James L’Etoile uses his 29 years behind bars as an influence in his novels, short stories, and screenplays. He is a former associate warden in a maximum-security prison, a hostage negotiator, facility captain, and director of California’s state parole system. He is a nationally recognized expert witness on prison and jail operations. He is a two-time Silver Falchion Award nominee and shortlisted for the Bill Crider Award for short fiction. 

Among other things, James and Carter discuss writing being a form of therapy, how writing presentence reports evolved into writing crime fiction, and working with two different publishers. At the end of their conversation, they make up a suspenseful story using a line from Kwei Quartey’s The Whitewashed Tombs.