Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny, STATE OF TERROR: A Novel
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[0:56]My essay is called A Small Shiny Thing, and what I really don't have time for is Getting Sick.
[1:03]I am so excited to be releasing this episode based on my conversation with the Temple
[1:08]Emanuel Striker Center live with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penney about their novel
[1:14]State of Terror, which had just hit the New York Times bestseller list about an hour
[1:19]before we started this event together.
[1:22]So thank you to the Striker Center.
[1:24]Thank you to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penney's publicist for asking me to moderate this event,
[1:29]which was perhaps my favorite that I've ever done on this podcast.
[1:33]So exciting.
[1:34]I was a little nervous, but it ended up being fantastic.
[1:37]And I hope you enjoy it.
[1:38]It was great.
[1:39]OK, so in case you don't know, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman in U.S.
[1:43]history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party in 2016.
[1:48]She served as the 67th Secretary of State from January 21st, 2009 until February 1st, 2013,
[1:56]after nearly four decades in public service, advocating on behalf of children and families
[2:01]as an attorney, first lady, and senator.
[2:03]She is a wife, mother, and grandmother.
[2:06]Louise Penney is the number one New York Times in Globe and Mail, bestseller of the Chief Inspector
[2:11]Armand Garmash novels.
[2:13]She has won numerous awards, including a CWA dagger, and the Agatha Award five times,
[2:19]and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
[2:22]She lives in a small village south of Montreal.
[2:24]I really hope you all enjoy this episode.
[2:26]It was such a thrill to do it.
[2:29]It's nice to meet you, ladies.
[2:30]Thank you, I'm sitting.
[2:31]Hi.
[2:32]Thanks to Gotti and the Striker Center for all this.
[2:35]I am so excited to discuss your book.
[2:37]It was so good.
[2:39]It destroyed three days of my life where that was all I could do.
[2:42]I'm sorry.
[2:43]I'm sorry.
[2:44]You're not sorry at all.
[2:45]You're not sorry at all.
[2:46]I feel like I hadn't felt that way since I like binged on homeland and I couldn't get
[2:52]off the couch.
[2:53]I was like riveted.
[2:54]So it had that save level of like intrigue and you know, made me obsessed with it.
[3:00]So anyway, thank you.
[3:01]And I also wanted to say there were so many references to the ladies in this book having
[3:05]some Chardonnay together.
[3:07]So I brought a little bottle.
[3:08]So we can pretend that we're enjoying this because I'm not a little bottle.
[3:14]I'm just going to have it after, you know, settle this because if I had a pair of
[3:20]spanks, I would put them on here as well.
[3:24]But that was part of what made this book so amazing is that the two of you together made
[3:29]Ellen Adams seem like the most relatable and yet amazing woman ever.
[3:34]So she's doing the things that every other woman who's probably on this zoom or in the
[3:38]world has to do every day and yet so much more.
[3:42]So she becomes such a multi dimensional, amazing character.
[3:46]Tell me a little bit about how the two of you collaborated.
[3:49]I know it says a lot in your amazing acknowledgements, which are award worthy in their own
[3:53]right.
[3:54]But how you collaborated to craft this character?
[3:57]Well, I'll start to be and then Louise can continue on because it's a wonderful story
[4:02]that brought us together to become friends and then let us to collaborate.
[4:07]It really started back during my presidential campaign.
[4:11]Got to mention my coming to the Striker Center to talk about that.
[4:16]And during that campaign in 2016, one of my closest friends, my best friend from literally
[4:22]sixth grade, a woman named Betsy Johnson Evelling, was interviewed about me, which, you
[4:27]know, is what happens to your friends when you run for office.
[4:30]They get asked all kinds of questions.
[4:32]And so she was being asked by a reporter, well, what do you and Hillary like to do
[4:37]together?
[4:38]And, you know, Betsy named some things.
[4:40]But she said, you know, we have always loved to read the same books.
[4:43]And then we talk about them and we trade ideas about books.
[4:47]And literally we used to go to the library as little, you know, as little girls.
[4:50]And so the reporter then said, so what are you reading now?
[4:55]And none of this would be happening.
[4:56]We would not be sitting here with you, Sibi, if Betsy had not told the truth, which is
[5:02]that we were reading the latest Louise Penny Gomash books in her wonderful series.
[5:08]So fast forward, the article was read by Louise's publisher and take it from there,
[5:15]Louise.
[5:16]Yes.
[5:17]And Sarah Melting, who read it, said, touch on me and said, did you know Hillary Clinton
[5:22]reads your books?
[5:24]And when I regained consciousness, I said, I don't think I knew that.
[5:28]She said, her best friend, Betsy, would like to meet you when you're in Chicago, where
[5:32]I was launching the next book.
[5:34]And I said, yeah, I would love to.
[5:36]So Betsy and I met, and, you know, will you reach a certain age and you sort of think
[5:40]your dance card is full, that's not, but that was the assumption I had.
[5:44]I've met all the profound, I have made all the profound friendships I'm going to make.
[5:49]And that could not have been more wrong because that was the moment that my life changed.
[5:53]and Betsy and I immediately had a bond.
[5:57]And she became the taproot for so much that just happened in my life and that that ended
[6:02]up, you know, in this marvelous moment right now, we bonded, we kept in touch.
[6:09]Two weeks after my tour ended, my husband Michael, who had dementia, passed away.
[6:16]And I was, it was just, it was shattering, it was a terrible, terrible.
[6:19]I thought that I might die, but I clearly didn't.
[6:23]And I was reading, and it was very comforting to read the letters of condolence.
[6:27]Many of which were from people who were friends and we knew and I'd sort of expected them
[6:31]and there they were and it was very nice.
[6:33]But one I didn't expect and it was from Secretary Clinton, couldn't believe it.
[6:39]She wrote, she took time from the most brutal political campaign to write a letter of condolence
[6:45]and it wasn't just a dear occupant, sorry for your loss.
[6:48]I was really talked about Michael and his contributions to medicine and was, and about
[6:53]loss and grief, something that she knew a lot about and knows even more about now, there
[6:59]was such a kindness to write to a woman she'd never met about a man she'd never met.
[7:03]And a woman, I couldn't even vote in the election.
[7:06]This was an act of pure kindness.
[7:09]And from that moment on, I mean, Michael adored Hillary, I always had such respect for her,
[7:14]but it went to a whole other level as you can imagine.
[7:17]And after the election in February, Betsy got in touch and said, Hillary's invited
[7:21]us to her home in Chappaqua for a weekend.
[7:25]And I thought, that's good.
[7:26]Of course, I would have loved to come, but Frankie's going through my mind was like,
[7:31]ah, a weekend.
[7:32]Like initially it was going to be one night.
[7:34]I don't know if you remember the tellerie and then you made it two nights and I'm thinking,
[7:37]I can probably not say something really stupid for one night, but what are the chances?
[7:44]Like, how long can I smile and nod, but you and I, and I said one more little, like,
[7:50]the moment we actually met, we were at dinner at a restaurant, Bill was obviously with
[7:56]us and a couple of other people.
[7:58]And Hillary, you were giving a talk in Boston and you flew back and you were a few minutes
[8:03]late for the dinner.
[8:04]So we were already seated.
[8:06]The restaurant was full, it was throbbing.
[8:09]Hillary shows up at the door and the place goes silent.
[8:13]And then as one, they rose and the cheers and the clapping, I'll never forget it.
[8:19]I've never seen anything like it.
[8:21]And then as the coda to that throughout the dinner, as Hillary is trying to eat, these
[8:26]young women came over and thanked her.
[8:28]They didn't want, you know, someone at a photograph, but for the most part, they just
[8:32]wanted to thank her and many were in tears.
[8:35]And Hillary, you were so gracious with them.
[8:37]It was obviously a moment I'll never forget.
[8:39]It was beautiful.
[8:40]Well, that was the beginning of our wonderful friendship.
[8:46]And we got to spend time together.
[8:49]We spent it with my, you know, my family with Betsy and her husband, obviously Louise
[8:56]was a gracious host.
[8:57]We actually went to Canada.
[8:59]I came to your place for Thanksgiving.
[9:01]I got it.
[9:02]Yeah.
[9:03]We went to Canada to see you, to see some of the places that our scenes in your books.
[9:10]And then we lost Betsy, Betsy passed away in July of 2019 from breast cancer, which
[9:16]she'd been fighting for 10 years.
[9:19]And both Louise and I were honored to speak at her memorial service.
[9:23]It was, you know, just an incredible shared grief losing our friend.
[9:30]But it also further expanded the circle of friends that welcomed Louise.
[9:35]So all these friends of mine, literally from high school, who we'd stayed in touch with
[9:41]and Betsy was kind of the pivot around which we all rotated because she was the winner.
[9:46]Keep us informed about somebody's family or if an illness struck anything that was important.
[9:52]And we've continued to be great friends.
[9:54]And then, you know, toward the end of 2019, we were both called by our agents.
[10:00]asking if we'd consider writing a political thriller.
[10:03]I have to confess, I was very apprehensive.
[10:05]I said, look, I love Louise as a friend.
[10:09]Obviously, I admire her greatly as a writer.
[10:11]I have never written fiction.
[10:13]I don't know whether this could work.
[10:14]I'm really cautious and not particularly convinced.
[10:18]I think Louise had a similar reaction.
[10:21]And our agents encouraged us, at least, to talk.
[10:25]And we started.
[10:26]Where did we begin?
[10:27]And we did.
[10:28]It sort of felt there's nothing to be lost to just chat.
[10:31]Let's see how far we can take it.
[10:33]But you're absolutely right.
[10:35]I'd never collaborated with anyone.
[10:37]I had no idea how it's done.
[10:41]Then I read a couple of books where people had collaborated
[10:44]and tried to get a sense of how it's done.
[10:46]So that was my fear, really, was you describe losing
[10:49]the friendship.
[10:50]And I was just afraid that it's like going from playing
[10:54]singles tennis to playing doubles.
[10:56]And I was just really afraid I'd keep hitting her
[10:57]on the back of the head with the tennis ball.
[11:01]Or worse, are you worse when are you hitting me?
[11:05]Or would be mutual?
[11:07]But yes, what they did was the publishers
[11:09]who had no faith at all, by the way, that we could do this.
[11:12]So they were hearing the sign of contract
[11:13]with us very, very wisely before we proved we could.
[11:17]We had an idea.
[11:19]So we sat down.
[11:20]We were in quarantine by then.
[11:22]Not quarantine.
[11:23]We were in lockdown.
[11:24]You were in chapel club.
[11:25]I was in Quebec.
[11:27]And we hammered out a 19-page outline.
[11:32]It was quite something that I'll always remember
[11:34]when we were tossing around at what about this.
[11:36]We knew, obviously, some of the broad strokes
[11:38]was clear.
[11:39]Would it be a woman secretary of state, obviously?
[11:43]It would feature strong women characters.
[11:45]That is not exactly a plot line.
[11:47]But we were tossing ideas.
[11:50]What about this?
[11:51]And I suppose that happens.
[11:52]You remember, and Hillary would say something,
[11:53]I'd say, yeah, but what about this?
[11:55]And then she'd say, no, I don't think that works.
[11:56]And what about that at one stage, Zibi?
[12:00]Remember this, Hillary, we got so confused
[12:04]that we actually just stopped talking and stared at each other.
[12:08]You thought our customers were throwing it to the person.
[12:10]I thought our customers threw it to the person.
[12:13]Yeah, but I have to give Louise all the credit.
[12:16]She then asked the question that unlocked the plot.
[12:20]She asked me, well, what were my nightmares as Secretary of State?
[12:24]And I had quite a few to be honest.
[12:26]But I ran through some of them with her.
[12:29]There's still my nightmares.
[12:30]But one of them, which I worried about when I was a senator
[12:34]from New York, especially after 9-11, obviously,
[12:36]I worried about it all four years in the State Department,
[12:39]was the possibility that terrorists could
[12:42]get ahold of nuclear weapons, whether it
[12:44]was a dirty bomb or something more sophisticated
[12:47]because I knew, and this is in the public record.
[12:50]I'm not spilling any classified secrets
[12:53]that that had been a constant theme.
[12:55]The terrorists seeking out on the dark web
[12:59]or through criminal gangs or the Russian mob,
[13:01]whoever they could possibly connect with,
[13:04]the idea that they wanted to possess a nuclear weapon.
[13:08]And when I told Louise that, I mean, she was as terrified
[13:11]as I was.
[13:12]I don't think she slept very well the next time.
[13:14]Pretty alive.
[13:15]Yeah, that's great.
[13:17]I don't think I've slept since I finished this book.
[13:19]I mean, I hope you do.
[13:22]You have a bunch of little children, so yeah.
[13:25]I mean, that's part of why.
[13:26]Yes, okay, fine.
[13:27]But this did not help.
[13:29]Let me just say that.
[13:30]But to know the other thing, the Hillary, of course,
[13:32]it's just genius on so many levels, not only creatively,
[13:35]but obviously what you bring Hillary with geopolitically.
[13:39]Because again, we could have a dirty bomb, OK,
[13:43]but it's still not a plot.
[13:44]And Hillary provided the plot.
[13:46]The plot is Afghanistan.
[13:49]Afghanistan, all that the morass that is that region
[13:54]of the world, and the chaos, and then added to
[13:58]with the American withdrawal, and the Taliban coming in.
[14:02]You see Hillary for saw this.
[14:04]This was prescient.
[14:05]The Taliban will come in with the Taliban,
[14:07]will come al-Qaeda.
[14:09]A lot of the obviously the gains that had been hard fought
[14:12]for 20 years would be lost.
[14:15]And the terrorists would again have a foothold
[14:18]and the launching pad again.
[14:20]And so she walked me through this, and it really was.
[14:23]And then we had, sadly, we had the plot.
[14:27]I couldn't believe that passage was in there
[14:29]about what could happen with Afghanistan.
[14:30]And I was flipping back.
[14:32]I was like, wait a minute, when did they write this?
[14:33]Like, they couldn't have just written this.
[14:36]So it's amazing.
[14:38]And terrifying.
[14:39]We obviously did the outline and wrote most of it
[14:44]before the election in November, certainly,
[14:48]before the attack on our capital,
[14:50]before the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
[14:53]But I did have one very important piece of information.
[14:57]And that was the agreement that the Trump administration
[15:01]signed with the Taliban, which happened before the election.
[15:05]And basically, as one of Trump's former national security
[15:09]advisors called it, it was a surrender agreement.
[15:12]We got nothing.
[15:13]We got no commitment to keep al-Qaeda out.
[15:16]We got no commitment to follow the laws
[15:19]that had been adopted, or their constitution.
[15:21]We got nothing.
[15:22]Nobody got anything.
[15:23]And it was just, as they said, a surrender document.
[15:27]So I knew that we were on a path to getting out
[15:31]that it would be very hard, even if you wanted to, which,
[15:34]I think most people wanted to end that war
[15:36]and get our troops and everybody home.
[15:39]But even if you wanted to do otherwise,
[15:41]you wouldn't be able to, because the momentum
[15:43]was on the side of the Taliban.
[15:45]And that was, as I said, before the election,
[15:47]and certainly before the deadline to withdraw.
[15:51]So as we were talking about this,
[15:54]the ramifications, because I very much agreed with what
[15:59]Secretary of State Blinken said a few weeks ago,
[16:01]he said, the Trump administration did not leave us a plan.
[16:05]They left us a deadline.
[16:07]And so in our plot, we have a former president
[16:11]who leaves Afghanistan, and then the incoming president
[16:15]inherits that situation with all of the potential threats
[16:21]and dangers that it sadly conveys.
[16:23]So yeah, I did think a lot about it.
[16:27]And obviously, Louise and I kicked back
[16:29]and forth all sorts of ideas.
[16:32]But we really wanted this not only to be a fast-paced thriller.
[16:36]And we're obviously thrilled.
[16:38]People are liking it and reading it.
[16:40]But we really wanted it to be a cautionary tale
[16:44]about both enemies abroad, enemies within,
[16:48]and the kind of threats that we have to be ready to address.
[16:53]And one that, because it's fiction,
[16:55]and you've talked about this, and rather than nonfiction,
[16:58]we were in the position of making it more palatable
[17:02]for people to be able to take it on board in a way
[17:06]that was entertaining at times playful,
[17:09]but also, as Hillary said, as a cautionary tale.
[17:12]But we also wanted it, obviously, to be more than just that plot driven.
[17:17]We wanted the characters to come alive,
[17:19]because really, what we want the people at the end of it
[17:22]to remember is the threat and the importance
[17:25]that we all stand up and be vigilant.
[17:27]But we also want, I think, people are most likely
[17:30]to also remember the characters to bond with the characters.
[17:35]As you were saying, the Secretary of State
[17:39]so identifiable, she's not a superwoman.
[17:42]She is an intelligent, thoughtful, smart, motivated person
[17:47]who was found herself in this position
[17:49]where she can give back, and she does.
[17:52]There's no better way to transmit information
[17:54]than through storytelling.
[17:55]So I feel like that's what you've done.
[17:57]You'll remember that.
[17:58]You'll remember the moments and the scenes in your head
[18:00]more than you will, you know, paper on documents or agreements.
[18:05]So it's the most illustrative way, I think,
[18:07]to tell a story that's memorable.
[18:10]And I saw in the notes that you said,
[18:12]and I wanted to ask how President Clinton is
[18:14]and how that whole thing.
[18:15]I was like, sure, this was going to be canceled,
[18:17]like everything else in life in the last two years.
[18:18]But how is he doing?
[18:20]And then I saw that he had been your sort of fact checker,
[18:22]which is quite the job, you know?
[18:25]Oh, well, thank you for asking, Zippy.
[18:27]You know, he's getting better.
[18:28]I have to say it was a very serious infection.
[18:32]And he thankfully, he was in California
[18:36]for events around the Clinton Foundation.
[18:38]And he hadn't been feeling great,
[18:40]but he felt good enough to go.
[18:42]And then that evening he got, you know, high fevers
[18:45]and shaking and his staff took him to the UC Irvine
[18:50]Medical Center, which was absolutely an excellent place
[18:54]for him to be because they had to search
[18:56]to find the source of the infection and what the infection was.
[19:00]And it had gotten into his bloodstream.
[19:02]And so he had developed sepsis,
[19:04]which is very scary as I'm sure most of the viewers know.
[19:09]And they had to work with the antibiotics
[19:11]because oral antibiotics were not gonna work.
[19:14]We are now in the world of multi-drug resistant bacteria.
[19:18]And so they had to get the right combination
[19:21]and start them, you know, very quickly on IV antibiotics.
[19:25]But by Sunday, he was well enough to come home.
[19:27]We flew home.
[19:28]But he's going to have to take intravenous antibiotics
[19:31]every day for four weeks in order to try
[19:35]to knock out the infection.
[19:37]So, you know, I am, you know, just so grateful
[19:41]that he had such excellent care that he is, you know,
[19:43]recovering, he is getting better.
[19:45]But I hope all of our viewers, you know,
[19:48]really take seriously any kind of fever
[19:51]or any kind, you know, it was non-COVID, thank goodness.
[19:54]But still, we're in a world now where we're in a race
[19:58]to try to get, you know, better.
[20:00]their treatments for bacteria, like what he was infected by,
[20:04]and that's a pretty important challenge too.
[20:08]Oh my gosh.
[20:09]Well, I'm so sorry.
[20:11]I was thinking as I read the book and your acknowledgements
[20:14]at the end about all of the loss that you have had.
[20:16]And Louise, you too, with your husband.
[20:18]I mean, that is so crushing
[20:20]and your brother, Secretary Clinton,
[20:21]and your other friend.
[20:23]And like, there's just so much.
[20:25]I know a lot of people obviously in the world
[20:26]have had a lot of loss, particularly lately.
[20:29]But sometimes just even the site of a hospital room
[20:32]can bring all of it back, the smell, something like that.
[20:35]So anyway, my heart was kind of going out to you
[20:37]and just wondering if this was all, you know,
[20:41]if it was even more than the fear of losing someone
[20:44]you've been with forever, coming right back.
[20:46]I mean, Debbie, that's really both very thoughtful
[20:50]and astute of you because Louise and I have really
[20:53]reflected about how a lot of the, you know,
[20:57]the motivation behind this book,
[21:00]frankly, was fueled by loss.
[21:02]As you point out, the person I thought of
[21:05]as we were developing the character
[21:07]of the Secretary of State Ellen Adams
[21:09]was a dear friend of mine, Ellen Tauscher,
[21:12]who had been a member of Congress from California,
[21:15]who I had asked to leave Congress
[21:17]to come to the State Department with me
[21:19]to run the program on arms control.
[21:22]So she became the undersecretary for arms control.
[21:24]And she understood the threat of nuclear weapons.
[21:27]She was really one of the experts
[21:29]and she passed away prematurely in May of 2019.
[21:33]I did lose one of my two brothers in June of 2019,
[21:37]which was just such a heartbreaking tragedy.
[21:41]And then we lost Betsy.
[21:42]So as we began talking about this book
[21:45]and we talked about the characters,
[21:47]I shared with Louise who had never gotten to meet
[21:50]Ellen Tauscher, you know, what kind of person she was
[21:53]and how when I thought about a Secretary of State
[21:55]going toe to toe with adversaries around the world
[21:58]trying to stop a nuclear catastrophe,
[22:01]I would have sent Ellen anywhere anytime
[22:03]to do that high stakes diplomacy.
[22:05]And it was so, I don't know how to tell you,
[22:08]it was liberating for me as well as exhilarating
[22:10]because I've only written nonfiction
[22:12]and I'm kind of trapped by, you know,
[22:15]making sure everything is factually correct,
[22:17]which I believe it.
[22:18]I live in the fact-based world,
[22:20]but this gave us a chance to tell a story rooted in reality,
[22:24]but with just enough elbow room and license
[22:27]that maybe readers could actually absorb it better than,
[22:32]you know, some, you know, 500 page treaties
[22:35]about the danger of nuclear weapons falling
[22:37]in the hands of terrorists, we would show not tell,
[22:40]I guess I would say.
[22:42]You described it as not having to force feed people spinach.
[22:46]Yeah, right, exactly.
[22:48]But I think you know exactly what you're saying
[22:50]that they, I think that's one of the reasons
[22:53]the characters resonate with people is that,
[22:56]you know, that they are founded in people
[22:59]that we loved and cared about.
[23:01]And so that there is a responsibility we felt to Betsy
[23:04]and to Ellen and to others that they be people in full,
[23:09]not discard more there to fuel along the plot
[23:13]that there be a depth to them.
[23:16]And it was a joy to write them as well, wasn't it,
[23:20]to bring them alive again and make them immortal
[23:23]and introduce them to hundreds of thousands,
[23:27]millions of people who would never get a chance to meet them.
[23:30]That is what's so nice about writing about those of the people
[23:33]that we've loved so much who we've lost.
[23:35]And I've lost a number of people to actually one on 9.11.
[23:38]And you know, it just, it's so heartwarming
[23:41]when you can introduce them to people through words.
[23:44]And it's like you've done some sort of a mitzvah
[23:47]because you kept their memory alive.
[23:49]So you could sense that in this book
[23:51]because so much of this book was about friendship.
[23:54]I mean, even just the kind words exchanged
[23:56]between Betsy and Ellen and there was one scene
[24:00]where they were on the phone just thing.
[24:02]And Betsy said, you know, be careful Ellen Sue Adams
[24:04]after this long pause.
[24:05]And it was just this lovely moment
[24:07]where they're working together,
[24:09]but there's so much love there too.
[24:12]So I don't know, I felt like, yes, of course,
[24:14]it's this nail biting thriller with like more travel
[24:18]than I don't even know how many miles Ellen Adams
[24:21]has put on at this point.
[24:22]I'm like, is it even physically possible
[24:24]for them to have gone to this many places
[24:26]in this amount of time?
[24:27]I don't know, I'm sure you checked.
[24:29]We did actually.
[24:30]That's one of the things our editor did
[24:32]because I think Hillary and I we had Ellen flying
[24:35]all over the place because she had to
[24:37]and others were flying all over the place.
[24:39]And our wonderful editor, Jen Enderlin,
[24:42]was the one who sort of said, what, you know,
[24:45]how can it be three o'clock here
[24:48]but nine o'clock there and seven p.m. there
[24:50]and maybe you want to sort of work that out a little bit.
[24:53]Yeah, you know, Debbie, I love the idea
[24:56]that it's a mitzvah, keeping the memory of people
[25:00]that we loved alive.
[25:01]And you know, when I think about this book,
[25:05]I think about how in the acknowledgements,
[25:08]Louise really summed up the feelings we had about it,
[25:11]which is that, yes, it's a book about terror.
[25:14]It is a page turner.
[25:15]It is ripped from the headlines,
[25:16]all the things that I think are fair to say about it.
[25:19]But it's also at its heart a book about love and courage.
[25:24]And, you know, we are living in a time
[25:26]that demands a lot of courage from a lot of people.
[25:29]And some, you know, are able to step up
[25:31]and others, you know, are reluctant to do so
[25:35]when we came up with a plot that included
[25:37]domestic terrorists, as I said it was before,
[25:41]you know, January 6th, but I was really concerned
[25:45]and shared my concerns with Louise,
[25:47]who, of course, was watching with great interest
[25:50]from the other side of the border
[25:52]about what was happening in America,
[25:54]that, you know, we are really not only divided,
[25:58]everybody knows that, but there are truly people
[26:01]who think attacking our capital,
[26:03]undermining our democracy, trying to stop an election,
[26:07]you know, pumping big lies into social media and beyond,
[26:11]that they are the patriots.
[26:13]And we wanted to really kind of help the reader
[26:18]think that through.
[26:19]And, you know, we don't yet have much detail
[26:22]on who's reading it.
[26:23]We're thrilled to be number one
[26:25]on the New York Times bestseller.
[26:27]Everyone, we are thrilled.
[26:30]But we also are interested in who's reading it.
[26:32]You know, one of the things that one of our editors said
[26:36]is, you know, women writing a political thriller
[26:40]about women of a certain age,
[26:43]is pretty unique.
[26:44]You know, most political thrillers are written,
[26:46]understandably by men.
[26:48]They star men as the protagonist.
[26:50]They have a lot of action we do too.
[26:53]We have things blowing up and all sorts of stuff.
[26:55]So this is gonna be interesting to see
[26:58]whether you can develop characters,
[27:01]the way that Louise brilliantly does
[27:02]in the Gomash series.
[27:03]Characters that you just take into your heart,
[27:07]you wanna know what's gonna happen to them.
[27:08]You can't wait for the next book to come out
[27:10]because that's gonna give you more insight into them.
[27:13]Those are the kind of characters we wanted to put
[27:16]in the middle of an incredibly intense political thriller.
[27:22]And because those are kind of characters
[27:24]we want not only to spend time with by reading,
[27:28]but we want reflected in popular fiction.
[27:32]Right, we set out among many things
[27:35]to also write a book we would read.
[27:37]Yes, that's true.
[27:39]And that's, you know, and at the center of it,
[27:42]strong women who aren't perfect,
[27:44]these aren't super women as we've all said.
[27:47]These are women who have doubts,
[27:48]who have insecurities,
[27:50]who wonder if they've done the right thing,
[27:52]who come out of a meeting and lean against a door
[27:55]and create a God, they haven't just made a terrible mistake.
[27:58]Things we've all done, we've all done.
[28:01]The difference in this case is that the stakes are so high.
[28:06]And that's one of the great joys and insights
[28:08]working, of course, with Hillary is getting inside the room,
[28:12]getting to see what it's like when there is a global catastrophe
[28:17]underway.
[28:19]And information has come, people have been foreign ministers
[28:21]and prime ministers woken up in the middle of the night.
[28:23]Information is coming in and it's half-baked
[28:27]and it's who knows what's true and who knows who to believe.
[28:31]Trust is a major issue that runs through this whole story.
[28:35]Who do you trust politically, who do you trust personally?
[28:39]Do you trust yourself?
[28:41]And even layering on mothering of adult children
[28:45]and what you do when their paths kind of aren't maybe,
[28:48]well, anyway, when the paths diverge in the woods
[28:52]and you see what your kids end up wanting to do,
[28:54]whether or not that's what you had in mind or not
[28:57]and how you keep all those conflicts together
[29:00]while you're busy running the country and everything else.
[29:04]That's such a great insight, Zibi.
[29:06]You know, obviously the plot has many twists and turns
[29:10]and some of them have to do with adult children
[29:13]as you just rightly point out.
[29:15]And that's what I think we mean when Louise is saying,
[29:20]you know, these women are not perfect.
[29:21]You know, and in most political thrillers,
[29:24]the women are there, you know, they're assassins
[29:27]or they're love interests or, you know,
[29:30]they're the stern, you know, intelligence director
[29:32]who gives the guys in the field their orders
[29:35]and you don't really get to see much about their life.
[29:38]And yes, this may be the only book you'll ever read, Zibi,
[29:42]that has both spanks and flannel moose pajamas in it.
[29:48]Oh, I hope not.
[29:49]I hope not.
[29:51]They may make another appearance.
[29:53]Yes, I'm aware of the phrase.
[29:56]We'll tell you the story behind the moose pajamas.
[29:59]Can you do that, Louise?
[30:00]What do you say?
[30:00]Oh, they were, yeah.
[30:02]Well, this never end.
[30:05]All right, so here's the story.
[30:06]So we're in the middle of the pandemic, of course.
[30:09]We had had ideas that we would be able to write this
[30:12]in a spa somewhere, right?
[30:14]Yes, that was our hope.
[30:15]Yeah, I don't know.
[30:16]We had a spa in the morning.
[30:17]Hillary has actually made a spa a verb.
[30:19]We would go spying in the morning,
[30:22]and then I don't know how to let us
[30:23]or something for lunch, and then that didn't happen.
[30:27]So she's in Chapaquah.
[30:28]I'm in just Northern Montreal at the Lake House,
[30:32]and we're FaceTiming, and we're trying to figure things out
[30:35]and sending notes back and forth.
[30:37]And we say, you know what, let's face time
[30:40]when the day settles down seven o'clock.
[30:44]So get on FaceTime.
[30:46]Isn't Hillary in bed?
[30:48]Seven p.m.
[30:49]She's...
[30:50]Yes, and it's a freezing bed.
[30:52]So we're bouncing.
[30:54]We're both in bed.
[30:56]I do not know where the days went during the pandemic,
[31:00]but I would be ready for bed at seven p.m.
[31:02]I wanted it to be on the downward slide.
[31:06]And Louise, of course, being the good Canadian
[31:08]that she is, she has the order of Canada.
[31:10]I mean, it's very distinguished.
[31:11]She's in her moose, pajamas.
[31:13]So...
[31:13]The cows would be order of Canada, actually.
[31:15]But the order of Canada.
[31:16]Not the order of moose.
[31:17]You see them?
[31:18]Yeah, yeah.
[31:19]No.
[31:20]So then Hillary, of course, being the silly woman,
[31:23]she can sometimes be locks me for like eight months.
[31:27]And it actually, as the readers know,
[31:30]it ends up in the book where a Canadian character
[31:33]is wearing moose pajamas.
[31:35]But I got...
[31:35]I didn't get my slightly my own back.
[31:37]You came over from lunch the other day,
[31:39]and I gave Hillary a pair of her own flannel moose pajamas.
[31:43]Exactly.
[31:44]Exactly.
[31:45]As soon as the weather gets called enough to where
[31:47]I intend to wear them, yes.
[31:48]Yeah, I want to see that.
[31:49]It can be.
[31:50]I'll send you a picture, honestly.
[31:52]It could be a good holiday giveaway.
[31:55]You could start selling the pajamas with a book
[31:58]and tying it with a red ribbon and like, you know,
[32:00]it could...
[32:00]Oh, Zibi, good idea.
[32:02]Great idea.
[32:03]Great idea.
[32:04]I think a percentage needs to go to the striker center.
[32:06]But, you know, that's a fabulous idea.
[32:09]There you go.
[32:10]So are these characters going to live on?
[32:14]Well, I think we're, you know,
[32:15]we are just having so much fun right now.
[32:19]Just, you know, to hear that we were just hit number one,
[32:22]in North America.
[32:23]Not just, you know, it's, I think we just want to breathe it in.
[32:28]Relax.
[32:29]I think sometimes, I mean, as we all know, life can just pick us up
[32:33]and begin, it's been like in a wave.
[32:36]And we forget to just relax and take a breath and enjoy it
[32:41]and count our blessings.
[32:42]So I think we're, we're doing that right now.
[32:44]And then we'll blow up some more stuff, you know.
[32:47]If I find it hard to believe that either of the two of you
[32:50]are really just like relaxing and taking back.
[32:53]You're, I'm sure you have eight million other ideas
[32:55]brewing for what's to come.
[32:57]But we do, we do have a lot of things going on.
[33:00]You know, Louise has so much happening with, you know,
[33:04]anybody who produces a book every year for how many years,
[33:07]17, 18 years.
[33:09]You're having 300?
[33:10]3, 40.
[33:11]I don't know.
[33:12]It goes back to, you know, at least the revolutionary war.
[33:15]No, it's just, well, so remarkable to watch her in action.
[33:22]And yet at the same time, we really do want to enjoy this.
[33:28]We, you know, we're having a great time, you know, promoting the book,
[33:31]talking to people like yourself.
[33:33]So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
[33:35]We want to just absolutely relish this.
[33:38]Don't you remember Hillary when we first were, this was proposed
[33:41]and we had one of our first FaceTime calls.
[33:44]And I think we both made it clear that we're not going to do this
[33:46]unless we're going to enjoy it.
[33:48]Absolutely.
[33:49]We didn't need to do it.
[33:50]It was not something that either of us, you know, needed to do.
[33:53]We just did it because we thought in the end,
[33:56]it would be a great experience working together.
[33:58]And it was and we're still friends.
[34:00]We'd probably even better friends because we've kind of been through,
[34:03]you know, the wars together, the literary wars.
[34:06]But also, that's the other thing we wanted to inject in this.
[34:09]And I'm not sure how many political thrillers have a sense of playfulness as well.
[34:14]and humor that there are these Easter eggs that we've put in for people to discover.
[34:19]The two, the women, actually, they all.
[34:22]There are moments where all of them have funding.
[34:25]One of the things, Hillary, that we both loved is the relationship between the current
[34:29]president and the secretary of state that is, you know, it's antagonistic to say the least.
[34:37]And some of them get in both, I've both of them get in some good shots every now and then.
[34:43]But we do have the relationship evolve, which was really important to us because they start out.
[34:48]I mean, you know, this president who in her prior life as the head of a big media empire,
[34:55]Allen had opposed.
[34:56]I mean, she did not want her to be elected and then much to her amazement.
[35:00]He asked her to be secretary of state.
[35:03]And, you know, the ostensible reason why she ran this media empire.
[35:06]She had context around the world, but she had no political experience, no government experience.
[35:10]And he really wanted her to fail, almost as payback for her opposing him.
[35:16]She took the job because, you know, she is a woman of a certain age.
[35:19]It was an amazing opportunity and challenge, but she doesn't trust him at all.
[35:24]And so the two of them have a lot of testy interactions.
[35:28]And then as this crisis develops, they realize they have to trust each other.
[35:34]They have to listen to each other.
[35:36]They have to respect each other's gut and what is happening.
[35:40]But I loved that.
[35:41]I loved, you know, the trajectory of that.
[35:44]And so there's a lot in here that is not necessarily the headlines, but they're kind of
[35:50]trend lines.
[35:51]They're what happens when people find themselves in difficult situations and they have
[35:57]to rely on each other.
[35:59]What happens when you don't know who the enemy is or maybe you think you do and then you
[36:04]get new information and that changes what you think.
[36:07]I mean, this is what happens in diplomacy.
[36:10]It happens in business.
[36:11]It happens, you know, in every walk of life.
[36:14]But the stakes could not be higher than they are in this particular plot.
[36:18]And that's sort of what you're describing so well, Hillary, is what gives flesh to the
[36:24]bones.
[36:26]And that's really the heart and the soul of these stories is are the characters, as the
[36:31]richness of the characters, their relationships, their doubts, and the fact that all
[36:35]of them evolve.
[36:37]And the other thing I really like about the president and the secretary's relationship
[36:41]is we know early on why he appointed and why he hates her because of this media empire
[36:48]and her campaign against him.
[36:50]We don't find out till much later on, and I'm not going to tell you why she hates
[36:54]him so much.
[36:55]Right.
[36:56]Right.
[36:57]Right.
[36:58]Exactly.
[36:59]Yeah.
[37:00]By the end of it, I was like, I don't know what's going to happen with these two, like, right.
[37:05]Exactly.
[37:06]Yeah.
[37:07]Anyway, my last question for the two of you is, what advice would you give to aspiring
[37:12]authors?
[37:13]Wow.
[37:14]Well, first you have to decide if you want to write fiction or not fiction because
[37:18]you know, my prior experience was all nonfiction.
[37:22]You have to know what you want to say.
[37:23]You have to organize, you know, your thoughts, the best you can.
[37:27]I actually was very used to writing an outline, you know, we had not.
[37:32]Our publisher said, right, an outline that was very familiar territory for me, even
[37:37]though I had no idea for a novel what it would look like.
[37:41]But now that I've had this incredible experience with Louise learning from her, watching
[37:45]her, collaborating with her, you know, fiction is so exciting.
[37:51]And it's so it's so full of possibilities that I am, you know, really just incredibly
[37:58]grateful that I had a chance to, you know, try my hand at it.
[38:01]Well, and I'm incredibly grateful that you have more nightmares.
[38:04]You know, my advice when aspiring writers ask is, I suffered writers blocked for five
[38:13]years.
[38:14]And that was pure fear, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of the judgment of others.
[38:22]And finally, it came to me what I needed to write and I just, I couldn't worry about others.
[38:30]I couldn't worry about whether it even be written, couldn't worry about whether to
[38:32]end up on the bestsellers list, couldn't even worry about whether it be any good.
[38:38]All I could think about was just write a book, as we said earlier, that I would read.
[38:44]That's it.
[38:45]And if chances are, if I will read it, other people probably will too.
[38:50]So just keep it simple.
[38:52]Don't worry about what anyone else thinks and be very careful about who you show it to,
[38:57]like especially the former president of the United States, the whole manuscript was
[39:04]finished.
[39:05]True.
[39:06]Yes.
[39:07]And then I said, you have to hide it from him, did you have to like, walk it in a drawer,
[39:11]hover it up, you know, come into my office to see what I was doing.
[39:16]And then I finally said, would you read this, tell us what you think?
[39:18]And thankfully, he liked it.
[39:21]And he did have a few editorial comments, he did say at one point, you know, I'm not
[39:25]sure any president would say that.
[39:27]And you know, Louise thought about it and said, well, yeah, he was a president, maybe
[39:31]we'll kind of edit it.
[39:32]Yeah, but I was on the verge of arguing with the man.
[39:37]But overall, I mean, because he was so enthusiastic and has, you know, not only written
[39:42]to very successful thrillers, but read, you know, a million of them, that made me feel
[39:46]like we were on the right path.
[39:48]He was very generous.
[39:49]I have to say he was very generous, yeah.
[39:51]My mother was very happy that you had books coming out at the same time, you know, yes,
[39:57]yes.
[39:58]How nice.
[39:59]Thank you.
[40:00]Well, I will, well, Louise, I think it's so nice that you took all of that fear and ended up writing a novel about courage. It's like a nice way that you flipped it in front of me. As I, as I write, I have the last words of the poet, Shamus heeny, who said on his death bed. He said,
[40:15]not only to marry, and that means being not afraid, because it's scary writing fiction. It's scary writing anything, isn't it? I mean, it's scary doing anything. You know, it's just get over it. No, it's going out the front door. Sometimes it's scary. Well, I didn't mean to leave on that negative note there. But anyway, well, I know God, he wants to hop back on to say goodbye. But thank you for me too. This was so fun. Thank you. Can we also say to this is the last event in our virtual tour. And I can't imagine anything more special. And I think that's what I'm going to say.
[40:45]And Zibi, you've just been fantastic. And has the striker center just thrilled. Thank you, everybody. It's striker and Temple of Manuel. Thank you.
[41:15]Sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.