The Crime Cafe

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Michael J. Young, MD.

Check out our discussion about his medical thrillers and enter his book giveaway here!

You can download a PDF of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today my guest is a doctor who spent 30 years as a surgeon while living and practicing medicine in Chicago. He's the author of a memoir/assessment of the current medical system - oh my - titled The Illness of Medicine: Experiences of Clinical Practice. He's also authored a trilogy of medical thrillers, and they all sound absolutely terrifying. I say that in the nicest possible way. I mean it in the best possible way. Anyway, he is also on the faculty of the Departments of Urology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has invented and patented various medical devices, too. Amazing guy! It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Michael J. Young, medical thriller writer and M.D. Hi, Michael. How are you doing today?

Michael: I'm wonderful, thank you.

Debbi: Great. Fantastic. Wow. My first question to you, of course, is how are we going to fix our horrible healthcare system?

Michael: Oh, we could spend hours and days.

Debbi: Hours, yes. I was going to say, you probably ask the same question all the time in your books.

Michael: Every morning.

Debbi: Boy, I can tell you, I've had enough experience with it to know. So I was reading your first few chapters in Net of Deception and my gosh, what egregious examples of what not to do on the internet.

Michael: Yes, it is. Well, actually, Net of Deception evolved out of my dissatisfaction and distrust and frustration, if you will, with the online pharmaceutical access that people have. As easy as it is, and in many ways, the advantages of having it are great, but the disadvantage is that patients don't have the opportunity to truly have informed consent about potentially very dangerous drugs. And in this particular scenario, nefarious activity occurred within the company that was selling these drugs. So it was really predicated on my own frustration with that evolution of how drugs are obtained today.

Debbi: Yes. And not to mention medical information in general on the internet.

Michael: Yes. Again, it's a double-edged sword. I encourage people to have information. The problem with the internet is that you don't always know the reliability or the source of that information. And although it may say it's from so-and-so, it may not be. And so a consumer of this data, of this knowledge, of this vocabulary has to be extraordinarily mindful and diligent in assuring that they're obtaining that information from a reliable source.

I encourage people to have information. The problem with the internet is that you don't always know the reliability or the source of that information.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely. And so often things will depend on other factors that aren't being addressed in the information that you have, so that you don't have the whole picture.

Michael: No, you don't, and that carries over too much of the direct consumer advertising of drugs. I mean, there's only two countries in the world that allow it - the United States and New Zealand. That's it. And so when you hear or watch these ads on TV, everything looks wonderful but you're only getting a snippet because there's only so much time with which that information can be given to you and you can't decipher it. The legal information that's given is boilerplate. Everybody has the same side effects.

Debbi: It's read very fast.

Michael: Very fast, but also at the end, you may die. You may this, you may that. Well, of course. And so how is a consumer supposed to make that decision? But unfortunately for us as physicians, patients come to the office with a preconceived solution to the problem without really understanding the problem. But they've had this wonderful advertisement telling them all the benefits. And so if you don't fulfill that requisite, they become very frustrated and they will shop till they find someone who will prescribe that particular medication or pill without really having an understanding of the disease or the alternatives. So it's a problem.

Debbi: Yes. There's a lot of reasons to be cautious while looking for information on the internet for those reasons.

Michael: Absolutely.

Debbi: Your trilogy. What inspired you to write a trilogy, and did you plan from the start to make it a trilogy?

Michael: That's a very insightful question, and the answer is no, I did not. I guess it all begins with my frustration with the healthcare environment and our healthcare delivery system, which prompted me to write my first book. After I wrote that, I felt that I could convey the same information, discussing the entitlement and the greed and all of those things I was very dissatisfied with in the healthcare industry. If I fictionalized it, I could then reach a different group of readers who aren't interested in reading a dialogue about healthcare. That's about as dry as a desert to some people. They may be interested, but they don't want to delve through that. Either it's difficult emotionally, or they just don't have the tolerance. They want to be entertained.

I guess it all begins with my frustration with the healthcare environment and our healthcare delivery system, which prompted me to write my first book.

So I decided a way to entertain people but still convey the information of healthcare vulnerabilities was to fictionalize it. These books are not simple books. They are not Colonel Custard in the library with the lead pipe These are books that I have written in an effort to educate, perhaps subtly, but nonetheless give information. They are based on my personal experiences. I don't know if you want me to delve into that, how that evolved, but I'm happy to.

These are books that I have written in an effort to educate, perhaps subtly, but nonetheless give information. They are based on my personal experiences.

Debbi: I think we can talk for a little bit about that, please.

Michael: Well, for instance, the first of the trilogy was Consequence of Murder: Algor Mortis is the title. And when you see algor mortis, what does that mean? Well, algor mortis is one of the initial phases of what occurs to a body after it dies. We have three of them: the livor mortis, which is translated as the color of death, where a body dies and because there's no longer blood being pumped, the blood will pool to the back if a person is lying upright, face up. So if you turn the body over, the back will be crimson because the blood has pooled. Pardon me?

Debbi: Lividity. Is that what it is?

Michael: Well, no. It has to do with the fact that because gravity will take over and pull the blood down, and there's nothing pumping or moving the blood, it will go to the most dependent portion of the body. So that's why the body will be blanched on top and more crimson on the back. The third phase is rigor mortis, which I'm sure we've all heard of, which is translated from Latin as the stiffness of death. But in between them is one called algor mortis, which is translated as the coolness of death. And what that relates to, Debbi, is the fact that a human body will lower its temperature by one and a half degrees Fahrenheit per hour to ambient temperature. So when you're watching television and the coroner says, the body's been dead 12 hours, well, how do we know that? We know that because of the body temperature. So algor mortis relates to that temperature change.

And in writing this first book of the trilogy, it had to do with the fact that I once had a patient that I was operating on, that I came into a lot of bleeding in the kidney as I was working on a kidney stone with a laser. That stone eventually got stuck in blood, which clotted, which held it in place and made it easier to treat. I decided I needed a synthetic clot so I created one in the lab in my job as an innovator at the University of Illinois, and when I submitted it for patenting, the department and the university felt, well, this will be very expensive, so let's put it on the shelf. To which I said, no, no, let me use this. I can kill somebody with this and I did so in a book.

And just to pull it together, I decided, well, how can we use this? Well, if I inject it in a vein, and this material starts as a liquid at cool temperature, and it solidifies at body temperature, I decided if I inject it in someone's vein, it will then cause a clot, which will lead to a pulmonary embolism. Patient dies. They cool, and of course, when they cool the material liquefies again, so you can't find it. So the plot started with my experiences with this material, and I developed a character, Jay Yamp, which I then put into the other novels. So they all feed into experiences in my life as a surgeon. but also they add a twist to show the vulnerability of patients in a hospital environment or medical environment.

Debbi: Oh, yes. Wow! That's a mind blower there. I like that.

Michael: So all the books, they're not simple stories. I mean, they're interesting, but they're not, again, just a police agent or FBI agent seeking for the killer. These have a medical association, something that has to do with physiology or anatomy, and I'm very mindful to explain all of this, but I think people like to hear that.

Debbi: That's very cool. That's great. I mean, I can appreciate, as a person who used to practice law, why you would want to take your experiences and put them in a fictionalized context, because I did it with my own books,

Michael: Right. And there is nothing better than reality to create fiction around that.

Debbi: Exactly.

Michael: Some of the things that happened to us, we could not make up.

Debbi: Precisely. Yeah. Sometimes you have to kind of think, okay, will people believe this?

Michael: Yeah, they do and they will.

Debbi: They do, yeah.

...

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Phil M. Williams.

If you like thrillers, you'll want to check this out.

And don't forget to check out his giveaway here!

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone! This week we have with us the author of 27 books, primarily thrillers. His stories tend to explore modern dilemmas and controversies which pit powerful villains against average citizens. He's giving away an audio version of one of them, NO GOOD DEED. It's my pleasure to introduce my guest, Phil M. Williams. Hi, Phil. How are you doing today?

Phil: Very good, Debbi. Thank you so much for having me on!

Debbi: It's my pleasure, believe me. I noticed that most of your books are thrillers. I also noticed that you do have at least one series, the 2050 series.

Phil: That's correct.

Debbi: What prompted you to write this series?

Phil: I think I was interested in – in thinking about what would happen in my lifetime. Right? I mean, I'm 48 years old, so I'm hoping I get another 25 years at least. So I was thinking, okay, well, I wonder what the world would look like. I don't know. 2050 is a good, seemed like a good round number. And I see a lot of the – I'm interested in history. I'm interested in some politics. And to me it was just sort of an extension of.

Now it's a very exaggerated version of what's maybe happening in the world today, but it's sort of taking the extreme versions of totalitarianism and projecting it on the United States and seeing what life would be like for. And in the series, there's four main characters. And so I wanted to see, wanted to explore what life would be like for the one character as a farmer. He's an average guy that's struggling, as a lot of our farmers are today, and struggling to make ends meet.

And then you have the congresswoman who's sort of a budding communist congresswoman who eventually rises to power. And then you have the banker, who sort of comes from a very shadowy family where they control a lot of the economics behind the scenes. So you get a chance as the reader to kind of, to see that.

And then you have just this regular woman who's sort of, who's a nurse, and she and the farmer end up. They end up, they end up crossing paths, but they kind of show that … those two characters show the every man and every woman perspective of what life is like in this dystopian future, whereas, and then the other side of the coin, you have the corporate power banker, and then you have the governmental power person that ends up being the president. They show you the power side of the dynamics, which I think is really interesting for the readers.

And you can see, as the series goes on, you can see how the plots wrap around each other and how the characters sort of interact with each other. And in the beginning, you don't always see how it all is going to connect, but it all kind of sort of weaves together, which I think was just unbelievably complex to do.

The plot outline was – Yeah, the plot outline was over 100,000 words. I think it was, like, 130,000 words just for the plot outline. And I put a – put a lot. I spent over a year just working on the five book plot outline before I even wrote a single sentence of the series.

Yeah, the plot outline was over 100,000 words. I think it was, like, 130,000 words just for the plot outline. And I put a – put a lot. I spent over a year just working on the five book plot outline before I even wrote a single sentence of the series.

Debbi: Oh, my goodness!

Phil: Yeah.

Debbi: I'm always in awe of people who can do that. Write out, like, entire plot developments in an outline and then turn it into a book.

Phil: Yeah, I'm definitely a plotter. And if you're not a plotter, I don't know, Debbi, if you're a plotter.

Debbi: I am, actually.

Phil: Okay.

Debbi: I'm very much a plotter, but I do like to kind of give myself this wiggle room to go off on other things. Yeah.

Phil: Yeah. I do the same thing. I mean, I think, like, I'll come up with a very detailed plot outline, but a lot of times when I'm writing it, I'll come with, something new will come up, and it's like, oh, that changes my outline. So then I got to go through the whole plot outline and make some minor changes here and there to make it to sort of fit the new direction.

But, yeah, I try to at least maintain some flexibility, not be so rigid on the plot outline, but. But I'm probably closer to rigid than, I'm on the opposite spectrum as, like, say, Stephen King, who just, you know, of course, he's the pantser. Right? That's the example everybody gives, I guess.

Debbi: Yeah. I mean, I'm amazed when people can do that, too. I'm just like, you know, no, I have to have some idea of where I'm going. I need a little roadmap of some sort.

Phil: Yeah, I agree with you. I'm the same way.

Debbi: So you've written a lot more standalones, though. What is it that draws you toward writing standalones?

Phil: That's a good question. You know, it's funny because I don't know many, many indie authors that are doing well that write standalones. It's just, it's not, I know it's a – it's a terrible business choice, but I personally enjoy reading standalones and I, I think that's probably why I like writing them. But I think it's, when you're writing a long series, I think it gets, to me, it gets repetitive, and I like the idea of a completely different – I like the idea of telling a complete story in a single book as best as I possibly can.

[W]hen you're writing a long series, I think it gets, to me, it gets repetitive, and ... I like the idea of telling a complete story in a single book as best as I possibly can.

And then once I feel like I've exhausted it, I feel like if I were to try to write another one, it's just not going to, it's just the, it's always, the sequels always pale in comparison to the original, you know, and that's kind of the way I view my standalones. It's like, well, I put everything into that story and once it's over, I got nothing left to say.

Debbi: You know, I think that's great, actually. I think the fact that you focus so much on the quality of the story rather than worrying about, oh, I have to write, you know, three or four novels. Put them all out, you know, this year. I mean…

Phil: My bank account doesn't like it, but….

Debbi: Well, I get that. Believe me, I get it. Yeah. But I think – I think quality pays off in the end, when you come right down to it.

Phil: Yeah, I agree.

Debbi: How would you describe your writing to someone who is interested in buying your books, but isn't familiar with your writing?

Phil: I would say just looking at what the reviews tend to say, because I think my opinions on these things are always wrong. Even my opinions on my own work, as often if I'm, if I'm talking to a reader, you know, it's, it's, I think that the reader's opinions are probably more going to be correct.

And they tend to write like, if you look through my reviews, you'll notice a lot of people will say they can read them very quickly, they're page turners, that they're, and I – and I purposely don't write in particularly flowery language or, um, particularly complex. And now a lot of the plots can be complex, but I want the average person to pick this up and feel like it's entertainment, not that it's drudgery.

And so I've tried to write it in such a way. Plus, I don't, it's partly me, too, is I don't like to read books there. I feel like it's drudgery where the – where the author is, you know, so smart that I can't understand half the words in there. But, so I would say, yeah, they would probably say that they're – they're page turners, that they're – that they're going to be, there's going to be twists and turns and there's going to be characters that you love that might get killed off, that you just don't know what's going to happen next. That's right.

Debbi: Wow! Well, you make it sound incredibly intriguing. And I have to tell you, I agree with you on the flowery language. I'm with Elmore Leonard. Skip, you know, leave out the parts, people skip.

Phil: Yeah, that's true. That's exactly right.

Debbi: Amen.

Phil: That's a great quote. I love that quote.

Debbi: Yeah. I love Elmore Leonard. I mean, the guy was, was awesome. What are you working on now?

Phil: I'm working on a book now. The title is a working title, so it may not end up being the title, but it's, it's called WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOODS. And it's about a – it's about a young woman who is from the trailer park. She's grown up hard and she's works at a fast food place and she's, a guy comes in and she sort of had, she's had a rough go lately and she's – and she laments to herself how people come in, you know, those little plastic boxes where people put cash in for, like, I don't know, Ronald McDonald House or something. Right? For charity. And they put these in the fast food places.

And she's lamenting in her mind that, you know, fast food workers are the only ones who don't get tips. Right? And all the other food places, you know, most people, you know, you get tips. So she's sort of angry about this and she's thinking about how, and somebody puts some money in the little plastic thing and they kind of look at her for some sort of acknowledgement of their heroism, for putting this money that she's not getting. Right?

And she so just gives them kind of like the smile that

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer and entrepreneur Clay Stafford.

Check out the plans for the upcoming Killer Nashville conference!

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Our guest today is a return visitor. Along with being a bestselling and award-winning author, he's a poet, screenwriter, and playwright. He's also founder and CEO of Killer Nashville. It's my pleasure to have with me again as this week's guest. Clay Stafford. Hi, Clay. How are you doing?

Clay: Hi, Debbi. Doing well. Absolutely wonderful.

Debbi: Wonderful. You're looking good there.

Clay: Well, thank you.

Debbi: Looking good. It's always nice to know. The farther we get along in age, it's nice to know you're still looking good at least. Shall we talk about what's coming up at Killer Nashville then?

Clay: So you're just leaving it wide open then, what's coming up?

Debbi: Yeah. What's special coming up, let's say?

Clay: Well, every year it changes, and this year I truly do think it's going to be the best one yet so far, and we're coming up on - what is it - it's the 18th year or something.

Debbi: 18th or 19th, I was going to say

Clay: Maybe 19th, but we're getting close to that two decade point. I think the lineup ... I'm currently finalizing the schedule - should have it online very quickly, and it's going to be, I think, a wonderful year.

Debbi: That's excellent. That's good to hear. I happened to notice that one of your offerings was a mock crime scene, which I thought was kind of cool. Is that like a display, or do people get to interact with it?

Clay: We actually used to do that all the time, and then Dan Royce, who was the assistant director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, always put that on. This last year and the year before, he did not do it just because I think he'd been doing it for 15 whatever years and decided to take a break. But he has told me that he is coming back with another crime scene. It's basically an interactive crime scene where people try to actually solve the crime, and it looks like it's the same training methods that are used with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the FBI and all of the other agencies. Each attendee who wants to try to solve the crime, the winner gets a heavily discounted attendance for next year for Killer Nashville.

But it's a tricky business and it's always been a lot of fun. We've learned over the years how to be able to handle that, because one year we just set up the crime scene and some attendees at a hotel we were at at the time came by and happened to look in, and it looks very realistic - blood and brain matter and everything all around - and they called 9-1-1. The next thing we know, we have police officers and medical people all showing up, and they're telling us to get out of the way, and then of course, they're going over to look at the dummy, and then I guess they kind of feel like maybe a dummy. But we've now set it aside so that it's not right in front of other people who are not—

The hotel we're using - Embassy Suites in Cool Springs, Franklin - we actually have sold out the whole hotel, so it should be all crime writers who are there, so there should not be any danger of the 9-1-1 team showing up. I'm hoping Dan will come through with us on that. He said he is working on an idea, so hopefully we'll have that ready to go.

Debbi: Well, that's very cool. Very interesting story too. I could just imagine what that was like.

Clay: Oh, we've had several of those kinds of incidents, but it's nice that people are conscientious in calling the authorities when they see a problem.

Debbi: Yes. Just out of curiosity, have you ever considered having programming for screenwriters?

Clay: We do offer a session. Now being a screenwriter myself as well as writing in other media, the method of storytelling is pretty, pretty close. But yes, we again have a session on screenwriting this year. The Tennessee Screenwriters' Association is actually being a sponsor of that, and so we've got professional screenwriters who have some pretty good Hollywood credits who are going to be giving presentations on screenwriting this year.

Debbi: That's very cool.

Clay: What we usually do is try to have something on all of the media we use. Sometimes we even have things on poetry in the tradition of Poe and Stephen King and other people who write poetry. I don't know if you know Stephen King wrote poetry, but he does write poetry, and so we offer various mediums from playwriting to screenwriting to poetry. We're doing several panels on nonfiction this year and presentations as well as writing true crime. Really focusing a good deal on true crime this year because it seems to be something that a lot of people are interested in. I take a lot of polls of the people on the mailing list of what do you want this year? Because really I'm trying to create a conference that's for the people who are coming, and true crime and memoir is - we're having something on memoir as well - and so all those together, we pretty much cover the gamut of the mediums that are available. But like I said, the storytelling is pretty much the same. It's the formatting and what you can offer in screenwriting as you know. For example, you know it's just a visual and audio thing. You can't get inside the character's head. If you do, you're still doing visual and audio, and so it's a different writing than writing for a novel, and we discuss all of that.

What we usually do is try to have something on all of the media we use. Sometimes we even have things on poetry in the tradition of Poe and Stephen King and other people who write poetry.

Debbi: For sure. You’re also publisher and editor-in-chief of Killer Nashville Magazine.

Clay: Yes. Very proud of that magazine and the work that everybody has done with it.

Debbi: I was going to say, how did you get started with the magazine?

Clay: You know, it was a way to continue to offer … As we've talked before on the show, I've had a pretty good career and felt it was time. Killer Nashville is my version of giving back to the community, and everybody who comes and presents is giving back to the community. The headliners and our guests of honor and all of the other people who come all come with a spirit of giving back, and so you have a meeting, a gathering that's a once a year thing, and there's no way to continue the education. So I decided what we need is a magazine, but we'll do an online magazine and we'll make it free, and it's absolutely free to everybody. All you have to do is go to KillerNashville.com  and sign up for the free magazine.

You get it, I assume, and I would say that the quality of the craft articles and also the other how-to things are on equal par with any other magazine that you could get a subscription to and have to pay for it. So it's absolutely free and it comes to your inbox. So I encourage everybody to sign up for that if they want to. And then also this past year, I really wanted to give writers more of an opportunity to be able to publish their own works, and so it has moved slightly. It's a craft magazine, but it's also now a literary magazine because we're publishing creative non-fiction, poetry, short stories, excerpts from books, different things, reviews of new books that are coming out, and if anyone wants to volunteer, we'd love to have volunteers. Just go to the KillerNashville.com site and you can volunteer, but also if you want to submit some of your writing, we would love to have people's submissions, because we're always looking to discover the next great voice.

Debbi: Very cool. I was going to ask about submissions, so I'm glad you brought that up.

Clay: Yeah, it's open and there's no fees. We really try to make sure of that. You know, having gone full circle in this business myself, the people who really need to get that foot in the door are not always the ones that can afford it. They can't always afford to come to the conference so we have the magazine for free so that you can get some information there. They can't always afford to enter contests, so our submission process is free. So again, it's just a labor of love that we're trying to help writers of all kinds who are out there to find publication and also knowledge.

Yeah, [magazine submissions are] open and there's no fees. We really try to make sure of that. You know, having gone full circle in this business myself, the people who really need to get that foot in the door are not always the ones that can afford it.

Debbi: Yes, yes. That's great. It's wonderful that you're doing that. One thing I was going to bring up is, it seems like it's harder than ever for authors to let's say, be visible these days with the sheer plethora of books that's coming out, and things like … well, I guess really to a certain extent, writers are very introverted usually, and have a hard time with the idea of marketing. They think marketing, they think something's sleazy. What are your thoughts on the best way to build a fan base?

Clay: I personally think it's through just getting people to know you, and you've got to have these days as you pointed out, there are many, many authors out there now, and you have to have some sort of platform in order to be able to set yourself up higher so your head is sticking above the crowd, and people are able to see that....

Screenplay by Whitfield Cook, Alma Reville, and James Bridie; 

Based on Man Running (1947 novel) by Selwyn Jepson; 

Produced by Alfred Hitchcock.

This week’s ad-free episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Weldon Burge.

Check out the first interview of our Tenth Season. Dear God Good grief! Has it really been ten years?

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

You can download the transcript here! :)

Debbi: Hi everyone. This is the first episode of our 10th season here at The Crime Cafe. And boy, that decade sure went fast. Where did all that time go? In any case our guest today is a writer, indie publisher, and a full-time editor, although I now believe he has retired, but we can talk about that. He's written numerous articles for various publications as a freelancer. His first novel, Harvester of Sorrow was originally published by Suspense Publishing, but is now published through his own company, Smart Rhino Publications, which focuses mostly on horror and suspense thriller books.

He has also published 17 books. That company has published 17 books, including the most recent anthology, Asinine Assassins. There's the tongue twister for you - Asinine Assassins - which I believe is also part of a trilogy. His latest short story collection is Toxic Candy, which he is offering as a giveaway. Check the notes in this recording for his guest post and giveaway details. Alrighty then. So in any case, it is a great pleasure for me to introduce Weldon Burge as my guest today. Hey, Weldon.

Weldon: Hi. Thanks, Debbi. Good to hear you.

Debbi: It's great to see you and great to hear you, and glad to have you on the show. So you are no longer working full-time and you are devoting yourself to writing fiction these days?

Weldon: Yes. Pretty much.

Debbi: As well as publishing.

Weldon: If a nonfiction job comes up, I will take it, but I'm focusing primarily on fiction at this point.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah. I reached a point where I pretty much said, okay, that's all I'm going to do.

Weldon: Well, I was working for an educational consulting firm, so I was dealing with PhDs every day, and then I'd come home and I have to get into fiction because I'd had enough brainy stuff all day long. So now that I'm retired, I'm going full force into the fiction and enjoying it. I love it.

Debbi: Awesome. That's great. That's a wonderful thing. So how do you structure your writing schedule?

Weldon: I don't. I mean, I'm constantly writing. I'm constantly writing notes, bits of dialogue that come into my head I will write down. So as far as the schedule goes, it's just whenever I have time to do something, I'll do it. But I have things churning in my head constantly, so getting something on paper is something I do all day long. Ideas come for me and I try to work them out in my head, and I have notebooks everywhere, notes everywhere, and when I have time to sit down and do it, I do it.

I'm constantly writing notes, bits of dialogue that come into my head I will write down. So as far as the schedule goes, it's just whenever I have time to do something, I'll do it.

Debbi: Yeah. Notes everywhere. I think that's kind of like a writer's life. Notes everywhere.

Weldon: Yes, that's right. That's right.

Debbi: What was it that inspired you to create the Ezekiel Marrs character, and what are your plans for the series?

Weldon: Okay. Actually there's one chapter in the book that has nothing to do with Ezekiel Marrs. That actually spun the tale for me. There's a section in the book where a teenage couple find a body in the woods, and that was the very first thing that came into my head, and everything kind of spread from there. Ezekiel Marrs was first called Simon something, and it went through umpteen different names, and I liked the Ezekiel because of the biblical parlance there and then Marrs because it's out there. So I like the idea of that name, and it's fairly unique, which was the other thing I was looking for. The character kind of grew out from himself. It was kind of interesting how that occurred. I always wanted to do police procedurals. I have always been interested in that sort of thing, you know, CSI kind of stuff, so it was just kind of a no-brainer to go in that direction for that book.

Debbi: What makes you interested in procedurals particularly, do you think?

Weldon: I'm not sure actually. I really hit into Ed McBain's books back in the eighties, I guess it was, and I've read every single one of them. I think there's 50-some of those books. The Steve Carella character, I really enjoyed that character because it was a policeman who was a no-nonsense type of guy, very structured and very family-like, and I like that character, and I kind of tailored Ezekiel Marrs with that character in mind. So that's kind of got me into it. And then of course, the CSI shows and so forth, which are totally unbelievable, but I think they're cool. So I was looking at all of that. When I was doing the Harvester of Sorrow, I wanted to make it as real as possible, so I talked to cops. I actually did a police academy here in my hometown just to get a feel for what cops are doing, and that helped considerably when I was writing the book.

Debbi: That's interesting. You're in Delaware, correct?

Weldon: Yes.

Debbi: And there's a cop academy right in your hometown?

Weldon: It's in Newark, Delaware, and it's a community type of thing. I think there were maybe 20 of us, and it was interesting because we got to go out and do things with the cops, ride alongs and that sort of thing, and it's very illuminating to see what actually goes on. I think anyone who's writing crime fiction should do this sort of thing to get out there and see hands on how cops do things.

Debbi: Yeah, absolutely. It's an education for sure. What made you decide to start a publishing company?

Weldon: I've always enjoyed working with other writers. We have a very good community of writers here in Delaware, Northern Delaware, and I enjoy working with all of them, and I've always had in mind to do anthologies because of that. When I started the company, I had anthologies in mind. So I did the Zippered Flesh Trilogy, I did the Assassins Trilogy, several others and I enjoyed all of that. I mean, I've worked with probably nearly a hundred writers at this point, very diverse in their abilities, and I've probably learned more from them than they've learned from me, which is kind of cool, and all of that. I mean, I enjoy not only working with the writers, but teaching them. I've been doing a lot of workshops and that sort of thing recently.

I've always enjoyed working with other writers. We have a very good community of writers here in Delaware, Northern Delaware, and I enjoy working with all of them, and I've always had in mind to do anthologies because of that.

I worked with the library system here in northern Delaware, particularly the Kirkwood Library in Milton. We've been setting up an author series. We do a monthly thing now. We just did one on book covers before that. We did a panel discussion on self-publishing. The one next, well, actually the end of this month is about structuring novels. So I've lined up a number of writers in each of these specific categories and had them come in and teach these classes. So it's becoming really a rolling ball kind of a thing, and more and more people are coming. The last thing, we had 43 people there, and the library was ecstatic that we were able to get 43 people in one room. So I love that kind of thing when we can do that sort of a community thing.

Debbi: That is such a great example of what authors should be doing, focusing on the local market.

Weldon: Yes, and if you look at it from a marketing perspective, my name is getting out there because of this material that I'm doing, and the same with the authors that I'm pulling in to do the teaching. So every time we go out there, we have setups for our books. The end of this month, I have someone who's doing novel structuring. She'll have her books there as well so it's not only a teaching, but it's a selling and marketing opportunity for the writers. So that's very important to these folks. I find that teaching these classes is a far better way to market your books than say, signings. You have a signing and people come in the door and they just go right around you. They know it's a hard sell, but if they're learning something and say, oh, there's something cool about this book, they're more likely to buy it. So I think it's very popular with the writers and very popular with the readers.

I find that teaching these classes is a far better way to market your books than say, signings. You have a signing and people come in the door and they just go right around you. They know it's a hard sell, but if they're learning something and say, oh, there's something cool about this book, they're more likely to buy it.

Debbi: Absolutely. Very smart. What's your process for planning, organizing and publishing the anthologies?

Weldon: Usually I talk with some writers that I know in the area. There used to be a group here called the Written Remains Writers Guild, which was dissolved in the past few years, but I worked a good deal with them too. The anthologies, in fact, that we published, were in tandem with that group so it worked out very well. But what was your question again?

Debbi: Oh, just wanted to know what your process was for putting these anthologies together. How did you get the authors? How do you organize everything?

Weldon: Well, when I started out the whole … I come from a marketing background, so I knew that the best way for a new publisher to get going is with an anthology, because you automatically have 20-plus writers who are all going to hit their material on social media. So for me, it's free advertising. So it's a good opportunity for them to build their portfolios. But it's also good marketing for me to get the book out. So with the first anthologies, the Zippered Flesh horror thing, it's a body horror thing and it sold very well....

Screenplay by Andrew P. Solt and Edmund H. North;

Produced by Robert Lord.

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Charles Salzberg.

Check out our final regular episode of Season Nine!

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. This is the last regular episode of the ninth season of the Crime Café. I cannot believe that I've been doing this for nine years, honest to God. So, in any case, our guest tonight is a person who has worked as a journalist and he is a novelist, who has written for a variety of magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Elle and others. He's also written book reviews. He gets paid to do that. I have to find out about that.

Charles: Not much. Not much.

Debbi: Not much?

Charles: Not much.

Debbi: Well, you get paid something. That's nice. His series though is the Henry Swann Detective series, which is really cool, I think, at least based on what I've read. He has written true crime and a variety of nonfiction books, including a book about Soupy Sales, which I have to ask about. He's a writing teacher and mentor, as well as the founding member of the New York Writers' Workshop. It's my pleasure to have with me, Charles Salzberg.

Charles: Thank you so much for having me.

Debbi: Oh, sure. It is my pleasure, believe me. I just started actually your latest Man on the Run. Wow. What a great opening. You already have me hooked. I love your style. It has a kind of a chatty feel to it. Is this the way you write generally?

Charles: Yes. Almost all the stuff I write is in first person from different people, and I just like that conversational style.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you there. Yeah. I like that. What inspired you to write the Henry Swann Series?

Charles: It was inspired in the beginning by spite. I was in an MFA program at Columbia, and I had to have a manuscript to get in, and I chose this teacher who said he read the manuscript - I'm not sure he did. It got me into the program and he said to me, do you know how to tell a story? And I said, yes, I know how to tell a story. He said, well, you don't tell stories. This book is written like Nabokov and Philip Roth, in a style like that. You should read Chekhov. I was an English major. I had read Chekhov. Anyway, I quit after two weeks and I thought, well, this guy doesn't think I can write plot. I'm going to write a book that's very plotted, and those would be detective novels.

So the first Swann book was called Swann's Last Song because I had no intention of writing crime novels after that, or revisit Swann. It had a very interesting history because I wrote it and I sent it to agents and editors, and they all said we love this, but we can't publish it with this ending. The problem with the ending for them was the detective follows all the clues, and in the end, the murder has nothing to do with any of the clues he followed. It was totally random. So the reader finds out what happened, but the detective who's really a skip tracer had nothing to do with solving the crime. And they said you're going to disappoint detective/crime lovers because they need the detective to solve the crime. And so I said, well, that's not what this book is about. I was much younger then, and so I said if you're not going to publish it this way, I'm going to put it away and forget about it and go onto the next thing.

About 20 years later, I happened to stumble across the manuscript and I read it and I thought, this is pretty good. Maybe things have changed. I had been published much more in those 20 years in nonfiction, and I gave it to an editor and he said, I love this book but we can't publish it with this ending. I said, well, what if I change the ending? And they said yes. So in 20 years, I learned how to sell out essentially, and again, I had no intention of writing another crime novel, but it was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. I didn't even know what a Shamus Award was, and when I lost, I got really pissed off and I said, I'm going to keep writing these things until I win something. So that's how it happened.

It was really inspired by a magazine article I wrote about a fellow by the name of Sidney Weinstein, who was what was called a skip tracer. Skip tracers are, to me, even lower than the private detectives. They're the ones that repo cars and they find husbands who have run away from their wives and lost people, and I kind of patterned it after this guy that I interviewed.

Debbi: That's fascinating. It's fascinating how much spite played into your decision to write crime.

Charles: Then I found that I liked it. After I got started and did a couple of books, I found this is pretty good. This is fun.

Debbi: It's awesome. What do you enjoy most about crime writing?

Charles: The character. I'm really big into character. I don't write typical murder mysteries.

Debbi: I love that.

Charles: Occasionally there are murders in the books, but only one did I write, Canary in the Coal Mine. That was kind of like a murder mystery. I'm much more interested in other crimes, smaller crimes, crimes that I think that we can identify with a little bit more.

I don't write typical murder mysteries. ... I'm much more interested in other crimes, smaller crimes, crimes that I think that we can identify with a little bit more.

Debbi: I was going to say you can do all sorts of things with a crime novel. They don't have to involve murder, but do you plan to write more crime novels?

Charles: I do. I'm working on one now.

Debbi: I was going to say, what are you working on?

Charles: I'm working on one with a little bit of a different twist, because the main character has a touch of ESP and no one in the world knows he has it. He's embarrassed by it; he doesn't use it. The only person who knows he has it is his best friend, and his best friend comes to him one day and says my college-age daughter is missing, and I'd like you to help me find her, if you have this power, using it. And so reluctantly to help his friend, he has to tap into this ability he has. Very reluctantly though.

I'm working on one with a little bit of a different twist, because the main character has a touch of ESP and no one in the world knows he has it. He's embarrassed by it; he doesn't use it.

Debbi: Reluctant why?

Charles: It scares him a little. It makes him different. He's afraid of it. He wants to be just like everyone else, and so he's shunned it over the years.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. You wouldn't want to over-rely on that, but at the same time, it adds an interesting twist to the whole detective genre.

Charles: Yes. Well, that actually comes also from a book I was going to do with a woman who had that ability out in California, and she worked with police departments. I went out there and interviewed her, and I found out how she does it and how it works for her, and this stuck in my mind for years, and I thought one day, maybe I'll use that, so I decided to.

Debbi: That's really cool. You've also written a lot of nonfiction, including a book about Soupy Sales? How did that come about?

Charles: Well, that's quite a story too. I was approached by an agent friend of mine, and Soupy was a client. They already had the book deal, and they needed someone to work on it with him, to write it with him, really to write it. I had always been a fan growing up, so it was kind of exciting, but I said yes before I met him. And then when I met him, very nice man, but I think he was suffering from Parkinson's and maybe he had had a stroke and he could hardly speak. Try writing a memoir with someone who can't speak. I should have met him before. I would've found that out, but I just trusted the agent, so I had to rethink the entire book. So instead of just interviewing him and getting stories from him, I had to deal with it as I would a magazine article, and I found people that worked with him over the years, worked on the shows with him, and got stories from them about him. The book was really fun to do, and I spent time with him, but unfortunately I didn't get him in his best years.

I was approached by an agent friend of mine, and Soupy [Sales] was a client. They already had the book deal, and they needed someone to work on it with him, to write it with him, really to write it. I had always been a fan growing up, so it was kind of exciting ...

Debbi: Oh, that's such a shame.

Charles: A very nice man though, and never made a lot of money doing what he did, too.

Debbi: Huh, interesting. because I remember him well. I remember he did the whole pie-in-the-face thing, didn't he?

Charles: Yes, he did, and it became a big thing. People like Frank Sinatra would go on the show to get hit in the face with a pie.

Debbi: Right, right. He was something. How much research do you do for novels?

Charles: Well, I'm really lazy and I do as little as possible, but sometimes I do have to do research. It can be fun, depending what it's for. Research for me is something that happens often before I even decide to write a book. So, for instance, Man on the Run, the character in that book, which he's actually a character in Second Story Man. That's the first time he appears. That book was inspired by an essay I read in the New Yorker years and years ago about a master thief, a master burglar. I think all writers have this. It kind of sticks in your mind, certain stories. I didn't know that I would eventually use it in a book of mine,...

Screenplay by Gene L. Coon; 

Based on “The Killers” (1927 short story) by Ernest Hemingway; 

Produced by Don Siegel.

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Len Joy.

Get to know Len and his books, as well as his interest in athletics and how it has inspired his writing.

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest this week is the award-winning author of several novels, including one that I read called Dry Heat, which I really liked a lot. Like many authors, he started off in another career before he started writing. It's my pleasure to introduce my guest Len Joy. Len, hi.

Len: Hi. Thank you very much for having me. I never thought of myself as a crime writer, but as I look at my work, I do have a lot of crime in there, so happy to be part of this.

Debbi: Absolutely. Well, I am glad to have you on, that's for sure. Now I finally have you . Okay. I wanted to ask you particularly about Dry Heat, because I loved it so much. What was it that inspired you to write this novel?

Len: Well, this was one of the few novels I think I wrote that was inspired by a specific incident. In my earlier career, I had an engine remanufacturing company in Phoenix with my brother-in-Law. We ran that for almost 20 years. It was a down and dirty, gritty, manufacturing operation. We had about 200 employees at any given time, and I had a very trusted employee, a woman and her husband that worked for me in the office. Their son, who I knew, I think he had just turned 18 and he was out hot rodding on the interstate on a Friday night, and not sure whatever happened, but they basically were dueling with another car and somebody in the vehicle he was in shot at the other car.

Didn't hit anybody, but it turned out that the other vehicle was driven by an off-duty policeman, and he was arrested. He was the only adult -18 years old - and the other three were underage, and he was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, which is a serious crime. I mean, it's more serious penalties, and even though nobody was hurt, I don't believe he was the one shooting, but nevertheless, he was arrested. I followed this with obviously the parents as a father, and I had a kid about the same age as Tim, and instead of going to college, he's going to trial, and they have this lawyer, and they're going to a pretrial conference. They're going to fight this. I think they have a good case. They come back in the afternoon and they tell me that they basically presented him with the alternative of if you lose at trial, you could go to jail for 20 years, or you can take a deal and you go to prison for three, and they took the deal.

But that just stuck with me, not just for the kid, but for the parents to have to make that decision in an instant, and it just changes the whole direction of your life. That was 20 years ago, and I started writing after that, and it was just something. I followed their story and he went to prison. He came out. I stayed in touch with his mother. My business ended in 2003, so I was no longer in Phoenix, but it was a story that interested me. And after I'd written a couple other novels, I decided not to use that story, per se. I mean, his story is his story, but that incident inspired me, I guess, in a way, to try to write about that kind of event where you're heading in one direction and something happens and your whole life changes.

And I like sports, so I always make it somehow an athlete involved. But that was the inciting incident, I guess, that got me to write up the book. The story is totally different, but I have shared it with my employee and with Tim who was the inspiration for it, and they liked the book so I'm satisfied and happy.

Debbi: That's great. Yeah. That's great. Wow, it all just seems so unfair and circumstantial, and yet this person just dealt with it.

Len: Yeah. I mean, you shouldn't be playing with guns, but cops shouldn't probably be driving up and down harassing people either. So it was ...

Debbi: Did he know there was a gun there? I mean, all those things.

Len: Yeah.

Debbi: Well. So tell me about your other books. How would you describe them generally? What genre?

Len: That's a good question on genre. Whenever I try to find it, I can't. It's like commercial, literary fiction, something, but there's the basic premise if I find a theme. Mostly I'm writing about people, mostly former athletes, just because that's something I can write about that I know, but it's their life after the cheering stops. In Better Days as an example, a high school basketball star Darwin Burr wins his state championship for a small town in Illinois. And when the story opens 20 years later, he's been coasting on that glory, if you will, for all those years, not really taking charge of his life, and the incidents in the story that forced him to get back in the game and take action.

Mostly I'm writing about people, mostly former athletes, just because that's something I can write about that I know, but it's their life after the cheering stops.

In American Past Time, the first book I wrote, that was in some degree inspired by I watch baseball a lot, and they had a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs who had a perfect game going right to the last pitch, literally, and the umpire on a close call called it a ball, so he lost his perfect game. He walked the runner, and I was like, all right, I'm going to use that somehow. I wrote a story about a minor league baseball player who does pitch a perfect game, but it injures his arm and he never makes it. He's going to make it to the majors, and then that causes him not to make it, and he goes to work in this factory in a small town. And it's the life lived after that, near almost making it. I always watch the Olympics and you see all these stories of glory and stuff. There's a lot of people who are really good athletes that don't make it that far but they work really hard and then they have to have another life afterwards. That interested me so I use that as fodder for the stories.

Debbi: That's fascinating. That's really interesting. How much research do you do when you're writing your books?

Len: Well, I'm very grateful for Wikipedia and Google.

Debbi: Aren't we all?

Len: I am. I do write about … Being a little older than a lot of writers, I have a lot of experience like manufacturing experience, so I use that. I don't branch off into something that I don't know anything about, because I don't have enough time, but using those years I wasn't writing as my experience base. A lot of them, I set in certain time periods, like the book I'm writing now. It's taking place in 1981. It's taking place over 30, 40 years, but I always go on to Wikipedia and see like, okay, we're in 1984 now. What happened in 1984? I want to make an incident so I can anchor the readers. It's going to be like June or July, and then I look and I say that was when OJ had his slow speed police chase so that's an event I can have him watching with his buddies on the bar because I was doing that, and people can relate to that if they were around at that time.

Debbi: Very interesting. I like the idea of writing about the past because then I don't have to worry about technology as much.

Len: Yeah. I mean, cell phones changed everything, like for writing scenes. If you look at a Law & Order in the pre-cell phone age, it's a different timing of the scene because they have to, they have to call into the office or the dispatch and, and now everything is zoom, zoom, zoom like, it's just …

Debbi: Exactly. Yeah, it's wild. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Len: Well, I work out every morning. I'm a triathlete and I have sort of a very scheduled swim or bike or run, and I walk my dog in the morning early. I always say I start about 10 o'clock, but I thought about that and really from about 10 to noon, it seems like I'm doing other stuff, like checking the email and reviewing. I look at the books and how they're doing on Amazon, but usually start by noon. I try to get a couple, two, three hours in, and I'm generous in what I do. I also spend a lot of time reviewing other people, which I think is part of my reviewing or my writing process because it helps to see what other people are doing and what works and doesn't work.

I work out every morning. I'm a triathlete and I have sort of a very scheduled swim or bike or run, and I walk my dog in the morning early.

I try to get two or three hours in every day, maybe not on Sunday or something, doing something else. But I think as a triathlete and someone training, there's sort of a good complimentary discipline. I mean, they're both things where you're doing it every day. You're not showing up on race day and expecting to run in a marathon or whatever. I wrote a lot of short stories and I like flash fiction and even some poems, but I think novels have worked the best for me because it's just something I can plot out and take a day at a time and just keep working at it. It takes about a year and a half, two years, it seems like to get it finished.

I wrote a lot of short stories and I like flash fiction and even some poems, but I think novels have worked the best for me because it's just something I can plot out and take a day at a time and just keep working at it.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You take your time with it. You build it out, just bit by bit. Stick with it.

Len: I like to go back and forth. Some people write the whole thing and then revise....