The Crime Cafe

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer David Putnam on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below, or if you’re in a rush, download a copy!

00:13 Debbi: Hi, everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I’m your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two e-books for sale; the nine-book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website, www[dot]debbimack[dot]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.

Debbi: [00:01:03] Today we have an author with an extensive and impressive background in law enforcement. He's worked in narcotics with the FBI on violent crimes. He's worked on a SWAT team. He was with the U.S. Marshalls. He was co-sworn in as a U.S. Marshall, among other things. And, according to his bio, was a member of the real life Hawaii Five-O, which I found very interesting. In any case, it's pretty clear where this author gets his material. Today's guest is bestselling author David Putnam. Hi, David. It's great to have my show today.

David: [00:01:48] Thank you for having me.

Debbi: [00:01:49] Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Tell us about your protagonist, Bruno Johnson, and what prompted you to write about that character? What prompted you to create that particular kind of character?

David: [00:02:03] Well, that's kind of a long explanation. I've been writing since like 1989. And I was constantly writing. I'd written 38 manuscripts when I finally sold my 34th manuscript, and I was trying everything. I tried police procedural, mystery, young adult, sci-fi. And I had four agents. I had a 156 rejections when I quit counting. And Bruno Johnson was just another one of those attempts to try to find a market for my writing. And Bruno Johnson, he is an ex-cop, ex-con who rescues children from toxic homes in South Central Los Angeles. He couldn't do it when he was a cop because there's too many rules and regulations. So now he goes outside the law to rescue the children. I chose Bruno and made him an African-American, because it adds an extra layer of conflict. When I was working for the sheriff's department, I left the jail after six months and went to work patrol in South Central Los Angeles. I went out with two African-American deputies and one was a good friend of mine. I got to see firsthand the added layer of conflict that he had to deal with. I thought that would work well in my books. So that's why I chose to do it that way.

"When I was working for the sheriff's department, I left the jail after six months and went to work patrol in South Central Los Angeles. I went out with two African-American deputies and one was a good friend of mine. I got to see firsthand the added layer of conflict that he had to deal with. I thought that would work well in my books."

Debbi: [00:03:25] That's very interesting, yeah. I'm reading your first in the series, The Disposables, and Michael Connelly called it "raw, powerful and eloquent", which I have to agree with.

David: [00:03:39] Thank you.

Debbi: [00:03:41] Did you have direct experience with seeing children in abuse situations?

David: [00:03:47] Oh, yes. You know. Readers read for the emotion. That's what they're in the game for, they read for the emotion. And conflict is emotion. So I thought that I would also write about something that was most emotional to me, and the most difficult part of law enforcement was dealing with children who were abused, because they had no advocate except for law enforcement or social services.

Debbi: [00:04:15] Yes. And social services can often be . . .

David: [00:04:21] Overwhelmed.

Debbi: [00:04:21] Overwhelmed, yes. Not due to any fault of their own necessarily.

David: [00:04:27] Exactly.

Debbi: [00:04:31] The idea of an underground railroad is so intriguing. What made you think of that?

David: [00:04:39] Well, he had to rescue the kids and he couldn't do it legally, so he couldn't keep the kids in the US because they'd be constantly hunting them. So, throughout the series, he collects these children and sometimes I'm writing them. I'll turn a book in to the publisher, and they'll send me an e-mail back saying, "Don't you have 12 kids now?" I started to lose track of my kids.

Debbi: [00:05:08] Oh, my. But, yeah. I just thought that was a very innovative approach to trying to save these kids.

David: [00:05:17] Well, thank you.

Debbi: [00:05:22] I guess I've already asked this question, but how much of your experience in law enforcement finds its way into your novels?

David: [00:05:30] Well, I try to write a scene that was most powerful to me, to start the book. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's the first chapter. I just write the scene that's most powerful. And that's what I did with all the books, including Disposables. And in some cases like The Reckless, I turn that book in. And that one was the most emotional book that I had ever written. And I put a lot of background into that book to establish the motivation for what happens. And the publisher. I sent the book to the publisher. They loved the book, but they said the book actually starts on page 101. So I had to cut the first hundred pages. So I always try to put my actual experiences in the books. For instance, The Innocents I would say is 50 percent true, even though I fictionalized it, there are actually scenes, 50 percent of book actually happened. The Reckless is about 90 percent true. The other ones have different scenes that I pulled from my experience and I just craft them to fit in with the storyline or the story arc.

" I always try to put my actual experiences in the books. For instance, The Innocents I would say is 50 percent true, even though I fictionalized it, there are actually scenes, 50 percent of book actually happened. The Reckless is about 90 percent true. The other ones have different scenes that I pulled from my experience and I just craft them to fit in with the storyline or the story arc."

Debbi: [00:06:43] I was going to say you said you start with a scene that's very emotional and then kind of build out from there? Is that kind of the way you write?

David: [00:06:52] Yes. And sometimes I have to build in the front, too. So there have been times where I write what I thought was a first chapter, the opening scene, and then I would put probably 10 chapters in front of it, because it wasn't working for me. So to make the story arc work, I had to re-craft it. So it all depends. It's like putting a puzzle together sometimes, and I really enjoy writing because of that. I never know what's going to happen.

Debbi: [00:07:18] Yeah, it's kind of like, you know what you wanna say and it kind of gets summed up in the scene and then you'd construct this plot to get there maybe?

David: [00:07:28] Yeah, exactly.

Debbi: [00:07:31] I know what you're talking about. Well, let's see. Can you tell us a little bit more about how Bruno's character develops over the course of the six novels? And I know that some of them are prequels?

David: [00:07:50] Well, Bruno, as I said earlier, he continually gathers more children in the first three books, The Disposables, The Replacements, and The Squandered. The Disposables starts in the U.S. and ultimately ends in Costa Rica. So then The Replacements and The Squandered start in Costa Rica and I had to have a strong motivation to get Bruno to come back to the US to write that storyline. And at the conclusion of the fourth book, The Vanquished, I left Bruno particularly emotionally and physically damaged. And the publisher said, "A great book, and we love it. But we don't know how you're going to pull Bruno out of this." So I thought about that. And they're probably right because it was going to take a lot of writing to get him back on track because of what I did to him. So I decided to go with a prequel and that's what started. So, I started Disposables and I gave Bruno a lot of backstory. So on my prequel, I'm going back and I'm actually showing all that backstory that I gave Bruno while at the beginning of the first book. So there's four prequels, and the first one is The Innocents. The second one is The Reckless. The third one is The Heartless. And it's already coming out in February 2020. And the publisher just picked up the fourth and final prequel, which is The Ruthless, which will come out 2021. So now I'm back on track and I'm writing the current day book that comes after The Vanquished. So I'm working on Book Nine right now.

"The Disposables starts in the U.S. and ultimately ends in Costa Rica. So then The Replacements and The Squandered start in Costa Rica and I had to have a strong motivation to get Bruno to come back to the US to write that storyline. And at the conclusion of the fourth book, The Vanquished, I left Bruno particularly emotionally and physically damaged."

Debbi: [00:09:33] So you figured out where Bruno goes from there in your ninth book.

David: [00:09:37] Right. Right, right. Exactly. I had four books to think about it and how to get him out of it, out of the mess I put him in.

Debbi: [00:09:44] There you go. It's all you have to do. Just write the prequels.

David: [00:09:49] That's right.

Debbi: [00:09:50] Let's see. How would you describe your writing to someone who has never read your work but would like to learn more about it?

David: [00:10:00] You know, I try to write, I try to put the reader right where I was in the scene. So if I was in an incident, I try to write it just the way I saw it, felt it, smelled it, heard it. I try to put all those senses into the story. I also try to stay true to the dialogue....

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Earl Javorsky on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below, or if you’re in a rush, download a copy!

00:13 Intro Debbi: Hi, everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two e-books for sale; the nine-book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website, www[dot]debbimack[dot]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.

01:01 Debbi: Hi, everyone. Today, we have with us the author of one of the most interesting stories I've read in quite a while. When I say ‘interesting’, well, you'll see. But before I introduce him, I'd like to give a shout out to a friend of the podcast, Stewart A Williams Design. I can personally vouch for the quality of his work. He does my covers and he's absolutely fantastic. He runs a gamut of services, from typography, graphics, but his specialty is book covers; e-book and print. So, I highly recommend Stewart A. Williams. You can find his website at www[dot]stewartawilliamsdesign[dot]com. And with that now, I'd like to introduce to you the author of Down Solo and Trust Me, two very different thrillers that our guest is giving away. It's my great pleasure to introduce Earl Javorsky.

02:08 Earl: Great, thanks. Good to be with you.

Debbi: Well, thank you for being here. Now, my introduction to your work was with Down Solo, and please tell the listeners about the main character, Charlie Miner, you know, the interesting part about him.

Earl: The part that he’s dead?

Debbi: Yeah. It kinda catches your attention right off the bat.

Earl: Yeah, but he's not a zombie or a superhero or any weird thing like that. He's just a regular guy. He is PI, he has a drug problem. He wakes up dead at the morgue and there's a bullet hole on his forehead. And once he finds out he can move, it's like in the middle of the late night, early in the morning, the place is pretty quiet. And he finds a place to shower off. It's one of those hoses over a tub and he cleans himself up and steals clothes from another corpse and goes out. Gets a cab, on a mission, he's got to find out who killed him. It's pretty straightforward, isn't it?

"He's just a regular guy. He is PI, he has a drug problem. He wakes up dead at the morgue and there's a bullet hole on his forehead."

Debbi: It is, it’s very straightforward and a very intriguing premise. It kind of made me think of the movie, DOA, except instead of a guy who has been murdered but hasn’t died yet, you’ve got a guy who has died and wants to find his murderer. They're both trying to find their murderers but in different ways. What prompted you to write about a character in that particular situation?

03:48 Earl: I have absolutely no idea. So, I haven't been a ‘supernatural type’ reader, you know, since my early 20’s. I loved it then and then I went off into more conventional like Raymond Chandler and traditional mysteries and up to, you know, current great writers in that genre. And one day I sat down and I wrote the first page of Charlie Miner, of Down Solo and I had no idea what to do with it for like six months. And somewhere along the line, I went, okay, I got a guy, he's dead in a morgue, he's a heroin addict, let's make him a PI. Let's make his murder part of the case that he was looking into. Which case? How do we find out? And all of a sudden, I realized I could develop it and so I get him going home, finding out that his place has been searched and trashed. He gets access to his files and has to go through a bunch of files to find out which one maybe had to do with his murder and who the people were. And then I've got a plot outline and it all kind of made sense and I knew where it was going and unfortunately, I got there at page 90, which was not a novel. So, then I sat on it for another year and then I realized that where I had gotten to was not the end, it was the end of a foundation where the real story was at a deeper level, and that there were string-pulling puppeteers behind what we thought was the end of the mystery. We had to go find that. So, it opened up for me in a weird or organic fashion I really can't explain.

"I haven't been a ‘supernatural type’ reader, you know, since my early 20’s. I loved it then and then I went off into more conventional like Raymond Chandler and traditional mysteries and up to, you know, current great writers in that genre."

Debbi: Sometimes, that's the best way for a story to come, I think.

06:07 Earl: I think so.

Debbi: At some subconscious level, something was coming out there, that's really cool. So, I just had to follow that up with Down to No Good, which I'm currently reading.

Earl: Okay. Are you amused, I hope?

Debbi: Of course, yeah. I mean, the situation is somewhat comical that you can't help but be amused and also just odd. I mean, it's just a great set up. Do you plan to write a third book?

Earl: I have a third and a fourth Charlie Miner book, plotted and kind of mapped out. Right now, I'm giving priority to a different kind of novel, a much more conventional one. It's not noirish and it's certainly not supernatural, based on something close to my heart that happened locally here in Oceanside, California, where I'm living. And having to do with the local drug and gangbanger scene and a kid gets beat into a coma over a drug deal and his dad has to track down what really happened. So, that's more of a straightforward psychological thriller and I'm giving my attention to that.

"I have a third and a fourth Charlie Miner book, plotted and kind of mapped out. Right now, I'm giving priority to a different kind of novel, a much more conventional one."

Debbi: Mm-hmm. Is that what Trust Me is like? You described that as a more conventional thriller, what is that novel about?

Earl: Trust Me centers around, well, the bad guy. It’s sort of an ensemble piece, tracks five different characters. The villain in it is a sex predator in the Los Angeles recovery community and actually he's based on a real guy but the real guy didn't kill his victims, he just seduced them and was predatory and creepy. He's like a doctor or a psychologist, he was old, he went after good-looking newcomers and it was creepy. So, I just turned him into a serial killer because it was fun and it worked for the novel.

Debbi: Is it tough keeping track of five different characters? You said it follows five characters, it sounds almost cinematic.

08:50 Earl: I had that. Well, I like to think that I write visually and track cinematically. I come from a film background, my dad was an actor, a Paramount star. My mom was in the theater. But regardless, yeah, I had to. It was complicated and I had to storyboard it just to keep track. I used four by six cards with notes and character names and kept reshuffling them, trying to figure out how they interlaced into something coherent. Sure. And I was told early by an agent, “hey, you can't do this”, and I go, “okay, I can't work with you anyway, so thank you for rejecting me because it wouldn't have been fun”. And since, of course, it has to be handled well and maybe she was saying you're too new to handle this, I don’t know. It went through several versions after that rejection but I certainly read a lot of stuff that I've liked that tracked multiple characters. So, again, it's in the handling, I hope I did a good job.

" I like to think that I write visually and track cinematically. I come from a film background, my dad was an actor, a Paramount star. My mom was in the theater."

Debbi: I think that's true, definitely. You were a working musician at one time.

10:15 Earl: [laughs] Barely.

Debbi: What did you play and what kind of music?

Earl: I played guitar and unfortunately, I guess, not that well. I supported my wannabe rock stardom in illegal trade. I call it working my way up the ladder, the corporate ladder in … What's my phrase? I’ve forgotten.

Debbi: Chemical Entertainment Industry?

Earl: Yes, there it is.

Debbi: I was going to ask about that but then I said, dare I ask?

Earl: Dare you ask. You already did, go ahead. It ruined me. I ended in a County Jail for nearly a couple times. It was boom and bust; I had some good times. I had a nice car and a house at Malibu once and then I had a crappy car and no car and no apartment anywhere. It was a zig-zag odd career, where I met a lot of very strange people, they now populate my books. So, there.

Debbi: Every experience becomes fodder, you know?

Earl: That’s right, yeah. Lemons to lemonade, I hope.

Debbi: That's funny because my father was a writer and he used to talk about how much experience is important when it comes to writing. Every crappy experience I was having, you know, when I was younger, he would say, “oh, it's all good for your writing”, and it's like you were right, Dad. What authors do you draw the most inspiration from?

12:04 Earl: Oh my, okay. That’s a tough one only because the list is so long. So, I'm going to apologize right now because they're gonna be mainly men. Sorry. And I keep trying and there's women writers, like Ursula Le Guin and Barbara Kingsolver, a number of them that I just love. But when it comes to influences, I'm gonna start with Elmore Leonard and the anti-Leonard, which is James Lee Burke. Why I call him the anti-Leonard is because Elmore Leonard is so sparse and you know his cardinal rule, ‘leave out the parts that the readers are gonna skip over’. And then there’s James Lee Burke, whose prose is so lush and gorgeous and any other writer, I don't want to know what color the sky is and I don't w

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Andy Rausch on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below, or if you’re in a rush, download a copy!

Debbi: Hi everyone, this is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack.

Before I bring on my guests, 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 www[dot[debbimack[dot]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.

Debbi: So, well folks it's good to be back for a fifth season of this podcast. I got to tell you it's been cool and I'd like to thank the people, I think it's Kings River Magazine [correction: King’s River Life Magazine], who put up a nice mention of the podcast recently online.

In addition, I'd also like to put in a good word for my cover artist, the one who works on my books, his name is Stewart A. Williams and he has a business called Stewart A. Williams Design, and I totally recommend him, highly recommend him for anybody who’s interested in self-publishing and finding a good cover artist. His website is www.stewardwilliamsdesign.com and with that, let's get to my guest.

My guest today is Andy Rausch, he is the first guest of the season. He has that distinction, and he is a man of multiple talents. Andy is an author, a film journalist, a screenwriter, film producer, actor, and I believe, also a graphic novelist now. Did I manage to get all of it in, Andy?

Andy: I think so, pretty much, you know. I do political activism. I do a lot of stuff. I'm busy. I'd like to think I'm good at some of them. I try, I try.

Debbi: That's good. Well, it's a good thing to be busy

Andy: Right and I write a lot of nonfiction, too, as you might have seen. About 30 of my books are probably nonfiction and then the other… I mean this year, I'll have my 38th book out and only one of them was self-published and I mean I know that's corny, because that stigma’s gone, but you know when I came up there was a stigma about self-publishing. So, I always thought, you know, you got to do it, but I mean some of the publishers they don't sell, so what's the difference, you know you might as well do it your way and get what you want done and I get that, I think that's amazing. But I do a lot.

Debbi: Yes, yes, and keeping busy is good, as long as you're keeping busy with the right things.

Andy: Right, right. Well, I figure if I stay busy with these things, it'll keep me out of trouble and unbusy with the bad things, you know?

Debbi: Yes, yes, good point and just so you know, he's giving away kind of a two-book package. Is this correct, your latest novella Bloody Sheets and the anthology A Time for Violence?

Andy: Right, so I just wanted to give away the books to, you know, bring it to more people's attention. I do work with a lot of publishers. Some of them are little, some are big. These are books that I'm very proud of that are with a smaller publisher, and you know, so whatever it takes to get readership I'm down for. I tell people if you can steal them, whatever you need to do. The publisher probably shouldn’t appreciate that, but my thing is just read them. I'll give them away, you know, I don't care and that's always been the way, I don't care to be rich. That’d be great, but I don't really care. I just want to get them out there.

Debbi: All right, well, um, I have to ask you about the book I just finished reading, Elvis Presley, CIA Assassin? Oh, my god! That story is freaking hilarious. I felt like I was reading something out of Quentin Tarantino's movies. What prompted you to write that book?

"Quentin had actually had an idea at one time before he made it, and he had thought about writing a book about Elvis Presley working for the FBI, because there is a thing, you know, where Elvis had approached Nixon about being in the FBI and going undercover, which is a hilarious concept, because he’s the most well-known face on the planet at that time. How would that ever work?"

Andy: Well, you know what's funny is Quentin had actually had an idea at one time before he made it, and he had thought about writing a book about Elvis Presley working for the FBI, because there is a thing, you know, where Elvis had approached Nixon about being in the FBI and going undercover, which is a hilarious concept, because he’s the most well-known face on the planet at that time. How would that ever work? But you know Quentin never did anything with it, and I liked the idea, but I wanted to make something different obviously. I don't rip off the man, but I do admire him. He's a hero of mine, and you know he worked with me on my last non-fiction book that comes out next month.

And so anyway, I had this idea, well, what if he was in the CIA and he was an assassin, because I feel like an assassin is a whole other thing. He's not out here doing sneaky stuff, he's out here killing people. And when I write, it tends to be about hitmen a lot of times, and again that's Quentin's fault, I think. It's his influence. So, anyway, I had a lot of fun with it, but it's my only comedy and I'll say this. I'm glad you liked it. I don't think it connects on the level that a lot of my fiction does with people. I don't necessarily think it's … not that it's funny as much as it is the format, as I tried to write it as an oral history, and I'd never seen a novel done like a true oral history.

I mean World War Z is called an oral history, but it's not presented as an actual oral history book. So I wanted to do that Rashomon kind of style, and I thought it would be fun and it was great fun to write it. It’s just finding an audience has been more difficult for that one, which I thought would be a given considering it's about Elvis, but what you get is that in my research, I'm going to be frank. I liked Elvis a lot when I was younger and he's okay, but I was finding when I was researching that he wasn't the brightest guy in the world. You know, he was great or whatever. So, in the book, I kind of joke about it at times. He kind of does these things that are kind of dopey … so that pisses fans off that are purists. And that's generally who's going to go after that book, so I think that's part of the problem too.

Debbi: Well, I thought it was absolutely hilarious for what it's worth, so you have at least an audience of one on that one.

Andy: Oh! I appreciate that.

Debbi: I also read A Time for Violence, which is a great collection, so.

Andy: Well, no. I appreciate it.

Debbi: Uh-huh, go ahead.

Andy: Good, I was just going to say, comedy I think I can do, but I think I do better when it's not a whole comedy. There's comedy in all of my work, but it tends to I think work better when it is done within really serious scenes. With comedy, people will laugh and say, “You know, I laughed ‘till I cried” or whatever. I blew out my drink or whatever, you know. And I think that's more my style. Like I wanted to be a comedian when I was younger. It was not in the cards for me. I can be funny, but not consistently funny, and I think I have to pick my spots, because the only two comedies I've done, one was a novel and it was Elvis and I think it's funny. But again my sense of humor isn’t everybody's sense of humor. I don't have always that broad sense of humor and that's what a lot of people tend to go to.

And the other thing I wrote that was a comedy was the movie Dahmer vs. Gacy, which is not a very good movie, and I have to take a lot of the blame for it. I like it, I don't care, but when you go on Netflix, there are a lot of bad reviews.

"I can be funny, but not consistently funny, and I think I have to pick my spots, because the only two comedies I've done, one was a novel and it was Elvis and I think it's funny. But again my sense of humor isn’t everybody's sense of humor. I don't have always that broad sense of humor and that's what a lot of people tend to go to."

Debbi: Wow.

Andy: So, yeah, I know. We had a movie that had good distribution. I wrote it. I'm proud of it. And it was meant to be a $500 movie and then we got a fifty thousand dollar budget, and I wasn't responsible for shooting it you know. So they did things in a way that sometimes I wouldn't have done, and they added scenes that I didn't write. And then I feel like, dammit I get credit—not credit, but I get blamed—for some of it. But you know I'm proud that it's out there, and hopefully the next one will be better.

Debbi: That’s a heck of an achievement, you know no matter what kind of movie it is I think.

Andy: Right, right.

Debbi: So, A Time for Violence. Great collection of short stories by some of the best in the business. It definitely lives up to its title. You described it in the foreword as “a love letter to the great anthologies of yesteryear.” Can you expand a bit on what you meant by that?

Andy: Well, it just seems like you know in the 80s all of a sudden there were anthologies everywhere, like that was a golden, one of the golden periods for short stories. And I may be misremembering it a little, because I was in middle school in the 80s, but you know I was reading all of these books, these anthologies, like the Dark Visions books and all these things that would have all of these great … but they were almost always horror. And I wanted this to be something different, I mean but one of those ones with the big-name people in it. I wanted to put together horror and crime, which is primarily what I write is crime, but sometimes horror.

And I met Chris Roy, who's been on your show, and I said hey, man, like you know writers, I know writers. Let's put them together. Let's put out this anthology....

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Joe Lansdale on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below, or if you're in a rush, download a copy!

Debbi: [00:00:12]  Hi everyone, this is the Crime Cafe your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I'm your host Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: The 9-book boxed set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website DebbiMack.com under the “Crime Café” link. You can also get 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.

Debbi: [00:01:04]  It's my great pleasure to have with me today one of the most eclectic writers doing crime fiction, among other things. An author in multiple genres including mystery, westerns, horror, science fiction, and suspense, he has also written for comics, and several of his novels have been adapted for film and TV. My guest is none other than the very awesome Joe Lansdale.

Debbi: [00:01:31]  Hi Joe. I'm so excited to talk with you today. Thank you so much for being here.

Joe: [00:01:36]  Thank you, Debbi. I'm glad to be here.

Debbi: [00:01:39]   It's so great to have you on. I first got to know your work as a reviewer for Mystery Scene Magazine actually.

Joe: [00:01:45]   Really? That's a great mag.

Debbi: [00:01:48]   Yeah, it's great, it was wonderful. I got these wonderful free books and I got to read them and talk about them. It was great!

Joe: [00:01:54] (laughing)

Debbi: [00:01:56]  So my Lansdale starter book was EDGE OF DARK WATER and, boy, that made an impression on me.

Joe: [00:02:03]  I'm glad it did.

Debbi: [00:02:04]   Tell me when you wrote it—did you think of it as a young adult novel? Because it is a very mature young adult novel, and I love that about it.

Joe: [00:02:14]  No. I didn’t really think of it as a young adult novel. It was the first novel I did for my new publisher Mulholland, which is a branch of Little Brown. and it was just a story I wanted to tell. And I’ve always liked stories with young people as protagonists. In fact, I’ve written quite a few with young people as protagonists and so it just seemed natural to me and, you know, it just rolled out.

Debbi: [00:02:40]   I know that feeling actually. The feeling that something is just rolling out.

Joe: [00:02:43]  Mmm … it’s good feeling.

Debbi: [00:02:45]   Yes it is! I have this one young adult novel I’ve done and it’s kind of like this real kind of variation from what I usually do. But the fact that you write in multiple genres to me is so encouraging, but let me get to the latest thing you have out which is in the anthology A TIME FOR VIOLENCE. Am I correct about that?

Joe: [00:03:09]  Ah, yes, there is an anthology that has my story in it among others.

Debbi: [00:03:14]   I got to tell you, I love that story. It was like the world’s most twisted holiday story.

Joe: [00:03:22]  Thank you! Thank you so much.

Debbi: [00:03:24]   It’s the highest compliment I can think to make for that particular story. It’s awesome. One thing I enjoy about your writing is the way you combine serious social issues with humor. Can you talk a little bit about Hap and Leonard and where those characters came from?

Joe: [00:03:42]  Well, you know, Hap and Leonard really were an accident. I had a two-book contract for Bantam, which I was very excited about, for two crime novels, and the first one I wrote was COLD IN JULY. And when I finished COLD IN JULY, I thought, you know I’d like to write another novel that kind of has that old Gold Medal novel feel. Fawcett Gold Medal was a branch that did crime, and then there was another branch that did westerns, science fiction and so on. And I’ve collected those Gold Medal novels for years, and I like the way they told stories and I like the attitude, so I wanted to capture something with something of that tone.

And I had always thought that I would like to write something about the era that I grew up in, that I became adult in, which was the ‘60s, early ‘70s, and about civil rights and the Vietnam war and the kind of contradiction of people and ideas of that era. So, I don’t think I was conscious of it when I started writing the novel, but I said I’m going to use my own background to a great extent in this book. Now Hap is not me, but he’s damn close. He went to a prison for being against the Vietnam war, and I dropped out of school to be drafted to kind of protest the Vietnam war so therefore I was drafted. I said I wouldn’t go. I thought I was going to prison for 18 months, but they gave me a 1-Y for whatever reason. I think they threw me a bone actually, and sent me home. But I used that as kind of the basis for Hap, and the fact that he experiences the ‘60s and the feeling that in the ‘80s a lot of that idealism had gone the way of the passenger pigeon. And I wanted to sort of bring that back up and try to have Hap experience that again and be touched by it, but I also wanted to show that there were a lot of divisions and sides of it, and the fact that really young people had sort of led that “revolution”, because it was really a varied group of different ideas.

On Hap and Leonard: "I didn’t plan for it to be a buddy book at all, and I had Leonard in it as just kind of a side character, but all of the sudden Leonard starts really becoming prominent as I’m writing it. And I had this white, liberal heterosexual whose best friend was a black, gay Republican who had been to Vietnam and had a different viewpoints than Hap had."

But because they had and they were young—they didn’t really have a realistic view of what was going on. That doesn’t mean the idealism was wrong, but it meant the expectations were a little bit dramatic. And so I had this in the background, and I had this sort of story I wanted to tell, that took place where I grew up and took place around the kind of people that I grew up with and the kind of people that we were in the ‘60s and early ‘70s or a lot of us were. And so I just started writing from that standpoint and Hap was the only character. I didn’t plan for it to be a buddy book at all, and I had Leonard in it as just kind of a side character, but all of the sudden Leonard starts really becoming prominent as I’m writing it. And I had this white, liberal heterosexual whose best friend was a black, gay Republican who had been to Vietnam and had a different viewpoints than Hap had.

And, as I wrote it, I realized this was really good, because it gave you the chance to kind of explore both sides and both kinds of people without making it a lecture. And I just found I really, really like these two characters and I felt so close to Hap because of the connections with my life and I felt close to Leonard because he was made up of a variety of different people I had known in my life. So I felt like when I talk to him I was probably talking to a flip side of myself in some way and yet also this combination of characters that I had melded together to make Leonard and then I brought in Hap’s ex-wife, and I did have an ex-wife, but I want to rush to say—that was not my ex-wife. But I had been through the whole early divorce as a young man during the ‘60s, early ‘70s and the disappointment that a lot of us had in how we thought we going to change the world.

But again we were naïve, which doesn’t mean that the intent is naïve, but it means our expectations of how it would be done and how easily it might be accomplished were. That was all in the novel, more to me than the storyline, and I’ve put people that conflicted with what Leonard believed and what Hap believed because they were war extremists. Yet there was this connection that he had with these people in a funny way and with his ex-wife who was an extreme idealist and who was also somebody who abandon men easily because she always wanted new fresh ideas. She was in love with being in love more than anything else, yet she was at the heart and at the bottom of it, the most idealistic of all of them and the most sincere about her idealism, I think. Maybe there is a character Chub that might have been equally so, but I just sort of let that story unravel. And then when I got through with it, I thought I’d left Hap and Leonard alone.

How Hap and Leonard became a series: "I tried to write another book for a new publisher I was with. ... I wasn’t happy with it. ... Hap started speaking to me. And I realized he’d been trying to speak to me for a while and I wasn’t listening, cause I thought I was through with that book. I thought I was through with that character. And as this character spoke to me, I sat down and in about three and half to four months, I wrote a brand new novel."

I tried to write another book for a new publisher I was with. I moved from Bantam to Warner or Mysterious Press, and I wrote an entire book and I wasn’t happy with it. The publisher was like not sure what to do with it, because it was really dark. And I said, you know what? Let me go home and think. So I went home. By the time we flew home from New York where we had been visiting with our editor at that time—my wife was with me—we got home and immediately Hap started speaking to me. And I realized he’d been trying to speak to me for a while and I wasn’t listening, cause I thought I was through with that book. I thought I was through with that character. And as this character spoke to me, I sat down and in about three and half to four months, I wrote a brand new novel, and I wrote it in a much more relaxed style like SAVAGE SEASON had been. But I think by that point from MUCHO MOJO, which is the second in the series which many people thought was the first, because the Bantam edition had gone out of print at that time....

Debbi Mack interviews thriller author Jamie Freveletti on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you're in a rush, click here to download a copy.

Debbi: [00:00:12] Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. Before I introduce my guest, I just want to mention that there are some great new perks and features for readers who support the Crime Cafe Patreon campaign. You can access the Patreon campaign from my website DebbiMack.com.

Debbi: [00:00:41] Today, it's my great pleasure to have on the show an award winning and internationally bestselling author of thriller novels. Specifically, the Emma Caldridge Series, which is totally awesome. I've read one of them, and they're absolutely fantastic. She has also written novels in the Robert Ludlum Covert One Series and, as the author of both crime fiction and true crime, I'm thrilled to have on today Jamie Freveletti. Hey, Jamie. It is so good to see you.

Jamie: [00:01:18] Good to see you again. Even if it's virtual.

Debbi: [00:01:22] Even if it's virtual. Yeah. Virtual beats no contact or falling apart. Well, I've read the first book in your series, and Emma Caldridge is just the most awesome protagonist. So smart, so resourceful, so kickass. Tell us about her, how you developed that character, and how she has developed over the course of your series.

Jamie: [00:01:53] So, she's a chemist right. She's kind of like a female MacGyver. She came about, because I had written a novel, a manuscript I should say, and nobody had picked it up. And it's called BLACK MONEY. So I wanted to write something else. I love thrillers. I was at a 24-hour race with my husband. He's an ultramarathon runner, and he runs 24 hours at a time. So I went to this race. I was a handler. I used to go to make sure he didn't die. So, it was in Colorado. We had a freak snowstorm in the middle of the night. It was 70 degrees when they started. It was minus whatever and snowing on them. So one man passed out on the trail and got hypothermia. So I was in charge of dragging him to the hospital when I did that, and I started thinking you know he didn't know where he was, he didn't know his name. And that gave me the idea for a lot of things, because I thought, "This is kind of frightening." You know you "what if" and that always starts every novel, right? What if this happened to me? What if I got hypothermia or I was somewhere where I didn't know where I was. He was from England. You know, he was in a strange location running this 100-mile race. He was obviously in fantastic shape. But something happened. So that's why I put her, in RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL, I have her down in the Colombian jungle. I was thinking what would it be like if your plane is down. You don't know the east from west. You don't know where you are. You know the jungle in Colombia is landmined at the time. Since then, there's been a peace agreement. Treaty. But that's how it started.

Debbi: [00:03:41] That's really amazing. It's just ... the story is just riveting. I mean that first one that I read, the first in your series? Just a page-turner. Totally.

Jamie: [00:03:52] Thank you. Yeah. RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL started my career and got the awards and got everything rolling. That was really ... That's really the book that I still look back on with great fondness.

Debbi: [00:04:05] That's awesome. That's wonderful. You have degrees in law and a postgraduate degree in International Studies. I take it that you've drawn upon your legal practice experience in your writing to a certain extent?

Jamie: [00:04:21] I do all the time. When I was a lawyer, I did a lot of food, drug, and medical device, both regulatory and litigation. White-collar defense. And since Emma's a chemist, she's kind of fashioned on a bunch of the expert witnesses from the pharmaceutical companies that I used to work with. I love the experts. I love the chemists that kind of ... all that scientific stuff, and I thought it would be cool to make a protagonist who is pretty logical, who was involved in STEM science, and she's an ultrarunner. I love running. So that's something I like, and really I use everything. Every Emma Caldridge novel has an unusual disease or chemical or something, because she's a chemist, and I find them through the research I still do because I love it. Through FDA stuff. I do love that stuff. So. that's all. Every one. They all involve, you know, pandemic flu is one. The latest one BLOOD RUN is smallpox virus. That has an interesting story.

"I thought it would be cool to make a protagonist who is pretty logical, who was involved in STEM science, and she's an ultrarunner."

Debbi: [00:05:27] Wow. So how much research do you generally do for your novels?

Jamie: [00:05:35] I do a lot. More than I think I would like sometimes, because it takes away from the writing. Obviously, you can only research ... you know how it is, right? You really have to write. You have to make concessions to what you want to do. But I end up researching a lot. I do a lot of in-depth clinical research. And then that takes me off on another whole tangent. Usually, I use Google Earth, since I usually put at least the Emma Caldridge series is ... usually I place her in failing nations. Not always. But, you know, places that are completely ... running dark the second she's in Somalia. She ends up in Somalia, near Somalia. THE NINTH DAY was the only one set in America. Partly in America. The rest are set elsewhere. So I do a lot of Google Earth. I went to Columbia, of course, but the danger was there but wasn't as bad as it could have been. Somalia I was unable to visit, although I did have an invitation from a family to go there which would have been nice to take. My husband nixed that completely. I agree. I agree. Totally okay. We got the young kids, we can't take those kind of risks. So I do a lot of Google Earth and a lot of other research. I speak to journalists, things like that.

Debbi: [00:06:57] That's fantastic. I have to talk you when we're done here more about that kind of research, because you know that kind of thing fascinates me. And I'm always looking for good sources of information. You say you like thrillers. What is it in particular that you like about thrillers? What drew you toward that genre?

Jamie: [00:07:17] I don't know. I have to be honest with you. I love mysteries, too. You know, mysteries are somewhat different. I grew up with Edgar Allan Poe. So at nine, I remember, I don't know, my Mom had this type of ... I don't know if it was margarine at the time. I don't know what that stuff was called. But on the back, you could get five books for a dollar. Something crazy. And I remember cutting it out. I was 9 years old, and I said to my Mom, "Can we mail this in?" And we did. And she's like fine. Well, they sent all this stuff that was in the public domain. So I really cut my teeth on it. So funny. I loved Edgar Allan Poe, which was pretty brutal for 9-year-old, but I loved it. Yeah. And then THE THREE MUSKETEERS, Dumas. So I started reading a lot of action-adventure with the Dumas and Edgar Allen Poe and mystery. And that's kind of where my interest ... I was very young. I loved the Walter Farley Black Stallion books. I loved horses. Every girl, I think, most girls love horses. I got kind of a taste for action-adventure and thriller, and that's kind of where I've stayed the whole time. Now I love, I will admit, I read everything as you can imagine. I read non-fiction, fiction, romance. Love romance. I read mystery. I read everything sci-fi. I loved Heinlein. I read everything I can get my hands on. So I'm a very broad reader. And so far I've been writing thrillers and one mystery.

" I loved Edgar Allan Poe, which was pretty brutal for 9-year-old, but I loved it."

Debbi: [00:08:58] Well, I have to tell you this sound so familiar. I mean I hear this from all writers that they read everything you know? And I think that's so important if you're interested in writing. To just read as much as you can. Let's see, when you were at the C3 conference you mentioned something about a song list associated with your work?

Jamie: [00:09:25] Yes. Oh God. I was just on the phone about that this morning.

Debbi: [00:09:29] Could you talk about that? Because I love music and I just like the idea of associating music with a series.

Jamie: [00:09:37] I know I got my idea ... my mom who has passed away was a jazz singer and an actress. So she was in movies. She was in Pet Detective, The Truman Show, Recount, big movies. She was in movies, but she started out as a jazz singer in Chicago. And I had this idea for this and I can't really talk too much about it, but I'll tell you as much as I can. For this story that I'm preparing to give to my agent. It's a contemporary. I have a historical I'm delivering to my agent next month. And this one I'll deliver to her in two months. But this second one is a contemporary involving a band. It's a mystery about a band. Music band.

[00:10:19] So I thought, well, wouldn't it be cool to tie that up and have the band have actual music that the band plays. So I got this idea that I would tie in with a real life band, and I would commission some songs that match the story the guy in the band or the women in the band. In this case, there's a woman producer and a male guitar player and that's deliberate, by the way. I wanted to have a woman guitar player, but I thought women producers in music are ... it's like women directors. I really wanted to have a woman producer. Really up in front and more of that aspect of things. So she's the producer. And I have some ins with Berklee College of Music. So I have contacted some family members who are able to create music. At the time I spoke at the C3, I was really discussing the Jack Reacher music. I don't know if we discussed that....

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author and consultant D.P. Lyle on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript!

Debbi: [00:00:12] Hi, everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale: the nine-book boxed set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website DebbiMacke.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.

[00:01:01] It's my great pleasure to have with me today an author, forensics expert, and consultant. My guest has won and been nominated for multiple prestigious awards for his works of fiction, and along with writing numerous works of fiction, he consults with other novelists and television writers on shows that include: Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, House, Pretty Little Liars, and more. My guest is none other than DP Lyle. It's so great to have you on today, Doug. Thanks for being here.

D.P.: [00:01:49] Thanks for having me, Debbi, I appreciate it.

Debbi: [00:01:50] To say that you have an impressive body of work is understating things. For the benefit of listeners, how would you describe the types of books that you write?

D.P.: [00:02:01] Well, I write both nonfiction and fiction, but my fiction works are mostly darker thrillers. But my Jake Longly, my newest series is comedic thrillers. I like comedy. And, you know, I'm a funny guy. What do you mean? So I write these comedic thrillers, and I'm really having fun with them. I was working on the fourth Jake book this morning. So, yeah.

Debbi: [00:02:28] That's awesome. Tell us about Jake, then. What's he like? What's that protagonist like?

D.P.: [00:02:34] Well, there's a lot of me in Jake, of course, and there's a lot of Jake in Jake, but he's an ex-professional baseball player who now owns a bar in Gulf Shores, Alabama. And his idea of life is to own a bar and chase bikinis. And his father, Ray, is ex-military spook world, special ops guy who's a P.I. now. And he doesn't understand why Jake won't work for him. But Jake always ends up mainly through his new love interest, Nicole, gets drug into Ray's world and all these cases. So you would say that Jake is a reluctant P.I. He doesn't want to be there, but he always ends up there.

Debbi: [00:03:18] Hmm. So the chasing bikinis part always makes me think of John McDonald.

D.P.: [00:03:25] Right.

Debbi: [00:03:26] So he's not quite the white knight. Or is he?

D.P.: [00:03:29] Oh, no, no. No, Jake's got his history. He's got an ex-wife named Tammy the Insane, as he calls her, who actually married the attorney that handled the divorce and that kind of thing. But then so Tammy always calls Jake for advice, though she doesn't like him. And she argues with him all the time. But she always calls him for advice, and it drives him crazy. And then Nicole, his new love interest is hot, but smart and tough and clever and focused. And so she's different than Jake, too. Jake is kind of one of these guys that gets through life on good looks and wit and charm. But he gets forced into situations that forces him to use skills he had no idea he had.

Debbi: [00:04:17] Mm-hmm. That sounds interesting.

D.P.: [00:04:20] It's a fun story. They're all comedic based, I mean. They're situational comedy, so to speak, with a lot of murders.

Debbi: [00:04:30] Oh, that's always cool.

D.P.: [00:04:32] Yeah, exactly.

Debbi: [00:04:33] Murder with laughs is always cool.

D.P.: [00:04:36] Exactly.

Debbi: [00:04:38] How did you end up focusing on forensic science? You practice cardiology, right.

D.P.: [00:04:45] Right. Well, when I started writing fiction, you'd go to writers’ conferences and writers would come up to you and want to ask you questions about stuff. Now, if you go to a cocktail party in the general public, they want to know about their gallbladder and their cholesterol, you know, when they find out you're a doctor. But in writers’ conferences, they want to know about poisons and gunshot wounds and what dead bodies look like. And so I started researching it for that kind of to help writers and to answer questions for them. And I think I've got about six thousand questions on my computer from writers over the last 25 years about their stories and the forensic science. It wasn't hard to learn. I mean, it would be hard to learn and actually work in that field, which I don't do. I just work with the science of it to explain it for writers. But the language is the same as medicine. It's exactly the same science. So that's something, you know, I've done for 40, 50 years. So I know that science and like I said, the vocabulary of any new field is the hard part. Once you understand the vocabulary, you can understand the field. Well, I already knew the vocabulary. So the difference between pharmacology in a hospital and toxicology in a crime lab is really none. It's just one you're dealing with dead bodies and the other you're dealing with living folks. But the science and the chemistry is the same.

Debbi: [00:06:04] Mm-hmm. Absolutely, yes. So you saw a need there, and you decided to fill it.

D.P.: [00:06:13] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's kind of how FORENSICS FOR DUMMIES came about. When I wrote that book, obviously for the general public, but I was thinking of crime writers and what would they need? What would they want to know? How would this subject help them? Because in this day and age, even if you're writing a cozy, you know, that doesn't have a high body count or whatever, though, cozies do get body counts. It's just they're not very graphic. But you still have to know about forensic science. You have to know what's out there and you have to know what's possible, even if you don't dwell on it because it's there. And if you ignore it, readers are going to say, wait a minute. I don't buy this. You know? Why didn't they do DNA or why didn't they do a chemical analysis of the hair? Why didn't they do this, this, this, which you don't dwell on in cozies. But they have to be there. They're part of the story. You cannot ignore it in this day and age. The only way to ignore it is set your crime novel 50 years ago.

Debbi: [00:07:15] Yes, exactly.

D.P.: [00:07:17] Which is also cool.

Debbi: [00:07:20] Absolutely. Yeah, no problem with that. You can do whatever you want in the story.

D.P.: [00:07:24] Exactly.

Debbi: [00:07:27] Let's see. What's the biggest mistake you see writers make when they write about this area?

D.P.: [00:07:34] Well, understanding terminology. They don't really understand what a heart attack is. So they say when someone dies, they had a heart attack. But a heart attack is a specific entity that the coroner can 99.999 percent determine. It's a plugged artery with damage to the heart. But people die arrhythmic deaths. They die from the heart for other reasons. And they kind of lump them all into one. I think number two is poisons, that people don't really understand poisons. They want to give someone a poison and have them die twelve hours later. Well, I mean, can that happen? Sure. But they want them to die suddenly and quickly. In general, things that kill you quickly kill you quickly. Meaning shortly after you take it. Cyanide is not going to wait twelve hours to kill you and then kill you in three minutes. It's not going to happen that way. And so I always say poisons don't have timers, and you can time the delivery of the poison. You know, you can put it in their coffee cup and they don't have coffee till the next morning. Fine. That works. But they're going to die pretty quickly. Then I think finally, it's not understanding unconsciousness. How many times have you seen ... this goes back 100 years. Someone gets knocked out, put in the trunk of a car. They drive for three hours, then they open the trunk, throw water on them, and they wake up. It doesn't work that way. If you're knocked unconscious, you're going to wake up in a few minutes, and you're going to be furious, unless something really, really, really bad happened. And then you're not going to wake up at all or you're not going to wake up normal.

Debbi: [00:09:09] Yeah. One of the things I've always been amazed by is in these old movies, when the detective gets the crap beaten out him, there is not a single bruise.

D.P.: [00:09:19] Not a scratch.

Debbi: [00:09:23] Not a scratch, not a bruise, no concussion, no problem.

D.P.: [00:09:26] And you can bump into a door and get a black eye.

Debbi: [00:09:26] Get up, splash water on your face, walk away.

D.P.: [00:09:29] Their hair is perfect.

Debbi: [00:09:33] Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's see. Well, I have to ask, since you were on Diagnosis Murder, what was it like to work with Dick Van Dyke? Did you get to work with him at all?

"Anybody can write a screenplay, but not anybody can write a good screenplay. It's very, very difficult."

D.P.: [00:09:45] No, I didn't. I didn't work on the TV series at all. What I worked on was the novels with Lee Goldberg. And I worked on all the Monk novels with him. And so I worked with Lee a lot. I've known Lee a long time. He's a prolific writer. He's amazing. But I work with him on the novelizations of these. I did work with him on a couple of Monk episodes for TV. "Mr. Monk goes to Mexico" was one of them. I forget what the other one was, but it's a different world. The screenwriting world and the novel writing world are two entirely different worlds. You tell stories differently. We were talking about it earlier before we went on the air. Anybody can write a screenplay,...

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author Phillippe Diederich (writing as Danny Lopez) on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript!

Debbi: [00:00:10] This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest. I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale: the nine-book boxed 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.

Debbi: [00:01:03] Hi, everyone. I'm pleased to have as my guest today the author of the Dexter Vega Mysteries, as well as highly-regarded novels such as PLAYING FOR THE DEVIL'S FIRE, a young adult novel that has received a couple of honors in terms of Best Fiction and Best Young Adult Fiction. Again, it's a pleasure to introduce Phillippe Diederich [aka Danny Lopez] Glad you could be here today.

Danny: [00:01:30] Hi. Thanks for having me, Debbi.

Debbi: [00:01:32] Well, I'm just glad you can be here. And before we talk about your mysteries, let's talk about the novels that came before that. What was your first novel about?

Danny: [00:01:44] My first published novel is SOFRITO. And it's a novel about a Cuban-American who was born in the United States, has a Cuban restaurant in New York, and he travels to Havana for the first time in order to steal the recipe that had once belonged to his uncle. And in the process falls in love, discovers his late father's past, and mainly it deals a lot with the different shades of ideas on why people leave Cuba. You know, not necessarily political. So it's a double love story. It's a return to your own roots. It's a foodie book. It talks a lot about food and the restaurants. And it's a bit of a tour of Havana. I've met some people who have read it and say, "Oh, we went to Cuba because we read your book."

Debbi: [00:02:45] That's really cool. How would you describe it in terms of genre?

Danny: [00:02:53] Just straight up fiction. I got into writing because I like stories. So I try to create a story for all of my books. There has to be something beyond just characters or pretty writing. One of the things that happened with SOFRITO is that I had spent a lot of time in the 90s in Cuba, in Havana in particular, as a photojournalist. So it was still a forbidden place for Americans to go to. So I thought it would be interesting to write a book based on this place. I was so close and yet so far. And I also wanted to write about the different opinions that Cubans and Cuban-Americans had about Cuba and the Castro regime, etc. It took me so long to write and revise and get it published that by the time it got published, Obama had lifted some of the traveling sanctions that he had on. So it worked out quite well, I think, in the end that it got delayed in publication. Yeah. I'm just after a story. So I would say general fiction, you know. I'm really rooted in the classics of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. And they all have stories, great writing, great stories. And that's what I try to do.

"One of the things that happened with SOFRITO is that I had spent a lot of time in the 90s in Cuba, in Havana in particular, as a photojournalist. So it was still a forbidden place for Americans to go to. So I thought it would be interesting to write a book based on this place."

Debbi: [00:04:17] That's excellent. And that's really the whole point to write good stories. Now, your mysteries are written under a pseudonym, Danny Lopez. What made you choose to take on a pseudonym and why Danny Lopez?

Danny: [00:04:37] So what happened is I publish SOFRITO, which is a general fiction book, I suppose. And then PLAYING FOR THE DEVIL'S FIRE, which was marketed as a young adult. I didn't write it as a young adult. The publisher saw that the main character is, you know, 12 going on 13. It's a little bit more like a Huck Finn or a TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD type book.

Debbi: [00:05:04] Coming-of-age?

Danny: [00:05:05] So, yeah. Coming-of-age, but dealing with a lot of adult issues. An adult can really enjoy the book. So I allowed the publisher, we agreed that it would be young adult and we went in that direction. I have to say that both SOFRITO and PLAYING FOR THE DEVIL'S FIRE, which are written under my name, are mysteries of sorts. You know, they're not really genre mysteries. But SOFRITO's a search for this recipe. And basically this journey, the search for something that's missing. PLAYING FOR THE DEVIL'S FIRE is based on the main character searching for his parents who have disappeared after drug traffickers, narcos moved into the town where he lives in Mexico.

[00:05:56] So, in a way, they're mysteries, but they're not straight genre mysteries. So I had this idea for Dexter Vega. And I wrote it without really discussing it with my agent. And when she read it, she said that she could not represent it, because she had issues with one of the characters, one of the bad guys. It's not graphic or anything, but he's involved with abusing young women. Teenagers, really young teenagers that he finds in the street and he brings into his home. And she had an issue with that, And she also said that I should use a pen name, because it was very different from my other writing. I was new. I'm fairly new to the writing. There's no real guide for all this stuff that I've ever found that tells you everything about the marketing of the different books and what fits in what shelf, etc..

[00:07:05] It is a big deal in writing or in publishing. And this whole genre and subgenres and sections and where it fits on the shelf, and I think both SOFRITO and DEVIL'S FIRE really didn't have a shelf to fit in that well. Because just like you were asking what genre and it's like, well, it's kind of a mystery. just general fiction, kind of literary. So with the Dexter Vega mysteries, the first one, THE LAST GIRL, what happened is we decided to go ahead and market it myself and send the manuscript out, and based on what my agent had told me, the idea of using a pen name would separate the brands. I just didn't know how hard it was going to be to have two identities, promote two separate people. And so we publish with Oceanview. And the name Danny Lopez? Dexter Vega. Okay. I grew up in Mexico City, and I was born in the Dominican Republic. But my parents are not Latino per se. But that's what I write about. So I wanted to have somewhat of a Latino name that would work well. And Danny Lopez, a pen name, comes from, kind of, two characters that I like a lot are comedians or, you know, Danny DeVito and George Lopez. So it kind of built that way. I thought it would work well for the series since Dexter Vega's Mexican-American. And in that first book, he goes to Mexico, even though he doesn't really speak Spanish and he doesn't know Mexico. Kind of similar to SOFRITO in that sense. To try to solve the mystery.

Debbi: [00:08:56] I like it as a name. It's kind of snappy. It must be tricky, though, marketing under two different names. I am currently enjoying the first book in that series, by the way. I love your writing style. What prompted you to write mysteries?

Danny: [00:09:22] Well, I like reading them, and I think that what works really well for mysteries is that you want to turn the page. I mean, I find it's almost like a thriller to me to find out what's next, especially if you have really good characters. And some of the events that happened in THE LAST GIRL, as well as in THE LAST BREATH, happened here in Sarasota. So I was inspired by things that were happening locally here in order to write those books. And I just think it's an interesting genre, especially if you have really good characters.

Debbi: [00:10:04] I think that's essential. Having good characters is so important. Characters that you care about and want to follow and find out what happens to them. Are you writing a third book?

Danny: [00:10:19] I sort of am. I had kind of a false start late last year and feel like I'm starting again. Because the third book is a really important book. Dexter is divorced, and his wife and his daughter live in Houston. And one of the recurring themes in the book is---other than Dexter's drinking---is his seven-year-old daughter that he can't connect with very well. But he also has some background to him that is alluded to in THE LAST GIRL, in the first book, which is that he witnessed his father, when he was about his daughter's age, he witnessed his father getting shot by a policeman on a side road, a side highway in Texas. So this led him to become a journalist and to write about exposing the police department. You know, that's his real motivation and his sort of contentious relationship that he has with the Sarasota police and the Sarasota sheriff's office goes back to that. So even though it's touched upon in both books, but especially in the first book, my idea was that in the third book he would end up going back to Texas and has to face some of these demons that have been haunting him. So a lot of what is very subtly laid out in the first couple of books will come to fruition in the third book. And unfortunately, that makes it really difficult.

Debbi: [00:11:55] Well, I mean, but it shows that there is an arc to his character that you've planned out.

Danny: [00:12:01] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me it's very character-based. I get feedback from readers and it goes both ways. Some people either love him or hate him. Some people don't understand him. Some people feel like the plot is maybe too easy to figure out or the mystery to figure out. I talked to somebody last Thanksgiving and they said,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Ellen Kirschman on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript!

Debbi: [00:00:13] Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale: the nine-book boxed 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.

Debbi: [00:01:04] Hi, everyone. It's my pleasure to have as my guest today a crime fiction and nonfiction author who calls herself "A Shrink with Ink", and I don't think that's a reference to tattoos, although we could always find out. It's crime writer and psychologist Ellen Kirschman. Hey, Ellen, I'm so glad to have you on the show today.

Ellen: [00:01:29] Thank you. Debbi. I'm glad, finally, at last to be here.

Debbi: [00:01:35] Awesome. Okay. In your bio, you mentioned being born in New York City, but say you were born on the wrong coast. And I've often had that same feeling, because I love the West Coast. And you mentioned that you live in San Francisco.

Ellen: [00:01:49] Right. I live in the Bay Area.

Debbi: [00:01:51] Is that not the most awesome city ever?

Ellen: [00:01:54] Yes, it is. I love it.

Debbi: [00:01:57] I just adore it. What's your favorite part of living in San Francisco?

Ellen: [00:02:02] Well, I live about 40 minutes south, so my favorite part is that I can get up to San Francisco in just 40 minutes in my car or on a train. So I have one of the world's most beloved cities right there at my back door. I love a lot of things about the Bay area. The weather even though we have peculiar four seasons out here: flood, fire, earthquake, and landslides, usually. But most of the time it's temperate and wonderful, and I love the vibe out here. I know many parts of the country see us as being pretty ... a little on the "too far to the left" side, but that suits me just fine.

Debbi: [00:02:57] I know where you're coming from. It is a beautiful area, and I love the cable cars in San Francisco. That's one thing I love about it, and actually I used to live in Petaluma.

Ellen: [00:03:08] Did you?

Debbi: [00:03:09] That's about 40 miles north.

Ellen: [00:03:13] Right. Also a lovely community.

Debbi: [00:03:16] It is. It is very, very nice. Your first books were non-fiction. Can you tell us about them?

Ellen: [00:03:23] Sure. My first book, which just what came out, the third edition came out last May is called I LOVE A COP: WHAT POLICE FAMILIES NEED TO KNOW. And I'd been thinking about writing that book for almost 20 years, if you can believe it. It was just knocking on the inside of my head. We do so much training for police officers, but it was so clear to me as someone who worked primarily with police officers that this job just spilled over to their family life and their home in not always a very positive way, because the paradoxes, the kind of skills that make you a good street cop don't make you a very good parent, spouse, friend. You've got to really learn how to shift gears. So I really wanted to write something that would help police families navigate what it's like to be married to this job that they didn't select most of the time. So the book has been, it's been very gratifying. It's sold well over one hundred and fifty thousand copies. It's kind of, as people have said, the Bible for police families, and it's gratifying to know that I've been able to reach that many people and the help that many people.

"I really wanted to write something that would help police families navigate what it's like to be married to this job that they didn't select most of the time."

Debbi: [00:04:48] That's really something. That's amazing.

Ellen: [00:04:50] Thank you. And then this second book after September 11th, my publisher said look we need to do this for firefighters, as well. And so we did and that book is actually now under contract to update that book because there's a lot that's happened since it was published. And then the most recent nonfiction book came out about two years ago, and that's called COUNSELING COPS: WHAT CLINICIANS NEED TO KNOW. And in my work, especially my current work with the First Responder Support Network, it's really clear that many clinicians do not understand the subculture of policing and law enforcement in general. And when they don't understand it or when they harbor some personal attitudes, then they can make some really egregious mistakes in counseling cops. It's really hard for first responders to reach out and get help and when they do reach out and somebody makes a huge blunder or fails to connect with them where they're at in their particular life, they just don't go back to therapy and they write therapy off entirely as something that might be helpful to them.

"[I]n my work, especially my current work with the First Responder Support Network, it's really clear that many clinicians do not understand the subculture of policing and law enforcement in general. And when they don't understand it or when they harbor some personal attitudes, then they can make some really egregious mistakes in counseling cops."

Debbi: [00:06:11] Yeah. I can easily picture how people will shut down in the face of the wrong sort of therapeutic approach.

Ellen: [00:06:19] So I can give you an example, if you'd like. We had somebody that came through our first responder retreat who had been in two, I think, maybe three fatal shootings and was having terrible nightmares. All these shootings were legal, but he was having terrible nightmares, real doubts about himself, and it was affecting his family. So he finally went to see a therapist, and the first thing the therapist said to him was, "So, have you finally decided to stop being a trained killer?".

[00:07:00] Right. I see your eyebrows going up. And you're not a clinician, so wasn't that a horrible thing to say?

Debbi: [00:07:07] Talk about the wrong thing.

Ellen: [00:07:09] Totally, because here was an officer who himself was feeling like a victim. Why did this happen on my watch? Why did this person insert themselves in my life? And so that really convinced us that we need to develop what we call culturally competent clinicians---people who may only see a couple of cops a year, but do understand what they do and why they do it.

Debbi: [00:07:37] Sheesh. I would hope so. Good grief. Let's talk about your crime fiction now. If a potential reader asked you, how would you describe it? Is it more procedural or more detective?

Ellen: [00:07:56] Neither. Actually, Dot Meyerhoff is a police psychologist. Actually, Debbi, when I started this, I thought doing research for nonfiction is so difficult. Let's be easier to make stuff up. Well, it's absolutely not. I was delusional. It's way harder to write a fast-moving, engrossing piece of fiction as you know yourself as a writer than it is to write nonfiction, which is basically reporting. You have to know what good science and junk science is, but I found fiction much harder. So I have this character Dot Meyerhoff, who is herself a police psychologist. She's younger than I am. She's 52, and she should be counseling cops, not solving crimes. But she never gives up on anybody and when her officers, the ones she's supposed to be counseling, get into trouble, she gets drawn into either their cases or the way their cases are affecting themselves psychologically or their families. I would describe my books as psychological mysteries or thrillers. I tackle serious subjects, but I have a lot of humor in my books. You can't work with law enforcement if you don't have a sense of humor. And so I hope, I'm actually confident that my sense of humor comes through in these books, even though I'm tackling some very, very serious subjects.

"I tackle serious subjects, but I have a lot of humor in my books. You can't work with law enforcement if you don't have a sense of humor."

Debbi: [00:09:41] Yes, I think that's important, to achieve that balance. Humor as well as the serious stuff. Can you tell us a little bit about the story arc that your series follows, if there is one, in terms of your protagonist's development. Where does she start, and where does she go?

Ellen: [00:10:05] Well, it's not necessary to read them in order, but the first book is called BURYING BEN and that relates to Dot counseling a young rookie who is still in the field training program, and he's struggling he's having a terrible time, particularly with his training officer and Dot's fighting with the training officer. They've tried to get him to sort of settle down, be more of a teacher and less of an evaluator, because he's pretty rough. And, in the middle of all of this, this young officer commits suicide and leaves a note blaming Dot Meyerhoff and blaming his training officer. So Dot, she's brand new on the job. She's just literally walked in the door of this police department, and so she has to restore her own confidence, she has to restore her reputation with that department, and she is also in the throes of recovering from a failed marriage, in which her ex-husband (also a police psychologist) has left her for a much younger woman with whom he now has children. So she's kind of broken when she gets to the police department and then this terrible thing happens that this young man kills himself.

[00:11:37] In the second book called THE RIGHT WRONG THING, I tackled the issue of what happens when a police officer makes a dreadful mistake, shoots and kills somebody that is innocent,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime author and screenwriter James Longmore on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript!

Debbi: [00:00:13] Hi, everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale: the nine-book boxed 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.

[00:01:02] It's my great pleasure today to have James Longmore as my guest. James is not only an author, but a screenwriter and a publisher. He has written and directed short films, as well, and even done standup comedy. So thanks for being here today, James.

James: [00:01:21] Thank you for having me. Nice to see you.

Debbi: [00:01:25] Sure thing. It's great to see you. You've done so many interesting things. Let's start with your writing, though. What do you write mostly? Is it mostly horror or do you do other genres, as well?

James: [00:01:39] A lot of it seems to be horror, because that's sort of where my mind defaults to, but mostly, you know, dark stuff. You know, if it's dark, whether it's your crime or horror or dark romance or whatever. I think if it's got a dark element to it, then that's me. A dark comedy is what I'm a big fan of already, which is something we British people do incredibly well.

Debbi: [00:02:08] I do love dark comedy, and that's pretty awesome. But let's see. You've written five novels, three novellas, and a bunch of short stories.

James: [00:02:19] Right, yeah. Apparently so. Yes. On my resume.

Debbi: [00:02:24] Are all of your novels standalones?

James: [00:02:27] They are, yeah. I envy authors who sort of plan and write a series of three, four, five. We spoke to somebody recently who's planned a series of like ten books. Maybe I just haven't had the idea yet that it would sustain any sort of series. A couple of my novels I think would make a good sequel, but I just seem to like to move on to the next idea. I'm not one for rehashing, to be honest.

Debbi: [00:03:02] Interesting. Or for stretching things out.

James: [00:03:04] For stretching things out. Yeah, yeah, it's the same reason I tend not to commit to long TV series. A nice little 10-part series or an eight-part series, that's fine. But these that go on for like 13 seasons, it's just ... I just can't commit to that.

Debbi: [00:03:27] And they tend to kind of run out of gas after a while if they don't do it right.

James: [00:03:32] They do usually. I mean, I remember I really got hooked on Breaking Bad and that was just about the right length. I think it was seven, maybe eight seasons, and that was enough. But some of them, they just go on and it's like ... really should have stopped. Season Seven, you should have quit. But honestly. I mean, obviously, as long as people still watch it and advertisers still fork it out, they'll still keep churning them out.

Debbi: [00:03:58] Exactly, exactly right. Can you tell us a little about Flanagan? What's the book about?

James: [00:04:04] It's a sort of dark psychological sort of ... I don't like to use the word erotica, because it's not really erotica. It's about an everyday or seemingly everyday couple who have a couple of sort of weird ways of getting their kicks, and I don't want to give too much. It has a twist that I don't want to give away because it's one that people [won't see coming]. I swear you'd never see it coming in a million years. But, for me, because I like dark things, I like horror. You know, I mean for me one of the most horrific monsters, if you like, can be Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average. Because you never know. They could live next door and you know a lot of you look at them serial killers and whatnot and you know the number of times when they do catch them, the neighbors say, "Oh, you know, he was ever so nice."

"I like horror. You know, I mean for me one of the most horrific monsters, if you like, can be Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average. Because you never know."

Debbi: [00:05:05] Exactly.

James: [00:05:05] I mean, John Wayne Gacy. He used to do kids' parties as a clown. Ted Bundy worked on a suicide hotline. I mean, these are people who, until they're caught, you'd never suspect.

Debbi: [00:05:19] Exactly, yeah. Sometimes that kind of innocent demeanor can mask a really twisted soul.

James: [00:05:30] Oh, definitely. My first novel is about some killer giant centipedes. I always wanted to write a creature novel. I'm a big big fan of James Herbert. Actually the first grown up horror novel I ever read was James Herbert's The Rats, and I always wanted, all these years I wanted to write a creature novel, but couldn't really come up with a creature that hadn't been done and all that was not lame. But then I hit upon giant centipedes, which do creep me out to be honest with you. And that sort of wrote itself. My other novel, Tenebrion, is about a demon. But I think for me Flanagan is probably most horrific, because it could happen. There's nothing demonic about them. They're not anything other than average or seemingly average people.

Debbi: [00:06:24] Well, that's intriguing. What inspired you to write horror?

James: [00:06:28] You know, I think it's just the way my brain is wired to be honest. I think that's the kind of person I am. I think I'm a born pessimist by nature, anyway. It's an impossible question to answer. You can ask anybody. Ask J.K. Rowling why she writes Harry Potter. I mean anybody who writes anything. I think it's just the way the brain works to be honest. I mean you know the golden rule is write for yourself. Write what entertains you and I still to this day love horror movies, and I love reading horror books, and dark scary things. And I guess that's why I write it.

Debbi: [00:07:12] Just out of curiosity, are you a fan of corny, old sci-fi movies?

James: [00:07:17] Of what? Sorry.

Debbi: [00:07:19] Corny, old sci-fi movies?

James: [00:07:22] You know, I do like sci-fi, yes. Yeah. And funnily enough, I actually watched the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still a couple weeks ago. But, yeah, I grew up watching--they used to be on a Saturday morning. The old B-movies, sci-fi movies. Yeah. So if a good sci-fi comes on, I will always make an effort to watch it.

Debbi: [00:07:46] Or sometimes a bad sci-fi.

James: [00:07:47] Sometimes they are the ones where the sets are a bit wobbly and the effects. Some of those are brilliant.

Debbi: [00:07:55] Like your Ed Wood stuff.

James: [00:07:57] I love Ed Wood's stuff. The movie they made about Ed Wood, the one that Tim Burton made was just brilliant, but you know he just didn't care. He just, you know, when I think Bela Lugosi died halfway through filming, he just replaced him with somebody. He was even shorter and looked nothing like him and just replaced him and carried on. It was just like ...

Debbi: [00:08:22] You do what you have to.

James: [00:08:23] Fantastic. Because for him, for Ed Wood, it was about the story. All too often these days you know you see, probably in sci-fi especially, they spend that much time and effort on the effects and money on the effects that they seem to forget there's supposed to be a story as well.

Debbi: [00:08:43] And characters that you give a damn about.

James: [00:08:45] Yeah. You just get all big explosions and it's like the Transformers movies. You know, I've seen most of that with my kids, and I lose track of what's ... I don't care what's going on. And to be honest, it's just all CGI fighting CGI, and it's like I don't get it.

Debbi: [00:09:07] I'd like to do a whole podcast and call it Too Much CGI and talk about movies where they do this too much.

James: [00:09:15] I would agree. Yes, for now, I watched the remake of The Thing. I actually had the flu a couple weeks back, so I watched some TV. And obviously they used CGI rather than practical effects, and it wasn't a patch on the original, which was obviously all practical. I remember seeing that when it came out in the movies. It was like, "Wow!" You know? Good idea for a podcast. Yes.

Debbi: [00:09:42] Maybe I should think about that.

James: [00:09:45] Do that.

Debbi: [00:09:47] You have a very interesting background. You're from Yorkshire, England, but you live in Houston, Texas, now. What was it like moving from England to Texas?

James: [00:09:57] It was a big move. It was just totally different. I mean, the heat took some getting used to. We've been here eight years now. The heat. Because we moved in July and it was raining when we left Manchester Airport, and we got here about eight and a half hours later. And when we got off the plane, it was like stepping into an oven.

On moving from Yorkshire, England to Houston, Texas: "Because we moved in July and it was raining when we left Manchester Airport, and we got here about eight and a half hours later. And when we got off the plane, it was like stepping into an oven."

Debbi: [00:10:20] My gosh. I can only imagine.

James: [00:10:21] That summer it got up to 104. But it was like your high 90s, early hundreds, and we're not used to that, us Brits don't get, unless you go abroad on vacation. You know, go to like Greece or Spain or whatever. I went to Cyprus one year and it got up to 101, and and that was the hottest I've ever experienced and that's just like, that's normal here. Which is scary.

Debbi: [00:10:46] And I can imagine culturally it's very different.

James: [00:10:50] You know, it is and it isn't. To be fair, it's like stepping back into 1986....

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Andrew Nette on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript!

Debbi: [00:00:13] Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two e-books for sale: the nine-book boxed 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.

[00:01:02] Finally, I'd like to tell you about another podcast that might interest you. Kings River Life has a new mystery podcast called Mysteryrat's Maze. Episodes consist of mystery short stories, and first chapters of mystery novels, read by local actors. To listen to the episodes and subscribe to the podcast, you can go to mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com, iTunes and Google Play. Click the icon below to learn more.

[00:01:33] Hi, everyone. Today on the Crime Cafe, it's my pleasure to have a writer of fiction, non-fiction, a reviewer, and a self-proclaimed pulp scholar. It's my pleasure, as I said, to introduce Andrew Nette today.

Andrew: [00:01:54] Thank you, Debbi. Nice to be here.

Debbi: [00:01:58] I'm so happy you can be here.

Andrew: [00:02:00] Yes. It took a bit of organizing, but we did it.

Debbi: [00:02:03] We did it. We did it. How would you describe your particular type of fiction writing?

Andrew: [00:02:13] I think without trying to make it too complicated I like to say that I sort of write elevated sort of genre novels. It's hardboiled fiction with the sort of noir tinge, although I don't think you can call yourself noir. You have to let someone else call you that. But I do try and I do try and put a lot of work into them. I try to make the writing the best I can and I try and inject quite a bit of politics and setting into my into my crime novels. My second novel is called Gunshine State and it's a heist novel. It's a heist gone wrong novel. I love heist movies, and I've always wanted to write that Australian heist gone wrong novel, because there's so few of them. But it's also quite political and it's set in a number of places. It's set in Queensland, which is in northern Australia. It's also set in Melbourne. It's also set in Thailand, where I lived for quite a while.

Debbi: [00:03:21] I see. Well, I'm reading it now and enjoying it very much. Can you tell us a little bit about your first novel Ghost Money?

Andrew: [00:03:30] Yeah. Ghost Money, a novel dear to my heart. I worked as a journalist in Cambodia in the 1990s for a wire service for a while. I lived in that part of Southeast Asia for about seven years, and I spent quite a bit of time in Cambodia. I always thought Cambodia would be a great setting for a crime novel, partly because things happened every day in Cambodia. You just couldn't make up ... terrible things, but also wonderful things. Also, I'm fascinated by the notion of what constitutes justice and law and order in countries which lack a great deal of justice and law and order and which have had something like the Khmer Rouge that did the horrendous Pol Pot regime happened to them. But when I was working in Cambodia in the 90s, I always thought this would be really great to set a crime novel here. And I never got around to it. I was too busy working as a journalist, and then later on I sort of came back to it. That was in the mid-90s, and then basically in about 2007, my father died and I had this epiphany. I thought I have to write this novel. So my family and I went and lived in Cambodia for a year. And I wrote a novel that's called Ghost Money, which is set in Cambodia in the mid-90s. And the key character of which is a Vietnamese Australian former policeman who now works as a private investigator and is hired to go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia--the capital of Cambodia--to look for a missing Australian gem trader. And, yes, that's my first novel, Ghost Money.

"I'm fascinated by the notion of what constitutes justice and law and order in countries which lack a great deal of justice and law and order and which have had something like the Khmer Rouge that did the horrendous Pol Pot regime happened to them."

Debbi: [00:05:26] How much of your inspiration for these novels comes from just reading the headlines?

Andrew: [00:05:35] Oh, for that one, so much. And a lot of history. It's a very rich, historically rich novel. Some people think that there's too much history in it. That might be the case. It was very much based on fact. In fact, I didn't use a lot of material that I just thought people simply would not believe, a lot of real material. So it's a fictionalized version of a whole lot. I mean the central the central spine of the novel, the search for the missing gem trader, is actually also based on a sort of semi-real life event that happened in Phnom Penh back in the early 2000s. The murder of an Australian gem trader in a hotel room in a luxury hotel in Phnom Penh, which was never solved. There's a whole backstory to that. That was the sort of germ of it. The novel is set at a point when the Khmer Rouge ... because a lot of people may not realize the Khmer Rouge insurgency was actually still going right up until the early 2000s. I mean they'd been pegged back in terms of their territory a lot. By 1996 when I was working there was a journalist, the insurgency was still going very strong.

[00:07:01] So the government versus the Khmer Rouge and complicated by the fact of course that both sides are also trying to make money. And what happened in the mid-90s is that there was a big split in the Khmer Rouge and their foreign minister a guy called Ieng Sary, a person who had been their foreign minister who had this big base on the Cambodian side of the Cambodian-Thai border. He split from the main body of the Khmer Rouge. Without going into any of the details that was in a sense we didn't quite see it then, but looking back at it now that was really the beginning of the end of the Khmer Rouge, because they started to fall apart very quickly after that. When Ieng Sary split, he was in a town called Pailin on the border or on the northeast border in Cambodia. Very few people have been in Pailin, and there were always rumors about how many soldiers he had and how much influence he had on both sides. At that time, Cambodia was ruled by a very unstable alliance of two parties that have been at civil war with each other for most of the 80s. And the U.N. had brokered a very unstable truce with them to form a coalition government and they were fighting the Khmer Rouge and they were fighting each other and as soon as Ieng Sary split, both these sides of this coalition government started trying to woo him, because they were lining up for what would eventually be the armed conflict, the very brief armed conflict that those two sides of the Coalition government would have.

[00:08:38] Anyway, the book is set amongst that backdrop. It's a crime novel, very much so. But I was also very keen to talk about Cambodia I suppose back then as a broken country, but also as a country where people were trying to put it back together and what it was like for ordinary Khmers. So I was trying to be very faithful to that while at the same time deliver a really sort of exciting dark crime novel. So that's what I mean I suppose when I say elevated genre stuff. You're trying to kind of be political, you're trying to have setting. There's a lot about Cambodian history. What Phnom Penh was like in the mid-90s, but none of that is any good. I think if you're not delivering also a really interesting exciting crime novel.

Debbi: [00:09:28] Of course not. Yes, because there's the entertainment factor.

Andrew: [00:09:36] Yes, it's just didactic otherwise and you're just preaching at people.

Debbi: [00:09:40] Exactly. You don't want to do that. Hey, if I wanted to write a political speech, I'd do that. In any case, I was just going to say, you must do a lot of research for your books.

Andrew: [00:09:53] Well, that book was a lot of research, because you're trying to recreate Cambodia in the mid-90s. I had been there, but then it was 10 years later that I lived there again. And Cambodia was changing very rapidly, I did a lot of history for that book. I did quite a bit of research for Gunshine State, my second novel. I'm doing a bit of research for the sequel to Gunshine State, which is called Orphan Road, but I'm trying to do less research, and I'm trying to make them accurate and still trying to retain those elements I was talking about. I'm trying to not do quite as much research, since I did the most research for Ghost Money. If I had to do that with every single book, it would take me forever to write them.

Debbi: [00:10:41] Yeah, yeah. I mean, at some point it's like, it's fiction. Okay?

Andrew: [00:10:45] That's right. A thing a lot of people seem to miss these days. Yes.

Debbi: [00:10:51] Yeah, yeah. Okay. I've got to ask you this. You write book and film reviews. I was going to say that basically you have my dream job--writing book and film reviews. I have to ask how did you end up working for Noir City?

Andrew: [00:11:13] I've only written once or twice for them. So Noir City as the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation. A terrific organization. I think I just pitched them. People. Just pitch.

Debbi: [00:11:36] So no special connections there, eh?

Andrew: [00:11:37] Not particularly, no. No and I have met Eddie Muller [founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation]. I have been an attendee in the past at an event which is held in Philadelphia....