The Crime Cafe

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with international banking expert and crime fiction writer Carl Vonderau.

You can access a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today had a career in international banking before turning to crime writing. He’s also interviewed crime—

Carl (01:03): Why wouldn’t you?

Debbi (01:08): One naturally leads to the other.

Carl (01:11): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (01:12): Certainly. He’s also interviewed true crime authors to explore the effects of crime on the lives who may be tangential to that of the crime itself. I believe it was “behind every crime, there’s a family.”

Carl (01:29): Yes, that’s right. That’s sort of my motto when I write.

Debbi (01:33): I like that a lot. His interviews appear on a show called Person of Interest, part of the Authors on the Air Network. And he lives in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco.

Carl (01:46): No, San Diego. San Diego.

Debbi (01:48): Oh, you’re in San Diego because San Francisco was what was in your bio.

Carl (01:52): Really? Really?

Debbi (01:54): Really.

Carl (01:55): Oh, I got to fix that.

Debbi (01:55): Oh my God. Good heavens. So much for my questions about San Francisco. Well, San Diego is an awesome city, I have to say. I love San Diego. I’ve been there once and it’s like, oh man, this place is awesome.

Carl (02:10): Oh, well think of this. Before that I lived for 15 years in Montreal, right? In Montreal, there’s like six weeks of summer and it rains most of the time. So can you compare that to San Diego? I mean, somebody at my old bank asked, “Well, when your wife got an offer to teach here, how long did it take you to decide that? About three nanoseconds?”

Debbi (02:38): Seriously. No kidding. That is like, whoa. That’s where I’d go if I could. Yeah. Great place. Well, I’m just glad you’re with us today. Carl Vanderau And I think I got that right. Even the second time.

Carl (02:54): Yeah.

Debbi (02:55): All right. So awesome. So how are things in San Diego today?

Carl (03:02): It’s overcast.

Debbi (03:04): Overcast.

Carl (03:04): Yeah. It’s getting down into the 60s.

Debbi (03:08): Well, good grief. That’s just freezing.

Carl (03:10): That’s tough. I may have to put on a sweater.

Debbi (03:14): Oh my word. Well, stay warm. I urge you to stay warm. Keep that sweater on. We don’t want you to catch your death or anything. Let’s see. I see that you were in banking and you specialized in anti-money laundering.

Carl (03:35): Well, that’s what’s on the back of the book.

Debbi (03:38): That’s what’s on the back of the book.

Carl (03:41): I didn’t really specialize so much yet in banking. I took some courses on money laundering and I was involved with some people that tried to do some money laundering with me. And then I did a lot of international trade and I think it’s something like 7% of international trade is actually money laundering.

Debbi (04:04): I can believe it. There’s a lot of that going on.

Carl (04:08): Yeah.

Debbi (04:09): Yeah. Was there a reason in particular that you decided to start writing crime fiction?

Carl (04:16): Well, write what you know.

Debbi (04:21): I followed the same kind of advice. Yeah.

Carl (04:25): No, for some reason I thought that would be the easiest way to get published, but then I found that I tend to write about dysfunctional families and there’s nothing that makes a family more dysfunctional than crime and the possibility of wealth. So that’s what I found. I think it amplifies all the conflicts that are already there in these characters.

Debbi (04:57): That’s interesting. I know what you mean about focusing on dysfunctional families. I have a tendency to do that myself. Sometimes I wonder if the concept of family can extend to things like workplaces or communities.

Carl (05:17): Well, that’s an interesting question because quite often I worked at banks and one bank in particularly and they call it a family. We’re all a family here. We treat each other like a family. Some companies do that, but when the numbers go bad, that kind of disappears. When they have a down year, you may be family, but you got to go.

Debbi (05:42): That’s right. Profits get thicker than blood, something like that.

Carl (05:50): Yeah.

Debbi (05:50): There’s no blood there to thicken. It’s all about money. Yeah, it is unfortunate when things like that happen. So how would you describe your writing style then? Do you feel it’s very realistic or psychological suspense?

Carl (06:10): I think it’s more psychological suspense. I’m most interested in the characters, but I love a good plot, so the two really have to go together and they’re categorized as thrillers, so it has to start off strong. It’s interesting in this book, Saving Myles, which was the last book out, it’s about a family who has a very difficult son. So they sent him to a residential treatment center against his will, and when he comes back, he seems totally changed. And then he sneaks off to Mexico to try and do a drug deal and gets kidnapped. Now, the father is one of these high test bankers, a very prominent banker, and the only way he can save him the second time is to become involved in money laundering. And when I originally wrote that book, I started it out with that someone shows up at the father’s condo and your son’s been kidnapped.

(07:15): And then people said to me, “Well, why do we care about these characters?” But that’s the way you’re supposed to start a thriller, right? You either start it with a body or some danger or some kind of fight or something because that’s the way thrillers start. And then I though of Dennis Lahane’s Mystic River. You read that? It’s a wonderful book, but it doesn’t start off with the crime that takes place during most of the book. It starts off with 12-year-old boys and their father’s work for the candy factory, and one of them gets kidnapped and sexually abused, and that is what really resonates throughout the whole book. It causes everything or all the character interactions. And I thought, in this family, what would resonate like that, that colors everything else? Well, when they have to forcefully send their son off to a residential treatment center, when they have to hire two strangers to come and basically kidnap their son and bring him to the treatment center.

(08:19): So I though, well, I’m really taking a chance here, but it worked, so what can I say?

Debbi (08:26): It does. I read the first two chapters of your book.

Carl (08:30): Oh, good.

Debbi (08:31): They are a powerful opening.

Carl (08:34): Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Debbi (08:36): They are. They really are.

Carl (08:39): Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks. But that’s what plays throughout the whole book, how that both destroys a family and helps to bring them together.

Debbi (08:51): That is quite a topic to tackle in fiction, but very brave, I think, and good on your part. How much –

Carl (08:59): Well, I’m not going to get fired now.

Debbi (09:04): There you go.

Carl (09:06): Yeah. I mean, I’m not selling any books, but I’m not going to get fired. Well, when I was in banking, I’ve been writing for over 20 years, but I never told anybody in banking that that’s what I did, because then they wouldn’t think I was really very serious about my career. But then toward the end, I sort of let things slide a little bit and some people started to guess it and then, well, now they all know.

Debbi (09:40): Hey, I know lawyers who practice and write books under their own names, so I figure why not?

Carl (09:48): Yeah.

Debbi (09:50): Let’s see. Some of them don’t, of course. So some people are more, I guess, precious with their identities in terms of they don’t feel like being that exposed or something.

Carl (10:02): Yeah. Well, and I don’t talk about my own family very much publicly because they prefer that. But I do admit some things. I mean, we did go through this with one of my sons more than 20 years ago, and it was a very difficult experience.

Debbi (10:19): Horrifying.

Carl (10:22): Most difficult thing in my life. But what a parent realizes, and everybody knows this, you just have to say it, is that if you have the choice between sending your son away forcefully and he’ll hate you forever and saving his life, what will you do? If that will save his life, what will you do? Well, you’ll save his life. You have to. And so that’s what these parents believed, and that’s what a lot of parents believe when they have to send their kids to one of these residential treatment centers.

Debbi (10:55): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a sobering thought. How much research did you do during the process of writing your books?

Carl (11:09): Let’s see. Well, the first book, Murderabilia, is about the son of a serial killer, and nobody knows this about him until he’s accused of the same crime, and it all comes out that he’s the son of this man in prison in Illinois. And so I had to do a lot of research on serial killers and children of serial killers, and they lead very, very tough lives. I mean, not many people know that Charlie Manson had three, actually, I think it’s four sons now, I think. But when originally did the book, there were three, and one disappeared. Nobody knows who he is or where he is, like the character in my book. Another, they knew and he was bullied throughout school, and a third one committed suicide, this trauma of having this evil person as a father, and how can you ever live down that stigma?

(12:04): So that’s what I explored in that book, and I had to do that kind of research, which was tough because you really had to get into the heads of serial killers. Now, in Saving Myles, it’s set in both San Diego as well as in Tijuana. So I had to do some research in Tijuana about, particularly on settings, where could this take place there? And I was on the board of one of the branches of the YMCA here, and we had people we knew in the YMCA in Tijuana, so one of these guys showed me around. Where could a kidnapping take place?

(12:46): So for instance, he shows me this Plaza Fiesta there, and they’re like 20 bars and all different kinds of music coming from each one swirling into each other like a wave and drunks weaving around. Oh, they’re open all the time. It’s just a huge place of entertainment. So we go in there and I’m looking around and I’m thinking, well, this is too crowded. A kidnapping could never occur here. So then we go outside to the parking lot and there were guards in the parking lot, and then we saw this underground entrance to an underground parking, and I went under there, and it was damp and mildewy. It smelled. There was puddles on the floor, chunks of concrete had fallen from the ceiling. There were cars there and nobody was in there. And so you can imagine what I though, perfect, perfect. So that’s what I used.

(13:43): And in another case, we were interviewing people that had been kidnapped in Mexico, and so he brought me to the owner of this taco chain. I don’t know, they had three or four restaurants, and this man had been kidnapped before. And what was it like? He said, “Well, the kidnappers were actually in the same barrio where I grew up. I knew who they were, and they kept me, and my family was delaying too much to pay, so they cut off one of my toes and sent it to them.” These are people he knew. And you get these kinds of details that really evoke a whole setting as much as anything can do.

Debbi (14:34): Good grief.

Carl (14:35): Yeah. And then the rich people with these houses with these huge yards behind barricades and bulletproof glass and guards and cars on the street.

Debbi (14:44): Oh my gosh.

Carl (14:46): Yeah.

Debbi (14:48): Straight out of something like Breaking Bad.

Carl (14:51): Yeah. Yeah. And then I had to do research on money laundering because I was a banker and I knew something about money laundering, but I wasn’t an expert. So I signed up for this group called the Association for Certified Anti-Money Laundering Experts.

Debbi (15:11): So now you are certified.

Carl (15:14): So I took some courses and I went to some seminars they had here. As it turns out, when banks screw up, they get sued for hundreds of millions of dollars, so they had to make sure all their bankers were trained, and the treasury department and the FBI would send people to this. So I go there and people are going, “Well, what bank do you work for?” “Well, I’m a writer.” And they’re going, “Hmm. That could be true, or maybe you’re just trying to get to up your chops.”

Debbi (15:52): Oh, dear.

Carl (15:53): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (15:57): So what kind of writing routine do you keep?

Carl (16:02): I’m writing or marketing, you have to do them all.

Debbi (16:05): Oh, yes.

Carl (16:06): Yeah, seven days a week.

Debbi (16:09): When do you find the time to write, I guess?

Carl (16:12): Yeah. Well, I write various points in the day. I like to write in the morning, and I do do some outlining before I write, and of course the outlines change. I use Plotter to diagram some of the stuff. But my first draft is always by hand. So I will write on a legal pad, this kind of paper.

Debbi (16:40): I remember that.

Carl (16:41): And I’ll let my mind just flow into it, and I’ll write as fast as I can for that first draft of a scene. And I’ll leave out things like the setting, I’ll leave out gestures, I’ll leave out a lot of things, a lot of description, just write, get the conflict of the scene down. And when I get to four or five pages, I start to feel good. And when I get to 10 pages, then I know I’ve got a scene. And then I go back and I try the same day or the next to put that into the computer. And it’s sort of your first round of editing there where you fill in some of these things you left out, or maybe the scene begins farther into the page than it was supposed to, or maybe it ends earlier than you thought. So then you’ve got the first draft of the scene and you move on.

(17:31): That’s kind of the way I do it. And then I just keep going. It takes me six months to a year to write a draft, sometimes more than that, and then I just revise like crazy. Murderabilia, I revised 23 times. Saving Myles, I don’t know, it was 12 or 15 times. Just that’s the way I work because I get better ideas and things start to come together more.

(18:01): What’s the arc? How’s that coming together? Who are the main characters? What characters can I take out? What do I need to expand? What additional scenes do I need to do? Have I developed that conflict enough? So then I’ll write and then at the end I start reducing again. I think the book is with my agent now was originally 89,000 words and now it’s down to 76. So that’s how much you cut out.

Debbi (18:36): Yeah. It’s amazing how much air you can take out of one’s writing. I’ve discovered through screenwriting just how much air I tend to add. I didn’t even realize it. It’s like I pride myself on concise writing, but get into screenwriting and suddenly, no, no, no, you need to get there faster.

Carl (18:59): Yeah. Yeah. Well, they say in writing, cut out adverbs. Well, in screenwriting, there are no adverbs.

Debbi (19:06): No, it’s all action. Everything’s action. Action and dialogue. Stuff happens, people talk, now and then, or grunt or shrug.

Carl (19:16): Or grunt. But here’s something else that I think is probably important in screenwriting, but I’ve come to learn is really important in novels, and that’s the use of objects.

Debbi (19:28): Yes.

Carl (19:29): Because I mean, it can sort of blend into the background in a movie and you might not realize it, but in a book, an object carries so much weight and the best objects are both positive and negative. Well, here’s an example. Little Women, you’ve read that book, right? Everybody’s read that. So Little Women, there’s a mysterious character named Mr. Lawrence, who he’s cold and he doesn’t interact, but Beth is a musician and she’s shy, and so she interacts with him and he allows her to play his piano in his place. And then it comes out that he gives her his piano, and then you find out that the piano had belonged to his daughter who had died long ago. So you know how the stages of the object work all the way through.

Debbi (20:34): Yeah. Getting to know the characters, that’s part of the process of revising. No doubt you get to know the characters better as well.

Carl (20:43): You do. You do. You do. Or he would never do that.

Debbi (20:49): Exactly. It’s like, what was I thinking? No, no, no. She goes this way.

Carl (20:53): Yeah. Oh, I was just trying to tie up a plot there.

Debbi (20:56): That’s right. I was trying to get to the end.

Carl (20:58): Yeah. Yeah. I had to get them from here to there.

Debbi (21:02): Yes. There’s some places in between I can probably fill out a bit more. Yeah.

Carl (21:07): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (21:09): And what advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?

Carl (21:14): I would say write every day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes, and then gradually it’ll get longer, but you’d be surprised what you can do in 15 minutes. When I was in Montreal, I used to go to a coffee house between when I got off work and when the bus came and I’d have half an hour and I’d just write like crazy. So if that’s what you got, that’s what you do. And the other thing is don’t be in too much of a hurry to send off your manuscript, work on it till it’s polished. And of course, beginning writers, we all think it’s brilliant. Well, the way you find out is you get some outside opinion on the writing. That could be a writer’s group or it could be a developmental editor that tells you what’s working and what’s not working. You really need that to do that revision, and you need to revise that until it gets to a point where the revision makes it worse, and that’s the hardest thing to figure out.

(22:20): So those are some of the things that I’ve learned.

Debbi (22:24): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a tough business and hard to know when to stop on certain things.

Carl (22:32): Yeah.

Debbi (22:33): When to just trust your instincts, that kind of thing.

Carl (22:36): You make it worse.

Debbi (22:38): Yeah. Yeah. And is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Carl (22:45): No, I don’t think so. Just if anybody’s interested in my podcast, it’s called Person of Interest, and I interview true crime writers, and I’ve gotten to interview some really fascinating people like Bernadine Dorn, who was one of the rebels that… Well, let’s see. The movie was, what was the name of the movie? Well, it won all the Oscars. Anyway, this was based on someone in her life. I got to interview her son. I’ve gotten to interviews, people that worked for the FBI undercover for 20 years and so forth. So that’s on the Authors on the Air Network.

Debbi (23:33): Well, that’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that, and I will just say thanks for being here.

Carl (23:43): I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Debbi (23:44): It was my pleasure.

Carl (23:46): Thank you so much for chatting with me.

Debbi (23:47): It was my pleasure. It was enjoyable listening to what you write about and why it’s important. I love it. Thanks again for being here, and thank you to everyone who is listening. I hope you’ve enjoyed the episode or learned a new thing maybe. And if you would, please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And for early access to ad-free episodes plus serialized versions of my work, book reviews, and more, check out my Patreon page or my Substack newsletter. You can also buy my latest novel, Past Imperfect, as an ebook. It’s the third book in my Erica Jensen mystery series, and you don’t have to read the first two to understand it, but it doesn’t hurt either. On that note, I’ll be back. I’m a real salesperson here. Talk about a sales pitch, right?

Carl (24:49): Well, I just gave one, so you’re certainly entitled to.

Debbi (24:53): I’m so heavy-handed. Yeah, I’m practically like a used car salesperson here. Buy my book. What will it take for you to get into this book today? What will it take for me to get you into this book today?

Carl (25:03): So shall we negotiate the price now?

Debbi (25:06): It comes with extras, you know?

Carl (25:09): Okay.

Debbi (25:09): All sorts of extras. Yeah. If I can think of what those are, I’ll let you know. I’ll be back with another episode in November or Noirvember, if you want to call it that. In any case, happy reading and I’ll be seeing you! Take care.

*****

Check us out on Patreon.

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features true crime writer, Doug Kari. A writer who isn’t just Googling to get answers. 🙂

Check out the episode. How often do you get to hear stories from an actual “boots on the ground” journalist, these days?

Well, their numbers may be dwindling, but they still exist and here you go!

And for a PDF copy of the transcript, click here!

Debbi (00:52): Hi everybody. I have with me today a fascinating guest for you. He is a true crime writer known for his hands-on investigative approach to research and writing. His work has taken him to places like shallow graves. He just lies in the shallow grave and kind of gets a sense of what it’s like to have to be in a shallow grave, maybe avoiding gunfire or avoiding something.

(01:22): And he also has followed leads on missing persons through Death Valley and Mexico, among other places, I assume. Anyway, he was an English major at UC Berkeley and received his law degree—All right, lawyers!—from UC Law, San Francisco. His latest book is called The Berman Murders. It’s my pleasure to introduce Doug Kari. Is it Kari?

Doug (01:54): It’s Kari. And thank you, Debbi. It’s a pleasure to be on your show.

Debbi (01:59): Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. I do appreciate it. And your work just amazes me. I’m just blown away by it. How did you get involved in investigating the Berman murders?

Doug (02:13): For the Berman murders case, that was one that was really near and dear to my heart because of the location where the crime took place. It’s a desert valley that’s very difficult to access, that’s in between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley in Eastern California, and it’s quite inaccessible. To get there, you have to follow a 50-mile dirt road. You have to cross mountains that are sometimes impassable depending on the time of the year. And once you’re in the valley, it’s like being on another planet. It’s the kind of place, Debbie, that attracts counterculture types, the kind of folks I hung out with when I was a student at Berkeley, the hippie crowd, the seekers, and word of mouth, people have come into this valley and they travel there to hang out at Hot Springs. It was sort of like a mini Burning Man before Burning Man ever existed, a very eclectic crowd.

(03:18): You might find firefighters mingling with people from a magic bus. Everybody seems to share the same vibe, the same energy, the same aura. So it was quite stunning, quite shocking when in January 1986, a couple of nondescript hippie campers walked off on a morning walk and never came back. And three years later, their remains turned up miles away in a shallow grave. They’d been murdered.

Debbi (03:58): Yeah, that had to be kind of shocking. It was in 1986 that they disappeared?

Doug (04:08): January 1986. And that was a time period when myself and others that were into mountaineering out there and exploring the desert, we would go to these hot springs. I took my kids out there. In fact, or January 1986 was just a few months before I brought my newborn daughter out there for the first time. So to have a crime like this occur in a place that you think of as being completely off the beaten path, very laid back, peaceful, beautiful, to have people turn up murdered was just outside the realm of what most people could comprehend. And because of that, it was a real shock for those who frequented this valley. And it nagged me for years, Debbi. And finally in 2014, I decided I was going to investigate what happened, because there had never been an arrest or a conviction in the case, and I wanted to see if I could figure out what happened to these people and why.

Debbi (05:24): So how much research did you do to create the book? How many hours of research and how many hours of going through doing interviews and going through those interviews and that research before you were able to write the book?

Doug (05:42): It was a very lengthy process. I started with a real intense push in the first year, and that resulted in a cover story for LA Weekly about the case. But then off and on, I continued to work on the case over the span of about nine years, interviewing people, trying to gather information. Debbi, information gathering was really tough in this case. Some of the people that I wanted to talk to wouldn’t talk to me, and it took years and repeated efforts for them finally to soften up and agree to tell me what they knew. Tracking down, getting the case files from the sheriff’s office took time. Everything was really difficult in this case. There are cases where there’s a wealth of information available. This wasn’t that kind of a case, but slowly the facts began to emerge. I began getting cooperation from people, locating people.

(06:39): I got the records from the sheriff’s department. I went to the scene multiple times, and I already had a lot of knowledge of the area, and I started piecing things together, and it became clear that the likely suspect was one particular person. It’s not like in January 1986 in the middle of this remote desert valley, there were thousands or even hundreds of people who could be likely suspects. You’re talking about a few dozen people, and one stood out in particular. And so I did a deep dive on him, and ultimately in the book, I essentially lay out the case for why I believe the facts point to him as the likely perpetrator. Keep in mind, he’s never been arrested, never been charged, but the facts point that direction.

Debbi (07:34): That’s very interesting. I mean, this is long after the hippie movement was over, so these people were in a community that was very unique and very small and very… Probably the police were… I don’t know. How were the police like around all this?

Doug (07:53): Everybody tolerated it. The thing about Inyo County, California where this took place, it’s a very large county, about 15,000 square miles with a small sheriff’s department, and they had a very kind of live and live attitude. I would call it more of a libertarian attitude. Look, they didn’t want rampant law breaking, but they weren’t out there to police minor drug or alcohol violations. They felt that the hot springs tended to police themselves and that there was a pretty good scene going on out there. Law enforcement was okay with it. It fit the vibe of the community, and you couldn’t necessarily pinpoint it as being just hippies or counterculture types. I mean, you’d go out there and you’d see a mix of people, everybody ranging from gun enthusiasts to now and then people who like to explore off-road, and then of course the hippie types, the counterculture types, and everybody in between.

(09:08): Most people who are out there as regulars had a handle. They didn’t use their birth name. They would use some handle like Chili Bob, Lizard Lee, names like that.

Debbi (09:22): Well, it sounds fascinating.

Doug (09:24): Oh, it’s great. It’s great. And I’ve been going out there for years, totally fit with my personality, although I wasn’t a hangout at the hot springs guy so much. I fell in with a group of people who were more active. We like to explore the surrounding mountains and desert, and I actually co-founded a desert exploration group called Desert Survivors that still exists, and it’s a niche environmental and exploration group that explores these kinds of remote areas of the desert. I was out there a lot with my family. Even though it’s a desert valley with sand dunes and it appears very dry, there’s a mountain range, the Inyo Mountains, Debbi, that drops into that valley from peaks as high as 11,000 feet, incredibly steep with these deep canyons. Some of those canyons have waterfalls in them. There’s one particular canyon where you can park and walk aways up the canyon, and all of a sudden you come across a little waterfall.

(10:26): All three of my kids, we baptized them in that waterfall. So that’s how near and dear this place was and remains to my heart. So when these murders took place, again, it was a shock to the system, what happened? And that’s when, as I said, I finally decided to investigate. And there’s been other cases I’ve followed up on out there also, Debbi. There was a more recent case involving a Vietnam veteran who just vanished off the map, a missing person case. I did work on that case and published articles in the Las Vegas Review Journal and ultimately came up with a theory, found a piece of evidence and came up with a theory of what happened to him. I don’t believe it was foul play, but still don’t have a body, so I can’t prove that my theory is correct, but that’s an area where I’ve put in a lot of time and investigation into cases.

Debbi (11:26): Now, at this point, are you still freelancing or are you focusing more on creating books?

Doug (11:33): Yeah, I freelance primarily for the Las Vegas Review Journal. I’ve done work that’s been published in other places like LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune. As you know, Debbi, the journalism platform isn’t the easiest anymore. When cases do come along, a lot of times they’ll assign them to a staff writer, so there isn’t really room for a freelancer like me, even though I don’t charge for my work. Sometimes I get paid just because that’s the newspaper policy, but I’m not in this for the money. I’m in it because I have things I want to say, and I want to have a voice and a platform to be able to say it. I’ve got a social media platform for that purpose, even though social media is not my primary goal in life. I do have one book out, The Berman Murders, and a second book coming out on February 4.

(12:33): My publisher is Bloomsbury, so I haven’t had to endure some of the self-publishing challenges that you had to go through making a very successful platform off of. There’s good and bad that comes along with having an agent and a mainstream publisher. The good is that you get some reviews and you get some credibility. Of course, the difficult part of it is that you’re kind of at the publisher’s mercy a little bit. Bloomsbury’s a big publisher. They did the Harry Potter series. Once you sign a contract with them, they treat me very well, but you’re just one of many people in their stable, and that’s just how it is. But I’ve been very fortunate to land with Bloomsbury, and like I said, they’ve been quite supportive. I’m excited about the next book, Taking Naomi. It’s about the abduction, the kidnapping and murder of a teenage girl in Northern Nevada. Again, another case set in a rural desert area.

Debbi (13:49): And when’s that coming out?

Doug (13:51): February 4.

Debbi (13:53): February 4th. Thank you. Wow. Yeah, I was going to say, what kind of writing schedule do you keep and what kind of typical day do you have, or do you have a typical day?

Doug (14:09): It’s tough. It’s tough, Debbi, because even though I’m an older man now, I’m still very engaged in work. So my day job is working as a chief legal officer at a tech company that’s growing. We’re in the AI space. We do AI products for physical security solutions, so things like threat recognition, we do airports and other projects around the world. We’re not the installers, we’re the ones who engineer and design the products. So there are sophisticated products that can spot a gun in somebody’s hand or a knife. They’re used in places like casinos, jails, schools, and it’s a growing area, but because it’s growing and we’re expanding, I’m very busy with that. So right now, I haven’t had a lot of time to do as much on the writing side as I’d like. I do a monthly blog. I put out some social media posts, although my posting has really dropped off just because of the demands of the work.

(15:12): And of course, very soon now I’m going to be promoting the release of the second book, so I put in what time I can. When I’m in the middle of writing a book, Debbi, it’s a rough process. It doesn’t just flow out of me. It’s a painstaking process of just draft after draft after draft after draft. And one thing I don’t believe in is utilizing AI as a tool for writing. I can understand why some people do, and it’s okay for me if people use it in drafting business emails or even personal letters, whatever they feel comfortable with. But as a writer, I don’t care if an AI product might sound better than I sound. It’s my voice. I want my voice to be heard the way I say it, and I would never utilize AI even to edit or make suggestions. I just don’t believe in it.

(16:08): The other day though, I did go on to Gemini and I was self-educating a little bit about some of the current controversies and such in the AI space, and I asked Gemini to write a little summary of a case that I’ve published several articles about, the Aurora Phelps case in Las Vegas, and it came up with a pretty good 300 or 400-word summary. And then I said, “Rewrite the story in the voice of Doug Kari author.” So it did. It rewrote it in what it thought was my voice and made it a little more sexy, I guess, made it sound a little more true crime because true crime has a certain thing to it, a certain type of voice that you have. It’s not completely dry or academic or matter of fact. On the other hand, I don’t like to go too hogwild with it either.

(17:01): I wasn’t sure it was really my voice, but it was interesting to see that it thought it could speak in my voice. And then it asked me if I wanted an explanation of my writing style, and it actually made some pertinent observations. So anyway, this is a digression about AI and all the controversy. I’m kind of in the middle on it. I understand the concerns about what can happen if agentic AI is given tools without the proper training and the constitution and the system prompts so that it could go off the reservation and cause harm. But on the other hand, I think these are good tools. Again, that said though, I am dead set, dead set against ever letting it speak for me. My voice, it took me decades to develop this voice, and I’m jealous of it. I’m not going to outsource it to anybody.

Debbi (17:56): Absolutely positively agree with you. I mean, number one, you won’t be able to copyright it. It’s non-copyrightable, folks. You generate something by AI. If that’s all it is, it’s not copyrightable, so it’s worthless.

Doug (18:15): Well, it’s like if you’re a singer, you’re not going to ask AI to sing a song for you. Some of these AI-generated songs, they don’t sound half bad. I’ve listened to them. I’ve made a decision for myself, Debbi, I’m not going to listen to AI-generated music. I prefer to hear the product of humans because I’m a human and I want to hear the voices, the musical voices of lived experiences and all the nuances that come with being a human being, the emotions, the memories, all of those things. One of the things I don’t like about AI is that it has kind of unlimited access to information. Part of what makes us unique is we have limits. Each of us has a limited amount of information that we work with. Our experiences, part of our uniqueness is in what we don’t know and what we haven’t seen, and so we’ve developed a unique perspective based on what we have felt and seen and lived and what we haven’t, and that helps preserve our uniqueness.

(19:18): If everybody knows everything, then it just becomes white noise in a way. And that’s, to me, how some of this AI generated stuff sounds. It sounds like it’s carved out of white noise instead of being propagated from within.

Debbi (19:34): Yeah. I mean, when you write something, you are expressing yourself in the only way you should be expressing yourself. You are expressing you, your voice, your point of view, what you’ve seen, what you’ve experienced, even if it’s fictional, even if you’re making it up –

Doug (19:55): It’s the same.

Debbi (19:55): Your experiences inform that. So how do you replace that with the hive mind of AI, everything kind of condensed into this thing, and maybe they pick out a few things that are in your style and then try to mimic it? And then it’s like, where’s the growth? You’re supposed to also be growing as a writer, improving.

Doug (20:21): Well, that’s a really good point, Debbi, and it’s one thing that the AI models, at least the public-facing models don’t have, which is neuroplasticity. Our brains exist in motion. We’re constantly learning, developing as we go along. Even during the course of this conversation, of this interview, neurons are firing, our brains are developing, memories are taking place. You and I will both, in a neuron sense, be different after every experience, including this interview, including everything we do. We exist in motion, whereas these, especially the chat models, these LLMs, large language models, they are frozen in time as to a particular version. It’s just a closed set of mathematical formulas. I had somebody tell me the other day that they didn’t want to close what’s called the context window. When you enter a prompt in AI and you can continue to add to it, because the person told me that, well, AI had gotten to know her, the chatbot had gotten to know her, and I thought, no, that’s not how it works.

(21:36): What it’s doing is taking this growing body of information. It’s just applying numbers to it. It takes everything and assigns numerical values, and then pushes those values through a set of relational mathematical algorithms to relate those numerical values to other concepts out there in relational space and then turn it back into words. It’s just math, and you can adjust the math. You can try this sometime with any of the chatbots, you can alter the voice, say, “Talk to me like Shakespeare,” or you can just simply say, “Turn up the temperature,” and you’ll get a little more freewheeling answer or turn down the temperature. You’ll get a more rigid scientific business-like answer. All it’s doing when you say turn up the temperature or turn down the temperature is it’s just increasing or decreasing probabilities. If you turn down the temperature, then it’s only giving you the most boring high probability words.

(22:41): If you turn up the temperature high enough, you’re getting words that have very little relational context and may sound wacky or far out there, but it’s all math. It’s just math and probabilities. That’s why I’m not scared of it yet. Now, of course, it can become scary if you empower it, if you give it tools that it can independently exercise. It’s not like it goes evil, it’s just that it’s not well-trained. That’s all. Mathematically, the math is bad.

Debbi (23:11): It’s a computer program.

Doug (23:13): It’s a computer program.

Debbi (23:15): We have the ability to program these things or not program these things. We can make decisions about that.

Doug (23:23): We humanize this stuff. And I think that AI, the frontier companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, et cetera, they want us to look at them as human. They want to actually believe they have some sort of mystical powers. I think these geek mathematicians, they want to believe that they’re godlike creatures who have created something that has consciousness. I call BS on that. It’s just.

Debbi (23:45): It is. Yeah. And these guys need to see the movie Frankenstein or read the book or something. Yeah. There was a point being made there. Perhaps you missed it. Okay.

Doug (23:55): Right. That is a great story, by the way.

Debbi (23:59): You know, I have never read it.

Doug (24:02): Oh, it’s good.

Debbi (24:03): I think I’ve seen the original movie all of once, and I should probably see it again. What advice would you give to anyone who is interested in a writing career? I have to ask this question each time.

Doug (24:16): Well, my first advice would be don’t do it.

Debbi (24:20): Everybody says that.

Doug (24:21): Yeah. As a career, it’s very difficult to make any kind of money out of it. I do it as a passion, and I consciously take the economics out of it. Sometimes my writing generates some money, but that’s an afterthought for me. It’s all about doing it for the passion of it. But even then, I would advise, really, think about this before you do it. I’ll give you an analogy. I always like to use this analogy. Imagine that your life is the Thanksgiving table, and you’ve got the food set out, and then you’ve got each part of your life is one of the guests sitting at the table. So sitting at the table or your kids or your partner or your work or all these other things, and you’re all set up to have a nice dinner and everybody’s going to get their portion. Everything’s great.

(25:15): It’s all perfect. And then Writer Guy shows up and takes a seat at the table, and Writer Guy is like an 800-pound gorilla that robs from everybody else’s plate and just gobbles everything down, and everybody’s mad at you because you don’t have any time or energy left for them. All you’re thinking about is writing because the writing has gobbled up your life. That’s how it is for me. I can sit there and be working on something and look up, and hours have gone by, and then at the end of a whole day of working on something, I realized that it was a false lead, it was a false direction, and I end up just scrapping it, maybe saving it in the thought that I might use it someday or just deleting it all together. It’s a little bit depressing, but that’s part of the process, but it’s so time-consuming.

(26:05): The good thing about it, of course, is it feels great to be able to have a medium of expression. If you have things you want to say, if you have an artistic heart, and like me, you can’t sing, and you don’t play an instrument, and you’re not really a poet. I’m not even a fiction writer like you are, Debbi. I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway, but I don’t have that kind of talent. But what I can do is take facts from the world about interesting cases and try to turn it into a factually accurate story, but a good story, like a story that you’ll want to read that’ll draw you in, that talks about real life and death stuff, real people.

Debbi (26:45): Has anyone ever called you a Gonzo journalist?

Doug (26:49): A Gonzo journalist?

Debbi (26:51): I have to ask.

Doug (26:53): I studied new journalism when I was at UCLA, and I actually had a class called New Journalism, and we studied Gonzo as one of the mediums. For people who aren’t familiar with it, it’s the voice of most notably Hunter S. Thompson who kind of combined the stream of consciousness and getting high along the way, incorporating that into his voice. I’ve imitated Gonzo writing a little bit, and God knows I was at Berkeley in the ’70s, so if you’re at Berkeley in the ’70s, you sort of naturally were living a Gonzo journalism kind of experience back then. But my voice is a little more serious than that. I mean, I want you to be drawn into the story when you read it and to feel like you want to turn the page and know what happens next. But at the same time, I also want people to feel this isn’t about me.

(27:48): This is about the people in the book. It’s not less about my relationship with them and more about their relationship with each other. And the human dynamics in true crime cases are intense when you take the family, the victim, and then the people that surrounded the perpetrator, and then the law enforcement and the community at large, because nowadays, all high profile cases, you’ve got a community of people involved on social media, conventional media, and all of that comes together. All of that energy and that focus comes together, and all of those characters interact, and you’ve got a start and an end to all this, and something extraordinary happens. It’s really, really interesting and very sobering when you interview people who have been close to a major crime. These are just people, regular people. Sometimes a family member might’ve been killed, or they themselves might’ve been a victim, or they’re charged with trying to figure out what happened, or they’re a member of the public who wanted to do something and then ended up getting involved in the hunt or involved in helping the family.

(29:00): Everybody comes out of it with their lives changed forever on one of these big cases. Everybody’s changed forever.

Debbi (29:07): Yeah, I often think about that. Things that you see in the paper about people, what about the people in their lives?

Doug (29:17): Right? That’s why I’m not too quick to beat up on people. Social media tends to move in one direction or another. When I got involved in the Hannah Kobayashi case, everybody thought she was this damsel in distress, a woman who had supposed to change planes flying from Hawaii to New York to visit her sister. She’s supposed to change planes in LA. Instead, she never gets on the connecting flight, and she’s being followed around on video camera as they’re pulling up surveillance cameras, trying to figure out what happened to her. Her behavior doesn’t seem to be predictable. Where did she go? And then it turns out she was in Mexico. When it became clear that Hannah wasn’t necessarily a damsel in distress, that she might’ve been a person in a bad situation that just decided, “You know what? I’m going to get away from this.” All of a sudden, social media just turned on her. That kind of situation immediately makes me skeptical.

(30:22): Why the sudden turn? I think if somebody doesn’t fit your description or your preconceived notion of what they’re supposed to be, you mean a woman’s only sympathetic if she’s a damsel in distress? What if she’s having personal issues? What if something else is going on? What if she made a mistake? Have you ever made a mistake? The way social media gravitates and immediately tacks either somebody’s good or they’re bad, there’s not a lot of nuance on social media.

Debbi (30:52): Exactly.

Doug (30:53): That’s a fascinating part of the dynamic too. You see that playing out in the Lindsay Clancy case where people either think she’s a horrible murderer who murdered her children, or she’s this sympathetic mother who had a postpartum psychosis much worse than postpartum depression, that she was actually in a psychotic state and we ought to sympathize with her. Then you’ve got people on the fringe who are disregarding all the facts and just saying, “Oh, her husband did it.” It’s like, “No, he didn’t.” I know you’d love that to be the narrative, but it didn’t happen that way. I mean, if it did, you think her lawyer would’ve just overlooked that? I mean, come on guys. But perfectly reasonable people will go off on these tangents because that’s what they want it to be. I like to try to make room for the real facts of a case, which may be more nuanced.

(31:48): Not every perpetrator is the personification of evil. They may be evil, but there may be also reasons why they personify evil. I’m not letting anybody off the hook saying they’re not responsible for their own actions, Debbi. What I am saying is let’s understand why people do what they do as part of analyzing it. Doesn’t mean, oh, okay, they get a free pass for doing something terrible. No, but we should understand them as three-dimensional characters. Same thing with victims. It’s not just crime victim. It’s a person. It’s a human being with a multidimensional life. So that’s part of what I try to do in my stories, get in deep. Let’s strip away layers of the onion and find out what was going on underneath in the lives of all the people involved and how that came to be.

Debbi (32:37): Well, that is obviously a labor of love and just wonderful.

Doug (32:46): A labor of obsession maybe.

Debbi (32:48): Obsession, love, whatever. I just think it’s great what you’re doing. I think the fact that you can do it and not be arrested or harassed terribly.

Doug (33:00): Not yet at least.

Debbi (33:02): Not yet at least. I was going to ask you about that, but I can save that for the bonus. I have all sorts of things I can ask you in the bonus. Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish up?

Doug (33:15): Well, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate being here. You have a very interesting background. You’re a prolific writer. You don’t talk much in the material that I saw about your work as a lawyer, but you have that in your background as well. I mean, you’ve done a lot of things, so I appreciate the opportunity to speak with someone who, like me, has had a multifaceted journey into this space.

Debbi (33:44): Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I was going to say, do you think lawyers make good fiction authors? I think we get wonderful ideas for stories from our cases.

Doug (33:56): Sure. I mean, John Grisham’s an example of a lawyer turned writer who did a really terrific job with it. I tried my hand at some fiction writing, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m much more drawn to a set of facts. I really enjoy trying to uncover the facts and then organize them and understand what happened. It limits you in some ways, but in some ways it’s very comforting because your own imagination limits you too. Whereas the facts of a case, those are chosen by others.

Debbi (34:30): Yeah, it’s interesting because I too am sort of into doing research, so I can appreciate how awesome it is to find out stuff. I’m into that, totally.

Doug (34:46): When you really score an interesting piece of information, there was a probation report that had been written on the perpetrator in the Taking Naomi case, a really dark and complex character. That’s why I wrote the book primarily. Naomi was a fascinating victim. I mean, we’re talking about an 18-year-old young woman who spoke four languages and who had traveled multiple places in the world. She was a really interesting person with the experience that she’d gone through, not what you would expect at age 18 for someone to have seen and experienced as much as she had. But the perpetrator, he was fascinated because of the depth of his darkness and how it emerged early in life. One of the things I wanted to see was a probation report that had been written on him many, many years earlier. I had to go to court in Northern California to get a court order to get that document released.

(35:44): I had to sue the county. They weren’t going to give it to me. Of course, you can imagine when I prevailed and I got a copy of it and it turned out to have a wealth of information, how exciting that was.

Debbi (35:55): Oh, that always feels so good.

Doug (35:58): Right. I’m reading a probation report and I’m just thrilled.

Debbi (36:04): Only lawyer geeks can get thrilled about things like this. I mean, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, “Ah, got it.”

Doug (36:13): Yeah, really interesting information. Now and then you fight to get something and it turns out to just be pure gold in terms of understanding the situation. So many times, of course, you come up empty, you interview somebody and it turns out they don’t really have much knowledge or you find the documents and you look through them and there’s just not very much information. But now and then, I mean, I just got files in this Aurora Phelps case, the woman who was seducing older men and then drugging them, and many of them, several of them at least ended up dead. She’s now the subject of an international investigation and there’s an indictment pending on her in Las Vegas, and meanwhile, she’s incarcerated in Mexico. I went through old cases. There were some cases involving her, one of which was a bitter divorce, and she wrote a long single-spaced letter, email type letter to the judge, and it had all kinds of things that revealed parts of her personality.

(37:17): You dig through files of dry, meaningless stuff, and then you come to something like that, and you’re just like, “Oh, I’m starting to understand who this person is that went from being a mom of four boys to being an accused multiple murderer.”

Debbi (37:36): Yeah, very interesting. Thank you for that. Really, thank you for being here today. I really appreciate your thoughts, everything you’ve had to say, and all the work that you do. I’m amazed by what you’re doing.

Doug (37:53): My pleasure.

Debbi (37:56): To everyone listening, thank you very much. If you want to have early access to ad-free episodes plus access to my work, which I’m serializing on Patreon and Substack, you can join at the… I think it’s the $10 tier to get access to my work, and probably at some point I’ll do something additional. I’m not sure what that is at this point because I’m not sure of much of anything, anymore. If you enjoyed the episode though, please leave a review. They help a lot. I appreciate that. Until next time, happy reading, and I’ll be seeing you. Take care.

Get early access and more by supporting us on Patreon!

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer and independent publisher, Charles D’Amico. His Neil Baggio series has a villain, who’s got his own story, too. And you can learn more about that here!

And you can download a PDF of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:55): Hi everyone. My guest today is originally from Metro Detroit. He writes the award-winning Neil Baggio suspense series. In 2020, he founded the small press Blue Handle Publishing. It’s my pleasure to introduce Charles D’Amico. Hi, Charles. How are you doing today?

Charles (01:16): Good. How are you doing?

Debbi (01:18): Oh, I’m hanging in there. Not bad, considering I’ve been kind of nonstop all week doing something crazy of some sort, either editing a film, doing a book signing or being at someplace or other doing something that I haven’t.

Charles (01:34): It’s always good stay busy though, right?

Debbi (01:36): I suppose.

Charles (01:37): Because some of us when we get quiet, we don’t know what to do.

Debbi (01:40): Oh, I always know what to do if I’m quiet. That way I can pick up a book or watch a movie. It’s like, at last a quiet moment. I can read. So I was going to ask you about the Neil… Is it Neil Baggio?

Charles (01:57): Yeah, Neil Baggio.

Debbi (01:59): Baggio.

Charles (02:00): Yeah. The original framework for what is the book I have coming out in November, Why I Kill is called the Neil Baggio series. And that started as an FBI agent, Neil Baggio, whose mentor goes on a killing spree. And the book picks up four years after that, the first one, where he didn’t catch him. He leaves the FBI and it picks up with that broken down anti-hero. He was piecing everything back together. The killer comes out of hiding and now he’s got to find that lane, work with the FBI. They have to work with him and figure out how he’s going to catch his old boss. And that’s the first book Veritas, and it kind of goes off from there, the next three books. And then for years people would ask me, “How does an FBI agent become a killer?” So I wrote it, which is Why I Kill, the Cappelano journals that comes out in November.

(02:46): And it used to be actually really thick, but I was like, “To be that dark and that thick might not be the best idea.” So we kind of trimmed it.

Debbi (02:54): Yeah. Kind of gradually get there?

Charles (02:57): Yeah. If it kicks off, we’ll really see an unabridged version.

Debbi (03:02): Wow. Yeah, I noticed that. I noticed those Frank journals and I was like, “Oh, what is this?” And I’m looking, I’m like, “Oh, how interesting. Okay.”

Charles (03:14): I had a son who read the first version of that years ago and he kind of ducked my call for like three months. I was like, “Everything okay?” And he’s like, “Honestly, man.” He goes, “Didn’t know what to think that you thought of that stuff.”

Debbi (03:29): Well, you got to come up with a reason why they turn out to be a villain.

Charles (03:33): Exactly. It’s just a thought process.

Debbi (03:37): Yeah, it’s just a thought process. Exactly. It’s a hypothetical exercise.

Charles (03:42): You hope that an FBI profiler can think and understand the way a criminal does without being a criminal.

Debbi (03:48): Exactly.

Charles (03:49): I get it. Yeah.

Debbi (03:51): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s not like hearts and flowers stuff, if you’re going to write about killers. Which was very interesting because it makes me think of the old adage, every villain thinks they’re the hero of the story. So wouldn’t it be interesting to go back, look at all of my antagonists, my major ones, my killers and so forth, and just figure out what their story really is, go deep into it. That could get a little depressing, if I do it too much.

Charles (04:20): I started off with him being reluctant and then him rationalizing certain decisions and certain things that he wouldn’t say. And I’ve talked about this before, so it’s not like it’s an Easter egg or anything, but in the first volume, he doesn’t say kill. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s killing people. He keeps rewording it. He’s just removed people from the mathematics of life. And he’s rationalizing these crazy ideas on what he’s actually doing. And then eventually there’s a turning point in the middle that really flips the switch and he goes all in on it and he’s even aware of the moment. In these testing moments where he’s cognizant enough of what’s going on and he’s like, “If I was normal, I should feel something here.” And I don’t. It’s kind of cool to just think through what someone who’s rational enough, but even admitting, “Well, there might come a time I won’t be.” And there’s a couple moments where he, because it’s told from his perspective where he’s having the thoughts that there will come a time where I’m not rational about the irrational decisions I’m making.

Debbi (05:27): Yeah. Yeah. It’s just you don’t know where to draw the line after a while. You’re just so deep into it. You’re so deep in denial that you can’t…

Charles (05:37): After a while, I would think you could get used to anything or rationalize anything, whether it’s somebody who went off to war as a way to protect your psyche, not as a way necessarily out of ego, which some might be out of ego, but I think some of the greatest war heroes we talk about historically just maybe found a way to switch it off and found a way to rationalize it at an extreme level and more than just the plus-minus. I have to do it for survival because there’s quiet moments. And that’s one of the things that come up in the book. In the quiet moment, how do you rationalize this stuff?

Debbi (06:11): Exactly. Yeah. It’s the quiet moments when you start thinking about things. I noticed you also have two books with different protagonists, one called Perdue and one called One Golden Day.

Charles (06:27): Yes. So One Golden Day was kind of this exercise I did of putting all the advice my grandmother and mother gave me when they were still alive about relationships and life. And it’s told from this guy’s perspective called Travis Golden, who does really good around high school and college graduations. It’s told from the morning of his wedding day and it’s a flashback of his whole life, like high school and college, all these different big decisions in his life. And it’s told first person, he’s having these conversations, whether it’s with his mom or his grandmother or somebody in his family who’s giving him really good advice to solve this stuff. So it’s kind of a self-help book without it being a self-help book, kind of hidden in the story. Some of my favorite reviews of that book were like, “I count myself taking notes when it’s really good advice.” That’s kind of the idea behind it.

(07:18): If you know somebody’s in a tough place, but you don’t want to be upfront honest, like, “Hey, man, this is a really good book. Start reading it.”

Debbi (07:25): Interesting.

Charles (07:26): And then the Marie Perdita series, which is Perdue, I’m actually working on the follow-up to that right now called La Tase. When writing this, Why I Kill, put me in such a dark place and I was in a bad mood all the time, I needed something that cleared my mind. So I wrote, which originally was just kind of an exercise, a spinoff character from the Neil Baggio series who shows up a little bit in Book Three and a lot more in Book Four. I wrote her own spinoff, but it’s like a PG-13. And I imagined.

(07:58):

My daughter who’s now 11, what it would be like if my daughter had become a spy, she was kind of out on her own, and then I kind of like flashbacks. I’m decent at them. What would it be like if these interactions with her dad, me being obviously the dad, but this role of his influenced her in all these different things through her life that now while she’s in these tough situations, she’s drawing on. She’s alone, but on these occasions you’re learning these things about her. So I wrote this whole plunging the palette book just to get through the first draft of the journals because they were so dark. And ended up becoming a big series. I ended up writing three books or three rough drafts, three different manuscripts.

Debbi (08:39): Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you really have to mix things up sometimes because you don’t want to burn yourself out.

Charles (08:47): When I talked to somebody recently at Killer Nashville about that and he said, “I never thought of cleansing my palate in a way because I’m writing stuff that’s dark or putting me in a mood.” And I was like, “Well, it doesn’t always have to be for publishing.” I’m for fun, still little by little been working on a fantasy series for my kids. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. I don’t know if I’ll ever… But we’ll have conversations about certain things. I’m not really good at writing fantasy, but I like the fact that it challenges me. I’m trying to write it in third person, which is not my natural choice, and they like interacting with me on it. So when I get stuck or if I just want the exercise, I continue to work on this thing off to the side. And I think sometimes we get so stuck in this belief that you have to write only for one purpose when you can write for a million different reasons, write to write.

Debbi (09:40): Yeah. What made you decide to write crime fiction?

Charles (09:46): It’s actually a funny story. Out of spite is how I got started. I’ve always been good at writing. I mean, I could write a 10-page paper in college in an afternoon while watching a football game, which could drive my roommates nuts. My sister was a huge voracious reader when I was growing up. I remember reading those whole Anne Rice novels in two days and she’d plow through these novels and dislocated my ankle right after I graduated college. And about a week into it, I got bored of all the usual video games and TV, and everything I tried reading, I just didn’t enjoy.

(10:30): I was like, “I’m going to write a book.” It was kind of like a fleeting thought one day. And my sister was like, “You don’t read enough to write a book.” I was like, “You know what? Just because of that, I’m going to write a book.” So just out of kind of spite for my sister at the time, being younger, just gave me the motivation to get over the edge. And I wrote the first rough draft of Veritas and then went right into writing Ave Maria, and then those two manuscripts, as bad as they were, sat in a drawer for 10 years while life happened. And then one day I decided to get back into writing, found an editor, and never stopped after that.

Debbi (11:06): Interesting. It’s interesting that you wrote all that stuff out of spite and then just put it aside. Probably good though, huh?

Charles (11:17): Again, I didn’t read enough. And then when I got back into it, it was right before COVID, and I reached out to this guy who helped me. He edited my work for content. I did content writing for a little bit, and he was really brutal with me, which I loved. I was like, “If I give him this, he’ll be honest.” He gave me some really good feedback. He said, “I can’t help you with this.” He was like, “I would find an editor. It’s good enough.” He’s like, “I would.” I was like, “Cool.” That’s when I went down the rabbit hole finding an editor. While I was waiting for the editor to get it back to me, I started writing One Golden Day, just as an exercise to see if I could write something.

(11:56): And then I started editing Veritas and Ave Maria. When those were done, I started writing Colloquium, and I didn’t stop. I ended up writing a million words in about a year and wrote 14 manuscripts. I just kind of kept going. I didn’t edit anything, I just kept plowing through. So I’ve got seven Neil Baggio manuscripts. The fifth one’s about to come out early next year, three Marie Perdita ones. Then there’s One Golden Day, Frank’s journal, this weird spinoff, Western spinoff I wrote that’s like my Neil Baggio character in the 1800s. I just wanted to see if I could solve crimes without technology, so I made this whole world back in the 1800s. While developing Blue Handle and our editing firm, Book Puma, I realized there’s just things I had to get better at, but I started slowing down in my writing and just reading, reading and learning, focusing on growing those two companies, my restaurant company, Jimmy John’s, and just reading and trying to get better at reading, editing, and just becoming a better student because I didn’t grow up wanting to be an author, so I didn’t have that kind of background.

(13:05): After about three years of just trying to edit here and there, I finally got back in really hardcore into it. I started working on Frank’s journal, which is now called Why I Kill, and I started educating myself more and more, and I started understanding some problems I had got better and being more realistic myself and the mistakes we all make in the process. And now I just love teaching, whether it’s going to conferences and speaking on panels and telling people, “It’s okay. This is normal. This is part of the process.” You wrote a manuscript and it’s hard when someone says, “Oh, it’s only your first. You put your blood, sweat, and tears.” It’s like saying you have a kid and they’re like, “Oh, it’s only your first kid. It doesn’t count.” You’re like, “What? It’s a kid with a life.” You’re consulted and they’re like, “Well, it’s seven. We can fill the football, basketball team with two subs.” It’s great, but I’m surprised I made one. But the more you get through it and the more you do it, the more you realize, oh, see the beauty in the repetition, the beauty in not just researching, but reading other people and learning. I read The Book of Fallen Leaves recently, which was not my genre, and it was really hard. The writing wasn’t bad. The writing was beautiful. It’s not something I would normally read, and I wanted to read this completely different thing and challenge myself. I wouldn’t have done that a couple years ago, and it’s been cool to just broaden my spectrum in crazy, just wide shot and just to take it all in. It’s been really fun.

Debbi (14:42): That’s fantastic. Those are welcome words to my ears because reading broadly, I think, is really important. I mean, it can help you out in so many ways as a person and as a writer, it can help anybody out. But as much as I love crime fiction, I always love reading other things like sci-fi or historicals, Westerns, what have you, as long as it has a good story and characters that I care about.

Charles (15:14): Exactly. And the very specific reason I think I wrote crime fiction is that’s my background, degree in criminology, degree in psychology. I originally went to school to be a profiler. That’s what I wanted to do. When I graduated, I needed to work for a little bit to save up for grad school. I ended up getting a job as a GM at Jimmy John’s, and before I knew it, I was a director of operations making pretty good money, and I ended up not going back to the school, and I was making too good of money to get grants. I could only get loans. I tried it for a little bit, but it was hard doing both. But it’s always something I’ve loved. I mean, I researched it, went to school for a reason with it. When I finally sat down to write, it was kind of natural for me to pick that area because that’s what I studied.

(15:58): I studied in the mind of a killer and studied what made people do the things they do. I knew a pretty traumatic… I wouldn’t say it was any worse than any other kid, but there was plenty of stuff going on in my house growing up in the neighborhood, and I was the youngest of a whole generation. My sister’s three years older than me, and my cousins are older than me. I am the baby of the babies. I was in the room with adults or oftentimes forgot about the 80s and 90s. In a mean way, just like, “Oh, that’s right. The youngest one’s still here.” And because of that though, I saw the world from a different perspective. I always say I’m very big on empathy in that it’s not sympathy. I don’t feel bad for that person necessarily, but I do have a pretty good way of asking myself, “What made that person do that?” Or empathize and be like, “I can only imagine what they went through if this is the decision they feel is all that’s necessary, or what is all they have available,

Debbi (16:58): Yeah.

Charles (16:58): Whether it’s a criminal or someone just in the current environment today mouthing off at a youth sports game, empathizing. And I think that’s one of my favorite parts of writing and the way I write is creating these in situations that allow you to maybe empathize with the antagonist or maybe not like your protagonist as much for a short term only to be cheering for them a few minutes later.”

(17:25): When I first started, there was a really cool reader, Joanna, who’s a bookstagrammer, and she was a very big early fan of my work, and she joked once. They gave me the abuse I needed to really keep writing, and if I had a spirit animal, it would be Neil Baggio. She’s like, “You just have this brash way of writing the things I wish I could say.” I was like, “Wow, I say those things in real life, so I get in trouble.”

Debbi (17:59): Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I think you just faded out of the picture there for a moment.

Charles (18:05): Sorry about that.

Debbi (18:06): There you are. Okay. Yeah, I was just looking down at my questions and thinking about what to ask you. It sounds like you already know a lot and you probably don’t need to do as much research on the topic as you do maybe new developments in it.

Charles (18:24): Correct. It’s more about understanding the current state of affairs, depending on what I’m writing, or maybe procedural things. I also try not to get in the weeds on procedural. I was told once actually that I won an award and I kind of got mad, give you an idea of how ignorant I am sometimes in the industry. When I first got into it, I don’t remember which award it was for, but they wrote, “He writes nothing better than anyone we’ve seen in a long time.” I got mad, and my editorial director was like, “That’s a compliment. They’re saying you could write a scene where nothing goes on and they would enjoy it.” I was like, “I didn’t hear it that way.” I think I’m just good. Aaron Sorkin, it’s the closest thing I would say to a literary inspiration, someone I enjoy. I can read a play of his, not even watching TV, I’ve read screenplays, because I love the way he does dialogue. I’m a big, heavy dialogue person, and I love the fact that nothing could go on technically in a scene except two people walking or two people sitting at a bench, but an insane amount of information and storytelling was done in that kind of stale scene. It didn’t have to be full of crazy physical action, but a lot of emotion or a lot of thougts could be coming from that situation. I feel like that’s probably one of the strengths that’s carried my story. It’s not always a procedural, it’s more the interaction of the characters, the story, the everyday things that make you laugh and giggle a little bit, even though it’s a tense moment, because a lot of people get nervous and crack jokes when they’re tense and it’s stressful.

Debbi (20:01): And it’s more than just dialogue. There’s a lot of visual stuff going on, and the actors make a great deal of difference. It’s really interesting, very interesting. Once you get deeply involved in making movies, in any way, you start to just perceive the whole thing differently. It’s very weird.

Charles (20:22): The first couple times I read a script, I actually called our editorial director, Ricky, and I was like, “Are you confused? There’s nothing on here.” He’s like, “There’s really not. They leave a lot to the director and a lot to…” He’s like, “Some may be overdone,” but for the most part, they’re just kind of writing the plot, the general scene in that conversation, and it’s then up to the director to bring it to life. And you start to realize the amount of people it takes to bring this thing to life. It’s crazy.

Debbi (20:53): It is. It’s really something. It’s amazing that anything gets made, especially these days with the financial stuff going on. Let’s see. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?

Charles (21:13): Well, first of all, one of my favorite things I heard from people like Reed Coleman and others at Killer Nashville was, “Tell people you’re a writer and your side gig is a teacher. Tell people you’re a writer and your side gig is a doctor, is a fireman, is a garbage man. If you want to be a writer, you need somewhere need to define yourself a little bit and embrace it. You may not make a living off of it, but it is a full-on task.” When I hear… I actually just corrected somebody recently, they’re like, “Oh, I was just a stay-at-home mom for two years.” I go, “That’s a full-time gig. Don’t say it flippantly.” They have four kids. I was like, “This is a lot of work. If you told me you were a stay-at-home mom for a 16-year-old that was gone all day at school, okay, you could say that a little flippant, but being a full-time parent is hard.” So maybe with a writer, being a full-time writer is hard and it’s hard to make a living off of, especially for the first decade, unless you’re lucky.

(22:12): So just defining yourself as a writer who also has a job, it helps you survive, first of all. And then I would also say, remember, you don’t always have to write only your book. Your story is not going to disappear. I hear that all the time. I had this great thought and I was afraid it was going disappear, so I wrote it down. I always tell people, I go, that sucks. That’s one of the worst things you can do because you’re almost creating fear and anxiety around the creative process as opposed to when they happen, just kind of smiling, giggling and being like, “Ooh, I wonder where this goes.” Creating a dopamine hit and a psychological loop that encourages those things to happen, because if you put fear and anxiety around it, you’re only going to make it less likely to have them because you’re so tense as it’s happening and your body wants to stay away from that anxiety.

(23:04): I guess unless you’re a sado-masochist, maybe you can go ahead first time.

(23:10): Creating this positive environment and this routine around creativity and knowing it’s not always going to be linear, it’s not always going to be perfect. I used to be a straight answer writer. Now I’ll give myself key points I want to hit, but it’s an evolution. I always say when we were born, we couldn’t walk, we couldn’t talk, we couldn’t even go to the bathroom by ourselves. Look at this now. And it takes a lot of failure to do some basic stuff in our lives. Let’s be honest with ourselves, did we put as much effort as we think we did into this thing? And we may have put our heart and soul into it, but take a deep breath and say, “This is an amazing thing I’m trying to do and I will get there. There’s going to be a lot of failure along the way.

(23:55): And if I stick through it and I trust some smart people, maybe make a few wrong decisions and keep trucking after it, by the time I get done, I will be better for it. Even if that isn’t the best story I ever write, probably won’t be because everything you write after that, you’re going to get there. So remember, everything you’ve done in your life took repetition, and I mean everything. When you sit down as a writer, remember that. So whether it’s writing on a Substack, whether you have two followers, 200 or 2000, you’re just constantly getting reps, whether it’s creating stories that may never see the light of day, just little stories. When I would get stuck, I would write these side conversations between Neil Baggio and a bartender or a cabbie of him talking while he was stuck. I never went in the book.

(24:41): I would literally open up a new document, just have a conversation. It would allow my left and right to talk to each other. Practice will really get you there. So the best advice I can tell everybody is when you write, tell people you’re writing. Don’t be ashamed, don’t be afraid of it. And if for some reason the people in your immediate circle don’t agree with you, this is the beauty of the world we’re in now. It’s so much easier to find a community, even if it’s only digital, to support, help, and encourage. Even if your niche is [narrow] no matter what it is, you can find a group, take a deep breath, keep writing your stories, and look for that group that reminds you that what you’re doing is just for you and two people. You know what I mean?

Debbi (25:30): Well, that’s excellent advice.

Charles (25:32): Talking about writers and getting people encouraged.

Debbi (25:36): That’s excellent advice. I mean, look for the people who get you and they will get you, and there you go. I think really –

Charles (25:47): Gladwell once said… Oh no, you’re good. I’ll finish after, you were saying.

Debbi (25:52): That’s okay. It’s just really good advice, and I’m glad you said all those things.

Charles (25:58): Well, Malcolm Gladwell, I think it was the masterclass that he did for that at masterclass. He said, “If you get a one-star review, unless it’s really poor editing or a really blad plot line that everybody’s pointing at, you just didn’t write that person’s story, and that’s okay. They just didn’t see it your way.” And he’s like, “You can go look at some of the greatest books out there that cult followings. One of my favorite things when I would get down on myself is I would go read one-star reviews of Harry Potter.” Sold millions and millions and millions and millions of copies, and there’s people out there like, “I got it.” And they just remind you, that’s okay. Some people aren’t going to do that.

Debbi (26:41): And some people just like to give one-star reviews, I’m convinced. So it’s not an indication of anything really or anything to worry about.

Charles (26:52): Oh, magical. He’s like, “My wife loves Yelp. Used to love Yelp.” And he’s like, “You don’t know what that person’s five star is.” He might be like, “This restaurant, you can have blood on the napkins.” You don’t know that person’s one-star scale. Maybe they’re upset, maybe they had a bad day. You don’t know.

(27:12): Keep trucking, keep writing, keep trying to get better. So remember, every great book has one-star reviews. Even some of the worst books have five-star reviews, somebody loved it. Just keep writing and keep trying to get better.

Debbi (27:28): Exactly. Yeah. So on that note, would you like to add anything before we finish up?

Charles (27:36): Yes. I have a new book coming out November 17th, Why I Kill. You do not have to read other books to read it. And even though it is a dark story, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. The feedback I’m getting, Reed Coleman just gave me a blurb to put on the book, a New York Times bestseller. If you just really love great storytelling and you want something you’ve never read before, especially if you’re a big fan of the Dexter series or Silence of the Lambs, I would definitely preorder this.

Debbi (28:06): Oh, that’s a nice comp. Yeah, good one. All right. Well, thank you for being here, Charles. I really appreciate your time.

Charles (28:14): Thank you for your time.

Debbi (28:16): Oh, it’s my pleasure. My pleasure to have you on. And to everyone who’s listening, thank you so much for listening. To my Patreon supporters, thank you very, very much. It really helps a lot to get that small bit of income that helps to defray some of the costs of doing this podcast. Yes, I was going to say something about where I’m going with the podcast, except I’m not really sure at this point. I keep thinking I want to do something in the form of a scripted podcast at some point, but I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m not quite sure. So I’m pondering it.

Charles (28:58): You’re pondering it?

Debbi (29:00): I’m pondering it. I ponder a lot of things. In that vein, I will just say if you would like to be a Patreon supporter, find us at the Crime Cafe on Patreon. I’ll put a link to it, and you can check out the tiers. You can get access to chapters from my book if you reach at the, I think it’s the $10 level a month, as well as book reviews. Anything is up there is early access and without ads. I don’t do ads. And with that, I’ll just say thank you for listening and take care, and I shall be talking to you in two weeks. Be seeing you.

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime fiction and nonfiction author, Phil Halton

His website poses a question: How do we create meaning in the face of chaos?

Riddle me that, eh? 🙂

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. Today I have a guest who says he didn’t plan to become a writer, but as a soldier and later a security consultant, he’s traveled extensively throughout the world to most places and situations that very few people get to witness. What better background for a writer, I say.

(01:16): It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Phil Halton. Did I say that right?

Phil (01:22): Perfect.

Debbi (01:23): Phil Halton?

Phil (01:24): Perfectly.

Debbi (01:25): Excellent. Good. Good to have you here, Phil. How are you doing?

Phil (01:29): Good, good. It’s good to be here though as it’s odd to be here on the 11th of September.

Debbi (01:35): Yes, it is. Very odd indeed. The whole day has felt slightly strange for that reason, that it’s the 25th anniversary and all, because I remember the day it happened a little too well for comfort. So you didn’t plan to be a writer, so what made you decide to be one?

Phil (01:59): In some ways I kind of fell into it. I identify I think more as a storyteller, and so I was always the guy who had the stories. I had a bunch of experiences that I didn’t want to write about directly, but I though, oh, I can rework some of this and tell some stories that I think are actually of use as well, of value. Because my first novel in some ways is kind of the origin stories of the Taliban. It ends when the Taliban begins and it’s based on my experiences working with former Taliban and others in Afghanistan. And so I had things I wanted to say, I had things I wanted to express, and so that’s how I decided to do it.

Debbi (02:43): Sounds like you got some very interesting inside information in your work.

Phil (02:49): Yeah. Well, I think too that when I dig and dig and dig and dig in these things, I always find humans at the base of it. And so I think of my stories as really human-centered stories, even if they’re in strange places and with strange customs and strange. It doesn’t matter. You can always find the human element of it.

Debbi (03:12): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s absolutely true. I think that’s what draws us into reading the books. If you can’t find the humanity in the character, how are you going to care?

Phil (03:23): Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think in the end, that’s a positive message that we all have this common humanity and perhaps aren’t so different after all.

Debbi (03:35): I love that message. I wish there were more of that out there. Were there certain steps you took to get started as a writer or did you just fall into it naturally and know how to tell a story from the get-go? Well,

Phil (03:51): Well, I don’t know about that, but yeah, certainly I started with writing screenplays and I worked with an established screenwriter, and so we partnered up on a couple projects that actually didn’t really go anywhere. People loved them and didn’t want them. And so we did that a couple of times and I decided I’m going to write my own thing here, my own screenplay. And again, people loved it, nobody wanted it. And so I realized this might do better as a novel, so I rewrote it as a novel and wouldn’t you know that I sold the novel and the screenplay within a week of each other.

Debbi (04:32): Wow.

Phil (04:33): Yeah.

Debbi (04:34): My goodness. That is remarkable.

Phil (04:38): It is. The screenplay was never produced. It died in production hell, but that’s okay. I got paid and the novel was published and became This Shall Be a House of Peace. Then from there I just kept building on my experiences and kept working at it, though my military background really gave me a mindset about professional development, that that’s important. I pursued that as well as a writer. I just finished a doctorate in English literature and I see it as my development as a writer.

Debbi (05:17): Well, that’s going to develop you all right. That sounds like quite the program. A lot of people don’t go through that kind of rigorous development for sure. How do you choose your particular topics and your particular characters? Are they based on people you’ve known, situations you’ve been in or just made up?

Phil (05:45): Well, I think like a lot of writers, I’ve got 20 stories in my drawer here that I’m trying to pick which one I’m going to do next. So it’s never a shortage of stories. It’s always like will I live long enough to tell all these stories? And they’re typically not drawn directly from any experience of mine. The characters are often kind of a hybrid of people I know, and sometimes it’s kind of surprising that there’s a villain in a book and someone’s like, “Well, who are they based on? They seem really realistic.” And it’s like, “Well, actually it’s me. I based it on myself, the worst version of myself.” So yeah, I try not to write too directly about my own experiences and try to take it a little farther.

Debbi (06:38): Is there a favorite among the books that you’ve written?

Phil (06:44): Yeah. Well, that’s hard to say. I guess my favorite of all the books would be Every Arm Outstretched, which is, it’s set during the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, but it’s really a story of friendship and loyalty and humanity again. I think it’s kind of the most fun book that I’ve written.

Debbi (07:10): Interesting, because I noticed it’s about veterans, correct?

Phil (07:17): Well, no, it’s about the two young men who get wrapped up in the revolution. They’re not high-minded folks, but they get forced into it and then really confront how to be a good person when there’s no rules anymore.

Debbi (07:35): Yeah, I noticed there were a lot of ethical issues coming up in some of the descriptions of your books, and I like that. Those are always intriguing stories.

Phil (07:44): Yeah. And I think that idea, how do we make sense out of chaos? What do we do when no one’s telling you what to do? Those are stories that always attract me.

Debbi (07:54): Yeah. Now, I have to say that Postslop is a really great title for a book because it immediately got my attention. And unfortunately, we experience it all over the internet, cluttering our inboxes and gently sucking our brains out.

Phil (08:11): Yeah.

Debbi (08:13): What do we do about this? Is there something we can do?

Phil (08:16): So my doctoral thesis was in literary theory, specifically postmodern theory, so kind of a French philosophy of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. And as I was doing all this deep theoretical reading, I realized that these theorists were talking about things that we’re experiencing now, and they were theorizing about it, but it’s sort of come true that images have become detached from their meaning, that things are circulating on social media and on the internet, and they don’t really mean anything anymore. It’s this kind of brain rot material. And so as I was doing this work and listening to my kids, who my kids are in their early 20s and are struggling with this stuff, never having known life before the internet, that I realized that, well, what are we going to do about it? And that I needed to write a short book for them, and so it’s postslop because we can’t go backwards.

(09:21): We can’t get before there was slop. We have to get postslop. We need to move on and actually ground ourselves in what’s real, because slop, it’s not just AI-generated stuff, it’s humans that are making it. Influencers, I find it must be the saddest people on earth because they have a boss, it’s the algorithms.

(09:45): And they have to tune their work to that in order to survive, in order to make money. So the book is really about how do we get past being inundated with slop as individuals and ground ourselves back in what’s real?

Debbi (10:03): That’s definitely a book I want to read, for sure. Let’s see. I recently had an exchange with a chatbot I wanted to tell people about. It did absolutely everything it could to keep me from speaking to a human being. I thought that was interesting.

Phil (10:26): Well, there’s economics behind this too, right?

Debbi (10:29): Oh, yeah.

Phil (10:31): It’s not just an aesthetic choice for businesses. There’s an economic reason why we’re all getting sucked into chatbots.

Debbi (10:38): Yeah. It’s a little bit disturbing when you’re trying to fix a complicated problem and the chatbot just isn’t designed for it. And you keep saying human being, and they keep saying, “We understand you want to talk to a human, but I can help you. Uhh. … bye.” Let’s see. How much research do you do on your books?

Phil (11:06): Well, so I flip back and forth between writing fiction and non-fiction.

(11:10): So I think I take a non-fiction approach to a lot of my books because I’ve written fiction set in Afghanistan. I’ve also written a scholarly history of the war in Afghanistan. So I do a fair deal of research, though I think sometimes it surprises people because a lot of the research doesn’t necessarily make it into the book. I just want it for my foundational knowledge and it’s like a little sprinkling through because my one crime fiction book, Red Warning, is set in Afghanistan in 1978 and follows a corrupt police detective, and people are like, “Oh wow, how did you get all the details of how the police station worked and the detective’s office worked?” And I was like, “No, no, I made that up. I just made that up.” But I based it on dysfunctional offices that I’ve worked in before, and it rings true, I think, because it does touch something that’s true, even if it’s not exactly how those things worked in real life.

Debbi (12:23): I think that’s just the best way to write, because sometimes people get too hung up on reality, so to speak. Fiction is not reality. That’s a documentary or a non-fiction work. Storytelling is about creating situations where people can feel something for the characters.

Phil (12:44): That’s right. And you need just enough to make it believable, because I coach writers as well, and that’s a common problem, particularly for historical fiction writers, that they’re just so lost in their own material that they’re like, “Well, it can’t be that because X.” It’s your story. It can be anything you want.

Debbi (13:06): It’s fictionalized history.

Phil (13:08): Yeah, that’s right. So I always say it’s spice. It’s just the spices that you’re putting in the historical research. It’s not the foundation of the whole thing.

Debbi (13:19): Right. I mean, if you’re writing about the 1800s, obviously women don’t have the vote yet, but human nature is human nature.

Phil (13:31): Yeah, that’s right.

Debbi (13:31): That’s kind of what it comes down to. I think

Phil (13:34): We all want to show our homework. I think that’s what authors do. They’re like, “Look how much I know about this period.”

Debbi (13:41): Yeah. It’s kind of like, yeah, they want to show off and say, “Oh, look, look, look at how this computer works, and this is how this gun works.” And well, sometimes it can get a little too detailed. Let’s see. You’ve also done a graphic novel. How did that come about?

Phil (13:58): Yeah, so that was a failed screenplay.

Debbi (14:01): Oh, that figures. Visual.

Phil (14:03): Yeah, that was one of those screenplays I wrote with another screenwriter. And again, we never found a home. And so at one point in my writing career, I was looking through my box of unpublished stuff, like what did I have that maybe had legs that being a short story or a novella or whatever I had that just hadn’t found a home. And that screenplay really felt like this could be something. And so I naively thought, oh, a screenplay to a graphic novel, that’ll be easy. And it’s not as simple as that. So you end up having to rewrite it pretty extensively. And then of course you have another creative involved because we hired a graphic artist to actually draw it. So it became a really interesting group project that is very different than normal work for me, which is very solitary and just me and a computer.

Debbi (15:10): Yeah. That’s the thing about screenwriting. Screenwriting is highly collaborative.

Phil (15:17): Yeah, it is once it gets going.

Debbi (15:19): Working with an artist is also, same thing.

Phil (15:22): Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, in this case, the artist had a lot of experience drawing manga, and they brought a completely different visual sensibility to the story than I had imagined, but it was terrific. I really liked how it worked, and it was all them. I would never have thought of it. I would never have pulled it off if not for them. So the collaboration was really positive.

Debbi (15:46): That’s awesome. That’s really great. I think it’s great when you can find another person to collaborate with because the result can be absolutely spectacular sometimes.

Phil (15:56): Yeah, I think writers don’t do it enough. It’s such a solitary thing.

Debbi (15:59): I agree. I agree with you. Let’s see. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Phil (16:07): Well, my schedule has been pretty strange lately just because I’ve been in school full-time, but my typical writing schedule is I write about five hours a day, five days a week, because it’s what I do for a living, so I don’t have a lot of other distractions. I can’t really produce more than five hours. That’s really the limits for my brains. And it intends to be during the day, get up, walk the dog, have some coffee, read the paper, and then sit down to write. I like monastic silence when I write, so I need a very quiet, dim place to go and write, but I also tend to go in fits and starts. And so when I start a novel, then I just drive all the way through it, and then I’ll take a bit of a pause, plan something else out, and then dive in again.

(17:03): So right now I need a pause.

Debbi (17:03): Yeah. Yeah. Take a pause and take a look at what you’ve done and figure, am I going the right way? That kind of stuff.

Phil (17:13): Yeah. What do I want to do next? What really attracts me?

Debbi (17:16): Are you more of an outliner or a pantser?

Phil (17:19): Oh, I am an outliner extraordinaire. I have big corkboards covered in index cards. They’re color-coded. I do all of that. I did try more of a pantser method with my last book that is currently looking for a publisher because it was a really complex structure. It was a chiastic structure, so like a ring structure, which you would think needs more planning, but it was so complicated that I couldn’t plan it. So I planned the first half and then just tried to figure out how to write my way back to the beginning again. And yeah, it was interesting. I’m still a planner though.

Debbi (18:03): Oh yeah. Same here. I’m more of a planner than a pantser, though I tend to deviate from my plan a lot. I like to say, wait a minute, maybe I should go this way instead. That seems to be better.

Phil (18:17): I forget who said it, but plans are useless, but planning is essential.

Debbi (18:21): Right. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, totally. Let’s see. What are you working on now? You’re taking a pause, you said.

Phil (18:32): Yeah. So this is a funny year for me. So it’s a three-book year in terms of publishing. Now, most of them have been stacked up years before, but it looks like a pretty massive output. And I just finished writing a novel a couple months ago, and so I’m planning my next book, which I think actually is going to be nonfiction and will be a guide for veterans who want to write memoirs, so a guide to memoir writing.

Debbi (19:04): That’s great.

Phil (19:06): Yeah. Yeah, because I coach a lot of veterans and coaching’s expensive and not everybody can afford it. And so I thought this would be an easier entry point for veterans who have stories to tell and are kind of one and done writers. They may not have a second book, but they have one that’s really burning.

Debbi (19:25): Yeah. I write about a female veteran actually, so this is kind of interesting for me.

Phil (19:32): Yeah.

Debbi (19:33): I can get the Canadian perspective on this then.

Phil (19:37): Yeah. Well, it’s probably not that different actually, to be honest.

Debbi (19:39): I would think not. It’s the human perspective, eh?

Phil (19:43): That’s it. That’s it. Yeah.

Debbi (19:47): What advice would you give to someone who’d like to write for a living?

Phil (19:54): I think there’s two parts to that. Someone who wants to write and then someone who wants to write for a living. When I first was circulating the idea that I was hoping to write for a living, I was in a poker group of writers, writers and poets and reviewers and editors. And when I said, oh, I think I might give this a go, someone said to me, “Phil, do you know the difference between a writer and a large pizza?” “A large pizza can feed a family of four, maybe an extra large pizza nowadays.”

(20:34): So I think if you want to be a writer, it’s actually very easy. You just write. A writer is defined by the action, and so you carve out some time in your day or your week and write. Write for yourself, write for publication, whatever you want to write. And if that’s on your phone or whatever, whatever, I think that’s a noble enterprise on its own. If you want to write for a living, that’s a lot tougher. I think certainly in the beginning it constrains what a living is, but there are a lot of people making a living as writers. They’re just not writing the way that people might think. They’re not sitting down to write the great novel and then that gets published and then they live off their fame and money for the rest of their lives. There’s a lot of copywriting jobs, there are magazine writing jobs.

(21:34): So I think you got to find what do you want to write about and then how you can monetize it.

Debbi (21:39): Yes, that’s important.

Phil (21:41): Yeah. And I’m not going to say that it’s easy, but it’s also not impossible. You can certainly monetize writing, but it might be in a weird place that you don’t necessarily expect.

Debbi (21:54): Exactly. Yeah. There are a lot of writing jobs out there and there are a lot of opportunities for writers to make jobs for themselves, to be entrepreneurs.

Phil (22:06): Yeah, because I think if you’re a writer, you’re a business. You have to think of it. You’re not an artist, though maybe you are, but primarily you’ve got to think about it as a business and make those decisions so that you can survive. I don’t think there’s any glory in being a starving artist.

Debbi (22:26): There isn’t.

Phil (22:27): I don’t think there’s any value in that for itself.

Debbi (22:33): Yeah. I mean, artists really do have to think of it as a business, even artists.

Phil (22:41): Yeah, artists of all kinds, and writers are artists.

Debbi (22:43): Truly, that’s pretty basic. If you’re going to make money at anything, you better treat it like a business. That’s all there is to it. Is there anything you would like to add before we finish up?

Phil (23:01): Yeah. I’m really thinking about this thing about writing as a business or writing for a living, because I think people feel sometimes that if they want to be a writer, that’s the only way that to be serious, they have to write for a living. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s necessarily true either. How you pay your mortgage, how you pay your rent is kind of a separate question from what do you do that gives value to society.

Debbi (23:33): Yes.

Phil (23:35): And so I think you can be a very credible writer who also has a job that doesn’t involve writing. And I think that’s really okay too. And I wish more people wrote, particularly in the face of all the AI slop and the rest of it, just sit down and write. Write a story for fun, write something to express an opinion or a concern you have. I think these are important skills actually.

Debbi (24:06): I love hearing this.

Phil (24:09): Yeah. Well, and I find it sad. I work with a lot of veterans and writing their memoirs and they’ll say, “Well, I kind of dictated a bunch of stuff into ChatGPT and then it spat out this memoir. Now I want you to edit it, Phil.” And I’m not going to edit it. And also, do you realize that the one thing that you had going for you is that the only person who can tell this story is you.

Debbi (24:37): That’s right.

Phil (24:38): The only person who can tell your story is you, and you’ve given that up. So yeah. Again, I think there’s a lot of value, a lot of value in writing and storytelling. It’s kind of the code of how humans work, how human society works.

Debbi (25:00): Yes, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. It’s funny, there are so many contexts in which I tell people that storytelling can help them.

Phil (25:11): Absolutely. Yeah. I think leadership is essentially storytelling because you’ve got to create a convincing story, if you will, as to why people should do the things that you’re asking them to do and to all work together for a purpose. You can’t do that without crafting a narrative around why we’re doing whatever we’re doing.

Debbi (25:33): Yes.

Phil (25:35): For good and for evil, these narratives get created. So yeah, it’s powerful stuff, writing.

Debbi (25:41): It is. The pen really is mightier than the sword.

Phil (25:46): I think so. I think it is. Yeah, having waved both, I think it is.

Debbi (25:52): Hey. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here, Phil. I really appreciate your time and all of your thoughts, and we can hang around afterward and do a quick bonus episode for the Patreon supporters.

Phil (26:07): Okay. Sounds good.

Debbi (26:08): All right. Well, thank you so much, Phil, for being here. And I will just say thank you to my listeners for tuning in, so to speak. I like to say tuning in, even though we don’t have a radio frequency. I’m just an old-fashioned gal who used to listen to the radio. Music, that is. I wasn’t around for the shows. Those go before my time. Anyway, you can get ad-free early access to the podcast as well as book reviews and updates on what I’m doing if you become a Patreon supporter, along with chapters from my books and other things. I hope you consider becoming a member and take advantage of the perks. On that note, I want to thank you again for listening. In two weeks, we’ll have another author on, and until then, take care and happy reading. I’ll be seeing you. Take care.

*****

Check us out on Patreon!

Hi there! 🙂 On the Crime Cafe this week, we have my interview with Matt Witten, who’ll tell us all about his latest novel, 51%, which will (with any luck) be adapted, produced, and distributed to a television set screen near you. He is also optimistic in the face of the insanity we’ve all been subjected to about the future, which is somewhat reassuring.

For a copy of the transcript, click here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today has worked in a wide variety of media, from writing novels, writing for television, writing for the stage, and producing film. His latest novel, 51%, has the most intriguing concept, which I will let him tell you about. As of this moment, it’s still science fiction, I believe, I hope. It’s my pleasure to have with me the author of 51%, Matt Witten. Hey Matt, how are you doing?

Matt (01:25): Great. Thank you, Debbi. It’s so good to be here.

Debbi (01:27): Excellent. It’s great to have you on. Oh, you look so relaxed and happy out there on that porch. That looks nice. I should be on my porch right now except that it’s kind of sweltering out there a little bit from what I understand. Where are you located?

Matt (01:42): I’m in the Adirondacks. I used to live in Los Angeles and our house was in the Palisades Fire last year, so we were very fortunate that we had this small second home in the Adirondacks. So this is where we live now.

Debbi (01:55): Oh my gosh. Well, that’s nice. Very nice. Tell us about your latest book. I am so hooked on the concept already.

Matt (02:04): Thank you very much. It’s called 51%. Here’s a picture of the cover. And it’s about a world 20 years from now. I used to say 30 years, but after one year of Trump, I’ve decided that it’s more like 20 years. And sometimes after I describe the concept to people, they say, “Oh, it sounds more like 10 years.” Anyway, it’s a world where the big six corporations, they own just about everything. They own schools, they own parks, they own the post office, just about everything’s been privatized and they even own people. So our hero, our two heroes are homicide detectives for the New York Police Department Incorporated, because in this world, even the police department is private. So for instance, if you want to investigate a murder, you have to raise money to investigate the murder because you got to raise money for your own salary and half goes to you and half goes to the corporation that owns the police department.

(03:01): So you raise money from the victim’s spouse, their partner, their friends, their neighbors, their family. You might do a Kickstarter campaign in order to raise money for the murder. And so yeah, we have two heroes. One’s a homicide detective and the other is his partner and she’s a crime marketing expert. She’s the one that raises the money.

Debbi (03:28): Wow. Interesting. It’s just so intriguing to listen to you describe this concept because it’s so similar to something I’m working on in certain ways.

Matt (03:36): Okay. All right, good. Well, we should join forces.

Debbi (03:39): I’m a little more optimistic in terms of when this happens in the future.

Matt (03:44): You put it further away?

Debbi (03:45): I’m being a little more hopeful, I guess.

Matt (03:48): Yeah.

Debbi (03:49): Let’s give us a minor bit of hope here.

Matt (03:51): Well, I try to be hopeful in this in the sense that I describe them as the two main characters, but really the homicide detective’s ex-girlfriend is leading the resistance and the resistance is fighting the forces of evil. And she’s got this big action that she’s going to do on Saturday night at midnight, and hopefully it will jumpstart a revolution against the forces of evil. So there’s a lot of hope and love stories to give us hope also.

Debbi (04:22): Well, that’s great. That’s wonderful. And I understand that you will be writing an adaptation of this for somebody for television?

Matt (04:29): Yes, I did. Yeah, I wrote an adaptation of it for TV, co-wrote with Charlie Greg, a showrunner for NBC. So that was very exciting. And we have some meetings scheduled the next month, so we’ll never count our chickens too quickly, but—

Debbi (04:48): Oh, absolutely not.

Matt (04:49): That’s exciting.

Debbi (04:50): That is an amazing bit of news though.

Matt (04:53): Yeah.

Debbi (04:53): And it sounds like things are progressing as opposed to stalling.

Matt (04:57): Yes. Well, yeah, I think so. Yes.

Debbi (05:01): That’s fantastic. Congratulations. That’s a big win for you.

Matt (05:05): Yeah, thank you.

Debbi (05:07): I really want to see this thing. I want to read this book too. Let’s see. What really inspired you to write this book? She said somewhat like a dumb interviewer, what inspired you to write this book.

Matt (05:23): It’s always a good question. Well, I would say two things. One is, ever since I first started following politics, I’ve just watched as the government got more gridlocked and government became smaller and big corporations became bigger and more powerful. And we’ve got guys like Elon Musk, some days they’re trillionaires and some days they’re only close. And I’ve watched the middle class getting squeezed, basically the middle class and the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. So all my feelings about privatization and big corporations taking over and all of this came to fruition in this. And I’ll also say more specifically, the day that I got the inspiration for this, I went out to see a lecture by a TV executive named David Nevins, and Nevins was involved in the creation of some terrific shows like ER, The West Wing, Homeland. And he said something that night when I saw his lecture, he said that the best TV shows, and my guess is the best novels, but anyway, the best TV shows are the ones that speak to our deepest fears.

(06:34): So I walked home from the lecture that night. I was in Connecticut and I thought, “What are my deepest fears?” And two words came back to me, and those two words were student loans.

Debbi (06:47): Oh, my gosh.

Matt (06:48): And so I thought about student loans all night long, and by the morning I had this world, the name of the book is 51%, and it’s based on the idea that there are, if you want to go to college in this world or you want to go to high school, there’s no public colleges, there’s no public high schools, so everything is private. So if you want to go, you’re going to have to pay your own way, and lots of times you’re not going to have the money for it. So you get a loan to go to high school and college. And what it is, it’s an income share agreement where you agree the corporation is going to pay for your high school, pay for your college, but you’re going to have to pay them X percent of your money for your salary for the next 10 years.

(07:29): So 20% of your income, let’s say for the next 10 years. And I should say, by the way, this is already happening. These income share agreements exist now. People on the right, like Marco Rubio are very supportive of it. People on the left or the middle, like Hillary Clinton are very supportive of it. So it’s already happening. So I thought, let’s say this catches steam and then it’s used for other things because the way the world is going, fewer and fewer people, at least in the last year or two, are having health insurance. Nobody gives a heck about Obamacare. Excuse me, the rich people don’t give a heck about Obamacare. And so what if you get a situation, you God forbid, get cancer, you’re going to have to give up X percent of your income for a certain number of years. You need help with childcare, which the United States government or state governments don’t really seem to have what Europe has in terms of childcare.

(08:20): Okay, you want childcare, you have to give up another percent. So some people wind up over 50% owned, and when they wind up over 50% owned, 51%, then the corporations own them, could tell them what to do. If you want to be a poet or whatever, they’ll just laugh at you. Poets don’t make any money, so you got to work whatever. You got to work at a strip club, you got to work in a mine that can cause cancer. You have to do what we tell you to do. So it’s just basically.

(08:51): Anyways, that’s what inspired me. It’s basically looking at this world we have now where middle-class people are getting more and more squeezed and to the point where the corporations 20 years from now own us. And at the same time that right now we have these evil guys with. I mean, I would just say Trump, I’ll just say it, evil guys like Trump who are doing all these things to make our world worse, but there’s tremendous people who are fighting back against them. And it seems to me in every generation we’ve had a bad guy or the bad force, evil that we’ve had to fight. And so in my book, 20 years from now, there’s going to be evil again and good people of goodwill are going to come together and fight it. And that’s going to be the way the world works, I think, till the end of the world. Good is always going to.

(09:41): I don’t know, it must be a line of the Superman or something, but good is always going to fight evil. That’s the way it is.

Debbi (09:47): Thank you for articulating all of those thoughts that need to be expressed. I just think that was a very nicely expressed sentiment, all of it.

Matt (10:01): Thank you. I appreciate it.

Debbi (10:02): I wish more people thought that way and started thinking about it and started resisting.

Matt (10:08): Thank you. I’ll tell you, the thing that makes me anxious when I talk like that is–

Debbi (10:11): I get it.

Matt (10:11): I’m imagining the reader, or not the reader, the listener to your podcast sitting at home saying, “Man, that book sounds pretty heavy. No way I’m touching that book.” So then I always have to follow it up with, “It’s a very sweet love story. There’s a lot of action.” People that read it, it’s like, oh, super fast-paced and all that, because whatever, I’m a TV writer. I don’t want people getting bored, so I got to keep it coming.

Debbi (10:36): Think about all the spy movies you ever watched. That’s pretty serious stuff, but still it’s very watchable.

Matt (10:43): Yeah, it’s interesting. If something doesn’t have something to it, sometimes it’s like, why am I reading this? It’s like there’s nothing to it. It’s too airy or something. But yeah, if something’s too heavy, obviously I’m going to put the book down after page two or three. So just trying to get that match and create something that I would enjoy reading, and I think a lot of people are enjoying reading.

Debbi (11:08): You’re not writing a treatise, you’re writing a novel, a thriller novel at that.

Matt (11:12): That’s right.

Debbi (11:13): So it’s going to be thrilling. Let’s see. Let’s see. I was looking at an interview you did where you talked about “wars without consequence.” I thought that was a really interesting expression. Can you talk a little bit about what that means, wars without consequence?

Matt (11:32): Well, could you say a little more? I don’t remember what it means.

Debbi (11:37): It had something to do with bombing countries where we didn’t have any interests.

Matt (11:41): Yeah. Well, I think probably what I was thinking. I wrote a movie called Drones, and so I was probably talking about that. In this movie, there’s guys, these Air Force privates actually, who were hitting buttons and killing people in Afghanistan. And there’s no danger to Americans anymore. We can go. In Iran, I mean, we’re killing our economy and we have wounded or killed 750 people. So maybe that’s not the best example, but there are a lot of wars that we have fought that nobody knows anything about. We’ve had drone attacks on Sudan, and even in Iran to a certain extent, we’ve managed to kill tens of thousands of people in Iran, and hardly any Americans have suffered as thoroughly as that, as being killed by it. And we have these wars where if we don’t die, we don’t feel it. If we don’t suffer, we don’t feel it. And it means we’re likely to have more wars. The bar will be lower to have these stupid wars.

(12:52): Venezuela as being another good example, in my opinion. In the one hand, it’s like, “Oh, great. We’ve got these great weapons. We’ve got these great drones. It’s terrific. We’ve got these great bomber planes. We’ll be able to do this and be so powerful.” And yet on the other hand, it just means we’re going to get more wars, we’re going to kill more people, we’re going to alienate more people, we’re going to create more wars.

(13:18): At this point also, everybody’s got this ability. Ukraine’s got the ability. Iran, obviously, they have these weapons that are pretty relatively cheap and they’re able to hold us off. So it’s probably what I meant by war without consequence. It’s different from you’re going into battle like a Mel Gibson movie or something. You’re going into battle across the plain and some of you are going to die and some of the enemy are going to die, and it’s real, and you really got to deal with it, and it’s right in front of you. I don’t mean to romanticize, it caused great carnage, but it also is great disincentive to declaring war on somebody.

Debbi (13:57): And it also isn’t going to be covered by the media quite the same way as say, oh, Vietnam.

Matt (14:02): Right. I mean, Vietnam was. Yeah, because everybody was scared of getting drafted. That’s why the Vietnam War created that huge movement. And Iraq war was just as stupid as the Vietnam War, but nobody had to worry about getting drafted. So though there’s a lot of anti-war sentiment, it wasn’t like the streets were full of people protesting because if I don’t have to worry about getting drafted, I may be ticked off with the war, but I might not be so likely to go out and protest and do things.

Debbi (14:32): Yeah. Let’s see. Sometimes I get the sense that we’re so busy trying to keep up with technology that we don’t have time to really think about what we’re doing. Would you agree with that?

Matt (14:48): Are you thinking in terms of AI specifically?

Debbi (14:50): I’m thinking in terms of all the technology. Things happen so fast. We get so many things in email from people. Here’s a great way to promote your book, blah, blah, blah, stuff like that. I mean, it’s like they come fast and thick, these offers sometimes, especially when you’re doing something like screenwriting.

Matt (15:16): Yeah, yeah. Well, you definitely get a lot of spam for sure. I mean, as a writer, you get a million emails that they might claim to be from, whatever, from John Grisham and saying, “Oh, I read your book. It’s going to be terrific.” And it’s a hustle. I believe that. I know. It’s crazy. And then you get so many offers from book clubs, and I think about 99 out of a hundred are scams, and it gets to the point where I don’t even answer them, and I probably miss a book club here and there, but it’s just not worth it to me to try to figure out each one. Okay, is this a scam or is it real? Since it’s a scam 99 times, I’d rather just get rid of it. But yeah, I don’t know. I mean, technology, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Debbi (16:03): Let’s think of AI then. I mean, AI itself is also a huge … to me, it can be hugely problematic for us. I’m not saying it doesn’t have benefits. I’m just saying it could be a huge problem if we’re not careful.

Matt (16:19): Yeah, I agree. Well, everything. Yeah. I mean, Instagram, people are very concerned about it for kids and social media in general. So yeah, I don’t know. I think in general, technology has improved our lives in the last, whatever, thousands of years or hundreds of years.

Debbi (16:37): Absolutely.

Matt (16:38): I had a funny conversation with somebody recently, a friend of mine, Wendy, who’s in her 70s, and she was complaining about the world, and I said, “Well, do you think that the world has gotten worse in the last 30 years or 40 years?” And she said, “Well, yes.” I was kind of shocked, because the way I view it, it’s like people’s lifespans around the world are getting longer and infant mortality is less. The percentage of people who’s hungry is a little bit less than it used to be. And so to me, it’s like things are getting better. But I was trying to think, let’s say Wendy’s daily life or my daily life, is it better or worse than it was? I mean, I think all the medical advances probably means that I’m healthy. Actually, I know. Medical advances means I’m healthier than I would’ve been. That’s the main thing. But other ways, I don’t know. Is food better? Is drink better? Is movies better? Is entertainment better? I don’t know. I have to think about that some more because I don’t know how you feel, but I always took it on faith that things were getting better for us.

Debbi (17:43): Well, I don’t think things are getting worse. I think we’re being bombarded with information of various sorts. Some of it is edited, some of it isn’t. So sometimes you hear stuff and it sounds worse than it really is, and some of the headlines are worse than what they’re saying, than what they’re actually saying. I think we just are so bombarded with information that. And we’re also living in an extraordinary time when it comes to people who violate the Constitution around here. I mean, I’ll just say it, they are violating the Constitution left and right up at the federal level. And Congress, I don’t know, whatever happened to balance of powers? That’s what I’d love to know.

Matt (18:32): Right. Yeah. In that sense, maybe things are getting a lot worse.

Debbi (18:36): In that sense, that part is getting worse. But I don’t think the world generally is getting worse. I think we’re just better informed of the bad parts of it.

Matt (18:46): Yeah, I think, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what’ll happen after we get rid of this president and things change a little bit. I really don’t know. Will this be a blip or will it be just things continuing to go down the tube? It’s hard for me. I mean, in that sense, it’s hard for me to tell.

Debbi (19:01): Well, I never like to make predictions, so I don’t believe in them because you never know what’s going to happen, really. I’ve seen games where I was convinced my team was going to lose and they come back from behind, that sort of thing.

Matt (19:17): Oh, were you a Knicks fan this year?

Debbi (19:20): No, but I’ve been a Mets fan for many years. I remember when they were absolutely terrible. That’s how old I am. So have you ever listened to a podcast called American Afterlife?

Matt (19:33): No, I never have.

Debbi (19:34): It’s about what happens in the Northwest. The Northwest just basically crumbles into the sea, and there’s National Guard trying to keep control over everything, and there’s this one girl, a young girl who. She’s like a teenager, young adult, who is trying to find her mother, but she has a whole set of issues with her mom. And well, it’s interesting. It’s just a really interesting end of the world kind of thing that might interest you since you’re dealing with the technical part of it in your book, and they’re dealing with natural catastrophe.

Matt (20:11): Oh, that sounds good. I’ll remember that. American Afterlife. I’m reading a great novel now called Murder at the End of the World, and it’s about—

Debbi (20:18): Oh, I’ve heard of that.

Matt (20:19): Oh, it’s amazing. In fact, I think we can make a great movie or TV show. I was curious to see if it had been optioned yet, but it’s about the big asteroid’s about to hit. It’s going to destroy the world in a few months. At the time the book starts, it’s two months from now, so what are you going to do? Your world is going to destroy it. And the hero of the book decides to go to driving school. She’s 23, I think, and she’s decided, “You know what? I’m this old. I should have gotten my license. I’m going to get my license.” And it turns out there’s one teacher still at the driving school, and so she is going to help her get her license. It’s a cool concept. They’re living their lives, and then it takes a twist, which is that they find a dead body in the trunk of the car that they’re going out to drive.

(21:10): So then it’s like, “What do we do? We’re not going to let this murderer get away with it. I don’t care if there’s two months left. We’re not going to let her get away with it.” And then to make it really work, first of all, the author emphasizes how the victim suffered in the last part of her life because it was a vicious kind of murder, and then it turns out it was a serial killer. So it’s like, “Okay, we got to avenge the victim because they really suffered, and other people are going to suffer in the next two months.” So really, even if it’s two months left, you want to keep the people from suffering, let them die when the asteroid hits, it won’t be as bad. So it was just a beautiful book. It was a buddy story between these two characters, but it was also just beautiful. You’re going to live and no matter what happens, even if you’re about to die, it was great.

Debbi (21:59): Yeah. Live until you die.

Matt (22:01): That sounds like a good policy.

Debbi (22:04): That’s what I always say. Just keep living.

Matt (22:09): That works.

Debbi (22:10): Live now. Don’t wait to live. Don’t say, “Well, I’ll wait 10 years and start living then.”

Matt (22:17): You’re right about that. You’re right about that.

Debbi (22:19): That’s kind of what I’m feeling these days. Well, it sounds like you have a lot of hope for society despite everything you write about in your books, and I like that. I just want to say that.

Matt (22:32): Okay, thank you.

Debbi (22:33): Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Matt (22:38): No, I’ve enjoyed being on here. It’s a pleasure. So I know you’re working on a movie short, so good luck with that.

Debbi (22:47): Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m excited, very excited. So I’m sure it will be fun. And I’m also doing post-production on my first movie, so that’s coming together finally.

Matt (23:03): Wow.

Debbi (23:04): Slowly.

Matt (23:04): Well, that’s exciting.

Debbi (23:05): Things happen with me very slowly.

Matt (23:07): That’s very exciting.

Debbi (23:09): Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And I am happy to have you on today and hope that you’ll hang around for the bonus episode that I’ll do after this, like a 10 minutes bonus.

Matt (23:24): Sure.

Debbi (23:25): Excellent. Great. So thanks so much for spending time with us today, Matt. I really appreciate it. It was very interesting hearing you talk and talking to you. Your book sounds fantastic, and good luck with the show.

Matt (23:40): Thank you. Thank you very much.

Debbi (23:42): To all my listeners and supporters, I would like to thank you very, very much for listening or watching on YouTube. If you’d like to follow us on Patreon, you’ll see that the Crime Cafe is now kind of rebranded into the Crime Cafe and multimedia experience. That’s kind of the best way I can put it because I’m kind of into podcasting, novel writing, screenwriting, and now filmmaking. So what does that all mean? I don’t know. We’ll see. I would welcome your thoughts on the show. Do you enjoy listening to it? Would you enjoy listening to a scripted podcast, for instance? Are there any other features that you would like to see as part of my newsletter? Let me know. Just shoot me an email at [email protected]. On that note, thanks again for your attention, your interest, and we’ll be back in two weeks with more.

(24:43): So in the meantime, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

We’re still on Patreon. 🙂

My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer and screenwriter M.M. DeLuca.

Among other things, we discussed what it was like for her to study with a Pulitzer Prize winning writer.

For a copy of the transcript, click here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everybody. Today my guest is the author of five critically acclaimed suspense novels, including her latest novel, The Divorce Party. Originally from Durham City, England, after studying at the University of London Goldsmiths College, she moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where she worked as an English literature teacher, then as a freelance writer.

(01:20): It’s my great pleasure to have with me Marjorie DeLuca, who writes under the name MM DeLuca. Hey Marjorie, how are you doing today? Let me see if I can get you in view. There you go. Awesome.

Marjorie (01:35): It’s great to be here. Lovely to talk to you.

Debbi (01:38): Well, I’m very pleased to have you on. It says, oh, how are things in Manitoba, anyway? How are things in Winnipeg?

Marjorie (01:48): Hot and humid.

Debbi (01:50): Hot and humid.

Marjorie (01:51): Hot, humid, windy with periods of rain.

Debbi (01:54): Oh my, that sounds like us.

Marjorie (01:57): It’s greener. Greener than usual.

Debbi (02:00): Well, there you go. There’s that.

Marjorie (02:01): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (02:03): Let’s see. Now in your bio, it says that you studied advanced creative writing with Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Carol Shields. What was it like to study such a subject with a Pulitzer Prize winner?

Marjorie (02:17): It was like meeting a rock star. It really was. We were her final class before she retired, and we were all sitting there that day in awe because she just won the Pulitzer Prize. We were sitting there just waiting for her to come in, and she slipped through the door. She was this very petite, quiet lady, and she was just amazing. She had a charisma about her, and she wasn’t just your teacher. She was a friend, a mentor, and she loved to meet with us outside of class and we’d all go for lunches and she’d say, “Tell me the gossip. Come on.” And she was just a wonderful teacher. And actually, a lot of the things that we did in class, I used as an English teacher, but she had a profound influence on my career. It was an amazing one year that we spent with her.

(03:22): And after that, she moved away to the coast, to BC, and sadly passed away some years after that. But yeah, it was a fabulous experience.

Debbi (03:36): Was this during, I assume these are graduate studies?

Marjorie (03:43): Yes, it was, but you had to send in a piece of work or several pieces, and she selected the participants. So it was a one-year, just once a week course. Yeah.

Debbi (04:00): Sounds very much like a fellowship or something like that.

Marjorie (04:04): Yeah. Well, she was a professor at the University of Manitoba for many years. And when she won the Pulitzer Prize, I think she was the only female professor at the time.

Debbi (04:15): Oh my goodness.

Marjorie (04:16): The other male colleagues were a bit miffed, I think.

Debbi (04:20): Oh, dear.

Marjorie (04:22): She won the prize. But anyway, no, maybe that’s not fair, but she had been there quite a while as a teacher, a professor.

Debbi (04:34): Well, that’s just extraordinary that you had that opportunity. That’s fabulous.

Marjorie (04:38): Yes.

Debbi (04:41): What genre would you say your writing falls into?

Marjorie (04:45): I’m all over the place, really. I get bored in one genre. I started off in sci-fi, young adult sci-fi when I was teaching grades 10 to 12. And around that time, The Hunger Games came out and the kids just loved it, even reluctant readers. So as I was reading them, I thought, “I could write something like this.” And so that’s when I really started getting serious about putting something together.

(05:18):And I wrote a trilogy called The Forevers. Here’s the cover of it. I couldn’t find a publisher, so I self-published the trilogy and actually did pretty well. And later on, I adapted it into a series, and I actually got shortlisted for a Netflix call for submissions with my pilot and pitch, but they didn’t pick it up, but I’m still hoping that someone will. So I started off with that. Then you can see I’m all over the place.

(05:57): Then I went into historical fiction and wrote this family saga called The Pittman’s Daughter. And that’s based on my mother’s reminiscences as growing up in a culinary town in Durham, near Durham in the northeast of England. She was a Pittman’s daughter, a coal miner’s daughter. I couldn’t get that published by a publisher, so I self-published it.

And then I really love historical fiction. The first book I got published was this, The Savage Instinct, which is fact meets fiction set against the trial of real life serial poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton. So that’s when I started getting into suspense. I wrote another suspense book called Lilah, and then began a string of contemporary suspense.

So I had The Perfect Family Man, which was a big bestseller, The Secret Sister, The Night Side, which is sort of dark paranormal suspense. And then The Divorce Party, which is. I sort of got tired of being in the dark side after The Savage Instinct and The Night Side.

(07:32): I thought, I think I need something light. So I came up with The Divorce Party, which is exactly what it says. Friends from university who were invited by their frenemy, I guess, to her divorce party in Las Vegas. I had a lot of fun writing that.

Debbi (07:56): I was going to say, that sounds very acerbic wit stuff.

Marjorie (08:02): Oh, it was such fun writing it and researching it was so funny. There’s a whole industry devoted to divorce parties

Debbi (08:12): Oh, my gosh.

Marjorie (08:12): In Las Vegas.

Debbi (08:13): Oh, I can imagine.

Marjorie (08:14): I had no idea.

Debbi (08:15): I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about it, but I can imagine, wow.

Marjorie (08:20): No, I didn’t. I knew there’s the marriage thing. Well, there’s the whole marriage thing with the chapels and all of that. Note: There’s divorce cocktails. There’s special divorce playlists. There’s divorce party games. It’s incredible.

Debbi (08:38): Divorce party industry. Wow, that’s fantastic.

Marjorie (08:42): I know.

Debbi (08:42): Fantastic stuff. Places you go when you start looking.

Marjorie (08:47): I know. And it’s actually not as depressing as you’d think because a lot of these divorce parties are looking at things as a fresh start, a way to reinvent yourself. Unfortunately, in my book, it’s not as nice as that.

Debbi (09:06): They’re reinventing themselves in bad ways perhaps.

Marjorie (09:09): Yes. They’re actually trying to reinvent themselves, but the past keeps popping up like a corpse in a swimming pool.

Debbi (09:18): That’s right.

Marjorie (09:20): And then my latest one is another one of these destination thrillers, and that’s set in Mexico in a big villa at a 60th wedding anniversary.

Debbi (09:34): Deadly Diamonds.

Marjorie (09:36): Yeah. Actually, the book is still at the copy editing phase, and the publisher hasn’t done the cover release yet.

Debbi (09:52): Yeah.

Marjorie (09:53): Yeah. So it’s set in Mexico during the weekend of Día de Los Muertos. And that’s why I’m wearing a T-shirt with a –

Debbi (10:05): Nice.

Marjorie (10:07): Yeah.

Debbi (10:08): Very nice.

Marjorie (10:10): So I’m all over the genres. I jump it back and forth.

Debbi (10:16): That’s pretty impressive. I see you’ve done a combination of self-publishing and publishing through presses. Is that correct?

Marjorie (10:23): Yes. Yeah.

Debbi (10:26): But you started with self-publishing?

Marjorie (10:28): Yeah, I started with self-publishing.

Debbi (10:31): And when was that?

Marjorie (10:34): That was probably around 2013. The market was way less crowded. When I started self-publishing, it was possible to sell a decent number of books. So The Pittman’s Daughter and The Forevers trilogy did quite well. Nowadays, I’m not so sure. I think it’s really, really competitive and expensive to market.

Debbi (11:04): I know. Believe me, I know.

Marjorie (11:07): Oh, yes? You’ve self-published?

Debbi (11:09): I’m right in there. Yeah, I’m self-published. Yeah.

Marjorie (11:12): Yes.

Debbi (11:12): I am totally self-published at this point.

Marjorie (11:16): Yeah, and it takes a lot of your time.

Debbi (11:18): With a few exceptions. Oh, yeah, it does. It takes a lot of time. The thing is that I’m also involved in screenwriting, so there’s a lot of time that gets devoted. You do screenwriting?

Marjorie (11:32): Yes.

Debbi (11:33): Excellent. Most excellent. Good to know. How did you get into screenwriting?

Marjorie (11:41): My daughter is a costume designer for film, and one of her earlier projects, she was involved in some Hallmark movies, and I saw some of these. I can write one of those. So I co-wrote a Hallmark feature with a friend of hers who’s involved in the movies as well. It never got anywhere. Then I adapted The Forevers and did that pitch and the pilot episode and got a lot of encouragement from the Netflix executive who really loved it. But unfortunately, there’s that phrase, “We love it, but we’re not going to go with this.”

Debbi (12:26): Yes. Getting the green light is hard.

Marjorie (12:29): I know.

Debbi (12:30): It’s become harder.

Marjorie (12:32): Yes. It’s more difficult than even getting a book published, I think. And then I met up with another friend of hers who’s a production designer, and he wanted someone to co-write an action thriller with him. So we co-wrote an action thriller, which is actually going through some early stages of development, so I’m hopeful.

Debbi (12:57): That’s great.

Marjorie (12:58): Yeah. And I’ve had some interest in The Divorce Party, of people interested in adapting it, so we’ll see.

Debbi (13:06): Wonderful.

Marjorie (13:06): You never know until the green light comes on.

Debbi (13:12): Exactly.

Marjorie (13:14): It’s in suspension.

Debbi (13:15): It’s all very sketchy until it actually happens.

Marjorie (13:18): Yeah.

Debbi (13:20): And even if it’s happening, it might get shut down. You never know.

Marjorie (13:24): I know. I know. But screenwriting does help with novel writing.

Debbi (13:29): It does. You’re absolutely right about that.

Marjorie (13:32): Yes.

Debbi (13:33): I learned that fast. How do you decide which story you want to tell?

Marjorie (13:46): It’s interesting because it takes me a long time. I’ve usually got two or three projects going at the same time that come to me through either. The inspiration either comes from a memory, an image that was catchy to me, something that I saw in the news maybe, or somebody that I met that’s kind of sparked an idea. So a project that I’m working on right now that might be picked up by a publisher, it was suggested to me by a childhood image of when I was a kid. We lived in a house just outside of Durham City. And I remember one day there was a terrible accident outside the front of the house, a car accident. And I remember we had a little kind of bank that I could look out onto the road from. And I remember seeing a pair of red child’s shoes and this red shoes, red shoes thing stuck in my mind forever.

(15:05): And just that image sets up a whole set of different ideas for me. And it takes me a while to explore the ideas before I start writing in, because I’ve done it the opposite where I’ve gone full tilt on an idea that’s not fully developed. And then you’re like, okay, now what?

Debbi (15:29): Exactly.

Marjorie (15:30): So then I’ve got another project, which is a sci-fi one, which that came to me when I thought about deserted shopping malls. We went for a visit down to Grand Forks, which is just south of us in North Dakota. And the mall, which used to be busy in the ’90s, was a dead zone. It was the weirdest place I’ve ever stepped into. The food court was empty. There were no stores. It was a ghost town. And then I started thinking, wow, what if these in the future were places that people lived? And what if the grid failed basically, and people were forced to live in these malls, but the wealthy people lived in biospheres? I came up with an idea there were three classes of people, the wealthy people living in the biospheres, the mid-range people living in the malls and the old Costco warehouses, and then the feral people living wild,

(16:49): And came up with this story about the wealthy people wanting to move off the planet basically. And it’s a whole complicated story, but that idea was just suggested by the mall. So I’ve got all of these projects going, and I kind of dot from one to the other. And my rule is if it doesn’t get me in the gut, if I don’t feel an emotional connection after writing it for a while, I put it aside. For me, it has to touch the emotions somewhere. And that’s how I decide. I kind of have the two or three projects. I write a bit here and a bit there. But if it hasn’t got some emotional resonance, then I put it aside for a while until I can come up with something better.

Debbi (17:49): I know the feeling because, I think it must be a screenwriter thing because I have multiple screenplays that I’ve started. Ideas that I really want to develop and take somewhere.

Marjorie (18:02): Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Debbi (18:04): It’s always about which one do I really connect with the most?

Marjorie (18:09): Yes, I know. I mean, I’m sure writers have so many ideas in their draw when they’re sitting on their laptop that could be great stories. I’ve got lots of thoughts.

Debbi (18:22): Exactly. Yeah.

Marjorie (18:23): But it takes a really fully formed idea to go to the end of a novel.

Debbi (18:29): Exactly. Or a feature film.

Marjorie (18:32): Yes.

Debbi (18:33): I was going to say that you must be an outliner at heart.

Marjorie (18:38): No, I’m not actually. That’s why screenwriting was so good for me. It forced me to outline things. Yeah. So I’m a kind of semi-plotter, semi-outliner. I’ll have a basic outline, and I usually know the ending, and then I’ll start writing from there. But I’m not a beat by beat person unless I’m writing a screenplay.

Debbi (19:05): Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I tend to be more beat by beat, but I’m willing to vary from the beats. This is the thing for me. It’s like if I know where I’m going, that’s what counts.

Marjorie (19:18): Yeah. Well, you do need to know the ending.

Debbi (19:21): Yeah.

Marjorie (19:21): It’s interesting because we are working on the publisher, the editor, my publisher that published The Savage Instinct, we are working on an adaptation of it, but it’s amazing just how much a feature movie requires you to strip the story right down to the essentials.

Debbi (19:44): Absolutely.

Marjorie (19:46): So I’ve done the beat sheet for The Savage Instinct, and I had to cut lots of the story out. I had to cut some side plots and some characters because the movie is just really lean. You have to get down to the essence of it.

Debbi (20:11): Exactly. Yeah. You can’t have too many subplots. You can’t have too many characters. Not only is that going to confuse the audience, but the cost goes up. More actors.

Marjorie (20:24): Yes. Well, that’s the thing. Yes.

Debbi (20:25): This is a reality.

Marjorie (20:27): Yeah. And that’s what my editor kept telling me. More characters, more money. And at the center of The Savage Instinct, it’s really a story about two women, a childless woman and a child poisoner. And it’s set in the Victorian era, but it’s a really strange dynamic between these two women. The childless woman is a prison visitor visiting the child poisoner. So a very strange relationship develops because the childless woman’s husband is very oppressed. He’s basically oppressing her. And yes, she forms a friendship with the poisoner and a sort of strange mentorship arises. I won’t say anymore.

Debbi (21:28): Yeah, that does sound like a strange mentorship. Let’s see. What authors do you like to read?

Marjorie (21:39): Interesting. The book that I’m currently reading now is written by a Canadian author who I really loved his first book. It’s called The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer. He wrote, We Used to Live Here. I don’t really have heard of that one. He’s very, very good. I love Margaret Atwood. I think I’ve read most of her books. I read, I’m trying to think. I have so many books that I like. I used to read more suspense and thrillers than I do now. I liked Gillian McAllister.

Debbi (22:30): Oh, yeah. I think

Marjorie (22:30): It’s Gillian McAllister. I really liked her. Lisa Jewell, I’ve enjoyed some of her books. Then I just read a book called Liberty Street, which is by another Canadian author about a journalist that goes into a woman’s prison in the ’60s. She gets herself admitted to a woman’s prison because in the ’60s you could be sent there if you were incorrigible. You are an incorrigible young woman that your parents couldn’t contain you. You could be sent to this awful prison.

Debbi (23:09): Oh, my goodness.

Marjorie (23:11): Yeah. So I read a variety of books.

Debbi (23:15): Wow, that sounds like quite an interesting book.

Marjorie (23:18): Yeah.

Debbi (23:19): Scary and horrible, but interesting. Yeah. How do you divide your time between writing and marketing?

Marjorie (23:29): I probably don’t do enough marketing. The publisher does some. I’m published at present with a smaller British press, Bloodhound Books, and they’re really good at producing marketing materials. They do beautiful visuals and they make a trailer for the book and they’re really helpful, but you still, as the author, have to do quite a bit yourself.

Debbi (24:01): Oh, yes.

Marjorie (24:02): There’s Instagram posts. Well, I don’t know. I mean, if we knew what worked, I’m not sure. I see people nowadays are doing lots of recorded messages on Instagram and stuff, I guess, to make sure that people don’t think AI wrote their book or something. They’re trying to personalize their author platform.

I have a website, but it takes a lot of time to do all this stuff. Oh, yeah. For sure. I write every morning, but once I’ve gone through the emails and then looked after a couple of things, I’m like, okay, where’s the time going? I haven’t written anything. So I have to have deadlines.

I work best with a tight deadline. So my book, The Night Side, was published with Seven House who were taken over now by Joffe Books. And so I might be doing another one for them. I’m not sure, but I gave myself a deadline to finish this book. So once I know it’s coming up, then I really go to it and forget the marketing for a while.

Debbi (25:26): Yeah, that’s probably best.

Marjorie (25:29): Yeah.

Debbi (25:29): When you’re in the zone on something, you really just have to stick with that.

Marjorie (25:34): Yeah.

Debbi (25:36): Let’s see. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Marjorie (25:40): Well, I write every morning and take the afternoon off. Otherwise, my husband would be like, “Come on, let’s go out.” And I’m like, “Okay.” We golf and all of that. Then I write sometimes in the evening as well. Depends just what kind of a schedule I’ve got.

Debbi (26:01): Yeah.

Marjorie (26:02): You do have to set aside a period of time, but you can’t do it all the time. And I tend to write more in the winter. Summer’s a bit difficult because you’re just wanting to get outside and to be in the fresh air.

Debbi (26:20): Absolutely.

Marjorie (26:23): I write Saturdays and Sundays. There’s no day off. And in fact, really, there’s no time off ever because you probably know this, you’re always thinking about ideas.

Debbi (26:36): Oh, yes. A writer never really takes a vacation. No,

Marjorie (26:40): No, no.

Debbi (26:43): There’s always something good cooking up there. I don’t know.

Marjorie (26:46): Yeah. Even when I’m on vacation, I’m thinking,

Debbi (26:51): Yeah, yeah. What will I write about this?

Marjorie (26:53): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (26:56): That’s interesting. Sometimes I catch myself blogging in my head.

Marjorie (27:01): Oh, really?

Debbi (27:01): Yeah. So to speak. Yeah. How would I blog this particular scene that’s taking place right now?

Marjorie (27:09): And then you drift away and your husband’s probably like, “Hello?”

Debbi (27:12): Hey, are you there?

Marjorie (27:14): Yeah.

Debbi (27:14): Listen to me. Okay. Yes.

Marjorie (27:18): Actually, I’ve gotten into trouble a few times because I’m a people watcher and staring at people and their interactions. And I’ve had more than one set of people say, “Do you want a photograph or something?”

Debbi (27:33): It’s funny because I have to really catch myself not to do that. It’s like I will see something and I’m just like, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” I mean, if people start to get to the point where they’re like, “Hey, what are you looking at?” That would worry me a little bit.

Marjorie (27:51): Yeah. Well, actually, that was something that Carol Shields told us to do. She said, “You have to develop your writer’s eyes and ears. So you would look for something beyond the obvious.”

Debbi (28:08): Exactly.

Marjorie (28:09): “And then you listen to other people’s conversations.” And actually I have that in, I think it’s in my book, The Night Side maybe. Yeah, I talk about that. The character talks about that. It’s either that or The Perfect Family Man. I can’t remember. Now I’m getting them mixed up. But I used to tell that to my students because I taught creative writing at high school, and I’d send them out to just find images, find things around the school that they’d never looked at before. And they would come back and write it all on the board and there’d be a mass of different images. And it was amazing experience. Then I’d tell them to listen in on conversations and we’d make big displays of that. And they would go away and write stories inspired by one or more of those images or sound bites. They loved it.

Debbi (29:15): That’s a very cool thing.

Marjorie (29:17): Yeah, it was.

Debbi (29:18): A very cool thing to get people writing.

Marjorie (29:20): Yeah.

Debbi (29:21): Good writing prompts.

Marjorie (29:23): Yeah.

Debbi (29:24): What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?

Marjorie (29:30): Have a day job.

Debbi (29:33): Yes.

Marjorie (29:34): You can’t make enough money as a writer unless you’re one of the top. I don’t even know what the percentage is now. There’s not enough money to support you as a writer. So have a day job if you’re a young person, have a backup and have a very thick skin because you’re going to get criticized, you’re going to get … You’re going to be putting your work out there and you’re going to get some very weird reviews sometimes, but you can’t personalize it because not everybody’s going to like what you put out there. And another thing I would say is that for the older writer, it’s never too late. Writing is one thing that you can do regardless of your age. It doesn’t matter how old you are, as long as you can sit down and come up with a story, keep going with it. It’s a great thing to do as a retired person because you’re not worrying so much about the financial side of it.

(30:45): But I would say only do it if you’re willing to pour out, sort of plunder your own emotional life and lay it bare for everyone to see. It’s a risky thing to do.

Debbi (31:03): Yes. Yes, it is.

Marjorie (31:08): And you expose yourself to other people’s scrutiny.

Debbi (31:13): Yes. Yes, it is. It is a risky thing. And I’m not sure people really appreciate that until they actually do it.

Marjorie (31:24): Well, the very first time that I had to share a piece of my work was in Carol’s class, and your heart’s pounding, you’re flushed and hot and cold, and you’re like, “People are going to hate it. People are going to hate it.” And then you read it. And thankfully, people liked what I read. So once I had done it a few times, I was fine, but I know a lot of young writers are reluctant to share their work. I would get students coming to me and saying, “I’ve got this book of poems. Will you look at it?” And I’d say, “Well, do you want me just to read it or do you want me to give you constructive feedback?” And some students would say, “No, I just want you to read it because it’s part of me. I don’t care to revise it.” And others would say, “Yeah, I want to make it better.” So know why you’re writing.

(32:25): Are you writing to share it with other people? Or is it just something cathartic for you? And if it’s something to share and publish, then you have to know that writing is a business as well.

Debbi (32:43): Yes. Yes to all of what you said.

Marjorie (32:46): Yeah.

Debbi (32:47): I mean, what great advice. Wonderful. Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Marjorie (32:57): I think one of the things that as a writer that has been wonderful for me is, and probably for you too, is finding a community of writers, a virtual community, as well as writers here in my own hometown. But I have a very tight-knit group of writer friends all over the UK, the US, and Canada. And because it’s such a solitary pursuit, it’s great to have those people to complain to vent, to ask how they’re doing. It’s amazing. Do you find that too?

Debbi (33:37): Oh, it’s definitely a good thing to have community for sure of people to talk about these things.

Marjorie (33:45): Yeah,

Debbi (33:46): Absolutely.

Marjorie (33:49): And there’s some great organizations that are helpful in that, but I get to meet some of these people in person now at the Bouchercon in October. That’s right. The International. No, it’s not the International Thriller Writers, that’s Thriller Fest. Yeah, this year it’s in Calgary.

Debbi (34:14): Calgary, yes.

Marjorie (34:14): Big conference. Yeah. So I’m looking forward to that and moderating a panel.

Debbi (34:20): It makes me wish I decided to go.

Marjorie (34:24): Yeah.

Debbi (34:25): Shoot.

Marjorie (34:26): Calgary’s a beautiful place. Yeah.

Debbi (34:28): I really would love to go back up to Canada and see more of it.

Marjorie (34:33): Yeah, I think they’re doing some tours to the Rockies to ban from. It’s not too late.

Debbi (34:41): I’ll give it some serious thought.

Marjorie (34:43): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (34:44): See if I can convince my husband to go up to Canada. I don’t see why he would object. He objects so much that’s going on down here that going to Canada might be a relief.

Marjorie (34:58): Yeah, escape to the Rockies. You’d love it.

Debbi (35:01): Yeah, yeah. Escape to the Rockies.

Marjorie (35:01): And Calgary’s such a lovely town.

Debbi (35:04): I’ve heard that they’re fabulous looking too.

Marjorie (35:06): Oh, spectacular. Yeah.

Debbi (35:09): Well, I want to thank you so much for being here and hang around for a little bit more because we’re going to do a bonus episode for the Patreon supporters.

Marjorie (35:18): Okay.

Debbi (35:18): Alrighty. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here, Marjorie.

Marjorie (35:22): Thank you. It was great to talk to you.

Debbi (35:24): Great talking to you too. Thank you.

Marjorie (35:27): Okay, thanks.

Debbi (35:29): So to all my listeners, thank you so much for listening. That goes especially to my Patreon and Substack supporters. Thank you for following me there and for supporting me there. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. They help. And until next time, happy reading and I’ll be seeing you.

This week’s guest is William Stuart, executive producer and director of the popular scripted podcast American Afterlife.

Imagine, using a scripted podcast as a proof of concept. Because we talk about that here

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest is a veteran entertainment executive with extensive industry experience. As president and CEO of Aurora Productions, he oversees its slate of film, television, and podcast projects. He’s also executive producer and director of American Afterlife, a highly successful scripted podcast adapted from the best-selling YA trilogy.

(01:23): It’s my great pleasure to introduce my guest, William Stuart. Hi William, how are you doing today?

William (01:29): Very good. How are you? Glad to be here.

Debbi (01:32): Very happy to have you on. I’m very interested in your podcast. I’m interested in scripted podcast in general, but what’s the logline for your show?

William (01:43): Yeah, I don’t know that we fall quite in the crime drama, but we’re going to get there.

Debbi (01:48): Okay.

William (01:51): The idea is based on fact, but then becomes fiction. So Pedro Hoffmeister, who lives up in Eugene, Oregon, has been writing about the big earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, and everyone up there is sort of bracing for it. And as a writer like yourself, he sort of said, “How do I fictionalize this and what would happen if?” And he wrote his novel, his book based on the fact that the earthquake happens. And one girl, a 15-year-old girl decides she doesn’t want to get rescued by the National Guard and be skirted away, but she decides she has to look for her mother. And as you can imagine in this post-apocalyptic world where authority is gone, electricity’s out, dams have broken, that it’s a new world. In terms of visually, we’ve been talking about The Last of Us or Station Eleven, this sort of post-apocalyptic world where many of the rules are thrown out and you just have to survive.

(03:15): And that’s what our heroine Cielo has to do or tried to do.

Debbi (03:21): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very interesting concept, frightening concept.

William (03:26): Yes.

Debbi (03:27): Also very suspenseful. I think it falls pretty well into a thriller genre in any event.

William (03:37): Well, there’s two aspects to it. One, it’s certainly a thriller and even a bit of a psychological thriller with her, a young girl in this new world. But then it develops into a crime series. There’s been a number of murders and we don’t know who’s responsible. And at first she’s even blamed for them, but then we find out it wasn’t completely her doing, but she was involved.

Debbi (04:10): Interesting. How does adapting something like that into a podcast differ from adapting for film and television other than the need for sound versus visuals?

William (04:25): Yeah, it’s a very good question. Something that was a challenge for us, but we knew from the beginning this really had to feel like a movie. I hate to say that, or a TV series, as if you closed your eyes and were watching it.

Debbi (04:42): Exactly.

William (04:44): So the performances, and especially that of Scarlett Estevez, our lead, and Josh Mesnik and Ted Owens had to be spot on. And then with the soundscape that we designed, that brought the audience into it. So you can imagine Scarlett, who’s done a lot of voiceover and animation, was very comfortable with it because she’s usually just reading from a script and not acting with other people. But there is the advantage that usually they will show you the picture and the character you’re voicing, and you’ll look to that. In our podcast, I had to ask her to create a whole new persona. There was no Scarlett, no Cielo in real life. So Scarlett went away with the scripts and came back with what she thought the character should be and should sound like. And she was really great and I think got it 99%. And the other 1% or what have you, we worked on in the room, in the studio.

Debbi (06:02): Wow. It sounds like you really had a collaborative process going with the actor, that actor at least in particular, and others, I assume?

William (06:10): Yeah, all of them.

Debbi (06:12): All of them.

William (06:12): Yeah. It was an interesting process because of scheduling and such. In the beginning, they were all in the studio with us separately, and they were doing their own pieces. And I had heard obviously Scarlett’s piece, so then I could tell Josh what he was reacting to. And then we could tell Ted Evans where he had to be. And then eventually we thought it would be really cool to get all three of them in the room, which we did. And that was amazing. I mean, we went back and fixed some stuff. I was able to put Scarlett sitting opposite Josh, which is what they’re doing if you know the podcast. It’s an interrogation in that sense. So now they’re sitting opposite each other and we got even better performances, I think.

Debbi (07:05): Yeah, the performances are excellent. They really are.

William (07:08): Yes.

Debbi (07:09): I mean, they draw you in very well. What do you think accounts for the show’s great success?

William (07:20): I think it’s the fact, number one, we started with a great premise, a great book. It already had a strong following. It was a bestseller. And when we started telling Pedro’s audience what we were doing, they were all there on social media asking, “When’s it coming? When’s it coming?” And like all good Hollywood things, it took twice as long as we hoped, but we made it twice as better, I always say. I think it’s the fact that we took the time to do it right, that we went back over the performances and honed them and got them better. And then we had the time, we made the decision to take the time to do the soundscape properly, to really go into it. And we did, I think, three or four edits of the soundscape for each episode just to make sure it wasn’t over the top and cartoony, but just stayed in that realistic place where people really feel and felt, I think, immersed in the world.

Debbi (08:37): Yeah. I noticed when I was listening to it, there’s a very distinct difference between listening to Cielo, think to herself, voiceover style versus being in the room with the cop.

William (08:49): Right.

Debbi (08:51): It sounds more like a room.

William (08:53): Yeah, which is something which is easy to do if you know you have to do it. And what it was just behind the scenes, it was just turning on this air conditioner noise that there would’ve been in this Holiday Inn in Eugene. She’s talking to herself, she’s almost in a soundproof room or something. It’s in her head.

Debbi (09:19): Exactly.

William (09:19): And that’s sort of what we were playing with. And the sound effects, I think, do take you from one location to another.

Debbi (09:28): Absolutely. Yeah. Certainly it’s less costly to make a scripted podcast production than a full film production. Is that a good motivator for people to start thinking about perhaps breaking into writing scripted podcasts?

William (09:46): Well, I’ve done a couple of interviews now, and that question, like yours, got asked. As a filmmaker, it’s fun just to make stuff. My process is I find material, I find a script, a book, even a news article that I think is interesting and see if we can make it into a movie. And in the past, in order to pitch these to the studios or now the streamers, you had to get something creative together. And that was always a pitch, maybe with some visuals. Once in a while, we’d even do a poster. But with this project, we said, “Well, podcasts are becoming of age.” Not so much dramatic, but just podcasts in general, there’s a big audience. So we were saying, “Look, the end goal between you and us is that we hope this will be a TV series.” And we did the podcast with that in mind.

(10:58): So this is our calling card towards something bigger.

Debbi (11:02): Yes.

William (11:03): And it allows the, I’m going to get in trouble for this, the short attention span buyers at the studios to just listen to one or two episodes and totally understand what we’re doing or trying to do.

(11:24): And as I referenced always in Hollywood, the tone of it is The Last of Us, the tone of it is Station Eleven. The tone of it is one other project or something. So they get an idea going in what it’ll be like. But still the challenge will be to find a top TV writer, which we’re doing now, to hone and develop probably because there’ll be a longer, probably eight, 10 episodes to develop more characters, more situations for her, take more from the book. We actually left a lot out of the book, but expand it and expand it and of course make it much more visible. We’ll obviously see the earthquake happen. We’ll see the dams break. We’ll see the helicopters. We’ll see the National Guard arriving, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s primed for a TV series. As you mentioned earlier, if we could get the money together to make something like that.

(12:35): But podcasts are reasonable to make. Something at our level in terms of production value is more difficult to the individual out there, but I’m very lucky in that I teamed up with Benstown Media, who are a radio production company, and they brought everything to the table that they could in order to make this a first-class podcast.

Debbi (13:08): That’s fantastic. Well, I’m glad that it’s worked out so well for you so far because it’s a very, very interesting story. How did you find the actors? And do you think audiobook narrators would be a good place to look for talent in this area?

William (13:27): And say that again about narrators? Oh, book narrators. I’ll do.

Debbi (13:31): Yeah, book narrators.

William (13:31): All right. Yes and no. Where we had our talent, I cast this like a movie. I went after actors. Scarlett, I don’t believe she’s done book narration, but she’s done voiceover and cartoons and animation and stuff. Josh is not, he’s just a young guy wanting to be an actor. Ted Evans is a veteran voiceover guy and radio guy, does a ton of commercials. I believe he’s the Aflac Duck, if you want to make a reference.

Debbi (14:12): Oh, yeah.

William (14:13): He’s one of the top sound guys in Hollywood. And usually hard to get him, but he loved the project. And he’s never been asked to do something more extended. When he does a commercial, it’s 10, 20, 30 seconds of voiceover. Here, we wanted him for all the episodes and he was thrilled by that.

Debbi (14:37): I guess so.

William (14:39): Yeah. Yeah. And he was terrific. Talking about what we’re going to do, which was a bit of your question too, we’re already starting to develop season two of the podcast. And we left it as a cliffhanger where, I don’t know if you’ve gotten the last episode yet. Not yet. I don’t want to spoil it for you. Well, I won’t spoil it for you.

Debbi (15:06): There’s a cliffhanger, of course.

William (15:07): It’s a cliffhanger. And obviously like every good series like this, we left it open to more episodes. And we’ve already started to talk about how to do that and how many and when and all of the good things. But clearly what happened on Apple, that we went to number one in the podcast in Drama. Immediately we knew we had to do more with this.

Debbi (15:33): Yeah, that’s amazing. Congratulations on that.

William (15:37): Thank you very much.

Debbi (15:38): Fantastic.

William (15:39): We were happily surprised, but not astonished.

Debbi (15:44): Well, that’s wonderful. What kind of production schedule did you have? How far ahead were you writing things before you had them out there?

William (15:54): Interesting. Yes, a good question. We set a date for the launch, and I think it was back in, I don’t know, January, February, something like that of the year. And then we said, okay, let’s backtrack from there. If we do three episodes, if we have three episodes in the can, then we can continue on and do the fourth and the fifth while we are launching it already. It’s just sort of the television series model. They will write six or seven episodes. They’ll get it on air. And then if they’re smart, they’ll wait to see the audience reaction to certain characters and where the story’s going. And therefore they’ll modify episode six, seven, eight, nine as they’re going along and they can make changes. And that’s what we though we were going to do. But then after we got number one and number two in the can, we said, “Wow, this is so good. We’ve got to launch it.”

(17:01): All in the series, we decided to just do it all. Just do all the episodes, do the sound. The soundscape was easier to do with all the episodes there. We could start promoting it. We could start doing, which you may or may not have heard, the little mini-episodes in between where we go behind the scenes a bit and meet other characters and meet Scarlett and meet Ted Evans and Josh off camera, so to speak. So then we got it all in the can, as you say, and then we picked a date and we set that date. We did some promotion around it. I was able to arrange a meet and greet and a Q&A at Barnes & Noble where we brought in the author from Eugene. We brought in Scarlett. We brought Josh and myself, and we did it in the Barnes & Noble in Glendale so we could push and promote the book and the podcast and what was coming next.

(18:17): And that was very successful and fun to do. We might try and do another one with the second series launch.

Debbi (18:27): Wow, that’s really something. Yeah. It sounds like you had fun doing it too.

William (18:34): It was one of the funnest, if that’s a word, projects I’ve done. Great partners at Benstown Media. Scarlet and the other actors were just a joy to work with. I know it’s said a lot in Hollywood, but it really was. She’s getting a lot of attention. She’s coming out in a movie in August, I think an Adam Sandler movie. So her career’s on the rise and we’re on her coattails right now.

Debbi (19:03): That’s fantastic.

William (19:05): Yeah.

Debbi (19:06): That’s amazing. If an author were interested in having their book adapted into a scripted podcast, what would be the best approach for them to take?

William (19:16): Yeah. Well, calling me, I guess, would be one idea. We’re excited about it. We are hoping to have a conversation. Are you familiar with Blumhouse? Of course you are. Yeah. They tried to launch some podcasts in 2004, I think, horror podcasts. But we thought we could bring our expertise to the table and maybe do some sort of anthology, a horror a week, a crime a week, something like that where-

Debbi (19:53): Very cool.

William (19:54): We would have a host every week. Trying to think back to the shows I watched. The Wild World of Disney, whatever it was, where Walt Disney was hosting every week, where we could get a celebrity every week to say, “Hey, thanks for coming. We’ve got a doozy for you. Hope you like it. Listen in.” So there’s a plan there. We haven’t had that conversation with them yet, but something I’m trying to make happen.

Debbi (20:28): Well, I was going to ask, do you take queries?

William (20:33): Yes. Yes. From writers, from crime writers.

Debbi (20:37): Well, I can think of a thousand crime writers right now who might be interested.

William (20:45): Well, let’s keep that open because I also, in my development slate, have one or two or three scripts for features that we couldn’t get made. And we’re talking about reviving those in some way and seeing if they’re adaptable to a podcast series of this kind. I think almost anything is, depending on how you go about it.

Debbi (21:20): Exactly. Yeah. I was going to say, is there a particular type of work that you think is best for this type of media? Or really can you do anything?

William (21:30): I think anything. I mean, I was skeptical when we said let’s do one set in the Pacific Northwest, outdoors mostly, in a deserted landscape. But then the writers were able to balance that with the interrogation room and other elements that made it sound bigger than it really is.

Debbi (21:52): Yeah. Yeah. That sound design really.

William (21:54): Yeah. That takes you in the interrogation room and out of it. Do you remember, did you ever listen to Homecoming?

Debbi (22:06): That sounds really familiar.

William (22:08): Yeah, it was very popular. They had, I think, Laura Linney and I forget the actor’s name. Anyway, they were doing it and it was very contained. It was all almost in one building, a couple of rooms in a cafeteria and all that in one building. And it was interesting to listen to, but there wasn’t much dynamic to it. It was a quiet podcast, not big sound effects, a lot of interrogation room, and a lot of expositional dialogue because they didn’t have the sound effects. And then they made a movie about it with Julia Roberts, which was a failure, but they got it made.

Debbi (22:58): Yeah.

William (22:59): That’s 99% of the challenge here in Hollywood.

Debbi (23:05): It seems like a miracle when anything actually gets made, and yet things get made.

William (23:10): Things get made.

Debbi (23:12): They just do.

William (23:14): It takes a lot. I mean, it used to be a very friendly atmosphere for creators like myself, independents, where you could get into a studio, have a conversation. 75% of the time it’s no. But then 25% of the time you could get into a dialogue where they say, “Okay, I like this. Could you change this? Could you change that? Then come back.” How about “we like it, we want to option it, and then we’ll develop it.” But those conversations have sort of ended. They’re looking for independent producers to come in with a proverbial package. So do you have a director? Do you have a script? Do you have a star? And all those elements, which we now have to put together just almost to talk to them.

Debbi (24:10): Yeah. Yeah. You pretty much have to have the whole thing set up in a package ready for them to look at.

William (24:19): And say no.

Debbi (24:20): Very beautifully presented, very little thought, a whole lot of, “Here’s what’s in it for you.”

William (24:31): A lot of work goes into it. You’ve got one shot, but still most of the time it’ll be a no, but at least you’ve gotten in the room and had the conversation. What’s most difficult is to, and I’ve done it recently with this podcast, is to make a few phone calls to the agencies or some independent production companies. And just to get people on the phone or an email chain is diabolical.

Debbi (25:04): Yeah. Yeah. Getting people on the phone is difficult.

William (25:08): Difficult, difficult. Or getting people to return calls, whatever. But that’s what producers do, and I guess that’s my life now. Or it has been for a while, I should say.

Debbi (25:19): I get it. I get what you’re saying.

William (25:23): I assume it’s like going to get books published.

Debbi (25:27): Yes. There’s a lot of waiting, a lot of speculation.

William (25:32): Right.

Debbi (25:34): And nobody knows anything, as somebody once said.

William (25:38): That is so true. Nobody knows. What was the saying?

Debbi (25:43): Nobody knows anything.

William (25:45): No, but there was another one in the movie side of it. Oh, I don’t know if I like it. No one’s told me yet. That sort of thing.

Debbi (25:59): Yes, that’s a good one.

William (26:01): I won’t know if I like it until someone tells me I like it. So that was old studio in the agency mantra because no one wants to pass on anything, but no one wants to take it to the group meetings and say, “Hey, there’s something interesting. What do you guys think?”

Debbi (26:18): Too afraid.

William (26:21): I guess. But it’s become such a, I hate to date myself, but back in the day, the business was not a family, a family business in a way. On the movie side, I knew most of the players. They knew me. I wouldn’t call them with something stupid. And when I called them, they would turn the call and we’d have a conversation. But then it became a younger executive, a younger group who didn’t plan on staying anywhere a long time. And we’re told that the way to advance is to change companies all the time. And so they planned to be there a year or two, and they had the projects that were ready to go right away. And if you didn’t have it all together, they didn’t want to go to the meetings and get shot down. So it’s gotten to the point where they still won’t say no, they just won’t return your call, but they’ll hardly say yes.

Debbi (27:32): It’s hard to get a yes. Yeah, for sure. And even when you get a yes, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get the total green light.

William (27:42): No, the green light’s way down the road.

Debbi (27:44): It’s way down the road.

William (27:46): Just to get it in the place that can help you get to the next step.

Debbi (27:51): Precisely.

William (27:53): Yep. Yeah.

Debbi (27:55): What advice would you give to anyone who would like to get into what you’re doing?

William (28:00): Podcasting or producing?

Debbi (28:02): Either podcasting, writing, or producing, or all three.

William (28:07): They’re three different things.

Debbi (28:09): Yes.

William (28:10): The interesting thing with writers, as you know, is if you want to create something, you don’t need a team of people around you. You’re able to go, like I say, writers, painters, you’re able to go into a room, close the door, and write, and you don’t need outside help doing it. You want feedback later, but you’re doing what you’re doing. With a movie, I can’t get a normal movie made without a hundred people being involved. And I’m starting with a writer coming and doing it, then a writer and I convincing a director to do it. Then the writer, director, and I convincing an actor to do it. At the same time, maybe convincing a studio to do it. And then you get the studio together, and then you have to convince the studio that you’ve got the right budget. And then you have to go find the rest of the cast and the crew and the time.

(29:17): So it takes really a village.

Debbi (29:21): Yes.

William (29:21): Takes forever. With a podcast, it was me in the room with three people. Then you put the soundscape of four. I think our team was 10 people at the end of the day and all kicking in to do a good job. So I think that’s the difference. Now, the results are quite different. At this point, there’s very little money in dramatic podcasting, but there’s a satisfaction in getting it done. It’ll help book sales. It’ll help Pedro It’ll help Scarlett, it’ll help all the elements involved. It’ll help myself. But what the next step is with it is a complete unknown.

Debbi (30:11): I was going to say, do you get advertising dollars? Is there a subscription? Is there a Patreon or something?

William (30:18): The podcast world?

Debbi (30:20): For your show.

William (30:22): For myself?

Debbi (30:23): Yeah. Is it financed through ads or what?

William (30:30): Yeah. Well, this case, again, we were financed by Benstown, but we were able to do it on a budget because they already owned the studio. They owned the people who did the announcing, the people who did the soundscape, all these bells and whistles they already had in-house. We were able to do all of that easily and cheaply. We did try and get a sponsor on board once we could show all the episodes. We said, “Well, let’s go get a sponsor.” And we worked with a company called Gamut. It was another big radio company. And the reluctance was it’s something they’d never heard before. It wasn’t Joe Rogan. It wasn’t some celebrity podcaster or actor having a podcast, et cetera, et cetera. It’s something new. It’s dramatic. Who’s the audience? How many people will listen? And nobody knew. In the end, I was able to go to a company that I knew called Pair of Thieves, which is in the same marketplace in terms of social media and all that with us.

(31:52): They actually sell socks and underwear to a young audience, to a hip young audience. And they saw what we were doing and said, “Hey, this is great.” They came on board to sponsor the series. We did a tie-in with them, a giveaway of socks, and they got radio time, et cetera, et cetera. And it worked out really, really well. They sold some more socks. We got some more listeners, but the numbers still are small. I don’t think we’ll make back our budget on the first one. But the second series, which as I said, we’re planning, then we’re probably going to get a sponsor for a good sum of money, something that’ll cover the budget and also cover the budget in number one to sort of get us in there. They’re not big numbers, I mean $100,000 for the series. We’re not looking at millions of dollars, although we might ask for millions. We’re not expecting that. Yeah.

Debbi (32:52): Well, I just wish you the best of luck with this because it really deserves a wider audience in that sense.

William (33:01): Share with your friends and your followers.

Debbi (33:06): I will.

William (33:08): Hopefully that’ll help. We’ve been very steady with the downloads since the beginning, which is very encouraging. They haven’t dropped off a cliff. They’ve been very, very steady. So word of mouth is going around.

Debbi (33:20): That’s fantastic.

William (33:20): Apple started out really strong. Spotify then came up behind Apple and started growing. And now the two of them together, and we’re on Gamut Radio and all of those, but those two are the bulk of it because they’re people in their car or they have 20 minutes, the kids have 20 minutes to listen to something wherever they are. So that’s worked very well.

Debbi (33:47): Well, is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

William (33:51): Wow. No, I just encourage people, everything I can. Television or features or whatever it is, it starts with great material, great ideas, and having a way to explain those ideas to the next person. Be it a script, be it a pitch document, be it a podcast. How do you grow your idea? And that’s the challenge. How do you bring people on board to support your vision and say, yes, I’ll get on board. I’ll help you do this.

Debbi (34:33): Exactly. Yeah.

William (34:34): Yeah.

Debbi (34:35): Kind of like finding your people. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much.

William (34:42): A pleasure to meet you.

Debbi (34:44): It was a pleasure to meet you too, William. I really had a good time talking about this, and I really do love that show, American Afterlife, everybody. Check it out. It’s excellent. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. You can also support the podcast by becoming a patron on Patreon or subscribing on Substack. Until next time, take care and I’ll be seeing you.

*****

My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is poli-sci professor and crime writer Caleb McGee Husmann.

We talk a little about his academic specialty–political science–and mostly about writing and crime fiction!

For a copy of the transcript, click here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of several novels, including Exteriors and Interiors, Feral Chickens: A Hawaiian Comedy, and Owen O’Shea: Stay-At-Home Dad, Wannabe Detective. I love that title. Originally from Minnesota. He now lives in North Carolina with his wife Beth and their daughter, Jo.

(01:18): It’s my pleasure to have with me today, C. McGee. He writes as C. McGee, but his name is Caleb Husmann . Hi, Caleb. How are you doing today?

Caleb (01:28): I’m doing well, Debbi. How are you doing?

Debbi (01:30): Just fine, thanks. So according to your bio, you are both professors in the department of two at a small university. Now, is it the subject that is so arcane that only two people are doing it or is the university so small that it can only afford two people in that department?

Caleb (01:51): Option B. Option Be. We only got a thousand students. So it’s a small school in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. So William Peace University. So we’re it, the Department of Two. My wife is my boss, so she’s my boss at work and at home, all the time.

Debbi (02:10): I see. I see. And what subject do you teach?

Caleb (02:14): We’re political scientists. So we are the entire department. We do a little bit with the criminal justice department as well and then pre-law, but political science is the main thing.

Debbi (02:25): Well, it’s an interesting area to be in right now, I guess.

Caleb (02:28): There’s always world events happening. That is one, I overall view it as a positive about being a political science professor is even when you’re teaching the same topics, it’s still new because you tie in current events that are happening now. And so I’m whatever almost 15 years into being a professor. I honestly think if I was teaching a subject that didn’t refresh every semester, I would kind of be exhausted of it, but I love it because sure, I’m teaching federalism again, but this time it’s California’s trying to go independent instead of Texas trying to go independent from four years earlier. It’s always something new, which is great.

Debbi (03:09): Exactly. Yeah, that’s true. When did you start writing fiction?

Caleb (03:16): Graduate school. So it’s funny I say that because in graduate school you’re already writing a ton. You’re writing for class and you’re writing your dissertation and all that sort of stuff. But actually it was during the summer I was interning in DC and usually I was working on the Hill for my member of the house that I worked for, but on my days off, I started to write. I guess I started writing a little bit short stories and stuff before that, but that was the first time I started to write a novel. I don’t know. I guess I was looking for, I played a lot of soccer growing up. I played soccer in college, had a couple trials with some pro teams, and then it didn’t work out. And then I was like, “Well, crap, I got to do something else.” And then I ended up going to grad school and figured out I still needed something that I could really strive for that I wasn’t sure I was going to succeed at.

(04:14): I think that was part of the draw of soccer. I love playing soccer, but there was no guarantee that you were going to make it, and so you were striving for something that was kind of out of reach. And with writing novels, I mean, it’s somewhat the same as it’s a tall order and finishing it and getting it out there. And then can you get it published and that whole ordeal? It’s a monumental task, but I find those sorts of challenges draw me in for some reason. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sadist, who knows?

Debbi (04:45): I think most writers have a tendency to think of themselves as masochists. We are always seeking ways to challenge ourselves and do better.

Caleb (04:56): Yes. Masochist. There you go. That’s the word.

Debbi (04:59): Yeah. We are sadistic to ourselves.

Caleb (05:01): Yes, there you go. There you go. Thank you.

Debbi (05:04): Split personality.

Caleb (05:05): Better vocabulary.

Debbi (05:07): We have split personalities. We have a sadistic side that picks on our masochistic side.

Caleb (05:12): That sounds right.

Debbi (05:14): Let’s see. Now your writing style seems very humorous. I like that about it. I love the tone of the O’Shea story.

Caleb (05:27): I think it goes along with my personality. I think all of my writing is humorous. Owen O’Shea is definitely the novel that’s, the main character is the most me. The other novels, I definitely had to think through, okay, what would this character be thinking at this time? With Owen O’Shea, I was basically like, all right, what would I do? So it was the easiest to capture that voice because it was the closest to myself just in that sort of situation. But yeah, I think the goal was to find some line between the mysteries. There’s the gritty noir mysteries that tend to come out of Scandinavia and stuff like that. And then there’s the comfy, cozy, Jessica Fletcher, Murder She Wrote type mysteries. And I feel like there’s not necessarily a ton that are in between where they’re a little bit more suspenseful and the humor is a little bit more adult and adult things happen, but it’s also not dark and like The Killing or something like that.

Debbi (06:36): Exactly. Yeah. It’s not grotesquely scary or whatever, but there’s just enough in there to keep you on the edge of your seat, keep you turning the pages, that kind of thing.

Caleb (06:48): Exactly. So that’s the goal.

Debbi (06:50): Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let’s see. What inspired you to write comedy in general?

Caleb (07:00): I think it’s always been a big part of my personality. Another professor was asking me what was my main value? And I think they wanted something profound, but I said fun. Fun was my main value.

Debbi (07:14): That’s a great value.

Caleb (07:15): Yeah. I mean, who doesn’t like having fun? And I think sometimes we take life too seriously. And even in more serious situations, I’ve always found humor is a great way to deal with it and handle it. And it’s just kind of a natural part of my personality so it naturally comes out in my writing. And so I’ve rolled with it from my first three novels. It’s interesting, the one I’m working on now is the first one I’ve written that’s not really comedic because it’s a horror novel, which is different. But that actually took more time because the comedy is my default way of thinking and so it comes out easier.

Debbi (07:55): Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Do you have a writing routine? Do you have a time when you write?

Caleb (08:03): Yes, absolutely. If I don’t sit down and treat it like a shift, then it’s not going to happen.

Debbi (08:09): Exactly.

Caleb (08:10): I think there’s this romantic notion for writers, but really for all the arts of like, oh, the muse is going to strike and then I’m going to write this great thing. And that’s not really… I’m sure there are people like that. I don’t think it’s most people. I think most people, you show up and you sit and you push, and then two hours later, hopefully something came out. So that’s typically what I do, is typically I will set a timer depending on the day and how much time I have for just two or three hours. And that’s every Tuesday and Thursday because my schedule allows for it. And then Saturday and Sunday, assuming I’m not bringing my daughter to a sports practice or something like that, then I try and do two to three hours on Saturday and Sunday as well.

Debbi (09:01): Yeah. Yeah. It takes diligence to do this and you really do have to devote time to it. People don’t realize how much time writers put into their work.

Caleb (09:11): It takes ages, ages. And I’m always jealous of… So I just read Stephen King’s On Writing, which was one of the best books on writing. It’s up there with Bird by Bird as my favorite books on writing.

Debbi (09:23): I love Bird by Bird.

Caleb (09:25): It’s so great. It’s so great. But Stephen King, who it’s interesting, his novels are up and down for me. There’s ones I love. It is one of my favorite novels of all time. The Body‘s one of my favorite novellas of all time, but then there’s other ones that I DNF’ed. So I didn’t know what to expect into going on his book on writing and it was spectacular. It was so good. And he talks about that, that he’s got to sit down and do it. But also in his two-hour session, he can write whatever, 2000 words or something crazy like that. I’m like, at the end of two hours, I’m lucky if I have 500 words. His output is insane.

Debbi (10:03): Everybody varies in terms of what they can produce.

Caleb (10:07): Yeah.

Debbi (10:08): I mean, I know people who say, oh yeah, I can write 10,000 words a day. And it’s like, well, okay, that’s you. Not everybody is like that.

Caleb (10:18): I can’t even wrap my head around that.

Debbi (10:20): I mean, these galactic figures that I’m just like, okay, really? And how many of those words do you end up throwing out, I wonder?

Caleb (10:29): I think maybe that’s some people’s process, having talked to them, is that they just spew it all out.

Debbi (10:35): They spew it out.

Caleb (10:36): I think the editing really takes them ages and they’re really adding a ton more to the story afterwards.

Debbi (10:43): It could be. Or taking out a lot sometimes.

Caleb (10:45): Yeah, that’s definitely true.

Debbi (10:47): That’s true for movies, that’s for sure.

Caleb (10:50): Yeah. I think most novels benefit from being cut down a fair amount, my own included for sure.

Debbi (10:55): Oh, I think there’s a lot of air in writing that can come out. I see it all the time. And you said you’re working on a horror novel now. That’s interesting.

Caleb (11:08): Yeah, it’s a pretty big change for me. I’ve always read a lot of horror. I’ve always loved horror movies, but because comedy I think is my default, I didn’t go in that road. Although there’s a lot of good horror/comedy stuff. The Apple TV series that just came out, what is it? Widow’s Bay?

Debbi (11:27): Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that.

Caleb (11:28): Oh, if you haven’t seen it, you should watch it. I mean, I’m aiming for horror and for comedy, but it really hits both out of the horror element and the comedy element.

Debbi (11:38): Interesting.

Caleb (11:40): But I found I couldn’t keep the tension and the tone of the horror novel when I threw in the comedy. And so the horror novel’s definitely not as comedy-based as my other books, not even close. I mean, there’s not really any comedy in it. It’s a straight horror novel.

Debbi (11:58): Yeah. Okay. Well, that sounds interesting. Be a new, interesting direction for you to go in.

Caleb (12:06): Yes, it’ll be a change of pace. It’s interesting too, writing query letters to publishers and agents too, that’s so different. The other ones were like comedy, and then this one I’m writing explaining this supernatural horror that haunts them from their youth and this camp that has this unnatural draw to it. So it’s a very different, even just marketing the novel and trying to get an agent and a publisher for it is a whole different process.

Debbi (12:38): So you are actively looking for an agent?

Caleb (12:42): Yes. So I’ve published my first three novels with Roundfire and they’ve been good. They’ve been great, but obviously you can get an agent and get in with one of the big four, that’d be great. I mean, one of the big four publishers would be ideal.

Debbi (12:56): Right.

Caleb (12:57): Not going to even look at you if you don’t.

Debbi (13:02): Yeah. They don’t always give you the support that you think they might.

Caleb (13:09): Yeah.

Debbi (13:11): I’m sure you’ve heard the stories at this point.

Caleb (13:14): Yes, I have. A bunch of mid-list publishers that do great things and really work with their people. I don’t want to say that Roundfire has been… I have nothing negative to say. It’s been great. It’s just if I can get bigger, I’ll go for it. But yeah, I’ll be happy if it ends up coming out with Roundfire as well.

Debbi (13:36): Well, I wish you luck with that.

Caleb (13:38): Thank you.

Debbi (13:39): I hope that they fully support you as they should, whoever you are with.

Caleb (13:45): So fingers crossed.

Debbi (13:46): Fingers crossed. Do you have a favorite author or genre that you like to read?

Caleb (13:52): Oh, I read all across. Are there genres that I tend towards more? Yeah, I like horror, like I was saying a lot. I like a good thriller mystery, but I’ll read anything from a philosophical treatise to a cozy mystery. Give it all to me. I’m totally on board. As far as favorite writers go, I love Jim Thompson. So he’s an old pulp writer. He wrote Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me and all those. I think he’s massively underrated. Most of his books were almost out of print. And then I actually think Stephen King, we were just talking about, mentioned once that he was his favorite crime writer and now all of his books are back in print, which shows you the power of Stephen King.

(14:38): And that’s great. He deserves it because he’s amazing. So Jim Thompson is definitely up there. But I also like comedy stuff like Nick Hornby, who wrote High Fidelity and About a Boy and all that sort of stuff. And then I’m trying to think. I wasn’t really a reader until I was about 17. And then almost every one of my generation, I read the Harry Potter novels and got hooked on reading. And so JK Rowling will always have a special place because of the fact that she got me to be a reader and then a writer because I wouldn’t be a writer without being a reader for sure.

Debbi (15:15): That’s right. Yeah.

Caleb (15:17): And so Patricia Highsmith, I love her. All the Ripley books are great. Yeah. And then let’s see. And then for being out there and really different, Danielewski who wrote House of Leaves, he just came out with a new one called Tom’s Crossing that is also awesome. He is unlike any other author that has ever existed. I don’t know. I don’t want to overstate it, but I feel like he reinvented the novel.

Debbi (15:45): Interesting.

Caleb (15:46): Pretty great.

Debbi (15:46): Well, I’ll have to check that guy out.

Caleb (15:48): Oh yeah. House of Leaves is the first one you got to go to.

Debbi (15:51): House of Leaves.

Caleb (15:52): House of Leaves. You will have never read anything like it. I can guarantee you that.

Debbi (15:57): That’s interesting. Wow. Because one of my favorite writers did something really remarkable with a private eye novel. I think it was Jonathan Franzen [With apologies to Jonathan Lethem], I think, maybe who did Gun with Occasional Music. I’m trying to remember if he was the one who did Gun with Occasional Music because I love that book so much. It has weird dystopian sci-fi and a private eye involved in investigating a case with these bizarre creatures just doing business with human beings, ordinary human beings. I can’t remember what they were like, but they were really bizarre creatures in some way. These fantastic creatures that he can’t quite grasp. It’s like, I don’t like these people, whatever they are. And then the ending is just so clever. It was like, oh my God. It kind of blew my mind.

Caleb (17:07): Brilliant.

Debbi (17:07): And the title makes sense, but you have to read the story for it to make sense. It has to do with weapons and music, gun with occasional music.

Caleb (17:19): Oh, that’s pretty good.

Debbi (17:21): Weapons that play songs. It’s all very strange. I’m having a hard time remembering the details because it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but it was really a remarkable book. But now I have to read House of Leaves.

Caleb (17:35): You won’t be disappointed.

Debbi (17:36): And Tom’s Crossing and the rest of this guy’s stuff.

Caleb (17:39): Yeah. House of Leaves is definitely the one I would start with. But Tom’s Crossing, which is the most recent one, is my second favorite. So yeah, Danielewski’s amazing. Franzen’s amazing. I think the thing that gets me about Franzen is, so I’ve read Freedom and The Corrections and maybe one or two more, but those are the two that stick in my head. And I don’t like any of his characters. I loathe all of his characters, but I still love the book, which that’s pretty remarkable. If you can write a novel in which you’re kind of rooting against every single character in both freedom and the corrections and still be turning the pages at a crazy pace, that’s amazing. He is so talented to be able to pull that off.

Debbi (18:28): When you can get people to relate to unlikeable people because they have something about them that makes you like them, that’s really pulling off a remarkable thing I think. Yeah.

Caleb (18:40): It is. I totally agree with that.

Debbi (18:42): And you see it a lot. You see it a lot on television. I mean, Tony Soprano does terrible things, but we’re all on his side on various issues.

Caleb (18:52): Yeah, especially with Breaking Bad and all the anti-heroes.

Debbi (18:56): Breaking Bad? Better Call Saul.

Caleb (19:00): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Better Call Saul. Yeah. I think what Franzen does that truly blows my mind is that they’re much more ordinary, nasty people. They’re just kind of the crappy people that you know as opposed to with Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, which I agree, both those are amazing and Better Call Saul. They’re –

Debbi (19:24): Bigger forces.

Caleb (19:25): The crime world and there’s larger forces at play and it’s somewhat escapist versus when I’m reading Freedom, Freedom takes place in Minnesota near where I grew up, and it’s just very relatable. And the people’s bad qualities are bad qualities that you know in people. I don’t know any mobsters, but I know people like the people in Freedom and they’re crappy in the same way that people are crappy in Freedom. And he just captures it though in a way that … I can’t even put words to it.

Debbi (19:56): Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Yeah. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, things like that, are interesting to capture. Or just the ordinary conflicts that people endure in daily life sometimes make good material.

Caleb (20:15): Absolutely.

Debbi (20:16): Strangely enough. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing for a living?

Caleb (20:24): I mean, I don’t know that this is very profound, but just do it. So many people just talk about doing these things and they don’t just sit down and do it. And you’re going to realize it’s not as glamorous. It’s not catching the muse like you imagine it to be. But in many ways that makes it more rewarding.You sit down and grind and at the end of a lot of hours of work, you have a novel. And so I’ve talked to a ton of people who’d say, “I would love to write a novel,” or other big life things, but they just never actually do it.

(21:03): Just actually take that first step and then take the next and the next and keep the momentum going, don’t slow down. And even when you get stuck, keep on grinding away. You asked about my writing routine. I mean, I normally try and write two hours, at least three to four days a week, but sometimes that week will go great and I’ll produce a few thousand words, but I know that there have been many weeks where I turned around and deleted everything I wrote that week or I was trying to grind and nothing would come and by the end of the week I had 200 words. So you just got to push through those moments. And honestly, I don’t think that they go away unless you sit down and grind through them. At least they don’t for me. You got to power through.

Debbi (21:53): Yeah. I think it was, I’m trying to remember the name of the author who said, inspiration doesn’t come to him. He has to hunt it down with a club.

Caleb (22:05): Yeah, that’s good. I like that.

Debbi (22:07): It was Jack something. Somebody famous that I’m blanking out on.

Caleb (22:13): Yeah.

Debbi (22:14): I hate that.

Caleb (22:15): Hunting it down with a club sounds like Jack London, right?

Debbi (22:17): Jack London, that’s it. That’s the one. Yeah, there goes the mind. Oh well. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up? By the way, do you use an outline when you write?

Caleb (22:33): No, that’s a great question. Yes-ish, but I don’t follow it hard and fast. But I do get gigantic artist pads, the biggest one you can get at the art store. You’re not getting this puppy at Target. You got to go to the specialized art store to get this gigantic one. And then I’ll outline the whole thing on that sheet of paper. But also I recognize that as I go, sometimes the characters develop in ways you’re not expecting. Sometimes the plot develops in ways you’re not expecting. So do I follow the outline broadly? Yes. But if it feels like the story should head in a different direction, I don’t hesitate to change direction with it and then –

Debbi (23:15): Absolutely.

Caleb (23:16): When I need to.

Debbi (23:17): It’s really like just having a little roadmap and then you realize, oh, I don’t really want to end up there. I want to end up here instead.

Caleb (23:24): That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Debbi (23:27): Yeah. Personally, I think it’s a great way of keeping yourself going if you know that there’s another place that you have to get to on that outline.

Caleb (23:35): Yes. And I think when you sit down at the beginning of your two hours that you’re going to write that day, it’s less daunting if you have a general idea of where you’re headed as opposed to, “All right, I’m going to sit down and write for two hours today, but I have no freaking idea where I’m going to go. ” It’s much more intimidating.

Debbi (23:54): It’s much more intimidating.

Caleb (23:55): Yeah.

Debbi (23:56): If you have some idea, you can always play around with that idea and maybe go in a slightly different direction or not, depending. It’s going to depend on where the characters take you.

Caleb (24:07): That’s right. And then if it’s an outline, if I’m out on a run or playing golf or I’m somewhere off on my own and my mind is kind of wandering, I can outline the story in my head. I can’t write a scene in my head, but I can outline where the story’s going in my head. So it’s a good way to do some work on my writing even when I’m not sitting down and doing my two hours of grinding it out.

Debbi (24:35): Yeah, I’ve noticed that if I’m really stuck on something, sometimes if I walk or even just take a shower, something where I’m doing something entirely different, it’ll just come to me. Did you think about doing this? Oh, no.

Caleb (24:50): That is so true.

Debbi (24:51): Sometimes it’ll just come to you, a solution of some sort that you can try out.

Caleb (24:58): It’s amazing how many breakthroughs you have while you’re in the shower washing your hair and all of sudden it’s like, oh my God.

Debbi (25:03): I know. What is it about showers? What is it about that kind of thing? I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing. Well, I want to thank you for talking with us today, Caleb. I really appreciate it. Thank

Caleb (25:17): Thank you so much for having me, Debbi. So I appreciate it.

Debbi (25:19): I was happy to have you on. So thank you so much and stick around. We’ll do a bonus episode for Patreon supporters.

Caleb (25:28): That sounds wonderful. Awesome.

Debbi (25:29): Excellent. Excellent. All right then. Well, everybody, thank you for listening. I want to thank everybody who supports me on Patreon and Substack. I would like to also request that if you could, please leave a review for the podcast if you enjoyed it because they do help us. Until next time when I have M M DeLuca on as my guest, I’d like you to wish you all a good two weeks and take care. Happy reading and I’ll be seeing you.

My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is thriller author Jennifer Lycette.

Check out her book titles: The Algorithm Will See You Now and The Committee Will Kill You Now. So … clearly a cozy writer? 🙂 Nope, medical thrillers.

Transcripts available for download to all free and paid Patreon members.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is a doctor who writes medical thrillers with a high tech edge. Author of The Algorithm Will See You Now and The Committee Will Kill You Now. It’s a pleasure to introduce my guest, Jennifer Lycette. Hi, Jennifer. How are you doing today?

Jennifer (01:14): I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

Debbi (01:16): I’m pleased to have you on. Believe me, I’m always pleased to hear from the medical community as well as medical writers, even though I can’t watch medical shows to save my life anymore. They just make me too tense. Thank you so much for being with us today. I get the feeling from the titles of your books that you might have the tiniest bit of concern about how technology could affect or is affecting the practice of medicine. Is that—

Jennifer (01:45): Yes, I think that’s fair to say. I enjoy using fiction to explore complicated scenarios both from the technology and the ethical standpoint.

Debbi (02:02): I can appreciate that. Yeah. The ethical standpoint is often a really great place to find those conflicts that you can use in fiction. The titles alone almost sell the books if you ask me, but they are so intriguing. What prompted you to start writing these stories in particular?

Jennifer (02:24): Gosh, that’s such a good question. So I can’t really identify any one moment, but I started writing the first one, which was Algorithm about 10 years ago and I had started writing creative nonfiction as sort of a professional outlet and I’ve written some essays about that, like going through professional burnout and discovering writing as I think I’ve heard other authors on your show talk about, and for a lot of us, I think writing is in some ways some form of therapy. And so I was really enjoying that writing and connecting with colleagues. And then I had this idea that I wanted to reach people outside of medicine. And so I think like a lot of new authors, I didn’t know how hard it would be to write a novel, but I sort of grew up reading a lot of thrillers and medical thrillers, Robin Cook and all this, and I thought, well, maybe I could write a medical thriller. And so I just thought of the idea and started writing one day.

Debbi (03:45): They just come to you. Yeah.

Jennifer (03:46): Yes.

Debbi (03:47): They really do. They both take place in Seattle, I noticed, but it’s not the same protagonist. Is it the same hospital or different hospitals?

Jennifer (04:01): Yeah, so it’s different hospitals and different protagonists, but they are connected. So they each can be read as standalones. But the second book, The Committee is actually a prequel going back 30 years to tell the story of the antagonist in Algorithm. So I think just all the character work I did to develop her, there’s another minor character that as I was writing Algorithm, I just was like, I think these two had a relationship in the past, but that’s just one line in Algorithm. And so it just got in my head and I was like, I want to write their story. And so I went back and wrote, so they’re middle-aged in Algorithm. And then I went back and wrote when they were young residents in Seattle and just to tell more of the story of how the antagonist whose name is Dr. Mara Maddox, how she ended up being the person she is in Algorithm.

Debbi (05:12): That’s really interesting. I love the way you went back and did backstory in a prequel. That’s fantastic. That’s an excellent approach because so often we get to know our protagonists better as we write.

Jennifer (05:26): Yes.

Debbi (05:26): Am I right?

Jennifer (05:28): Yes. There was all this that didn’t end up on the page in Algorithm and I was like, I think I have an additional book here.

Debbi (05:37): How I wrote the book of Algorithm.

Jennifer (05:41): Yes.

Debbi (05:43): This is what I went through. Let’s see. What is it about Seattle that made you choose that as a setting?

Jennifer (05:53): That’s a great question. So I think a lot of it was just, it’s near and dear to my heart because that’s where I went to medical school. And I think also I wanted to write something a place I was familiar with, even though I don’t live there anymore. And I think also in a lot of audiences’ minds just because of some of the other media and shows and things, there’s kind of a link between Seattle and medical.

Debbi (06:26): That’s right. I keep forgetting about that show that’s named after a book. So to speak. Yeah, I did a little research on you actually. I noticed that you are originally from Alaska.

Jennifer (06:41): Yes, very true.

Debbi (06:43): I thought it was fascinating. And you went to medical school at a school that would take students from places that did not have medical schools in their state. I thought that that was very unique and interesting.

Jennifer (06:58): Yeah, that’s absolutely right. So I went to University of Washington Medical School, but they have a program called WWAMI that stands for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. And so those states don’t have their own medical schools. So they basically have a certain number of applicant spots for each of those states because they want to hopefully encourage graduating doctors to go back and practice in those states or in more rural environments. So yeah.

Debbi (07:38): I can’t help but be reminded of the show Northern Exposure. Did you ever see that?

Jennifer (07:46): I never watched the whole series, but yes, I’ve seen some episodes back some time ago, I guess now.

Debbi (07:55): Yeah, that was a very amusing look at Alaska and somebody who is from a very non-Alaska place as I can speak to from experience having lived in New York. Oh boy, going to Alaska from New York would be quite the shock.

Jennifer (08:14): I think so.

Debbi (08:14): Yeah. And for a while you had a rural medical practice in Astoria, correct?

Jennifer (08:22): Yeah, that’s correct. So I didn’t end up going to practice in Alaska, although I did do some clinical rotations up there when I was in training, but I did practice for some years in rural Oregon.

Debbi (08:43): Yeah. So that must’ve been quite an experience dealing with rural medicine. I mean, some of the stuff in the things that you talked about in your interview were just like, yeah, that’s the way it is out there. Not everybody has equal opportunity, equal access to good medical treatment or know the right way to take care of themselves.

Jennifer (09:10): Yeah, I think that certainly influenced my book idea with Algorithm because I had previously worked in a metro practice and even though I grew up in Alaska, I grew up in Anchorage, which is a fairly moderate size city. And so I think I was a bit naive about some of the limitations of living in non-urban areas and talking with colleagues about, like you said, equal access and even equal access to technology. I don’t want to necessarily go into any deep dives about AI or anything. I think people are probably a bit tired of that. But even just, for example, I had many patients who didn’t have internet, so even checking the patient portal to check their appointment, they didn’t have that. And so just really basic things that I think maybe when at least I know for me, living somewhere where that’s taken for granted, that just experiencing that and how we need to make sure we’re still making sure everybody has equal access and equity. It’s not as straightforward as it at first seems, I think, even in the US.

Debbi (10:46): Yeah, definitely. And now you’re in British Columbia and you have a medical practice there, I assume?

Jennifer (10:56): Yes, I am still practicing. I’m a medical oncologist, so I still practice. And so yeah, a lot of writing happens on weekends, but—

Debbi (11:09): I was going to ask you about your writing routine. Do you have a set number of hours you like to write or a time you like to write?

Jennifer (11:21): I would say not typically. There are times when I’m drafting that if I’m really on a good streak, I will try to just hold myself to a thousand words a day. But the reality is just there are some evenings I come home from work and I have enough energy to write and then other times I don’t. And so I just have to tell myself that’s okay. And then I just write on the weekends. So I tend to be someone who just might do a really big chunk on one day and then not anything for some days. So I’m probably not a good role model.

Debbi (12:04): Oh, I always figure everybody has their own way. Some people are cranking out 20,000 words a day and then other people are just like, I write whenever I can.

Jennifer (12:16): Yeah.

Debbi (12:17): So it’s like whatever works for you works for you. What sort of books do you tend to gravitate toward reading?

Jennifer (12:27): Oh gosh, I actually read pretty much across all genres except I will say I don’t tend to like horror and I like thrillers obviously, but I don’t tend to like real violent or serial killer types. But often I actually, unless I’m reading for writing research, I tend to actually gravitate these days toward lighter cozy fiction.

Debbi (13:09): I get it. Yeah, I can kind of get it. Yeah. I’ve been reading some very funny mysteries lately. It’s like, oh, these are relief, relief from the stress of everything.

Jennifer (13:24): Very true. Yes. I find that, too.

Debbi (13:28): Okay. I have to ask, are you a big fan of The Pitt?

Jennifer (13:33): So it’s so funny you would ask that.

Debbi (13:35): Is it as good as everybody says?

Jennifer (13:38): So like you kind of mentioned a little while ago, so I will admit I don’t watch medical shows because for me it’s like being at work. So I have family members that are huge fans of The Pitt. And back when I was in training and ER was the big show, I did watch that. That was probably the last one I watched because then as I got farther along in my training, like we were just talking about with reading, I don’t actually watch a lot of shows. So if I make time for a show, it’s usually something just kind of like comedy or light. So I feel like I would be a fan of The Pitt if I watched it and I know I’d probably immediately get sucked into it as my family members try to get me to, but I’m just like, “Oh, I just had 12 hours of that today.”

Debbi (14:39): That’s right. Yeah, this is too much reality. Well, that’s a change for television actually. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, but yeah, I keep hearing wonderful things about it.

Jennifer (14:55): Yeah, me too.

Debbi (14:56): Are you working on anything now in terms of books, projects?

Jennifer (15:02): Yeah, so I’m a very slow drafter and reviser. So each of my books from concept to publication took about three years. So I’ve been working on something for the past few years and I am to the point where I think it’s getting close. So it’s not in this world, it’s something new. It is, I guess I’ll call it a speculative thriller, but it’s not necessarily a medical thriller. So I was maybe trying to write something a little more mainstream, but it’s almost there, not quite out there. So I feel like I’m not ready to put it out there, but maybe soon.

Debbi (15:47): So a thriller that isn’t as medical or is somewhat medical?

Jennifer (15:53): Yeah, so I would say it’s medically adjacent, the characters are not healthcare professionals or anything like that.

Debbi (16:06): Interesting. Let’s see. So a lot of people would like to write but don’t know how to get started. What advice would you give to encourage these people to get started? What would you say to them?

Jennifer (16:21): Yeah, so a couple of things, I guess. I guess the first thing would be just write even if it’s for yourself because unless you come from a background of writing, like for me, which I did not, you have to just dive in and then you’ll learn from your mistakes. And I think also getting a supportive community around you. I was very fortunate that after I had been writing Algorithm for about a year, I entered a contest that doesn’t exist anymore, but some people might remember it called Pitch Wars and I got assigned a mentor and then through that I met other writers and then some of them I’m still in touch with and we have an online writing group and I realized for that year I was just trying to do it on my own, how much better it is now to have the support. And then also when you connect with other writers like that, you realize that everyone else, even those who are successfully published, they go through rejections and doubt and all those things, so you don’t feel so alone.

Debbi (17:48): Exactly.

Jennifer (17:52): I think a lot of opportunities nowadays for online writing groups or a lot of local libraries have drop-in writing groups. It might be a way that you can connect if you’re just starting out of the blue like I did without really knowing anyone or knowing what you’re doing.

Debbi (18:14): Yeah, it can often start with a local writing group or organization. I know that’s the way it started for me.

Jennifer (18:21): Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi (18:21): It really probably started with a class I took actually at a community college. That’s really where it kind of started and people in the class got together and formed a writer’s group, of course.

Jennifer (18:34): Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi (18:35): That’s what writers tend to do. They form these little groups. They prop each other up.

Jennifer (18:42): Yes.

Debbi (18:43): Let’s see. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?

Jennifer (18:49): Oh gosh, that’s such a good question. I’ve got to think for a minute. I think probably the best advice which is not unique and I think out there a lot is just, which is really hard sometimes, but don’t get so attached. Sometimes one of the hardest things is if something isn’t working in your story, but it’s your favorite thing or maybe the thing that you thought was going to be the best thing and then it’s just not working and you just have to cut it and that’s okay. But I think that’s another thing with meeting other writers is getting that feedback and beta reading. And I think too, I guess this would be a second thing with advice would be when you get feedback, take some time to process it because I’ve found for myself so many times when I first read through it, everything feels negative I think just because it all feels so personal.

(20:01): So then I usually will skim it and then I’ll set it aside and then I’ll come back a couple days later and I’ll look at it again and then it’s like your brain works better or something. Then I’m like, “Oh, well, this actually wasn’t negative at all. This was really positive. This is really helpful.” So I think just taking time to process that kind of feedback and knowing that I think a lot of our brains work that way as writers. We just tend to see the negative first.

Debbi (20:35): Yeah, it is hard sometimes, especially, I don’t know what it is about screenwriting, but boy, that is a tough arena to impress anybody in. Let’s see. Is there anything else that you’d like to cover that we haven’t talked about?

Jennifer (20:56): Oh gosh.

Debbi (20:57): Is there anything you want to talk about?

Jennifer (21:01): Not that I can think of. I just appreciate so much that you invited me on and it’s just so fun to meet you. Again, just I think the writing community is just one big, large, supportive community, which is so wonderful. So I guess to anyone out there who’s maybe feeling stuck, just keep writing.

Debbi (21:26): That’s right. Write on. Thank you. Those are great words to end with. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate you being here, Jennifer. Thanks.

Jennifer (21:35): Thanks again for having me. It was fun.

Debbi (21:38): It was my pleasure, believe me. And to everyone who is supporting the Crime Cafe on Patreon and Substack, I want to thank you so much. To everyone who’s listening, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. They do help. Until next time when my guest will be Caleb Husmann, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Clay Stafford.

Check out the plans for the upcoming Killer Nashville conference, which celebrates its 21st anniversary. So, it can now legally drink whatever it wants. 🙂

Transcripts available for download to all free and paid Patreon members.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Before we get started with the show, I’d like to announce that my third Erica Jensen novel is out now. It came out on June 6th as an ebook. It’s also coming out in print, hopefully soon, probably sometime next week. So be on the lookout for that. And with that, I just hope that you will check the book out and consider giving it a read. Now let me introduce my first guest for season 12. You could say he’s even a regular here. He’s just part of the show now, really. He is in fact a bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and creator of Killer Nashville, a fantastic conference that’s held every year in Nashville. It’s Clay Stafford. Hi, Clay. How are you doing?

Clay (01:46): Hi, Debbi. I’m doing great. Yeah, I’ve decided that I’m just going to move in, so I hope you have a spare bedroom or something.

Debbi (01:53): Dear me.

Clay (01:56): Congrats on the new book.

Debbi (01:59): I’m sorry?

Clay (02:00): Congratulations on the new book.

Debbi (02:01): Oh, well, thank you very much. It took long enough for me to get it finished in between trying to tweak screenplays and do other things in between.

Clay (02:09): There’s always something going on, always juggling.

Debbi (02:12): It’s weird. I mean, it’s like, okay, I’m going to go back to the book now and where was I? And who was this person? I got to go back and check. And I would find things that would change and it was like, oh my God. You really have to spend some time with a novel to really get it done.

Clay (02:34): Yeah, you do.

Debbi (02:36): It’s like trying to pitch a TV show, actually. TV shows are so dependent on characters that it’s just really, unless you really, really know your characters and where they’re going, there’s just no point. And you really have to know this stuff like the DNA of the whole world you’re creating in a sense. So it’s really interesting. But enough about me and my thoughts about screenwriting. It’s very good to see you. And I was going to say, how many decades have you been running Killer Nashville? And then I looked and I realized it was two.

Clay (03:16): Decades. Yeah, started in 2006.

Debbi (03:18): That’s amazing.

Clay (03:20): Our 21st year. It’s funny how numbers work like that because 2006, 2026, but yet it’s 21. So I don’t know how math works, but …

Debbi (03:31): Oh, wow.

Clay (03:32): Yes.

Debbi (03:33): Oh, wow. Okay. So 21 years. Ooh.

Clay (03:36): Years.

Debbi (03:37): Darn.

Clay (03:40): I’m like 20 years ago today.

Debbi (03:43): Yeah, I guess so since you started on The Zero. Yeah, that’s kind of like counting the centuries there. Interesting. Oh, math. Yeah. So what was it like at the beginning versus now? I mean, how many people signed up for the first one and how are you doing now?

Clay (04:05): We had about 70 people that showed up the first year and then we started climbing and really our cap this year is 500.

(04:19): And we sell out. We’ve been selling out for the past four years now. And so we will definitely sell out and I think we’re going to sell out. Even somebody I was talking to today said we may sell out at the conference by the end of June and the conference is not even until August. So any of your listeners or viewers out there that want to come to Killer Nashville, better check out the website and maybe move forward because we may be selling out early this year, but we sell out every year. And part of it had to do with the venues because they only cap a certain amount and we had only so many conference rooms. And so the first year we had a linear session where it was like class and then another class and another class.

(05:13): Now we have 11 sessions going concurrently. So you got a choice of 11, you have to pick one and that goes on for the full four days of the conference. And so there’s a lot of sessions that are going on. So we’ve expanded since in the past two decades into what we’re offering as well as the increase in attendance. But we could have more people there if we opened it up. But those pesky fire marshals, they only say you can have so many people in there at the same time. And so they know what’s going on. But I think we’re at the Embassy Suites in Cool Springs area and they’re incredibly nice and they’ve refurbished the entire hotel. I mean, gutted the hotel this past year. We were the last event before they were waiting for us to finish and the next day they had the demolition crew in there tearing everything out.

(06:14): So everything is completely brand new. They added restaurants and the whole little village section around it. So the place is really great. So we rent out the whole hotel and then it’s like a fishbowl. As you know, everybody in there, 100% of them are writers or publishers, editors, attorneys, publicists, and everybody is in there together and you just really get to network and get to know people. And so you asked how to expand from 2006 to now.

(06:52): It has gone in many different directions and the expansion’s been good. I can’t believe we’re still around after 21 years. I never thought when the first one, I never looked ahead and thought, well, 21 years from now, I’ll still be doing this. I didn’t have that in mind, but it’s a blast. I love it. I enjoy every year. What’s changed there? There’s more opportunities for writers to find publishers, to find agents through Killer Nashville than we did back in 2006. And so part of the fun for me has always been, as you know, seeing people get a deal, seeing somebody reach a goal that they had and knowing that Killer Nashville and the attendees at Killer Nashville, not just me or not even me, had something to do with the confluence of events that caused that to happen. And I think that it’s been 21 years of seeing people’s lives transformed that in what I think is the most noble profession of all being a writer and being a purveyor of ideas. And so it has just been a joy ride for me. And so I look forward to 20 years more. We’ll see.

Debbi (08:29): That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s great. I can really appreciate what you’re saying because it is wonderful when you can help somebody out with something, give some knowledge to somebody that really helps them out. I’ve done some mentoring with people in my alumni, alumni mentoring, that’s the kind of thing. And it’s the kind of thing I’d like to continue to do actually. Well,

Clay (09:00): Well, it’s fulfilling.

Debbi (09:03): It is.

Clay (09:04): I think that’s very good.

Debbi (09:08): By the way, where can I find your films or film?

Clay (09:12): Most of them are from PBS and NBC, CBS, ABC, and a lot of them are not available anywhere. And I have absolutely no control over that because I do not own the rights. It costs, the economics of it. People say we produce a film and throw it on Netflix. Actually, you pay Netflix to put it on there. And if the production company like PBS, PBS has a lot of my stuff. If they decided to pay Netflix or whoever, any streaming service, then you would be able to see it, but I don’t have the rights to it, I can’t stream it or put it on anything. So that answers your question.

Debbi (10:05): Oh, that’s too bad. But you have made films.That’s cool.

Clay (10:10): A few films. I mean, over different kinds between documentaries and episodic TV and stuff, probably about a hundred different credits. And I understand some of the stuff that I used to act in, I got a royalty check from The Guild for performances that are showing in Japan of all places,

(10:38): Not in the US and not Japan of all places, but of all places, why isn’t it showing in the US? I don’t know. But anyway, stuff is out there, but it’s really, content has changed so much in the decades that I’ve been in this business. And there are tons, if you’re an old film fanatic such as myself, there are tons of TV shows and films that were major when I was growing up that you can’t find anywhere because it just costs money to put them up on a streaming platform unless the company is NBC or Paramount or something and has their own streaming network. So there’s a whole bunch of deal-making things that have to go into all that. And unfortunately, creators don’t always have the leverage to be able to be involved in those discussions. I took a long way to answer your question.

Debbi (11:52): That’s okay. You covered some points that are very interesting. We could really get into that, but instead I will just mention that you have a podcast now.

Clay (12:03): I do have a podcast and I’m very excited about that and it’s gotten favorable results so far. People are actually listening to the podcast, but it’s an extension of what I’m doing. I’m talking with bestselling authors just similar to what you do and getting some good perspectives on the industry and you can, of course, stream it on any podcast platform. And I’m just always looking for ways to try to keep getting the information out there to the people that need it. So I mean, that’s what Killer Nashville is all about. So the podcast was a natural evolution on that. And then Killer Nashville Magazine is now going to be an ePub. Starting with the July one issue, that you can purchase on any platform, Amazon or Google or Apple, all of those easing platforms.

(13:16): And so that’s an exciting thing as well because we’re getting more exposure for our writers by doing that. And that’s really one of the things that I’ve done. I’ve been really happy. I mean, we’ve gotten picked for best mystery anthologies of the year and all kinds of stuff. So we discover a lot of great talent. And for your listeners, if they’re interested in submitting, we would love to have … I mean, we’re actively looking for submissions in all different things from short stories to craft to even novellas to flash fiction poetry. Look on killernashvillemagazine[dot]com and you can find all the stuff that we’re looking for. And we love discovering new voices and publishing established voices and take all of them equally in what we’re doing.

(14:17): But yeah, that’s expanding and there’s a couple other things that are in the works. So next year when we talk, we’ll be talking about some different things

Debbi (14:28): The world will have changed some more.

Clay (14:32): But yeah, so there’s been a lot of expansion. There’s another thing, how is it different since 2006? We got a podcast going, got an e-magazine going and we get tons of people. It’s Killer Nashville International Writers Conference and we have probably, I don’t know, 10% of our well-known, more than that, probably about maybe 15% of our demographics are outside the US from all parts of the world. So that’s been a major expansion.

Debbi (15:13): Very, very interesting. Do you see any change in what people are looking for from the conference?

Clay (15:21): I try to stay up-to-date and of course I do a lot of consulting and I’m always involved in the industry and I know a couple of people and so I get to hear the inside scoop on things. And so I always try to make the conference applicable to right now and even to take it beyond a lot of conferences are how to write great protagonists and stuff and that’s very important. But some of the different aspects of today, even social implications of writing that we get into academic type classes as well as just the craft classes. And then of course we got the forensic classes and forensics is always moving forward in terms of what they’re able to do in terms of uncovering crime. So that’s always contemporary and we’re trying to stay on top of all of that as well as legal issues pertaining to crime and crime punishment and justice and even in cases, some cases of injustice, try to cover all of that with all of that focus toward how to make somebody a more informed writer in terms of making sure that everything they write is plausible, especially in the crime business and making sure that everything is entertaining, which is just a basic literary thing. So we cover a lot of ground.

Debbi (17:02): Interesting. Do you have any thoughts about what’s going on with AI and the copyright implications of using it?

Clay (17:14): I think that any tool can be an asset and any tool can also be abused. And I have never seen a piece of AI material that I felt sounded like a real person wrote it. It’s absent of voice. So I know that on some platforms people are writing AI stories and selling them and you’re going to have that. You’re going to have people doing that sort of thing. But if you read it, it’s just for lack of a better word, very simplistic, if not some of it’s just downright trash. I’ve seen some things where people have to actually taken the AI formatting and just into a book and published it on a platform for people to purchase and they haven’t even taken the trouble to change the formatting or anything. It’s just laziness. But my son and I played an interesting game with AI, which is just fun for us.

(18:26): We go on an AI program and say, write a story about a romance where this happens and then something else happens and then there’s a murder and then there’s whatever. And we have a little party just hanging out listening to the stupid stories that we up with. So in terms of writing stories, which I think is what most writers are fearful of, it’s going to take our jobs, it’s going to take whatever. I don’t foresee that at all. Now AI is excellent if you say I am doing a plot on whatever it happens to be, where’s a great place to research this or what are three books that really can give me some insight into that? AI is great for giving you that. I mean, it’s got access to data and can compute faster than … It can compute faster in a few minutes than I can at what we used to do, go sit in the library and look at microfiche.

(19:44): Maybe who arrives first at a crime scene and AI can give you a list of who shows up and who gets called next and how that process works. So for that kind of stuff, AI is great, but when you start using it like that, it falls into Scrivener or any kind of a Word or docs. It just becomes a tool that you use, a research tool and there’s nothing wrong with that in terms of expediting what we used to laboriously have to do in libraries. And my eyes have crossed many times looking at that microfilm to do research on projects and now it’s just type it into an AI program and they can bring you up all sorts of leads that you can then just go investigate without having to do all that manual searching yourself. It’s been an incredible time changer.

Debbi (20:55): It is. Yeah, I agree. It’s amazing the sources you can find and the way you can organize information, it will give you take something and summarize it. Most of the time it comes out really good, really well.

Clay (21:13): And I will say, news seems to thrive on the bad things and it has to be something stirring the pot. And it was like, oh my gosh, cassettes have come out. My gosh, eight tracks are going to change the world. You remember eight tracks?

(21:44): And ebooks are the death of publishing. It’s audiobooks. Nobody’s going to be learning to read anymore. And so it’s always just people looking for something to talk. Let me give a message to your viewers out there. Instead of worrying about how ebooks are going to destroy the industry, which we’re not worried about now anymore, everybody’s found that they’re very lucrative. Let’s look at AI. How is it going to destroy the industry? Because there’s always some nefarious thing that’s coming to destroy the industry, but it doesn’t destroy the industry. This is a multi-billion dollar business. And instead of worrying about all of that stuff, it might be best if we reframed our minds and our time to write that next page and focus there instead of all the things first of all that we cannot control. Second of all, it’s just chatter, use any tool for the good purposes and don’t be stupid and use it for something that’s bad and don’t support the people who use it for something that’s bad.

(23:08): So that can apply to everything that’s been going on in the publishing industry since maybe the 1940s or if not before.

Debbi (23:19): Yeah, there have been so many changes.

Clay (23:23): Not that I have an opinion on the silliness of it,

Debbi (23:27): Of course not. Neither of us have opinions about the publishing industry for heaven’s sake. It’s simply delightful.

Clay (23:41): I don’t know how you feel, but I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world to be in the center of books that are coming out and books that are doing very well and authors that are trying to get there and writing my own stuff. I mean, for me, I can’t think of a better job. I’m just absolutely blessed. But somebody else in another profession is going to go, “Be a writer? That’s blessed?” But yeah, for me in my little world, publishing industry and the entertainment industry is an incredible place to be.

Debbi (24:19): Well, I quit practicing law just to become a writer because all my life I’d wanted to be one and I said, it’s about time I started, huh? Yeah. So I did. What is it that keeps you going without burning out?

Clay (24:39): Yeah, I absolutely love what I do. I think that’s what I said earlier. I am more of the Phineas and Ferb mentality, the 10-year-old boy mentality. I wake up every morning and say, okay, what am I going to do today? And I have incredible people, teammates that I work with and they make my day a pure joy and we all create together on various things and working on Killer Nashville and all that other stuff. And so I’m just surrounded with incredibly creative and wonderful people and doing something you love. If it’s work, then after a while it starts wearing you out. But if you’re playing then, and I’m a builder, I’m a creator, that’s what I’ve always done. And when you’re playing, it doesn’t feel like work. So it’s not unusual. I mean, we’ve talked before, most of my days are 14-hour days, Monday through Sunday, seven days a week.

(25:53): I don’t take days off and because I miss it. It’s like I get to show up and hang out with my friends. And so how do I prevent burnout? I don’t know. I’m just having too much fun.

Debbi (26:07): I understand actually. It’s really interesting because I’ve never been more engaged in a process than I was when I was directing my first movie and you just get so into the process that whatever is bothering you disappears. It’s really weird. It’s kind of like writing a novel. I mean, it’s like really just focusing on the thing that you’re doing and just getting into it and feeling that flow of creation. Really, there’s nothing like it.

Clay (26:45): One day I’m going to grow up and not be the 10-year-old boy anymore, but we’ll see when that happens.

Debbi (26:51): I know the feeling. I know the feeling. Is there anything you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?

Clay (26:58): No, I think I came with no agenda other than to be here.

Debbi (27:05): Well, I’m so glad that you came today and that you spent some time with us. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Clay.

Clay (27:11): Is there anything you want to cover that we haven’t covered?

Debbi (27:14): Oh, we can talk about that in the bonus round. How does that sound?

Clay (27:19): That works great.

Debbi (27:20): I love the bonus round. I get to ask all sorts of weird questions. Let’s see. It was really great to see you, Clay.

Clay (27:30): Same here. Thank you for having me back on your show.

Debbi (27:33): Well, thanks for being here. And to all my subscribers, whether you’re on Substack or Patreon, thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who’s listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review. They’re helpful. They really are. And so until next time when my guest will be Jennifer Lycette, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.