Rio Youers: Author of "No Second Chances" Chats About Thriller/Crime Writing, Crafting Plot Twists and the Challenges of Writing Place
From Rio Youers, the acclaimed author of Lola on Fire, comes a Hollywood noir thriller about desperate love, vengeance, and the precarious pursuit of fame.
We spoke with Rio about crafting plot twists, the challenges that come with writing a place where you don’t live, his daily writing routine and the spark that inspired his latest thriller, No Second Chances.
What was the spark that brought about the idea of No Second Chances?
The spark, really, was the antagonist, Johan Fly, who is this over-the-top Viking wannabe and YouTube star. He’s young, wealthy, alluring, and completely psychotic. I knew when he popped into my head that I wanted to spend some time with him – to find out what pushed his buttons, and how far he’d go to protect every malicious thing he’d worked for. He is in many respects the classic bad guy, the man you love to hate. Stephen King called Johan Fly “the best villain since Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels,” which made all the time I spent with him (Johan, not Stephen King) worthwhile.
I should say that, before Johan, I had the protagonists from No Second Chances – Luke Kingsley and Kitty Rae – in my mind, hanging out, waiting for a story to drop into. I knew that Luke was an actor who’d fallen on hard times, and that Kitty was a strong, determined young woman who’d arrived in L.A. with her eye on the stars, but I didn’t have much more than that. It was only when Johan Fly entered the equation, bringing his own brand of wickedness with him, that the pieces came together and the story developed. So yeah, Johan was the spark.
Usually, I start with an idea – or a breath of an idea – and then add the characters, but with No Second Chances it was the other way around.
As a thriller and crime writer, what does your process look like? Where twists and turns and action and mystery are all part of this genre, how do you make sure you are ticking all those boxes?
That’s a good question. I think it’s instinct. I just feel it. I certainly don’t spend hours outlining the novel before I write it, or strategically dropping in plot twists. I take a leap of faith – a seat-of-the-pants, wholly unadvisable approach that usually works out for me. Honestly, it’s kind of terrifying.
That’s not to suggest that I’m going in cold or blind. I have a good sense of the characters, and I have the foundation of a story, which has to feel solid before I begin building on it. With No Second Chances, I had a few movie-like scenes in my head, and a couple of key moments that I knew I had to hit. For the most part, though – and this is true of all my books – I worked it out as I went along. And of course, there was the safety net of being able to go back and rewrite certain scenes, or to tweak here and there to keep everything aligned. One thing I can say for sure: There are always multiple drafts, and I never show a book to anyone before I feel it’s ready.
Do you write every day? Can you take us through a day in the life?
Yes, I do. Every day, unless I’m traveling, and even then I take a notepad and pen with me.
A day in the life. Well, I’m an early bird. I get up around six, brew a pot of tea, and go to work. I write until ten o’clock, or thereabouts, then I hit the gym (where I invariably ponder whatever I’m working on as I pound the treadmill). Then it’s lunch. I try to take care of the admin stuff in the afternoon – emails, and such – before going to pick up the kids from school. If I’m lucky, I’ll squeeze in an extra hour of writing after that, although my brain has usually turned into mashed potatoes by 4 P.M., so I’ll either chill with a book or play my guitar.
Of course, it doesn’t always work out this way. John Lennon said that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, and he was right. It’s also what happens while you’re busy trying to write a novel.
The setting, LA/Hollywood, is a huge part of this novel. Do you have any advice for writing place? Did you face any challenges in this part of the novel process?
I’m not a native Californian. Not even close. I was born in the U.K., and have been living in Ontario, Canada for the past twenty years. I knew that setting the book in Los Angeles would present challenges, but that didn’t faze me. I mean, what’s a creative pursuit without a challenge or two? The most boring, worn-out piece of writing advice is to write what you know, but I say to hell with that! I write to escape what I know.
But you can’t be flippant about it. You have to take it seriously. Setting can be as crucial to your novel as any of your characters, so you have to get it right. I visited Los Angeles before getting too deep into No Second Chances (I actually started writing it in West Hollywood – sitting at the bar in the Viper Room). In terms of advice … I don’t know, it’s really just common sense: Visit the location, if possible; research until your eyes drop out of your head; have the work beta-read by someone who knows the area. For me, I brought in my good friend, Chris Ryall, a Southern California boy, born and bred, who was every bit as valuable as I needed him to be. I had the sunshiny California flavor cranked up to 11 in the early drafts, but with Chris’s advice, I toned it down to about a 6.5, which is where it needed to be.
And yeah, there were plenty of challenges. That’s where the research came in useful. Also, I made some geographical changes to better serve the story, and to get me out of a few tough spots. There are two towns in the later part of the novel – Nueva Vida and Pale Bone – that don’t exist. They’re entirely the products of my imagination, which of course gave me the freedom to run wild. My town. My rules.
You made the choice to acknowledge COVID in this novel. I know this is a debate among publishers so I was curious about this choice.
COVID is so huge and ugly – its damage felt around the world – that to not mention it would feel like an oversight. Also, as a writer of contemporary thrillers, I want to reflect the world we live in. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It gives the reader a mooring, something familiar and secure, which makes the make-believe aspects easier to accept.
I wrote No Second Chances in 2020 – the year that the pandemic started to take hold. The novel is set in 2022. Optimistically (believing we’d all be back to something like a normal existence), COVID is referenced in the past tense. Yet here we are, at the beginning of 2022, with Omicron raging and the world still on its knees. I should also note that COVID isn’t linked to the plot in any way; it’s only mentioned conversationally. So if you’re as exhausted with the pandemic as I am, and just want an edge-of-the-seat, cinematic thriller to jump into, No Second Chances will serve you well.
As a writer who also writes fantasy, what excites you most about writing in the thriller/crime genre?
Escaping into a majestic fantasy world – to vacate the tribulations of the real world, if only temporarily – can be a rewarding, unforgettable experience. But it’s the lowdown, hard-hitting grittiness of our reality that gets my creative engine running. In contemporary thriller/crime fiction, what’s happening on the page could well be happening right outside your door. Knowing this, the reader is hooked in a different, more visceral way. That connection fascinates me, and appeals to my storytelling mind.
What was a piece of craft advice that helped you while writing this novel? What would you tell aspiring crime writers?
Hmm, no advice particular to this book, only the advice I’ve always followed, and that I offer now: to read every day, and to have fun.
What was the last book you read that you would want to recommend?
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. A captivating, characterful, unflinching rollercoaster of American fiction. It lifted me to the tips of my toes.
Rio Youers is the British Fantasy and Sunburst Award–nominated author of Westlake Soul and Lola on Fire. His 2017 thriller, The Forgotten Girl, was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. He is the writer of Refrigerator Full of Heads, a new six-issue series from DC Comics, and Sleeping Beauties, based on the bestselling novel by Stephen King and Owen King. Rio’s new novel, No Second Chances, will be published by William Morrow in February 2022.
