David Baldacci

But you also have to realize that he's lost everything.

Everything he really cared about.

He never wanted to become this thing.

He was perfectly happy with his life.

But I also think that as I was thinking about the world in general when I was writing this novel, I was thinking that

A lot of people who did the right thing ended up losing everything they had through no fault of their own.

And then what do you do after that?

And I bring Malter Nash along to say, I'm not saying this is the perfect model, but you get back up and you keep trying.

I know it is.

I've seen that in my life.

You know, people can let that one emotion out.

not only overtake their lives, but bend their will in ways they never would have done before.

It can be really debilitating.

You know, it's kind of like doom scrolling on your phone all day and spending 10 hours past and you have no, you're never gonna get those 10 hours back and you probably haven't learned anything more that you didn't know before.

That complexity grew organically in the novel.

You know, again, I thought this was going to be one book and done.

But the more I got into Steers in the first novel, I was thinking, you know, you idiot.

There's untapped potential.

There's opportunity to do something you haven't done before, to take a character that you built into this monster and

And then instead of just having this ending where everybody could see it coming, start peeling back the layers of this monster and see how it came about.