Interview with Chris Whitaker - All The Colors Of The Dark

Subscriber-only episode

We sit down with Chris Whitaker to chat about All the Colors Of The Dark. He shares personal details about how trauma early in life helped him write this book but also meant it took years to complete. Listen to the end for what book he would recommend and where he likes to spend time when not writing. 

Order: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/761187/all-the-colors-of-the-dark-a-read-with-jenna-pick-by-chris-whitaker/

Personal Website: https://sites.prh.com/chriswhitaker

Article about the TV adaptation: https://deadline.com/2024/06/ucp-to-adapt-chris-whitakers-new-novel-all-the-colors-of-the-dark-into-series-1235978405/

TW: Discussions of childhood abuse, violence, some explicit material

Brief Show Notes: 
0-1:00 Intro 
2:30 Sliding Doors Discussion 
4:30 His discussion about following these characters for 27 years 
10:00 Discussion about Kristin Hannah 
11:30 - 17:00 TW child abuse - description of his personal life and how it impacted this book 
18:00 Alternate ending options 
20:00 TW Discussion of abortions and patient/doctor relationships 
25:00 Discussion around how weeks of research would go into writing one paragraph 
31:00-36:00 Listener/member Questions 
37:00 Reader roundup 5 quick answer questions 

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Music is Ur Karma (Instrumental Version) by Craig Reever.

The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Emily and Ashley of The Creepy Book Club alone.

Transcript

 Hi. Oh my gosh. Okay, first publicly in front of the whole book club. Let me say he just got the zoom link one minute ago from me because it was a miscommunication. Completely my fault. So we are unbelievably thankful and grateful to have you here, because you probably thought you were off the hook and could go to bed. Uh, no, I didn't, I just my publicist didn't send me the email. No. So it's our fault. So now that you're here, we can be, uh, get this show on the road so everybody knows. This is Chris Whitaker, a British author known for his books, Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls. We Begin at the end, The Forever Born and Raised in London, and A father and lovely enough to join us today on the Creepy Book Club. We are unbelievably excited to have you. It is very tough to get five stars for most of our book club members, and all the colors of the dark absolutely did it for us, so thank you. I'm on it. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this one. Yeah. We have been so excited to talk with you about this book and your other book. So I plan on not keeping you for any longer than 30 minutes. And I'm going to try my best to ask you questions that you haven't been asked a million times on every interview. Don't worry. So to try to keep it a little fresh. So I'm just going to start by saying this book absolutely broke most of our hearts in the absolute best way. It was marketed as a slow burn thriller, but felt like a story, really, of hope and loss and love. Could you talk to us some about how you created this story? Because it had a little bit of a sliding doors aspect where if Saint Pat or Misty made any other single decision, their lives would have gone in a completely different trajectory. That's right. Yeah. Um, so I started out with like a really simple top line pitch, and it was two abducted teenagers fall in love in the pitch black basement. They're being held and having never seen each other. The boy escapes and can't find his way back to the girl. So that's what I had at the very beginning. Which sounds a bit like a mystery, a bit like a thriller. And then, um, and then I began writing it and it turned into just this sprawling, massive, epic story about, um, it kind of it started as a coming of age where it starts as a bit of a thriller, then it goes to coming of age, and then it it looks at family and kind of the changing meaning of that word. And um, and it follows patch doesn't it follows patch and sign over a lifetime and um, and it very much is a sliding doors story because patch you know, patch kind of lives the life that Misty should have had, you know, but probably Misty wouldn't have been kept alive in the same way that patch was. And, um, so they kind of trade places when they're 13 years old and, um, patch, although on the surface it appears like he kind of loses everything. Um, in actual fact, you know, he comes out of there, um, a different person, but a person with purpose, you know, he has this, this huge grand plan. You know, he needs to find this missing girl who may or may not be real and bring her back and, um, and and so kind of he he's, he's lost before, you know, and now he's got this purpose in it. He travels around the US and he sees the most beautiful things. And he probably wouldn't have left the town of Montclair had this thing not happened, wouldn't have picked up a paintbrush. So all of these amazing, amazing things happen to him, um, because of this apparently awful thing that happens. He comes dangerously close. And I'll ask a question about this with some of the other characters later. But to completely unraveling in parts where you feel like, is patch going to be able to survive this next step, to continue moving towards what seems to be his final destination? And you really patch is just a character that will live with most of us for forever. Um, so the the initial abduction, captivity, crime almost somehow seems like a side story, but it's necessary to set up his obsession with finding grace and the path his life took. Did you have any other? Because we're a thriller crime book club. Did you have any other potential crimes in mind other than the abduction and captivity to to get patched to this path? Um, not really, to be honest. And, um, and I never see the book as a crime book. You know, it kind of. It's a book with a crime in it. But, um, it feels like it just felt bigger, you know, by the time I was done with it. I think if you're going to follow characters for 27 years, like in this book, um, the crime is always just going to be a small part of their lives. And the bigger part of it is, you know, what happens next? How do you how do you go from being a child that goes through this terrible trauma to being, you know, a fully functioning adult, you know, does it happen? And we see with patch, you know, it's very difficult because he is a kid and later a man that makes terrible decisions. You know, he he's he's quite frustrating. But because we've joined him at a young age and we've seen where he's coming from, you kind of you have some empathy and you're more able to it's still frustrating, but you're more able to understand why, you know, why does he do these reckless, crazy things? And it's because, you know, he's desperate and he believes that there's a life out there that he needs to save, and there can be nothing more important than that. So however, he needs, whatever he needs to do to find grace is worthwhile, and he'll always be able to justify that. You know, these terrible things he does, these bad decisions, he'll always be able to justify them to himself because there can be no greater purpose for him. It did seem like not only with patch, but other characters in the book. There was an overall theme of making decisions that were personally poor decisions for that particular person, but with the intent of helping someone else. Yeah, I think so. I think that as well. Like because you can kind of dress it up like that, can't you? If you're patch, you know, and you're, and you're about to do something crazy or reckless, you can always justify it to yourself. You know, no matter how reckless it is or how stupid it seems, he'll always be able to say, you know, I did it with a noble intention. And so I think that goes some way to explaining why he does what he does. But, um, doesn't make it any less destructive for him and for sane as well, because sane is, you know, clearly she's his best friend and she loves him totally and would do anything for him and kind of does do anything for him. Because as much as the the abduction is his sliding doors moment at the beginning, It's also saints, you know, because she's a girl that should have gone to an amazing school and had a very different life. You know, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the life that she leads, but I don't think it's the life that her grandmother would have chosen for her, you know? And Grandmother Norma sees patches this, this kind of destructive force, you know, she empathizes with him, like we all do. But he's probably not the person that you want to be in your granddaughter's life, you know, because he's only going to bring trouble with him. And and so Saint kind of sacrifices everything because she knows that the only way to bring him back entirely, or to bring all of him home, is to help him on this crazy journey, because he she knows she knows him well enough to know that he's never going to quit. He's never going to give up. So she can either kind of wash our hands of him or help and Saint being who she is, you know, and she's a she's a brilliant friend, an amazing person. She goes all in with him, you know, for, for better or for worse. You essentially just answered the next question, but I'll give you another opportunity to add anything. I said, um, that the book seems to have a theme at times of unraveling, that the characters feel like they are on the edge of just a complete unraveling. You can feel patch unraveling with his obsession. You can feel Sainte unraveling, knowing that she might have to hold patch accountable as the love of her life and friend. Um, so just wanted to chat a little about a bit about these two characters in general and how you wrote them with this fine line that felt like love and, uh, near madness. Yeah. It was, um, it would kind of drive me mad writing. I can imagine it, really, because I get I got two into it, you know, with the detail of it and the detail of their lives. And, um, and so I'm now in this in the office in my garden, um, just outside London. And, and I built this during lockdown because I couldn't get any, um, builders in because of lockdown and Covid. So I built this myself because I knew I had to write a book. So I spent like four years in this room. Um, um, just just with these characters, you know, just it was just kind of the three of us, and, and I went a bit mad writing them and and kind of understood. To a point what they were going through because I had a crappy childhood, so I kind of knew what it's like to have a difficult start in life. And, um, and to kind of feel like you have to work twice as hard as everyone else to kind of keep yourself straight, you know, to keep yourself on the path that you should be on. I feel like it's harder for for someone like me, and probably for someone like patch and, um, and so I kept that in mind throughout writing it. And, um, and we kind of muddled through and I had help from my editors who were amazing UK and US, and they kind of just I missed my deadline by a couple of years and, and they just stuck with me, you know, through this whole process, they just they just had faith that I would be able to tell this story. Um, even when I didn't really think that I would be able to, you know, there were points where I didn't think I'd be able to get to the end of it. And, um, and then I did, and and now it's they've kind of been on this journey, these characters, you know, from seeing Jill Biden reading the book to, um, you know, to doing the tour with Jenna and, and it just it feels weird because I'm in the room where I wrote them and for so long, like, you know, it was just us here, um, in the UK. And now and now they're out there in the world. I just had lunch with two friends and I took them each a copy of your book, and I said, you absolutely have to read this book. Do you know the author, Kristin Hannah, who writes historical fiction? I love Hannah, so your writing reminded many of us so much of the care and love she puts into her writing. You could feel that it took you years to write this, because every sentence was so intentional. To teach us more about why characters were heading down a path that, to the reader, felt unbelievably destructive and like they would lead them to no good ending. So Kristin Hannah is one of our favorites. And I just thought, this book has that same attention to detail and was just beautifully written. So yeah, that's like the highest praise because, um, Kristin Hannah is like author royalty to me. You know, she's just and she's been so kind as well since she read my last book. We begin at the end. And she was, um, she was lovely about that. And she sent me a really nice message about this one. And she just, you know, when someone must be so busy, you know, like the book tour and things like that. And she finds time, which is not all. Not all authors do that. And it's really lovely to see you're paying it forward by doing it with us now. Don't think we haven't been following your Instagram and seeing how many places you have been promoting this book. It seems exhausting. Our book club is going to think that you and I worked together before this interview, because you keep just leading into the next question, but I did want to ask. You have been very, very open about your personal struggles and how they helped you write this book. Would you feel comfortable sharing a little bit about some of how your own life guided this book? Of course. Yeah. Um, so I my parents split up when I was a kid, and, and an adult came into my life that was quite violent and, and a drinker and, and I was asleep one night when I was ten, and he came into my room and pulled me out of bed by my arm, and we both heard the bone break, and and then he obviously I was really upset. I was ten with a broken arm, and he made me be quiet and then told me to go back to my room and I couldn't tell anyone. So the morning. So I had this, this really long night where I was in loads of pain but couldn't make any noise. And um, and so that was kind of. Partly the inspiration for the patch basement scenes, which were really tough to write and and also partly my sliding doors moment, you know, my own because I felt like like the next day I had to tell my parents that I had done it, um, playing football. And it was a story that I stuck to in quite recent until quite recently. Like I only told my dad about it maybe 3 or 4 years ago about what actually happens. So I feel like it set it. I don't like blaming my childhood because other than that, you know, it was quite those bits were traumatic. But I had a really nice, loving parents. And, um, just so happens it was kind of bad luck that my path crossed with this person. And, um, but then afterwards I felt different. So I kind of felt like a normal kid for the first ten years of my life. And then afterwards it was like flipping a switch, you know, I couldn't sleep anymore because I thought, I still have trouble sleeping now because I think subconsciously I don't feel safe. You know, when I lie down to sleep, I think something bad's going to happen to me. And, um, and so that, you know, as a kid, as a teenager, didn't sleep, ever used to be stressed all the time, worried about things, and, um, and then messed up at school, you know, I stopped having interest in in school, stopped. Stop going to school. So I messed up my exams, you know, and didn't go to university, whereas I probably would have. My brother went to a really good university. All my friends went to university and and I was kind of the odd one out. And then, um, and then I was. I was out. I was working as an estate agent, a real real estate agent, and like a junior like trainee, and, um. And someone mugged me, um, one morning, and, um. And I think because. Because when I was a kid, I didn't like feeling like a victim. Um, when he pulled out a knife, I refused to give my phone to him. My cell phone. You know, he wanted it, and I just. Because I had learned as a kid, you know, I didn't like that feeling of being a victim, being powerless. So even when he pulled out a knife, I refused to give it. And, um, he he stabbed me three times in the side, and, um, and it was quite. It was really, um, difficult afterwards because, um, I didn't know about PTSD, and I didn't know. I didn't know what was wrong with me, you know, because I'd had stitches and and physically, I was okay. You know, I've still got loads of scars, but, um, mentally I was really struggling. But again, because because as a ten year old, I had learned if something bad happens, you don't tell anyone, keep your mouth shut. Deal with it yourself. So I tried to do that again and, um, and it didn't work, you know, and I was drinking and taking drugs and, um, just really kind of unraveling. And, um. And it was only by chance I went into the library and got a self-help book, and it talks about writing as therapy. And, um, and so that's how I found my way to writing. So, you know, in the, in, in the same way that patch wouldn't have picked up a paintbrush. You know, he's a kid that wouldn't have become an artist. No, there's no way I would never have become a writer. You know, I went to quite a rough school in London, and, um, there's just no way. You know, I had no interest in writing. It was only as a form of therapy, you know, as a kind of. Survival method that I began writing. And it wasn't even then, you know, I didn't start writing a book until, like a good ten years after that happened. So, yeah, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be here now talking to you about this book had these things not happened to me. Right. Wow. That's, um, absolutely tremendous and makes at least me personally see patch in a much not different light. But some of the decisions that he made seem like they really came from a place of potentially healing for you. And also extreme trauma. Yeah, but I wasn't really conscious of it. You know, I started writing the book and didn't really I didn't figure it out until I was halfway through. I was writing the patch scenes in the basement, and they were so tough to write. And I thought, why is this having such an effect on me? And I didn't think, you know, I never kind of traced all the way back to, to me being ten and making that link until around two years into writing this book. And then it clicked and I thought, yeah, you know, I've written this, this, this character that is going through some of the stuff that I went through, right. And it became clear why you might need to step away and take breaks from writing it, and it would take longer because you're working through your personal story while writing this beautiful character. Mhm. We'll move on to an easier question. Thank you for being willing to share all of that with us. Was there any. I only have like three more questions. Any alternative ending that you had in mind? It seems like it was destined to end this way. Okay, good. That's the right answer. There never was. There was. Um. I say, whenever I start with the book, um, I know the characters. I begin to get to know the characters, and I know how it's going to end, you know? I know where we're heading. So this book was all about answering that question. You know, if you're a kid, if you've had a traumatic start to life, you know, can you write your own ending? That was what it was all about, you know? And it was all about feeling like, you know, like I've been in so much trouble in my life. And, um, and I've always kind of thought that I was on a road that that diverted when I was ten years old, you know, and I've been on a different road and I can't get back. But I've learned as I get older that that's not true, you know. And I wanted to look at that with patch, because patch, it feels like, you know, when you're reading his life story, it feels like he is going to self-destruct. You know, they can't possibly be a happy ending for patch. He it's just not written in the stars for him. And, um, and I really wanted to look at that, so I knew where we were heading. And you just hope his happy ending, which it does turn out, is more than just surviving because at times it feels like he might just survive, which is no way to live. No, that's that's right. And that particularly when it's a kid, you know, when you followed someone from 13 like patch and younger because we flashback to when he meets Saint, so they're nearer to 11, 10 or 11. Um, you really want it for him? You know, I really I was writing the story, and I really I was two thirds of the way through, and I really wanted him to get everything that he deserved, you know? And he kind of. He doesn't want that much, really. You always get the feeling with patch, you know, the money doesn't really matter to him. He becomes really successful. He doesn't really care about that. Um, he just wants everyone, his, his closest people around him to be okay. And I think that's enough for him. That's kind of more than he ever expected. I do think it was quite the journey, though, of really until the end, us not knowing if it was going to turn out okay for him because sometimes and most of the time it doesn't. And it could have been a completely plausible ending for him that it it didn't turn out as well as it did. Mhm. Yeah. It could have been it just um I never would have done it. No. You know, maybe we never would have read anything you wrote again if you did. So um, just a few more. This is a pretty particular question, but with the way things are, um, with the election coming up and certain other things, I would love to ask you about this. With the way things are in our current culture and the side story of the abortions that were being provided, it feels pretty relevant. Um, the extent that he went to to protect his patients felt fairly heroic. Could you talk a little bit about how you chose that to be the secret that was being kept? Um, because I knew that you were doing it. Sorry to interrupt you. Thank you for doing it. Of course. Um, so when I, when I was looking to set the story, um, you know, in the 70s, partly I wanted it to be, you know, set way before the internet and things like that, because it was going to be this big search for this girl and doing it in an old school kind of old fashioned way, you know, we're saying picks up the phone patch, goes to missing person charities. You know, it all felt quite it felt simpler and it felt more of them, you know, as characters. But partly it was Roe versus Wade as well. You know, it was going all the way back and it was looking at how frustrating, you know, it's been that we haven't moved on that far. You know, it felt like, you know, this was a massive thing in the 70s, you know, and it's a massive thing now. And you wonder what's happened in the 40 years in between. But also it's really important as a writer that I don't put myself on the right side of history or, you know, let my views dictate any of it, because I think it's fairly balanced. In the book you have Norma, who is, um. You know, he's quite religious. You know, there's strong views about it. And I think she saint is saying that, um, that, you know, they should have freedom of choice and it's that her body and things like that. And, um, and Norma says that sane wouldn't be there if they did because Saints mother would have aborted her. So it's a complex issue in their story. But we also know where Saints story is heading. You know, towards the end of it. We know, you know, that she does this, this thing, but, um, she can't really move past either. You know, throughout the book, you don't know that it's happened until, till the very end. But there's there's kind of clues there and it stands up to a second read. You know, you can see her shift. You know, there's a sadness to her and a kind of loss and a mourning and also a strength. You know, she has this this purpose. Kind of like how patch does, you know, she has this reason for being and she he is always at the very front of her mind. Whatever she's doing, you know, she'll pick something up or take a photograph or, or jot something down and make a memory and, um, for him and, um, it was just. It was just walking that line. And it also, you know, it's a subject that we don't get to talk about unless it's a book club, unless people have read the book. You can't talk about that as a subject in the book without it being a spoiler. So that was something that we discussed, you know, with the PR meetings beforehand. And, you know, how much can we talk about and things like that. And, and it's still a really emotive subject. You know, I get messages about all the time from sometimes from people that are angry and, um, it's difficult, isn't it? Well, not for me. If you know me, I scream about these things on the internet. But but as a writer, it is a difficult subject to address. And in the way that you did, showing all the sides that this impacted so many people's lives in so many different ways. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Um, yeah. It was it was difficult to write. It was in the research was really difficult. And, um. Yeah. Um, it's kind of hard to believe, isn't it? Yes. Um, I think the easiest question for us to ask, because it's the most predictable and you get it all the time, but we just have to know. Obviously, we were left wondering throughout most of the book if Grace was a real person or a figment of his imagination to help him survive. Obviously. I shouldn't say. Obviously. Did you mean to to take us down that path? And did you always know she was a real person? I always knew. I thought it would be a very hard truth to learn. If you're a reader, you know, to stick with patch and sign on this journey. And then for her not to be real, I think, um, it it wouldn't have felt right. And, um, you know, I needed patch as well. I needed patch to, to have this, you know, because he devoted his life to it and, and had she not been really would have felt like a wasted life, you know, not just his life, but everyone connected to him. So I always knew that she would be real. And it was never a question, um, of her. Not. But yeah, I think I think it's it's possible, isn't it? It's entirely possible to believe that he made it because the level of trauma, you know, to be trapped down there for 300 plus days, you know, it's, um, it's almost unimaginable that kind of horror for a child. And patch is as strong as anyone. Just like saying, you know, they're the strongest characters. And, um. And he still has. He never has a moment where he doubts himself. But Saint definitely does. You know, she has these moments. And you would. I think that's why, unless you're living it and we kind of get to live it with patch in a way that the other characters don't. They hear about it afterwards, but we're there and present for it, so we get to feel it in the way that he does. But it's kind of mad his journey, you know, just that the painting of her, you know, it's it's kind of crazy, you know, that he believes that he knows what she looks like and for it from her voice and from touching her face and things like that. And, um, and so I can see that. Yeah, it could go down either road. Many of us in the book club. Talked about what you talked about a little bit earlier. We were born in the 70s and the 80s. And how real you wrote that there were no cell phones. There was no googling like grace. Let's just look up her name. It was old school driving to these places to have real life conversations with people in an attempt to to find her. What can we ask? What year were you born? I was born in 1991, okay? I was 1980 and this all felt very familiar. The maps and where you're going. So obviously that was written very intentionally. Did you have to do much, much research for that or were you like, I remember this because I was ten, 15, you know, endless research. It was like years of painstaking poring over every library book and listening to that. I found a website where you can listen to people talk because you can like you can choose someone from Missouri and listen to them read a transcript, and you can pick up on speech patterns like that. And so I get obsessive about every detail like that. The scene where patch gets a job in the mine, I spent a month researching mining in Missouri, and I know everything about it, and I knew what kind of rock they'd be looking at and what they'd be walking on, and what the air temperature would be like, how far they would go underground and like. And that is a paragraph in that book. It gets reduced to like maybe 15, 20 lines. And so I did that level of research for every single scene. And um, I just I haven't found a shortcut for it because, um, I don't think I'd take it anywhere. I quite enjoyed it. And, um. Yeah, it just is a reason why the book it took so long to write, I think, um, but it was it was partly because I'm less interested in the internet and things like that, you know, like, I like to go back to that period when I was a kid, um, because it felt simpler, but also it was partly because I wanted patch to get something from it, you know, from this search and the fact that he physically has to go out and leave the town that he grew up in and see, like the ocean and see boats and things that all the things that he should see. Um, the only reason he gets to do that is because he's on this, you know, this, this quest to find find grace. And he sees the most beautiful things, you know, and his life is richer and it's wide open and everything good comes to him. And, um, and that's because of this, this horrible thing. I'll tell you. I was on the phone with my best friend, the co-founder of the Creepy Book Club, before this, and we were agreeing that we should abolish the internet. Life was better before it. It's a terrible thing than I said. But how would we interview Chris? She's like, that's a good point, that this is working out for us. Well, today. Yeah. No, I, I have that with my kids, actually. They're, um, my two boys. My daughter's only four, so she doesn't care about the internet. But my boys are, like, completely addicted. You know, it's a real like. It's a problem, isn't it? It really is. I think that they're less sociable because of it. I think they have. Yeah. I just think, like YouTube is my son is like addicted to watching YouTube shorts. And I think there's an instant gratification thing, and it even makes reading a book seem like a chore, you know, to like a 13 year old. To an 11 year old, it seems like, you know, like, why would you look through this book when you could? In that time, you could have watched like a thousand short videos and this close to your face, I'm like, scoot it back, buddy. Put it back. Exactly. Yeah, but I don't know, I don't think I think we've there's no turning back. Really? Yeah, but isn't it. Well, I just have one more quick question. And then if, if you have like five more minutes, would you be able. Yeah, I've got nothing. My daughter's fast asleep, so I'm good. Don't say those words because now she'll probably need you. You've just had a really bad night last night. She was up all night. So tonight she is exhausted. And it's the cycle. Yeah. Is there anything about the book you haven't been asked that you just wish someone would ask you or you want to share. Um. Amazingly, I think people have covered every single question that I could ever be asked about the book, and people like to know about the TV adaptation. I get asked that a lot, and they like to cast it as well. Oh, that's what we do here. I'm not going to make you do it, because I'm sure you do. But that's like at the end of every call, we're like, all right, we just have Kathy Bates as Norma. That's the only one I'm going to tell you, okay. I like Frances McDormand for Norma. That's fine. I think she'd be a good one. She works. Um, she she's the owner. Interestingly, though, she's the only one that I can see. I can't see patch and saying because they feel too real, like, too close, you know, because I spent so much time with them. They feel like, like real people. Um, which is strange. So that when, when people suggest, like, a celebrity or an actor, I think, yeah, I can see it. But yeah, they'll never be my, like, first idea of them because they exist in my head and they'd have to be all different ages because it spans so long it couldn't just be one. I've read the pilot episode and they're talking about making three seasons from one book, so there will be, I think, two, I think probably childhood patch insane. And then I would imagine someone can play them from, you know, adult all the way to, you know, or from like late teens maybe all the way to to 30s. If you need a book club to, like, review the mini series before it's out in the day. Definitely got you. We've got you. Um, okay, I'm going to put this on gallery so I can see who would like to ask a question. I think let's do three questions. And if you don't have any because we've covered everything, that's fine. Aggie. Oh, you always have the best questions. Be ready. Chris. Okay. I thank you so much for joining us, Chris, and for sharing so much of your, um, you know, difficult experiences. Um, in a really weird way. We're grateful for your experience because it produced such amazing, uh, literature for us. What I wanted to ask about patch is, um, you don't really talk a lot about. And, and I want to know whether it's intentional, um, about what happened to patch in that basement for the 300. Some days you talk a lot about, you know, his relationship with Grace and how she tells him all the places she's been and kind of he lives vicariously through her. But you don't say much about the nature of his abuse. I mean, obviously there's the captivity, which is in a in and of itself, quite abusive and, and and traumatic. But is there something we're supposed to read into it? Is there something you left intentionally? What happened to patch in the basement for 300 something? I think partly it's because, for the most part, what we imagine is often worse, you know, like, is often worse than than a writer could write. And I think that I think just being deprived of light, you know, and, and everything, you know, his family and his friends, um, that is punishment enough. And, um, I also think those those he's got no real concept of time while he's down there, you know, and he loses a lot of it at the beginning when he's unwell after he's just been stabbed, you know, when he's been stitched back together and he's clearly got infections and, um, and then we skip ahead and then it happens again, you know, after he stands up to, to Eli and, and takes a beating, he gets very sick again. So we lose him, you know, kind of slipping in and out of what could be days or weeks or a month or more. And it just. I don't like kind of the gratuitous stuff. You know, when I'm reading a book, I shy away from it. And I think partly it's because I've lived through some really violent situations in my own life, and they never get it quite right. You know? Like no matter who's writing it, it will either be it'll either be a character, get stabbed and get straight back up, you know, and it's like, you know, and it's never like that. And there's. So I just for the most part, don't like writing it. You know, I think it's the least I think the crime is the least interesting part of the book. And, and what we imagine is far worse anyway. So it doesn't need to be, um, it's kind of spelled out. Thank you. Uh, Michelle, go ahead and ask your question. Hi. So I know that you said you always had the ending in mind. You always kind of knew what the ending was going to be. But did you always know that Grace was going to be the kidnappers daughter? I did. I did know that I knew exactly what I knew. Why Grace was alive, which is part of the, you know, is a really big question. You know, if he's taking these people and killing them, why not her? You know, why is she the special one? And and clearly, there's only one reason why. It's not because she's, like, devoutly religious or or, um, any other reason like that. It's because, you know, he kind of there's, there's some human element to him and, and she is his family and that's why she gets away. And, um, and so I knew that was coming. But the, you know, the very final scene where Patrick ends up in, in Outer Banks, where Blackbeard was hiding, that was kind of fortuitous, because I couldn't end the book now. I'd been I'd I'd had like a month of trying it, like I was late to deliver it and I had to finish it. And it was the first time I felt real pressure, because I knew we were going to print on a certain day, and I didn't have this ending, you know, I knew that patch would end up on a boat. I didn't know where. And and I knew that they, they made purple honey in that area, you know, North Carolina and, um, and I didn't I was just by chance, I was reading an article and it was someone that had done a road trip across that area, and they kept seeing those OBX bumper stickers. And so I started googling it and looking into it. And then I found out it was where Blackbeard had hid, hid. And, um, and that's the same place that purple honey was made. So it was like this amazing, serendipitous, you know, thing that, like, just felt meant to be. You know, I was meant to finish the book exactly when I did. Otherwise I wouldn't have found my way to this ending, you know, that really tied everything together. Awesome. All right Chris, thank you so much. We do five quick questions at the end that are just like you got to answer them like that first thing that comes to your mind I think the answer to number one, you already told us what is your favorite place to write? I feel like you're in it right now. All right. Yeah. It's the only place that I write. Yeah. I can't write anywhere else. Favorite spot to be when you are not writing? Um, anywhere with my kids, I would say a book you will always recommend always, um, of light tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I loved it so much. Um, a show or series that you love. Don't be embarrassed. It can be like a reality TV show. I don't know, I don't know reality TV that much, but it would be The Sopranos. I just watch it constantly. I've been watching it since it was first on and I loop it just all the time. Yes. And easiest one. Uh, what is your favorite candy of choice? Um, I don't Jen. I would go chocolate. Okay. Chocolate. It has to be specifically Cadbury's UK Cadbury chocolate. Exceptionally well. Thank you so much for being on with us, especially after the last minute craziness of getting married. We, uh, I think it's the best book we've read this year. It's in my top five books ever. Um, it was just absolutely beautiful. Thank you for being with us. We are looking forward to being the first people to see the mini series. Just send it our way. And, um, thank you for being willing to spend time with us. Thank you for all listening and thank you for doing this. I look forward to this one and it was great. Thank you very much. Goodbye, Chris. Thanks a lot. See ya. Bye.