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

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

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brenda (04:01): Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brenda (09:18): Yeah.

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

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

Debbi (09:55): Oh, wow.

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

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

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

Brenda (10:19): A beautiful trip.

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

Brenda (10:27): It will depend on the book. Some of them, I do quite a bit of research. I read up on them. I do a lot of research on Google in looking for information. I use Google Earth a lot. Sometimes I write about a place I haven’t been, so I look it up on the map and then I find all the photos of it and read up the town, whatever their website is and that kind of thing. But a lot of it, I’m just making it up.

Debbi (11:00): Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to trust that a certain amount of common sense will work for you.

Brenda (11:11): Exactly. And sometimes I think, well, I don’t know exactly how this should go, but nobody else does either unless you’re in the profession. But I have had a couple of cops that have helped me out. They’ve read through my stuff and given me some pointers.

Debbi (11:27): Yeah, that’s always helpful to have people who are in the business you’re writing about comment on stuff, that’s for sure. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Brenda (11:39): Well, that fluctuates. I’m a pantser. I know that you’re a plotter, from a different video. So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing. And I’m not some really, really disciplined. I write when I feel I want to write, but lately I’ve been trying to write 500 words a day. I have a book coming out May 1st, the fourth in the Hunter and Tate series. It’s called Who Lies In Wait. So I’ve been working on that and now I’m working on the launch and all that kind of thing. But I also have a contract with Dundurn to have a book done June 1st, so I’m plugging away on that. So I’ve had to be more disciplined this time around, but I tend to write later in the morning and into the evening. Sometimes, off and on.

So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing.

Debbi (12:40): It’s interesting. I used to be an afternoon writer, now I’m a morning writer.

Brenda (12:45): Yeah.

Debbi (12:47): It’s weird how these things can work and how they can change.

Brenda (12:52): I used to be morning and now I’m more afternoon.

Debbi (12:55): Yeah. Let’s see. Yeah, as a pantser, wow. I’m just blown away by people who can just sit down and write without actually figuring out some plot points ahead of time.

Brenda (13:11): You have to edit a lot. There’s a lot. You find your clues and make sure everything’s lined up properly. So at the book I’m writing now, the manuscript, I have two months to pull it together, basically. I’m almost done writing it.

Debbi (13:26): Oh, good luck with that and I’m sure you’ll do great.

Brenda (13:30): Real work Is ahead. Yeah.

Debbi (13:32): Lots of experience at this point. What, 25 books? 24 books you have?

Brenda (13:38): Twenty-five, but the 26th is coming out in two months. So.

Debbi (13:43): You’ve done this before. It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Brenda (13:47): Every time. It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long. I don’t know if you find this, that there comes a point where you go, this is awful. Why am I writing? And then it.

It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long.

Debbi (14:07): Oh, I know. I think every single writer must feel that way when they’re working on something. It’s like, what possessed me to go in this direction with this person? Why am I doing this?

Brenda (14:20): What makes me think I can do this?

Debbi (14:23): But then at some point you realize there’s a way to get through it and you get the thing done. It’s very interesting how that happens.

Brenda (14:32): Magical.

Debbi (14:34): It is. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of magic to it. So what author has most inspired you to become a writer?

Brenda (14:46): Well, as a child, I really loved Enid Blyton. Dunno if you’ve ever read her book, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven. I just loved books where they went on adventures and solved puzzles. I’ve always loved the murder mystery genre, read a lot through university. Which authors … I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird. I have to say that that book inspired me as well, and I know it is kind of a mystery. And in the crime writing genre, I love Michael Connelly’s books. There’s so many. Ann Cleeves, Denise Mina in Scotland. There’s so many great writers and I read quite widely.

Debbi (15:39): Yeah, me too. I like all different types of books. What do you like to read outside of the genre?

Brenda (15:47): Well, I belong to a book club and they pick, they’re quite well read and they pick different books, so I just enjoy reading whatever comes up,

Debbi (15:58): Whatever comes up.

Brenda (15:59): Right now we’re reading The Pull of the Stars by—see the book over here—Emma Donoghue. She’s a Canadian author and it’s about a pandemic 1918, and it’s told from the point of view of a nurse who’s working in a maternity ward and everyone’s sick, but it’s actually quite a good story with a lot of history to it. And so I enjoy all kinds of books.

Debbi (16:24): Yeah, I enjoy history and historical fiction, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Brenda (16:39): Don’t do it.

Debbi (16:43): Don’t do it? Don’t do it, if you want to make money right away,

Brenda (16:47): I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing. The other thing I would say is you just got to sit in the chair and do it, and it takes practice. It’s like any profession, you have to work away at it. You have to have good grammar skills and you have to treat it as a profession, I think if you’re going to be really good at it.

I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing.

Debbi (17:20): Exactly. Yeah, certainly you have to do the writing. You also have to get out there and have your writing looked at and commented on, get good criticism on it. Do you have beta readers or a writer’s group that you rely on?

Brenda (17:43): I do for this series. I have beta readers and they have the first look at it, and I’m really trying to find out if they’re enjoying it. And then professional editors, of course, editing is massive to make a book shine and I realize with every book just how important it is to put in that time.

Debbi (18:07): It is, it’s very important. And that’s something people really need to appreciate before they put their work out there, I think. How important it is to really make it look good and to make it something that people will want to read and want to keep reading.

Brenda (18:24): Most authors will tell you that their first book never got published, but they’re glad in the end that it didn’t.

Debbi (18:33): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Would you say that Ottawa is a character in your books?

Brenda (18:45): Oh, definitely. To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description. But in this latest one, Who Lies in Wait, it’s set in winter in Ottawa. And during the period that I’m writing the book, it’s snowing. There’s a big blizzard, goes on for a couple of days, the power’s off. It’s just great for writing a murder history to have all this, but I think the setting and the mood and all of that is another character in the book. And I don’t know about you, but I love reading murder mysteries set in different places. Just for that. I’d like to find out more about the place.

To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description.

Debbi (19:33): Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I like that kind of thing. Definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Brenda (19:43): No, it’s been great. I enjoy writing, I love reading, and I love hearing from readers. My website is brendachapman.ca and you can contact me through there. I also enjoy visiting book clubs to talk about writing, and I can do that by Zoom as we are today or in person.

Debbi (20:11): Alright, well that’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Brenda. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to tell us about this and to talk about your books.

Brenda (20:20): Well, thank you Debbi. It’s been great.

Debbi (20:23): Well, thank you. And on that note, I will just say please, listeners, I would appreciate anybody who enjoyed this episode to please leave a review. I would really appreciate that. Reviews help a lot. Also, if you would take a look at our Patreon page, you’ll see that I’m now serializing the novel Red Harvest because it’s in the public domain now. And I thought, what fun to share. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op with the world on my Patreon page. So go to my Patreon page if you want to check it out, find out all about the Continental Op, that fictional detective based on Hammett’s experiences working as a Pinkerton agent. In any case, our next episode will feature Edward Zuckerman as my guest. Until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Support the podcast on Patreon for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, serialized fiction, and more!

You can buy all my ebooks and audiobooks direct from me here!

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

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

You can download the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carter (03:50): Oh, good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carter (09:00): Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (10:53): That’s interesting. What’s interesting is you’re probably the first person I’ve spoken to who is a complete pantser in terms of the plot, because a lot of people I talk to say, well, I’m a little bit plotted in a little bit pants. I have a general idea and all this kind of stuff, but you seem to be a complete pantser.

Carter (11:16): It’s a curse.

Debbi (11:16): Just taking everything literally as it occurs to you.

Carter (11:20): And I recommend to every writer to try multiple ways because you will eventually find that method that is organic to your nature. I mean, I’ll give you an example. I’m writing something now, and I had kind of, again, the opening scene idea, but not much more than that. I’m like, I am going to outline 20% of this book before I start. And I sat there for two days and I just couldn’t figure it out. And the moment I wrote the first paragraph, things start to reveal themselves to me. And so I’m convinced personally that my outline is fully formed in my head. I just need to write in order to tap into the subconscious part that is releasing it a little bits at a time, because it’s not like I change my books massively after I write that first draft. I just physically need to be in the act of writing to know what might happen next.

I recommend to every writer to try multiple ways because you will eventually find that method that is organic to your nature.

Debbi (12:15): Do you usually have an end goal in mind in terms of where you want the story to end?

Carter (12:20): No. I know what’s not going to happen. I’m not going to have my protagonist hit by a truck on the last page, but usually around 80%, 70, 80% in I start to get an idea of how it might end, but not usually before that.

Debbi (12:41): How much research do you do before you write or during the writing process?

Carter (12:47): I don’t do much. I mean, I do obviously all the research I need to do that supports the book to make it as believable as possible. I usually just don’t set myself up for a story that requires that once in a while I might have a secondary POV that might be a detective, and in that case, I’ve got a friend who’s a detective and I’ll feed him pages. I’m like, does this make any sense to you at all? But the beautiful thing about writing first person present tense from kind of an everyday character, that character walks around the corner and there’s somebody pointing a gun at her face, she’s not thinking, oh, that’s a Walter PPK, nine millimeter. They’re like, there’s a gun in my face. So you don’t really, but there are times where you do have to obviously look things up. If it’s a setting that you’re not familiar with, you either go there or you make sure that you’re doing it justice by that kind of research. But that’s usually the extent of it.

Debbi (13:49): Yeah, yeah. Just enough to make it feel real.

Carter (13:53): Yeah. Because you’re not going fool everybody, but you think about what you like to read and what resonates with you, and you try to adhere to those standards.

Debbi (14:05): Exactly. Yeah. What author would you say has been most influential and inspiring for your writing journey?

Carter (14:14): There’s so many, and it’s funny because I mostly read nonfiction, but I grew up on Stephen King clearly, and I think someone like Stephen King, you learn depth of character and maybe not even so much plot, but just emotion. I think he’s a master at that. Then you look at somebody like Cormac McCarthy who not only do I not write like, but I could never write like him.

(14:45): But when you read him, you realize, wow, his writing forces me to read every word. Why is that? And I think from him, you realize how to distill, how to take a paragraph and put that whole sensation of that paragraph into two or three words by just choosing. And that all happens in the editing where you realize, this feels a little bit lengthy to me. What am I trying to say and how can I make that visceral? But there’s a tremendous number of authors that I’ve read who they just tap into your head somewhere and you start to realize like, oh, this is sounding a little bit like Harlan Coben or whomever.

Debbi (15:33): Let’s see. Have you ever considered writing a series?

Carter (15:38): Not seriously. Series are a tricky thing. As a new author, you really have to have the series to go to a publisher or to an agent. You can’t just say, you bought my book, great, but let’s make this a series. And they’ll say, slow down. We don’t know how this book’s going to do first. And so that’s kind of how it started for me. And then I’ve always just written standalones and I just love where are we going this time? Who’s our cast? That’s so exciting for me. Also, when you start having fairly everyday characters, how much stuff can possibly happen to them that you can extend into a series? I certainly would never say never, but at this point, I just love going to a new world each time.

Debbi (16:33): Yeah. There is something kind of nice about going into something totally different, a different situation with a different set of people dealing with the problem. Totally.

Carter (16:44): I agree.

Debbi (16:45): It’s a challenge, but it’s a good kind of challenge. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing, in a writing career?

Carter (16:55): Well, the first one was, don’t quit your day job. You know what I’ve learned over time, and I do coach writing, I do coaching and online classes and seminars and retreats, and I feel like I have a little bit of an expertise at it because I started from a place of zero background in writing, zero aspirations in writing. It was literally, quite literally, I started on one day, it was a lightning strike, and I haven’t stopped, but I had to learn everything. So I’ve gone through all those pitfalls, and what I’ve really realized is, one, determine your, why are you doing this? Really think about that and make sure that’s an answer that you can print out and put on the wall and look at every day to make sure you’re staying true to that vision. And secondly is to write every day. The biggest complaint, people say, I wish I had time to write. And that’s just such a load of crap to me. You can write for 15 minutes, and if you do it every single day, you’ll build that muscle just like going to the gym. But consistency, I think overshadows inspiration, overshadows everything else because you will become a writer if you write every day. I mean, look at me 22 years doing this. I only write an hour a day. So you can find an hour in your schedule,

I do coaching and online classes and seminars and retreats, and I feel like I have a little bit of an expertise at it because I started from a place of zero background in writing, zero aspirations in writing.

Debbi (18:19): And you’re doing well at it. Thanks. And you’ve got, you’re teaching courses and everything. That’s fantastic.

Carter (18:27): Yeah, I love it. I love talking to writers, so it’s always fun.

Debbi (18:31): Do you ever do things like masterminds or workshops?

Carter (18:35): Yeah, I mean everything. Yeah. I teach at other workshops, and then I just run my own as well. And I love, one of the things I love talking about, because I think I’m not a big believer in classes teaching you how to write. I think there’s a million ways to write, so I’ll teach how I write, and that may or may not resonate with you, but I love talking about the writer’s psychology, blocks, inspiration, consistency, things that really trip writers up and keep them from realizing their goals because they’re too stuck in their own head, because I’ve been through all that too. Fear of rejection, sharing your work, all those things are so scary. There’s a lot to teach along those lines.

Debbi (19:26): Absolutely. Yeah. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Carter (19:36): I was just going to say I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book.

Debbi (19:41): Well, that’s my pleasure, and I love the background you have set up for yourself with the covers on the wall.

Carter (19:48): Oh, yeah.

Debbi (19:48): Anybody who’s listening to the podcast, check out the YouTube video because there’s this lovely display of his covers on the wall to his right as you’re looking at this.

Carter (19:58): Yeah, it’s funny, I did that. I remember with my first book, I’m like, I wanted to have it framed, and then when I went to do a couple events, I would put it on a little easel, and then I started doing it with every book, and then I realized, this is a nice affirmation for me to be able to kind of, when I’m in my office, I’m like, oh, I did that. Yeah. And writers need that, we need, because we’re so full of self-doubt that it’s good to say, no, I’ve done this. And so I think that’s important for everybody.

Debbi (20:31): Fantastic. Well, I think that is great advice and just a great way to finish up. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your being here and telling us about this, Carter.

Carter (20:42): Thanks so much, Debbi. I really appreciate it as well.

Debbi (20:45): It’s been my pleasure. Believe me, I always enjoy talking to writers about this stuff, and I think the advice is good for anybody who’s interested in writing too, and for anybody who just enjoys reading crime fiction.

Carter (20:58): Totally.

Debbi (21:01): Thank you to everyone who’s listening or watching. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Also consider becoming a Patreon supporter. Check out our different episodes on Patreon, as well as our perks, which we put ad-free episodes up there, so keep that in mind. Also, we have different perks at different tiers, so please give that some consideration. Helps to support the effort here and keep us in business. Our next episode will feature Brenda Chapman. Until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Check out our Patreon page!

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

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

Download a copy of the interview in PDF.

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

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

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

Priscilla (02:05): Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (11:36): Yes, yes, exactly. That’s when you get that wonderful, all that tension, all that conflict that you need in a novel, and those types come together and just boom, even in small ways. Do you have a set number of books you’d like to write for the series, or are you just taking it book by book?

Priscilla (12:02): I’ve been taking it book by book because I’m not a fast writer in part. I mean, I’m not writing three books a year, I’ll put it that way, every two years. So sometimes things like the pandemic slowed down almost every writer I talked to just because the stress of dealing with it, the unknowns. If you were writing a book as I was with a contemporary setting, you didn’t know is the pandemic going to be over? Is it not going to be over? And I dunno, maybe you had that same experience.

Debbi (12:36): I did actually. It’s really weird. Yeah, it happened. The pandemic happened and I was writing something where my protagonist was going to pretend to be a census taker, I think. And then I couldn’t do that because the census takers couldn’t go to the houses. And I was like, oh, okay, I can’t do that then. And the timing was just wrong. I know.

Priscilla (13:06): And When the House Burns, I originally, that was not, I didn’t have a title originally. Often, I don’t always have a title when I start, but it was going to be on a very different topic, which I may get back to. But then, and I wrote about this in the post on your blog, there was the shutdown. So we were all stay at home. So home was, and did you have a safe home was a very big deal. And I actually had to move during the pandemic because my basement turned toxic. And like a reader, a writer, excuse me, I couldn’t let that detail go by. And in the novel When the House Burns, the detectives have to suddenly get out of their agency building because it’s suddenly gone toxic. And so they’re displaced. So many people are displaced, but so you sometimes have to adapt to circumstances.

(13:59): And the book I’m working on now involves the MedTech industry. I was inspired by nonfiction, by exposes of the pharmaceutical industry, and particularly a sub-subplot, and this is nonfiction, I’m talking about real people in that plot. One of the big moneymakers, questionable people in the pharma industry had a family. He divorced the wife, but they didn’t take a settlement. I mean, this was a wealthy man. They just sort of disappeared, changed names and everything, would have nothing to do with this person. And you begin to wonder why. And it’s a little bit like Succession only nobody wants it. So I have that sort of disappeared family, and I already had this idea. It started writing it when I began having some health issues of my own. And there my life was imitating my book a little bit and has happens to so many writers and people in life in general. Some post COVID health issues slowed me down for quite a while, and it put me very in touch with the pharmaceutical and MedTech industry. And things are much more resolved right now, but …

Some post COVID health issues slowed me down for quite a while, and it put me very in touch with the pharmaceutical and MedTech industry. And things are much more resolved right now, but …

Debbi (15:29): Oh, good.

Priscilla (15:30): I got a different view of things. And it’s always hard to keep a book on path, the path you think it should be on. And then, you know this as a writer, to adapt when your book does fall off that path. And I had to kind of restart it at some point. And fortunately, it’s at the phase now where it’s being read by people. So that’s good. That’s fantastic.

Debbi (16:00): Excellent. Do you do a lot of research when you write your novels either before or during?

Priscilla (16:10): I do research throughout. I do quite a bit before. I think that’s my old academic habit. And a lot of times when I’m stuck, I find research helps me out. Now the research can be of different kinds. Some of it I’ve written about: addiction; privacy issues; homelessness; arson; and now the MedTech industry. And some of it can be pretty dry, almost academic. I mean, looking at FDA websites about drug recalls for example, or looking at statistics on homelessness and you don’t want that part in it. But some of my research is much more fun going to restaurants and thinking, well, could a couple have a fight here? What would it be like? So I’ve sometimes gone to restaurants. I’ve gone to quite a few parks in the Twin Cities. I mean, the Twin Cities is a city of rivers and parks.

(17:10): And I’m trying to think of, I did talk to a cadaver dog trainer occasionally. I like to get personal interviews when I can. I can’t always get them, but I’ve talked to cadaver dog trainer, social worker, a person who works helping the native community with issues in Minneapolis. And in fact, one of their issues is right outside the center there’s a homeless encampment with drug issues. So even though some of their own people are homeless, they want that area to be safer. So you get the double, you get that it’s a multi-sided problem right there.

I like to get personal interviews when I can. I can’t always get them, but I’ve talked to cadaver dog trainer, social worker, a person who works helping the native community with issues in Minneapolis.

Debbi (17:50): Yeah, my goodness.

Priscilla (17:53): And as I said, some of it, like for When the House Burns, it was COVID, but I looked online at a lot of houses for sale, and I got hung up on one where there was a very ugly looking deer mount in the basement along with, oh, I can’t remember what else was in it now, but some very strange things. And the most fascinating one was a very nice house, which has sold by now, but it had a mission style bent stairway. And that meant the bottom was dark wood wainscoting, and the top was painted plaster. But someone had done a very realistic mural over the plaster that showed a dragon going up the stairs. And if you went upstairs and you could do this online, follow the curve, you had Wonder Woman fighting the dragon at the very top of the stairs. So yes, a lot of people out there have wonderful imaginations, and I like to tap into that when I can.

Debbi (18:49): That’s fantastic. It sounds like you really kind of explore the Twin Cities in your work.

Priscilla (18:56): Yes, yes. I try not.–

Debbi (18:58): That’s really cool.

Priscilla (19:00): Well, partly, I don’t live right in the Twin Cities, and it gives me an excuse to go in and hang out in cool places.

Debbi (19:07): That’s really cool.

Priscilla (19:08): And yes, anyone who writes does a lot of nerd things. They may not like to admit that they may. I remember hearing your talk with Gregg Hurwitz, who goes to explosions and things. I can’t say that I’ve done that, but one thing I did is agencies that rehab houses, some for-profit, some nonprofit, including Habitat for Humanity, did this program in the Twin Cities several years ago. We could go on this housing tour and that included Habitat for Humanity, houses in low income neighborhoods, a neighborhood with a public housing project where yes, some of the cars parked around the streets were on blocks and didn’t have wheels and also very high end places. And most people just went to the few kind they were interested in. A lot of people who went to the lower income ones were actually interested in supporting agencies and Habitat for Humanity, but I remember you actually had to fill out a little card and someone says, you’re going to every single one of these. Well, it was a great way, it was open houses on economic range, and there was one that had, it was only about 12 feet long, but one of those little swimming pools where you swim against the current, it was inside. And I kept thinking, haven’t used it yet, but wouldn’t that be a way to murder someone, is to crank up that they go smash into the wall. That’s the way writers think.

Debbi (20:44): Yeah. I’m afraid that is exactly the way writers think. What if, especially with these books, it sometimes kind of scares yourself thinking about these things. Let’s see. Is there an author that has influenced your writing greatly? Somebody in the established authorship that you look up to as a kind of inspiration?

Priscilla (21:09): They’re a great deal, and I’ll come to the more contemporary ones in a minute, but I think I read mysteries as a kid a lot. My husband has always read a great number of mysteries, including Nero Wolfe, classic Archie Goodwin, and actually it’s Rex Stout is the writer, Nero Wolfe and Archie.

Debbi (21:30): Yeah.

Priscilla (21:33):But then when I was still teaching, I read some PD James novels, we’re talking back in the nineties when she was very big. And if readers don’t know her, she’s extremely brilliant. And I may make fun of her detective in a very indirect way in my series because her Detective Dalgliesh is brilliant himself and also a published poet. In my series, Eric Jansson has a sister who’s a published poet, and her poetry, which is erotic, always embarrasses him. Anyway, and Donna Leon with her Italian series. But Minnesota and Wisconsin have a fantastic writing community. So I’ve felt supported by people there like Mindy Mejia, Matt Goldman who narrates mysteries, but used to write for television, including for Seinfeld, Alan Eskens. So there’s quite a community in the Twin Cities.

Debbi (22:36): That’s awesome. I read Mindy Mejia’s To Catch a Storm, I think it is.

Priscilla (22:43): Yes. And I think A World of Hurt, I think is the one that’s out now. I have it, I plan to read it any minute now because I think she’s coming out with more, but she does very intense thrillers with characters who have very unusual backstories, and she’s a wonderful writer, wonderful stylist.

Debbi (23:10): Excellent. Yeah. What advice would you give to anybody who’s interested in having a writing career?

Priscilla (23:20): Persistence is in some ways more important than talent. I’ve been to, before I had written or finished a book or maybe even, I was very scared of starting a fiction book. I went to conferences and I hear these people read these fantastic beginnings, and I thought, nothing I’ve written so far nearly has the punch of that. But then I never see their names on the published list. So you can sometimes be overwhelmed by the brilliance of someone else or just how thrilling it is. Persistence matters more. Can you get it done? And you have plenty of time. I still have a hard time. I think partly it’s my academic career or I did do editing myself. I have a hard time turning off that internal editor and just getting out that lousy first draft.

Persistence is in some ways more important than talent. I’ve been to, before I had written or finished a book or maybe even, I was very scared of starting a fiction book.

Debbi (24:10): That’s right.

Priscilla (24:12): I say, oh, this is going. And you just have to sort of say, and I’ve heard other writers say this, you just have to tough it out.

Debbi (24:21): Just keep going.

Priscilla (24:23): Yes.

Debbi (24:24): Start and keep going.

Priscilla (24:26): Right.

Debbi (24:29): One of the things I always think is good is to keep a journal, because you kind of tend to find your writing voice when you’re writing in a journal,

Priscilla (24:37): Right? Yeah. I do that off and on. And actually what I kept more of was, and this doesn’t seem to have that much to do with my mystery series, more of a nature journal and combined with photographs of what’s blooming and what birds are coming through. I live with a view of the Mississippi River, a giant flyway, though that only indirectly comes into the books in that I know the flora and fauna pretty well, and again, I get characters, it’s bird watchers who discover a body in the very first book, but you have to keep in the habit of writing. And I realized that when I was stuck and very frustrated. I just didn’t feel up to writing. But you have to keep in the habit of writing or I know I listened to a lot of books when I couldn’t. You have to keep reading too. That’s the other thing. You have to keep reading, and you have to read people who write like you and people who do not write at all like you do.

Debbi (25:42): Yes, absolutely. I agree with all of that. That’s fantastic advice. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Priscilla (25:54): I’ll try to think. I think, yeah, I think also you have to be serious about writing, but you can’t take yourself as a writer too seriously. I think one thing about my detectives is at some point they realize they can’t take themselves too seriously. They have to lighten up a bit. And even though the crimes may be grim, I am not someone who gets real graphic about the murders. I’m more in the traditional category there, but I think not take yourself too seriously, even when you’re in a real dilemma as a writer, just like the detectives, at some point, what they have to do is, I think there’s, I can’t remember which novel it is, but there’s one where both Eric and Deb, they’re in their street clothes, but they’re standing in a lake. How they got in that lake is a good question, but they’re standing in the lake and Deb is trying not to cry. She doesn’t want to cry in front of her partner. Her partners don’t cry in front of each other. That’s one of the codes. But she is very upset and at some point she just says, I wanted be to crime what Meryl Streep is to acting or something, and suddenly Eric says, well, I’ll be Roger Federer, the Roger Federer of crime, something like that.

I think also you have to be serious about writing, but you can’t take yourself as a writer too seriously.

Debbi (27:11): But that’s really cool.

Priscilla (27:14): They had to break out of that moment.

Debbi (27:16): That’s cool. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being with me today to talk about this, to share this with us.

Priscilla (27:25): And thank you so much, Debbi.

Debbi (27:27): I appreciate it, and it’s my pleasure, believe me.

Priscilla (27:31): Okay, well, I’ll continue watching.

Debbi (27:34): Awesome. Thanks. And to anybody who is listening or watching, if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review where you listen to podcasts or watch on YouTube, wherever. Also, consider joining my Patreon page, becoming the supporter on Patreon, where I post bonus episodes, excerpts for my work, writing excerpts, short stories, what else? Lots of things. Crime related, bits and bobs, a newsletter. I got things going, all sorts of things going. Anyway, our next guest will be Carter Wilson, and until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

Support the podcast on Patreon. Check out the shop there!

 

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

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

You can download the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael (05:05): Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (11:19): Yeah. Yeah. That’s fascinating. That is very, very interesting. Raises all sorts of things in terms of multiple personality, stuff like that. Who knows?

Michael (11:32): It’s pretty endless, isn’t it? Yes.

Debbi (11:34): I could go on, but …

Michael (11:36): But no, you’re right. Who is this person now?

Debbi (11:38): Yeah, yeah. Wow. This other voice talking in my head, that’s part of me.

Michael (11:44): I mean, most of us have enough voices in our head as it is.

Debbi (11:47): Writers in particular. Do you think, as gender roles have changed over the years, as our perception of gender has changed, do you think that crime fiction has kept up with the changes? Can we be doing a better job?

Michael (12:08): I think that’s a fantastic question. I mean, one of the things in the world of crime fiction, as we know, some of our great writers have always been, have been the pioneers and have been women have been the pioneers. You think of the Golden Age of crime writing in Britain. I mean, you think first of, well, you think first, Agatha Christie, of course, and Dorothy Sayers and others as well as, of course, different men. But so women have always been prominent as crime writers. I think when we think of different subgenres, you think of the classic thrillers, which still have a bit of a macho, not bit of, still tend to be dominated by a very macho vibe. Actually, my agent is now shopping around a thriller that tries to get around some of those tired cliches of thrillers. But we’ll leave that aside, too. When it comes to, we’ll have another conversation. But I don’t know if it has actually fully adapted. We do see more either, if not themes, references to women, cops being sexually harassed at work. There certainly are themes around physical and sexual abuse of women sometimes. Unfortunately, that’s done in a, I think pretty, I’d say superficial and even exploitive way, a sort of titillating way, which to say the least, I find ugly and wrong and distasteful.

I don’t know if it has actually fully adapted. We do see more either, if not themes, references to women, cops being sexually harassed at work. There certainly are themes around physical and sexual abuse of women sometimes. Unfortunately, that’s done in a, I think pretty, I’d say superficial and even exploitive way …

Debbi (13:44): What the crime writers have most inspired you to get into crime writing?

Michael (13:51): Wow. I am a very eclectic reader. I do particularly love the British, Scottish mystery writers a lot. I think those tend to be my go-to writers, although there are of course, some North American writers who I totally love and adore, and so I won’t start picking out names, but I read quite widely, and I spend a lot of time with the classics, sometimes going way back. I just reread the other day, Woman in White, one of probably the first mystery ever written by Wilkie Collins 160 years ago or whatever it was. And I think that wide reading is really important. I think it’s an important thing as writers, as readers, just to keep it broad.

Debbi (14:59): Yeah, yeah. I’ve noticed a tendency on the part of writers to read broadly anyway. But yeah, I’m sort of the same way. I like to read different things. I need my palette cleansed every now and then of crime writing. Something different something that tastes a little different and comes across a little differently.

Michael (15:21): Well, I hink one reason for this, certainly as a writer, if you’re just immersed in, let’s say contemporary crime fiction from the US, so you’re just trying to keep up with the hundreds and hundreds of books, or at least some of them, you’re going to be in such a little bubble of a certain writing style, a certain subject matter, subject matters, preoccupations, but a very small world. And I think that what that does, it’s not really healthy for your own writing or for the field. It just becomes, you just start reflecting back and forth. We become like AI machines that are just ourselves based on what we read. And there are things that are in contemporary mystery writing that’s very good. There’s other things, I think less so. I’m not enamored with sentences that have to explain every little thing in the sentence and have a lot of adverbs. She gasped with emotion, and it’s like, of course you don’t need to. And I think there’s a bit of a tendency in a lot of contemporary writing, and particularly sadly when we get into the self-published world in which there’s some great stuff, but tends not to get edited as much. And so you don’t have as much of that editorial oversight that can say, no, you don’t need that. Just cut it out.

I think there’s a bit of a tendency in a lot of contemporary writing, and particularly sadly when we get into the self-published world in which there’s some great stuff, but tends not to get edited as much.

Debbi (16:51): Yeah, definitely. An editor is something every self-published author should invest in along with the great cover.

Michael (16:58): Yeah.

Debbi (16:58): Period. That’s my advice.

Michael (17:01): Editors are great. I remember one of my–

Debbi (17:03): They’re your best friends.

Michael (17:06): They are. I remember one of my first experiences, it was actually years ago now, it was a nonfiction project with Ballantine Books and I had written this thing, and the comments back from my editor were, I don’t get this, this doesn’t, whatever. And I just thought, first thought was, how could she be so dumb? Why couldn’t she get that? And then of course, the obvious hit me, which is no, if she doesn’t get it, it means I’m not doing my job as a writer, because she’s obviously a smart woman,

(17:40): Just that dose of reality and someone challenging us to kill our darlings and all the cliches. I mean, luckily for one of my books, speaking of editors, one of my most recent works of fiction is actually a young adult crossover. It’s a fantasy, a present day fantasy. It’s a mystery in there. And under pseudonym Kayden Quinn, because I actually co-wrote it with my longtime editor, and we wrote this story together about a 16-year-old young woman who discovers on the horse farm where she’s working three, the horses are centaurs. It’s a fantasy, but there’s a climate change theme in it. There’s about to be, I won’t get into the details and spoil anything, but basically Andra and the centaurs have got to save everything. And so what was really fun, speak by the editors, is I did most of the writing as we started off, we developed all the ideas together, which was an amazing back and forth, to have someone to work through things.

Just that dose of reality and someone challenging us to kill our darlings and all the cliches.

(18:56): I did the writing and she would edit, but after a while, we were just mashing up back and forth and just learning from each other. And it was Marie Lynn Hammond, who’s a Canadian singer songwriter, and an avid horsewoman, I should add, since this is set in a stable, is a type of great editor who just pushes, pushes. I would have Andra just saying something or doing something. And it just seemed fine. And Mary Lynn would say, well, why did she not get under the covers? I’m just thinking, it doesn’t matter. She’s tired. And Mary Lynn would constantly be saying, even if you don’t tell the reader, you’ve got to know if you want to, what’s going on. So writing Moon Storm Rising was such a wonderful experience and ended up with a book, I think that’s quite magic. There’s magic in it. I mean, one of the things that Andra eventually starts to learn is centaur magic, which you probably didn’t even know existed. And apparently it does. I happen now to be an expert on centaurs.

Debbi (20:08): Awesome. And it sounds like a great collaboration you had going with your editor there.

Michael (20:13): Fantastic.

Debbi (20:15): There’s a lot of good in collaborative writing.

Michael (20:18): It’s very tricky. Several years ago, I co-wrote another strange hybrid book called The Afghan Vampires Book Club, and it’s not a fantasy. There may or may not be vampires in it. We got a beautiful blurb from Jane Fonda on the cover. I mean, it’s a nice book, but it’s about war. It’s a metaphor about war and love and life. And anyway, co-wrote it with a friend, and at some point we decided that our friendship was more important than wrestling over do we like this adverb or adjective? And we just kept deferring to the other. And so it’s a really interesting process. It is hard to write, to write together,

Debbi (21:07): Maybe on a novel more so than what I’ve been doing screenplay writing, which is so collaborative. It really is good to work with another person when you’re working on a screenplay. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Michael (21:22): Well, and as in when you think of screenplays, it’s something that’s ultimately going to be out of your control. And to have that collaboration from the start, I think is so healthy.

Debbi (21:31): Exactly. Yeah.

Michael (21:32): Someone pushing back and creating ideas together. But no, I love that brainstorming together. It’s terrific.

On collaborative writing: I love that brainstorming together. It’s terrific.

Debbi (21:39): I mean, you can have it in your head, but unless it’s on the page, nobody’s going to see it. Nobody’s going to really know what’s going on here.

Michael (21:47): That’s why they call us writers rather than thinkers.

Debbi (21:51): Hopefully we do both.

Michael (21:52): I should tell you quickly, my other recent novel, these two actually ended up being self-published, which I’d never done before, but my agent thought it were so different from my other writing, just let my publishers, been published by Penguin and Random House and Crooked Lane and others. Let them do what they do. And just so these are actually self-published on Amazon of all things. This one is for fans of Dick Francis, that very sort of light mystery writer from England from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, who wrote these horse racing themed mysteries. They’re all sort of the same. But anyway, I thought I’m going to copy his formula, do the same thing he did, but in the world of golf of all things. Anyway, The Perfect Lie, again under a pseudonym, Joshua Slate, came out of that thinking. Just sort of fun. I was talking earlier about the political and the social themes of my Jen Lu series set in Washington DC, 10 years in the future. This is pretty straightforward stuff, and this is just turn the page entertainment and have fun with it.

I was talking earlier about the political and the social themes of my Jen Lu series set in Washington DC, 10 years in the future. This is pretty straightforward stuff, and this is just turn the page entertainment and have fun with it.

Debbi (23:04): Cool. Well, that’s always fun. It is always nice to have a read that’s just easy and fun.

Michael (23:10): Yeah.

Debbi (23:11): So cool. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up? Do you have any advice for people who would like to write for a living, for instance?

Michael (23:22): I think one of the main things is, and the two classic answers are the best answers, and that is to read, read, read, read. And as we were both saying earlier, read diverse. If you’re into fiction, great, you can just read fiction. But the world of fiction, don’t just get stuck in one genre or one period. You’ll just stymie yourself from the beginning. So read as broadly as you can. Work at it. Don’t be scared of the big books of the classics. Actually, I have a little series I started on Instagram. I can’t remember if I already mentioned that, but if not, this little series saying, don’t be scared of big books on my Instagram account. So read. The other, of course, is just write, write, and write. I’m not one into this, you have to write a certain number of words a day. That’s not my, that’s not me.

I think one of the main things is, and the two classic answers are the best answers, and that is to read, read, read, read. … don’t just get stuck in one genre or one period. You’ll just stymie yourself from the beginning. So read as broadly as you can. Work at it. Don’t be scared of the big books of the classics.

(24:19): When I’m into a project, I could start first thing in the morning and then at midnight I have to force myself to stop. And other days it’s not what I’m doing. So I am not saying you have to crank out a certain number of words a day, but writing is not just an art, it’s a craft. You have to work at it. And part of working at it is that it gets into nothing, trying to work with, if you can just scrounge up the money or whatever, but hire good editors. When you show friends, friends just love what you write. And you know what, sometimes you’ll have some friends who are good critics too, and that’s fantastic, but most people are not editors. Most people are not book critics. So get that support.

(25:09): Don’t be in too much of a hurry. Particularly if you’re querying agents, you don’t get many shots at it. And if you’re sending out things to your list of whatever, 30, 50 agents, once they’ve seen you and turned you down once, your next, when you rewrite that book in a half a year, they’re not going to be interested. So be patient, make sure you’ve got a good, if you’re writing a book or stories that you’re going to get there. Unlike being a professional athlete, writers do not peak in their 18 to 25-year-old. There’s a few prodigies that are there, but most writers, they’re peaking in their thirties, forties, fifties, whatever. So just hang in there, learn the craft of writing, develop your own view of the world. Read and learn to, when I said read, learn to read like a writer, I find when I read a story, I just get so into the story. I’m not reading like a writer, so I have to sort of slow down and think about how did the writer make me feel this? How did I realize this is happening when they haven’t said so? And to really just try to slow down a bit. So yes, reading, writing, getting criticism and challenge are all really, really important.

Debbi (26:41): Yes, I couldn’t have said it better. Thank you so much, and I would like to thank you for being here today with us to talk about this. I appreciate your being here. Thanks.

Michael (26:52): Well, thank you. In your 10th year, which is amazing doing this, and best of wishes for your own writing and just keep up the great work.

Debbi (27:02): Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. For those of you listening, please consider leaving a review, if you enjoyed the episode on your favorite podcast app. Also consider supporting us on Patreon where we offer bonus episodes, early access to episodes without ads, excerpts from my work, and reduced prices on various books and other items in my store on Patreon. On that note, our next guest will be Priscilla Paton. Until then, take care and happy reading.

*****

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

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

Download a copy of the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gregg: Yeah.

Debbi: Kind of like that.

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Oh wow. That is so cool.

Gregg: It was really cool.

Debbi: Have you ever met Michael Uslan?

Gregg: Michael who?

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

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

Debbi: Yeah. Nice guy.

Gregg: Yeah.

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

Gregg: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gregg: Thank you.

Debbi: I agree with you completely too. It’s like looking at things from different perspectives, being able to see the way somebody else will perceive something and acknowledge that, simply acknowledge that.

Gregg: Yeah. And to try and engage in reality, whether that’s talking to people or putting forth policies. If they don’t have engagement on the ground… One of the things I’ve learned, I have a refrain that reality is where ideology goes to die. Once you have your feet or your bearings that are engaged in the real world on any initiative, whether it’s messaging or specific policy, when you deal with reality, you quickly lose the ideological moorings that sometimes ossify thoughts and make them more rigid.

I have a refrain that reality is where ideology goes to die. Once you have your feet or your bearings that are engaged in the real world on any initiative … you quickly lose the ideological moorings that sometimes ossify thoughts and make them more rigid.

Debbi: Yeah. So what kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Gregg: I get up. It’s a wonderfully boring life when things are calmer. I get up and I just sort of sit and I write first thing in the morning. I take a lunch break. I write more. I basically write all day every day. I have a lot more meetings now. I do some screen writing. I have other stuff that can kind of interfere. But the biggest thing for me is if I can get a solid four-hour chunk first thing in the morning, everything works out. Then I can come back in the afternoon often for an hour or two, maybe a little bit more time. If I’m under deadline or towards the end of something, I can really push out those days, eight, 10 hours sometimes even.

Debbi: Wow, that’s impressive, especially with all the emphasis on marketing they put on authors.

Gregg: Yeah.

Debbi: I’m telling you. So how much research do you do when you write your novels?

Gregg: I do a great deal actually. I’ve fired every gun Evan Smoke uses. I mentioned earlier, I’ve gone on to demolition ranges with SEALs to blow up cars. I’ve gone-

Debbi: That sounds like fun.

Gregg: It’s really fun. I’ve gone undercover in mind control colts. I’ve swam with sharks. I’ve gone down class four white water rapids in Mexico. I try to go anywhere that the action is because if I experience it firsthand myself and sort of smell the smells and feel the air against my skin, I can convey it often in a different way that brings it to life much better for my audience and my readers, and it helps me avoid tropes. It helps me avoid the sort of cliched reactions to scenes. I did some training in mixed martial arts fighting, which is not to suggest that I’m any good at it, but I did that before I started the Orphan X series just to understand how hand to hand might work, and there’s a particular sensation, for instance, to getting choked out. There’s different sensations that if I experience I can write about and breathe life into differently than if I weren’t willing to put myself on the line.

I’ve gone undercover in mind control colts. I’ve swam with sharks. I’ve gone down class four white water rapids in Mexico. I try to go anywhere that the action is because if I experience it firsthand … I can convey it often in a different way that brings it to life much better for my audience and my readers, and it helps me avoid tropes.

Debbi: Are you more of an outliner or a pantser when it comes to actually writing the books?

Gregg: I’m very oddly kind of right between. I have what I call a rolling outline. It’s a living and breathing outline, and so I have a bunch of plot points, snatches of dialogue. It’s in a big file. It’s filled with bullet points. It’s often 20 pages or so before I start 20 to 30 pages. And as I start to write the book, I shape up out of the clay some of these sort of scenes and themes and whack them into different places. And the whole time I’m writing, that outline is growing and evolving until at some point it shrinks and is consumed into the 400-page manuscript.

Debbi: Yeah. I think a lot of us take the hybrid approach, so to speak. It’s not all pantsing and it’s not all strictly outlined. It’s kind of like you said, bullet points with stuff in between that kind of takes you from one point to another.

Gregg: Yeah. You want to be open to opportunity. I discover a lot writing-

Debbi: Absolutely.

Gregg: … and I’ll think about things that need to change. And so, I have to always make sure it’s flexible that I’m not sort of rigidly filling in and painting by number something that I’ve conceived of at the outset before I’ve got myself up to the elbows and the clay of it.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. Let’s see. What author has most inspired you to be a writer?

Gregg: Probably Stephen King, who I started reading in fifth grade. I remember I was struck by how amazing it was that this guy who’s typing in Maine could put together a collection of common words in an uncommon manner that could elicit such strong emotion in me. It was like a magical power, and I wanted to do that.

I studied a lot of Shakespeare too. I have a highly practical Masters in Shakespearean tragedy, which is useful because employers were just beating down my door with job offers after I got that. But I was writing my first novel when I did that, and Shakespeare has had a great impact on me in a lot of ways because particularly the tragedies, they’re very close to early commercial thrillers. They’re tales of lust, intrigue, and murder that are highly structured. They’re narrative driven. They’re often based on pre-existing themes and ideas, and they’re designed to put assets and chairs to sell out the Globe Theatre to represent every quadrant of society. And so in a lot of ways, reading those and studying those make logical sense in a certain way for the types of writing that I do, even though it doesn’t on face value seem as logical.

Debbi: I got to agree with you about Shakespeare. Shakespeare is truly a writer who hit all the right emotional points in terms of reaching a reader or a viewer, in the case of watching his plays. When I was in high school, I literally asked… I don’t remember which play it was we did, maybe it was Macbeth that we covered, but afterwards I went to the teacher and said, “Can we do some more Shakespeare?” And he’s like, “What?” He acted like I had just said something really, really weird and bizarre, and like there was something wrong with me. I said, “Can we do it just faster? Because we don’t have to go over every single word. I can figure out what he’s saying.”

Gregg: Yeah, there’s this sort of cadence to his writing, and once you fall into it-

Debbi: Exactly.

Gregg: … You can be swept along. Some people have a hard time entering it, but I think once you get it, if you get the ear for it and you get the rhythm of it, he’s just wonderful.

Debbi: He is wonderful. Absolutely. I got to talk to you about these little parodies that I wrote of Shakespeare plays. I made them hard-boiled mysteries.

Gregg: Wow.

Debbi: Yeah. Hamlet hires a detective to prove that his uncle killed his father, essentially, and the detective asks, “How do you know this?” “Well, my father’s ghost told me.” “Oh, I see.” It’s a little bit cryptic.

Gregg: Not a great chain of evidence.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of like something like, this guy’s crazy, but okay, he’s got money. I’ll take the case. King of Denmark? Sure, why not? Prince, little Prince. Anyway, now that I’ve gotten off on that track, what advice would you give to anyone who is interested in having a writing career, other than reading Shakespeare?

Gregg: Schedule and discipline. You got to get your ass in the chair time. It’s so important to have it.

Debbi: Absolutely.

Gregg: Don’t be afraid to get down a vomit draft. A lot of people get paralyzed with self-criticism, but if you write anything, even if you just throw it on the page, you can make it better, and you cannot make a blank page better. So if you carve out the time and you move forward no matter what, you can always fix it, and you’ll be learning, however slowly and imperfectly. At least you’re tilted in the direction of starting to produce work that you can assess and criticize and edit and cut and rewrite.

A lot of people get paralyzed with self-criticism, but if you write anything, even if you just throw it on the page, you can make it better, and you cannot make a blank page better.

Debbi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have to just get started at some point and be willing to take criticism when it’s given, when it’s given in the proper way, informed, constructive criticism. But you just have to get started and get used to the idea of taking constructive criticism.

Gregg: That’s right.

Debbi: Yeah, for sure. Let’s see. Is there anything else you would like to tell us before we finish up?

Gregg: No, I think we’re good. I’m happy to welcome new readers on board to the Orphan X series. Nemesis is the tenth. In a lot of ways, it’s a big culmination of the book where Evan for the first time finds himself up against one of his closest friends, and so there’s a combative aspect, but there’s a really deep emotional core because what does it mean if you’re up against your closest friend and the stakes are life and death, and it’s the first time he’s really had that in his path to becoming more human, even as somebody who was trained to be an assassin.

Debbi: Well, thank you so much for being here. I just want to thank you and good luck with your op-eds and all those efforts.

Gregg: Thank you so much, Debbi. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Debbi: It was my pleasure, believe me. And on that note, I just want to thank all my listeners too. Make sure that you leave a review if you enjoyed this episode. It helps. Also, we do have a Patreon page where we offer perks to Patreon supporters, so do check that out. On that note, we’ll have another episode next week, and until then, just take care, and happy reading.

*****

Check out our Patreon page!

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

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

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: Yeah, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like, so the idea with Lovecraft and Cthulhu and these monsters, it’s not explicit horror. It’s more dread and implication and, frankly, slowly going mad. And so I my husband was the one who suggested it, actually, because I was like, you know, in each of these Deadly Sin books, Hope fights a different monster.

[T]he idea with Lovecraft and Cthulhu and these monsters, it’s not explicit horror. It’s more dread and implication and, frankly, slowly going mad.

And I need a monster that symbolizes sloth or laziness. And he was like, “What about Cthulhu? He’s sleeping.” I was like, oh, OK. I actually hadn’t read H.P. Lovecraft, but I was like, let me give it let me give it a try. And I liked the idea. And so I ended up working with two different artists. I’m just going to show off the art for. OK … trying, trying, trying.

Debbi: Other direction.

Melissa: OK, I’m going to do, I’m going to do the big one.

Debbi: There you go.

Melissa: So this one is no, no. Yes. OK.

Debbi: There it is.

Melissa: This one is by Ben Baldwin in the UK, and I do find it amusing. OK, if we can just stay in focus … with the idea, I told him that this one is going to be on neurology. And I like the idea of this tentacled creature attacking a skull. So that’s what he came up with. And there I did a series that goes. So that’s the shoggoth, but it’s actually the dust cover. So there’s probably no way this will all stay in focus. But anyway.

Debbi: I can see most of it. It looks good.

Melissa: Yeah. So it is cool. So this was the first time I worked with artists, which was really neat. And that I ended up writing poems as well as the novel, and so the poems will be in a book called Cthulhu’s Cheerleader, and then the actual book is called Killing Me Slothly.

So the Kickstarter backers can get both of them together in a special edition and everybody else can buy them separately as desired. So I’m working on that. But to be honest, Sloth was just, it’s just so tough. Like it was like, it’s tired and I’m tired. It was just actually sucking out my brain. No, I think I am just, I’m just revising the ending. So I’m hoping that will be done soon. And then I’m also working on romance, which I am just trying to hit all of the tropes. So I have a group of hockey players who are set in Glengarry.

So I don’t know if you know this, small towns are very big in like. Well, there’s it’s one set of romance and I live in a small town that is so cute, like just for example, when we moved in, one of our neighbors made us an apple pie. Another neighbor gave us homemade jam. And a set of pasta plates, which I can assure you they did not do in Montreal.

Like we just, I think, never spoke to our neighbors, you know, so it’s just, and our like our mail carrier, she makes little. Like she gives our dogs treats if she sees them, but like at Christmas, for example, she makes up little treat bags for them and she makes a Christmas card and she specifically names them like and she does. I think she’s made over 100 of these bags for all the dogs on her route.

Debbi: Wow.

Melissa: Yes. And that’s just normal where I live. So other people are like …

Debbi: That’s so small townish.

Melissa: I know.

Debbi: It’s very quaint.

Melissa: It’s so cute. Like I had read online that they were like, OK, well, we have these small towns and people like to romanticize them, but it’s really sad.

And real small towns aren’t like that. And I was like, I actually do live in that small town. So I’m going to try and transmit that through Fire and Ice and the rest of the books in that series, the Glengarry Guards.

Debbi: That’s really nice. I like to hear about happy small towns because I see so many depressed ones on television mostly. They really, really like to dump on small towns.

Melissa: Yeah. And of course, like that’s what people click on and watch. So, I mean, they’re not going to show the happy endings a lot. Like you might get just one one heartwarming thing before the end of the hour. But I was like, you know what? I’m lucky that I live in this place where people care.

Debbi: That’s awesome.

Melissa: I’m going to share a bit of that in 2025.

Debbi: All right. I’m ready to move to Canada.

Melissa: OK, yeah. Come on over.

Debbi: All right. All right. For many reasons that I won’t go into right now.

Melissa: Yeah, I got it. I got it.

Debbi: Oh, boy. Let’s see.

Melissa: Canada feels the same. I shouldn’t speak for all of Canada. My part of Canada feels the same.

Debbi: Let’s see. Do you plan to how many more in the Hope Zse series do you think you’re going to write? You’ve got the Seven Deadly Sins going, right?

Melissa: Yeah. So I’m going to finish the Seven Deadly Sins. That’s the plan.

So Sloth is number three. And then I’m going to do Lust next, which is number four. But depending how things go with romance, I may like space out the books a bit more because I know that some people, like who are much more business minded, they’ll just stop a series.

So Sloth is number three. And then I’m going to do Lust next, which is number four. But depending how things go with romance, I may like space out the books a bit more …

I’ll be like, OK, sorry, this doesn’t work or this has to take a back burner. And for me, I was like. There are seven deadly sins. Like it’s kind of weird to stop after three. In my case, it was actually a Kickstarter level where people could choose that they were going to be in a future book. So I have at least three people that I need to put in future books. So the series will continue, but perhaps just at a slightly slower pace.

Debbi: When did you start doing a Kickstarter?

Melissa: With Wrath. I’m just going to show you all my books. So with the first deadly sin. And I’ll just give a Kickstarter tip for any crime people who are looking at it. So there are people who do super well at it, like Sara Rosett, just beloved, you know, put up her historical 1920s mysteries. And it was like, yeah.

But not all mysteries have done as well. And from what I understand, historical, like even historical romance is not considered a huge market. Kickstarter loves fantasy and science fiction. So if you can get that angle in, that would be helpful. So it just so happened that in this series, I started introducing supernatural elements. Well, perhaps suitably this this one had ghosts in it. So, yeah, there you go. I’ll just put it with my face. Why not?

Kickstarter loves fantasy and science fiction. So if you can get that angle in, that would be helpful. So it just so happened that in this series, I started introducing supernatural elements.

So it’s not, I wouldn’t say, a huge selling point, but it’s they do like to have that. And I think they’ve talked about how Brandon Sanderson, you probably heard. Now, I can’t remember how much he made. Forty five million dollars or something like something enormous like that my mind cannot grasp. And so he brought a bunch of fantasy fans to that sphere who are interested in seeing other books like that or in that realm. Or, you know, there’s a market for it.

Debbi: Fascinating.

Melissa: And this may change, too, like right. So as you bring in more fans, they may do that. But just it’s not a given that just like, oh, I put a crime book on and we I make tons of money like exactly.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. People don’t realize how much effort goes into doing something like crowdfunding.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. People don’t realize like creative work in general, how much work goes into it.

Debbi: Exactly right. Yeah. They just don’t realize. How do you manage to balance your medical work with your fictional work?

Melissa: Yeah, I do. I did something very different from most, which is that I. Well, there are a few things. I prioritize writing, so I felt a little guilty when I graduated, like I told my husband, I was like, oh, you know, now I can finally make some money. But I really want to write because, you know, I’ve been kind of starving to do this during my whole medical training and even our undergrad, right, because you’re just working so hard to get into medical school and beyond. And he was like, “Do it.”

My husband is a man of very few words, but he always encouraged me to write or just he’s just been like, why not? Like he’s not somebody who will like give speeches or anything, but he’s just like, I don’t see a problem. So I’m like, OK, so my parents really thought that was strange. And like, I’m sure my classmates and stuff would not understand why I would do this, you know, financially and stuff. It just it makes no sense. But I just I, you know, in the end, I told people I’m just like other people can run an emergency room, but only I can write my stories.

Debbi: That’s right.

Melissa: And in the end, you die and you have to be happy with whatever you did.

Debbi: Exactly.

Melissa: I just like I got to prioritize my writing.

Debbi: I know the feeling. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with this book at all. Range. This is a great book. I’m recommending it to the entire world.

Melissa: OK, what’s it about?

Debbi: It’s about how generalists triumph in a specialized world. I think you might like it.

Melissa: I would totally be into that.

Debbi: Yeah, you would be into that. It totally resonated with me. I went to law school and then decided to be a writer. So it’s like I trained as a writer. I was a journalism major, but then didn’t end up going into it. But then I did go into journalism, but that was later.

Melissa: It’s obviously, you know, you love words. You love thinking deeply about issues. You know, these things go together. Like in our world, we don’t think of them. But actually, you know, journalism and law. Yeah. Why not? It’s very verbal, intelligent.

Debbi: Exactly. And and also it helps that I have a supportive spouse as well. He was very much like, you should be writing.

Melissa: Oh, fantastic.

Debbi: Isn’t that nice when it works out that way?

Melissa: Yes. Actually, you know, I used to be part of this blog called Mothers in Medicine, and one of them, her ground rock recommendation was marry well.

Debbi: Mm-hmm.

Melissa: Because what you choose makes such a fundamental difference. And, you know, I have heard repeatedly that the number one financial determinant for you as a woman is not your education.

It’s not how hard you work. It is your partner. So even now in 2025, you have to be very, very mindful. Like a lot of time, your partner will drag you down. You know, you’ll end up with a bazillion kids or if you’re career minded, you’ll have to pay alimony or palimony. Like just it can be a real millstone. You have to be smart about it.

Debbi: Exactly. These are important choices. Think about it before you do it.

What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career? Apart from choosing your spouse or partner well.

Melissa: So, that’s one. I always say read, read, read, write, write, write, because there are a lot of people are attracted to writing, but they’re not actually interested in reading books. And that doesn’t work. Like you have to love stories and words in this medium, like it’s not the same as TV.

You know, you need to love books. If you love TV, then you could do TV, which is also writing. But choose your medium and understand like. There’s a lot of frustration involved. Like I try to explain to people. It’s not like math where one plus one equals two.

[Y]ou need to love books. If you love TV, then you could do TV, which is also writing. But choose your medium and understand like. There’s a lot of frustration involved. Like I try to explain to people. It’s not like math where one plus one equals two.

So if you put this amount of energy into writing, then you will achieve this much or you will sell this many books. There’s a lot of randomness and luck and, like, popularity contests going on with the literary world and it’s such a balance to just, to be confident in yourself and what you want to do and also be able to handle capitalism, frankly.

Debbi: Yes, unfortunately, but there you have it.

Melissa: Yeah. So long term, like that’s what it’s like.

But I’m just fascinated by artistic people, like creative people in general. And I’ve also like done some acting and performance and stuff, too. And one analogy that stuck with me was, you know, because, you know, it’s so hard to act like, you know, you often end up just giving it away for free, for example.

And one person said, well, you know, it’s like riding a bus, you know, like you get on the bus and it’s really crowded and you have to shove your way on and you’re just like, why am I doing this? And it’s so stressful. But you keep riding the bus and eventually there’s a place for you to sit.

And I’ve been struggling with that, like. Feeling like that, honestly, and feeling confident and faith and and keep going and everything like that, but it is like that, like you have to keep going. Oh, actually, can I share an analogy? I was just thinking about this.

Debbi: Please do.

Melissa: So Jennifer Crusie, you may know her. She wrote romance and she writes romantic suspense with often with Bob Mayer. And she talked about an experiment where they had rats with islands. So it sounds horrible.

But what they did was they took rats and they put them into, say, a basin and the rat had to paddle around. There was no, they couldn’t get up on the sides. It was too hard for them. So they divided the rats. Some of them, they would just have to paddle around until the timer went off and they would take them up. And, you know, no rats actually drowned or anything like that.

Or if they paddled around long enough, the second group, there was actually some sort of island where they could rest their little paws and breathe. And then they took all the rats and then they put them in the base in a second time. And they just measured how long they would swim. And the rats who had islands in the past, even though there were no islands now, kept swimming for much longer. And she was like, you need to be a rat with an island.

Now this now this makes me think about privilege, right? Because if you have been someone who’s raised with, you know, not a lot of money, you know, you actually physically cannot afford to just keep paddling around and be like, oh, well, if I write one more book, one more book, one more book, it’s going to be OK. For sure, that’s true.

But if you can keep the faith and keep going and write your book, even if you have to do it on the side and keep your day job and, you know, keep changing your baby and everything that you need to do at the same time, then eventually, I hope you will find a spot for yourself. You’ll create some sort of niche and find some group of people who are like, yes, I love your work. I love your stories. You are one of my people. And that’s what I’m hoping for, for all of us.

Debbi: I think those things are possible if you stick with it. You just have to persevere and believe in yourself. And look for your people, like you said, look for the people who appreciate what you’re doing.

Melissa: Yeah.

Debbi: So on that note, I’ll just ask, is there anything else you’d like to say before we finish up?

Melissa: I guess I just want to say thanks, you know, like, because you’re one of the people who keeps us going, right?

Debbi: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that, because, boy, I know the feeling is sometimes you just need somebody out there who believes and is ready to get behind you and say, pay attention to this person.

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. And so and thank you for adding your book to the gift basket for the giveaway.

Debbi: My pleasure. I’m glad I was able to do that. Yes, we’re doing a joint giveaway.

I’m throwing in a copy of Damaged Goods, my first Erica Jensen mystery with the gift basket that Melissa is offering. So be sure and check out that giveaway. The details are on my website under the post about the giveaway.

And if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. They help us. Also check out the perks we offer to various supporters on Patreon. So I’ve got that going.

And on that note, I’ll just say that our next guest will be Greg Hurwitz. And I want to thank you again, Melissa, for being with us today. Take care and happy reading!

*****

If you’re a fan of the show, consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

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

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (00:09:21): Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi (00:12:43): Exactly. Exactly. It’s not. Standing out is harder than ever these days. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in writing as a career?

Matt (00:12:58): I think, you know, go with the fact that there is no magic bean. As we just mentioned, it’s not as easy as writing the book and collecting the paycheck and going out. You know, really what you have to do is you have to spend your entire day gathering a whole bunch of beans and then you grind them up. And at the end of the day, if you’re lucky, you have enough for a pot of coffee. And the next day, you can drink your coffee and do it all over again.

(00:13:37): And that’s pretty much what it is. And if you don’t love writing, researching, editing, promoting, and marketing books, you probably are in the wrong field. Because there’s a chance that you’ll make a lot of money. And there’s a chance that you’ll make a living. And there’s a good chance that neither one of those things will happen and you’ll have to be doing it for the love of the craft and just enough to scrape by.

(00:14:12): And so, you know, you have to love it. There’s no major magic bean. You just have to gather the beans and grind away at it and make a pot of coffee and then do it all over again the next day.

Debbi (00:14:25): Absolutely, yeah. It’s interesting because there is definitely routine in a writer’s life.And the idea of writing as a job is something I can fully appreciate in terms of putting in the hours, and making sure you apply your time in the best way. And I was reminded of, when you were talking just then, of Robert Crais, who spoke at Bouchercon one year and said he considered himself a blue collar writer. And I thought that’s such a great attitude. You have your little lunch bag or whatever, you sit at your computer, you do your thing for a few hours, you take a break,you do your thing some more for a few hours, and you just work at it and work at it. And it’s a job. He treated it as a job. And I thought, that’s fantastic. And it sounds like you do the same sort of thing.

Matt (00:15:21): Absolutely. You know, I think another one of my heroes, Robert Parker, treated it that way as well, as a blue-collar job. And I think that made an impact on me, for sure. And, you know, people are always talking to me about how are you so prolific? How do you write so much?

(00:15:41): And then I kind of hear how many thousands of words they write when they sit down to write, and it’s always higher output than I do. But I do it every day. I do it seven days a week. And it just dovetails into the next day. And I just keep going at it. And when I finish one book, I’m lucky to take a day off and I start writing the next one. So, you know, you’re grinding away doing the blue collar work. I like that. If that’s what you call it.

(00:16:15): And, you know, it’s not sitting at your fancy desk, you know, whipping off a book in a couple of weeks and then taking the rest of the year off to, you know, just go around signing it.

Debbi (00:16:27): Interesting. Yeah, it isn’t. What conferences do you usually attend?

Matt (00:16:34): You know, ones that I never miss are local to me, Crime Wave in Maine and Crime Bake in Massachusetts. I’ve done ThrillerFest down in New York. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to try and get down to Nashville next year for the Silver Falchion one.

Debbi (00:16:57): Cool.

Matt (00:16:59): Which is something I’d like to do. I have not yet done Bouchercon, which I would like to do sometime. And I’m not sure if I’ll get there next year or when exactly that will be.

Debbi (00:17:12): Well, one of these days, I hope to get to one of those conferences because it’s been a long time since I’ve been, since before the pandemic.

Matt (00:17:20): Do you go to Malice Domestic?

Debbi (00:17:24): I haven’t lately, but I would like to this year.

Matt (00:17:27): That’s right in your neck of the woods.

Debbi (00:17:29): It is, yeah. I always go to C3, if you’ve ever heard of that, Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity.

Matt (00:17:36): Yeah, I’ve heard of it.

Debbi (00:17:38): It’s in Columbia.

Matt: (00:17:39): Oh, it’s right in Columbia.

Debbi (00:17:40): Yeah, it’s right there. It’s like, hey, all I have to do is just drive right over there. Yeah, it’s great. So is there anything else you’d like to talk about before we finish up?

Matt (00:17:53): No, I think, oh, I think my third series, which was the impetus behind my Brooklyn 8 Ballo series was really the fact that my daughter lives in Brooklyn. She’s in Bed-Stuy. And so I said, you know, if I’m going to write, and the first step was I wanted to combine my love of histories and mysteries.

(00:18:19): So I said, well, let’s write a historical PI mystery. And then I decided to write about Brooklyn because my daughter lives there and I could go do research and visit at the same time. And so I set my PI detective in Bushwick, right next to Queens there. And I decided on the 1920s because it was such a fabulous time and place with the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age and prohibition and gangsters and everything. So all of those things get woven into my so far two book series. The first one was Velma Gone Awry and then this past summer City Gone Askew came out, and in the first pages of the first book Dorothy Parker makes an appearance. And she’s such a fabulous character that she refuses to leave the pages and she becomes a regular throughout the book, both of them, as do many other characters like Coleman Hawkins and Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky.

(00:19:27): And so and then, you know, other appearances by famous people is fun to weave into it as well. So that’s kind of my Brooklyn 8 Ballo series.

Debbi (00:19:39): Have you been to the Algonquin and the Round Table?

Matt (00:19:43): I have.

Debbi (00:19:44): It’s kind of cool. My husband and I went there once, and there was a cat that was roaming through the restaurant, and apparently it kind of came with the place. I don’t remember the name of the cat now, but I just remember there was a cat.

Matt (00:20:00): Yeah, I didn’t see the cat when I was there, but I did go in because – My first chapter, you know, 8 Ballo, my PI hops into the Algonquin Room to talk to Dorothy Parker, who’s at the Round Table with Benchley and some of those others. That starts the whole thing off.

Debbi (00:20:21): That’s fantastic. That sounds like great fun.

Matt (00:20:24): Yeah, the research is so much fun on a lot of those things. I also visited the back room of The Back Room, which is a speakeasy in lower Manhattan that has been kept exactly like it was in the 1920s, so they haven’t changed a thing. But on top of that, they’ve kept pristine a back room to this speakeasy called The Back Room, where Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano planned Murder Incorporated and kind of laid the foundation for the modern day mafia.

(00:21:04): And they play parts in both of my books so far. So it was neat to get in to see that, you know, just so many different things to the historical aspects. The history of Roosevelt Island which used to be known as Damnation Island and the East River there. It’s just mind-blowing so.

Debbi (00:21:29): Fascinating. Oh, my goodness. Well, I want to thank you so much for being here and sharing all this with us because it really is fascinating. And so I appreciate your being here and waiting to get on, also.

Matt (00:21:44): Oh, it’s fantastic. And it was great talking to you. It’s always one of the best, you know, I didn’t quite get to this, but one of the best parts of the whole gig is interacting and talking with other authors. And it’s such a fantastic community, mystery writers specifically, that I’ve enmeshed myself in and have really enjoyed. So I’m very happy to be on and chatting with you.

Debbi (00:22:12): Oh, well, same here. And thank you. Because yeah, you’re right.I mean, mystery writers are just awesome people. Crime writers, mystery writers, all of us.

Matt 00:22:23): Yeah, I think we get our angst out on the pages. So we’re a little more chill.

Debbi (00:22:28): That’s what it is. Yeah, we get all that angst out on the page and don’t have to take it out on anybody else. So yeah. Again, thank you. And my thanks to everyone who is listening as well. You can get early access to the episodes ad-free if you become a supporter on Patreon or Substack, one or the other. One of these days, I’m going to decide between the two of those, maybe. Who knows what’s going to happen? I never know what’s going to happen.

(00:23:00): Anyway, you also get bonus episodes and excerpts from my work, et cetera, et cetera. In any case, our next guest on the podcast will be Melissa Yi. And in the meantime, take care, happy new year and happy reading. Be seeing you.

Matt (00:23:19): Happy New Year. Write on!

Debbi (00:23:21): Write on!

*****

If you enjoy the podcast, I hope you’ll consider lending your support on Patreon.

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

Bogie as Sam Spade!

He was also great as Philip Marlowe!

See what I mean? 🙂

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

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

Powers Boothe was awesome!

I even did a tribute post when he died.

So, I just had to include him in this, didn’t I? 🙂

 Happy Noir New Year! 🙂

Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

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

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

You can download a copy of the interview here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kerrie: Yes, yes. It was perfect.

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

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

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

Kerrie: Oh, wow.

Debbi: Funny how that happens.

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

Debbi: Exactly.

Kerrie: Poverty was not fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debbi: It’s a tough job. Yes.

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

And I think it’s really important for a defense lawyer to … any lawyer, but really a defense lawyer … and the reason I say that is because psychopaths will manipulate anyone. They’ll manipulate the judges, their lawyers, the juries, and they will get away with it, and they will use the courtroom as another method of manipulation. And so unless you are really attuned to that, you’re going to fall right into that trap. It has happened to colleagues of mine, and the ripple effect stays with you forever. I mean, you can get roped into it.

The classic case that I always think of is my colleague who represented Jodi Arias and all of the fallout that he went through of having to represent somebody like that. What’s important for – I’m sure that your viewers understand this – there are a lot of defense attorneys who represent capital clients, 99% of them are court appointed, so we don’t pick and choose who the clients are. And so if somebody is assigned to a truly vile person, and I can think of, for example, James Holmes, the mass shooter of Colorado movie theater killer shooter. The attorneys that represent James Holmes, the defense lawyers, they were vilified, they were hated by the public. It was almost as if they were an extension of James Holmes, which is really an unfair characterization, but it happens quite often to defense lawyers, and it really, I think, can have a psychological toll on practicing in that area.

I think that’s really important too, to sort of have the public understand that, that they’re not extensions of their client. They’re not. Just because they’re out there defending somebody like that. I mean, everybody deserves a defense and all that stuff, but I think it’s really important to understand the kind of client that you’re dealing with, how they’re going to manipulate everything that you say or do in the courtroom, and that’s really what sort of my path has taken me on, all this true crime stuff. I’ve really been fascinated by that. What is that ripple effect? What does it do to people? What does it do to the community? What does it do to the lawyers representing them?

I think that’s really important too, to sort of have the public understand that, that they’re not extensions of their client. They’re not. Just because they’re out there defending somebody like that.

Debbi: Those are great questions. And yeah, really, what does it do to the community as well as the lawyers? I mean, that has to take a toll on your psyche after a while. One of the questions I had for you was if you ever got depressed doing this work.

Kerrie: Yes. I think I would be lying if I said I didn’t. I think that what was really key for me in doing capital work and then of course doing true crime work and really starting to drill down into some of these really dangerous characters, was to make sure that I had my own balance. I didn’t let it absorb me, and you have to realize when it is absorbing you. You have to realize when it’s important to step away, to practice mindfulness, to recognize that this is not your identity.

Just because you’re representing somebody who embodies the worst of the worst, it’s not who you are. You don’t have to take it on. It’s easy to say that, but I’ll be honest, I was in therapy for many years. Probably the only thing that kept me going was having some kind of sounding board.

I know this sounds kind of tongue in cheek, but you know they have the scenes in The Sopranos where he goes to see his therapist. Well, it’s really true. It’s that kind of relationship where you go to your therapist and you say, listen I do something really strange and a lot of people don’t understand it, and I can’t talk to anybody about it because everything’s confidential. It’s secret so you can’t talk to your client about how your client’s affecting you. You can’t talk to anybody really. Maybe the State Bar, maybe the Ethics Committee, but not really, because it’s just not that kind of thing where you can divulge anything personal about what you’re going through with respect to what your client’s facing.

So it’s a very interesting sort of private, hellish world, but it did remind me in a lot of ways of that Sopranos scene. Well, he has many scenes where he goes to see his therapist.

Debbi: Yes. Yes. What authors have most inspired your own writing?

Kerrie: Oh, it’s interesting because even though I am a true crime writer, I don’t read a lot of true crime. I find I have to really step away from that, and so I am very fascinated by memoirs. I absolutely love reading about other peoples’ lives and other peoples’ experiences because again, I really believe that we can learn so much from shared stories and I admire the courage that it takes a lot of these writers. One that comes to mind is Glennon Doyle, Glennon Melton Doyle, who’s one of my favorite writers. What I love about her is her authentic voice, how she can just completely 100% be herself and not worry about how other people are going to perceive her. I just find that so courageous and so fascinating, and I don’t know how she does it, but she does it and it’s amazing to me and so I’m very intrigued by that.

I don’t read a lot of true crime. I find I have to really step away from that, and so I am very fascinated by memoirs. I absolutely love reading about other peoples’ lives and other peoples’ experiences because again, I really believe that we can learn so much from shared stories.

Another one is Cheryl Strayed, the fact that she could take one experience out of just a terrible tragedy in her life and not let it define her life, but show you how she moved through it. What I love about those two authors in particular is that they’re not celebrities. You know, they’re not out there … I mean, now they are in the public eye, but at the time they weren’t and this was just a slice of their life that they were willing to share with the world. And because they did that, we all gained something from it.

I remember reading Cheryl Strayed’s book and thinking at the time I was going through some very traumatic experience in my own life, and I thought, wow if I had not found her book, I don’t know that I would’ve had the same sort of epiphany that I had coming out of my own tragedy. I find that such courageous writing, and it reminds me in a lot of ways of the – because there are times where I come back to true crime writing – and I don’t know if it’s a worldwide phenomenon, it might be, but I’m just going to say the American phenomenon, we have savage appetites for crime and it really sort of made me think about that a lot on sort of an academic level. What is it about it that really draws us in, and predominantly women? I mean, women make up the main audience of true crime, which is even more fascinating to me.

Debbi: Why do you think that is?

Kerrie: Well, there are many theories on it, but I think in a lot of respects, it’s sort of that idea of – I’m not much of a roller coaster rider and I don’t like riding roller coasters – but it’s that idea of being on a roller coaster, being able to have the thrill of almost in my opinion, almost dying from the speed and then whipping around things, but knowing that you’re not going to. So for a woman who is in – and I hate to say this – in all likelihood, going to be the target of a predator or more likely than a man, for example, to be a victim of a crime, for women, it’s that sort of I’m going to sit in the comfort of my living room. It’s like watching a horror film unfold, and I’m going to see this play out on a screen. So I’m protected, but I’m watching it and maybe I will learn something. I will learn something about the pathology of that predator. I will learn something about how that victim became a victim, and what can I take away from it.

And so that always brings me back to why I write true crime, and why I devote so much of my time to doing podcasts of it, is that I really believe that there is a fine line between entertainment and education. I think that it’s such an important vehicle to be able to educate people about these different pathologies and about if this happened to this woman, what could you do differently? What could you learn from this, and what can you take away from it?

I really believe that there is a fine line between entertainment and education. I think that it’s such an important vehicle to be able to educate people about these different pathologies and about if this happened to this woman, what could you do differently?

But the one thing I will say about true crime that I really would love to see a turn in, which I haven’t seen too much of yet, is to not have the victim be a footnote. I think that that’s something that really does need to change. It’s not sensationalizing so much the killer or the predator or making that such the focal point, even though it’s really important to know that sort of pathology, I think in many respects, it’s really important not to forget the victim that this happened to, and they have a life and how did it impact that? Again, that’s that ripple effect. How did it impact that community, that person? I mean, taking one precious life out of that, and how did it change the trajectory of so many lives? So it’s really sort of a double-edged coin.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah, for sure. What kind of writing schedule do you keep, and how much time do you spend on writing versus, say, the podcast?

Kerrie: Well, I think I’m probably a little bit insane that way, a little ADHD. I have kept the schedule probably, oh my gosh, for as long as I can remember really, and it just sort of became my biorhythm. I get up at 4 every morning, and I work from about 4 to 7, and then I go to my day job, which is law. I really try to compartmentalize those two because it’s too difficult to bring them into the same space, so I really focus on writing, and by writing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be being physically at a typewriter writing something. It can be thinking about an idea. It can be going for a walk, it can be reading something, watching something. I get a lot of inspiration from watching documentaries.

And then, now that I have these two podcasts, one of my podcasts, Crime Stands Still, started out of a case that I represented a woman for 15 years who I believe was wrongfully convicted, and I was actually her post-conviction lawyer. And so at the end of the day, she said to me, there’s nothing left that you can do in the legal system, so what can you do in a different media platform? I had never really thought about podcasting until I got to her case, and I thought, you know what? Her case is so interesting, so compelling, I think I’m going to start there. So I started by telling her story and offering different legal theories and different perspectives, different new evidence that the jury never heard, and so that became that platform. That was kind of easy to do and fun to do because I already had all the research.

The other one I do is Crime Bites, where I just do kind of snippets of what’s in the headlines, and I offer it from a defense attorney’s perspective. What would I see legally that maybe an audience doesn’t get from another podcaster? What can I offer that’s different? I do spend quite a bit of time on that one, because I have to, number one, find the case and figure out what’s interesting about it. I don’t want to just talk about a case that’s sensational, but I will talk about something that is in the news and maybe offer a different perspective. It’s quite a bit of work so I devote maybe two days a week to researching and writing those scripts and doing those podcasts, and then the rest of the time as a lawyer. So it’s a juggling act.

Debbi: Wow. It must be quite a juggling act. I really admire your determination and persistence there and your work ethic. That’s great. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Kerrie: Well, the one thing that I would say to somebody that I wish somebody had said to me was do not expect it to replace your day job, at least not for a very long time and if you’re very, very lucky, because you cannot or shouldn’t I think, be doing it for the money because it’s not there and it’s not there for a variety of reasons. 90% of the time it has nothing to do with the quality or time expended on your book.

It’s just a fact. There’s so many books out there. The publishers take the lion’s share of the royalties and so it can be very frustrating. I’m traditionally published, so I can’t really speak for the self-publishing arena, but being published traditionally, it’s been a very sobering experience. While they certainly have a wide distribution and they get your books in a lot of places, and it’s fun to see that, you lose a lot of control over the creative project. You really don’t see a lot of money from it.

Debbi: That’s right.

Kerrie: Yeah. And that’s why I’m still a lawyer. I get asked that all the time. Why do you still do this? Well, because I have to.

Debbi: People have this notion that somehow you come out with a book and suddenly you’re a millionaire. No, it’s not the way it works at all.

Kerrie: No.

Debbi: That’s definitely true for self-published, I can tell you that from a personal perspective. I know that from experience. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Kerrie: The only other thing that I would add is in addition to just doing it because you have a passion for it, don’t write to the market necessarily, but write to what you are absolutely passionate about, because you’re going to spend so much time working on it, rewriting and editing, no matter what, no matter if you’re self-published or traditionally published, it is going to consume your life for a couple of years at least. And so be prepared for that and be sure that you really love what you’re doing. And the last piece of thing I would say is don’t read the reviews.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely!

Kerrie: Just don’t read them, because people will write whatever. They haven’t tried to write a book and so they’re just going to be trolls in a lot of cases.

Debbi: The heck with them.

Kerrie: Yeah.

Debbi: Ignore that kind of stuff. If there are people out there who like you, that’s enough, isn’t it?

Kerrie: Right.

Debbi: Have that crew of people who like you. Well, thank you so much for being here, and this was a great talk and I could probably talk for an hour about this, but unfortunately I don’t have the time. Zoom won’t let me.

Kerrie: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Debbi: Oh, I’m pleased to do it. Believe me. It’s always nice to have a lawyer on, too, especially a defense lawyer. I love defense lawyers, so … not that I don’t like prosecutors, I know they have a very important job, but defense lawyers really take it on the chin sometimes, and I like to defend them..

Kerrie: That’s cute.

Debbi: So, in any case, I just want to thank everyone who’s listening. If you would please, leave a review if you enjoyed the episode. And also, we have a Patreon page with perks for supporters, so check that out. With that I’ll just say, take care and until next time, happy reading.

*****

If you enjoyed the episode, consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

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

I’ll gladly provide transcripts when I can afford it Enjoy my expensive hobby the show! 🙂

 

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with lawyer and crime writer Dan Flanigan. Dan started off writing poetry. Check out the story of how his writing journey began. To download a copy of the transcript, just click here. Debbi: Hi, everyone. My guest today is a lawyer, author, playwright, and poet, who among other things, has taught legal history and jurisprudence and practiced civil rights law, as well as worked in financial services, so he has an impressive resume. His written work includes the Peter O'Keefe hardboiled crime series, which has earned praise and awards. He has also written stage plays and short stories. His novella Dewdrops was adapted from a play. It's my pleasure to have with me a lawyer and acclaimed author, Dan Flanigan. Hi, Dan. How are you doing today? Dan: Good enough, thank you. As I said, better than I deserve I'm doing. Debbi: Oh, dear me. Oh, I'd hate to think that. You always wanted to write a novel but ended up going to law school. How did that come about? Dan: Well, I'm not sure. Debbi: I know the feeling. Dan: I wanted to be a writer from the time I was a sophomore in high school, and found many ways to avoid or evade it. When I look back on it, I punished myself a whole lot all those years, and unfortunately punished my wife as well for selling out, not doing what I was supposed to do. But when I look back on it now, I wonder if I really had anything to write and you've lived your whole life. You have had a lot happen to you. Debbi: There's a lot to be said for waiting before you start writing, because then you have more content to draw from. Dan: In any event, I never thought it would, but it worked out well. Debbi: Absolutely. Yeah. What was it that started you? You started with poetry, correct? Dan: Yes. I had written in sort of spurts occasionally over a long period of time, between my sophomore year in high school and when I really started writing in earnest, and I had a period in the 1980s when I was on kind of a two-year break from practicing law and I wrote several plays. I wrote some poetry, a couple short stories, and I wrote a novel. One thing led to another. For example, I had an agent, I had a publisher for the novel. The publisher went bankrupt, and I had a stage reading of a play in New York. I thought I was going to be on top of the world for about five seconds. Where do you go eventually with any of that? So I decided I'm going to quit punishing myself and have nothing to do with writing. And about 20 years later, if you got something like that in you, I guess it stays in you. My wife died in 2011, and I thought I'd do a kind of tribute, I guess - she might not think so - to her with a book called Tenebrae, which is a book of poems, mostly focused on her last illness and death. That sort of broke the dam, if you will, and sort of led me back into writing in a very serious way, and I really kept to it since. Debbi: What inspired you to create Peter O'Keefe, this character? What kind of a person is he and what do you draw on to create stories about him? Dan: The way I ended up there is odd, but I had no thought of ever writing crime fiction or detective fiction or anything else. I had read some of it over the course of my life, but never was steeped in it in any way, and the first two books, one was poetry and one was a short story collection, Dewdrops that I guess - not to be pretentious - but you might call literary fiction. But then I wanted to write this novel, sort of a fall in reparation sort of thing. I thought I want to make this more interesting than just navel gazing, and so I said, you know, I'm going to try to put it in this sort of private detective format and see how it goes. And that was the book that I wrote, and got accepted by a publisher. I had no thought of ever writing crime fiction or detective fiction or anything else. I had read some of it over the course of my life,