Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Nicole Ransome: Hi, I'm Audible editor Nicole, and I'm bouncing out of my seat to welcome the legendary David Baldacci, with over a hundred million copies of his books sold worldwide, and a career spanning over decades, with major, bestselling standalones in series like Absolute Power, the Amos Decker series, King and Maxwell series, Strangers in Time, and so many more. It's great to have him here to introduce his newest thriller, Nash Falls. Welcome, David.
David Baldacci: Thank you. It's great to be here.
NR: Nash Falls is your newest thriller series, following the head of acquisitions of Sybaritic Investments, Walter Nash, whose life really does take a dramatic turn when he is asked to be a mole for the FBI for crimes brewing at his very own job, literally at his father's funeral. Why did you choose to kick Nash's story off at that moment in time for him?
DB: You know, I've been doing this such a long time. My chief job is to make sure I don't get bored while I'm writing the novel. And the way I do that is to get out of my comfort zone and write about things I've never written about before. Usually, my characters have some sort of special skills: military, detective, or whatever. So, Nash is an everyman. Yes, he has a great job. He works hard; he's a businessman. That's his wheelhouse. He's provided really well for his family. He has an estranged relationship with his father, the Vietnam veteran who passed away at the beginning of the novel. And Nash goes to his funeral. I wanted to take a guy who had a really nice life and then destroy it, and then to see how he would rise from the ashes. I really like to get my readers into a novel as quickly as possible, and one way to do that is to make them start thinking, “What the hell would I do if that had happened to me?”
Then they will read the pages and read the story to find out what happened to Walter Nash and maybe think about what they would've done during the same sort of situation. I love Nash. He came out of me from nowhere. You know, people talk about AI and all that. I'm like, where did Nash come from? A billion different places in my mind that I really can't explain. The human brain is a pretty complicated thing. But I loved how the story turned out. There's one more novel in this series—at least one more—to find out, you know, the full story with Walter Nash and what happened to him. But it was a great ride and I really, really enjoyed putting it together.
NR: Yeah, I was actually going to say that he has no special skills, no background in this. Like, the only real connection that he has to this kind of life is his father. And, you know, he does get some help from his friends along the way. So how important was it for his character to be centered around the right kind of other supporting characters for the Nash character to really grow and really succeed during this story, or at least go through this change?
DB: Those are great questions. And I built it upon three different things. One, even though he didn't have special skills at the military and all that, he was businessman who'd been involved in a lot of high-stakes negotiations. He knew how to cut a deal; he knew how to deal with people. He knew how to read people and to get out of a situation intact. So, throughout the book, he would use some of his business skills to get through really difficult situations. And maybe at first blush, he wouldn't think that business skill would be important, but it turned out to be. His father was described as being a sort of Hercules in the novel. This guy had a motor that never quit. And I think Nash, even in his business career, he inherited that. The guy is just tenacious as hell and just keeps going.
"My chief job is to make sure I don't get bored while I'm writing the novel."
If a wall gets in front of him, he goes through the wall. He's just doing it in a different way in the novel. And the third pillar that I gave him—which is a really important one—was Isaiah York, his father's best friend growing up, his father's best friend in Vietnam and throughout his entire life. But for York, and you'll find out his nickname and what that means in the novel, Nash never would've been able to survive this. And in many of my books, I try to show that if you're going through a really bad time—as all of us do in our real life from time to time—it's much better to go through that with people who care about you and who love you and have your back then to go through it alone. Human beings going through bad times alone, it's a recipe for a lot of bad things happening. So those are the three pillars I gave him in this novel to sort of make him be able to achieve, plausibly, what I wanted him to.
NR: That's great. Actually, speaking of that support system: He has a wife; he has a daughter; and his family life—from the start of the story, in comparison to the ending, without any spoilers—it's just so starkly different. And so how did you want this change to affect the character Walter Nash, especially for the sequels to come?
DB: I wanted it to affect him bone deep. It couldn't get any deeper. And this was a story that knocked him right on his butt and stunned him in so many different ways. I mean, when I was writing some of the scenes, I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm putting him through this." [laughs]. But then I just kept going. I guess I'm sadistic in that way, anyway. But I wanted this to, again, I wanted the life that he had had to completely vanish. And so, you know, in our lives, people have to start over so many times in life. You know, things happen. They lose someone; they lose a job; they move; they do something different with their lives and challenges come up; and then they have to reinvent themselves. But I think Walter Nash had to reinvent himself and build himself into somebody he never thought he was going to be, somebody he never really wanted to be.
NR: Mm-hmm.
DB: Sometimes life throws you curveballs. You have to do that. And I think that was such a fascinating question for me. I write a lot of books to answer questions that I don't think have been answered. And for me, I wanted to see what Walter Nash was capable of, and I ripped everything he'd ever had away from him.
NR: Yeah. I mean, he went from a very cushy lifestyle, you know, to, the end scene. I really enjoyed hearing his POV from, like, just all of that outcome.
DB: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's a book that hits you in the heart; hits you in the gut; hits you in your brain. Everywhere! Because there's a lot of action in this novel. A lot of things happen, and he can show off what he can do now, but really, I wanted you to understand how it had affected him right in this heart. Because this is a guy—this is a very emotional book for everybody in this novel, not just Walter Nash. Everybody has stuff going on. And again, I think that's a reflection of many people's lives. It's complicated out there. And I think that when people read stories like this, they understand that, my God, human beings, if they're anything, they are resilient. You know, they can come back from stuff that you just didn't think you could come back from.
NR: Yeah. There was even the character Red Temple, he is—regardless of how much he has, well, he still has his own plights. And even though it may not be as relatable to everyone, it's still a story that definitely exists. And that actually leads me into my next question. There is a disparity between the lifestyle upbringings and wealth of characters. Like with Red Temple, Nash himself against his father, Victoria Steers, Isaiah: What takeaways did you want listeners to have about wealth, wealth and status, especially how it affects your mindset when faced with losing everything?
DB: Yeah. I think the people who believe that money can make you happy, they don't understand, one: What money can do to you, and how unhappy it can make you. Red Temple's character, somebody had told me that Red is such a, he's such a louse; you just want to hate him. But when he is on the page, you can't take your eyes off of him, of the guy, you know, you never know what he's going to do. No matter if you're, whether you're born with pennies or billions, life is complicated. And you could see that Red's life is not really all that great. Yeah, he can fly around on a private jet, but he has very low self-esteem. He's been under the thumb of his father his entire life, which I can imagine, it's not a really good place to be. And he's just not a happy guy.
Walter Nash is born very blue collar. He didn't have a whole lot. He earned whatever he has. Again, his life has challenges. You know, his marriage is good. It's not perfect, not any marriage is. His relationship with the teenage daughter... I raised teenage kids. They're in their thirties now. I know what that was like. It's not easy to do that. And there are battles, and you have to pick the hills you're going to die on. So, it's just, I wanted to show the complexity of human life—whether you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth or no spoon in your mouth. And the characters that I set out to do that to in this novel covered the entire spectrum. And that's what I wanted to achieve.
NR: Was there a character's POV that you found yourself researching the most to develop?
DB: Yeah, you know, Victoria Steers, you're going to see a lot more of her in the second novel. She's a woman that, just from my background, was very difficult for me to relate to. She's from a part of the world that, you know, I'm not familiar with. She's a female. Culturally, we couldn't be more different. I really had to dig deep to try to understand where she was coming from, what I wanted to achieve with her character in the novel. But I needed to do that because I can't cruise on any one character. I can't just say, “Okay, I'm gonna throw this out. And it may not be that developed but just trust me.”
No, I have to earn that trust with my readers. So, I really had to dig deep in my own self, and women that I've known in my life from lots of different places to understand the relationship I put her in with her mother and other things going on in her life, how she would be. And I think people, in the next novel—when you see her front-and-center—I've done something with her character I've never done before, and we'll see if I pulled it off.
NR: Yeah, she is a very huge antagonist. She's a plot driver in this story. And she's also quite elusive. I was going to mention that she doesn't actually make appearances as often, so I definitely can't wait to see more from her. But as you were creating Victoria Steers and Nash as combating forces, what key differences did you want listeners to grasp between the two characters outside of just, like, good and evil or, like, man versus woman. Those types of differences?
DB: I think I wanted to, more than differences, I wanted to share the similarities between them, and they both came up in ways that were punishing, and they had to earn everything they had. Things could have gone very badly for them, and they could have lost everything along the way. I think if you look at each one of them, they are tenacious, resilient, and they are used to battling through obstacles to get what they want. Not just what they want, but what they think they need at any point in time. Even Nash, you know, once he re-transforms himself, he has a plan, and he executes upon that plan to get to the location and the spot and with the people he needs to get to.
"I think that when people read stories like this, they understand that, my God, human beings, if they're anything, they are resilient."
And you'll see with Victoria Steers, even a little bit, that she's in this novel, that's what she does. She has a plan, and she's going to execute upon this plan. I think, at the end of the day, even though they look very dissimilar, at the end of the two novels, people are going be like, "Oh my God." You know, they're very much alike.
NR: Yeah. I mean, Victoria Steers is a character-and-a-half. She really... [laughs] She really does Nash something awful. She's quite the opponent, I'll say, for sure. But I do enjoy characters like that. I love those complex ones that still actually, like, you kind of understand their origin story, doesn't kind of right their wrongs, but you kind of understand it, humanize them a bit.
DB: Right. Yes.
NR: So, you don't completely villainize them.
DB: I can't. Otherwise, they just turn into a cartoon character, and that's not what you want. You want them to be: They can be good or evil, but they have to be authentic.
NR: Mm-hmm. And it has to be a balance, too. She's doing a lot of terrible things, so it's going to be extreme, but you kind of understand why she goes to those levels because of all the hard decisions. And honestly, all of the weaving that she had to do throughout life. So it's, like, you understand, you definitely do.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
NR: And even when Nash, his come-up story was kind of, like, it was accidental. He found something that other people weren't really looking at. And so his was a little more on the luck side. But, at the same time, still hard work, driven. He has the complications.
DB: Yes.
NR: So, Nash Falls ends on a great cliffhanger that gives the feeling of more exciting things to come for the character. What are you most excited about when it comes to the changes that have and inevitably will fall on Nash as he gets further and further into this new life of his?
DB: So, I think, you know, with Nash, I've set him on a track that he's going to have to continue on. It's really no going back for him. He's not going be the old Walter Nash. He's going to be who he is now. But with, in the very last line—the second book is finished—the very last line in that novel sort of sums it up for Nash, where he's going to go from here, but I think it was morefascinating. And as soon as I finished Nash Falls, you know, the second book I had pretty much in my mind at least completed. I was just champing at the bit to get going because this is where the relationship between Nash and Steers comes full front-and-center in this novel and doesn't really deviate from that mark. As a writer, knowing that you have that opportunity, I just wanted to get going on the second book as soon as I finished Nash Falls.
I'm just a planes, trains, and automobile guy. I write everywhere, anytime. Doesn't matter. I don't count pages or words or whatever. I don't need a perfect space to write. You know, I've written great pages in the middle of a little deli in Vienna, Virginia, with a hundred people around me—where I feel like I'm the only person in the world. And when I'm in a story, there's nothing else that exists except me and the story. And I'm very excited. I tried to put all this, all Nash's story, into one novel. There's no way in the world that I could do it, because another 400-page novel follows from this one. And I think that when people read it, they're going to be glad that I split it into two.
NR: Yeah. But what made you split it into two parts? Like, do you feel that there is more to come for Nash regardless of like... Okay, I know the second book is already written. I do enjoy his character, but I do love those, you know, those thriller characters that their lives are kind of… they're just kind of thrown into all of the weeds of it and, you know, they kind of have to figure it out, you know, and then you get this great hero. I feel like he could be a great hero.
DB: I know. I think you're going to see Nash again. I mean, I've done it with so many of my other characters, too. I thought there were going be one book or two books, but then they keep speaking to me, and Nash keeps speaking to me; he's got more to go. I've given him this new life. I've transformed him, and he's probably telling me, let's see what we can do now that, you know, I am who I am and let's go down that road together.
NR: Yeah. I feel like that, I could see this as a movie, you know [laughs]. I feel like it's so properly paced. And especially with the description, I feel like I can see the actors in my head.
DB: Yes.
NR: You know? So, I personally really enjoyed the series. I really do love his character. I like his thought process. I like the other characters’ thought processes as well. And I really do like how we get into the weeds of just their backgrounds.
DB: Mm-hmm.
NR: The audiobook is narrated by some really great and known voices: MacLeod Andrews, Christine Lakin, Larry Herron. Shiromi Arserio, and Will Collyer. Have you had the chance to listen to the audio book?
DB: I haven't. They haven't sent me the code for it yet. But I did the audition tapes, and my wife and I listened to all of the actors they brought on, and we picked that crew. Some of them have done audiobooks for me before. Probably 20 years ago, I said, "Look, we're not doing a one-reader anymore. This is ridiculous." I don't want guys trying to pretend they could speak like women and vice versa. And we went to two readers, male and a female, which is better. But over my last, I don't know, 10 books or so, particularly A Calamity of Souls and Strangers in Time, I said, “We're going to do full cast. People, this is a growth area for books, and we need that. We need to make this so entertaining for people that it could make people read more physical books, more e-books, but if they can listen to the thing on their smartphone or wherever, we need to give them an incredible production.”
And the multicast is the only way to do that. I've listened to all of these people read roles from Nash Falls, and I picked the ones that you would be listening to. I can't wait to listen to this, because quite frankly, it's a very different experience than reading the novel. These characters do something I can't do. They give voice to the words. I can't do that as a writer. I just give you the printed words on a page. They can bring emotion and nuance to these roles, and the dialogue that I can't do as a writer. I can't wait to listen to it. I think that from now on, all my books are going to be multicast. I think it's a great thing for readers; I think it's a great thing for the book industry.
NR: It's like, we're here, sympatico. I did notice that there was a transition from your older audiobooks to your newer audiobooks, and they are, like, single versus multicast. So, you said that multicast is a great experience, but when you're listening to those audition tapes, how do you decide which voice speaks to your characters the best?
DB: I have a number of people listen to it. And my wife and I listen to it, and we discuss it. And we really go round and round about what we want that character, that actor, to achieve through the character's voice, and which one is most powerful, which one is the best match. And I have to tell you, and particularly on this one, you know, we probably got a dozen audition files. And to whittle it down to five, it was tough. There were a couple where it was almost like flip a coin. They were both so good, and either one of them could have done the role, and you, it was, then you're just talking about a 1,000th of 1 percent gut feeling. Okay, let's just go with this person.
So everybody auditioned, even though ones who didn't get picked. They're all fantastic talents. And it's really, at the end of the day, I try to dig deep into the character and try to visualize in my mind, close my eyes, listen to the voice and see if it's sort of matched in my head what I thought that would be.
NR: Out of all of your audio books, do you have a favorite performance? I know it's kind of hard because, you know, all stories are precious, but is there one that really does, like maybe the specific character is really, you know, presented so well? Like, what performance of your own story stands out the most to you?
DB: You know, it's a multicast and there's a book that was... You know, most writers start out writing autobiographic material because it's so potent and powerful and visceral. It took me 53 books to get to writing something autobiographical [laughs]. I guess I'm a slow learner, but A Calamity of Souls, I think, was the best audio book production that's ever been done of any of my novels. It was five voices by actors performing that book. There wasn't a weak voice in the entire production. And I've listened to that thing five times, even though I know exactly how it's going to end. But every single role was so powerful and hit, you know, exactly what I wanted it to be. Maybe it was because the story was so personal to me, but that was one hell of an audiobook, and I've had thousands of emails from fans all over the world who told me the exact same thing.
"I think that from now on, all my books are going to be multicast. I think it's a great thing for readers; I think it's a great thing for the book industry."
NR: That's amazing. I mean, it sounds like five is your magic number here. (laughs). You listen to it five times, you have five narrators. Is, is, is that a thing? You know, I'm noticing that this one also has five narrators. (laughs).
DB: Yeah, I know. I think that, sometimes, that's a decision made between me and the publisher about how many, and is six too many? Is seven too many? Is four too few? So I think we've hit upon five. One is just: Let's put together the breadth of the characters that they're going to have to, you know, be voicing, and the major ones. And then how many of those can one, could, can one of the readers do two or three? And once you whittle it down to an acceptable number where you have enough different voices, then... I think I've done some where there, maybe there were four, but it seemed like five is pretty much of a sweet spot. Maybe it's because I have a lot of characters in my novels from all sorts of different places and, and backgrounds. Um, but five seems to be a pretty good sweet spot.
NR: Wow. Okay. That's cool. And, also as audio develops and sound design is added to these audio books, do you feel that you'll expand from just simply multicast listening to maybe like more of a cinematic performance or, you know, audio-experience type of situation?
DB: I never say never. I want to make the experience as good as possible. Look, we both know not enough people read books, and we need to have more people read. And I don't care how they read it. They can read it physically; they can read it on an e-book; they can listen to it. So long as they get into the story, because the more people who read books, the better world we're going have. I think I've accepted that this gospel all my life, and I know because books build empathy, which is the most important human attribute there is because at least to all the others, like love and respect and dignity. So, if we can do something that will draw any, even more people in where they can have even a bigger experience about what the book is about, I'm there.
NR: Very cool. You've written so many stories over the years that have kept your fans hanging on every page. How do you keep your stories and themes fresh when writing to not only long-standing fans, but also to new ones?
DB: That's a great question. I think the best attribute a writer can have is curiosity. You have to be curious about the world, and every day you need to learn something you didn't know the day before. And look, I travel widely. I meet lots of people. I read everything there is out there. I know what's going on in the world. And when you have that number of “knowledge pots,” I like to call them, spread all over the place, you can go and pick little bits and pieces out all of them and bring them together because my knowledge pots are different from anyone else's. What I bring together, the result is unique. It's original. Nobody else has ever come up with that because they don't have my different knowledge pots.
I don't write about things that I know a whole lot about, which is the old adage. I read about things that I'd like to know a whole lot about, and then I go out and find out about them, and I have that passion for it. And the passion is carried over into the pages. It makes your plots better, your characters better, your prose better. So that's what really drives me, answering questions that I don't think have been answered, learning new things that I didn't know the day before, and grabbing my knowledge pots and seeing what original ideas I can come up with. So that is what is sort of unique to how I build my stories.
NR: Wow. So, with this new character, Nash, under your belt, what has been your favorite series to write so far, and who has been your favorite protagonist to build out for fans?
DB: Well, there's one that started with the Memory Man, Amos Decker. I've done seven novels with Amos. He's actually in production for a television series on Amazon. And he was such a unique person. I'd never written a character about him before. I wrote a book called, I think it was Born on a Blue Tuesday or something like that, a person with synesthesia, the mixing of your sensory pathways [editor’s note: the title is Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet]. And so I decided, well, you know, if a detective had that, plus hyperthymesia, which is a perfect recall, and he got it through a traumatic brain injury while playing NFL football, and he died on the field and they brought him back and he had these twin weapons that he could use as being detective, that would be a fascinating story. But the problem with a perfect memory is, guess what? Most of us have a lot of things we'd much rather forget. Right?
He can't. So it's like an albatross around his neck, which makes him enormously complicated. But as a writer, it gives me enormous potential to dig deep into this guy. So Amos Decker, and probably just a close second would be Travis Devine, my 6:20 Man series guy. He's really complicated, and I'm sort of in the middle of what I'm trying to do with him. Every new series is an opportunity for me to start from square one. And when I think of Walter Nash, I can't tell you the dopamine dump that I get in my brain. [laughs]. It is just an amazing feeling, because I know, “Oh my God, I can spend years with this character. Let's go and have some fun.”
NR: Yeah, the Walter Nash character, I really do enjoy him. He's very complex and I feel like, honestly, I love to see a character struggle in the ramp up period. You know, the scene where he is cleaning himself all off. He's vomiting on himself, and I'm just like, "Yeah, yeah, no, that's about it." [laughs]. Yeah, I can understand. So, I just feel like, yeah, his reactions were authentic. They were genuine. Like, you can understand. It's like, "Yeah, I probably would've done the same thing. Yeah, yeah."
DB: Exactly. The reaction for the reader. Yeah. Because a lot of this is brand-new territory for him too. He doesn't know how to take any of this in. He has to learn as he's going. And guess what, pretty much all of us do that every day.
NR: Yeah. This is his new job [laughs]. Doesn't really pay well. So, have you read or listened to anything recently that you would recommend to listeners?
DB: Let me think about that. I'm looking... So, I'm almost done with a book that came out recently, and I'm not sure how to pronounce it. I think the author said you could pronounce it however you wanted to. Katabasis, by R.F Kuang, and Yellowface. I'm almost done with that. I'm really enjoying that. That's sort of her replication of Dante's trip to hell, which I thought was incredibly original. I read Babel and enjoyed that one very much.
I always recommend two books that I go back and read from time to time. Isabel Wilkerson, she wrote Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns, and those are two books that I recommend. They're both nonfiction. The Warmth of Other Suns is taken from line from a James Baldwin novel. James Baldwin was one of my favorite novelists of all time. One of the, I think, the most elegant American writers this country has ever produced. So, I always recommend those to people because, if you want to understand why the world is the way the world is, read those two books and they will explain it completely.
NR: I love that. And I love The Warmth of Other Suns. I read that in school, read it on my own free time. It's a great book. Yeah.
DB: Everyone in this country should read that book.
NR: Agreed. It should be right on the curriculum.
So, thank you, David, for taking the time to go down this deep dive with me on your new story. Listeners, you can get Nash Falls on Audible now. Thank you, David.
DB: Thank you. Thank you very much.
