see the eyes, but never the whole face.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah, no publisher ever said to me, by the way, when we're we're about to start sending you some ideas for the covers, you'll notice we're not sending any women's faces because they don't do well. You you couldn't count on them for that kind of info.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yeah, I mean, I I'm with Source Books and Poison Pen Press. And I will say when they send me a proposed cover design, they pull all the comps that they used. And and I have such an appreciation for that because they're looking at the market. Um, and I think your points about the market are very astute.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

But are they pulling comps of the books that are really selling, or are they pulling just comps of the genre?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

No, ones that are selling, absolutely, yeah. I mean both, but but um and and your points about the market are I think are smart, and it's true. And I think the other side of that also is that I I have seen people who try to write to the market, and of course, you can't time that, obviously. Right. But the other problem is I think you sometimes you see people trying to write something that that's just not who they are. Like that's not it takes a while to find your voice, and it's and your best writing is going to come out of something I think organic that then you tune to the market as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Right. And so please don't misunderstand me. I don't think you should write to trends of the market, but you should be aware of them and understand that maybe there's a period of time where we saw Ceres losing some of their clout. And it should be at least something you're factoring into what you're doing. Somebody I I know who used to work for me just sent me a proposal for a book that she wanted to do and she wanted some help in from me in terms of trying to get an agent. And it was like she just got so caught up in what the trends are. And as we know, by the time you're following that trend, it's it's long gone.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Right, right. No, absolutely. And so you mentioned you started writing that first book on the weekends when you had time, and of course, you're having kids. We've all been through that. When you started writing that, did you have a book in mind, or was it kind of the mindset of like, I just got to make sure I can do this, first of all, if this is what I want to do?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Well, it's funny because I am a big plotter. I mean, I don't plot out everything, every single thing, because I like the fun and the kind of magic of as you're going along, having things evolve and discovering, oh, somebody you didn't think was going to die is actually gonna die. But I always start knowing the the protagonist, the inciting incident, the the killer, the ending. And always I try before I start anything to figure it out how I'm gonna try to hide the killer. And I I love that one of the things. That people say most commonly in any kind of Amazon reviews I get is I never saw it coming, but it's but it's credible. Like to me, that's what I want to do.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

That's the hardest balance, right? Because you don't want to have this ghost in the machine moment where it's surprising, but it's surprising because it's literally impossible.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

But with the very first book, I just told myself, Cater, uh, that's what my family and friends call me. Cater, just go up and write a sentence. And I wrote a sentence for the first book that still, you know, two and a half years later when the book became published was still the first sentence. But but that's all it was. It was about a magazine editor-in-chief, and the book was going to be about her nanny dying. That's that's all I knew when I wrote that first sentence. And I loved the feel of like, oh my gosh, I wrote the first sentence for a mystery, and it had a certain irreverence to it that I wanted to have the main character have. She was a uh true crime writer in a magazine, but I had no no plot, nothing. And then it was sort of like, oh, well, what do I do from here? And I called my agent who had represented me on nonfiction, and I just said to her, Oh, you know, I really want to write suspense fiction, and you don't know this, but when I picked you as my agent, I knew you handled some mystery writers. And she said something on the phone that the whole plot appeared in front of my eyes as I was talking to her. And I was like, Phew, because now I have an idea. But that was the only time I didn't start right away with a good sense of where I was going. And I this was something else John Grisham said the other day that I think he likes to do that too, because if you really want great red herrings and great uh twists at the end, I think you want them to f feel organic. And if you are just, you know, kind of winging it. I I had to read a couple books lately from up-and-coming female writers who uh for some sort of contest. And wow, I my head was spinning at the end. And I thought, you know what, they didn't plot, they just decided to pants their way through and it unraveled at the end. And I think if you, you know, it I do think it helps to plot a little bit. You don't have to plot the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

It's interesting, yeah, because I am the opposite of that. I and I've tried to plot, and my brain is just not capable of, but I've I've I've learned over time that I think the outline's there, and I think I have to be I so I think I'm basically my draft is a very slow-moving outline because it all comes alive in the editing, of course. Uh yes, yes, but you do have that moment like 60 in where you're not really planning a twist, and you're like, oh my god, what if, you know, that what if moment. What if this person died right now? What would that mean? You just see it happening. Um, but if you try to force it one way or another against how your brain works, I think you run in run into trouble.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Um, yeah, that's such a good point because I do have a couple really good pals, like Lisa Unger, who's such a wonderful episode of this just came out today, actually. Oh, really? Yeah, she's such a wonderful writer and she's a pantser. And so if it works for you fine, but I think there might be some aspiring authors who've been encouraged to go by the seat of their pants who would do better if they did a little plotting.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Yeah, and I think that's one of the and I think you have to recognize your limitations. If I know I can't plot, I'm not going to write uh procedural mystery, you know, because that's got to be really tight and you know, almost beautifully mechanical in a way that that requires a lot of intricate thinking. And I think my brain's not good for that.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Right, right. I just read a great British procedural that just came out called Missing. And I think that it's by someone whose last name is Jackson, and then it's two initials, maybe EA Jackson. And oh gosh, it was so entertaining, but all these little pieces are there.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

And I have so much respect for that.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah, it was really good. And I immediately Googled what are some other great British procedurals? Because I realized it'd been a while since I read some, so I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of them.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Oh, they're just great because they're so glum.

unknown 26:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

And I love watching British mysteries just because it's they're so moody.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I know, I know, but I love it.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Uh so when your first book came out, so you were kind of, you know, and and I'm sure it didn't hurt who you were at the time to now have a debut book um with with with PR and all that kind of stuff. But that book you kind of went through the roof, you they which is very rare for a debut. Um, did that must have just validated, like, yeah, this is what the universe wants me to do now.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Well, you know, it's interesting because I I didn't have any breakthrough on that because of my job. I mean, eventually the New York Times did a story on me, but that was after the book had done well. And I played it down at work because I was at the biggest magazine in the company, this huge media company, Hearse, and I thought, I don't want them to know I'm like like spending this time writing these murder mysteries. I need to have my eye on the ball with the job. So I didn't do a book tour or anything, but somebody I knew professionally sent the book to the Kelly Rippa book club. And that would not have happened. I mean, he wasn't able to say, hey, you gotta pick it, but they picked it. So that little thing made a big difference. And from there the book really took off. And it's only later because and I've sometimes, I guess, in the first couple of years, I thought, wow, I just really lucked out. And I was pulling something together for a publisher that wanted to put a a lot of praise for for each book in the front. And I realized I got starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, from Book Lists, and overall just spectacular reviews from People Magazine, EW. And I had been telling myself for years, wow, you lucked out because someone you knew sent it to the Kelly Rippa book club. But I guess the the book probably would have done fairly well on its own because it did have such good reviews. And but it was, I think, the Kelly Rippa book club that helped it you know stay on the New York Times bestseller list for a while.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Oh, it's yeah, it's amazing. And now, of course, it's Reese or whomever, what that kind of influence has. Oh, I know. That's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies from that one, yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Right. But the the downside of that, and I see a number of people who I really like struggling with this, then maybe your second and third books don't land the same way, and suddenly you're feeling under this pressure. And it just shows how crazy publishing is. You could have this one book that's such a success, but there's no like with magazines, there's a uh like there's a kind of a a you know, a bottom and a top for how high an issue could sell. You've got a bandwidth, and you pretty much know even if you have a clunker in our case at Cosmo, it might be 1.7 million on the newsstand. And if you had something incredible, it would be 2.3 million. But you weren't gonna go go below 1.7. You have your base, yeah. You have your base. And I think unfortunately, there's nothing like that when you publish.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

If you're if you're a Reese pair, clunker can be a real clunker in books.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Right, right, right. And I I've heard a couple women talking about the struggle they're going through now as authors, that the swings have been really hard to deal with, and it affects your advance next time. Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

No, totally. And and I think there's also this lack of real objectivity where you can say, oh, this got starred reviews from three trades, so it's going to do well. A lot of times that doesn't necessarily mean anything for your actual sales, or you know, the opposite is holds true as well. Your best books might not have been critically, you know, loved, but they just connected with the zeitgeist for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Right. I think there isn't today. I mean, I think there was a time where a great publisher's weekly review would really help you. And I don't think that that's a given anymore. But that said, one of the things I discovered as I after I finished my book for 2027 is I realized, wow, I just really like doing this. I I don't think I quite understood as much as I did in the years that I was doing the Cosmo job and writing. I almost didn't have time to think about it. But now that I have more time to think about the experience of writing, I realize, you know what, I'd probably be writing even if nobody read it. Because I I love the experience. I love having a character, I love coming up with twists. And it sounds like you that's what drives you too, that even if the readers all disappeared, you'd still make your I don't know how you stick with it otherwise, because it's such an incredibly difficult thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

And you know, I've evidenced over 20 years that the physical act of writing has gotten easier. Like I can physically the muscle is there. I can if I know the scene, I can write it. But it's every time I start a book, it's like this is a major undertaking. And if and I get overwhelmed, and and but there's the excitement, and but and if I didn't have that love of like I can't wait to see what happens, then I don't know why you would because again, there's no guarantee that it's there's no bandwidth for you to walk into. But what's amazing about you is you know, you have this attitude of these swings, these potential swings, and you're seeing it, but yet in your own career, you know, you're talking about your 2027 book, for example, you're like, I've been able to just have this output roughly a book a year, and for this, you know, 20 plus years, and that's that's amazing, you know, because some swings kill authors, some swings, even if the low is not that bad, they're just like, you know, I I can't do this anymore. And I think that underlying passion is the reason.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah, I you do have to examine, you know, what are you getting out of it? If if it's your main source of income, if is it a problem? For me, I I banked on the fact that we we live long lives and we can be serial achievers. And I thought, I'm gonna take a chance and uh do it now, but I had already been able to save money for an to have a new career. And I've I I I really I love doing it, and I also, you know, this book has done very well, but I also I've made a publisher change as much as I love my old publisher, and my books are you know, I I get royalties from my books, which is great. But I I I went with Thomas and Mercer, which is a wonderful division of Amazon, and they they really uh helped introduce me to a new group of ri readers. And it's because so much of it w regardless of Reese and the Today Show, so much of it is word of mouth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

I think the preponderance of it is my successful book is word of mouth through social media, through just the library pushing something.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah, I I think that it is one of those things that it's important to be aware if you're if you're thinking about it someday being a day job, that there is this roller coaster and you need to be prepared for that. And it just it might be something that you continue to have a day job. I did for eight books.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Yeah, and I I did for 10.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. I was burning the candle at both ends a lot of the time. And it's been nice to not have that other distraction, but sometimes that's what you're gonna have to do.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Yeah, I mean, burning the candle at both ends is hard, but it's not as hard. It's it's compensated by the fact that you're every two weeks you have guaranteed money coming in from your other job. I mean, that that compensates for quite a bit. And and I think the other beautiful thing about writing, as we think about, you know, working for other companies and things like that. First of all, you're doing it for yourself, you're your own employer, you're it's your own vision, and you can do it until you drop dead. You know, you're not going to get aged out of it. You're, you know, it's as long as your mind is curious and active and empathetic, you can write.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

You said something I'm really glad you said a minute ago. You said physically, and I think you meant just how you start a book and tackled 90,000 words or whatever, has gotten easier. And I often hear people say, Oh, it never gets easier. I do feel it gets easier. I feel that because I am not, I don't find 90,000 words daunting anymore because I know I've I've done it 20 times so far. And I know a way to make it a little easier by because I am a plotter, I start to sort of think not over not only of the inciting incident, but where chapter 10 or 11 is going to take me. And by then I realize, okay, I'm gonna have some momentum to keep going from there. So in that sense, it has gotten easier. I've also learned that sometimes when nothing's working for me in terms of I don't know where I'm going quite next, research. I've gotten so many plot twists from saying, okay, you know what, I need to talk to somebody who's who's written a book about this. And so it has gotten it's daunting, but it's it's easier than book one.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Oh, a hundred percent. And I think what's the other the other part of that is when you either if you're pantsing or outlining, when you get to a scene where you're like, Yeah, I gotta write this scene, but I'm not really motivated by it, and it's hard, that makes it really hard. As you go on, you realize the reason it's hard is because uh we don't need that scene. That's right, right. That scene doesn't belong, that's why it's hard. And your brain starts to pick that up after time, where all of a sudden you're kind of just writing really interesting scenes, and that's what how books work. And that when you have that, it's really fun because you know, I can't wait to write X and X and X. So you just get a sense of that better over time.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah, there is the fun. You know, I I heard a friend of mine who's a wonderful thriller author. She was telling me that about a line years ago that that Hemingway said to to leave off at night um in a in at some place you can't can't wait to finish.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Totally. And I 100% agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yeah, and so there's the fun. And you know what also for me I've come to see is what a great stress reliever having my characters are. Uh you know, we had some I had something horrific happen to me uh in the last decade that was really shattering. And the best stress relief I had was being able to go to bed at night and just go to these people who were in that particular book that I was working on. And the next year it was a new book. And I I realized if I gave that up, I would not have a stress release release in the evening.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

So when you're in bed at night, you're thinking about your characters.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Yeah, just for a little while before I do all those breathing exercises.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Yeah, oh, that's interesting, right? Well, it's a it's a form of meditation, really.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Yeah, it is. It's I'm thinking about them instead of what might have happened that day or or something. And uh so for you, writing is it's incredibly fun. Um, even though it's hard work, you you you would you enjoy it, it's not an odious task.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

No, it's become, you know, and I think for all of us, after a certain amount in our career, it becomes our identity in a in a positive way, of like this unveiling of like, you know, I've spent years doing many different things, and unveiling of like, oh, I think this is who I am. And there's something incredibly freeing about that feeling of like not working for a job where maybe you like the job, but you don't really care that much, or what you're like, oh, this is why I'm here. And that really helps with the hard stuff because you realize like I'm good at this, I've been successful at this, and I love it. And what more would you want out of life?

unknown 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Um, you know, there's something else I've realized lately how much because I do a certain amount of research for the books and for I Came Back for You, which is the book that uh that's just came out in March. I I researched grief because the main character, Brie, her daughter had been murdered eight years before, and the theater, the serial killer, thought to have killed the daughter, makes a dead deathbed confession that uh he he's murdered women, but the daughter wasn't one of them. So she's got to go back to the town, the college town where her daughter was murdered and kind of confront all this. And so I did a fair amount of research on grief, and I found out some really interesting things about grief that that I had not been so aware of. You know, one of them is we often hear that there's five stages of grief, and that's just total bullshit. That was something um Cooler Ross was researching how people confront the grief over their own terminal illnesses, not how we confront grief about the death of a loved one. Right. Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

And there's no not there's not five stages. So that was interesting. And then I did some research about stress and fascinating about that, and also about body language, because there's one scene in the book where Brie is trying to evaluate whether someone's telling the truth. And I'd done a lot of articles on body language in when I was in my 20s working for Glamorra magazine, and apparently a lot of it's been rethought. Yes, liars sometimes do touch their mouths when they are lying, but it could be just a nervous gesture, too. And what someone told me is one of the really big indicators whether someone is lying is a lack of consistency. And uh a great cop I I interviewed said that the thing is, people who are lying, they hear themselves telling the story and they start to worry it doesn't sound as credible. So they embellish it, they add a detail, so consistency in what they're saying, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:17

And it may then counteract something that conflict with something that's one word eventually comes out, that's that's an event. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

So one thing I I feel like I'm I'm smarter from having re-researched some of the stuff. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Well, and I think that you know, just finally to say, I think the act of writing just is so good for your brain. You know, it is they talk about how you get older, you should do seduco and all like how about writing a novel every day. I know, I know what a powerful thing for your mind.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Exactly. You know, I I I'm learning Spanish because we live in Uruguay in the wet winter time, and for years I've been trying to learn Spanish. I feel like, you know, I think the writing is actually helping my brain more than the Spanish.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

It 100% is. Okay, we're gonna wrap up before we do. We're gonna do the storytelling part of the show. We're gonna make up like a two-minute-long short story. So I have three books here. The only thing in common is they're all signed copies. Um, you're gonna choose one of those books, and I'm gonna choose a random sentence from a random page, and that'll be the first sentence in like a very short short story. So I'll read that sentence. You give me a sentence, I'll give the next one, and we'll just piece something terrible together. I've got uh The Night We Burned by S.F. Cosa, uh Lost Lake by Emily Littlejohn. These are all thriller mysteries, and Lisa Gardner's Kiss Her Goodbye. So choose one of those.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Well, I know Lisa pretty her stuff pretty well. So one of the first two. Lost Lake, is it?

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Uh yeah, by Emily Littlejohn. She's a Colorado author. She's great. Um give give me a page between one and three hundred.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Uh 170.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Okay, so I'm gonna quickly look at 172.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

Because there might be some action happening by then, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:06

There should be, yeah. Um I'm gonna read this and you can do whatever you want with it. Okay. Suffice it to say, the man was not well liked.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Oh, that's it?

SPEAKER_02 44:24

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yeah, okay. Um there were plenty of rumors around that he'd been sending dick pics to women who work for him.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

But she hadn't been able to substantiate the rumors, nor did she care to try. But it didn't take that kind of rumor to let her know he was not the kind of guy she would ever want to date. She could tell it just by the way he wore his clothes.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

So she brushed him off, but he didn't take no for an answer. Her doorbell rang that night. And when she looked through the hole, she saw him standing on the other side. And because he was her boss, she didn't dare not answer.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

She opened the door and it took only a few seconds before she knew he was drunk. She'd seen him drinking before at more than one conference. But then he always had some kind of wry look of amusement on his face. That was not how he looked now.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

At first he grinned drunkenly, sheepish sheepishly at her. But then when his eyes caught sight of the butcher knife in her hand, they went kind of bug-eyed. Whoa, he said. What do you got there, sweetheart?

SPEAKER_02 45:58

I think we call it there. So let me tell you why that was great, because I'm always being accused of these stories of like going too dark. And I usually, there's usually a knife. A lot of times there's a knife. And I'm like, Kate White just went straight for the knife. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

I had to be inspired by the headlines today with our disgraced congressman from California.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

Well, good. Very, very appropriate timing. Well, Kate, what a.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

What a pleasure talking to you. Are you going to be at Thriller Fest or Yes, I am, and I'll look for you. I will be there for five or six days. So I'm doing a lot there.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Perfect. All right. See you there, pal. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Bye, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

All right, that is it. That is my chat with uh Kate White. That was a great one. I could have gone on a lot longer with her. She she was a wealth of good information and just inspiring to talk to. As a reminder, her new book is I Came Back for You. And if you want to check out that book or read anything you want to read about Kate, just go to her website at katewite.com. And if you're interested in me and my books, um, and you can see my brand new cover of my upcoming thriller in November 2026 called When They Find Me on my website at CarterWilson.com. And if you're interested in any kind of one-on-one writing coaching, you want to check out our Paris writing retreat next year or any of our workshops and seminars that we put on, you can find all of that information at unboundwriter.com. All right, folks, friends, writers, that is it. That is it for this episode of Making It Up. Another one out just next week. In the meantime, thank you so much for watching andor listening to this. I really appreciate it. Take care of the city.