My guest interview this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is with the spy thriller novelist, Howard Kaplan.

He has a fascinating story or two in him, for sure.

For a PDF copy of the transcript, click here.

Debbi (00:12): Hi everyone. My guest today has a most interesting background in international affairs. I would like to talk to him more about that, actually. Let’s just say his work was so interesting, he got picked up by the KGB and interrogated. Okay. A native of Los Angeles, he’s lived in Israel and traveled throughout Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. He’s the author of the Jerusalem Spy Series, the latest of which is The Syrian Sunset. It’s my pleasure to have with me Howard Kaplan. Hi Howard. How are you doing today?

Howard (01:32): I’m doing fine, thank you.

Debbi (01:34): Excellent. Good, good. Your background is just fascinating. At the age of 21, you actually were sent on a mission to smuggle out of Russia, a Soviet dissident’s manuscript on microfilm to London?

Howard (01:47): Yes. I actually went to Russia twice to consecutive summers. It was right around my birthday’s in July, so I think it was one right before I was 21, and right around the time I was 22. And it was old school stuff. These were before the technology era where at that time the KGB had a single agent who monitored every Xerox machine in the Soviet Union. They could do that because it was a crime to have unemployment. So they gave everybody a job and they used to have something called Samizdat, which was self-published, where people would go into a typewriter and type a manuscript with onion skin, which is very thin paper and carbon paper. Most people don’t even know what these things are anymore.

Debbi: (02:51): I do.

Howard (02:52): And you would get several copies and they would be circulated underground. So I was not involved in how they transferred this manuscript to microfilm, however I was involved. When I met with them, I had, again, pre-digital age, lots of rolls of film in a camera bag, some exposed pictures I’d taken, some not. So we took a, this was prearranged, a fresh roll of film, slid open the box carefully so it could be reglued together, opened the Kodak yellow canister, removed the regular film, placed the microfilm in, taped a lead of film back in because they used to come with like six inches of film sticking out and glued the box together and threw it in the box. Wasn’t somebody, I thought it was a very good idea and it was unchallenged on the way out.

Debbi (04:00): And it was much less conspicuous than a pumpkin.Howard (04:06): So I was bold and I thought, oh, this is easy. I can go back every year and do this kind of thing. And that turned out to be misconstrued because I went back the next year and I got arrested for meeting with dissidents. But fortunately, I’d actually transferred a different manuscript to the Dutch Embassy at that time because again, they’re KGB agents. They would stand outside a little phone booth like a London booth, and Russians couldn’t enter a foreign embassy. But when I was arrested, I didn’t have anything incriminating on me, and they didn’t know actually about any of these prior events. They didn’t even know I’d been in Russia the year before. I had a new passport, still with my name, and they were just picking me up for meeting with dissidents, with people protesting the government.(05:06): And so they interrogated me for a few days. It was generally polite. Interestingly, in Moscow, the Russians have a great interest in Jack London, in the writer, I think because the Canadian Arctic, if that’s a proper term, is reminiscent of the Soviet North, the Russian North and Siberia. And so they’re very akin to his writings. He’s one of the writers that’s most sought after in Russia. Now they can get books. It’s a different world. And they asked me a lot about Jack London novels, and I wondered if this was for a long time, meaning years. I wondered was this surreptitious? Were they trying to get me—this one interrogator who spoke perfect American English. Was he trying to relax me, so I gave up anything? But I concluded, I just read it in a novel, in one of the Martin Cruz Smith novels. Again about Jack London, the Gorky Park writer, and I concluded they just wanted to know about Jack London, and we had a lot of time because I wasn’t going anywhere.

Debbi (06:26): That’s fascinating. That really is. Let’s see. Tell us about the Jerusalem Spy series and what inspired you to write it.

Howard (06:36): I did my junior abroad in Jerusalem. I got wedded for a taste of traveling, and then I had these, I went to the Arab countries rather than study for finals. Those days, again, I keep talking about like I’m old, but my son’s getting married next week, so maybe I am a little bit, where security was less concerned. I was able to go to Cyprus to the American Embassy, and they issued me a new passport on the spot as long as I gave them my old passport, which had Israeli stamps in it for them to hold in the safe in the embassy in Nicosia. So for a number of years I had two active passports and it wasn’t terribly special, but they only allowed me to have one in my possession. And I went to Lebanon the first time from Cyprus, and then I went to Syria, which became a passion of mine in my life. Up to this day, I’m helping Syrian refugees who’ve come to Los Angeles with adjusting, sometimes aiding them with financial for legal issues. Often they’re about divorce and not about asylum and visas. So I wrote these five books. I think there are five. There’s one that’s not republished, so I’m always confused how many I have. You have to find it online.Debbi (08:30): I understand.

Howard (08:30): It’s an old hardcover edition, it’s not digital. About sort of moral ambiguity, gray issues I can say now because it’s a current time in the Middle East. My parents were Holocaust survivors. My father lost his entire family in Poland. My mother was in Auschwitz. These things affected me and affected me maybe in a way that’s popular with some and unpopular with others. I’m very unhappy, which is an understatement to see what Israel is doing in Gaza, starving people. My mother, illustrative of this point, she was a very attractive woman, Hungarian, blue-eyed blonde, and her identity was very much centered on her looks. That’s what she cared about. And so she always was slim and whatever well about in her mid-eighties, early eighties, she got dementia and the first thing she said was—not the first thing, but very quickly—she said, I didn’t eat for a year. I’m going to eat. Because she was referring to so many decades earlier to not being able to eat in Auschwitz. And she blew up about 60 pounds before everybody got a sort of control.

(10:03): She was still cooking then. Then later, she was put under a more restrictive diet. But for me to see Israelis, Jews starving a population in the way my mother and her family and my father’s family, most of them died in Auschwitz too, is a shocking experience for me and incomprehensible and an unacceptable and an unforgiving experience. So I’ve been writing about the conundrum of these areas. I’ve written a lot, as I said about Syria, and even now we have my Syrian friends tell me my latest book, The Syrian Sunset deals with the period of Bashar al-Assad and chemical weapons. Now, there’s been a new regime come in, and I have scenes in the novel about Sednaya Prison, which was an awful place in some detail. And the prison has been liberated for the first time in decades, and everybody’s out, it’s closed and the horrors revealed.

(11:20): However, the new government in Syria is greatly fundamentalist. They want women to ride in the back of the bus separately. They’ve closed the great music school in Aleppo in northern Syria because music distracts from piety and study of religion in Islam for fundamentalists, not for your average wonderful Muslim, but for these fundamentalists. So now you have more ambiguity. You have people who threw out the murderous Bashar, but they’re suppressing women’s rights, killing in their own right, and they want to stop co-ed education. And as his friend of mine said, even in Tehran in Iran at the university, men and women study together, but in Syria, they want to stop it. So these are the kinds of things I’m writing about in the series of novels, historical novels.

Debbi (12:21): Well, these are very, very timely and important topics. I’m really glad you’re doing this. I noticed you’re on a website called We Are Not Numbers. As a big fan of the old TV show, The Prisoner, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by that particular line.

Howard (12:45): I don’t remember how I got started with them even. It’s been a few years, it’s not happening now because of the war in Gaza. But before this last war, this group, I used to mentor writers in the Gaza Strip via Zoom and Facebook with their stories, which were invariably autobiographical.

(13:14): And their line was, we are people, we are not numbers. And one in particular that I’ve talked about and written about, a young woman’s story, and I had mostly women. I had all women in fact, because for some reason the men weren’t doing it. The women, maybe they felt more open, maybe they felt freer, maybe they weren’t worried about saving face. But she talks about her really close friend who got very ill, couldn’t be accommodated in the hospitals in Gaza. So she got flown to Jerusalem to attend, to be taken care of in the Israeli Hadassah hospital, and she got to walk around and see the city. And the author who’s writing this autobiographical story is talking about how her whole life, she lives in this strip of 25 by five miles and she’s never been out and she’s not allowed to leave. It’s blockaded by Egypt on the south and by Israel on the north and on the seas by the Israelis. And she says she wished she could get deathly ill so that she could be taken to Jerusalem and see this wonderful city that’s her homeland, also. And I find as often happens, sometimes real life is more powerful and even what you can make up, but I can steal these experiences somehow and recraft them into fiction. But that was the most moving story that I had from working with these people in We Are Not Numbers.

Debbi (14:58): Oh my gosh, that really is, that’s something else. Would you consider yourself to be a spy novelist? How do you describe your writing to others?

Howard (15:10): I think I do in the way that le Carré is a spy novelist. I did have these experiences when I was young and I got connected with several espionage organizations and also just as a thriller writer in general. I’m not a crime writer. These are not mysteries in terms of, as I mentioned, the Martin Cruz Smith books, which I’ve been reading a few of them recently. They’re really international thrillers and spy novels.

Debbi (15:53): Yes. Yeah. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Howard (15:59): I’m a morning person altogether, and it seems, it’s funny, I was talking, I was at a chiropractor today and he was early and I was early. It was an eight o’clock appointment. We were both there at 10 of, and he started telling me about how his father was always early to everything. And I said, my father was always early to everything. So I think these are learned behaviors. I don’t think they’re genetic, but he said to me, that was a wonderful line. He asked his father, why do we always show up early? His father said, so we can relax. And I thought that was just precious because I have the same mania. But the truth is, if you arrive casually and you go relaxed and you get there at a reasonable time, you’re relaxed the whole time. You don’t have to rush maniacally to get there early in order to relax. So again. Yeah, these are things that interest me as a writer. So when I heard that, I thought, that’s just fabulous.

Debbi (17:05): That’s a great character point right there. Yeah, I really liked it. I hustled to get there so I could relax. Yes. That’s awesome. Let’s see. What writers have most inspired your work?

Howard (17:21): Le Carré I think in terms of quality, and there’s an Americans spy novelist, it’s unclear to me how well known he is. I read a lot of the Graham Greene books when I was younger. They were of great merit. But there’s an American writer who died only recently, had a very, very long career. His name is Charles McCarry, and he wrote a six to 10 novels. I don’t remember exactly how many, about an American CIA agent called Christopher. His first name was Christopher, and those are, I looked for really good writing. I met Clive Cussler at an event once, and he was just the most sweetest man around. We corresponded. He used to hand write me notes on his stationary, but he didn’t have the literary prose of these other two people, which I think inspired me more than anybody else.

Debbi (18:28): Wow. Yeah. Those are good people to be inspired by. Let’s see, one of your books, The Damascus Cover was made into a feature film. I happened across a podcast where you were talking to somebody about that, let’s see, the podcast was called Follow Your Dream?

Howard (18:51): I dunno. I’ve done a few podcasts. I did real live interviews before there were podcasts. The movie was filmed, the book was filmed years after the novel came out, A director came across it through a friend, who had read it?

Debbi (19:12): The story. Tell the story about that.

Howard (19:13): And said, I want to do this. He said, I think I can get financing. And I met him for coffee and I said, okay, we did a little deal. I signed it. He brought papers, and in actuality, it took 10 years for him to get the financing. And one time he called me up and said, come meet me. I have some news. We to meet a Peet’s Coffee at Beverly Hills, which is no longer there. It’s a victim of the pandemic. It’s now a hair salon or something. That’s the new world. And he said, I need to renew the option of the agreement one more time,

(19:58): Because it expired in July. It was like May. And he says, we’re going to start shooting in October. So some of my Hollywood friends said, well, you ought hold him up for more money now. And I said, I don’t do that. This guy’s been working for 10 years to get this done. It’s incredibly hard thing to do. I’ll extend it for a hundred dollars because I’m interested in the film getting made, not in five figures or whatever it might have been. And he got the film made with some very well established stars. I remember Jonathan Rhys Meyers stars in it. I get my son’s on my mind. I just saw him yesterday and the wedding is this coming weekend. And I remember telling him, we had Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and he said, are you sure? Because it seemed somewhat improbable. And then they got Sir John Hurt to come and a really highly talented indie woman actress Olivia Thirlby, who appears in a good number of things. First thing comes to mind, she was the sidekick in Juno many years ago as a teenager.

Debbi (21:08): Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Howard (21:09): That was her opening and she was in the, well, she’s been in a number of things, Dredd. And she’s actually, I shouldn’t say this, but John Hurt has passed, so I can say it. I think she’s the best of all of the stars in the film.

Debbi (21:28): Oh my gosh.

Howard (21:29): I think she outs shines the bigger men who have bigger.

Debbi (21:34): Oh my goodness. Well, that’s awesome.

Howard (21:37): It’s free on Tubi. It moved around. It’s been on everything. It used to be on Prime. It used to be on Hulu, and now it’s rentable for those things. But it’s free on Tubi with obviously commercials. That’s how that,

Debbi (21:53): That’s awesome. Well, that’s great. I love that you took the long view in terms of paying the producer or actually the director, I should say, in terms of the option, because—

Howard (22:06): He stuck to it. He really,—

Debbi (22:07): That’s money that you saved him that can go to those actors.

Howard (22:11): Well, and that it just—

Debbi (22:12): That’s important.

Howard (22:13): It also kept good relations. He didn’t feel like I was holding him up because I could.

Debbi (22:19): Exactly, exactly. And so much of this depends on relationships and trust.

Howard (22:25): I think so. And we’re still on good terms. He calls me periodically.

Debbi (22:29): That’s right, that’s right. That’s exactly right. I think that’s a very smart move.

Howard (22:32): One of the distributors, I think the international distributor got bought out by a bigger company recently. So he said we might have some additional areas where we didn’t sell, where it can be distributed now because they have a little more clout. And sometimes what they do, the film is 2018, so it’s not a new film. They package them with a number of slightly older films and then hand them to Denmark. So you can buy this. So there’s not much money in it, but there’s a little bit, and then it’s out there.

Debbi (23:06): There you go. There you go. And this director now has an additional credit. As I understand it, he had only directed one film before this.

Howard (23:15): Yes. And he made a horror film.

Debbi (23:17): Was it a short or a feature?

Howard (23:19): I haven’t seen it. I think it was a full length horror feature, like shot in the Philippines, something like that.

Debbi (23:24): Okay, cool. Well that is really cool. That was cool for you and for that director.

Howard (23:30): Yes, certainly a win.

Debbi (23:32): It was a win-win.

Howard (23:33): And I have to say this, I’m divorced. I mentioned my son, but ever since the film came out, my dating life’s exponentially better. People look up, they say, you have a film. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I’m still the same person, but—

Debbi (23:48): That’s funny. Yeah, I know. I know what you mean.

Howard (23:50): But, really, it’s just … often the first question people want to ask me.

Debbi (23:56): It’s very interesting, especially the rather lucky kind of way that your friend happened to know somebody who’s a director who wanted to go a bit farther with that. Were you involved in adapting the novel? I mean, adapting.

Howard (24:13): I wasn’t involved in the screenplay, but once they shot, I was involved. They asked my opinion on the editing. And I was actually quite involved on the editing, but not on the original adaptation. The director did it. He bought, this was his project to write the script and to direct it and raised the money. So it was one of those kind of.

Debbi (24:42): It’s tough.

Howard (24:43): Yes.

Debbi (24:44): You have to find somebody who really believes.

Howard (24:46): Right. And it’s really all about money. Because you can hire people.

Debbi (24:49): That’s it That’s it.

Howard (24:50): If you have the money, and for example, this film shoot was two months. So there are a lot of actors who work for two months, if they have a window rather than just sit around. So it’s possible to get people, and I think John Hurt came on for five days, also serendipity. How did they get John Hurt? Sir John Hurt the great? He had a house in Morocco and they were shooting in Casablanca, Morocco. So he told the director, I’ll come for a week. You have to do all my scenes, and at five o’clock on Friday, I’m leaving. So you better be done.

Debbi (25:31): Oh yeah. Yeah.

Howard (25:32): And they were, he did. I wasn’t there. I didn’t meet him, but.

Debbi (25:39): Well, that’s all of the stuff that goes into movie making and there’s so much, it’s really just a complex “takes a village” process. But what advice would you give to anyone who would like to write for a living?

Howard (26:00): Twofold. One is perseverance, and the other is equally practical. And that is find an additional revenue stream to make money so that you’re not under the pressure, the gun of having to support yourself exclusively from writing, which may or may not happen. Stock market, Instagram influencer, A lot of women can make particularly a lot of money doing that. I think you need to be practical in that sense. And the others just persevere. Again, I heard a story today about a woman who self-published young adult fiction. Then she kept going. She got a small publisher for her second book, and she’s a TikTok influencer. She has a following on TikTok. She’s 20 something and she’s now getting a deal with Harper. They’re talking to her about a deal. Her books are well received. So that’s exactly what I mean, persevere. I don’t know if she was young, if her family was helping her financially, that counts as a revenue stream as far as I’m concerned. If you have parents who want to contribute to that for a period of time, they’re not going to do it forever. But I think there’s no reason to say you have to do this on your own. But I think those are the twin things. You need to work hard and persevere, and you need to prepare for earning a living if it doesn’t work in that direction.

Debbi (27:53): Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Howard (27:57): We hear the stories, I find it kind of annoying the story of the actor, Jon Hamm, for example, who struggled and struggled and struggled for 10 years or whatever, didn’t make it, couldn’t do anything, was presumably dirt poor and then became a global star. And the subtext seems to be, if you keep at it, that can happen to you too. But the truth is, for every person like that, there’s a million who don’t make it or pick your number, 500,000, 200,000. Working and persevering is not a guarantee, is not even maybe a likelihood. It’s a passion. So when I hear people use something like that as an illustration of how you should persevere, as I say, I get annoyed. I think it’s not, he’s the way, outlier exception. Many more people have fallen by the wayside and succumb to their parents telling them to go to law school.

Debbi (29:16): And invariably, the way they made it will be different from the way somebody else made it. It’s just you find your opportunities, you take advantage. That’s what it kind of comes down to.

Howard (29:31): Yes, there’s always, I think it’s a small cliche that it’s skill and luck together. And I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks and a lot of unlucky breaks. For example, The Damascus Cover, when it first came out, the editor, he handled it well. He sent the book out to all the paperback houses then without, not an auction, without a bid, without a price, and said, what do you think? And they all came back and said they wanted it. It was a kind of really 10 out of 10. And there was one company that bid a certain amount, $75,000 I think was the high. They just came in and said, we’ll give you 75. So they held a party, which in other words, an auction. And they wanted Bantam Books, which was the big paperback house at the time to go. And the editor-in-chief, whose name is Mark Jaffe, wanted to go to a hundred, but his underlings said no, and they didn’t. And there was a difference between the 75 and a hundred, because when they pay a hundred, it’s a much bigger book in terms of what they promote. So I did fabulously well, but I missed that last leg. And then many years later, the book got filmed anyway and got a big audio book contract because of the film. So it just kind of wanders around like that.

Debbi (30:56): That’s right. Just never know. Nobody knows anything. As William Goldman once said, just never know. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Howard (31:14): I’d like communicating with readers. I’m on, the best place for me is really Facebook. You can find me. I have an author page under my name and a regular page. So I’m more than welcome. I’m more than inviting people, aspiring writers, people who’ve read the books and people haven’t read the books, whatever they want to do. That’s the best place for me. And I’m very, I have time, so I’m happy to answer email, not email, what do you call it? Instant messages and messages on Facebook. If I can be, as I say, I help certain people with certain things that’s sort of random, which I choose to do and which I choose not to do. So that would be about my only other invitation.

Debbi (32:08): Well, thank you so much for being here, Howard. I really appreciate your time and all you had to say.

Howard (32:14): Thank you for talking to me across the country.

Debbi (32:19): Well, it’s my pleasure. Believe me. Your story is just fascinating. What you’ve done, the work you’re doing is fantastic. I just want to say everyone listening, thank you so much. Thank you to my patrons on Patreon. I’m putting bonus episodes together as fast as I can, and I’ll have them for my patrons there. Patrons get bonus episodes and ad free episodes among other perks. So check out my Patreon page. Meanwhile, until next time, when my guest will be June Trop, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

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My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is the award-winning author of the Detective Parrott and Quinn McFarland Mystery Series, Saralyn Richard!

Check out our discussion about her latest work, including the Quinn McFarland novels and a new historical novel in the works, inspired by her grandparents, about the 1900 Storm in Galveston, Texas.

Treat yourself to a PDF copy of the transcript.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the award-winning author of the Detective Parrot Mysteries and the Quinn McFarland Mysteries, as well as other books. Her laudable goal is to change the world one book at a time, which I think is a great, great goal. It’s my pleasure to introduce today’s guest, Saralyn. Richard. Hi, Saralyn. How are you doing? It’s been a long time.

Saralyn (01:19): I’m good. It’s wonderful to be back with you, Debbi.

Debbi (01:23): It’s wonderful to have you on. Thank you. Before we delve into the world of Quinn McFarland, I have to ask about good old Detective Parrott. Do you plan to continue that series?

Saralyn (01:37): I do. I do.

Debbi (01:39): Awesome.

Saralyn (01:40): But I generally give him a rest and he gives me a rest after a book just to have some time to regroup and have some new things happen in his life. New things happen in my life. So I kind of alternate between Detective Parrott books and other books.

Debbi (02:04): That’s a great approach actually. That way you don’t get burnt on doing the same sort of thing. It adds a little variety.

Saralyn (02:14): And he doesn’t get burned with me asking a million questions. I like it when he comes to me and he whispers in my ear and I don’t have to beg and plead for, give me a new story.

Debbi (02:31): That’s great. I like that. That’s absolutely a wonderful approach. What inspired you to write about a woman who works in her family’s mortuary?

Saralyn (02:43): Well, Quinn is more than that. She works in that mortuary because she is kind of withdrawn from society. She had a very bad experience when she was young in high school, and she doesn’t really trust people. She really just kind of resorts to her family business, which happens to be a mortuary, and there she can be herself. She doesn’t have to worry because dead people don’t hurt you and they don’t talk about you and they don’t tell lies about you and things like that. So she’s gotten very comfortable in that life and in the first book, which was Bad Blood Sisters, she was just about to turn 30, and it was a big aha moment for her that life is passing her by and she’s not accomplishing any of her goals. Originally, she wanted to be in the medical profession, and she is an embalmer, so that is considered the medical profession, but she wanted to be on the living side of things, and she hasn’t done that.

(04:17): She hasn’t gotten married, she hasn’t had a family. She hasn’t really made friends since high school. And so she’s uncomfortable with the place that she’s in in her life, and boom, suddenly she’s thrown into solving a mystery and she becomes an amateur sleuth, and that’s Bad Blood Sisters. And by the end of Bad Blood Sisters, she is getting herself more on track. When the second book begins, which is Mrs. Oliver’s Twist, she has foresworn police matters and crime. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with that anymore, and she actually wants to leave the mortuary business and become a physician’s assistant. And she’s applied to that school and she’s about to get in and she’s feeling a little guilty that she’s leaving her family in the lurch, but she’s ready to move on and she’s promised, well, she’s now got a husband. That’s a bit of a spoiler, but she’s promised him and she’s promised her parents no more criminal activity, no more searching for perpetrators.

(05:41): And then suddenly she is thrown into another mystery because her very favorite teacher from high school who helped her get through that rough period in high school turns up dead, and she’s in the morgue and the police come to ask her to identify the body, and so she feels that she can’t turn her back on this woman who helped her so much. So she gets involved and that’s the second book. But to answer your question, the mortuary is really an important part of every community. The service that’s provided by the people who work there is so important, and it’s something that most people don’t want to have anything to do with because most people are uncomfortable about death. My experience, and I’ve interviewed a lot of people who work in funeral homes because I write mysteries, and so I have opportunity to talk to them. My experience is that they’re all very kind, very loving people who really want to take care of their customers, their clients, and Quinn is like that. And so I really wanted to shine a light on that industry a little bit, and it also is a perfect place to put somebody who’s going to get involved with crimes because dead people end up in mortuaries. So it all worked out.

Debbi (07:25): That’s true. That’s quite a concept too. I like the way you’ve set up that character with a backstory like that, and then the realization that, oops, life is passing by. I got to do something. How much research did you do on mortuaries or anything else in terms, when you wrote these novels?

Saralyn (07:50): I’m a big research person. It’s really one of my favorite parts of being an author because I love learning new things. I love meeting new people. I love interviewing them. I love going to see how things work. And so I did quite a bit of research and I’ve had lots of encounters with people in funeral homes, but because of the book, I’ve had to get pretty detailed. I’ve had to go through an autopsy, go through an embalming process, what does it look like? What does it smell like, what does the room look like? Because I want my book to be as authentic as possible. At the same time, I don’t want to gross out my readers and tell them more detail than they really need to know for the story. So there’s finding that right balance, but the research is a lot of fun, and I found almost everybody that I ever talked to, so willing to help and help with a book and be mentioned in a book or have their job mentioned in a book. They’re flattered and they’re very forthcoming with information, and that’s what I love about doing the research. It gives me an entree into a whole different world.

Debbi (09:32): It’s kind of the same impetus that a journalist would have, to find out more, to learn. Let’s see. Do you have an arc for this character? Do you have an endpoint in mind? I’m not saying you have to tell us what it is.

Saralyn (09:52): Yes and no. I have ideas about where she’s going to end up, but I’m a pantser. I’m really not a plotter. And I have experimented with being a plotter. I’ve listened to webinars by very famous writers who say, you must, you must outline.

Debbi (10:22): Banish that word from all this.

Saralyn (10:25): I tried. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to sit down and write an outline, but it frustrates me to do that because it takes away the creativity that is so much of the joy of writing. And I myself do not want to know the ending. When I start a book, I want to surprise myself. I want to entertain myself. I want to puzzle myself. I want to put myself in the role of a reader. I feel like if I’m writing with a lot of expectation and joy, then the reader is going to read it with that same emotion. Exactly. It gets across in the prose. So I really don’t plan too far ahead for my characters. I do have ideas, though.

Debbi (11:35): I myself have a tendency to plot things, but I don’t always end up following that thing that I wrote out ahead of time. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, after say the midpoint, anything could happen, really. I might end up in almost the same place that I had imagined at the beginning, but who knows?

(11:56): It just seems to be the right place to end it. Something like that. I don’t know what it is. It’s like a kind of a hybrid approach I want to plot, but I can’t do it completely. I can’t just write everything out.

Saralyn (12:10): Well, it’s like real life because you may have a plan for yourself, and something happens to hijack that plan that turns out to be even better than what you had planned. So in real life that happens. And in books, that happens too.

Debbi (12:33): Very true. Very true. What are you currently working on?

Saralyn (12:41): Well, I have to smile over this because when I was 15 years old, I wanted to write a book about Galveston, Texas during the 1900 Storm, which Galveston is my hometown. My grandparents were here for the 1900 Storm. I’ve always been fascinated by it. And at the time when I was 15, there wasn’t that much written about it. So I started doing research in the library. I researched for 10 years. I read everything that they had in the library about the 1900 Storm. I had extensive notes. I had my plot in mind. I had everything ready to go, but I didn’t write the book. I started writing the book in the 1980s on a Macintosh computer. Do you remember those, little screen?

Debbi (13:46): Oh, yeah.

Saralyn (13:49): And I had about a hundred pages written, and every time I sat down to write though, I had to reread what I had written. And pretty soon I was spending all my time reading and not having time to write. So I didn’t get that far into the book. And then that computer crashed, so I lost that manuscript, and that was my first manuscript. Well, in the meantime, many people have written books about the 1900 Storm and great books. So one of them is Isaac’s Storm, and one of them is The Promise by a friend of mine, Ann Weisgarber. And so I feel like a lot of books have been written about that time period, but not about the rebuilding of Galveston after the storm.

(14:41): And that’s really where my grandparents’ story takes place. Anyway, so I still hadn’t written it and hadn’t written it, and finally I decided, you know what? I’m going to write that book. It’s a departure for me. It’s not Detective Parrott. It’s not Quinn McFarland. It’s historical. It’s still mystery. It’s a historical mystery. It’s got a little bit of romance. It’s got a lot of suspense, a really fabulous setting, and I’m enjoying it so much. I’ve been doing a lot of really heavy research into the time period, and I’m learning just a million things, and I’m recreating these characters that are my grandparents, but I don’t really know for a fact that that’s what they were like. I’m creating them and I’m trying to be as careful as I can possibly be based on what I do know about ’em and what I have been told. And then the rest I’m just imagining. And I think it’s pretty fun. I’m just really enjoying it.

Debbi (16:05): Interesting. It’s like creative nonfiction in a way. Yeah. Interesting. Galveston is an interesting location. Is that why you decided to set your story there? Because that’s your hometown?

Saralyn (16:23): The Quinn McFarland books are set there, and there was a clamoring, A lot of my readers are from Galveston, and they were like, well, when are you going to write about Galveston? Because the Parrott books are in Brandywine Valley. And for a while, Parrott was toying with the idea of moving to Galveston in one of the books. But I did some research to see what it would take to bring him here, and it’s just not feasible. He would have to start all over again. He’s, he’s risen in the ranks where he is, and he would have to start all over again being a patrolman, nobody would do that. No. He’s not coming to Galveston, so.

Debbi (17:15): What a shame.

Saralyn (17:16): Yeah, but that’s okay because it made room for Quinn.

Debbi (17:20): That’s true. He could always take a busman’s holiday, find Quinn, and they could work together on something, or he could advise her on something. He could make a cameo appearance. I always think about these things, how to cross things over.

Saralyn (17:38): And that’s because our characters are so real to us.

Debbi (17:42): Yes, to us, yeah.

Saralyn (17:43): Really are real people,

Debbi (17:47): Really. I know they come to you and just, why aren’t you writing about me now? I hear from Sam. It’s like, I’m getting there. I’m getting there. What are you reading these days?

Saralyn (18:04): Well, I just finished …

Debbi (18:06): Other than Galveston stuff.

Saralyn (18:08): Just finished this book.

Debbi (18:09): Ah, The Quiet Librarian.

Saralyn (18:12): And it’s by Allen Eskens. And the reason that I chose that book was because I went to a webinar at which this author spoke on a panel, and he talked a little bit about The Quiet Librarian, and I was fascinated by it, and so I decided I was going to read that book.

Debbi (18:40): Well, your fascination has fascinated me, so now I have to check it out.

Saralyn (18:45): It’s a very interesting book, and it’s about Bosnia.

Debbi (18:48): Really?

Saralyn (18:48): And that’s something I didn’t know very much about

Debbi (18:56): Really. Yeah, neither do I. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing and how have you overcome it?

Saralyn (19:16): Well, a lot of people have asked me, why do you write mysteries? Because you’re such a refined ladylike person. You’re so kind. You wouldn’t kill anybody. And why are you writing books that have murders in them? And the truth is, I really abhor violence, and I don’t even like the sight of blood. It makes me faint, which is why I didn’t go into medicine. So I would say that killing characters or putting characters in dangerous, perilous situations where they’re hurt physically, emotionally hurt is hard for me because I love my characters and they are so real to me. And so when I make these awful things happen to them, I struggle with it. And sometimes I have to stop writing and give myself a pretty long break because of that. That’s the big challenge, and that’s what I do, is give myself a break. And sometimes I’ll write something completely different, something lighthearted, something a little romantic or something just to divert me from those unsavory things that happen in mysteries. But I really love mysteries, so I always go back to them. I just don’t like the violent parts, and I try not to have a lot of violence. My mysteries are not very gritty, but still, it’s hard for me to kill off a character.

Debbi (21:18): Oh, same here. And I know if I read, if I’m in a series, into a series of books and one of the characters gets killed, that hurts me. I might end up crying over that. That’s the thing, something that’s well written, when you really get to know the characters, you get close to them, and when you’re writing them, it’s just as bad. So yeah. If your books were adapted for the screen, who could you picture playing Quinn?

Saralyn (21:53): I don’t know. I try not to think of actors and actresses as my characters. I would rather have my readers imagine or answer that question for themselves because we all have different preconceived ideas about what characters look like based on what they are. I don’t even have a lot of description in my books of my characters. I just give a minimum description. All I really say about Quinn is that she’s petite and she has curly dark hair and light eyes, but I never really get specific about her looks because she could be any woman, any young woman, and probably any young woman could play her.

Debbi (23:04): Okay. I always ask what advice you would give to somebody who would like to have a career in writing. Has your advice on this changed, given the tremendous changes in publishing?

Saralyn (23:24): It really hasn’t. There are tremendous changes, but a lot of things are still the same.

(23:33): And if you want to have a career in writing, you have to write. I mean, that’s just the first step you have to write. So for years, I said, I want to be a writer, but I wasn’t writing. And you can want to be a writer, but you’re not going to be a writer until you actually get started and write. I would say, and I do, I teach creative writing and I mentor young writers or new writers. Sometimes they’re older people who want to start writing, and what I say to them is just start writing. Don’t worry about the publishing part right now. Don’t even worry about the editing part. Just write, get that craft going because it’s not going to happen overnight. And practice is what makes you a good writer and makes your writing good enough to be published. You can’t even get to that stage of publication until you’ve mastered your craft to a certain degree. And so none of that has changed. I think that that’s always the truth. What I think has changed is the options. There are many more options than there used to be for publishing and marketing, and those keep changing. Sometimes they open up, sometimes they close up. Sometimes one platform becomes another, but to aspire to be a writer, you have to start with the writing part.

Debbi (25:36): That part has to be really good too. I mean, it has to be the best that you can do because any less than that, and really you’re not doing yourself any favors. Find a group that you can bounce, show your stuff to, get a critique from them. Take notes. Listen with an open mind, all of those things, the basics, this is the thing. The basics are the most important part before you even get to that whole marketing part, that’s something to keep in mind. Very important. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Saralyn (26:24): We just started, it seems like we just started.

Debbi (26:28): This always goes very quickly. It’s like before you know it, a half hour is just up.

Saralyn (26:34): Yeah. I just always enjoy talking to you, Debbi, because your trajectory as a writer, it is so interesting. So I can just learn a lot from you.

Debbi (26:51): That’s nice. Thank you. I always feel like I don’t know if I’m doing anything right. I just do things and hope for the best.

Saralyn (27:02): Well, I think one of the things that you and I have in common is that we both are open to new experiences and new challenges. And this historical mystery for me is something totally new. And I know you’re venturing into something new too. I don’t know if you want to tell about it.

Debbi (27:27): Yeah, I can talk about it briefly. For those who don’t know. I am directing a short film. It’s called “Absolution”. It’s about a priest with a very dark past who has to deal with a penitent who comes to confess and basically face the consequences of his actions in his old life, which were, they were not nice, let’s put it that way. So it’s got kind of a neo-norish feel to it, too. It’s going to be like 10 minutes long. It’s not like a long movie, but our production shut down because of heat in the studio, and we were supposed to make it in one day, and we’re going to hopefully finish that day that we started back on July 8th actually, which was the day before my birthday. I was hoping to have a finished production for my birthday, not quite pulled off. That’s okay. I can defer this kind of gratitude.

(28:31): But yeah, it was just a wonderful experience and if anybody is interested in film and directing and screenwriting, I’m here. I can answer questions on things like that. I can tell you it’s not an easy road to take because you really have to put yourself out there and be able to say, hi, this is what I do, and here’s my screenplay. And then take all of the comments that you get and don’t just immediately go, “You don’t understand. I’m trying to say this.”

No, you don’t understand. You’re not doing what you think you’re doing. Listen to what they’re saying because, yeah, I mean, I just had to hear it two or three or four times before it finally sank in. Oh, I get it now. I need to get there faster. I need to be clearer. I need to go from point A to point B in this scene and not waste a lot of time. I can get rid of this character. I can get rid of this whole scene here. It’s useless. It’s amazing how much stuff you can cut when you start doing screenwriting. Anyway, now that I’ve gone off on that little tear about screenwriting and filmmaking, I’m very happy to be doing it, which is very weird. You have to be a little bit crazy to do this, I think.

Saralyn (29:53): You have to have fun.

Debbi (29:55): It is. It’s total fun.

Saralyn (29:57): And I want to do screen. I want to write a screenplay. I want to get into that too. There’s so much that I want to do and so little time, but one thing at a time.

Debbi (30:11): Exactly. One book at a time, one word at a time. All of it.

Saralyn (30:17): I didn’t start writing until 2013. Since that time, now I have seven books out.

Debbi (30:25): Wow. I’m impressed.

Saralyn (30:27): And I’m up to the eighth. So little by little I’m climbing in that mountain.

Debbi (30:34): Yes. That’s the way it feels, doesn’t it? Like climbing a mountain. Oh, boy. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your being here and spending time with us.

Saralyn (30:45): Well, thank you so much for having me.

Debbi (30:47): It was my pleasure, believe me. And I will come back on now, and I will just say thank you to everyone who is listening. I appreciate all of you and to my Patreon supporters, thank you so much for your help there. It helps a lot. I was just going to say something else. Oh, yes. When I started this podcast, I started and thought it was one of the best things. I’ve come to think of it as one of the best things I’ve ever done because I feel like I have learned so much just by talking to so many authors over the past 10, 11. This is the Eleventh Season, so it’s been 10 years and it’s going to be 11. So it has been a wonderful experience to do this. I’m going to continue doing it, and I want to thank you all for listening, and until next time, when my guest is Howard Kaplan, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

*****

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is clinical psychotherapist and crime writer Harper Kincaid.

Learn more about the challenges and joys of the writing life, along with the inspiration for her books and advice for anyone who wants to write.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the USA Today bestselling author of the books in the Bookbinder Mystery series, Bookbinding Mystery series. Her work has been published in a variety of publications including Writer’s Digest Magazine and CrimeReads, and many, many others. It’s my pleasure to have with me today, Harper Kincaid. Hi Harper.

Harper (01:19): Hey, Deb. To everybody here. Such a fabulous treat to be able to meet with you today and talk.

Debbi (01:26): Awesome. Yeah, it’s great to meet you too. And I love your name, Harper. You weren’t named for Harper Lee, were you?

Harper (01:32): No, and honestly, it’s a pen name because I’m also a licensed clinical psychotherapist, and so I try to keep, I don’t really keep the streams very separate anymore, but when I first started writing, I was doing child and adolescent social work and I was writing dirty romance and people getting killed. So maybe you want to not have that come up in the same Google search for that kind of thing.

Debbi (02:03): Understandable. Yes, very much so. Let’s see. You were born in California and raised in Florida. Then—I love this quote—”moved like a nomad with a bounty” on your head.

Harper (02:15): I did.

Debbi (02:17): Where are you living now?

Harper (02:19): So I have lived right outside of Washington DC in a town, Vienna, Virginia, Northern Virginia. Actually, the Bookbinding series is based there and in the series we’re not going to talk too much about it, but it’s a combination of places and people and businesses that are really there and some that I’ve made up. And a girlfriend of mine said it’s Vienna zhuzhed up in the books. So I’ve been there for almost 20 years at this point. But it’s true. I lived in New Orleans, I lived all over South Florida. I lived in Northern California, but we’re East Coasters and we are there in the DC area, which is an interesting time to be there, to say the least.

Debbi (03:04): Well, cool. I’m glad you’re relatively close to where I am.

Harper (03:10): And where are you based? Remind me.

Debbi (03:10): I’m in Columbia, Maryland.

Harper (03:13): Oh, I’m going to wave. *waving*

Debbi (03:16): Hey! *waving* Right across the river. Hey, there, across the river, Vienna and all that. Wow.

Harper (03:24): It’s nice. It’s funny, when I first came to the area, I did not understand this demarcation between Maryland and Virginia that people, like Virginia people did not really go over to Maryland, vice versa. And I was like, it’s not that far. What’s the big deal? And I don’t know if that’s ever been your experience, but that was something I found really strange.

Debbi (03:47): I have found a little peculiar myself when I first came here because I’m originally from New York and I’ve lived in all these different places too, like California, Pennsylvania, and then back DC for one summer. I mean, it’s just here, there and everywhere. Indeed. So when you encounter something like that, you’re kind like, what?

Harper (04:11): Yeah, every region, I guess.

Debbi (04:13): And then there’s the traffic.

Harper (04:13): Oh, the traffic is never going to get better.

Debbi (04:18): Oh, it is outrageous around here. It really is, and it always makes its way into my books somehow. I mean, I write about around here and one of the things I always write about is traffic. The traffic is terrible.

Harper (04:30): It’s true. Everyone can relate to that for sure.

Debbi (04:32): For sure. Yeah, and anytime I’ve been in Los Angeles, everybody there is so polite by comparison to here, yet people complain about the traffic there and I just don’t understand it.

Harper (04:44): Every region has its little peccadillos, right?

Debbi (04:47): I suppose so, yeah. I guess if I were living in LA, I would have my peccadillos about the traffic there.

Harper (04:54): You absolutely would.

Debbi (04:55): Yes, absolutely. For sure. What was it that inspired you to write the Bookbinder Mysteries? Why a bookbinder in a bookstore?

Harper (05:05): Right. Well, it was art imitating life a little bit because I had finished my graduate education for clinical psychotherapy, but I was writing more full-time and I wanted to learn the book business. So I ended up getting a job at my local independent bookseller Bards Alley in Vienna. And I just loved all the characters and the people that would come in. And it was around that time when I was making the switch from romance to mysteries, cozy mysteries, and my agent Jill Marsal from Marsal Lyon, she said, I’ve been talking with a couple of editors, and they would really love something that’s based in a bookstore in a southern town, but it’s a feminist and maybe you could throw some nuns and a German Shepherd in there. It was really specific and weird. And the irony of that was that I did do that.

(06:07): I put the proposal together, and the one other editor who really wanted all of those things was the first to reject it. And in the meantime, I had a couple of others who accepted it and then they got to battle it out. And then I was writing that. And so that’s where it came from. It was this, when you’re in genre fiction, oftentimes it is this collaboration. I mean, sure, it can be just from the author and puts her, his or her or their pitch in there, but sometimes it is like you have these relationships with your agent or other editors and they’re like, this is what we’re looking for. What do you think? And that’s how I got into the romance gig, what I ended up writing got published by one, but then another publisher said, well, that isn’t right for us, but we like your voice. Will you write this? So it has more of that collaboration sort of a feel to it. I mean, versus maybe literary or memoir or something like that. So that’s how I got into it. And the people of my town really, they love to see who’s who. They all want you to figure out who the villain was. I always give a very PC answer. I say, if you like the character, it’s based on you, and if you don’t like it, it’s something I made up. It’s just a way to keep the peace. It’s a good way to keep the piece, for sure.

Debbi (07:30): Absolutely. Yeah. Never tell ’em it’s based on real life.

Harper (07:34): No, no, for sure. Although real life can sometimes be even more interesting.

Debbi (07:39): Oh yeah, certainly.

Harper (07:41): For sure. Yeah.

Debbi (07:42): I mean it’s like you can’t make it up.

Harper (07:44): That’s true.

Debbi (07:44): It’s real.

Harper (07:45): That’s right.

Debbi (07:47): Let’s see. So your second book in that series had a Shakespearean theme. I couldn’t help noticing. Does the play itself work its way into the plot, or is it just a play on words?

Harper (07:58): It’s more of the play on words. There are Shakespearean elements for sure, and there is the, every chapter begins with a Shakespeare quote, not always from Midsummer Night’s Dream, but from any of them. But then that’s sort of your clue of what the theme of the chapter’s going to be. So it’s a nice little homage and a way for me to share my love for theater. I love any kind of musical theater, plays, whether it’s Shakespeare, whether it’s comedy of errors or things like that. So that’s where that came from. And it could have gone a lot deeper into the whole really playing out the Shakespearean themes, but I was on a short deadline, so we were like, okay, let’s just bang this out. And it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

Debbi (08:50): Do you have background in the theater, just out of curiosity?

Harper (08:54): I did some acting back in 1912 when I was a teenager in college, but it was always an avocation, never the main thing. Then my oldest daughter sort of was doing the same thing again in her teenage years, and then we made a right turn into something else. But I absolutely adore the theater. I am fortunate enough, I’ll drive up to the city, New York, and I’ll see things off-Broadway or Broadway and someday I’ll write a play. I haven’t gotten there yet, but right now I just, I’m a super fan.

Debbi (09:32): Well, that’s really cool. I think it’s cool that you would like to write a play someday.

Harper (09:39): People always probably ask you this too. Oh, where do you get the ideas? And you’re like, that’s not the problem. I have so many ideas. What am I going to commit to take the time? Right. So

Debbi (09:53): Absolutely

Harper (09:54): On the list,

Debbi (09:56): And it takes some time to break into something like playwriting or screenwriting, I got to tell you.

Harper (10:01): Really. Absolutely. Well, you know, so.

Debbi (10:06): Oh boy. Yes, indeed. I know.

Harper (10:09): I would love to hear about that another time.

Debbi (10:11): Yeah, we can talk about that. Were you always interested in writing as a child?

Harper (10:20): That was always something since I was four years old, and then I kind of dabbled with it on and off to be a writer, even if you’re writing fiction, there is an act of bravery to it. There’s an unveiling of yourself. It’s probably not a coincidence that I’m both a writer and a psychotherapist. And I think one informs the other. It took me a long time to learn how to write the way that I wanted to, that I always tell people who are starting out, when I’ve taught classes, there’s this vision of what your writing is going to look like or the book or the play or what have you. And then there’s the skill level that you’re at at the time, and there’s this big gulf in between.

(11:06): And if you can ride or surf that uncomfortableness and that sort of grind of the back and forth of learning, then you will get to that vision in your head. But there is that price to pay of your time and your dedication. And I also probably didn’t get to it more until, I mean, my children were still pretty young, but until I was in my early forties is when I started. And just because I think I got into my forties and I was like, well, geez, how much longer are you going to wait for your dream?

Debbi (11:42): Exactly.

Harper (11:44): So I was like, ef it, I’m going to just throw something out there. My husband, this to me, he goes, I don’t care how good or bad it is, but finish it and send it. Because I was very famous in the family for starting and not finishing creative projects.

Debbi (12:03): Oh dear.

Harper (12:03): No, but it was, I kind of needed that. I needed that.

Debbi (12:09): That’s actually, yeah.

Harper (12:11): Yeah, just finish it. I don’t care what it is or whatever happens with it. And that was one of the best, sometimes I get mad at him at the time, but later it’s like, that was really actually quite helpful. So.

Debbi (12:23): The funny part is that I’ve read a nonfiction book, I think it was called Range or something like that. It was about how people who have multiple interests who maybe stop, start something and then stop it and do something else who jump around to doing different, developing different skills, actually exceed, excel in particular areas eventually.

Harper (12:49): Oh, I like that one.

Debbi (12:49): Yeah. I mean, it’s like you got to read this book, you probably would like it.

Harper (12:54): I putting it on my list right now.

Debbi (12:55): I think it’s called Range. I think it’s called Range. [It is. I reviewed it here. Then, i did readings from it here.]

Harper (12:57): Okay.

Debbi (12:58): I reviewed it. But it’s a really good book and it’ll give you some hope there, because I’m the same way. I was trying this. I was trying that. And anyway, so how would you describe your writing style? What’s your voice?

Harper (13:16): That’s a great question. I tend to write more with a humorous, lighter banter, and yet I will be just under the surface will be some really more heartbreaking themes. And it’s not that they’re being ignored, and it’s not that they’re just being laughed away. It’s life. They’re the things that make you laugh and where you’re savoring things. And then there’s the things that are mending and breaking your heart at the same time. And sometimes we let them come to the surface and sometimes we don’t. And I’m very, because of what I do for a living, I’m not going to enjoy if it’s heavy all the time. I live with that. I hold a lot of pain and bevy of emotions for my patients, and I’m honored to do so. But then if I’m going to write, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a comedic slapstick thing, but it’s going to be more nuanced and it is going to be probably a bit lighter in tone just because that’s kind of how we get through, isn’t it?

Debbi (14:36): Exactly.

Harper (14:36): Right. And that’s actually what kind of got me into genre fiction in the first place. I graduated from my social work program, and I had a really tough placement to earn my hours, and I just did not have the spoons, the capacity to do what I was doing there, and then read something like Lovely Bones or something that was really violent or graphic or what have you, or something. I wanted the guaranteed grownup happy ending, or at least close to it, or happy for now. I just couldn’t, my nerves were shot. So that’s what I was reading. That’s what I was binge reading and then ended up coming into it. So I still probably have that as my voice.

Debbi (15:29): Interesting. Well, humor is always a nice thing to add, I think. A little bit.

Harper (15:34): A little bit, right. Without going to, it’s not a comedy routine.

Debbi (15:39): Exactly. Yeah. A lot of situational humor sometimes.

Harper (15:44): Indeed, indeed.

Debbi (15:46): Let’s see. And what are you working on now?

Harper (15:50): That’s such a good question. I’m working on two, I sort of go back and forth between them. The fiction book, which is, I’ll talk about the fiction one that’s more probably of interest for your readers. It is about a group of Gen X young adults in Coconut Grove, Florida in the early 1980s. And they are sort of experiencing being the mature parents, even though their parents aren’t, they’re the mature ones. It’s also at this juxtaposition of the Satanic panic and with Adam Walsh being kidnapped and unfortunately murdered, and also the rise of violent street crime during the Mariel boatlift time in Miami. I was raised in that time. And so it’s this confluence of true crime stuff that’s going on and how this group of friends is navigating that plus their families and things like that. So it’s got some crime elements to it, and there will be something that happens, but it’s really not a true crime or a murder mystery. It’s really more of fiction with some suspenseful elements. And it’s been a blast. And it’s also been, you know you’re getting older when they’re like, oh, you’re doing something in the early eighties, that’s historical fiction. And you’re like, excuse me. Sure enough. I mean, I’m digging all through all my research really. I got to tell you, it’s blowing my mind a little bit. So I’m doing the research and I’m going back and I’m like, I am a relic. I am writing about a relic and I am a relic. So.

Debbi (17:49): Feels odd doesn’t It

Harper (17:51): It does. It does. But it’s also a heck of a lot of fun.

Debbi (17:56): It is fun. Great fun. What’s your writing schedule?

Harper (18:02): That is where my ADHD comes in, Deb. So I have a pretty thriving practice. I’m really lucky about that. So there are certain days, usually Monday through about Thursday, I’m writing midday from about 11 to three. Sometimes I’m researching, sometimes I’m writing. And on the weekends, it could be anytime, obviously. But then sometimes things come up that have to run errands, whatever. And I’m not one of these people, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad who has, I have to have my word count in by this week or that week. But I do think I do better with a deadline. So I purposely am writing this next book without trying to, I usually get a contract. I usually have a first few chapters, and my agent’s been really great with that. I didn’t want to do it that way this time. I kind of wanted to write really. Okay, I’m thinking five thoughts at once. So let me backtrack. During COVID, I had a tremendous writer’s block. I could not read, I couldn’t write. It was a terrible time that way.

(19:19): And one of the things that I came up with personally was that while I enjoyed writing the romances and the mysteries that I have, it felt more like a job just because of the pace and feeling like you were beholden. Of course, because you have contracts and things like that. I really had lost the joy and the exploration and what have you. So I probably have indulged myself a little bit too much on the other side, but I’m really been trying to work on finding, first of all, it’s to find the story that I actually wanted to commit to. And then finding the rhythm. And it’s only been, I hate to say it in the last year, that I’ve even was able to arrange my schedule because I have a lot of patients first thing in the morning before work, and then of course after work.

(20:09): And so that midday of being able to have that time, and I do better when I have that. And I do better when I’m treating my ADHD and I’m medicated and I can stay on those things otherwise it’s really hard. And I was a later diagnosed person as well, so it was around that period of time. So do you know what I’m saying? So it was just trying to, learning how my mind works best with ADHD and perimenopause and all of these other things. But that’s okay because everything that I went through is now stuff that I get to help other, I have mostly women in my practice. I get to help them because I’ve been through it. And so for that reason, it’s okay. But yeah, it was a grind to sort of figure it out because all the tricks that worked before didn’t work anymore.

Debbi (21:02): Wow.

Harper (21:03): Yeah.

Debbi (21:04): Well, I really admire your ability to deal with that situation. That can be very tough. Thank you. Thank you. Honestly, appreciate it. Let’s see. How do you divide your time between writing and marketing?

Harper (21:22): That’s so funny. I, so marketing, when I actually have a book out, I tend to work obviously with the publisher and hiring. I do hire a publicist now just to take some of that off my plate. In fact, one of the fabulous people had organized this talk that we’re having now, and I really appreciate that. But look, that’s money. And I put aside money and other things to afford that. Others would rather keep that for themselves and do the marketing themselves. God bless you. And I love talking to people such as yourself who have podcasts. It’s not about that, it’s just it’s all the time, right.

Debbi (22:03): Time, yeah.

Harper (22:03): It’s all about time.

Debbi (22:04): It’s all about time. Exactly.

Harper (22:06): So what I really tend to do, whether it’s … mostly it’s through Instagram and then I’ll just share that reel or post is I’ll share something of just either what I’m writing about or what’s going on in my life or try to make people laugh and what have you. So I’m keeping a conversation and a relationship without it being about selling all the time. It’s really about, so that is a constant. I do that almost every day unless I’m on vacation like I’ve been. But otherwise, and even if it’s just a, “Hey, this was something that made me laugh” or whatever. I actually ended up having someone recently who’s living in a war zone right now, and she is a fan of my books. And she ended up DMing me that she just wanted to thank me for some of the funny memes and other things that I share through my feed that sometimes when she’s in a bomb shelter, that that’s sometimes, obviously she will have certain ones that are saved on her phone and it helps her. And I was like, oh, wow. So I mean, that’s not thinking of it for everyone like that, everyone, it’s like a haha, and you move on with your life and that’s totally fine too. But that meant a lot to me, that it could be something from across the world that something I’m just finding amusing having this conversation. So I loved that.

Debbi (23:32): It’s nice to be able to help people that way,

Harper (23:35): Isn’t it? Yeah, I agree.

Debbi (23:38): Just a nice touch.

Harper (23:40): Yes.

Debbi (23:41): What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Harper (23:46): Oh wow. That’s a great question. I will give, I’ll just say what I did. I did not wait until I had the most perfect manuscript. I did not wait until I had the most brilliant idea. Again, as I said earlier in the podcast, I got into my early forties and I’m like, what am I waiting for? And I started with a novella and I look back now and I’m like, Ugh. But honestly, my first several romance novels were my writing school, and I learned a lot. And I had amazing editors through different houses who really took their time to help me improve. That was something that was a grace that they gave me. It’s not something I expected. But I think that especially more with women, I don’t see this as much with men. I don’t mean to make this a gendered thing, but we kind of wait until we think we’re perfect and then we’re going to try. And I’ve seen people through different writers associations who have been working on the same manuscript for 10 years. And I’m like, now is there also, the flip side of that is that someone reads an earlier book of mine, they’re like, oh, but I own that. And I say, yeah, not so good. But it was good enough for that period and each one keeps getting better and not to be so precious.

(25:19): To also, I ended up, I don’t know if you can do this anymore, you’ll have to tell me. Because back in the day, I ended up emailing half a dozen publishers that I had identified who would probably like my stuff and sent them a query letter and obviously made sure it was fully polished and everything. And I was able to do that directly. I didn’t need an agent for my first four or five books. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some that will still let you query directly. There’s some that won’t start with the ones who will take your queries directly. If you want that big agency, don’t go for the one who’s the big name. Maybe there’s some scrappy person there who wants to make their career.

Debbi (26:05): It’s absolutely true.

Harper (26:06): You sort of can plot it together and don’t expect it to be sure. We all want a national bestseller or first stuff to be made into movies, and maybe that happens. Absolutely. Don’t lose that dream. And I’m not saying that it can’t happen, but the product can’t be the main reason why you’re doing it. It’s got to be process. And if you just love writing or, although a lot of us writers we love and hate it at the same time, but if you kind of feel like you have to do it or you have a story or you just, even if it gets rejected, even if nothing happens with it, I mean, how many stories have we all heard of, oh, that book was rejected 30 times or this one couldn’t get an agent. There’s a million stories like that. Take feedback, by the way. That’s another thing. Make sure it’s with people that you respect.

(27:05): Make sure, trust your gut with that. You may really disagree with everything they’re saying, but if you start hearing sort of the same thing two or three times, then change it. You’ve got to be really brave and humble. It is something that I look at everything, whether it’s the writing or whether I am being in service to something that’s not just myself. Even if I get to enjoy it, it’s for something else. And so that helps me take the ego out of it. And if a story isn’t working or a character isn’t working that I really liked or was attached to, it’s like, well, then this is no longer in service to the story or to whatever it is. And that for some reason, I don’t know if that helps, but it’s those kinds of things.

Debbi (27:59): Okay, makes sense.

Harper (27:59): And network. And don’t just sit in your place. I could be shy, can’t tell it right now, but you should go to conferences, you should make friends. That’s how I got my first agent was, and my only agent, she’s awesome, was because a really good friend of mine also had her and said, oh, you’re already on your six book. It’s time to get an agent. And she introduced us and we had a conversation. And I don’t know if I would’ve gotten past a certain part of her pile otherwise, but also my friend offered it to me. I didn’t ask her.

Debbi (28:35): Yes.

Harper (28:38): I would never want to put someone in a position, but that was some deliciousness that she gave me. And people want to do it. If they believe in you, they want to do it.

Debbi (28:48): Exactly. You just have to develop those relationships and so much relationship trust. Absolutely. A hundred percent trust that you’re doing good stuff. Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s great advice and I just want to thank you so much for being with us today. Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish up?

Harper (29:09): Nothing. I mean, you can email me at HarperKincaid26six@gmail. I’m happy to answer back. I follow back if people have more questions. I love keeping in touch that way, and I really just want to thank you for your time and having me on here. It’s been such a treat.

Debbi (29:28): Well, thank you. And I really enjoyed meeting you and talking to you.

Harper (29:33): Me too, for sure.

Debbi (29:35): So thanks so much, Harper, and we’ll have our bonus episode after this.

Harper (29:43): I’m excited about that.

Debbi (29:45): For Patreon supporters.

Harper (29:47): That’ll be good.

Debbi (29:48): Yeah, it’ll be awesome. I just want to say thank you to everyone who’s listening, and if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. They’re much appreciated. And consider becoming a Patreon supporter. You can get ad-free episodes, excerpts from my work. What else? I have bonus episodes. I’ve got book reviews, all sorts of things on Patreon for supporters. I also have a shop there where you can get books at a discount if you’re a supporter. Also, um … that’s it. That’s all I had to say other than until next time, when our guest will be Saralyn Richard, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

*****

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is journalist and crime writer Jonathan Whitelaw.

Wherein we discuss important topics like treating your writing career like a business. Along with really great topics, like Doctor Who, James Bond, and Terry Pratchett. Just sayin’. 🙂

You can download a PDF of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is an award-winning journalist and author. He once worked in Scottish politics, then moved into journalism where he covered a wide variety of topics for major publications. He appears on the Bloody Brothers Podcast and the Bloody Scotland Book Club. His novel, The Concert Hall Killer, was recently shortlisted for the Whodunnit Award for Best Traditional Mystery by the Crime Writers of Canada. Originally from Scotland, from Glasgow, he is now living in Canada in Alberta. It’s my pleasure to have with me Jonathan Whitelaw. Hi, Jonathan. How are you doing?

Jonathan (01:37): Hi there. I’m very well, thank you, Debbi. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Debbi (01:42): Oh, it is a pleasure to have you on, and I love your accent. It is so beautiful and musical.

Jonathan (01:49): Thank you very much. It’s the only one I have.

Debbi (01:51): I love it. I love it. It’s great.

Jonathan (01:54): Very kind.

Debbi (01:55): What was it that took you from Glasgow to Alberta?

Jonathan (02:00): My wife. Short and sweet and simple answer, much like her, except the simple part, obviously far from it, she’s the brains of the operation and I often say that I always like to try to think that I’m the eye candy of the operation, but I’m not even that, so she’s that as well. So yeah, my wife’s a doctor, so a few years ago it was pre-pandemic actually. She was at a conference and she got chatting to an expat doctor who’s working in a place called North Battleford in Saskatchewan, and he was there promoting Western Canada. And him and my wife got chatting and he effectively offered her a job, but of course, with the pandemic and then my wife completing their training and stuff like that, I was having a baby. Everything got kicked into the very, very long grass for a couple of years, and the job was no longer there when we were ready for it. So by that point, we’d really talked ourselves into it and we’d explored all the options and stuff like that about coming over and visas and permanent residency and things and citizenship beyond that. And we found that there was a job opening in Alberta. A place called Grand Prairie, which is about an hour’s flight northwest from Calgary. And that was it. We up sticks and moved wagons west in May 2022, and we haven’t looked back since.

Debbi (03:29): Wow. That’s really something.

Jonathan (03:31): Yeah

Debbi (03:32): You can write from anywhere, so that’s cool.

Jonathan (03:35): Exactly right. Well, I was a journalist as your very, very kind intro mentioned there. I was a journalist, but I write full-time now. I’ve been able to go full-time writing since we moved to Canada, so it’s over three years that I’ve been a full-time writer. And it was a mixture of circumstances. It was a mixture of where we were going and what we’re going to be doing and stuff like that, and The Bingo Hall Detectives as a series sort of picking up. So yeah, it’s been a great adventure. We’ve been made to feel very, very welcome here in Alberta and Canada in general.

Debbi (04:13): It’s fantastic.

Jonathan (04:14): And I get to go back to the UK all the time for work. I go back for festivals and stuff like that, and it’s only one flight from Calgary, which is great. So it’s just a red eye there, and then you’re back during the day. So it is good fun, and it’s a wonderful part of the world.

Debbi (04:29): That’s awesome. Yeah, I know as an American, we tend to look upon Canadians as being really nice people. Do you find that they’re very nice?

Jonathan (04:40): Oh, yes. Oh yeah. Very much. Very, very welcoming. And I think a lot of the reasons that we are so comfortable here is that we have been welcomed with open arms everywhere and anywhere we’ve gone. We’ve lived, in the three and a bit years that we’ve been here, we’ve stayed in three major cities in Alberta. Grand Prairie, Edmonton, and now Calgary and everywhere we go, we’ve been welcomed with open arms and been made to feel so at home. And it is home now, right? That’s the thing. When I go back to the UK, if I’m doing work, if I’m doing festivals and events and stuff like that, when I get back on the plane to fly across the Atlantic, I say it and I feel it. That’s me heading home. And we’re all very, very grateful as a family. We’re very, very grateful for that welcoming. And it’s made what has been quite a big life altering transition, so much more easier and so much more pleasant to do. So that’s fantastic. We’re delighted. We’re delighted. We’re delighted to be home.

Debbi (05:44): Well. You chose the right country on the North American continent.

Jonathan (05:49): Yes.

Debbi (05:49): I think they have their own political problems, but they don’t have a tyrant in control, I think. (Ahem!)

Jonathan (05:55): That’s very, very true. Very, very true.

Debbi (05:57): I’ll try not to say anything more. Things get a little dicey around here.

Jonathan (06:03): Nothing more needed. Nothing more needed. Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi (06:05): No more need be said. Yes, no words. I just read the first chapter of The Garden Club Murders, by the way. And I think your writing is just awesome and can be hilarious at times.

Jonathan (06:18): Thank you very much.

Debbi (06:18): It’s just outright hilarious. Your characters are wonderful. Has anyone ever approached you about making a TV show out of your books?

Jonathan (06:27): Oh, you’re not allowed to ask that one, Debbi. That’s all pretty much on the wraps at the moment. You always ask it, right? You’re allowed to ask it. You should never tell a journalist what questions they can and can’t ask, as I famously did for over a decade, but I’m just not allowed to answer. So there we go. Mum’s the word, mum’s the word. What I will say is that it’s been a very, very exciting last couple of months, and that’s all you’re getting.

Debbi (07:00): Oh, wow. Well, I will look forward to seeing something that you wrote up on the telly.

Jonathan (07:05): Thank you very much.

Debbi (07:06): I certainly hope so. Your books are set in Cumbia.

Jonathan (07:11): Yes.

Debbi (07:12): Now I’ve heard of Cumbia, but I never knew where it was until now. So tell us about Cumbia. What is it like and how does it inform your fiction?

Jonathan (07:21): Yeah, it’s a county in England, northwest England. In fact, it’s the most Northwesterly county in England. It borders Scotland, it’s northern border borders Scotland, and it’s home to the Lake District, which as the name suggests is a huge, big national park filled with, I can never remember the amount of it, but it’s hundreds and hundreds of lakes. Biggest one’s Windermere. Ullswater’s another one, where the action takes place in the first book, and it’s acres and acres and acres, thousands of acres of this kind of unkempt, uninterrupted countryside, rolling hills, mountains, and you’ve got little pockets of humanity in there as well. So you’ve got Carlisle, which is a city, it was a fairly big city, but you’ve also got places like Kendal and Penrith where most of the action series takes place, and they’re all separated by these huge big swathes of open countryside.

(08:23): And it’s a place, it’s a place I know very, very well. I’d holiday there growing up. And when I was grown up, if you can call me grown up, I don’t know if a lot of people would argue that I’ve never grown up, me being one of them. But when you live in Scotland, when you grow up in Scotland, you live in Scotland, Cumbria as a region is always one of these places that you blink and you miss because you’re on the train. If you’re going down to, say, Manchester, Liverpool, London, or what have you. And it’s strangely underrepresented in fiction, modern fiction anyway. And certainly in crime and mystery fiction where you’ll maybe find fiction. Obviously you’ve got your big, big cities across the world, your Londons, your Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto, all these big, big cities have got dozens and dozens and dozens of crime and mystery novels set in them.

(09:19): But in the UK it tends to be either Scotland as a whole or London. Sometimes you get something in Manchester, Birmingham, sort of Midlands and stuff like that. But in terms of Cumbia as a whole, I think I’m one of maybe two or three mystery writers operating in the moment who use that as their back door, which I always thought before I started writing the first book, I always thought, that’s madness. It’s such a beautiful part of the world, beautiful part of the country, and it’s ready made for mystery. It’s these little pockets of humanity surrounded by endless countryside. And I always say that, I always say, you can always use some countryside when you’re a murder mystery writer because it’s a good place to hide a body.

Debbi (10:08): Yes, yes. Excellent point. I mean, even in film noir, you can see film noir with great big open spaces like The Hitch-hiker.

Jonathan (10:19): Absolutely.

Debbi (10:20): Takes place in absolute bleakness on the road with this crazy guy.

Jonathan (10:27): It adds to the atmosphere, right? It’s this sense of nothingness and I think isolation. Yeah, totally. And what would happen if something goes wrong out here? I think that there’s something very primal about that, that I think we can all experience. We all fear and well, Cumbria might not be necessarily on the scale of The Sahara Desert or something like that, or Death Valley. It’s not quite deserted Arizona or Nevada, but it can be frightening. And when you drive between these villages and towns and in cities at night, the place is completely dark. These are roads that don’t have streetlights on them, and you look out and you think, well, what’s going on over there? Or you don’t want to know what’s going on over there. So that’s the thing about murder mystery, is that there’s always that sinister element to it. Even if you write like me, if you write cozy mysteries, where you don’t necessarily see the knife go in, but the knife’s gone in, and then it’s still murder and all this kind of carry on. So what a rich, fertile playground for a writer to be able to use. And I’m very, very grateful, very, very privileged to do it.

Debbi (11:44): And I’m sure there must be a lot of history there, too.

Jonathan (11:46): Oh yeah. Tons, tons, tons. Yeah. Cumbria, I think maybe has a much more a richer historical literary prowess and legacy. William Wordsworth obviously is one of, if not the biggest name, who was home there and wrote about there and stuff like that. As I wander, softly as the cloud, all that stuff was all conjured up in the Lake District. So yeah, it seemed very, very odd to me that there was 300 years worth of literature and genre fiction that was never ever set there. So the series is very much my homage to there, and I’m always delighted, and I feel very, very lucky when I get compliments from people who do live there and they’ve stayed there and they see places that they know and they live in and they enjoy, and they’re always, Cumbrians are very, very friendly people, and they’re always happy to come and chat to me about it. And that’s a real gift, right? That’s a proper gift. It’s one of the gifts of being a writer is that you get that sort of experience. It’s very special.

Debbi (12:59): Absolutely. Yeah. It’s really nice that you get to showcase this place that most people

Jonathan (13:06): Exactly.

Debbi (13:07): Never get to see because it hasn’t been written about.

Jonathan (13:10): Exactly. Exactly.

Debbi (13:11): I think that’s awesome.

Jonathan (13:11): Awesome. Yeah, it’s really, really cool. In fact, the new one, the new book, The Garden Club Murders, is dedicated to Cumbia and its people. And it was something that I was adamant that I was going to do with the fourth book was a very, very small thank you to the area, a very, very small thank you to the people that have made this series the success that it is. When I collected the first book, won the Lakeland Book of the Year Prize for Fiction, which was a Cumbria award. And I remember when I went to collect the award, I was speechless, unbelievably, I was speechless. I know that is very, very difficult to get your head around, but I was genuinely speechless. And I said in my speech, I said, thank you, thank you for this. It’s not that I’m looking for recognition, it’s not that I ever felt that I needed that sort of validity from the people from Cumbria or the region, but that’s very much how I felt with it when I won that award. And like I say, it’s just really, really cool to be able to have, have an area like that kind of to myself.

Debbi (14:21): Yeah, it’s a nice achievement. Very much an achievement. What’s your writing schedule like?

Jonathan (14:29): Oh dear.

Debbi (14:30): Oh dear?

Jonathan (14:32): Yeah, schedule makes it sound organized. And I’m the least organized person on the face of the Earth. It’s busy. It’s busy. It’s busy, I think is the broad stroke. So I wrote three books last year. I wrote three novels in 2024, and some of that was unexpected, some of it was pre-planned. So I finished off, I did the edits at the beginning of the year for A Concert Hall Killer, which is the third Bingo book. And then I was due to write the fourth one, which I was going to do in the second half of the year. But in between, I had this idea for a puzzle book called Murder in Tinseltown, and I ran the idea past my agent, very, very speculatively. It was my nonfiction agent, and he loved it. He loved the idea of it. And I think we worked this out within 12 days, 10, 12 days of me having the idea and emailing them.

(15:32): We were out in submission with a breakdown of how this was going to work. So it’s one of these, choose your own, choose your own path books from, if you remember, I’m showing my age here, but a certain vintage of readers will remember these types of books where it would be, say you’ve walked down a corridor, turn to page 72. If you take a left turn to page 160 if you want to take a right. And then you would go to the correspondent page and it would maybe move the story forward, or you would be eaten by a troll or something like that. So my wife, like I said, the brains of the operation, she’d been badgering me for years to write a modern up-to-date aimed at an adult readership, one of these for mystery.

(16:23): So I finally got round to doing it, and part of the deal that it was sold to Harper Collins on was that it would be ready for Christmas 2024. So I had maybe about eight, 10 weeks to write it from scratch. So that kind of took up all the summer, and then it pushed the fourth Bingo book into the distance a little bit. So by the time that we ended the calendar year last year, I’d written three books, but I’m a writer. This is what I’m meant to be doing. If I wasn’t to doing that, I’d be out vacuuming the carpet or doing lots and lots of laundry. So yeah, I’m not complaining about it. I’m not complaining about it.

Debbi (17:08): Very good. Very good. What authors have most inspired you to write?

Jonathan (17:14): The good one? I have so many. So many. I used to read a lot of Terry Pratchett when I was younger.

Debbi (17:21): Oh, yeah.

Jonathan (17:23): The late great Sir Terry Pratchett, in fact, much missed. He’s been gone, I think 10 years now. So yeah, I loved sci-fi and fantasy growing up. I still do, and I don’t read it as much or as often as I’d like to. But I always loved Terry Pratchett, I always love Terry Pratchett’s humour, and I loved how you pick up any of the Discworld novels, of which there’s what? Twenty-five, 30 or something like that. And, at its core, it’s a fantasy novel. It’s Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards and all the rest of it, but they’re also hilarious.

Debbi (18:02): Oh, yeah!

Jonathan (18:03): And it’s all an allegory for real life.

Debbi (18:07): Exactly!

Jonathan (18:08): What I always loved about Terry was that his mastery of language and his inherent hatred for authority figures, it all shone through the work. And he was able to compose characters, especially authoritarian characters, so well, and cut them down with just one sentence, with one quip, and bring them back down to size. And I love that, and I love that, and I love that in all media. I love it in TV shows and movies. And Terry Pratchett, for me, was the very, very best to do it. So I think the humor, certainly the humor element of it in my own work and in my own writing probably pays a lot homage to Terry Pratchett. And it is only an homage. I would never ever dream of liking myself to him, far from it. But yeah, lots and lots, lots and lots of writers for very, very different reasons.

(19:12): I adored doing Shakespeare at school. I was one of those kids. I was one of those kids, that actually really enjoyed Shakespeare. There’s this whole thing that you’re not really meant to when you’re 12 years old, to enjoy all the language, get all the jokes and stuff. So yeah. Then mystery writers, you’ve got your godfather of mystery is Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly, you mentioned in my introduction there that I do work for the Bloody Scotland Festival and the book club and stuff like that. And I remember one of the first events that I did was the book club, and one of the books that we read was the second Sherlock Holmes novel, or novella, sorry. So it’s The Sign of the Four, I think it is. I’m someone, I’m sure listeners will correct me, which is fine. And I hadn’t read it for years.

(20:08): I hadn’t read it, I think since I was a teenager. And I came to it pretty fresh. And what amazed me was how modern it was, what amazed me in terms of the composition, in terms of how it’s written, in terms of the style. We as mystery writers still use styles and techniques that were on display in 1862 or whenever this novel was first published. And I was so, so amazed at how modern it felt and how fresh it felt, even though it was a hundred and what, 40 years old or something like that, 180 years old. So yeah, I’m in a really, really lucky position as a writer because I still do a lot of review work, so I get to read a lot of very, very fresh, a lot of new stuff, a lot of new writers, a lot of established writers who’ve got new work coming out, and I get to read them early. Some of them ask me to offer a blurb for the cover and the press and stuff like that, which always baffles me because you’re in trouble if you’ve got to ask me. That’s how I always look at it.

(21:13): But I’m always grateful to do it. And it is always lovely to see contemporaries and consider myself contemporary of these wonderful modern writers. I think that’s a very long winded way of saying that. I don’t actually have any favorites. There’s too many to pick. I couldn’t pick one.

Debbi (21:32): Terry Pratchett.

Jonathan (21:33): Terry Pratchett. For ease, we’ll go for Terry Pratchett.

Debbi (21:36): Absolutely. I love Terry Pratchett. Oh my gosh. And I only got to know about him maybe 15 years ago. That’s when I first got exposed to him through a blogger I happened to meet who likes Doctor Who.

Jonathan (21:50): Right. I see. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course. Of course.

Debbi (21:54): We connected over Doctor Who, James Bond, stuff like that. And then I find out about this Terry Pratchett, and I’m like, ooh, this guy’s great.

Jonathan (22:03): Debbi, you’re reading from my resume there. Doctor Who, James Bond, all that stuff. That’s all the good stuff, right?

Debbi (22:10): It’s awesome stuff.

Jonathan (22:12): We could probably fill another show with just talking about those things. Definitely.

Debbi (22:15): Probably. Yeah.

Jonathan (22:17): Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi (22:17): Maybe we should start a podcast about Doctor Who, an American and a Scot.

Jonathan (22:26): Scot. Yeah. A Scot.

Debbi (22:28): A Scot and an American on Doctor Who.

Jonathan (22:30): There we go. There we go. Well, we had an American set Doctor Who, right? We had the American set Doctor Who in 1996, and we’ve had plenty of Scots that played Doctor Who over the 60 plus years. So let’s do it.

Debbi (22:44): My gosh. I could really, I just love talking about Doctor Who because each one was so different, and I won’t comment on where the show is going now. It’s just kind like, what is … what?

Jonathan (22:58): Yeah, it’s different, right? It’s different.

Debbi (23:00): It is different.

Jonathan (23:01): Bring back the wobbly sets and the bubble wrap monsters. That’s what I think.

Debbi (23:05): Yeah, please bring back the terrible special effects. I love those.

Jonathan (23:09): Cheap and cheerful. That’s the way forward, right? Cheap and cheerful.

Debbi (23:11): That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe bring Tom Baker back for a guest appearance again? I love Tom Baker.

Jonathan (23:21): He’s very old. He’s very, very old. But I think he’s still got it though. He’s still got it. He’s still got it.

Debbi (23:25): He’s still got it.

Jonathan (23:26): Absolutely. Yep.

Debbi (23:27): Oh, Tom, hang in there, Tom. We love you.

Jonathan (23:30): Absolutely. He’s in his nineties now, I think. 92 or something like that. 93 years old.

Debbi (23:33): Something like that. Yeah.

Jonathan (23:35): Good. A good Scouser. My dad and my stepmom are from Liverpool, so yeah. Yeah, there you go. It’s that connection, right? It’s the five degrees of Kevin Bacon, but we’ll see Tom Baker this time.

Debbi (23:49): Alright. And Terry Pratchett.

Jonathan (23:52): And Terry Pratchett.

Debbi (23:53): Terry Pratchett and Tom Baker. Two favorites. I won’t even tell you how many Tardises I have in this room alone. It’s a little preposterous, but that’s okay.

Jonathan (24:05): It is. Okay.

Debbi (24:07): Let’s see. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?

Jonathan (24:13): Well, you got to write, okay. I know that sounds glib, and I know that that sounds almost cheeky, but it’s true. It’s true. You got to write. I do a lot of teaching here in Alberta, creative writing, teaching specifically crime and mystery courses as well. And I always open my courses and I always open my classes and workshops with, at the end of the day, if you don’t write it, nobody gets to read it. Alright? And you can’t be a writer with it all just in your head. It doesn’t work that way. You can have the best characters, best plot, best ending. It’s not just crime and mystery. It could be anything, any genre, a literary fiction, anything, nonfiction, biography, you name it. If it stays in your head, nobody gets to enjoy it. Nobody else gets to enjoy it. And the wonderful thing about creative writing and the written word in novel format, short story, poetry, screenplay, whatever, is that it gets to be enjoyed by an audience. And people want to read it, right? People want to read your work. When we get over that hump, when we get over my bluntness, what I always say is remember that this is a professional industry.

(25:30): It’s a multi-trillion dollar global industry, and you need to be professional. And I always say to my classes, and if anyone is close enough to ask me for advice, I always say, you don’t need to be a professional writer to be professional about your writing.

Debbi (25:48): That’s right.

Jonathan (25:48): And that’s things like if you work on your manuscript and you want to query an agent or query a publisher about maybe getting it published, for example, if that’s the path that you want to go down, do your research. Find the agents and the publishers that publish your work and your type of work. There’s absolutely no point in sending your sci-fi masterpiece to an agent who only specializes in romance because it’s not what they do. And these agents will undo, advertise what they want and what they represent and what they look for. So be professional about your writing, not just from an industry point of view, but for yourself, right? It’s hard work. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of imagination and stuff like that. A lot of dedication. It takes a long time.

(26:41): You owe it to yourself to be professional about your writing and treat it with the respect that it deserves. And you as a writer deserve, I always say it makes me sound and feel a little grubby because at the end of the day, it is an art form and it’s this art versus business, these two loggerheads that go at it forever. But if publication, if the publishing world, the traditional publishing world is the route that you want to go down, just remember that you’ll be working with editors, you’ll be working with salespeople, you’ll be working with cover design people, audio book designers. That’s the thing. My name is on the front of my books, but it takes dozens and dozens of people, some people I’ve never met to get it on the shelf. And that goes to printers, to distributors, to booksellers, to bloggers, to podcast hosts, and remembering that it’s a collaborative effort, but everyone in the industry does it for a job.

(27:43): And if you want to do it as a job that you have to treat it like a job. The earlier you know that, I think the better chance you stand of being successful in this industry. And I wish I knew earlier than I did, right? That this isn’t me sitting in my high horse or sitting in an ivory tour. I learned the hard way. I’m published 10 years in 2025. It’s my 10th anniversary as a published author, but I’ve been writing since I was 17. I’ve been writing since, well, I’ve been writing seriously quote-unquote since I was 17. And it took me the guts of another decade before I was published. And a lot of mistakes that I made when I was younger could very easily have been avoided. And I’m always at pains. I’m always at pains to pass that knowledge on because I don’t want you guys, I don’t want anybody making the same mistakes that I did because it’s needless. So there we go. Lecture over.

Debbi (28:45): What are you currently working on?

Jonathan (28:48): So there are two more Bingo books that are being looked at by my editor. They’re not written, they’re just proposals at the moment. I’m out in submission with my, a time recording went out on submission with my agent for a new standalone Canadian set murder mystery. It’s a little harder, little harder edge than my cozy stuff. And it was a lot of fun to write, a lot of work, a totally different mentality and shift in me as a writer to be able to write that. You always say with these things, gritty or darker, all these sort of platitudes that go into these things, but they’re platitudes because they’re true. Not having to resist the temptation to not have as many gags or as many deliberately or you hope deliberately humorous quips left, right, and center, while still maintaining a lightness to the darkness to try and bounce it out a little bit. So that’s really, really exciting. I’m really, really nervous about that because it’s the first time I’ve been on submission for about seven years and it doesn’t get any easier. You don’t get any more confident with these types of things or I don’t, anyway,

Debbi (30:09): I know, know the feeling.

Jonathan (30:11): And yeah. And I’ve got standalone. I’ve got a new standalone coming out. It was meant to be coming out in the UK in July, but it’s actually been pushed back to February 2026.

(30:21): And again, that’s on the cozier scale that’s coming out from Harper Collins called All At Sea. So it’ll be out here in North America, probably in about a year’s time, roundabout now maybe July, August time. And that was a lot of fun to do as well. Brand new characters, completely different setting. Totally different from Cambria. It’s set in the Mediterranean on a luxurious yacht with a celebrity crew, and the captain is found murdered, and two of the celebrities have to team up to catch the killer. So yeah, just a little bit. Talking about James Bond, it feels like my ode to James Bond, because it’s all these glamorous locations with glamorous people and action. And there’s jet skis and there’s police racing through the streets of La Spezia in Italy. So yeah, really, really fun to do because the Bingo Hall Detectives is very homespun. It’s home counties, it’s tea, it’s woolen jumpers, it’s British sensibilities. Whereas this one that went all out the window, it was good to be let loose. So that’s out in February in the UK and it’ll probably be about a year’s time for North America, which I’m very, very excited about. Really excited.

Debbi (31:45): Excellent. Congratulations. That’s wonderful.

Jonathan (31:46): Thank you very much. Thank you.

Debbi (31:47): For all your success.

Jonathan (31:49): Thank you.

Debbi (31:50): Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish up?

Jonathan (31:53): No, not at all. Just that the questioning has been wonderful, and I get very nervous with these things because I used to be a journalist and I was on the other side of the mic for a very, very long time. And I remember what I was like as a journalist, and you’ve been a wonderful, very gracious host, Debbi, so thank you very much.

Debbi (32:14): Oh, it was my pleasure. Believe me. Thank you. It was a pleasure having you on. And to everyone listening, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. Also consider becoming a patron of the show on Patreon. Check out our Patreon page where we have bonus episodes and sample chapters from my work. In fact, I put up whole novels, but you have to be at a certain level of patronage to get to them. So anyway, check us out there. And on that note, I’ll just say thanks for listening. Our next guest will be Harper Kincaid. Until then, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you!

*****

PS: I was accidentally in Taggart – it inspired a crime novel.

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer and media entrepreneur, Clay Stafford.

Don’t miss our discussion of the ways the publishing and filmmaking worlds collide, so to speak. 🙂

To download a PDF of the transcript, just click here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. We are back with a new season of the show, which is starting its 11th year. I can’t believe I’ve been doing it this long. And once again, I have with me one of the crime genre’s most multimedia and multihyphenate entrepreneurs out there. His business, American Blackguard, does film and television production as well as publishing. He’s also the organizer and promoter for the Killer Nashville Conference, which will be coming up later this year. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Clay Stafford. Hi, Clay. How are you doing?

Clay (01:34): Hi, Debbi,

Debbi (01:34): Gotta get you on camera. There we go.

Clay (01:38): Hey, how are you?

Debbi (01:39): I’m fine, thank you. How are you?

Clay (01:41): Eleven years.

Debbi (01:42): Eleven freaking years. Can you freaking believe?

Clay (01:45): Stamina. Stamina.

Debbi (01:47): It’s insane. There’s stamina. Yeah, I’m mustering up the stamina to keep it going. Yeah.

Clay (01:56): Well, for Killer Nashville, we’re coming up on 20 years.

Debbi (01:59): Wow, that’s impressive.

Clay (02:02): Yeah, so … stamina.

Debbi (02:06): Amen to that, man. Amen. I hear you. Apart from getting ready for the conference, what projects are you currently working on? What’s on your front burner, so to speak?

Clay (02:17): I’ve actually got three projects that I’m working on right now. One is a nonfiction book and the other is a memoir. And because I come from a very eclectic kind of Appalachian background, and then Country Boy went to the city, and so there’s some things to discuss there. And then I’m working on a novel now, the first in his series, and it’s got a few short stories and poems and stuff like that out and some essays, but those are the long-term projects that I’m working on right now.

Debbi (02:58): Very cool. It’s funny you should say you were a country boy who found the city. I was a city girl who ended up in the country. Briefly.

Clay (03:10): Yeah. So I sort of came back. I was a New York guy, a Los Angeles guy, and a Miami guy, and went back and forth from place to place in those areas, but ended up in Nashville. So I don’t know if I’ll actually, we can call Nashville the country, but it’s back towards home where I’m from in Tennessee.

Debbi (03:38): It’s not quite as country as say, Bakersfield, California.

Clay (03:43): No, I’ve been to Bakersfield. I love Bakersfield. But no, it’s still, we’ve got our family farm back in east Tennessee, and so I’ve still got roots in that area and spend a lot of time in north Georgia and areas like that. So I get out in the tick country, so.

Debbi (04:10): Excellent, excellent. Very good. Nashville is also a big place for music, correct?

Clay (04:16): Yeah, they do a little bit of music here,

Debbi (04:20): A little bit of music, just a little,

Clay (04:26): Yeah. And the little community I live in is replete with country music and gospel pop performers, writers, producers and stuff. And so we have these tour buses that come by all the time, and I never thought I would live in an area where tour buses come by to point at houses and things and say, so and so lives there, so-and-so lives there, but it’s just, yeah, Nashville’s got its charm, that’s for sure.

Debbi (05:00): My goodness, that must be quite a thing. Having tour buses come through your neighborhood. Things have changed so fast in terms of the publishing industry and the movie industry and the television industry that I see them kind of coming together. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Clay (05:24): Well, I think that they’re definitely tied together now because we are in a position where we’re doing IP, intellectual property more. That’s what I focus on more right now. I used to say that I was a writer or a filmmaker, but right now I would say that I’m an IP creator. And because so many, it’s different. It’s no different than you take a book and then make an audiobook and make a ebook from it. It’s the same property that’s being construed in multiple media. And so I think yes, they all come together because it’s the way people are digesting the entertainment and information right now, so it is becoming one. But for me, with my eclectic life as a filmmaker and a writer and all of that, for me it has always been one. So for me, it’s almost like, oh, the world is coming full circle back to where I’ve always been, which was create something and then just decide what plate we want to serve the meal on.

(06:40): And that’s what all these different medias are, just the plate that you’re serving the meal on. And some people want to eat out of a hardcover book and some people want to eat out of a movie theater. And so really you’re just satisfying the needs and the options and choices, the wonderful options and choices because there are people who are auditory, people who are visual and being able to read and comprehend. All of those are strengths, and we’re all wired differently. And more and more we’re finding psychologically that each of us learns differently and processes differently. And creating all these avenues for single stories is to me, like all progress for me. I love progress. I love technology, I love innovation. And so for me, I think that it’s an incredible time to be in.

Debbi (07:43): It is definitely. People are doing things out there that are just amazing, but sometimes it’s a matter of being seen, being visible. Do you have any thoughts on what authors can do to make themselves more visible in a way that’s not simply saying, Hey, buy my book. Buy my book?

Clay (08:05): Yeah, I think just being authentic. I think we are really in a position where writers used to have this hallowed place as these intellectual people who lived in ivory towers and produce tomes that everyone loved to read. And I think even the noir authors were romanticized to a great degree because we know what writing is. It’s sitting there and typing on a keyboard and watching the cursor go across the screen. It’s very exciting. I think that there’s been a change in our society, just like there is a change in technology that we just talked about in the previous paragraph where you don’t even have to have, you’re going to get hate mail for this maybe, but you don’t even have to have any talent. You don’t have to have skills, you don’t have to have whatever to be a celebrity. You just have to be on TV.

(09:28): I mean, you can take this any way you want, but you can be anybody in America that you want, as long as you’ve been on TV and have had no experience at all, you can be anything you want because you’ve been on TV. So in terms of that, I say that writers have come to a point that they can’t rely on their intellectual laurels. They can’t rely on their talent and skills anymore. They have to become visual. And that means being on TV. Well, even in our lifetime, that whole concept has changed. It’s no longer TV, but what in the world is TV? Everything’s a streaming something. So I think the way to get out there and people have become, I think you’ve got to get out of your head in terms of being and thinking, looking at it from your side out, and instead look from the other side towards you.

(10:39): And what they really, really are looking for is some truth and reality. They’re fascinated by people’s lives. That’s why you have so many reality TV shows and reality programs and even reality forensic files, reality, whatever, because people are really interested in other people’s lives. Some fancy and glamorous and some just strange and crazy, but all of them seem to be like a train wreck. You watch, I don’t want to say that your life, writers, needs to become a train wreck, but I would say that getting your story, getting your personality out there and in a way, becoming your own celebrity, because even posting on everybody used to put on post on social media, even just posting on social media now with the algorithms, you’re completely lost on that. I think you should do things that you can control,

(11:50): Have your own, if you have a YouTube channel or you have your own newsletter list or you have your own something that you can control and something that you own as opposed to social media and things that you have no control over their algorithms. That’s the things that writers need to do in terms of building a platform. And then I’d say build it on authenticity, not fluff, not buy my product. But I mean on social media, I guess some of my greatest likes and positive comments when I’m sitting there with my Doberman lap dogs sitting in my lap because people, they respond to things that are real. And so I think, in that, people get to know you, not because you’re pushing it on them, but because of their natural curiosity of, oh, Debbi Mack seems very interesting. What does she do? Oh, she does that. Well, that’s interesting. I’ll take a look at that. And I think you let the, we are at a place now where the consumer, the reader is the one who will follow the breadcrumbs if they choose to follow the breadcrumbs, but we no longer sell anything. And I think writers, many of the writers that I know and meet and talk with are wanting to sell something. We no longer sell anything anymore.

Debbi (13:36): Exactly.

Clay (13:38): We show up, we be ourselves, and we attract the people just like friends. We attract people that are like us that have something interesting, even if they’re not like us and people we just want to hang out with. And then that leads them naturally into, well, if I’m going to hang out with, I like hanging out with ’em on social media. I like hanging out with ’em when I get their newsletter. I might spend eight hours and hang out with ’em and read their book, and that’s the choice that falls on the reader. So I really think that we need, to get directly to your question of how to get out there. I really think that, as you were saying initially, you know how the book world and the film world and all the visual world, it’s all coming together. Put yourself out there in a multimedia mentality.

(14:42): And that will attract people in to you because it’s discoverability, right? Again, there’s people who look at social media, they like to follow it. There’s people who like to read newsletters. There’s people who like to learn, and there comes your YouTube channel. And so all of that stuff coming together creates an audience of people who actually want to, in their minds, there’s this feeling too of now psychologically, lots of studies done on it where people feel like they … you know, a celebrity or somebody dies. And you would think, by the way people were asking that it was their best friend, because they’re that close. But people are looking, starving for that connection with other people. And if you provide that in an honest way, I think you build an audience and you become high profile. And then what leads from there? As I said before, jokingly, you could be anything you want after that point in all seriousness, because you’ve created a group of people who actually have a genuine, not a pressured sales, not any kind of thing, but a genuine interest in who you are.

Debbi (16:04): Exactly.

Clay (16:05): And what your product is.

Debbi (16:07): I think that’s great advice. I mean, you want to attract people who get you.

Clay (16:12): Yes, absolutely.

Debbi (16:13): Who are interested in you, not force them to look at you. It’s like when I used to do book signings, I would sit at a table, maybe toward the front of the store sometimes, sometimes in the back, and I would see people and say, do you enjoy mysteries? That’s the way I would introduce myself. And if they didn’t, well, okay, never mind. I don’t want to bother you. I just happened to write them. If somebody was interested, I would just say, well, this is my book. And I would tell ’em about it. And it was simple as that to make a sale sometimes. But that kind of personal touch tends to get missing sometimes in all the technology.

Clay (16:56): And I think that it’s really, what do you want? And I think there’s, I want to be famous. I want to make a whole lot of money. Those aren’t good reasons to be a writer. I want you to buy my book. It’s not even necessarily a good reason for be a writer. I want to write something that communicates to you. Now, there’s a good reason to be a writer.

Debbi (17:27): Exactly.

Clay (17:28): And the beautiful thing about that is I have control over that. I can refine and refine. I mean, I have a limit to my talent. I have a limit to my skillset, but I can refine and refine to the point that I feel like I am communicating with you. And that should be the end result for me as a writer. And you know what? That takes the whole sales pressure off of everything. This is a story that meant something or means something to me, and I hope it means something to you. And if you don’t want to buy it, probably in the library, it’s somewhere else, you can get it. It doesn’t matter. But the focus, I think, really, once again, is on the audience now rather than on us as writers trying to hawk our wares. It’s on building that connection. It’s the connection that a) people are starved for, but b) it’s the connection that brings them in and wants them to be a part of your life, which includes all of your books and everything else.

Debbi (18:40): Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. What would you say a typical day is like for you?

Clay (18:50): A typical day?

Debbi (18:52): A typical day if there is such a thing?

Clay (18:54): Well, now I’m giving away my trade secrets. People are trying to find me know what’s going on now. I wake up very early and I do emails to catch up on what happened over the night, and then I turn my email program off and I turn my phone off.

Debbi (19:16): Good move.

Clay (19:16): And then around five o’clock in the afternoon, my wife gets home and we have dinner, and then I go out and work some more. And then the last thing I do around eight o’clock, I look at emails and clean out my email box. And that way I haven’t been bothered all day long by emails, and I answer emails and then that’s clear, and then I shut everything up. And then, because I do so many interviews for the next two hours, I’m usually reading books, not always, I don’t want to say ones that I don’t want to read because I only review and do interviews with people that are really turned on by, but it’s not books that I would, there’s some books that come out that I want to just personally read that I’m not going to interview the author. I’m not going to do anything. And I find I don’t get to do that because my job requires that I read the stuff for my interviews just like you’re doing here with me. And so that’s my typical day then I go to bed and I sleep very well, and then I get up the next morning and I do it, and I do that seven days a week.

Debbi (20:33): Wow.

Clay (20:34): Yes. I don’t take time off. I lose momentum if I take time off. And I really am just very grateful for having a job where I can be creative. I have an incredible team that works with me at American Blackguard, and I put them up and match them against anybody. They are incredible. They’re supportive, they’re understanding, they’re compassionate. They care about not only what’s going on within our nucleus, but also care about people through Killer Nashville, because they work on Killer Nashville as well. And then we started the streaming service, The Balanced Writer, you know that. And so they’re there and they’re very supportive. And so my family is very supportive of my lifestyle and work. And so when you have all the boxes checked, why not show up and play every day? I can remember as a kid, I would wake up in the morning and write a story, or I’d wake up in the morning and get my eight millimeter camera, and I’d take off with my buddies and we would start shooting a film. And I don’t think much has changed in all of that time. I’m still that little kid with a manual typewriter and an eight millimeter black and white camera and it’s play. Kids don’t wake up in the morning and work.

(22:24): They wake up in the morning and play. And so seven days a week? Yes, seven days a week, because I absolutely love it. And I feel very fortunate to have been given an opportunity to do the things that I love.

Debbi (22:43): Well, that’s fantastic. And you’re doing a great job. It’s amazing what you’re doing.

Clay (22:48): Well, thank you.

Debbi (22:49): What advice would you give to people who want to make a living as a writer?

Clay (22:58): Write. And that sounds silly, doesn’t it? But write. Don’t spend all your time focused on trying to be successful. Don’t spend all your time focused on trying to get people to like you on Facebook and don’t spend time looking at social media. Write. After I do my emails in the morning, I write, I don’t, like today, my son came home and said, have you eaten today? And I said, no. And he brought me a sandwich, but most days I don’t even eat breakfast or I don’t eat lunch because I drink a lot of coffee, but I’m really into what I’m doing to the point that my physical sensations don’t seem to matter that much. It’s what’s gone here. And then I have dinner in the evening. So I pretty much just, I focus in on what I’m working on. And what was your original question with that one right there?

Debbi (24:07): Oh, just, what your advice would be to somebody who wants to make a living as a writer.

Clay (24:11): Yeah. So that comes down to that. After I do those emails in the morning, I start writing and I write, and I am an outliner and I do research, and I’m writing and doing research and outlining from that point all the way until five o’clock. And I’ve been able in my life to get a lot of product out. And I think you can’t become that celebrity that you want to be as a writer until you’ve got product that’s available. I mean, somebody can say, I have this credible idea for some new toothpaste. Well, until you can go to your local shopping market and buy the toothpaste, it really doesn’t matter. So I would say what is the best thing for writers to do is write. Forget all of this peripheral stuff that’s going on. And our society really, there’s this whole market that I think capitalizes on writers by saying, let me teach you how to be a social media success. Let me teach you about branding. Let me teach you about marketing. And my question is, what are you marketing? If you don’t have your book, what are you marketing?

Debbi (25:34): Exactly.

Clay (25:35): So what’s my advice to writers? Write, spend the time writing. And then once you get something perfected to the point that you feel, I doubt if it’s perfect, but it’s the best I can do.

Debbi (25:51): Exactly.

Clay (25:51): At that point, you put it out into the world and then you go back and write something else. And I really think you don’t … there’s this whole pressure that’s on. I’m writing something and it has to be super successful and I have to make a lot of money off of it. No, where you’re successful and where people become successful is their backlist. Not that frontlist book that comes out. Sure, you got to have a frontlist, you got to have frontlist to get to the backlist. But it’s people discovering these little nuggets that you’ve written. And that can be short stories, essays, poems. Somebody can, I mean, lots of people have gotten agents, they’ve gotten people who bought their books because they saw your mystery story published in a particular mystery periodical and said, well, I really like what Debbi Mack is doing there and check her out. And lo and behold, she’s got some books. And so I buy a book and those backlists then move things along. So I really think the best advice you can give a writer is write. I grew up as the son of a brick mason, and I knew how to lay brick. And the best way to build a house is brick by brick. And if you’re not bricking the house, then you’re not producing anything, so … write.

Debbi (27:21): So right. So correct. Yes. Absolutely. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Clay (27:28): No, I always enjoy talking to you. It seems like we have our little annual gathering here. It seems like such a truth. But what I was thinking today is that I was like, okay, oh good, I got to see Debbi Mack today. And then I was like, it couldn’t have been a year since the last time we had a conversation, but I guess it was.

Debbi (27:52): It was actually a year. Yeah.

Clay (27:54): Time just flies. So I guess the last comment I want to make is for your listeners who are writers, because time passed so quickly between the last time I talked to Debbi and now, everything about your life is passing so quickly. And if you don’t write today, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But if you don’t write for 30 days, if you don’t write for a year, you’ve lost some incredible time to share your story and to share your perspective with other people and learn new skills and have a great time, I mean, you and I know writing is incredibly fun. They say it’s solitary and lonely. I don’t know. I’ve got a head full of characters and stuff, so it never gets lonely for me. They won’t shut up.

Debbi (28:49): Exactly.

Clay (28:49): So it’s a lovely time, but time does pass quickly. And I really would encourage, if your listeners are not diligently doing, you don’t have to be crazy like me and do seven in the morning to 10 at night every single day for seven days a week, 365 a year. You don’t have to be crazy like that, but donate 30 minutes or something every day and just write something that helps you discover something new about yourself. I think that’s what writing really is for me, even if it’s fictional, it’s discovering something new about myself. And I think the growth that comes from that enhances the rest of your life, not the distance of your life, but the surrounding life that you have at the present. And I would encourage your listeners to pick up a pen or start typing and just make it a practice every day, because time is fleeting and you’ve got all this in here and you need to share it out there so people know it.

Debbi (30:04): Amen to that. I agree with you completely. The book will not write itself. You have to get started.

Clay (30:12): No, the funny thing is about writing, the book doesn’t write itself. It evolves and you evolve as you go along. And I really think it’s the evolution of it all that provides the center of who you are as a writer, and that’s how you improve and grow. By not necessarily growing as a writer or growing as a social media marketer or whatever. It’s growing as a person because that personhood is going to come through in that writing that you do.

Debbi (30:55): I agree. I agree. These are great points. Thank you, Clay.

Clay (30:59): Absolutely, Debbi. And thank you for having me on your show. I always look forward to it.

Debbi (31:04): I do, too. It’s good to see you, and I’m glad you were on today and very happy to have you on.

Clay (31:13): Yeah, and if anybody would like to get more of what I’m talking about and stuff, I’d love for them to check out my newsletter, a weekly newsletter where I give more tips on writing, marketing, the writer’s life and everything like that. And then we’ve got Killer Nashville coming up. Let’s have everybody check out killernashville.com. My website is claystafford.com. And then for those people who are not able to come to conferences, we’re putting 5,000 sessions up on a new streaming service called The Balanced Writer, and go to thebalancedwriter.com and check that out. So if you can’t afford to go to conferences, then let the conference come to you. Once again, it’s streaming in, not TV anymore. It’s streaming into whatever device you have.

Debbi (32:07): Alright, well thank you so much for that information, Clay.

Clay (32:11): Absolutely.

Debbi (32:12): I’m sure a lot of people appreciate that. I would also like to thank my Patreon supporters as well as my supporters on Substack. Your generosity really does mean the world to me. My thanks to everyone who’s listening. Thank you, Clay, for being here again. It is, as always, enjoyable to talk to you. And if you would, listeners, please leave a review for the podcast, if you enjoyed this episode. They help. So with that, that’s it for me. Until next time, my guest will be Jonathan Whitelaw next time. And until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer J.D. Barker.

Don’t miss our discussion on writing across different genres and the benefits of collaborative writing.

You can download a copy of transcript here.

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today is a New York Times and international bestselling author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime mystery, science fiction and supernatural. That’s quite a bit. His debut novel Forsaken was a finalist for the Bram Stroker Award in 2014. Several of his works have been optioned for adaptation to motion pictures. It’s my pleasure to have with me my guest, JD Barker. Hi, JD. How you doing today?

J.D. (01:32): I’m doing great, Debbi. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Debbi (01:34): Well, it’s my pleasure to have you on, believe me. I’m glad you’re here. I love that you have no problem with mixing genres in your work. I think that’s awesome. Would you say that there’s any particular genre that tends to be dominant in your writing?

J.D. (01:51): Well, it’s funny. I grew up, I’ve been writing my entire life, but I worked behind the scenes for about 20 some years. I worked as a book doctor and a ghost writer, basically helping other people get published, and one of the things I saw over and over again is an author would write a particular book and it would hit, and then all of a sudden they had to write that same book, but different for the next 20 books. The publisher just wanted that same book but different, and honestly, that scared me. I didn’t want to get caught in that kind of hole, so I made a conscious effort from the very beginning. I’m a huge fan of horror. I’m a huge fan of thrillers, so I basically bounced back and forth, and I think my Wikipedia page probably sums it up the best. I think that’s what you were reading from, but I describe it as a suspense novel as the common thread with little elements of horror, of sci-fi of this, of that and what that allows me to do. As long as I keep that thriller-suspense framework in place, I can branch out a little bit and the readers come along for the ride. It’s not so different that it frightens ’em off.

Debbi (02:51): That’s really cool. That’s great. So it gives you more flexibility

J.D. (02:54): And agents hate it, and publishers hate it because again, they want you to write that same book, but different. But I’m finding that the fans, they actually enjoy it because I’m not giving them the same book every single time. I think it gets old as a reader too, so it allows me to mix it up and just keep it fresh.

Debbi (03:12): Totally, I agree. Yeah, so you’re directly reaching the readership as opposed to going through what a publisher thinks this should work, which is something I’ve advocated a long time.

J.D. (03:27): Everybody approaches this from different angles, which is something else I picked up on over time. As a business model, publishers really only care about selling that book, the one they have in front of ’em, the one they signed you for. That’s really their only priority. But you as an author, you really need to look at your business, your model, your brand, and approach it from that standpoint. And you can really see the stark differences. If you walk into a major bookstore, you walk into a Barnes & Noble and you’re going to see pretty much the title of every book is huge. The author name is tiny little print at the top or the bottom. It’s an afterthought because the publisher knows they have to put it on there, but they just want to sell that one title. But if you look around that same bookstore at the brand name authors, the ones that we all know, the household names, you see Stephen King, Nora Roberts, James Patterson, John Grisham, their names are huge, and the title is nice and small, and they’ve obviously built up to that over time. But I think as an author, you really need to keep that in mind from the get go. And if you’re with a traditional publisher, push to have your name as large as it possibly can, and if you’re indie publishing do the same. I mean, there’s no reason not to.

Debbi (04:34): Wow, that’s great advice. Excellent. I agree with you. I have to say, you are definitely an example of a successful indie author. What did you do to develop a readership?

J.D. (04:52): I did a lot of different things. I wish I could pin it down to one in particular. I fell into being an indie author. It wasn’t actually my goal when I was working as a book doctor and a ghostwriter, that was all for traditional publishers, so I had fully intended to go that route. But when I finished up my first novel, it was called Forsaken. I went to query agents, and even though I worked in publishing, I had no idea how to actually query an agent. I never had to do it before, so I did it all wrong. I bought a list of agents, I think there were 200 of ’em on an Excel spreadsheet. I wrote a form letter literally to whom it may concern, and I sent every single one of ’em the exact same email. I sent them the first three chapters of my book as a PDF file, as an attachment.

(05:31): And for the most part, most of them ignored it because agents are very particular in what they want, and they’ll list the specs on their website. They want to see the first chapter, they want to see the first three. They want it in an Arial font. They want it in Times New Roman font. Every agent’s got their own little quirky little thing, and if you don’t do that quirky little thing the second you end up in their inbox and they catch it, they just hit the delete key. So I basically queried all wrong. I didn’t get any real responses, and I decided to indie publish. But I made a conscious effort when I did that to basically come out with something that was on par with something coming out of a traditional publisher. So I hired professionals across the board for editing, for formatting, for cover design. Ultimately, we released a hard cover and audiobook and an ebook on the same day with plans to put out the paperback six months later, which was the traditional model at the time. And I basically made it as indistinguishable from something coming out of Random House, and that worked back then in 2014. It allowed me to get in front of a lot of places that I probably wouldn’t have if people knew that I was an indie author, and I basically hit the ground running.

Debbi (06:35): Yeah, it’s funny you have the same kind of story that I had. I also fell into indie publishing. It’s like I had a contract with a publisher. The publisher went out of business nine months later, and it’s like, I can’t sell a series that has been published and then gone out of print nine months later. It just doesn’t happen.

J.D. (06:58): No, that’s a whole other animal.

Debbi (07:00): It was very frustrating. What year did you make the Times list?

J.D. (07:07): I’ve been on there a bunch of times now. I think the first time, let’s see, we’re in 2025. It was probably around 2020. It was with The Coast to Coast Murders, and I wrote it with James Patterson. We hit number two.

Debbi (07:18): Oh, wow.

J.D. (07:18): And I’ve hit number two a couple of times now. I just did it again with our latest book. It’s called The Writer. We got stuck behind Rebecca Yarros. She was number one. We hit at number two, and I really had hoped to hit number one with this one just because you can’t put number two New York Times bestseller across the top of your book. It just doesn’t look right. But Rebecca Yarros, she is a powerhouse. We weren’t able to knock her off that spot.

Debbi (07:44): Oh, well. I knew somebody who was second to JK Rowling, and I said, Hey, as far as I’m concerned, it makes you number one. So as far as I’m concerned, you may as well be number one. That is amazing. That really is amazing. Can you talk a little bit about what steps you took that took you from being indie author to having your work optioned by producers or whoever?

J.D. (08:13): Yeah. Well, I’ve had a lot of crazy things happen in my career, and basically I call it capturing lightning in a bottle. I’ve done it a bunch of different times. So with the very first book Forsaken, when I wrote it, I had to explain where the wife buys a journal and just to get the book done, I wrote that she walked into Needful Things, Stephen King’s store from his book and bought it there. I fully expected to have to change that because you can’t do that sort of thing without a bunch of lawyers knocking on your door. But my wife read it and she said, you know what? Before you change it, let’s see if we can get King’s permission to use it. So that’s essentially what we did. We found out he had a house in Florida. It was about 10 minutes from my mom’s house.

(08:49): So when we were visiting my mom, we printed up the manuscript, we hopped in the car and we figured, well, we’ll go over to Stephen King’s house. We’ll hope to catch him outside. Maybe he’s gardening or something. We’ll hand him the manuscript, he’ll give us a big thumbs up and we’ll be on our way. It didn’t work out that way. He lives on a little island off the coast of Florida called Casey Key. You go over this tiny little bridge, and if you make a left, you go to the public portion of the island where the restaurants and bars and hotels and stuff are, and if you make a right, you go to the entire half of the island that Stephen King owns. There’s immediately a no trespassing sign. Another sign there was a gate, and then another gate. We got about halfway to his house, and we just decided this is a really bad idea, and we turned around, went to a restaurant, and I called a friend of mine who knew Stephen King, told him what we were doing, and he said, oh yeah, don’t stalk Steve.

(09:32): He hates that. Here’s his email address. Just send him the book. If he likes it, you’ll hear back from him. If the book is garbage, he probably won’t reply. I sent off the book and a couple of days later I got an email back from King and he said, I love this. Go ahead and use the reference. Let me know if you need anything. I thought for sure at that point, I wouldn’t have any trouble getting an agent or a publishing deal or any of those things. But like I mentioned, I did the query process all wrong. So I ended up Indie publishing the book, and it came out, and sales were okay at the beginning, but with any other indie title, nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew about the book. I started running Facebook ads and Amazon ads. I did all the things that every other indie author does, but for me, it wasn’t enough.

(10:11): So I reached out to another friend who used to do PR out in LA for rock bands, and I asked her if she wanted to work a book, and we started discussing the book and looking for different angles to promote it, and I told her about this trip to Stephen King’s house, and she said, you know what? That’s the story. So she wrote that up. Ultimately, Publishers Weekly wrote it, basically a story about an author who made a failed trip to Stephen King’s house to try and get his blessing on something. But that story came out, and then librarians read it, bookstore owners read it, and that sparked sales for the book. And then ultimately, I ended up selling about a quarter million copies of that indie published title. So when that happens, the traditional publishers really take notice. So when I had my next book ready to go, it was called The Fourth Monkey about a serial killer in Chicago. I had no trouble getting an agent. The book ended up going to auction with multiple publishers involved, and when the dust settled, I had a seven figure deal for two books with HMH, which is now part of Harper Collins and a film and TV show attached, and all of that played out probably over a couple of days. It was extremely quick.

Debbi (11:16): Wow, that is remarkable. And you kind of put yourself in a position to make these things happen. That’s the thing. You reached out to a publicist that helped.

J.D. (11:26): Yeah, I mean, I’m really good at spotting the opportunity, and I don’t shy away from it. I would rather try something and get completely shot down and fail at it, but at least I walk away knowing that that I tried, and I tend to do that over and over again, and it’s worked out more times than it’s failed.

Debbi (11:44): That’s awesome. That really is awesome. You have a book coming out soon, don’t you?

J.D. (11:51): I’ve got a bunch of ’em. So writing with James Patterson, he’s not only taught me a ton about the writing process, but the business side. So I’ve got a number of books coming out with co-authors. I’ve got solo titles coming out, but my next solo title, it’s called Something I Keep Upstairs, it comes out in May. It’s a haunted house story. The tagline for the book is for a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die.

Debbi (12:12): Intriguing. How many books do you have coming out then with other people as well as your own?

J.D. (12:20): Just over the next 12 months, I’ve got 12 of them in the pipeline.

Debbi (12:23): Oh, my goodness. Wow. So collaboration is really working out for you, to say the least.

J.D. (12:29): Yeah. Well, I’ve doubled down not only on the writing thing, but also the business side. So, after The Fourth Monkey hit, that was traditionally published, I wrote a prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker’s family that came out through Putnam. So another traditionally published book. I basically did a couple on the traditional side, but because I got a taste of being an indie author, I really missed that. I missed the freedom that I had. I started looking at the economics of it. As an indie author, you make about 70 cents on the dollar. If you’re with a traditional publisher, you might get a nice big advance check, but you have to pay that money back and you’re paying it back at like 15, 20 cents on the dollar, these small little incremental payments. So at one point I took a look at it and it didn’t make sense to me, so I called my agent and I said, okay, here’s my new book.

(13:14): It was called A Caller’s Game. I’m going to go ahead and publish it myself in English around the world, and you can go ahead and sell to the foreign territories. And at that point, I was in about 150 different countries, about 24 different languages. So she kind of took the book in that direction, and I published in English, and I really liked that. I called it a hybrid approach because I was able to hit all those different markets. I was able to control everything, but I still had that one particular problem that indie authors have. You can’t get into all the bookstores, you can’t get into Costco, you can’t get into Target or Walmart or airports. So for years, I tried to find a way around that, and if you fast forward to about a year and a half ago, I came out with a book called Behind a Closed Door.

(13:53): I sent it off to my agent. The book started going to all the publishers. We got a film deal right away, but I really didn’t want it to go to a traditional publisher, and it was about to go to auction. I got a phone call from somebody who worked at Random House, and she said, listen, we’re about to offer on your new book. When that comes in, you need to turn it down. And I asked her why, and she said, well, we’re about to lay off a number of people, and the editor who wants your book is on that list, got a similar phone call from Harper Collins, and then about a week or two later, all these layoffs happened across the industry. So that kind of solidified my thinking of not wanting to go to that model,

(14:27): But my last real job I had, I worked in finance. I was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm, and I had heard that Simon and Schuster had recently got bought by a private equity company. So I reached out to some friends of mine that I used to work with, and they put me in touch with a private equity firm. Ultimately, I had some discussions with Simon and Schuster, and over about a six month period, we negotiated a deal where I created my own imprint on Simon and Schuster. So I can basically act as an indie author. I can publish what I want when I want because I’m a publishing house, but sales, print and distribution are all handled by Simon and Schuster. So I’ve got them as my backbone, which means as an indie author, I can get my book into all these places that you can’t typically get into, and that’s what I’m doing today. So it’s a very different business model, I think, from a lot of indie authors, but I think it’s where the industry itself is going.

Debbi (15:16): Yes, I agree with you 100%. Wow, this is just amazing stuff. Thank you for sharing this. Speaking of sharing, and you see the cover.

J.D. (15:28): Yeah, so that’s one of my co-author titles. Working with James Patterson, one of the things that he taught me is the benefit of working with other people, and as a ghost writer and a book doctor, my first 20 years in this business, that’s all I did. I collaborated with others. So when I sat down to write my first solo title, that actually felt weird to me working on a book all by myself. I missed working with other people. Working with Jim has been a blessing, but I wanted to branch out and do some co-authored stuff on my own. So the one you’ve got there, it’s called Heavy Are The Stones. I wrote it with a woman named Christine Daigle, and in real life, she’s a neuropsychologist, so she was able to bring that aspect of her life into the writing process, and as an author, I can fake my way through being a neuropsychologist if I want to. I can do enough Google searches and watch some Netflix specials and fake it well enough to be able to pull it off. But when you’ve got that authentic voice in the writing room with you, you can’t beat that. So I look for that in my co-authors. I try to find people who can bring something to the table that I can’t necessarily replicate on my own.

Debbi (16:28): I love it. I reviewed this book actually a long time ago, and part of my review, in part of my review, I said, this just shows you how beneficial it is to collaborate with other authors. I mean, I made the point of saying it. It was like, this is brilliant, a great, brilliant approach here. Yeah.

J.D. (16:50): Well, if you think of just the writing process, whether you’re an outliner or a pantser or a discovery writer, however you want to phrase it, you’re basically coming up with that entire story idea all on your own, and if you’ve got a co-author, you’ve got somebody you can bounce ideas off of. They may come up with something totally out of left field that you’ve never thought of or vice versa, or you might run with an idea that they come up with. So it takes a story in a completely different direction.

Debbi (17:13): I can totally appreciate that. The weird part is that I’ve come to appreciate collaboration through screenwriting.

J.D. (17:21): Yeah, I mean, I think that —

Debbi (17:22): It is so weird

J.D. (17:24): At this point. I’ve got eight different projects in what I call various stages of Hollywood Hell. And a number of them are in development for TV shows, and there’s writers’ rooms, and when I do a Zoom call with those writers, there’s five, six, seven different people all working on that screenplay all at the same time, and the fact that all those different voices in there, they create this unique thing that none of them could come up with on their own.

Debbi (17:49): I have to ask you. In the background, is that Nighthawks I see on your wall?

J.D. (17:57): Yeah, it’s got Elvis sitting at the counter? It’s kind of hard to see.

Debbi (18:02): It’s got Elvis at the counter? It looks so much like Nighthawks.

J.D. (18:05): Yeah, it’s similar, but it is kind of like a spinoff of Nighthawks

Debbi (18:09): Of Nighthawks. I think that is so cool. I love Nighthawks.

J.D. (18:12): Yeah. I’m a huge fan of John Hopper.

Debbi (18:15): Me too. Yeah, totally. Let’s see. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

J.D. (18:23): Well, it’s changed a lot. When I was in the corporate world, I was working at 60 to 80 hours a week, so I would squeeze in writing whenever I could. That might be my lunch hour sitting in traffic in line at the grocery store or whatever, and I would knock out maybe two to 300 words a day. Now I’m doing this full-time. I’ve been full-time for about 10 years now, so the schedule’s completely different. I get up at the crack of seven in the morning. I told myself when I left the corporate world, I’d never set an alarm before seven again. So I get up at seven, I grab my coffee from the kitchen and I just sit down on my desk and just start writing. I turn the internet off when I first get there. I don’t look at anything online, no email, nothing like that until I get my words for the day, and that’s changed a lot too.

(19:04): I mean, now I get two to 3000 words basically in the morning. I wrap up around 11 with that. That’s my daily word count. Then I flip on the internet and my inbox fills up with all the business side of this interview requests, talking to agents, various deals, things like that, and I deal with all that stuff. My quitting bell rings at three o’clock. I live on a little island off the coast of Portsmouth in New England, so I go for a run around the island. It’s 4.2 miles. I just do one lap. Then I come home and I spend the rest of the night with my wife and daughter. I really tried to separate the two worlds. When I first started, when my book started to hit in other countries, I used to get interview requests. I would come in at literally all hours of the night, and I tried to do all of ’em, so I would find myself up at one in the morning doing some interview in a country somewhere on the other side of the globe, but I almost burnt myself out, trying to keep up with that. In today’s world, I force everybody to schedule those things based on my schedule, so they’re all done by three o’clock in the afternoon regardless of where they are in the world.

Debbi (20:06): That’s a wise choice. It’s very easy to get burnt out if you get too engaged on the internet.

J.D. (20:13): Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi (20:15): I see it. I hear about it more and more happening with the online creators. It’s kind of scary. How much research do you do when you write a book? Before and during?

J.D. (20:30): Honestly, as little as possible. Research feels like work, and I honestly just making shit up. That’s the part I enjoy. I just had a call right before I jumped on here with you with somebody. We’re working on a nonfiction book together, and it’s a whole different animal because we have to make sure every factual detail is correct. We have to be able to back it up. It’s a homicide that was never actually solved. It’s an unsolved case, but we know all the players that were involved, so we have to be extremely careful. We’re naming real people. If you don’t do that properly, you can end up in a courtroom. It’s like the amount of research involved in that versus writing a fiction book. It’s night and day,

Debbi (21:12): Definitely. What are you reading now?

J.D. (21:17): Ooh, let’s see. I’m looking over at my coffee table for those that can’t see, so I’ve got a copy of Never Flinch, which is Stephen King’s new one. It comes out in about a month. I’ve got an an ARC of that, and right below it is, I’m not sure what it’s actually called, but it’s a new Hunger Games book. I had to order that one.

Debbi (21:37): Yeah, I read the first one. I never got to the next or any after that. I thought it was good. I liked it. Let’s see. What advice would you give to someone who would like a career in writing?

J.D. (21:53): I mean, there’s basically two pieces I think every author needs to do. I think you need to read as much as possible. I’ve never had any formal training. I’ve never taken a single class on writing outside of English class and school, but I’ve read so much that the story structure is just ingrained in my head, so when I’m writing a book, I know the twist needs to happen here. I know the third act needs to start here. Those things feel very intrinsic to me. It’s almost like going down a road and missing your turn. I feel like I missed my turn and I have to go back when I missed one of those points, and it all comes from reading. And the other thing I think you need to do is write every single day, whether you’re writing your book or you’re writing something else, I think you need to write, and I see writing almost like a muscle.

(22:35): It’s like going to the gym. You need to exercise it constantly, and if you don’t, then it gets weak. If you’re there every single day working it out, it gets stronger and stronger, and you’ll see that in your word count. If you set a goal of a hundred words a day, you’ll eventually start to hit that. It’s that much easier to get to 200 and a 300 at 400 before you know what you’re doing, a thousand. But if you dial it back, you take a week off, all of a sudden that gets more difficult to do. So write, write every single day.

Debbi (23:00): Absolutely. Absolutely. And it also helps a lot to know the business before you get into it. The business side of the publishing business.

J.D. (23:10): Yeah. I mean, whether you’re going indie or traditional, I think you need to understand as much of it as possible. I mean, you’re ultimately, you’re creating a product, you’re creating a widget that somebody else has to sell, and you need to understand that. I encourage most authors to try to go the traditional route at first at least, so they can get that experience and see how it’s supposed to work, and then go indie after that. If they decide that that’s the route they want to go. I run into people all the time that tell me I tried to get an agent. Agents kept passing on it, kept passing on it, so I put the book out myself. It drives me nuts when I see people do that because they’re almost shooting themselves in the foot. If agents are passing on your book, there’s a reason they’re passing on the book. You need to figure out what that reason is, figure out how to correct it, and then maybe resubmit it. But I really don’t think anybody should hit that self-publish button unless they’ve got a book that a traditional publisher would publish if you let them. It’s got to be that good. It literally has to be a five star read before you put it out in the marketplace, or it’s going to fizzle and die.

Debbi (24:09): I agree. Quality is very important. The quality of your covers, the quality of the book itself, all these things are extremely important. They’re part of your brand really. They show you’re serious. Running your stuff past an editor, taking their advice, take advice from, get a proofreader too. Get somebody to really look over the copy and make sure it’s perfect. All those things are important. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

J.D. (24:47): No, that’s it. Just check out my new title, Something I Keep Upstairs. It releases May 13th.

Debbi (24:52): Alright, well that’s wonderful. Congratulations on that. And also check out Heavy Are The Stones. I’ve read it and I loved it. Yeah, it was a fun one. I was looking at my review and it was really interesting just to look at a review that I had done ages ago, and I thought, wow, I did love this book. I remember now how much I loved this book and why. Anyway, thank you so much for being here today, and I want to thank everyone who’s listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. Also, this is the final episode of season 10. I’m officially done. I’ve officially done this for a decade, so I’m not sure how to feel about that. Either happy or freaked out, maybe both.

J.D. (25:44): Sounds like there should be cake.

Debbi (25:45): There should be cake. Yeah. Where’s the cake? The cake did not arrive. Anyway.

J.D. (25:52): All right. Well, thanks for having me, Debbi. I appreciate it.

Debbi (25:54): It was my pleasure. Believe me. Oh, your words are music to my ears, by the way. I got to talk to you about this when we do our bonus episode after this. Anyway, I’m still posting chapters for my work, book reviews and more on my Patreon page, so during the hiatus in the podcast. So check it out. I’m on Patreon. You’ll also find me on Substack doing various things. Until next time and until season 11 starts, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

*****

With thanks to my Patreon supporters!

PS: And May the Fourth Be With You.

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Deven Greene.

Check out our discussion about her medical and scientific thrillers.

You can download a copy of the interview transcript here.

Debbi (00:53): Hi everyone. My guest today writes fiction in the suspense and thriller genres. Most of her works involve science or medicine. She has a PhD in biochemistry and an MD, and she practiced pathology for more than 20 years. Her books include the Erica Rosen Trilogy, Ties That Kill, and her latest novel, The Organ Broker. She’s also published several short stories. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Deven Greene. Hi, Deven. How are you doing today?

Deven (01:29): I’m doing great. How about yourself?

Debbi (01:31): Great, thank you. And I’m glad you’re here today, so very glad that you’re on the show. You live in Northern California? Yes?

Deven (01:39): That’s correct. Yeah.

Debbi (01:40): What part? Because I used to live in Petaluma.

Deven (01:43): Oh, okay. Well, I live, you may have heard of then of Orinda, which is a tiny town, but it’s near Walnut Creek in Berkeley.

Debbi (01:52): Oh, yeah. I remember. It’s the Napa Valley, right?

Deven (01:55): Yeah. Well, yeah.

Debbi (01:57): I’ll be darned. Beautiful country up there.

Deven (02:01): Yeah, no, I like it here.

Debbi (02:03): Yeah. So with a background like yours, I can certainly see how you got inspired to write medical thrillers or science thrillers. When you started writing fiction, did you find you had to kind of adjust your writing to be a bit less formal and more engaging, so to speak?

Deven (02:22): Well, it’s quite different than writing pathology reports, I’ll say that. But I’d say that I’ve read enough fiction, especially in my genre, to be able to adapt pretty easily. And interestingly, when I first started out, I had a resident working under me, and she wrote a pathology report, and she did a description of everything, but she didn’t say what it was, and it was like she was waiting, trying to build up suspense. I said, no, this is a pathology report. You have to say what it is.

Debbi (03:04): Yeah, yeah. Just say it.

Deven (03:06): Yeah. But it’s different in what I’m doing now,

Debbi (03:10): For sure. Yeah. I’m sure you do work in technical terms though. And how do you, what’s your method for taking complex scientific subjects and making them understandable to the average reader?

Deven (03:26): That’s a good question. So I really like to put what I call sciencey things in my writing. That’s one thing I really enjoy doing, and hopefully people will learn things. So I’ll write something and then I’ll go through it several times to simplify it, and then I give it to other people to read who are not in the medical or scientific field and get feedback. And a great one is my little brother who didn’t know the difference between a gallbladder and a kidney, I found out. So he’s a good one. If he can understand it, most people can. So I wind up simplifying. I try to keep it still accurate. Some people may find it too much. I don’t know. They can skip over those parts, but that’s not the main substance of my books.

Debbi (04:28): You’d rather sprinkle it in than overwhelm with detail?

Deven (04:31): Yes, that’s my attempt. That’s my attempt.

Debbi (04:35): I think that’s generally the way people approach it. I know that when it comes to legal terminology, I tend to, I used to be very, what’d you call it? Literal in the way I would present something, or very explanatory. It’s like, no, no, no, Debbi. Cut back, make it less explanatory, make it more, make it more like fiction. Duh.

Deven (04:59): Right. It’s not a report. It’s not a brief.

Debbi (05:03): So what is your latest book about?

Deven (05:08): My latest book, The Organ Broker, and I happen to have a copy here.

Debbi (05:12): Nice cover.

Deven (05:14): Trying to get it in focus is about.

Debbi (05:16): It’s a little out of focus there.

Deven (05:18): Well, I’m not being very successful here. There we go. Anyway, it’s about, as one person thought, it was about someone who sells piano type organs to churches. And it’s not that. I think most people would get that. So basically the book starts with a political rally, and there’s a very charismatic speaker, and they’re in front of a big building, and people are holding signs that say, stop, STOP. And they eventually bring somebody, the police bring somebody and lead him wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles, bring him into the building. And at the end you realize that he’s going to be executed. And the name of the organization is Stop Transplant of Organs from Prisoners because they’re now executing people and taking their organs to transplant. So that’s basically what it’s about. And it’s about a couple with a very charismatic husband, but he’s a jerk and the wife who’s kind of the brains behind the operation, and she really wants to see it succeed. And there’s this dark character called Broker Al, who actually sells the organs. You learn at some point, and things don’t go as they should. So that’s basically the story.

Debbi (06:56): And what inspired you to write about this particular subject?

Deven (07:01): Good question. I get my thoughts out of thin air. I did read a book a while back, which was interesting, about a man who accompanied his brother who needed a kidney to China. And they used prisoners, as you may or may not know, and it has been brought up in other countries. But it was an interesting read, and I just remembered one part of the book. I couldn’t believe where they’re actually going to get this kidney. And he’s kind of saying, well, who is this guy? And he’s talking to the doctor and the doctor says, this man is very bad. He’s so bad. I would kill him myself.

Debbi (07:49): Oh my goodness.

Deven (07:52): Yeah. But anyway, it is practiced kind of hush-hush in China and probably at countries.

Debbi (08:01): Fascinating. Very interesting.

Deven (08:04): It’s a “what if.” What if we did that here? It has been talked about, it has been talked about.

Debbi (08:10): That is very interesting. You also are offering to give away a copy of that book as well as the Erica Rosen Trilogy, is it?

Deven (08:23): Yeah. Yeah. I have, it’s called Erica Rosen MD Trilogy. And there’s three books in that one. It’s older, so it’s about a pediatrician who has three events, I’ll say, because the first one, which is called Unnatural, is about genetic engineering. And the second one, Unwitting, is about autism. And the third one, which is called Unforeseen, has to do with pharmaceutical industry. So they’re all different, but they follow a story arc with Erica and her best friend Daisy. She’s a San Francisco pediatrician, but she does wind up going different places in the books.

Debbi (09:11): Are your books generally set in the same area, location?

Deven (09:16): No, actually, I move around. My story Ties That Kill, which I wrote in between takes place in Idaho. And actually after I wrote that there were the four killings in Idaho. These four university students were murdered. It’s been on the news a lot. And then The Organ Broker takes place mostly in Texas, which, it’s kind of a big capital punishment state.

Debbi (09:54): Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That seems appropriate. Yeah.

Deven (10:00): Yeah.

Debbi (10:01): Let’s see. How much research do you do before and while you write your books?

Deven (10:07): I do quite a bit. A lot of the main subjects I write about, I know a fair amount about, but often I have to do more research in that. But there’s also a lot of ancillary things that come up that I kind of don’t know anything about. And I really enjoy learning about these things. They may not be the main subject of the book, but I like to keep things interesting and just introduce things that may be about a place, a thing, a technique, an item. I had to learn some cell phone technology, for instance, for one of my books, learned Bitcoin technology for another of my books. Just a number of random things.

Debbi (10:55): I hear that more and more about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, people learning about this stuff. And I’m always amazed. It’s like I can barely wrap my mind around it.

Deven (11:06): Well, I’m not saying I would invest in it, but–

Debbi (11:10): Yeah, really.

Deven (11:11): But I know something about it.

Debbi (11:13): That’s very cool. There’s something I wanted to ask you, and now it’s just completely slipped my mind, but I will just continue on.

Deven (11:23): Okay.

Debbi (11:24): What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Deven (11:28): Well, I’ve actually developed a writing schedule. When I first started to write, I was still working, and then it was just whenever. I couldn’t really easily fit it in, but I did most of my writing more late at night, on the weekends. And sometimes I would take vacation and just stay home and write. I wouldn’t go any place. But now I’m retired, and it took me a while. I would get kind of obsessed and want to just keep writing. And I’ve realized that that’s actually not a good thing. So now what I do is when I’m writing, when I’m doing the rough draft, what I call the rough draft, I write 1100 words a day. I get up, I have my coffee, and then I sit down to write and I write 1100 words, and then I stop. And it actually gives me time to think about changes I might want to make instead of just plowing through it really fast. So that works out well. And then of course, I wind up spending more time editing.

Debbi (12:42): Yes. Especially if you’re cranking out a thousand words a day. That’s pretty good. That’s darn good.

Deven (12:49): I really do crank it out. I mean, I don’t correct much. It’s full of misspellings and bad grammar or bad punctuation.

Debbi (13:02): But it’s all stuff you can clean up later.

Deven (13:04): Yes, yes. So.

Debbi (13:06): Getting it on the page is the hard part.

Deven (13:09): Yeah.

Debbi (13:10): Then you can clean it up. I know what I was going to ask you. I was going to ask you, as a pathologist, where did you work? What kind of work did you do?

Deven (13:18): Oh, okay. Well, I was not a forensic pathologist. I was not an examiner. And if there’s any listening, I’m sorry, but they’re weird.

Debbi (13:31): They’re always depicted that way on television too, so maybe that’s accurate.

Deven (13:38): Well, having been to a number of lectures given by medical examiners, without going into any details, they like to show gruesome pictures and they like to shock an audience, even of pathologists. Okay.

Debbi (13:54): Oh, wow.

Deven (13:57): But I practice, actually, there’s a big healthcare institution here called Kaiser Permanente. I dunno the term of it, but it covers a lot of it.

Debbi (14:08): Oh, yeah.

Deven (14:09): So I worked at one of their labs where I got specimens from all over Northern California Kaiser to do special testing on it. I really enjoyed it, and I had to think long and hard about retiring, because I really enjoyed my work. But then I thought, actually the first job I got, the very first job I got, I was called almost in a panic. I had just finished my residency and just finished my boards. And a pathologist had died looking in his microscope, and he just had a heart attack and died, and they did a replacement. And so as I got older, I started thinking, I don’t want to die at the microscope.

Debbi (14:58): Yeah.

Deven (14:59): I want to have some fun. I mean, not that work wasn’t fun, but.

Debbi (15:03): Yeah, I get it.

Deven (15:04): I thought, you know. So I just kind of picked a date five years away and stuck with it. So here I am.

Debbi (15:12): Good thinking. So are you more of a plotter or a pantser? You sound like a pantser.

Deven (15:21): Well, I am a plotter. I always start with a plot, but I have found that if I write anything detailed, it gets changed. I always have a plot. I don’t start with characters. I start definitely with plot, and I know the basic arc, where it’s going to start and where it’s going to end, and maybe some stops along the way, but in between I, I’m a pantser or you could say, but I always know who are …

Debbi (15:52): Where you’re headed,

Deven (15:54): Where I’m headed. My books are not mysteries. People often say, you’re a mystery writer. I do write some short stories that are mysteries, but they’re, they’re more, you know what’s going on and you know what the stakes are, you may not know how it’s going to shake out. But anyway, that’s what I do. So I definitely have to make a lot of changes along the way. I can’t write that detailed an outline.

Debbi (16:26): Neither can I could never write out every single thing that was going to happen in the book, otherwise I would just write the book.

Deven (16:34): Well, yeah. Well, also you get ideas that pop into your mind. You think you were going to do one thing and then you think this would be better, or you even hear, I mean, actually one thing I’ve learned is I don’t write historical fiction, but in a way that would be easier because things change now. So sometimes I’ve written a book and things have changed while I’m writing it.

Debbi (17:07): Oh, yeah. Yes. It’s a very real problem.

Deven (17:11): Yeah. Like Covid!

Debbi (17:15): Yeah. That was a biggie. Yeah.

Deven (17:16): Yeah. So I had to stick that in. There’s things you have to mention, you started and there was no Covid, nobody had heard of it, but things happened.

Debbi (17:28): Yeah, for sure. In your guest post, you mentioned several writers that you particularly enjoy or were inspired by. Robin Cook, Michael Chrichton, Michael Palmer were three that I remember.

Deven (17:42): Yeah.

Debbi (17:43): Are there any other authors who you enjoy or who inspire you other than those suspects.

Deven (17:50): Actually, I should have put Tess Gerritsen on that list.

Debbi (17:55): Ah. Tess Gerritsen. Okay.

Deven (17:56): Yeah. I mean, these are MDs that write medical thriller type books, which I enjoy. And that’s not the only thing I enjoy. Okay. But that’s what I like to write.

Debbi (18:09): Exactly.

Deven (18:10): Another book I really enjoyed was The Martian. It’s not medical, but it’s what you call sciency. And I really enjoyed that. And I read a lot of nonfiction and I read a lot of other fiction and some I don’t like. I won’t mention the ones I don’t like.

Debbi (18:34): Do you read much science fiction at all?

Deven (18:39): I used to when I was younger, but I really don’t now.

Debbi (18:42): Same here. I tend to read less of it than I used to when I was younger.

Deven (18:47): I mean, I loved Star Wars when it came out.

Debbi (18:50): Oh, yeah.

Deven (18:51): I stopped. I don’t know how many they’ve had now. I’ve lost interest in that. Not that I couldn’t be interested, but there’s so much other stuff.

Debbi (19:02): Cool. Yeah. There are so many books. Yeah.

Deven (19:05): Oh, there’s too many books. There’s so many books I want to read, and I’m not a fast reader, and I like to write and maybe do something else,

Debbi (19:16): Really, you know. Have a life?

Deven (19:18): Yeah. I like to think I do. So all those things take time. But I always enjoy a good book. And I’ve also started reading more memoirs. A lot of memoirs I find very interesting. And they’re usually about people that are known to some extent, and they’re usually quite different than what I expected.

Debbi (19:47): That’s interesting.

Deven (19:48): Yeah.

Debbi (19:51): Who in particular has written a memoir that you didn’t expect what they wrote?

Deven (19:58): Well, one that comes to mind that I read fairly recently, Quincy Jones. So I was certainly familiar with Quincy Jones, and I suspected, I mean, he was 90 in his nineties when he died, so he was older and a very successful music. Well, he was a musician, but more of a music producer and that sort of thing. Very successful, often thanked at the Grammys. And I wondered how he got his start, because he started at a time when black people didn’t have a lot of opportunity, and I thought, I wonder if he was born into a rich black family. There were some, so I was curious to see what his story was. Well, I was completely wrong. He was dirt poor. He had a very terrible childhood, but he had an amazing personality and persevere. I mean, he was a force of nature. Very talented. But he just had a way of doing things. I was very impressed. I wish I had that.

Debbi (21:22): Yeah, it would be nice to have that kind of energy. Yeah. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Deven (21:33): Well, first of all, don’t expect too much.

Debbi (21:37): Yeah. Boy,.

Deven (21:37): Think everyone says that, but if that’s what you want, I really think, well, one thing I would suggest that I didn’t do was start writing short stories. I started with novels and then I started writing short stories, but I think it would make more sense to start with short stories. One thing I did do before I actually started writing, my first novel, which has yet to be published, is I took classes, I went to seminars, I took classes, paid some money. And I think you need that. You need to learn. Get books. At some point, you have to write. I mean, at some point you have to say, I think I’m ready.

Debbi (22:26): Exactly. And you pick up a good book or two, take a class. And from there, really, you just start writing.

Deven (22:34): Yeah. You have to have to go for it. And then you also have to be very open to criticism because you’ll need it. Yeah. It’s kind of upsetting. You spend a lot of time writing something, you think it’s really good, and maybe it isn’t. It’s a good idea, but it will need some work. And if you have your mother read it, your spouse read it. I mean, everything I read, I have my husband read it first, but he likes everything I read. If everyone in the world was him, I’d be a great success, but they’re not.

Debbi (23:27): Fortunately, my husband told me the first draft that I wrote of something was terrible.

Deven (23:31): Oh, that’s nice, actually.

Debbi (23:33): That was the best thing he could have done for me. And I said, you know something, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. This is terrible. So I went back, I made it better, and he said, much better.

Deven (23:45): Good. Yeah.

Debbi (23:46): He’s honest guy.

Deven (23:48): My husband will point out certain things like actually a misspelled word. Well, I don’t need that. But yeah, so it just kind of makes me feel better for somebody to read it. And do you understand? I say, do you understand it? I mean, does it sound like gibberish?

Debbi (24:07): Especially when you’re talking about science stuff? Yeah.

Deven (24:10): Yeah. Of course he knows that, but I still want him to be able to follow the plot. Does it …

Debbi (24:16): Does it make sense?

Deven (24:17): Does it make sense? You try to make it move not too slowly, but you want it to just flow and you don’t want to leave out too many words or too many sentences. So people will go, wait, what?

Debbi (24:33):Where are we? What’s going on?

Deven (24:35): Exactly. Exactly.

Debbi (24:37): Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Deven (24:44): Well, I think we’ve covered a lot about how I write, what I write. I like to write, I mean, my books aren’t for everyone, but if you like medical thrillers, medical or suspense, things like that, I think that you could like my books.

Debbi (25:04): Fantastic. Well, it sounds like you write some really interesting stuff, and I want to thank you for being here today with us.

Deven (25:12): Okay. Well, thanks for hosting me. I really appreciate it.

Debbi (25:15): It’s my pleasure. And we can talk after this in a little bonus episode that I put up for Patreon supporters, if that’s okay.

Deven (25:24): Oh, okay. I’ll hang on there.

Debbi (25:26): Okay, cool.

Deven (25:27): All right.

Debbi (25:28): Let’s see. So thanks again, Deven, and best of luck with the latest book. Also, to everyone listening, thank you for your interest. I’m so glad for that. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a quick review. It really helps. Furthermore, if you would like to lend a little support toward the production costs of this podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter. We offer perks to supporters at different levels, so I hope you’ll check that out. In the meantime, ’till next time, our next guest will be J.D. Barker, and with that, I’ll just say, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

****

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Ed Zuckerman.

Check out his wealth of experience a freelance journalist, as well as his work as a debut crime writer!

You can download a copy of the transcript here!

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today has what most people would consider to be a pretty interesting resume. He began his career as a journalist writing about zombies, killer bees, talking apes and other subjects for Rolling Stone, Spy, the New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, and many other magazines. He has written two nonfiction books, The Day After World War III and Small Fortunes then moved into writing for television drama, including more than 50 episodes of the original Law and Order, Blue Bloods, and Law and Order SVU. I have that right, don’t I? SVU?

Ed (01:35): That’s correct.

Debbi (01:36): Alright. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Ed Zuckerman. Hi, Ed. Good to see you here.

Ed (01:43): I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Debbi (01:45): Well, it’s my pleasure, believe me. And wow. I mean, your guest post just tells an amazing story, and it struck me that you found the information initially in a book where a lot of people would’ve just stopped and said, oh, I got a book about Nigerian police. That’ll do. But you took it farther. You talked to the author and then you went to Nigeria.

Ed (02:10): That’s right. That’s right. Well, I was a journalist, but the first part of my, I’ve always been a writer, but my first part of my career, I was a journalist, ended up doing a lot of research and enjoyed the travel and enjoyed the research.

(02:21): And when I came up with the idea for my novel Wealth Management, one of the characters is a detective from Nigeria who shows up in Switzerland to investigate a crime. Geneva, Switzerland is where the story is set. And instead of just making stuff up about Nigerian police, especially nowadays with concern about being authentic and not making who you’re writing for, who writing about, I thought I would find and meet some Nigerian policemen, which was easier said than done. I can retell the story or it’s in the blog post that I put on your website. So what do you?

Debbi (02:58): I will link directly to the website.

Ed (03:00): Okay.

Debbi (03:00): I think they should read it because really it’s a remarkable story to read.

Ed (03:05): The short version. I ended up going to Nigeria, which is a tough top. People don’t go to Nigeria. Nigerians don’t need you, and they expect the same. Tourists are not especially welcome, and you have to be all careful watching your step over there.

Debbi (03:22): Interesting. Very interesting. And the police are not always cooperative.

Ed (03:28): They didn’t see any reason to cooperate with me, but I did arrange some contacts as I described in my blog post that you can read on the Crime Cafe website.

Debbi (03:37): I will be sure and put a link into the notes with this episode for sure.

Ed (03:42): Oh, good.

Debbi (03:43): Yeah. And you’re giving away a copy of the book as I understand it.

Ed (03:47): Yes, I am. I have a few left.

Debbi (03:50): Awesome, excellent. Because I got to tell you, I’m reading it now and it’s very, very compulsive reading. Short chapters. Well-written.

Ed (04:01): Well, I did write for a TV for a long time, and for better or worse, the book is structured a little bit like a TV script with short chapters and a lot of dialogue and a good story I hope, but also a substantial dose of humor.

Debbi (04:16): I’ve noticed that since I’ve taken up screenwriting, my writing has gotten shorter. I mean, it just happens. I think it happens when you go into screenwriting mode. You start being aware of how many words you’re using to say something.

Ed (04:33): Right. You just don’t, I mean, some famous writer, I forget who it was about something he had written and he said, if I had more time, I could have written less.

Debbi (04:43): Yes, exactly. Yeah. Choosing your words carefully is very important. I have to ask, you did such an interesting variety of topics in magazines in your work. How did you break into writing things like this for magazines?

Ed (05:01): I felt like I was born writing. I was a little kid. I was writing little stories and poems when I was eight years old. In college, I was very involved with the school newspaper. It’s really all I did in college was work on, which was a daily newspaper that led to some newspaper work, some freelance work and, I’m dating myself, but in the 1980s, being a freelance magazine writer was a good thing to be. That’s when magazines existed. Nowadays, it was pre-internet, and I moved to New York and it was a great field, and once you had done one good article somewhere, it would lead to another article. You’d follow an editor from one place to another, and it just kind of grew organically.

(05:45): But nowadays, just that whole business has totally changed. But it gave me a great chance. I mean, magazines would send me all over the world to do articles. It was great for a young person, which I was then.

Debbi (06:03): Well, that’s really great. That’s fantastic. What was it that inspired you to write Wealth Management?

Ed (06:10): Well, actually, I’d been writing for TV for a long time at that point, and I’d done well over a hundred crime stories from Law and Order and other shows. So my mind was in that realm, and I think the germ of it was after 9-11. It was terrible then, needless to say, there was a report that somebody had shorted airline stocks right before, and as you probably know or may know, if you short a stock, you make money if the stock price goes down. And of course, airline stocks went down drastically for a while after 9-11 because no one was flying and it was actually investigated whether or not Osama Bin Laden or people in league with them had decided to make money off that attack by shorting airline stocks. And it was investigated by the FBI and the SEC. And it turned out it was a total coincidence.

(07:02): I mean, on any given day, someone is shorting every stock in the world probably, and so someone had shorted the stocks and made a lot of money from the tragedy, but it was like some investor from Nebraska or something. So it was totally innocent. But it occurred to me a few years later that after the Islamic State withdrew from its so-called [illegible] in Iraq, when it had not a territory, while when it withdrew from Mosul, which is their capital, big city in Iraq, there was a bank there and they looted the vault of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as they retreated. They also had a lot of money for terrorizing their own population back when they had controlled territory. They even had, they had Islamic state traffic police who were fining drivers for driving with broken taillights. So they were in retreat, but they had a lot of money and they may have been stupid or not stupid. They may have been evil and/or crazy, but if they weren’t dumb, what would they do with all this money? Maybe they could start investing it, and what if they began investing at shorting stocks in companies that they were going to blow up soon thereafter. So that was part of the basis of the idea. And then I devised the characters and the situation and the love triangle and the drama and the tension and whatever else I managed to cram in there.

Debbi (08:26): Right. Well, it does read a little like a television show then.

Ed (08:34): Well, perhaps it reads like a television show, but a good television show, I hope.

Debbi (08:37): These days, television shows can be really addicting, they’re so well written.

Ed (08:42): Well, nowadays, it is sort of a golden age of television again. Every 10 years is a new golden age, but …

Debbi (08:47): Really,

Ed (08:48): And also I kept it short and moving quickly, because I get bored with scenery in novels. I don’t really care what the weather is like. People go on and on. Some writers go on and on about the beautiful mountain across the way, and … get to the point, tell me a story and let’s move this along. And that’s what I like to read. And so I wrote the way I like to read.

Debbi (09:18): Awesome. That’s music to my ears really. How long did it take you to write the novel?

Ed (09:26): Longer than I thought. I thought. I thought, oh my God, I’ve written a hundred, more than a hundred TV scripts in a week or two. But it was harder than I thought, it took longer than I thought. Probably a couple of years, including the research and the travel. And in a TV script, if you’re writing a scene about Debbi and Ed having a conversation in a restaurant, you write interior restaurant night, Debbi and Ed are sitting at a table, and then it’s just dialogue. In a novel. You have to …

Debbi (09:59): Create the scene.

Ed (10:00): What they’re thinking, what it looks like, what’s going on. You can’t just do that. So I mean, I once knew a writer, he’s since deceased, a bestselling writer, Stuart Woods, and when I met him, he was writing two books a year, and they were all bestsellers, you probably know of Stuart Woods.

Debbi (10:20): I’ve heard the name.

Ed (10:21): And I was having drinks with him one night and he said, you know, Ed? My agent said, if you’re writing two books a year, Stuart, they’re all bestsellers. Could you write three books a year? And he said, yeah, sure. Why not? I’m not a fast writer.

Debbi (10:40): Some people can do that. I can’t.

Ed (10:43): Nor can I.

Debbi (10:46): How much research, how many hours of research do you think went into that novel?

Ed (10:51): Oh, I mean, hundreds. I mean, just life in Nigeria alone.

(10:56): The book is about money laundering and dirty money and Wall Street and how investment banks work and how both managers work. And I’ve never worked in finance, but I had some friends and new people on Wall Street, and they introduced me and I would interview them. It was like I approached my novel writing using my background as a journalist as well as a TV writer. So I learned a lot about money laundering and terrorist financing and these voluminous reports by these international organizations. And I mean, it can be really boring after a while, but you learn to cherry pick the best examples.

(11:33): The research was the easy part. Then I had to like, oh, I’m not going to make an omelet out of all this stuff.

Debbi (11:38): Exactly. Right. Exactly. Harder than it sounds. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Ed (11:50): A really awful one. I read about these people who get up at 4:00 AM and wait for three hours before the kids go to school or something. I get up, I have to check my email for a while. I read the papers at breakfast, then it’s going to be time for lunch. And so I usually have a quota, a very modest quota per day, and I don’t usually get to until mid- or late-afternoon. And if I write a few good pages, great, I’m done. Which is why I don’t write one book every four months, it’s why I write one novel every 65 years.

Debbi (12:30): So your next one won’t be out for a while then?

Ed (12:33): It’s going to be a while. Actually, I was going to set a sequel of some of the same characters in St. Petersburg, Russia, where my daughter was living weirdly enough. Whose kids go to move to Russia when they finished college? But then Covid happened and Russia was shut down and then war with Ukraine. And so I’ve actually been doing research in Helsinki for another book. Helsinki is very close to St. Petersburg, you may know, and it’s out on the front line of what’s happening in Europe, and they joined NATO. And so anyway, standby. I’ll be back on your show in five years from now.

Debbi (13:12): Cool. Hopefully I’ll be around doing it.

Ed (13:16): Save me a slot. I’m sure you will.

Debbi (13:18): Absolutely. It’s a date. Have you ever read The Helsinki Affair? There’s a book out there called The Helsinki Affair.

Ed (13:27): I haven’t seen that one. I’ve read some books by Helsinki crime writers, but not that one. Do you recommend it?

Debbi (13:34): I do. Yeah. I enjoyed it.

Ed (13:36): Helsinki is a really interesting place. The history there is fascinating. I went to a bar and sat at a table where Vladimir Lenin had sat conspiring with Finnish communists in 1918. It was like, whoa, okay, I’ll sit here.

Debbi (13:56): Oh, wow. That’s even cooler than sitting at the Round Table in New York in that hotel.

Ed (14:04): Yeah, the Algonquin Round Table.

Debbi (14:06): The Algonquin, that’s it. I was there once, saw the round table.

Ed (14:11): Oh, did you?

Debbi (14:12): Yeah.

Ed (14:13): Yeah. And there’s still bullet holes in some of the bridges from the Finnish Civil War, and it’s a very interesting place.

Debbi (14:22): I’ll bet. I’ll bet that’s interesting. So what are you working on now?

Ed (14:30): This week? I’m weirdly working on the narration for a documentary about the money from the cryptocurrency in the 2024 election.

Debbi (14:39): Fascinating.

Ed (14:40): It just came out of nowhere. It’s a friend of a friend said, Hey, if you’re not doing anything, can you help us with this documentary?

Debbi (14:47): Wow.

Ed (14:49): I’m also dealing with brand new grandson, so that’s pretty exciting.

Debbi (14:53): That’s cool. Congratulations.

Ed (14:56): Thank you.

Debbi (14:56): And you have a good documentary voice.

Ed (15:00): Oh, well, they haven’t asked me to be the narrator, but yeah, I’ve actually, I’ve been told that, but I’ve never done it.

Debbi (15:06): Well, good luck with that. That’s excellent. Let’s see. Oh yeah. I wanted to ask you, what’s the secret for breaking into television writing?

Ed (15:17): Wow, that’s really.

Debbi (15:19): These days.

Ed (15:20): I broke in a long time ago and I got in because I had a friend was working in TV and thought maybe I could do it, and gave me a chance to come in to pitch an idea to Miami Vice.

(15:35): And the people running Miami Vice at the time hired me provisionally to write a script, which ended up being kind of a disaster. But that was my entry through a friend who was a very talented writer who thought I had the talent to do that, and sure I knew how to do it. I turned out an act for it, and then I lasted for a long time. But nowadays, getting in, it’s all micromanaged by the studios and the networks, and hope I don’t get arrested for saying this, but they’ve been focusing on diversity lately, but maybe now that’s illegal. So they’re not focusing on diversity anymore.

Debbi (16:16): Who knows?

Ed (16:18): The thing about writing for TV is … for TV or movies. They sort of overlap now more than they used to. There are probably literally millions of people who would like to write for TV, and there are hundreds, maybe a few thousand people doing it. And then the thing that’s weird is that when I worked in TV, which I did for a long time, I was surrounded by some very talented writers and some very mediocre writers. I thought, well, why did this person get in when there’s a million people banging on the door? There’s so many banging on those doors that the agents, who are basically the gatekeepers can’t, I mean, they, I don’t know. The short answer is people move to LA, they get jobs as assistants getting coffee for writers, and you get Harvard Law School graduates begging to be your assistant to get you coffee and do your Xeroxing. Once you’re in the writer’s room as an assistant taking the notes, you can move up. But those jobs are incredibly competitive. Crummy jabs are incredibly competitive. So I don’t know, buy a lottery ticket,

Debbi (17:24): Really. You’re probably better off. Things have gotten really wild as far as all this goes in terms of writing for television, writing for publication, all of it, the internet, so much.

Ed (17:39): Everyone’s a writer. People are self-publishing. When my book came out, it got some nice attention. It got a few very strong reviews, but there’s so many books out there, and my book is not a bestseller, but if anyone wants to buy it, it’s available. Please do. I think you’ll like it. I hope you’ll like it. But it didn’t. To break through that, the clutter.

(18:08): I wrote nonfiction books early in my career as a journalist, and back then a book came out. The publisher will send you, I went on a nationwide book tour and they took ads, and I was on Good Morning America, and I was on the David Letterman show talking. I was on the Today Show, and nowadays your book comes out, and unless you’re already a star or lightning strikes a new writer, which happens sometimes. You give the right book that’s good at the right time and you get picked. But in most cases, they say, well, here’s a copy of your book. Good luck.

Debbi (18:41): Good luck. Yeah.

Ed (18:43): Yeah.

Debbi (18:43): And you might get a little advance, which will get used up toward promotion or something.

Ed (18:48): I got a little bit, I mean, I did not want to self-publish. I was with a real publisher. I got a small advance and I was one of the crowd that coming out.

(19:03): But I think self-publishing is, some people do very well by it. Do you self-publish or are you published?

Debbi (19:16): I have been self-published since 2009. Yeah, I started it after I lost my, I was with a small press and they went under nine months after I signed a contract with them.

Ed (19:30): Oh, wow.

Debbi (19:31): I was trying to find an agent, trying to find an agent. I said, oh, the heck with it.

Ed (19:35): Actually. I have a friend who self-published. He used to be published by a New York publisher, who had a series. I won’t tell his, well, I won’t tell his name. I’ll give some detail. And eventually his series kind of dried up, and Bolger said, and at one point he was spending a few years ago, maybe he’ll be doing it $20,000 a month advertising on Amazon.

Debbi (20:03): See, I would never do that.

Ed (20:04): So when you bought a new Amazon Kindle and took it out of the box, there’s a book on the cover. So his book, his latest book, he writes a book every year would be on the cover. So he told me he was spending $20,000 worth of advertising, but he was taking in $30,000 a month.

Debbi (20:21): Mmm-hmm. Yeah.

Ed (20:23): But it was a business, and he was working just to manage that and God bless him, and it worked great for him.

Debbi (20:31): Yeah, yeah. Well.

Ed (20:33): Little events and anyway.

Debbi (20:35): When Amazon is involved, that kind of thing happens.

Ed (20:41): Yeah. AI books are coming out and …

Debbi (20:47): It’s a mess out there as far as AI goes. I mean, there are good uses of AI and bad uses. That’s what it comes down to. And plenty of people are taking advantage of the bad uses, it seems. What writer most inspired you to become a writer?

Ed (21:08): Well, when I was a kid to loved the short stories of John Updike. He wrote really wonderful prose and Hemingway, some of the Hemingway when I was quite young, and then I began reading the so-called new journalism writers like Tom Walsh, and that’s actually more like what I ended up doing for magazines, Hunter Thompson, writers that were lively and fun, and I aspired to do that. And then in my own way, I did a lot of that.

Debbi (21:48): That’s excellent.

Ed (21:48): I think some people are born with musical talent and some aren’t. I’m not, and I think some people are born with sort of a facility with language in the same way some people built, born with a facility for music. It has to be developed, through creative writing courses in college and all that. Then I caught some lucky breaks. I mean, luck is so important. Luck is that I knew this one guy who worked at TV. It’s just …

Debbi (22:17): Exactly. Yeah, sometimes it’s just who you know, and what you have access to.

Ed (22:24): Go to a good college. It’s not necessarily what you’re going to study there, but who you might meet there.

Debbi (22:30): Exactly.

Ed (22:32): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (22:33): I wish I’d known that when I went to college.

Ed (22:38): Well, I don’t know.

Debbi (22:38): I was a dumb kid. What can I say? For a smart person, I was pretty dumb.

Ed (22:44): I think we all were when we were young.

Debbi (22:47): I suppose you’re right.

Ed (22:49): If I could go back knowing then what I know now, I would’ve.

Debbi (22:52): Done this, that, and the other. Of course. Yeah. You can’t do that. And really everything that you do adds up to what you’ve become. So really everywhere you go, there you are. Something like that. That’s true.

Ed (23:07): And you are what you eat.

Debbi (23:09): Exactly. What advice would you give to anyone who’d like to have a career as a writer

Ed (23:18): Write and read. Read a lot. I often found that if I was reading something, the next thing I wrote, I’d be emulating that, kind of imitating what it was in my mind. And so read good stuff, read, read, read, read, read and write for anyone you can write for, any little magazine. I began writing for these weekly newspapers back a million years ago. At one point, I was getting $5 an article for religious news service. I was writing something for them. Try to get published, read, write, and try to get published so you have some good clips and get lucky and try to put yourself in places where you can get lucky. People move to LA, they move to New York, they go to a creative writing program at a good college. They put themselves, they go to these writers’ conferences, these crime writers conferences, Thrillerfest, and some of the others have ways to meet agents, to network, and do those five minute pitch sessions. Sitting alone in your room somewhere ain’t going to suffice it.

Debbi (24:30): Yeah, I agree completely.

Ed (24:32): You need talent and you need luck.

Debbi (24:36): Perseverance, too.

Ed (24:37): Yeah. Although there’s a certain point when you wonder. I mean, I knew some people out in LA wanted to be TV writers, and they were working as assistants and they were getting me coffee, and at a certain point, they were 32 years old and I thought, maybe they should just go now. Know when to cut your losses.

Debbi (25:00): It’s a really tough field to make really a good living at, but you can do it depending.

Ed (25:11): Well, I fell into TV by chance and TV of course enabled me to, gave me the financial resources to get a small advance and then fly to Nigeria. Yeah.

Debbi (25:22): Yeah. So that’s good timing as well as talent.

Ed (25:30): A lot of things added up. Yeah, the right time. I was lucky.

Debbi (25:32): A lot of things add up to, yeah. I mean, there are no, this is the thing. Everybody wants to know. How do you achieve this thing? And it’s like everybody achieves it in a different way. Is kind of what it comes down to. And sounds like you had–

Ed (25:48): I know one guy in LA, everyone else was moving out there. He was a young guy and trying to get jobs as assistants, and he said, I’m not going to do that. He worked as a waiter, but he was a good writer, and somehow he ended up getting a script to the right person and he’s had a good career.

Debbi (26:02): You just never know. You never know when it’s going to happen. Yeah. You have to keep trying. So is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Ed (26:16): I was going to talk about, no, I think we’ve covered things. Lately. I’ve been reading a writer named Mick Herron. Do you know Mick Herron? He writes the Slow Horses series.

Debbi (26:31): The Slow Horses! Yeah.

Ed (26:32): Which is now on Apple TV, and it’s a big hit. His first few books published and did nothing, and with the third or fourth book in the series, he suddenly broke, and then the previous ones became big. And he’s a writer that I really admire because he tells great spy stories with humor, which I think is very important, and it’s a kind of thing I would emulate. I’ll tell you one other story. When you publish your book, you get these blurbs, you get people you know to say, this is the best novel since Charles Dickens. This is the greatest writer. You take this with a grain of salt. I’ll notice Stephen King blurbs almost every novel that comes out. Five people blurbed my book. Some writers I knew and I was being compared to some really great writers like Elmore Leonard, my embarrassment.

Debbi (27:29): And le Carré.

Ed (27:32): Yeah, le Carré, yeah. So these are great comparisons, but I’m very ashamed to have, so I was in Helsinki doing some research for my next novel, and they went to a sauna. They’re crazy about saunas in Helsinki. I’d go to saunas all the time. So I went to this very upscale sauna and it’s of a chic bar restaurant that had a sauna attached. And I’m sitting in the sauna in my bathing suit, sweating, and there’s a young American couple next to me and we start talking and the woman says, oh, so what do you just, oh, I say, I’m a writer. She says, oh, my boyfriend’s grandfather was a writer. I’m thinking, nowadays, every jerk on the bus is a writer. So I’d say, well, that’s nice. What was your grandfather’s name? And he says, Elmore Leonard. So I say, oh my God, someone compared me to your grandfather on my book cover, and I’m so embarrassed.

Debbi (28:25): Wow. Oh my gosh.

Ed (28:28): Well, you got haunt a sauna in Helsinki, and you’ll run into Elmore Leonard’s grandson, who’s an artisanal baker in a suburb of Detroit, it turns out.

Debbi (28:36): How interesting. That’s fascinating.

Ed (28:40): Nothing to do with my book, but

Debbi (28:42): Well, it’s great. It’s still a great story. That’s awesome. You never know who you’re going to run into out there. Well, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us and tell us all these great stories. Thank you.

Ed (28:56): Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

Debbi (28:58): It was wonderful to have you on. Thank you. And stick around. We’ll have a bonus episode after this.

Ed (29:04): You will?

Debbi (29:05): Yeah, we do a bonus episode for the Patreon supporters. It’s just like five minutes, like five or 10 minutes.

Ed (29:11): Oh good. Right.

Debbi (29:12): So just want to let everybody know, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. They help a lot. And for access to ad-free episodes, bonus episodes and more, become a patron of the podcast on Patreon. Our next guest will be Deborah Greenberg, who writes under the name Deven Greene. Until then, take it easy and happy reading. Be seeing you.

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Brenda Chapman.

Brenda discusses her journey from writing for her daughters to becoming a published author, her inspiration for various protagonists, and her writing process. She also shares insights into her latest series, the Hunter and Tate Mysteries, set in Ottawa. Brenda emphasizes the importance of setting in her novels and offers advice for aspiring writers. Check out the interview for more about Brenda’s career and her approach to crafting compelling crime fiction.

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today is a Canadian crime fiction author with 25 published novels as well as standalones and short stories. She writes various police procedurals and mystery series for adults as well as mysteries for middle grade readers, which I think is really cool.

(01:19): She is currently working on her new mystery series in Ottawa, set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate Mysteries. The third book in the series, Fatal Harvest, comes out in April, came out in April 2024. Sorry, excuse me. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards, including the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, so wow. Okay. So she was once the writer-editor, I have to note here of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which really intrigued me because I used to work at EPA, but we can talk about that later maybe. That stuff is fascinating to me. In any event, it’s my pleasure to introduce crime writer Brenda Chapman. Hey Brenda, how are you doing?

Brenda (02:10): Great, thanks, Debbi. Thanks for having me.

Debbi (02:13): Oh, it’s a pleasure, believe me. And finding out that you worked in pest management, wrote about pest management to me is just fascinating.

Brenda (02:22): I was only one of a group of writer-editors.

Debbi (02:25): Yeah. Well, very cool. Still, we’ll have to talk about that at some point. Back when I was practicing law, I worked at the Office of General Counsel, Pesticides and Toxics Division, so I worked a lot on FIFRA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. What a mouthful, right?

Brenda (02:49): Fiction is much more fun.

Debbi (02:53): So anyway, when you first started writing fiction with serious Intent to be published, what inspired you to write for middle graders?

Brenda (03:02): Well, my daughters were 12 and nine, and I was actually teaching at the time. I was teaching kids with special ed and reading with some of them, and I thought—one girl brought in a book to read aloud to me, and I thought I could do a better plot than this. And that got me spurred into trying it, and it was really just to see if I could do it. So I wrote the Jennifer Bannon Mysteries. The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, “Mummy, you write just like a real author.” And I thought, wow, maybe I can get this published. So I spent my lunch hours trying to find a publisher and found one in Toronto. They took that first one and it turned into a four book series in the end.

Debbi (03:57): That’s awesome. So you found one in Toronto then? That’s great.

Brenda (04:01): Yeah.

Debbi (04:03): Fantastic. Is it a small press?

Brenda (04:04): It was. They’ve been absorbed by Dundurn, which is a bigger middle press in Toronto, and they’ve taken over my books from that time and the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is … I went from writing for kids to writing for adults, and I did the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is seven books set in Kingston with an indigenous lead detective, a woman, Kala Stonechild, and yeah, that series has done quite well, and I’m actually now writing the eighth. The publishers contracted me to do another book.

Debbi (04:46): Fantastic. Congratulations. It’s wonderful. And I read your article, fabulous article on you there in that local paper.

Brenda (04:57): Well, that was actually my old university. Lakehead University a couple years ago interviewed me and people in my life in the publishing business and put together that article. So yeah, it was.

Debbi (05:08): Oh, that is wonderful. That is great. Let’s see. What has led you to choose particular protagonists in your various series? I noticed you have a number of them, different series and protagonists.

Brenda (05:21): Yeah, I have three adult series. So the Kala Stonechild, I was actually working at Department of Justice and I had the indigenous file in communications. I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I’d have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves. I’m sure it’s the same. I live in Ottawa in Canada, but I know it’s a lot the same in the US. So Kala kind of came out of that, and I knew when I was writing a series that I needed a hook and she kind of became my hook. In another series that I was writing at the same time, I was contracted by a different publisher to write adult literacy series of novellas. And for that they wanted a strong woman. They wanted conflict with someone else in her life. They wanted a good mystery set in Canada and humor, and it had to be written at a grade three, four level, but for adults.

(06:34): Yeah, yeah. So Anna Sweet is a PI living in Ottawa, and the mysteries are a lot of fun. The books are about 14,000 words, and that was kind of where she came from. And then the series I’m writing now, because Stonechild and Rouleau had been a police procedural, I thought, I really love police procedurals, but I’d like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who’s been let off, let go from the paper as many have been. And she started up a true crime podcast and she freelances a bit with the paper, but she’s dirt poor. She’s living in a garrett apartment in the Glebe, which is the neighborhood in Ottawa near the canal, which I had lived in, and I actually put her in the apartment I used to live in before I met my husband.

It was in an old brick house on the third floor and cold as heck in the winter just anyhow, she’s living there. And so she kind of came out of all that. And in the first book, which is called Blind Date, it’s about Ella Tate’s story and her background and how she had quite a rough life. Her brother, who she was looking after is living on the streets now. When the book begins, people in her life start being harmed and she begins to realize that they’re after her. And the apartment that she had had to move from when she lost her job, the woman there is assaulted and she looks a lot like Ella Tate, the protagonist.

Debbi (08:20): Yeah, fascinating. Very, very interesting. I noticed your series of novellas and I thought, wow, I love novellas. They seem like just a perfect length. It’s like not too long, not too short, just enough to get some meat on the bones.

Brenda (08:41): Yeah, yeah, they’re great. You have to be very tight with your words. You can’t have any extra ones. I had a terrific editor for that series and the Anna Sweet Mysteries, I really enjoyed writing them. They were a lot of fun.

Debbi (08:57): Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to try more of those, frankly, just for a sense of completion quicker. Do you find they’re faster to write?

Brenda (09:08): Oh yeah. They took about three months to write and a full length novel takes me about eight, nine months.

Debbi (09:16): Yeah, at least. Yeah, for sure.

Brenda (09:18): Yeah.

Debbi (09:20): Let’s see. Now, I saw that you stuck with a desire to set your books in Ottawa rather than in the US as you were advised. I think that’s an excellent decision, personally. I think we here in the States are fascinated with what goes on in other places, frankly.

Brenda (09:39): Yeah. Well, I have so many American readers that really enjoy the books being set in Ottawa, and I actually had one reader from Minnesota email me through my website and she said, I’m going to come up and visit all the places in your Stonechild and Rouleau series.

Debbi (09:55): Oh, wow.

Brenda (09:56): So she went to Kingston and all over and she sent me an email afterward and said it was just the greatest time and she had a photo of herself canoeing on a lake somewhere. It was just great.

Debbi (10:07): Oh, that’s great. That’s fantastic. Yeah, I’d love to go up to Canada and take the train across the country. That’s my big dream at this point. To see the Canadian Rockies.

Brenda (10:19): A beautiful trip.

Debbi (10:20): Yeah. How much research do you do before and while writing your books?

Brenda (10:27): It will depend on the book. Some of them, I do quite a bit of research. I read up on them. I do a lot of research on Google in looking for information. I use Google Earth a lot. Sometimes I write about a place I haven’t been, so I look it up on the map and then I find all the photos of it and read up the town, whatever their website is and that kind of thing. But a lot of it, I’m just making it up.

Debbi (11:00): Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to trust that a certain amount of common sense will work for you.

Brenda (11:11): Exactly. And sometimes I think, well, I don’t know exactly how this should go, but nobody else does either unless you’re in the profession. But I have had a couple of cops that have helped me out. They’ve read through my stuff and given me some pointers.

Debbi (11:27): Yeah, that’s always helpful to have people who are in the business you’re writing about comment on stuff, that’s for sure. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Brenda (11:39): Well, that fluctuates. I’m a pantser. I know that you’re a plotter, from a different video. So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing. And I’m not some really, really disciplined. I write when I feel I want to write, but lately I’ve been trying to write 500 words a day. I have a book coming out May 1st, the fourth in the Hunter and Tate series. It’s called Who Lies In Wait. So I’ve been working on that and now I’m working on the launch and all that kind of thing. But I also have a contract with Dundurn to have a book done June 1st, so I’m plugging away on that. So I’ve had to be more disciplined this time around, but I tend to write later in the morning and into the evening. Sometimes, off and on.

Debbi (12:40): It’s interesting. I used to be an afternoon writer, now I’m a morning writer.

Brenda (12:45): Yeah.

Debbi (12:47): It’s weird how these things can work and how they can change.

Brenda (12:52): I used to be morning and now I’m more afternoon.

Debbi (12:55): Yeah. Let’s see. Yeah, as a pantser, wow. I’m just blown away by people who can just sit down and write without actually figuring out some plot points ahead of time.

Brenda (13:11): You have to edit a lot. There’s a lot. You find your clues and make sure everything’s lined up properly. So at the book I’m writing now, the manuscript, I have two months to pull it together, basically. I’m almost done writing it.

Debbi (13:26): Oh, good luck with that and I’m sure you’ll do great.

Brenda (13:30): Real work Is ahead. Yeah.

Debbi (13:32): Lots of experience at this point. What, 25 books? 24 books you have?

Brenda (13:38): Twenty-five, but the 26th is coming out in two months. So.

Debbi (13:43): You’ve done this before. It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Brenda (13:47): Every time. It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long. I don’t know if you find this, that there comes a point where you go, this is awful. Why am I writing? And then it.

Debbi (14:07): Oh, I know. I think every single writer must feel that way when they’re working on something. It’s like, what possessed me to go in this direction with this person? Why am I doing this?

Brenda (14:20): What makes me think I can do this?

Debbi (14:23): But then at some point you realize there’s a way to get through it and you get the thing done. It’s very interesting how that happens.

Brenda (14:32): Magical.

Debbi (14:34): It is. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of magic to it. So what author has most inspired you to become a writer?

Brenda (14:46): Well, as a child, I really loved Enid Blyton. Dunno if you’ve ever read her book, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven. I just loved books where they went on adventures and solved puzzles. I’ve always loved the murder mystery genre, read a lot through university. Which authors … I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird. I have to say that that book inspired me as well, and I know it is kind of a mystery. And in the crime writing genre, I love Michael Connelly’s books. There’s so many. Ann Cleeves, Denise Mina in Scotland. There’s so many great writers and I read quite widely.

Debbi (15:39): Yeah, me too. I like all different types of books. What do you like to read outside of the genre?

Brenda (15:47): Well, I belong to a book club and they pick, they’re quite well read and they pick different books, so I just enjoy reading whatever comes up,

Debbi (15:58): Whatever comes up.

Brenda (15:59): Right now we’re reading The Pull of the Stars by—see the book over here—Emma Donoghue. She’s a Canadian author and it’s about a pandemic 1918, and it’s told from the point of view of a nurse who’s working in a maternity ward and everyone’s sick, but it’s actually quite a good story with a lot of history to it. And so I enjoy all kinds of books.

Debbi (16:24): Yeah, I enjoy history and historical fiction, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Brenda (16:39): Don’t do it.

Debbi (16:43): Don’t do it? Don’t do it, if you want to make money right away,

Brenda (16:47): I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing. The other thing I would say is you just got to sit in the chair and do it, and it takes practice. It’s like any profession, you have to work away at it. You have to have good grammar skills and you have to treat it as a profession, I think if you’re going to be really good at it.

Debbi (17:20): Exactly. Yeah, certainly you have to do the writing. You also have to get out there and have your writing looked at and commented on, get good criticism on it. Do you have beta readers or a writer’s group that you rely on?

Brenda (17:43): I do for this series. I have beta readers and they have the first look at it, and I’m really trying to find out if they’re enjoying it. And then professional editors, of course, editing is massive to make a book shine and I realize with every book just how important it is to put in that time.

Debbi (18:07): It is, it’s very important. And that’s something people really need to appreciate before they put their work out there, I think. How important it is to really make it look good and to make it something that people will want to read and want to keep reading.

Brenda (18:24): Most authors will tell you that their first book never got published, but they’re glad in the end that it didn’t.

Debbi (18:33): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Would you say that Ottawa is a character in your books?

Brenda (18:45): Oh, definitely. To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description. But in this latest one, Who Lies in Wait, it’s set in winter in Ottawa. And during the period that I’m writing the book, it’s snowing. There’s a big blizzard, goes on for a couple of days, the power’s off. It’s just great for writing a murder history to have all this, but I think the setting and the mood and all of that is another character in the book. And I don’t know about you, but I love reading murder mysteries set in different places. Just for that. I’d like to find out more about the place.

Debbi (19:33): Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I like that kind of thing. Definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Brenda (19:43): No, it’s been great. I enjoy writing, I love reading, and I love hearing from readers. My website is brendachapman.ca and you can contact me through there. I also enjoy visiting book clubs to talk about writing, and I can do that by Zoom as we are today or in person.

Debbi (20:11): Alright, well that’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Brenda. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to tell us about this and to talk about your books.

Brenda (20:20): Well, thank you Debbi. It’s been great.

Debbi (20:23): Well, thank you. And on that note, I will just say please, listeners, I would appreciate anybody who enjoyed this episode to please leave a review. I would really appreciate that. Reviews help a lot. Also, if you would take a look at our Patreon page, you’ll see that I’m now serializing the novel Red Harvest because it’s in the public domain now. And I thought, what fun to share. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op with the world on my Patreon page. So go to my Patreon page if you want to check it out, find out all about the Continental Op, that fictional detective based on Hammett’s experiences working as a Pinkerton agent. In any case, our next episode will feature Edward Zuckerman as my guest. Until then, take care and happy reading.

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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Carter Wilson.

Don’t miss our discussion of his process for writing thrillers without outlining.

You can download the transcript here.

Debbi (00:53): Hi everyone. My guest today is not only the Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today bestselling author of 10 award-winning psychological thrillers, but his work has been optioned for television and film, and his latest release, Tell Me What You Did, was a Barnes and Noble National Monthly pick. Awesome. He also hosts a podcast Making It Up, and is founder of the Unbound Writer Company, which provides coaching services, writing retreats, and online courses. So he is a busy man. He has also contributed short fiction to various publications and was featured in RL Stein’s young adult anthology Scream and Scream Again. I’m pleased to have with me today Carter Wilson. Hi Carter. Thanks for being here!

Carter (01:46): For having me here. Debbi great. Great to talk to you.

Debbi (01:49): Oh, it’s great to have you here. Thank you so much. Tell us a little about your latest book and what inspired you to write it.

Carter (01:58): Well, I’ll start with the inspiration. A few years ago, I have a buddy named Blake and he and I would always give each other podcast recommendations, and he came up to me one day and he’s like, oh, you have to check out this podcast. Basically on this podcast, people can call in and leave a voicemail and leave an apology. And so I guess the conceit of the podcast is they would just play these apologies, and the human part of my brain thought that was pretty cool. The thriller writer part of my brain immediately thought, well, what if it wasn’t a podcast? What if it was a confession? And so that was kind of the nugget of the idea for my book. And I don’t outline, so I never know where my book’s going, but ultimately, Tell Me What You Did follows the story of 30-year-old Poe Webb, who is the host of the nation’s top true crime podcast called Tell Me What You Did.

(02:51): And that’s the conceit of the podcast. People call in and they can confess to crimes anonymously, and if Poe believes them, then they have a discussion about the criminal mind. And then one day she has this really creepy guest on who seems vaguely familiar to her, and his confession is that he murdered Poe’s mother. Now, of course, Poe knows her mother was murdered. Poe actually witnessed her mother’s murder when she was 13. But the thing that’s sticking with her, she realizes this can’t be the guy because Poe spent eight years of her life tracking down that murderer and killing him herself. So she’s forced with the question, who is this guy? And if he is telling the truth, who did I kill? So that’s kind of the setup for the book.

Debbi (03:37): Wow, that’s a very intriguing setup I have to say. I also, I just started it and the way you structure the beginning, it just pulls you right in.

Carter (03:50): Oh, good.

Debbi (03:51): It was so intriguing. It’s basically like a podcast within a podcast.

Carter (03:55): Yeah. There’s interspersed throughout the chapters is kind of a cut up podcast transcript between these two individuals, and that ultimate conversation takes place at the end of the book, but you’re seeing glimpses of that conversation throughout the story.

Debbi (04:12): That sounds fantastic. So is this kind of a commentary on true crime podcasting? Do you have any feelings about why it is that people gravitate to true crime podcasts?

Carter (04:29): I mean, I don’t know if I would say it’s so much of a commentary because when I kind of approach a book, I’m never thinking about what is my message here? I’m just thinking about, and again, because I’m not outlining, I’m just thinking about what happens next, and it kind of unfolds to me. But I have been asked that question quite a bit, and I do like true crime podcasts. I listen to ’em. Sometimes I can’t take ’em, sometimes they’re too intense for me. But I think what really speaks to at least American culture is just the idea that people are so starved for recognition, so starved for 15 minutes of fame that they’re willing to confess to crimes with this flimsy kind of promise of anonymity, which of course could be easily broken, but people are still willing to do that, and I think that is a very American mindset.

Debbi (05:22): Yeah, yeah, that is true. Yeah. Are there particular ideas that you tend to gravitate toward when you tell a story? Is there a type of story that you enjoy telling particularly?

Carter (05:36): My first book I wrote, and I didn’t even know it was a thriller. It was my agent who told me what a thriller was. I was so ignorant, I didn’t even know what thrillers were. But I always gravitate to stories that just have inherent conflict, that have kind of a protagonist who’s maybe a little damaged and is trying to almost find a way to heal, but realizes the only way to heal is to potentially go through more trauma. And so I just love a setup where I just going to throw things at my protagonist and just see how they react and just say, you’re going to fail a lot before you succeed. And I think that adds to the tension, but just it allows me to kind of from a safe distance get to say, what would I do in this situation? And that brings me joy when I write.

Debbi (06:29): Do you tend to focus on everyday sort of people as protagonists as opposed to people with powers or influence?

Carter (06:39): For sure. Yeah. And certainly I stay away from people who have very specialized jobs because that would be research for me, and that feels like homework. So I don’t know if I would call them everyday people because usually they’ve had things happen to them in their past that make them broken in a way. But certainly on the face of things, they’re fairly ordinary people.

Debbi (07:09): Yeah. Is there a focus in your mind on a particular subgenre of thriller that you, is there a sub genre? Do you do strictly psychological thrillers or do you think about that at all?

Carter (07:25): I don’t think about it. There are so many subgenres, and I feel like there’s new ones being created every day, and I’ve been labeled many different things from anything from thriller blending into horror to domestic suspense to psychological thrillers. The domestic aspect I feel, meaning familial. There’s usually family elements. That’s pretty consistent throughout my books. There’s usually some kind of father-mother figure that either something’s happened to or there’s a relationship that’s either healthy or fractured, but is central. Sisters. So I think domestic is, but the main thing for me, the psychological aspect is heavy because I usually write from a first person present tense point of view. So you are in the immediacy of this person’s mind typically for the entire book. So I love the idea of memory that’s not consistent. I love the idea of the trauma having kind of warped a perception of reality. And so having a first, somebody narrate the novel who may or may not be willingly unreliable is kind of interesting to me.

Debbi (08:44): This is all lending itself so well to adaptability, to film, I have to say,

Carter (08:49): Hey, fingers crossed,

Debbi (08:50): Present tense stuff, something thrown at the protagonist that they have to really fight to overcome, all of those things. Great stuff.

Carter (09:00): Thank you.

Debbi (09:02): So what kind of writing schedule do you tend to keep?

Carter (09:07): A pretty light one. When I started writing, I had a corporate job that I maintained for a couple decades after I started writing. And my advice to any aspiring writer out there is not to quit your day job because it’s a tough industry.

(09:25): So I’ve learned over time just to write an hour a day, and I still maintain that schedule. I write in the mornings and when I’m actively drafting, it’s kind of a five to 700 word goal, daily goal, but I don’t write more than an hour. It’s very rare that I do, and I also don’t miss a day. It’s very rare that I do that either. So with that schedule, I can have a draft done, if I can figure out what I’m doing, in about six months. So I try to do about a book a year published, and that keeps me, I think, my name out there without killing me. So many other things you have to do during the day to support writing. And I have other companies as well.

Debbi (10:09): That’s right. Yeah. I mean, you got to find the time to do the writing. That’s the thing, that’s the trick,

Carter (10:16): Right. And you’ve got to make sure you’re not, what I fear is, could you write four hours a day? Of course you can, but I think you have to build up to it. But I think for me, I really have to trust the story. And again, going back to the idea that I’m not outlining and I don’t know what’s coming next, there’s a pace at which it unfolds to me. And I think if I try to force it, if I try to put in those extra hours, I might be going down a wrong path. So I tend to be consistent but not overdo it.

Debbi (10:53): That’s interesting. What’s interesting is you’re probably the first person I’ve spoken to who is a complete pantser in terms of the plot, because a lot of people I talk to say, well, I’m a little bit plotted in a little bit pants. I have a general idea and all this kind of stuff, but you seem to be a complete pantser.

Carter (11:16): It’s a curse.

Debbi (11:16): Just taking everything literally as it occurs to you.

Carter (11:20): And I recommend to every writer to try multiple ways because you will eventually find that method that is organic to your nature. I mean, I’ll give you an example. I’m writing something now, and I had kind of, again, the opening scene idea, but not much more than that. I’m like, I am going to outline 20% of this book before I start. And I sat there for two days and I just couldn’t figure it out. And the moment I wrote the first paragraph, things start to reveal themselves to me. And so I’m convinced personally that my outline is fully formed in my head. I just need to write in order to tap into the subconscious part that is releasing it a little bits at a time, because it’s not like I change my books massively after I write that first draft. I just physically need to be in the act of writing to know what might happen next.

Debbi (12:15): Do you usually have an end goal in mind in terms of where you want the story to end?

Carter (12:20): No. I know what’s not going to happen. I’m not going to have my protagonist hit by a truck on the last page, but usually around 80%, 70, 80% in I start to get an idea of how it might end, but not usually before that.

Debbi (12:41): How much research do you do before you write or during the writing process?

Carter (12:47): I don’t do much. I mean, I do obviously all the research I need to do that supports the book to make it as believable as possible. I usually just don’t set myself up for a story that requires that once in a while I might have a secondary POV that might be a detective, and in that case, I’ve got a friend who’s a detective and I’ll feed him pages. I’m like, does this make any sense to you at all? But the beautiful thing about writing first person present tense from kind of an everyday character, that character walks around the corner and there’s somebody pointing a gun at her face, she’s not thinking, oh, that’s a Walter PPK, nine millimeter. They’re like, there’s a gun in my face. So you don’t really, but there are times where you do have to obviously look things up. If it’s a setting that you’re not familiar with, you either go there or you make sure that you’re doing it justice by that kind of research. But that’s usually the extent of it.

Debbi (13:49): Yeah, yeah. Just enough to make it feel real.

Carter (13:53): Yeah. Because you’re not going fool everybody, but you think about what you like to read and what resonates with you, and you try to adhere to those standards.

Debbi (14:05): Exactly. Yeah. What author would you say has been most influential and inspiring for your writing journey?

Carter (14:14): There’s so many, and it’s funny because I mostly read nonfiction, but I grew up on Stephen King clearly, and I think someone like Stephen King, you learn depth of character and maybe not even so much plot, but just emotion. I think he’s a master at that. Then you look at somebody like Cormac McCarthy who not only do I not write like, but I could never write like him.

(14:45): But when you read him, you realize, wow, his writing forces me to read every word. Why is that? And I think from him, you realize how to distill, how to take a paragraph and put that whole sensation of that paragraph into two or three words by just choosing. And that all happens in the editing where you realize, this feels a little bit lengthy to me. What am I trying to say and how can I make that visceral? But there’s a tremendous number of authors that I’ve read who they just tap into your head somewhere and you start to realize like, oh, this is sounding a little bit like Harlan Coben or whomever.

Debbi (15:33): Let’s see. Have you ever considered writing a series?

Carter (15:38): Not seriously. Series are a tricky thing. As a new author, you really have to have the series to go to a publisher or to an agent. You can’t just say, you bought my book, great, but let’s make this a series. And they’ll say, slow down. We don’t know how this book’s going to do first. And so that’s kind of how it started for me. And then I’ve always just written standalones and I just love where are we going this time? Who’s our cast? That’s so exciting for me. Also, when you start having fairly everyday characters, how much stuff can possibly happen to them that you can extend into a series? I certainly would never say never, but at this point, I just love going to a new world each time.

Debbi (16:33): Yeah. There is something kind of nice about going into something totally different, a different situation with a different set of people dealing with the problem. Totally.

Carter (16:44): I agree.

Debbi (16:45): It’s a challenge, but it’s a good kind of challenge. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing, in a writing career?

Carter (16:55): Well, the first one was, don’t quit your day job. You know what I’ve learned over time, and I do coach writing, I do coaching and online classes and seminars and retreats, and I feel like I have a little bit of an expertise at it because I started from a place of zero background in writing, zero aspirations in writing. It was literally, quite literally, I started on one day, it was a lightning strike, and I haven’t stopped, but I had to learn everything. So I’ve gone through all those pitfalls, and what I’ve really realized is, one, determine your, why are you doing this? Really think about that and make sure that’s an answer that you can print out and put on the wall and look at every day to make sure you’re staying true to that vision. And secondly is to write every day. The biggest complaint, people say, I wish I had time to write. And that’s just such a load of crap to me. You can write for 15 minutes, and if you do it every single day, you’ll build that muscle just like going to the gym. But consistency, I think overshadows inspiration, overshadows everything else because you will become a writer if you write every day. I mean, look at me 22 years doing this. I only write an hour a day. So you can find an hour in your schedule,

Debbi (18:19): And you’re doing well at it. Thanks. And you’ve got, you’re teaching courses and everything. That’s fantastic.

Carter (18:27): Yeah, I love it. I love talking to writers, so it’s always fun.

Debbi (18:31): Do you ever do things like masterminds or workshops?

Carter (18:35): Yeah, I mean everything. Yeah. I teach at other workshops, and then I just run my own as well. And I love, one of the things I love talking about, because I think I’m not a big believer in classes teaching you how to write. I think there’s a million ways to write, so I’ll teach how I write, and that may or may not resonate with you, but I love talking about the writer’s psychology, blocks, inspiration, consistency, things that really trip writers up and keep them from realizing their goals because they’re too stuck in their own head, because I’ve been through all that too. Fear of rejection, sharing your work, all those things are so scary. There’s a lot to teach along those lines.

Debbi (19:26): Absolutely. Yeah. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Carter (19:36): I was just going to say I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book.

Debbi (19:41): Well, that’s my pleasure, and I love the background you have set up for yourself with the covers on the wall.

Carter (19:48): Oh, yeah.

Debbi (19:48): Anybody who’s listening to the podcast, check out the YouTube video because there’s this lovely display of his covers on the wall to his right as you’re looking at this.

Carter (19:58): Yeah, it’s funny, I did that. I remember with my first book, I’m like, I wanted to have it framed, and then when I went to do a couple events, I would put it on a little easel, and then I started doing it with every book, and then I realized, this is a nice affirmation for me to be able to kind of, when I’m in my office, I’m like, oh, I did that. Yeah. And writers need that, we need, because we’re so full of self-doubt that it’s good to say, no, I’ve done this. And so I think that’s important for everybody.

Debbi (20:31): Fantastic. Well, I think that is great advice and just a great way to finish up. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your being here and telling us about this, Carter.

Carter (20:42): Thanks so much, Debbi. I really appreciate it as well.

Debbi (20:45): It’s been my pleasure. Believe me, I always enjoy talking to writers about this stuff, and I think the advice is good for anybody who’s interested in writing too, and for anybody who just enjoys reading crime fiction.

Carter (20:58): Totally.

Debbi (21:01): Thank you to everyone who’s listening or watching. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Also consider becoming a Patreon supporter. Check out our different episodes on Patreon, as well as our perks, which we put ad-free episodes up there, so keep that in mind. Also, we have different perks at different tiers, so please give that some consideration. Helps to support the effort here and keep us in business. Our next episode will feature Brenda Chapman. Until then, take care and happy reading.

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