The Crime Cafe

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

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

You can download a copy of the transcript here!

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

Ed (01:35): That's correct.

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

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

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

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

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

[I]nstead of just making stuff up about Nigerian police, especially nowadays with concern about being authentic and not making who you're writing for, who writing about, I thought I would find and meet some Nigerian policemen, which was easier said than done.

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

Ed (03:00): Okay.

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

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

People don't go to Nigeria. Nigerians don't need you, and they expect the same. Tourists are not especially welcome, and you have to be all careful watching your step over there.

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

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

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

Ed (03:42): Oh, good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I felt like I was born writing. I was a little kid. I was writing little stories and poems when I was eight years old. In college, I was very involved with the school newspaper.

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

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

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

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

I'd been writing for TV for a long time at that point, and I'd done well over a hundred crime stories from Law and Order and other shows. So my mind was in that realm, and I think the germ of it was after 9-11.

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (08:47): Really,

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

I kept it short and moving quickly, because I get bored with scenery in novels. I don't really care what the weather is like. People go on and on. Some writers go on and on about the beautiful mountain across the way, and ... get to the point, tell me a story and let's move this along.

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

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

Debbi (09:59): Create the scene.

...

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

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

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, "Mummy, you write just like a real author."

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

Brenda (04:01): Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I'd have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves.

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

I really love police procedurals, but I'd like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who's been let off, let go from the paper as many have been.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brenda (09:18): Yeah.

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

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

Debbi (09:55): Oh, wow.

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

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

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

Brenda (10:19): A beautiful trip.

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

Brenda (10:27): It will depend on the book. Some of them, I do quite a bit of research. I read up on them. I do a lot of research on Google in looking for information. I use Google Earth a lot. Sometimes I write about a place I haven't been, so I look it up on the map and then I find all the photos of it and read up the town,...

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

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

You can download the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

Basically on this podcast, people can call in and leave a voicemail and leave an apology. And so I guess the conceit of the podcast is they would just play these apologies, and the human part of my brain thought that was pretty cool.

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

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

Carter (03:50): Oh, good.

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

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

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

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

I don't know if I would say it's so much of a commentary because when I kind of approach a book, I'm never thinking about what is my message here? I'm just thinking about, and again, because I'm not outlining, I'm just thinking about what happens next, and it kind of unfolds to me.

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

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

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

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

I stay away from people who have very specialized jobs because that would be research for me, and that feels like homework.

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

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

I've been labeled many different things from anything from thriller blending into horror to domestic suspense to psychological thrillers.

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

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

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

Carter (09:00): Thank you.

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

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

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

I've learned over time just to write an hour a day, and I still maintain that schedule. I write in the mornings and when I'm actively drafting, it's kind of a five to 700 word goal, daily goal, but I don't write more than an hour.

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

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

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Priscilla Paton.

Check out our discussion of her Twin Cities mysteries and the inspiration behind her dual detectives Eric Jansson and Deb Metzger.

Download a copy of the interview in PDF.

Debbi (00:51): Hi everyone. My guest today is originally from Maine, but now hails from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which invariably evokes images of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat in the air for me. If you're a person of a certain age, you'll understand. Anyway. Some of you may understand that reference. And in any case, she is a college professor from that area and she's now an author of the Twin Cities Mystery series. It's my pleasure to have with me today, Priscilla Paton. Hey, Priscilla, how you doing?

Priscilla (01:29): Well, I'm doing really great. I'm actually in Arizona right now escaping some of those famous Midwest winters. Just for a very brief time though, I'll be getting back to the greater Twin Cities experience very quickly. I'm now retired from teaching, which gives me more time to make mischief and at least in my head, get into trouble.

Debbi (01:56): I love it. Yes. Isn't it wonderful when we can write out these things on the page as opposed to actually committing crimes?

Priscilla (02:05): Right.

Debbi (02:07): Let's see. Tell us about your series. You have dual detectives, detective Eric Jansson and Deb Metzger. How was it that you came up with these two characters?

Priscilla (02:20): Well, as you noted in your introduction, I've been transplanted to the Midwest. I'm been married to a Midwester for decades, and I'm both an insider and outsider there to some extent. Eric Jansson represents the Scandinavian Midwest as I've come to know it. He does have dark hair, but he still has blue eyes and the dark hair goes back to the Sámi people in northern Norway. So I got to play with his experience, his immersion in that Scandinavian-American culture, and I came up with him first. He was still a bit of a stoic. Scandinavians and New Englanders both are. So he was stoic. He wasn't that given to free and open expression, though he may have had a lot of renegade thoughts running through his head. He's kind of a rural bender, and I started writing, exploring what I could do with that character, and I found it was a little too quiet, a little too internalized.

Eric Jansson represents the Scandinavian Midwest as I've come to know it. He does have dark hair, but he still has blue eyes and the dark hair goes back to the Sámi people in northern Norway.

(03:30): Though he is physically active, he's athletic, and I put him aside for a minute and started writing about a woman who finds a PI type, who finds her cases by looking at the boards and coffee shops. As I was coming up with her, I was sitting in a coffee shop looking at a board, and I think that idea lasted as long as my cup of coffee and I went and then sort of like Athena bursting out of Zeus's head, Deb Metzger came to me. She ... as somebody who would rile Eric. Not necessarily be, not that they would necessarily hate each other, they don't by any means, but someone who would push him. In fact, in one of the novels that their chief joked something about, she says something about Eric being so quiet. He says, that's a good job for you. Draw him out. In a way she does it by annoying him. So it's sort of a vinegar and oil couple. But I tried to give them slightly different skill sets as usually happens when you have partners in real life and in fiction. So Eric is a little bit more the puzzle solver, a little bit more.

(04:46): A couple of times, once he played, pretended he was a waiter. He is a little more on the edge of, I don't know if I want to say deceit, but he can be a little cagey here where Deb is more forthright and she is tall. She's about six feet in shoes or boots. She has kind of spiky blonde hair. She's lesbian. She can't hide easily. So she sort of knows people have to confront her and she has to confront them. And yeah, some experiences in life have given her a chip on her shoulder, which include some prejudice from a past boss, but also some disappointment in love because you have to have disappointment in love in a detective novel. You can't make them too happy from the get go.

Deb is more forthright and she is tall. She's about six feet in shoes or boots. She has kind of spiky blonde hair. She's lesbian. She can't hide easily.

Debbi (05:38): Yes, so true. Yes. So their relationship is pretty much confined to professional. Correct?

Priscilla (05:49): Yes. A professional takes up enough time, and again, you can't make them too happy. But I wanted them also to be normative enough that they weren't like these ... I was kind of making fun of the noir type where the detective is so damaged and his mother, one love, son, dog had been killed by terrorists and he's on a revenge path now. Eric though he is divorced, does have a young son and he has a family that's far too wholesome back in Iowa. So he plays off that a little bit. And so he has family obligations that keep him busy. And Deb is still, Deb though she'd been in the Twin Cities for, she came up from another city in Iowa. So they're both from Iowa because how noir is that? They both know about corn. So she's a little more finding her way. And I think having them together during, there are a few times as the books go along when they're more apt to see each other in a social situation, not so much that they're inviting each other places as they happen to run into each other. In my very first book that happens at a party, at their chief's house, where in very odd ways they defend each other and debate over the quality of the line.

Debbi (07:11): Well, that is really cool. I love the sound of that. What subgenre would you say your series falls into? Is it more like a police procedural or more hardboiled? Softboiled?

Priscilla (07:28): I make, there's some times when I sort of make fun of the hardboiled tropes. That's cool. I consider it a warped procedural. There are police and there is procedure, but often the case is that I've been in bureaucracies, enough educational ones, nonprofit ones that I know what good work they could do. I also know the grind of committee meetings and things like that. So they're often pushing. I mean, I think in the first one there's an anger management seminar that Deb, as a new hire in this agency is supposed to attend, but it never happens, which makes people angry, keeps getting postponed.

I consider it a warped procedural. There are police and there is procedure, but often the case is that I've been in bureaucracies, enough educational ones, nonprofit ones that I know what good work they could do.

(08:10): And another one, she's on what we used to call a DEI thing where mostly the other participants want to all strangle each other because that happens on these committees. So I have some fun with procedure, but at the same time I realize that it's there and they realize it's there for a purpose, and though they may grate against it. And when I do get into more procedural things, I try to give it a little humor or a little edge so you're not just bogged down by it, but both the necessity of it and the anguish of it and the comedy of it.

Debbi (08:47): That's awesome. I like the sound of that, and I love that you're kind of pushing against the usual tropes of the detective. Totally damaged, can't deal with drugs and alcohol and all of it. But yeah, I mean it's nice to see something different and fresh in that area.

Priscilla (09:09): Eric may be a little addicted to his workout because he's a runner and he works off some of his excess. So instead of talking when he gets angry, he usually runs another mile or something like that, and Deb's a swimmer. So they kind of vent themselves that way and by being snarky with each other, not necessarily healthy. The other thing I might say about my series in general is they do derive from real crimes or circumstances, but at the bottom they're about relationships. Relationships between the detectives, relationships among the people involved in the crime from the murderers themselves to those impacted to those who are maybe not quite as honest as they should be, because I think of murder as the ultimate sign of a failed relationship. Something's gone terribly wrong, and can the detectives work with each other's oddities enough to solve the case? And I do pay quite a bit of attention. I usually have four points of view in a book, one, Eric's point of view, Deb's point of view, and then two people close to the crime and generally to up the suspense who are threatened or in danger. And partly that way, you get to see, I think the latest book, which I believe you received, When the House Burns.

The other thing I might say about my series in general is they do derive from real crimes or circumstances, but at the bottom they're about relationships.

(10:47): I was writing that during the COVID shutdown and when George Floyd had been murdered in Minneapolis. And I had to have my detectives react to that in some way, even though I don't actually mention those specific names in the book. And when you have the secondary characters in the one, even before COVID, the one Should Grace Fail, which has characters of color, they are very suspicious of the detectives. And you sort of get to see how that can impede the investigation, but you also understand why they do it and how their own experiences have led them to that point. So it's a lot about, sometimes you hear a book described as character driven, I think of mine as character driven, but the characters are often terrible drivers and they crash into each other.

Debbi (11:36): Yes, yes, exactly. That's when you get that wonderful, all that tension, all that conflict that you need in a novel, and those types come together and just boom, even in small ways....

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is educator and crime writer Michael Kaufman.

Check out our discussion of his Jen Lu series, featuring a brain implant character named Chandler. What would Philip Marlowe make of that? :) The one question I forgot to ask!

You can download the transcript here.

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. Today I have a somewhat unusual guest in that he's better known for his work in gender studies and his nonfiction books than for his crime fiction. However, along with his work as a lecturer and advisor, he co-founded The White Ribbon Campaign, a worldwide effort by men to end violence against women. And somewhere along the line, he decided to write crime fiction, mysteries. So it's my pleasure to introduce my guest today, Michael Kaufman. Hi Michael. How you doing?

Michael (01:27): Great to be here with you today.

Debbi (01:29): Fantastic. Good to have you on. Great to have you on. Tell us about how you went from lecturing non-governmental organizations and other huge bodies of people and starting a worldwide movement to fiction writing and to your mystery series in particular.

Michael (01:51): Yeah, I think there's a couple of answers to that. One is that it reflects what I read many decades ago. Now I was an academic, so I read all that stuff and over the years, just increasingly, I've just focused, most of my reading has been in my first love, which is fiction, and a good chunk of that has been crime fiction and mysteries combined with the classics and all of that. The other answer to that I've always written fiction. My first novel, not a crime novel, but a straight ahead novel was published by Penguin Random House back a couple decades ago now. And so I've always had that interest. But here's the final answer to that. A lot of the work I've done in the United Nations system around the world, different governments, companies, you talk to people during a break over lunch or whatever, and I'd be there to talk about gender equality and inclusion and violence against women and transforming our workplaces and better lives for men and parenting, all sorts of things like that.

(03:02): You sit down with a couple of colleagues and you'd expect the discussion would be really sort of super highbrow and I'm reading the latest whatever philosopher. People say, yeah, I'm reading this great mystery. And one of the things that's true is that for all of us, no matter what we do, the world of fiction and in the case for many of us crime fiction, it's a combination of both a wonderful escape, a wonderful entertainment, but also a wonderful way to engage with the world. Good crime novels, the page-turning plot. And we all try to do that, but they also delve into characters. You think of some of your favorite crime writers over the years, you might say, yeah, I loved his or her plotting or their plotting, but you also love the characters they create. You love the worlds. And also in the case of these, some writers, you love the issues that they explore. So for me, this is what I decide to spend more of my energy on is my writing, my fiction writing in particular, and to use that as a vehicle, both to be blunt, to entertain and to give people something that'd be really fun to read and enjoyable and exciting, page-turning, but also to explore different social, cultural, environmental, and political issues. So there's a multifaceted answer to your straightforward question.

Debbi (04:51): Well, I'm with you a hundred percent on that. I have really tried to do that in some of my books. Yes, I've tried. Anyway, let's see. Tell us about Jen Lu, Is it?

Michael (05:05): Yeah.

Debbi (05:06): So what was it that inspired you to write about her?

Michael (05:10): So my first mystery series, I'll just weigh them here. My Jen Lu series, The Last Exit and The Last Resort. I wanted to probably just came out of, I was visiting a friend in Washington DC. I'm affiliated there with a research center, and we were taking a walk and riffing on this and that, not rifting riffing on this and that he and I had written a strange novel together called The Afghan Vampires Book Club. There may or may not be vampires in it, but--

Debbi (05:49): I love the title.

Michael (05:51): Yeah, we started talking about the future and it was one of those sort of unexpected one thing leading to another. And we started wondering about basically what was going to be happening in Washington in 10 years in the future. So eight years now, seven years now, six years now, whatever. And of course we could not quite have imagined what did end up happening now, but we'll see. We still have a few years until we get to 2033 and 34 when these two books are set. What I wanted to do was to not get deep into science fiction. It's really a cross-genre book because it is set in the future. I didn't want to spend a lot of energy on technological speculation except for one thing. And that is half of each book is narrated by the bioimplant in Jen Lu's brain and Jen Lu is a DC cop, and she has this implant in her brain whose name is Chandler, and he's this sort of wannabe tough guy, but Chandler's only three years old, so he has a hard time pulling off the tough guy thing. Anyway, each of these books, the first book, The Last Exit deals with, aside from it, hopefully tells an exciting story, but woven into that are issues that explore around income inequality, inequality overall, and the impact of climate change. Now, this was written, I'll tell you a funny story about this.

Yeah, we started talking about the future and it was one of those sort of unexpected one thing leading to another. And we started wondering about basically what was going to be happening in Washington in 10 years in the future.

(07:30): This was written, I guess it was published in what, 2020? 21? 21. So I was writing it pre-COVID, so as one does, and I had a scene at the beginning and it's still there where there's these huge fires in the Appalachian Mountains, and this was before all the fires in California and elsewhere, but these fires in the Appalachian Mountains, DC is covered with smoke, and there's a scene at the beginning where Jen Lu, she's been demoted for some reason. She's on patrol and she puts on her N95 mask. So in the original pre-COVID I wrote, "she put on her N95," and the note I got from my editor was "What's an N95?" So I had to change it to, "she put on her N95 mask." Anyway, so it's set in the future, but it deals with issues that are very much with us today.

(08:31): Similarly, The Last Resort, the second in the series, a lot more very centrally on climate change, there's a theme around climate reparations, but also issues around violence against women. So with both of these books, and what I'm really excited about in terms of the response I've gotten is people to say they love the voice. They love Chandler's voice because he narrates half of these books. They love the characters, they turn the pages, but they also like that I've been able to in a fun, entertaining way engage with some issues that are, I think, important to a lot of us.

So with both of these books, and what I'm really excited about in terms of the response I've gotten is people to say they love the voice. They love Chandler's voice because he narrates half of these books.

Debbi (09:10): Yes, yes. Sounds like it. Sounds like a remarkable concept there, the whole business with the technology in her brain that really ... whoo!

Michael (09:25): Yeah, it's rather scary actually. I mean--

Debbi (09:27): Rather scary. Yes.

Michael (09:29): Yeah, it's interesting, because I don't, the one thing I haven't done too much yet in the series, and we'll see where it develops. I've touched on here and there, this is really a creepy technology. This is a technology I actually hope does not happen. The way I use it here though is in a fairly light way. It's just sort of an element of the story. It's an element of the characters, but it's one that you can start glimpsing here and there. This is actually a pretty problematic technology, and we'll see where it goes. Chandler, who's a character in it. That's the other thing that just amazed me. We as writers always talk about, there's that cliche about the characters having a life of their own, and it's of course total nonsense on one level. But what it does represent, and I'm sure you can relate to this, is that as we write, if we're really into a story, we actually come to know our characters unconsciously, deeper than we're actually thinking.

We as writers always talk about, there's that cliche about the characters having a life of their own, and it's of course total nonsense on one level. But what it does represent, and I'm sure you can relate to this, is that as we write, if we're really into a story, we actually come to know our characters unconsciously, deeper than we're actually thinking.

(10:32): I think unless we're the most brilliant writer around and has it all worked out, for most of us, our brains are actually doing a better job unconsciously than consciously. And so things happen, the characters do things that of course, we're creating, well, here's something, my character, this computer implant, Chandler, I knew he was going to have this sort of tough guy voice. He's going to be somewhat humorous. I didn't know he was going to evolve in the course of these books as a character. It hadn't occurred to me. And that starts happening and he becomes a real live character. And I think that's part of, in the reviews and Publishers Weekly and elsewhere, I think that's one thing that the reviewers really talked about.

I knew he was going to have this sort of tough guy voice. He's going to be somewhat humorous. I didn't know he was going to evolve in the course of these books as a character. It hadn't occurred to me.

Debbi (11:19): Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. That is very, very interesting....

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is internationally bestselling crime writer Gregg Hurwitz.

Check out our discussion of his Orphan X series and his other projects.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. It's my pleasure to have with me today. The New York Times number one internationally best-selling author of 24 thrillers, including the Orphan X Series. His novels have won numerous literary awards and been published in 33 languages. He's also written screenplays, television scripts, comics, and poetry. He is actively working against polarization in politics and culture, which I think is wonderful, by writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and other publications. My guest today is Gregg Hurwitz. Hi, Gregg. So happy to see you here.

Gregg: Hi. Good to see you too. Thank you for having me on.

Debbi: It's my pleasure, believe me. So, tell us about the Orphan X series and your tenth book in particular, Nemesis. What inspired you to write this series?

Gregg: Well, I have a lot of friends who were in the special operations community, and over the years hanging out with them, I did a lot of research with them through the early books, sneaking onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs to blow up cars, getting on all these different kinds of weapons, and I was always intrigued when they talked about black operations and how they were funded and how they worked. And I had this moment one time of just thinking how amazing would it be if there was a government program that took kids who were unwanted out of foster homes and took them off the radar completely and raised them up and trained them in silos separate from everybody else to be assassins who could do things that America can't do, who are essentially expendable. And so, that's what happens to my lead character when he's 12.

I have a lot of friends who were in the special operations community, and over the years hanging out with them, I did a lot of research with them through the early books ...

His name is Evan Smoak. He's taken out of a foster home in East Baltimore, and he's raised by a handler, who in fact becomes his father figure and actually loves this kid. His name is Jack Johns. And he tells Evan, "The hard part is not going to be making you a killer. The hard part will be keeping you human." And so Evan, basically, those are two directives on a collision course. And at some point, those things explode before the series even starts and Evan goes off on his own, flees the program, and basically becomes someone who helps people. He's like an assassin, a pro bono assassin. He helps people in desperate need who have nowhere else to turn who can call an encrypted phone number, 18552 nowhere, that you can call and you can see who answers. And he picks up the phone and says, "Do you need my help?" And if they need his help, he will go anywhere and do anything to help and protect them.

Debbi: Wow. In some ways it reminds me of the old show, The Saint. He's a rich person. I don't know about Evan, but this person is rich, and he uses his wealth to help people out in all sorts of terrible situations, using all sorts of means.

Gregg: There is an aspect like that of Evan. He has a bunch of money still from when he was in the program because he was given a lot of resources that were stashed in non-reporting countries. And so when he fled the program, he had all this hidden cash put away and he can use that, his resources and his highly unusual skill set to help people.

Debbi: Wow. That's really a remarkable concept. I love it. As I understand it, the series has kind of an overarching plot to it in terms of an arc. Do you have a plan for how many books you're going to write, and do you have a series Bible?

Gregg: I don't have a concrete plan, but Nemesis is the tenth. And as much as if you read the books and you're a series reader, you'll find all sorts of, I hope, richness and texture throughout the books as Evan grows. But I make sure that in every book is an onboarding point for new readers, so you can read them all as stand-alones and there's just more to them if you read them together. And I am not sure how many I'm going to write. Right now, I'm enjoying it so much that certainly the next one and the next next one and the next next one are going to be Orphan X books, and that's about as far ahead as I've thought.

I make sure that in every book is an onboarding point for new readers, so you can read them all as stand-alones and there's just more to them if you read them together.

Debbi: Wow. Well, that's thinking far ahead and that's good. Let's see. Did you come up with the series kind of completely thought out in terms of where you wanted to go, or do you kind of improvise as you go?

Gregg: It's a weird combination. It's funny. When I look back on the series, there's been this very logical progression through the books that I didn't necessarily plan. I knew I had different stories. Certainly when I sold the series, I had an idea already then that became the premise for the sixth book. I knew once we knew Evan well enough that one day when he gets that phone call and he answers and says, "Do you need my help," someone's going to say, "Evan, it's your mother," and it's the mother who he'd never met. So I had sort of these different plots that were put out there, but I didn't have it all neatly ordered and I'm filling it in because I discover so much when I'm writing. The characters come to life in different ways and I tend to follow the story, the stories themselves, and I've learned a lot about him through the writing. And so, it sort of is a combination of both.

Debbi: Yeah,. It's interesting how that happens. It's like the best laid plans get ruined when your characters start to come to life and tell you, "No, you want me to do this now."

Gregg: Yeah.

Debbi: Kind of like that.

Gregg: As I say, no battle plans survives first contact with the enemy.

Debbi: There you go. How did you get into writing comics?

Gregg: Well, I loved comics. I started to read them very intensely when I was in about seventh and eighth grade. And at some point into my career, I'd written I think six books. The executive editor of Marvel, Axel Alonso, who is now a very close friend, had come across some of the books and was a fan, and he basically called and asked me if I wanted to pull a character out of the Marvel Vaults and reinvent them and to do it. And so, it was an amazing call. Writing comics for Marvel is a lot like when you have that rich kid who lives up the street from you, has all the best toys, and you get to go to his house to play with all of his toys. That was what it was like working for Marvel. I wrote Punisher. I wrote Moon Knight. I had Spider-Man swing through Moon Knight at one point. It was amazing. I wrote Wolverine. I got to just write these characters that had meant so much to me. And then later, I crossed over to DC and did a long run on Batman.

Writing comics for Marvel is a lot like when you have that rich kid who lives up the street from you, has all the best toys, and you get to go to his house to play with all of his toys.

Debbi: Oh wow. That is so cool.

Gregg: It was really cool.

Debbi: Have you ever met Michael Uslan?

Gregg: Michael who?

Debbi: Michael Uslan, who bought the rights to Batman.

Gregg: Oh. Yes. Yeah, I do know him. I've met him in passing.

Debbi: Yeah. Nice guy.

Gregg: Yeah.

Debbi: I heard him speak once. Really, really nice guy and very interesting.

Gregg: Yes.

Debbi: So now you're writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal on polarization and politics and culture, and what a time to be doing it, when the time when it was most needed. What approach do you take in trying to take on this topic?

Gregg: Well, it's interesting. I've had a lot of pretty intense forays into the culture since about 2015 when I noted a lot of increasing signs for polarization and extremism. And I think one of the ways that I'm effective is I'm not actually that interested in politics, though I've done a great deal of work in politics, and I've built a lot of content. I've made commercials and spots, many of them around unity, centrism, and moderation that have multiple hundreds of millions of views. And so, I've had quite a robust intervention in the culture. And I think part of what works is that I'm not ideological. I'm not particularly partisan, and I'm not that interested really in politics. What I'm much more interested in is getting to understand different perspectives, and I think being a novelist has helped me in that immensely because, as a novelist, what you're trying to do is to pull on the mask of a character and to see the world through their eye holes to really inhabit and embody them.

I've had a lot of pretty intense forays into the culture since about 2015 when I noted a lot of increasing signs for polarization and extremism.

And so, that's what my training is much more than trying to be right on the basis of a partisan set of beliefs that are locked. And so, I try to embody and understand different people, people who make meaning in different ways, people who have different belief structures, people who have different political priorities, and then to find those points of connection to bring them together. Because if we have different types of people who make meaning in different ways working together, that's our best chance to sort of strengthen the country and our system and our institutions and help us navigate complex change. And so, bringing a novelist mindset to this I found is very, very effective.

I try to embody and understand different people, people who make meaning in different ways, people who have different belief structures, people who have different political priorities, and then to find those points of connection to bring them together.

Debbi: That's great. That's really great, taking that approach.

...

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is award-winning author of crime fiction and work in other genres, Melissa Yi.

Check out our discussion about her plans for the Hope Sze medical thriller series, as well as her young adult, romance, and fantasy writing, along with her experiences with Kickstarter. And get to know a bit more about Cthulhu.

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone, this is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host, Debbi Mack. My guest today is an author who follows the maxim, write what you know. She's an emergency doctor who writes a medical crime series. She also has been nominated for the Arthur Ellis and Derringer awards for her work. She's also written in a wide variety of genres, including young adult, romance, science fiction, and fantasy.

It's my great pleasure to have with me today, Melissa Yi. Hi Melissa, how are you doing today?

Melissa: I’m so good, Debbi. I just want to tell you that I did end up winning the Derringer Award.

Debbi: Oh, that's awesome. Excellent. Way to go.

Melissa: Thank you. One year nominated, one year win, you know, these things come and go, but when you win, you should take it.

Debbi: Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. So I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, definitely mention it. So about your latest book, it's a young adult novel, isn't it?

Melissa: Yeah, I'll see if I can get it to stay in frame. Okay, great. I love it. The Red Rock Killer.

Debbi: Yes. Yes. Tell us about it. What inspired you to write this book?

Melissa: Okay, well, did you know that the International Thriller Writers every year they have the Best First Sentence Contest? And I look, yes, and it's free to enter. I think you have to be a member though. And membership is free too. And so then they have all these bestsellers who will go through and then pick out their favorite sentence. And I looked at some of the sentences and I was like, okay, I'm going to write one, too.

So I wrote, just trying to remember correctly. “The summer I turned 14, my mother told me I could do whatever I wanted. So I decided to find the Red Rock Serial Killer.” And after I sent it in, I was just like, what a strange sentence.

So I wrote, just trying to remember correctly. “The summer I turned 14, my mother told me I could do whatever I wanted. So I decided to find the Red Rock Serial Killer.” And after I sent it in, I was just like, what a strange sentence. Like, really? Why would a 13 year old be looking for a serial killer? I mean, okay, if it's for a podcast or something, but in real life, like, it's just sort of odd. But I kept writing it a bit. And I was like, you know, obviously, she wants to do this. She has a mother like, I just kept writing. And then that sentence won the best first sentence from Allison Brennan, who's a New York Times bestseller. So I was like, awesome.

Yeah, this is amazing. And then shortly after that, they had a contest where R.L. Stein and some other judges were going to pick the best middle grade crime novel that was written by a Black, Indigenous or person of color. And the prize was to come to Thriller Fest in New York and $1,000. So I was like, oh, I already have this book that I started, kind of out of nowhere.

So I'm just going to keep going with it. And as I was writing, I was like, okay, her name is Edan, which is a name that means fire and it's spelled E-D-A-N. And her mother thought that this was a good name for somebody who was born in the desert, because when I looked it up, I didn't even know where the Red Rocks were.

But my choices were, oh, you could basically be in Quebec, Canada, or you could be in Las Vegas. And I already have a series that’s set in Quebec. So I was like, we're going to Las Vegas. And that was fun for me, like, you know, it's a different country and because I'm Canadian and stuff.

And she had two best friends. And one of them is Callie Yang, and she's a swimmer and she's a good girl, you know, like she's the teacher's pet kind of thing. And the other one is Barstow. And he's pretty well off, like he's the best. Well, he's the most well off out of the three of them, which is a bit of a bone of contention with him and Edan, not because they want it, but just because Edan's mom is a single mom and she doesn't have as much money. And he loves video, but they both love video games, like they're always playing Stardew Valley and stuff. So I'm like, OK, I have these three teenagers who are going to end up finding a serial killer.

And what happens? And in this case, it was they end up going hiking for Callie's birthday and find a barrel in the desert. So there's not, you know, explicit blood and guts or anything like that. They don't end up seeing a body, which makes it more middle grade and younger YA. But it's just a lot of fun. I love her.

There's actually also a finalist for the, I'm going to have to think of the correct name. It's the Claymore Award for the unpublished manuscript for the Killer Nashville. So people really enjoy Edan if they meet her. And she's also the cousin of Hope, who is my main protagonist. Although they haven't met each other yet. So that part is not done. But for now, she's an innocent 13-year-old finding bodies in the desert.

So people really enjoy Edan if they meet her. And she's also the cousin of Hope, who is my main protagonist. Although they haven't met each other yet. So that part is not done. But for now, she's an innocent 13-year-old finding bodies in the desert.

Debbi: Wow. Very interesting. Fascinating how a contest like that where you came up with a single line led to a book.

Melissa: I am the kind of person that I just love randomness. So if you show me something, I will try and make something out of it. But you know how they say, like when you're writing poetry, one line drops from the sky. This is a book that felt like it kind of dropped from the sky.

Debbi: I kind of know the feeling. Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I wrote my own YA pretty much the same way. It was like a line occurred to me and then I kept going. Weird.

How do you choose which genre you want to write in? Like you've done many genres. And do you kind of like pick a story and say this is good for sci-fi or fantasy or YA? Or do you explore the genre and come up with the story?

Melissa: Stories first for me. Yeah, I'm actually not good at genre. It'd be like. You know, some people are really into fashion and they're very precise. Like, for example, one of my friends said she met a woman who only wore red or chartreuse. And that's all she had in her house. Like that's how she, like it made her very happy to have only these tones. That was so foreign to me. Like, I mean, I love like so many colours, like the brighter, the better.

You know, again, like people like of all kinds, a variety of animals, like just a lot of things like foods and spices, like just variety makes me happy. So I actually have difficulty seeing genre, like if people are like. You know, for example, I show like somebody's like I was at a book fair and a woman was like, “Oh, I only read romance.” So I showed her Wolf Ice, which is a werewolf thriller and romance. And she was horrified. And she was like, “I said romance.” And I'm like, yes, it is. But OK, I guess we have different ideas of what romance is, you know?

Debbi: Yeah, exactly.

Melissa: But for me, actually, I am trying to be a little bit more strategic about it just in that I have realized that medical thrillers are not as big a market as I would like them to be. So even though Hope is now a supernatural thriller series, like I'm doing The Seven Deadly Sins and I'm working on Sloth. So I'm bringing in Cthulhu.

So these things, it should bring more people, but it won't necessarily bring more people. Well, I'm just going to say romance is the biggest genre. So I am also trying that out for 2025. I want to keep my hand in mystery thrillers, but also do romance.

Debbi: That’s cool. I mean, the fact that you're aware of what it is you like to do and what you do and that you don't let arbitrary rules define you, I think. I think that's pretty cool.

Melissa: It is. I wish I could be cool and marketable.

Debbi: Well, there's a market for people who are looking exactly for something different, you know, something like, say, romance, but a little bit different or something like crime, but a little bit different. Like definitely a 13-year-old going after a serial killer, investigating a serial killer is pretty different.

Melissa: Yeah, I hope so. I hope I can find people who are, you know, who love change and innovation instead of, you know, rereading the same.

I hope I can find people who are, you know, who love change and innovation instead of, you know, rereading the same.

Debbi: I agree. I think, you know, I think there are people out there who are looking for that kind of thing, honestly, because, you know, after a while, you get tired of reading just the same old tropes over and over, sort of like television, you know, the way they'll take something and they'll beat a trope to death. And it's like, yeah, it's a new twist on this. Yeah, they can do it. They do it, too. But it's like, you know, you got to look for that stuff. Yeah, so I was going to ask you a question about something else, but it’s now escaped my mind. What are you working on now? That's the question I want to ask you.

Melissa: Oh, amazing. Yeah. So that's a perfect lead-in.

Yes. So I am working on Sloth. OK, I'm going to try and find. So this time what I did was I ended up pairing with an artist, a local artist named Sarah Leger to work on art with the book, so it may look blurry. It is actually blurry. And I think she wanted that.

Like, so the idea with Lovecraft and Cthulhu and these monsters, it's not explicit horror. It's more dread and implication and, frankly, slowly going mad....

Join crime writer Matt Cost and me, as we discuss how Matt manages to write and publish three books a year, in various series.

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:00:52): Hi, everyone. Happy New Year. Today is the third of the month, so it's still a pretty new year. Anyhow, my guest for this episode is the former owner of a video store, a mystery bookstore, and a gym. I assume that he formerly owned these. He's also taught history and coached just about every sport imaginable, in his words. So I'm trying to imagine some sports he might not have coached. Coming to us from Brunswick, Maine, it is my pleasure to introduce my guest, Matt Cost.

(00:01:31): Hi, Matt. How are you doing today?

Matt (00:01:33): I'm fantastic, Debbi. Thank you much for having me on.

Debbi (00:01:37): Oh, it's my pleasure. Believe me. I always enjoy talking to people about their books and stuff.

(00:01:43): So I read your guest post. My goodness, your life sounds exhausting. It sounds like you're constantly on the go. And you write three books a year and publish them?

Matt (00:01:55): Yes. You know, I got my first book published in 2020 after a short 29 years of waiting to get it published because I wrote it in 1991, originally the first draft. So when I got that door open, I decided to just go straight for it. And so that's kind of what I do. I write seven days a week, 365 days a year and do all the other pieces that I put with that guest post on your blog.

Debbi (00:02:24): Wow. Well, I'm impressed. I got to say, three books a year is really good, in my opinion. That's a fantastic output.

Matt (00:02:35): The variety of things you do is pretty cool, though. You've got mysteries and thrillers and young adults and screenplays. So that's all very cool.

Debbi (00:02:44): It's very cool. It may not be remunerative, but it's cool. I'm enjoying it, though.I do enjoy writing screenplays very much.

(00:02:54): How do you organize your workflow? Do you keep a calendar of, say, short-term deadlines, things like that?

Matt (00:03:03): Not so much. Like I said, I write every day because without writing, nothing else matters. And so I fall into a rhythm where it takes me three or four months to write a book, but then it takes me three or four months to edit a book and three or four months to market a book and then three or four months promoting a book. And I'm generally doing all four of those things at the same time for four different books.

(00:03:31): So that's kind of how my time is managed, you know, I break it out and what I need to get done. But I always start the day with writing because none of the rest of it matters if you don't write.

Debbi (00:03:43): Exactly. Exactly right. Yeah. And how do you manage the paperwork in terms of like, or the filing system, as it were, if it's an online filing system of your research and stuff, because you do a lot of historical research, don't you?

Matt (00:04:02): Yeah, I've done three standalone historical fiction pieces. And then I also have started a series that's a historical PI mystery series set in 1920s Brooklyn, New York. Bushwick, not too far from Queens. And, so to answer the question, I start with a document where I'm taking notes on the research that I'm doing. Much more heavy for historical, but some of the mysteries, you know, like when I get into genome editing and my book Mouse Trap, that took a lot of research on my part to understand the science behind that, because that's not my forte, so to speak. And so I take all of those notes and then I develop character sketches.

(00:04:52): And I usually pick a picture that corresponds with what I think, maybe some famous actor, maybe just some schmo off of the internet that fits the image of who I'm looking for. And then I create an outline, which has over time become a pretty exact science for me. It is, you know, 40 chapters long and there's three things in each chapter and a date and a word count. And I generally don't fill that outline in until I've written the chapters that it's going into because that helps me keep the place for what has happened. So, when you ask about the filing system, that allows me to come back and say, okay what was that guy's eye color in chapter one or much more convoluted, you know.

(00:05:49): And when I'm on Book Six, which I'm currently on Book Six of my Clay Wolfe Trap series is, you know, what was the name of that park over in this fictional town of Port Essex that I put into Book One? And so I can go back and look into those outlines and find the appropriate place and names and things. And that's very helpful.

Debbi (00:06:11): That's a great system for a series. And your mathematical approach to story writing reminds me a great deal of screenwriting, which is highly mathematical. You need certain things to happen by page 10, by page 15, by page 20, that sort of thing. Have you ever considered screenwriting as an option?

Matt (00:06:33): I have, you know, dabbled with turning some of my works into screenplays. But then I realized that, you know, out in Hollywood, they have 10 or 12 screenwriters that they like to use for most of the work that they do. So you perhaps had some luck with it, but I was thinking it was going to be a tougher nut to crack than even getting published. So until somebody comes along and asks me to do it, I think I'll hold off.

Debbi (00:07:03): I was going to say that I have not had Hollywood producers pounding on my door. It doesn't happen like that. It really does not. Yeah, you kind of have to want to do that sort of thing or have an agent that wants to explore that, something like that, or produce it yourself. You could always do that, which is every bit as hard as it sounds. Let's put it that way. Producing.

(00:07:34): Let me see, so your different series, where did you get the inspiration for them and tell us about them. How are they different? They deal with different protagonists, correct?

Matt (00:07:52): Yeah my first mystery series was based in the town that I live in Maine, so I went with the adage of write about what you know. And so I based it in Brunswick, Maine. And interestingly enough, my private investigator, Goff Langdon, is a private eye and a mystery bookstore owner in the town of Brunswick, Maine, because neither one of them is a job worthy of paying the bills in Brunswick. Small town, Maine. But if he puts the two of them together, he's able to make a living. And that bookstore that he owns is based on a mystery bookstore that I actually owned in the 1990s, the Copy Dog Mystery Bookshop. And it sort of had a short run in the 90s. But now it gets to live on in the pages of the book. So that's kind of fun for me. So it's much more successful in the book than it was in real life.

Debbi (00:08:54): Yeah. I love the idea of a mystery-solving mystery bookstore owner. I think that's great.

Matt (00:09:01): Yeah, so that was a fun one to put together. And so then, you know, as I was thinking about coming up with another series, I decided to create a fictional town because there's certain problems with writing about a small town that you live in, such as people coming up and saying, “Is that me?”

Debbi (00:09:21): Yeah.

Matt (00:09:23): Or similar such things. I had one terrible story with that is, an elderly lady got my phone number and called me. She must have been in her 90s. And she said she absolutely loves my books and explained where she lived in Brunswick and that some of my scenes take place in and around where she lives. And as she explained where it was, I realized that in the book I was currently writing, I had just killed somebody in her building.

Debbi (00:09:59): Oh, my gosh. Oh, dear. Oh, no.

Matt (00:10:03): And I didn't really have the heart to say that, thinking that it was the same building.

Debbi (00:10:09): Oh, my gosh. How awkward would that be?

Matt (00:10:13): So I decided to write a series about a fictional town that I created in Maine called Port Essex, which is actually loosely based on a real town, but it gives me the liberty to change things and do things that I want. And I have that private investigator, Clay Wolfe, be a little more professional. He's a former Boston homicide detective as opposed to a mystery bookstore owner slash PI. And so he's a little more professional, well-dressed and worried about his looks and appearance than Goff Langdon, who's a bit of a slacker. But I would say both those series, as well as my third series, develop a very colorful cast of characters.

(00:11:02): I've always liked Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen where they have just zany, fun characters. And so both Clay Wolfe and Goff Langdon have a group of friends who are a little zany, pretty colorful, a little crazy. And so I have fun with that.

Debbi (00:11:20): Oh, my God. You had me at Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, two of my favorite writers.

Matt (00:11:26): Yeah. I mean, once I got past the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and things like that, I would say that those were the two that made the biggest impact on me and maybe tempered a little bit with Robert Parker. So you put those together, that's the vein in which I try and write because those are kind of what molded me back in the day.

Debbi (00:11:48): So cool. That is really cool. Have you ever thought of writing a nonfiction book about productivity for writers?

Matt (00:11:56): [Laughs]

Debbi (00:12:00): Time management?

Matt (00:12:03): I haven't planned on writing that. But up till now, as writers, we do a lot of conferences. And I go on panels and things like that. And I've never really felt like I should teach a class on writing. But now I'm starting to come around to doing exactly what you said. Productivity for writers or as my blog is called the Evolution of a Book, because I feel like I have fine-tuned that pretty well to hit all the different aspects that you need to as an author in this day and age, which, as you well know,...

The Crime Cafe once again is pleased to bring another episode from the annals of radio! Yes, a radio program. With one of my favorite protagonists--Philip Marlowe!

Bogie as Sam Spade!

He was also great as Philip Marlowe!

See what I mean? :)

Also, check out these show notes from out of the past. :) Get it? Ha!

And for your holiday viewing pleasure, one of my other favorite Philip Marlowes!

Powers Boothe was awesome!

I even did a tribute post when he died.

So, I just had to include him in this, didn't I? :)

 Happy Noir New Year! :)

Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

This week’s Crime Cafe interview features journalist, attorney, podcaster, and true crime writer Kerrie Droban.

We talk about psychopaths and writing about them. And other stuff.

You can download a copy of the interview here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is an award-winning true crime author, podcaster, attorney, and television journalist. She writes about violent subcultures such as outlaw motorcycle gangs and about criminal pathology. She has appeared on numerous television documentaries and shows. Her books have been adapted to create the show Gangland Undercover and have been optioned for film. It's my pleasure to have Kerrie Droban with me today. Hey, Kerrie. How are you doing?

Kerrie: Good. Thank you so much for having me.

Debbi: I'm so glad you're here with us today. I was just checking your website and I was fascinated to see that you grew up in a "spy family". What was that like?

Kerrie: I did. I know. Everybody asks me that. It was actually the perfect backdrop for true crime and really sort of set the ball in motion, unbeknownst to me until a lot of years later. I grew up in a family of secrets and undercover operations and I really didn't know anything about what my parents did until I was 17. And so it really just sort of set this whole career in motion of what does that do to somebody who lives in a duplicitous world where you're not really sure what's real, what isn't real? What are the stakes of keeping secrets and living in a family where you at one point, on one occasion you have to protect them while they're trying to protect you at the same time. You know, you really just don't really know who to trust and who your confidences are. It was an interesting world. I had two brothers, and my brothers and I, none of us really knew what the other knew. So it was one of those sort of compounded duplicity. You couldn't really ask, and so we sort of lived in a world of walking on eggshells, not really knowing who knew what and what was real.

I grew up in a family of secrets and undercover operations and I really didn't know anything about what my parents did until I was 17. And so it really just sort of set this whole career in motion of what does that do to somebody who lives in a duplicitous world where you're not really sure what's real, what isn't real?

Debbi: Oh my gosh. What a background to have as a person getting into crime writing of any sort.

Kerrie: Yes, yes. It was perfect.

Debbi: Yeah. And you had a Masters in writing, essentially from the writing seminar program at Johns Hopkins University first before you went to law school.

Kerrie: Yes. I started out actually as a poet. I mean, that's a very circuitous route into true crime, but I wound up honing my skills as a poet and realized you really can't make a living as a poet, and unless I wanted to be a poetry professor, I really wasn't going to go very far with poetry. So that's what launched me into law school.

Debbi: That's interesting, because I had a similar story except it was with history. I was a journalism major, and I thought about getting a Masters in History and decided I don't really plan on teaching history and ended up in law school.

Kerrie: Oh, wow.

Debbi: Funny how that happens.

Kerrie: I know. It's sort of like your practical brain says, okay, how are you going to actually feed yourself, you know?

Debbi: Exactly.

Kerrie: Poverty was not fun.

Debbi: Oh, God. I can name some classes that were totally not fun. I hated Estates and Trusts for one thing. Lord, Lord. I read your guest post and I thought it was really good. I wanted to recommend that everybody read it. What struck me about it was kind of the general sense that psychopaths can't really be fixed as such, in any sense that we would normally think of "fixing" a person. And in fact, we have to be better educated to avoid being in danger from them. That's kind of what seemed to be your point. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on how environmental factors might affect persons in becoming a psychopath.

Kerrie: Yeah. I mean, it's a subject that has fascinated me for a very long time, and of course, it blends in really well with true crime writing, and being a criminal defense attorney and being a family law lawyer. What struck me really starkly in practicing in this area, is that people really didn't have an understanding of that kind of pathology. And when you don't understand psychopathy, then you really don't know how to - number one - litigate it, address it. Judges don't know how to give appropriate sentences. Victims don't know how to survive this. I mean, it becomes this sort of escalating ball that really can take you into areas that are not even helpful.

What struck me really starkly in practicing in this area, is that people really didn't have an understanding of that kind of pathology. And when you don't understand psychopathy, then you really don't know how to - number one - litigate it, address it.

So to answer your question, it's a whole nature/nurture question. Are psychopaths born? Are they made? And I think the consensus, and in fact most of the research that I've done, is they are really born that way, and so because of that, they're different. It's a very nuanced personality disorder. Oftentimes it's sort of interchanged with verbiage like sociopaths or narcissists, or people will just say it as sort of hyperbole. Oh, he's such a psychopath. But I think it's really important to understand what that personality disorder is in order to know how to address it, particularly in the litigation area.

I've seen people - lawyers, judges, victims - become re-traumatized, re-abused by the very system that's designed to protect them. So and, and the reason it's important to understand that environment doesn't necessarily play a factor is because you don't want to wind up blaming the victim, blaming the parents of the child who might be born that way, or what do you do when you're faced with them? We have so much teen violence now, which is really hard to comprehend, hard to wrap your brain around. I mean, what do you do with them? Do you try them as adults? Do you rehabilitate? We're a nation that really wants to rehabilitate criminals, and I know this sounds weird coming from a defense attorney, like an imposter defense attorney.

I don't believe that rehabilitation can actually help somebody who is a psychopath, and the common other terminology for this - antisocial personality disorder. When I was a capital lawyer, that was sort of the kiss of death diagnosis where if somebody had antisocial personality disorder, there was no cure. There was no helping them. And so then you talk about, well, how do you keep other people safe from them?

Debbi: Yeah. That's a very good question. Where do you land on something like the death penalty?

Kerrie: Interesting, because I was a capital lawyer for about 15 years and really started litigating in those areas mostly on the appellate post-conviction side, and so I would see them after they were convicted, and after they had gone through these lengthy mitigation hearings where you would see the lawyers presenting really umpteen factors in their childhood that could have contributed to the way they became. Things like they had domestic violence in the family. They had abuse, they had trauma, they had sexual abuse, you name it, and how did that impact the later crime?

I actually stopped being a capital lawyer when I got to the one case that just I couldn't do anything with. And I had to get off of that case because in my opinion, it was the first time that I actually encountered what I would describe as a true psychopath. There was no way to help this person, and I felt, just from a moral/ethical standpoint, there was really nothing that I could authentically argue to help my client.

I actually stopped being a capital lawyer when I got to the one case that just I couldn't do anything with. And I had to get off of that case because in my opinion, it was the first time that I actually encountered what I would describe as a true psychopath.

I really believed - and this was sort of my moral crisis at the time or my ethical crisis - I really believed that if I continued to … I couldn't represent him because I really believed that he deserved to die. That is so stunning for me to be able to say that as a defense attorney, but it really sort of flipped everything on its head for me and I started to really reevaluate the work that I was doing, why I was doing it, why this particular defendant was different from the other ones that I had represented, and what made him different. And so that's what sort of launched me on this whole trajectory of, well, maybe there's another way of analyzing these cases.

Debbi: This is great. I mean, I just love hearing this from a defense lawyer because we don't get to hear enough from defense lawyers, I think. A lot of people have this picture of them as sleazy or something like that, and they're not.

Kerrie: They're not. It is such a tough job. It's a really tough job.

Debbi: It's a tough job. Yes.

Kerrie: Actually it sort of launched me into a whole other sort of area of like the ripple effect of representing people like this, representing psychopaths. What does it do to the lawyers? I think lawyers need to be trained in that area as well, and not just spit out the party line of let's do all of this mitigation when sometimes there isn't mitigation. It doesn't exist, as in the case of the one client I had to withdraw from. There was nothing, and that's what led me to conclude evil is not a mental illness. I really went on this sort of soapbox of let's not conflate the two terms because they're not the same, and they deserve to be treated differently.

And I think it's really important for a defense lawyer to … any lawyer, but really a defense lawyer … and the reason I say that is because psychopaths will manipulate anyone....