Strangers on A Plane

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Usually when you call something  “an airplane book” it means a book  that’s perfect reading for an airplane—riveting and distracting and compelling.

(Yes, I know it could also be about airplanes, or whatever. But go with me here.)

I love airplane books. And I love seeing what everyone else is reading on airplanes. (Lots of people still read book-books, my survey shows. Especially when there are no plugs on the plane.)

But this perfect airplane book, THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A, takes place on an airplane. Not completely, but the opening premise is so chilling that it’ll make you take a second look at the person sitting beside you.

Listen to this:

Jack Buchanan knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver―he just can't figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe isn't in Jake's line of work and didn't go to college with him. They have nearly nothing in common apart from a deep and shared certainty that they've met before. As their airplane conversation deepens, both struggle to figure out what circumstances could have possibly brought them together. Then, in a revelation that sends Jake reeling, Clara admits she's traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and she disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing.

AHHH!  What would you do?  Carter Wilson, the author, didn’t start out to be a novelist.   What got him there? Boredom.

And then—something else. Something that applies to all of our lives.

"Not Enough Time" Is a Myth!

by Carter Wilson

 As a bestselling author of six psychological suspense novels who also has a full-time job and family, I'm frequently asked, "how to you find the time to write?" I used to answer this vaguely, like I was some kind of superhuman who didn't know how to explain their innate powers. But it didn't take long to realize I wasn't special. I wasn't doing anything that anyone else isn't capable of. I was merely making choices that allowed me to do the things that made me happiest.

True, there are only twenty-four hours in a day. But that only matters if you choose to define your life as a series of days. But what if, rather than defining your life through time, you defined it though passion? Through the things that made you happy rather than the things you felt you had to do? What would that look like?

I have a formula for all this, and it doesn't factor in time as a variable at all. It's this:

PASSION + COMMITMENT = HAPPINESS

I didn't start writing until I was thirty-three, and, having no formal education in in the field, had no idea what I was doing. My writing career began on a single day when, in order to stave off boredom at a continuing-education class, I began writing a story. I wrote that story for two hours in the class, went home, then decided I had more to say. Three months later I had a 400-page manuscript. I remember writing that last line, sitting back, and thinking, what just happened? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? And, the biggest question of them all: now what?

I proceeded to learn the publishing industry, mostly through Google. What do I do with a completed novel? Find an agent. How do I do that? Write query letters. And so on. After seventy or so rejections I landed that agent. She shipped my book around to all the publishing houses, where it took about a year to be soundly rejected.

That last rejection represented an inflection point in my life. Two years earlier, I never would have conceived that I'd soon be writing a novel, landing an agent, and having my book rejected by all the publishing houses. With that final rejection, it was the time to define exactly what this life path was. Give it a name. Was this a whim, or was this a passion? Did writing make me happy?

Yes, I decided. It did.

So I found the time around my already busy life to write a second novel, which took a year to finish and another year to be rejected. As did books three and four. Finally, roughly eight years after that day in the classroom where I began my first story, I landed my first publishing deal with that fifth book. Since then, I've had four other novels published, a sixth releasing this July, have won numerous awards and have even hit the USA Today bestsellers list. And yet, I still have that full-time job. I've still managed to raise two wonderful if-slightly-deranged kids. I still spend cherished quality time with Jessica, my partner. I still manage to log 250 workouts a year.

It's not a miracle. It's not some secret time-management technique. I do all those things because I have a passion for them all. I love writing, my job, my kids, Jessica, and exercise. Make the things you are passionate for your priority, and the rest will slip away. And there's this added benefit: focusing on things that make you happy will naturally result in spending less time on things that don't. For me, those things include obsessing over the news, wasting hours on social media, and reading books or watching shows with which I'm not fully engaged.

When people say, "I don't have the time," it's usually just an excuse. What they really mean is they don't want to prioritize something into their life because it's less important to them than other things. Sure, sometimes there's literally not enough time to do something even if you love it (like writing a book in a week), but if you really wanted to do something, like master the guitar, you could do it. It could take years, but that doesn't matter. Define your life through passion, not time.

Yes, my days are full. I get up at 5am, work out, write, get the kids to school, go to work, come home, write some more, spend quality time with my family, and then I'm in bed around 10pm. I can't write a novel in three months anymore; it takes a year.

Which leads me to the second part of the equation. Commitment. You can be passionate all you want about something, but if you don't throw yourself fully into something, the happiness you seek around that thing will never be fully realized. Many instances when I sit down to write, there is no muse guiding me. No sense of losing time as my fingers take control of my brain and the story magically unfolds. Lots of times writing sucks, feeling more like a low-level data-entry job than crafting a piece of creative fiction. But I have to sit in that chair every day, seven days a week, because for all the times it's not fun, I know I'm an overall happier person for it.

Next time you actually use the phrase, "I don't have any time," catch yourself and think about what it is you really mean. Do you not have the time, or do you not have the passion? Asking yourself that simple question might reshape how you view what it means to be happy.

Passion plus commitment equals happiness. It can be that easy.

  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yup, I so agree! But I still wonder about the person sitting next to me on the plane. And all the stories flying with me. Stories I’ll never know.

Did you ever meet someone life-changing on a plane?

And a copy of THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A to one lucky commenter!

THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A

   coming July 2 from Sourcebooks

Jake Buchanan knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver—he just can’t figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe isn’t in Jake’s line of work and didn’t go to college with him. They have nearly nothing in common apart from a deep and shared certainty that they’ve met before. Despite their best efforts over a probing conversation, both struggle to figure out what circumstances could possibly have brought them together. Then, in a revelation that sends Jake reeling, Clara admits she’s traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing. 

The Dead Girl in 2A is the story of what happens to Jake and Clara after they get off that plane, and the manipulative figure who has brought them together decades after they first met. Intensely creepy, beautifully written, and full of Carter Wilson’s signature whom-can-you-trust paranoia, this is a psychological thriller unlike any you’ve read before.

ABOUT CARTER WILSON

USA Today and #1 Denver Post bestselling author Carter Wilson explores the depths of psychological tension and paranoia in his dark, domestic thrillers. Carter is a two-time winner of the Colorado Book Award and his novels have received multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. Carter’s bestselling, critically acclaimed standalone thrillers include MISTER TENDER’S GIRL; REVELATION; THE COMFORT OF BLACK; THE BOY IN THE WOODS; and FINAL CROSSING. He has also contributed short fiction to various publications, and most notably was featured in the R.L. Stine young-adult anthology, Scream and Scream Again. Born in New Mexico, Carter now lives outside of Boulder, Colorado in a Victorian house that is spooky but isn’t haunted…yet.