imagine the ultimate game of hide and seek a squid game like version then imagine that this whole game becomes something far more Sinister than what was intended add in a treacherous storm and this becomes a battle for survival I love when Lisa Unger is here Lisa is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of 21 books published in 33 languages and she sold millions of copies worldwide she's received numerous Awards including two Edgar nominations in the same Year Lisa is a master of the psychological thriller her latest is close your eyes and count to 10 Lisa thank you so much for being here oh my gosh thank you for having me I love being here with you an well I love when you're here let me tell you this book was really intense 21 books I can't believe we're at 21 books I know and they get better and better thank you all right let's start with the premise the premise is a game and we've got social media we have an extreme Adventurer a daredevil and then there is this participants are being asked to play hide and seek fill in as much of this part of the game if you can yeah so it starts really with Adele who is one of the contestants of the game and she's a single mom and she's been you know kind of through the ringer in her life and she's like struggling you know to support her kids and you know her her son Blake is like you know a a weat fanatic which is like kind of my version of YouTube right and he is obsessed with this influencer and and when the opportunity comes for Adele who's like sort of fashioned herself into like a fitness influencer like after her husband you know disappeared under um sort of dark circumstances she like sort of fought her way back to like a power you know place where she was like you know working out and going online and doing all that so she's been kind of stepping into this world a little bit as well so when her son says hey Mom you know there's this um extreme game of hide and seek on an island in the Atlantic and it's really a no-brainer you know you can it's a no-brainer you can go there and the prizes and million dollars you know for whatever reason Adele decides that she is going to play this game ma MAV Dylan is this internet celebrity he is this Daredevil yeah how would you describe him well I mean he's an interesting character because for me like you know the story of the character in the book always starts way before the book begins so for Maverick you know I see him as like you know he was this kid he was a daredevil and his mother was a photographer and so he kind of grew up in front of the camera and doing all these stunts for everybody and it just sort of you know after an injury he sort of finds himself online where he becomes like a gaming influencer and so he kind of crafts this life for himself um in his company where you know he and his friends basically travel all over the world do these dream stunts and games and they get more and more and more and more followers and so and they make more and more and more money and their mission becomes more and more murky and so um I see him as somebody who is like kind of you know this type of kid who grows up in front of the camera and then doesn't know who he is when the camera goes off but what he has is a multi-million dollar company and the way they make money is by doing these extreme challenges right so the more followers they get the more advertising dollars come in and that's how their company makes money it's a it's a new world it is um the setting is so crucial oh yeah to this plot the setting is a character because it sets the mood and there's this tension I'm sure there's a backstory how did you come up with this place well I actually you know it's very funny my husband and daughter and I tended you know do these kind of you know wild trips and we wound up in the azors which are you know Islands an archipel archipelago in the Atlantic of Portuguese islands and um we were about to hike the rim of a volcanic Lake when a torrential storm broke and kind of sent us rushing back to our car and then on that drive home or back to our hotel We Came Upon This um abandoned structure in the middle of nowhere and it was a gigantic building that looked like it had once been a grand hotel and there were all these signs that said you know no entra danger pelet GR in other words stay away which we of course interpreted as a dare and so come right in we interpreted this as please come in and explore and so that's kind of what we did and we just kind of fell upon this amazing place that was just completely complely abandoned it was a it was at one time a hotel and it like in the 80s and it kind of went out of business and then it just fell to seed and like this place completely isolated in the middle of this island in the middle of the ocean I mean it just felt like how was I not going to write about it I was going to say how long did it take from the minute you saw this place to go okay this is the next book absolutely like it was pretty it was pretty much that it was pretty much you know within a year like that place kind of found worked its way and because that's kind of kind of how it works it like it works its way into whatever I'm working on and I've also been really obsessed with this idea of the media of the social media influencer and what that means so like the kind of two points dub tailed and um there's the book close your eyes and and count to 10 close your eyes and count to 10 let's look at the other participants you mentioned Adele and we'll get back to her but who are the others so there's Minka um Nikki who is a she's like a um the the first woman to um to do all the Summits at a very young age at 17 and she has a company um of like gear athletic gear and so she is an adventure influencer and a retail influencer and she's obviously chosen because of her you know her big followership and she's the youngest she's the youngest yes and then there's there's wild Cody who um is a um a former like sort of nature show personality who's had a terrible terrible fall from grace and he's kind of like you know they say in the book like he's on his Redemption circuit like he's you know apologizing for things he's done and trying to find his way back to his roots as like a you know a survivalist basically somebody who's passionate about the environment and then of course there's the Extreme Team and all their all the roles that they have to play in the game and and that we're not going to give too much away about them because that that's very important You Adele being a single mothers PR money she really ising this for the money right and her children Blake and violet you know what I loved they're so authentic and especially the way that that they interact with each other yeah how did you get in into the the teen brain here well I have you know I have a a niece and nephew I mean and the book is dedicated to my niece Violet and um of course my daughter ocean is like you know we just came through the teenage she doesn't have a sibling she's our she's our only um but like you know those interactions between kids are like something that you know I always watch and then of course you know we're all like secretly still like that kid like fighting with their I still fight with my brother all the time so like that kind of like love tension that you have with your sibling I think is very you know pre it's present for me it's like something that I've watched and you know I just love you know I just love I loved getting to know them on the page like that's kind of it works for me like you know it's never no one's ever based on any one person but I think like their every character is kind of like an amalgamation that kind of comes to life as I'm writing and they are fully defined Blake and violet they really are are yes they were and they were and they actually you know it was funny because I you know I wrote my first draft and then you know at the end of the first draft I was like I just felt like I wanted more I wanted them to have a bigger place in the story and then when my editor um read read that draft she was like I loved it she's like but I loved Adele and and and Blake and and violet you know so much I wanted to see more of them and I was like yeah okay so it's like so I wound up reconstructing a little bit the book to to have more to have their place in the story be more present because I was you know um so I just love spending time with them there is this world of social media there is gaming there are influencers they all come to play together in this book did you have to like bone up on video games because that's that that world is constantly updating yeah I constantly I'm like I'm kind of a research junkie so I'm always researching stuff like this a te technology is something that you know always fascinates me and it's not necessarily I think we've talked about this before it's not necessarily the technology that fascinates me but it's how that technology rewrites the way we relate to each other and so gaming and social media and you know influencing and all of that stuff like that is a very big part of how people are relating to each other especially younger people now like this is how they are connecting how they are staying connected so yeah I spent a lot of time researching that and and how it works and you know but you know the interpersonal stuff the human relationship stuff like that's ancient right it's just the technology that's new that's a great way of of putting that in in the book well you know the the video game and the real world convert Verge and sometimes I I I'm wondering if in real life if the people playing these games if that's the same for them if that is their world it is in many ways like i' I saw that a lot with my daughter and her friends like not so much my daughter because we were pretty strict about what she was able to do online um but we've seen this with so many people that we know that that life is being lived online but it's a real thing the relationships that you have with people um are are true they're real they're just you know happening in this different Universe this kind of virtual universe but the you know the friendships the alliances the enemies all of that like it's the same ancient code between people it's just that you're communicating via this game and um in fact in this book you know I actually had to tap ocean because I needed a moment where something in the game was able to impact the real world and I was like how would that happen like how could how could we do that I never talk about my work with anybody but this is the first time I ever talk to anybody my daughter about how like help me brainstorm how this can how we can use something from the game to um to affect the real world game and so that was really interesting the book I said in the beginning it's an intense read and for me it was anxious because I couldn't put it down I kept wanting to find out what is going to happen next it's hard to get an idea exactly so what I'd love for you to do is if you could read a paragraph from when the game begins and this would be Adele's voice yes and just to set this up a little bit it's chapter 10 this is from a D's perspective and throughout the beginning of the book there's these like sort of Snippets these moments where you kind of Jump Ahead into the game as it's going to be played in the in the real world the game had begun the hiders all scattered it felt Primal like a hunt beginning there was a deep thrum of excitement even though Adele knew she was the prey she was alone running up the wet path the storm wild raged around her lightning and then darkening the sky like someone flipping a switch on and off she felt the thunderclaps vibrate beneath her feet what was supposed to be a game now felt very real was she going to die here an ocean away from her babies she kept running digging deep outrun the storm don't get struck by lightning hide pray that morning comes I'm sorry she told her kids God herself I should have known better see I just got chills again I should have known better you are so good at fear so I have to talk about fear the concept of fear particularly in this book it's all the way through yeah I mean I think that you know I mean obviously I think a lot of people turn to Crime fiction to metabolize fear both writers and readers you know so if you're you know I I actually had this question asked to me by the friends and fiction ladies you know what scares you you know and like you know and why do you write about it and it's such an interesting thought that like you know if you want to know what scares me all you have to do is read my books the entirety of my fear it dwells on these pages and I think that you know interesting especially like in that particular in that particular paragraph like she's on an island in a storm and you know the game has begun and you know she's virtually you know she's literally threatened her life is literally threatened and the thing that frightens her the most is that she's an ocean away from her babies and I think that that's true of of all crime fiction that you know there's this concept of the big Stakes like oh the fate of the Free World hangs in the balance um but those are that's not what frightens us what frightens us is the very small things the things that are personal and so you know that's where I always go with my characters I want to talk about something personal for a moment you are any viewer is going to look at you and see this cute adorable bubbly smiling person and that is who you are you don't look like somebody who is going to be writing this really dark stuff yeah now I know because we've talked before that as a young teen you experienced something very disturbing it was a a classmate who was abducted and I believe murdered that's right so somewhere deep inside you does this find its way to the page and how do you navigate this with without it you know bother affecting you consuming me um yes I when that is true when I was 15 um a girl I knew was abducted and murdered and we lived in a really small town um it was like the kind of place where you move your family to be safe from the city it was like you know New Jersey like just outside of New York City and um you know I very much so feel in in my life and the trajectory of my life the world was one thing before that and another thing after that for me because you know I after that you know and it played out in front of us in a way that like probably it wouldn't now like I think children get more sheltered more protected these days than than they they were at my age so like we kind of saw the whole thing play out you know the investigation you know the the hunt for her the hunt for him the investigation the you know the funeral the wake and it you know it gutted us you know in a way that like you know I think stayed with me I'm not going to you know overdramatize it and say that it haunted me but it definitely stayed and it did find its way onto the page but mainly you know at that time like I had all these questions and I had questions about people and why and why her and what made this person do this thing to just a girl who was just like me and why not me and like these are the questions that that I had and I put them to people who should have been able to answer and they they couldn't they not only did they couldn't answer they didn't want to answer they didn't want to hear the question so I think in a lot of ways I turned to the page to try to answer the questions that I had as a kid about people and I think I still do that to this day I mean that really is the driving force through all of my novels that I just have so many questions about people and why they are the way they are and this is where I answer them a good Thriller needs plot twists I mean it's inevitable I know I'm going to pick up your book and then things are going to change but it has to be surprising so do you work it out in advance or or is it organic when you're writing for me it's organic I mean I don't outline I don't I can't write like that I if I I write for the same reason that I read because I want to know what's going to happen to the people living in my head if I already knew the answer to those questions I wouldn't be able to write the book because why you know like I I'm engaged in the story in the same way that I hope my readers will be um and and so there isn't really anything that I plot out like I'm not like oh this Twist on this page and this thing is going to happen here and oh you're GNA they're going to think this but this is really going to be it like I just don't have that kind of you know calculating mind although I you know I kind of wish I did you know I think it probably would be easier than to like yeah there's the way I write there's a lot of 3 a. wakeups my subconscious is always working on the story so there's a lot of times where I just wake up and I'm like oh my God that's it you know and like just so I'm that involved on like that deeper level with everything that that I'm writing so like I don't have a plan when I sit down to write I your approach has always been this way it's always been this way like I just have a voice in my head in this case it was aele and I was like very interested in Maverick you know like those were the two main voices for me and so I had these two voices and I was not sure how they were going to intersect initially and you know I had this place which is not always the case it's not always like a place that inspires but this place really did Inspire and so um you know I had all these like pieces and I just sit down with them and I just I might have a phrase or a thought or an idea in my head and I just start writing and then you know things evolve for me people evolve for me on the page in the way that they will later for hopefully for my reader you are at the top of your game you are very successful and I understand there is is I think a project in the works with Jessica Alba and Hulu can you give us any little updates I will give a little update so yeah we um so confessions on the 745 is in development at Hulu um with Jessica Alba toar Eva Longoria to direct and Sharice Castro Smith is just an amazing writer um to write and so we're the project um you know some these things are are never at least it seems to me they're never fast but this seems to be moving in the ri.. direction so I'm hoping but you know by the end of the year I'll have some you know good news to share good fingers crossed on that exactly Lisa has your definition of success changed over the course of your writing yeah I think it has I mean I think to some degree you know and and my husband and I were just talking about this this morning I think for me um the goal is every day to be a better writer than I was yesterday and that's like the driving force you know there are certain accolades and things that come that are you know make you very excited and very proud for for a minute you know um and and then you go back to the pages right because that's where that's where everything lives like so for me that's where my joy is you know and I think that you know obviously the amazing things that happen I'm always grateful and just you know obviously very excited when when you know great things happen but for me it's always I'm always going back to that page every morning and what I bring to that page is joy and it's a love of The Craft and it's a love of you know the blank page where anything can happen all the possibilities are there and so the fact that I get to get up every morning and do that I can't think of a a more authentic measure of success you exude Joy I'm just going to say that hindsight's wonderful but is there anything that you would have done differently from when you started I mean it it's difficult to say that because you know like I just kind of feel like you're on this path in life right like so I always knew I was a writer I never wanted to be anything else and I had other parts I had certain times of my life where I wasn't writing where I was you know in aob that was you know related in publishing but I wasn't really spending any time writing because everything in my life was taking me away from it and then I got really serious about it so I guess you know you could say you know if you were to look back you could go well maybe I wish I had published earlier or maybe I wish I had published later like after I'd written a few books because the first book I wrote the one I started when I was 19 was the one I published when I was 29 so it took me 10 years to write it but um you know that was my first book so like I think you can look at different pieces and say oh maybe if this had been different or if that had been different but you just don't know the truth of that right so like if you think about where you are in your life and you know you feel joyful the way I do about things most of the time then you know you can't look back and say I wish this had been different or I wish had that been different because you don't know what you know it's chaos theory right you change one thing and then you don't know what else tumbles out of place so that's the next book okay I'm going to write about it what do your readers influence your growth H have they influ or and how important is it that you get reader feedback um that you mean in terms of like well you know I have certain readers that are very important to me my agent my editor my H my husband and my mother are very important readers you know and um my mom is the first kind of cold reader and she's a librarian and she's like a lifelong just lover of story so you know with the convers I have with her are very important you know it's more like you know what she what she didn't get what she wanted more of what she was upset about like whatever right like she gets very involved with the story so like those conversations are very important to me and and they do influence me of course you know like there's a there's a draft there's a first draft that's just mine and that'll always be mine and then there's the draft where you know I take feedback and then I try to make sure my reader gets everything that he need I got everything I needed in the first draft now I have to make sure my reader gets everything that he or she needs so um that is you know that and that's part that's part of the process right like I write the book it gets edited I make it the best that I can make it the best that it can be and then I put it out in the world and then a reader picks it up and then that book belongs to them that that book belongs to that reader and what they they're going to bring all of themselves to that story so the book they read is necessarily different than the book that I wrote and and that is the relationship between um author and reader and it's an important relationship like I think it's like oh it's a romance thing like oh I write for myself I write alone well that's fine I mean you can do that but you're not you're not a published writer you're not your book is not going out into the world and maybe you don't want that and that's cool but if it is going out into the world you have readers and they are incredibly important you spoke about your mother just a few minutes ago we know she was a librarian I know that's where your love of reading came from I want to thank all the Librarians and you know I've had people that I've talked to in even on on this show that credit Librarians literally with saving them letting them know that there are books that speak to them and their circumstances so true so yes if whatever you want to say about libraries oh my gosh libraries are you know they're so foundational to our communities and to the business of publishing I mean it's a huge part of publishing which I think some people don't realize right like it's just such a big force and Librarians I always say are like the only people who are like as geeky into story as writers themselves like they're the like they as a writer like Librarians are your people like for sure and you know the and and libraries are like I have so many friends who are authors who have said if it wasn't for my library if it wasn't for My Librarian I wouldn't be a writer you know I wouldn't and there wouldn't have been any place for me to go and just lose myself in books there wouldn't have been any place for me to go and you know have somebody who says Hey read this I mean that just that action from somebody that you respect like is so foundational for so many kids and you know just remember bringing my daughter to the library you know every week for story time and just like this big array of books that she could like learn to check out and all of that and like I just think they such an important part of our communities and our industries did your mom let you read anything you want she did yeah absolutely no censorship and if I could reach it I could read it if I could reach it if I could reach it I could read it I could read it yeah the new book is close your eyes and count to 10 it is so good Lisa anger thank you so much for sharing your time with me thank you Ann you're wonderful I appreciate you so much I'm Anne boock please join me on the next between the covers