The Crime Cafe

Debbi Mack
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Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.

  1. 2d ago

    Interview with Carl Vonderau – S. 12, Ep. 10

    This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with international banking expert and crime fiction writer Carl Vonderau. You can access a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today had a career in international banking before turning to crime writing. He’s also interviewed crime— Carl (01:03): Why wouldn’t you? Debbi (01:08): One naturally leads to the other. Carl (01:11): Yeah. Yeah. Debbi (01:12): Certainly. He’s also interviewed true crime authors to explore the effects of crime on the lives who may be tangential to that of the crime itself. I believe it was “behind every crime, there’s a family.” Carl (01:29): Yes, that’s right. That’s sort of my motto when I write. Debbi (01:33): I like that a lot. His interviews appear on a show called Person of Interest, part of the Authors on the Air Network. And he lives in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco. Carl (01:46): No, San Diego. San Diego. Debbi (01:48): Oh, you’re in San Diego because San Francisco was what was in your bio. Carl (01:52): Really? Really? Debbi (01:54): Really. Carl (01:55): Oh, I got to fix that. Debbi (01:55): Oh my God. Good heavens. So much for my questions about San Francisco. Well, San Diego is an awesome city, I have to say. I love San Diego. I’ve been there once and it’s like, oh man, this place is awesome. Carl (02:10): Oh, well think of this. Before that I lived for 15 years in Montreal, right? In Montreal, there’s like six weeks of summer and it rains most of the time. So can you compare that to San Diego? I mean, somebody at my old bank asked, “Well, when your wife got an offer to teach here, how long did it take you to decide that? About three nanoseconds?” Debbi (02:38): Seriously. No kidding. That is like, whoa. That’s where I’d go if I could. Yeah. Great place. Well, I’m just glad you’re with us today. Carl Vanderau And I think I got that right. Even the second time. Carl (02:54): Yeah. Debbi (02:55): All right. So awesome. So how are things in San Diego today? Carl (03:02): It’s overcast. Debbi (03:04): Overcast. Carl (03:04): Yeah. It’s getting down into the 60s. Debbi (03:08): Well, good grief. That’s just freezing. Carl (03:10): That’s tough. I may have to put on a sweater. Debbi (03:14): Oh my word. Well, stay warm. I urge you to stay warm. Keep that sweater on. We don’t want you to catch your death or anything. Let’s see. I see that you were in banking and you specialized in anti-money laundering. Carl (03:35): Well, that’s what’s on the back of the book. Debbi (03:38): That’s what’s on the back of the book. Carl (03:41): I didn’t really specialize so much yet in banking. I took some courses on money laundering and I was involved with some people that tried to do some money laundering with me. And then I did a lot of international trade and I think it’s something like 7% of international trade is actually money laundering. Debbi (04:04): I can believe it. There’s a lot of that going on. Carl (04:08): Yeah. Debbi (04:09): Yeah. Was there a reason in particular that you decided to start writing crime fiction? Carl (04:16): Well, write what you know. Debbi (04:21): I followed the same kind of advice. Yeah. Carl (04:25): No, for some reason I thought that would be the easiest way to get published, but then I found that I tend to write about dysfunctional families and there’s nothing that makes a family more dysfunctional than crime and the possibility of wealth. So that’s what I found. I think it amplifies all the conflicts that are already there in these characters. Debbi (04:57): That’s interesting. I know what you mean about focusing on dysfunctional families. I have a tendency to do that myself. Sometimes I wonder if the concept of family can extend to things like workplaces or communities. Carl (05:17): Well, that’s an interesting question because quite often I worked at banks and one bank in particularly and they call it a family. We’re all a family here. We treat each other like a family. Some companies do that, but when the numbers go bad, that kind of disappears. When they have a down year, you may be family, but you got to go. Debbi (05:42): That’s right. Profits get thicker than blood, something like that. Carl (05:50): Yeah. Debbi (05:50): There’s no blood there to thicken. It’s all about money. Yeah, it is unfortunate when things like that happen. So how would you describe your writing style then? Do you feel it’s very realistic or psychological suspense? Carl (06:10): I think it’s more psychological suspense. I’m most interested in the characters, but I love a good plot, so the two really have to go together and they’re categorized as thrillers, so it has to start off strong. It’s interesting in this book, Saving Myles, which was the last book out, it’s about a family who has a very difficult son. So they sent him to a residential treatment center against his will, and when he comes back, he seems totally changed. And then he sneaks off to Mexico to try and do a drug deal and gets kidnapped. Now, the father is one of these high test bankers, a very prominent banker, and the only way he can save him the second time is to become involved in money laundering. And when I originally wrote that book, I started it out with that someone shows up at the father’s condo and your son’s been kidnapped. (07:15): And then people said to me, “Well, why do we care about these characters?” But that’s the way you’re supposed to start a thriller, right? You either start it with a body or some danger or some kind of fight or something because that’s the way thrillers start. And then I though of Dennis Lahane’s Mystic River. You read that? It’s a wonderful book, but it doesn’t start off with the crime that takes place during most of the book. It starts off with 12-year-old boys and their father’s work for the candy factory, and one of them gets kidnapped and sexually abused, and that is what really resonates throughout the whole book. It causes everything or all the character interactions. And I thought, in this family, what would resonate like that, that colors everything else? Well, when they have to forcefully send their son off to a residential treatment center, when they have to hire two strangers to come and basically kidnap their son and bring him to the treatment center. (08:19): So I though, well, I’m really taking a chance here, but it worked, so what can I say? Debbi (08:26): It does. I read the first two chapters of your book. Carl (08:30): Oh, good. Debbi (08:31): They are a powerful opening. Carl (08:34): Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Debbi (08:36): They are. They really are. Carl (08:39): Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks. But that’s what plays throughout the whole book, how that both destroys a family and helps to bring them together. Debbi (08:51): That is quite a topic to tackle in fiction, but very brave, I think, and good on your part. How much – Carl (08:59): Well, I’m not going to get fired now. Debbi (09:04): There you go. Carl (09:06): Yeah. I mean, I’m not selling any books, but I’m not going to get fired. Well, when I was in banking, I’ve been writing for over 20 years, but I never told anybody in banking that that’s what I did, because then they wouldn’t think I was really very serious about my career. But then toward the end, I sort of let things slide a little bit and some people started to guess it and then, well, now they all know. Debbi (09:40): Hey, I know lawyers who practice and write books under their own names, so I figure why not? Carl (09:48): Yeah. Debbi (09:50): Let’s see. Some of them don’t, of course. So some people are more, I guess, precious with their identities in terms of they don’t feel like being that exposed or something. Carl (10:02): Yeah. Well, and I don’t talk about my own family very much publicly because they prefer that. But I do admit some things. I mean, we did go through this with one of my sons more than 20 years ago, and it was a very difficult experience. Debbi (10:19): Horrifying. Carl (10:22): Most difficult thing in my life. But what a parent realizes, and everybody knows this, you just have to say it, is that if you have the choice between sending your son away forcefully and he’ll hate you forever and saving his life, what will you do? If that will save his life, what will you do? Well, you’ll save his life. You have to. And so that’s what these parents believed, and that’s what a lot of parents believe when they have to send their kids to one of these residential treatment centers. Debbi (10:55): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a sobering thought. How much research did you do during the process of writing your books? Carl (11:09): Let’s see. Well, the first book, Murderabilia, is about the son of a serial killer, and nobody knows this about him until he’s accused of the same crime, and it all comes out that he’s the son of this man in prison in Illinois. And so I had to do a lot of research on serial killers and children of serial killers, and they lead very, very tough lives. I mean, not many people know that Charlie Manson had three, actually, I think it’s four sons now, I think. But when originally did the book, there were three, and one disappeared. Nobody knows who he is or where he is, like the character in my book. Another, they knew and he was bullied throughout school, and a third one committed suicide, this trauma of having this evil person as a father, and how can you ever live down that stigma? (12:04): So that’s what I explored in that book, and I had to do that kind of research, which was tough because you really had to get into the heads of serial killers. Now, in Saving Myles, it’s set in both San Diego as well as in Tijuana. So I had to do some research in Tijuana about, particularly on settings, where could

  2. Oct 18

    Interview with Doug Kari – S. 12, Ep. 9

    This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features true crime writer, Doug Kari. A writer who isn’t just Googling to get answers. 🙂 Check out the episode. How often do you get to hear stories from an actual “boots on the ground” journalist, these days? Well, their numbers may be dwindling, but they still exist and here you go! And for a PDF copy of the transcript, click here! Debbi (00:52): Hi everybody. I have with me today a fascinating guest for you. He is a true crime writer known for his hands-on investigative approach to research and writing. His work has taken him to places like shallow graves. He just lies in the shallow grave and kind of gets a sense of what it’s like to have to be in a shallow grave, maybe avoiding gunfire or avoiding something. (01:22): And he also has followed leads on missing persons through Death Valley and Mexico, among other places, I assume. Anyway, he was an English major at UC Berkeley and received his law degree—All right, lawyers!—from UC Law, San Francisco. His latest book is called The Berman Murders. It’s my pleasure to introduce Doug Kari. Is it Kari? Doug (01:54): It’s Kari. And thank you, Debbi. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. Debbi (01:59): Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. I do appreciate it. And your work just amazes me. I’m just blown away by it. How did you get involved in investigating the Berman murders? Doug (02:13): For the Berman murders case, that was one that was really near and dear to my heart because of the location where the crime took place. It’s a desert valley that’s very difficult to access, that’s in between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley in Eastern California, and it’s quite inaccessible. To get there, you have to follow a 50-mile dirt road. You have to cross mountains that are sometimes impassable depending on the time of the year. And once you’re in the valley, it’s like being on another planet. It’s the kind of place, Debbie, that attracts counterculture types, the kind of folks I hung out with when I was a student at Berkeley, the hippie crowd, the seekers, and word of mouth, people have come into this valley and they travel there to hang out at Hot Springs. It was sort of like a mini Burning Man before Burning Man ever existed, a very eclectic crowd. (03:18): You might find firefighters mingling with people from a magic bus. Everybody seems to share the same vibe, the same energy, the same aura. So it was quite stunning, quite shocking when in January 1986, a couple of nondescript hippie campers walked off on a morning walk and never came back. And three years later, their remains turned up miles away in a shallow grave. They’d been murdered. Debbi (03:58): Yeah, that had to be kind of shocking. It was in 1986 that they disappeared? Doug (04:08): January 1986. And that was a time period when myself and others that were into mountaineering out there and exploring the desert, we would go to these hot springs. I took my kids out there. In fact, or January 1986 was just a few months before I brought my newborn daughter out there for the first time. So to have a crime like this occur in a place that you think of as being completely off the beaten path, very laid back, peaceful, beautiful, to have people turn up murdered was just outside the realm of what most people could comprehend. And because of that, it was a real shock for those who frequented this valley. And it nagged me for years, Debbi. And finally in 2014, I decided I was going to investigate what happened, because there had never been an arrest or a conviction in the case, and I wanted to see if I could figure out what happened to these people and why. Debbi (05:24): So how much research did you do to create the book? How many hours of research and how many hours of going through doing interviews and going through those interviews and that research before you were able to write the book? Doug (05:42): It was a very lengthy process. I started with a real intense push in the first year, and that resulted in a cover story for LA Weekly about the case. But then off and on, I continued to work on the case over the span of about nine years, interviewing people, trying to gather information. Debbi, information gathering was really tough in this case. Some of the people that I wanted to talk to wouldn’t talk to me, and it took years and repeated efforts for them finally to soften up and agree to tell me what they knew. Tracking down, getting the case files from the sheriff’s office took time. Everything was really difficult in this case. There are cases where there’s a wealth of information available. This wasn’t that kind of a case, but slowly the facts began to emerge. I began getting cooperation from people, locating people. (06:39): I got the records from the sheriff’s department. I went to the scene multiple times, and I already had a lot of knowledge of the area, and I started piecing things together, and it became clear that the likely suspect was one particular person. It’s not like in January 1986 in the middle of this remote desert valley, there were thousands or even hundreds of people who could be likely suspects. You’re talking about a few dozen people, and one stood out in particular. And so I did a deep dive on him, and ultimately in the book, I essentially lay out the case for why I believe the facts point to him as the likely perpetrator. Keep in mind, he’s never been arrested, never been charged, but the facts point that direction. Debbi (07:34): That’s very interesting. I mean, this is long after the hippie movement was over, so these people were in a community that was very unique and very small and very… Probably the police were… I don’t know. How were the police like around all this? Doug (07:53): Everybody tolerated it. The thing about Inyo County, California where this took place, it’s a very large county, about 15,000 square miles with a small sheriff’s department, and they had a very kind of live and live attitude. I would call it more of a libertarian attitude. Look, they didn’t want rampant law breaking, but they weren’t out there to police minor drug or alcohol violations. They felt that the hot springs tended to police themselves and that there was a pretty good scene going on out there. Law enforcement was okay with it. It fit the vibe of the community, and you couldn’t necessarily pinpoint it as being just hippies or counterculture types. I mean, you’d go out there and you’d see a mix of people, everybody ranging from gun enthusiasts to now and then people who like to explore off-road, and then of course the hippie types, the counterculture types, and everybody in between. (09:08): Most people who are out there as regulars had a handle. They didn’t use their birth name. They would use some handle like Chili Bob, Lizard Lee, names like that. Debbi (09:22): Well, it sounds fascinating. Doug (09:24): Oh, it’s great. It’s great. And I’ve been going out there for years, totally fit with my personality, although I wasn’t a hangout at the hot springs guy so much. I fell in with a group of people who were more active. We like to explore the surrounding mountains and desert, and I actually co-founded a desert exploration group called Desert Survivors that still exists, and it’s a niche environmental and exploration group that explores these kinds of remote areas of the desert. I was out there a lot with my family. Even though it’s a desert valley with sand dunes and it appears very dry, there’s a mountain range, the Inyo Mountains, Debbi, that drops into that valley from peaks as high as 11,000 feet, incredibly steep with these deep canyons. Some of those canyons have waterfalls in them. There’s one particular canyon where you can park and walk aways up the canyon, and all of a sudden you come across a little waterfall. (10:26): All three of my kids, we baptized them in that waterfall. So that’s how near and dear this place was and remains to my heart. So when these murders took place, again, it was a shock to the system, what happened? And that’s when, as I said, I finally decided to investigate. And there’s been other cases I’ve followed up on out there also, Debbi. There was a more recent case involving a Vietnam veteran who just vanished off the map, a missing person case. I did work on that case and published articles in the Las Vegas Review Journal and ultimately came up with a theory, found a piece of evidence and came up with a theory of what happened to him. I don’t believe it was foul play, but still don’t have a body, so I can’t prove that my theory is correct, but that’s an area where I’ve put in a lot of time and investigation into cases. Debbi (11:26): Now, at this point, are you still freelancing or are you focusing more on creating books? Doug (11:33): Yeah, I freelance primarily for the Las Vegas Review Journal. I’ve done work that’s been published in other places like LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune. As you know, Debbi, the journalism platform isn’t the easiest anymore. When cases do come along, a lot of times they’ll assign them to a staff writer, so there isn’t really room for a freelancer like me, even though I don’t charge for my work. Sometimes I get paid just because that’s the newspaper policy, but I’m not in this for the money. I’m in it because I have things I want to say, and I want to have a voice and a platform to be able to say it. I’ve got a social media platform for that purpose, even though social media is not my primary goal in life. I do have one book out, The Berman Murders, and a second book coming out on February 4. (12:33): My publisher is Bloomsbury, so I haven’t had to endure some of the self-publishing challenges that you had to go through making a very successful platform off of. There’s good and bad that comes

  3. Oct 4

    Interview with Charles D’Amico – S. 12, Ep. 8

    This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer and independent publisher, Charles D’Amico. His Neil Baggio series has a villain, who’s got his own story, too. And you can learn more about that here! And you can download a PDF of the transcript here. Debbi (00:55): Hi everyone. My guest today is originally from Metro Detroit. He writes the award-winning Neil Baggio suspense series. In 2020, he founded the small press Blue Handle Publishing. It’s my pleasure to introduce Charles D’Amico. Hi, Charles. How are you doing today? Charles (01:16): Good. How are you doing? Debbi (01:18): Oh, I’m hanging in there. Not bad, considering I’ve been kind of nonstop all week doing something crazy of some sort, either editing a film, doing a book signing or being at someplace or other doing something that I haven’t. Charles (01:34): It’s always good stay busy though, right? Debbi (01:36): I suppose. Charles (01:37): Because some of us when we get quiet, we don’t know what to do. Debbi (01:40): Oh, I always know what to do if I’m quiet. That way I can pick up a book or watch a movie. It’s like, at last a quiet moment. I can read. So I was going to ask you about the Neil… Is it Neil Baggio? Charles (01:57): Yeah, Neil Baggio. Debbi (01:59): Baggio. Charles (02:00): Yeah. The original framework for what is the book I have coming out in November, Why I Kill is called the Neil Baggio series. And that started as an FBI agent, Neil Baggio, whose mentor goes on a killing spree. And the book picks up four years after that, the first one, where he didn’t catch him. He leaves the FBI and it picks up with that broken down anti-hero. He was piecing everything back together. The killer comes out of hiding and now he’s got to find that lane, work with the FBI. They have to work with him and figure out how he’s going to catch his old boss. And that’s the first book Veritas, and it kind of goes off from there, the next three books. And then for years people would ask me, “How does an FBI agent become a killer?” So I wrote it, which is Why I Kill, the Cappelano journals that comes out in November. (02:46): And it used to be actually really thick, but I was like, “To be that dark and that thick might not be the best idea.” So we kind of trimmed it. Debbi (02:54): Yeah. Kind of gradually get there? Charles (02:57): Yeah. If it kicks off, we’ll really see an unabridged version. Debbi (03:02): Wow. Yeah, I noticed that. I noticed those Frank journals and I was like, “Oh, what is this?” And I’m looking, I’m like, “Oh, how interesting. Okay.” Charles (03:14): I had a son who read the first version of that years ago and he kind of ducked my call for like three months. I was like, “Everything okay?” And he’s like, “Honestly, man.” He goes, “Didn’t know what to think that you thought of that stuff.” Debbi (03:29): Well, you got to come up with a reason why they turn out to be a villain. Charles (03:33): Exactly. It’s just a thought process. Debbi (03:37): Yeah, it’s just a thought process. Exactly. It’s a hypothetical exercise. Charles (03:42): You hope that an FBI profiler can think and understand the way a criminal does without being a criminal. Debbi (03:48): Exactly. Charles (03:49): I get it. Yeah. Debbi (03:51): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s not like hearts and flowers stuff, if you’re going to write about killers. Which was very interesting because it makes me think of the old adage, every villain thinks they’re the hero of the story. So wouldn’t it be interesting to go back, look at all of my antagonists, my major ones, my killers and so forth, and just figure out what their story really is, go deep into it. That could get a little depressing, if I do it too much. Charles (04:20): I started off with him being reluctant and then him rationalizing certain decisions and certain things that he wouldn’t say. And I’ve talked about this before, so it’s not like it’s an Easter egg or anything, but in the first volume, he doesn’t say kill. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s killing people. He keeps rewording it. He’s just removed people from the mathematics of life. And he’s rationalizing these crazy ideas on what he’s actually doing. And then eventually there’s a turning point in the middle that really flips the switch and he goes all in on it and he’s even aware of the moment. In these testing moments where he’s cognizant enough of what’s going on and he’s like, “If I was normal, I should feel something here.” And I don’t. It’s kind of cool to just think through what someone who’s rational enough, but even admitting, “Well, there might come a time I won’t be.” And there’s a couple moments where he, because it’s told from his perspective where he’s having the thoughts that there will come a time where I’m not rational about the irrational decisions I’m making. Debbi (05:27): Yeah. Yeah. It’s just you don’t know where to draw the line after a while. You’re just so deep into it. You’re so deep in denial that you can’t… Charles (05:37): After a while, I would think you could get used to anything or rationalize anything, whether it’s somebody who went off to war as a way to protect your psyche, not as a way necessarily out of ego, which some might be out of ego, but I think some of the greatest war heroes we talk about historically just maybe found a way to switch it off and found a way to rationalize it at an extreme level and more than just the plus-minus. I have to do it for survival because there’s quiet moments. And that’s one of the things that come up in the book. In the quiet moment, how do you rationalize this stuff? Debbi (06:11): Exactly. Yeah. It’s the quiet moments when you start thinking about things. I noticed you also have two books with different protagonists, one called Perdue and one called One Golden Day. Charles (06:27): Yes. So One Golden Day was kind of this exercise I did of putting all the advice my grandmother and mother gave me when they were still alive about relationships and life. And it’s told from this guy’s perspective called Travis Golden, who does really good around high school and college graduations. It’s told from the morning of his wedding day and it’s a flashback of his whole life, like high school and college, all these different big decisions in his life. And it’s told first person, he’s having these conversations, whether it’s with his mom or his grandmother or somebody in his family who’s giving him really good advice to solve this stuff. So it’s kind of a self-help book without it being a self-help book, kind of hidden in the story. Some of my favorite reviews of that book were like, “I count myself taking notes when it’s really good advice.” That’s kind of the idea behind it. (07:18): If you know somebody’s in a tough place, but you don’t want to be upfront honest, like, “Hey, man, this is a really good book. Start reading it.” Debbi (07:25): Interesting. Charles (07:26): And then the Marie Perdita series, which is Perdue, I’m actually working on the follow-up to that right now called La Tase. When writing this, Why I Kill, put me in such a dark place and I was in a bad mood all the time, I needed something that cleared my mind. So I wrote, which originally was just kind of an exercise, a spinoff character from the Neil Baggio series who shows up a little bit in Book Three and a lot more in Book Four. I wrote her own spinoff, but it’s like a PG-13. And I imagined. (07:58): My daughter who’s now 11, what it would be like if my daughter had become a spy, she was kind of out on her own, and then I kind of like flashbacks. I’m decent at them. What would it be like if these interactions with her dad, me being obviously the dad, but this role of his influenced her in all these different things through her life that now while she’s in these tough situations, she’s drawing on. She’s alone, but on these occasions you’re learning these things about her. So I wrote this whole plunging the palette book just to get through the first draft of the journals because they were so dark. And ended up becoming a big series. I ended up writing three books or three rough drafts, three different manuscripts. Debbi (08:39): Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you really have to mix things up sometimes because you don’t want to burn yourself out. Charles (08:47): When I talked to somebody recently at Killer Nashville about that and he said, “I never thought of cleansing my palate in a way because I’m writing stuff that’s dark or putting me in a mood.” And I was like, “Well, it doesn’t always have to be for publishing.” I’m for fun, still little by little been working on a fantasy series for my kids. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. I don’t know if I’ll ever… But we’ll have conversations about certain things. I’m not really good at writing fantasy, but I like the fact that it challenges me. I’m trying to write it in third person, which is not my natural choice, and they like interacting with me on it. So when I get stuck or if I just want the exercise, I continue to work on this thing off to the side. And I think sometimes we get so stuck in this belief that you have to write only for one purpose when you can write for a million different reasons, write to write. Debbi (09:40): Yeah. What made you decide to write crime fiction? Charles (09:46): It’s actually a funny story. Out of spite is how I got started. I’ve always been good at writing. I mean, I could write a 10-page paper in college in an afternoon while watching a football game, which could drive my roommates nuts. My sister was a huge voracious reader when I was growing up. I remember reading those whole Anne Rice novels in two days and she’d plow through these novels and dislocated my an

  4. Sep 20

    Interview with Phil Halton – S. 12, Ep. 7

    This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime fiction and nonfiction author, Phil Halton His website poses a question: How do we create meaning in the face of chaos? Riddle me that, eh? 🙂 You can download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. Today I have a guest who says he didn’t plan to become a writer, but as a soldier and later a security consultant, he’s traveled extensively throughout the world to most places and situations that very few people get to witness. What better background for a writer, I say. (01:16): It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Phil Halton. Did I say that right? Phil (01:22): Perfect. Debbi (01:23): Phil Halton? Phil (01:24): Perfectly. Debbi (01:25): Excellent. Good. Good to have you here, Phil. How are you doing? Phil (01:29): Good, good. It’s good to be here though as it’s odd to be here on the 11th of September. Debbi (01:35): Yes, it is. Very odd indeed. The whole day has felt slightly strange for that reason, that it’s the 25th anniversary and all, because I remember the day it happened a little too well for comfort. So you didn’t plan to be a writer, so what made you decide to be one? Phil (01:59): In some ways I kind of fell into it. I identify I think more as a storyteller, and so I was always the guy who had the stories. I had a bunch of experiences that I didn’t want to write about directly, but I though, oh, I can rework some of this and tell some stories that I think are actually of use as well, of value. Because my first novel in some ways is kind of the origin stories of the Taliban. It ends when the Taliban begins and it’s based on my experiences working with former Taliban and others in Afghanistan. And so I had things I wanted to say, I had things I wanted to express, and so that’s how I decided to do it. Debbi (02:43): Sounds like you got some very interesting inside information in your work. Phil (02:49): Yeah. Well, I think too that when I dig and dig and dig and dig in these things, I always find humans at the base of it. And so I think of my stories as really human-centered stories, even if they’re in strange places and with strange customs and strange. It doesn’t matter. You can always find the human element of it. Debbi (03:12): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s absolutely true. I think that’s what draws us into reading the books. If you can’t find the humanity in the character, how are you going to care? Phil (03:23): Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think in the end, that’s a positive message that we all have this common humanity and perhaps aren’t so different after all. Debbi (03:35): I love that message. I wish there were more of that out there. Were there certain steps you took to get started as a writer or did you just fall into it naturally and know how to tell a story from the get-go? Well, Phil (03:51): Well, I don’t know about that, but yeah, certainly I started with writing screenplays and I worked with an established screenwriter, and so we partnered up on a couple projects that actually didn’t really go anywhere. People loved them and didn’t want them. And so we did that a couple of times and I decided I’m going to write my own thing here, my own screenplay. And again, people loved it, nobody wanted it. And so I realized this might do better as a novel, so I rewrote it as a novel and wouldn’t you know that I sold the novel and the screenplay within a week of each other. Debbi (04:32): Wow. Phil (04:33): Yeah. Debbi (04:34): My goodness. That is remarkable. Phil (04:38): It is. The screenplay was never produced. It died in production hell, but that’s okay. I got paid and the novel was published and became This Shall Be a House of Peace. Then from there I just kept building on my experiences and kept working at it, though my military background really gave me a mindset about professional development, that that’s important. I pursued that as well as a writer. I just finished a doctorate in English literature and I see it as my development as a writer. Debbi (05:17): Well, that’s going to develop you all right. That sounds like quite the program. A lot of people don’t go through that kind of rigorous development for sure. How do you choose your particular topics and your particular characters? Are they based on people you’ve known, situations you’ve been in or just made up? Phil (05:45): Well, I think like a lot of writers, I’ve got 20 stories in my drawer here that I’m trying to pick which one I’m going to do next. So it’s never a shortage of stories. It’s always like will I live long enough to tell all these stories? And they’re typically not drawn directly from any experience of mine. The characters are often kind of a hybrid of people I know, and sometimes it’s kind of surprising that there’s a villain in a book and someone’s like, “Well, who are they based on? They seem really realistic.” And it’s like, “Well, actually it’s me. I based it on myself, the worst version of myself.” So yeah, I try not to write too directly about my own experiences and try to take it a little farther. Debbi (06:38): Is there a favorite among the books that you’ve written? Phil (06:44): Yeah. Well, that’s hard to say. I guess my favorite of all the books would be Every Arm Outstretched, which is, it’s set during the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, but it’s really a story of friendship and loyalty and humanity again. I think it’s kind of the most fun book that I’ve written. Debbi (07:10): Interesting, because I noticed it’s about veterans, correct? Phil (07:17): Well, no, it’s about the two young men who get wrapped up in the revolution. They’re not high-minded folks, but they get forced into it and then really confront how to be a good person when there’s no rules anymore. Debbi (07:35): Yeah, I noticed there were a lot of ethical issues coming up in some of the descriptions of your books, and I like that. Those are always intriguing stories. Phil (07:44): Yeah. And I think that idea, how do we make sense out of chaos? What do we do when no one’s telling you what to do? Those are stories that always attract me. Debbi (07:54): Yeah. Now, I have to say that Postslop is a really great title for a book because it immediately got my attention. And unfortunately, we experience it all over the internet, cluttering our inboxes and gently sucking our brains out. Phil (08:11): Yeah. Debbi (08:13): What do we do about this? Is there something we can do? Phil (08:16): So my doctoral thesis was in literary theory, specifically postmodern theory, so kind of a French philosophy of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. And as I was doing all this deep theoretical reading, I realized that these theorists were talking about things that we’re experiencing now, and they were theorizing about it, but it’s sort of come true that images have become detached from their meaning, that things are circulating on social media and on the internet, and they don’t really mean anything anymore. It’s this kind of brain rot material. And so as I was doing this work and listening to my kids, who my kids are in their early 20s and are struggling with this stuff, never having known life before the internet, that I realized that, well, what are we going to do about it? And that I needed to write a short book for them, and so it’s postslop because we can’t go backwards. (09:21): We can’t get before there was slop. We have to get postslop. We need to move on and actually ground ourselves in what’s real, because slop, it’s not just AI-generated stuff, it’s humans that are making it. Influencers, I find it must be the saddest people on earth because they have a boss, it’s the algorithms. (09:45): And they have to tune their work to that in order to survive, in order to make money. So the book is really about how do we get past being inundated with slop as individuals and ground ourselves back in what’s real? Debbi (10:03): That’s definitely a book I want to read, for sure. Let’s see. I recently had an exchange with a chatbot I wanted to tell people about. It did absolutely everything it could to keep me from speaking to a human being. I thought that was interesting. Phil (10:26): Well, there’s economics behind this too, right? Debbi (10:29): Oh, yeah. Phil (10:31): It’s not just an aesthetic choice for businesses. There’s an economic reason why we’re all getting sucked into chatbots. Debbi (10:38): Yeah. It’s a little bit disturbing when you’re trying to fix a complicated problem and the chatbot just isn’t designed for it. And you keep saying human being, and they keep saying, “We understand you want to talk to a human, but I can help you. Uhh. … bye.” Let’s see. How much research do you do on your books? Phil (11:06): Well, so I flip back and forth between writing fiction and non-fiction. (11:10): So I think I take a non-fiction approach to a lot of my books because I’ve written fiction set in Afghanistan. I’ve also written a scholarly history of the war in Afghanistan. So I do a fair deal of research, though I think sometimes it surprises people because a lot of the research doesn’t necessarily make it into the book. I just want it for my foundational knowledge and it’s like a little sprinkling through because my one crime fiction book, Red Warning, is set in Afghanistan in 1978 and follows a corrupt police detective, and people are like, “Oh wow, how did you get all the details of how the police station worked and the detective’s office worked?” And I was like, “No, no, I made that up. I just made that up.” But I based it on dysfunctional offices that I’ve worked in before, and it rings true, I think, because it does touch something that’s true, even if it’s not exactly how those things worked in real life. Debbi (12:2

  5. Sep 6

    Interview with Matt Witten – S. 12, Ep. 6

    Hi there! 🙂 On the Crime Cafe this week, we have my interview with Matt Witten, who’ll tell us all about his latest novel, 51%, which will (with any luck) be adapted, produced, and distributed to a television set screen near you. He is also optimistic in the face of the insanity we’ve all been subjected to about the future, which is somewhat reassuring. For a copy of the transcript, click here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today has worked in a wide variety of media, from writing novels, writing for television, writing for the stage, and producing film. His latest novel, 51%, has the most intriguing concept, which I will let him tell you about. As of this moment, it’s still science fiction, I believe, I hope. It’s my pleasure to have with me the author of 51%, Matt Witten. Hey Matt, how are you doing? Matt (01:25): Great. Thank you, Debbi. It’s so good to be here. Debbi (01:27): Excellent. It’s great to have you on. Oh, you look so relaxed and happy out there on that porch. That looks nice. I should be on my porch right now except that it’s kind of sweltering out there a little bit from what I understand. Where are you located? Matt (01:42): I’m in the Adirondacks. I used to live in Los Angeles and our house was in the Palisades Fire last year, so we were very fortunate that we had this small second home in the Adirondacks. So this is where we live now. Debbi (01:55): Oh my gosh. Well, that’s nice. Very nice. Tell us about your latest book. I am so hooked on the concept already. Matt (02:04): Thank you very much. It’s called 51%. Here’s a picture of the cover. And it’s about a world 20 years from now. I used to say 30 years, but after one year of Trump, I’ve decided that it’s more like 20 years. And sometimes after I describe the concept to people, they say, “Oh, it sounds more like 10 years.” Anyway, it’s a world where the big six corporations, they own just about everything. They own schools, they own parks, they own the post office, just about everything’s been privatized and they even own people. So our hero, our two heroes are homicide detectives for the New York Police Department Incorporated, because in this world, even the police department is private. So for instance, if you want to investigate a murder, you have to raise money to investigate the murder because you got to raise money for your own salary and half goes to you and half goes to the corporation that owns the police department. (03:01): So you raise money from the victim’s spouse, their partner, their friends, their neighbors, their family. You might do a Kickstarter campaign in order to raise money for the murder. And so yeah, we have two heroes. One’s a homicide detective and the other is his partner and she’s a crime marketing expert. She’s the one that raises the money. Debbi (03:28): Wow. Interesting. It’s just so intriguing to listen to you describe this concept because it’s so similar to something I’m working on in certain ways. Matt (03:36): Okay. All right, good. Well, we should join forces. Debbi (03:39): I’m a little more optimistic in terms of when this happens in the future. Matt (03:44): You put it further away? Debbi (03:45): I’m being a little more hopeful, I guess. Matt (03:48): Yeah. Debbi (03:49): Let’s give us a minor bit of hope here. Matt (03:51): Well, I try to be hopeful in this in the sense that I describe them as the two main characters, but really the homicide detective’s ex-girlfriend is leading the resistance and the resistance is fighting the forces of evil. And she’s got this big action that she’s going to do on Saturday night at midnight, and hopefully it will jumpstart a revolution against the forces of evil. So there’s a lot of hope and love stories to give us hope also. I try to be hopeful in this in the sense that I describe them as the two main characters, but really the homicide detective’s ex-girlfriend is leading the resistance and the resistance is fighting the forces of evil. Debbi (04:22): Well, that’s great. That’s wonderful. And I understand that you will be writing an adaptation of this for somebody for television? Matt (04:29): Yes, I did. Yeah, I wrote an adaptation of it for TV, co-wrote with Charlie Greg, a showrunner for NBC. So that was very exciting. And we have some meetings scheduled the next month, so we’ll never count our chickens too quickly, but— Debbi (04:48): Oh, absolutely not. Matt (04:49): That’s exciting. Debbi (04:50): That is an amazing bit of news though. Matt (04:53): Yeah. Debbi (04:53): And it sounds like things are progressing as opposed to stalling. Matt (04:57): Yes. Well, yeah, I think so. Yes. Debbi (05:01): That’s fantastic. Congratulations. That’s a big win for you. Matt (05:05): Yeah, thank you. Debbi (05:07): I really want to see this thing. I want to read this book too. Let’s see. What really inspired you to write this book? She said somewhat like a dumb interviewer, what inspired you to write this book. Matt (05:23): It’s always a good question. Well, I would say two things. One is, ever since I first started following politics, I’ve just watched as the government got more gridlocked and government became smaller and big corporations became bigger and more powerful. And we’ve got guys like Elon Musk, some days they’re trillionaires and some days they’re only close. And I’ve watched the middle class getting squeezed, basically the middle class and the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. So all my feelings about privatization and big corporations taking over and all of this came to fruition in this. And I’ll also say more specifically, the day that I got the inspiration for this, I went out to see a lecture by a TV executive named David Nevins, and Nevins was involved in the creation of some terrific shows like ER, The West Wing, Homeland. And he said something that night when I saw his lecture, he said that the best TV shows, and my guess is the best novels, but anyway, the best TV shows are the ones that speak to our deepest fears. [E]ver since I first started following politics, I’ve just watched as the government got more gridlocked and government became smaller and big corporations became bigger and more powerful. (06:34): So I walked home from the lecture that night. I was in Connecticut and I thought, “What are my deepest fears?” And two words came back to me, and those two words were student loans. Debbi (06:47): Oh, my gosh. Matt (06:48): And so I thought about student loans all night long, and by the morning I had this world, the name of the book is 51%, and it’s based on the idea that there are, if you want to go to college in this world or you want to go to high school, there’s no public colleges, there’s no public high schools, so everything is private. So if you want to go, you’re going to have to pay your own way, and lots of times you’re not going to have the money for it. So you get a loan to go to high school and college. And what it is, it’s an income share agreement where you agree the corporation is going to pay for your high school, pay for your college, but you’re going to have to pay them X percent of your money for your salary for the next 10 years. (07:29): So 20% of your income, let’s say for the next 10 years. And I should say, by the way, this is already happening. These income share agreements exist now. People on the right, like Marco Rubio are very supportive of it. People on the left or the middle, like Hillary Clinton are very supportive of it. So it’s already happening. So I thought, let’s say this catches steam and then it’s used for other things because the way the world is going, fewer and fewer people, at least in the last year or two, are having health insurance. Nobody gives a heck about Obamacare. Excuse me, the rich people don’t give a heck about Obamacare. And so what if you get a situation, you God forbid, get cancer, you’re going to have to give up X percent of your income for a certain number of years. You need help with childcare, which the United States government or state governments don’t really seem to have what Europe has in terms of childcare. (08:20): Okay, you want childcare, you have to give up another percent. So some people wind up over 50% owned, and when they wind up over 50% owned, 51%, then the corporations own them, could tell them what to do. If you want to be a poet or whatever, they’ll just laugh at you. Poets don’t make any money, so you got to work whatever. You got to work at a strip club, you got to work in a mine that can cause cancer. You have to do what we tell you to do. So it’s just basically. It’s basically looking at this world we have now where middle-class people are getting more and more squeezed and to the point where the corporations 20 years from now own us. (08:51): Anyways, that’s what inspired me. It’s basically looking at this world we have now where middle-class people are getting more and more squeezed and to the point where the corporations 20 years from now own us. And at the same time that right now we have these evil guys with. I mean, I would just say Trump, I’ll just say it, evil guys like Trump who are doing all these things to make our world worse, but there’s tremendous people who are fighting back against them. And it seems to me in every generation we’ve had a bad guy or the bad force, evil that we’ve had to fight. And so in my book, 20 years from now, there’s going to be evil again and good people of goodwill are going to come together and fight it. And that’s going to be the way the world works, I think, till the end of the world. Good is always going to. And it seems to me in every generation we’ve had a bad guy or the bad force, evil that we’ve had to fight. And so in my book, 20 years from now, there’s going to be evil again and

  6. Aug 9

    Interview with M.M. DeLuca – S. 12, Ep. 5

    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer and screenwriter M.M. DeLuca. Among other things, we discussed what it was like for her to study with a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. For a copy of the transcript, click here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everybody. Today my guest is the author of five critically acclaimed suspense novels, including her latest novel, The Divorce Party. Originally from Durham City, England, after studying at the University of London Goldsmiths College, she moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where she worked as an English literature teacher, then as a freelance writer. (01:20): It’s my great pleasure to have with me Marjorie DeLuca, who writes under the name MM DeLuca. Hey Marjorie, how are you doing today? Let me see if I can get you in view. There you go. Awesome. Marjorie (01:35): It’s great to be here. Lovely to talk to you. Debbi (01:38): Well, I’m very pleased to have you on. It says, oh, how are things in Manitoba, anyway? How are things in Winnipeg? Marjorie (01:48): Hot and humid. Debbi (01:50): Hot and humid. Marjorie (01:51): Hot, humid, windy with periods of rain. Debbi (01:54): Oh my, that sounds like us. Marjorie (01:57): It’s greener. Greener than usual. Debbi (02:00): Well, there you go. There’s that. Marjorie (02:01): Yeah. Yeah. Debbi (02:03): Let’s see. Now in your bio, it says that you studied advanced creative writing with Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Carol Shields. What was it like to study such a subject with a Pulitzer Prize winner? Marjorie (02:17): It was like meeting a rock star. It really was. We were her final class before she retired, and we were all sitting there that day in awe because she just won the Pulitzer Prize. We were sitting there just waiting for her to come in, and she slipped through the door. She was this very petite, quiet lady, and she was just amazing. She had a charisma about her, and she wasn’t just your teacher. She was a friend, a mentor, and she loved to meet with us outside of class and we’d all go for lunches and she’d say, “Tell me the gossip. Come on.” And she was just a wonderful teacher. And actually, a lot of the things that we did in class, I used as an English teacher, but she had a profound influence on my career. It was an amazing one year that we spent with her. (03:22): And after that, she moved away to the coast, to BC, and sadly passed away some years after that. But yeah, it was a fabulous experience. Debbi (03:36): Was this during, I assume these are graduate studies? Marjorie (03:43): Yes, it was, but you had to send in a piece of work or several pieces, and she selected the participants. So it was a one-year, just once a week course. Yeah. Debbi (04:00): Sounds very much like a fellowship or something like that. Marjorie (04:04): Yeah. Well, she was a professor at the University of Manitoba for many years. And when she won the Pulitzer Prize, I think she was the only female professor at the time. Debbi (04:15): Oh my goodness. Marjorie (04:16): The other male colleagues were a bit miffed, I think. Debbi (04:20): Oh, dear. Marjorie (04:22): She won the prize. But anyway, no, maybe that’s not fair, but she had been there quite a while as a teacher, a professor. Debbi (04:34): Well, that’s just extraordinary that you had that opportunity. That’s fabulous. Marjorie (04:38): Yes. Debbi (04:41): What genre would you say your writing falls into? Marjorie (04:45): I’m all over the place, really. I get bored in one genre. I started off in sci-fi, young adult sci-fi when I was teaching grades 10 to 12. And around that time, The Hunger Games came out and the kids just loved it, even reluctant readers. So as I was reading them, I thought, “I could write something like this.” And so that’s when I really started getting serious about putting something together. (05:18):And I wrote a trilogy called The Forevers. Here’s the cover of it. I couldn’t find a publisher, so I self-published the trilogy and actually did pretty well. And later on, I adapted it into a series, and I actually got shortlisted for a Netflix call for submissions with my pilot and pitch, but they didn’t pick it up, but I’m still hoping that someone will. So I started off with that. Then you can see I’m all over the place. (05:57): Then I went into historical fiction and wrote this family saga called The Pittman’s Daughter. And that’s based on my mother’s reminiscences as growing up in a culinary town in Durham, near Durham in the northeast of England. She was a Pittman’s daughter, a coal miner’s daughter. I couldn’t get that published by a publisher, so I self-published it. And then I really love historical fiction. The first book I got published was this, The Savage Instinct, which is fact meets fiction set against the trial of real life serial poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton. So that’s when I started getting into suspense. I wrote another suspense book called Lilah, and then began a string of contemporary suspense. So I had The Perfect Family Man, which was a big bestseller, The Secret Sister, The Night Side, which is sort of dark paranormal suspense. And then The Divorce Party, which is. I sort of got tired of being in the dark side after The Savage Instinct and The Night Side. (07:32): I thought, I think I need something light. So I came up with The Divorce Party, which is exactly what it says. Friends from university who were invited by their frenemy, I guess, to her divorce party in Las Vegas. I had a lot of fun writing that. Debbi (07:56): I was going to say, that sounds very acerbic wit stuff. Marjorie (08:02): Oh, it was such fun writing it and researching it was so funny. There’s a whole industry devoted to divorce parties Debbi (08:12): Oh, my gosh. Marjorie (08:12): In Las Vegas. Debbi (08:13): Oh, I can imagine. Marjorie (08:14): I had no idea. Debbi (08:15): I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about it, but I can imagine, wow. Marjorie (08:20): No, I didn’t. I knew there’s the marriage thing. Well, there’s the whole marriage thing with the chapels and all of that. Note: There’s divorce cocktails. There’s special divorce playlists. There’s divorce party games. It’s incredible. Debbi (08:38): Divorce party industry. Wow, that’s fantastic. Marjorie (08:42): I know. Debbi (08:42): Fantastic stuff. Places you go when you start looking. Marjorie (08:47): I know. And it’s actually not as depressing as you’d think because a lot of these divorce parties are looking at things as a fresh start, a way to reinvent yourself. Unfortunately, in my book, it’s not as nice as that. Debbi (09:06): They’re reinventing themselves in bad ways perhaps. Marjorie (09:09): Yes. They’re actually trying to reinvent themselves, but the past keeps popping up like a corpse in a swimming pool. Debbi (09:18): That’s right. Marjorie (09:20): And then my latest one is another one of these destination thrillers, and that’s set in Mexico in a big villa at a 60th wedding anniversary. Debbi (09:34): Deadly Diamonds. Marjorie (09:36): Yeah. Actually, the book is still at the copy editing phase, and the publisher hasn’t done the cover release yet. Debbi (09:52): Yeah. Marjorie (09:53): Yeah. So it’s set in Mexico during the weekend of Día de Los Muertos. And that’s why I’m wearing a T-shirt with a – Debbi (10:05): Nice. Marjorie (10:07): Yeah. Debbi (10:08): Very nice. Marjorie (10:10): So I’m all over the genres. I jump it back and forth. Debbi (10:16): That’s pretty impressive. I see you’ve done a combination of self-publishing and publishing through presses. Is that correct? Marjorie (10:23): Yes. Yeah. Debbi (10:26): But you started with self-publishing? Marjorie (10:28): Yeah, I started with self-publishing. Debbi (10:31): And when was that? Marjorie (10:34): That was probably around 2013. The market was way less crowded. When I started self-publishing, it was possible to sell a decent number of books. So The Pittman’s Daughter and The Forevers trilogy did quite well. Nowadays, I’m not so sure. I think it’s really, really competitive and expensive to market. Debbi (11:04): I know. Believe me, I know. Marjorie (11:07): Oh, yes? You’ve self-published? Debbi (11:09): I’m right in there. Yeah, I’m self-published. Yeah. Marjorie (11:12): Yes. Debbi (11:12): I am totally self-published at this point. Marjorie (11:16): Yeah, and it takes a lot of your time. Debbi (11:18): With a few exceptions. Oh, yeah, it does. It takes a lot of time. The thing is that I’m also involved in screenwriting, so there’s a lot of time that gets devoted. You do screenwriting? Marjorie (11:32): Yes. Debbi (11:33): Excellent. Most excellent. Good to know. How did you get into screenwriting? Marjorie (11:41): My daughter is a costume designer for film, and one of her earlier projects, she was involved in some Hallmark movies, and I saw some of these. I can write one of those. So I co-wrote a Hallmark feature with a friend of hers who’s involved in the movies as well. It never got anywhere. Then I adapted The Forevers and did that pitch and the pilot episode and got a lot of encouragement from the Netflix executive who really loved it. But unfortunately, there’s that phrase, “We love it, but we’re not going to go with this.” Debbi (12:26): Yes. Getting the green light is hard. Marjorie (12:29): I know. Debbi (12:30): It’s become harder. Marjorie (12:32): Yes. It’s more difficult than even getting a book published, I think. And then I met up with another friend of hers who’s a production designer, and he wanted someone to co-write an action thriller with him. So we co-wrote an action thriller, which is actually going through some early stages of development, so I’m hopeful. Debbi (12:57): That’s great. Marjorie (12:58): Yeah. And I’ve had some interest in The Divorce Party, of people interested

  7. Jul 26

    Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4

    This week’s guest is William Stuart, executive producer and director of the popular scripted podcast American Afterlife. Imagine, using a scripted podcast as a proof of concept. Because we talk about that here Download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest is a veteran entertainment executive with extensive industry experience. As president and CEO of Aurora Productions, he oversees its slate of film, television, and podcast projects. He’s also executive producer and director of American Afterlife, a highly successful scripted podcast adapted from the best-selling YA trilogy. (01:23): It’s my great pleasure to introduce my guest, William Stuart. Hi William, how are you doing today? William (01:29): Very good. How are you? Glad to be here. Debbi (01:32): Very happy to have you on. I’m very interested in your podcast. I’m interested in scripted podcast in general, but what’s the logline for your show? William (01:43): Yeah, I don’t know that we fall quite in the crime drama, but we’re going to get there. Debbi (01:48): Okay. William (01:51): The idea is based on fact, but then becomes fiction. So Pedro Hoffmeister, who lives up in Eugene, Oregon, has been writing about the big earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, and everyone up there is sort of bracing for it. And as a writer like yourself, he sort of said, “How do I fictionalize this and what would happen if?” And he wrote his novel, his book based on the fact that the earthquake happens. And one girl, a 15-year-old girl decides she doesn’t want to get rescued by the National Guard and be skirted away, but she decides she has to look for her mother. And as you can imagine in this post-apocalyptic world where authority is gone, electricity’s out, dams have broken, that it’s a new world. In terms of visually, we’ve been talking about The Last of Us or Station Eleven, this sort of post-apocalyptic world where many of the rules are thrown out and you just have to survive. (03:15): And that’s what our heroine Cielo has to do or tried to do. Debbi (03:21): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very interesting concept, frightening concept. William (03:26): Yes. Debbi (03:27): Also very suspenseful. I think it falls pretty well into a thriller genre in any event. William (03:37): Well, there’s two aspects to it. One, it’s certainly a thriller and even a bit of a psychological thriller with her, a young girl in this new world. But then it develops into a crime series. There’s been a number of murders and we don’t know who’s responsible. And at first she’s even blamed for them, but then we find out it wasn’t completely her doing, but she was involved. Debbi (04:10): Interesting. How does adapting something like that into a podcast differ from adapting for film and television other than the need for sound versus visuals? William (04:25): Yeah, it’s a very good question. Something that was a challenge for us, but we knew from the beginning this really had to feel like a movie. I hate to say that, or a TV series, as if you closed your eyes and were watching it. Debbi (04:42): Exactly. William (04:44): So the performances, and especially that of Scarlett Estevez, our lead, and Josh Mesnik and Ted Owens had to be spot on. And then with the soundscape that we designed, that brought the audience into it. So you can imagine Scarlett, who’s done a lot of voiceover and animation, was very comfortable with it because she’s usually just reading from a script and not acting with other people. But there is the advantage that usually they will show you the picture and the character you’re voicing, and you’ll look to that. In our podcast, I had to ask her to create a whole new persona. There was no Scarlett, no Cielo in real life. So Scarlett went away with the scripts and came back with what she thought the character should be and should sound like. And she was really great and I think got it 99%. And the other 1% or what have you, we worked on in the room, in the studio. Debbi (06:02): Wow. It sounds like you really had a collaborative process going with the actor, that actor at least in particular, and others, I assume? William (06:10): Yeah, all of them. Debbi (06:12): All of them. William (06:12): Yeah. It was an interesting process because of scheduling and such. In the beginning, they were all in the studio with us separately, and they were doing their own pieces. And I had heard obviously Scarlett’s piece, so then I could tell Josh what he was reacting to. And then we could tell Ted Evans where he had to be. And then eventually we thought it would be really cool to get all three of them in the room, which we did. And that was amazing. I mean, we went back and fixed some stuff. I was able to put Scarlett sitting opposite Josh, which is what they’re doing if you know the podcast. It’s an interrogation in that sense. So now they’re sitting opposite each other and we got even better performances, I think. Debbi (07:05): Yeah, the performances are excellent. They really are. William (07:08): Yes. Debbi (07:09): I mean, they draw you in very well. What do you think accounts for the show’s great success? William (07:20): I think it’s the fact, number one, we started with a great premise, a great book. It already had a strong following. It was a bestseller. And when we started telling Pedro’s audience what we were doing, they were all there on social media asking, “When’s it coming? When’s it coming?” And like all good Hollywood things, it took twice as long as we hoped, but we made it twice as better, I always say. I think it’s the fact that we took the time to do it right, that we went back over the performances and honed them and got them better. And then we had the time, we made the decision to take the time to do the soundscape properly, to really go into it. And we did, I think, three or four edits of the soundscape for each episode just to make sure it wasn’t over the top and cartoony, but just stayed in that realistic place where people really feel and felt, I think, immersed in the world. Debbi (08:37): Yeah. I noticed when I was listening to it, there’s a very distinct difference between listening to Cielo, think to herself, voiceover style versus being in the room with the cop. William (08:49): Right. Debbi (08:51): It sounds more like a room. William (08:53): Yeah, which is something which is easy to do if you know you have to do it. And what it was just behind the scenes, it was just turning on this air conditioner noise that there would’ve been in this Holiday Inn in Eugene. She’s talking to herself, she’s almost in a soundproof room or something. It’s in her head. Debbi (09:19): Exactly. William (09:19): And that’s sort of what we were playing with. And the sound effects, I think, do take you from one location to another. Debbi (09:28): Absolutely. Yeah. Certainly it’s less costly to make a scripted podcast production than a full film production. Is that a good motivator for people to start thinking about perhaps breaking into writing scripted podcasts? William (09:46): Well, I’ve done a couple of interviews now, and that question, like yours, got asked. As a filmmaker, it’s fun just to make stuff. My process is I find material, I find a script, a book, even a news article that I think is interesting and see if we can make it into a movie. And in the past, in order to pitch these to the studios or now the streamers, you had to get something creative together. And that was always a pitch, maybe with some visuals. Once in a while, we’d even do a poster. But with this project, we said, “Well, podcasts are becoming of age.” Not so much dramatic, but just podcasts in general, there’s a big audience. So we were saying, “Look, the end goal between you and us is that we hope this will be a TV series.” And we did the podcast with that in mind. (10:58): So this is our calling card towards something bigger. Debbi (11:02): Yes. William (11:03): And it allows the, I’m going to get in trouble for this, the short attention span buyers at the studios to just listen to one or two episodes and totally understand what we’re doing or trying to do. (11:24): And as I referenced always in Hollywood, the tone of it is The Last of Us, the tone of it is Station Eleven. The tone of it is one other project or something. So they get an idea going in what it’ll be like. But still the challenge will be to find a top TV writer, which we’re doing now, to hone and develop probably because there’ll be a longer, probably eight, 10 episodes to develop more characters, more situations for her, take more from the book. We actually left a lot out of the book, but expand it and expand it and of course make it much more visible. We’ll obviously see the earthquake happen. We’ll see the dams break. We’ll see the helicopters. We’ll see the National Guard arriving, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s primed for a TV series. As you mentioned earlier, if we could get the money together to make something like that. (12:35): But podcasts are reasonable to make. Something at our level in terms of production value is more difficult to the individual out there, but I’m very lucky in that I teamed up with Benstown Media, who are a radio production company, and they brought everything to the table that they could in order to make this a first-class podcast. Debbi (13:08): That’s fantastic. Well, I’m glad that it’s worked out so well for you so far because it’s a very, very interesting story. How did you find the actors? And do you think audiobook narrators would be a good place to look for talent in this area? William (13:27): And say that again about narrators? Oh, book narrators. I’ll do. Debbi (13:31): Yeah, book narrators. William (13:31): All right. Yes and no. Where we had our talent, I cast this like a movie. I went afte

  8. Jul 19

    Interview with Caleb Husmann – S. 12, Ep. 3

    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is poli-sci professor and crime writer Caleb McGee Husmann. We talk a little about his academic specialty–political science–and mostly about writing and crime fiction! For a copy of the transcript, click here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of several novels, including Exteriors and Interiors, Feral Chickens: A Hawaiian Comedy, and Owen O’Shea: Stay-At-Home Dad, Wannabe Detective. I love that title. Originally from Minnesota. He now lives in North Carolina with his wife Beth and their daughter, Jo. (01:18): It’s my pleasure to have with me today, C. McGee. He writes as C. McGee, but his name is Caleb Husmann . Hi, Caleb. How are you doing today? Caleb (01:28): I’m doing well, Debbi. How are you doing? Debbi (01:30): Just fine, thanks. So according to your bio, you are both professors in the department of two at a small university. Now, is it the subject that is so arcane that only two people are doing it or is the university so small that it can only afford two people in that department? Caleb (01:51): Option B. Option Be. We only got a thousand students. So it’s a small school in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. So William Peace University. So we’re it, the Department of Two. My wife is my boss, so she’s my boss at work and at home, all the time. Debbi (02:10): I see. I see. And what subject do you teach? Caleb (02:14): We’re political scientists. So we are the entire department. We do a little bit with the criminal justice department as well and then pre-law, but political science is the main thing. Debbi (02:25): Well, it’s an interesting area to be in right now, I guess. Caleb (02:28): There’s always world events happening. That is one, I overall view it as a positive about being a political science professor is even when you’re teaching the same topics, it’s still new because you tie in current events that are happening now. And so I’m whatever almost 15 years into being a professor. I honestly think if I was teaching a subject that didn’t refresh every semester, I would kind of be exhausted of it, but I love it because sure, I’m teaching federalism again, but this time it’s California’s trying to go independent instead of Texas trying to go independent from four years earlier. It’s always something new, which is great. Debbi (03:09): Exactly. Yeah, that’s true. When did you start writing fiction? Caleb (03:16): Graduate school. So it’s funny I say that because in graduate school you’re already writing a ton. You’re writing for class and you’re writing your dissertation and all that sort of stuff. But actually it was during the summer I was interning in DC and usually I was working on the Hill for my member of the house that I worked for, but on my days off, I started to write. I guess I started writing a little bit short stories and stuff before that, but that was the first time I started to write a novel. I don’t know. I guess I was looking for, I played a lot of soccer growing up. I played soccer in college, had a couple trials with some pro teams, and then it didn’t work out. And then I was like, “Well, crap, I got to do something else.” And then I ended up going to grad school and figured out I still needed something that I could really strive for that I wasn’t sure I was going to succeed at. (04:14): I think that was part of the draw of soccer. I love playing soccer, but there was no guarantee that you were going to make it, and so you were striving for something that was kind of out of reach. And with writing novels, I mean, it’s somewhat the same as it’s a tall order and finishing it and getting it out there. And then can you get it published and that whole ordeal? It’s a monumental task, but I find those sorts of challenges draw me in for some reason. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sadist, who knows? Debbi (04:45): I think most writers have a tendency to think of themselves as masochists. We are always seeking ways to challenge ourselves and do better. Caleb (04:56): Yes. Masochist. There you go. That’s the word. Debbi (04:59): Yeah. We are sadistic to ourselves. Caleb (05:01): Yes, there you go. There you go. Thank you. Debbi (05:04): Split personality. Caleb (05:05): Better vocabulary. Debbi (05:07): We have split personalities. We have a sadistic side that picks on our masochistic side. Caleb (05:12): That sounds right. Debbi (05:14): Let’s see. Now your writing style seems very humorous. I like that about it. I love the tone of the O’Shea story. Caleb (05:27): I think it goes along with my personality. I think all of my writing is humorous. Owen O’Shea is definitely the novel that’s, the main character is the most me. The other novels, I definitely had to think through, okay, what would this character be thinking at this time? With Owen O’Shea, I was basically like, all right, what would I do? So it was the easiest to capture that voice because it was the closest to myself just in that sort of situation. But yeah, I think the goal was to find some line between the mysteries. There’s the gritty noir mysteries that tend to come out of Scandinavia and stuff like that. And then there’s the comfy, cozy, Jessica Fletcher, Murder She Wrote type mysteries. And I feel like there’s not necessarily a ton that are in between where they’re a little bit more suspenseful and the humor is a little bit more adult and adult things happen, but it’s also not dark and like The Killing or something like that. Debbi (06:36): Exactly. Yeah. It’s not grotesquely scary or whatever, but there’s just enough in there to keep you on the edge of your seat, keep you turning the pages, that kind of thing. Caleb (06:48): Exactly. So that’s the goal. Debbi (06:50): Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let’s see. What inspired you to write comedy in general? Caleb (07:00): I think it’s always been a big part of my personality. Another professor was asking me what was my main value? And I think they wanted something profound, but I said fun. Fun was my main value. Debbi (07:14): That’s a great value. Caleb (07:15): Yeah. I mean, who doesn’t like having fun? And I think sometimes we take life too seriously. And even in more serious situations, I’ve always found humor is a great way to deal with it and handle it. And it’s just kind of a natural part of my personality so it naturally comes out in my writing. And so I’ve rolled with it from my first three novels. It’s interesting, the one I’m working on now is the first one I’ve written that’s not really comedic because it’s a horror novel, which is different. But that actually took more time because the comedy is my default way of thinking and so it comes out easier. Debbi (07:55): Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Do you have a writing routine? Do you have a time when you write? Caleb (08:03): Yes, absolutely. If I don’t sit down and treat it like a shift, then it’s not going to happen. Debbi (08:09): Exactly. Caleb (08:10): I think there’s this romantic notion for writers, but really for all the arts of like, oh, the muse is going to strike and then I’m going to write this great thing. And that’s not really… I’m sure there are people like that. I don’t think it’s most people. I think most people, you show up and you sit and you push, and then two hours later, hopefully something came out. So that’s typically what I do, is typically I will set a timer depending on the day and how much time I have for just two or three hours. And that’s every Tuesday and Thursday because my schedule allows for it. And then Saturday and Sunday, assuming I’m not bringing my daughter to a sports practice or something like that, then I try and do two to three hours on Saturday and Sunday as well. Debbi (09:01): Yeah. Yeah. It takes diligence to do this and you really do have to devote time to it. People don’t realize how much time writers put into their work. Caleb (09:11): It takes ages, ages. And I’m always jealous of… So I just read Stephen King’s On Writing, which was one of the best books on writing. It’s up there with Bird by Bird as my favorite books on writing. Debbi (09:23): I love Bird by Bird. Caleb (09:25): It’s so great. It’s so great. But Stephen King, who it’s interesting, his novels are up and down for me. There’s ones I love. It is one of my favorite novels of all time. The Body‘s one of my favorite novellas of all time, but then there’s other ones that I DNF’ed. So I didn’t know what to expect into going on his book on writing and it was spectacular. It was so good. And he talks about that, that he’s got to sit down and do it. But also in his two-hour session, he can write whatever, 2000 words or something crazy like that. I’m like, at the end of two hours, I’m lucky if I have 500 words. His output is insane. Debbi (10:03): Everybody varies in terms of what they can produce. Caleb (10:07): Yeah. Debbi (10:08): I mean, I know people who say, oh yeah, I can write 10,000 words a day. And it’s like, well, okay, that’s you. Not everybody is like that. Caleb (10:18): I can’t even wrap my head around that. Debbi (10:20): I mean, these galactic figures that I’m just like, okay, really? And how many of those words do you end up throwing out, I wonder? Caleb (10:29): I think maybe that’s some people’s process, having talked to them, is that they just spew it all out. Debbi (10:35): They spew it out. Caleb (10:36): I think the editing really takes them ages and they’re really adding a ton more to the story afterwards. Debbi (10:43): It could be. Or taking out a lot sometimes. Caleb (10:45): Yeah, that’s definitely true. Debbi (10:47): That’s true for movies, that’s for sure. Caleb (10:50): Yeah. I think most novels benefit from being cut down a fair amount, my own included for sure. Debbi (10:55): Oh,

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About

Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.

Information

  • Creator
    Debbi Mack
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    264
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack
  • Show Website
    The Crime Cafe