[00:00:00.190] – Alan Petersen
You are listening to Meet the Thriller Author, the podcast where I interview writers of mysteries, thrillers and suspense books. I’m your host, Alan Petersen, and this is episode number 182. We’re back with an amazing interview with best selling author Lisa Scottoline.

[00:00:24.410]
Lisa is a New York Times bestselling and Edward Award winning author of more than 30 novels. She has 30 million copies of her books in print in the United States and has been published in 35 countries. Her latest novel, What Happened to the Bennetts, will be published on March 29. Before we get to the interview with Lisa, a quick update. I will no longer be posting weekly interviews, but you can still expect some amazing author interviews coming up. It’s just going to be on a bi monthly schedule. So show notes, archives and subscribe to my Thrilling Reads newsletter. Please check out ThrillingReads.com/links. And don’t forget to rate and review this podcast on your favorite podcasting app. All right, here is my interview with .Lisa Scottoline.

[00:01:18.010]
Welcome to the podcast, Lisa.

[00:01:19.720] – Lisa Scottoline
Thank you so much for having me on, and I really appreciate it.

[00:01:22.640] – Alan Petersen
Oh, thank you. I’m so excited to have you on the line here and talk to you about your new books and your writing and all that good stuff. So can you tell us a little bit about your background? Before you started writing and publishing these novels.

[00:01:32.960] – Lisa Scottoline
There was a log cabin involved. Now I’m so old, I’m trying to see if I should go to my first divorce or my second. That’s not a sentence you want to hear yourself saying when you’re trying to impress this new podcaster. I think I used to be a lawyer. Also a bad thing to go to, but when you get people to like, you never want to lead with that lawyer thing. But in short, I always loved books, and I loved Nancy Drew. And after my first divorce, I said, I want to stay home with my daughter because she was born about the exact same time. That’s really excellent timing. And so I said, well, you know what? Why don’t you try to write a novel? Because I was an English major, and of course everybody thinks they can. And the truth is, everybody can write a novel. I mean, that is the God’s honest truth. If I can, anybody can. And the truth is, I just started, and that was five years of terrible rejection. My favorite rejection letter, I still remember it was, we don’t have time for any more clients. And if we did, we wouldn’t take you.

[00:02:30.250] – Alan Petersen
Ouch.

[00:02:31.990] – Lisa Scottoline
What a jerk. And you know that I saw that guy, like, ten years ago, book Expo, where I was at Keynote, and he’s like, at least I’m like, dude, I don’t have time to talk to anybody. And if I did, I would not talk to you. That’s how petty I am. Really.

[00:02:47.710] – Alan Petersen
I don’t blame you.

[00:02:51.470] – Lisa Scottoline
So that was like, 30 something years ago and 30 something novels ago. And God bless my readers, who basically have built my career, they’ve stayed with me book to book, and I’ve changed genres. I write historical fiction now. I write humor. I just write whatever I want to write and try to make it really as good as I possibly can. And then I get to talk to you. So that’s pretty much the update.

[00:03:16.130] – Alan Petersen
I noticed that your last book, Eternal, was a historical fiction. And what happened to the Bennetts is like a psychological suspense novel. Is there a lot of difference between when you’re writing the two? Is it the different approaches or how does that work?

[00:03:30.870] – Lisa Scottoline
You know what? It’s so funny because I’d always written, like, I don’t believe in any of these genres of skin shit. And now I know I proved to myself because I always wrote, whether they’re domestic thrillers or legal thrillers or fast moving novels, I just think of them as fast moving novels. And then I secretly always wanted to write this novel Eternal about this basically a love triangle set during Mussolini’s reign in Italy and then the Nazi occupation. And then I’m like, you know what? That’s historical fiction. You’re not allowed other people do that smarter than you. You know, all those insecurities that come up. And then I was like, just do it. And then I did it. And it kind of worked out. God bless my readers who came and were like, because I read the online reviews, they’re like, I don’t really read historical fiction, but I love this. And I go, well, that’s wonderful. And so when I started the writing Journal, what happened to the Bennett, which is a thriller in theory, I was like, you know what this is? No, I’m just going to tell you, Allen, from the inside out.

[00:04:29.000]
It’s no different. It is the same. I’ve always been interested in these three themes, love and justice and family. There’s a through line through everything I’ve written, which I didn’t start out that way. I just started writing books. And then I realized that I’m writing about the same things and in different iterations and permutations and other long words. But the bottom line is that’s what I’m writing. And so when you write what happens to the Bennett, you go, well, this is the same issue. It’s a family. An injustice happens to a family and they have to survive it. And that’s exactly what happened to an Eternal, although one set of Mussolise, Italy and one set in modern day Delaware. And what I’ve taught myself in answer to your question is that this distinction of setting and place and time is form over substance. The thematically, they are identical. They feel similar. And I hope they have a kind of rewarding, not only a surprise ending, but kind of a rewarding arc of these characters lives. So to answer the question, oddly, it’s not different. It’s the same

[00:05:37.250] – Alan Petersen
Can you tell us a little bit about the plot of what happened to the Bennett and what inspired you to write it? How the idea came to you?

[00:05:44.270] – Lisa Scottoline
It’s funny. The idea came to me. It’s not impressive, but I don’t like tailgaters. I live alone. I drive along the car. I got the dogs in the back. Only one has a seat belt. The favorite one. But I only have one of those things. You can’t hook them all into the seat. But anyway, it’s not a big deal. I was like, what if I were carjacked right now? What if this tailgater carjacked me? And when I went home, I said that’s the book basically what happens and what happened to the bandits is that families driving along from a soccer match one night and someone is tailgating them and they’re carjacked and the carjacking goes horribly, terribly wrong and they find themselves by the morning in the witness protection program in federal protection. And boom, that was the idea. People say, do you know how it ends? I don’t even know how it middles. I don’t know anything. It’s not impressive, but I kind of sit there and go, what would happen next? And that becomes the way that you construct the novel. I hope people who listen to your show want to write because if they do, I’ll tell them that they can do it and you just kind of start and then keep going.

[00:06:57.240] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, we do have a mixture of readers and writers, inspiring writers that listen to the podcast.

[00:07:02.410] – Lisa Scottoline
That’s great. That was my understanding on that.

[00:07:04.000] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I love the stuff that kind of insight from someone like you. Obviously, you don’t outline or anything. You get the story going and you start writing.

[00:07:13.510] – Lisa Scottoline
Right? I don’t outline because I think, well, I can’t I just constitutionally would be impatient with it. But I also think here’s the two things I think of my defense, because there’s people who outline, people who don’t. If I outlined it, I got to say that I really think that writing it would be like filling in the blanks. Like would be kind of like. I think that would be like literary mad Libs. Like she does this and you go, wait a minute, I know what she does. And the other secret thing that I think happens is that when you write a novel where you don’t really know what’s going to happen next, I secretly think that your state of anxiety is what creates the suspense. Like if you’re a master of suspense, it’s probably because you’re a freaked out writer. I just thought of that. But I think it’s a little truth that you don’t really know. It ended up becoming a lot like life. You look at all the curveballs we’ve gotten that are awful, the pandemic now a war. It’s just horrible. And you can’t even make this up. And what you kind of do. And especially with something like what happens at Bennett because you’re talking about a thriller that set as a law enforcement angle. Well, you can’t write a modern thriller in which, let’s see everybody’s good all the time. The police are always good. Look at what our views of the Supreme Court right now. I’ve been writing novels for 35 years. I can tell you that 20 years ago, nobody even could name one person in the Supreme Court. Well, now we have views about who should be on and who should be off. And we have views about the FBI that we did not have before. We have views about policing that we did not have before. And when law and justice is in so much flux and conceptions of law and justice are in so much flux, you have to write a thriller that deals with those issues. It just can’t be, oh, here’s the good guys and they’re on the cavalry. It’s just not how it works. We know now that’s not how it works. And so that’s what the backdrop of this book as well.

[00:09:11.510] – Alan Petersen
Before you started writing professionally, do you enjoy these type of genres? Do you enjoy reading thrillers?

[00:09:17.630] – Lisa Scottoline
Well, I think I grew up with Nancy Drew, so that’s part of the problem. You get very used to a girl driving around in a car, having adventures, and you’re like, I want to be that. And I want to do that. And it’s really good, except when you get a little older and you realize that. Well, honestly, in my part, I started writing in 1990s, and a lot of the characters are men. They’re all man made characters. And I was like, give me a break. At some point, I was just so tired of seeing, especially when I became a female lawyer, like, why aren’t there women lawyers stories? Like, I can do this. And as an English major, I thought you should try to give it a try instead of bitching about it. Sorry. But I mean, for some period of time, I had to eat myself alive, which is kind of my method, until I finally actually do something about it. And so I think that’s sort of what got me to where I am. I think I just kept trying to do it and try to get better and try to refine the craft a little and pull in live in the world. So all of the world is there. For example, like in this novel, he has to really think about himself as a man and a father. And at some point, I started writing male main characters as well. I was close to my dad. Obviously, I’ve met in my life, not as many as I would like, but that’s another manner. And I go, well, what is a hero? These what is a father? What is a hero? My dad, I was really close to him, and I loved his personality and that he was heroic but didn’t really understand that about himself. And we’re a society. But I just got back from the new I love superhero movies. I saw the new Superman, not just one Superman, three Superman, Spiderman. We love superheroes. And what is happening with this? Well, partly it’s the ideas we put on men. You must be rich, you must be a tin of industry. You must be thin, you must be handsome. You must drive a great car. What are the things we do to men? Why do we tell them their personal power is and what do we do to women? What he is a modern hero. Because that’s the problem with this character. That’s his issue. He doesn’t view himself as a hero. In a way, he is. But when this horrible thing happens to his family, he’s got to figure out how to get them out of this. And at some point, I think I had him say, I’m not giving away, just go, like, maybe hero is just a guy who solves a problem for his family. And that’s not a bad definition.

[00:11:41.910] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think that’s what great aboyt this novel, too, because it’s like regular people versus a super cop.

[00:11:47.460] – Lisa Scottoline
Yeah, right. Or an expert. The crime bloggers are a good example of that. And part of what I’m talking about, like this democratization of everything, which is so great. 20 years ago, there were people wrote True crime, Anne Rule and a bunch of other authors. And you read those books. Well, now there’s people who blog about true crimes and try to solve them, and they crowd source it and they get the documents and they talk to witnesses and they do all the things that they can do that law enforcement would do or if it had the time and the budgets and God bless these people, they solve crimes. Well, I was like, well, I’ve got to deal with that in this novel. And that would be this situation we write for, because what I learned from Wit Sack was there’s a program designed to hide criminals, not normal, law abiding families with 3 million connections to the community is that you go that night and you don’t say goodbye so nobody knows where you were? I mean, Alan, where would you be? All of a sudden you and your family disappear. People are going to go, Wait, what? Wait, Where’s the cat? Wait, he was just on Facebook. Wait a minute. I just sent him a message on Instagram. He didn’t answer it. That’s weird. And so that’s all the stuff that happens to a modern family. And what happens to this family. And the program is because they’re normal, they make great witnesses, but because they’re normal, they’ll flounder in WITSEC. They could go under in wit SEC. And so this father has to find it in himself to save his family against really hard odds.

[00:13:15.550] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. So it’s so fascinating, too. It would be hard enough, I would imagine, 30, 40 years ago, to go into a witness protection. But now, like you said, it was social media and Twitter and Facebook.

[00:13:25.730] – Lisa Scottoline
Yeah, right. You’ve got to assume luckily most criminals my research was and I have great sourcing on this because I spoke to somebody who helped run one of the WITSEC programs, and he was like, most criminals, when you put them in the program, they’re happy. They lost part of their life, but you’re saving their life. They know that you’re saving their life. And to a certain extent, they get a little fight Bund and they get put up somewhere. And that isn’t true in this case, you’re saving their lives, but you’re also ruining it at the same time. And that’s a really tough stuff. It’s no win. And that’s what Jason Bennett has to figure out how to save his family and how to win in a no win situation.

[00:14:15.110] – Alan Petersen
You mentioned about the research. How much research do you put in before you actually start writing, or do you do it at the same time?

[00:14:22.150] – Lisa Scottoline
I do it at the same time because like I said, I’m impatient, I can’t be bothered. And also, I think you find out what you need when you do it. I had to talk to the FBI guy up front. I go, what’s the first move? Where did he go? And that’s when I got my first surprise because I live in Pennsylvania. And I said, so if someone gets close, to WITSEC, where do they go? Like, you put them in, like Arizona or Minnesota or San Francisco, right? And he’s like, no, they go to Delaware. I was like, wait, what? Like Delaware is 20 minutes from me. It’s not far. And I was like, this isn’t what I thought. He said, well, that’s kind of what we do because there’s an interim period where you have to basically be trained and oriented and accepted into the program. You’re called applicants and the application process is really arduous. And I’m like, who knew this? It’s like College or something. And it’s like the College you never want to get into with that. I just thought of that, but it’s kind of true. And so I dealt with that research. And I think also that it was kind of cool to research setting because this character setting has to reinforce people who are writing out there. I want them to know that everything matters. Everything matters in a novel, particularly in a thriller, because you have to have an economy of space. We don’t want to hear your exposition. We’re not interested in what the Sunshine looks like. It’s just not the book for that. And so I sent him, I said, well, if he goes to Delaware, there’s parts of Delaware. If you imagine that he was a farmer, he grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is a lot like where I live. I actually live on a farm and I’m a Terra firma kind of girl. I plant I grow alfalfalfa, I have a garden, I have tomatoes. I got a lot of crap. And he’s that kind of guy. Well, if you send them to certain parts of Delaware, there’s a salt Mark. And it’s actually a good place to send somebody in Whitsake because it’s a beach town that’s deserted in the winter. Perfect. Okay. But the problem is, and great for the novel is that there’s tidal Saltmarsh that basically kills the trees. And so there’s things called the ghost forest, which is incredible to see. And I described it in the book, and I thought, actually videos of it are going to be on the website. People can see them as a companion to the book. And he’s basically in a place where there’s no more terrifying. In fact, the tides shift beneath his feet. I’m like, well, that’s a pretty good metaphor. Even I can figure that one out. And I like it because I think it emphasizes his and his family’s dislocation that they are out of place and they don’t belong here, and they have to find a way to acclimate to survive.

[00:16:54.420] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I love the metaphor. That’s pretty cool. When that idea comes to your head, do you, like, get excited when you’re writing? And you’re like.

[00:17:00.120] – Lisa Scottoline
Actually. I kind of do. Isn’t that weird? I live alone. I write alone. You’re like, oh, my God, look at that, look at that. That’s a good idea. You get excited, you dance around and you’re like, oh, baby. Like all your little things that you tell yourself, I sing a little song, I have a little thing I do. And I go, and then you start getting singing all these connections, and we see a ghost forest. And you go, this is sort of interesting because that’s the term given to that’s what ecologists call it when all the climate change happens and it kills the trees at the root, the trees don’t fall over. They just turn white. And it’s kind of horrifying. And I went there at night, and it looks like there’s bones in the sky. You’re like, oh, God, I can’t even make up stuff as good. And then you start to think, well, let’s say, for example, and it happens in the book that they have to leave everybody they know. And I go, well, they kind of ghost. They kind of ghost everybody they know, okay, that’s pretty good, too. And then also they’ve lost. They have lost. And so they’re living in a house, essentially, with ghosts. And you go, okay, baby, maybe this is having developing some resonant layers. Look, Alan, I can’t tell you if anybody picks this stuff up, I don’t know. But I will tell you that I have faith in readers that they do, and I have faith in their consciousness that it works on them. Like, it works on me. They start to make these connections, and it all becomes real for them in a way it wouldn’t if you had it on this pavement in Chicago, that’s just going to be a different book and have a different feel.

[00:18:31.970] – Alan Petersen
What’s your writing day like when you’re working on a project? Do you have a set hours? Do you give yourself word count goals?

[00:18:38.970] – Lisa Scottoline
I do the word count goals. I’m a big fan of that. And I would encourage anyone listening. Any way you do it is right because it’s very individual. But I work every day like, it’s up to date like this. So I’m having fun talking to you. And I do 2000 words a day. Now I start at nine and I don’t stop till I have 2000 words. A lot of times that will take me till 06:00 at night, a lot of times that will take me until 09:00. I just break up. I go around 02:00. I’ll eat something. Maybe I’ll walk the dogs. Sometimes when I look away and people should take your heart when you look away, sometimes the answer will come to you. Because in first draft, especially, you’re not fussing over verbs. You’re trying to figure out what actually happened, like, what are they going to do? And so that’s hard thinking. Like, your brain will hurt at the end of the day, that money Python. My brain hurts, my brain hurts. And then I always do the first draft. Second draft technique, which is the first draft, is like Hemingway says, Write drunk, edit sober drink. But I mean, you get it down. You don’t worry about how it sounds. You just have to tell the story to yourself. And then by the time you’re done, you’re like, oh, my God, this ended. Like, the surprise ending is a surprise to you. You’re like, oh, my God, look at this. This kind of works. And then you’re in pig heaven. Because to me, that’s my happiest day, because I go now all I have to do is make it better. Now I know I have a story. So now I get to worry about taking out the sentences that I don’t need, especially for a thriller. You want it to be fleet. So you have to take out stuff. You never tell the reader something twice, because a lot of people, God bless them, or read a thriller in one sitting. So if you tell them something on page 30, they’re going to remember on page 65, you don’t need to hit them over the head or bore them. You can’t not allowed. So you take it out. And Elmore Leonard says, I take out the parts people skip.

[00:20:35.840] – Alan Petersen
I love that.

[00:20:36.400] – Lisa Scottoline
And that’s such a great quote. And I always thought that was kind of funny. And then yesterday I was writing and I was like, you know what? I finally can 30 years it has taken me, but I said, oh, my God, I am not going to write that paragraph because people will skip it and I will later delete it. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. And particularly at the end of the book, you know, at the beginning, you’re establishing setting and things like that. You get to tell a little more details so people can picture it. As Stephen King says, imagine the scene and then reproduce it for the reader. That is the most essential, most brilliant, most succinct explanation of writing I’ve ever heard. And anybody can do it. Imagine the scene and then reproduce it for the reader. And so you learn that by the end of the book, they don’t need to hear the great description of the office again. They know what this office looks like. They know what this swamp looks like. They just want to see what happens and how it ends. It’s really a remarkable thing. And I feel very lucky to be engaged in this profession. I love books, and I’m just thrilled to write them and read them. Really.

[00:21:41.410] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I’m curious, too, because you have over 30 novels does the process. I know I’ve talked to a lot of authors, and they say that it never gets easier. How about for you?

[00:21:52.220] – Lisa Scottoline
No, it never gets easier. I will say this, though. I do think you get a little more confident. Not much, but you get a little more like it’s really important for people listening that when you make a decision in a story. I need the sentence. I don’t need the sentence or I’m going to turn this verb. This verb should be darted instead of bolted. It should be whatever. It should be raced instead of ran. I think a lot of verbs, as you can tell, because verbs can really do a lot, in a sense, and you pay attention and especially in thrillers. And so now I’ve learned a little bit my decision was right. I used to dither. And what’s so weird is when you’re right, you’ll find that when you go back and you read your draft, you go, oh, I remember when I thought that should be darted, and I changed it to boldly. You actually remember. And finally I’ve stopped going. Still second guess it. Just go with it. You are right. You’re always right the first time. If I had listened to that, I would not be divorced twice. I’m just telling you that right now. And it’s really a true thing. Your gut is always really your gut is telling you something and you bring it with you when you sit down at the computer.

[00:23:05.150] – Alan Petersen
I noticed when I was checking on your website that you write a column with your daughter. How’s that collaboration with working with your daughter like that?

[00:23:11.830] – Lisa Scottoline
It’s really fun. So I write a humor column which has been published in the Philadelphia Inquire for the past twelve years, every Sunday. But for people who aren’t in the area, they can read it on my Facebook page. I post it on all of my social media every Sunday morning at nine. And it’s kind of a little inspired by Irma Bombach, who kind of just wrote about life as a woman. I mean, I’m kind of a woman on my own. It made it into not memoirs. And the first one was called Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. It was not man bashing. I’m just telling it was dog loving because there’s so many women, you don’t really know where your life is going to lead you. I mean, it’s lovely. You’re a lovely guy and it’s lovely to be able to talk to you. And I never thought, wow, you have all these books and you wrote them, and how did that happen? But I also never thought that I would be so completely single. I’m in a room now with three dogs. I’m very happy about that. They’re very quiet right now, which is excellent. And you don’t really know where your life will lead you. And I just wanted to write about that because I know that there are a lot of women who are widowed or divorced or just on their own and men, too. And I just wanted to give them a voice that maybe they weren’t getting. And also just laugh when you’re right enough about murders and heavy things and fascism. Sometimes you just want to crack a joke and it’s not going to work in the novel you’re working on. But it’s really fun to just once a week write 800 words. And I must tell you, it helps me get to the point you would not know it from this interview. But all writing builds and feeds all writing. So never feel bad if something you wrote wasn’t published. I mean, that’s happened to me. I have an unpublished book sitting around and I lost it. When you write a short piece, it will help your long pieces be better. And that’s what happened to me. So every week I’m writing something that’s 700 words. So when I sit down to write 120,000, I know it will be better. And it is.

[00:25:02.090] – Alan Petersen
So you write every day?

[00:25:03.520] – Lisa Scottoline
Absolutely seven days a week. I’m lucky. I consider myself very lucky. Now, the first draft, if you do the multiplication, probably takes you about a month to get 2000 words and tell you don’t always make it or you screw up or you have something you probably come out with. You’d come out with like 60,000 words a month if you multiply. That right. Which never really happens. Sometimes you’re lucky to get like $40,000 a book is $95,000. And then once you have a draft down and it used to take me, I used to be able to do one in four months. I’m getting back to that. And you’re immersed. It’s not like a pressure. It’s great. This is what I wanted in my whole life. I can’t believe I get to do it. And you’re so preoccupied. Somebody once, I think Jake hasn’t some great filmmaker said being a writer is like having homework every night of your life. And that’s true. But the word count goal is good because you also know when you can quit. Like if you get 2000 words by 03:00. Wow. You make a cup of tea and go watch some doping on Netflix’s or go for a walk and listen to an audiobook. I mean, that’s kind of like my life.

[00:26:09.030] – Alan Petersen
Do you use Word to write your books?

[00:26:11.190] – Lisa Scottoline
Absolutely. And sometimes I use Dictation software, too. When I have a really hard part, emotionally, it’s hard. I get upset with the characters. There are parts in this, and I think these characters are going through a really hard thing. And I’m sitting there weeping in my own keyboard, which is kind of weird, but I go, how can you get this and just say it? Just say it. And sometimes I’ll just say it. And I know I have something that I can work with and then make a lot better. But I love all this technology. I use all of it, and I think it’s terrific.

[00:26:42.530] – Alan Petersen
So what happens to the benefits will be out on March 29. What are you working on next? Can you tell us?

[00:26:48.080] – Lisa Scottoline
I can’t. Sure. I’m excited, too. I just finished it. I just finished. I’m closing in on it, man. I thought I was going to finish it this weekend. It’s called Sacred and it’s historical fiction, and it’s the rise of the Mafia in 1800 Sicily. It’s how the Mafia came to be through the eyes of a family.

[00:27:04.110] – Alan Petersen
Awesome.

[00:27:05.040] – Lisa Scottoline
I know. I just pitched you Alan.

[00:27:08.850] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I love it.

[00:27:10.710] – Lisa Scottoline
You know, as much as my editor at this point.

[00:27:13.420] – Alan Petersen
All right. Wow. I like it because there’s a lot of books about the Mafia and all that. But nothing on the history of it like that, so that’s really cool.

[00:27:24.230] – Lisa Scottoline
You’re very kind to say that. I appreciate it. I would have been devastated. Well, that’s a real stupid idea.

[00:27:38.530] – Alan Petersen
All right, Lisa. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really good talking to you. And for our listeners, scottoline.com Is probably the best place to find you.

[00:27:46.990] – Lisa Scottoline
Well, thank you so much on social media. Alan. I really appreciate this. Thank you so very much.