Those Extra Seconds

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: If there actually IS someone who manages to do it all--look at her bio!--it’s the amazing Kate White. Incredibly glam on the outside, incredibly hardworking and authentically talented on the inside, Kate’s a real role model for all of us.

Her new thriller The Fiancee is out this week--and whoa, it is a page turner. It’s hip and knowing and full of relationships and gaslighting and secrets. And a murder. Or maybe two.


And Kate is also one of the most mindful people I know...though her life is whirlwind, she always has her priorities straight and her focus clear. I always wondered how she did that so beautifully.

Today dear Reds and Readers, she reveals one of her secrets. Hmm. Would this work for you?

Those Extra Seconds

By Kate White


What a crazy time, right? The pandemic was so hard, but coming out of it seems hard, too--though in a whole different way. At moments I’m joyful, relieved, raring to go, and thrilled I can celebrate the release of my new suspense novel, The Fiancée, in person with friends, and even head in August to the Bouchercon Mystery Conference in New Orleans.

And yet then, only a short time later, I’ll feel oddly unsettled, worried that I jumped into something too fast and not sure at all what I should be doing.

Have you been riding a similar roller coaster these days?

As odd as it sounds, I’ve been aided during this time by a great piece of wisdom I learned over a decade ago from a West Coast police officer I interviewed for my work—and perhaps you’ll find her wisdom helpful, too.

This woman specialized in crisis intervention, and her job involved handling many harrowing situations, such as dealing with people standing on ledges and threatening to jump to their deaths. I asked her back then to share some of the strategies she found most effective in her job.

What she told me was fascinating, and one tactic in particular has always stayed with me.

In any kind of crisis situation, she said, we often have a bit more time than we realize to decide on the right course of action--not a lot of time, but at least a few more seconds. In the stress of the moment, however, our urge to act quickly sometimes discourages us from taking those extra seconds and as a result we end making a poor choice.

Over time, this police officer trained herself to always take those extra seconds and use them to her advantage. She’d step back and ask herself if her first instinct was the right one or whether there might be a smarter way to handle the situation.

I don’t generally incorporate a lot from my crime writing into my personal life (I swear I’ve never done anything with all the info I’ve gathered about how to poison someone and not get caught!), but this particular lesson is really helping me as I venture out into the world again. I’m hardly in crisis, but it’s a tricky and uncertain time, so it’s been beneficial to step back, wait a bit, and ask some questions before jumping into anything. Questions such as, “Is this really going to be worthwhile?” “Is there a better choice for me right now? “Will following this course of action be a way of expressing some of the good things I learned during the many months in hibernation?”

Taking those extra seconds has helped me be clearer about what I want to say yes to in the next part of my life--and what I finally want to let go of (kind of a Covid Cleanse!)

What do you think? Could the strategy be beneficial for you, too?


HANK: Great question! What do you think, you all? Even...those three seconds before you hit “send” on an email? Or say something you might regret? Have you had a moment where you were happy you waited?

THE FIANCEE

A riveting standalone thriller, set on a bucolic estate, about a captivating young woman who joins a family and threatens to upend their picture-perfect lives.

Summer’s looking forward to a break from hustling for acting work in Manhattan when she, her husband Gabe, and Gabe’s nine-year-old son come to rural Pennsylvania for the annual family get-together at her in-laws’ sprawling estate. The reunion sounds like the perfect escape, until Gabe’s younger brother Nick shows up with his new flame Hannah, who’s an actress as well.

Summer immediately recognizes Hannah from a showcase they once did together, but, strangely, Hannah claims not to know her—and that’s not the only thing that seems off. As Hannah charms the other family members, and Nick announces that he’s proposed to her, Summer doesn’t have much choice but to grit her teeth and bear it.

Not long after guests arrive, the reunion is rocked by tragedy–a family member is found dead.

Doctors attribute the loss to natural causes, but a grieving Summer soon becomes convinced there’s been foul play and that the too-good-to-be-true Hannah is involved. Though Summer tries to make Gabe and the others see the light, they keep ignoring her suspicions.

How far will Summer go to expose the truth? As she investigates just what Nick’s fiancée might have done to keep her perfect image intact, she begins to fear that the first death may only be the beginning…


Kate White is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels of suspense: seven standalone psychological thrillers, including Have You Seen Me? (an Amazon Editors’ mystery and thriller pick for 2020), as well as eight Bailey Weggins mysteries.

Her next suspense novel, The Fiancée, was published on June 29, 2021.

For fourteen years Kate served as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and though she loved the job (and all the freebies to be found in the Cosmo beauty closet), she decided to leave eight years ago to concentrate full-time on being a suspense author.

Her first mystery, Even If It Kills Her, was a Kelly Ripa Book Club pick and #1 bestseller on Amazon. She has been published in countries around the world. Her most recent Bailey Weggins mystery, Such a Perfect Wife, was nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award.

Kate is a frequent speaker at libraries and conferences and loves to share her journey from magazine editor to suspense novelist in a talk called “On Becoming an Author: Forging a New Creative Path and Finding Winning Ideas All Around You.”

She is also the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, a collection of recipes from the field’s top-selling authors. In addition to writing mysteries and thrillers, Kate is the author of several bestselling career books, including The Gutsy Girl Handbook: Your Manifesto for Success, as well as I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: How to Ask for the Money, Snag the Promotion, and Create the Career You Deserve, and Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do.

She divides her time now between New York City and Las Flores, Uruguay.