The Crime Cafe

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author Richard Helms.

To buy any of the books displayed, just click on the cover.

The interview transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

Debbi: Hi everybody. This is the Crime Cafe. Your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I’m your host, Debbi Mack. Before I introduce my guest, I’d like to remind you to please check out the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and the Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology. Both publications you can find on my website, debbimack.com when you click on the link Crime Cafe. You can also find the podcast subscription buttons there, as well as Crime Cafe merch. And with that, I would like to introduce my good friend and a great writer who also happens to be a multi-award winning author, a retired clinical forensic psychologist, and a retired college professor, Richard Helms. Do you go by Rick or Richard?

Richard: I go by Rick.

Debbi: Yes, I always call you Rick [laughs]. So, very cool, Rick. Thanks for being here. I’m so glad you could be here.

Richard: Well, I’m happy to be here. I appreciate you having me today.

Debbi: Well, it’s my pleasure and at this point, you said you have 19 published novels?

Richard: Well, yeah. I have 19 that have been published. I think three of them are still in print. So, a bunch of them are available as ebooks, but most of my novels right now are out-of-print for any of a number of reasons. My own publishing company folded up back in 2011 and several of the books were on that, and Five Star (I’m one of the Five Star orphans). Some of you may not be familiar with Five Star. It was a division of Cengage Learning, which used to be Houghton Mifflin. It was Thomson-Shore and all these other, but anyway, they folded their mystery thriller line, I guess January of 2015 and I got the message on my birthday that my book publisher was going out of business.

Not only that, but my books were going to be going out of print. So, the books that I had with Five Star are largely out-of-print at this point, but I have had 19 published up to this point beginning all the way back in 1980, which is probably before a lot of people watching this were born, when I had my first couple of novels published by World Karting Magazine. I was a go-cart racer back then when I was in college and Anne Bazzoli-Kugler with World Karting Magazine talked me into writing a series of stories about a driver named Karl Geary and the two books, Geary’s Year and Geary’s Gold were serialized over the course of about four years in World Karting Magazine. I immediately got to work and started writing an adult style thriller. At the time I was really reading a lot of Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett and David Morrell and so I decided I was going to write a Ludlum-style thriller called, The Valentine Profile because obviously getting published was so incredibly easy that all I had to do was dash it out and send it off and people would pay to publish it. I didn’t see another book in print for almost 20 years [laughs]. So…

Debbi: This is not a place to look for overnight success.

Richard: Well, most of the overnight successes I know have been doing this for about 20 years [laughs].

Debbi: Exactly! Exactly!

Richard: At one level or another. I mean [Robert] Crais was writing for TV for years; Lee Goldberg, too. You know people who’ve been slaving away in the salt mines of writing in the back rooms of the story-runner rooms, and a lot of them are now coming out as novelists and doing a really great job.

Debbi: That’s correct. That’s true. I was going to ask you about stock car racing and if you’d ever considered writing a NASCAR novel.

Richard: Well, I wrote a novella, which is currently…I have a book of short stories that’s currently with my new book publisher. It’s Clay Stafford Books out of Nashville, Tennessee. But I’ve sent them a short story compilation that includes an unpublished novella that’s built around stock car racing.

Debbi: Ah-ha.

Richard: And in the book I’m working on right now, I’ve had requests from an agent to do a full read on it. In the book I’m doing right now, there’s a section in which one of the characters does become a professional stock car racer and eventually a professional Indy car racer back in the 1950s and ’60s. So, it peaks in from time to time, but I haven’t actually written an entire book except for the Karting novels built around racing itself.

Debbi: Well, it would be intriguing to see more of that [laughs].

Richard: I think my good friend, Tammy Kaehler is going to kind of corner the market on that [laughs].

Debbi: Is that the woman who often teams up with Simon Wood?

Richard: Yes, yes they are good friends.

Debbi: I was going to say, you know they are both into racing.

Richard: Simon is a former racer and Tammy’s done a little bit of I think autocrossing and a little bit of racing and, of course, I drove race cars for about 28 years and so when we get together at conferences we have something other than books to talk about [laughs].

Debbi: You’ve had a number of different protagonists over the years.

Richard: Yes.

Debbi: I was going ask, if somebody asked you what kind of books you write, can you think of a common thread or theme or type of protagonist that runs through your work?

Richard: I think they all probably embody (and this is almost like a stock answer), but really, I think they all kind of embody the idea that Raymond Chandler talked about that “down these mean streets walks a man who is not himself mean” and he goes into all of the other qualities of a private eye writer. As Robert B. Parker pointed out in his doctoral dissertation, however, even Chandler said that this hero doesn’t really exist. This is not a person you would encounter in real life because in real life, most of us have way too much to lose. But, and that’s where fiction gives us this outlet, this heroic Arthurian kind of figure or sometimes a quixotic kind of character who’s tilting at windmills, who does the things that nobody else can do. That would be the person that I write. I tend to write those individuals, the larger than life characters who embody values and ethics and morals that I believe in. But, at the same time, are able to take it one step further and become the knights-errant who can step in and save the day, when most of us might stand by saying what is there to do, you know?

Debbi: Yes, exactly.

Richard: I tend to write heroic, more heroic figures I think without labeling them as heroes. They would certainly say, “I’m no hero.”

Debbi: [laughs].

Richard: I’d disagree.

Debbi: Yes, yes. Not surprisingly I’ve noticed a lot of your main characters are retired forensic pathologists.

Richard: Psychologists, psychologists.

Debbi: Well, I noticed the use of the term pathologist in some of your descriptions.

Richard: I use the term pathology a lot, yeah. But Pat Gallagher is probably my marquee character. He’s the one that’s gotten me the most stuff over the years; most recognition. And, in fact, there’s a new Pat Gallagher novel coming out this summer from Clay Stafford Books in Nashville. It’s called Paid in Spades and I’m real excited about it. But Pat Gallagher is a retired forensic psychologist and a disgraced college professor.

Debbi: [agrees].

Richard: What’s really interesting is that when I wrote Pat Gallagher originally back in the 1980s (I wrote the first stories around 1984 somewhere in there), I was neither a forensic psychologist nor had I ever been a college professor [laughs], so it’s almost like in this case life imitated art. A couple of years after I wrote the first Gallagher stories, I went to work as the supervising psychologist in Charlotte for a facility, a 24-bed locked facility for the most violent and aggressive teenagers in the state. And I walked in the first day, and I had been hired as a behavior analyst, which is what I was trained to do. Almost all of my work up to that point had been behavior analysis rather than kind of touchy feely counseling kind of stuff.

So, I walked into the first day working for this center and I walked into the director’s office and he looked up and he said, “Ah, our forensic psychologist has arrived” and I said, “Whoa, time out, I’m a behavior analyst. I’m not trained to be a forensic psychologist. I don’t claim to be and there is nothing on my resume that said forensic psychologist.” He said, “No worry, we’re going to get you trained.” And they did. They did get me trained, but I was very taken aback by the idea that I might actually be doing this stuff that Gallagher had been doing in my stories before. Later that day, I had my first therapy session. It was a group therapy session for adolescent sex offenders, and I walked in and it was being conducted by the assistant director of the facility; a wonderful woman named Juliet Orridge who later went back to England. She was from England, she went back to England and she was awarded the MBE, no the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for the work she did with child rehabilitation there. But anyway, she was running the group that day and I walked in and she looked up and said, “Oh, our new sex offender therapist has arrived.” And I said, “Whoa, time out. I’m a forensic psychologist.” [laughs].

Debbi: [laughs].

Richard: And that’s how that came to be. But yeah, Gallagher’s a retired forensic psychologist. Ben Long in, The Unresolved Seventh, is retired but he’s dragged back into practice in that particular book. Hollis Dayton, who is the female heroine of The Daedalus Deception, which is a book that’s only come out as an ebook so far. But she also is a retired social worker as I recall. But beyond that, I’m not sure if there are any others. I’d have to think and look at some of them to find out, maybe some of the short stories....

Debbi Mack interviews thriller author Kristin Helling.

To buy any of the books displayed, just click on the cover.

The interview transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. This is the Crime Cafe. Your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I’m Debbi Mack, your host. Before I bring on my guest, I’d like to say two things. First, check out my website and the link at debbimack.com. The link “Crime Cafe” where you can find all the buy links for the Crime Cafe publications, as well as the subscribe button for the podcast. Secondly, I’m putting together a Patreon campaign for people who would like to support the podcast. Yes, you can help keep the lights on here and keep the great crime, suspense and thriller talk coming. So, they’ll be great perks for people who get involved and donate as low as a dollar. So, please consider it and be on the lookout for the page. I’ll let everyone know when that’s up. But now, what you’ve been waiting for. My guest is Kristin Helling who “enjoys stories with a journey, whether it’s a journey across the globe, a journey through space, or a journey of finding oneself.” I like that. How’s it going Kristin? It’s great to have you on.

Kristin: Good, thank you for having me, Debbi.

Debbi: Sure thing. It’s wonderful. So, you’ve done a lot of different types of writing and that intrigues me, but we’ll start with your thriller writing. The Altruism Effect, tell us about the book. What is the book about?

Kristin: Yeah, so the premise is based around a psychological experiment from our history, a real one. As I was studying psychology, I got my minor with my bachelor’s in psychology and it was just all of these cases from the past that have taught us so much about humanity, was just so inspiring to me and so I feel like the stories write themselves when I read these cases and so my series, Mastermind Murderers is based off of loose inspirations from psychological studies. So, the first book, The Altruism Effect is based off of the Stanford Prison Experiment that happened in 1971. So, yeah my protagonist is a psychologist herself. She’s graduated with her doctorate and she’s running a clinic with a few other graduates that she has come close with and she’s had a couple of horrific experiences, which relates back to the prison experiment. Kind of helps her guide herself through life.

Debbi: I know as a lawyer, it affected me.

Kristin: She went through the training to be a psychologist and that definitely came from my background in psychology as well as, you know the cases that I allude to as well.

Debbi: Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you had that reference to the Stanford Experiment, because I think I’ve heard of it before and that’s just very scary. And where does The Bystander Effect go from this, the next book I assume in the series? Is it an extension of what happens before? Is it the same protagonist or does something else happen?

Kristin: It is, yes. So, this is a four book series. So, I don’t think it’s a spoiler in saying that she survives [laughs].

Debbi: Thank heavens [laughs].

Kristin: And so the second book, The Bystander Effect opens up with the detective that speaks to her when she’s in the hospital at the end. He actually goes back and visits her after there’s been some time for her to heal and he actually approaches her to ask for her expertise in a case that he’s currently working on. So, he…because of the experience that she had, he’s finding similarities in some current cases he’s working on and he thinks with her experience and her education that she would be a really big help to the case. And so, with a lot of kind of going within herself and seeing if this was possible for her to even do, she ends up taking the job, and so the two of them work to try and solve the next case that comes up. That’s kind of how the rest of the series is lined up. She ends up becoming a very integral part to solving cases that are also related to past experiments.

Debbi: That’s very interesting. So, you create kind of a team in essence.

Kristin: Yes.

Debbi: A crime solving team.

Kristin: Yes.

Debbi: Psychologist and police detective, I guess. That sounds really interesting. What about Capsule? I noticed you wrote … it looks like a sci-fi thriller.

Kristin: [laughs] Yeah, interestingly enough, I’ve got lots of stories and they all tend to be within the thriller genre. I just love, you know fast-paced stories that have twists and turns you’re not expecting and so this story came into my head and it’s very character driven. It’s more of a character kind of experiment and it could have taken place anywhere really. It could have been in a submarine, it could have been in the woods. But, it just happen to make sense in space so that was actually the first novel that I published and it’s a standalone, even though some of my readers want me to continue it. Kind of made that, you know mistake of leaving it a little open-ended at the end for the reader to decide and they didn’t like that [laughs].

So, yeah I love that story and it was with me for a long time and I finally got it out onto the page and I love talking about that one as well because it really is a character study that also tells us a lot about humanity and I loved writing that story because the main character was born in space because his parents, the astronauts, knew that it would be a suicide mission and they knew that they needed to have somebody to pilot the ship back to earth. So they birthed a child to do that. So his whole life is essentially out of his hands. He felt like he didn’t really have a choice. He has to do this mission. So he starts to kind of formulate those decisions whether or not, you know am I living for myself or am I living for this other thing. And so for me, writing that character was hard because I have all the biases of a person who was born and who has lived on earth. This person has never stepped foot on earth before. So to really take myself out of my biases and put myself into that character psychology was very interested and fun to do.

Debbi: Wow! That sounds really intriguing. I’ve got to check that out.

Kristin: Thank you.

Debbi: Because I love sci-fi actually and to combine sci-fi and thriller is really cool.

Kristin: It’s very soft sci-fi. So I don’t go through a lot of technology and things with the ship. Maybe one sentence of how it works and kind of move on from there.

Debbi: I kind of like that though; the psychology part of sci-fi.

Kristin: Yeah.

Debbi: You also write creative non-fiction and travel narratives.

Kristin: Yes.

Debbi: How did you get started with that? I love to travel by the way. I noticed you’ve been to all these places, countries. That’s fantastic!

Kristin: Thank you. Yeah, so traveling is gosh, it’s so opening to your perspective of what you know as your culture. When I met my husband, he was born in a small city outside of Kansas City, Missouri and had lived in the same house his entire life and so I was like, you’ve never seen anything else outside of, you know this little Missouri town, like we need to see things. I grew up traveling with my parents and everything, so my husband and I went on several trips so that I could show him. I have a love for France, so I actually studied there in college for a month and brought my husband along and he’s a photographer so it was kind of perfect mashup and traveling just opens your perspective and it’s inspiring and you meet different people from different cultures and walks of life and it’s pretty awesome.

So, creative non-fiction was a genre that was kind of emerging, I would say back in like 2010. A lot of people really hadn’t heard about it and there was an anthology by a guy named Phillip Lopate that I read and I just loved it and creative non-fiction is kind of just like snippets of life that you can embellish upon. I love just taking the brevity of life, small things. You know I wrote a story about leaving for work and forgetting my coffee cup on top of the car and it falling off when I pulled out and me not knowing what it was and me thinking I hit the neighbor’s cat and that’s the whole story. The whole story’s about my coffee cup falling off the car. But, you can really elaborate on that and you know bring the creativity into the story by taking something so simple and just, you know expanding it.

Debbi: I love that. I love the idea of the small story and I think that’s true of documentary as well. I’ve been taking some documentary classes myself and some of the best documentaries I’ve found have been small stories about people you don’t even know. I mean just the stories that they tell and they’d be amazing on the page as well as visually.

Kristin: Right. Narrowing the scope on a subject can be really impactful.

Debbi: Exactly, exactly right. So you did a Da Vinci travel series. I thought that was kind of interesting.

Kristin: Yeah, so you know I read Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code and there’s quite a few places to travel in that book and me being a book nerd, thought it would be fun, you know to go to all of those places in the book [laughs]. So, yeah we actually kind of did it backwards. So we started in Scotland and then worked our way down through England and to France and ended up at the Rose Line and of course it’s a fictional book so for me it was really inspiring to see these places that you know, Dan Brown saw and worked into this whole world. That was pretty awesome and it was fun.

Debbi: That’s fantastic! Have you published any of these?

Kristin: Just on my blog, which I don’t think I have live anymore actually [laughs]. I’ve written several, you know travel narratives and blogs about my traveling. I don’t think I have them live anymore. They’re kind of archived.

...

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author S.G. Wong.

The transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

Debbi: Hello everyone. This is the Crime Cafe. This is your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I’m your host, Debbi Mack. Before I introduce my guest, I would just like to remind you to check out the Crime Cafe link on my website, debbimack.com where you can find buy links for the Crime Cafe Boxed Set and Short Story Anthology. It’s only $1.99 for the boxed set and $0.99 for the anthology and you can also subscribe to the podcast there. And now, it’s a great pleasure for me to introduce my next guest, a woman who writes in the hardboiled mystery genre, which I love and also has an awesome female protagonist, S. G. Wong. Hi, S.G., how are you doing today?

S.G.: I’m doing well Debbi. How are you?

Debbi: Fine, thanks! I had the pleasure of reading your first Lola Starke novel Die On Your Feet. I just thought it was so, such an interesting concept.

S.G.: Thank you.

Debbi: How about you tell us about Lola and her companion, so to speak, Aubrey [laughs].

S.G.: So, as you mentioned my series protagonist, her name is Lola Starke, and Lola lives in a city, I call Crescent City. I created a world for her and it’s based on 1930’s Los Angeles, but the premise is “what if the Chinese had colonized rather than Europeans” and then I also imagined ghosts being a regular part of life in Crescent City. So, Lola’s constant companion, Aubrey is invisible to Lola but she hears him. She hears him just fine. Oftentimes, she’s not happy about hearing what he has to say, but you know those are the best sorts of, you know partnerships. Dramatic partnerships are, you know, when they’re at odds. It’s really fun to write. So, Lola is a bit of a trust fund baby, but she’s actually also a private investigator. She chose that path because of her father who worked at one of the studios in town. So, since it’s based on, you know, not a very close reading of 1930’s era L.A., but sort of this Hollywood glamorized version that we all sort of have (those of us who don’t actually live there). So, there’s a movie studio, there’s a movie studio system and so Lola’s father used to work as a fixer for the studios and she’s kind of gotten into that sort of problem solving career. So, that’s who she is and her companion, Aubrey. Yeah, her ghost [laughs].

Debbi: That’s really something. The first book ends in a way that’s not really a cliffhanger, but really strongly suggests an interesting sequel. That’s all I’ll say about that.

S.G.: I’ve actually…well so far, I mean now it’s 2018 isn’t it? There are three books out in this series so far, and I’m actually busily working on a prequel novella. It’s actually a re-working. I actually had finished it back in July of 2017 and then you know how it is, Debbi when you’ve done something and it’s okay, but something’s not quite sitting right with you, you know as the writer. And so I sat with that for months, and I finally decided in December I had to re-write the whole thing because it just was not quite working. So, I have no idea when that’s going to be out [laughs], but I’m working on it. And then, in terms of the continuing novel series, I have an idea to do three more books. Books Four, Five and Six I guess it would be. Sort of like a trilogy within the larger series because I have a really long story arc I want to explore. So, that’s what’s on deck I guess, as they say.

Debbi: Wow, that’s fascinating. I realized that you had some books after the first one and I was curious about what kind of story arc Lola had without giving too much away over the course of those books.

S.G.: Right. So far books One, Two and Three and thank you very much again for your lovely, kind words about book One, Die On Your Feet. So, the two books after that, the second one is called, In For A Pound and the third one is called, Devil Take the Hindmost. They aren’t like a serial in that you can read them out of order. Although, to be perfectly honest, everybody prefers, they tell me they prefer to read them in order because there is a progression to Lola’s character and especially her relationship with Aubrey, her ghost and also her relationship with some of the other people around her; her family and friends. So, it’s three different cases entirely. I have a much, you know, larger, longer overreaching character arc for Lola. I have some things planned for her that will really test her mettle and that, I think, is just a personal preference. I like reading stories where, especially with serious protagonists, you know where they are challenged; they are really put through their paces, and I like as a reader to see what happens. How are they going to grow? So, you know, it makes sense I guess as a writer I like to score that on my own as well; in my own art. So, there’s not really much to give away. Bad things happen [laughs] and Lola has to figure out what to do about it. Almost like every book [laughs].

Debbi: She has her ghosts to deal with [laughs].

S.G.: Absolutely!

Debbi: Literally [laughs]. The interesting thing is combining this paranormal sort of element with hardboiled mystery.

S.G.: Yeah.

Debbi: Was there something that came out of the science fiction or fantasy literary tradition that inspired you to combine those two things?

S.G.: Right. I’d have to back up I guess. As a child, I read a lot of fantasy. Not as much science fiction. I didn’t get into any science fiction until maybe after university really. So, later in my 20’s I guess. But I loved fantasy, and I read the classics. Of course, I read Tolkien. I read this hilarious wonderful fantasy series of five books by David Eddings, called The Belgariad. They’ve since admitted that he mostly wrote that with his wife, Leigh, but at the time, you know in the early 80’s they weren’t crediting his wife. They were just crediting him. So, it’s nice to see that she can claim some of that work, because it’s a really fun series. Anyway, it’s fantasy series, you know epic fantasy, high fantasy but really classic quest fantasy. Whereas what I write, I suppose you could think of as like urban. Not urban fantasy in the sense of, I guess what its come to mean is vampires and werewolves and things like that. Not quite like that. I read that stuff too, for sure. It’s more the idea that, you know, what if we lived in a parallel world. So what if Lola lives in a parallel world where ghost as magic is normal and then what would it look like? So that’s really I guess, that’s more the tradition that I’m writing in. Alternate history I guess is an easy way to say it.

Debbi: Alternate history. That’s interesting.

S.G.: Yeah.

Debbi: Just out of curiosity, have you ever read, Death is a Lonely Business, by Ray Bradbury?

S.G.: I have not.

Debbi: You should give that one a look because he’s, you know what he used to [write]?

S.G.: Yes.

Debbi: That was his little foray into hardboiled mystery and at the same time there was an element of the fantastic to it.

S.G.: Right.

Debbi: Kind of creepy, Bradburyesque hardboiled mystery.

S.G.: Yeah, no I just wrote that down [laughs]. You know, as writers we love book recommendations.

Debbi: Oh, yeah. And I also have to ask if you’ve ever read anything by Mercedes Lambert?

S.G.: No, I have not. Mercedes Lambert.

Debbi: Yeah, she wrote…she was able to write three books before she died in the series about Whitney Logan...

S.G.: Okay.

Debbi: Who in the third book, called Ghosttown there are elements of magical realism that come into the story and Native American culture and it’s really interesting. It takes place in California.

S.G.: Okay.

Debbi: Los Angeles and very good, very good books. All three of them of them are, but the third one was like, started to get out there. She was getting out there a little bit [laughs].

S.G.: Okay. When was she publishing?

Debbi: This was back in the 90’s I think. I think it was the 90’s. But I just remember that she had died not long before I really started to do anything in terms of self-publishing and all that kind of stuff.

S.G.: Right.

Debbi: I just remember feeling like, oh that’s such a shame because those three books were so wonderful and she also wrote under her…that was her pen name. Her birth name was Douglas Anne Munson. She wrote a novel called, El Niño under that name....

S.G.: Yeah.

Debbi: Which was also very good. I think she might have been a lawyer. That was one of the things I liked about her that she dealt with the legal system in her work and I remember El Niño was about the juvenile justice system, which is one of those things that really kind of concerns me a lot I know.

S.G.: Right?

Debbi: Yeah.

S.G.: Okay, yeah, yeah.

Debbi: Anyway, you know you might be interested in those.

S.G.: Yeah, I will check those out.

Debbi: Especially Ghosttown, because when you talked about the fantastic and everything that book was starting to get out there into the fantastic.

S.G.: Yeah.

Debbi: So, anyway [laughs].

S.G.: I could spend a whole hour exchanging book recommendations, I’m sure.

Debbi: I know, yeah. We could talk about that sort of thing forever. You said that Crescent City was inspired to some extent by Los Angeles. You know you have the studio system and everything.

S.G.: Right.

Debbi: Was there any other location that played into your description of it? Because I really had a vivid sense of the place.

S.G.: Really? Oh, thank you!

Debbi: Of the tile joints, you know, kind of like gambling casinos in a way. Almost like a Vegas or Reno atmosphere.

S.G.: Yeah. You know what? I did not have an actual location that I based that on. That was really all my take of Chinese culture. So, I know from first-hand experience [laughs] that gambling is a huge part of Chinese cultu

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author Curtis Bausse.

The transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

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’d like to remind you that the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology, are available for sale on my website, debbimack.com and just click on “Crime Café”, and you’ll get to the buy links as well as the podcast subscribe buttons and the merchandise store. Now, having said that, I’m very pleased to have today with me mystery author Curtis Bausse [Pron: Bowse]. Did I say that correctly?

Curtis: Well, it should be Bausse [Pron: Bose] normally, the French pronunciation.

Debbi: Curtis Bausse.

Curtis: I accept anything these days, you know.

Debbi: But you go by Curtis, I assume.

Curtis: Yeah, yeah sure.

Debbi: Okay, Curtis, who comes to us from Provence. Am I saying that right?

Curtis: That’s perfect, yeah.

Debbi: Oh, fantastic! Well, it’s great to have you on and you are originally from Wales though.

Curtis: Indeed, yes.

Debbi: That’s awesome.

Curtis: I grew up in Wales, educated in England and then I moved to France like ages ago. Shall we just say ages ago.

Debbi: Ages ago. So you lived in Wales for a while.

Curtis: I lived in Wales all my childhood and then went to school in England. I was actually, I’m pretty much Welsh. I’m 75%, but we lived very close to the border with England and I never learned to speak Welsh for example. I couldn’t understand Welsh, so my education is more English.

Debbi: [agrees]

Curtis: And then I moved to France. So, I’m a bit of a mix, yeah.

Debbi: Okay, well I just have to ask, have you ever been to Portmeirion?

Curtis: In Wales?

Debbi: In Wales.

Curtis: Uh, yes, a long, long time ago. Why do you have to ask that? Have you been?

Debbi: I have to ask that because I’m a big huge fan of the TV show that was set there, The Prisoner.

Curtis: The Prisoner. Yeah.

Debbi: Whenever I see that place, I always think creepy, small town [laughs].

Curtis: You’re right, yeah. No, I went when I was a kid and that series was amazing. And I think afterwards it actually burnt down. Did you read about that?

Debbi: I didn’t read about that, no.

Curtis: There was a fire there in Portmeirion and I think that whole kind of set that they used burnt down. Whether they rebuilt it, I don’t know, but yeah. There was a fire there.

Debbi: Wow! Because I know that there was quite an uproar after they aired the ending of the series.

Curtis: Yeah.

Debbi: To the point where Patrick McGoohan actually fled the country as I understand it.

Curtis: Yeah, I didn’t know that.

Debbi: Oh! I love that show though. So, what inspired you to move to France?

Curtis: What inspired me? Well, my parents were always Francophiles. We came to France when I was a kid for holidays from the age of like eight or 10 onwards; you know we would come to France every year. I studied French at uni and I had what we call a sandwich year abroad when you study languages. So, I came to France during that year at the university and more or less fell in love with the country. Well, I was already pretty much, you know, and met my wife at that time.

Debbi: [agrees]

Curtis: And so settled there as soon as I left, as soon as I left uni in fact. Britain at that time (the UK) was not in a very great state. This is kind of the mid 70’s. More or less bankrupt and there wasn’t much that would, you know, want you to stay in Britain, and France was a very attractive proposition at that time. So, I came and settled and stayed ever since.

Debbi: Huh. And where did you get the idea to write about Magali in your mysteries?

Curtis: You mean where did I…

Debbi: Why

Curtis: …find her as a particular…

Debbi: What inspired that character? Yes.

Curtis: Well actually she lived just down the road from here. Sort of 500 yards down the road. That was the person that inspired me if you like, the initial spark because I like to have something from reality to kind of set me off. We knew her as a neighbor and she’d just been left by her husband after like 20 or 26 years of marriage. I thought well, we discussed it with her what she was going to do and everything. Eventually she moved on and we no longer have any contact with her.

But, I took that situation and transposed it into Magali and joined up with something kind of fantasy I had, kind of a long time ago, was to be a private detective. And at that time in France, I don’t think it’s the same in the States, but at that time in France, it was not regulated at all. You could just put up a plaque and say, I’m a private detective, come you know, I’ll solve your cases. Since then, it has been regulated in France about a dozen years ago; no later than that you know. That was what sparked it off, you know that idea of someone looking for a new life and they could just put up a plaque and say they were a private detective. Obviously she was illegal doing that at this time, but it hadn’t been very long since it was illegal and so she had to go through the process of becoming qualified and so forth. But that was what gave me the idea of using Magali as a protagonist, yeah.

Debbi: Well I like it a lot. I love your sense of humor. Would you describe your series as humorous mystery? Do you fall kind of like more on the cozy side of the spectrum or more…does it get grittier or how would you describe it?

Curtis: Actually, it gets kind of darker. The further I go, it gets a little bit darker. I’m not particularly…I don’t know a lot about mystery series in general. I mean I do read them, but I read loads of other stuff. The other various sub-genres, was something I actually discovered as I was going along; so cozy mystery, procedurals, and all that.

Debbi: [agrees]

Curtis: When I set out, it was just going…I’m going to write a detective story; a mystery story. I wouldn’t call it cozy. It’s a little bit of everything really. Not in a particular sub-genre and as I go along, it’s getting more and more dark in fact. So, I wouldn’t call it cozy, even if I do try to keep the humor in there, yeah.

Debbi: Well, I like that actually. I like the idea of incorporating so many different types of literature and elements in there.

Curtis: I find it difficult to let go of humor entirely, you know.

Debbi: [laughs] Good. Tell us about your latest book in the series then.

Curtis: The latest. Well, the one I’m working on now you mean? Or the one…

Debbi: The one that’s currently out that you’re giving away.

Curtis: Okay, okay. The first one was, One Green Bottle, which you started reading perhaps. And then the other one is, Perfume Island, the second one. That’s the one that was set in Mayotte, which is a tiny island in the Indian Ocean; a French island which is the latest and most recent department of France, so a fully integrated part of France, but 5,000 miles away from Paris, where we went to live, my wife and I, just a few year ago. We spent two years there.

My wife was a school inspector before she’s just now retired, and I had just retired at that time and so she had a post out in Mayotte for two years and so we went out there and it’s quite an exceptional place. I mean there are a lot of places in the world which have inequality; obviously, you know a lot of rich people and the rich and poor living together and the rich in protected communities and so forth. But, this island is quite special in so far as it’s only recently become a French department, which goes against if you like the whole idea of decolonization. The whole trend since the 1950’s of African countries getting their independence.

Mayotte was in the mid 70’s part of the French colony, the Comoros Islands and they voted whether they wanted to become independent or not and they are composed of four islands. Three of the islands voted to become independent and Mayotte was the only one that said, no we don’t want to be independent, we want to remain French.

Under international law, the majority vote would be the valid one. In other words, the whole country becomes independent. But France said, okay three of the islands have voted to become independent so yeah, you can become independent, but we’re going to keep the fourth one, because they voted to remain French. That’s more or less how it happened. So the three Comorian Islands now say, well that’s completely illegal and there have been actually several resolutions in the United Nations to say that France is occupying Mayotte illegally, but the French don’t really care about that and the United Nations is not going to do anything.

So, that’s the situation as is it now and little by little Mayotte has become fully integrated into France. It’s a fully French department, except that it’s 95% Muslim. The main language (the first language) is not French. The minority of people speak French and you get a lot of immigrants now coming from the other three islands to try and live in Mayotte because Mayotte is part of Europe (being part of France) and so they expect a better lifestyle, better standard of living. They want eventually to acquire French nationality and maybe make it to Europe, etc.

So you have all the problems of migration that we get in Europe on a slightly smaller scale, but in Mayotte we get those and they cross from Comoros, it’s about 70 kilometers; it’s a risky crossing. There’s been about 20,000 people that have lost their lives in the last 20 years or so, and that’s where we went to live for two years. It’s a fabulous island, extremely beautiful. It has a lagoon which is said to be the second most beautiful and largest lagoon in the world, and yet there is this undercurrent and a very exceptional political situation,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Ray Flynt.

The transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

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 introduce my guest, a quick reminder that the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology, are available for sale at all major online retailers and some minor ones too. In any event, just go to my website, debbimack.com and click on Crime Cafe, where you’ll find the buy links as well as ways to subscribe to the podcast. And with that said, I’m thrilled to have on my program today, one of my old writers’ group buddies, and a great mystery author as well as a master thespian, Ray Flynt. Hi Ray, I’m very glad to have you on today. It’s awesome and thanks for being here.

Ray: Well it’s great to be with you and we do have a history, even though you’re barely out of college and I’m 39 again. We do go back a few years.

Debbi: Oh, please!

Ray: I have fond memories of that writers group in Maryland for many, many years.

Debbi: We miss you.

Ray: It really kind of crystalized my writing, that group.

Debbi: It’s a great group and I’m glad to be a part of it and we miss you and think of you often (at least I do). Your first mystery, I remember reading parts of that I believe.

Ray: Absolutely.

Debbi: Unforgiving Shadows

Ray: Unforgiving Shadows

Debbi: Yes. It kind of seems to set up Brad Frame’s backstory for kind of like the whole series that carries him through the whole series in a sense. Was that intentional?

Ray: Yes, although it was not the first Brad Frame story that I wrote.

Debbi: Ah, Okay.

Ray: The first one that I wrote was entitled, Grateful Husband Loving Wife and it was not good, plain and simple. However, I thought when I finished it, it was a masterpiece you know. First of all, it was only about 40,000 words. It was not…I mean some might debate whether I’m a good writer now, but I was not a good writer back then and I rediscovered my manuscript for that book about 10 years after I’d written it and I started to read it and I thought, oh my god, this is just absolutely awful!

Debbi: [laughs]

Ray: So I know I’ve improved from then. So that was the first book and it really was I think unconnected character that I wanted to make Brad. One of the issues that (in my life) I wanted to infuse Brad Frame with was to create an investigator whose life had been informed by tragedy and that kind of shot him off into a different trajectory then he had been. In my own life, when I was in my mid 30’s, I had a younger brother (age 22) that died. And it was certainly a tragic event for our family. It was something that we were all dealing with; trying to come to grips with, did a lot of reading, etc. The second book that I wrote with Brad Frame as the lead character, was a book that later got published called, Lady on the Edge, and in that book it features a South Carolina ceramic artist whose son’s death had been ruled a suicide four years earlier. Brad Frame was in town and she reached out to him saying she didn’t believe that her son would commit suicide. As a mystery writer, it has to be a murder mystery and, in fact, that’s the case. But that book gave me the opportunity to explore suicide on families.

Debbi: [agrees]

Ray: So that was basically the second manuscript that I wrote…a book which was originally titled Death Scenes, and that is what became Unforgiving Shadows. …for me a little of the story…I think this is informative for writers. Some of my favorite authors growing up were like Reck Stout. So he had the Watson character that basically told his stories, you know.

Debbi: [agrees]

Ray: So originally I started off with the idea that Brad Frame, this wealthy member of the mainline in Philadelphia had hired a publicist to tell his stories and that characters’ name was Steve McBride. Steve was young, a whole lot younger than Brad. He was an unemployed actor, which of course was something I could identify with. He also had a very flip sense of humor and he was poor. Whereas Brad was rich and it gave time for commentary about…wealthy and you know how easy their life was and so on. So I wrote this whole story called, Death Scenes with Steve McBride as the first person narrator of the story. I ended up getting an agent who told me, “I love the book”. Ok, great I’m glad you love the book. Well, she spent a little over a year trying to interest publishers in New York in buying the book and after I think it was 15 months or whatever, she came back to me and she said, Ray, I’ve exhausted most of the publishers. She said maybe you need to go back and do what a couple of the editors had suggested and that is that they felt Brad Frame was too distant because I was using this other narrator. So maybe you need to go back and revise your book or person’s (Brad Frame’s) viewpoint. And I did and that took seven months. I mean you don’t just change first person to third person overnight, you know. Plus at that point, I didn’t need Steve anymore, so I eliminated his character. But, the story of Unforgiving Shadows was essentially the same one as Death Scenes, except now told in Brad Frame’s third person viewpoint. And that’s the book that eventually was published by Five Star in 2005.

Debbi: Hmm-hmm

Ray: Thus, my first published book in the Brad Frame series. So then I had…then I had Lady on the Edge fully completed and guess who the narrator was for that? Steve McBride…

Debbi: [laughs]

Ray: And I had two-thirds of another book called, Transplanted Death, the narrator of which was Steve McBride. So I had one and two-thirds books that I then had to go back and completely re-write to put it in Brad Frame’s third person.

Debbi: Whoa.

Ray: So that’s, you know that was my start as a writer.

Debbi: As a writer and a re-writer.

Ray: Writer and re-writer and as you know, writing is all about re-writing and editing.

Debbi: Exactly. It is, very much so.

Ray: That’s how I got my start. But back to your earlier question, I envisioned Brad a dozen years after the death of his parents, or his mother and sister, excuse me. They were kidnapped and murdered and he’s invited (in the first chapter) he’s invited to the execution by lethal injection of one of two men responsible for the murder. The other had died in prison, so there’s just this one who’s awaiting execution. Brad goes reluctantly. He doesn’t necessarily feel that that’s going to give him any closure (watching the execution) and after everything is over, the chaplain runs after him and shoves a Bible into his hand and said the condemned man wanted you to have this. Not to give away the whole story, but within the Bible is a message from the man that sends Brad back to the original case. So, not only does the story give that opportunity to go back and examine what propelled Brad into becoming a private investigator because prior to that, he had led a rather aimless life. Like I say, he came from a wealthy family. He had family trust funds. He traveled a lot and didn’t do very much of anything and the tragedy in his family gave him a focus and he decided to become a private investigator to help bring justice to other people.

Debbi: Hmmm.

Ray: That’s kind of the premise that I’ve been working off of.

Debbi: That’s interesting. As the series has progressed, I’ve noticed that the stories seem to get darker.

Ray: A little bit.

Debbi: Where he’s butting more heads, more with the police.

Ray: Yes. Well, that happens. That does happen. One of the challenges of writing a private investigator is there are limitations to what they can do, and I think your average private investigator is mostly helping to track down missing persons or infidelity in a marriage situation. They’ve been hired for that purpose, etc. They don’t get very much involved in solving murders. Usually the police are the ones that get involved in solving murders. And so, when I have a murder take place, and all of my books involve murders, I feel as if I have to have a legitimate reason for why Brad is interested in the case; poking his nose around in the case. And inevitably in some of the books, it has led to him, as you say, butting heads with the police.

Debbi: [agrees]

Ray: And I try to keep that respectful, but you know, at the end of the day, I’ve got to write a book that has some conflict about it and also keeps Brad involved in helping to solve the case. Even though at the end, he may go to the police and say here’s the guy who did it. I don’t really involve Brad that much in a lot of daring-do, you know where he’s, you know shooting it out with the suspects at the end. It’s more of a cerebral kind of detective trying to figure out who committed the crime and why, and then passing that information along.

Debbi: More of a puzzle and less violence.

Ray: Absolutely! Absolutely! More of “who done it”, you know that kind of thing. Yeah, puzzle mystery.

Debbi: And I noticed, okay … the partner, Sharon Porter that Brad has…

Ray: Yes.

Debbi: What inspired you to give Brad a female partner?

Ray: Well, another one of my favorite authors growing up was Earl Stanley Gardner. Of course he created the Perry Mason series. It always appealed to me about Perry Mason was Della Street and their relationship.

Debbi: [agrees]

Ray: They kind of worked well together I thought and of course you also had Paul Drake. So, there was kind of 3 people that helped in the solution of a crime. And so when I originally had my Steve McBride character, there was the trio; Brad, Sharon (which I kind of was trying to emulate what Earl Stanley Gardner had done). But Sharon…I guess I would say I’ve grown up in a family with strong female influences; strong mother,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer K'Anne Meinel on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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

And click here to enter her five-book giveaway!

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[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.

[00:01:03] It's my pleasure today to have on an author with more than 100 published works including short stories, novels, and novellas. She works in a variety of genres, including crime fiction of course, and she's a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is also owner of Shadoe Publishing, amongst her other accomplishments. So it's my great pleasure to introduce K'Anne Meinel. Thanks for being here today, K'Anne.

K'Anne: [00:01:38] Thank you for having me.

Debbi: [00:01:41] It's my pleasure to have you on. Glad you're able to be here. So you've written an impressive number of works. How long have you written and published fiction?

K'Anne: [00:01:55] I've written all my life but I've actually only published about eight years. But I had books waiting. I wrote my very first complete novel in 2003 and I did it in two weeks.

Debbi: [00:02:12] Wow.

K'Anne: [00:02:13] Yeah.

Debbi: [00:02:13] That's impressive. Was that your completed draft or did you have to amend?

K'Anne: [00:02:21] I played with it for eight years before I actually sought out publishers. Got 20 rejection letters, and something told me to go with self-publishing which has worked for me.

Debbi: [00:02:34] That's excellent. Yeah.

K'Anne: [00:02:35] Once I published it, I did get approached by a publisher, and I should have read more of the reviews because they turned out to be con artists. I've never received any residuals.

Debbi: [00:02:49] Oh my gosh.

K'Anne: [00:02:49] They stole it, and then I got my rights back. Using my lawyers. And they've never stopped publishing it. They keep stealing.

Debbi: [00:03:03] Oh, my gosh. That's awful.

K'Anne: [00:03:05] Yeah, it was a horrible experience. That's why you know I caution people. Yeah. Anybody can call themself a publisher but watch what they do.

Debbi: [00:03:15] Right. Absolutely. And self-publishing ... you have your own imprint. I also have my own imprint and I think that's very important.

K'Anne: [00:03:23] Yeah. Because a lot of self-published authors, if they don't have a so-called publisher behind them, some stores won't even consider them.

Debbi: [00:03:34] Yes, exactly. Exactly right. It gives you a more professional image.

K'Anne: [00:03:41] It does. It does. And I've compared my paperback books to some of the so-called professional books. Some people that I may compete with or whatever, and I'm very pleased with what we've produced. And it was a learning curve. You know I didn't walk into this knowing anything, but I really enjoy learning. It's a challenge. I absolutely love formatting my books. Once the story is written, then tweaking all the little fine details like putting in a doodad here that most people wouldn't notice. But when you're looking at a paperback and it feels different, accordingly, and you don't know why, it's because of those details.

Debbi: [00:04:29] Yes. Yeah I really like self-publishing and the flexibility that it gives you.

K'Anne: [00:04:40] Well, they're trying to make it a little harder. I notice with CreateSpace going away, because Amazon is bringing it back under their umbrella and it's no longer going to be a separate company. I had my first experience with Amazon's print and---wow---did they make me jump through hoops that were unnecessary. Well, you can't do this. You can't do that. And I'm like, funny, you published it already and I've done that. Now you say I can't do that. I had found an error that I wanted corrected, because I'm real particular about that, and it took about five or six tries to get it published again.

Debbi: [00:05:28] That's bizarre. I've had no trouble with IngramSpark myself.

K'Anne: [00:05:32] Yeah. Yeah. There, too, there's a learning curve and, in fact, that was one of my goals this year: to switch not only all of my books, but my authors' books over to IngramSpark, just because of the broader range that'll give us.

Debbi: [00:05:50] Absolutely. I myself would recommend IngramSpark any day over any other publishing platform in terms of print. That's just my feeling about it. I've been with IngramSpark since before there was an IngramSpark. Back when there was Lightning Source.

K'Anne: [00:06:10] Yes, yes.

Debbi: [00:06:11] When I decided to go completely self-published, I used Lightning Source and never looked back. So, as far as I'm concerned, I'm covered.

K'Anne: [00:06:24] Well, you also get into a creative, comfortable feeling. I was used to CreateSpace. And, yes, I balked at using Kindle's platform. But Kindle is the biggest dog in the yard. So you gotta deal with that.

Debbi: [00:06:45] Oh, I'm not arguing with that.

K'Anne: [00:06:46] Yeah no. But as a result because they already owned CreateSpace and now they're bringing it back in, all their little hiccups are costing some of us time, effort, etc.

Debbi: [00:07:03] Well, it's interesting because one of the arguments I've always heard for using CreateSpace is that you'll get your print books up on Amazon faster?

K'Anne: [00:07:10] Theoretically.

Debbi: [00:07:12] Theoretically. Well, that may be true, because right now my print book which I just came out with is only available through Barnes & Noble and Indiebound online.

K'Anne: [00:07:27] You can't discount Barnes & Noble. They're still out, they're still hustling, they're still fighting, and I hope they win. Because, you know, Amazon has killed the stores and I mean I've seen strip malls that are absolutely empty because you can't have Mom-and-Pops anymore when you have an Amazon. I mean, I know myself my first thought is, "Well, let's go see what it is on Amazon."

Debbi: [00:07:55] I know. Well, it's the go-to place for a lot of people. And one of the things I like about Kobo is that it reaches certain international markets that Amazon does not. Oddly enough.

K'Anne: [00:08:11] Yes, yes. I have my books out on 18 different distributors, because there are countries that don't allow Amazon.

Debbi: [00:08:21] Interesting.

K'Anne: [00:08:24] And I like the fact that my books are available. We still can't get into South Africa. South Africa blocks a lot of books.

Debbi: [00:08:35] Fascinating.

K'Anne: [00:08:38] It's interesting when you find out that from a fan they're like I can't get your book but I really want it. And, fortunately, I made it so that all my books are available on my website and that makes a big difference in what they can download, because I have another fan who only orders from my website, because she's having trouble getting it in Australia, of all places.

Debbi: [00:09:02] Wow. I had no idea.

K'Anne: [00:09:05] Amazon. Yeah. Amazon isn't capitalizing in Australia like I personally believe they should.

Debbi: [00:09:14] And Kobo certainly does.

K'Anne: [00:09:19] Yeah.

Debbi: [00:09:19] Yeah, well. Well, let's talk about your series, the Malice series. You have a long string of novellas in this series. What inspired you to write about a lesbian serial killer?

"Ninety to 95 percent of all serial killers are male and from all the research I've done, the remaining five or 10 percent that are female either ... I don't want to say women are smarter, but they're less likely to be perceived as a killer."

K'Anne: [00:09:37] Ninety to 95 percent of all serial killers are male and from all the research I've done, the remaining five or 10 percent that are female either ... I don't want to say women are smarter, but they're less likely to be perceived as a killer. They're able to fake it better. I think women can be more devious. If you look in some of the different cultures, women were always nastier. For instance, in the American Indian culture if somebody had to run the gauntlet, the women were always the ones that were more bloodthirsty, more willing to kill. And nastier. That's just one example. I mean that's throughout history. But when I came up with this series, I loved Dexter and I didn't want to copy him at all, because I don't do that. But I thought, "Gosh can I write a murder mystery?" Well, it was an experiment. It was only supposed to be five books. Number 25 should be out in the Spring. But this fascinating character resulted. And what I have Alice in my head and what she's like and what my fans perceive her is absolutely fascinating to me, because she's this petite little blonde and yet I get this gamut of descriptions of her that I just kind of go ... That's not what I wrote.

[00:11:23] Okay. That's how you want to see her. Go for it, but she's highly complex and it doesn't come out in one book. And as you read her, you're thinking okay, well, most serial killers are loners. And because I cater to a lesbian market, it always surprises me how many straight hetero male followers I have to that series. In fact, one of my followers, I killed him off in the third book cause he was being a smart aleck on social media. I said, well, guess what? You're going to die. And he loved it. He absolutely loved it. He has bragging rights, but you don't think about women being serial killers and the beauty of it is I've already thought up at least three or four s

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer K'Anne Meinel 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[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.

[00:01:03] It's my pleasure today to have on an author with more than 100 published works including short stories, novels, and novellas. She works in a variety of genres, including crime fiction of course, and she's a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is also owner of Shadoe Publishing, amongst her other accomplishments. So it's my great pleasure to introduce K'Anne Meinel. Thanks for being here today, K'Anne.

K'Anne: [00:01:38] Thank you for having me.

Debbi: [00:01:41] It's my pleasure to have you on. Glad you're able to be here. So you've written an impressive number of works. How long have you written and published fiction?

K'Anne: [00:01:55] I've written all my life but I've actually only published about eight years. But I had books waiting. I wrote my very first complete novel in 2003 and I did it in two weeks.

Debbi: [00:02:12] Wow.

K'Anne: [00:02:13] Yeah.

Debbi: [00:02:13] That's impressive. Was that your completed draft or did you have to amend?

K'Anne: [00:02:21] I played with it for eight years before I actually sought out publishers. Got 20 rejection letters, and something told me to go with self-publishing which has worked for me.

Debbi: [00:02:34] That's excellent. Yeah.

K'Anne: [00:02:35] Once I published it, I did get approached by a publisher, and I should have read more of the reviews because they turned out to be con artists. I've never received any residuals.

Debbi: [00:02:49] Oh my gosh.

K'Anne: [00:02:49] They stole it, and then I got my rights back. Using my lawyers. And they've never stopped publishing it. They keep stealing.

Debbi: [00:03:03] Oh, my gosh. That's awful.

K'Anne: [00:03:05] Yeah, it was a horrible experience. That's why you know I caution people. Yeah. Anybody can call themself a publisher but watch what they do.

Debbi: [00:03:15] Right. Absolutely. And self-publishing ... you have your own imprint. I also have my own imprint and I think that's very important.

K'Anne: [00:03:23] Yeah. Because a lot of self-published authors, if they don't have a so-called publisher behind them, some stores won't even consider them.

Debbi: [00:03:34] Yes, exactly. Exactly right. It gives you a more professional image.

K'Anne: [00:03:41] It does. It does. And I've compared my paperback books to some of the so-called professional books. Some people that I may compete with or whatever, and I'm very pleased with what we've produced. And it was a learning curve. You know I didn't walk into this knowing anything, but I really enjoy learning. It's a challenge. I absolutely love formatting my books. Once the story is written, then tweaking all the little fine details like putting in a doodad here that most people wouldn't notice. But when you're looking at a paperback and it feels different, accordingly, and you don't know why, it's because of those details.

Debbi: [00:04:29] Yes. Yeah I really like self-publishing and the flexibility that it gives you.

K'Anne: [00:04:40] Well, they're trying to make it a little harder. I notice with CreateSpace going away, because Amazon is bringing it back under their umbrella and it's no longer going to be a separate company. I had my first experience with Amazon's print and---wow---did they make me jump through hoops that were unnecessary. Well, you can't do this. You can't do that. And I'm like, funny, you published it already and I've done that. Now you say I can't do that. I had found an error that I wanted corrected, because I'm real particular about that, and it took about five or six tries to get it published again.

Debbi: [00:05:28] That's bizarre. I've had no trouble with IngramSpark myself.

K'Anne: [00:05:32] Yeah. Yeah. There, too, there's a learning curve and, in fact, that was one of my goals this year: to switch not only all of my books, but my authors' books over to IngramSpark, just because of the broader range that'll give us.

Debbi: [00:05:50] Absolutely. I myself would recommend IngramSpark any day over any other publishing platform in terms of print. That's just my feeling about it. I've been with IngramSpark since before there was an IngramSpark. Back when there was Lightning Source.

K'Anne: [00:06:10] Yes, yes.

Debbi: [00:06:11] When I decided to go completely self-published, I used Lightning Source and never looked back. So, as far as I'm concerned, I'm covered.

K'Anne: [00:06:24] Well, you also get into a creative, comfortable feeling. I was used to CreateSpace. And, yes, I balked at using Kindle's platform. But Kindle is the biggest dog in the yard. So you gotta deal with that.

Debbi: [00:06:45] Oh, I'm not arguing with that.

K'Anne: [00:06:46] Yeah no. But as a result because they already owned CreateSpace and now they're bringing it back in, all their little hiccups are costing some of us time, effort, etc.

Debbi: [00:07:03] Well, it's interesting because one of the arguments I've always heard for using CreateSpace is that you'll get your print books up on Amazon faster?

K'Anne: [00:07:10] Theoretically.

Debbi: [00:07:12] Theoretically. Well, that may be true, because right now my print book which I just came out with is only available through Barnes & Noble and Indiebound online.

K'Anne: [00:07:27] You can't discount Barnes & Noble. They're still out, they're still hustling, they're still fighting, and I hope they win. Because, you know, Amazon has killed the stores and I mean I've seen strip malls that are absolutely empty because you can't have Mom-and-Pops anymore when you have an Amazon. I mean, I know myself my first thought is, "Well, let's go see what it is on Amazon."

Debbi: [00:07:55] I know. Well, it's the go-to place for a lot of people. And one of the things I like about Kobo is that it reaches certain international markets that Amazon does not. Oddly enough.

K'Anne: [00:08:11] Yes, yes. I have my books out on 18 different distributors, because there are countries that don't allow Amazon.

Debbi: [00:08:21] Interesting.

K'Anne: [00:08:24] And I like the fact that my books are available. We still can't get into South Africa. South Africa blocks a lot of books.

Debbi: [00:08:35] Fascinating.

K'Anne: [00:08:38] It's interesting when you find out that from a fan they're like I can't get your book but I really want it. And, fortunately, I made it so that all my books are available on my website and that makes a big difference in what they can download, because I have another fan who only orders from my website, because she's having trouble getting it in Australia, of all places.

Debbi: [00:09:02] Wow. I had no idea.

K'Anne: [00:09:05] Amazon. Yeah. Amazon isn't capitalizing in Australia like I personally believe they should.

Debbi: [00:09:14] And Kobo certainly does.

K'Anne: [00:09:19] Yeah.

Debbi: [00:09:19] Yeah, well. Well, let's talk about your series, the Malice series. You have a long string of novellas in this series. What inspired you to write about a lesbian serial killer?

"Ninety to 95 percent of all serial killers are male and, from all the research I've done, the remaining five or 10 percent that are female"

K'Anne: [00:09:37] Ninety to 95 percent of all serial killers are male and, from all the research I've done, the remaining five or 10 percent that are female either ... I don't want to say women are smarter, but they're less likely to be perceived as a killer. They're able to fake it better. I think women can be more devious. If you look in some of the different cultures, women were always nastier. For instance, in the American Indian culture if somebody had to run the gauntlet, the women were always the ones that were more bloodthirsty, more willing to kill. And nastier. That's just one example. I mean that's throughout history. But when I came up with this series, I loved Dexter and I didn't want to copy him at all, because I don't do that.

But I thought, "Gosh can I write a murder mystery?" Well, it was an experiment. It was only supposed to be five books. Number 25 should be out in the Spring. But this fascinating character resulted. And what I have Alice in my head and what she's like and what my fans perceive her is absolutely fascinating to me, because she's this petite little blonde and yet I get this gamut of descriptions of her that I just kind of go ... That's not what I wrote.

[00:11:23] Okay. That's how you want to see her. Go for it, but she's highly complex and it doesn't come out in one book. And as you read her, you're thinking okay, well, most serial killers are loners. And because I cater to a lesbian market, it always surprises me how many straight hetero male followers I have to that series. In fact, one of my followers, I killed him off in the third book cause he was being a smart aleck on social media. I said, well, guess what? You're going to die. And he loved it. He absolutely loved it. He has bragging rights, but you don't think about women being serial killers and the beauty of it is I've already thought up at least three or four sequels that will veer off from Malice about her daughter.

Debbi: [00:12:38] Fascinating.

K'Anne: [00:12:42] So, yeah, it could be genetic,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Adam Maxwell.

The transcript is below, if you’d like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

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 we get started and I introduce my guest, let me remind you that the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology are on sale at my website, and all major retailers; Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, you name it, they’re there. Just go to debbimack.com and click on “Crime Cafe” to find the buy links. You can also subscribe to the podcast there. Plus, I’m going to be making a big announcement. It’s coming up soon, so stay tuned for the big announcement about the show. I guess what I’ve done is just made a big announcement about the big announcement! So, if that’s not from a Monty Python skit, I don’t know what is! And on that note, I’d like to introduce my guest, the very funny crime author, Adam Maxwell. It’s so great to have you here, Adam. Thanks for coming on.

Adam: Well, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Debbi: Awesome! So, your books seem to run the gamut from children’s to adult mystery and caper. How would you describe yourself as an author in one sentence?

Adam: Eclectic!

Debbi: Eclectic…fair description.

Adam: Constructed perhaps [laughs].

Debbi: [laughs]

Adam: I think there’s definitely two sides. The main two sides would be the crime writing, which it goes from crime to detective and a lot of little bits and bobs. Writing for kids was kind of an accident because I have a daughter and when she was maybe about 5 years old, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the sort of books that were available and thought, well I can do better than that. And I’ve ended up writing five kids novels. Four have been published and one, Pirates vs. Ninjas, which is going to come out early next year. But, that’s kind of … it’s a destruction almost. It’s fabulous. It’s wonderful to do, but it’s not really where my heart is. It was rather where my heart for my daughter is and being terribly vain I obviously published them as well [laughs]. But, yeah the majority of the work I’m doing, at the moment I’ve got sort of the next two or three books in the series, the crime series I’m working on at the moment. That’s everything. I’m not sure. My daughter is getting to be kind of big, where she’s starting to read the Percy Jackson’s and The Hunger Games and I’m not sure…I’m not interested in writing that sort of thing so I think that’s probably it for the kids books for me. It will just be crime from now on, which I’m sure anybody who’s watching will be glad to hear [laughs].

Debbi: [laughs] It sounds like your writing career sort of started with your daughter.

Adam: Yeah, I mean certainly I was doing a lot of stuff before then that was much, much shorter but the crossover between the crime and the longer works started to come with the kids’ books and then sort of now everything’s too long, so everything is novel length. You can’t have short ideas anymore because that’s when they turn into these enormously long plot ideas that you have.

Debbi: Well, I think you could probably write short stories and novellas?

Adam: Well, the next one that I’ve got coming out, it did turn into a novella, but it almost ended up as a novel. I think writing sort of heist-caper style plots; the level of complexity in there, it lends itself really well to having much longer, convoluted, to-and-fro sort of plots. Yeah, that’s how my brain works I suppose, so [laughs].

Debbi: [laughs] Well, I like it. I’m reading Cat Chaser and it makes me laugh out loud at points. The way your protagonist just stops when he falls asleep. I’m like, oh my god. What inspired you to write a mystery about a detective with narcolepsy?

Adam: [laughs] Well I think…that was one that I had for a long time. Now I am 41 years old and when I came up with that idea I was probably 21 years old and at the time I think you find different things funny then you do when you get older. When I first started to think about it, I was like, there’s nothing funnier than people who have this thing where they fall asleep. It’s actually the more research you do, the more you realize what a debilitating and tragic condition it is for the people. Like these people can’t hold down jobs, and so it became this like…if we’re going to be allowed to laugh, how can we make it a character who it’s OK to laugh at and that was by always making him the cleverest person in the room. He never accidentally comes upon the solution to things. He is the person who has the idea, who makes the connection. So, he’s always better than everybody else, and he does that in spite of his condition. And, so then I think you can get away with the humor a lot better. But, I think The Defective Detective is much more slap stick. The caper books, I think, are a bit more Coen brothers; sort of a bit darker.

Debbi: I like that. Which of your books are the caper books?

Adam: At the moment there’s only one because The Dali Deception is the first one.

Debbi: [agrees]

Adam: That sort of sees the crew get together. You’ve got Violet who is the brilliance of the operation. She returns to her home city, which is a fictional…it’s the same city that the Clinton in Defective Detective occupies, this fictional city of Kilchester which was supposed to be the north of England, but has enough crossover in most British cities that there’s something there from each one where you kind of, you can spot that this part might be London and this part might be Manchester. So, there was a bit of that in there. But she returns home to this place having sort of exiled herself after her criminal boyfriend tried to kill her halfway through a job and so she comes back and is tempted back as criminals in this sort of thing tend to be by promise of big payday and pulls together the crew through that and I kind of…when I started to write it, I’d not been writing anything but The Defective Detective for a while and I sort of thought, is this it? Like, if it is, then I suppose that’s fine. I like Clint as a character and had plenty of ideas, but I wanted something else that I could do. And so I deliberately tried to come up with a set of characters that I’d be able to use in a series going forward so that I did more than one thing and not just bore everybody to death with the same thing all of the time. And so I ended up with the five of them and three of them were women and two of them were men. And kind of the women were in control and they were the ones who made the decisions and the men kind of but not…I mean or the real experts and they’ve failed as you would have imagined. But, at the end of it, there is very much the question of what do we do next. Like, where do we go from here? And I sort of like that you’ve got this kind of Guardians of the Galaxy dynamic of these people who don’t really trust each other and kind of have to trust each other or want to trust each other but, some of them are scheming and some of them…and are they betraying each other as they go along? Will they stick together? And so you’ve got all of these sort of miniature things playing out at the same time that they try to steal a blank canvas signed by Salvador Dali and so because it seemed a ridiculous thing and Dali did in fact sign a lot of blank sheets of paper in order to make money. He would just sell these and there’s a lot of discrepancy as to some of the works as to whether he did them or whether they’re forgeries because they’ve got a real signature. And so these sorts of things all seem very interesting and then I thought I’ll write something short that I could maybe get people into the series with this novella that I’m just putting the finishing touches to which is called Kill It With Fire. But while I was writing that, the next book came along as you know, you do the same thing and you end up in that sort of…well OK, let’s do the next one and the following one starts to invade as you plot it. So, there’s a lot of…these characters definitely are moving in different areas and different things are happening in their lives and they’re getting involved in things they shouldn’t. It’s interesting to me and hopefully interesting to readers.

Debbi: Well, I find it interesting. And what sort of arc do you anticipate for these characters?

Adam: Well I think that series characters often have a degree of reset, so that you kind of…you move a little way up but you don’t necessarily want to take them so far that it’s…it’s not Harry Potter series, where you’ve got a beginning, middle and end. It’s more sort of Donald Westlake kind of scenes where there is some changes and some things happen, but the majority of things you’ve got to pick up one of the books and you’ll probably still get as much out of it even if you hadn’t read the rest of them. So, I do kind of see the next book being…the idea behind the next book is that they’re going to inadvertently steal from an assassin. And so the assassin will then come after them and try to murder them all. So, it’s not the traditional like, “let’s knock off a casino” kind of book.

Debbi: [laughs]

Adam: But in forcing them together in this kind of situation, it will probably bring a lot more trust in one another out of it. But then you’ve got in The Defective Detective books that you’ve been looking at, the computer expert in that is sort of the white hat computer expert and is the sister of the black hat computer expert in the Dali Deception. So, the prospect of putting them two together in a room and how they make them do family things, at the same time that they’re sort of trying to do…she’s trying to stop her when she’s trying to do the bad thing and those kind of dynamics interest me. I’ve always been a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse and those little awful,...

Debbi Mack reads Chapter 6 of her New York Times bestselling hardboiled mystery, Identity Crisis, on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Here’s the text of my reading:

CHAPTER SIX

Detective Derry stopped by the office the next day. Jergins was with him, looking sullen and officious.

“Things aren’t looking good for your client,” Derry said.

“Now what?”

“Garvey’s body was found in his apartment. A witness says Ms. Hayes was there that weekend, the weekend he was shot.”

That creepy neighbor of Schaeffer’s, I thought. “So?”

“Didn’t she have a protective order against this guy? Why would she want to see him?”

It was a fair question. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t prove she killed him.”

Derry took a deep breath. “I didn’t say it proved anything.”

“Maybe it was someone who looked like Melanie.”

“Anything’s possible. The witness identified her from a photo we found in her apartment.”

“You searched her place?”

He nodded. “Yesterday.”

He didn’t mention the box or the state of the apartment, and I wasn’t going to bring it up.

“Was there any reason for that, other than a witness’ statement?”

“Fingerprints,” Derry said. “We found her prints at the scene.”

“How do you know they’re hers?” I had to ask.

“The bank where she works routinely takes its employees prints.”

I was at a loss to understand or explain it, but I didn’t owe anyone any explanations. “What do you want from me?”

“I just wanted to let you know we’re getting a warrant for Ms. Hayes’ arrest,” Derry said.

I nodded. What could I say? I’d have done the same thing in their place.

“So if you have any knowledge of Ms. Hayes’ whereabouts, now would be the right time to tell us,” Jergins barked.

I could understand if the FBI didn’t offer courses in diplomacy, but I was starting to wonder if it should. Even Derry didn’t look happy about Jergins’ outburst.

“If I had any knowledge of Ms. Hayes’ whereabouts,” I said, keeping my voice deliberately calm. “I would have told you by now.”

Jergins squinted and scowled at me.

“We thought it would be a good idea to check with you,” Derry said, sounding almost conciliatory. “Just in case.”

“I understand. What about the murder weapon? Were her fingerprints on that?”

“We’ll discuss that at the appropriate time, Ms. McRae,” Jergins said, interrupting.

Derry’s eyes slid Jergins’ way. His cheeks reddened, and I didn’t think it was from embarrassment.

“Really?” I said. “And when did you start working for the homicide unit?”

“There’s an appropriate time and place for everything.” Jergins’ face was tight, making his big ears stand out even more. “We’ll discuss the murder weapon at that time and place.”

“Now, I wonder when that would be. Maybe at the sentencing hearing?”

Derry turned away. I didn’t know, but I could have sworn he stifled a smile.

“With all due respect, Ms. McRae,” Jergins said. “We don’t know that Ms. Hayes will hire you to represent her.”

“Why not?”

“You represented her on a domestic violence matter. That doesn’t mean she’ll want you for this.”

I looked at Derry. He was staring at something on my desk. I realized it was Melanie’s address book, still sitting beside the phone.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, addressing my comments to both men, trying to bring Derry back into the conversation, “she’s still my client.”

“Mr. Garvey’s dead,” Jergins said. “The case is moot, and you know it.”

“Sure, the court case is moot, but I don’t consider the entire matter closed,” I said. “After all, your interest in her was sparked by that case. I haven’t closed the file. So it’s still an open case, from my standpoint, and she’s still my client.” Not bad, I thought. Pretty smooth, even.

Derry kept looking at the book. The plain, dark cover had nothing to connect it with Melanie, but I couldn’t remember if her name was on the inside.

Jergins sneered. “Very convenient. Keeps that attorney-client privilege intact.”

“You know the privilege doesn’t let me help clients commit crimes.”

“I know that. Maybe we should get a warrant and make sure you know that, too.”

I gaped at him.

Derry coughed. “Can I talk to you a minute?” he said to Jergins. “Excuse us.”

They left the office. A few minutes later, Derry returned, alone. “He’s going to wait in the car.”

“Is this supposed to be some weird variation on ‘good cop, bad cop’? What the hell’s his problem anyway?”

Derry shrugged. “Lacks a few social skills. Guess he has a thing about defense lawyers.”

“You think?”

“He also thinks you know something you’re not telling us.”

“But you know better, right?”

“I think you’re telling us everything you know,” he said. “I certainly hope so.”

“I am.” He seemed to have lost interest in the address book. Guilt gnawed at me, but the book didn’t have any answers, at least not yet.

“The man he mentioned, Christof Stavos,” he said. “He is dangerous.”

“I know. It’s been bothering me. You really think he might hurt Melanie?”

“It’s possible. Or maybe you.”

“Why would he have any interest in me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason that Jergins thinks you’re holding something back.”

“Christof Stavos has a thing about defense attorneys, too?”

Derry toyed with his shirt cuff. “Were you talking to someone at Bruce Schaeffer’s apartment?”

That blabbermouthed neighbor must have told them about me. I never gave my name, but Derry may have recognized the description.

“Yeah, I went there. I was hoping Schaeffer would know something about Melanie. Didn’t pan out.” I paused, then laughed uncomfortably. “There is something else. It’s kind of silly.”

“Go ahead.”

I told him about the black Lincoln and the visit from John Drake the day before. Derry’s brow furrowed, the lines growing deeper as I spoke.

“You didn’t get the tag on the car, did you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of it.”

“That’s OK.”

“Another thing—I think that guy Drake gave me a fake name. I checked him out in some of the Internet directories and got nothing.”

“I think you’re right.” Derry paused and arched an eyebrow. “And I think, whoever he is, he has a sense of humor.”

“How’s that?”

Derry smiled. “You’re probably a little too young to remember the show Secret Agent Man. John Drake was the name of the main character.”

“And they say television isn’t educational.”

Derry stole a glance at me. The look suggested we were just two human beings talking. No ghosts haunting us anymore. However, the moment passed.

With the usual formality, Derry shook my hand. “If you hear anything, please let us know. Please keep what we said in mind.”

“Sure.”

After he left, I wondered what I’d gotten into. I should have given Derry the address book.

I think I would have, except that Melanie was still my client. I wasn’t going to run out on a client, not without getting her side first. Something about the setup didn’t seem right. Killing Garvey, then leaving a box of incriminating files in her own apartment made zero sense to me.

As for Stavos, I didn’t know much about the Mob, but I was under the impression they didn’t kill people without a reason. When it came to this case, I felt like I was too clueless for them to bother with me.

Since I had no meetings or court dates, I dug back into Melanie’s phone book with renewed vigor. A person didn’t just disappear. They left traces somewhere. If she was with a friend, I should be able to find that friend. If she was at a motel, she’d eventually run out of money and have to turn to someone she knew. Donna would have been a logical person, but whether it was shame or pride, something was keeping Melanie from seeking her out.

I stuck with it and managed to make it all the way through S. A lot of the calls were long-distance. Either Melanie had traveled a lot or her friends did. She seemed to know people all over the U.S. and even someone in Canada. I figured I’d rest up before I tackled the multitude of Ts—Thompson, Tillman, Toohey …

I did some other work and a few administrative chores then left the office around five thirty.

At home, I fed Oscar, then took an evening ride on my old Schwinn. I’d been trying to exercise more regularly, do at least five miles every couple of days. Lately, I’d slacked off a bit, because of the heat and humidity. After the workout, I lugged the bike upstairs, sweaty and panting. Maybe a bit more diligence was in order.

The food situation was reaching a critical point, but I managed to throw together a tuna salad with dill pickle slices for dinner, which I ate while watching the news. The O’s weren’t playing. TV sucked. I thumbed through some magazines, then went onto the balcony. The sun had set, and the air was as moist and heavy as a wet blanket. Like a locker room, only filled with the pungent smell of cut grass and impending rain. Now and then, I heard the low rumble of distant thunder and saw lightning flicker in the dark sky.

I wished Ray were with me. I knew that wasn’t possible. When those months had gone by and he hadn’t called, at first missing him was like a chronic ache in my belly. I forced myself to forget. Then he showed up at my door. Now the ache was back. And again, he couldn’t be here.

I liked living alone, doubted if I could abide sharing my space with anyone, but sometimes I wondered. If I dropped dead tomorrow, who would care? Maybe a few people, but …

Still things could be worse. What if I were Melanie? Apart from my problems, maybe that was one reason I was so interested in finding her. She was all alone like me—probably scared shitless and in over her head.

Was that where I was with Ray? Over my head? I felt a wave of self-pity wash over me.

“Damn it,” I said. “Snap the fuck out of this.”

It was time for drastic measures. I marched straight to the fridge and went for the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Unfortunately,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Vincent Zandri.

The transcript is below, if you'd like to read it.

Or download the PDF copy and read it later.

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, don’t forget that you can buy the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and the Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology for only $1.99 and $.99 each. Just go to my website, debbimack.com and click on “Crime Cafe” where you’ll find the buy links. While you’re there, please subscribe to the podcast on either iTunes or Stitcher, and if you’re watching this, you know that we’re on YouTube as well, so you can subscribe to that channel. Now having said that, it’s my great pleasure to bring on best-selling author, Vincent Zandri. Vince, I am so thrilled to finally have you on my show and to meet you this way, so to speak, after so many years of our first contact online.

Vincent: I know it’s been so long.

Debbi: So, thanks for coming on. It’s been many years and I remember one time you saying that you would love to meet and even though we haven’t gotten to meet in person, it’s nice to be able to do this.

Vincent: Oh, Deb, I was probably just flirting with you at the time.

Debbi: [laughs] Well, that’s very nice. That’s very kind and I’m quite, I guess, what’s the word...flattered.

Vincent: Oh you can’t even think…you’re speechless.

Debbi: I’m speechless [laughs].

Vincent: Well, truth be told, I was in awe of your first book and it did so well and you were like one of the groundbreakers who was one of the first people to like, “You know what? I’m not going the traditional route. I’m totally going to do this.” And, boom, you hit the New York Times with a great, great, great noir novel. So that’s why I was in awe of you, to be perfectly honest.

Debbi: Oh, well that’s really nice of you to say. I am flattered Vincent. That’s kind. Interesting that you bring up genre because how would you describe your writing in one sentence? Are you mainly a thriller writer, a noir writer, a mystery writer, adventure?

Vincent: If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I don’t know, this might sound namby-pamby, but I like to write what I like to read.

Debbi: That sounds good.

Vincent: Simple…yeah, and it’s as simple as that. You know, sometimes there’s like the literary Vince, a book like When Shadows Come, which Thomas & Mercer did which…like my mother or even some of my best fans will be like, “Huh? What was that book about?” And then there’ll be books like, The Shroud Key, for instance which I did under my own label which…and they’ll be like, “Oh my god, you’ve got to go to the next page, you’ve got to go to the next page, gotta go to the next page, gotta go to the next page,” and you eat it up like potato chips, right?

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: And then there’s the Vince who writes like psychological suspense like, I don’t know. Name one of my…The Remains for instance, which is like my big ass seller I guess and I even wrote that from a female perspective which is just sort of relentless. It’s sort of a combination of like, it’s got hardboiled in it. It’s got romance in it. It’s got adventure in it. It’s got that Hitchcock, psychological suspense in it. So it’s got all of it in there and now even more recently, I’ve ventured into (and I blame Richard Godwin for this) but I ventured into erotic noir a little bit.

Debbi: Wow.

Vincent: Yeah, which I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off and I’m still not entirely sure if I’ve pulled it off.

Debbi: [laughs]

Vincent: But, the reviews have been good and to me it was like, well a lot of noir and hardboiled fiction has a lot of sex in it anyway so just take it a step further. But I think it’s kind of working because and I think the plot is good. But anyway, the point being that I’m still experimenting.

Debbi: Yeah.

Vincent: And I’ve even ventured into…I have a young adult coming out in January as well.

Debbi: Very cool! I’m looking forward to that because I would love to read that one.

Vincent: Yeah, it’s actually the Chase Baker Series again, but it’s young Chase Baker.

Debbi: I love that idea because I was just thinking Chase Baker is such compulsively readable stuff.

Vincent: I appreciate that.

Debbi: It is very much so. I see from your blog that you were a photojournalist. How long did you do that and what did you cover?

Vincent: I was, I mean I started out as a reporter for like a stringer for the local paper in Albany, NY called, The Times Union, which is still there. And at a time in the early 90’s, in the very early 90’s when like it was still, you know, they still had stringers and they still hired freelancers and all that sort of stuff and it was pre-Internet and all that stuff.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: And you went and covered a story and…

Debbi: Yes.

Vincent: Went into the plant and wrote it and all that stuff and it was great and I was geared for the construction business, so I didn’t know how to become a writer. I just knew I wanted to be and so I looked up all my heroes like Faulkner and Hemmingway and all these guys and I discovered like they just started at the newspapers.

Debbi: Right.

Vincent: And so I was like that’s what I’m going to do and so I did that and then I ventured on to writing short stories for the literary journals and things like that and then I went to writing school and I wrote for magazines and I just worked my way up, you know. By the time I was in my late 20’s, I went to writing school and the book I had to write for my creative thesis ended up being my first novel.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: The Innocent and that got picked up by Delacorte and you know. So I’ve been kind of doing it ever since. Oh and to answer your original question, this business being as cyclical as it is, there’s good years and bad years, so I would always go back to journalism. Back in the mid 2000’s, 2007, 8, 9, 10, I was working for some foreign news outlets.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: Like RT and some others and just really traveling all over the place and writing stories like in Africa and you know, China and Russia on any number of topics and kind of making my living that way for a while. You know because I had gone through my second divorce or whatever and it was sort of always on the road.

Debbi: Wow. For some people that would be a dream job.

Vincent: Oh, it was! And I actually ended up…I actually ended up using Florence as sort of my home base in like a 5th-floor guest house walk up, which is right down the road from me now (now I have an apartment). And it was like 20 Euros a night but I had my own bathroom, you know which was cool. And I remember like one of the biggest, one of the most profitable stories I sold, I remember I pitched it at like 6:00 in the evening here…

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: To Moscow and they came back and it was all about how, at the time (I think it was 2010) the governor had said like New York state is going to be broke within 30 days. And so that’s kind of a big deal being that New York City is the financial capital of the world.

Debbi: Yeah.

Vincent: And so like I’m writing a story about Albany, NY really because it’s the capital where I come from, from Florence, Italy for a Moscow newspaper or news outlet and it ended up being like the top story that night in Eastern Europe.

Debbi: Wow!

Vincent: So, it was super cool and they like, and they paid so well and I was like, I was like floored, it was great!

Debbi: Oh my god, that’s fantastic! That’s really fantastic!

Vincent: But back then it was more like, I was doing more journalism and I had been back to writing fiction was more, you know when I had the time I was writing fiction.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: But now I’m, back to almost, I’d say 99.9% all fiction unless somebody asks me to write an article for them, then I’ll do it, but if the pay is good enough, but you know so. They’ll probably come a time again maybe that I’ll go back to journalism. I don’t know.

Debbi: Well, you never know. But having that option is nice.

Vincent: Oh yeah.

Debbi: Would you say you generally write series novels or standalones?

Vincent: I do both.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: I do both and the standalones, it’s a different…the series novels for me are like, that’s like fun.

Debbi: [agrees]

Vincent: You know like throwing my characters who I love, I just love throwing them into situations and they’re funny and you know…

Debbi: You get to know their quirks and so on.

Vincent: Yeah, you know and what they’re capable of and what they’re not capable of and I know their back accounts, which are usually in the red and I know, you know their lost loves. But, you know like I always try to, I always try to portray a strong sense of morality with these guys or whatever. Some of them are more political than others and they like differ in their political views and they are not all the same. But the standalones, they take longer. They, you know, you have to create a whole new world for them as you know.

Debbi: Yes.

Vincent: It takes a lot longer. It takes much more of an emotional and physical investment. It’s much more like writing a literary novel, you know. The language has got to be right and so I’m actually finishing one right now called The Girl Who Wasn’t There and I think I’m like 40,000 words into another one that I don’t have a title for. But it’s a lot of work. That’s one of the reasons I come to Italy still to write the novels because, look it if like the house burns down, I’m over here I can’t do anything about it.

Debbi: [laughs] It’s cool that you have a place in Italy. Very cool!

Vincent: Yeah, so.

Debbi: Well, it’s funny you bringing up Hemingway and Faulkner as inspirations because I know that I was inspired by the likes of Hemin