The Crime Cafe

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Art Taylor.

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’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe Nine Book Set and Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology are available for sale on my website, debbimack.com. Go there and click on “Crime Cafe” and you’ll find the buy links. So, now that that’s been said, it’s truly a pleasure to introduce my guest, the awesome Art Taylor. Art, it’s really great to have you on the show today. Thanks for coming on.

Art: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Debbi: I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed reading Del and Louise’s adventures on the road. But the first thing I wanted to ask you before I got to that was, you’ve seemed to have made a career out of writing short stories. Now was that intentional, or are you just drawn to the short story format?

Art: Well, two things. Number one I think it’s tough to make a career from short stories. There’s a lot of great markets out there, both anthologies and mystery magazines and, of course, online. But, you know, in terms of actually making a career of it, I don’t think you reach as wide a readership as you might with a novel. Which is one of the reasons why I was very pleased to have On The Road with Del & Louise come out—to have a book out there as well. But the short story form is one that I particularly appreciate. You know, I started reading Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine way back when I was in late elementary school and middle school. In fact it was one of these fundraising drives that the school did where you go door to door to sell magazine subscriptions to raise money for the school. I ended up, don’t remember if I sold any magazine subscriptions, but I bought one myself to Ellery Queen’s and that’s where I first started reading, you know, short stories, mystery short stories at an adult level; building off of having read Nancy Drew and The Three Investigators and that sort of thing. So, the short story, I was always a big fan from the very beginning. And, of course, having been in writing classes both in high school and in college and then went on to graduate school, the short story is sort of the focus for a number of reasons of a workshop setting. Something that people can bring in, can be discussed in full, as opposed to like a novel portion, which I think is harder to workshop. And so, for a couple of reasons, both as a reader and as a writer, I have kind of both fallen in love with the form and then fallen into the form as a writer. I enjoy it. I admire it and then I admire people who can write book-length pieces as well.

Debbi: Well, I have to say that I admire anybody who can master the short story form because I think it is the toughest.

Art: It’s a, you know, it can be a challenge. I’ve heard, in fact, one of my writing professors (speaking about grad school) who has published, gosh twenty novels, told me once, she said, “I’ve never been able to write a short story.” It is too different for her. And so we hear short story writers like me who are saying that, you know, we wish we could write at the novel length more naturally. It’s more of a chore for us. I hear it in the other direction. A good short story, it is a different approach. People think of it maybe sometimes as an apprenticeship. I’m going to start writing short stories as an apprenticeship toward writing a novel. But they really are two different things. You’ve got to write with great efficiency, have to streamline things, and every little detail not only has to count, but it also has to do a lot of work. The right detail. The right line of dialogue. The right little bit of action. So, I think there is a different kind of challenge there than with a novel which in many cases works as an accumulation, you know, we’re building more; building more wider cast of characters. Building more subplots; more conflicts. And so, it’s two different directions entirely.

Debbi: There’s an economy of words in the short story that reminds me actually of screenwriting. Have you ever thought about that?

Art: Oh, absolutely! And I think, you know, I’ve heard people compare a good short story to a poem, for example and to screenwriting as well. A good friend of mine who’s a screenwriter, Adam Meyer, was giving a workshop just recently as part of our local chapter of Sisters in Crime, and he was talking about the economy of screenwriting, the way that it’s not just pared down to its essentials, but everything has to earn its place in the larger workings of the full story that’s being told. And so I do think that’s very clearly the same.

Debbi: That’s absolutely true. I can speak from experience. As I was telling you, I really am enjoying On the Road with Del & Louise and what made you decide to write a novel out of these short fiction pieces?

Art: Yeah, you know, it kind of came around in an interesting way. The first story, Rearview Mirror, was published several years ago in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. My wife and I actually had challenged one another to a little writing contest the Washington Post ran, where they show a picture and you write a story prompted by that picture. Each of us wrote one, and I drew on both what was in the picture, a picture of a young woman in a convertible with the desert landscape in the back and she’s sort of leaning back against the driver from the passenger seat, and then on a trip that my wife and I took to the American Southwest, out to New Mexico as well, in some of the landmarks there. So, between those two, I wrote this story and really enjoyed writing it. I don’t know where Louise’s voice came from, but I think she was driving, say driving the story with that voice. But after I was finished with the story, it was kind of a standalone, and it was a year or so later before I started wondering myself what happened to those two; what happened to these characters that had been such a joy to be with. And I started percolating then on the idea of a second story. I hesitate to call it a sequel for a reason I’ll explain, but a second story that picked up where the first one left off. And as I kept thinking about it, I envisioned a number of adventures they could have on this longer road trip. One of the things that helped me, again as the short story kind of being a form that I’m more comfortable with, is this allowed me to build that longer narrative of the novel out of a series of six shorter narratives that are each sort of their own piece, but that add up to a greater journey, a greater story line, a greater narrative arc, when they’re put together. And it also allowed me (this is one of the things that I enjoyed) to play within the individual pieces with different tones. So, for example, there is a story in there that’s more of a caper. It’s kind of a humorous little caper story that’s set in the wine county in Napa Valley. And then a little later, there’s a story that’s darker that I would classify as domestic suspense or even leaning toward noir, that’s set in North Dakota. So each of these could sample a different sub-genre of the larger mystery genre, get that individual identity, but then overall tell this bigger story about two people (the title characters, Del & Louise) and their struggle, their journey to find what they mean to one another. So, part of this was just aesthetically fun to play with and hopefully fun for the readers as well. I appreciate your saying that you enjoy it.

Debbi: Oh, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. That first story was just fantastic and I just finished it actually and I was like, wow!

Art: Thanks so much.

Debbi: I can see how you’d be intrigued by the characters. It’s so essential for the characters to be interesting in the story.

Art: Yeah.

Debbi: And the fact that you were able to kind of spin out other stories from them, tells me that you know about those characters and care about them, so in the same way the reader will come to care about them as well.

Art: It’s interesting you’re talking about character, you know one of the questions we get, I’m sure you get as well is where do you start with a story that you’re telling; a novel that you’re writing. Is it a situation? Is it a character? Is it a plot? And for me, you know, I think it’s inextricable one from the other, you know the character determines the plot as much as a situation might prompt a character in one direction or another. So, I appreciate that about the character because I do put a lot into trying to make them, you know, real, live folks somehow.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely. And you do a good job. There’s a kind of Bonnie and Clyde feel to the characters. Was that at all an inspiration for you?

Art: You know, not directly. But it’s interesting, you know I maybe one of the dimmest people on the planet when it comes to this, but it was only when the book started to…was almost ready to come out that somebody stopped me in the hallway at George Mason University where I teach and said, oh the, you know, Del & Louise that’s sort of a nod toward Thelma & Louise.

Debbi: I was thinking about that too [laughs].

Art: Yep, so I’ve had the comparison to Bonnie & Clyde, which I hadn’t really, you know there is a reference or two to Bonnie & Clyde in there, but they had not been really a direct inspiration. And the idea of Thelma & Louise, I was just slow on picking up that myself. Her name came well before I thought about that.

Debbi: Wow.

Art: But I do think the idea of people on the run, a couple on the run and trying to…to both work together and then work on their own individual goals; their own individual desires. You know as part of the tension that I think is interesting about the Bonnie & Clyde story,...

Debbi Mack reads Chapter 5 of her New York Times bestselling hardboiled mystery, Identity Crisis, on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Here's the text of my reading:

CHAPTER FIVE

Saturday morning is one of the few times I find driving on Route 1 bearable. No traffic to speak of, so there’s plenty of room to maneuver around the potholes and bumps and scars in a road that hasn’t been paved in God knows how long. Normally, Route 1 is like one of those driver’s ed movies—cars making sudden lane changes, darting out randomly from hidden entrances, left and right. That morning though, I cruised past the shopping centers of Beltsville, sailed right through the two sets of lights at Rhode Island Avenue, where traffic usually snarls, and breezed into College Park without even getting stuck behind a Metrobus.

I was up early because I’d awakened at four that morning with Ray on my mind for the first time in almost a month. I’d thought about him quite a bit during the month after we last saw each other. When I didn’t hear from him, I decided I had a choice between driving myself crazy and not thinking about him. I chose the latter.

After an hour of alternately staring at the ceiling and the inside of my eyelids, I figured it was time to rise and shine, or at least rise. I showered, fed Oscar, scarfed down a bowl of Cheerios, and brewed a double-strength cup of dark roast to go. Then I grabbed the P.O. Box key and headed out.

The post office was on Calvert Road where it dead-ended at the railroad tracks. My route took me past the University of Maryland, my alma mater, a hilly green sweep of campus dotted with colonial brick buildings. Across Route 1 from the campus, the matching brick buildings of fraternities lined a horseshoe-shaped street. Calvert was a residential road that connected with the old U.S. highway in the nerve center of the college town where the bars were. They used to have lines out the door when you could drink beer at eighteen in Maryland. Now, the drinking age was twenty-one. Some of the bars closed, but the rest hung on, continuing to do a solid business with a still young-looking crowd.

I turned onto Calvert, and after countless stop signs, reached the post office. It was a few minutes before ten, so I listened to the car radio, tapping my fingers to the music on the wheel and feeling highly caffeinated blood coursing through my veins. At ten on the dot, they unlocked the front door and I went inside.

At the box, I paused before inserting the key and opening the little door.

Two letters were inside. Again, I hesitated before reaching for them. It’s like I expected someone to run up and slap cuffs on me if I did. For checking my own P.O. Box that I didn’t know I had, for God’s sake.

Neither letter had my name on it. One was a piece of junk for “Boxholder.” The other bore the name of Gregory Knudsen.

That guy the FBI man mentioned. What did he have to do with Tom and Melanie?

Maybe Knudsen was the identity thief. Could he have been working with Tom Garvey? Or Melanie? The box was in my legal name, clearly a woman’s name, but apparently, other people could have mail delivered to it.

I still didn’t have any answers. I was only assuming the P.O. Box was connected with my credit situation, but I couldn’t think of any other reason for it.

I looked at the envelope again. Just a regular white business envelope. No return address. A New York City postmark from a couple of weeks ago.

I considered opening it, but that was tampering with someone else’s mail, a federal offense. Wonderful. I checked the flap. Someone had done a crummy job of sealing it, only licking the middle. One slip of the thumb and …

Reluctantly, I put the envelope back in the box. It could be evidence and was not my mail. I probably shouldn’t have this box key, I thought.

I didn’t really want to talk to the postal clerk—what would I say? The best place to go with this was the cops, but I didn’t feel like getting into it with them either. They’d ask a lot of annoying questions, like, “Why didn’t you call us when you saw her apartment was tossed?”

I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe I was afraid they’d find something incriminating. Maybe it was the fact that I wouldn’t have been there to begin with, if it hadn’t been for Donna. Anyway, I made a command decision not to call, not sure of the ethical aspects, but based on my gut. So now what?

I decided my best bet was to put the key back where I found it. I didn’t want to impede a police investigation, but I had no duty to assist them either. After I returned the key, I could check with Derry, see if they had searched Melanie’s place while I had it, and come clean if I had to. He wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t think it would put me any higher on his shit list than I already was.

At Melanie’s apartment, I let myself in as before. I went to the bedroom and replaced the key and receipt. I was on my way out when I noticed a box on the dining room table.

It was the kind of box you might want to use for moving or storing files—I know, because it actually was full of files. Printed on the side was Lobkowicz along with a fancy crest of some sort. If it had been there the day before, I would have noticed.

The folders had names on them and were filed in alphabetical order. I checked one at random. It held correspondence with a bank, something about establishing a credit line.

I slid the folder back into place. I didn’t want to go any farther, but I couldn’t stop now. I had to check the ones beginning with M.

Malone, Martinez, Mazzuli. Then McCabe, McNally. And there it was.

I pulled out the file with my name on it and found the paperwork for my ten-thousand-dollar line of credit. Shit. Less than 24 hours ago, someone had left that box. The someone who’d tried to rip me off.

On my way out, I checked the answering machine. No messages, but Bruce Schaeffer’s number was on her caller ID again. He had called at 11:24 p.m., long after I spoke to him. Interesting. Her mailbox hadn’t been touched. Her red car was in the same spot.

Anyone could have brought that box in. The key wasn’t hard to find. Or maybe the locks were picked.

Why did Bruce phone Melanie again? Was there a connection between his call and the box’s appearance? Was it a coincidence?

I wondered how many of the questions Melanie could answer.

I spent a lot of time that weekend phoning people in Melanie’s book. In an attempt at efficiency, I ignored the professional entries—doctors, dentists—and anything identified by an institutional name only. As for the rest, I figured I’d start with A and keep going.

Personal phone books have this tendency to collect names the way furniture collects dust and, in my quest, many of those names were about as useless. Some people I called weren’t home—I left messages when I could. Some hadn’t seen Melanie for years, and some barely knew her to begin with. A couple of people knew her from school, some from the bank. They expressed concern, but couldn’t help me. I kept going.

By Monday, I’d slogged through to the Ms. I’d developed a short explanatory speech that sounded stale by the third call. I got all sorts of reactions, from skepticism to concern, hostility to apathy. I felt sorry for telemarketers. I was glad to stop and turn my attention back to legal work.

I was wrapping up for the day, when I heard a knock.

“Yes?” I said.

The door opened and a man I didn’t recognize stuck his head inside. The disembodied head wore a shock of light brown hair and a genial expression.

“Excuse me, Ms. McRae? I wonder if I could have a moment of your time.”

I got up and approached him. “For a consultation?” If he was a potential client, the answer was yes. If he was a salesman, my preference was to beat feet home to some take-out Chinese and the ball game.

The door opened all the way, revealing a sturdy frame—not fat, not skinny, maybe a slight beer belly—clothed in a pair of chinos, a Madras shirt, and moccasins. He stuck out a squarish hand.

“My name is John Drake. I’m a friend of Melanie Hayes’ parents. Were you busy? I could come back.”

“No, that’s OK.” Feeling curious, I invited him in.

Drake relaxed into a guest chair, crossing a leg over one knee. He looked a bit like an overgrown version of a kid in a Rockwell painting, complete with cheek of tan and unruly cowlick.

“Melanie’s mother called a few days ago. Her folks are concerned, because they’ve been told she’s missing. Since I live in the area, they asked me to try to contact her.”

“Oh?” The wariness that rose in me was almost palpable. “How do you know her parents?”

“I’ve known Melanie since she was a kid.”

“That’s interesting.” He looked like he was close to Melanie’s age. “So they looked you up? Or have you kept in touch with them since they moved to New Mexico?”

Drake smiled broadly. His teeth were as even and white as Chiclets. “Arizona,” he corrected me. “They live in Arizona.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Drake’s smile faded, but his green eyes continued to look amused. “I’m doing her folks a favor.”

“Sure. But I don’t know how I can help you.”

“I understand from someone at the bank that you’re her attorney.”

That could only be Donna.

“Correct,” I said. “You’ll understand if I’m a little protective when it comes to a client.”

“Certainly. Really, I have no dark motives.” He spread his hands, as if he were opening himself like a book. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Unfortunately, I have no idea where she is.”

“Ah.” He looked terribly disappointed. “I was hoping you might have heard from her.”

“I haven’t.”

“She didn’t give you a possible alternate address or phone number to contact her at?”

I shook my head.

“Not to impose, but could you possibly recheck your file?” Something seemed to catch in his throat, and he began to cough.

“No need,” I said. “I’ve been trying to find Melanie myself. Believe me,...

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author Daniella Bernett on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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 am your host Debbi Mack. Before we get started, I’d like to mention that you can buy the Crime Cafe Box Set and Anthology, as well as Crime Cafe merchandise on my website. Just go to debbimack.com and click on “Crime Cafe” and look for the buy links. And while you’re there, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks! Now I’d like to introduce my awesome guest who’s just released the third novel in her mystery series. It’s Daniella Bernett. Hi Daniella, I’m so glad to have you on today.

Daniella: Hi, hi Debbi. I’m glad to be here today too!

Debbi: Awesome! Well, let’s talk about your series. Even though, strictly speaking it’s the Emmeline Kirby/Gregory Longdon Mystery Series, I see Emmeline as a very strong and independent female protagonist. Do you think of her as the primary protagonist of the two?

Daniella: Yes, I do. Yeah, she is definitely the primary protagonist. Emmeline is a journalist, so she’s inherently curious about many topics. So, of course murder would intrigue her and she would want to see that justice is done and to ensure transparency and she’s also a bit reckless, which gets her into trouble a lot of the time. But, I have Gregory there who’s a jewel thief. He balances it out. He’s on the other side of the law, so who better than the criminal to know how a fellow criminal’s mind works. And yet the two of them do have similarities because for Gregory he’s a gentleman and murder is not the done thing. So, of course he cannot let a murderer go free. So, in that sense, they are similar and their paths cross and they work together to see that justice is done.

Debbi: And of course they’re both a little bit attracted to each other; more than a little.

Daniella: Oh, yes well they do have a past. They are former lovers, but in my first book, Lead Me Into Danger, they hadn’t seen each other in two years and Emmeline literally runs into him in Venice after she witnesses two men tried to murder a fellow colleague of her. And then they become embroiled in a chase for a Russian spy in the British Foreign Office and so on and so on and things take off from there. The first book, Lead Me Into Danger, takes place in Venice and London.

Debbi: Those are exotic places.

Daniella: Yes. In the second book, Deadly Legacy, which is about a hundred million dollars in stolen diamonds, and murder of course. That one takes place entirely in London. And then my new one, From Beyond the Grave, which just came out, it takes place in Torquay, in Devon which is along the English Riviera.

Debbi: Wow! You pick some very interesting spots to set your stories. How do you choose the locations?

Daniella: Well, first of all, I’ve been an Anglophile since I was a little kid, so England, anything about England always attracted me. So when I started writing my stories, of course my characters had to be British, they had to take place in England or in the British Isles. So, that’s why they take place in Britain.

Debbi: In Britain. And how did you choose Venice or the other place?

Daniella: Venice, well Venice is, aside from London, Venice is one of my favorite cities. I adore Venice! I’ve been there several times and I simply love it and Venice itself has its own history of intrigues; political intrigues and Machiavellian machinations and so forth. So, naturally that fit in quite well with my storyline.

Debbi: [agrees] Where do you see Emmeline and Gregory going? Can you give us a hint of where they might be heading in future books?

Daniella: Well, to start, let’s take it from Beyond the Grave, which is the book that just came out. Emmeline is, you know, she hasn’t seen Gregory, but now she’s been involved with him in the first two books and she’s leaning towards him again. Her feelings are being rekindled again, but she can’t quite trust him. That’s why she went to Torquee for a holiday to try and sort out her feelings and so on. But, who should turn up in Torquay, but Gregory.

Debbi: Who else?

Daniella: Who else. But not only does he show up, he brings all his past secrets and one by one they keep tumbling out and of course there is a murder or two involved in Torquee. But as for your question, well, you know, there are tensions, there’s back and forth but you know, if readers are pulling for them, continue to pull for them, but I’m not going to give too much away about their relationship, so that readers can see how things progress.

Debbi: Well, it’s intriguing. I love their relationship. When I read Deadly Legacy, I thought Gregory is such a great foil for Emmeline. Emmeline is…you’ve had something of a journalistic background, correct?

Daniella: Yes, my degree is in journalism so you know, they always say write what you know. So, I hadn’t been a journalist but I did write, I did lots of writing in school in the newspaper and such, so picking a journalist was for me a natural thing because as I said before, a journalist is inherently curious about things and wants to follow up, wants to know the why; why did something happen. So, that fits in well with the sleuth.

Debbi: Yeah, absolutely! I was going to say being a journalist gives you the perfect excuse to ask questions and investigate.

Daniella: Oh and Emmeline asks lots of questions and again that’s why her questions often rankle people and get her into trouble. To round out my ensemble, there’s Chief Inspector Oliver Burnell and Detective Sergeant Jack Finch who represent the law and all its gravitas and Gregory and Burnell have a cat and mouse relationship. Burnell is always after him but he can never quite catch Gregory, even though he knows for certain Gregory is guilty of so many crimes.

Debbi: [agrees]

Daniella: But again, that’s another aspect of it. I have the professional sleuth against the amateur sleuth to show the different sides of how cases can be solved and how the two interact and work together to ultimately solve the crimes.

Debbi: So, you have kind of a triangle going there between the law, the outlaw and the investigator.

Daniella: Yes

Debbi: The amateur investigator…

Daniella: Yes, and Chief Inspector Burnell has a soft spot for Emmeline. You know, normally the police and journalists, there is a tension there, but he has a soft spot for Emmeline and the feeling is mutual. But of course he’s too gruff to actually demonstrate that. But sometimes it peeks through that he has a soft spot for her

Debbi: Is there anything of a romantic tension there that could come out in later books?

Daniella: No, in terms of Burnell, No. The romantic tension is solely between Gregory and Emmeline.

Debbi: Ah, OK. I couldn’t help but notice that you’re from New York. I’m also from New York, from New York City.

Daniella: Oh, well I’m a native New Yorker. I grew up in Queens. I work in Manhattan, so yep.

Debbi: I’m from Queens also.

Daniella: Small world.

Debbi: Wow! But you’re a self-described Anglophile and actually I’m something of an Anglophile myself these days. How did that come about for you?

Daniella: Well, as I mentioned before, I’m a voracious reader and I’ve read a lot of books that took place in England and I’m a devoted Masterpiece Theater and mystery fan, so that’s how I became an Anglophile since I was a little kid.

Debbi: Hmmhmm. Since you were a little kid, so were you a fan of The Avengers I have to ask?

Daniella: I’ve watched a few Avengers, but I didn’t really…I wasn’t really, I didn’t watch that show too much. But other shows I did like The Saint with Roger Moore and a whole host of other ones, and like all the British comedies on PBS.

Debbi: Hmmhmm. Yes, yes. I’m trying to think of one. Have you…Are You Being Served?

Daniella: I saw a couple of those. That was…I’m not too fond of that one.

Debbi: Really? That one makes me laugh like crazy. I don’t know what it is about that one. But, what writers have most inspired your writing?

Daniella: Well, the writer that inspired me the most was Agatha Christie. I started reading her when I was a little kid and I just…I devoured all of her books. I admired her skill in dropping little red herrings and leaving it up to the reader to put them all together to figure out the puzzle because for me, in terms of mysteries, of course the character is primary but the puzzle is what intrigues me. You know, I don’t need to know how many blood and guts have been spilled. It’s the puzzle and how the author leaves the clues for you to put them together to figure out.

Debbi: Hmmhmm. Yes, I can understand that. Are there any other writers that you have found particularly inspirational?

Daniella: Emma Jameson is wonderful. Her…she has two series, The Lord & Lady Hetheridge series, which is about two Scotland Yard detectives and she has another one, Dr. Bones, which takes place in World War II in a little town in Cornwall. And then some of the historical ones like Tasha Alexander, Charles Finch. I’ve read a number of Elizabeth George too, and Tracy Grant. In terms of more spy thrillers, Daniel Silva is one of my favorites.

Debbi: I was thinking there’s one about Jacqueline Winspear. Do I have that correct?

Daniella: Oh, yes! I read a couple of her books as well. She’s very good. Tessa Arlen is another one that I enjoy. Oh, and the D.E. Ireland books, which are the Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle series. That’s another wonderful series, yeah.

Debbi: You go for couples [laughs].

Daniella: Well, yeah it’s different because it’s different in certain cases but I mean that’s the, either you have a man and a woman, they think differently. In my series,...

Debbi Mack interviews mystery author Ellen Byerrum on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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 9 Book Set and Crime Cafe Anthology are available for sale from all online retailers, regardless of what device you use. So, go to debbimack.com and click on “Crime Cafe” to find the buy links, subscribe to the podcast and buy awesome Crime Cafe merchandise. With that then, it’s my great, great pleasure to introduce the awesome fashionista crime writer, Ellen Byerrum. Hey Ellen, how you doing today?

Ellen: I’m great Debbi. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for asking me.

Debbi: Sure thing! It’s wonderful to have you on and so let’s talk about Lacey Smithsonian. I had to laugh when I read your bio on your website and you described Washington, D.C. as “a city rich in history, culture, political drama and crimes of fashion”.

Ellen: That is true. I absolutely believe that. Although now that we’ve moved to Colorado, I sometimes feel I owe an apology to Washington. I’m now living in a town, I’m living in a town where people when they dress up they have to wear their good fleece. So, that’s the difference in our towns.

Debbi: Oh my gosh! Well at least their wearing something interesting like fleece.

Ellen: Well, yes but everybody’s wearing it. Or you know, just your average gym wear because everyone here’s into, you know sports, gym wear, skiing and in Washington lots of people wear suits.

Debbi: Right! And dull suits at that.

Ellen: I know. We just want to perk them up a bit.

Debbi: Well, D.C. is hardly the fashion center of the country or the world.

Ellen: Well, I like to call it the city that fashion forgot. And I also think it’s the home of the congressional comb over and I often wonder why, why it is that congressmen and senators don’t have the typical male baldness patterns. I think that there’s a lot of plugs going on. That’s just a guess, and Botox.

Debbi: You might have something there. I think you may be on to something. Before we actually start talking much about Lacey Smithsonian I wanted to talk about your days as a journalist. Tell us a little about your journalistic escapades. I think I spit that word out right finally, escapades.

Ellen: Yes, that’s great. I was a reporter in Washington, D.C. for BNA, now Bloomberg BNA for 17 years and I mostly covered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration which is great if you’re a mystery writer because you learn all the horrible ways people die on the job.

Debbi: Yeah absolutely, wow!

Ellen: Yeah.

Debbi: It’s funny how real cases like that can inspire so much can’t they?

Ellen: They really can and you know I was horrified to find out that people have actually died in vats of chocolate.

Debbi: Oh my gosh!

Ellen: You think you make that stuff up but it turns out it’s real. So that was, yeah it was great and you know someone died in a vat of cherries. So, very tragic but odd you know.

Debbi: It is. It’s just amazing! Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

Ellen: Yeah, it really is. And of course I started out on a small western newspaper. And I think the highlight of my reporting days then is when I crawled through a massage parlor window.

Debbi: [laughs]

Ellen: To get inside to interview the girls as it were.

Debbi: Whoa, very Brenda Starr.

Ellen: [laughs]

Debbi: Old reference.

Ellen: Yeah, it was a crazy town, so I was happy to get back east.

Debbi: Well, I have to ask you what inspired Lacey Smithsonian as a character.

Ellen: Well, I love mysteries and I was reading them constantly and I love women characters, you know sleuths, the detective character and they were rough and they were tough and they were smart. But I always came to a part in the book where it said, I can’t dress myself. I don’t know what to wear and it drove me crazy. How could a woman who is brilliant and smart and she can fight and she can deal with the guys and she’s smarter than them. How can she not know how to dress? And I thought I really want to read about someone who can do that and then I came up with her being a fashion reporter who doesn’t want to be one. She wants to be taken seriously. But, I’ve given her a skill that not a lot of people have. It’s called extra fashionary perception.

Debbi: Hmmm.

Ellen: Hmmhmm. So she reads people’s clothing. She reads people like a book and so she reads into what they wear as clues and it, it works out well in the books.

Debbi: That’s a great angle.

Ellen: [laughs] Yeah, and in Washington people are very much in the, they’re in the Talbots mode or the Ann Taylor mode and suits, but still there’s a lot of variation. You see a lot of interns in what I call the three knuckle suit lengths. You know the, the oversized suits. They maybe haven’t grown into them yet or they haven’t learned how to get a tailor. But clothing and how we wear it, we tell stories about ourselves by what we wear. And Lacey keys into that.

Debbi: That’s really cool, cause it is unusual to see these days a strong female protagonist with fashion sense.

Ellen: Yeah, I think so.

Debbi: I suppose that I’m thinking of Sarah Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski. She likes her shoes. I remember that.

Ellen: Right, she does like shoes. But so many of them they’re rough, they’re tough, they’re brilliant, they’re great, they don’t dress and I would think that the tipping point for me came with Sue Grafton, who I love, Kinsey Millhone’s black dress.

Debbi: Oh yes!

Ellen: And she’s always describing it, you know it’s polyester, you can roll it up in a ball, you can retrieve it from under your bed and truly I just want to light a match to that polyester monstrosity.

Debbi: Oh my gosh!

Ellen: And there was one book and I can’t remember which alphabet letter it was, where Kinsey, Kinsey had a friend who gave her a wonderful green cocktail dress and she was wearing it and I knew the minute she got it that nothing good was going to happen to that dress and it got blown up. So, you know I think there is a fear of being a strong woman who can be attractive as well as smart, and powerful, and shoot a gun. But there shouldn’t be, so that’s my take on Lacey.

Debbi: Well that’s a very interesting perspective. Thank you! I was going to say did you give her the last name Smithsonian because she had the fondness for vintage clothing?

Ellen: [laughs] You know characters sometimes name themselves and I named her that and I thought, no you can’t really do that, but I gave her a back story that often in my books I have found that people change their names and many people who came to this country changed their names when they got here. So her ancestor was a Smith from London. He was a Cockney from London and he just wanted a tonier sounding name and he named himself after the museum and of course there are no Smithsonians. There are Smithsons but no Smithsonians. So that’s where Lacey came from.

Debbi: Wow, interesting.

Ellen: So.

Debbi: How does her story evolve over the course of this series?

Ellen: Well she, it does evolve and she does grow and she does learn more things. In one of the books, Armed and Glamorous she goes to private investigation school in northern Virginia and I did that and had my PI registration in that area and she runs into an old love who is, who used to be a town police chief in a small town out west and he is now back in Virginia where he grew up and he’s in a private investigation firm with his dad. So, Lacey learns that, and also she goes through a personal evolution of hating being on the fashion beat, and then accepting that she has this skill and also that she is breaking stories and breaking murder stories, including one of a missing intern on Capitol Hill and of course we always get inspiration from the Capitol. And it ties in with a young woman who wanted to be a designer who disappeared during World War II. So, there’s a link between the two and you know, so Lacey understands that she has this gift and so she comes to accept it if not always love it, and then by the time, you know, I’m writing, I just finished the 11th book, it’s going to be out for sale October 16th and in that book everybody else wants to jump on her beat because that’s where the action is. And so people are coming in with suggestions and things. So, she has had that evolution and you know, relationships with people evolve and with Vick, her main squeeze. So, she does learn and grow and one thing I think is kind of unusual about my books is that they always tackle a different subject area. I mean you’d think that fashion is very small and very constrained, but it’s not and in every book I’ve had to learn something new.

I have a book called Shot Through Velvet and I had found out that the last velvet factory in Virginia was closing down and so I took a day off work and I went down and I interviewed the guy and he showed me this amazing velvet factory and of course I was with an OSHA reporter and he said, “You sure could kill a lot of people in a place like this”, which of course is music to my ears in one way, but horrifying in another.

Debbi: Yeah.

Ellen: But the equipment, it’s velvet is a very hand intensive fabric. It cannot be automated completely. So, you know, your fingers and your hands are at risk and there’s this huge blade. When you make velvet (and I didn’t know this), velvet is sewn with the nap on two sides and how you get the velvet fabric is you have to slice through these big panels of fabric and the blades are like 6 feet of whirling round blades. Very dangerous! So, and then also they have these huge vats; these dying vats.

Debbi: [agrees]

...

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Dave White on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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

Debbi: Hi! This is the Crime Cafe. Your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I am your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set and The Crime Cafe Anthology are on sale at all major online retailers for $1.99 and $.99 respectively. So, just go to my website debbimack.com. That’s debbimack.com and click on Crime Cafe and you’ll find the links for the books, as well as how to subscribe to this podcast. And with that, I’d like to introduce now, it is with great pleasure that I introduce now my guest, Dave White; the highly acclaimed Dave White.

Dave: Hello.

Debbi: Thanks for being here Dave. It’s great to have you on.

Dave: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. We’ve been talking about this for a while, so this is nice.

Debbi: This is awesome! I’m so glad you could be here because I’ve seen you so often at conferences and I’m such a shy person, I don’t know why I didn’t just walk up to you and say, “Hi Dave, I’m Debbi”.

Dave: I’m shy too. It takes a lot for me to introduce myself to people, so I get it. I understand. Hi Debbi!

Debbi: Hi Dave! And you’re from New Jersey. I am originally from New York, so that’s all the more reason why would should know each other.

Dave: Exactly, exactly.

Debbi: So, you’re the author of the sixth book so far series, correct? The Jackson Donne books.

Dave: Right, there are five Jackson Donne books and one standalone called Witness to Death.

Debbi: Oh, Okay! That’s a Jackson Donne also then?

Dave: No, Witness to Death is a stand….wait, now I gotta count my books. There are six books total and five Donne.

Debbi: Ok, five Donne done.

Dave: Yes, exactly!

Debbi: So, tell me a little bit more about the character Jackson Donne.

Dave: Jackson Donne is a, we can go through a long history here. He’s a former private investigator. In the first novel, When One Man Dies, he was a private investigator, mourning the death of his fiancé and asked to solve a hit-and-run where one of his close drinking buddies was killed. And from there, the series kind of grew because Donne clashed with his former cop partner, Bill Martin, several times throughout the series and Martin kind of became an arch enemy for a couple of the books. Since then, Martin took Donne’s private eye license, got it taken away, Donne kind of became a freelancer and tried to go back to college and he was very much like, you know they pull me back in. Every time he thinks he’s out of the private eye or the crime business he gets pulled back in. He’s been on the run to Vermont at one point. He was in prison. He’s had quite the five-book life.

Debbi: Oh my goodness! I was going to ask you about his journey as a character. It sounds like he’s had a rather rough one.

Dave: Yeah!

Debbi: I think of this right away. His fractious relationship with the police. What was it that caused that rift between himself and the police?

Dave: In the books, Donne was a narcotics agent with…there was a New Brunswick police narcotics committee I guess you would call it as part of the police force and they were corrupt. They were stealing drugs, they were doing drugs, they were skimming money off the top anytime they busted someone up and what Donne finally realized was he was going down this dark hole, he became a drug addict (that sort of thing), so he turned in the narcotics force; everybody except his partner, Bill Martin, who he kind of let off easy. He kind of destroyed the narcotics force, but Martin was able to keep his job. The rest of them went to prison and Donne left and become a private investigator. So that’s kind of what started it because now all the cops kind of hate him for turning in these guys and Martin really holds a grudge because even though he got off easy and Donne thought he was doing him a favor, Martin really resents Donne for what he did.

Debbi: Ok, yeah! What inspired you to write these stories?

Dave: I guess…the first Donne novel actually came out in like, not novel story, came out in 1999, with The Thrilling Detective website that’s run by Kevin Burton Smith. It’s a great website if you haven’t checked it out. But that first story, I was reading Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, and a ton of Robert Parker and I wanted to try my own hand at it. I was actually in college and I had taken a creative writing fiction class and tried writing the first Donne story and it kind of went from there.

Debbi: Wow! So the character is not based on anybody or any incident in particular?

Dave: No, I think Donne at the beginning of the series is very much the archetypical private investigator, you know. Mourning the death of his fiancé, drinking too much, that sort of thing and when I started to realize that as I wrote When One Man Dies, I tried to really take him away from that and kind of make him his own kind of person. So he’s not so much that archetypical, you know, that prototype private investigator. So, I’d think by now, he’s really not, but at the time it was just, I want to write a private eye story, this is what I know about private eye stories, this is what I like about private eye stories.

Debbi: Exactly! Yeah, question is, what can you use to set a private eye apart from all the others out there? And so I’m always very interested in hearing how people do that.

Dave: Yeah, I think that’s interesting because I had actually written George Pelecanos long time ago through e-mail when I was in college. I was telling him about writing this private eye story and I was never thinking about setting it apart from other private eyes, and he said in the e-mail, “The last thing the world needs is another private eye story.” What he was trying to say was like write from the heart, you know, write what you know and that sort of thing. I wasn’t thinking that way at the time, but that line in that e-mail kind of stuck with me as I really started to think a little more deeply about what I was doing with Donne and how I could change who he was and kind of separate him out from the pack.

Debbi: Exactly!

Dave: And make it organic at the same time.

Debbi: Yes, exactly! Something that reflects your voice and your outlook on the world and concerns, I assume?

Dave: Yeah, I think there are a lot, you know not even past deals with kind of New Jersey’s struggle with public education in a way when Chris Christie took over and then I started playing with a lot of Donne’s past, you know the narcotics stuff was never really clearly defined so I kind of dug into that a little bit and some of my thoughts with violence and that sort of thing and how violence affects us.

Debbi: Yes! These are all very topical and important issues and it’s the kind of thing I think that can be very well explored in crime writing. How do you feel?

Dave: Yeah, I think that’s what people do best. The best crime fiction, and I’m not saying I’m the best crime fiction, but you know somebody like Laura Lippman looks at a school shooting and does a fantastic job with it or Pelecanos and the way he looks at the streets of Washington D.C. and it’s not a political thriller, it’s a hard boiled crime story and that deals with his concerns and that sort of thing. So, yes!

Debbi: That’s what I like about them. You know, being from the same area, I can really relate with those stories very well and I love the way that Pelecanos takes D.C. and portrays it as a city as opposed to the capital of the U.S.

Dave: Right.

Debbi: I like that about him.

Dave: Yeah, I agree.

Debbi: Where do you anticipate taking the series in the future? Any thoughts on that?

Dave: Not at the moment. I’m actually…the last book, Blind to Sin, kind of leaves Donne and his on-again, off-again private eye partner, Matt Herrick, who was introduced later in the series, kind of in a place where we can take a break from them. I’m looking to try my hand at some other standalone thriller type things. One that I actually wrote about for your blog; I’m revising it. I’m not even ready to tell you what it’s about just because of the revision that lies in front of me. But, I want to take a look at some things in history that I’ve always been interested in like the shark attacks of 1916 is something that I want to write about eventually. So I’m taking a little bit of a break from Donne for now. We’ll see where he and the rest of the kind of side characters in the series are when I’m ready to come back. But for right now, I needed a mental break because the series got very dark.

Debbi: Sometimes you need to do that.

Dave: Yes.

Debbi: Do something different. Kind of cleanse you mental palate, sort of speak.

Dave: Yeah, I’m trying to write a fun book.

Debbi: That would be fun. I would love to write something comedic.

Dave: Yeah.

Debbi: Let’s see. I was going to ask you…thrillers…how do you go about writing a thriller as opposed to like a mystery series? How do you approach that?

Dave: I have had a lot of trouble with standalones. I think it’s because with the series, and with Donne, I know him so well that I can kind of anticipate his moves and kind of fill in the other characters around him. So, I can write those books without outlining and without, you know, not ten revisions but like three or four drafts where I’m happy with it. My standalones have become massive re-writes every time. Witness to Death, I think I took two years to re-write, and it’s mostly because I have to figure out who the main character is and that takes me awhile to learn this new character. A lot of times who I think he or she is in the first draft, is not who they are in the last draft. And that was certainly true with Witness to Death. And now,...

Debbi Mack interviews thriller author Zoë Sharp on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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

Debbi: Hi everyone! This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I am your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, let me remind you that The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set is available for sale at all major and some minor online retailers. The Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology is also available online for sale and it’s $0.99 for the anthology and $1.99 for the boxed set, so check it out. Just go to debbimack.com and look under “Crime Cafe” or “Books” to find the books there. And with that, I would like to now introduce an author who created one of the most awesome female protagonists ever. The character is Charlie Fox and the author is Zoe Sharp. Zoe, it’s great to have you here today!

Zoe: Thank you very much for inviting me, Debbi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Debbi: I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you on! So, you have one of the most fascinating bios ever! You actually wrote your first novel at 15?

Zoe: I did! It dates me horribly to say my father typed it up with carbon copies. And it went out to publishers and received what’s known in the trade as rave rejections. So, it still sits in a box in the attic and my father, bless him, keeps threatening to get it out and put it on eBay.

Debbi: Oh, that’s so cool!

Zoe: At which point I remind him that it won’t be long before I am choosing his nursing home and he should be nice to me.

Debbi: Good for you! And you became a photojournalist. I think that’s very cool and you mention that Charlie Fox grew out of the death threats you received as a photojournalist. What was that about?

Zoe: Yes! That was, that was a weird set of circumstances. I was working in the motoring field. I was involved with a lot of auto magazines and I was sent to see a collection of cars with a guy. When I arrived two things happened. The guy was very surprised to see that I was not on my own as he was clearly expecting, and the collection of cars did not exist. So, it was around the time when a real estate agent in the UK, called Suzy Lamplugh, who’d gone to show a client around a vacant house, and was never seen again. And the death threat letters started, you know, shortly after that incident. And I was kind of wondering whether it was the guy who’d been hoping to get me on my own. So, it tends to concentrate your mind. Started me learning an awful lot of self-defense. But it also sort of sparked off the character of Charlie Fox.

Debbi: Well I can just imagine. That must have been very scary.

Zoe: It was first annoying and only afterwards when the ramifications sank in did it get a lot more scary.

Debbi: [laughs] Yeah. Well I love Charlie Fox. When I was a kid watching action movies, it was always the women who put themselves in harm’s way and who would do what I would call “tripping over their shoelaces”. Running with the man and then they would fall or something.

Zoe: Yes, always sprain their ankle.

Debbi: Exactly! They would need some sort of help. But, I’ve always enjoyed strong women on movies and on TV. When I was a kid I used to watch The Avengers and I just loved Mrs. Peel and, and Honey West. I’m dating myself now. But…

Zoe: It was exactly those kind of characters that I wanted to get to with Charlie Fox. And it still bugs me that even now you have to specify that a female character is strong.

Debbi: Yes.

Zoe: Whereas you don’t have to do that with a male character. Nobody ever describes, you know, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher as a strong male character because you just, you kind of assume that unless there is something very specific about the character, he is going to be strong just by the very fact that he’s male. So, I like to write about capable female characters and even in the stand alone, I’ve done the female character of Kelly Jacks, is still very capable and, not quite as deadly as Charlie but very capable.

Debbi: That’s awesome! That’s something that I’ve wanted all my life. I wanted that so much as a child and it’s wonderful to see that now. See more of that now.

Zoe: Yeah!

Debbi: I mean you need more of that.

Zoe: We still do and it’s weird. Even in sort of my normal life. As I mentioned, I used to be involved with car magazines and that was a rarity, to be a woman working in that field. I started that nearly 30 years ago. But even so, it’s still not that common for women to be involved in that field or to be knowledgeable in that field. But, more recently, I’ve been renovating houses and I find that whenever you have any kind of technical ability to do renovation work, guys look at you with their jaws open and go, “Where did you learn to do this”? And it was my mother who came up with a brilliant answer to this which was she said, “You should just tell them I learnt from my mother”.

Debbi: [laughs]

Zoe: That would be such a good answer.

Debbi: Well I have to tell you I used to do electronics technology. That was my first major, quote/unquote, when I started college and there were two other women in the class.

Zoe: Yep.

Debbi: And the guys looked at me, I was a lab tech, and the guys looked at me and they were just like, I don’t believe it! And I ended up showing one of them up, which really [laughs] kind of, at that point they actually gained a little respect for me. But, and my sister was also an auto mechanic. But, that’s a whole other story.

Zoe: [laughs]

Debbi: Let’s talk about Charlie Fox [laughs].

Zoe: Okay.

Debbi: Okay, I’ve noticed that Charlie starts off really strong in that first book, which just grabbed me and has grown and developed over the course of the series. Can you talk a little about how she’s grown and developed?

Zoe: Well, yeah, I think when you write a series character, you either have the choice, you make the decision fairly early on that you’re going to keep them very static in their personal development. And for a write in some ways that makes life easier because it doesn’t matter what order then people read the books. If the character doesn’t change, it’s only the events happening to that character that are different from one book to the next. But I wanted the character to change and develop. I always knew from the start that she would go from teaching self-defense into close protection and then sort of, she’s now really moving through a side, I suppose a side door of close protection into a more proactive role. That’s where I’m taking her in the latest book. And, certainly where I plan to take her from this point forwards. So I wanted the character to develop and I wanted to go on as much of a personal journey in each book or sometimes that spans several books, as I did to her actually having to deal with the events of each separate plot. And so I’ve always gave her, right from the start, she discovered she had an ability to kill, which is a very difficult aspect for the character to come to terms with herself. And it’s something again, we’ve talked about the difference between male and female characters, but the guys are kind of expected to shoot the villains and go and have a, you know, a beer in the bar at the end of the day. Women are, are treated differently if they are able to do that. They either become psychopaths or they become somehow ice cold or sassiness. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to keep her a very kind of human, slightly vulnerable person. But, her abilities do give her a kind of psychological hang ups.

Debbi: Umm-hmm.

Zoe: But nevertheless, she recognizes that you know, you cross her line in the sand and she has the capability to stop you in your tracks.

Debbi: Umm-hmm. And I admire that about her and about your writing. Sean Meyer, an interesting character that you introduced in book two, as I recall, was this part of the plan to show Charlie’s vulnerabilities without weakening her and can you talk a little about their relationship?

Zoe: Well they’ve had a slightly complicated relationship. I think that’s the easiest way to say it.

Debbi: [laughs]

Zoe: And it doesn’t get any easier. Yes I needed somebody to, as a bit of a foil for Charlie, somebody who initially in the early books, she was very admiring of. She wanted to emulate and gradually, gradually, that relationship has almost changed over in that she has become the strong side of the partnership. And that in itself was very interesting because people do develop and they do change. Sean has changed quite a lot over the course of the series. And, you know in the latest, but I’m not going to give away, but their relationship comes to something of a crisis point in the latest book.

Debbi: Ahhhh. Interesting! Yeah, I was just going to ask you about the latest book and you said that she’s more complicated than ever.

Zoe: Yes!

Debbi: How is she more complicated and where do you see her going from here?

Zoe: Well, the latest book I wanted to deal with, some aspects of her past so, I not only used very current events happening in the Middle East, but I also wanted to elude back to the guys who attacked her when she was in the army. And a little bit more contest on that and, in the role of people who were a little higher up the food chain who, Charlie never realized were quite as involved as they were. So, she kind of sets an element of her past to rest in the latest book. But it also means she’s closed some doors in her personal relationships. And, she’s looking to set off in a slightly different direction. So, I can’t say too much without giving away kind of what happens in the new book in Fox Hunter. But, it’s, it was very interesting to write. It took me awhile to write this one and I wanted to get her in a story right.

Debbi: Well, you’ve intrigued me, totally. And, let’s see. I was going to ask, you also have a stand-alone novel, correct?

Zoe: Yes, I do....

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Seth Harwood on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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

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, I'd like to remind you that The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set is available as well as The Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology. They're both available online on all major online retailers for $1.99 for the boxed set and $0.99 for the anthology, which is a real deal. Just go to debbimack.com and click on either Crime Cafe or my book link to find the Crime Cafe buy links. Now, having said that I am very pleased to introduce the author that I once called the ‘Golden God of Marketing’, Seth Harwood. Hey man, how you doing?

Seth: Hi, thanks for having me on.

Debbi: I am so happy to have you on. I’ve admired your business savvy and your writing for years, and I gotta say it seems like a million years ago that I first heard about Jack Wakes Up. But I had no idea that you had serialized it as a podcast before publishing. So see—you were way ahead of the curve on all of us. When did you start the podcast?

Seth: I started it in 2006 in the summer. I had been a big fan of audiobooks and so I saw that the way that I could put this book out was to put it out as audio in a way that people could get it on the web and interact with it. And that seemed to make so much more sense than putting it on the web as text. So there were guys like Scott Sigler and Tee Morris and a few others at a website called Podiobooks and they were ahead of me, but it was still like very early stuff. I mean you know it's years before something like Serial comes along and people really know what a podcast is. But what we were doing was serializing our books as podcasts.

So I did it Jack Wakes Up, I started and then I really found an audience that I could connect to. And I feel like for so long as a writer, that's what I had been looking for and even having gone past that to get books published by big presses, small presses, all different kinds of presses; that interaction with readers, that feeling of I knew people were waiting for my stuff to come out each week. I knew that they were invested in the story and I would hear from them. That level of interaction—that was the best thing ever really. And so you know it was great that I did that and my goal at the time was to get enough of an audience so that publishers would take me more seriously and publish me. And looking back on it now, what I was doing then was even better than working with publishers. And so now I'm going back to that, and I think you've done a lot of self-publishing, other guys have done self-publishing and you know just to find a way to sort of work with the audience directly; I think that's the best thing that we can do. But the rest of the story, yeah, and you probably know more about that than I do.

But the rest of the story is that I did like five or six books as serialized audiobooks, podcasts. I put them all out for free, built in audience. And then I started doing Crime Wave, which is how I met you, because I wanted to get more crime stories to that audience that I had and I wanted to help other authors get into the podcasting stuff and sort of helped get their work out there. So, yeah, it was really great and it was a very intense period of my life where from you know 2006 to about 2009, I was doing roughly a podcast a week of 30 minutes of fiction, mixing, recording, editing, putting it out, doing the web posts. And sometimes two a week when I was doing my own stuff and Crime Wave. So it was really a lot of work.

Debbi: I know how much work goes into it personally of course. And so that must have been quite hectic for you writing, podcasting, all of that—to be a good time manager.

Seth: It must be a good something. But what I did that was helpful was that, I had the book Jack Wakes Up written and so when I was podcasting that it was all completely written. And then I had a series of stories that I could podcast short stories in the literary tradition from my time in graduate school. And so when I finished Jack Wakes Up I would take a hiatus and then basically write the next book and, while I was on hiatus, I would podcast some short stories and sort of go through whatever I had that I could put out as content. And say stay in touch with the feed, if these short stories aren't really your speed, you know there's going to be more crime and more Jack Palm - stuff coming soon.

And people really stuck with it and a lot of the people really liked my short stories and connected with me through that which really felt great because those are closer to my heart than the crime writing. They’re semi autobiographical and basically as I was going forward with podcasting each new novel, they were getting closer to being the rough draft that I would podcast and I got to the point where I was getting closer and closer to serialization, to the point where by the time I was podcasting the fourth book I had 25,000 words of it written and I started podcasting it. And I was writing it - each week I would write more material and podcast it. So basically I had a buffer of 25,000 words and I was trying to write four or five thousand words a week, podcast that much and maintain that buffer of 20 to 25 thousand words. But I was literally you know creating it as I was writing and it was hard. It was a lot of work but it was fun and exciting and like seat of your pants and pretty amazing experience.

And - still I love that book Young Junius the one that came out of that and a lot of my--You know you have these books they that are closer to you. That's the crime book that's closest to me before the one that I'm doing now. But you know there's other ones that maybe you think the crime book should be this or a publisher wants you to do that. And you know Young Junius, the people that like Young Junius are the people who I get the most and we connect and I love that book. It was risky because almost all the characters are African-American and to use their voices and set this in 1987 was hard but it was amazing. It was an amazing experience to write it and podcast it and then we did a really cool special edition of it where we had pictures in it and special covers that were designed by artists who are listeners. And basically we raised money for a print run of it by pre selling these $35 special editions. It was just an amazing process back then and I look back on it now on I'm like oh my God how did I do all that. And part of the answer is that I didn't have a kid at that point.

Debbi: Yeah, I hear that takes a lot of time.

Seth: It does, but it's so rewarding, too.

Debbi: That's what I hear also. As an aunt I can appreciate it from an aunt’s perspective.

Seth: But that was the thing was that you know connecting with that audience, knowing that I had an audience that wanted material and writing to give it to them, it was great. And for me like making the audio and recording it and stuff and even doing the voices; it wasn't super hard for me and so I was able to do it.

Debbi: Well that's fantastic and it just folds right in with the whole concept of social media marketing as well. Connecting with people and getting feedback from them. So--

Seth: That was the great thing was that I could hear from - I mean I was on Twitter and Facebook and wherever else, basically because wherever my listeners were, I wanted to be able to hear from them on the platform that they liked. And so when I would put stuff out it wasn't always hey buy my book, that was the cool thing was that each week I had a new thing to give people. And so my social media stuff was never "Hey look at me" or "Hey do this or buy this"; it was always like here's something for you, here's something for you, this is for you. And so I think that was really effective and you know if you have 20 episodes of a book and each week you're coming back and offering you know maybe for the first couple of times someone sees it on Facebook they miss it. But then you know by the by the fourth or fifth time they're thinking wait what is this and then they look and it's like oh episode five. Oh I can get episode one here. Yeah I'll try that out and listen.

And now you know that was back when a lot of the people who were interested in crime maybe didn't really get the technology for listening to podcasts. A lot of the people who were really successful with the podcasting back then were writing sci-fi because the readers for that tend to be more early adopting. But you know now, so many people listen to podcasts and the cool thing is that Patreon, I did a Kickstarter in 2010 and that was great, but it took a lot of work to raise a chunk of money. And so the thing that I like about Patreon is that you build it and then people go on it and subscribe so it continues to do the funding for you. And it's not just a one-time thing like Kickstarter was. So I'm doing Patreon now and I honestly think, I honestly I'm in a place where I feel like I've put my eggs in publishers baskets, set many times, it doesn't really pay off and I’m at a point where I want to try to monetize the audio rather than the print and sort of try to monetize it and sell the print stuff as a secondary fashion. But really try to interact with the audience through Patreon, let them subscribe and get the audio and interact with my stuff that way.

Debbi: Well I think that's a perfect way of doing things and just brilliant. And so are all of your novels Jack Palms novels? Are they all part of the series?

Seth: Well no. So there's three Jack Palms books, Jack Wakes Up, This Is Life and then well it's funny because when I first podcasted them there were three Jack Palms books. And then when I got with the publisher,...

Debbi Mack interviews thriller author Lawrence Kelter on the Crime Cafe podcast.

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

Debbi: Hello, 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 this week's awesome guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe boxed set—that’s nine books in the boxed set—and the Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology can be purchased online at any online retailer for the very reasonable price of $1.99 for the boxed and $0.99 for the anthology. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, whatever. The buy links are on my website debbimack.com. And with that said I'm thrilled to introduce my guest Lawrence Kelter, a fellow New Yorker and thriller author. it's great to have you on Larry.

Lawrence: It's great to be here. Please, let's stick with Larry.

Debbi:  Larry. [laughs]

Lawrence: If I get Lawrence you know, I'm gonna assume that I've done something wrong or I'm in big trouble. Larry works just fine.

Debbi:  I know what you mean cause when people call me Deborah, I always think of my mother. Deborah!

Lawrence: Exactly.

Debbi: Exactly. I first got to know your work through the Stephanie Chalice thrillers and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Lawrence: You're about the only one who does pronounce it correctly.

Debbi: Stephanie Chalice. I like that. What a great protagonist she is. What inspired you to go with that series—to write it?

Lawrence: I was a big and I still am, a big fan of Nelson DeMille and I got sucked in by his John Corey character. At the time, he only had a couple books in that series, but now he's up to, I guess about seven or eight in the Corey series. And what I liked about him was he had this ascerbic personality and he's always making smart-ass comments. And I like the punch of having a smile when I read.

You know, there’s a lot of great authors and you know I can't take anything away from them, but they're very, very dry and they'll just go through pages and pages of description. How he approached the crime circle and there was an inner circle and outer circle and the third circle and it's like, it takes you four pages to get through the crime circle. And it’s “What the …”, you know? I really like DeMille’s character, and I said you know I'd like to do something like that. I hadn't written at the time. And I can't copy John Corey. So I kinda borrowed some of his personality traits and I imbued them in a woman, so to speak.

Debbi: Excellent.

Lawrence: Yeah, so Chalice is supposed to be fun, quirky, a little too savvy for her own good, a little too smart-alecky for her own good, but I think that makes the character memorable and fun.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely and it underscores how she's a human being, she's not like a .... I don't know, a stereotypical woman or whatever you wanna call it right.

Lawrence: Right.

Debbi: I like the fact that you can write that. So, much is said about men writing women and women writing men.

Lawrence: Right.

Debbi: I don't see why men can't write women as authentically as women can.

Lawrence: Well, I'm several books into it now. You know, when I first started out there were some comments saying that she wasn't a real woman, that she was too much of a man's vision of a woman and some of that I think was real or right. I think I kinda absorbed those comments and refined her personality as I went along, and she’s seven whole books and three novellas into the series at this point.

So, yeah, she's gone through a lot of changes and you know there's a lot of work involved. She starts out as a single gal detective and then she gets a partner that she falls in love with and, by the seventh book, she's got a child, she's married and has a child, so you know she's gone through an evolution, so to speak.

Debbi: And do you picture writing more of that series and where do you think she'll go from here?

Lawrence: I do picture writing more of it. I haven't begun to craft the next book yet and that's because I’ve just had so many things on the back burner and at a certain point you either have to move them up in the line or you know they're never gonna get looked at. So, that's what I've done and as you probably know, I'm involved in a new project. So that's taken the bulk of my time.

Debbi: Yes. Tell me about the Chloe Mathers series, the thrillers, the Chloe Mather thrillers. How does Chloe differ from Stephanie, and is this is a trilogy or do you plan to make more out of the series?

Lawrence: Well, what I've done—well let me take a step back—Chloe Mather is a little bit more straight-laced than Chalice is.

She comes from a military background. As the story goes, she was a Marine or an ex-Marine, now an FBI agent. And in the Marines, she was one of the few women who actually saw active combat. Normally—and I can't speak for the armed forces at this moment in time—but when she was in the armed forces most female Marines were clerical or technical that kind of thing who served as liaisons. They never really saw the battlefield, but she was assigned to what they call the female engagement team in the Middle East and what her assignment was—they call it the FET.

What the FET was supposed to do was sort of broker the relationship between Muslim women and the military, because in that culture, men are not allowed to speak with women they're not married to. So, she's able to do that as a woman, and she's out in the Middle East during some of the military offensives and because she's out there she gets pulled into a couple of real situations, rescues, you know? She was under siege a couple times, she's a sharpshooter, so she's a little bit of a stiffer character.

Debbi: Interesting, very interesting. I'm gonna have to check those books out.

Lawrence: OK. The second part of what you asked. Do I see more Mather? What I did is to kind of keep Mather going and keep Chalice going at the same time. I've combined them in a new series.

Debbi: Oh, wow.

Lawrence: Yeah, so what I did was. In Chalice’s last book she was critically injured, she's recovering, but because of N.Y.P.D. protocol, she's on medication and she's gonna be on medication for another six or eight months, and N.Y.P.D. demanded that she's off medication completely for a full year before she can see active duty or do a normal tour as a detective. And she just couldn't handle it anymore. She's too much of an A-personality. She needed to get back out in the field, so she leaned on her friend, Herb Ambler, who's an S.S.A. at the New York City FBI Bureau, and he pulled enough strings, he had enough clout to get her moved over, and now she's an FBI agent and Mather's an FBI agent, so they're sort of rocking it together.

Debbi: Very, very interesting.

Lawrence: Thank you.

Debbi: I'm interested that you combined the two characters, because I could do the same thing with the series that I'm working on actually. I'm starting a new series and it also takes place in Maryland and you've got me thinking now. I think my first taste of your funniest writing was the Frank Mango novel.

Lawrence: OK.

Debbi: That's when I really got to see you just kind of go over the top a little bit and I loved it. It was that wise cracking detective with the name Mango. And he was always getting jibes about that.

Lawrence: Right.

Debbi: Was that a standalone or is that part of a series you'd like to write?

Lawrence: I'd like to write more Frank Mango at some point. There was one book, which was called Kiss of the Devil's Breath.

Debbi: Yes.

Lawrence: And that was a novella or a long short story. But I do like his character. And he's fun to write. I try to pick characters that are fun to write. It actually came about—before I was writing full-time, I worked for a bank and one of the people I was on the phone with all the time was a guy by the name of Frank Mango. You know, I met him once at some point, but it was very briefly and it was not repeated. And the name just kept, you know, poking into my head. It’s like I couldn’t … every time I heard Frank Mango, I said, oh, what a great name, for a big fat rumpled detective, you know?

Debbi: It is, it's a great name. That's wonderful.

Lawrence: Yeah, I mean the actual Frank Mango that I took the name from he was nothing like that so. If he hears that he doesn't think I picture him is this oaf, which I don't but …

Debbi: But it's a wonderful name.

Lawrence: Yeah.

Debbi: He should be honored. It's a very funny novel and good.

Lawrence: Thank you.

Debbi: That's my personal recommendation to everybody listening. You've also collaborated with one of my previous guests, Frank Zafiro, who’s also one of my favorite authors and the book is The Last Collar. What can you tell me about that book and about your collaboration process?

Lawrence: That was interesting. Frank and I had both contributed to an anthology. And that's where we kind of met, again online, not face-to-face, because I'm in New York and at the time I think he was in Spokane. He's since relocated, but he's still out west, and we've never met face-to-face. But I had this idea for a novel. I had a character that I had once used in a novel that I never pushed through to publishing. You know, I liked the character, but the story didn't grab me enough to give it a full commitment.

So, I spoke to Frank and I said, “I'm looking to do a real police procedural.” I said, ”I'm kind of like you know … I'm a fake cop. I know cops, I've been involved with cops, but I'm not a cop and I'd like to get a partner who really knows the police force from the inside.” And we talked about it a little bit. We really didn't kick it around too long.

His biggest concern was that in all the collaborations he's done, and he's done several, they always had one voice. I'm sorry,...

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Timothy Hallinan on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Debbi Mack interviews thriller author Sue Coletta on the Crime Cafe podcast.