SPOILER WARNING: Be sure to read Fade In before listening to this interview with Kyle Mills!
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00:00:16
All right. But if we can hold you for a
00:00:17
little bit longer, I do have some burning questions.
00:00:20
Sure, hit me. A spoiler time spoiler alert,
00:00:23
we'll put in another sound effect for this.
00:00:26
Fades alive, obviously. My jaw dropped when we first
00:00:30
interviewed you about Fade and I had fully thought with him quote
00:00:34
dying at the end of book one. Let's get some back story.
00:00:37
Let's get a prequel. Let's see him and Matt Egan
00:00:39
becoming friends. Let's go back to the beginning.
00:00:42
What would it be? Fun, that would be fun.
00:00:45
I, I, I hope you would enjoy that cause the readers would
00:00:47
enjoy it. But what got you to this point
00:00:50
to to bring him back? It was very much, I don't know,
00:00:55
I thought about him a lot because, you know, I lived in, I
00:00:58
loved that character. I mean, seriously, like when
00:01:02
when I wrote his death scene, like, I mean, there were tears
00:01:05
in my eyes when I was typing that and I but but to you, he
00:01:11
was dead. Like that was the point of the
00:01:13
book, that I was going to kill him off and all that.
00:01:15
So I, I started thinking about it.
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I remember I was on a run in Tucson, a trail running in
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Tucson, and, and I thought of a way that he could have survived
00:01:27
and it just kind of popped into my head.
00:01:29
But I didn't have a story for him back then.
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And now the world has gotten so chaotic.
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I almost need a character if I'm going to do modern, what I
00:01:41
consider modern thrillers, right?
00:01:42
This is going to deal with AI and the elites and all this
00:01:46
stuff, you know, the, the divisions in the United States.
00:01:51
I needed a, a character that could process that in an
00:01:54
interesting way. That was a bit of a philosopher
00:01:58
and you know, I'm really deeply moral guy and all this stuff.
00:02:02
So really, that's when I thought I'd use that idea to resurrect
00:02:09
him because he was the guy in my mind.
00:02:13
He's the guy to tell the contemporary story.
00:02:16
Like I want to see what all the chaos in the world through
00:02:20
Fade's eyes. I want to know what he thinks
00:02:23
about it. He's not a stoic.
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No, a lot of the a lot of the guys you know, who write, you
00:02:30
know, are Vince and are, have these very powerful characters
00:02:34
who are very stoic and all this. And that's not Fade.
00:02:38
He's, he's always thinking about things and wondering about
00:02:42
things and feeling caught up in things.
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So he seemed like the right guy to tell the the the story of
00:02:48
2025. Yeah, all these other larger
00:02:52
than life protagonist want to rise above the chaos and and the
00:02:57
the geopolitics of it all. And Faye just wants to be like
00:03:02
write it off What what does that have to do with me?
00:03:04
But I loved how you brought him back.
00:03:06
Was that the idea when you were running in Tucson?
00:03:08
Was that one of the cops, the sniper?
00:03:11
Yeah. He pulled his shot intentionally
00:03:13
because what was it that he saved them?
00:03:14
And I love how Fade Matt gave him like, hints, like he led him
00:03:18
to it. And then he let Fade put it
00:03:20
together and say, oh, the the cop was one of the guys that I
00:03:23
had saved earlier. And so he pulled the.
00:03:25
Shot. So yeah, his SEAL team had gone
00:03:28
and saved these this, this screw this, these guys in Afghanistan.
00:03:34
And the guy knew who he was and pulled his shot so and it was in
00:03:40
A and it was in a hospital. Like literally he was shot in a
00:03:43
hospital. Right, so you could help him?
00:03:45
Yeah. So and that was the moment I
00:03:49
thought, well, maybe he could have survived.
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But again, I like didn't have a story for him back then.
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This was years and years and years ago.
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But then when I thought I was going to leave the mid trap
00:04:00
stuff and I really wanted to deal with very contemporary
00:04:04
threats, runaway technology, you know, chaos or the elites and
00:04:09
all this stuff, I thought, yeah, this is a guy who could tell
00:04:13
that story and that you could empathize with.
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Yeah. And I feel like I'm not much of
00:04:20
A creative myself, but I feel like if that is coming back to
00:04:23
you 20 years later, you're thinking what would Fade feel
00:04:26
about the situation or what how would Fade respond?
00:04:29
That means you tapped into something.
00:04:31
You you had a special character. You had a secret sauce, and I
00:04:34
feel like so many people just don't listen to that voice or
00:04:37
that instinct and never get to write that fade in, never get to
00:04:40
write that second book, even though you know it was there and
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was there for a reason. You were thinking about it for a
00:04:46
reason, because there was more story to tell.
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He was a hard guy to get out of your mind.
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Yeah. No, because that's a weird
00:04:54
character and he's to some extent, you know, he's based on
00:04:58
a couple of people I've known over the years.
00:05:00
So you know that I was that were very dear to me.
00:05:03
So yeah, definitely got a hard guy to dislodge.
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What about? This point what about Matt
00:05:10
Egan's family though did because that was also a bold move that
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hits you like a sledgehammer after book 1.
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You know he had the family he he lost fate as a friend but still
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tried his best to, you know, make amends with him and that
00:05:24
that went to shit. His family just dies off page
00:05:28
like. Yeah, So Matt Egan's family is
00:05:31
funny because I like when I first wrote Matt Egan, it was 20
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years ago. He I had like a placeholder and
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I was like, Matt Egan's wife does something weird.
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And I wanted it to be really the antithesis of everything he was
00:05:47
because I love those opposites attracting.
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And one day I was typing and I don't know if people, I'm a huge
00:05:54
fan of a musician named PJ Harvey.
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And I thought Matt Egan's wife is PJ Harvey.
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She. And so that's what I went with
00:06:05
that you have this very straight laced military guy and this
00:06:08
woman who was this alternative musician, but he loved her and
00:06:13
they had a family and it was she kind of kept him out of the
00:06:17
darkness kind of thing. But I wanted him broken.
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Like you had to have AI mean all the people that joined John
00:06:27
Lowe's little cabal. Right.
00:06:32
The thing that John Lowe does, which makes him very morally
00:06:37
ambiguous, Ambiguous. I can't do it like you.
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Yeah, I did it to you. You've screwed me up, is that he
00:06:45
gives people what they want and what they need, right.
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And that's not always that. Sometimes that can be a really
00:06:51
dark thing. And so I gave Matt Egan.
00:06:56
Matt Egan now has become somebody who needed something
00:06:58
that Lowe could give him. And now essentially he's a
00:07:01
little bit enslaved, which again, is kind of like John Lo's
00:07:06
trying to do the right thing. But maybe not.
00:07:09
He ain't no Boy Scout. No.
00:07:12
And look at look at what he what.
00:07:15
Look at what Matt did at the training exercise.
00:07:17
I thought the training scene was, even though there's plenty
00:07:20
of crazy wild action scenes, one of the most fun to go on is the
00:07:23
training scene when it's like, bring me the beers and I'm like,
00:07:27
oh crap. Like how the hell is this going
00:07:29
to go? And that's when you get to see
00:07:30
Fade's humanity and he's a team guy.
00:07:33
The SEAL, the SEAL mission was still embedded in him, in his
00:07:36
DNA, even after all that he's been through.
00:07:38
Matt, though, was a loose cannon there and then, particularly
00:07:42
with Eugene, Well, First off, the Eugene character was great.
00:07:46
And then even coming back in the dreams, those dream sequences
00:07:49
were wild. I wonder where you're going with
00:07:51
that. I wonder if that gets unpacked.
00:07:53
How would that? You know, yeah, poor, poor Fade.
00:07:59
But yeah, it's Matt, I think is his own, you know, independent
00:08:04
character that I wanted to be really rich and interesting
00:08:08
because it's easy when you have a character as powerful as Fade
00:08:13
to let the other people fall into the background.
00:08:16
And and it's like when I wrote a book in the first person once
00:08:20
and I discovered that the challenge of that is very much
00:08:26
how do you make the secondary characters who don't have their
00:08:28
own voice rich? And so I wanted Matt to be that
00:08:34
guy. And he is obviously extremely
00:08:38
angry and and has lost his icy veneer, which is hard for him.
00:08:45
So unhinged. Mad.
00:08:47
Unhinged. Yeah, Matt, Maddie and the the
00:08:50
the guy who never made a mistake, you know, is always
00:08:54
super calm, unhinged, lost everything.
00:08:57
Yeah. So that's those are the scene.
00:08:59
With the coffin though. Huh.
00:09:01
The scene with the coffin, yeah, Oh my goodness, that was wild.
00:09:06
So, yeah, I mean, you, you know, the stakes were high, you know,
00:09:11
the stakes were high and there and John Lowe's serious about
00:09:14
putting together a team of the best.
00:09:17
And so how do you do that, you think?
00:09:20
But what is SAS training? And then you turn it up to 11,
00:09:25
right? And so, and then everybody under
00:09:30
that level of stress, all the characters reveal themselves,
00:09:34
right? Like who is Linnea?
00:09:36
Who's Danny, you know, and how do they react to those things?
00:09:40
Linnea being the very straight laced person with no sense of
00:09:43
humor, but then being disappointed in herself because
00:09:47
she wasn't the moral compass there.
00:09:49
Fayed was. And she wanted, you know, what
00:09:53
Lowe was giving her, which, you know, we find out.
00:09:56
You'll find out in the next book what it is he gave her.
00:09:58
So it's, it's interesting to put characters under that level of
00:10:05
stress and then see who they are really.
00:10:09
Yeah, I think it's really cool how she she almost shines as the
00:10:12
the next teammate and team member that you kind of want to
00:10:15
have your back, which she's a sniper and she takes that shot
00:10:19
and Fade, no one, no one thinks it's a viable shot.
00:10:23
And he forces her to take it and she takes it and makes it like
00:10:26
Fade's pushing people to their limits because he pushes himself
00:10:30
to those limits. And when he's getting Lynnae and
00:10:33
the team to do the same, whether whether it's like the physical
00:10:36
limits of taking that shot or the moral limits of testing who
00:10:39
they are and figuring out what's right and wrong.
00:10:43
I thought the team dynamic was cool.
00:10:44
Reminded me of like an American assassin.
00:10:46
You know, some of these like really iconic training scenes
00:10:48
that bring the team together and they have this come to Jesus
00:10:51
moment. I knew after that scene they
00:10:53
were as tight as can be. Any OP, you put them in the
00:10:55
village, you know, the, the Madagascar village and all the
00:10:58
other OPS. I was like, they're tight.
00:11:01
No one's screwing each other. There's no bad guy in this team.
00:11:04
Like they are the real deal. They're going to go out and get
00:11:06
shit done. Yeah, they finally did, though
00:11:09
she is very wary of him because he's so different than she is.
00:11:14
And, you know, she likes the steady more like Danny, right?
00:11:19
Like the really steady guy. And he is.
00:11:23
And that guy's, you know, fades all fire.
00:11:26
And I think she points out that, you know, he's the guy that
00:11:31
never dies, but not everybody else is bullet as bulletproof as
00:11:37
he is. So it's that and that's a really
00:11:40
interesting relationship to deal with, because the thing with
00:11:46
fate is he's one of those people who everybody likes immediately
00:11:52
and she doesn't. And it like, and he he gets to
00:11:55
play with that all the time. Like it's like the only person
00:11:58
in the world that doesn't like him and he has a a great time
00:12:01
with it. It's his actions though, you
00:12:03
know, actions speak louder than words.
00:12:05
It's his actions that bring her to his side or bring her into
00:12:09
the fold. And I feel like she'll have
00:12:11
she'll have his back through anything now after what they've
00:12:13
been through like trial by 5 and.
00:12:14
She's that type of person, yeah, she's that type of person.
00:12:17
She's never going to let A-Team right now.
00:12:20
The other people, I feel like Lisa and him have that bond.
00:12:22
She was she was a great. I feel like there were phases of
00:12:25
women in this book, like she was phase one.
00:12:27
You met her, you saw who she hit her relationship with.
00:12:30
Fade showed who Fade was in the way.
00:12:33
He was going to care for her and help cover up the thing with the
00:12:35
football player. Like they had each other's back.
00:12:37
And then Phase 2 is like Linnea. They have each other's back
00:12:40
trial by fire. But then you throw us this
00:12:42
oddball woman who is part call girl but part high end
00:12:47
assistant. Were you just having fun with
00:12:49
that? I was like what?
00:12:50
Where's Kyle Co with this one? Or someone is going to the,
00:12:55
you're going to the elites, right?
00:12:57
Yeah. This, I'm not making this shit
00:13:00
up. Like this stuff goes on and you
00:13:03
see it. I mean, it became kind of blew
00:13:05
up with the Epstein's. But this stuff exists like you,
00:13:11
you know, young women who are trafficked and, you know, sent
00:13:15
off to Eastern Europe or, you know, the Middle East or
00:13:20
whatever. And, you know, become companions
00:13:25
for very wealthy people. I mean, they're all this kind of
00:13:28
stuff exists. It's real like almost nothing.
00:13:31
It's funny. The the the next book I'm
00:13:33
writing is it's almost everything is grounded in some
00:13:35
incident that I've put together that's real.
00:13:39
And Raya is real. So she's essentially sold to him
00:13:44
and she knows it. But their relationship evolves
00:13:49
because he's not the kind of person that would ever he keeps
00:13:52
telling her to quit, you know, and he'll give her all his money
00:13:56
because he doesn't care about it.
00:13:57
They're also still so broken. Like, yeah, I think they can
00:14:01
connect with one another because they've been there.
00:14:03
Like, not many people can look at fate and say, I've been where
00:14:07
you've been. I've been as low as you've been.
00:14:08
I've been as screwed over as as you've been, and you still keep
00:14:12
fighting. You're a survivor.
00:14:14
I think she maybe this is what you intended.
00:14:17
She's going to give him the will to live.
00:14:18
I, I feel like that's the arc. I don't know what Fade 3 has in
00:14:21
store. Fade out, maybe.
00:14:22
Who knows what we're going to oh, fade out or not?
00:14:24
Because that might have a connotation.
00:14:26
Someday last book. Yeah, someday.
00:14:28
We already thought we had the last book in book #1 but you,
00:14:32
you did the, the Kyle Mills twist.
00:14:34
You, you pulled the rug out from under us.
00:14:36
But yeah, I I just think she's the one who can basically save
00:14:39
Fade from himself. Absolutely, Absolutely.
00:14:43
I'm somebody that grounds him and gives him something to live
00:14:47
for, somebody to be loyal to. And, you know, he needs that
00:14:53
because the world is, I don't know, he's not sure he's cares
00:14:56
about that and cares about being alive or dead.
00:14:59
But I mean, we all need that, right?
00:15:01
I mean, this is what I'm trying to do with fate is create
00:15:04
somebody that we can all kind of empathize with.
00:15:07
We all need something to live for, and we kind of cling to
00:15:12
whatever that might be, if it's family or friends or, I don't
00:15:16
know, sometimes it's a job, you know, whatever that makes us
00:15:19
feel like we belong on this earth.
00:15:21
And he needs that, and she does too.
00:15:26
And that they, you know, they come to a pact where that's what
00:15:30
they're going to be for each other.
00:15:33
And we'll see. We'll see if it works.
00:15:36
Yeah, it sounds almost like what I thought Matt Egan's role was
00:15:39
in Book 1, which was he was the one trying to give Fade that
00:15:42
sense of belonging and like, never giving up on him as as a
00:15:45
former friend, even through everything.
00:15:48
And now I feel like I don't want to say he failed in that.
00:15:52
He played a very important role in it, but he couldn't put the
00:15:54
finishing touches on it. He couldn't be Fade's savior and
00:15:58
friend, and everything's kumbaya in the end.
00:16:00
I think he's too. Broken.
00:16:02
He's too broken now with losing his fan yeah, so curious about
00:16:05
his arc curious about Raya's arc.
00:16:07
I think they she definitely has a future so I want to see where
00:16:11
you go with it. But no doubt you're going to
00:16:12
pull stuff from headlines again. I was reading the scenes about
00:16:16
the syringe attacks when John Lowe like like we were saying a
00:16:20
lot of your books have puzzles in them.
00:16:22
I remember Mitra have enemy at the gates.
00:16:24
There were so many puzzles to figure out what these packages
00:16:26
being left all throughout Africa.
00:16:28
But he almost puts the puzzle together, like, why are these
00:16:32
people being attacked? Not killed, not beaten up?
00:16:35
They're also really brilliant scientists and thinkers.
00:16:37
They're almost the elites themselves.
00:16:39
Why are they getting mobbed? And then he finds out about the
00:16:42
syringe attacks. I swear I read that chapter,
00:16:45
checked my phone like 10 minutes later and read about the music
00:16:48
festival in France. Yeah, A. 100 something people
00:16:52
stabbed with syringes at a music festival.
00:16:55
Kyle, you, you ripped the stuff right out of the headlines.
00:16:58
It's insane A. Syringe.
00:17:00
Yeah, that's. The most obscure thing, and it
00:17:02
happened while I'm reading your book.
00:17:04
And it happened well after I wrote it.
00:17:06
Yeah, it happened, yeah. So that's a, that's also a a
00:17:09
component that wasn't as important in the Mitch rap
00:17:13
books. And that that I really like is
00:17:15
that's the sleuthy stuff. Yes, yeah.
00:17:18
The book's not a mystery or anything, but you.
00:17:21
How do they figure this out? And I like those steps.
00:17:25
You know, they like like a Sherlock Holmes would would
00:17:30
take. And so that was kind of the goal
00:17:35
without was the Mitch wrap step was a little less procedural.
00:17:39
Yeah. Now one other thing just to wrap
00:17:43
it up that makes him Kyle Mills book is the technology.
00:17:46
I don't know what I like the more between the drone in the
00:17:49
very beginning, the AI drone, it's almost like your own
00:17:52
personal bodyguard in the sky, your watcher in the sky.
00:17:56
But that's exactly what I expect.
00:17:58
A guy like a John Lowe or I should say an Elon Musk or, you
00:18:02
know, Jeff Bezos to come up with to protect themselves.
00:18:05
That drone was really cool, but I think the better piece of tech
00:18:08
might have been the Mystery Machine.
00:18:11
Yeah, and. I think you were on the Mystery
00:18:13
Machine for a little while when you had that really, really
00:18:15
awesome beard growing in. Did did you unplug from the
00:18:18
Mystery Machine? No, I need that.
00:18:19
That's literally a face Wyoming face warmer.
00:18:24
So when you're skiing and stuff it, it definitely has a benefit.
00:18:28
But then when it gets warm again, I shave it off.
00:18:31
So that's my cycle, but that machine.
00:18:34
Was perfect because it kind of goes to that moral ambiguity of
00:18:38
John Lowe knows he's not doing the most upright thing.
00:18:42
And that very haunting description of he takes the
00:18:44
children, puts them in this Academy, gives them a life they
00:18:47
would never had, but is secretly stealing their blood to be used
00:18:51
to rejuvenate and make superhumans who are youthful.
00:18:55
Where did you come up with that? Because no doubt in a few months
00:18:58
we're going to see it being sold on Amazon.
00:19:00
Oh God, I hope not. So yeah, the blood thing is real
00:19:05
and probably not a direction humanity I hope wants to go, but
00:19:09
it seems to work. So the other, the other big
00:19:13
motivator for that is, and I, and I kind of made fun of this
00:19:18
in the book a little bit, is the idea, the cliche of somebody
00:19:22
waking up from a coma. So it like when I came up with
00:19:27
the idea, it felt a little General Hospital.
00:19:32
And when I did research, I was strangely, I have two friends
00:19:35
who've been in comas and when I did research for it, it's just
00:19:41
really not realistic. And in fact, I made fun of it in
00:19:44
the book where he where Fayed likes to watch Arabic soap
00:19:49
operas and the guy's like waking up and but his best friend's
00:19:54
going to screw him. And it's like this big soap
00:19:56
opera. And so I wanted to make it
00:19:59
realistic and that that's where you have this machine that helps
00:20:03
him recover and also all the training that he had to do and,
00:20:09
and the trying to come back and trying to figure out the
00:20:11
difference between, you know, dreams and, and reality and
00:20:15
stuff. So I didn't want it to be that,
00:20:18
you know, you wake up from a coma and you're, you're great.
00:20:20
You know, you're. Right.
00:20:22
So, you know, doing backflips and shooting people and all that
00:20:24
stuff. I wanted him to not be able to
00:20:26
get out of bed, to be able to walk on crutches and all that
00:20:29
stuff. And I think that's something
00:20:31
like how you brought Fade back with the police sniper pulling a
00:20:34
shot because he had respect for Fade.
00:20:36
He was, you know, paying him one back.
00:20:38
I bought into this one because a big question I had after Fade
00:20:41
one was how the heck is this guy going to operate?
00:20:43
How is he going to kick ass? And I was like, I hope it's not
00:20:46
just some very gimmicky, you know, some of these characters
00:20:49
who are pushing late 50s are still super elite operators.
00:20:52
They're taking pills, they're doing steroids.
00:20:54
I was like, I hope it's just not that generic kind of trajectory.
00:20:56
And there was nothing generic about the rehab facility, the
00:21:00
Mystery Machine, the bullet surgery, how it was perfect.
00:21:03
He was in a coma because that's how they were able to extract
00:21:06
the bullet. If he wasn't in a COVA, if he
00:21:07
wasn't immobile for months, they wouldn't have been able to get
00:21:10
the bullet out. Hats off to you.
00:21:12
You got me. I was a skeptical reader after I
00:21:14
heard fate survived. I was like, how the heck are you
00:21:17
going to make him not only survive, but make him be a super
00:21:20
bad ass again? And you pulled it off with fate
00:21:23
and you, you really got me with that one.
00:21:25
So. Yeah.
00:21:26
And it starts kind of really dark because, you know, he that
00:21:29
that drug, by the way, that gets people out of comas is real.
00:21:34
And you know that it kills 80% of the people they give it to.
00:21:39
And blow's basically like you weren't doing so well so dad
00:21:44
wouldn't have been a big deal. But you know, you didn't die, so
00:21:47
it's all good. Oh man, I know a little bit of a
00:21:51
little bit of John Lowe's character early on, you know?
00:21:54
You you definitely get that and you then that keeps up
00:21:56
throughout the book that that's how he thinks problems through.
00:22:00
It's almost like a high risk factor doesn't matter.
00:22:02
It's still worth it. It's like pot odds and poker.
00:22:04
You're you know, you're in the pot.
00:22:05
You got to keep playing the game.
00:22:07
Exactly. Well, Kyle, Congrats on fade in.
00:22:12
I I can't believe there's more to fade.
00:22:14
After reading the first book, I wasn't sure this would happen
00:22:17
And and now you've got me interested and intrigued for the
00:22:20
third one. Well, hopefully I'm glad you
00:22:23
liked it and hopefully you'll like the the next one.
00:22:26
And I just have to say, great shirt.
00:22:28
This is a great shirt. We'll have to hook you up with
00:22:30
our new rebrand here, so. The rebrand, I haven't, I
00:22:33
haven't gotten there yet though. I don't know.
00:22:34
I kind of like it though. It's it's a little bit of
00:22:37
history. Yeah, true.
00:22:38
The the original Mitch rap podcast.
00:22:41
Well, Kyle, thanks so much. Thanks for spending the time and
00:22:44
and congratulations on yet another pub day.
00:22:46
Thanks, Happy, happy to be here and it's always great to catch
00:22:51
up with you. Got to thank our patrons
00:22:53
including our special, our deputy director, special Deputy
00:22:57
Director Sherry F, our special operator Jason C, our special
00:23:00
agents Ben, Darrell, Kevin, George, Matt, Don, Peggy, Mark
00:23:04
and Chris. Subscribe, rate, interview to
00:23:07
all three seasons of No Limits. You can find us@thrillerpod.com
00:23:11
or on Twitter and Instagram.