The Crime Cafe

Listen to the podcast on Substack.

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer and cinephile F.R. Jameson.

Plans are afoot for you to see more of us here and 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

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of two book series. One is the Screen Siren Noir series featuring British film stars that get caught up in noir tales of blackmail, obsession, scandal, and death. Ooh! His latest release, Vivian Fontaine is the fourth in that series, and he's working on a fifth. He also writes a horror series under the moniker Ghostly Shadows Anthology. I'd be interested in hearing more about that, too. There are six volumes in that series.

Originally from Wales, he now lives with his wife and daughter in London. It's my pleasure to introduce my guest F. R. Jameson. Hi, F. R. How are you doing today?

F. R.: Hello Debbi. How are you? I'm fine, thanks.

Debbi: Oh, wonderful. And what a wonderful backdrop you've got there. Just delightful! Regal Theater. Ooh. It's just ...

F. R.: I think it looks more American than it does British, but I might be wrong.

Debbi: That's very interesting. Yeah, it looks very Broadway-ish or something like that. Grand! It is nice to finally see you after getting your newsletters where you talk about movies a lot. I love that. I really do enjoy your newsletters more than most authors because of that, I think. You talk about television shows, you talk about movies, you talk about things other than your books, but you do talk about your books, too.

F. R.: I do. I do talk about my books. I feel like you could do, but then I send it out every fortnight, and to send it out every fortnight only talking about that, I would be bored, because you know what it's like when you are writing a book, it's great when it's finished, but the actual incremental stages of it, it's not that fascinating.

Debbi: Yes.

F. R.: Another two weeks, I've done another 60 pages. They seem quite good.

Debbi: Yes, yes. I can't wait for you to see them. I've been sitting here at my desk and it is so exciting writing these 60 pages.

F. R.: You want things like you're reflecting that kind of accidental, existential dread when you're about two thirds through when you're thinking, “Is any of this good? Is this just terrible?” I don't know anymore.

Debbi: I have had those thoughts, believe me.

F. R.: I think all authors have those thoughts where you do get to the point where you think you have other ideas in your head and you just think I'll just write one of those, because that compared to this is brilliant. You are experienced enough to know you get two-thirds into that, you would be thinking, I want to do something else now, and you'll never, ever finish anything.

Debbi: Yes, you really have to kind of hone in on those things that really interest you and really excite you, I think, and go with those and set aside other things for other times, so to speak. What inspired you to write about British film stars?

F. R.: Well, I'm sort of a massive noir fan as I've read earlier some Megan Abbott novels, which is very much in that milieu in Los Angeles, and also read James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler, James Cain and Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson. I'd love to do a book like that, but not being American and not knowing the locales, I felt it would be starting out with imposter syndrome. I didn't want to be in the situation where I'm sweating over Hollywood's geography. Would you really go to that club? Would you really turn left at that place, or would you keep going? In essence, just made it all up which feels wrong as it's grounded in a place.

And then it occurred to me, Britain does have a film industry, which is a much smaller affair, but it is there. You did have things like big studios in the 1950s. You had Rank, you had Ealing, you had Hammer. You had these places in the 1950s and '60s, and you could set it around there, but then they become by necessity, smaller and more parochial tales because it's not the massive star system, big glamour machine that Hollywood is. There is a smaller strip, but that works I think in that kind of genre's favor.

One of my favorite authors writing this stuff is Jim Thompson, who can write these books set in nowhere little towns where characters wind up in, where things start happening or cities kind of just exist in kind of dreams almost. They don't seem to have any geographic basis to them, but they are small places. So I'm sort of leaning into the smallness of them, as opposed to the big glamour of Hollywood, which would be fake if I tried to write it.

Debbi: Well, I think focusing on the small stuff makes it far more interesting, I've always found. It's interesting how many of these movies are set in L.A. or New York, but some of the most interesting stories take place outside of those places. This is again something like British cinema, which itself is smaller compared to say Hollywood. I mean, that in itself interests me, but you guys had Alfred Hitchcock first.

F. R.: Yeah, but he had gone by about 1940, and it was much more done on a shoestring operation version of the '50s and '60s. I have in my head one set in the '70s, and by that point, it's terrible. Sex comedies is the main thrust to the British film industry. It's a whole other business. It's not the new Hollywood. It's just these awful films that are the main focus of it. Awful films, ridiculously good cast because that's the only work they can get.

Debbi: Wow. Well, I see what you're talking about there. I think I know the films you're talking about, too. So are the main characters based on actual actresses?

F. R.: I've read a lot of biographies of directors and actors and actresses, so I haven't specifically taken an actress and tried to weave her life story in a fictional form. But I have, through a lot of reading and occasionally watching a documentary on them, little nuggets are pulled out and kept in mind of things that really happened to people that I can then use to happen to my fictional protagonists.

Debbi: So there is a good deal of research in terms of reading that went into preparing ...

F. R.: There's a good deal of very pleasurable research. I greatly enjoy reading that stuff. I don't find it onerous and a lot of watching old films which again, it's all research I enjoy.

Debbi: Exactly, especially watching those old films.

F. R.: Yes.

Debbi: Very much. What are your plans for the series? Do you have a certain number of books you'd like to write?

F. R.: Well, I also write as well the Ghostly Shadows series you so very kindly mentioned, I've got another series, which is the Ludo Carstairs Supernatural Thrillers, which kind of straddles both the thrillers and the horror, but I think the supernatural elements takes them for a lot of thriller fans far more into the horror arena, which a lot thriller fans are very much focused on real world stuff and see it as a natural thing elsewhere, which is fine.

So, that at the moment is my main focus. But I certainly want to keep writing the noir novels as I get a great deal of pleasure from them. I've got another one already typed up and on my computer, so I now have to at some point rewrite it and edit it. I've got ideas for others, I have starts for others, so it's just when I can get the focus to get the attention down. I don't know, maybe I'm just finishing.

I start my process. I start off writing a book in longhand on notepads, and I've nearly finished writing one Ludo Carstairs Supernatural Thriller for next year, and thinking from January, maybe I will write a short noir novel. For myself, it's such a change of pace from thinking of scares or terrifying things, which in the Ludo Carstairs books also, you're trying to think of a kind of a Sherlock Holmes-esque relationship and Doctor Who stuff as well, so a lot of things fed into that.

But it is quite nice to then go to … I’ll try to do a Richard Stark novel or a James M. Cain or Jim Thompson stuff and just add fire to that, or just think of a story from British history that I can weave in. I've got an idea for one which kind of leans into the war stuff in the early '70s, which would be a slight difference to it, but a change of pace, it would very much fit into that world. So the answer to the question is yes, I do want to write more and I will write more when I carve time, which is always the thing.

Debbi: Yes, time is always the thing. When do you generally write? What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

F. R.: In the mornings and evenings. I have the habit of writing everything first draft by hand in notebooks, which is just a good exercise in getting it all down. I was writing a chapter earlier and how it is in my notepad now is not very good. It's got the salient things I want to have in that chapter there, so it's done. And then gradually, I'll type them all up, type up the books quite quickly. Type them all up, make changes and improve things along the way, and then I have my sort of work-through version, which is when I go through that document and rewrite and edit and change things round and it becomes this all-consuming thing of when I have … when I'm going through that process,  20 things in my mind of plot arcs and changes and have to go back and sort of foreshadow that instead of ticking off a lot of stuff on a list all the time.

...

Listen to the podcast on Substack.

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer and CinemaSins co-creator Jeremy Scott.

Learn more about how he became a comic film commentator and about his debut novel, When the Corn is Waist High.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today my guest is the co-creator and narrator of CinemaSins, a YouTube channel dedicated to movie-related comedy, and a highly successful one at that. He's also the author of the Able Series about a group of disabled kids with superpowers—which I definitely have to read—and a crime novel called When the Corn Is Waist High. An intriguing title, I have to say. It's my pleasure to introduce writer and entertainer, Jeremy Scott. Hi, Jeremy.

Jeremy: Hi there. Thank you for having me.

Debbi: It's a pleasure to have you on. Good to see you. When people ask you what you do, what do you tell them?

Jeremy: Generally depends on my read of them because younger generations are going to get it immediately. I'm in my 40s, so anybody about my age and younger, I'll probably just give them the honest answer. I run a YouTube channel and I also write books. Anyone like my mom's age, I might just kind of take a read of them and go, I'm an author or I'm an entertainer, and try and keep it …. Well, because I've had several conversations where they just ask question after question after question, because to some people, the idea that you can upload videos to the internet and make money from it is just mind boggling. So I'm trying to save everybody's time and those interactions, but still convey the truth.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. I tell you, there is so much that you can do these days. There are a lot of people who really, really do not get it, who are my age, and frankly, I get it completely

Jeremy: Yeah, clearly.

Debbi: I totally do. When did you start CinemaSins and what inspired you to start it?

Jeremy: Well, this requires a tiny bit of a backstory. My business partner in CinemaSins is named Chris Atkinson, and we met in '99 working at a movie theater. We were both managers who worked in the booth. The movies would come in on separate reels, and we would have to build the movies into one giant print, and then we would have to watch it as part of our job to make sure we had not made any mistakes and there wasn't anything wrong with that copy of the movie.

We were also both big fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when we were in college, so every Thursday night, he and I would throw on a movie that we had built and sit in the audience and crack jokes the whole time, and that was, in hindsight, the genesis of what became CinemaSins. But it wasn't until December 2012, we uploaded the first CinemaSins video. We just had both done a lot of writing in the area of online video, video marketing, even Codex, and some of the technical stuff behind video online, and we had just watched so many of these YouTube channels and creators like Epic Meal Time and Freddie Wong, and just having so much fun creating, because YouTube made it available to anyone who had the talent and the time and the gear to make a video.

So we tried for months. We tried four or five different ideas, channel concepts. Nothing really ever stuck until the CinemaSins one, and people ask me all the time what I did to help make that successful. And I tell them nothing. I made a video and somebody came along and posted it to Buzzfeed and at the time—I don't know if it still is—at the time, Buzzfeed was like a reader voted up and down thing. So like the top story was one that was getting the most reads and that it was up in the top 10, and that basically drove everything. A few videos after that, Kevin Smith, a filmmaker tweeted about us, and that brought in a huge wave. And from there, I can't explain the growth, but we're happy for what we've been able to do for the last 10 years.

Debbi: Well, that's fantastic. That's absolutely fantastic. I was going to ask you about how a person can develop a 9 million subscriber following, but I think a lot of it has to do with luck, who sees you, where you get placed in various online publications, things like that. It's amazing. I assume you monetize your YouTube channel. Is it through ads, or is it through other means?

Jeremy: We would call it ads either way. YouTube runs ads on our videos, both at the beginning and what's called a mid-roll ad in the middle of a video, and we get a percentage of those. And then we also can sell sponsorships so some of our videos might open with a 30 second "this video is brought to you by" Nature Box or what have you. We have had a handful of them over the years, but beyond that, that's really the only way we monetize the YouTube videos.

Debbi: And you have a podcast as well?

Jeremy: We do. The videos, we're playing a character who's a know-it-all who's nitpicking movies, and so the podcast is hopefully something that shows our love of movies and how genuine it is. It's called Recotopia and every week it's basically a movie club, movie of the week club. We take turns picking a movie that we think has been underseen or underappreciated, and then we meet and discuss it, and we have both a live audience online and then you can download or watch it on YouTube later. It's just an hour-long celebration of recommendations of movies and TV shows and stuff.

Debbi: Oh, that's fantastic. I just love it when people highlight an underappreciated movie, because there are so many out there that are good that you don't hear about that much.

Jeremy: Yes.

Debbi: Especially some old ones.

Jeremy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Debbi: Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing a scripted podcast, just out of curiosity?

Jeremy: I guess I would have to answer that yes. I have thought about it, but I don't think I've entertained it too seriously. I have a lot of ideas. I have a lot of things I'm in the middle of writing all the time. That is something that I would enjoy trying my hand at at some point, but I haven't really gone beyond that. It's just on a back burner list of things I might like to do someday.

Debbi: We may need to talk at some point. We'll see. You might be interested in what I have to say. Tell us about your books, the Able Series. I think it's a really fantastic premise you've come up with.

Jeremy: Thank you.

Debbi: What inspired you to write it?

Jeremy: I'm not sure. The idea came to me years before I wrote it. I self-published the first edition in 2015 of the first book, but I wrote a first page synopsis idea/thing in 2009 and showed it to my wife. There were a lot of differences in what ended up coming out as a story, but the idea of a disabled person that also has superpowers was the central premise.

The early draft, it was going to be an older person who was a judge, but once I realized it needed to be kids then I was able to sort of play in an area that I don't think a lot of stories have been able to, where they are outcast because they're stuck in the middle of these two groups. They live in a superhero society, but they're not fully accepted because their disabilities impact how they can use their powers, but the non-powered people don't really respect them either because they have superpowers. The main character is a blind kid named Philip, and his power is telekinesis.

So the question is, how does he move things with his mind that he's not able to see? And through the adventure, he figures out how. So, I thought it would be fun to sort of play with coming of age, where you're stuck in between those two worlds.

Debbi: Yes. That's an interesting time period.

Jeremy: Yes.

Debbi: In one's life.

Jeremy: Yes, absolutely.

Debbi: How many books have you published in the series?

Jeremy: There are four books in the Able Series, and it was always intended to be four. The first one is when they're entering middle school, the second one, they're in high school, the third one, they're in college, and then the fourth one jumps ahead 25 years. They're all middle-grade-aimed, intended for pre-teens and teenagers. So When the Corn Is Waist High won't tonally compare in any way to these Ables books, which are aimed at kids and trying to be empowering. The murder mystery book is absolutely an adult-aimed novel.

Debbi: I was going to ask you about that. Tell us about that book. What is that book about?

...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer S.J. Rozan.

Learn more about her life as an architect and writer, as well as her book about the real mayors of New York!

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of 18 novels and 6 dozen short stories. In a word—prolific! The recipient of several awards, including the Edgar, the Anthony, the Shamus, the Nero, and the Macavity, she has also received the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award, one of the coolest titles for an award I've ever heard, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. She has edited anthologies and served on the National Boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and is a former president of Private Eye Writers of America.

She speaks, lectures and teaches and runs a summer writing workshop in Italy. A former architect whose practice focused on police stations, firehouses, and zoos, she is a native New Yorker who lives in lower Manhattan. It's my great pleasure to have with me today, the author of the Bill Smith and Lydia Chin Mysteries, S.J. Rozan. Hi, how are you doing today?

S.J.: I'm doing great, thank you. I just got back from the gym and I have the secret of my longevity —caffeine—and so I'm fine and thank you for having me.

Debbi: Oh, it's my pleasure, believe me. I remember you from Bouchercon when you would do those pickup basketball games.

S.J.: Yeah, we would still do them if I had gone to the last couple Bouchercons. I will go to Nashville and we'll do one in Nashville.

Debbi: Very cool. Wonderful. I should go just for that.

S.J.: Absolutely, absolutely.

Debbi: Cool. You have had an amazing career and you still are continuing to have an amazing career. How do you keep up with all of that? Do you never sleep or do you have an assistant or ...?

S.J.: I have no assistant and I do sleep, but I have a strict schedule of writing. I write in the morning, every morning except the mornings when I go to the gym, and then I write as soon as I get home for the same number of hours. It seems to work. I'm doing two series now and we have yet to see whether I will collapse eventually , but even with the short stories, it does seem to work. I'm a good procrastinator, but once I sit down to work, which is why I need a steady schedule, this is how you do it. If I were just, hmm, I think I'll work later, that doesn't happen, but I do.

I get up in the morning, I go out for a walk because I spend so much time working as an architect going to the office that I can't just roll over into the living room, which you are looking at. So I go out for a walk and then I come back and I write, and that's it. I do that until the sponge is all wrung dry, and then I do other stuff. Then I can come back in the evening sometimes, if I have the evening available.

Debbi: Yes, yes. I hear that about writing in the morning. I do the same thing. You have to have that kind of regimented time set aside. Otherwise it could slip away.

S.J.: And if you can't do the morning, you can do the afternoon. You can do whatever works for you, but you have to have a time. You have to have a “this is it.” First of all, you cannot wait for the muse because the muse is busy off someplace. Has dropped the idea in your head and then has gone off and you're supposed to run with it. But you also can't depend on yourself to do things later, like when you're supposed to do sit-ups every day and you say, after lunch. Oh no, now my tummy is full. Before dinner, and then the next thing you know, it's Tuesday and you haven't. So with writing, it's the same thing.

Debbi: Absolutely. That is so true. What was it that inspired you to create Bill Smith and Lydia Chin, these characters?

S.J.: Well, Bill was the first character in my head. For years, he was sitting in there waiting to be written. He is that iconic voiceover white male private eye, and who that character is, is a character who can comment on the world because he refuses to be part of it, although given who he was born—a straight, white, healthy male—he could be part of the power structure anytime he wanted. The earliest of these guys that Bill is following in that path had been cops and left the force, had been soldiers and were court-martialed out. They had tried to be part of the system and they couldn't do it because the price of their soul was just too high. And so that was the character I wanted Bill to be.

Now, when I started writing, a lot of the white male private eyes, because there were a lot of them, had partners who were just like them, only psychotic. And what that meant is that when the private eye had something that needed to be done that was morally ambiguous, he could say, gee, you know, there's someone shooting at me up there in the hills, and he's kind of got me pinned down in my house, and I kind of wish he wasn't there. And an hour later, having said that to his sidekick over the phone, an hour later the sidekick comes along and says, done, finished, took care of it, and so the private eye doesn't have to get his hands dirty. And I thought, that is absolutely not what the form is about. The whole point of the private eye form is moral ambiguity. These are already guys who have given up their chance to be in the power structure, to go down into the dirt and deal with what goes on down there.

So I thought, okay, if Bill was going to be one of those guys, then he needed a sidekick who was not at all like him. So it had to be a woman because he was a man, somebody small because he was big, somebody young because he was middle aged. And then I thought, well, and go for it. Make her somebody from another culture, and then everything he thinks he knows can be a matter for debate. What's for breakfast when the new year happens. Everything. So that was where Lydia came from. And she is Chinese because for various reasons in my background, Chinese-Americans seemed like a culture I could learn enough about to deal with.

So Lydia was created as a sidekick for Bill, and it became very clear that she wasn't going to put up with that, that she would be a sidekick, but then he had to also be a sidekick and this was a partnership. And I thought, okay, so the first book I actually wrote was a Bill Smith book, and then I wrote a Lydia Chin book, and then my agent sent them to Keith Kahla at St. Martin's then, who was my publisher. That is, they weren't my publisher yet, but they said, okay, we love it, we'll buy it, but we want to bring the Chinese woman out first, even though it was written second because—and this was very sensible, I thought—Bill is another white male private eye.

Of course Rozan is much more brilliant than anybody else because this was how my editor talked, but if anybody's looking for a white male private eye, why would they buy one they've never heard of when they could buy Robert Parker, Lawrence Block. But Lydia Chin is something that's not been seen before. It's an Asian-American woman private eye. So this will give readers an entry into this series, which then will alternate narrators. And I thought, fine, bring Lydia out first. Lydia will like that better anyway. So that's how they were invented. That's who they are.

Debbi: That is so cool. Did you have to do a lot of research to get to understand Lydia's character?

S.J.: Well, one of the reasons I chose it is because I had always been interested in Chinese culture. In fact, I went to Oberlin College because they had a historical connection with Asia and especially China. I took courses in Chinese music and Chinese poetry and Chinese literature, old and new, so I was kind of steeped in that anyway and I had some Chinese American friends in New York. When I decided to do Lydia, I kind of doubled down on all that. I live not far from Chinatown, and I spent a lot of time down there and I would go around with my friends and they would show me things. Sometimes they would invite me home to dinner with their mothers, who would cook, and then they would laugh at the stuff I would eat because they tell me white people don't eat that. What's wrong with you?

So I had figured I had a handle on Lydia. I did do a lot of reading of young Chinese writers, people in her generation. Now since Lydia doesn't age very much, the young Chinese writers are a whole new generation, but the people who were writing at the time,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Michael Farris Smith.

Check out his story! From award-winning author to screenwriter-producer!

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. I have with me today an author who's enjoying a rather extraordinary year. Along with releasing a new novel in April, two of his previous novels have been adapted for film and been released this year. It's a pleasure to have with me today author and screenwriter, Michael Farris Smith. Hi, Michael. How are you doing?

Michael: Debbi, I'm doing fine. Thank you for that introduction.

Debbi: Oh, it's my pleasure, believe me. Let's talk about screenplays and movies. I see that you were credited as a producer as well as the screenwriter on IMDB Pro, so congratulations for that and congratulations for what you've done. It is simply amazing. This is not typical of most authors, I have to say.

Michael: Yeah. You know, I keep hearing that over and over and I believe it because I know now how much it takes just to get one across the finish line, but to be able to get two, I feel pretty fortunate.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I saw a recent interview where the writer had described you as celebrating in a low-key way, and I thought, well, when you think of the sheer amount of work that goes into making a movie, creating the package, finding the money, making the deal, all of those things, I had to wonder how else would you celebrate except to say, phew! That's done.

Michael: Yes, I don't know there's a whole lot of energy left to have a big celebration. You have used it all up. I don't know how most people are. I get the impression that a lot of creative people are the same way, that when they get to the end of a project or when they get to the finish line, it's more a sense of relief than anything. Certainly there's excitement and there's reward, but whether it's a novel or a script or anything really, the sense of relief, the accomplishment of it, to me is always the overriding emotion versus wanting to go out and have a party. I want to sit down and kick my feet up and have a beverage and just really kind of revel in that it's over and that it's done, and hopefully in the way that you wanted it to be done too. Hopefully it's a product you're happy with.

Debbi: Yes. Amen to that. I hear you. I thought it was interesting that they approached you about writing the screenplay, which is not typical for most authors. Most of the time they'll hire somebody who's in the business to write the screenplay. They approached you. You said, yeah, sure and then you had to learn about screenwriting. Was that a learning experience?

Michael: It was very much a learning experience, and the way you describe it is exactly what happened. When I was asked if I wanted to be attached to write the screenplays, I said, yes, absolutely. And then the next question was, well, do you know how to do that? And I said, yeah, sure. Of course I do, and I hung up the phone. That was kind of a group call, and I hung up from that group call and immediately picked up the phone and called my manager, and I said, look, man. I need you to tell me two books about screenplay right now that I can order and start trying to figure out how to do this. He just laughed because he goes, I knew you didn't know how to do it, but that was the absolute correct answer, because I think you can do it. I believe you can do it, or we wouldn't have tried to. And he goes, you don't need to let anybody know what you can or can't do in this business. Just raise your hand and keep going. I mean, I didn't know how to write a novel either. I had no idea how to write a novel. I ended up learning how to do that, so I figured I could learn how to write a screenplay.

Debbi: That's right. That's exactly right. What books did they recommend, just out of curiosity?

Michael: One is called Save the Cat. I think it's pretty popular, and then the other one is really more technical, I feel. It's called The Hollywood. It's like just a guidebook. It's sitting in here somewhere, but it really gets the nuts and bolts of doing things technically right, and how to do flashbacks and how to superimpose. I mean, it really gets into that, which I really needed because the screenwriting programs now that you can just giddy up and go and move along. You don't have to think about the indentions and all this and margins. They kind of do it for you, so you're really free to get into going and exploring. But to do it correctly too, I wanted to look like a pro.

As far as Save the Cat, I think I did look at one or two other kinds of guidebooks about how to write screenplays. I did get into them, but I was also careful not to dig too far into them because I was afraid it might mess me up a little bit and it might slow the creative process or just get in the way somehow of me thinking too much. So I did read those books about what a screenplay is, what works, how it's supposed to do this and that and the other, and then I kind of let it go and just tried to be a storyteller telling it in a different medium. I do think that served me well to not try to think too hard about it.

Debbi: Absolutely. I agree 100%. That's one of the things that I think hangs people up when it comes to the screenplay. They get too focused on I have to get something here by page 10. I have to get something here by page 20, instead of thinking about the story, how it can unfold. You'll find that it naturally unfolds at certain points, in my opinion.

Michael: That was one thing that kind of frightened me a little bit about it, was I would open up these books, and you're right. It would tell you this needs to happen on page 10, that needs to happen on page 25, this needs to happen on page 50. This is horrible advice. I know there's a formula to it. Anybody can watch a movie and kind of feel those moments in that time, but I really wanted to back away from it because I think you have to trust yourself as a storyteller, whatever the medium is. And as a storyteller, I think you have an innate sense of when it's time to shift gears or when it is time to make something new happen, or when it's time to go down a different road, or when it's time to cause more trouble, so I tried to rely on that a little bit too.

Debbi: I love that. When it's time to make more trouble. It's like the old saying 'put your protagonist in a tree and throw rocks at him.'.

Michael: I love that. Absolutely.

Debbi: So what did you do to prepare for writing the screenplay to adapt your work? How did you go through the process of adaptation? What was that like, and what did you do specifically?

Michael: That's a good question. The one thing I did have to learn to do in screenwriting, which I don't do as a novelist, is outline. Now, one of the early things I learned about writing scripts is you write a 40 scene outline first that everybody kind of agrees upon, and then you sit down and you start writing the screenplay. And for me, at the beginning, I was like I don't want to do that because when I'm writing fiction, I never look too far ahead. It's kind of like working in the morning, making a note to walk in the next day. But this really served me as learning how to do a script, because you're taking a 300-page novel and you're putting it into a hundred pages, so what are the things that have to be in there to tell the story? And you also find out too, this might work in the novel, but they can't be this way in a film.

So the very first step was taking out a notepad is how I did it the first time, and just starting to go through the novel and come up with that 40 scene outline where I could see it as a whole. Then I could talk to the directors as a whole and you begin to get the feedback from others about, well, we can't do it this way. We can't do it this way because this, that, and the other. And so you figure out how to get the story on the page through the outline first. And for me, that was a great benefit, and I definitely see the advantages of doing that in a screenplay, because that's the starting point. When I actually sat down to do it, we were talking earlier about taking the anxiety off things as much as you can, and trying not to think too much.

I would get on page 4, 5, 12, 15 of the script, and I would be sitting there and just like, naturally thinking, okay, now what's next? Because that's how I do a novel....

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Liz Alterman.

Don't miss her book giveaway! Liz is giving away a signed copy of her novel The Perfect Neighborhood. To enter, just subscribe to her Substack newsletter.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of a book that I've had the pleasure of reading and reviewing. A suspenseful novel that weaves in humor and social commentary. It's called The Perfect Neighborhood and I highly recommend it. It's my pleasure to have with me today the author, Liz Alterman. Hi, Liz. How are you doing today?

Liz: I'm good, Debbi. Thank you so much for having me, and for reading the book as well.

Debbi: Oh, I loved it. And I'm glad you're on. I'm so glad you're here with us.

Liz: Thank you.

Debbi: What inspired you to write the novel?

Liz: Oh, thanks for asking. It's funny, I love to read thrillers and mysteries, and I guess one day I woke up from a dream with the idea for the plot, sort of the beginning and the ending, but I didn't really have the middle. I mentioned the idea to my husband, and the story involves a little boy who goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten. When I told my husband, you know I just had this really vivid dream, he was saying, oh, I wouldn't write it. There were so many kidnapping stories. Just try to come up with another idea. So I tried for about six months, and as I was kind of doing the dishes or gardening or something, these characters were speaking to me, and the plot was kind of revealing itself and coming alive. And after giving it six months with no other ideas, I thought, okay, I'm going to sit down and try it. And my kids—I have three boys—and my oldest will joke, why would you write about a missing child? That's so disturbing! Can't you write something light?

I said, as a parent, to me, that's so much more frightening than let's say a zombie story. The thought of something happening to my kids is probably the most frightening thing I can imagine.

Debbi: Wow. You know, it's funny because I have been reading so many books about either missing children, kidnapped children—what was the other one I was thinking of—at-risk kids.

Liz: Sure.

Debbi: It's like there's this huge sub-genre of kid-related anxieties coming out in writing. What are your thoughts on that? Do you see that as well?

Liz: I do. I think we see that a lot. It almost goes in cycles where I think we see a lot of that, or we also see a lot of women in peril, women in bad relationships or women at risk, other things like that. But now that you say that, and especially as I've seen other titles come out, I will say, okay, I think my husband may have been onto something. There is a lot in that field already.

Debbi: That doesn't hurt any, actually, and in a sense, it almost helps because you're part of a wave of something.

Liz: That's true.

Debbi: And actually you're tapping into something I think very primal, very primal for parents, particularly mothers, I would think. I'm not a mother, so it's very hard for me to really think about that. But if I think about my own mother, it makes sense to me, a lot of sense.

Liz: Absolutely.

Debbi: Can you tell us a little about the plot?

Liz: Sure. So the book starts off, and it begins with a lot of gossipy voices of neighbors who are speculating about this younger woman in this upscale neighborhood who decides to leave her husband in the middle of the night. The person who spies her leaving is a young man who has returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and so people feel that maybe he has come back a little different. He's not quite the guy that he was, and he has taken it upon himself to patrol the neighborhood. And so they think maybe he's almost inventing more of a story than there is, but he is the one who first spots her leaving. She's this beautiful model and actress, and her husband is a former rock star who gives music lessons to kids in the afternoon. And so everyone sort of speculates, if these two can't make it work, how can we? They're this golden couple and everyone's kind of had their eye on them.

Then fast forward two months. This little boy goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten, and it's almost like that record scratch moment of everybody taking a look around and thinking, we're supposed to be safe here in this lovely neighborhood. Is there a predator in our midst? Is it someone we know, someone among us who knew this little boy's routine? His mom is a real estate agent, and sometimes she can be a bit of a cold fish. He has a stepbrother who's maybe not thrilled about his dad marrying that real estate agent. So there's sort of a lot of people who get called into question. I kind of wanted to explore the idea of what it's like to live in a nice community where you think maybe nothing can go wrong and the secrets—or not necessarily secrets—but you can look at someone's life from the outside and think it looks beautiful and perfect and flawless, and then you open the door and there's a whole different world going on behind closed doors.

Debbi: Yes. Yes. I mean, things are not always the way they seem. Certainly people who seem to have perfect lives don't always have perfect lives. Nobody really has a perfect life when you come right down to it. How would you describe your writing style? Would you say you're more a thriller writer, mystery thriller, crime novel? How do you like to describe your writing?

Liz: That's a great question. I think suspense is something that I feel is a throughline. I feel almost guided by if an idea catches me, rather than sticking with a specific genre or a theme, I like to hop around. Before The Perfect Neighborhood, I had written a young adult thriller that some people will say maybe the first half is scary and thriller-y, and then the second half is more of a coming-of-age as the main character deals with the aftermath of what she went through. Prior to that, I had written a memoir that I like to think has a little touch of suspense in it. It's about the period when my husband and I were laid off within six weeks of each other, and so we kind of struggled to get back on our feet. So I try to add humor, yes, but definitely as I like to joke, don't try this at home. It's not fun.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah, and you have to laugh at some point.

Liz: Exactly. If you don't, you'll cry, so...

Debbi: Exactly. Your novel seems to comment almost as much on suburbia as it does on say, rumors and secrets and the darkness beneath a perfect exterior. Was that intentional?

Liz: It was, a little bit, because I've always lived in the suburbs. I'm in New Jersey, and it's funny. I guess I've lived in a few different suburbs and I've worked in a few different suburbs and different people that I've stayed in touch with will say, oh, you based this on Princeton, or you based it on Westfield, or you based it on Chatham. It's a fictional town, but it's sort of an amalgamation of all of those places. I think as lovely as a certain place may be... also, I used to cover local politics and local Boards of Ed for different online and local newspapers. Again, you kind of scratch the surface and you can definitely see the underbelly of areas and that even the most beautiful place can have its darkness.

Debbi: True, true that. How much research do you do when you're working on a novel?

Liz: Well, with this one, I really wanted to try to get it accurate in terms of let's say your child is missing and the police arrive. What are some of the first things that they do? So that was something I really wanted to kind of dig into, so I did a lot of research there and just saw what are kind of the first questions that they ask. A lot of times, I didn't realize this but they might think your child is hiding somewhere in your home. Let's look close or let's check with the neighbors first before we really panic, and I'm sure in their experience, they probably bump into parents who think the worst and then it turns out their child is in a neighbor's basement playing, or just in a backyard of a new child or something, or went home with a friend.

I know, one time, we got a call, a little boy was missing, and it was just that he decided to get off at a new bus stop that day, that he just felt like taking a longer walk on a nice afternoon, but his mom didn't know. She knew who else was on the route, and my son was on it,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer David Swinson.

Learn all about David's latest release, Sweet Thing, and some of his other work. Not to mention that the guy's met Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary. Now, that is interesting.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today worked with the D.C. Police Department as a detective, so he's done research on the job for his books. He's the author of the Frank Marr Trilogy and two stand-alone crime novels. We can talk about those, but I am tempted to make this an episode about music, gonzo journalism and beat poetry, based on his own backstory. His latest novel is called Sweet Thing, and just saying that makes me want to sing like Lou Reed. It's my pleasure to have with me today, crime writer David Swinson. Hi, David.

David: Hi. How are you?

Debbi: Good. How are you doing? I understand you're feeling a little under the weather, but I'm glad you're able to be with us today.

David: Like I said, it's the Covid booster.

Debbi: Ah yes! We have all endured that wonder. Let's talk about the two books you've written since the Marr trilogy. I noticed you set the earlier one City on the Edge in a place outside of D.C., well outside of D.C., but very much influenced by things that happen in D.C. so to speak. But your latest one is going back into the D.C. Police with a homicide detective as your protagonist in Sweet Thing. So what inspired you to kind of shift perspective like that from one kind of story to another and back?

David: You mean to Sweet Thing?

Debbi: In going from City on the Edge, which is very different from what I've seen back to Sweet Thing.

David: City On the Edge is, you know we all I think as writers, always have that one book that we've always wanted to write. That had a lot to do with my history and stuff, although I didn't suffer that kind of loss or witness a murder in Beirut or anything. But I really love that city, Beirut, and I always wanted to use it as a backdrop to a novel. But at that time before I wrote Sweet Thing, I had two more, that book and another book that I owe Mulholland Books and Little, Brown and Co. and so I always knew I'd return to the detective novel.

Speaking of Sweet Thing, I was listening a lot to—I always make playlists—I was listening a lot to the WaterBoys cover of Van Morrison's song “Sweet Thing”, and that just really inspired me and I just really wanted to write something about how it can all go wrong, because I like the the whole fallen character type thing.

Debbi: I like those too. A complex character, one that you can get behind who isn't perfect.

David: I don't think I can really write any other kind of character really.

Debbi: We see so many of our own imperfections, I think, and like to discuss them in a sense. Your latest book mentions Frank Marr, which I thought was interesting. I've just started it and I got to the part about Frank Marr and his phone. Can you talk about Frank Marr's role, if there is one, in your latest book?

David: He has a minor role, but it's a good role. That was another thing. I sort of wanted to bring back his character, sort of before all the bad stuff happened to him, just see him on the job as a younger detective at Narcotics Branch. But I didn't want to give him a big role because it was all about Alexander Blum.

Debbi: Exactly. Yeah. When is this taking place? What year is it in the book?

David: 1999. Couple months before Y2K.

Debbi: Very interesting. An interesting time. I wanted to ask you about research. Did you have to do a lot of research for this book because of the fact that it's based in that year?

David: No, I lived it pretty much. I remember it vividly. I mean, as cops, we all really thought it was going to be the end of the world. Even our officials did. That night everybody was in cars, on corners. It was all hands on deck, and as detectives, we were in our offices, just waiting for it to slam down and everything to shut down, and obviously it didn't.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

David: But I sort of like that as a time period for the book.

Debbi: It was a very peculiar time or moment. I remember when that New Year's Day was. Everybody expected suddenly the lights would go out. Everything would go nuts. Nothing happened.

David: The zombie apocalypse.

Debbi: Yes, exactly. Is there research that you do, other than what you already know from work?

David: Not really. Again, kudos to all the authors that can research. I can't. I'm really bad at it, but I do have things. In 1999, the drugs were the drugs and the investigations. I knew the the law and stuff. Things have changed a bit with respect to drugs now. So in the new book I'm working on, I do have those people I call to ask what's the drug that's hitting hard right now —fentanyl and stuff like that. But in 1999, I pretty much knew what was going on, but if I needed a refresher, there were people I would call. But as far as research, I really didn't have to.

Debbi: Wow. Well, that's interesting because that's so unique. Everybody talks about how much research they do, but you have it all in your head from having worked in it. That's pretty cool.

David: Yeah, I write based on experience, not actual cases or anything like that, but just on life experience, because it's easier for me. Research is so hard and it is grueling, like outlining. I don't outline either because I write by the seat of my pants, so outlining is difficult. I sometimes wish I did outline and research, but I just can't. I suppose if I were to ever write something in the 1800s or something like that, there'd be a heck of a lot of research I'd have to do.

Debbi: Well, I admire your ability to write by the seat of your pants, because I can't. I can't seem to function without some kind of outline, even if just the bare bones.

David: Well, I take notes. Notes are basically like my outline. I take tons and tons of notes.

Debbi: Good practice. I've never asked anybody about this, but let me ask you—what do you think motivates people to write about crime?

David: Even before I became a cop, I've always wanted to be a writer, and even before I became a cop, I was always interested in writing about crime and stuff like that. I don't know, I just think that in crime there's everything that you want to explore, and to me, it's the fallenness of man. As a detective, I saw the greatest things and the worst things, so that's what you get in crime and crime writing. It's not all just crime, crime, because it's regular life too for the characters.

Debbi: It's just human emotion and human relationships.

David: There's certain things with respect to crime I won't get into, things having to do with children or things like that. That's just not fun.

Debbi: I can appreciate what you're saying. Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book and what you're working on now?

David: Oh, the one I'm working on now?

Debbi: Also, the latest book that's coming out.

David: Oh, well, Sweet Thing is already out. It came out on the 7th and it follows detective Alexander Blum, who he and his partner, Kelly Ryan, catch a case, a homicide, and he finds something on his own there that he pockets, which suggests that his confidential informant—he doesn't know yet—knows the homicide victim. One thing leads into another and he ends up falling into a sort of a femme fatale type personality, but a relationship with the confidential informant's girlfriend, and just everything goes downhill from there..

Debbi: Yes, I can imagine. Shall we talk about Hunter Thompson or having drinks with Timothy Leary, and coming up with a movie that actually gets shown in theaters?

David: Well, I had drinks with both of them, but Tim Leary, I didn't really have a lot of drinks with. When I was booking concerts at this nightclub called Bogart's Nightclub in Long Beach, California, we had an off night—Wednesdays—and I came up with an idea to do evenings of conversation. Again, because I wanted to be an author and all this stuff, obviously I would pick authors and poets and even standup with John Waters and stuff like that.

We did a couple of shows and then I remember reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and thinking it would be really cool to get Hunter S. Thompson there. He had never, ever in his life done a nightclub, and I got ahold of Bill Stankey, who to this day is one of my good friends, who managed him....

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Kathleen Kaska.

Check out how she got the inspiration to write the Sydney Lockhart mysteries. It all started with the thing at the hotel ... but I can't tell you what that is.

No spoilers! :)

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. My guest today is originally from Austin, Texas, a very cool town, by the way, especially when the Austin Film Festival is in town. God, that is a great film festival, I have to say for screenwriters particularly.

However, having said that, I'm with the author for this week who lives in Washington state now, which is also a really cool place, I have to say. She is the author of the Sydney Lockhart Mysteries, as well as the Kate Caraway Animal Rights Mysteries and other books, which include three trivia books. I believe it's Sherlock Holmes, Hitchcock and Agatha Christie trivia. Wow, that's interesting. My guest today is Kathleen Kaska.

Hi, Kathy. How are you doing today? Do you go by Kathy or Kathleen?

Kathleen: Kathleen.

Debbi: Kathleen, definitely Kathleen there. Okay, I should have asked you ahead of time. I forgot .

Kathleen: That's okay.

Debbi: Tell us about Sydney Lockhart. I read Murder at the Driskill and just loved it, so tell me what inspired you to write that series.

Kathleen: Thank you. Well, Sydney Lockhart, my series is set in the early 1950s, and Sydney Lockhart is a young woman trying to make it as a private detective in a man's world. And so you can imagine how hard it was in the 1950s to take on a career that was just unheard of for women. So that's what the series is about, and each book takes place in a different historic hotel, and these are real hotels, and they're still in operation today. So, that's kind of how I decided to structure this series.

Debbi: Very interesting. So you picked hotels every time?

Kathleen: Yes.

Debbi: Fascinating. Here I thought maybe you picked the Driskill because of the film festival. Do you have a fondness for the Driskill in any particular way?

Kathleen: Well, yes. The Driskill is in downtown Austin. It's not too far from the Capitol. It's right in the center of the city. And when I lived in Austin, we lived right across the street from the Capitol. So we would often just wander down to the Driskill bar and have a drink and have dinner. It was a great meeting place to meet friends, so I spent a lot of time there just hanging out. It's like the center of Austin, and it's just a beautiful, beautiful hotel.

Debbi: It is. It's gorgeous and there's so much history in there too. I mean, Stephen Austin and the whole, the whole vibe there, the whole historic vibe in Austin is interesting. Very, very interesting. I like Sydney's relationship with her partner. I remember that from the book. They seem to have a kind of, almost a Moonlighting kind of vibe to them. There's humor, but there's also mystery. Can you talk about that whole partnership, how that developed?

Kathleen: Yes. When I write my mysteries, I don't outline or plot. I don't develop the characters beforehand. They just sort of appear to me, just like Sydney appeared to me once when my husband and I were staying at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of our most favorite places. We had probably spent a total of four months at that hotel, but on one of our visits, our room wasn't ready. We always stayed in the same room, and I was wondering what could possibly be wrong that we’d have to wait four hours for our room to get ready? And then my imagination kicked in. I thought, okay, what if there was a crime committed in that room? So when we finally checked in, I'm unpacking and I'm imagining things, and this young, tall, redheaded woman comes out of the bathroom and she says, “It wasn't me who did that, but you need to look in there and see what's going on.” So I went in there and there's a dead body in the bathtub.

Debbi: Oh my!

Kathleen: And that's how it started - Sydney in my imagination. So in that very first book and in every book after that, Sydney finds a body in a hotel, and she's usually the main suspect. And in Murder at the Arlington, a Hot Springs police detective comes to investigate, and his name is Ralph Dixon, and he suspects her. But there's an instant spark between the two of them. I was only going to have him there for the first book, but by the time the book ended, I realized that no, he's going to be a regular character.

So in the first three Sydney books, he kind of shows up unexpectedly and assists Sydney in getting herself out of trouble. By the end of the third book, which was Murder at the Galvez, he says, you're really good at this Sydney. I think this is your calling. And so at that point, they decide to go into business together. And in Murder at the Driskill, they had just opened their detective agency in Austin.

Debbi: Wow. Yes, I remember that now. Wow. It's been a while, but boy, that's very interesting, the way you worked up to that through the books. I like that. I like that a lot. I'm also interested in your animal rescue series. What inspired you to create that character, Kate Caraway?

Kathleen: Well, I have always been into animal rights, and when I lived in Austin, I was a member of Wildlife Rescue. It was a volunteer organization, and we took in injured and orphaned wildlife with the purpose of hopefully releasing them back into the wild. And I was thinking, I was writing nonfiction at the time, so I wanted to develop a mystery series, and I thought this would be a good character for me. This would be a good premise to have my detective as an animal rights investigator. And so that's how it started, so every issue in the book is a different animal rights issue.

The first book, Run Dog Run, dealt with Greyhound racing, and the second book, A Two Horse Town took place in Montana, and it deals with saving a herd of wild mustangs. And then the current one takes place on an island here in the Pacific Northwest called Lopez Island. And on Lopez Island is an Animal Rights facility, and the murder takes place there. I wanted to write a mystery with a social cause, so that's why I developed this one.

Debbi: Totally logical and totally great that you use those things from your life as inspiration. It's fantastic. Let's see. Location seems to figure largely in your mysteries as well, clearly. I assume that much of Washington you got to know through writing these books.

Kathleen: Yes, yes.

Debbi: And Austin you knew by living there.

Kathleen: Right. And, yeah, the Sydney Lockhart series with the historic hotels, the hotels themselves have a history. They have a past; they have a story to tell. And so when I do my research, I try to figure out what was going on at the hotel in the town during the time in which I'm writing, and if I can find a good piece of information, I'll leave it into the story. So the hotels are almost like a character themselves, because they add so much to the book. And, so the setting is almost as important as the characters in the plot.

With the Kate Caraway series, I like to travel, and so I come across places that just really intrigued me. In A Two Horse Town, which takes place in southwestern Montana on the Crow Native American reservation I was really taken by that part of the country, and I thought, oh, I'd like to set a book here. Once I started writing it and researching it, I found out that that area of the country has the largest population of wild mustangs in the country. I was like, whoa.

Debbi: That's an interesting factoid.

Kathleen: I know. And then Lopez Island, which is near me, is just an absolutely beautiful place. I've spent a lot of time there. A lot of my favorite hiking places are on Lopez Island, so that's where I set my third book. So location is important to me. I want my readers to feel like they're there, and if they've never been to these hotels, or if they've never been to these other locations, I want them to go and experience what it's like.

In Murder at the Arlington, I was there for a book signing, and one of the locals came and bought my book. We were there at the hotel for like a month. I had several events going on, and I would see him in the lobby every night reading my book. And so I went and I talked to him and he goes, yeah, I love this book. He says, I'm going to read the entire book here at the hotel.

Debbi: Wow.

Kathleen: Wow. So I guess I did something right....

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writers David Bushman and Mark T. Givens.

Check out our discussion of the fascinating true story that inspired the show Twin Peaks.

Before I bring on my guests, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy 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.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

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

Hi, everyone. Today I have two guests with me - David Bushman, who's the author of five books: two on true crime - why is that so hard to say? - two on true crime and three on pop culture. And Mark Givens, the creator and host of the Twin Peaks–centric podcast Deer Meadow Radio. Together, they have researched and written this book, Murder at Teal's Pond, a really excellent book, I have to say. Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you for being here, David and Mark. I really appreciate it.

David: Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Mark: Thank you, Debbi.

Debbi: It's my pleasure, believe me. I'm a big fan of Twin Peaks, and I really enjoyed your book as well. It was a fascinating look at how this ... you know, the inspiration for the show. Tell us how you met and what led you to collaborate on this book.

David: Mark, go ahead.

Mark: I thought you'd go first, David. Okay, I'll go first this time. We usually go back and forth. Well, like we were talking a little bit, Debbi, before we got started, and you just alluded to, we were both big Twin Peaks fans, which if people don't know was a show from the late eighties, early nineties that didn't last very long, but was very critically acclaimed and had a cult following decades later. To be honest, we're not going to all the Twin Peaks conventions every year, but when they announced that a new show was coming back, I think both David and I kind of remembered the old show and got interested in it.

And then, like you said in the intro along different lines, David ended up writing a book called Twin Peaks FAQ. And in my spare time, I do a podcast called Deer Meadow Radio, which you guys still check out. So for both of those projects, I think we both encountered this story independently, and we're both pretty struck by it because in today's internet age, anything that has any kind of following. Everyone knows all the stories behind Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever, but I think because of that gap in time, there were still a few stones that hadn't been completely explored. It had kind of gone dormant, and this was one of them. My recollection of how we found this story was, once or twice over the years, the co-creator, Mark Frost, had alluded to it as something that he knew as a child. A ghost story almost that his grandmother would tell him up in upstate New York where he would have summer vacation with his grandparents, and so he just kind of knew it as a ghost story. Was it even a real thing? Was this a real girl or just somebody made up a folk story?

But he did have a few scant facts. At one point, I think he did go back and research, so he knew a couple things, and long story, longest story kind of short, we pieced that together and finally found this was actually a big deal back in the day and it was a very interesting case with parallels to Twin Peaks, even though Mark Frost didn't really know all those details. It was just kind of the situation of a murder of a beautiful young girl. Her body is found washed up on shores in a small town, and there's lots of suspects and all kinds of interest. So those are the parallels, that I guess just kind of happened situationally.

David and I were both very drawn to this story for the same reasons we were drawn to Twin Peaks, and if I recall correctly, I did on my podcast, maybe my third episode was about the Hazel Drew story. You can go listen to it still. It's now very dated because we were just uncovering things at the time. It's a piece of history, but it's not a known piece of history, so we had to do a lot of digging for this time and era.

Anyway David independently had also, I think while researching for his book also uncovered this. And I think he just called me out. I think he heard my podcast and just Facebooked me or somehow we had a call and that was it. And then we just started looking into it and it went from there.

Debbi: That is really interesting. What was it like working on this? How much time did you put into research and how did you divide up the work? How did you manage to work together?

David: It took five or six years from concept to publication, so there was a tremendous amount of research involved. A lot of it, some of it was done online. A lot of it was done at the local library in Troy, New York, and then a lot of it was done by talking to people in the neighborhood or trying to track down people who were ancestors - I'm sorry - descendants of people who were involved in it in one way or another. It was really hard. I mean, there were no official records other than newspaper reports, which were not that reliable because they were always contradicting not only each other, but sometimes themselves. So it was really hard from that perspective.

We did a lot of interviewing of people up in the neighborhood. We spoke to some relatives of the victim, Hazel Drew. We made some really good contacts up in the neighborhood of people who connected us with other people. We had roundtable discussions where like 10 people would sit around and talk about all the stories that they had heard about Hazel. And in terms of working together, Mark at the time was living in the D.C. area and I live in New York, so we did a lot of communicating through phone or the internet. It wasn't a finely demarcated line, but I guess there was to an extent certain things. Mark, I know, was really interested in the politics of the area of the time, and he was really interested in tracking down through Ancestry, that thing, so I sort of left that to him. Then there were other areas that were of more interest to me, and we just kind of worked it out. It was pretty smooth. I think it was pretty smooth sailing for the two of us. We had minor disagreements maybe about things, but we just worked them out.

Debbi: What were the areas of particular interest to you? Mark's was political and yours was what?

David: Well, definitely interested in crime. We found some cases that - I was interested in the crime itself. Both Mark and I were both interested in newspapers. I have a newspaper background. I was a reporter in the consumer press for a while, and then I moved over to the trade press. I went to journalism school. I have that background. The newspapers were a really interesting story themselves, and they sort of led us to this guy William Clements, who was a mean character in the tabloid coverage of the murder, and Mark really got into him. But the newspaper story, related crimes or crimes that may have been related, those kinds of things, we were both more interested in the politics. There were times that only I could go up there, and so I wound up talking to certain people, and then other times when Mark was only able to get up there, so whatever direction those conversations took us in, that became that person's purview, more or less. But we both signed off on everything.

Chapters or halves of chapters went back and forth and we made suggestions and I think that we have different strengths too as researchers and writers, and I think that we really complimented each other well. I think Mark can go down rabbit holes without losing his patience better than I can. I have a paper background. I'm a little bit more like, well, we have to move on now, but those kinds of things work to our advantage, I think

Debbi: Differing perspectives. Gives it more diversity, as it were. So you guys kind of complimented each other in a way?

David: I think so, yeah.

Mark: It worked really well. Most of the time, I forget how many years it was - five or six, David said - most of that time was exploratory, not actually writing, I would say. The last year or so,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Kristen Bird.

Check out our discussion of her latest novel Watch it Burn, along with the book she’s giving away I Love it When You Lie.

Remember to leave a comment here to enter the giveaway! 🙂

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.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. My guest today earned a Bachelor's degree in Music and Mass Media before getting a Masters in Literature. Along with being an author, she teaches high school English (yay!), and writes with a cup of coffee in hand. Do you do that one-handed?

Kristen: Write?

Debbi: Well, I'll tell you, I do love my coffee.

Kristen: Yes, me too.

Debbi: Oh yeah. Oh boy. I can't live without. In her free time, she likes to visit parks with her three daughters and watch quirky films with her husband. Oh boy. We have things to talk about because I love quirky films. Her most recent novel and the one she's giving away is I Love It When You Lie. I even have a copy here on my Kobo. You can see the cover maybe if you're watching, and her next release will be her third novel, Watch It Burn. I've read her excerpt and it's really something. From Houston, Texas, I'm pleased to have with me Kristen Bird. Hi, Kristen. How you doing today?

Kristen: Good. Thank you so much for having me today.

Debbi: It's a pleasure to have you. Yeah, believe me. I read your excerpt and wow!

Kristen: Oh, thank you.

Debbi: Oh, you're welcome. Readers learn so much about your protagonist in that first chapter. This is after a prologue that's already intriguing, and then a little excerpt from like a newspaper or something.

Kristen: Right.

Debbi: You know, that first chapter and then you end it with a nice hook.

Kristen: Oh, thanks.

Debbi: I will not say what. What's interesting is that you're weaving in the character's backstory without it reading like exposition. What's your technique for doing that?

Kristen: I think my technique is lots of failure at not doing that, and so some of the earliest comments from my agent who liked the story of the first book that I sent her also said, you're doing way too much telling. Can you please make this more vivid for us? Can you please show it to us? And so with the second book, before I even sent it to her for editing notes, I really tried to ask myself with every chapter, how can I paint a picture of this, rather than just tell everyone what's happening? So I think that maybe just having that question in the back of my mind was really important. I also like to focus on settings that are really vibrant and familiar to me, and so I think that that helps as well.

I really tried to ask myself with every chapter, how can I paint a picture of this, rather than just tell everyone what's happening? So I think that maybe just having that question in the back of my mind was really important.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely. Those little details that add up to a whole picture of a world, right?

Kristen: That's right. Yep.

Debbi: You're just creating that experience with words. Now let's see, what else? How would you describe your books in terms of genre?

Kristen: I think that they are southern suspense, most likely. They always have a mystery at the heart of them. They're set in a small southern town, but I have had people say to me that sometimes it feels a little more like women's fiction and less like the thriller genre, which is kind of the catchall for a lot of these different subgenres. So right now, I think I would say southern suspense.

I think that they are southern suspense, most likely. They always have a mystery at the heart of them.

Debbi: That's really cool. Southern suspense.

Kristen: Yeah.

Debbi: As opposed to, say romantic suspense.

Kristen: Right. Most of my characters are involved in some kind of relationship, but there's definitely not the ... it's usually not the kind that's like, let's have a happy ending necessarily . So I don't know how romantic it always is.

Debbi: Well, I can appreciate that for sure. Definitely. What inspires you to write the stories you do?

Kristen: I mentioned the setting earlier, and I think that that actually is the first thing that comes to mind before I write. My first book was set in Galveston, which is where my husband and I lived for about three years early in our marriage when we were both still in our twenties. My second book is set in North Alabama, which is where my extended family is from. And so even though I only lived there for a few years as a child, that's where we would always travel back to for holidays. And then this third one is set in the Texas Hill Country, which is about three hours from where I live, but it's kind of one of those quick getaway vacation spots for us. So it often for me has that kind of feeling of escape in a way, and so I think that the setting is really mostly what it inspires or comes to mind first.

Debbi: Interesting. Are your books standalones or are they related in some way?

Kristen: They're all standalones. The only related element is that small town mystery in the South.

Debbi: Well, that's very interesting. So tell us about your latest book and tell us about the one before that.

Kristen: Okay.

Debbi: And if you like, tell us about the first one.

Kristen: Okay. Sounds good. So Watch It Burn is set in the Texas Hill Country and it opens with a town that is on fire. Then we backtrack about a week to lead up to how this happened. And as we backtrack, we find out that a week ago, a 65-year-old woman was found drowned in only two inches of the Guadalupe River, and many of the women in the town found this suspicious for a variety of reasons, one of which is that she was the wife of a businessman who has basically running an empire out of their town that has suspicious, cult-like undertones to it. So as they start investigating the death of this woman, his wife, they also are deciding what they need to do in order to save their town from this man and his cultish organization.

So Watch It Burn is set in the Texas Hill Country and it opens with a town that is on fire. Then we backtrack about a week to lead up to how this happened.

Debbi: Very interesting. Yeah. It's interesting that you're exploring the dark side of small town living, because I'm actually doing that myself in something I'm writing.

Kristen: Oh, really? Can you tell me about it? Not yet?

Debbi: Well, not ... really. Not yet. Because actually it's the idea for a screenplay.

Kristen: Oh, very cool.

Debbi: And I could actually turn it into a book. That would be interesting, but we're getting a little off of you. I want to talk about you.

Kristen: So I can tell you about I Love It When You Lie too, if you want.

Debbi: Yes, please do. Yes.

Kristen: That one is set, like I said, in North Alabama. It's in the Appalachian foothills where I grew up, and it is about three sisters and their beloved grandmother. Their grandmother was supposed to be celebrating her 80th birthday, but instead she passes away, and so they all come back to her house for her funeral on Decoration Day, which is a tradition that is specific to the area of the country where I grew up. It's every Sunday in May where people go and they decorate the graves of their loved ones. So they're back on Decoration Day for their grandmother's funeral. Each of them brings with them a problematic man, and before the weekend is up, one of those men will be in the grave with their grandmother.

Each of them brings with them a problematic man, and before the weekend is up, one of those men will be in the grave with their grandmother.

Debbi: Hmm. Fascinating. I am hooked already. That's great. So where are you in the process of bringing out Watch It Burn?

Kristen: It comes out next March, March 12th, so I just have proof pages left to do, most likely in November. And then just talking to people about it and hoping that people will give it a try.

Debbi: I hope they do too, because really fascinating stuff here. What authors have most inspired your writing?

Kristen: Lisa Jewell is a huge one for me. I got to actually interview her at our local bookstore, Murder By The Book, in Houston. I found out then that she was not only a great writer, but also just a lovely human being, which is always a nice surprise when you meet people you admire and they're just very kind. So, Lisa Jewell definitely. I also have some Texas authors that I really admire – May Cobb, Ashley Winstead. And then actually,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Brian Lebeau.

Check out our discussion of his debut novel A Disturbing Nature and how he's expanding the story into a series.

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.

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

Debbi: But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting.

I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice?

If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included affiliate links on this blog.

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today's guest is a native of Falls River, Massachusetts, home of Lizzie Borden, and a World War II history buff. His fiction explores the psychology of serial killers, and his first novel is called A Disturbing Nature. I'm holding it up right now. Nice cover, I have to say. He's also, I take it, a big Red Sox fan. Love it. It's my pleasure to have with me my guest, Brian Lebeau. Hi Brian. How are you doing today?

Brian: I'm doing excellent. How are you, Debbi? Thank you for having me on the show.

Debbi: I'm very happy to have you here, believe me. It's always nice to have another baseball fan on, although I have not followed baseball as religiously as I used to. I know there have been a lot of changes.

Brian: Now what team are you a fan of?

Debbi: Hmm?

Brian: What team are you a fan of?

Debbi: Well, actually I have two teams. I've got the New York Mets, because I'm originally from New York. Can't help it. Sorry about that. Really sorry about '86, but I was just so thrilled to see them win the Series, but anyway. I am located near Washington D.C. so now I'm a Nationals fan, too. Not to mention an Orioles fan when they're not playing the Nationals. It's very confusing being me . But I just wanted to thank you for being here, and also to mention that even in your bio, you talked about your longtime fascination with Lizzie Borden. What was it that drew you toward the topic of Lizzie Borden, other than living in the same area that she did?

Brian: Well, I was 11 years old, and it's actually Fall River. There's no 's' on Falls River, so it's Fall River, Massachusetts.

Debbi: Oh! Fall River!

Brian: Yes, Fall River. It's the first 30 years I was there. And when I was 11, my fifth grade class went to the Fall River Historical Society, and the Fall River Historical Society really has a heavy focus on Lizzie Borden. Has a lot of artifacts and so forth, also the Underground Railroad. But at 11 years old, it just fascinated me because I had heard the song sung, the Lizzie Borden song sung, many times in the school yard. But now I actually could see something relative to it.

And around the same time, just a few months later, I watched the World at War narrated by Lawrence Olivier. Amazing World War II documentary! And so they both kind of converged because the thought of Lizzie Borden on a small scale potentially having killed her father and the stepmother, and then looking at Hitler on a grand scale, getting others to use their hands to kill was … it just fascinated me at a young age, and so I just continued to accumulate knowledge on both World War II and at the time, mass murderers; later, serial killers.

Debbi: Interesting. So it kind of hit you at an impressionable age.

Brian: Yeah, it really did.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. What was it that led you to write A Disturbing Nature?

Brian: In 1989, I was in graduate school at Clark University, working on an economics doctorate, and I woke up in the middle of the night, about three in the morning, sweating, just sweating. I had this dream where a whole bunch of seminal events in my life kind of converged, and they had to do with my father and a neighbor that lived across the street a couple of houses down. It had to do with things that occurred while I was in undergraduate school at Marquette in Milwaukee. Just a series of things that when I looked at them all together were really kind of shocking.

But this whole story came to me in that dream. I woke up and I had to jot down like three pages of the story.

But this whole story came to me in that dream. I woke up and I had to jot down like three pages of the story. And by the way, it's not a coincidence that the young man, Mo Lumen, who has the seizure at age 11 is in fact at an intellectual capacity of 11, because that was when I was remembering the story. I was 11 years old. So he was in a sense the youthful part of my life, whereas Francis Palmer is the most cynical, middle-aged part of my life.

So he [Mo] was in a sense the youthful part of my life, whereas Francis Palmer is the most cynical, middle-aged part of my life.

Debbi: Yeah. That's interesting. I was going to ask you about 1975 and why you chose that particular year.

Brian: I was 11 years old.

Debbi: Very, very interesting. How much and what kind of research did you do while developing the story?

Brian: A ton. I'm a traveler. I love to travel. I live now in Southern California outside San Diego, and so I traveled back to Boston and Providence down to Virginia to where I was. Originally I taught ... When I was in graduate school, I was teaching at Bryant College, so that's how Bryant College enters as the scene, a major scene or the key scene in the book. I also lived in Fauquier County in Sumerduck where Mo Lumen is as a young man, before he moves to Rhode Island to become a groundskeeper at Bryant College. And so I had to go back to these places and really take a hard look at the layout, the geography, because I wanted to create a realistic version of what these locations looked like in 1975, and so I visited the Historical Societies.

I actually walked some of the properties in Virginia so I could see where they laid out, the ages of the houses where they were. Where Mo Lumen's house is in Fauquier is actually the house that I lived in while I was a defense contractor in Northern Virginia,

I actually walked some of the properties in Virginia so I could see where they laid out, the ages of the houses where they were. Where Mo Lumen's house is in Fauquier is actually the house that I lived in while I was a defense contractor in Northern Virginia, so I use that as the layout for his house. And the little store is the store that I could walk to a half a mile away that he goes to in the book. So everything is historically accurate down to the weather and the buildings that no longer exist in Providence, like the Fire and Police headquarters, is actually where it was located at that time. Some stuff is a little more difficult to collect, but I tried to be as accurate as possible, even down to the weather. So when you see the weather on a day, that was the weather of that day.

Debbi: Wow! That's being careful with your research, all right. Your story is told from multiple perspectives, which I thought was a really good way of drawing the reader in and making them guess who has the right perspective. How skewed is their perspective? Are they really seeing the truth or what are they really experiencing here? What was it like writing that? Did you write out each character and then intersperse their scenes, or did you do one scene after another after another?

Brian: Well, having lived a life of doing technical documentation largely for the government commercial clients, a lot of BCA economic analysis, it was a really big shift to starting to do literature, or at least attempting to do literature. So the first cut of the novel was over 200,000 words, and it was entirely from Mo Lumen's perspective, the young man who's got the intellectual capacity of an 11-year-old, and it was long. It was a good story. I had some professional readers, bestselling authors—one very well known—take a look at it and they said, it's a good story but you can't write it this way. And in the evolution over the course of about a year and a half, I realized that the investigator needed to be a bigger character. In fact, the four-book series is centered around the investigator, a series of different mass murderers around the country. And so I made him an almost equal character to Mo in the first novel, and that took a while to write. So they were written very much separately. Most of the Mo chapters were rewritten at that time as well.

There were eight critical mistakes, as most people do when they start writing. There were eight critical mistakes that I was making. I had to correct those, but what I was really trying to accomplish was two very distinct voices in the book. I wanted a very simple Hemingway-esque voice for Lumen. A lot of dialogue that did not exceed more than two syllables, particularly if they were coming from him. And in Palmer's case, he's Harvard educated, very intellectual, very intelligent, and I wanted his to read more like you have read Ra