Guess what I heard? But—you have to promise not to tell.
Is there any one of us who wouldn’t lean closer and listen to the person who asked us that? Especially if the question was whispered, hushed, delivered with a sense of drama?
“Guess what I heard?” means there’s a surprise, there’s a shock, there’s a twist. And it sometimes means there’s a secret. A secret that someone probably wishes would not be told.
“Guess what I heard?” And the problem with secrets — with gossip, with rumors — is that they may not be true.
Of course I can keep a secret, we say, believing it. Tell me.
And that’s the point of no return.
Once we hear the secret — true or not — then comes the next question: do we tell? And who do we tell?
And when we demand of our listener the same promise not to tell — it doesn’t matter, does it? Because the story is out of our control.
And what about the third person in this equation? The person who this secret — true or not — is about? Our whispered game of gossip telephone may change their lives. It may even destroy them.
Because there is one deadly weapon we all possess: Words. And we each must make the choice whether to use our deadly weapons for better or for evil.
In psychological thrillers, character is revealed by how they use their words. Whether they use them as messengers of truth — or they weaponize them.
In my new One Wrong Word, Arden Ward is a crisis management expert, and as a result, is also an expert in using her words to persuade people to see the world the way she wants them to see it. She’s working to repair the reputation of an acquitted killer and trying to protect his shattered family — she but as the truth emerges, so do the doubts. And Arden begins to fear that maybe she’s using her skills to protect a murderer.
Problem is — Arden’s about to be unfairly fired from her job. Because someone is spreading scandalous rumors about her — and her boss believes them. One wrong word is about to ruin her life.
If you had asked me at first whether it was based on a true story, I would have said no. But I was about ten chapters into writing a thriller about scandal and gossip and revenge when I recognized that it was based on a true story. And it was about me.
When I was about 19, one of my first jobs in the real world was in a political campaign. Very high pressure, very high stakes, very fast-paced. I was a worker bee, a go-fer, and I absolutely loved it.
But one day I overheard a conversation between two campaign big-wigs, and they were gossiping about another powerful man in the campaign.
We’ll call him Jim, not his real name.
The first man said something like: “I hear Jim has a big crush on Hank. And if his wife ever gets wind of it, it’ll be a public relations disaster. What should we do?”
A … what? I was baffled. This was completely news to me, I had no idea, and certainly would never be involved in such a thing. I was horrified.
But then the second man said something like: “Only one thing to do. I guess we’ll have to fire Hank.”
And I thought what? Fire me? Fire me? Seems to me that Jim is the one who has to go.
In the end, no one got fired, and nothing untoward ensued, and the campaign ended, (they lost, ha ha) and we all went our separate ways.
But that moment has stayed with me so profoundly. I had done absolutely nothing wrong, yet I was the expendable one. And it would have been murder if they had gone through with it, right? They were willing to murder my reputation to get what they wanted.
One wrong word, and my life would have been completely different — followed by whispers and rumors, poisoned by perceived scandal. And that’s the power of words, in real life and in novels.
So One Wrong Word became a love letter to my 19-year-old self, and it was a joy for me to allow Arden Ward to say what I should have said, and to do what I should have done. And to reclaim her power.
I got to use storytelling to knit up the raveled edges of fact … and have a do-over by way of fiction. (And in real life, there were no real murders.) Yes, One Wrong Word is a twisty cat-and-mouse thriller but as Paul Harvey used to say: now you know the rest of the story.
