David Baldacci

That's not where I want to go.

And so every time I write a novel, it's like I'm writing my first novel over and over again, but I try to do it better than what I did before.

What I like to do is people say, where do you get your ideas from?

Well, I wake up every day and I walk out the door and I just look around.

I don't stare at my phone.

I just see what's going on around the world.

I read a lot about what's going on around the world, issues that are important to me.

I've tried to process it and go, okay, how can I take a fresh perspective on that and turn a real life event or a feeling or a theme or an emotion

and set it in a fictional novel.

How can I do that to show people that if they're not thinking about these big issues out in the world, how can I show them when they pick up the book, they read a really exciting story, but they come away thinking, wait a minute, now that I think about it, he was actually maybe trying to say this.

Maybe I should start thinking about that a little bit more.

Oh, let me look at this.

Oh, there's a news article about this that's going on.

And maybe those two tie together.

Because at the end of the day, I want to write exciting stories that people have fun and they're page turners.

I get that.

But I don't want it to stop there.

I want people to keep thinking about this stuff.

Revenge.

It's always a dish best served cold and you get a hell of a lot of it in this book.