The Crime Cafe

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer and psychotherapist Mark Schorr.

Check out our discussion about his novels, as well as his other unique activities and interests, such as engaging in government-run ESP experiments.

Got your attention yet? :) Stay tuned!

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today has the most interesting background. He has worked as a bookstore manager, private investigator, nightclub bouncer, newspaper reporter, freelance writer, and is currently a licensed psychotherapist. Along with the diverse interests he has, which include - well, I'll get into that later - he is also an Edgar-nominated author of 11 mysteries, mystery thrillers, I should say, with titles in France, Spain, and Japan, and three books under option for adaptation. That's impressive. My guest today is Mark Schorr. Hi Mark. How are you doing today?

Mark: Good, Debbi. Nice to see you. Thank you for having me.

Debbi: Well, it's great to see you too. Among your novels, you have a series about Red Diamond, Private Eye. That caught my eye right away. I love the name.

Mark: I thought it might when I saw your stuff with Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler is an idol of mine in terms of as a writer. Not as a person, but as a writer and my first dog we named Marlowe. The first three books, the idea is this cab driver has a miserable life and his escape is reading, reading the hardboiled fiction, and then he has a trauma and he comes to believe that he is Red Diamond, this ace private eye, and gets involved in all sorts of misadventures.

Debbi: Oh, wow. That's interesting. Does that happen in the first book, the misadventure or does it happen ...?

Mark: The first book is the trauma, and he starts getting involved in misadventures and then it continues for two more. There is Red Diamond, Private Eye, Ace of Diamonds and Diamond Rock. All featured the character. Simon Jaffe is his cab driver name, but Red Diamond is his P.I. name.

Debbi: I love it. That's so cool. I was going to ask you if you came up with the name after watching Murder by Death, which I think had the character Sam Diamond in it.

Mark: No, I just like the idea of Diamond. That is hard and Red was my nickname when I was a kid, way back when and had reddish hair. The interesting thing is I found out subsequently there's a writer named Gerry Petievich who did To Live and Die in L.A. and a few other books. He's a former Secret Service agent, and he had a villain named Red Diamond in one of his books.

Debbi: Ah!

Mark: Just coincidentally.

Debbi: That's a very interesting coincidence.

Mark: Yes, yes.

Debbi: Wow. So do you plan to write any more of those books?

Mark: I'd like to, but by the third one it was not selling great, and it's been a long time. The first three were the ones that were optioned and the rights are still held by a movie studio, and I don't think it's ever going to get made. There were changes in management and things like that. So, it's not like it can sell to Hollywood. Rights are a little bit tied up. I did have another idea for Red Diamond where he would actually meet the creator of the Red Diamond stories, the author. It’s almost like playing with sort of a father figure relationship. I had a few ideas along that path, but I don't think there's going to be another Diamond book.

Debbi: Hmm. Have you ever by any chance seen the British mini-series, The Singing Detective?

Mark: I've heard of it, but I've never seen it.

Debbi: You really should see it.

Mark: Okay.

Debbi: It's about this guy. His name is Philip Marlowe.

Mark: Ah.

Debbi: It was created by Dennis Potter, and basically the guy has, I think a condition that Dennis Potter had, and there's all this weird stuff with hallucinations and flashbacks to his childhood. It's really interesting.

Mark: I'll check it out. Thank you for the recommendation.

Debbi: Definitely check that out. Let's see, your other books are standalones. Do you have a preference for doing those versus series?

Mark: Three of them were thrillers featuring a Zen counterterrorist. Gunpower, Seize the Dragon and Overkill are also a series. But other than that, I think there's something to be said for both of them. There's something nice about a standalone and starting fresh each time, but there's something nice about the familiarity of being able to build on what you've presented in a book. I mean, the tricky thing is how much do you rehash what's in the original book, or how much do you assume that people know. You need to do some refreshing of the recollection, but you don't want to be having pages and pages of … "and then there was the time when blah-blah-blah". It gets kind of slow.

There's something nice about a standalone and starting fresh each time, but there's something nice about the familiarity of being able to build on what you've presented in a book.

Debbi: Yeah. You don't want to do that.

Mark: No, no.

Debbi: You don't want to bog down the story with all that backstory.

Mark: Backstory, right. For people who have read the previous book, you don't want to punish them by just presenting too much backstory.

Debbi: Absolutely. Let's see. Among your diverse interests, I noticed you've been an international courier, among other things, which calls to mind all sorts of images. Were you carrying secret documents?

Mark: No, no. It wasn't as glamorous as that. There was a thing when I was living in LA where they used to use - and I don't think they do it anymore - but for example, if Federal Express had a small shipment like 20 bags or something like that, and they didn't want to use an airplane, they would use your baggage check-in privileges. In other words, if you were on the flight, it only cost them a per-bag cost. So they would have couriers go over and just fly over to - I flew to Japan, I flew to Thailand - and they would use my baggage check-in privileges. I could only have a carryon bag, and they would ship a whole bunch of bags with me on a commercial flight.

Debbi: Oh, wow.

Mark: So, I think it was DHL subcontracted, and I'm not sure about Federal Express, but some of the bigger shipping companies would contract with this company that then had hired me to just fly over there so they could use my baggage check-in privileges.

Debbi: Wow. Very interesting. I had no idea such a thing existed.

Mark: I didn't either. I forgot how I found out about it. This goes back to when I lived in LA, which was more than... It was about 33 years ago or so. So, it goes back a bit.

Debbi: So how does a person get involved in something like that?

Mark: I guess probably nowadays you could Google it if there is still such a thing. I know at that point, they were also running things from New York to the Caribbean and South America. I don't know if they had them going to Asia or it was based on the coast, each coast kind of thing. I suspect that's the way it was.

Debbi: That's fascinating.

Mark: New York would be Europe and South America.

Debbi: Wow. That's something. You were also a Tai Chi instructor?

Mark: Yes.

Debbi: A subject in a federally-funded ESP test or tests?

Mark: Yes. Yes. So, the Tai Chi. I've been doing martial arts ever since I was about 8 years old, and as I've gotten older, the joints are less forgiving of bouncing off of the mat or blocking punches or whatever, so now I do Tai Chi and I teach Tai Chi to a couple of people. There's a thing in Tai Chi called Push Hands, which is a real time exercise where you are trying to off balance the other person. So that's the more martial part really of the Tai Chi, as opposed to kind of slow set, which is what most people are familiar with. But Tai Chi has weapons, swords, all kinds of things, a staff.

I've been doing martial arts ever since I was about 8 years old, and as I've gotten older, the joints are less forgiving of bouncing off of the mat or blocking punches or whatever, so now I do Tai Chi and I teach Tai Chi to a couple of people.

But the actual federally-funded ESP experiment was what sparked my latest book, The Mastermind. My late wife and I were in this experiment back in the '70s in Brooklyn where they had us go to a lab in a hospital, and they wired me up with an EEG, and then they had me sleep, and my wife would project messages, images randomly chosen. They had like a Viewmaster and used random numbers to choose

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer, podcaster, and journal editor/publisher Lorie Lewis Ham.

Join us for a discussion of her new novel that takes place in Fresno, California! In the Tower District! :)

Not to mention her podcast and literary journal. Oh, my!

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi: Hi. Our guest today had her first song and poem published when she was 13, so she got a real early start. Since then, she's published many articles, short stories and poems, six mystery novels, and written for a local newspaper. Those are still around, you know, and it's a great thing. And furthermore, she has been for 13 years, editor-in-chief and publisher of Kings River Life Magazine, and she produces Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast, where you can hear an excerpt from her latest book, One of Us, a story that takes place in Fresno, California, a place near and dear to my own heart. It is my great pleasure to introduce my guest, Lorie Lewis Ham. Hi, Lorie. How are you doing today?

Lorie: Hi. Okay. Thank you for having me. I've been fighting some allergies this week. If you remember Fresno about this time of year, there's blossoms everywhere.

Debbi: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Agriculture all over the place as I recall.

Lorie: Yes, definitely.

Debbi: Wow. Yeah, because I moved there from New York, so it was quite a change.

Lorie: Oh, wow. Yeah, that would be.

Debbi: It was. It was almost like heaven by comparison. Isn't that funny to say about Fresno? I don't know.

Lorie: It is.

Debbi: It's very. So tell us about your book, about Roxi, the podcaster/private eye, as I understand it. What a great combination!

Lorie: Well, the podcasting and the private eye part kind of take place a little further into the book. At 35, she was a children's book author and lived on the coast of California, and she lost her publisher. They dropped her series and she is like, okay, well now what am I going to do? And she has a cousin who's a P.I. who lives in Fresno, and he said, well, hey, come stay with me for a while, and so that's what she did. Then he talks her into helping out with a local community theater and someone's murdered during a rehearsal. He's hired to investigate and she helps him out, so that's kind of where the P.I. part starts, helping out with that. It's set in the Tower District, which is the arts district of Fresno, so it's quite different from the rest of Fresno.

Debbi: It's the cultural oasis, I think you put it.

Lorie: Yes.

Debbi: Which I thought was an interesting way of putting it. What was it about Roxi in your mind? She started out as a supporting character in a previous book, correct?

Lorie: Correct. Kind of correct. I did a series featuring a gospel singer, and in the final book, The Final Note, she's introduced, but she's introduced actually with a plan in mind to create a series for her. But it was a totally different series than what it ended up being.

Debbi: Wow, how interesting. In what way? What were you expecting to do?

Lorie: She ran a pocket pet animal rescue and as I said, was a children's book author, and that was going to be the focus. It was going to be set on the coast in a fictional town called Ayr, not very far from Santa Cruz. When I originally came up with that idea, there weren't any animal rescue cozies out there, and by the time I really had time to sit down and seriously work on it, they were everywhere. So I thought, well, what could I do differently? And so she got moved to Fresno.

When I originally came up with that idea, there weren't any animal rescue cozies out there, and by the time I really had time to sit down and seriously work on it, they were everywhere. So I thought, well, what could I do differently? And so she got moved to Fresno.

Debbi: Oh, wow. Well, that's very interesting. In what ways is Fresno or the Tower District like a character in your book? How do you make a place like that part of the character, one of the characters in the book?

Lorie: Well, it has its own unique culture compared to the rest of the Valley, really. Not just Fresno. It's a very artsy area, lots of theater and art galleries, and it just has a very different feel to it, lots of historical buildings. In the book, Roxi talks about how it kind of feels like she's stepping back in time, as far as how it looks and feels. So I think that becomes just a really big part of the story itself, is that area and that community. It's like its own small town in a way.

It's a very artsy area, lots of theater and art galleries, and it just has a very different feel to it, lots of historical buildings. In the book, Roxi talks about how it kind of feels like she's stepping back in time, as far as how it looks and feels.

Debbi: Yes. I can imagine. When I was living there, I think there might have been 300,000 people there. I don't know how big it must be now.

Lorie: Oh, I don't know, but it's a whole lot bigger than that.

Debbi: I was going to say.

Lorie: I think it's like one of the—now I'm just guessing—third or fourth largest cities in California.

Debbi: Wow. That's really something. Do a lot of people commute from there to other places?

Lorie: I know some do. I'm not sure how much. There's probably more commuting if you live in Bakersfield. I think a lot of people live in Bakersfield and commute to Southern California. There's probably some, I think. Fresno's gotten so big now that there's probably more people living in the smaller towns and commuting to Fresno for work.

Debbi: Interesting. Really interesting. My uncle used to work for the Fresno Bee. Is the Fresno Bee still around?

Lorie: Small world! Oh yeah, definitely. Just like any other paper, it's a lot smaller than it used to be, and a lot more of what they do is online. And interestingly enough, it's been a few years now, but they dropped their arts coverage almost completely.

Debbi: Wow.

Lorie: Yeah. So ...

Debbi: Oh my gosh!

Lorie: Yeah, so it was already a big part of Kings River Life. We've got the mystery side, but we were already covering a lot of the arts culture and we picked up even doing more since the Fresno Bee pretty much … I think they cover big things like Broadway shows coming through town and things like that, but they used to have a regular columnist that covered all the local arts.

We've got the mystery side, but we were already covering a lot of the arts culture and we picked up even doing more since the Fresno Bee pretty much … I think they cover big things like Broadway shows coming through town and things like that, but they used to have a regular columnist that covered all the local arts.

Debbi: That's amazing. Well, it's a little discouraging, but I'm just glad to see that papers can continue in some form these days. It's nice to know. How much research did you do when you wrote the book?

Lorie: Well, first off, I'll tell you, it took about 10 or 11 years for me to write this one because around the same time I wanted to start that, I started Kings River Life and it kind of took over.

Debbi: I was going to say.

Lorie: So it took a lot longer to get this one done—I don't want this to sound—but not a whole lot because I was already very familiar with the Tower District. I would do basic things like, okay, what street was this on? And since I don't live in the Tower, I just get to visit it, I would ask people on Facebook, okay, what's the best pizza place in the Tower? Things like that. And then of course I did research on the mystery side. I have some connections that I've worked with since my first book series, so there was that. And also, Stephen Carlucci, her cousin, actually is a carryover from the other series. He never gets his own books. He's always kind of a sidekick. I already knew a lot about Roxi's family too, so I didn't have to do a lot of really in-depth research, and through Kings River Life and through my kids being in theater, I had a lot of connections in the local theater scene, so I knew a lot of that. So yeah, not a lot really. Just kind of firming up some facts and stuff.

Debbi: When I think of the Central Valley. I always think of it as the real California in the sense, because so many people kind of equate California with Los Angeles or San Francisco. And to me, the Central Valley was really like the real California, because you had all these just regular people, farmers....

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with three of the four crime writers who've published a novel under the name Lee Anne Post.

Check out our discussion about their novel Thoughts & Prayers.

First, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest is a person of many parts as you can see. I have three-quarters of them with me today. Lee Anne Post is the pen name for co-authors Cathy Baldau, Tara Bell, Ginny Fite and K.P. Robbins. I have three of them with me here today—Cathy, Tara, and Ginny. So, welcome. Stories by these authors have appeared in numerous journals, and individually they're published as well in 10 novels, I believe it is. They've worked as reporters and editors covering various types of topics, and they have written a highly relevant novel that entertains and raises important issues, Thoughts & Prayers. So it is my great pleasure to have with me today, [three of the] four authors who represent the one author Lee Anne Post, the collective author. Thanks guys for being here. This is great.

All: Thanks for having us.

Debbi: Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so glad to have you here. So tell me more about the book Thoughts & Prayers. What is it about?

Ginny: Cathy, you go.

Cathy: I always get this. The author's scariest question is what is it about? Even though you've worked on it for five years. It's basically about an outcast, overprotected girl who unwittingly lets her boyfriend into their school thinking that he's just going to scare a few people, but he ends up bringing a gun and minutes later, 14 people are dead, and then it's her trying to hide her complicity or she's the accomplice. She's trying to hide that from the authorities. And then as the town and the survivors' grief turns to anger and revenge, she's also trying to hide from them as well.

Debbi: My goodness.

Ginny: I think of this book as the Crime and Punishment novel of the 21st Century, and really it's basically Ross Konikoff. That was his name, right? She struggles with this issue of how much her guilt will force her to give away, and whether she can conceal herself in plain sight or not, and whether she should help the authorities or not. It is both character driven and plot driven, which is fairly unusual for a crime novel.

Debbi: You know it's interesting that you bring up that point of complicity because I'm currently working on a story about my attorney character, where she's trying to figure out if she's crossing a similar line. Interesting. Real interesting. What really fascinates me is the fact that you were able to collaborate on this, four of you. How was it that you divided up the work and how was it that you met and formed this group exactly?

Ginny: Tara, you want to give that a go?

Tara: I'll give that a go. We started out as a writing group to begin with, so we knew each other. We had been reading our work for maybe at least five years, I think the four of us. And one day we decided, one of us said, do you want to try writing a book together? Let's try writing a book together. So at first we weren't too sure whether this was a good idea, but we just started. We just began and with our computers in our laps and a whole other way of working, we plotted out a plot, decided that each of us would have two characters. We designed those characters. This was all done maybe in two weeks, I think. We laid this down, this basic story, and that each of us would have two characters and who they were, what their names were, and how they pretty much interrelated with each other. We wanted a community of diversity, and so I took two teens and Cathy has the protagonist Lily, the person that was the accomplice, and Ginny had two characters—a policeman that was involved in it and the father of one of my characters. Anyway, I'll stop, but you get the idea.

So at first we weren't too sure whether this was a good idea, but we just started. We just began and with our computers in our laps and a whole other way of working, we plotted out a plot, decided that each of us would have two characters. We designed those characters.

Ginny: I just want to say the reason Cathy's character Lily became the protagonist is that she missed one of our weekly meetings. We decided while she was not there that Lily was definitely it.

Debbi: Oh my gosh. Wow! This is so fascinating because each of you took a character and created an arc for them then.

All: Yes.

Tara: Yes. Two characters, two character themes.

Ginny: Two characters, and we did that up front. You know, the weird thing about this is we really knew this book even before it existed, and so we knew the character's names almost immediately.

Tara: Yeah, we did

Ginny: With very little movement about those. And then we knew what had to happen for each of them, and so we wrote little character exercises about each of their individual arcs and shared them with each other.

Debbi: Wow!

Ginny: Maybe as juice to get us started.

Debbi: I have got to make an observation here. You said something in your guest post that really resonated with me. You said, "we had to learn how to go from being soloists to members of a chamber orchestra, to blend our understanding, writing styles, language use, pacing and approach to character and storytelling into one harmonious melody." Right away, all I could think was that I was struck by the similarity with the filmmaking process and the screenwriting process. Honestly.

Tara: Yeah.

Debbi: And I thought, wow, this is like a TV writer's room almost in a sense. Seriously.

Ginny: In a way, yes.

Debbi: I was just like, wow, this is fabulous. Fabulous stuff. I'm loving it. Was it difficult at all to adjust to writing collectively?

Ginny: Cath?

Cathy: I think the writing part was easier than the editing part, to be honest. I think the writing part was the fun part. You know, we were all just flying and reading every week. Every week we were reading what we were writing, and then when it came down to the editing process, that's where things got tough because you had to sort of give up a part of your own work to these other three voices to make sure that all these characters, that everything made sense and matched. We did a big timeline. We couldn't write that the character had blue eyes when the character really had green eyes. So there was a lot, and we got down to the micro level of editing too. Every word, basically every sentence was debated. As an author, you're usually flying solo, so you don't have to compromise as much. Well, you don't have to compromise at all, except with your editor, I guess. But we really worked together to make it one voice between the four of us.

As an author, you're usually flying solo, so you don't have to compromise as much. Well, you don't have to compromise at all, except with your editor, I guess. But we really worked together to make it one voice between the four of us.

Debbi: Oh my gosh. Wow! I mean, if any screenwriters are listening, I'm sure a lot of them are thinking, whoa! Well, this is kill your darlings. This is a kill your darlings thing.

Ginny: Oh, definitely. So there were issues about backstory. How much do we put in and how much do we leave out? And many of us, like me, like our backstory, so letting go of that little comfort blanket, sometimes very difficult.

Debbi: But it can also be very freeing.

Ginny: Yes. That too.

Tara: And we all got to know each other's characters really well, too, as we kept working. So in a way, we had that ability to get to know them, even though we still had somewhat control over what we thought about it, and then we would discuss it and see if it went along with everyone. Discuss how we felt that character should feel or say or do, and so it really wasn't ... we didn't have to give up a lot. Sometimes we would compromise or add to our ideas of that character, and it really, in a way was pretty wonderful. I learned a lot about putting a novel together by working with these wonderful writers.

Sometimes we would compromise or add to our ideas of that character, and it really, in a way was pretty wonderful. I learned a lot about putting a novel together by working with these wonderful writers.

Debbi: Collaborating does that, I think. You just learn so much from it. And I love the point you made in the post, your guest post about humor, how it really is appropriate to include humor in heavy material,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Saralyn Richard.

Check out our discussion about her books and the writing life!

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today I have a return guest. I get a few of those now and then. My guest today is the author of the Detective Parrott Mystery series. The latest book in that series is Crystal Blue Murder. I almost wanted to say “Crystal Blue Persuasion”. Yeah, I'm old . Anyway, Crystal Blue Murder was selected as December Read by Women Writers Women's Books. Her second book in that series, A Palette for Love and Murder won the Killer Nashville Silver Falcion Reader's Choice Award in 2021. She's also written books outside the series. Standalones that have either been shortlisted or made the finals in various award contests. I'm pleased to have with me Saralyn Richard. Hi, Saralyn. Glad to have you here today.

Saralyn: Thank you so much for having me. I'm just thrilled to be on.

Debbi: Excellent. Good. I'm thrilled to have you here. So tell me was your title inspired by Breaking Bad?

Saralyn: No, but "Crystal Blue Persuasion" was running through my mind, an earworm during the whole time I was writing the book.

Debbi: Oh my gosh, wow. Because I noticed that the story starts off with a bang in terms of the explosion of a meth lab, I think it is. So what was it that inspired you to write this story?

Saralyn: Well, my series, my Detective Parrott series that started with Murder in the One Percent is set in Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania, and that is a very rural, peaceful, serene, wealthy area west of Philadelphia. And there are a lot of parties that go on there. There are horse activities, equestrian activities. There are artists in the community. You're probably familiar with Andrew Wyeth and his family.

They live in Brandywine Valley and paint there. There are numerous things to do there, and there're just lots of stories waiting to be told. And the first book, Murder in the One Percent takes place with the equestrian crowd at a party. The second book, A Palette for Love and Murder, takes place with the artist community. And this third book takes place, starts off with the burning of a bank barn, and bank barns are prolific throughout Brandywine Valley and really throughout New England. They are, they're structures that are very, very interesting because they were built for functionality into a bank of dirt. It has nothing to do with the money bank. They were built into a bank of dirt so that it's a bi-level barn and it's protective of the animals that might live there. In cold wintertime, it's also convenient to store grain because you can get to the hayloft from the other side so that it's on the first floor. And those structures, because they're so old, have been in disrepair. And so people have societies out in the country trying to preserve the history of this country flavor have taken about renovating them and making them, preserving them for history, for historic purposes. And I've been on tours of these barns and they're just remarkable. They're just fabulous. Some people have turned them into houses and they're like 40,000 square foot houses with tall ceilings, really super high ceilings. You can get a 40 foot Christmas tree in your house.

And this third book takes place, starts off with the burning of a bank barn, and bank barns are prolific throughout Brandywine Valley and really throughout New England. They are, they're structures that are very, very interesting because they were built for functionality into a bank of dirt. It has nothing to do with the money bank.

So anyway, those exist in Brandywine Valley and the dark side of Brandywine Valley is because it's so isolated and remote, it might be a really great place to have a meth lab because people aren't really checking, it's sort of live and let live, and no one would really suspect that there could be a meth lab in one of these bank barns. So that's what gave me the idea for the story. And Detective Parrott is on it from the call that he gets in the middle of the night to come to the bank barn where there's a fire and he goes through all the toxic work to extinguish that fire with the fire department and look for clues and they find a body in that barn. So that's how the book starts.

Debbi: Well, that's fascinating. I'd never even heard of bank barns before this. So they sound like remarkable structures.

Saralyn: They are. I have a book here. There are many, many books that have been written about bank barns that I did research using these books and authors, but I've also been on tours of bank barns and they're just really remarkable. So it's good. I love to read books where you learn something new and I like to write books where I'm able to convey something new, also.

Debbi: I was going to say, this is definitely a book where you learn something new. Let's see. You also, I noticed in reviews of your work that people will remark on how great your characters are, how much they love them. What is it that you do to create characters that are so relatable that people want to follow them?

Saralyn: I have this philosophy about people that there's no one who's entirely bad and there's no one who's entirely good. And I've seen this throughout my years as an educator. Even the worst acting child in a school has some redeeming qualities, has some motivation that makes him act out something that can be addressed. And so I try to carry that over in my writing, and I think that that's one factor. And the other is that my characters really come to me first. My story revolves around the characters instead of the other way around. And before I even have a plot at all in mind, I have interesting people that are ready to populate the story, and I talk to them, I listen to them and they, they're with me the whole time that I'm writing. And then afterwards too, I never lose my characters. They're always, they're like my friends, imaginary friends, but friends.

I have this philosophy about people that there's no one who's entirely bad and there's no one who's entirely good. And I've seen this throughout my years as an educator. Even the worst acting child in a school has some redeeming qualities, has some motivation that makes him act out something that can be addressed.

Debbi: I can relate with that. Yeah, I understand. Well, that and the song, "Crystal Blue Persuasion" ,. What an earworm. Let's see. You must have done a lot of research for this too, I assume.

Saralyn: I didn't know too much about that. And I didn't know that much about the procedures for containing it and how dangerous it is. And there's some other things that happen in this book also that required a lot of research and really all of my books, with the exception of the one that takes place in an inner city school because I really lived that life myself for a lot of years. That one did not require a lot of research, but all the rest of them really do. And research is one of my favorite parts about writing a book because I love meeting people. I love talking to people. I love learning new things, and I love the interactive part of research, and I want my books to be authentic. If they're not, someone is going to call you on every little detail that is inauthentic. And so I really spend the time doing the research ahead of time so that I know that or I'm confident that my stories will read true.

Debbi: I have a funny feeling that's the constant worry of every fiction writer out there, , that somehow we're going to get the details wrong. Let's see. What are you working on now?

Saralyn: Actually, I'm working on the next Detective Parrott book, which is an anomaly for me because what I usually do is write a Parrott book and a standalone, a Parrott book and a standalone, because I don't want to burn out Parrott and I don't want to burn out myself on writing these same characters, the same setting and so on. But the reason that I broke that pattern this time is that I have a fantastic story, and the story just ripped me, the characters in the story. And I thought, I can't wait to do this one. I have to do this one now. So I don't have a title for it yet. I'm just about maybe one-fourth of the way through reading, through writing it, the first draft. But it's an incredible story and I'm very excited about it.

...

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Willa C. Richards.

We talk about her debut novel The Comfort of Monsters, Milwaukee, and more!

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and other publications. She's also the recipient of a 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers, and her novel is called The Comfort of Monsters, and it's very good. I've read it and reviewed it and loved it. It's my pleasure to have with me Willa C. Richards. Hey Willa, how are you doing today?

Willa: Good. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on.

Debbi: Excellent. Well, I'm glad you're here. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk to you, because I really did love your book. I thought it was great, and it touches on so many issues. I was listening to an old review I did of the book, trying to get back in touch with the issues that really stuck out for me. And it was like, wow! I'd forgotten just how complex and wonderful this book was.

Willa: Well, thank you for saying that.

Debbi: Oh, well, I mean it honestly. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. So, tell us about the book and what inspired you to write it.

Willa: Yeah, I started working on the book because of a project I was actually working on with my mother. My mom is a historic archeologist. Both my parents are archeologists, but my mother in particular is a historic archeologist. She works in mostly in cemeteries, and her sort of life's project is working in a cemetery in Milwaukee, a pauper cemetery that was run by the city and then sort of forgotten and then ran into all of these sort of issues with construction and new development where they had sort of forgotten that these people were buried there. So my mom was tasked with excavating these graves and removing them from an area where they were in danger of being destroyed, so that's sort of her life's project. She got a call from a family—I believe this was in 2018—asking if she would excavate an area of the cemetery for them because they believed that their loved one was buried there, a recent burial, not a historic burial. And the reason that they believed this was based on a tip from a psychic.

She did agree to work with them to excavate the area where they believed this woman—it was a young woman who had gone missing in the ‘80s—she agreed to work with this family and I volunteered on that project as well, and that was sort of the seed that really started the entire novel for me, just thinking about the space that that family was in, that they had been in and the work that they potentially did with a psychic to come to that place in the Milwaukee Poor Farm cemetery to try to find her.

Debbi: Wow. So much of that is reflected in your book and it's fascinating that your mother had that particular profession, and that you got involved through your mother's profession.

Willa: My whole family was really around my parents' work from a very young age. We grew up on archeological sites, so we were sort of always involved in their work in a very intimate way, I guess you would say. And then as we got older, some of us did field schools and we started learning how to do archeology as well, so we would work for them during the summers. As a writer, it was an amazing experience. All of the different projects I worked on were just amazing experiences, and I've written a lot about archeology. I have a couple other short stories that also feature archeologists as the protagonists.

My whole family was really around my parents' work from a very young age. We grew up on archeological sites, so we were sort of always involved in their work in a very intimate way, I guess you would say. ... As a writer, it was an amazing experience.

Debbi: Fascinating. Let's see. Your story is set in Milwaukee in three different time periods, correct, as I recall?

Willa: Mostly two. Yeah.

Debbi: Mostly two. And there's a focus on the Dahmer summer and the...

Willa: Correct.

Debbi: So what were your reasons for choosing that location and those times?

Willa: I'm from Milwaukee. My whole family is from there. I have a pretty loving relationship with the city, and it's a city that I don't often see reflected in contemporary literature or anywhere else, even pop culture. There's a few things that showcase Wisconsin, but it's usually like North Woods stuff. So yeah, I knew I wanted to set my first book in Milwaukee since it was my hometown. The way that the Dahmer material entered the book was because I was really thinking a lot about cold cases and why some cases become so intractably unsolved. I was thinking about the different reasons for these, and one of the things that occurred to me was that you have resources, law enforcement resources, and sometimes "smaller" cases get subsumed by these larger ones. And when I was thinking about the history of Milwaukee, one of the biggest cases in the city's history was the Dahmer crimes, and this sort of completely subsumed law enforcement, media, political people, everyone. So I thought it would be really interesting to try to juxtapose a made-up crime with this very real crime and sort of see what kinds of sparks and connections sort of happened in that space.

I'm from Milwaukee. My whole family is from there. I have a pretty loving relationship with the city, and it's a city that I don't often see reflected in contemporary literature or anywhere else, even pop culture.

Debbi: You do that very effectively. When you were writing each story time period, did you write them separately and then put them together, or did you write each part sequentially and keep track of it on separate … whatever?

Willa: Whatever. It was a little bit of whatever. Yes, it was definitely a little bit of whatever. I did start by writing them separately, chronologically, so I did all of the early sections first. I started in '91 and just wrote that section through, and then I wrote the second part—the 2019 section—chronologically from beginning to end. The original shape of the book actually was a Part One, Part Two where those sections came one right after the other. I submitted that version to my agent and she just really wasn't sold on the structure, so we talked about different ways of creating more tension, especially in that 2019 section. It was her idea actually to try to weave the two together, which I was initially incredibly disappointed, and the task seemed very daunting to weave those two together. I mean, you're a writer. As you know, once you've written, there's so many small details that you then need to think about like have I introduced this person yet? What is the first detail? But once I sat down and did it, I realized that it was really strengthening both sections to match them up like that. And then from there, I sort of added in things that needed to be added in, and that's kind of where the whatever part came in.

I did start by writing them separately, chronologically, so I did all of the early sections first. I started in '91 and just wrote that section through, and then I wrote the second part—the 2019 section—chronologically from beginning to end.

Debbi: Well, you do. It's really a fabulous job I thought, putting that all together. How much research did you do for the book and what was the process like?

Willa: I did a lot of research. I did a lot of very early research, and then I did a lot of research that was a little bit more targeted and specific to what I needed in the moment when I was writing. But the first part was definitely just kind of deep dive into the basics of the Dahmer case, and I really wanted to know beyond just sort of the pop culture narrative. We all have kind of the ideas of what's portrayed in various movies, journalism especially. But I was interested just to hear what the nuts and bolts of the case was, especially because I was one [year old] at the time, so I didn't really have any experience of it. So I went about that in two ways. I did go back to a lot of the journalism, both mainstream journalism, but then also some of the counterculture newspapers at the time. So mostly the gay newspapers that were reporting on it....

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Michael Hearns.

Join us for a discussion of his Cade Taylor series and his other work as a technical consultant and movie producer.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today my guest is a Miami native who spent 27 years working as a South Florida police officer and detective. For a decade, he worked undercover investigating large-scale cocaine trafficking and high volume money laundering cases. He worked with multiple police and federal agencies and is a certified DEA instructor. He also has a Master's degree in Investigative Criminal Psychology. He has worked and consulted on multiple serial offender homicide cases, and since his retirement from law enforcement, he's worked as a technical advisor in film and television.

He is also a movie producer and an adjunct professor at multiple universities within the US, and he is the author of the Cade Taylor series of books, which I'm told is a completely new genre in the detective fiction realm—Dark Tropics. We're going to have to talk about that. It's my pleasure to introduce Michael Hearns. Michael, thank you for being here today. Thank you so much.

Michael: No, Debbi. Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here to get a chance to meet you.

Debbi: Excellent. Well, it's great to meet you. So tell me about this Michael Cade. He sounds like an interesting character. He seems to be in a kind of a class all of his own with this weird agency or whatever he's with. Tell me about the fiction that you write in this series about him.

Michael: Yes. The fiction I write is based on a fictional character named Cade Taylor. He's a detective in Miami. He's assigned to the Vice Intelligence and Narcotic unit, which is kind of a covert undercover operation, and the first book I wrote was called Trust No One. That came out in 2020, and then that was quickly followed up by Grasping Smoke: A Cade Taylor Novel in 2021, and then last year we had One More Move. And basically these books chronicle the exploits of Cade Taylor as he tries to maneuver through some very sticky and unexpected circumstances involved in working in narcotics and money laundering, dealing with the Cali Cartel and Medellin Cartel. Also, just some nefarious subjects and people and things in Miami, which we oftentimes refer to as a sunny place for shady people. So, Cade Taylor has learned to thrive and navigate in that system, and the books chronicle Cade Taylor as he works on these different cases.

Debbi: Was there something in particular that inspired you to write about this particular protagonist?

[M]any people had asked me about writing a book myself, and I think they actually wanted me to do a tell-all, and I just didn't feel comfortable with that. So based on my work experience and my knowledge of that world, I was able to create this character Cade Taylor, and what I've tried to do with these books is bring a high level of authenticity and a high level of realism to the series.

Michael: Well, one of the things that came to me was, many people had asked me about writing a book myself, and I think they actually wanted me to do a tell-all, and I just didn't feel comfortable with that. So based on my work experience and my knowledge of that world, I was able to create this character Cade Taylor, and what I've tried to do with these books is bring a high level of authenticity and a high level of realism to the series in the three books that have been written so far, where we see a lot of things that the average reader and/or even person in the visual arts, TV or movie doesn't see or know. It's a whole different world. It's a whole different aspect of law enforcement that many people don't understand or are exposed to. So through the tone of these tales, I'm able to give the readers hopefully a very good compelling story, characters that resonate with them as well, but also bring them into the nuances of what that world is like.

Debbi: I assume that a lot of your background feeds into this fiction. Would that be correct?

Michael: Yeah, yeah. There are a few people who know me who will call me on the phone or send me a message or something and they'll say “Hey, I'm reading Trust No One, or I'm reading One More Move or Grasping Smoke”. And they'll say “I'm on page 210”, and I don't know what that means. So I say, you have to tell me what's going on. And then they'll say, “Oh, you just did this and you just did that”. And I'll say, that's just not me. It's Cade Taylor. They're like, “Yeah, yeah, I know it's you.” But the reality is it is Cade Taylor. It is a fictional character. The characters are fictional, but everything going on around them is authentic.

When I write these books, I actually do a lot of research. There's a lot of checking tidal charts, moon phases. When they order something from a restaurant, it actually comes from the actual menu of the restaurant. The streets they drive on, the places they go are true, actual places. So it's almost as if while you were living your life, you're getting a very spy-optic view of these individuals—most notably Cade Taylor—as they are going through their exploits all the while amongst you. You weren't just aware of it.

Debbi: You know, I wanted to ask you about research, because I was going to say you spent 27 years working in this field, but you need to do additional research to write these books, correct?

Michael: Yeah. I mean, research is never going to hurt you. From some of the work I've done post-retirement, I feel like the audience is a lot more sophisticated than we give them credit for sometimes as authors. They really do understand weaponry. They understand a lot about the geography. These books are set in Miami, but even though you may not live in Miami, it's still a city that most people have either visited or passed through. And many people have a clear understanding of tactics, although they're not tactical, maybe. So these books kind of bring in an aspect of tactics and technology and authenticity with them.

From some of the work I've done post-retirement, I feel like the audience is a lot more sophisticated than we give them credit for sometimes as authors.

In this book, I don't have them drive down Elm Street and make a right on Maple Street and make a left on Birch Street. The streets stay where we're on; the doors they walk through, the doors they walk out of are real doors. They are real places. So I think for many people who live in New York City, live in Miami, live in Los Angeles, when they see television shows filmed in their cities, they sometimes put their palms on their forehead and close their eyes and wince in pain because they recognize that they were just in the Bronx and now they're in Brooklyn, or whatever the case may be. I try to be very geographically accurate and very chronologically accurate with the books.

Debbi: You know, it's funny. When I think of South Florida, I think of a few things related to crime and its depiction on television. I think of Dexter, I think of Miami Vice and I think of Carl Hiaasen. Where do you sit in this grand scheme of South Florida crime?

Michael: South Florida is my hometown. I was born and raised there, and it's amazing how we all have rubbed elbows with each other. I've had conversations with Carl Hiaasen. I've been on the set of Miami Vice in their early days. I worked for the actual real Miami Vice, and I remember when Dexter first came out, when Jeffrey first wrote it. We all kind of bounce around each other a little bit, and it truthfully is an entity unto itself. It's the only part of America or North America that's subtropical, and it's the end of the earth basically. People come down and they don't go back up again. They've already seen what's behind them. They're not going to go back up. I lived in Richmond, I lived in Raleigh, I lived in Roanoke. I'm not going back. I'm staying here. And they come down and it's very transactional and people and things, they learn to groove and move on a different beat.

We all kind of bounce around each other a little bit, and it truthfully is an entity unto itself. It's the only part of America or North America that's subtropical, and it's the end of the earth basically. People come down and they don't go back up again.

We are a peninsula; we're surrounded by water, and there's lots of things that come in on the air and come in on the water....

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Lynn Slaughter.

Check out our discussion about her crime writing and her young adult fiction.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today had a long career as a professional dancer and dance educator before becoming a fiction writer. The recipient of many writing awards, her latest book is a young adult crime novel called DEADLY SETUP, and her first mystery for adults, MISSED CUE, will be released this summer. It's my pleasure to introduce my guest, Lynn Slaughter. Hi Lynn. Thanks for being here with us.

Lynn (01:26): Hi, Debbi. Great to be with you.

Debbi (01:29): I'm so glad you're here, and I'm so glad we were able to connect.

Lynn (01:33): Yes, that had a set of challenges.

Debbi (01:37): Yes. Love your Christmas lights in the background.

Lynn (01:41): Oh, well, thank you.

Debbi (01:43): Yeah, they're so pretty, so nice. Let's see. I noticed on your website that you mentioned that you particularly enjoyed teaching teenagers to dance. I sense a kind of natural affinity perhaps for teenagers, and was this what led you to write to young adult and coming of age books?

Lynn (02:05): Excellent question. Definitely. I think that fed right into it, Debbi. Teenagers have always been my favorite age group to work with. I taught at a performing arts high school, and I also spent seven summers as the counselor at a residential program for teens who are gifted in the arts. So that was a pretty major experience for me. And in addition to that, I just always loved young adult literature. I read books that were young adult books way into adulthood, and have always loved that literature. So probably a combination of all those things.

Teenagers have always been my favorite age group to work with. I taught at a performing arts high school, and I also spent seven summers as the counselor at a residential program for teens who are gifted in the arts.

Debbi (02:50): Yeah, same here. I think that young adult literature appeals to people of all ages, frankly.

Lynn (02:58): Yes. You know, it's interesting because research has shown that over half the people who are buying young adult books are actually adults, and of those close to 80% are actually buying them for themselves. So this morning I got a call from someone who I hadn't heard from in years and years who said, oh, I just love this book of yours that I just read. Well, she's 85, so I was reminded again that, yes, young adult is not just for young adults, so.

You know, it's interesting because research has shown that over half the people who are buying young adult books are actually adults, and of those close to 80% are actually buying them for themselves.

Debbi (03:39): Absolutely, yes. So tell us about DEADLY SETUP. What inspired you to write this story?

Lynn (03:47): Well first off, the story is about a young woman who is a daughter of a New England heiress, and her life really implodes when she gets accused and goes on trial for the murder of her mother's fiance. She is very sure that someone has set her up for this, but she doesn't know who. And of course, she's determined to prove her innocence and uncover the identity of the real culprit. But the story isn't just about that, like all mysteries, it's about more than that. And this character is having a lot of challenges in her life. She has a very difficult mother-daughter relationship. Her mom is really not there for her emotionally or in terms of acceptance and support and even just basic interest. And that's very hard on her, and she is missing, I think, having a sense of family. So what inspired that was actually growing up in a very wealthy community in Connecticut, Greenwich, Connecticut. I lived there between sixth grade and 12th grade. And whereas my family lived in a pretty modest apartment in the downtown area, I hung out with all of these kids who lived in mansions and had every possible material advantage. But many of them actually had parents who were more or less missing an action. Their parents were involved in a lot of stuff other than parenting their children. And looking back, I didn't know what it was called at the time, but looking back, they were emotionally neglected.

[S]he's determined to prove her innocence and uncover the identity of the real culprit. But the story isn't just about that, like all mysteries, it's about more than that. And this character is having a lot of challenges in her life.

(06:00): So I think to some extent, that inspired this. The other thing that inspired the premise of this novel was that many, many years ago, an actress named Lana Turner had a daughter named Cheryl Crane, who was accused of shooting her mother's boyfriend. And this was splashed all over the movie magazines and the tablets. This, of course, was way before the internet. And that story stuck with me and I'm sure was in the back of my mind of, oh my goodness that would be something for a family to go through. So those are a couple of the things that inspired DEADLY SETUP.

Debbi (06:47): That's really interesting. What struck me when I started reading your book was how much a parent, their lifestyle choices can affect a child, sometimes to devastating effect.

Lynn (07:02): Yes, yes. I think that that's true. I really do.

Debbi (07:06): Mmm.

Lynn (07:07): One of the things about DEADLY SETUP is that this character falls in love for the first time, and her boyfriend actually has a very supportive family. So she keeps going over to his house, and she becomes terribly aware of the lack of genuine family at her house in part because she's seeing what a supportive family looks like.

Debbi (07:42): Yeah. Yes, indeed. What do you think are some of the key differences between writing for young adult for that category and writing adult?

Lynn (07:55): Oh, holy guacamole. That is such a hard question. You know that Michael Cart, who is an expert on young adult literature, wrote a book about it, and he says that defining young adult fiction is about as easy as nailing jello to a wall,

(08:15): How he describes it. So I think it's very difficult. I do think that young adult literature has a very common theme of coming of age, that the character during the story is literally growing up and is trying to deal with some of these really big issues that you go through during adolescence of defining, gee, who do I think I am? Who do I wanna be? Where do I wanna go? How am I the same? And how am I different from my parents or my peers? So it's a very intense, intense period of life, and it has a lot of angst in it. It has a lot of joy, a lot of humor, but also a lot of angst. Young adult literature is written from the point of view of a teenage protagonist. So if you're going to write young adult, it's very important to try to get it into the headset and the mind and the feelings of a teenager. If you are writing from the perspective of an adult looking back at your youth, then you're writing adult fiction. So that's one of the differences.

I do think that young adult literature has a very common theme of coming of age, that the character during the story is literally growing up and is trying to deal with some of these really big issues that you go through during adolescence of defining, gee, who do I think I am? Who do I wanna be? Where do I wanna go?

(09:43): But this spring, for example, I have an adult mystery coming out, and those issues are just different because the protagonist is at a developmentally much different stage of life. She's already in a career, she's in a relationship. She's trying, of course, to sort out her life and next steps, but it's very different than being a teenager. So that's some of the differences. But in terms of subject matter, I think used to be that people would say, oh, when you're writing for young people, this subject or that subject would be off the table. That's no longer true. Our young people are exposed to everything, especially with the internet and [crosstalk]. So isn't a lot of difference in that way. And I just think too, that there's a lot of crossover. And sometimes I honestly think it's a marketing decision in terms of, oh, is this going to be a young adult book? Or is this going to be a new adult book or an adult book? So it's hard to define.

Debbi (11:13): Yes, yes, I agree. So what was it that prompted you to write MISSED CUE?...

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Tessa Lunney.

Check out our discussion about her Kiki Button series set in 1920s Paris, and experiencing the joys of bohemian living, if only vicariously. :)

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Today it's my pleasure to have with me an author who writes about a bohemian woman with a mission in Paris during the 1920s. Her protagonist is Kiki Button and her latest novel is Autumn Leaves. Along with her fiction, she writes poetry and reviews. I'm pleased to introduce Tessa Lunney here today. Hi, Tessa. Thanks for being with us today.

Tessa (01:22): Hi, Debbi. It's a pleasure.

Debbi (01:23): Wonderful to have you on. Thank you for being here. And I loved your book, by the way. I still have to review it. I feel real bad about that, but it was a very enjoyable book. Tell us about Kiki Button and your series.

Tessa (01:41): Yeah, sure. So Kiki Button, the book is set in the early 1920s in Paris. So the first book was April in Paris, 1921, and the second book is Autumn Leaves, 1922. Kiki Button is an Australian expat. She was a nurse in the Great War but doesn't want to live in Australia anymore. She wants a life of greater freedom, adventure and fun really. So she runs away back to Paris, which she had come to know during the war. In Paris, she meets up with the friends that she'd made during that time. Friends from Australia such as Maisie, who was another nurse, as well as friends from the British Army such as Bertie. When she's in Paris, she works as a gossip columnist for a London magazine reporting on all the fabulous celebrity and aristocratic goss that was going on in Paris at the time. But secretly, she's also a very reluctant but very capable spy.

(02:46): She had been recruited during the war by her archnemesis, the nefarious head surgeon, Dr. Fox. And Dr. Fox finds her again after the war. He's still working for the British government and he's going to make sure that Kiki works for him. So that's who Kiki is. She's a very lively vibrant person who is also quite straightforward about the problems that she carries with her from the war and from what she did and how that affects her day-to-day life. She's enormous fun to write and sometimes I feel that she just writes herself. I can hear her speaking in my head.

Debbi (03:30): That's wonderful.

Tessa (03:33): Especially her clothes. Yeah, it is. It's good fun. Especially her clothes and her shoes and her parties. These are super, super great. So the series has two books in it at the moment, and the first one is when she arrives first back in Paris after deciding she wants to leave Australia. The second one is when she returns to Paris after being in Australia for a year after the death of her mother. So they're sort of different in tone. She's still the same vibrant woman, but the first one is just pure joy. And the second one is a little deeper, is a little deeper, a little heavier.

(04:17): I think of them as in the sort of the Paris book subgenre, if you know what I mean. So there are, there're sort of mystery, spy thriller, I call them a sexy spy thriller set in the 1920s. But there's also a lot of romance and there's also a lot of Paris in them, even though she does go to London and she does go to Rome and she does go to other places. Paris is the city of her heart, and the books really focus on it as a place as it might have been in the 1920s, especially in expat Montparnasse.

I think of them as in the sort of the Paris book subgenre, if you know what I mean. So there are, there're sort of mystery, spy thriller, I call them a sexy spy thriller set in the 1920s.

Debbi (04:52): Yeah, I was really impressed with the job you did describing the ambiance Paris in the 1920s. How much research did that require?

Tessa (05:06): A lot. A lot. But I did it. I did it, out of pure joy. In 2008, I read a book called Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson. Virginia. Nicholson is Virginia Woolf's grandniece, Vanessa Bell's granddaughter, and her book Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900 - 1939. This book actually, here we are for your YouTube people

Debbi (05:33): Love that cover.

Tessa (05:35): Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's a, yeah, it's beautiful. And what it is is it's about bohemian life in England, particularly London in the first part of the 20th century, but not the talking about these people's work, but talking about their life, how being bohemian was a whole of life exercise. And so the chapters are on money, food, clothes, how to bring up children, travel parties. And I was really looking for a template for how to, not just how to write as a skill, but how to create a life where writing could be at its heart, however successful or not that I was. And this was a template, like a guide, like a Bible. It showed all these people in London, some I'd heard of like Virginia Woolff, but lots that just failed really in their artistic endeavors, but live so gloriously and in the process of their living really contributed a lot to the way art was made and the way we thought about especially women and art and what women's work was.

I was really looking for a template for how to, not just how to write as a skill, but how to create a life where writing could be at its heart, however successful or not that I was. And this was a template, like a guide, like a Bible.

(06:47): So this started my obsession with the 1920s. So even though it covers a much larger period, the 1920s was a real boom time after the war. And so I just went through her backlist and I started reading her backlist and I read her book again and I read more of her backlist. And I've read The Great Gatsby, of course. Oh yes. 10 times. This is my very old copy. I really refuse to read another edition even though there are millions. But I need this picture. I know George Horning and Hua, sorry, George Horning and Huna for the pictures from 1930. But it is beautiful. And then I found A Movable Feast. Anyway, and I read this multiple, I've read that one multiple times. So when I was writing the first one, I'd already been reading about the 1920s for about a decade. I'd done, I'd completed a doctorate in war fiction as well.

(07:45): So when I was too tired to read about battles or war trauma, I'd read about the 1920s because it had so much post-war information, I guess, but it was a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun. So yeah, I'd been reading for about a decade, and then when I started writing, I had a lot of the information already. And then I just had to do very particular bits of research. For the second one, I had to do more research, partly because I didn't know what was happening precisely in 1922, but also because I have attached the main plot point to something that's happening politically in Europe at that time. And it was quite an unstable time after the war when the Austria-Hungarian Empire had collapsed, the German empire collapsed. The Russian Empire had ceased to exist, and it was Bolshevik Russia and a Civil War, the tail end of the Civil War. So I also had to do research around what was happening politically in Europe around then. And so I could tie that into the spy plot.

So when I was too tired to read about battles or war trauma, I'd read about the 1920s because it had so much post-war information, I guess, but it was a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun.

Debbi (08:58): It's fascinating.

Tessa (09:00): I mean, it's so much fun to read about that time. So exciting.

Debbi (09:04): Oh my gosh, yes. Wow. Was there anybody, anything in particular that inspired you to create this particular protagonist in this situation?

Tessa (09:18): Not one thing. It was lots of things. Lots of things. So I, as I said, I completed a doctorate in war fiction, which had a basis in trauma theory. And I read a lot about war trauma. And after I completed that, I really wanted to write something a bit lighter, a bit more fun, not completely away from the war trauma idea, but away from the war. So that was one thing. Another thing was that I was pregnant when I wrote the first one. And I was reading a lot of crime because I was pregnant and a lot of romance. And I wanted something that had a little less violence than in it than most crime because I was so pregnant and very sensitive to what was going on

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Barry Finlay.

Check out our discussion of the Marcie Kane thriller series and his latest work, the Jake Scott mysteries.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi (00:12): Hi everyone. My guest today has written fiction and nonfiction. Among his achievements, he's climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his son and written a book about it called Mount Kilimanjaro and Beyond: A Life-Changing Journey. I love that title. He's also written a travel memoir called I Guess We Missed the Boat. In 2014, he began work on his Marcie Kane thriller collection consisting of five books. He recently released a second in a new series of books, I assume it's a series, featuring his protagonist Jake Scott. Among his many accolades, he's received the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal for Philanthropy. Impressive. I'm pleased to have with me Barry Finlay. Hi Barry. How are you doing today?

Barry (01:49): I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Debbi (01:51): Fine, thank you. It's great to have you on. Thank you for being here.

Barry (01:55): Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Debbi (01:57): Oh, I'm glad. I'm thankful that you could wait to be on . I have people on the waiting list now. It's so ridiculous. I can't believe it.

Barry (02:06): Yeah, I think I booked in March, I think.

Debbi (02:09): Yeah. Well, that's doing relatively well compared to some people. Yeah, he would not believe so. Tell us about Jake Scott and why you decided to write a series about him.

Barry (02:22): Well, Jake Scott is kind of an old-fashioned, affable, easygoing individual. He is a former reporter and he stumbles across crimes that he just can't resist poking his nose into and trying to find out what happened. It's a mystery series. The first one's called Searching for Truth, and I decided to write this one. I wrote another series first called the Marcie Kane Thriller Collection, and the first book in that series, The Vanishing Wife had a protagonist called Mason Scott. And Mason Scott was an easygoing accountant, and I kinda liked the character, but I also had a character in the first book called Marcie Kane. And so I had a choice of continuing on with Marcie or continue on with Jake, and I decided to continue on with Marcie, but at the same time, I really like Jake. So after writing five books in the Marcie Kane thriller collection, I kind of reinvented sorry, I let, the guy's name was Mason Seaforth in the Marcie Kane series, and I kind of liked that character, and so I turned him into Jake Scott in the Jake Scott series, and so here we are.

Jake Scott is kind of an old-fashioned, affable, easygoing individual. He is a former reporter and he stumbles across crimes that he just can't resist poking his nose into and trying to find out what happened.

Debbi (03:41): Fascinating. I was going to say it's interesting that you started out with a series of five books about Marcie Kane, but actually they were about somebody else, but they ended up being about Marcie Kane.

Barry (03:53): Exactly. That's exactly right.

Debbi (03:55): Wow, so that doesn't sound like you did a lot of planning as far as what you were going to write for the rest of the books. I guess the first one.

Barry (04:04): Yeah, I'm not a plotter or a planner. I know there are plotters, there are pantsers, and I guess I'm a seat of the pants kind of guy. I do plot ahead a chapter or two. I at least work it out in my head but I don't plan the whole series or anything like that. I'll let the characters take me where they will.

I'm not a plotter or a planner. I know there are plotters, there are pantsers, and I guess I'm a seat of the pants kind of guy. I do plot ahead a chapter or two.

Debbi (04:29): Well, I really admire people who just do that, who just wing it because I have to plan a little bit when I write a novel. It's just the way I am, I guess.

Barry (04:40): Well, it's interesting, cause I saw Jeffery Deaver speak once and he said he plots about 250 pages before he starts to actually write the book. So he basically got the book and then he just fills in the blanks, I guess. And I give a lot of credit to somebody that can do that.

Debbi (04:59): I do too, because I can't. I have to plot very, very sketchily.

Barry (05:06): Yeah. Yeah. Just not me.

Debbi (05:08): No, I could not possibly write the detailed outlines that some people do. I find that absolutely remarkable. It's like, why don't you just write the book then?

Barry (05:16): Exactly. I guess they never have writer's block.

Debbi (05:19): I don't know. All I know is I like having a certain amount of surprise in my plots. And if they occur to me while I'm writing them, all the better.

Barry (05:32): Yeah. I honestly don't know--

I honestly don't know how the books are going to end until I get close to the end and the characters take me where they wanna go. And I'm always surprised too, so that's part of the enjoyment for me.

Debbi (05:33): I could plan a certain way, but yeah, go ahead.

Barry (05:36): I honestly don't know how the books are going to end until I get close to the end and the characters take me where they wanna go. And I'm always surprised too, so that's part of the enjoyment for me.

Debbi (05:52): Absolutely. That's so true. Yeah. Most of the time I feel like I know where I'm going with the end, but sometimes the end will surprise me.

Barry (06:01): Yeah.

Debbi (06:02): At the end, you'd think that's a good sign.

Barry (06:05): I think so.

Debbi (06:07): I think so too. Yeah. When you wrote the thrillers how did they differ or do they differ from the mystery series you're working on?

Barry (06:19): I think there's more action in the thrillers. The mysteries in my mind are a little more character driven, so there's a little more relationship development and that kind of thing. And the mysteries hopefully people, the readers won't be able to figure them out until they actually get to the end. Whereas the thrillers everybody knows who done it pretty early in the book, and it's just a matter of dealing with those people.

I think there's more action in the thrillers. The mysteries in my mind are a little more character driven, so there's a little more relationship development and that kind of thing.

Debbi (06:51): So they are very definitely thrillers as opposed to mysteries?

Barry (06:55): In my mind. Yeah, there's a clear distinction in my mind between the two.

Debbi (06:59): There definitely is. Yeah. So are you currently working on the next Jake Scott?

Barry (07:08): They percolate for a while. After I finish one I, it's kind of rolling around in my head, I guess, and I'm coming up with different ideas, but right now I'm focusing on marketing and promotion and that seems to take a tremendous amount of time. So I'll probably start writing after Christmas and see where it goes.

Debbi (07:31): It does seem to take a tremendous amount of time, doesn't it?

Barry (07:34): Yeah. When people ask about writing a book, I always warn them about the marketing promotion aspect. It's very time consuming.

Debbi (07:45): It is. And I don't think people really appreciate just how much work it is.

Barry (07:50): Oh, I don't think so either.

Debbi (07:52): I think a certain picture has been painted by certain people of what writing is like, which it is not at all.

Barry (07:59): No, no. I guess if you're with a traditional publisher, a big name traditional publisher, and you have a big name, then you can spend all your time writing. But for the rest of us, it's a lot of work. Doing the promotion and marketing

Debbi (08:15): And having that big name publisher does not always work out so well for the smaller, less well known authors, that's for sure. Well, we won't go there, though. Let's see. Where do you set your books? Are they all in Canada?

Barry (08:35): The thriller series? Marcie Kane lives in Florida, but I do bring her back to Canada somehow. So there's a Canadian element in, I think pretty well all of them but some of them are international as well. For example, A Perilous Question is about human trafficking, and it starts in Africa, and it's actually based on a question I was asked when we were in Africa. We were touring an orphanage, and one of the girls took me on the tour and one took my wife and another girl took somebody else. And at the end of my tour, the girl said to me,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Chip Jacobs.

Check out our discussion of his true crime story, The Darkest Glare, as well as his debut novel, Arroyo.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog.

Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.

Debbi (00:55): Hi, everyone. Today I'm pleased to have with me as my guest, a bestselling author and journalist. I love journalists, by the way, since I was a journalism major. Yes, I was .

Chip (01:08): Me, too,

Debbi (01:09): All right. All right. His latest book is a true crime story. It is the latest, right? It's called The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles. I've read it and it is quite the bizarre story. He has written several other books, including Strange as It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahlar, The People's Republic of Chemicals, the international bestseller, Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. I love these titles. Anyway, more recently he released his debut novel Arroyo, a work of serialized, I’m sorry, a work of historical fiction set around the construction of Pasadena's mysterious Colorado Street Bridge, which really intrigued me. I had to look that up. He's also worked as a reporter and written opinion pieces for a variety of major newspapers, including the LA Times, the New York Times, CNN, and several others. It's my pleasure to introduce Chip Jacobs. Hey Chip, how are you doing today?

Chip (02:27): Hey. Hey, Debbi. Honored to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.

Debbi (02:31): Oh, well It's my pleasure, believe me. Very happy to have you on. And so tell me, talk about how you ended up writing The Darkest Glare which was written a bit like a thriller with this absolutely psychotic villain in there. How did you learn about the story and what interested you in writing it as a book?

Chip (02:58): Yeah, I mean, I will never be called a true crime author cuz I'm not a true crime author. When I went into journalism I always tried to avoid getting assigned a crime story or active murder case or whatever, because that just wasn't in my DNA. And nonetheless, stories will find you. And in the mid nineties I was working at a newspaper competitor to the LA Times, having a blast getting under people's skin. And I developed a relationship with a source who just gave me tip after tip after tip, and he just had the highest batting average and he was always getting me above the fold on front page stories. And it was fantastic. I left journalism to work my first book biography but I was still freelancing and one day, true story, late nineties walking down Hollywood Boulevard, which back then and still now kinda looks like a Star Wars bar in terms of characters, and some moments in your life crystallize.

When I went into journalism I always tried to avoid getting assigned a crime story or active murder case or whatever, because that just wasn't in my DNA. And nonetheless, stories will find you.

(04:07): We just passed a homeless guy carrying a banjo and Jerry Stasi on the sidewalk, this is the protagonist of the book, Jerry Schneiderman, and says, did I ever tell you--because we developed some trust--that I had a double murderer chasing me? And he goes, yeah, my ex-wife thinks it killed the old me. And I thought he was just trying to impress me. It was braggadocio maybe. Maybe there was a little something there, but almost yanking my chain. Turned out not only was he being accurate, he was understating how really evil and devastating the crime was that he got sucked into in 1979 Los Angeles, which was a very dark period in American history. I don't know if it's as dark as now, but murders were high. We were fighting with each other. America seemed on decline. We were, there's huge gas station lines and stagflation.

(05:07): The murder rate was so scary. It was fueling quote-unquote white flight, alarm sales, gun purchases. It was almost a battle. And my source back then was a brilliant space planner dealing with trying to grow the business too much because they had been talked into it by a very debonnaire partner, and they were doing space planning, kind of interior architecture. They were doing really well. They were crushing it. They had a different way of approaching than stodgy older firms. But then Jerry's partner, a guy named Richard Kasparov said, I know a way to get rich even quicker. We're gonna go into construction and when you go into construction, you need two things. You need a contractors' license and you need experience, and boy did they hire the wrong person.

Debbi (06:02): . Yeah. Yes, indeed. That came back to bite them in the ass, huh?

Chip (06:09): Oh yeah.

Debbi (06:11): In a big way. How many people did you interview and was it difficult to get people to talk to you about what happened?

Chip (06:19): That's a great question. Without my journalism background, I could not have done this story. God is still trying to jackhammer patience into my soul. And this was something I learned in this story where you develop a source, and it might be years and years and years before they really tell you what you wanna know and you just can't come onto them a thousand miles an hour. So I probably interviewed 30 people or something like that. Some had passed away. There were three or four people that did not wanna talk to me. And one person I met one time at a Hamburger Hamlet in West Los Angeles. And this crime, this murderer, this monster who was a, I don't wanna be a spoiler, he haunted people even after he died. And I think there was some fear in these people. He's got associates, maybe he's gonna reincarnate and track me down.

Without my journalism background, I could not have done this story. God is still trying to jackhammer patience into my soul. And this was something I learned in this story where you develop a source, and it might be years and years and years before they really tell you what you wanna know and you just can't come onto them a thousand miles an hour.

(07:29): I interviewed wives and girlfriends and things like that, and they'd be bawling when I'd interview them. And even though I tried to be diplomatic and empathic and all that, and sympathetic, they never got it out of their system. I would say my really big break came when I reached out to the assistant district attorney that prosecuted the case. He was retiring, he invited me over to his house and he opened up his garage door and there's all these files he brought home and he goes, take your pick. And I spent a beautiful, delicious and also very dark afternoon going through his stuff, because it was dark in that garage and the things I was learning with these files was pretty dark about humanity. Traditionally, as a reporter, you go after the documents. So I went to downtown LA, something called the Hall of Records, which is in this dungeon-like basement below this Sixties building.

(08:30): And you feel like you are in a nuclear bunker going down there with kind of shady fluorescent lights. And it's serpentine. There's not a lot of humans, it smells. You finally enter this area and you expect there to be human moles working there. So finally, you know, have your case number. I go to the files, somebody has gone, or numerous people have gone through this box of files and taken stuff out. A massive amount. And I've faced this before in journalism where somebody doesn't want you to know what's going on. There's only one set of records before it's digitized and they just swipe 'em. Or they put her down their shirt and they walk out like Fawn Hall, during Iran --that's what happened here. There was people that did not want to have any fingerprints on this story because of guilt, because of terror, because there's something other shady happening.

(09:20): And so it was not easy filling in all the blanks of the story. And I felt a little bit like Jurassic Park where they had to add in DNA here and there, and that's what it required me to do. But Jerry Schneiderman, my anti-hero, I sat with him for interviews many, many times. So it wasn't always easy. I also not equivocated, but I vacillated about contacting the trigger man in the story cuz he was in prison. He'd been denied parole cuz he was considered so dangerous. He was like a brilliant kid who fell out of a car, hit his head and developed two things, epilepsy and psychopathy when he fell out of this car....