Welcome to the Book Club with kin, where we feature incredible This time we're reading.

Tell Me what you Did.

A thriller about a podcaster who gets people to confess their crimes, and a mysterious caller who knows she's hiding her own terrible secret.

You know, I sometimes like to think that I can figure the mystery out of this.

Like not letting the dog anything happen to the dog.

I can't.

I have I have learned that lesson.

First, I visit a local restaurant in Castlerock to hit up a delicious fight inspired by the novel that I can share with the book club.

Then I sit down with author Carter Wilson to discuss his creative process.

The smartest thing I ever did was take the time to be curious about why did this happen.

And then we meet our book club friends at the public library in Castle Rock for a vibrant discussion.

Please don't kill the cat.

Please don't touch me.

Come and join us.

Poe is the main character of this book, and she loves steak and red wine.

So we thought, why not come to downtown Castle Rock and get steak and wine for our book club discussion?

Lock and bottle is a locally owned restaurant in Castle Rock.

Just a quick walk from our book club meeting spot at the library.

John, welcome.

Thank you so much for being part of our show.

Thank you.

Block and bottle is one of three restaurants that you own.

Yes.

You said you started in the restaurant business age 14.

Tell us about that.

My mom said, don't get in trouble.

Go get a job at age 14.

And I became a dishwasher at, age 14 and worked my way through everything from becoming a sous chef, an executive chef, and then, ended up, opening up a lot of restaurants for corporate and then decided to do my own.

About, 10 or 11 years ago, my first one.

Our main character, Paul, likes red wine and steak.

So because we're at Black and Bottle, what would you recommend from your restaurant?

Well, we have a wonderful, New York strip, and we serve that with, frites, which is French fries and truffle oil and parmesan.

And then we seasoned it with kind of like an herb butter with, time and rosemary to finish it with their butter.

John, that sounds amazing.

I can't wait to share it with our book club.

Thank you.

But I'll save my appetite for when we joined the book club.

Because first, I'm meeting with the author of tell Me What You Did.

Carter.

Wilson.

Carter, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me here.

I'm so excited.

You started writing in your early 30s, correct?

That's right.

Okay.

What was the catalyst?

It was boredom, know for real.

It was.

I was a commercial real estate appraiser.

Okay?

And I had to take this eight hour long class on ethics.

Then I was completely bored during this class.

And I remember for the last two hours I was I said, I'm going to pose myself a riddle and I'm going to answer the riddle and that's going to pass the time.

So I made up this weird little murder mystery riddle that just popped into my head, and I wrote it down on a sheet of paper, and I spent the last two hours trying to figure out the answer to this riddle, which I couldn't because it was so weird.

And I got home and I just started thinking, I'm like a it was frustrating.

I'm like, I need to figure this out.

And 90 days later, I had a 400 page manuscript and nothing had ever happened to me like that before in my life.

I had no background in writing, no aspirations in writing, and so never in high school, college, never there.

So this thing just happened.

Okay.

The smartest thing I ever did was take the time to be curious about that whole thing.

Like, why did this happen?

Is this something I should maybe think about?

So I just kind of pursued it from there.

Fabulous.

You have never written to date a series, correct?

You do not have a series.

Are you opposed to having a series?

No.

I'd probably make more money if I wrote a series.

My.

A lot of friends are very successful writing series, but if you have the great luck of.

I got an agent with this book and we were able to sell it and you think, okay, I want this to be a series.

A lot of times a publisher will say, well, we don't want a series because we don't know if this book is going to sell well.

So we don't want to commit to 4 or 5 books, okay.

So that was kind of the case with me is like, let's just see how this goes.

And so I just got into the rhythm of writing Standalones and then you realize kind of the great joy and freedom associated with that meaning.

I don't have to see these characters again.

I can kill whoever I want.

Yeah.

And, or I could bring somebody back for a minor role.

I can have kind of some, some cross line to tell him, but, and I also like the idea that somebody can just pick up any one of my books.

And that might be the first Carter Wilson book they ever read that's not tied to anything else.

And they can kind of enter into, you know, my reading realm that way.

I think, like people that are fans of yours, like, one of the things I just think about certain characters, which, okay, one of them's dead.

So you said you already told me that you're not bringing him back.

That's fine.

But series, I think like the character, like when I read them, I'm like, I want to go on the next.

The next year years.

That for sure.

I mean, what are they going to do next?

Are they going to show up if they pulled up in front of my shop like I'm in, like, I don't know where we're going, but let's go because like the adventure from last time.

Yeah.

And I definitely get emails from people saying what happens next?

It was on her back and, and and I don't write it off like, you know.

Yeah, I brought a character back in to tell me what you did from several books ago, and it was like meeting an old friend again.

I'm like, oh, how are you doing?

What's new with you?

Yeah.

And it was just great to write her again because I missed her.

Yeah.

So but you also have to be realistic.

Like when you're writing a detective, for example.

They're in a world where things constantly are happening that you can structure stories around.

I tend to write more everyday people that happened upon extraordinary circumstances.

So you have to feel like, right, how many times can this happen to that which that's relatable to like an ordinary person all of a sudden they get shoved into this, right?

Right.

But can they do that for book two and book three and write?

Okay, after a while you're like, just, you know, maybe you should just stay in your house.

Right.

What do you do for fun?

Like.

And when I say fun, I mean, like, decompress.

If you don't have to go on tour, you don't have obligations that week.

What do you do to recharge?

Yeah, I mean, my days are pretty similar.

Yeah.

I work out almost every day.

You know, I spend a lot of time with.

My kids are in town.

I spend time with them, walk the dog twice a day, but I, you know, to decompress.

I'm either watching TV at night where I get a lot of ideas, or I'm reading, or I'm working with my hands somehow.

So right now I'm taking a barn door and building a desk out of it.

And I just love working an hour a day on something like that.

That might take me three weeks.

It's almost like meditative.

That totally is tough.

Tell us first about unbound writer.

Sure.

Unbound writer is my company where I do one on one coaching with other writers, mostly aspiring writers.

I created a series of online classes, and I also do writing retreats and workshops and all that kind of stuff.

And the essence of it is I like working with writers.

I love talking to writers.

So it's it's it's just interesting for me.

And, you know, after having done this for 20 plus years and failed a lot along the way, I'm excited to share kind of what things to avoid.

Yes, yes.

Making it up.

You you have interviewed over 200 authors.

Yeah.

Tell me about that.

So I've done a lot of interviews and I remember just I had this moment where I was thinking, I'm really tired of some of the questions that are like, all right, which one of your characters do you want to have dinner with?

There's a lot of these really rote, questions.

And so I'm like, I just want to have a podcast where I have a freewheeling conversation with another author about whatever comes to us so I don't prepare.

Yeah.

At all.

So that's the essence of it.

And at the end of each episode, we, we impromptu improv, a short story together, which we will not be doing, but it's it's fun.

Read.

You know is it is.

So recently you posted on your newsletter, Ode to Region.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah.

So my newsletter comes out every month and I write an essay, an opening, an essay.

And I've been doing this for many, many years.

And a, a occurred to me that I'd never written about my age, and I just happened to have had dinner with her.

She lives in New Orleans.

And so I was reflecting on my relationship with her, which is going on 21, 22 years now, which is very I don't know if it's rare.

It's probably it probably is.

It's the exception that somebody has with their agent for the entirety of their career.

And so when I was writing it, I was just feeling that reflection of gratitude of like, you know, this person has just stuck with me.

Yeah, yeah.

And they don't make a dime until they sell something, and then they make 15% of your dime.

And it's funny, I just, I just found a photo.

I took a photo when I got my very first check, and my first advance was just for, like, $1,000, and so she got 15%.

So my first check was for $850.

This was nine years after I signed with her.

Oh my gosh.

So that's what she made, $150 after nine years of being with me.

So totally worth it.

Yeah.

So and you just like.

And I mean, I remember one time she talked me off a ledge when I was just venting and I said, why do you stick with me?

And she said, because you're easy to work with.

Oh my God.

So I'm like, okay, because I don't consume all of her day.

Obviously she's got multiple clients.

But it's it's a hard, hard job.

And for some to have that kind of relationship where you just have this inherent trust over art together, is is difficult, I think so.

You know, I just do think about her quite a bit and how much I appreciate her.

It was lovely.

It's lovely.

And I would say, would you say again, we talked about I gave a presentation to a college class recently and in I ended it with, in your life you have only a handful of people like and I call it your inner circle, and those are the people that you should reach out to to get advice from, or to run things by whatever it is personal life, business, anything.

And you're only going to have a couple of people, your agents in your inner circle.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, maybe not so much for life advice.

Yeah.

But and the funny thing with agents, no matter who you are, you don't talk to them all that often.

No, I mean, you might.

You might go two months without, you know, you might be exchanging emails about royalties or whatever.

But, you know, I've probably physically met her ten times in my life, over 21 years.

But when it comes to story structure and that massive uncertainty that never goes away right away when you're right, that's for anybody, like ever going to see me and just to give the end and, you know, you there are people who give you advice about your story that you could almost feel on your skin, you know, like, this is good advice.

There's a lot of people to give you advice that you just, you know, that doesn't resonate with me.

And so to have an agent who tells you something like, oh, same thing with an editor, like, oh, that totally makes sense.

I never would have seen that for myself.

That's invaluable.

Invaluable.

Thank you so much, Carter, for allowing me to interview you.

I'm going to go next door and talk to the book club, and Tom is going to lead the discussion.

Fantastic questions, Kim, and thank you very much.

Thank you.

Welcome to Book Club, everybody.

I'm sure there is a wine around here somewhere.

Carter I can can you give us a brief synopsis of the book?

In other words, tell me what you did.

So tell me what you did.

Tell the story of 30 year old Paul Webb, who is the host of the country's most popular true crime podcast.

And the conceit of the podcast is basically she brings people on and they confess crimes.

And if she believes them, which she doesn't always, then they have a conversation about the criminal mind, and one day she gets a call her and it's on video so she can see him, who's creepy and he's vaguely familiar.

And his confession is that he killed his mother.

Now, this is shock to Poe, of course, but Poe knows her mother was killed.

Po actually witnessed her mother's brutal death.

Would.

Poe was only 13 years old, but she knows this can't be the guy.

Because Poe spent eight years of her life tracking that guy down and killing him herself.

So it becomes, who is this person?

And if he is who he says he is, who did I kill?

So that's that's kind of the overall arc of it.

But obviously it goes way deeper than that.

Did anybody have trouble reading the book at night?

Because I thought it was creepy.

Oh, yeah.

Only during the day.

Yeah, not at night.

I listen to the audio and I listen to it primarily, actually, as I was getting ready for bed.

So now.

So Poe's a pretty strong protagonist in the book.

She's hard to like.

I would say.

Oh, I like, I don't know, I just, I ask, what did you think of her?

I liked her, I, I, I thought she was very well-written.

I thought there were parts where, where she says there's a fine line between healthy and destructive paranoia, and I'm pretty certain I'm straddling it.

I that perfectly describes, because she's got to think, is this guy real?

Did I did I kill the wrong person, or is this guy the right person?

I mean, she's got she's got to figure out what's going on, right?

Yeah.

There's nothing more trapping, I think, than your own mind.

Like when you're just not sure.

I love playing in that space.

That's my favorite thing.

That's why I tend to write first person present tense, usually just one character, because you're just in their head and they only know what they know, and they may not be reliable even to themselves.

And so I love the idea that the stress of not knowing and also this massive secret, what does that manifest into eventually physically, emotionally, mentally?

It's just that's a fun playground to be in as a writer, because you did see her evolve too, because when the book starts, she's hiding things from her boyfriend.

She hasn't told her father.

I mean, there's just things, and she has to kind of unravel and unpeel her own onion to get to the end.

Yeah.

And it's and it's a journey for me because I don't I don't plot.

So I don't know what the book is about.

I didn't know the summary.

I just gave.

I didn't know that was what the book was.

I just knew it was about a podcast where people confess crimes.

That's all I knew.

So as things are unveiling to her, they're unveiling to me.

So that's what's fun about it, because there's a little bit of like, what would I do in this situation where I, this person and I just try to make it a lot more interesting than what I would actually do.

What would you all do in pose situation?

I wouldn't have told my boyfriend.

I mean, I would have told the father I, I went to told anyone because it's crime, because.

Yeah, I mean, you don't want anyone else to be.

It's a crime to be aiding and abetting after the fact.

So I yeah, I probably just wouldn't have told anyone.

And that's a very clear headed answer.

Yes.

And to me that is Nancy.

Right.

But you have to assume you're in a clear headed clarity.

Yeah.

As that person who committed it.

But the way she committed the initial crime was very well thought out.

I mean, she pursued him.

She went on dating app.

She found out who he was.

She did all that.

She was very strategic in how she got there.

So it's not as if she ran into him on the street and was like, oh, you want to go get drinks and then kill them, right?

It was not necessarily a crime of passion, correct?

Yeah.

Which is also why I went to Hollywood, because a crime of passion is technically it can sometimes get away with justifiable homicide.

Yeah, well, I following her character also was strategic as a when she was 13 because she was told to go to her friend's house and then strategically, she placed herself to be at that moment when her mom was having this affair that she knew was going something wasn't right.

And then she strategically placed herself again when she created that profile to find the murder, like she knew something premeditated in her mind.

And I don't know if she led into, like, feeling this power of vigilantism.

Like I was just trying to figure out because I asked myself throughout the book, do I empathize with her?

Like, when am I going to find that empathy for Poe?

Which was Tom's point.

Like, maybe not everybody likes her, but yeah, I went to set her out to have drinks.

Are there anything?

Yeah.

No, no.

As long as you get the rat poison out.

Yeah.

You can have a drink.

No rat poison.

So I had been my first choice, and.

And that's kind of the not necessarily the intention, but certainly the intention isn't.

I need to make sure everyone likes my character.

That tends to be make for in my opinion, a very boring character.

Oh, yeah.

Because a lot of people say, oh, she's flawed, you know, she's very morally gray.

And I'm like, we all are.

Maybe not to that extent, but that, to me is much more.

I think it's important, as the author, that you're you want to know what happens, not necessarily that you like them.

So yeah, I have a lot of people say you're invested.

Yeah.

Do you don't want to be disappointed.

But that doesn't mean you would sit down and have a drink with this person.

You can't be indifferent.

You have to at least feel something, even if it's a negative.

Right?

I think my, my favorite books are the ones that I remember.

And I thought the ones on an essay.

Love.

Yeah.

So three of the, characters.

Well, I guess the mom's kind of a character.

Three of the characters, follow along.

This theme of moral ambiguity.

The mom's affair.

And then we find out about, the dad's affair.

And then, of course, there's Poe, who, is full of moral ambiguity.

And how did we feel about that as we went through the book?

I didn't see her as morally ambiguous.

I and maybe I'm seeing it wrong, but I was she was reacting to things that happened to her.

And so yeah, I mean, there's and you definitely want your characters to have agency.

You know, a lot of times things happen to them that they can't control.

But the question is, do things keep happening to them?

And they just say, woe is me?

Or do they do something about it?

And there's nothing less interesting than a character who just does nothing.

And so then you start to think like, okay, to what extent do they do something, and how far do they take it?

I knew it was going to be an angry book, and so I just and I didn't even know who the character was.

I'm like, this is going to be an angry book.

And I started writing.

I'm like, oh my God, she's so angry.

Why is she so angry?

I didn't know anything about her mother at that time.

And then I started seeing like, oh, she just this is this is justice for her.

And then she went into podcasting to talk about other people committing crimes.

I just found that interesting because she she took what she did without saying it, because no one knew.

No one, no one in her audience knew that she had witnessed a murder.

She didn't talk about it.

Yeah.

And that wasn't.

It's funny, because that wasn't necessarily intentional, because I started with the idea of the podcast, and then I came up with the idea of of the mother, the mother being killed.

And then about three quarters of the way through the book, I'm like, oh, the podcast is therapy for her.

It's the therapy that she never actively sought, and it is her way of connecting to the criminal mind and is funny when the subconscious works like that and you're just like, okay, this was meant to be like this, but it was never a conscious thought of mine until I kind of.

And that's one of the best parts of writing in general.

It's like when you have those moments like, oh, this is what the book is about.

Would you listen to her podcast?

I definitely would, you would, you wouldn't.

So I said no, because it's real.

Like people are like, I'm good with fiction, but I know I yeah, my answer is no.

Yeah, I don't know.

One of my favorite podcast is about real things, but it's all about scandals.

And so there's like there's not necessarily a story.

Yeah, there's well some of them, you know, no murders actually just scandals.

Was it your intent to have, evil versus good, theme with her?

Because really, she was it was evil being paid back with evil.

And that was her.

Yeah.

I like just the idea.

There's sometimes when you're just, like.

It all depends on what you read and what you watch.

And sometimes I'm reading a book that's just it's just a revenge book.

And there's something kind of satisfying about that.

So I wanted to take elements of that, but then also make it as realistic as possible.

Like there's consequences to everything, right?

So revenge is a fantasy, but when you act out on that fantasy, there's the mass of reality wrapped around it.

And it just became very interesting for me to play with that.

Like what?

Well, what would the consequences be?

I wanted to start with the idea of like, yeah, I'm going to kill this guy.

This is my life's goal.

And then what?

Like, why did you pick Burlington, Vermont?

Is there a specific reason or you like, you've been different?

Yeah.

No, I've never been to Vermont.

Oh, perfect.

Good answer.

Years ago, I set, a book in Manchester, New Hampshire, which I didn't really know anything about until I went there to research.

And I just decided on New England's Creepy.

Yeah.

So a lot of my books are set in New England, and so I just kind of chose Burlington and I researched it, and I'm like, this, this feels good.

Do you believe in ever in the story?

When he claims to be the killer, he is playing with her psychologically, and making her think about what she did.

But do you ever believe him?

I did, I don't know if that's the right answer.

Yeah.

There is no right answer.

And I and I also didn't have a problem at the point in the book when like, oh, snap, she killed the wrong person.

Like, that was one of the questions.

Like, I didn't have a problem with that either, because I thought, well, he's a bad guy too bad guy.

We all make mistakes.

Yeah.

I was like, okay, what happens?

I just get rid of him.

Just like, okay, you're going to have.

Yeah, it's the scariest moment for me was when her dad didn't come home when he was just out buying groceries.

And then he does come home and he says he stopped me.

He was walking towards me with the what?

A taser and duct tape or a taser and zip ties.

And I'm like, oh my God, no, please don't kill the dad.

I was like, please don't kill, don't, don't, don't especially no, no.

Meanwhile, our red wine and steak are finished and ready to taste.

So the next part of our discussion involves wine.

People drank a lot of red wine.

So all book clubs have all the book clubs we've all been in.

Yeah, a lot of red wine.

Cheers.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for hosting.

Really.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

My books are very boozy.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, sure.

You know, this was so much.

You know, this one was pretty much.

I mean, she drank a lot.

I was worried about going to prison.

I was thinking, oh, gosh, that's a quick detox.

Detox?

Yeah.

Okay.

And now we're going to sample the block and bottle steak.

So they prepared a New York strip fits the book, tied it in with the red wine.

Because if you forgot in the book she's cooking your dad a steak.

And then this is before the second murder.

Correct?

Before he's okay.

I'm just being a steak performer.

Yeah.

So let's the red wine, the steak, and then we're going to.

Yeah, commit murder.

Okay.

I have one more question about the book for you all.

Okay.

If you called in the pose podcast, what would your confession be?

Five years ago, I think, for Thanksgiving, and I. I was just trying to save time.

So, of course, I consulted Tom and Nancy, and I said, do you think it's okay if I order?

Yeah, as long as you hide the packaging.

And so.

So I pulled as far as I know, minus the turkey.

I pulled it off.

Wow.

Yeah.

I put everything in other containers.

My dad kind of did question, like the brussel sprouts.

Like the sauteed pears.

It's like, you know what?

Usually I was like, yeah, but aren't they wonderful?

So yeah.

And then I did, you know, capital crime we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to round out a friend of mine, actually did a friend who's here once.

I'm out now.

All right.

Good.

One time at work, we had a chili contest and she forgot to bring.

She forgot to make chili at home and bring her crockpot.

So she went to the grocery store down the street in body count of her meal and poured it in a crockpot.

Oh, if she one did, she wouldn't turn the crock pot on.

And she won that, you know, all around.

We'll have our on the next book club.

Thank you for joining us.

What are we going to read next time?

Thriller.

Mystery.

Historical fiction.

Join us to find out.

So anybody else have a confession that they won?

I was just trying to keep a ligh I enjoyed it, I really did.

I just, you know, you seem like you hesitated a little bit.

Oh, it's okay if you don't like it.

Was it?

You write psychological thrillers and then you live in eerie, Colorado.

That's.

There's something there.

Can you tell me anything about your next book?

The next book is condensed to a five hour period.

It takes place in the Colorado mountains, which I rarely write about.

Colorado, two days before Christmas, my Christmas novel.

Oh, they're all non-alcohol because it's the library.

The wine's nonalcoholic.

Yeah.

Oh, so how is the wine?

The nonalcoholic.

Very grapey.

It smells very fruity.

Oh, yeah.

Score.

Okay, good.

Good job.