This week’s guest on the Crime Cafe podcast is historical crime writer Stephen Eoannou.

Check out our discussion about the creator of the Lone Ranger!

Grab a PDF copy of the transcript here!

Debbi: Hi, everyone. My guest today has published two novels with the third coming in May of next year. Along with novels, he has written at least one short screenplay. He lives and works in Buffalo, New York, which also provides the setting and inspiration for his work. It’s my pleasure to have with me today, the award-winning author Stephen Eoannou.

Stephen: There you go.

Debbi: Did I get that right?

Stephen: Yes.

Debbi: Awesome. Fantastic. So thank you for being with us today.

Stephen: Thank you for having me.

Debbi: I’m pleased to have you on. I really enjoyed your book Rook, your debut novel. That was a very interesting story. What inspired you to write about this particular man from the FBI’s Most Wanted List?

Stephen: Yeah. I had finished my first book Muscle Cars, which is a short story collection, and I was picking around trying to find an idea for the next project, and I can remember it vividly. It was a Sunday morning. I was standing in my kitchen and I was reading the newspaper. It was spread out on the kitchen table, and I saw an article, and the title of the article in the Buffalo News was “The Strange Tale of a Buffalo Bank Robber Turned Writer”, and that immediately caught my eye, thinking this maybe is another career avenue for myself. But I started reading this article about Al Nussbaum. I had never heard of the man before, and by the end of the article, I knew that I wanted to write about him.

I was standing in my kitchen and I was reading the newspaper. It was spread out on the kitchen table, and I saw an article, and the title of the article in the Buffalo News was “The Strange Tale of a Buffalo Bank Robber Turned Writer”

I wasn’t sure it was going to be a novel or a short story or what, but I knew I wanted to learn more about this man and write about him. And what fascinated me was not only was he this kind of cerebral bank robber who approached the robberies like chess matches – which he was an avid chess player – and he’s quoted as saying that robbing banks is like chess for cash prizes, which I think is a great quote. He became a writer when he was in prison, and he was a penny-a-word guy, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock. He even was writing for Scholastic Books, if anyone’s old enough to remember Scholastic Books.

Debbi: Oh, I do

Stephen: Yeah, me too. I still have a few of them. So the man who was doing time in Leavenworth was also writing Scholastic Books. He was just a fascinating character, and he was a Buffalo guy. I had kind of decided after I completed Muscle Cars that really Buffalo, New York was going to kind of be my literary turf I was going to carve out for myself. Kind of what William Kennedy did for Albany and Richard Russo did for upstate New York, the Catskill areas. That’s what I was going to do. And so this just kind of fell in my lap and I just kind of really became intrigued with Al and his story.

Debbi: Interesting. Very interesting that you were able to find this in the local paper, right?

Stephen: Well, what it was his daughter, who’s just an infant in the novel, she was trying to do a Kickstarter campaign to gather up all her father’s short stories and anthologized them, and so the newspaper did a feature on it. And what was really great about this whole experience with Rook is that since the publication, I’ve become friends with her. She lives about two hours away. She’s a retired attorney, not a defense attorney or criminal lawyer. We’ve had coffee a few times and she’s come to a couple of my events when I’m in the Central New York region, telling me some fascinating stories about her dad that I wish I knew while I was working on the manuscript.

Debbi: Interesting. Because this is a fictionalized account of a true story, were there permissions involved in terms of using his name and so forth?

Stephen: No, and I figured the legal team at the publisher would worry about that. I just wrote it the way I wanted to write it, and no one said anything. So we’ll just keep it amongst ourselves.

Debbi: Hard to say. Hard to say what happened. Okay. Your second novel is also historical. I take it that you’re basically focused on historical writing most of the time?

Stephen: Yeah. And that wasn’t the plan; I just kind of … I’ve always enjoyed it, but you know how these things are. You kind of stumble from one … an idea finds you and next thing you know, you’ve written a story set in the early 1960s, and now there’s a story, Yesteryear, the second novel was set in the early 1930s, the book that’s coming out in May is set in 1942. The thirties and forties have always been an era that has really intrigued me primarily because of my parents, that’s when they were growing up. And so I kind of grew up listening to their stories about growing up in the Depression, the immigration experience from my father coming from Greece. Just growing up with those stories, watching old movies like The Maltese Falcon with my dad. He was 20 when The Maltese Falcon came out, so he remembers that from his youth. That was kind of my upbringing, if you will, listening to those stories and watching those movies. Next thing you know, fast forward 40 or so years, and I’m writing about those types of things now. So you never know what’s going to percolate up to the top when you’re in the creative mode.

The thirties and forties have always been an era that has really intrigued me primarily because of my parents, that’s when they were growing up. And so I kind of grew up listening to their stories about growing up in the Depression, the immigration experience from my father coming from Greece.

Debbi: Exactly. Yes, and that era is very inspiring. There’s so much from it that informs what we do today.

Stephen: Yeah, and my mom always said, she chastised me. She goes, you romanticize that period, but it was really hard. The Depression and World War. You romanticize it, and she was absolutely right. I do.

Debbi: Absolutely. I was fascinated by the subject of Yesteryear, which was a playwright that I had never known about who created the Lone Ranger. Tell us how you got interested in that.

Stephen: Another Buffalo boy, and I had never heard about him either. I was at a party or a bar somewhere where they were serving alcohol, and someone said to me, well, you know the guy who wrote the Lone Ranger is from Buffalo? And I said, no, he’s not. I would’ve known about that. I mean, Buffalo is very good about promoting any creative person who’s been successful, no matter what the connection. Mark Twain was the editor of the Courier Express newspaper for two years. He’s a Buffalo writer. We made him our own. So for someone who … because Fran wrote not only the Lone Ranger, but also the Green Hornet and Sergeant Prescott of the Yukon, so he has a huge influence on 20th century pop culture, and no one’s really heard of him.

I think because he sold the rights to the Lone Ranger for $10 before the Lone Ranger just exploded into this 90-year money making franchise. And to make matters worse, the man he sold it to for $10, George W. Trendle, who owned WXYZ radio in Detroit where the Lone Ranger was broadcast from, started claiming in the 1940s that he was the creator of the Lone Ranger, not Striker. So Fran kind of missed out on the fame as well as the fortune, because if you think about not only the radio and the TV show and the movies, think of the comic books that Fran wrote. There were a dozen or so hardback novels published in the thirties and forties that Striker wrote, the comic strips that appeared in over 200 newspapers, all the spinoff toys. The Lone Ranger is one of the first kind of crossover into marketing and spiffs and toys. So all the masks and hats and holsters and all that money bypassed Striker and went to Trendle.

I think because he sold the rights to the Lone Ranger for $10 before the Lone Ranger just exploded into this 90-year money making franchise.

When Trendle sold the rights in the mid-fifties, he sold the rights for $3 million, which was a record in the entertainment industry at that time. I think Fran was working for him up until that time as head writer at WXYZ, but he may have received a bonus from that 3 million, but certainly not the millions that Trendle made.

Debbi: Oh, my gosh. It just goes to show you the importance of owning the intellectual property.

Stephen: And you know? It’s a common story. You look at all these artists – visual artists, literary, musical. When it’s a new medium or something new like the early days of rock and roll, and you think of all the African-American early rock and rollers who were screwed terribly with their contracts and rights. It seems like every time there’s something new, a new medium, a new form, the artists are so desperate to get that work out there that they get taken advantage of.

Debbi: Yes, definitely. Yes. That is definitely true. It’s a shame. So your latest one coming out next May about the private eye named Nicholas Bishop. He has a background from World War I that he carries into the story, correct?

Stephen: He has got a lot of baggage that he carries. A lot of abandonment issues, alcoholism, he may or may not have stepped in front of a taxi cab on purpose that has left him with a limp and unable to serve in World War II. His alcoholism is out of control, and when the novel begins, he wakes up on the floor of a hotel room where he’s the house detective, because he has lost his private practice, he’s lost his secretary, who he has been in love with forever. He can’t find his car, and he wakes up on the floor after a five-day bender, can’t remember anything, and two shots were fired from his gun and the police are downstairs. They want to talk to him. And that’s how the novel begins.

His alcoholism is out of control, and when the novel begins … he wakes up on the floor after a five-day bender, can’t remember anything, and two shots were fired from his gun and the police are downstairs.

I call it my pandemic novel, even though it has nothing to do with any type of pandemic, except the one that we were going through when I wrote it. I started it right before the lockdown and finished it two years later, which is pretty quick for me because there was nothing to do except write, so that’s why it’s my pandemic novel. I was alone in a big house with a little one-eyed dog during the lockdown, and Nicholas Bishop has a one-eyed dog that he doesn’t know where it came from. He just woke up on the floor and it was there. He names the dog Jake, and finds out later it’s a female dog. So Bishop has all sorts of things going on in his life.

Debbi: Well, it sounds intriguing, I have to tell you. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Stephen: I’ve been pretty disciplined for a long time. I get up at five and I write from five to seven, every day. That’s my goal. Sometimes I can go longer. Sometimes after my day job, if I still have some creative energy, I’ll do some at night or some editing, and if I miss for whatever reason, I try to make that up on the weekend. So every morning, quarter to five, the alarm goes off or I wake up on my own, because I’ve been doing it for so long. And when I was about halfway through Rook, it was about this time of year, mid-October, early November. It was starting to get cold up here in Western New York and dark in the morning, and for like three days in a row, I just could not get out of bed and go up to my office to write. I was awake, but I just could not get out of bed. And of course, you beat yourself up about it.

And then I realized, smart guy that I am, I could just bring my laptop from my office downstairs and just put it next to my bed. And so at five o’clock, I just reach over and grab my laptop. So there’s no rituals, there’s no coffee, there’s no tea, there’s no candles, there’s no music. I just literally prop myself up on the pillows and write in bed. And that’s where I’ve been doing the majority of my writing, or splitting it up in my office.

So there’s no rituals, there’s no coffee, there’s no tea, there’s no candles, there’s no music. I just literally prop myself up on the pillows and write in bed.

Debbi: There’s a famous author that used to do that. I can’t think of his name now.

Stephen: Oh, it’s crazy stuff. Hemingway wrote standing up, Dalton Trumbo wrote in the bathtub. So for right now anyways, that’s my routine. I would like to wake up at seven, walk my little one-eyed dog and then start writing at eight, but that’s not possible right now with the day job.

Debbi: So you work around the day job. I’m impressed. Very. But how much research do you do when you write historical novels? I mean, what kind of research?

Stephen: A lot went into Yesteryear. Of the three novels, Yesteryear required the most research. Research on the early days of radio, research certainly on Fran Striker’s life, research on the Lone Ranger. I was very fortunate when Fran passed away in the early 1960s, the Striker Estate left all of his papers to the University of Buffalo, and I’m an alumni. There were about 14 cartons that they have in their special collections, and it is just a treasure trove – letters, telegraphs, handwritten manuscripts, typed manuscripts with notes on them. So I would go online – they had an inventory of the cartons – and I would put in my request that on Thursday, I would like to come in at 10 o’clock and review the contents of carton number 12. I would get to the special libraries collection at 10 o’clock, and there it would be waiting for me, and I’d put on my white gloves, and I would hold an original Lone Ranger radio script from 1932. It was just fascinating. So a lot of research went into that book. In the back of Yesteryear, there’s a bibliography, because a lot went into it.

I was very fortunate when Fran passed away in the early 1960s, the Striker Estate left all of his papers to the University of Buffalo, and I’m an alumni.

There wasn’t as much written about Al Nussbaum, but it was fun research, tracking down on eBay the young adult novels that he wrote for Scholastic books and buying those, and researching the newspapers about his career in crime and then his arrest. Just really fascinating stuff. So a lot of time spent at the downtown library going through microfiches for that novel. With After Pearl, it wasn’t as extensive. This isn’t based on any historical figure like the first two novels were, so much of the research was just about what it was life like in 1942 Buffalo, New York. What did a carton of Chesterfields cost or a gallon of gas? What nightclubs were around? I knew a few of them from my parents’ stories, but where might he hang out? So that again, was reading old newspapers, not looking for anything in particular, but just going and reading the advertisements from the department stores of that time to see what they were selling. And what was really fascinating, you read the front page from 1942, and it’s not much different than what’s going on today. The same countries, the same stories, the same local corruption. It is really kind of disheartening in that regard.

And what was really fascinating, you read the front page from 1942, and it’s not much different than what’s going on today. The same countries, the same stories, the same local corruption. It is really kind of disheartening in that regard.

Debbi: Yes. Everything old is new again, or something like that. So have you ever thought of writing a series?

Stephen: Well, it’s a funny story. So I finished After Pearl, and I had my little writing group of these wonderful women I met in grad school at the Queens University of Charlotte. So there’s Ashley Warlick who wrote The Arrangement, a great crime novelist, Carla Damron who wrote The Orchid Tattoo, her latest. Beth Johnson and Araminta Hall. And so that’s my writing group. We’ve been together forever. I sent it to Carla first and I said, Hey, can you take a look at this? And she read it, and the first question she asked was, is this a series? I said, no, it’s a standalone. I just wrote it during the lockdown. She made some suggestions. I made my corrections, sent it out to Ashley. First question she asks, is this a series? I said, no, I just wrote it during the pandemic. It’s a standalone. Going to move on to something else. I sent it to my publisher, and he comes back and says, is this a series? Because I think Netflix might like something like this.

Debbi: Oh yes!

Stephen: I said, yes, it’s a series with no idea what the second book is going to be about. But I said, absolutely. It’s a series.

Debbi: Of course it is

Stephen: And so now I’m working on the second book in the Nicholas Bishop series

Debbi: On the subject of Netflix, now that you’ve mentioned it, what about this award-winning short screenplay of yours? How did you get into screenwriting?

Stephen: It was funny. That screenplay is called Slip Kid, and it’s based on a short story. It’s kind of the centerpiece to my short story collection Muscle Cars, but originally that was going to be my first novel. It dealt with a true story. When I was 16, my parish priest was murdered in a botched robbery at the local Greek church here, and they didn’t catch the killers for a few months so it was always in the news. It turns out that they were just teenagers, 17, 18 years old that made some terrible, awful choices with huge ramifications. The novel didn’t work so I cut it down to a long short story. I still wasn’t finished with it yet. It still wouldn’t leave me.

I was, at the time, just graduating from Queens, and I had a lot of friends who were in the screenwriting program, and they were always talking about writing screenplays and what they’re working on and the challenges. I said, well, I’m going to try that, and so I bought the software and hopefully it was going to be a feature, but I couldn’t make it into a feature. It was only a short, and then I finished it, I go, well, now what do I do with it? And they said, well, just submit it for some prizes. The Denver Film Festival was having a contest and one of the categories was original short film. So I submitted it and kind of forgot about it, to be honest with you, and the next thing I know, I’m getting this email that I won. So it was a shock, but a lot of fun.

They flew me out to Denver. I got to walk the red carpet. I went to all the screenings. I’d never been to a film festival before. Andy Garcia was there.

They flew me out to Denver. I got to walk the red carpet. I went to all the screenings. I’d never been to a film festival before. Andy Garcia was there. It was just a ton of fun and something that normally would not happen to me, but it was a great thrill. I’ve written one or two screenplays since, but I haven’t done anything with them. I really see myself in it. I’ve always seen myself as a novelist, and that’s really my main pursuit right now.

Debbi: Have you ever considered writing a scripted podcast?

Stephen: I never have, but that might be interesting.

Debbi: Because that’s something I’ve considered.

Stephen: Yeah. I’ve never done that, but that’s something to think about.

Debbi: Hmm. Cool. Keep thinking about it.

Stephen: Yes, while I try to come up with the third Nicholas Bishop novel.

Debbi: Maybe Nicholas Bishop would make a great radio show, so to speak.

Stephen: Yes, absolutely.

Debbi: “So to speak”, yes because that’s what scripted podcasts basically are.

Stephen: Right, right.

Debbi: What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing for a living or just having a writing career?

Stephen: Don’t give up. It’s not original, but it took me 30 years to get my first book published. I went the traditional route because when I started out wanting to be a writer in the mid-eighties, there really wasn’t … self-publishing really was frowned upon. Right. It was a vanity press.

Don’t give up. It’s not original, but it took me 30 years to get my first book published.

Debbi: Oh boy, was it!

Stephen: It had a stigma attached to it, it was cheating, so that was never really a consideration for me. So I took the traditional route. And about that time, in the mid to late eighties, that’s when all these American novelists all around 30 were getting their first books published. Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Bret Lott, Michael Chabon, all those guys. They’re a little bit older than me. They were probably around 30, I was in my mid-twenties. I said, well, that’s going to be me. I’m in grad school, I’ll have my first novel when I’m 30. I was sure of it, and then my 30th birthday came, and then my 40th birthday came, and then my 50th birthday came.

Debbi: I know that feeling.

Stephen: I think Muscle Cars came out in 2015 when I was 52, so I was not an overnight sensation. But I was trying all those years, writing poorly, getting a lot of rejections, trying to get better at my craft. Something happened when I went to Queens, not that getting an MFA is the answer for a writing career, but I think what it was, was for the first time I was surrounded by a group of writers and I found my group that you could share work with and get feedback and give feedback in an honest and constructive way. And like I said, that group that I’ve been together with, those women I mentioned earlier, it’s been over 10 years now that we’ve been doing this. That I think made a huge difference, having that network which I never had.

I tried to get into different writing groups throughout the years, but usually I was the one who took it the most seriously. Most of them were there for the food and the wine, which I enjoyed, but when you tell me I wrote this story on the bus ride this morning, how good is it going to be? Or how valuable is your critique going to be if you just did it on the ride over to the workshop or meeting? So it took me a long time to find my network, my group, and once I did that, and plus you do anything for 30 years, you get better eventually. So I think the two all came together at Queens and that really kind of set me on this path that I’m on. So the last 10 years have just been for me, an explosion of creativity and productivity.

Debbi: That’s fantastic. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Stephen: No, except maybe go to my website, which is SGeoannou.com. There’s a ton of information about that, about my books and my bio and appearances. But I always say the most important part of my webpage is the final tab, and that’s the contact page, so any readers out there who want to have me come to their book club, or if they just want to ask me questions or just drop me a note, I answer all of them. It’s the best part really when you get an email from someone who’s curious about your work and what you’re doing. I love that. So I encourage everyone to go out there.

Debbi: That’s excellent. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Stephen: Oh, thank you. I had fun.

Debbi: It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

Stephen: Oh, it was great.

Debbi: Thanks. With that, I will just say thank you for listening and, if you would, if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. They help with the algorithms. It’s so nice to be judged by bits and bytes of data, isn’t it? Anyway, these things do help so please leave a review if you enjoyed the episode. And we also have a Patreon page with benefits for patrons, so please check it out. Until next time, when our guest will be Dan Flanagan, take care and happy reading.

*****

Enjoy the show? Consider becoming a patron!

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with paleontologist and crime writer Leonard “Kris” Krystalka.

Check out his reading from The Bone Field!

Grab a PDF copy of the transcript here!

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is both a professional paleontologist and a novelist. He writes the Henry Przewalski – is that correct, I hope? Przewalski?

Leonard: Literally, it reads as Przewalski but it’s actually a Russian-Polish name, named for the discoverer of Przewalski’s horse, that small kind of dwarfish horse that lives wild on the Asian steppes. So it’s pronounced in the Russian sense.

Debbi: Got it. All right. I’ll try to remember that. It’s my pleasure to have him with me today. It’s Leonard Krystalka, who goes by Kris. Like Kris Kristofferson, may he rest in peace.

Leonard: May he rest in peace. A terrific person.

Debbi: Indeed. Yes.

Leonard: Yes. Wonderful artist.

Debbi: He was, yes. I want to thank you for being here so much. It’s good to have you on. Tell us about Harry Przewalski. I almost screwed that up again. How much did you draw from your own experiences in creating him?

Leonard: A great deal. I named Harry Przewalski as a homage to the study of the life of the past and the study of present biodiversity. So, Przewalski’s horse is this miniature horse that roams wild on the steppes of Asia. It almost became extinct by over hunting, and in World War II, the German soldiers ate what is reputed to be some of the last Przewalski’s horses in a zoo in Poland. But enough were saved to repopulate the wild steppes of Asia.

Przewalski’s horse is this miniature horse that roams wild on the steppes of Asia. It almost became extinct by over hunting, and in World War II, the German soldiers ate what is reputed to be some of the last Przewalski’s horses in a zoo in Poland.

Debbi: Interesting. Did you choose that name deliberately?

Leonard: I did. I chose it deliberately, although it’s hard to pronounce, and as a homage to the paleontological studies of the evolutionary history of life on Earth, the three billion year history of life on Earth.

Debbi: That is so cool. How many books do you have in the series, and how many do you plan to write? Or do you have a plan for the series?

Leonard: There are four books now in the Harry Przewalski series. There’s THE BONE FIELD, DEATH SPOKE, THE CAMEL DRIVER, and the newest one just published this year called NATIVE BLOOD. I have a fifth novel, which is not in that series. It’s a historical fiction of a murder that occurred in Lawrence, Kansas in 1871. A doctor accused of murdering his patient because he was having an affair with the patient’s wife. The doctor was arrested and the resulting trial was equivalent to … imagine the OJ Simpson trial in 1871 in Kansas. You have sex, you have murder, you have adultery.

It attracted reporters of every single newspaper in the country from San Francisco, from Chicago, from St. Louis, from New York, Washington, Detroit, and so forth. This is 1871 Kansas. It’s only six years after the end of the Civil War. So the trial was a national sensation, and one of the Lawrence women becomes the heroine. She talks the editor of one of the Lawrence newspapers into hiring her as the first woman correspondent west of the Mississippi. She covers the trial and solves the murder.

Debbi: Wow.

Leonard: She also fights for women’s rights. She fights for suffrage for women and blacks. Yeah, she’s quite a woman.

Debbi: And which book is this again?

Leonard: This is called THE BODY ON THE BED. I could hold it up for viewers to see.

Debbi: That’s very cool. I noticed that book was outside the series.

Leonard: Yeah, it is. I’m writing the sequel to that now. It’s called The Body on the Bricks. She is the heroine of that book as well. But your original question was about the Przewalski series of which there are now four, and yes, there may well be a fifth.

Debbi: Fantastic. Do you see yourself ending this series in a particular way, or do you just think you’re going to keep writing them?

Leonard: That’s a really good question. Yeah, I do see myself ending the Przewalski series in a way that does poetic justice to Harry’s character, how he thinks, how he acts, and when he would take off his gun and put it away somewhere and say, I’m going to do something else.

I do see myself ending the Przewalski series in a way that does poetic justice to Harry’s character, how he thinks, how he acts, and when he would take off his gun and put it away somewhere and say, I’m going to do something else.

Debbi: Yeah. So putting up the guns and retiring at some point.

Leonard: Correct.

Debbi: In what ways does your protagonist differ from you?

Leonard: Well, Harry is not me. Of course, as with any writer, there are parts of you that you cannot help but insert into characters – experience, emotions, the way one thinks, senses of humor, senses of tragedy. In all of those ways, yes, there are parts of Harry that come from my life and my experience. But there’s a great deal to Harry that isn’t like me. So, for example, Harry was a student of paleontology and quit when his fiancé, who was a social worker, was brutally raped and murdered by a social misfit. He left his studies. He went to volunteer for a war in Iraq. He came back with a gun and a license to detect. That’s not me.

Debbi: So he’s a veteran.

Leonard: Yes.

Debbi: Wow. Yeah. That will have an effect on you.

Leonard: And he uses his skills that he learned by thinking as a paleontologist about those scarce clues, about a bone here, a tooth there or a skull there, to piece together the evolution of life on earth. He uses those skills of piecing together clues from different spheres to solve murder mysteries, which are all wrapped inside science intrigues as well.

He uses those skills of piecing together clues from different spheres to solve murder mysteries, which are all wrapped inside science intrigues as well.

So for example, The Bone Field investigates a paleontologist who is murdered for scientific glory, for fame, for one of the fault lines in the human condition that I like to write about. I think the job of every novelist is to explore the fault lines in the human condition, and the mystery genre, the hardboiled mystery genre, is a perfect vehicle for exploring those fault lines. So in The Bone Field, I quote John Wolcott, a Scottish satirist who wrote “the rage for fame infects both great and small! Better be damned than mentioned not at all.” That infects a great deal of science intrigues. So there’s a great deal of paleontological intrigue, geological intrigue, and of course, murder and betrayal in The Bone Field.

In the second book, in Death Spoke, the scientific intrigue is the archeology of prehistoric art. Who painted the spectacular bison and deer and horses and mammoths and the caves of France 12,000 to 34,000 years ago? And why didn’t they paint in those caves? Why didn’t they paint the outside environment? Sky, clouds, trees, grass, water, lakes, streams? There is an answer to that, which you will not hear in archeology class, but if your audience wants to read Death Spoke, they’ll find out the answer to that question.

Debbi: Fascinating. That really is fascinating. I’m intrigued by the science here. How much scientific detail do you include in your books?

Leonard: A great deal, but the trick in writing the scientific parts is interweaving the murder story, the detective story with the scientific mystery, so that the two are inseparable and both of them are page turners.

Debbi: Exactly. Yeah.

Leonard: So that one compliments the other. So in what I just mentioned about the novel Death Spoke, the solution to the mystery of who were the artists and why did they paint art in the deepest recesses of the caves, and why only those four animals in almost 99% of the caves, that mystery is interwoven with solving the murder mystery.

Debbi: That is really cool. That is so cool. Have you ever thought of writing a mystery with dinosaur bones for kids?

Leonard: That’s a really good question. I used to make up stories for my kids and not read it, but relate it at bedtime. And they loved those stories. I wish I’d written them down, and they did have dinosaurs. Yes.

Debbi: Oh my gosh, because kids seem to love dinosaurs, and I thought right away that you’d be a natural at telling that kind of story.

Leonard: Yes, they do.

Debbi: Wow. Do you work full-time as a paleontologist?

Leonard: I did work full-time as a paleontologist. I don’t anymore. I go into the field once in a while, still excavating dinosaurs and other fossils in Montana, but I am not a professional paleontologist any longer in terms of publishing in the field, writing scientific articles and so forth. I’ve switched from that to writing about paleontology and archeology especially, in my mystery novels.

Debbi: That’s really interesting and cool. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Leonard: I don’t, and I wish I was disciplined enough to keep a writing schedule, then I would finish a novel in six months or a year, rather than take two years to write a novel. It’s easy to procrastinate. It’s easy to do other things that one enjoys. Reading. I’m an avid cyclist, so I do a great deal of cycling that takes a great deal of time. I like to camp and so on.

Debbi: That’s great. That’s wonderful actually. What was it that drew you to the field of paleontology?

Leonard: Say that again.

Debbi: What was it that drew you to the field of paleontology?

Leonard: That’s a good question. There are two passions that made me a paleontologist. First was the passion of ideas, and in many ways, my novels are about those ideas. Paleontology asks ultimate questions. What triggered the myriad explosions and extinctions of life on the planet during the past 3 billion years? That’s an ultimate question. Hundreds of millions of species came and went on land and in the waters, from the tiny one celled algae, all the way to the dinosaur that everybody knows – Tyrannosaurus Rex. So basal to that answer is the tree of life. And as a paleontologist I try to decipher that 3 billion year tree of life on Earth.

The other answer was the passion of place. The Badlands, where the rocks are preserved in a row, wrote all the answers to the ultimate questions that paleontology asks. It’s only in the Badlands that you find all those fossils. And for me, the Badlands are primeval. Those canyons, stark rubble strewn, the buttes rising in stacked layers of red and gray and blue, much like people would see in the Grand Canyon. Every time you find a fossil, you can imagine that the earth itself has bled from the red rocks. As a city kid – I was born and raised in Montreal in Canada – so as a city kid, when I first saw the Badlands, I was seduced by their beauty. And for me, it was a beauty so terrible that it hurt the heart.

Debbi: I know the feeling. I am originally from New York City, and then I moved to Fresno, California, and it was like, oh, look at this place. No big tall buildings. I feel like I’m out in the open at last.

Leonard: Right, right.

Debbi: Yeah. It’s almost a shock, almost a culture shock to go from that to Fresno, California. What authors do you like to read, and what authors have inspired your writing?

Leonard: That is a great question. Let’s see. I actually have a list because I don’t want to leave anybody out. Who do I like to read? I grew up on Rex Stout and his Nero Wolfe mysteries. I used to reread them every few years. The stories are entertaining. They’re almost mannered. They’re set in New York where you’re from, but what stayed with me when I read them was Rex Stout’s craft as a writer, as a storyteller. I also read all of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Cain. They introduced me to that streetwise, hard-boiled detective. The private eye, the simple short, declarative sentence. Ernest Hemingway introduced me to that as well, the wisecrack. And it also revealed how the gritty alleys of Los Angeles and other cities are perfect settings to fester the strands of human rot, and to tell the story of the gritty underbelly of human life and the human condition. This is why the detective story is so perfect.

I continued reading Ross Macdonald, James Crumley, whose prose is unmatched. For readers out there, the best dialogue, the absolute master of dialogue is Elmore Leonard. Boy, he paints his characters, their plots, the emotions, their psyches. He paints it with their words, how they speak, their expressions, their syncopation. When I read these authors, I find myself envious saying, damn, I wish I’d written that sentence.

The same holds for – of course, Elmore Leonard is dead, but the same holds for current writers. Ian Rankin, Lawrence Block, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy. Readers can’t go wrong. If you’re an aspiring detective writer, start with James Crumley. Start with A Kiss Before Dying and then go on.

Debbi: It’s been ages since I’ve read that, and I have to go back and look at it again, because boy, that name. James Crumley. I remember.

Leonard: In The Bone Field, I paid homage to him because I named the sheriff of a town in Wyoming after him. His name is Crumley.

Debbi: Oh, cool. Very cool. I love the way you said that the private eye novel, the hardboiled detective novel, is the perfect type of book to show the fault lines in the human condition. I think “fault lines in the human condition” has to be one of my favorite phrases.

Leonard: Right.

Debbi: That is so great.

Leonard: So if I could elaborate on that. My novels are classified as and we’re talking about them as murder mysteries, archeological thrillers, paleontological thrillers, and they fit the stereotype. There are murders committed, there are murders solved, there’s a private detective and so on. But the mystery classification is simplistic. For me – and I’m saying this for all your readers, all your listeners – for me, the best works in the mystery genre, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, I’ve talked about them before, James Crumley, Dorothy L. Sayers, they are much more than whodunits. They explore the fault lines in the human condition, and the best ones are as good as the classics in literature.

[F]or me, the best works in the mystery genre, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, I’ve talked about them before, James Crumley, Dorothy L. Sayers, they are much more than whodunits. They explore the fault lines in the human condition, and the best ones are as good as the classics in literature.

Mystery novels, private eye novels, they have the reputation of B-literature. I disagree with that entirely. It’s just like Humphrey Bogart films used to be called B-films, but now they’re rated just as classic as all the other classics. So the best mystery/private eye novels explore the same fault lines in the human condition as the classics in literature. The book of Job, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tony Morrison’s Beloved, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Those all made impressions on me. So in the best mysteries, just like in the classics and literature, their characters are just as flawed, just as heroic. The relationships are just as conflicted. The seven deadly sins are just as deadly, and the stories expose the same gritty underbelly of life.

Debbi: Yes. It seems like your books, the scientific part of it can even border a little on philosophy there.

Leonard: Correct, correct.

Debbi: Quite a bit actually.

Leonard: Yes. There’s quite a bit of philosophy and I don’t hesitate to kind of throw a couple of philosophical thoughts in. For example, I can read a small portion of The Bone Field where Harry likens geology to the human condition. He’s standing in the Badlands and he’s thinking, he’s looking over them.

There’s quite a bit of philosophy and I don’t hesitate to kind of throw a couple of philosophical thoughts in.

“Weathering was ceaseless. This endless war of attrition between earth and sun and wind and rain. The land trying to stay in equilibrium with the elements and failing. It was like the geology of a love affair, Harry thought. The silent abrasion of its intimate contours to a flat, monochromatic terrain. So in many ways, our life, human relationships are as much like the Grand Canyon, exposed to the elements, being eroded grain by grain, by grain, ultimately failing.”

Debbi: Ooh, that’s beautiful. Have you ever thought about doing voice acting or audiobook reading?

Leonard: I did record The Bone Field as an audiobook. It’s available as an audiobook, and I’ve also recorded The Body on the Bed, but it is not out yet.

Debbi: What a great voice!

Leonard: Thank you. Thank you.

Debbi: It’s beautiful. Beautiful writing, too.

Leonard: Thank you.

Debbi: What advice would you give to anyone who wants a writing career?

Leonard: That too is a great question. I would say rule number one: take chances. Art and science, the writing, the crafting of a novel, that art and the science of that art, art and science are subversive storytelling. They’re the risky search for uncomfortable truth, and that’s what those novels should explore. Uncomfortable truth. Writing a novel isn’t meant to be comfortable. I’m going to quote George Orwell. “Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.”

Debbi: I love that.

Leonard: And for me, what always happens … I think of the novel as an unbridled horse, a horse you cannot control. The novel is the wagon, and the horse is pulling the wagon, and you’re sitting on the wagon. Suddenly the horse goes down an alley that was unexpected, unexplored. Let your writing violate the storyboard if you use one. Go off the storyboard. I don’t use the storyboard. I let the horse and the wagon drag me where it does, and those alleys unexplored are the most rewarding moments of writing. Like many other authors would say, let your voice emerge naturally, unforced. Don’t try to imitate anybody else’s voice. Don’t worry about being off-key. You can always put it back into the key when you edit, but just let it flow.

I think of the novel as an unbridled horse, a horse you cannot control. The novel is the wagon, and the horse is pulling the wagon, and you’re sitting on the wagon.

Be smart, be scrupulous, be forthright. Like Steinbeck said, the discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. Be honest. Don’t be stupid. Do your research. Write what you know, know what you write. Immerse yourself in the research that goes into the novel. My advice and one I try and follow for every writer, when you write your novel, make readers want to pause at every sentence or at most sentences and say to themselves, damn, I wish I’d written that sentence because every elegant sentence is for me, a novel’s literary heaven, because otherwise, as William Styron quipped, writing is hell.

Debbi: Well, on that note, I just want to say thank you, and is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Leonard: No. The act of writing is one of the most enjoyable and painful. Writing is hell, but writing is also heaven bound.

Debbi: I hate to write, but I love to have written, as Dorothy Parker once put it. Well, I just want to thank you again for being here. It was great talking to you. I could talk to you for hours, probably about this whole subject.

Leonard: Thank you very much. Thank you for this podcast. I really appreciate it.

Debbi: It’s my pleasure, believe me. So everybody, if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review if you would on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you are a regular listener, check out our Patreon page. My work is up there. I’ve got samples of my work, ad-free episodes, and bonus episodes as well. So with that, I will just say, until next time, I’ll be seeing you and take care. Enjoy a good book. Happy reading and talk to you later.

*****

If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll get more if you become a patron!

 

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe features another story from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.

This episode comes to you ad-free. Relatively. 🙂

The following is an unedited AI-generated transcript. Does an awesome job, huh? 🙂

(00:00:12):
Hi, everyone.

(00:00:14):
This is The Crime Café, your podcasting source of great crime suspense and thriller writing.

(00:00:20):
I’m your host, Debbi Mack.

(00:00:22):
Before I bring on my guest,

(00:00:23):
I’ll just remind you that The Crime Café has two e-books for sale,

(00:00:28):
the nine-book box set and the short story anthology.

(00:00:31):
You can find the buy links for both on my website, debbiemack.com, under the Crime Café link.

(00:00:38):
If you’d like to

(00:00:39):
You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter.

(00:00:45):
You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon,

(00:00:49):
along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

(00:00:53):
Unfortunately, our scheduled guest was unable to make it this week.

(00:00:58):
However,

(00:00:58):
I have instead another episode from the files of Philip Marlowe,

(00:01:02):
Private Eye,

(00:01:04):
Daring Young Dame on the Flying Trapeze.

(00:01:06):
Enjoy!

(00:01:11):
For the safety of your smile, use Pepsodent twice a day, see your dentist twice a year.

(00:01:27):
Lever Brothers Company presents the Pepsodent program,

(00:01:30):
The Adventures of Philip Marlowe,

(00:01:32):
starring Van Heflin.

(00:01:40):
Pepsodent presents Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s famous private detective.

(00:01:45):
You’ve seen him on the screen in Lady and the Lake,

(00:01:47):
Murder,

(00:01:47):
My Sweet,

(00:01:48):
The Brasher Doubloon,

(00:01:49):
and The Big Sleep.

(00:01:50):
Now Pepsodent brings you the adventures of Philip Marlowe on the air and starring

(00:01:55):
MGM’s brilliant and dynamic young actor,

(00:01:57):
Van Heflin.

(00:01:59):
Pepsodent

(00:02:15):
There comes a certain time in the year when I don’t want to see midget auto races.

(00:02:19):
I just want to see midgets.

(00:02:21):
When I prefer sawdust to stardust, and popcorn to all other kinds of corn available in Hollywood.

(00:02:28):
The circus was moving in on the grounds at Washington Boulevard and Hill Street,

(00:02:32):
and I was turning in my usual fine job as sidewalk supervisor.

(00:02:37):
It was exciting.

(00:02:38):
It brought back all the sounds and sensations and convictions of childhood.

(00:02:43):
And then someone had me firmly by the wrist,

(00:02:45):
and I turned to look into a pair of steady,

(00:02:47):
smoky,

(00:02:48):
dark eyes that could be dangerous.

(00:02:51):
Excuse me, sir, but you are a private detective?

(00:02:54):
I’m a detective, but I don’t get much privacy.

(00:02:57):
Yeah, my name is Ralph Tassinari.

(00:03:00):
Who told you I was a detective?

(00:03:01):
My feet aren’t that flat.

(00:03:03):
Do you know a gentleman named Al Sicanolfi?

(00:03:06):
Well, I know an Al Sicanolfi.

(00:03:08):
He pointed you out.

(00:03:09):
He asked me what was the big idea.

(00:03:11):
What was my angle hiring a private detective?

(00:03:13):
He gave me an idea.

(00:03:14):
When has Al Sicanolfi had any ideas to spare?

(00:03:17):
Mr. Marlowe, besides owning one-third of this very fine little circus, I am Tassinari.

(00:03:23):
Of Tassinari, the Swede, and Glorian.

(00:03:26):
Trafisto.

(00:03:27):
The most brilliant aerial act in the business.

(00:03:29):
I own this circus with Glorian and the Swede.

(00:03:32):
Well, where does Al Sicanolfi fit in here?

(00:03:34):
Now, the Swede gets drunk and gambles fantastic sums of money.

(00:03:38):
This circus is worth a quarter of a million dollars.

(00:03:40):
Already, the Swede has gambled away much more than his third of the circus.

(00:03:44):
And a partner may sell out his other partners without even consulting them.

(00:03:48):
Oh, you’re afraid the Swede will sell you out to pay for his debts.

(00:03:50):
Yeah, and if he did that, I should not hesitate to… Uh-oh, watch yourself.

(00:03:58):
Uh, I’ll take it off.

(00:04:00):
It has made it plain that the gamblers expect payment immediately.

(00:04:04):
Would you consider giving us your protection during the three days we’re going to be here?

(00:04:09):
$25 a day in expenses.

(00:04:10):
That’s the nut.

(00:04:12):
Cheap enough.

(00:04:13):
I know, but you see, I’m a sucker for circuses.

(00:04:28):
Yeah?

(00:04:28):
Is this the office of Philip Marlowe?

(00:04:30):
Better still, this is Philip Marlowe.

(00:04:34):
Didn’t he?

(00:04:35):
Go ahead.

(00:04:35):
This is his partner, Glorianne.

(00:04:37):
I’m in a downtown bar with a Swede, and he’s terribly drunk.

(00:04:40):
I know this isn’t your job, but won’t you come down and help me get him sobered up for the night?

(00:04:45):
Please?

(00:04:46):
All right.

(00:04:47):
Mother Marlowe will be right down.

(00:04:48):
I found the Main Street bar where Glorianne said I’d find her and the Swede.

(00:05:01):
The Swede was potted like Grandma’s begonia.

(00:05:04):
And with the help of the bartender and four professional loafers, we got him into my car.

(00:05:09):
I told Gloria to drive.

(00:05:10):
Ah, ah, lay me alone, will you?

(00:05:12):
I’m all right.

(00:05:13):
Well, just take it easy.

(00:05:14):
Where shall I drive, Mr. Marlowe?

(00:05:15):
Jordan Street Receiving Hospital.

(00:05:17):
I’ll stay back here and wrestle the Swede for the championship.

(00:05:20):
I just left him alone for an hour to do some shopping.

(00:05:25):
I’m telling you something, honey girl.

(00:05:27):
That Tesson there, he makes any more passes at you, I’ll beat him brainless.

(00:05:31):
Oh, please don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Marlowe.

(00:05:34):
He thinks everyone at this circus is in love with me.

(00:05:36):
Okay, now back in your seat, Roger.

(00:05:37):
Yeah, yeah, and that flip doctor, too.

(00:05:39):
Oh, be still.

(00:05:40):
I’m telling you something, honey girl.

(00:05:42):
One of these days,

(00:05:43):
I’m going to get absent-minded on that trapeze,

(00:05:46):
and I’m not going to catch you,

(00:05:47):
friend Tassinari.

(00:05:48):
How’s that, huh?

(00:05:49):
Don’t listen to him, Mr. Marlowe.

(00:05:50):
Well, then tell muscles to let go of my ear.

(00:05:53):
Yeah, perfect crime.

(00:05:56):
Who’d know it was an accident or not?

(00:05:58):
And then I’d own half a circus instead of just a third.

(00:06:02):
Please, Mr. Marlowe.

(00:06:02):
He’s drunk.

(00:06:03):
Yeah, but drunk or sober, you’ve got one doozy of an idea there.

(00:06:06):
Drunk or sober.

(00:06:07):
Hey, my wrist.

(00:06:08):
Watch that.

(00:06:14):
I knew some interns at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital who obliged with some oxygen and a mask.

(00:06:21):
A half hour of breathing that oxygen deeply in the Swede was stone cold sober and back in my car again.

(00:06:26):
He was making certain cagey explanations.

(00:06:31):
Uh, Marlowe, you don’t want to take that stuff I was mumbling about seriously, you know, I…

(00:06:37):
I was drunk.

(00:06:38):
You certainly were.

(00:06:39):
After all, Gloria Ann’s my wife.

(00:06:41):
Oh?

(00:06:42):
Naturally, I don’t like other guys giving her the eye.

(00:06:45):
But that screwy talk about me dropping Tassinari accidentally on purpose.

(00:06:49):
Oh, forget it.

(00:06:50):
Oh, no.

(00:06:51):
Yeah, the perfect crime.

(00:06:53):
I was only talking, Marlowe.

(00:06:55):
I wouldn’t do that to Tassinari.

(00:06:56):
Of course not.

(00:06:57):
He’d be all broken up about it, wouldn’t he?

(00:07:07):
I sat in a field box that evening at this small, neat circus unwound toward the big act.

(00:07:13):
And the big moment arrived with butterflies warming up in my stomach and a pulse

(00:07:19):
thumping madly in my neck.

(00:07:41):
on the high trapeze.

(00:07:46):
Ladies and gentlemen,

(00:07:49):
the living and justifying Passaneri and the Swede came bounding into the arena and

(00:08:00):
over to the two spidery ladders that zoomed up into the very peak of the big tent.

(00:08:04):
Up there where it was hot, high, and dangerous.

(00:08:07):
Two magnificently made men climbing that slim ladder.

(00:08:11):
Their brilliant capes flowing behind them, going up higher, smaller, higher.

(00:08:16):
And then… They were on their tiny platforms, removing their capes grandiosely.

(00:08:21):
And they turned, faced each other across the void like divers.

(00:08:25):
Not a voice, not a breath, not a sound.

(00:08:28):
I began to perspire.

(00:08:31):
The net was being gathered back…

(00:08:36):
Then suddenly,

(00:08:37):
Passaneri raised his right arm and smiled,

(00:08:40):
dropped his arm,

(00:08:41):
and the Swedes shot out into space like a comet,

(00:08:43):
and the gay,

(00:08:44):
waltzing,

(00:08:45):
somehow insane music began.

(00:08:47):
The End

(00:08:57):
It was all the announcer said, at least to me.

(00:08:59):
Daring and terrifying.

(00:09:01):
Whirl and spin and contact.

(00:09:04):
Swing, swing, swing and spin.

(00:09:08):
Spinning and whirling, contact and break.

(00:09:11):
Hands locked to rosined hands, contact and break.

(00:09:14):
Spin, whirl, cartwheel and contact.

(00:09:18):
Swing, swing, swing, and leap.

(00:09:22):
Split second timing and the split second split again,

(00:09:25):
with crappies bars flying into place where and when they were needed.

(00:09:28):
I left away my head drumming and swimming.

(00:09:32):
And I looked up again.

(00:09:33):
I looked up and the thing that had been tying my stomach in cold hard knots,

(00:09:37):
the thing I was afraid of,

(00:09:38):
happened.

(00:09:39):
Look out!

(00:09:49):
The music played a gay tune.

(00:09:51):
The clowns poured into the arena, grinning happily.

(00:09:54):
I saw the youngish, handsome doctor race across the sawdust, followed by Gloria.

(00:09:59):
Across the arena, I saw Al Sicanolfi get up and disappear into the crowd.

(00:10:04):
I went out, too.

(00:10:11):
Outside, I managed to get a shaking match to a quaking cigarette.

(00:10:17):
In my mind, I heard again and again the drunken voice of the flying Swede come back to me.

(00:10:23):
One of these days,

(00:10:24):
I’m going to get abso-minded on that trapeze,

(00:10:26):
and I’m not going to catch your friend,

(00:10:28):
Tassinari.

(00:10:29):
How’s that, huh?

(00:10:30):
Only it was all wrong.

(00:10:31):
It didn’t add up.

(00:10:33):
Because the body that had plummeted to the ground hadn’t been the body of Ralph Tassinari.

(00:10:38):
but of the man who had plotted the perfect crime, Gloriana’s husband, the flying Swede.

(00:10:51):
Mother.

(00:10:52):
What?

(00:10:52):
Oh.

(00:10:53):
Oh.

(00:10:56):
You were in there?

(00:10:57):
Yes, I saw it, Gloria.

(00:10:59):
I think I could kill Ralph for this.

(00:11:02):
You think Tassinari dropped your husband purposely?

(00:11:04):
What do you think?

(00:11:06):
Look, Lorraine, I took this job, you know why.

(00:11:10):
Well, all this reminded me of myself when I was a kid reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and believing.

(00:11:15):
Well, I still believe in him.

(00:11:17):
I felt the same way about the circus.

(00:11:20):
The last childish illusions.

(00:11:21):
The man holds on to you so he doesn’t get too hard.

(00:11:24):
You’re not tough at all, are you?

(00:11:27):
I was going to like this job, and then this happened.

(00:11:31):
Do you know what I’m talking about?

(00:11:33):
Yes, sir.

(00:11:34):
I’m sorry we failed.

(00:11:38):
Look, Lorraine, the Swede is dead and you think Tassinari killed him, but it’s the perfect crime.

(00:11:42):
You can’t prove anything.

(00:11:44):
Look,

(00:11:44):
maybe I didn’t love the Swede very much,

(00:11:46):
but he was my husband and on the square…

(00:11:48):
Did you love Tassinari?

(00:11:49):
If I did, it’s all over now.

(00:11:51):
I’m going to prove to everybody in circus business at least that he killed my husband.

(00:11:54):
Yeah, well, how?

(00:11:56):
You’ll see, little boy.

(00:11:57):
Good night.

(00:11:59):
Good night.

(00:12:06):
I watched her go back into the big tent,

(00:12:09):
and then I drove home and dreamed all night of Al Saganolfi smiling his yellow

(00:12:13):
smile and disappearing into the crowd.

(00:12:17):
I got up late and went down for coffee in a newspaper.

(00:12:20):
The story was there on page one.

(00:12:22):
Also,

(00:12:23):
a silky,

(00:12:23):
leggy picture of Gloriana beneath it,

(00:12:25):
the caption reading,

(00:12:27):
Show must go on,

(00:12:28):
dares high trapeze in the passenary after mate falls to death.

(00:12:33):
I looked at my watch.

(00:12:33):
It was late, later than I thought.

(00:12:36):
For the daring young dame on the flying trapeze, it was almost too late.

(00:12:50):
You are listening to The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, starring Van Heflin.

(00:12:55):
Yes, families all over America have named their favorite toothpaste.

(00:12:58):
New Pepsodent with invigorating irium foam.

(00:13:02):
New, fresh-tasting Pepsodent with the new, cool, minty flavors.

(00:13:06):
It’s the three-to-one favorite over all other toothpastes in recent home tests.

(00:13:11):
So why not have your family try New Peptidon, the only toothpaste containing irium?

(00:13:17):
Get it without delay.

(00:13:26):
We continue with the adventures of Philip Marlowe,

(00:13:28):
created by Raymond Chandler and starring Van Heflin,

(00:13:31):
who appears by arrangement with Metro-Golden-Mare.

(00:13:34):
Producers of The Hucksters, starring Clark Gable.

But first, let me remind you that the podcast offers membership benefits on Patreon.

Check out Patreon today. After you buy your toothpaste.

(00:13:47):
The Lion Act was going on when I arrived at the circus grounds and practically ran to Gloria Ann’s tent.

(00:13:53):
She was in her tights and cloak ready to go on.

(00:13:56):
Look, Gloria Ann, you’re kidding.

(00:13:58):
This is a gag.

(00:13:59):
You’re not going up there.

(00:14:00):
One minute, little boy.

(00:14:01):
Well, you’re out of your mind.

(00:14:02):
I’m going up with Pastor Nari to prove you to killed a thief.

(00:14:05):
You add that up.

(00:14:06):
My arms are full of bundles.

(00:14:07):
Pastor Nari agreed to go up with me.

(00:14:10):
Why?

(00:14:11):
Why aren’t his nerves shattered after yesterday?

(00:14:13):
Because he knows he didn’t make a mistake yesterday.

(00:14:16):
He knows he dropped my husband purposely.

(00:14:17):
And not because his timing or reactions were wrong.

(00:14:20):
Do I make sense?

(00:14:22):
Up to a point.

(00:14:23):
You’re thinking he may drop me.

(00:14:25):
And I wouldn’t like that.

(00:14:27):
He won’t drop me.

(00:14:28):
What makes you so sure?

(00:14:29):
Because Tosinari loves me.

(00:14:32):
He wants me.

(00:14:33):
Does that make sense?

(00:14:35):
Yeah.

(00:14:36):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

(00:14:39):
Well, go to it, little girl.

(00:14:50):
I watched Glorianne so small and slim and fragile as she went up that thin ladder.

(00:14:55):
My throat swelled tight and the butterflies took off in my stomach again.

(00:15:02):
She was on the platform, removing her silk cape, folding it carefully over the rail.

(00:15:06):
They were facing each other, smiling.

(00:15:09):
Smiling.

(00:15:11):
Dead, sultry silence.

(00:15:13):
Then…

(00:15:25):
For minutes, I sat there, petrified, watching her cold sweat channel down my back.

(00:15:32):
For ten minutes, I stopped breathing.

(00:15:34):
I died.

(00:15:36):
Once, only once, I had to close my eyes.

(00:15:38):
And in that second, I heard the crowd roar.

(00:15:46):
Everyone was standing up, screaming and goggle-eyed.

(00:15:49):
I groped to my feet, and there she was.

(00:15:53):
Bowing and laughing and throwing kisses into the crowd and at Tassinari and at me.

(00:15:58):
Then she pirouetted and ran up the ramp to her dressing tent.

(00:16:05):
I got there with Tassinari.

(00:16:06):
Her eyes warmed for me and then froze again for Tassinari.

(00:16:11):
Come in, little boy.

(00:16:12):
And you, Tassinari.

(00:16:15):
Tassinari?

(00:16:16):
Ralph also is a name I bear.

(00:16:18):
Today I talk to Tassinari.

(00:16:20):
Now I want Mr. Moller to hear what I have to say to you.

(00:16:23):
Which is first that I’m through with you.

(00:16:25):
Corianne, not because of the accident.

(00:16:28):
Yes, but because it was not an accident.

(00:16:32):
You don’t believe that?

(00:16:33):
May I suggest that maybe Al Sicanolfi has a meaty part in this picture?

(00:16:37):
No.

(00:16:38):
Hasanari here killed a Swede.

(00:16:40):
Corianne, that’s not true.

(00:16:41):
Dr. Stowe seems to think as I do.

(00:16:44):
Ah, yes, Dr. Stowe.

(00:16:46):
I did pass your tent last night after the accident.

(00:16:49):
Accident?

(00:16:50):
I heard you and the kaffite unsuccessful doctor speaking together, oh, so intimately.

(00:16:55):
Bear your insult, Hasanari.

(00:16:57):
Speaking together, deciding conveniently, perhaps, that I’d kill a Swede.

(00:17:02):
Richard never accused you.

(00:17:03):
He only said that… Oh, he’s the one, eh?

(00:17:05):
Richard.

(00:17:07):
Get out.

(00:17:07):
If I wanted to murder a man, it would be easy to take my gun from my trunk and shoot him.

(00:17:12):
Yeah, but that wouldn’t be the perfect crime.

(00:17:14):
Why should I want to kill the Swede?

(00:17:16):
Because he might have sold you out to pay his debts.

(00:17:20):
Because you’d get half of his share of the circus.

(00:17:24):
Because you were in love with his wife.

(00:17:28):
I see.

(00:17:31):
You think you have a case, huh?

(00:17:33):
I hope not.

(00:17:34):
Florianne knows what I mean.

(00:17:35):
Only perhaps Tosinaya better go now.

(00:17:38):
Yeah.

(00:17:40):
Yeah.

(00:17:42):
I’m very sorry, Florianne.

(00:17:45):
For all of us.

(00:17:48):
Good day.

(00:17:50):
Good day, Miss Tamaro.

(00:17:57):
He padded out softly like a panther, resentment and hatred smoldering in his eyes.

(00:18:03):
That was horrible, little boy.

(00:18:07):
I’d better lie down now.

(00:18:09):
I left wondering if there’d be a show that night, tradition or no tradition.

(00:18:14):
I walked for a half an hour and then a police squad car came screaming down

(00:18:18):
Washington Boulevard toward the circus grounds.

(00:18:21):
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun, but Marlowe runs in it.

(00:18:30):
I found a small colony of cops in one of the dressing tents.

(00:18:34):
The man on the cot.

(00:18:35):
had taken a lot of pulses in his time, but he didn’t have a single one to show for it, not even his own.

(00:18:42):
Good-looking, youngish Dr. Richard W. Stowe was dead.

(00:18:46):
Detective Lieutenant Ibera held out a small automatic to me.

(00:18:49):
Hello, Marlowe.

(00:18:51):
I hear you’ve been masterminding things around here lately.

(00:18:55):
Ever see this gun before?

(00:18:56):
I may have heard of it.

(00:18:58):
A man named Ralph Tassinari, connected with his show, has disappeared.

(00:19:03):
Know something about that?

(00:19:04):
He was fresh from a lover’s quarrel last I saw him.

(00:19:07):
Ah?

(00:19:08):
Well, maybe just out walking it off.

(00:19:11):
Possibly.

(00:19:12):
But the dead doctor and Tassinari both went for a pretty little trapeze queen named Gloria Ann.

(00:19:17):
Was anything stolen here?

(00:19:19):
No.

(00:19:20):
The circus hand who heard the muffled shot came running before anything could have been taken.

(00:19:24):
Well, the gal, Gloria Ann, how does she feel about this?

(00:19:28):
She’s in her tent, heavily committed to a case of hysterics.

(00:19:33):
Uh, Marlowe, divvy’s on any information you get out of her.

(00:19:45):
Look, Laurie Ann, you can’t go on like this.

(00:19:47):
Now let me get something for you.

(00:19:50):
I’ll be all right.

(00:19:51):
Just to set it, to settle your nerves.

(00:19:54):
Oh, no, we never take that thing.

(00:19:56):
It’s bad for going up on a trap.

(00:19:59):
No.

(00:20:00):
No, I’ll sleep.

(00:20:02):
That’s the best thing.

(00:20:04):
Sleep.

(00:20:06):
You can’t go up there tonight.

(00:20:07):
Anyway, Tassinari’s missing.

(00:20:10):
I’ll go see what I can find for you.

(00:20:21):
I rummaged through Dr. Stowe’s medical bag while Ibera watched from across the tent

(00:20:26):
I found a small black book.

(00:20:28):
I leafed through it with my hand still hidden in the bag.

(00:20:32):
It was a small case history book with sketchy data about his cases,

(00:20:37):
the treatment given,

(00:20:38):
the medication prescribed.

(00:20:41):
I very quietly tore out the last page,

(00:20:44):
palmed it,

(00:20:44):
and slipped it in my pocket as I creaked to an approximate upright position.

(00:20:48):
Find anything to quiet the little woman, Myron?

(00:20:51):
No, not a thing, Lieutenant, not a thing.

(00:20:54):
I’ll try a drugstore.

(00:21:02):
Tablets of cyclodome, grains one and a half.

(00:21:06):
One tablet with warm water for nerves or sleep.

(00:21:09):
What is it?

(00:21:10):
It’s a common sedative, but I can’t sell you any without a prescription.

(00:21:15):
Well, can you tell me anything about those drugs?

(00:21:17):
Some, but you will find a lot more in Dr. Toral Solman’s textbook on pharmacology.

(00:21:23):
Textbook on pharmacology.

(00:21:25):
It’s only in the main library, I think, but it’s complete.

(00:21:28):
That’ll tell you all you want to know, I’m sure.

(00:21:39):
The druggist was right.

(00:21:40):
The textbook of pharmacology told me all I wanted to know.

(00:21:43):
Also, this was a very limited edition.

(00:21:48):
It was probably the only one of its kind that had on the page devoted to cyclodrome

(00:21:54):
a smudge of lipstick in the shape of a woman’s finger.

(00:22:08):
It was all and more than I wanted to know.

(00:22:11):
And all at once, I was old.

(00:22:14):
Very old.

(00:22:16):
From now on, I was going to leave illusions to high school girls and magicians.

(00:22:24):
Hello, little boy.

(00:22:28):
Back again.

(00:22:29):
I see you’re dressed for work, Lorianne.

(00:22:31):
Has the night returned?

(00:22:33):
I wouldn’t know.

(00:22:35):
But I think I do know who killed the Swede.

(00:22:37):
Tassinari.

(00:22:38):
I gravely doubt that.

(00:22:39):
Well, then who?

(00:22:41):
Not Alfred and Alfie.

(00:22:43):
Glorian,

(00:22:44):
you’re a dainty little thing,

(00:22:45):
and that’s a particular reason why you should break yourself of little unsightly habits,

(00:22:51):
like touching your fingers to your mouth to turn back pages in books.

(00:22:57):
Are you all right, little boy?

(00:22:59):
Was the Swede all right when he went up with Tassinari last night?

(00:23:04):
Or was he just slightly under the influence of a sedative drug that calms the nerves?

(00:23:08):
Yes, but slows up their reaction time.

(00:23:12):
I don’t understand such matters.

(00:23:14):
You admitted to me today that it isn’t wise to take such sedatives before your act.

(00:23:19):
But you did get a prescription for such tablets from Dr. Stowe and you said nothing about them.

(00:23:23):
Well, I was upset after the Swede was killed.

(00:23:25):
I needed something.

(00:23:26):
But according to Dr. Stowe’s case book, you got the tablets before the Swede was killed.

(00:23:31):
And you left him at the bar for an hour yesterday while you did a little medical

(00:23:35):
research at the main library.

(00:23:37):
And that night, the Swede split second time.

(00:23:40):
He didn’t quite split, did he?

(00:23:43):
Of course you weren’t afraid to go up with Tassinari today.

(00:23:48):
He didn’t miss the Swede.

(00:23:49):
The Swede missed him.

(00:23:50):
I hated him.

(00:23:54):
You didn’t want him.

(00:23:56):
You just wanted the circus, all of it.

(00:23:58):
So you killed the Swede with his own perfect crime.

(00:24:01):
Only it was too perfect.

(00:24:03):
You couldn’t pin the murder on Tassinari.

(00:24:06):
You had to think of something more down to earth.

(00:24:10):
Go on, little boy.

(00:24:11):
Make Gloria Ann proud of you.

(00:24:14):
Dr. Stowe knew that you hated your husband.

(00:24:17):
He knew that you had those tablets.

(00:24:18):
He knew that the Swede didn’t make mistakes.

(00:24:22):
Last night when Tassinari heard you and Stowe whispering together,

(00:24:25):
Stowe was telling you what he suspected,

(00:24:27):
wasn’t he?

(00:24:28):
He was a doctor and he is furious at the thought of being used in a murder.

(00:24:31):
You’re raising your voice.

(00:24:33):
You look certain.

(00:24:33):
No.

(00:24:35):
Well, if you didn’t shut up the doctor, he’d talk.

(00:24:37):
So you shot him with Tassinari’s gun after staging a very nice row with Tassinari in front of me.

(00:24:43):
That would pin it on Tassinari.

(00:24:46):
You let Stowe take you in his arms to muffle the shop.

(00:24:50):
That was particularly pretty.

(00:24:53):
No, little boy.

(00:24:54):
It was not.

(00:24:56):
No, it was not.

(00:24:59):
Little boy, you’ve had a busy day.

(00:25:04):
Well, it’s time that I grew up anyway.

(00:25:07):
That’s for my act.

(00:25:08):
Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Harry and Gloria.

(00:25:16):
And Gloria.

(00:25:17):
And Gloria.

(00:25:18):
I’ve sent for the police, Gloria, and they’ll be here pretty soon.

(00:25:21):
Little boy!

(00:25:22):
Asanay is there.

(00:25:24):
He’s waiting in the runway across the arena.

(00:25:26):
He came back!

(00:25:27):
He doesn’t even know he’s wanted, probably.

(00:25:29):
Oh, little boy, I have let you down.

(00:25:32):
Let me make it up a little.

(00:25:34):
Let me go out there.

(00:25:35):
Will you come down again?

(00:25:37):
Yes, of course.

(00:25:38):
By the ladder, I mean.

(00:25:39):
I won’t let you down again, little boy.

(00:25:41):
I promise it.

(00:25:42):
We circus people won’t disappoint you again.

(00:25:45):
Please.

(00:25:46):
They’re waiting.

(00:25:48):
Well, the show must go on, mustn’t it?

(00:25:51):
All right, go ahead, lady.

(00:25:52):
They’re waiting.

(00:25:56):
She ran out laughing, throwing kisses, and I walked out after her.

(00:26:01):
Stood in the runway watching.

(00:26:02):
I watched the small, delicate figure going up the ladder.

(00:26:06):
Then she was at the platform.

(00:26:08):
Rosin on shoes, rosin on the hands and wrists.

(00:26:12):
And sultry silence, not a voice.

(00:26:20):
raising her hand in a gesture of exquisite grace and sureness and smiling and pessimism.

(00:26:26):
Smiling.

(00:26:28):
And there it was.

(00:26:29):
This was it.

(00:26:31):
There.

(00:26:41):
Ghostly packs of small fry from my school days gaped up with me and shivered with kid delight.

(00:26:48):
I was a kid again, walking up at the circus guy and the circus lady.

(00:26:53):
The daring young dame on the flying trapeze, Passaneri and Glorianne.

(00:26:58):
Or positively, the last performance anywhere on earth.

(00:27:13):
You have just heard Van Heflin starring in the new mystery series,

(00:27:17):
Raymond Chandler’s The Adventures of Philip Marlowe,

(00:27:19):
brought to you by the Lever Brothers Company,

(00:27:21):
makers of Pepsodent.

(00:27:23):
Van Heflin will return in just a moment.

(00:27:26):
Now, here is Van Heflin, star of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.

(00:27:29):
King Leopardi had the hottest trumpet and the coldest eye in show business,

(00:27:35):
and he loved yellow silk,

(00:27:36):
so they called him the King in Yellow.

(00:27:39):
We consider his short,

(00:27:40):
eventful life next week when,

(00:27:42):
as Philip Marlowe,

(00:27:43):
I have some business with the King in Yellow.

(00:27:51):
Tonight’s story was written by Milton Geiger,

(00:27:53):
based on the character of Philip Marlowe,

(00:27:55):
the screen’s most famous private detective,

(00:27:57):
created by Raymond Chandler.

(00:27:59):
Heard with Van Heflin tonight as Glory Ann was Lorene Tuttle.

(00:28:03):
The original music was composed and conducted by Lynn Murray.

(00:28:06):
This is Wendell Niles inviting you to listen again next week at this same time to

(00:28:10):
another exciting mystery on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe,

(00:28:13):
starring Van Heflin with a distinguished cast.

(00:28:17):
This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.

 

If you made it this far, you must be a fan! 🙂

 

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Tom Fowler.

Check out our discussion of his Baltimore-based crime fiction.

Click here for a PDF copy of the transcript.

Debbi (00:55): Hi everyone. My guest today is the USA Today bestselling indie author of the John Tyler thrillers and the CT Ferguson crime fiction series. Born in Baltimore, he now lives in the Maryland suburbs of DC, a place that I know well, or at least I used to know it well. It’s my pleasure to have with me Tom Fowler. Hey, Tom. How are you doing today?

Tom (01:21): Good, Debbi. Thanks for having me on.

Debbi (01:23): Excellent. My pleasure. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that you are writing hardboiled mysteries that take place in Baltimore. You’re originally from Baltimore and you’ve also written a whole lot of those books. How many books do you have in the CT Ferguson series?

Tom (01:44): Sixteen currently. Just put up the pre-order for number 17. My hope is to have it out a little before Christmas.

Debbi (01:56): Well, I got to tell you, I love a hardboiled mystery, and I love the idea of the setting in Baltimore. How many books do you plan to write for the series? What’s your plan for the series in general?

Tom (02:09): Yeah, I don’t have any plan to end it. I think it’s common in the genre to have these kind of open-ended series, and we look at the Spencer series. Robert B. Parker wrote 40 or 41 before he died, and there’s been another 11 or 12, I think since his passing. Ace Atkins wrote the first nine or 10, and now Mike Lupica has taken over. So Jack Reacher was more of a thriller character, I would say, than mystery, but that’s a 27 or 28. And again, there’s an author transition happening there too. So I think it’s very common to see these series just keep going, and as long as people are interested in reading them, I’m certainly interested in writing them. I have a lot of fun with these books.

Debbi (02:56): That’s cool. I’ve noticed they tend to be on the short side. Is that intentional? Is it just the way you write?

Tom (03:04): I guess it’s just the way I write. They’re usually 70 to 75,000 words. The more recent ones have been closer to 70, so I’d say most mysteries are probably somewhere in the 75 to 80 range. So I hope I’m not writing too short, but it’s the right length for the story. I don’t want to pad the word count unnecessarily. They’re first-person stories, so there’s not a lot of side quests, if you will, happening that the other characters are going on, so.

Debbi (03:34): Exactly. Yeah, and personally, I like short reads, so I mean, that just really appeals to me.

Tom (03:41): Yeah.

Debbi (03:44): What prompted you to write that series?

Tom (03:49): A few things. I’ve mentioned before, I think I have a longer bio that mentions I wrote a “murder mystery” (in air quotes for those who can’t see me) when I was about seven years old in which no one actually died, so no murder. And I named the, I guess I can’t really call him the killer, but the person who stabbed people, the stabber, like in the first paragraph. So not a mystery either. Oh for two, but it’s because I was at my grandparents’ house a lot, and they would watch shows like The Rockford Files. This was probably the early eighties, and they were probably in syndication by then, but Columbo, shows like that where you had a cop or a PI, someone solving a mystery, and I’ve read a lot of different genres over the years, but I wanted to, at some point in the late two thousands to 2010, I wanted to write my own, and I really started writing that book.

(04:52): I know I had a finished draft of the first book, The Reluctant Detective, around November, December of 2010. I wouldn’t publish it until October of 2017. So the process took me about seven years, but I wanted to do, I like the crime genre a lot. I was big into shows like Monk and Psych and things like that at the time, but I didn’t want to do the photographic memory. I felt like that was overdone. So I had to put my own spin on it a little bit, but I really wanted to write something in that space because I’ve been a fan of it, even going back to my childhood watching those shows at my grandparents’ house.

Debbi (05:27): Absolutely. Yeah, those shows are great too. I loved The Rockford Files. Oh my gosh, he was just perfect. I also noticed that you have a protagonist in John Tyler thrillers who’s a military veteran. What inspired you to write that character?

Tom (05:47): Well, I’ve never been to the military myself, but I’ve worked for the Army and the DOD as a civilian for–I’m not in that space anymore, but I was there for about 16 years or so. So I met a lot of people who were in the military, and I wanted to do a different series, and I wanted to do more of a thriller style, like a military action thriller, and obviously the 800 pound gorilla in that space is Jack Reacher. So to be clear, I very much enjoy the Jack Reacher books. I’m not trying to bag on Jack Reacher, but I wanted to do something a little bit different than Jack Reacher. So I still wanted someone who’s been in the service and seen and done his share, but a different character in a lot of ways, I think. And in the series, Tyler has PTSD and lives with it and manages it. He has a teenage daughter who lives with him. As the series opens, she later goes to college. So there are a lot of differences, I think, between a character like Reacher or the more loner types that you normally see in this genre. But I wanted to ground him a little bit differently and tells stories. A character like Reacher, he rolls into a town, raises hell, shoots people and leaves, and he’s pretty much the same guy in the next book, and that’s fun. But I wanted someone who has been affected by what he’s done and continues to be affected by the things he does.

Debbi (07:12): Yeah, I hear that. Actually. I write about a female Marine veteran who also has PTSD and an opioid addiction.

Tom (07:21): Oh, wow.

Debbi (07:22): Who is trying to function as a private eye essentially. So that’s an interesting thing to deal with.

Tom (07:29): I read about something for people with traumatic brain injuries. It was like a therapeutic painting program,

(07:35): And I talked to someone I know who’s a psychologist, and I said, could something like this be adapted for people who were trying to manage PTSD? And she said, yes. So in the books, Tyler has this painting program that he does. He has watercolors and he has an easel, and he just gets these things out of his head. And interestingly, one of my readers teaches art and teaches watercolors. So he actually gave me some advice about these are the kinds of things he should buy, and this is how someone who’s not an artist, because Tyler certainly wouldn’t be an artist, this is how someone who’s an amateur would do a painting and they would do this part first and then this. So I think my descriptions of him sitting at the easel and doing his painting has gotten a little more accurate over time just because someone who reads my books happens to have that experience and said, Hey, you can have him do it this way.

Debbi (08:31): Wow, that’s really interesting. I like the idea of the art therapy as something to use to manage traumatic brain injury. Fascinating. So how largely does Baltimore as a setting figure in your stories?

Tom (08:51): Pretty prominently. Most of the stories, I mean, they all take place, at least partially there. Some of them are entirely contained in the city, but there’s also some stories that go into the county or other parts of the state. A couple of the Tyler books actually, some of the action takes place in nearby states, but they always usually start and end In Baltimore, which is my city. It’s the city I know. It’s the city I love. I know it doesn’t always have the best reputation, but it’s more than just The Wire, and it’s more than just what you see on the news.

Debbi (09:25): Exactly.

Tom (09:26): Yeah, it really is. It’s a great city, and I want it to feature in there. And yeah, I’m writing crime stories, so yes, people are dying in Baltimore and these stories. People die in every city, every day around the world. But I really want it to feature in there, and I get emails from people, not just people who lived in Baltimore, but someone who says, oh, I came to Baltimore for a conference 10 years ago, and we ate at the restaurant, and you wrote about it in your book, and just little things like that. So when you ground your series in any real city, even Baltimore in this case, you’re going to have people who know the landmarks, who have driven on those streets and who have been in neighborhoods, and it creates a real setting for people.

Debbi (10:10): Yeah, definitely. So you’re an indie author like myself. What has your experience been like as an indie author and was it what you expected?

Tom (10:22): No, it was not. It’s a lot more than what I expected, and I love it, don’t get me wrong, but there are days it really feels like a second job. There are days, it feels like a tied for first job maybe. I really kind of envisioned it as, okay, I’m going to write these books. I’m going to put them up there. And yeah, I wasn’t expecting to get rich or anything, and I haven’t gotten rich from writing books, but man, there’s a lot that goes on. You have to get your books in front of people, so you have to have an email list and oh, now you need to be on social media, and here’s these Amazon ads and Facebook ads and things like that. It’s like, man, I want to write. I don’t want to do all this stuff. And I think a lot of people are in that boat.

(11:11): We get into this, I think, because we’re creatives and we want to write and we have stories, and then the businessy aspects of it is where we kind of throw up our hands a little bit, and I’ve certainly done that in some areas. But yeah, I try to carve out time before the workday. After the workday, on the weekends at lunch. I don’t do my writing work during, I have a day job. I don’t write during my day job. That’s my day job hours, but before and after on the weekends, things like that, that’s when I carve out my time. But yeah, it’s great. I love it. I wouldn’t trade it, but it is more than I thought I was signing up for. Absolutely.

Debbi (11:53): I think the technology has made it so, as well as the proliferation of social media, and I’m not sure that social media is nearly as important as a lot of people think it is.

Tom (12:06): I think if you have to pick social media or doing an email list, a hundred percent always, pick email.

Debbi (12:13): Absolutely. And I think you have to be careful about which social media you decide to use too, because some just seem to lend themselves to people better than others. I hear it all the time. Use something that you’re comfortable with as opposed to trying to wrap your mind around every single one out there.

Tom (12:33): Right. The advice I used to hear, I know Mark Dawson mentioned this at some point, but I don’t know if he’s the originator of the advice, but it was always for social media platforms, pick two, and one of them should be Facebook simply because you can run Facebook ads. That’s probably still true, but you should also go where your audience is. Not everybody’s audience is on Facebook.

Debbi (12:54): Absolutely. I agree. Totally. So what kind of marketing do you do and how much of it?

Tom (13:06): As little as possible.

Debbi (13:07): I know the feeling,

Tom (13:11): Yeah. I do have a Facebook ad, two Facebook ads that run one to The Mechanic, which is the first Tyler book, and one to a box set on my direct store, my Shopify store. There’s another aspect of indie authoring that I didn’t think I would have to get involved in, selling my books directly. I have an Amazon ad. It’s a defensive ad, I guess, targeting me and my books, and that’s really, in terms of advertising, that’s all I do, and that doesn’t work out to be a great amount of money. Every month I have a newsletter that I send every two weeks. I do things like BookBub, FreeBooksy, those kind of newsletter promos. Periodically. I am on social media, but I don’t talk about my books a ton. I feel like all those “buy my book” posters, most of ’em are very tacky, and I don’t want to do that.

Debbi (14:04): Yeah, they are

Tom (14:05): I want to engage with people and not just hit them over the head with a book. I don’t think that’s the point of it. So that’s really what I do. I think most, unless you’re doing a ton of marketing, you can probably do most of this in an hour or two a week.

Debbi (14:25): I think you’re right. Frankly,

Tom (14:27): Maybe a little more on the weeks I write a newsletter. That always takes a little bit of time, but for the most part, I think a lot of it can be an hour or two a week. And if I were starting over, I think I would only send my newsletter once a month instead of every two weeks. But now I’m locked into that cadence and I’ve told people this is how often I’m going to send. So that’s what I do. But if I were starting over, it would probably be once a month. Yeah,

Debbi (14:46): I was going to say, you’re allowed to change your mind as long as you tell your readers. Sure. Let’s see. Do you do book signings? Just out of curiosity?

Tom (14:57): I haven’t yet. I was going to start doing them, and then Covid happened and people weren’t going to bookstores and all that. That’s something I’d like to start doing. I did one in 2019, I did a talk at a library in, oh God, Charles County, I think, and sold some books and did a signing afterwards. That’s something I’d like to get more into. There’s a lot of bookstores near me. There’s a few Barnes and Nobles. There’s some independent bookstores that are in the area or within, say, an hour’s drive because Columbia, Baltimore, DC, all those places are within an hour’s drive for me. So there’s a lot of possibilities there. So that’s something I’d like to start doing, but I haven’t done a lot of yet.

Debbi (15:41): Yeah, I’ve done a couple since the pandemic, or actually I’ve done one since the Pandemic, and I did one right before the Pandemic, and it’s like, I feel like I should do more. I feel like I should be out there more just meeting people. Have you ever considered crowdfunding your books?

Tom (16:04): I have, and I’ve done two Kickstarters so far. For me, they’re more, I don’t know that I would do. I wouldn’t do one all the time for every release. I think that’s too much. I think they’re more for special, more special projects, but it’s certainly a viable way to release a book. The one caveat I would offer, the first one I ran, I tried to do it specifically for an audiobook, and there’s a large segment of people out there who just do not care about audiobooks. It is a growing market, but more people read either eBooks or physical books than read audiobooks. So if you’re going to do a Kickstarter and you’re trying to fund an audiobook, that’s fine. Just don’t say, this is from my audiobook. You’re immediately going to turn off 80% of the people who might be interested in it. Offer audiobook as a reward certainly, but also make sure you have ebook, print, other stuff in there.

(17:05): There’s a few books out there on how to set up a Kickstarter. I think Monica Leonelle and Russell P. Nohelty have the best one I’ve seen so far. I think it’s called Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter. Has some really good advice in there. That’s what I’ve used. So my first campaign was audiobook centric and did not fund. My second one did. I have not yet run a third. I haven’t found the right project yet. I don’t want to do it just like, oh, here’s thriller number eight. Let’s do a Kickstarter. It doesn’t seem special enough to me. That’s just a normal release, but if I had something different or something special I was putting out, I would absolutely do it again.

Debbi (17:42): Yeah, it’s not a bad thing to do. If nothing else, you can get people on board with what it is you’re writing, the kind of thing you write. It’s like you attract the right people to yourself by doing that, I think.

Tom (18:01): Yes.

Debbi (18:03): And have you, just out of curiosity, thought of using either Substack or Patreon?

Tom (18:09): I’ve thought about it. It’s a function of time more than anything. Do I think I could reach people on those platforms? Yeah. They’re not really discovery platforms though, so I think you kind of have to bring an audience with you or send people to those places. And for what I would be providing there is the time outlay worth it. I don’t know. There are people who absolutely do well on substack, Patreon, other subscription based platforms. It is a second job for me. I don’t need it to be a first. I don’t want it to be my first job. So a lot of that is a function of, I don’t know if I have the time to do this or to do it really the way I would want to do it.

Debbi (19:01): Yeah. So what is your profession, your day job?

Tom (19:07): Yeah. I work in IT for the federal government.

Debbi (19:11): Ah, which agency?

Tom (19:13): FDA.

Debbi (19:16): Oh, my goodness. I’m a former Fed myself. Used to work with the EPA for a while.

Tom (19:22): Oh, nice.

Debbi (19:23): Yeah, it was a living, I suppose. Which is more than I can say for my writing career at this point. What advice would you give to anyone who is interested in a writing career?

Tom (19:37): Oh boy. There’s probably a lot of things that I could say there. I think the biggest one would be to know why you want to do it or what you want to get out of it. You might want to, maybe you’re a hobbyist who just wants to put up the book you’ve had in your head for 20 years, or your poetry collection or whatever, or your grandmother’s life story is particularly inspiring and you want to write about that and get it in the hands of family and friends, and you don’t really care if anybody else reads it or maybe you want to do this full time. Those are very different goals. They’re all very fine goals in and of themselves, but they’re very different. And the amount of time and other resources you may have to commit to them is going to vary wildly. So know why you want to do it and have those expectations set accordingly.

Debbi (20:34): That is very, very good advice, knowing your why are you doing this?

Tom (20:40): Yes.

Debbi (20:41): Because a lot of people don’t care if they make a bestseller list or even make a living off their writing. They want to get published, they want to express themselves, whatever.

Tom (20:56): Yeah.

Debbi (20:56): I think sometimes we lose that joy of getting what you want to say out there or in service to something else. We’re so worried about making money from it that we can’t think about the joy of doing it as much. So what I really like to focus on is the joy of doing it.

Tom (21:19): Yeah.

Debbi (21:19): It’s very important.

Tom (21:20): If you don’t enjoy it, then you’re doing wrong. If you’re not enjoying this.

Debbi (21:23): Yeah. I mean, there’s so much involved. There’s so much work involved. Why would you do it unless you enjoyed it?

Tom (21:30): Right.

Debbi (21:30): So yeah.

Tom (21:32): The only piece of advice I would definitely have, and this is more of a avoiding scams thing, is money should always flow to the author. If you were traditionally published, that will come in the form of either an advance or some royalties that your publisher sends you. If you are self-published, you collect the money from Amazon, Kobo, whoever, do not pay anyone to publish your book.

Debbi (21:57): Thank you for saying that, because too often I hear about people paying to get published, too often. It amazes me because you are the owner of this intellectual property and you are licensing it to a publisher or to whoever, whether Amazon or whatever platform you’re putting it up on. It’s a license for them to distribute it. So don’t pay to get published, period. Do not. Well, thank you so much for being here and telling us about your books and about your writing and the fact that you’re doing this while working is to me, amazing. So many books too. So you must write really fast.

Tom (22:43): Yeah. The first one took me over seven years to go from starting it to getting it published, made a few process improvements, I guess you could say in the time since. But now I can pretty much turn around a first draft in six or seven weeks-ish, and I send to my editor in chunks and he sends them back to me. So at first, I would just send him the whole book when I was done, and it would take him several weeks to get it back to me. But now I just send six chapters, six chapters, whatever, and this way he finishes a week after I do, and things are ready to go much faster.

Debbi (23:22): Wow. That’s a nice arrangement. Well, again, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it and absolutely stick around afterward, we’ll do a bonus episode together.

Tom (23:34): Sure. Thanks for having me.

Debbi (23:35): Sure thing. It was my pleasure. I would like to thank everyone also for listening, and if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review and check us out on Patreon where you can get access to bonus episodes as well as chapters from my work that I post there. Next time, my guest will be Pablo Trincia. I believe that’s how it’s pronounced. He’s the author of All the Lies They Did Not Tell, which is quite a story about a big scandal in Italy. Until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Check us out on Patreon!

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Catherine Rymsha.

Check out our discussion about leadership skills and crime fiction writing.

You can download a PDF of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today has a career in workplace communication and management. She teaches leadership skills and has a nonfiction book called The Leadership Decision which she published before her crime novel. Her crime novel is Stunning. It’s called Stunning, and in addition, she has given a TED Talk on the importance of listening, so listen up. You might learn something. It’s my great pleasure to have with me today, Catherine Rymsha. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly.

Catherine: You are. Thank you. Yes, you are.

Debbi: Excellent. Wonderful.

Catherine: So happy to be here.

Debbi: I was going to ask you about that, and I’d completely forgotten, in the big hubbub of trying to get connected.

Catherine: That’s fine.

Debbi: You wouldn’t believe, people. Anyway, thank you so much for being here. What is it that made you decide to write a novel, and a mystery at that?

Catherine: I love murders.

Debbi: Who doesn’t?

Catherine: It’s so odd saying that, but I’m talking to an audience who understands that. I love crime, I love murder. Even as a kid, I was reading like the Fear Street books and R.L. Stein and Goosebumps, and then ventured into Stephen King and then started to watch everything on ID, and 20/20 and Dateline, and all of those shows that dig into it. When I was a kid, I always wanted to write and I fell into leadership and wrote a ton about leadership, which for some, that’s not the most thrilling topic in the world, which I understand totally. But then, I was pregnant when I wrote Stunning. It was a dream. It was based on a dream that I had, and I kept having the dream, and I thought maybe I should write this down and I just started writing. I would write before bed and just write, write, write when I had time and I wasn’t sleeping or working a real job, and that’s how it came about. It just felt like it needed to get out of my brain.

Even as a kid, I was reading like the Fear Street books and R.L. Stein and Goosebumps, and then ventured into Stephen King and then started to watch everything on ID, and 20/20 and Dateline, and all of those shows that dig into it.

Debbi: Interesting. So do you picture writing more books, or is this like your one shot ?

Catherine: I just came out with a textbook, also not as thrilling, very academic, but I want to get back into writing murder and crime and even if I could do something based on real life murder or crime. I think those are things that are interesting to me to explore next. But I do want to start getting into it and I keep saying that, and I thought all summer I’ll write another book. And now summer has come and gone and the book is not written. So I’m thinking, well, maybe in the fall. I say that and I laugh because I don’t know if it’s going to happen that quickly, but it’s more fun than writing leadership. I mean, leadership is important but crime and murder and making things up is way more fun.

Debbi: Making things up is fun.

Catherine: Yes.

Debbi: It’s its own form of work, but at the same time it’s fun work.

Catherine: It is fun work.

Debbi: Yeah. Your books – do you have a traditional, hybrid or are you self-published?

Catherine: I am self-published with my first two, but the textbook, I did work with a publishing company, so that was interesting too, to have that experience after doing two on my own and working with editors and beta readers and that whole spiel.

Debbi: The whole shebang, yes.

Catherine: The whole team.

Debbi: I was going to ask you about your publishing journey. What has it been like for you? Has it been what you expected?

Catherine: With the first one, it was a learning curve, because I wanted to find an editor and I found an excellent editor named Sandy. She was so great at walking me through the entire process because she’s very experienced and does a lot of writing herself and writes books for authors trying to get published for the first time, and she is just brilliant at everything she does. So with having her, that was amazing. I can’t quite remember how I found her. I think I just found her through an online platform or a Google search or something, but she was a huge help. So even though I found it a little overwhelming at times and expensive at times, she really made it feel worth it. And then with the second book, it felt like a breeze because I knew what to expect and it just went a lot quicker.

But I would say there’s so many tools out there, as you know, for authors to use and to benefit from and to get their work out there that it’s no longer … I can look back now and think it’s not as bad as what I thought it was going to be. It can be expensive and you sell books but I haven’t kind of broken even with it yet. So that’s been interesting too.

I would say there’s so many tools out there, as you know, for authors to use and to benefit from and to get their work out there that it’s no longer … I can look back now and think it’s not as bad as what I thought it was going to be.

Debbi: It does add up. Everything out there does add up. It’s incredible. So what is your writing schedule like then?

Catherine: I write at night. I have two twin boys who are two now. Like I said, I was pregnant with them when I was writing the book and publishing it. But now it’s trying to fit it in when I can. So whether it’s before bed, between classes at UMass or early in the morning if I wake up before my kids, then those are the times that I try to fit it in. I wish I had more time, which I know everybody says, to write, but I think it’s just that matter of discipline, committing to a schedule.

Debbi: It’s a matter of discipline. Yes, very much so. It sounds like you have a plan that involves catching time periods where you can, how you can pretty much.

Catherine: Yes. I was listening to another one of your podcasts about writing in the airport and even just having that pen and paper, and I think that’s the thing. I take voice memos and then I take a screenshot of what the voice memo picked up, because if I don’t remember this thought or idea, I’m going to lose it. I don’t often have pencils and paper around these days.

I take voice memos and then I take a screenshot of what the voice memo picked up, because if I don’t remember this thought or idea, I’m going to lose it. I don’t often have pencils and paper around these days.

Debbi: Yes. That’s true. I’ve done that myself actually. I find all sorts of things I wrote years ago that I forgot about. It’s interesting. What authors have most inspired you to write in this genre?

Catherine: I think it’s going back to that R.L. Stein starting as a kid. I think those Fear Street books, Goosebumps books really caught my attention. Also then in high school, I started reading Stephen King, as most high schoolers start to do. I shouldn’t say most high schoolers. I think at the time a lot of my colleagues and peers and friends were. I don’t know if Stephen King is as popular now with the younger demographic, although I want to make sure. I assume he is, but I think folks like that who were pretty mainstream and out there and being published and seen as real authors were the ones that got me kind of hungry to write, and now many years later, writing in this particular genre.

Debbi: Yes. I have to read those Goosebumps books sometime because I keep hearing about them. It’s a period that I didn’t because I didn’t have kids so there are all these children’s books that sound so intriguing to me that I don’t know about.

Catherine: I look back and I think – I didn’t mean to interrupt you – but I’m like, oh my gosh, I was reading some of this at 12, 13. 10 I think I started with some of these books, and they got their hooks in me, I guess.

Debbi: I think they can be equally entertaining for adults.

Catherine: Oh, totally.

Debbi: I like that. I love stuff like that, just to go off and read a middle grade or a child’s book or a teenage, a young adult just for something different, to get away from the adults for a while.

Catherine: Oh, a hundred percent. Gives you a new perspective.

Debbi: Yes. Your book is set in New England, correct? Which is where you are.

Catherine: Yes. I’m in Massachusetts in the greater Newburyport area, so if you’re looking at a map, right on the New Hampshire/Massachusetts line, and my book kind of bounces around with perspective. So it’s thinking about some activities happening years ago in Boston or even at Amherst, and some events happening here in Newburyport, and then some bouncing up to Mount Katahdin in Maine, and really just having some fun with playing around with locations and perspective and time. That’s where I tried to weave some of that into Stunning.

I’m in Massachusetts in the greater Newburyport area, so if you’re looking at a map, right on the New Hampshire/Massachusetts line, and my book kind of bounces around with perspective.

Debbi: That sounds like fun. I love when a book gives you a sense of the place where it’s set, and it sounds like it’s set in some pretty interesting places. I’ve been to Mount Katahdin. [Correction: It was actually Cadillac Mountain.] It’s really nice. We went camping there and I remember the shoreline reminded me of California.

Catherine: Yes. Beautiful

Debbi: The rocky shoreline.

Catherine: It’s beautiful. I mean, Maine’s got so many great spots, but that Mount Katahdin is breathtaking.

Debbi: Yeah. Wow. If there’s one trait or theme that tends to come out in your writing, what do you think it would … the most major theme or device or whatever you use in your work, what would it be?

Catherine: I think it’s perspective. When I teach, and like I said, I teach leadership and management, and I talk often about perspective that people can look at a leader and somebody can think they’re amazing and excellent, and some people can think they’re a complete dud, and it’s always the debate of who’s right or who’s wrong. And this is where, when I wrote Stunning, I talked so much about perception is reality, and how do you understand behavior from a business and management standpoint that I wanted to incorporate some of that into Stunning of like, okay, here’s the perception of one person and how they’re thinking and seeing a situation. Here’s the perspective and thoughts of another person who is going to see that situation in a very different and unique way. And if you’re trying to think about peoples’ sides to stories and making your own assumptions and conclusions and your own perception of what’s going on or what’s happening, I think that was one thing that I try to get across in leadership is that there are different sides and different perceptions. That was one thing that when I wrote Stunning, I wanted to be kind of factual of dates and times, because I just tend to think like that. But it was also the matter too, of thinking, Hey, this is how this person is seeing something that’s going to come up with a murder, and this is how this other person’s going to see and experience it, and how do you as the reader make your own conclusions in starting to think about what’s happening or what’s going to unfold.

I teach leadership and management, and I talk often about perspective that people can look at a leader and somebody can think they’re amazing and excellent, and some people can think they’re a complete dud, and it’s always the debate of who’s right or who’s wrong.

Debbi: Yes. It’s interesting playing with peoples’ perspectives and perceptions. It’s key to writing a mystery, really.

Catherine: It totally is.

Debbi: It’s exploring peoples’ psychology at the same time that you’re telling the story. Pretty cool.

Catherine: And I think for some of the books and even the crime shows or murder shows that I watch or listen to and what have you, I think the ones that have characters that have opinions or perspective and you feel like you can relate to them or that you would be their friend in “real life” are the ones that really do resonate with me the most, so trying to think about what that looks like for my own writing .

Debbi: Absolutely. Really. What advice would you give to somebody who would like to write for a living?

Catherine: I would say find a good editor. Like I said, my editor Sandy Wendell has been absolutely phenomenal. She’s just an expert in this, and I think if I hadn’t met her, I don’t think I would’ve done more. I still work with her. I beta read for a lot of other folks that she’s editing for, and I have a great relationship with her. I think it’s a matter of finding an editor and doing your research, because I did use one website and I found an editor for my fiction book, and the editor on there charged me an incredible amount of money to edit it and they didn’t edit the book. It was a bit of a nightmare and thinking of saying to this editor, you didn’t edit it. Oh yes, I did. And you have to then go through line by line and try to …

Debbi: Oh my God!

Catherine: Self-edit and then try to talk to the company that joined the two of you together by saying hey, I just spent $2000 or $1800, whatever it was at the time, to have somebody look at this.

Debbi: Oh, my gosh.

Catherine: And I thought it was a nightmare. They did side with me because there was so much not done in the book, which would’ve been very embarrassing to put out there. But I would say if somebody’s thinking about getting into this, find a good editor or find another author as a peer or a mentor to walk you through the process, and then it doesn’t seem as bad or scary.

Debbi: Have you ever considered joining a writer’s group?

Catherine: I have. And I did it more when I was, I say younger in writing, maybe in my college, early twenties when I was writing a lot, but not really doing anything with it. I am involved with a writers’ group now on Facebook, although I hate to admit that I don’t really do much with it, but I can see the people’s conversations and comments and what have you, and gatherings and things that they do. And I think, gosh, I really should do more of this because this could be of a huge value and then I just don’t. But I would say that those types of groups and support, to your point, can be incredibly beneficial in trying to navigate this and understand it, especially like the marketing of books after it’s all said and done because that’s its whole other monster.

Debbi: Oh, yes. I don’t think people really have a sense of how much work authors do in terms of marketing their books. It’s just incredible. And especially now when there’s just so much to choose from, it’s almost like you’ve got the paradox of choice at work here. It’s like okay, which one of these things is really best for me?

Catherine: Right, right, right.

Debbi: I suspect what it comes down to is you have to pick something that you think works for you and is actually making connections or something to that effect. That’s just my theory.

Catherine: I think it’s a good one. It’s a good theory to have.

Debbi: It’s all I can ever suggest to anybody. Find something that seems to work for you and lean into that. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up about your books, about what your plans are? Anything?

Catherine: So, again, ready to go back to teach in a couple weeks with school just around the corner. Like I said, I don’t think I’m ever going to write a textbook again, but I would say that’s been a pretty thrilling experience. But the one thing that I’ve noticed, especially since I do a lot of I’ll say beta reading for people who are working with Sandy, is that so many people have so many great book ideas, and they put so much into their books. Some of the books that I’ve beta read for her have been brilliant. And then sometimes you get these books from people trying to write and publish their first book and kind of check that off their “bucket list”. And it seems like people try to – and I hate this expression but I’m going to use it – boil the ocean.

People with that first book. I think they’re trying to get everything in it in order to have it be representative of them and their life and their writing and their expertise and how brilliant they are. I get it because people have lives. They want to share that. I mean, the point of being a writer is thinking about those connections and considering how you can change the world or bring value or whatever that might look like to someone’s noble cause in doing this. The reason I bring that up is because I think for people who are considering writing or even other writers, it’s just a matter of understanding. You don’t have to do it all in one book. You can write another, and there’s nothing wrong with writing articles. It doesn’t always have to be a book. I think that’s one thing that I’m thinking about a lot is that you don’t have to always write a book to be a writer. There are other ways to write too.

The reason I bring that up is because I think for people who are considering writing or even other writers, it’s just a matter of understanding. You don’t have to do it all in one book. You can write another, and there’s nothing wrong with writing articles. It doesn’t always have to be a book.

Debbi: Absolutely correct. Absolutely. I just did a book review for a local newspaper for the first time in, I don’t know how many years. It’s been a long, long time. So it was really kind of a cool experience to do that. Just to be able to do that

Catherine: That’s cool. That’s awesome.

Debbi: Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Before we go, I just want to ask, do you think it would help authors to take leadership courses or to learn more about leadership in general?

Catherine: Ooh, that’s a great question. I never thought about that. I think everyone can benefit from a leadership class, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be like an MBA level seminar of struggling through 12, 8, 16, whatever the week amount is. There’s so many great podcasts and webinars on leadership out there that people can benefit from. But I think even where an intro course can be beneficial is trying to help people think about their own behavior and how they are perceived, like we’ve been talking about, but also trying to understand where they could make small tweaks in how they interact with others that can make them more effective. People always say I want to be a better communicator. Well, that too is this huge loaded word. Well, what does that look like? I think this is where authors can think about how they show up when they talk or represent their book or on social media, and how are they seen as leaders themselves? So I think there’s benefits in understanding how you want to be perceived and what you want your own brand to look like.

One thing that I talk about with my students a lot is what’s your leadership brand? Some consultants and academics call it a leadership legacy. I like the idea of a brand. How do you want people to define the value that you bring? And to your question, I think that lens can be applied to writing and being an author. What do you want people to feel when they read what you write? How do you want to be perceived? How do you want people to talk about you when you’re not there? I think those can be all important parts of leadership, but also in being an author.

Debbi: That’s great what you’re saying. You’re reading my mind a little bit.

Catherine: Oh, good. Perfect.

Debbi: We’re kind of vibing here. I definitely get what you’re saying and it’s really good advice.

Catherine: Oh, good. Hope it helps.

Debbi: Oh, I think everybody could benefit from learning about leadership skills and how to take responsibility for your own career. Learn to use your strengths, lean into your strengths rather than trying to do everything, all that kind of stuff, delegating when necessary.

Catherine: Yes. All those loaded things.

Debbi: Yes. All those things, but I want to thank you so much for being here and talking with us today. Thank you for sharing your expertise now with us. Everybody should watch your Ted Talk

Catherine: My pleasure. Thank you.

Debbi: What’s it called again?

Catherine: Want to become a better leader? Here’s how. Just listen. So a little play on words there.

Debbi: Just listen. Yeah, just listen. Always good to listen.

Catherine: Yes.

Debbi: So I’ll just put in a quick plug while we’re at it for my fundraiser. I’ve started a team to raise funds for the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation. I have dystonia, so I know what it’s like. I know that there should be more research done to find a cure for this condition. I will include a link with the show notes and hopefully, it’s free to join the team. You don’t have to pay anything, but if you can join the team, it helps show support for raising money for this condition that people don’t know about. A lot of people don’t know about it. It’s a movement disorder, in case you were wondering. So in any case, on that note, I will just finish up by saying that our next guest will be Tom Fowler. And until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Click here to enter Catherine’s giveaway!

And here to join the DMV Dystonia Team!

Thanks for reading! Support the podcast by becoming a patron!

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Anna Willett.

Check out our discussion about thriller writing and her Cold Case Mystery series.

You can download a PDF of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of several thriller novels, including five books in The Cold Case Mystery series. Her latest book is called Needles and Pins, and it’s this week’s giveaway, so make sure to check out the giveaway on my blog or on her Instagram. You can find it there on Instagram for sure. So it is my pleasure to introduce as my guest the author, Anna Willett. Hi Anna. How are you doing today?

Anna: Hi, I’m well. How are you?

Debbi: Good, thank you, although right now at the moment, I’m in Maryland where tornadoes are threatening somewhere on the horizon.

Anna: Oh really?

Debbi: Yes. Apparently we’ve been getting tornado warnings in different parts, not too far from where I live, but it’s all very sketchy right now. Hopefully I won’t be interrupting this podcast to dive under a desk or into a bathroom or something. I don’t know where I’d go.

Anna: Oh, that’s scary.

Debbi: It is. They are scary. In any case, let’s talk about your thrilling novels rather than my thrilling tornadoes. At what point did you decide to write a series?

Anna: Well, as I said in the post, I wrote a book called The Woman Behind Her, and the main character finds herself as the suspect in a murder. The lead detective on that case was Veronica Pope, who I became very interested in and wanted to write more of, and I thought, I think that I can do a lot more with this character, and so I’m going to write another book. So after really what was the second book in the series, I thought, there’s so much more I could do. There’s so many more places I could take her. I had so many more ideas for the sort of situation she could be in and her team, and it went from there.

Debbi: It’s fascinating. How many books had you written before you made that decision to go after that series?

Anna: I think it would’ve been 13, maybe 12 or 13 books.

Debbi: That’s very interesting how a character gripped you to the point where you decided to create a series for the first time.

Anna: Yes. Well, I’d had another series. It was just three books, and it was about a journalist, but all the others are standalones. And the woman behind her was, I thought, going to be a standalone, but it turned into this ongoing series.

Debbi: Yes, it’s fascinating. What inspired you to create Veronica Pope? What kind of inspiration went into creating the character itself?

Anna: Well, I wanted a female leader. I like to write about strong female lead characters, and so I wanted a female detective, and I wanted her to be – I’m going to say normal – so that she’s just an average woman who’s very good at her job, and she’s not a super cop. She’s not invulnerable to being hurt. She cares; she worries about things. She has her insecurities, she has her family life. She’s a single mother. She has ambitions for her job, but she’s also a little bit funny and down to earth, and that’s the sort of character I would like to read.

I like to write about strong female lead characters, and so I wanted a female detective, and I wanted her to be – I’m going to say normal – so that she’s just an average woman who’s very good at her job, and she’s not a super cop.

Debbi: Yeah, a very relatable sort of character.

Anna: Yeah, yeah.

Debbi: And skilled.

Anna: Yes. So I wanted her to be really good at her job and very insightful and very observant, but at the same time, I wanted her to have the same worries that most people would.

Debbi: Yes, exactly. Do you plan to write more books in the series?

Anna: I haven’t decided. I’m not sure. I might. If something comes to me, if an idea comes to me that I think would be perfect for Veronica. Not all, but quite a few of the books I drew from real unsolved cases in Western Australia. This last one was not one of those, but most of them I’ve drawn on those cases. Some were unsolved when I wrote them. Some were solved, but not really to the satisfaction of knowing everything about them. So I sort of drew on those cases and took them in another direction and put Veronica in them. So if something comes up that fascinates me, a crime or an unsolved cold case, then I might take that and write about that with Veronica.

Not all, but quite a few of the books I drew from real unsolved cases in Western Australia. This last one was not one of those, but most of them I’ve drawn on those cases.

Debbi: So it sounds like you take a lot of inspiration from true crime.

Anna: In Western Australia, yes. The previous one, The Ideal Couple, which is set in a small mining town way outside of Perth, I took the inspiration from a real life case where a husband and wife went out into the Outback and were prospecting and went missing, and it’s never been solved. And so I took that and changed it and put Veronica into it, and she comes in when it’s a cold case and she manages to solve it. So those sort of things, I think, oh, we don’t really know anything about what happened and what if it was this and this and this, and then I could put Veronica in there. If something grabs me like that, I’d definitely write another one.

Debbi: Cool. It sounds like each of these books are not necessarily part of a planned arc for the series, more like things come to you and they’re more spontaneous, like, what would she do in this situation?

Anna: Yes, yes, that’s exactly right. So there’s no real arc to it. I sort of know where she’s going on her journey, but the cases that will come across her desk and the ones that she’ll want to investigate, I’ll wait for the inspiration for those.

Debbi: That’s really cool. That’s great. How would you describe your writing to someone who’s never read your work?

I sort of know where she’s going on her journey, but the cases that will come across her desk and the ones that she’ll want to investigate, I’ll wait for the inspiration for those.

Anna: I would say that most of my books are thrillers, even the crime, the Cold Case series, they are thrillers, mystery/suspense thrillers. Most of my books are thrillers. A few are horror. I have a few horror as well as straight thrillers. A couple of them are supernatural horror. Quite a lot of them are domestic thrillers. So it just depends on the inspiration and the story ideas. I usually have a few ideas in a queue in my brain when I’m deciding which one to work on next. But, if you like thrillers, if you like mystery, if you like suspense, tension, and they’re probably a little bit grittier than a cozy mystery, for example.

Debbi: Right, right. They sound like fun.

Anna: They are fun to write.

Debbi: What kind of readers do you generally attract? Do you have a sense of who you appeal to?

Anna: I think I appeal to a lot of overseas readers who are interested in thrillers and crime and suspense, but also enjoy the location as it’s something new for many of them. Most people don’t know very much about Western Australia. Most people know more about the Eastern states, and because Perth is the most isolated city in the world, you sort of have a feeling it’s a place where anything could happen, and I think that appeals to a lot of overseas readers.

Most people don’t know very much about Western Australia. Most people know more about the Eastern states, and because Perth is the most isolated city in the world, you sort of have a feeling it’s a place where anything could happen, and I think that appeals to a lot of overseas readers.

Debbi: Well, I’m intrigued. Sounds fascinating. How much research do you do when you prepare to write?

Anna: I do quite a lot of research, particularly for the series because it’s a police procedural, so I try to be as accurate as I possibly can be. I have a friend who is a former Western Australian police detective, and I talk to him a lot about how do you think they would react in this situation? What do you think would be the next step when they’re doing this? Is it feasible that they would do this? How would they access this information? What exactly do you think they would say when serving a search warrant in this situation? Where would that allow them to search? Would I have to have a separate warrant for that? I try to get all the details as correct as I can possibly get them so there’s that authenticity.

Debbi: Yes, yes. If you’re going to do police procedural type stuff, you definitely need that.

Anna: And unlike a lot of other places in the world, there’s not a lot of information on any procedural elements in Western Australia. You can buy books on police procedures in the UK and in some parts of America, but you can’t really find anything on Western Australia in that way.

Debbi: How interesting.

Anna: So you really need someone you can ask.

Debbi: Yes, because things do have a tendency to change from region to region.

Anna: Yes. In Australia it’s a little bit more like the UK. Generally it’s the same, but in each state there’s a different police force. Most things are very similar in the way that they would operate, but I want it to be as authentic as I can make it.

Debbi: Sometimes I’ve noticed in the United States anyway, from county to county, some things can change about the way business is done, so I was wondering if the same thing was true of Eastern and Western Australia?

Anna: Not to the same extent as probably in America. We sort of mirror the British system here in Australia for the most part, and although there are different police forces, most procedural things would be very similar. There might be slight changes, differences in the law in different states, but it’s a very similar sort of approach in every state.

Debbi: Right, right. What authors do you find most inspiring to read?

Anna: I really enjoy Karin Slaughter, and I like Michael Connelly, Paula Hawkins, Clare Mackintosh. I have been reading a bit of Colleen Hoover, which is not crime, which is unusual for me to not be reading crime, but I do enjoy her writing as well. I like Stephen King. I’ll read anything. If it’s a good story, I’ll read anything, but my fallback is usually thrillers and crime.

Debbi: Yes. Are you more of a plotter or a pantser?

Anna: I’m a pantser

Debbi: People know. Nobody has to think twice about that one.

Anna: Yes.

Debbi: Interesting.

Anna: I try. Sometimes I think, yes, I’m going to plot a little bit more this time and I’ll write it all out. And then next thing I know, everything has taken me somewhere completely that I didn’t expect to go.

Debbi: That’s interesting. I find that I can plan things, but I don’t necessarily stick to plan, let’s put it that way.

Anna: Sticking to the plan, it’s hard to stick to the plan when the characters and the situation are telling you something else.

Debbi: Exactly. Precisely. What are you working on now?

Anna: I’m working on a standalone thriller at the moment, a domestic thriller. I’m also working on a horror novel when I have time as well. So I’m sort of writing one and writing a little bit of the other one at the same time. I’m taking my time on this standalone novel. I’m not rushing it or anything like that, so I don’t know when it will be finished, but it’s more of a domestic thriller.

Debbi: I think it’s good to take one’s time on things.

Anna: Yes. I’m enjoying taking my time. I guess the central theme of it in some ways is elder abuse.

Debbi: Ah, I’ve seen that come up a lot in books lately.

Anna: Well, it’s something that’s very real and it’s more common than I think most people realize. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about it, family and nurses from nursing homes and yes, it’s something that’s very real and I think often not really explored.

Debbi: What sort of writing schedule do you keep?

Anna: I usually write at night. I’m more of an evening writer. I don’t write in the morning or anything like that. I like to write later in the night, and I like to write longhand in a notebook and then I transcribe in the day.

I don’t write in the morning or anything like that. I like to write later in the night, and I like to write longhand in a notebook and then I transcribe in the day.

Debbi: Interesting that you write out by longhand first. I haven’t done that in ages.

Anna: I didn’t used to. I started just typing and that’s how I did the first few books. But then when I started writing notes and then more notes, I just found the ideas came a little bit easier when I’m using the pen than when I’m typing. And for some reason it just seems to come easier to me and flow more. I get a sore hand, but it comes easier, the ideas and the words.

Debbi: I can understand that actually, because I have a tendency to write movie reviews and book reviews out at night

Anna: I love it.

Debbi: But especially movie reviews, I find out I will just sit down and just start writing them out, and they just kind of read okay. It’s like, I could put this up on a blog, which I do.

Anna: It flows. It flows really well when you’re writing by hand, I think.

Debbi: It’s interesting. I never thought about doing novels that way or anything like that.

Anna: I fill a lot of notebooks.

Debbi: I fill up a lot of notebooks as well. Oh God. I journal. I spent years journaling. It seems like decades even. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing for a living?

Anna: It wouldn’t be an easy road if it’s for a living. Don’t expect that to happen really quickly, or with one book. It takes a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of books, a lot of hours spent writing. Just keep persevering and write another one and another one. And if the one you write does okay, but it’s not great, you just have to write another one. You just have to keep going.

It takes a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of books, a lot of hours spent writing. Just keep persevering and write another one and another one.

Debbi: That’s it. Absolutely. Never give up.

Anna: And don’t expect it to make you a fortune when you write one and publish them. Having modest expectations, I think would be the best thing. And don’t give up your day job.

Debbi: Exactly. Totally right. Total words of wisdom there, folks. Really! Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Anna: No, just that I really enjoyed this. I was really looking forward to talking to you.

Debbi: Same here. Well, I really appreciate your being here, and thank you so much.

Anna: Well, you’re welcome. It was fun.

Debbi: It was fun for me too. Someday I hope to visit Australia.

Anna: I think you would love it like most people. Yes, you should definitely come to Perth. It’s a wonderful place to visit.

Debbi: Oh, cool. I will definitely keep that in mind. Have to go, have to go places. In any case, I just want to thank you again for spending time with us, Anna, and my thanks to everyone listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review if you would. It helps. We are also Patreon supported with bonus episodes and other perks for supporters, so check that out if you would – patreon.com/crimecafe. So until next time, when our guest will be Catherine Rymsha, take care and happy reading.

*****

Here’s the link again!

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features The Adventures of Philip Marlowe in “The Orange Dog.”

And my thanks to Old Time Radio Researchers Group for the content. You’re awesome!

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

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

You can download a PDF of the transcript here.

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

Michael: I’m wonderful, thank you.

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

Michael: Oh, we could spend hours and days.

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

Michael: Every morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: It’s read very fast.

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

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

Michael: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Lividity. Is that what it is?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Exactly.

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

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

Michael: Yeah, they do and they will.

Debbi: They do, yeah.

Michael: So that was CONSEQUENCE OF MURDER about that which was created in a lab used for a nefarious reason. NET OF DECEPTION had to do with online pharmaceutical vulnerability we have. And then the last of that group To Cure or Kill had to do with the development of a new anti-cancer vaccine and the pharmaceutical espionage around that. So again, all of these I would be hard pressed to say, is this fact or fiction? I think they all could occur.

Debbi: Right. Yeah. Scary stuff. Do you plan to extend the trilogy?

Michael: No, the trilogy is completed. I just finished a book and just published a book on a completely different venue. It had to do with some of the psychology of the game of golf, and how it relates to a metaphor to life. I co-authored that with a psychiatrist. But my next book, I’m going back to the murder mystery thrillers, so that will be book 6, and I’ll be starting writing on that probably in the fall in about six weeks, and that will return to our vulnerabilities and the risks involved in the healthcare environment, but it won’t be part of the trilogy. It will be freestanding.

I just finished a book and just published a book on a completely different venue. It had to do with some of the psychology of the game of golf, and how it relates to a metaphor to life.

Debbi: All right. With a different character, set of characters.

Michael: Different characters. Those three books have the same main character. This will be a different venue, different problem, and again, a contemporary issue that I think those who like this venue will be very intrigued with. It has to do with the DNA companies.

Debbi: Oh, wow. That’s a hot topic.

Michael: Yes.

Debbi: All of these are. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Michael: I don’t. I am not one who can sit down at 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning, 8 at night, whatever, and say, today I’m going to write. If it’s not there, it’s not there. I have an idea what I want to write, and when I have thought about it subconsciously enough, maybe that’s a day, maybe it’s a week, I don’t know, then I start. And once the ball gets going, I will come back to it frequently, but I will do it more based on my schedule rather than on a particular … I’m rigid at eight o’clock, I’m going to sit down and write. I can’t do that. That’s not how I think. When it’s flowing, it’s flowing and when it’s not, it’s not.

Debbi: I get it. Really. What authors have most inspired your own writing?

Michael: I would say Robin Cook, Michael Crichton and perhaps the reason I mention them is because … well, Crichton is deceased, but they’re both MDs. Robin Cook’s first book, THE YEAR OF THE INTERN, was a book about healthcare, very similar to my experiences in writing ILLNESS OF MEDICINE, and then he wrote a thriller COMA which was later made into a film with Michael Douglas, I believe was in it. My first novel was CONSEQUENCE OF MURDER.

Michael Crichton, also an MD, wrote his first book, ANDROMEDA STRAIN. That’s a classic to me, and so I think, again, using their medical background, they were able to fabricate stories that people are interested in, particularly thrillers that aren’t predicated on just someone with a gun shooting somebody and then investigating it. They are much more complicated stories than that. And so that is what I’ve tried to, I see myself in that mold.

Debbi: Very good. What are your techniques for informing people through your fiction without getting too technical?

Michael: Again, a very good question. I practiced medicine for 30 years as a surgeon. I had to inform people of very technical problems, but put it in words and phrases and terminology that they could grasp and understand. So I think I’ve had a breadth of experience in making that translation. And so in the books, of course, I talk about the lasers and I talk about bleeding management. In many ways, the complicated problems that I filter down and take my time in making an explanation that I feel anyone with a moderate amount of interest would understand. If you look at Tom Clancy’s books, his stories, he would spend pages talking about the details of the bolt connected to the screw, connected to the door in infinite detail. I am not that detailed because I think in some ways – not to dismiss his writing, which is brilliant – but in some ways, you almost lose your focus. So I have to keep the reader’s focus, but give them information to help them with the next step in the story.

In many ways, the complicated problems that I filter down and take my time in making an explanation that I feel anyone with a moderate amount of interest would understand.

Debbi: Exactly. Kind of giving them context for understanding the whole thing.

Michael: It’s context, but it also can be used as a teaser, because you bring up a situation and then they have to wonder where does this come into play.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: Can’t lay it all out in front of the reader. They would get bored.

Debbi: That would get boring, yes. This isn’t a textbook, it’s fiction.

Michael: It’s fiction, and part of fiction that makes it interesting is that the reader is trying to figure things out as they’re going through, without being told what is going to happen.

Debbi: Yes. Yes, indeed. That’s very good. What do you find is the best way to establish a readership? How have you reached out to readers?

Michael: It’s hard. It’s difficult. I’m finding that people are more engaged in watching with streaming today than they are the effort to sit down and read. I think a lot of that evolved from the Covid issue, where people were not about milling with people. They were by themselves, and what do you do? You want entertainment, so you watch, less read. But I try to stimulate the reading by trying to get the word out on the various social media, shows such as this, radio, everything I can to get the word out. And I do think it does become a bit of a domino [effect], that once you get that ball going, more will follow.

Debbi: Yes. Yes. I agree. I mean, especially if you can reach the people who are really, really interested in your particular subject, they will want to talk about your book online and tell people about it.

Michael: Agreed. I think everyone has an issue or has an experience in the healthcare environment. We’ve all been patients. We’ve all had complaints or problems or frightening events that either did or could have happened to ourselves or someone we know. And so, just that vulnerability, it isn’t something that happens to somebody else. You know, I can read a thriller written about a spy. That’s not my life. But I could have consequences to my just being in my everyday world and then get sucked into the vortex of bad things that can happen as I’m going through surgery or in the hospital environment, drugs, et cetera. So these are real things that I think all of us are aware could happen to me.

I think everyone has an issue or has an experience in the healthcare environment. We’ve all been patients. We’ve all had complaints or problems or frightening events that either did or could have happened to ourselves or someone we know

Debbi: Yes.

Michael: And that’s what makes it real for them, even though it’s fictionalized.

Debbi: It does. It makes it very concrete and gripping in that way because you know, oh, this could be me.

Michael: Could be me.

Debbi: Yeah, but for the grace of God.

Michael: Right, right.

Debbi: What advice would you give to anyone interested in having a writing career?

Michael: They have to be dedicated. It is a very difficult thing to do. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy. It’s also something that is very … It’s very solitary in its performance. You have to be committed. I’ve met many people who say, oh, I’m going to write a book. Well, go at it. Be prepared to spend a lot of time by yourself. Be prepared that it is arduous. It is difficult. It’s not going to happen overnight. All my books take, for me, about a year and a half to write. They don’t come out easily. And so you have to realize it’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint, and you can’t force it.

I’ve met many people who say, oh, I’m going to write a book. Well, go at it. Be prepared to spend a lot of time by yourself. Be prepared that it is arduous. It is difficult. It’s not going to happen overnight.

Debbi: So true.

Michael: You just can’t force it. I teach at the University of Illinois in designing and developing surgical instruments, and I think we spend more time in instructing students on problem identification than we do on solutions. If you understand the problem, oftentimes the solution will be much more easily obtainable. I think if you’re going to write a book, you have to think, think, think, think about what you’re writing, why you’re writing, who your audience is, where you want to go before you just start getting in and writing. Now, that doesn’t imply that you have to spend forever outlining things. I don’t. I don’t outline at all, but I think about it a great deal before I even begin writing.

Debbi: Yes. That’s a good way to approach it. Even if you don’t outline, just think about how you would like the story to go.

Michael: You have to. The problem identification, understanding and ideating around the problem becomes more critical than the solution. Takes time. And be patient with yourself rather than just delving in and starting to write in different directions.

Debbi: Good advice. Good advice. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Michael: No, I think these are fun books. They are interesting books. They are thought provoking books. I think as much as there is – yes, there is murder, there is intrigue, there is mystery in all of them – at the end of the day, I wanted readers to connect with them and think about, again, our health world, our healthcare environment, and the vulnerabilities that we have in it, and hopefully shed some light on the problems I think that are in that environment. So there is an underlying purpose to the books other than just to entertain.

Debbi: I think that’s wonderful. That’s fantastic. And I want to thank you so much for being with us today, Michael. I really appreciate your time.

Michael: Thank you so much.

Debbi: It’s my pleasure. So on that note, I will just say, check out Michael J. Young, M.D’s. thrillers. They sound fantastic. And you can enter his giveaway. I will put a link in the notes where you can find the giveaway link. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review or becoming a supporter on Patreon. I post all sorts of bonus content there for Patreon supporters. In any case, thank you so much for tuning in to watch or listen, depending on what platform you’re on. Our next guest will be Michele Scott. Oh, the temptation to make an Office joke here, Okay. I won’t go there. I will not say anything about Michael Scott. Oh, I just did. Oh, sorry. Okay. Next time. Michele Scott, not Michael. Steve Carell’s not going to be on. And in the meantime, take care and happy reading.

*****

Show us some love! Support the podcast on Patreon!

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

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

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

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

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

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

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

Phil: That’s correct.

Debbi: What prompted you to write this series?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Oh, my goodness!

Phil: Yeah.

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

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

Debbi: I am, actually.

Phil: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phil: Yeah, I agree.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Amen.

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

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

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

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

And she so just gives them kind of like the smile that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t go to her eyes. Right? And then she, and then another guy comes in, puts a large amount, like a five or ten, and the little end of it sticking out. Right?

And so she ends up stealing it and gets caught and gets fired. So she really kind of spirals down, and then she ends up running into this guy who is – Claims to be this model scout. And she’s very – She’s very skeptical, but she’s desperate. And she eventually agrees to this $500 modeling gig for the day. Guy takes her out to the woods, and everything seems fine. It all seems in the up and up. He’s a, you know, they do pictures. It’s not, it’s all above board. That’s, you know, clothes on, the whole thing.

And then – and then – and then the guy, they do some pictures at this waterfall, and then they see somebody, or she thinks she sees somebody, and he goes to check it out, and then he never comes back.

And then she’s – And then all of a sudden, she’s being chased and basically, she’s in a situation where she’s fighting for her life, and at the end, they catch her and do terrible things to her. And then she wakes up in the same room every morning to do it all over again, and she just has no idea what’s happening to her. And that – So it’s a horror. It’s a horror story, and it’s a story about. And it turns out that she has some unique skills, given in the way she grew up. And basically, this group of men took the wrong person for once. And so that’s kind of how the story kicks off.

Debbi: That’s interesting! So sort of like a woman in jeopardy but not a victim.

Phil: Definitely not. I mean, she’s a victim. Obviously. She’s outnumbered, but not a…

Debbi: A helpless victim.

Phil: That’s for sure. I guess probably she’s a survivor, right?

Debbi: Survivor, yeah.

Phil: Yeah, she’s definitely a survivor. And she’s somebody who’s – She’s a small person. She’s petite. You know, she’s not anything. And I don’t like writing about, like, you know, special agents that can beat up anybody. That’s not interesting to me.

To me, what’s interesting is, like, okay, let’s take this young girl who has nothing, grew up in poverty, is a small person, put her in the woods with these big men that are used to doing these terrible things to women and see how she would get herself out of this. And it turns out she’s got a very interesting background.

And the story is being told in the before time and the after time because in the before time she’s in a situation where her mother goes to prison for drugs, and then she ends up with her a strange father who she hasn’t seen since she was very little. And he’s got his own issues, but he’s a somebody who’s just retired from the military and has some very special skills, but also isn’t quite right mentally.

And so he sort of puts her through all these weird, weird trials out in the woods where she vowed after these things that happened when she was younger that she would never go back to the woods. And here she finds herself back in the woods.

But a lot of these – a lot of these lessons, which she thought were the most horrible things that she had ever learned when she was a child, she’s finding them quite useful in the now time. So, anyway, yeah, so I’m excited about it. I’m looking forward to finishing it. And the first draft is all done. It’s with my editor now, but hopefully it’ll be out sometime in the winter.

Debbi: That’s great. Good to hear. How much research do you do for your novels?

Phil: It really depends on what I’m writing about, but I do tend to do a fair amount of research because I think it is really important. You probably agree it’s really important that we get things right, and obviously, we don’t know everything as writers. There’s so many things I’m writing about. Like, if I’m writing about prison, for example, I’ve got my novel REDEMPTION went heavy into prison, and I didn’t really know much about prison. You know, I’ve thankfully never been there, but my brother used to work there, so I interviewed him, you know, on all these different, like, little details about how it was.

And then I did a tremendous amount of reading about firsthand prisoner accounts and to get a feel for what it was like. And that’s essentially, I’ll come up with a storyline for what I want to write about, and then as I’m going, I’ll start doing the research, and I’ll find that really changes the plot because as I learn about these different things that, you know, you feel, you figure out, oh, that would never work because they would never do it like that because that’s not what, you know, a plumber would do or that’s not what, you know, whatever profession they are would do.

I’ll come up with a storyline for what I want to write about, and then as I’m going, I’ll start doing the research, and I’ll find that really changes the plot because as I learn about these different things that, you know, you feel, you figure out, oh, that would never work.

Debbi: Yeah, boy, I know where you’re coming from there, because I’m writing about a female Marine now, a veteran. I’ve never been in the military. What do I know? Right?

Phil: Yeah. Right.

Debbi: I start reading everything I can written by female veterans.

Phil: That’s great!

Debbi: I’m just like, whoa. Getting into their heads, and it’s like, whoa. Oh. So that’s how they think. Okay. They would do this in that situation. Oh, my.

Phil: That’s the beauty of what we do. I think, though, is that we can, because there’s no two people’s experiences in life are the same. Like, nobody. Not even – Not even twins.

Debbi: Exactly.

Phil: And so we have the opportunity to empathize with other people’s situations and then put that on the page in a way that’s – And I think the more we get it right, and then the more details and the closer it is to reality, the more I think, the more justice we, we do to those people in similar situations who can read that and look at it and say, hey, that, that reminds me of me. They’re talking about me. You know, they’re – they’re identifying with those characters and those feelings.

Debbi: Exactly.

Phil: I think that’s a wonderful thing about fiction writing, is that we, in a sense, can make the – Can make the world a more empathetic place, because everybody who reads these books can learn about what it’s like to be somebody other than themselves. And they can see all the parallels. Right?

I think that’s a wonderful thing about fiction writing, is that we, in a sense, can make the – Can make the world a more empathetic place, because everybody who reads these books can learn about what it’s like to be somebody other than themselves.

I had this conversation with my wife the other day. I said, you know, I’ve heard there’s been some talk of, like, you can’t write. Like, for example, I’m a man. I can’t write. I shouldn’t be writing a first person as a woman, you know, or I shouldn’t be writing somebody who’s a different race or a different whatever, a different sexual orientation.

But I told my wife, I was like, look, I’m an empathetic person like everybody else. I know what it’s like to feel lost – to feel left out, to feel alone, to feel ugly, to feel stupid, to feel happy, to feel all the different things like that. These are things we all have in common. And I think, as writers, we definitely have the ability to figure out how somebody else in a completely different background than us might feel in that same situation. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things I love about writing fiction anyway.

Debbi: I agree with you completely. I mean, the first screenplay I ever wrote was with a male protagonist. Had a male protagonist. And, well, that’s all I’ll say. I mean, it’s like, you can write whoever you want to write as long as you make it true to that kind of person, you know? Do your research, talk to people?

Phil: Absolutely.

Debbi: Yeah. So what do you find is the best way to build a readership?

Phil: I think that if you’re thinking strategy-wise, I mean, for people that might be listening, that are writers, I mean, I think it helps to stick in one genre. I’ve not done that. I mean, I’ve written, I think, in seven or eight different genres, and I think that helps me as a writer overall. But I don’t think it’s a good way to build a readership because not everybody reads the same type of things. Or, you know, like, my thriller readers are not necessarily going to be my literary fiction readers or my nonfiction readers. And it’s very hard to kind of build a good readership if you’re writing in different places.

So the smart thing, the smart play, I think, is to write in one genre, although I’ve, like I said, I’ve broken that rule, but, and then I think, obviously, what we talked about earlier is quality. I think that’s the, more than anything else, if you’re writing great stories that people resonate with and love, I can’t think of a better way to build a readership.

But, of course, you’ve got to have the marketing piece, so you have to be able to get people to even read it to begin with. I mean, even giving away books, which used to be much more effective than it is today, most people have, I’ve talked to a lot of readers. They have tens of thousands of books on their Kindle, and they’ve told me, they’re like, if I read nonstop from now until the time I die, I wouldn’t even read 10% of what’s on my Kindle.

Debbi: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That is the nature of the problem right there.

Phil: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as much as I’m – I think there’s still a time and a place to do free books here and there, it’s becoming less and less effective. And ideally, it’s not really about the money or it’s not about $0.99 or free or full price at $4.99 or whatever you want to sell your books for. It’s about getting people to actually read them, you know?

And to be honest with you, I think you would probably do better paying people a dollar to read every one of your books than you would giving them away for free and have – and have – and have a tiny fraction of those people read them just because those people that actually read them, if their books were good, they’d probably go on to buy more.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah.

Phil: To be honest with you, I’d do that. Anybody wants to read my books, you know, and write a review. You can’t do that —

Debbi: I’ll give you a dollar.

Phil: Yeah. You don’t have to write a review, just read them. Here’s a dollar. But, yeah, I think that in the long run, you’d probably be better with that than just giving them out. Because I think it’s something like a very, like 10% or less actually read the free books that they get a – Yeah, it’s very low.

Debbi: I’m not surprised. I’m not at all surprised, actually. And it’s – That’s the big, big hurdle now, really, just to have your stuff read.

Phil: Yeah, it is. There’s just so much.

Debbi: It’s too available. Everything’s too available.

Phil: Yeah, you’re right. There’s a sea of books out there. Just a sea of them. And how do you, you know, find a way to stand out and it’s. It’s not an easy answer, for sure.

Debbi: Not at all. No. What are you reading these days?

Phil: I’m reading a….

Debbi: What’s on your book pile…

Phil: Let’s see. I’ve got. I’m actually reading OJ IS INNOCENT AND I CAN PROVE IT. I don’t know if you heard that.

Debbi: Yeah, I’m looking forward to reading that, actually.

Phil: It’s written by William Dear, who’s a private investigator from Texas. It’s very, very interesting. And I’m reading that partly because I’ve got a YouTube channel called Thriller Vault, where I do a lot of – I tell a lot of stories. I’m basically telling stories, but they’re mostly true stories.

So, for example, like, I did a story on OJ. He wrote a book. It was through a ghostwriter a while back called If I Did It. I did a really weird book. So I actually wrote a story on that where I’m OJ and I’m just telling the story as if I’m OJ from my perspective, you know, based on the book, you know? And so I did.

And so then I got through that. I kind of got interested in, like, oh, well, I came across the William Dear books. I started reading that. And to be honest with you, that’s made me think that it possibly might have been his son and not him, who actually committed the murders, which is wild, because I was firmly in the camp that he’s probably guilty. Like most people, by the numbers, statistically speaking, most people think that he’s guilty. But after reading the William Dear book, I’m starting to really think that it was likely his son Jason that was actually the murderer.

Debbi: Well, it’s a very interesting case.

Phil: It’s really interesting, but…

Debbi: Because as a lawyer, it kind of offends me when people are suspected of something and then people start jumping to conclusions, that that means they’re guilty of something.

Phil: Yeah.

Debbi: So to hear that this stuff is coming out is very interesting to me.

Phil: Yeah.

Debbi: What advice would you give to anyone who would like to write for a living?

Phil: I would say that’s a good question. I mean, it’s, things have really, things are really moved quickly from when … things are really different from when I started. And they’re… I don’t know what my advice would be. Let me think about this for a sec. I would say…. I would say…. I would say, go into it with…..

I would say, you want to be hopeful because, like, for me, I was very naive when I started, and I was very, like, hopeful that. And I think everybody who’s starting out, they’re like, oh, I’m going to write the greatest novel ever, and it’s going to be an instant bestseller. And, you know, we have these – we have these crazy ideas early on. But I think that as much as it’s embarrassing for me to admit that that’s kind of how I felt when I was first starting out, I think it was necessary to have that naivete because you don’t realize how hard it is.

And I think that if I didn’t have that hope in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have, like, if you told me, hey, Phil, you’re not going to make any money till you write at least ten books. I don’t know. I mean, that’s a daunting past for somebody who’s never written a novel. So me going into it, very naive, is like, oh, well, this first book didn’t work out, but that was pretty fun, and I did a pretty good job. And we try another one, and then you’re like, oh, this one’s going to work out. Okay, well, maybe not. So then you’re ten books in. You’re like, okay, well, I’m starting to see some progress, but had I gone into it with realizing how daunting the task is.

I think I would recommend go into it with some hope and try to have fun with it. And if it’s something you enjoy doing, I think it’s something you should pursue.

So I think – I think I would recommend go into it with some hope and try to have fun with it. And if it’s something you enjoy doing, I think it’s something you should pursue. But if it’s something you don’t like, and hate. And you’re just doing this because, you know, you think this is some path to. I can’t imagine anybody thinks that, thinks that this is a path to wealth because I don’t think it is.

Debbi: It’s not.

Phil: I mean, I guess it could be for some people, but it’s more of a – it’s more of a labor of love, I think, than that. And, but if you, I think if you go into it with that and then whatever upside you get financially is great, but I wouldn’t go into it with, I’m going to be a millionaire author or something like that. I mean, it’s certainly possible, but I don’t think that. I don’t think – if money is your goal, I don’t think writing is probably the right profession for you, if money is your top goal. Now we all have to make money and live, of course. But anyway, that’s probably where I would.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. It really is not a quick path to riches at all.

Phil: No.

Debbi: And the people who make the big money are outliers.

Phil: For sure.

Debbi: It happens. But …..

Phil: Yeah, a lot of them are very old at this point. Like they’ve been around for a very long time.

Debbi: Right. They have time they have built up.

Phil: And the trad publishers are basically holding on to their names with a death grip. Even when they die. They’re hiring new authors to write their, under their name.

Debbi: They’ve created brands.

Phil: So if you’re a new person trying. Yes, if you’re a new person trying to break into the traditional publishing game, good luck with that. It’s not the way it used to be, where there were some chances. It’s much more difficult now.

Debbi: It’s very hard. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Phil: No, that’s it. Just thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Debbi: Well, it was my pleasure, believe me. And thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you about all of this stuff because it’s very interesting.

Phil: Oh, thank you! One thing I would want to mention, if anybody who wants the audiobook, if they just email me, I think the email is in the show notes and they can just email me and ask. And as long as they have audible for the US or the UK, I can send them the audio books, the codes for it, and all they have to do is have the app. So they have to be on Audible to get it. But it’s totally free.

Debbi: Fantastic!

Phil: Anybody who emails me, I’ll be happy to send them a audiobook. That’s what my evil plan is. I give you a free audiobook and get you hooked, and then you’ll buy some.

Debbi: Well, that’s a very nice, benign, evil plan, I gotta say. So on that note, thank you so much again, Phil!

And thank you to everyone listening! Thank you for listening or for watching on YouTube, depending on what you’re doing.

And our next guest on the show will be Michael Young. In the meantime, take care and happy reading!

*****

For ad-free episodes, bonuses and more, become a patron of the podcast right here!

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

Check out the plans for the upcoming Killer Nashville conference!

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

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

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

The transcript can be downloaded here.

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

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

Debbi: Wonderful. You’re looking good there.

Clay: Well, thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: That’s very cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clay: I personally think it’s through just getting people to know you, and you’ve got to have these days as you pointed out, there are many, many authors out there now, and you have to have some sort of platform in order to be able to set yourself up higher so your head is sticking above the crowd, and people are able to see that. You can do that through a bunch of numerous ways. You can do it through teaching, you can do it through interacting on social media, if you’re really good with that. You could do it just however it is that you reach out to other people. But the important thing that I think, and you know that I used to own a PR and marketing firm as well, and so the thing that I really think is most important is to just develop true, honest, sincere relationships with other people , and that builds.

The best thing we have tried over the years, and I’ve been in this business for decades – marketing and stuff – and over the years, you can take pay for ads, you can do all these other things, and the best thing you can do is just get word of mouth. It’s absolutely the best seller that you get. So write the best book that you can, and then just reach out to each individual person that you come along with, and just start building that base, and then continually put out new works so that you can maintain the interest of that base, and it sounds very simple. You go bathe three times in the river Jordan or whatever, and your leprosy will go away. It seems like a very simple thing to do. It is a simple thing to do, but it’s also something that has to be a consistent thing, and I really do think it’s the best way to build a platform.

The best thing we have tried over the years, and I’ve been in this business for decades – marketing and stuff – and over the years, you can take pay for ads, you can do all these other things, and the best thing you can do is just get word of mouth.

Debbi: Yes. Consistency and doing something that works for you is another important part, I think.

Clay: Well, you can’t change your personality. We all have different things that we’re good at. I do fine talking so I do a lot of presentations such as this, but some people are not comfortable talking, but at the same time, they’re more comfortable doing blogs. And by the way, if I can offer a self-serving plug here, I do a blog as well, and offer my insights, my personal insights, and from my decades of experience working on both sides of the camera, on both sides of the publishing industry, on both sides of the stage, and share that every week with people who are interested. So if anybody wants to sign up for that free newsletter, go to claystafford.com and just sign up and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you.

Debbi: Very good. Very good.

Clay: It all comes down to helping. I think the best thing that has ever happened for me in terms of marketing is just helping other people, and I think that people respond positively too, if you’re very sincere about however you are reaching out to other people, and if it’s just helping people enjoy life, helping people live life, whatever your gift is, then sharing that I think is really that best way to build that platform.

I think that people respond positively too, if you’re very sincere about however you are reaching out to other people, and if it’s just helping people enjoy life, helping people live life, whatever your gift is, then sharing that I think is really that best way to build that platform.

Debbi: That’s good to hear. I mean, you don’t have to be a particular way to be effective. You just have to kind of be your best self.

Clay: Be your true self.

Debbi: Your true self. Yes.

Clay: Be your true self and share your true self with others, and I think you’ll be surprised at the amount of love that comes back to you.

Debbi: I love that philosophy. It’s great. I mean, I agree with you completely. So what do you like on TV these days?

Clay: I am waiting two years or however long it is for Stranger Things to come back again.

Debbi: Oh my gosh. Anything else come to mind?

Clay: I spend so much time skimming television and reading and stuff. I’m just not a loyal person to anything because I’m just absorbing what’s going on around me, and there’s so many things because I have book reviews that I have to do – or let me rephrase that – that I get to do.

Debbi: That you get to do, I know.

Clay: I don’t have to do them, but I get to do them, and so I constantly have this… you know how you have this “want-to read” stack of books that are there.

Debbi: Oh yeah!

Clay: I’ve got one of those that you must read because there is a deadline of an interview that’s coming up with this, or a release of a review. So my reading and my viewing because I review films and TV shows and things as well, and mine is usually based on it, unfortunately. I came into the business because I love the business, and now the business has taken hold of me so I’m at the mercy of the business, and so it’s a completely different thing.

Debbi: I get it. I get it. Oh my gosh.

Clay: It’s completely delightful. But the fun thing is you just get to, when you have deadlines set, if you got a job that you have to read a book and then tell people what you think about it, or watch a TV show and tell people what you think about it, you live a rough life, right?

Debbi: Exactly.

Clay: But having to do that, you get to experience such an eclectic mix of authors from different styles, and I have reviewed a lot of things. I reviewed one version of The Bible that came out. I think it was the NIV version if I’m not mistaken. The editor gave it to me. A Closer Look was the magazine, and they gave me the thing. They said, would you review this new version of the Bible? And so I was like yeah, and then I made a joke, like but what if I don’t like it and the author gets angry?

Debbi: Oh boy.

Clay: So if you go to my website and look at the things that I’ve reviewed and stuff, it’s an eclectic mix. Everything from horror to romance to thriller, Southern Gothic, steampunk. It runs a gamut, but it’s a very exciting thing, and I have really an eclectic mix. And you know me – I have an attention span about this long. So if I read one book then I’m ready for a completely different kind of book, but it’s because that’s the way my mind works.

Debbi: Yeah, I can understand. I mean, I’m interested in a lot of things, though I tend to focus on one thing at a time. Let’s see. What are you reading that you’re really enjoying these days?

Clay: Once again …

Debbi: Oh dear!

Clay: Yes, it’s pretty much the same thing. I don’t have the copies of the books here, but I’ll tell you. The best thing to do is to look at the Killer Nashville Magazine and you’ll see the people I’m interviewing, because I always do the cover story on the Killer Nashville Magazine. Then also I have a monthly column for Writer’s Digest and I interview authors there, and I always read their books. So if you want to know what I’m reading, just take a peek at Writer’s Digest or Killer National Magazine or some of the other reviews. I do reviews via the Clay Stafford newsletter if you want to take a look at those. So you’ll see an eclectic mix on all of those.

Debbi: That’s very cool. I’ll have to look for your reviews. That’s great. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Clay: No, just whatever you wish to discuss.

Debbi: Well, I’ve learned a lot just in talking to you.

Clay: Time has flown by, hasn’t it?

Debbi: Just in 20 minutes I’ve learned so much about what you’re doing at Killer Nashville, which sounds so cool, and what you’re reading or trying to read or reviewing.

Clay: I just came back from a European tour and it was fabulous. I went with one objective and I came back with four objectives, which are some wonderful things that I’m hoping to do in Europe as well. I can’t really disclose what those are, but that’s my current project is looking into 2025 on some European projects that the groundwork, the foundation laid for these past three weeks in Europe.

Debbi: That’s fantastic. That’s wonderful. Great. Well, I want to thank you so much.

Clay: Absolutely.

Debbi: Was there something you wanted to say?

Clay: No, no. Thank you for having me on your show. It’s always a pleasure to be back and thanks for all you do for writers as well.

Debbi: Oh, well, you’re welcome, and I enjoy doing it. It’s the variety, you know. I get to meet a lot of people this way,

Clay: Yes, absolutely.

Debbi: So thank you again. I really appreciate your being on, and on that note, thank you to all my listeners for your interest. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. You don’t even have to write it, just throw some stars up there, please. Also check out our Patreon page. We have bonus episodes, as well as other bonus content for supporters, and with that, I will just say our next guest will be Phil M. Williams. Until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Become a patron of the show right here!

 

This week’s ad-free episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Weldon Burge. Check out the first interview of our Tenth Season. Dear God Good grief! Has it really been ten years? And check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe You can download the transcript here! :) Debbi: Hi everyone. This is the first episode of our 10th season here at The Crime Cafe. And boy, that decade sure went fast. Where did all that time go? In any case our guest today is a writer, indie publisher, and a full-time editor, although I now believe he has retired, but we can talk about that. He's written numerous articles for various publications as a freelancer. His first novel, Harvester of Sorrow was originally published by Suspense Publishing, but is now published through his own company, Smart Rhino Publications, which focuses mostly on horror and suspense thriller books. He has also published 17 books. That company has published 17 books, including the most recent anthology, Asinine Assassins. There's the tongue twister for you - Asinine Assassins - which I believe is also part of a trilogy. His latest short story collection is Toxic Candy, which he is offering as a giveaway. Check the notes in this recording for his guest post and giveaway details. Alrighty then. So in any case, it is a great pleasure for me to introduce Weldon Burge as my guest today. Hey, Weldon. Weldon: Hi. Thanks, Debbi. Good to hear you. Debbi: It's great to see you and great to hear you, and glad to have you on the show. So you are no longer working full-time and you are devoting yourself to writing fiction these days? Weldon: Yes. Pretty much. Debbi: As well as publishing. Weldon: If a nonfiction job comes up, I will take it, but I'm focusing primarily on fiction at this point. Debbi: Yeah, yeah. I reached a point where I pretty much said, okay, that's all I'm going to do. Weldon: Well, I was working for an educational consulting firm, so I was dealing with PhDs every day, and then I'd come home and I have to get into fiction because I'd had enough brainy stuff all day long. So now that I'm retired, I'm going full force into the fiction and enjoying it. I love it. Debbi: Awesome. That's great. That's a wonderful thing. So how do you structure your writing schedule? Weldon: I don't. I mean, I'm constantly writing. I'm constantly writing notes, bits of dialogue that come into my head I will write down. So as far as the schedule goes, it's just whenever I have time to do something, I'll do it. But I have things churning in my head constantly, so getting something on paper is something I do all day long. Ideas come for me and I try to work them out in my head, and I have notebooks everywhere, notes everywhere, and when I have time to sit down and do it, I do it. I'm constantly writing notes, bits of dialogue that come into my head I will write down. So as far as the schedule goes, it's just whenever I have time to do something, I'll do it. Debbi: Yeah. Notes everywhere. I think that's kind of like a writer's life. Notes everywhere. Weldon: Yes, that's right. That's right. Debbi: What was it that inspired you to create the Ezekiel Marrs character, and what are your plans for the series? Weldon: Okay. Actually there's one chapter in the book that has nothing to do with Ezekiel Marrs. That actually spun the tale for me. There's a section in the book where a teenage couple find a body in the woods, and that was the very first thing that came into my head, and everything kind of spread from there. Ezekiel Marrs was first called Simon something, and it went through umpteen different names, and I liked the Ezekiel because of the biblical parlance there and then Marrs because it's out there. So I like the idea of that name, and it's fairly unique, which was the other thing I was looking for. The character kind of grew out from himself. It was kind of interesting how that occurred.