Check out my interview with author, screenwriter, playwright, and overall multi-hyphenate film producer, Matt Witten.

He’s written a most interesting novel, 51%, which is (still) a science fiction thriller.

PS: Apparently, the only difference between “specialty” and “speciality” is that the latter is more commonly used in the UK. So, of course, I like it better I’m using it.

You know, it’s kinda hit me that I’ll be directing my second short film in less than a week. Unbelievable!

I keep going over the lists of things we need to create the set and provide costumes, as needed, as well as props and (in this case) posters. The whole film takes place in a dorm room.

Logline: On Halloween night, a young female grad student trying to meet a midnight deadline and avoid dealing with a stalker gets a scare that will change her life.

I think it qualifies as a story of psychological suspense.

Wish me luck! :)

For what it’s worth, we are looking for PAs (production assistants). No experience necessary. If you’re anywhere near Baltimore and want to participate, please send an email to my 1st AD Wes Throneberry. His email is wesshimoda@hotmail.com.

It’ll be an all-day shoot, but you don’t have to stay the whole time. But who knows. We might wrap early. You just never know.

Featured excerpts and more!

The Scallop Plot by Judy Foreman

Prologue

It was magic hour in Provincetown Harbor. The wind had died down to a soft breeze. The scattered clouds were turning a gorgeous lavender. The whale watch boats bobbed gently at the pier, disgorging their last contented sightseers. The bars were getting noisy, happy hour in full swing.

But the tense, middle-aged man slouched in the stern of the Vacker—which meant “beautiful” in his native Swedish—was distinctly not happy. He popped open a beer—his third—and stuffed the last, now-cold, bit of calamari into his mouth.

Olaf Svensson had spent the day alone, as always. But fuck it, he was not exactly a people person, and sour as his own company was, even to him, it was better than trying to talk to people who knew less about the world than he did.

He had taken the day to sail around the waters off Provincetown.

The area, teeming with bluefish and sea bass, was the perfect site for an offshore wind farm.

Now in his sixties, graying though still with the body of the swimmer he once was, Svensson was mostly unknown in America but had become famous in Europe for trying to develop Sweden’s offshore wind farms.

That work had once been part of Sweden’s famous green plan.

But then the anti-wind protests had come, at first with critics crying that Sweden’s beautiful coast would be marred by the huge turbines and all the helicopters flying overhead to de-ice them.

Others called his projects “fashion,” mere virtue signaling for wind energy fans. And then had come the big fear: that all those turbines in the water off Sweden’s Baltic coast, the coast facing Russia, might make it harder to detect any incoming Russian cruise missiles.

Agonized, he watched his dream collapse, his investors back out.

After years of fighting, he reluctantly terminated the leases he had so painstakingly won.

His projects doomed, Svensson had slid into a deep depression, drinking heavily, buying sex, living on ice cream and pizza. If he had had any friends, they might have gently noted that this depression was actually not new, that he should seek help. But there were no friends, and his despair festered.

He had grown up poor, or as poor as anybody could be in Sweden’s egalitarian society. His parents had run a small chain of mom-and-pop grocery stores, and he had learned as a teenager how to order goods, stock shelves, and sweet-talk customers into buying more than they’d come in for.

The mere thought of his father made him shudder. He still had the scars on his back from the endless, terrible beatings. He had only one eye, not a great thing for a sailor, or anyone else, for that matter.

The so-called accident had happened when he was three. His father had given him a pocketknife. Why on earth his father had done that, no one knew. Olaf, of course, played with it right away and within minutes had flailed around and jammed the sharp blade into his left eye. He’d lost the eye and had had a glass eye, and an attitude, ever since.

Once out of the house, no longer having to look at his mother’s sad and perpetually bruised face, he had been a quick study, cruising with a vengeance through college, taking easy courses, then going on to business school. Along the way, he’d tried marriage. But the bitch had abandoned him for another guy, leaving him lonely, childless, and angrier than ever.

But so what, he figured. He was smart. And determined. And before long he was among the first to catch on to the world’s burgeoning energy crisis.

He’d paid close attention in the 1970s as the oil embargo, long gas lines, and the world’s insatiable appetite for oil crippled countries around the world. But where others saw crisis, he saw opportunity.

He prided himself on being that rare breed: an environmentalist-businessman, driven—or so he liked to think—in equal parts by a genuine desire to save the planet and make money in the process.

Lots and lots of money. Doing well by doing good.

Now, as evening fell, the bitter man in the stern of the Vacker shook his head to emerge from his reverie. He put on his sweatshirt and opened his fourth beer.

For several years, his memories of the torpedoed Swedish projects had made him sad. But now they only made him mad. And more stubborn than ever. Now, as his depression morphed into fierce determination, he contemplated his new project, Provincetown Wind.

The waters off Provincetown offered perfect conditions for wind power: consistent strong winds and a shallow ocean floor. This time, he swore silently, he really would impress the young woman he had secretly fallen for—the one who haunted his dreams, the one he admired more than anyone else on earth, the one young enough to be his granddaughter yet worshipped enough to be his wife: Greta Thunberg.

He would make his millions. Nothing would stop him this time.

Not the law. Not ethics. Nothing. He had a secret plan to make sure his idea would become reality.

It had to.

Author bio

Judy Foreman is a former Boston Globe health columnist and the author of three works of nonfiction from Oxford University Press.

In 2022, she published her first novel, CRISPR’d, from Skyhorse Publishing. A Wellesley College grad (Phi Beta Kappa), she spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil and has a master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics, also at Harvard Medical School, a Knight Science Fellow at MIT, and a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

She has won more than fifty journalism awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award and a Science in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers. She lives outside of Boston with her husband.

Hold on For Dear Life by Annelise Osborne

There had been a morning, not so long ago, when he had counted to thirty-seven in the dark. The floor beneath him had been cold metal. He had not known whether anyone was looking for him yet, or whether the city was simply continuing without him, the way it always did. He had thought about Jack. That had been the first coherent thought: that she was going to be furious at him for making her worry. He had almost smiled, there in the dark. Almost.

The call came on a Tuesday morning in spring.

Charlie was at his desk in a small office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the kind of place that didn’t announce itself — no logo on the door, no row of monitors visible from the street, nothing that would tell a passing stranger that anything particular was happening inside. The office had been chosen deliberately for exactly that quality. They had learned, the hard way, what visibility cost.

He almost didn’t answer.

The number was international, Philippines country code, and he didn’t recognize it, and the morning had already asked several things of him that he hadn’t finished answering. But something made him pick up.

“Charlie?” A woman’s voice. Clear despite the distance. “This is Rosa. From Manila. We met at the meetup in Singapore — you spoke about cross-border payments.”

He remembered her. A small gathering near Clarke Quay, thirty people, and afterward she had found him and asked a question so specific and so correct that he had talked to her for twenty minutes while everyone else drifted toward drinks.

“Rosa,” he said. “Of course. How are you?”

“I’m good,” she said. “I’m calling because I tried it. This morning.”

He went still.

“USDA,” she said. “I sent money to my mother. In Cebu.”

He didn’t speak.

“She received it in four minutes,” Rosa said. “Four minutes, Charlie.”

A pause. He heard her deciding whether to say the rest of it. She said it.

“Usually I use a remittance service. It takes three days. They take eight percent.” Another pause, smaller. “Eight percent is a week of groceries. For my mother.”

Outside the office window, Williamsburg was doing what it always did — moving, building, entirely indifferent to what was happening in this particular room on this particular Tuesday morning. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Someone walked past with coffee. The city continued without ceremony, as it always had.

Charlie pressed his hand flat against the desk.

“I’ve been sending money home for six years,” Rosa said. “Every month. And I just — I wanted you to know. Because when you spoke in Singapore, you said the technology existed to make this instant and nearly free, and I thought…” She stopped. He could hear her composing herself. “I thought that was the kind of thing people said. At conferences.”

“I know,” Charlie said quietly.

“But it worked,” she said.

“It worked,” he said.

A brief silence. Comfortable, somehow, in the way that silences were comfortable between people who had said the true thing and didn’t need to say anything around it.

“Thank you,” Rosa said. “Tell your team.”

She hung up.

Charlie held the phone for a long moment. Through the glass wall of the small conference room he could see Jack at her desk, head down, working with the focused precision she had brought to everything since the beginning — since a dorm room at MIT, since a napkin diagram with arrows that didn’t make sense, since the long accumulation of late nights and hard decisions that had eventually, improbably, produced something real enough to cross an ocean in four minutes for almost nothing.

It had cost a great deal to get here. More than any of them had anticipated when they started. More than the market, at its most brutal, had seemed willing to let them survive.

But they had held.

Not because holding was easy. Because letting go would have meant letting go of something they had decided was true — and the market’s opinion of that truth had turned out, in the end, to be temporary.

Author bio

Annelise Osborne is a capital markets executive, author, and thought leader at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets. Former Moody’s SVP responsible for $400 billion of rated structured finance securities. Author of From Hoodies to Suits (Wiley, 2024) and debut novel Hold On for Dear Life (Amazon KDP, 2026). 2025 Stevie Award winner for Thought Leadership. Global speaker at Consensus, Davos, and the Global Blockchain Business Council. MBA, Columbia Business School.

Q&A from your host, Debbi Mack!

Q - What is your writing process?

A - I tend to outline after I get the germ of an idea. I try to plan out the key moments of the story in terms of the main character’s feelings in that moment, how revelatory that moment should feel. I also start with a type of ending in mind. All of this is subject to change, based largely on where the characters lead me. So, I start with a bare outline and improvise from there.

One nice thing about writing a series is that you get to know your cast of characters really well. You know which ones to use in various situations your protagonist deals with. On the other hand, writing a standalone novel lets you start with a fresh slate, which can be both intimidating and freeing.

Any time I tackle a new story, I’ll do enough research to feel comfortable describing the main character and the situation she (and it’s usually, but not always, a she) finds herself in. I don’t try to do too much research, because there’s a point of diminishing returns, where you’re just going down a rabbithole and not writing. I try to do enough to make the story feel real. Otherwise, I just start writing, and research further as needed.

I also tend to keep a fairly tight schedule and get in a little writing every day.

Q - Is there a specific author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

A - I could give you a long list, but I’ll limit it to these:

The Nancy Drew mysteries—typical female mystery author response, I know. But I used to love these as a child. Along with the Cherry Ames books, which a few of us remember. Clearly, they led me to a life of crime fiction.

Everything Ross Macdonald wrote. But if I have to pick one, I’ll make it The Ivory Grin, which is about as representative of his writing as anything. He wrote the sort of thing I tend to write about—broken families, secrets and lies, hidden agendas—so I get lots of inspiration from his work.

Finally, Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott. Because it taught me to take everything one step at a time.

Q - What tips would you give to aspiring writers?

A - Don’t aspire. Just write. Even if it’s just a daily journal. Write and keep writing.

But if what you really aspire to is be a published author, be prepared to have your work critiqued by others. That’s all part of the deal. And not everyone will love your work. Not everyone loves mine, but I’m not trying to appeal to everyone.

The people who “get you” will want to read you. The rest you can forget about.

Q - What are three books you’ll never part with?

A - Um, wow. I ask myself that a lot, because I tend to hold onto books. I could start a whole library at this point.

Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury. My Dad bought it for me at Powell’s Books when I was on vacation in Portland, Oregon. And it’s a fantastic read.

Screenplay by Syd Field. This may be the single most helpful book I’ve read about story structure. Especially if you’re just starting out, and the 12-Step Hero’s Journey is just a bit too much to absorb all at once.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton. Because … Sue Grafton. I also own a used book club edition of that one.

Q - What are three fun facts about yourself?

A - 1. I worked my way through college in a variety of interesting jobs. Among other things, I was a substitute schoolbus driver. That’s how I learned how to drive a stickshift. It’s also how I met my husband.

2. I was once a volunteer EMT (emergency medical technician) with the Hillandale Volunteer Fire Department of Montgomery County, Maryland.

3. I have survived several life-threatening situations. So many I’ve stopped counting.

Q - If you could choose a superpower, what would it be and why?

A - I’d like to be either a magician or a miracle worker. Who wouldn’t want to perform miracles or magic?

Q - If you were hosting a dinner party, which three authors, past or present, would be your dream guests and why?

A - Dorothy Parker, Terry Pratchett, and George Orwell. I admire all of them and can’t imagine the conversation we’d have.

Q - What projects are you currently working on?

A - Right at the moment, I’ve released my third Erica Jensen novel, Past Imperfect, as an ebook, but hope to have it out in print as soon as is feasible. In this book, Erica ends up investigating the mysterious death of someone she worked with during her deployment. Erica’s a Marine veteran, weaning herself off opioids and lingering PTSD, who manages to stumble over a body now and then.

I also write screenplays—scads of them—as of this writing, still unproduced. But I’ve written and directed one short film which I hope to finish post-producing soon. I’m also planning to shoot my second short right now.

I also have two ongoing projects. Well, three really.

I have two podcasts: the Crime Cafe podcast, where I interview crime, suspense, and thriller writers. The other one is Dark and Twisted Alleys: A Film Noir Podcast, in which crime and horror author F.R. Jameson and I trade witticisms and criticisms about a different film noir once a month. I’m also adding film reviews and essays to the lineup.

I’m also gathering an extraordinary collection of video from the public domain, which I upload to YouTube periodically. Now and then, I cut it up into segments and blog it as the Saturday Matinee.

Q - Would you like to share an excerpt from your work?

A - Sure. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Past Imperfect, the latest in the Erica Jensen mystery series:

muring inside. The only other sound was that of distant traffic from the main road.

Q - Where can readers learn more about you and purchase your books?

A - You can find me various places:

My website: debbimack.com

My blogs: https://www.debbimack.com/project/blog/

https://debbimacktoo.wordpress.com/ (a blog about movies)

https://debbimackblogs.com/ (an indie author’s writing journey)

https://randomandsundrythings.wordpress.com/ (bits and bobs)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbimackwriter/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbimacktoo/

Book buy links: https://www.debbimack.com/books/ (links to all my books)

Or you can buy direct from me here: https://payhip.com/debbimack

About the Host

Debbi Mack is a New York Times bestselling author of the Sam McRae and Erica Jensen mystery series, and two standalone novels, along with several short stories. A retired attorney with degrees in journalism, law, and library science, Debbi hosts the Crime Cafe podcast and co-hosts a podcast on film noir. As a screenwriter, she’s written and directed a short film and is in pre-production on a second one with Charm City Filmmakers in Baltimore. Originally from Queens, NY, she now lives in Columbia, MD, with her husband and at least one cat. Check out her website: debbimack.com.

What’s New and Interesting?

Well, um, all I can say is that I’m one person and I can only read so much, so fast.

But here’s what’s out this month.

A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston

Codebreakers by Stella Sands

Don’t Cross Mo Ellery by Birdie Horne*

Don’t Look Close by Jaima Fixsen

My Killer Family Reunion by Dinesh Thiru

My Sister Is Going to Kill Me by Nina Simon

Nearshore by Steve Hawk

Saint Delilah by Isabelle Spotts

Ten Seconds by Robert Gold

That Night by Gillian McAllister

The Book of Chuck by LaToya Watkins

The Butcher Legacy by Alaina Urquhart

The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey

The Hardest Ones to Fool by Christina Li

The People’s Historian by Dave Zirin

The Tailor by Tim Sullivan (you can pre-order the ebook now)

Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd

Tuxedo Park by Thomas Kenniff

You’ll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner (the paperback edition is available for pre-order)

These just out!

Natural Selection by Clare Edge

Not a Word by Linwood Barclay

Queens of the Crypt, Vol. 1 a graphic novel by Dom&Ink

To All the Men I’ve Killed Before by Katy Brent

Wicked Wanted Widows by Vanessa Lillie, Kimberly Belle, and Cate Holahan

A quick peek at September!

The Soufflé Also Rises by Lauren Johnson

A Game of Cat and Killer by Jiro Akagawa with Haydn Trowell (Translator)

A Rainy Night in Georgia by J. Tom Morgan (with John Capouya)

Adam, Mine. by K. Ancrum

An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino

Ashes at the Altar by LaDarrion Williams

And many more!

Two more announcements!

Just a reminder that if you're in the Baltimore, MD, area and are interested in participating in filmmaking, just email your interest to my 1st AD Wes Throneberry. His email is wesshimoda@hotmail.com, and you can copy me at debbi@debbimack.com

I’d also like to invite your contributions to this newsletter. Do you have a new release coming in the Fall of 2026 that you’d like to promote? A chapter from your novel? A giveaway? Or a short story you’d like to see featured here?

Hi! I keep reading about the power of collaboration, and I can tell you for a fact that collaborating with the right people will help you become better at whatever you’re doing. When I say “the right people,” what I mean is people who are excited to create with you and share a vision of the work.

Now, I can write about collaboration all day, and I can read about it all day, too. But, at some point, one must actually do something.

Who’d like to promote their latest book with an excerpt in the Crime Cafe newsletter? Seeking July and August releases.

Read more

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 in adapting it, so we’ll see.

Debbi (13:06): Wonderful.

Marjorie (13:06): You never know until the green light comes on.

Debbi (13:12): Exactly.

Marjorie (13:14): It’s in suspension.

Debbi (13:15): It’s all very sketchy until it actually happens.

Marjorie (13:18): Yeah.

Debbi (13:20): And even if it’s happening, it might get shut down. You never know.

Marjorie (13:24): I know. I know. But screenwriting does help with novel writing.

Debbi (13:29): It does. You’re absolutely right about that.

Marjorie (13:32): Yes.

Debbi (13:33): I learned that fast. How do you decide which story you want to tell?

Marjorie (13:46): It’s interesting because it takes me a long time. I’ve usually got two or three projects going at the same time that come to me through either. The inspiration either comes from a memory, an image that was catchy to me, something that I saw in the news maybe, or somebody that I met that’s kind of sparked an idea. So a project that I’m working on right now that might be picked up by a publisher, it was suggested to me by a childhood image of when I was a kid. We lived in a house just outside of Durham City. And I remember one day there was a terrible accident outside the front of the house, a car accident. And I remember we had a little kind of bank that I could look out onto the road from. And I remember seeing a pair of red child’s shoes and this red shoes, red shoes thing stuck in my mind forever.

(15:05): And just that image sets up a whole set of different ideas for me. And it takes me a while to explore the ideas before I start writing in, because I’ve done it the opposite where I’ve gone full tilt on an idea that’s not fully developed. And then you’re like, okay, now what?

Debbi (15:29): Exactly.

Marjorie (15:30): So then I’ve got another project, which is a sci-fi one, which that came to me when I thought about deserted shopping malls. We went for a visit down to Grand Forks, which is just south of us in North Dakota. And the mall, which used to be busy in the ‘90s, was a dead zone. It was the weirdest place I’ve ever stepped into. The food court was empty. There were no stores. It was a ghost town. And then I started thinking, wow, what if these in the future were places that people lived? And what if the grid failed basically, and people were forced to live in these malls, but the wealthy people lived in biospheres? I came up with an idea there were three classes of people, the wealthy people living in the biospheres, the mid-range people living in the malls and the old Costco warehouses, and then the feral people living wild,

(16:49): And came up with this story about the wealthy people wanting to move off the planet basically. And it’s a whole complicated story, but that idea was just suggested by the mall. So I’ve got all of these projects going, and I kind of dot from one to the other. And my rule is if it doesn’t get me in the gut, if I don’t feel an emotional connection after writing it for a while, I put it aside. For me, it has to touch the emotions somewhere. And that’s how I decide. I kind of have the two or three projects. I write a bit here and a bit there. But if it hasn’t got some emotional resonance, then I put it aside for a while until I can come up with something better.

Debbi (17:49): I know the feeling because, I think it must be a screenwriter thing because I have multiple screenplays that I’ve started. Ideas that I really want to develop and take somewhere.

Marjorie (18:02): Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Debbi (18:04): It’s always about which one do I really connect with the most?

Marjorie (18:09): Yes, I know. I mean, I’m sure writers have so many ideas in their draw when they’re sitting on their laptop that could be great stories. I’ve got lots of thoughts.

Debbi (18:22): Exactly. Yeah.

Marjorie (18:23): But it takes a really fully formed idea to go to the end of a novel.

Debbi (18:29): Exactly. Or a feature film.

Marjorie (18:32): Yes.

Debbi (18:33): I was going to say that you must be an outliner at heart.

Marjorie (18:38): No, I’m not actually. That’s why screenwriting was so good for me. It forced me to outline things. Yeah. So I’m a kind of semi-plotter, semi-outliner. I’ll have a basic outline, and I usually know the ending, and then I’ll start writing from there. But I’m not a beat by beat person unless I’m writing a screenplay.

Debbi (19:05): Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I tend to be more beat by beat, but I’m willing to vary from the beats. This is the thing for me. It’s like if I know where I’m going, that’s what counts.

Marjorie (19:18): Yeah. Well, you do need to know the ending.

Debbi (19:21): Yeah.

Marjorie (19:21): It’s interesting because we are working on the publisher, the editor, my publisher that published The Savage Instinct, we are working on an adaptation of it, but it’s amazing just how much a feature movie requires you to strip the story right down to the essentials.

Debbi (19:44): Absolutely.

Marjorie (19:46): So I’ve done the beat sheet for The Savage Instinct, and I had to cut lots of the story out. I had to cut some side plots and some characters because the movie is just really lean. You have to get down to the essence of it.

Debbi (20:11): Exactly. Yeah. You can’t have too many subplots. You can’t have too many characters. Not only is that going to confuse the audience, but the cost goes up. More actors.

Marjorie (20:24): Yes. Well, that’s the thing. Yes.

Debbi (20:25): This is a reality.

Marjorie (20:27): Yeah. And that’s what my editor kept telling me. More characters, more money. And at the center of The Savage Instinct, it’s really a story about two women, a childless woman and a child poisoner. And it’s set in the Victorian era, but it’s a really strange dynamic between these two women. The childless woman is a prison visitor visiting the child poisoner. So a very strange relationship develops because the childless woman’s husband is very oppressed. He’s basically oppressing her. And yes, she forms a friendship with the poisoner and a sort of strange mentorship arises. I won’t say anymore.

Debbi (21:28): Yeah, that does sound like a strange mentorship. Let’s see. What authors do you like to read?

Marjorie (21:39): Interesting. The book that I’m currently reading now is written by a Canadian author who I really loved his first book. It’s called The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer. He wrote, We Used to Live Here. I don’t really have heard of that one. He’s very, very good. I love Margaret Atwood. I think I’ve read most of her books. I read, I’m trying to think. I have so many books that I like. I used to read more suspense and thrillers than I do now. I liked Gillian McAllister.

Debbi (22:30): Oh, yeah. I think

Marjorie (22:30): It’s Gillian McAllister. I really liked her. Lisa Jewell, I’ve enjoyed some of her books. Then I just read a book called Liberty Street, which is by another Canadian author about a journalist that goes into a woman’s prison in the ‘60s. She gets herself admitted to a woman’s prison because in the ‘60s you could be sent there if you were incorrigible. You are an incorrigible young woman that your parents couldn’t contain you. You could be sent to this awful prison.

Debbi (23:09): Oh, my goodness.

Marjorie (23:11): Yeah. So I read a variety of books.

Debbi (23:15): Wow, that sounds like quite an interesting book.

Marjorie (23:18): Yeah.

Debbi (23:19): Scary and horrible, but interesting. Yeah. How do you divide your time between writing and marketing?

Marjorie (23:29): I probably don’t do enough marketing. The publisher does some. I’m published at present with a smaller British press, Bloodhound Books, and they’re really good at producing marketing materials. They do beautiful visuals and they make a trailer for the book and they’re really helpful, but you still, as the author, have to do quite a bit yourself.

Debbi (24:01): Oh, yes.

Marjorie (24:02): There’s Instagram posts. Well, I don’t know. I mean, if we knew what worked, I’m not sure. I see people nowadays are doing lots of recorded messages on Instagram and stuff, I guess, to make sure that people don’t think AI wrote their book or something. They’re trying to personalize their author platform.

I have a website, but it takes a lot of time to do all this stuff. Oh, yeah. For sure. I write every morning, but once I’ve gone through the emails and then looked after a couple of things, I’m like, okay, where’s the time going? I haven’t written anything. So I have to have deadlines.

I work best with a tight deadline. So my book, The Night Side, was published with Seven House who were taken over now by Joffe Books. And so I might be doing another one for them. I’m not sure, but I gave myself a deadline to finish this book. So once I know it’s coming up, then I really go to it and forget the marketing for a while.

Debbi (25:26): Yeah, that’s probably best.

Marjorie (25:29): Yeah.

Debbi (25:29): When you’re in the zone on something, you really just have to stick with that.

Marjorie (25:34): Yeah.

Debbi (25:36): Let’s see. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Marjorie (25:40): Well, I write every morning and take the afternoon off. Otherwise, my husband would be like, “Come on, let’s go out.” And I’m like, “Okay.” We golf and all of that. Then I write sometimes in the evening as well. Depends just what kind of a schedule I’ve got.

Debbi (26:01): Yeah.

Marjorie (26:02): You do have to set aside a period of time, but you can’t do it all the time. And I tend to write more in the winter. Summer’s a bit difficult because you’re just wanting to get outside and to be in the fresh air.

Debbi (26:20): Absolutely.

Marjorie (26:23): I write Saturdays and Sundays. There’s no day off. And in fact, really, there’s no time off ever because you probably know this, you’re always thinking about ideas.

Debbi (26:36): Oh, yes. A writer never really takes a vacation. No,

Marjorie (26:40): No, no.

Debbi (26:43): There’s always something good cooking up there. I don’t know.

Marjorie (26:46): Yeah. Even when I’m on vacation, I’m thinking,

Debbi (26:51): Yeah, yeah. What will I write about this?

Marjorie (26:53): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (26:56): That’s interesting. Sometimes I catch myself blogging in my head.

Marjorie (27:01): Oh, really?

Debbi (27:01): Yeah. So to speak. Yeah. How would I blog this particular scene that’s taking place right now?

Marjorie (27:09): And then you drift away and your husband’s probably like, “Hello?”

Debbi (27:12): Hey, are you there?

Marjorie (27:14): Yeah.

Debbi (27:14): Listen to me. Okay. Yes.

Marjorie (27:18): Actually, I’ve gotten into trouble a few times because I’m a people watcher and staring at people and their interactions. And I’ve had more than one set of people say, “Do you want a photograph or something?”

Debbi (27:33): It’s funny because I have to really catch myself not to do that. It’s like I will see something and I’m just like, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” I mean, if people start to get to the point where they’re like, “Hey, what are you looking at?” That would worry me a little bit.

Marjorie (27:51): Yeah. Well, actually, that was something that Carol Shields told us to do. She said, “You have to develop your writer’s eyes and ears. So you would look for something beyond the obvious.”

Debbi (28:08): Exactly.

Marjorie (28:09): “And then you listen to other people’s conversations.” And actually I have that in, I think it’s in my book, The Night Side maybe. Yeah, I talk about that. The character talks about that. It’s either that or The Perfect Family Man. I can’t remember. Now I’m getting them mixed up. But I used to tell that to my students because I taught creative writing at high school, and I’d send them out to just find images, find things around the school that they’d never looked at before. And they would come back and write it all on the board and there’d be a mass of different images. And it was amazing experience. Then I’d tell them to listen in on conversations and we’d make big displays of that. And they would go away and write stories inspired by one or more of those images or sound bites. They loved it.

Debbi (29:15): That’s a very cool thing.

Marjorie (29:17): Yeah, it was.

Debbi (29:18): A very cool thing to get people writing.

Marjorie (29:20): Yeah.

Debbi (29:21): Good writing prompts.

Marjorie (29:23): Yeah.

Debbi (29:24): What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?

Marjorie (29:30): Have a day job.

Debbi (29:33): Yes.

Marjorie (29:34): You can’t make enough money as a writer unless you’re one of the top. I don’t even know what the percentage is now. There’s not enough money to support you as a writer. So have a day job if you’re a young person, have a backup and have a very thick skin because you’re going to get criticized, you’re going to get ... You’re going to be putting your work out there and you’re going to get some very weird reviews sometimes, but you can’t personalize it because not everybody’s going to like what you put out there. And another thing I would say is that for the older writer, it’s never too late. Writing is one thing that you can do regardless of your age. It doesn’t matter how old you are, as long as you can sit down and come up with a story, keep going with it. It’s a great thing to do as a retired person because you’re not worrying so much about the financial side of it.

(30:45): But I would say only do it if you’re willing to pour out, sort of plunder your own emotional life and lay it bare for everyone to see. It’s a risky thing to do.

Debbi (31:03): Yes. Yes, it is.

Marjorie (31:08): And you expose yourself to other people’s scrutiny.

Debbi (31:13): Yes. Yes, it is. It is a risky thing. And I’m not sure people really appreciate that until they actually do it.

Marjorie (31:24): Well, the very first time that I had to share a piece of my work was in Carol’s class, and your heart’s pounding, you’re flushed and hot and cold, and you’re like, “People are going to hate it. People are going to hate it.” And then you read it. And thankfully, people liked what I read. So once I had done it a few times, I was fine, but I know a lot of young writers are reluctant to share their work. I would get students coming to me and saying, “I’ve got this book of poems. Will you look at it?” And I’d say, “Well, do you want me just to read it or do you want me to give you constructive feedback?” And some students would say, “No, I just want you to read it because it’s part of me. I don’t care to revise it.” And others would say, “Yeah, I want to make it better.” So know why you’re writing.

(32:25): Are you writing to share it with other people? Or is it just something cathartic for you? And if it’s something to share and publish, then you have to know that writing is a business as well.

Debbi (32:43): Yes. Yes to all of what you said.

Marjorie (32:46): Yeah.

Debbi (32:47): I mean, what great advice. Wonderful. Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Marjorie (32:57): I think one of the things that as a writer that has been wonderful for me is, and probably for you too, is finding a community of writers, a virtual community, as well as writers here in my own hometown. But I have a very tight-knit group of writer friends all over the UK, the US, and Canada. And because it’s such a solitary pursuit, it’s great to have those people to complain to vent, to ask how they’re doing. It’s amazing. Do you find that too?

Debbi (33:37): Oh, it’s definitely a good thing to have community for sure of people to talk about these things.

Marjorie (33:45): Yeah,

Debbi (33:46): Absolutely.

Marjorie (33:49): And there’s some great organizations that are helpful in that, but I get to meet some of these people in person now at the Bouchercon in October. That’s right. The International. No, it’s not the International Thriller Writers, that’s Thriller Fest. Yeah, this year it’s in Calgary.

Debbi (34:14): Calgary, yes.

Marjorie (34:14): Big conference. Yeah. So I’m looking forward to that and moderating a panel.

Debbi (34:20): It makes me wish I decided to go.

Marjorie (34:24): Yeah.

Debbi (34:25): Shoot.

Marjorie (34:26): Calgary’s a beautiful place. Yeah.

Debbi (34:28): I really would love to go back up to Canada and see more of it.

Marjorie (34:33): Yeah, I think they’re doing some tours to the Rockies to ban from. It’s not too late.

Debbi (34:41): I’ll give it some serious thought.

Marjorie (34:43): Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi (34:44): See if I can convince my husband to go up to Canada. I don’t see why he would object. He objects so much that’s going on down here that going to Canada might be a relief.

Marjorie (34:58): Yeah, escape to the Rockies. You’d love it.

Debbi (35:01): Yeah, yeah. Escape to the Rockies.

Marjorie (35:01): And Calgary’s such a lovely town.

Debbi (35:04): I’ve heard that they’re fabulous looking too.

Marjorie (35:06): Oh, spectacular. Yeah.

Debbi (35:09): Well, I want to thank you so much for being here and hang around for a little bit more because we’re going to do a bonus episode for the Patreon supporters.

Marjorie (35:18): Okay.

Debbi (35:18): Alrighty. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here, Marjorie.

Marjorie (35:22): Thank you. It was great to talk to you.

Debbi (35:24): Great talking to you too. Thank you.

Marjorie (35:27): Okay, thanks.

Debbi (35:29): So to all my listeners, thank you so much for listening. That goes especially to my Patreon and Substack supporters. Thank you for following me there and for supporting me there. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. They help. And until next time, happy reading and I’ll be seeing you.

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer and screenwriter M.M. DeLuca.

Check out our discussion about her various books in different genres!

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 after actors. Scarlett, I don’t believe she’s done book narration, but she’s done voiceover and cartoons and animation and stuff. Josh is not, he’s just a young guy wanting to be an actor. Ted Evans is a veteran voiceover guy and radio guy, does a ton of commercials. I believe he’s the Aflac Duck, if you want to make a reference.

Debbi (14:12): Oh, yeah.

William (14:13): He’s one of the top sound guys in Hollywood. And usually hard to get him, but he loved the project. And he’s never been asked to do something more extended. When he does a commercial, it’s 10, 20, 30 seconds of voiceover. Here, we wanted him for all the episodes and he was thrilled by that.

Debbi (14:37): I guess so.

William (14:39): Yeah. Yeah. And he was terrific. Talking about what we’re going to do, which was a bit of your question too, we’re already starting to develop season two of the podcast. And we left it as a cliffhanger where, I don’t know if you’ve gotten the last episode yet. Not yet. I don’t want to spoil it for you. Well, I won’t spoil it for you.

Debbi (15:06): There’s a cliffhanger, of course.

William (15:07): It’s a cliffhanger. And obviously like every good series like this, we left it open to more episodes. And we’ve already started to talk about how to do that and how many and when and all of the good things. But clearly what happened on Apple, that we went to number one in the podcast in Drama. Immediately we knew we had to do more with this.

Debbi (15:33): Yeah, that’s amazing. Congratulations on that.

William (15:37): Thank you very much.

Debbi (15:38): Fantastic.

William (15:39): We were happily surprised, but not astonished.

Debbi (15:44): Well, that’s wonderful. What kind of production schedule did you have? How far ahead were you writing things before you had them out there?

William (15:54): Interesting. Yes, a good question. We set a date for the launch, and I think it was back in, I don’t know, January, February, something like that of the year. And then we said, okay, let’s backtrack from there. If we do three episodes, if we have three episodes in the can, then we can continue on and do the fourth and the fifth while we are launching it already. It’s just sort of the television series model. They will write six or seven episodes. They’ll get it on air. And then if they’re smart, they’ll wait to see the audience reaction to certain characters and where the story’s going. And therefore they’ll modify episode six, seven, eight, nine as they’re going along and they can make changes. And that’s what we though we were going to do. But then after we got number one and number two in the can, we said, “Wow, this is so good. We’ve got to launch it.”

(17:01): All in the series, we decided to just do it all. Just do all the episodes, do the sound. The soundscape was easier to do with all the episodes there. We could start promoting it. We could start doing, which you may or may not have heard, the little mini-episodes in between where we go behind the scenes a bit and meet other characters and meet Scarlett and meet Ted Evans and Josh off camera, so to speak. So then we got it all in the can, as you say, and then we picked a date and we set that date. We did some promotion around it. I was able to arrange a meet and greet and a Q&A at Barnes & Noble where we brought in the author from Eugene. We brought in Scarlett. We brought Josh and myself, and we did it in the Barnes & Noble in Glendale so we could push and promote the book and the podcast and what was coming next.

(18:17): And that was very successful and fun to do. We might try and do another one with the second series launch.

Debbi (18:27): Wow, that’s really something. Yeah. It sounds like you had fun doing it too.

William (18:34): It was one of the funnest, if that’s a word, projects I’ve done. Great partners at Benstown Media. Scarlet and the other actors were just a joy to work with. I know it’s said a lot in Hollywood, but it really was. She’s getting a lot of attention. She’s coming out in a movie in August, I think an Adam Sandler movie. So her career’s on the rise and we’re on her coattails right now.

Debbi (19:03): That’s fantastic.

William (19:05): Yeah.

Debbi (19:06): That’s amazing. If an author were interested in having their book adapted into a scripted podcast, what would be the best approach for them to take?

William (19:16): Yeah. Well, calling me, I guess, would be one idea. We’re excited about it. We are hoping to have a conversation. Are you familiar with Blumhouse? Of course you are. Yeah. They tried to launch some podcasts in 2004, I think, horror podcasts. But we thought we could bring our expertise to the table and maybe do some sort of anthology, a horror a week, a crime a week, something like that where-

Debbi (19:53): Very cool.

William (19:54): We would have a host every week. Trying to think back to the shows I watched. The Wild World of Disney, whatever it was, where Walt Disney was hosting every week, where we could get a celebrity every week to say, “Hey, thanks for coming. We’ve got a doozy for you. Hope you like it. Listen in.” So there’s a plan there. We haven’t had that conversation with them yet, but something I’m trying to make happen.

Debbi (20:28): Well, I was going to ask, do you take queries?

William (20:33): Yes. Yes. From writers, from crime writers.

Debbi (20:37): Well, I can think of a thousand crime writers right now who might be interested.

William (20:45): Well, let’s keep that open because I also, in my development slate, have one or two or three scripts for features that we couldn’t get made. And we’re talking about reviving those in some way and seeing if they’re adaptable to a podcast series of this kind. I think almost anything is, depending on how you go about it.

Debbi (21:20): Exactly. Yeah. I was going to say, is there a particular type of work that you think is best for this type of media? Or really can you do anything?

William (21:30): I think anything. I mean, I was skeptical when we said let’s do one set in the Pacific Northwest, outdoors mostly, in a deserted landscape. But then the writers were able to balance that with the interrogation room and other elements that made it sound bigger than it really is.

Debbi (21:52): Yeah. Yeah. That sound design really.

William (21:54): Yeah. That takes you in the interrogation room and out of it. Do you remember, did you ever listen to Homecoming?

Debbi (22:06): That sounds really familiar.

William (22:08): Yeah, it was very popular. They had, I think, Laura Linney and I forget the actor’s name. Anyway, they were doing it and it was very contained. It was all almost in one building, a couple of rooms in a cafeteria and all that in one building. And it was interesting to listen to, but there wasn’t much dynamic to it. It was a quiet podcast, not big sound effects, a lot of interrogation room, and a lot of expositional dialogue because they didn’t have the sound effects. And then they made a movie about it with Julia Roberts, which was a failure, but they got it made.

Debbi (22:58): Yeah.

William (22:59): That’s 99% of the challenge here in Hollywood.

Debbi (23:05): It seems like a miracle when anything actually gets made, and yet things get made.

William (23:10): Things get made.

Debbi (23:12): They just do.

William (23:14): It takes a lot. I mean, it used to be a very friendly atmosphere for creators like myself, independents, where you could get into a studio, have a conversation. 75% of the time it’s no. But then 25% of the time you could get into a dialogue where they say, “Okay, I like this. Could you change this? Could you change that? Then come back.” How about “we like it, we want to option it, and then we’ll develop it.” But those conversations have sort of ended. They’re looking for independent producers to come in with a proverbial package. So do you have a director? Do you have a script? Do you have a star? And all those elements, which we now have to put together just almost to talk to them.

Debbi (24:10): Yeah. Yeah. You pretty much have to have the whole thing set up in a package ready for them to look at.

William (24:19): And say no.

Debbi (24:20): Very beautifully presented, very little thought, a whole lot of, “Here’s what’s in it for you.”

William (24:31): A lot of work goes into it. You’ve got one shot, but still most of the time it’ll be a no, but at least you’ve gotten in the room and had the conversation. What’s most difficult is to, and I’ve done it recently with this podcast, is to make a few phone calls to the agencies or some independent production companies. And just to get people on the phone or an email chain is diabolical.

Debbi (25:04): Yeah. Yeah. Getting people on the phone is difficult.

William (25:08): Difficult, difficult. Or getting people to return calls, whatever. But that’s what producers do, and I guess that’s my life now. Or it has been for a while, I should say.

Debbi (25:19): I get it. I get what you’re saying.

William (25:23): I assume it’s like going to get books published.

Debbi (25:27): Yes. There’s a lot of waiting, a lot of speculation.

William (25:32): Right.

Debbi (25:34): And nobody knows anything, as somebody once said.

William (25:38): That is so true. Nobody knows. What was the saying?

Debbi (25:43): Nobody knows anything.

William (25:45): No, but there was another one in the movie side of it. Oh, I don’t know if I like it. No one’s told me yet. That sort of thing.

Debbi (25:59): Yes, that’s a good one.

William (26:01): I won’t know if I like it until someone tells me I like it. So that was old studio in the agency mantra because no one wants to pass on anything, but no one wants to take it to the group meetings and say, “Hey, there’s something interesting. What do you guys think?”

Debbi (26:18): Too afraid.

William (26:21): I guess. But it’s become such a, I hate to date myself, but back in the day, the business was not a family, a family business in a way. On the movie side, I knew most of the players. They knew me. I wouldn’t call them with something stupid. And when I called them, they would turn the call and we’d have a conversation. But then it became a younger executive, a younger group who didn’t plan on staying anywhere a long time. And we’re told that the way to advance is to change companies all the time. And so they planned to be there a year or two, and they had the projects that were ready to go right away. And if you didn’t have it all together, they didn’t want to go to the meetings and get shot down. So it’s gotten to the point where they still won’t say no, they just won’t return your call, but they’ll hardly say yes.

Debbi (27:32): It’s hard to get a yes. Yeah, for sure. And even when you get a yes, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get the total green light.

William (27:42): No, the green light’s way down the road.

Debbi (27:44): It’s way down the road.

William (27:46): Just to get it in the place that can help you get to the next step.

Debbi (27:51): Precisely.

William (27:53): Yep. Yeah.

Debbi (27:55): What advice would you give to anyone who would like to get into what you’re doing?

William (28:00): Podcasting or producing?

Debbi (28:02): Either podcasting, writing, or producing, or all three.

William (28:07): They’re three different things.

Debbi (28:09): Yes.

William (28:10): The interesting thing with writers, as you know, is if you want to create something, you don’t need a team of people around you. You’re able to go, like I say, writers, painters, you’re able to go into a room, close the door, and write, and you don’t need outside help doing it. You want feedback later, but you’re doing what you’re doing. With a movie, I can’t get a normal movie made without a hundred people being involved. And I’m starting with a writer coming and doing it, then a writer and I convincing a director to do it. Then the writer, director, and I convincing an actor to do it. At the same time, maybe convincing a studio to do it. And then you get the studio together, and then you have to convince the studio that you’ve got the right budget. And then you have to go find the rest of the cast and the crew and the time.

(29:17): So it takes really a village.

Debbi (29:21): Yes.

William (29:21): Takes forever. With a podcast, it was me in the room with three people. Then you put the soundscape of four. I think our team was 10 people at the end of the day and all kicking in to do a good job. So I think that’s the difference. Now, the results are quite different. At this point, there’s very little money in dramatic podcasting, but there’s a satisfaction in getting it done. It’ll help book sales. It’ll help Pedro It’ll help Scarlett, it’ll help all the elements involved. It’ll help myself. But what the next step is with it is a complete unknown.

Debbi (30:11): I was going to say, do you get advertising dollars? Is there a subscription? Is there a Patreon or something?

William (30:18): The podcast world?

Debbi (30:20): For your show.

William (30:22): For myself?

Debbi (30:23): Yeah. Is it financed through ads or what?

William (30:30): Yeah. Well, this case, again, we were financed by Benstown, but we were able to do it on a budget because they already owned the studio. They owned the people who did the announcing, the people who did the soundscape, all these bells and whistles they already had in-house. We were able to do all of that easily and cheaply. We did try and get a sponsor on board once we could show all the episodes. We said, “Well, let’s go get a sponsor.” And we worked with a company called Gamut. It was another big radio company. And the reluctance was it’s something they’d never heard before. It wasn’t Joe Rogan. It wasn’t some celebrity podcaster or actor having a podcast, et cetera, et cetera. It’s something new. It’s dramatic. Who’s the audience? How many people will listen? And nobody knew. In the end, I was able to go to a company that I knew called Pair of Thieves, which is in the same marketplace in terms of social media and all that with us.

(31:52): They actually sell socks and underwear to a young audience, to a hip young audience. And they saw what we were doing and said, “Hey, this is great.” They came on board to sponsor the series. We did a tie-in with them, a giveaway of socks, and they got radio time, et cetera, et cetera. And it worked out really, really well. They sold some more socks. We got some more listeners, but the numbers still are small. I don’t think we’ll make back our budget on the first one. But the second series, which as I said, we’re planning, then we’re probably going to get a sponsor for a good sum of money, something that’ll cover the budget and also cover the budget in number one to sort of get us in there. They’re not big numbers, I mean $100,000 for the series. We’re not looking at millions of dollars, although we might ask for millions. We’re not expecting that. Yeah.

Debbi (32:52): Well, I just wish you the best of luck with this because it really deserves a wider audience in that sense.

William (33:01): Share with your friends and your followers.

Debbi (33:06): I will.

William (33:08): Hopefully that’ll help. We’ve been very steady with the downloads since the beginning, which is very encouraging. They haven’t dropped off a cliff. They’ve been very, very steady. So word of mouth is going around.

Debbi (33:20): That’s fantastic.

William (33:20): Apple started out really strong. Spotify then came up behind Apple and started growing. And now the two of them together, and we’re on Gamut Radio and all of those, but those two are the bulk of it because they’re people in their car or they have 20 minutes, the kids have 20 minutes to listen to something wherever they are. So that’s worked very well.

Debbi (33:47): Well, is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

William (33:51): Wow. No, I just encourage people, everything I can. Television or features or whatever it is, it starts with great material, great ideas, and having a way to explain those ideas to the next person. Be it a script, be it a pitch document, be it a podcast. How do you grow your idea? And that’s the challenge. How do you bring people on board to support your vision and say, yes, I’ll get on board. I’ll help you do this.

Debbi (34:33): Exactly. Yeah.

William (34:34): Yeah.

Debbi (34:35): Kind of like finding your people. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much.

William (34:42): A pleasure to meet you.

Debbi (34:44): It was a pleasure to meet you too, William. I really had a good time talking about this, and I really do love that show, American Afterlife, everybody. Check it out. It’s excellent. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. You can also support the podcast by becoming a patron on Patreon or subscribing on Substack. Until next time, take care and I’ll be seeing you.

Well, it’s been quite the busy time for me, what with publishing my latest novel (the print version of which is coming as fast as humanly possible), interviewing guests for my podcast, producing said podcast, and writing reviews, not to mention, finishing my first short film and getting ready to direct another one. So, forgive me if this newsletter comes out a bit late this month. Did I not mention setting aside the time to do physical and occupational therapy for my post-stroke dystonia? Not to mention taking time to disconnect from everything.

Check out the following new releases and other news! Click the titles for purchase links. All book links are affiliates of BookShop.org.

Featured excerpts and more!

If Books Could Kill by Kate Eberle

As soon as I waddle my puffer-coated self into my beloved craphole of a studio apartment, my phone pings with back-to-back messages. One from each of my parents, who are undoubtedly texting from opposite corners of the same house right now.

From my dad: a screenshot of the two Six Flags season passes he just bought us, captioned for the real ones only with several prayer-hands emojis.

From my mom: the wedding planner is on. channel 413. true love! why aren’t more men like matthew mcdonahey? XO.

I don’t have the heart to point out for the thousandth time that I don’t have cable, nor that it’s McConaughey, nor that true maybe isn’t the best word for a Hollywood rom-com. I pour myself a generous glass of cheap wine and send my parents three emojis each (roller coasters for Dad, pink hearts for Mom), ignoring the subtle digs they’ve made at each other.

At the end of the day, my parents are two of my favorite people in the world.

They’re also two of the least compatible people I’ve ever met.

It’s always been beyond me how they got together in the first place — Mom, the bleeding-heart romantic, and Dad, the adrenaline junkie. Never quite understanding each other or feeling understood.

Until I came along, anyway. They each found a kindred spirit in me, or maybe raised me that way on purpose for lack of like-minded company. Now my dad never has to sit next to a stranger on the Wicked Cyclone, and my mom knows who to call when Hallmark starts rolling out movies with titles like An Autumn Sweater Sweetheart or My Royal Christmas or A Royal Sweater for Autumn Christmas.

And so it is that I end up on my thrifted couch, streaming The Wedding Planner while I eat cold pizza and research bungee jumping excursions for when my temp contract ends next week. Comfy, content, and perfectly at ease with all my life choices.

See, this is the common misconception about romance fans: that we’re all lovelorn and miserable, desperately trying to make up for something we lack. No one spins a penchant for other genres into some soul-defining dissatisfaction with life. Imagine if we looked at every Civil War nonfiction–reading dad and went, How sad that he’ll never know the thrill of being a sepia-toned man in a kepi hat, writing letters to Dearest Martha before dying of gangrene in a soggy field. He must be so unfulfilled. Or told the die-hard fantasy fans, You’re just bitter because you wish you could be lording over all those rings, or whatever.

The point is, some of us consider our genre of choice simply a happy supplement to real life, a little escapist treat at the end of a long day. Some of us don’t need anything more than that and are perfectly capable of maintaining healthy boundaries between fiction and reality. Like me.

When I’m sober, anyway.

When I’m a few glasses of wine deep and Matthew McConaughey has just left his fiancée for Jennifer Lopez, all bets are off.

he just wants to dance with her, I text my mom, with a crying emoji.

She responds with cartoonish tears, too, but of the laughing variety. So I decide not to disclose that I’m sitting here with actual tears streaming down my face while the credits roll, clutching my empty wine glass to my chest as I cry-sing along to “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” a baffling song choice that has nothing to do with the movie’s theme but somehow has me deeply emotional anyway.

This is the downside to a strictly vicarious love life. Romance novels and rom-coms are enough, until, for a brief, stark, usually alcohol-fueled moment, they aren’t.

It is in these moments—when I’m alone and haven’t been kissed in forever and the Two-Buck Chuck has probably stained my teeth vaguely maroon—that my good sense abandons me and I make the horrible decision to re-download my dating apps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Eberle studied journalism at Boston University before rediscovering her love of fiction. She lives and writes in Connecticut, where she spends the rest of her time being the ultimate menace to society: a grown-up Theater Kid. If Books Could Kill is her first novel.

Storm Damage by Terry R. Bacon

I could hear more cops crowding into the building behind me. I turned and saw Daniels creeping closer, his gun held up in a two-hand stance. “Stay close,” I said, and then I heard footsteps ahead, someone moving to my right. I burst forward and chased the sound, skirting around more piles of boxes, rushing into the maze, and I came to a crossroads, aisles crisscrossing where smaller forklifts could move goods from here to there. I didn’t know which way to turn, but my instinct was to run to the right, so I did that. Dashing ahead, deeper into the warehouse, I paused after turning the corner at a tall stack of boxes, and then she stepped around the corner a few yards ahead of me, and we made eye contact.

She wheeled toward me with her assault rifle. I jumped back into Daniels, knocking us both backward as she cut loose on automatic, spraying bullets into the boxes I’d jumped behind. Wood chunks and splinters chewed through the air, causing an explosion of particle board fragments, wrapping tape, and shredded plastic. When the firing stopped, I leaped out and ran toward her, hoping she was reloading. I plowed into her as she was slapping another clip into her rifle.

She was a solid woman with meaty arms and legs. I knocked her off-balance, and she tumbled to the floor, her rifle skidding a dozen feet away. She snarled at me and scrambled toward the rifle, but I lunged and kicked one foot out from under her. “Get the rifle,” I yelled to Daniels. He was a blur in my peripheral vision as he ran for the rifle. He reached it just as she picked herself up off the gray floor, her fierce eyes jittery with indecision. She was calculating whether to charge me or him. I pointed the handgun at the space between her eyes and felt my trigger finger tensing. I wasn’t deciding whether to kill her. My impulse was more primal than that. I wanted to punish this animal for what she’d done. And I wanted revenge for the fear I’d felt when she was shooting at me. The rage burned in my heart for a long moment before it flickered out. But I knew if she attacked me while I held the gun, I would kill her. So I lowered the gun to the floor and slid it toward Daniels.

She watched it slide away from me. Then she came at me like a rabid dog, her face screwed up in rage. When she’d nearly reached me, I pivoted to my left and spun, slamming her in the back as she flew past me. The blow knocked her into a heavy stack of cardboard boxes, and she fell to her knees, screaming.

“What should I do?” Daniels yelled after he picked up my handgun.

“Don’t shoot her,” I yelled. I saw two other cops running through the aisle toward us. “Don’t shoot her,” I yelled to them.

She didn’t hesitate when she got back to her feet. She lunged at me, fingers clenched like claws, a fierce eagle descending with its talons raised. I grabbed one arm, spun and threw my hip into her torso, and flipped her onto the floor. She hit her head and was stunned, but she wasn’t finished. She rolled onto her feet and tried to plow her head into my stomach. I leaped backward and drove my elbow into her back. That dropped her to the floor, and I jumped on her and pinned her arms. She still struggled furiously, spit flying from her mouth, and I yelled to the cops now surrounding us to cuff her.

“She’s amped on drugs,” I told them. “Out of her mind. Don’t let her bite you. She will if she can.”

She was still raging as two cops subdued her and snapped on handcuffs. Two more cops helped pick her up and lead her away, her mouth snapping in a frenzied assault on anything within reach. I sank against a stack of boxes and realized I was out of breath. Daniels walked up and squatted beside me. “Here’s your weapon,” he said, trying to hand me the gun I’d been using.

“It’s not mine,” I told him. “Belonged to an officer in the other building. I don’t think he made it.”

He studied the handgun, nodded, and sat down beside me. “What are you? Special Forces? Navy Seal? What?”

I looked at him. “No. I’m a musician.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Terry R. Bacon is a poet, playwright, and award-winning author of more than a dozen books, including The Elements of Power, Elements of Influence, What People Want, and Selling to Major Accounts. A co-founder and former President and CEO of Lore International Institute, Bacon was named one of the Top 100 Thinkers on Leadership in the World by Executive Excellence magazine. Since retiring, he has continued his work through a widely used website on power and influence while pursuing fiction and creative writing.

Bacon holds a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from American University and a B.S. in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. A longtime advocate for the arts, he co-founded Durango PlayFest, a festival dedicated to developing new plays, and has served on numerous nonprofit boards in his Colorado community. He lives in the mountains of Colorado, where he continues to write. Storm Damage is the second novel in his Sonny Marshall thriller series.

Clay Stafford Talks About Killer Nashville

• What inspired you to start a writers’ conference back in 2006?

People often assume I started Killer Nashville to host a conference. I didn’t. I started it because I believed writers deserved a place where they were treated as colleagues, not as customers.

For years, I’d watched talented writers struggle to find their footing in an industry that often felt closed off, intimidating, and difficult to navigate. I wanted to create an environment where emerging writers could sit alongside bestselling authors, agents, editors, filmmakers, and publishers, not divided by status but united by a love of storytelling.

From the beginning, Killer Nashville has never been just about books. It has been about building careers, encouraging excellence, creating genuine relationships, and reminding writers that they belong in this profession if they’re willing to do the work.

Twenty years later, that’s still the mission. The conference has grown beyond anything I imagined, yet the reason it exists hasn’t changed. Every year, I hope someone walks through those doors and finds the encouragement, knowledge, opportunity, or lifelong friendship that changes the course of their writing life. If that happens, we’ve done what we set out to do.

• What has helped the conference to grow over the past 21 years?

More than anything, the people.

Killer Nashville has never been built by one person. It’s been built by thousands of writers, agents, editors, publishers, filmmakers, volunteers, instructors, and readers who believed in what we were trying to accomplish and kept coming back. Many have become lifelong friends, and many have introduced others to the conference because they had a meaningful experience.

We’ve also stayed true to our original mission. Trends come and go, but we’ve never lost sight of why we’re here: to help writers build lasting careers and create a welcoming, professional community. Whether someone is attending their first conference or is a New York Times bestselling author, we want them to feel equally valued.

Finally, we’ve never stopped evolving. Every year, we listen carefully to attendees and faculty, ask what would better serve writers, and make changes. I think that willingness to grow, while holding onto our core values, has helped Killer Nashville continue to earn the trust of the writing community.

• Do you find mystery/suspense/thriller writers to be a unique breed from other types of writers?

Every genre attracts remarkable people, but I do think mystery, suspense, and thriller writers share a few qualities that make this community distinctive.

They’re naturally curious. They ask questions, notice details others overlook, and are fascinated by motivation: why ordinary people make extraordinary decisions under pressure. They’re also wonderfully generous. One of the things I’ve loved most over the years is watching bestselling authors mentor emerging writers. That willingness to help the next generation is something I’ve seen repeatedly.

There’s also an interesting paradox. We spend our days imagining crimes, secrets, deception, and danger, yet the people who write these stories are among the kindest, funniest, and most supportive I’ve ever met. Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time exploring humanity’s darkest side that we develop a deep appreciation for its best qualities.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed building Killer Nashville. The stories may be about murder, but the community is about friendship.

• What do you feel is unique to Killer Nashville vs. other writer conferences?

Every conference develops its own personality, and that’s wonderful. What I hope people experience at Killer Nashville is that it’s built around community first.

We’ve always tried to create an environment where conversations flow as naturally in the hallways and over dinner as in classrooms. New writers aren’t separated from established authors. Agents, editors, publishers, filmmakers, and bestselling writers are approachable because they’re part of the same community. Some of the most important career opportunities I’ve seen over the years have begun with a simple conversation between sessions.

We’re also committed to serving writers at every stage of their journey. Whether you’re working on your first manuscript, seeking representation, preparing for publication, or building a long-term career, we want to offer you something meaningful.

Perhaps most importantly, Killer Nashville isn’t just about publishing books. It’s about helping writers build lasting careers, forge lifelong friendships, and find a genuine sense of belonging. When attendees tell me they found their agent, met a future coauthor, discovered a mentor, or simply realized they weren’t alone, I know we’ve succeeded.

• For the past 21 years, when other conferences, publishers, and writers’ organizations were glossing over the subject, you have been stressing how important diversity is and how vital it is that each writer’s voice be heard. Talk about that a bit.

I’ve always believed that every person has a story worth telling and a voice worth hearing. That’s where it begins.

Storytelling has the remarkable ability to let us step into lives that aren’t our own. We experience different cultures, backgrounds, professions, generations, beliefs, and life experiences through another person’s eyes. That’s one of literature’s greatest gifts. It expands our understanding of one another.

From the beginning, Killer Nashville has sought to create a place where writers from every background feel welcome and where every authentic voice can be heard. Not because it’s fashionable, but because great storytelling depends on the richness of human experience. If we hear only one kind of voice, we miss countless stories that deserve to be told.

I’ve never believed that publishing should be about deciding whose story matters. My hope has always been to help writers become the strongest storytellers they can be and to give readers the chance to discover voices they might otherwise never have encountered. When we broaden the conversation, everyone benefits: writers, readers, and the literary community as a whole.

• What is your favorite part about hosting the conference and what are some of the things you’ve gleaned from other writers appearing at the conference over the years?

My favorite part has always been watching lives transform.

Every year, I see writers arrive carrying uncertainty, wondering whether they belong, whether they’re good enough, or whether they should keep going. Over a few days, something shifts. They meet a mentor, make a lifelong friend, sign with an agent, win an award, or simply discover they’re not alone. Watching those moments unfold never gets old.

What I’ve learned from the remarkable writers who’ve joined us over the years is perhaps the biggest lesson: there is no single path to success. Every accomplished writer has a different story. Some found success early; others after decades of perseverance. Some outline every page; others discover the story as they write. Some publish traditionally; some independently; and many do both. The common thread isn’t a particular method; it’s persistence, curiosity, professionalism, and a willingness to keep learning.

Hosting Killer Nashville has given me the privilege of spending time with thousands of writers. If there’s one thing they’ve taught me collectively, it’s that talent matters, but character matters just as much. The writers who build lasting careers are almost always those who remain generous, humble, adaptable, and committed to the craft long after the attention fades.

• You have several annual awards that are presented at the conference. Talk about those a bit in addition to what you look for when judging a book submitted to one of your contests?

The awards are among my favorite traditions because they let us celebrate excellence in many ways. We recognize outstanding books and manuscripts, honor distinguished contributions to the literary community, and celebrate individuals whose work has had a lasting impact on readers and writers alike. Each award reflects the dedication, creativity, and perseverance that go into this profession.

When judging, we try to look beyond personal taste. Not every story is written for a specific reader, and that’s as it should be. The real question is whether the author has accomplished what they set out to do. Does the story engage the reader? Are the characters believable and compelling? Does the pacing keep us turning the pages? Is the writing clear, confident, and true to the story? Most importantly, does the book leave the reader feeling the journey was worthwhile?

Whether it’s a thriller, a mystery, a suspense story, romance, fantasy, literary fiction, true crime, or other nonfiction or fiction book or manuscript, great storytelling always comes back to the same fundamentals: authentic characters, meaningful conflict, emotional resonance, and a voice that feels genuine.

What continually impresses me is the caliber of work we receive. Every year, I’m reminded that extraordinary talent exists at every stage of a writer’s career. Our role isn’t simply to choose winners; it’s to recognize excellence and encourage writers to keep developing their craft.

• What is your greatest hope for the 2026 conference now that you’ve surpassed last year’s 20^th anniversary of the conference?

Crossing the twentieth anniversary was certainly meaningful, but in many ways it also felt like turning the page to a new chapter. Rather than looking back, I’m excited about what’s ahead.

My greatest hope for 2026 is the same one I’ve held since our first conference: that someone walks through those doors and leaves believing in themselves more than when they arrived. Perhaps they’ll meet the right agent, find a publisher, discover a mentor, make a lifelong friend, or simply realize they belong in this writing community. Sometimes a single conversation can change the course of a career.

I also hope we continue to strengthen the relationships that make Killer Nashville special. Books bring us together, but it’s the people who keep us coming back year after year. When writers encourage one another, share what they’ve learned, and celebrate each other’s successes, the entire literary community grows stronger.

If, at the end of the conference, people leave inspired to write better, to support one another more generously, and to continue telling stories that matter, then I’ll consider it another successful year.

What’s new in July?

A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder by Louise Candlish (I just finished this one. Wow! Review coming soon!

Don’t Look Away by Daniel Kenitz

Last Night Was Killer by Mary Pauline Lowry

Which I’ve reviewed here! Great read!

Most Ardently Yours by Freya Sampson

Perverts by Mac Crane

Pretty Dead Things by Kelsey Cox

The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts by Robert Thorogood

The Season of Sinking by Daphne Woolsoncroft

The Spy and the Snake by M. J. Robotham

Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Cadillac Wheels by Scott Saxberg

Cloudthief by Nathaniel Rich

Icefall: The Rise of the Nine by Jon Land and Michael Newman

Killer Vibes by Jack Friday

The Sins of Summer Daughters by Lo Patrick

A Last Time for Everything by Evan S. Porter

Our Marriage Is Murder by Carol Goodman

Paint Me Like Your Dead Girls by Cynthia Murphy

The Mortons by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld

The Shadow Step by Mark Billingham

Three Reasons for Revenge by Dervla McTiernan

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle

Furious Violet by Sarai Walker

Getting Away with Murder by Shari Lapena

Shrink Solves Murder by Philippa Perry

The Mortal Enemy Murder Club by Gloria Chao

The Whisper by Chelsea Iversen

On the Crime Cafe podcast!

My interview with Caleb Husmann

And coming soon to the audio podcast, my interview with William Stuart.

And my latest movie reviews!

My Review of ‘The Life of Chuck’ (2024)

My Review of ‘Following’ (1998)

PS: I’ve started (kinda) writing my memoirs. While I was doing tai chi and wondering if it would really change anything, I recalled how I first learned about the practice.

Book reviews from my archive!

Dates and publishers may change, but the book’s purchase links are current, as of this writing.

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This week on the Crime Cafe, I interview William Stuart, who’s the executive producer and director of the highly-popular scripted podcast series, American Afterlife.

Check out the show! Both of them! :)

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?

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Listen in as we discuss the writing life, as well as the use of humor in his fiction.

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My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is thriller author Jennifer Lycette.

Check out her book titles: The Algorithm Will See You Now and The Committee Will Kill You Now. So ... clearly a cozy writer? :) Nope, medical thrillers.

Transcripts available for download to all free and paid subscribers.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is a doctor who writes medical thrillers with a high tech edge. Author of The Algorithm Will See You Now and The Committee Will Kill You Now. It’s a pleasure to introduce my guest, Jennifer Lycette. Hi, Jennifer. How are you doing today?

Jennifer (01:14): I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

Debbi (01:16): I’m pleased to have you on. Believe me, I’m always pleased to hear from the medical community as well as medical writers, even though I can’t watch medical shows to save my life anymore. They just make me too tense. Thank you so much for being with us today. I get the feeling from the titles of your books that you might have the tiniest bit of concern about how technology could affect or is affecting the practice of medicine. Is that—

Jennifer (01:45): Yes, I think that’s fair to say. I enjoy using fiction to explore complicated scenarios both from the technology and the ethical standpoint.

Debbi (02:02): I can appreciate that. Yeah. The ethical standpoint is often a really great place to find those conflicts that you can use in fiction. The titles alone almost sell the books if you ask me, but they are so intriguing. What prompted you to start writing these stories in particular?

Jennifer (02:24): Gosh, that’s such a good question. So I can’t really identify any one moment, but I started writing the first one, which was Algorithm about 10 years ago and I had started writing creative nonfiction as sort of a professional outlet and I’ve written some essays about that, like going through professional burnout and discovering writing as I think I’ve heard other authors on your show talk about, and for a lot of us, I think writing is in some ways some form of therapy. And so I was really enjoying that writing and connecting with colleagues. And then I had this idea that I wanted to reach people outside of medicine. And so I think like a lot of new authors, I didn’t know how hard it would be to write a novel, but I sort of grew up reading a lot of thrillers and medical thrillers, Robin Cook and all this, and I thought, well, maybe I could write a medical thriller. And so I just thought of the idea and started writing one day.

Debbi (03:45): They just come to you. Yeah.

Jennifer (03:46): Yes.

Debbi (03:47): They really do. They both take place in Seattle, I noticed, but it’s not the same protagonist. Is it the same hospital or different hospitals?

Jennifer (04:01): Yeah, so it’s different hospitals and different protagonists, but they are connected. So they each can be read as standalones. But the second book, The Committee is actually a prequel going back 30 years to tell the story of the antagonist in Algorithm. So I think just all the character work I did to develop her, there’s another minor character that as I was writing Algorithm, I just was like, I think these two had a relationship in the past, but that’s just one line in Algorithm. And so it just got in my head and I was like, I want to write their story. And so I went back and wrote, so they’re middle-aged in Algorithm. And then I went back and wrote when they were young residents in Seattle and just to tell more of the story of how the antagonist whose name is Dr. Mara Maddox, how she ended up being the person she is in Algorithm.

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Hi all! On Episode Two of this season’s Crime Cafe, I interview medical thriller author Jennifer Lycette.

Check out our discussion about her novels The Algorithm Will See You Now and The Committee Will Kill You Now.

Read more

Past Imperfect is now available for sale!

As promised in the previous issue, my latest Erica Jensen novel is now out and available for sale as an ebook at the low introductory price of $2.99!

The print book will be out (with any luck) by next month.

And, yes, you’ll eventually (I think) be able to buy it on Amazon you-know-where. Unless I change my mind. :) You-know-who likes to change their terms and conditions, so …

Featured excerpt and more new releases!

Coming in July!

51% by Matt Witten

Chapter One:

4:32 am

Haylee and Juke

In her tiny one-bedroom speck on 20^th Street, Haylee Navarro tossed and turned. Finally she got out of bed, threw cold water on her face, and made coffee and oatmeal to fortify herself. She’d been eating this exact same breakfast for weeks and was stupefyingly sick of it, but her income had been pathetic lately – her last murder paid less than twenty dollars! – and oatmeal was all she could afford.

Especially with her syndicate taking so much off the top.

She glugged down the coffee, pushed her short, no-nonsense brown hair off her forehead, and banged her fist on the kitchen table. “You are tough and you are ready,” she said out loud. She ripped open the kit she’d bought last night off the interdrone, taking out a Q-tip and a shiny green sheet of chemical paper.

All she had to do was swab the Q-tip inside her cheek, roll it on the paper, and within seconds she’d know. Either the paper would stay green, or it would turn holy-shit-I’m-pregnant red.

Or to be precise, she thought, holy-shit-I’m-pregnant-broke-and-single red. A picture of Harrison came into her mind, and she bit her lip to keep from crying. She raised the Q-tip toward her mouth, closed her eyes, opened wide—

—and her I! buzzed.

She thought about ignoring the call, but if that paper did turn red she’d need every dollar she could scrounge up. So she put down the Q-tip and doubletapped her phone. “Hello,” she said.

As she waited for the bot at the other end to tap in, she told herself: hey, cheer up. Maybe this will be the murder I’ve been waiting for.

That was the crazy thing about the crime marketing biz: you’d bumble along for weeks, even months, living on oatmeal – and then suddenly, boom! You catch a homicide that pays you fifty Reagans.

***

Two miles away, at his studio speck in Brooklyn, Juke O’Keefe didn’t hear his I! at first. His snoring and his hangover swallowed up the buzzing. But then it got louder, and at last he groaned awake.

He grabbed the phone to shut it up and read the text: “Dead woman on Freedom, corner of Canal.” Great, he thought with a sigh. No shortage of bizness in this city.

He got out of bed – just a mattress on the floor – and headed for the kitchen. At thirty-three, Juke was tall with a bumpy nose and a two-day stubble. His deep-set gray eyes always seemed to be searching for something. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but sometimes when he smiled, his whole face seemed to crinkle up. When that happened, women would give him a longer look.

But most nights for the past three years, ever since his personal life fell apart, Juke came home from his homicide detective gig with the NYPD, Incorporated, or as everyone called it the NYPDinc, and wound down alone. After a day of confronting unspeakable evil – and even worse, office politics – he generally felt unfit for human consumption.

He often wondered what it had been like working homicide back in his father’s day, before the NYPD got privatized and bought up by a syndicate, before detectives had to raise money themselves to solve their murders. It must have been a hell of a lot easier.

Well scruck it, no use complaining. The pizza box on the kitchen table had a couple leftover crusts. Juke opened a creaky window to the icy pre-dawn air and lay the crusts on the fire escape. He whistled to the wounded pigeon with ragged wing feathers and just two toes on his right foot, who he had nicknamed Fuck Y’all, that lived on the roof across the street. The bird flew off the roof, dodged the holographic signs littering the sky, and landed on Juke’s fire escape, where he ate his breakfast.

Then Juke found a bottle of bourbon and poured himself a shot. This would be his last drink until after he solved the murder. It was the promise he made himself at the beginning of every case; and it was a promise he always kept.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Witten is a TV writer, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who has written for Law & Order, House, Pretty Little Liars, and many other shows. His thriller The Necklace has been published in eight languages and optioned for film by Leonardo DiCaprio. Killer Story won a Foreword Indie award for Best Mystery. Matt wrote four amateur sleuth novels, including the Malice Domestic Award-winning Breakfast at Madeline’s, and has been nominated for two Edgars and an Emmy. His speculative thriller 51% came out last month; NBC has hired him to cowrite a TV adaptation. You can read Matt’s piece “Burn, Baby, Burn: Losing Our Home in the Palisades Fire” on mattwittenwriter.com/blog.

Icefall by Michael Newman and Jon Land

PROLOGUE

Sentence

1,500 Years Ago

This place is called the Veyrion…. The boy had no conception of how he knew that. Nor did he understand how he knew that the shafts of white-blue lights in which each of the nine massive figures was contained were restraining shafts that functioned like individual cells of molten energy. Those figures were so tall and muscular they strained the limits of their electromagnetic bonds.

“Do any of you have anything to say before sentence is pronounced?” a disembodied voice demanded of the nine figures standing to his right, the words bouncing off unseen walls in a hollow, tinny echo.

The boy looked up and saw a ceiling of dull light in the shape of a convex cone. He knew he wasn’t here physically. The experience felt like a dream of something that had happened in the past on another planet light-years from Earth, another lesson in the many teachings of Gaia he did not yet understand the significance of.

“I ask again,” the disembodied voice boomed when the nine figures remained silent, each syllable seeming to hang suspended in the air, “do any of you have anything to say before sentence is pronounced?”

The demand was met by silence again. The boy also knew that in eras past, the Veyrion would have been overflowing with citizens packed in to watch these prisoners being sentenced and punished for their transgressions against the State. They would be made an example of for all this world to see, those not present to view in person required to watch over their personal screens. Now, the boy understood the unfolding scene would be beamed directly into the minds of the entire population, so they might experience what was to come instead of merely watching. No option to disregard it was provided, an example that functioned as a warning to anyone who dared to question or rise against a ruling body known as the Overseers.

Beyond the nine figures, the sprawling Veyrion was shrouded in darkness, as if a black curtain had been drawn over all that lay beyond the center of the floor that seemed to hover in the air, rolling slightly as if atop currents of water. The boy knew he was dreaming, so there was no reason to be scared. He was used to experiencing things in his dreams he was not meant to fully grasp yet.

“Do you renounce your belief in the old ways and a higher being who is no more than myth?”

Silence.

“Do you renounce your subversive actions against the Crown Arc and fellow citizens of this world?” the disembodied voice asked the nine figures restrained in their shafts of light.

Silence.

“Do you understand the sentence about to be dispensed as punishment for the offenses of treason and subversion against the greater good?”

Silence.

“Because you refuse to accept accountability for your crimes, you will surrender your very identities so you might be repurposed for a task determined by the Overseers. You will cease to exist as who you were. You will know only what is required and hold no memories of what came before. But first you must bear the loss of everything you hold dear, so your final experience will carry a pain you will carry forever in the black pits of your being.”

In the dream, the boy watched the families of the nine figures materialize out of thin air, herded along within funnels of light, one for each of the groupings, that kept the family members squeezed against each other. He could hear the sobs and shrieks of the children and spouses, parents, and anyone else touched by the same blood as the prisoners. As punishment for the nine figures’ crimes, their entire bloodlines, their very legacies, would be wiped out as the last sight their current memories would ever behold, to keep with them in blurred awareness for eternity.

“Now, bear witness to what you have reaped with your transgressions.”

The boy met the terrified gazes of the families that would linger in agony forever in the deepest recesses of nine figures’ minds, like an out-of-focus picture. In one of the funnels of light, he saw the tearstained face of a terrified boy about his age. In another, he watched a young girl squeezing a doll so tight her hands were pale from the blood being flushed out.

Wiping their memories clean would vanquish the experience from their consciousness, but not their souls, where the pain would carve its own dark void. They did not close their eyes because their doomed loved ones deserved to have them bear witness, to meet their pleading gazes this one last time, to take that final memory with them to whatever lay beyond, a gift these nine figures could not deliver onto themselves.

Five men and four women, the boy identified, noting that a man and a woman standing alongside each other in matching bright shafts pushed their hands as far as they could extend toward each other before those hands sparked against the borders of their electromagnetic confinements.

All at once, the nine funnels of light enclosing their families burned brighter and hotter until a single blinding flash seared the darkness in a white-hot fireball. The cries and calls for mercy were swept away in a single gush of silence, a sizzling followed by a crackling sound as embers cast by the remains of the nine families floated away to disappear into the ether. All that remained was the smell of burned skin and hair, accompanied by a corrosive, metallic stench hanging in the air that left the boy queasy. The funnels of white light were tinged by deep red slivers before they too were sucked up. He could see the nine figures struggling to remain stoic and still, but their expressions had twisted into inconsolable anguish mixed with suppressed rage and tortured resignation. The man and woman had stopped trying to stretch their hands toward each other, their expressions frozen in misery and shock.

The rank odor lingering in the air made the boy retch and, in that instant, one of the nine figures, their leader, he somehow knew, looked his way in a glimpse of acknowledgment.

He can see me! This isn’t a dream! I’m really here!

Then the disembodied voice returned, the words launched in a rattling bellow as if the volume had been turned up too high.

“Hold this moment of grievous loss wrought by your own hands as your last remaining thought, a final reminder before everything you are and have been is stripped away to erase the black pit at the depths of your being so you may serve the State in a mission for the betterment of the encompassing all you sought to betray in your resistance and rebellion. May you find renewed purpose in that task and redemption in fulfilling it.”

The boy heard a deep humming noise that made his ears bubble and filled his skull with air. He watched as the expressions of the nine huge figures seemed to lengthen, flattening out. Their eyes that just moments before had bulged with torment and anger had gone empty, no thought or emotion lurking behind them. Nothing to be kept hidden, because there was nothing at all.

“You are the Nine,” the unseen voice boomed. “And your mission is to serve the interests of the Crown Arc on a distant planet we have been preparing for ten million of their years. Your time will be measured by theirs, as you await the occasion your service is required in a black void you have wrought for yourselves.”

With that, the boy heard Gaia’s voice in his head, soothing in its familiarity.

“And your service will be required too.”

*****

CHAPTER 8

The Breach

Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska

Jules had never known a dark like that which enveloped the alien ship’s interior. She could feel her heart thudding inside her chest, not from fear but excitement and apprehension over the greatest experience of her life’s work. What good was being an astrobiologist if there was no astrobiology to study?

She knew she shouldn’t be here right now, shouldn’t have come. Daily activities had become a challenge for her these past few months, much less dealing with the rigors of a mission like this. But this opportunity had proved to be a great blessing for her, something to take her mind from the reality of what she was facing and provide the purpose she had longed for since she developed a fascination with life beyond our planet when she was around Charlie’s age.

Charlie….

She didn’t know. They hadn’t told her.

Jules suppressed those thoughts and focused on this ship that had brought the first known alien life forms to Earth somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand years ago. Over the years, Jules and Kai had heard increasing rumors about a so-called alien division taking hold at the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA. Its existence and purpose were shrouded in secrecy, but the presence on this team of the so-called Major Smith went a long way toward confirming the rumors were true and that, like Kai and Jules, such a division would now be able to use their expertise at long last.

Toward what purpose, though?

From the moment Timur had revealed the breach in the alien ship’s hull to them, both Kai and Jules knew they could not venture into the ship together. The risk was great enough for one, much less both, if a worst-case scenario befell them, rendering Charlie an orphan.

With that, Kai produced the quarter he always carried for situations like this from his pocket.

“Call it, Jules.” “Heads.”

“You always call heads.” “And I always win.”

Kai tossed the coin into the air, and Jules caught it on the way down and laid it on top of the nearest counter.

“I win,” she said, pulling her hand away to reveal it was heads.

“Do you?” Kai posed dryly and eased her aside. “You can’t do this,” he said, his voice lowered.

“I can, and I have to.”

“We have no idea of the effects the atmosphere and pressure on that ship might have on you.”

“The same goes for both of us, Kai.”

He held her by both arms, squeezing tenderly. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us on that ship, Jules.”

She managed a smile. No one had ever called her that until Kai came along. It was always Julia. He said she was too pretty for that name and proclaimed her Jules the first time they met.

“All the more reason why it has to be me who goes on board,” she told him, then bent his head toward her to kiss him lightly on the forehead.

“And if something goes wrong?”

“The drones have been all over that ship and found nothing. I’ll be fine,” Jules insisted, not realizing the irony of her statement.

“You mean every inch of the ship they could access.” “I need this, Kai.”

“And I need you, for as long as I can possibly have you. Charlie, too.” He tried to smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you fixed the coin toss.”

Jules winked at him. “I’ll never tell.”

Jules knew Kai’s point about her being the one to enter the ship was well taken, but if one of them was lost down there in the chasm, it had to be her. They were about to encounter a technology entirely unknown to man. Jules was also aware that the spatial rules applied to our world might be entirely different for an alien race capable of traversing the universe to reach Earth. So, while the drones had charted and recorded as much of the ship as they could find, there could be levels upon levels yet to be explored.

“Your husband and I will be able to monitor everything you do and say through the cameras and mics built into the helmets of all your team members. Major Smith will be accompanying you along with three of my men,” General Timur told her, adding, “just in case. We’ll also, of course, be recording everything from the perspectives of all five of you to study in case you overlook something in your visual inspection.”

“Meaning what we record is just as important as what we see.”

Timur nodded. “It’ll be easy to miss something vital in all that darkness. Our tech-enhancement software can correct that.”

“Good to know, General.”

Though the drones had found the air inside the alien craft to be breathable, Jules and her team would be wearing full space suits equipped with self-replenishing oxygen units. Neither she nor Kai bothered to ask General Timur how such a technology had been developed, because they knew no answer would be forthcoming. Nor did they ask the general about the drones Jules and her team were strapped to by harness to be lowered over five hundred feet into the permafrost where the long-buried ship had been found. The glacier’s collapse had left plenty of ice to land on outside the breach, confirmed to be thick enough to support their collective weight.

After witnessing what happened to a drone that had strayed too close to the alien ship’s magnetic field, Jules was more worried about the operation’s lowering phase than anything else. But Timur assured her that the drones would be remote piloted by seasoned professionals in another trailer who would steer them clear of the now-mapped magnetic field.

The descent felt more like floating than dropping, nothing like the rides at Disneyland and Disney World that Charlie and Kai loved but Jules avoided at all costs. Her booted feet touched down gently atop the ice, and she was aware immediately of the sounds of her breathing inside her helmet. All the helmets were equipped with a powerful LED light that automatically followed the direction of the wearer’s eyes and supplemented handheld flashlights that were even more powerful.

Before entering the ship, Jules performed a detailed study of the breach itself to confirm her initial conclusions from the footage recorded by drones. The fact that the color of the twisted and jagged edges matched the shading of the rest of the ship indicated it had happened recently, not two hundred thousand years ago. There was no scoring or scorching on what felt and looked like metal. She pressed a gloved hand against it and thought she felt the metallic substance recede, almost like thick, pliable leather, but visual inspection revealed it hadn’t compressed at all.

Jules took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she led the way through the breach inside the ship, holding the moment in her mind the way Neil Armstrong must have when he was the first man to set foot on the moon. She was certain she was looking at an array of machines that were long powered down before her, but they didn’t resemble anything like a machine by Earth’s standards. The sheer bulk of rectangular flat masses, circular platforms, and spherical extensions rising out of the floor could only house the technology that enabled a distant race to come all this way from their home planet.

Toward what purpose, though?

The walls, slick and cold to the touch even beneath her layered but flexible gloves, gave nothing back of the light shined against them. The beam from her helmet skimmed the surface, which was not reflective. Instead, it seemed to absorb the light like the ship’s surface had absorbed the drone. Jules knew that the ship’s construction offered the clearest clues to how the race that had traveled within it functioned. Still, she had no idea what to make of walls that swallowed light instead of reflecting it and wondered if the ship was designed to somehow absorb energy from space to replenish its power banks.

Major Smith spotted something on one of the large rectangular structures set into the center of the floor. It appeared to be formed from the same metallic substance as the walls, the seams between them invisible, as if the entire ship had been molded from a single piece of this organic metal-like compound.

“Shine your flashlight here,” he told her. “Match it to my beam.”

The two beams together revealed a series of nearly invisible symbols, rows and rows of what must be the alien language imprinted on a wall centered on the floor it looked like an extension of. The drones too had missed that, but that didn’t excuse her oversight.

I wouldn’t have missed this a few years ago, but a few years ago, I hadn’t been…. “Operating instructions, you think?” Jules asked Smith, stopping herself from

completing her thought.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Professor, and at this point, all we’re doing is guessing.”

“Einstein was the best guesser of all time, and Isaac Newton was the second best. Enough said on that note, Major.”

The next revelation came from her.

“Notice something we’re not seeing anywhere at all?” Jules asked him. “I’m listening,” Smith said.

The steady throb had returned, and the confines of her helmet seemed to worsen it. Jules felt her head expand with each pound, as if someone was pumping air into it. She wondered if her features looked bloated through the faceplate of her helmet.

“Light patterns, banks, or fixtures of any kind,” she told Smith. “I think this ship might have been operated completely in the dark.”

“Something else potentially revealing of whoever flew it here. Let’s continue our sweep, Professor.”

* * *

Jules knew the chamber they had entered made up only a portion of the overall size of the alien ship. Because of its seamless nature, any doors would be indistinguishable from the walls that held them. That made uncovering the outer chambers beyond this primary one a formidable challenge that resisted the meager light at their disposal. Their sweeps up, down, and along the walls revealed nothing even suggesting a possible hatch or doorway.

“Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place,” she suggested, looking up through her helmet.

The chamber’s ceiling was nearly thirty feet in height. Given the measurements the drones had taken of the ship’s entire exterior, there was definitely enough space to accommodate multiple levels. However, there was no way to access anything of the kind in evidence, at least not in any form Jules recognized. Among the most challenging aspects of astrobiology was the need to unlearn everything you had studied and learn it all from scratch.

Major Smith reported their progress, or lack thereof, back to base camp on the surface, sparing Jules that task while the trio of soldiers hovered behind them. After he had checked in, the two of them swept their flashlight beams across the completely black ceiling, having no more luck than they’d encountered with the walls, until something caught Jules’s eyes.

“The spot you just passed,” she told Smith. “Run your beam over it again.” He nodded his helmet and did his best to comply.

“Stop!” Jules ordered. Then, after Smith had frozen his beam on her command, “See?”

“No.”

“Move the beam a few feet to the side. See how it just sits flat on the metal?” “Yes.”

“Now move it back to where I told you to freeze it.” Smith shifted his flashlight just enough.

“There! The beam doesn’t sit; it disappears.”

Jules could see Smith’s eyes widen through his faceplate. “Looks like we’ve found a passage to the next level.”

“Let’s confirm that.”

Jules unclasped another device from her belt that could trace a red design that stuck briefly to the air to capture scale. The device was no bigger than a cell phone, with only a single beam and switch visible. She shined it upward, tracing the contours of the opening they’d found in the ceiling. The laser left a red impression in the air where the

beam disappeared above instead of sitting on the metallic surface. The process was deliberate and painstaking, ultimately revealing what neither had expected.

“That’s no entryway,” Smith said, following the jagged, shapeless impression left by the laser in the air.

“No,” Jules agreed, noting that the impression had already begun to dissipate. “It’s another breach.”

MORE TO COME NEXT MONTH!

*****

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Newman is an entrepreneur and storyteller whose fascination with science, technology, and the human spirit drives his debut novel, Icefall. Written in collaboration with bestselling author Jon Land, Icefall launches an epic science-fiction thriller series exploring humanity’s connection to forces beyond comprehension and the cost of survival in an age of awakening.

A lifelong creator of companies and ideas, Newman brings the precision of a strategist and the imagination of a world-builder to his writing. He lives in Northern California with his family, dividing his time between new ventures and the worlds he creates on the page.

What’s new in June?

Now on sale:

Goldenborn by Ama Ofosua Lieb

Let’s Not Go Overboard Here by Erica Hendry

Mr. Yay by Emily Jane

The Bookseller by Tim Sullivan

The Chateau on Sunset by Natasha Lester

The Children by Melissa Albert

Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan

Dirty Myrtle by Kennedy Weible

Red Sheet by James Ellroy

San Quentin Exodus by Bill Smoot

Strangers Behind Closed Doors by Catherine Adel West

This Is a Lie by Cleo Ballard

Nasty Little Secrets by Gabbie Hanks

Somebody Worth Killing by Jessica Payne

Three Hitmen and a Baby by Rob Hart

A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

A Twist in the River by Stig Abell

The Girl on the Beach by Carol Snow

Wait and See by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen

Whisper Creek by Allison Brennan

Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

Available for pre-order:

Enter the Nightmare by Jayne Castle

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

The Kings of Vegas by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

My June book reviews and recs

My Book Review of ‘The Girlie Playhouse’

And this just in!

My Book Review of ‘Last Night Was Killer’

And on Dark and Twisted Alleys podcast

Check out my interview with writer-director Pierce Kafka!

From the archive

My book review of 10% Happier

Read more

My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Clay Stafford.

Check out the plans for the upcoming Killer Nashville conference, which celebrates its 21st anniversary. So, it can now legally drink whatever it wants. :)

Transcript available for download here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Before we get started with the show, I’d like to announce that my third Erica Jensen novel is out now. It came out on June 6th as an ebook. It’s also coming out in print, hopefully soon, probably sometime next week. So be on the lookout for that. And with that, I just hope that you will check the book out and consider giving it a read. Now let me introduce my first guest for season 12. You could say he’s even a regular here. He’s just part of the show now, really. He is in fact a bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and creator of Killer Nashville, a fantastic conference that’s held every year in Nashville. It’s Clay Stafford. Hi, Clay. How are you doing?

Clay (01:46): Hi, Debbi. I’m doing great. Yeah, I’ve decided that I’m just going to move in, so I hope you have a spare bedroom or something.

Debbi (01:53): Dear me.

Clay (01:56): Congrats on the new book.

Debbi (01:59): I’m sorry?

Clay (02:00): Congratulations on the new book.

Debbi (02:01): Oh, well, thank you very much. It took long enough for me to get it finished in between trying to tweak screenplays and do other things in between.

Clay (02:09): There’s always something going on, always juggling.

Debbi (02:12): It’s weird. I mean, it’s like, okay, I’m going to go back to the book now and where was I? And who was this person? I got to go back and check. And I would find things that would change and it was like, oh my God. You really have to spend some time with a novel to really get it done.

Clay (02:34): Yeah, you do.

Debbi (02:36): It’s like trying to pitch a TV show, actually. TV shows are so dependent on characters that it’s just really, unless you really, really know your characters and where they’re going, there’s just no point. And you really have to know this stuff like the DNA of the whole world you’re creating in a sense. So it’s really interesting. But enough about me and my thoughts about screenwriting. It’s very good to see you. And I was going to say, how many decades have you been running Killer Nashville? And then I looked and I realized it was two.

Clay (03:16): Decades. Yeah, started in 2006.

Debbi (03:18): That’s amazing.

Clay (03:20): Our 21st year. It’s funny how numbers work like that because 2006, 2026, but yet it’s 21. So I don’t know how math works, but ...

Debbi (03:31): Oh, wow.

Clay (03:32): Yes.

Debbi (03:33): Oh, wow. Okay. So 21 years. Ooh.

Clay (03:36): Years.

Debbi (03:37): Darn.

Clay (03:40): I’m like 20 years ago today.

Debbi (03:43): Yeah, I guess so since you started on The Zero. Yeah, that’s kind of like counting the centuries there. Interesting. Oh, math. Yeah. So what was it like at the beginning versus now? I mean, how many people signed up for the first one and how are you doing now?

Clay (04:05): We had about 70 people that showed up the first year and then we started climbing and really our cap this year is 500.

(04:19): And we sell out. We’ve been selling out for the past four years now. And so we will definitely sell out and I think we’re going to sell out. Even somebody I was talking to today said we may sell out at the conference by the end of June and the conference is not even until August. So any of your listeners or viewers out there that want to come to Killer Nashville, better check out the website and maybe move forward because we may be selling out early this year, but we sell out every year. And part of it had to do with the venues because they only cap a certain amount and we had only so many conference rooms. And so the first year we had a linear session where it was like class and then another class and another class.

(05:13): Now we have 11 sessions going concurrently. So you got a choice of 11, you have to pick one and that goes on for the full four days of the conference. And so there’s a lot of sessions that are going on. So we’ve expanded since in the past two decades into what we’re offering as well as the increase in attendance. But we could have more people there if we opened it up. But those pesky fire marshals, they only say you can have so many people in there at the same time. And so they know what’s going on. But I think we’re at the Embassy Suites in Cool Springs area and they’re incredibly nice and they’ve refurbished the entire hotel. I mean, gutted the hotel this past year. We were the last event before they were waiting for us to finish and the next day they had the demolition crew in there tearing everything out.

(06:14): So everything is completely brand new. They added restaurants and the whole little village section around it. So the place is really great. So we rent out the whole hotel and then it’s like a fishbowl. As you know, everybody in there, 100% of them are writers or publishers, editors, attorneys, publicists, and everybody is in there together and you just really get to network and get to know people. And so you asked how to expand from 2006 to now.

(06:52): It has gone in many different directions and the expansion’s been good. I can’t believe we’re still around after 21 years. I never thought when the first one, I never looked ahead and thought, well, 21 years from now, I’ll still be doing this. I didn’t have that in mind, but it’s a blast. I love it. I enjoy every year. What’s changed there? There’s more opportunities for writers to find publishers, to find agents through Killer Nashville than we did back in 2006. And so part of the fun for me has always been, as you know, seeing people get a deal, seeing somebody reach a goal that they had and knowing that Killer Nashville and the attendees at Killer Nashville, not just me or not even me, had something to do with the confluence of events that caused that to happen. And I think that it’s been 21 years of seeing people’s lives transformed that in what I think is the most noble profession of all being a writer and being a purveyor of ideas. And so it has just been a joy ride for me. And so I look forward to 20 years more. We’ll see.

Debbi (08:29): That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s great. I can really appreciate what you’re saying because it is wonderful when you can help somebody out with something, give some knowledge to somebody that really helps them out. I’ve done some mentoring with people in my alumni, alumni mentoring, that’s the kind of thing. And it’s the kind of thing I’d like to continue to do actually.

Clay (09:00): Well, it’s fulfilling.

Debbi (09:03): It is.

Clay (09:04): I think that’s very good.

Debbi (09:08): By the way, where can I find your films or film?

Clay (09:12): Most of them are from PBS and NBC, CBS, ABC, and a lot of them are not available anywhere. And I have absolutely no control over that because I do not own the rights. It costs, the economics of it. People say we produce a film and throw it on Netflix. Actually, you pay Netflix to put it on there. And if the production company like PBS, PBS has a lot of my stuff. If they decided to pay Netflix or whoever, any streaming service, then you would be able to see it, but I don’t have the rights to it, I can’t stream it or put it on anything. So that answers your question.

Debbi (10:05): Oh, that’s too bad. But you have made films.That’s cool.

Clay (10:10): A few films. I mean, over different kinds between documentaries and episodic TV and stuff, probably about a hundred different credits. And I understand some of the stuff that I used to act in, I got a royalty check from The Guild for performances that are showing in Japan of all places,

(10:38): Not in the US and not Japan of all places, but of all places, why isn’t it showing in the US? I don’t know. But anyway, stuff is out there, but it’s really, content has changed so much in the decades that I’ve been in this business. And there are tons, if you’re an old film fanatic such as myself, there are tons of TV shows and films that were major when I was growing up that you can’t find anywhere because it just costs money to put them up on a streaming platform unless the company is NBC or Paramount or something and has their own streaming network. So there’s a whole bunch of deal-making things that have to go into all that. And unfortunately, creators don’t always have the leverage to be able to be involved in those discussions. I took a long way to answer your question.

Read more

Hi all! Thus begins another season of the Crime Cafe podcast! This week, I have a return guest who’ll fill you in on the latest plans for the Killer Nashville conference and more.

Read more

Hi everyone. Well, I don't have a book review today, do I? I don't think so, but I can certainly ... I'm almost finished with this one. It's really, really good. There's a lot of really great advice in here and exercises that you can follow to change your outlook and think about what you're doing and really be mindful of how you're spending your time. It's very important these days because it's too easy to get distracted by all the wrong things. I have spent a little too much time and a little too much money on webinars that ultimately end up sounding the same and I don't think we need more of the same. I think we need something different.

I'm getting ready to try some different things, hopefully things that will make a difference for me financially [and healthwise—I keep forgetting] and will make a difference for you time-wise, life-wise, maybe even financially. I'm not a person who can guarantee anything in the way of results other than you may feel better about yourself afterward. At least that's what I hope.

I also have this book, which is really, really interesting. what if? 2 by Randall Munroe He’s a number one New York Times bestselling author. Well, how about that? Join the club. Let’s see. I just like the concept behind this book. The first chapter says, the title is, “What would happen if the solar system was filled with soup out to Jupiter?” Amelia, age five, presumably asked this question. Well, Amelia, “[P]lease make sure everyone is safely out of the solar system before you fill it with soup. Indeed. If the solar system were full of soup out to Jupiter, things might be okay for some people for a few minutes.

“Then for the next half hour, things would definitely not be okay for anyone. After that, time would end.”

Something to think about. Are we filling our atmosphere full of soup? I’ve never thought about it quite that way. Ask somebody at the EPA, maybe they can fill you in or maybe not. I don’t know at this point what they’re doing at the EPA. I used to work there and I used to think it made a difference or I hoped to make a difference.

Well, I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I did. I did write that incredibly long memo about TSCA [pronounced Tosca] [the Toxic Substances Control Act] preemption that got a lot of praise at my going away party with a little tape that I’m hoping got somewhere that I can’t find because I had it at one point and now it’s gone. I hate when things like that happen. I have a Nirvana T-shirt that I swear. Never left the house except on my back and I can’t find it. Oh, well, it’s where all the missing socks are, right?

Okay. Having said that, it’s time to try some different things and so some things will be changing. I’m going to be shutting down something that I’ve been spending too much time on.

I have to focus my attention on a place where I seem to be getting the most results. And right now I love Patreon, but there are things on Patreon I like to follow actually. It really started with Girl in Space and I think the story just spoke to me so much that I just said, “Oh, I got to get in on this.” But it’s so difficult to choose sometimes because I go on Substack, I set up something with my published books. You can access books that I’ve published behind a paywall. The first five or seven chapters are free. But I mean after that it’s kind of like, why am I giving my stuff away? You devalue yourself when you just give the stuff that you sell for a living away willy-nilly. That’s just wrong. That just doesn’t make sense.

Every attempt I made and I made a couple of attempts to use Amazon’s Select thing. I would do the five free days or whatever it was. Skyrocketed. Free. It’s free. I’ll take one. Do you suppose anybody read any of those things they gave away? Probably not. Many of them probably didn’t read them. And of course, Amazon picked up a customer along the way and will not give you anything in the way of their contact information. Of course not, they’re Amazon’s customer now, not yours. You’ve just given away a customer.

Okay. Well, having said that, let’s try something a little different. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention. I have a book out. I did not do a great big book launch, did I? No, the book is just out and I have to write something to my email subscribers and let them know. This is part of what it’s like to be a writer.

Really! It's not like they show on TV. I got to tell you. It's not like a lot of things that you may think it is. So anyway, that's all I have to say. I really like this. What I've seen is this book so far. I don't know if I'll be able to get through it in time before I have to send it back to the library, but I would definitely recommend this one, How to Live A Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Number one New York Times bestselling authors of Designing Your Life. It's all about design. It's all about systems. It's all about showing up and doing the job and that's it. Hopefully I'm sitting up straight. Thanks and I will be seeing you.

PS: The ebook is available at these online stores. for only $2.99. That’s good until June 23, when the price goes up a whole dollar.

The print book is coming. Of course!

Oh, dear. I think I hear the sound of a deadline whooshing by. :)

Past Imperfect is coming out in June!

Presenting the cover. Drum roll, please! :)

You can pre-order the book now from any of these retailers.

I need to contact someone at Draft2Digital about the possibility of using them to distribute to Amazon. Hopefully, it will all go swimmingly, but I won’t hold my breath.

But I will try to remain optimistic about that.

*****

Brief book summary

When Heidi Sternberg, a military contracting clerk during Erica Jensen's deployment, is found dead the day the two were supposed to meet for lunch, Erica has reason enough to find the death suspicious. Heidi's widow makes it official by hiring Erica to find out who murdered Heidi. Along with official resistance, she's further taxed by her father's urgent request to investigate a blackmail attempt.

Early praise for the book!

‘A thoughtful mystery centring on the difficulties of friendship and family for Debbi Mack’s complex and compelling heroine.’

— Zoë Sharp, author of Bad Turn, The Girl In The Dark

“In Debbi Mack’s Past Imperfect, the third outing of her P.I. Erica Jensen, the laconic ex-Marine tackles concurrent serpentine cases – one the apparent suicide of a fellow Iraq vet who may have been involved in some shady dealings, and the other involving the blackmail of her father over something in his mysterious past. As in the previous novels, Mack gives Erica’s voiceover a convincing plaintive quality as she navigates between one set of threats and the other. Great modern take on the private eye genre!

— W.D. Gagliani, author of The Judas Hit and co-author of Acolytes of the Dead

Cheers for that, guys/gals! :)

Featured excerpt and more new releases!

My Twin, The Murderer by Lindsay Kent

(available for sale on June 13, 2026)

The door to the conference room bursts open. Three men step inside: two in uniform, the third, much older, in a dark brown suit.

I press my palm to my forehead and glance down, half-expecting to find myself standing in my underwear.

“Evelyn Malcolm?” The plain-clothed man strides over to me, flashing a badge. His voice is low and gravelly, his breath thick with cigarette smoke. Saliva floods my mouth, my belly burning.

“Yes? What is this—”

“It’s Eleanor,” Augustus corrects.

The man’s hand clamps down on my arm. “I’m Detective Schott. You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

“What?” The room tilts. The pages in my hand blur. The board members stare, frozen in time, their expressions a perfect gradient of shock and disgust.

I open my mouth to speak—

And splat.

To everyone’s horror, my morning coffee makes a grand reappearance, splattering across the pristine conference table like a Rorschach test from hell.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry!” My hands flail, searching for a napkin, a towel, anything—

But the detective is already pulling me to the door. “Glad that happened now,” he mutters. “Just had my squad car detailed.”

*

My heartbeat thunders in my ears as I’m led through the Pharmakon building. People speak to each other in hushed tones as I walk by, their faces a blur of concern and curiosity.

“You have the right to remain silent.” The officer’s voice warps, distant and hollow.

My knees buckle and I fall twice before I’m led outside, where I’m greeted by the heavy, monochrome slab of San Francisco’s summer sky.

Murder. I’m being detained for someone’s murder. Which means she’s finally done it.

In the back of the squad car I close my eyes, trying to make sense of the jumbled thoughts racing through my brain. If they ask me to testify on behalf of her character, would I tell the truth? What will happen to her once she’s convicted? I sink back into the bucket seat, shivering. Even after I claim my innocence, will it make a difference to Pharmakon?

I take a deep breath and shift my mind out of its abysmal loop the best I can, peering out at the blur of the city. I tap quietly on the window, keeping a tally of the pedestrians as we pass. I have to channel all my energy into what comes next—clearing up this case of mistaken identity.

In what feels like a blink we arrive. Detective Schott guides me by the arm toward the steep concrete steps of the precinct. The rancid stench of this part of the city assaults my senses: salty air, weed, human waste. Ahead, a homeless woman balances atop a mountain of garbage, swaying gently as she hums a tune only she seems to know. Her eyes catch mine, and her face shifts into cheerful exuberance.

“HIYEEEEE!” She shrieks, throwing a frantic wave in my direction. A grin so wide it stretches past the borders of her toothless mouth. “Is it time?” she asks, clapping wildly.

Squinting, I take in the deep crevasses in her cinnamon skin, the flicker in her gaze, some erratic rhythm playing behind her pupils. A whole life in there, I think. Once bright, full of potential. Now a crumpled-up scrap, tossed to the curb. Another story lost to the thirst—one more sip, one more smoke, one more needle in the vein.

Despite myself, I picture her face again. The years of terrible mistakes, arrests, betrayals. Brought on by the same insatiable desire. And yet, I’m the one in handcuffs.

“Ha,” I say under my breath. Schott tightens his grip on my arm.

Schott and the uniformed officers lead me through the buzzing precinct, weaving in between desks with ringing phones and crackheads cuffed to chairs with foaming grins. They take me down a busy corridor to an interrogation room.

The door swings open, and a strangled gasp catches in my throat.

Her back is to me, hands clenched tightly behind her head, clearly toying with the two young officers seated at the table—her mind games already in full swing.

“It’s all very simple. So simple it’s almost insulting. I’m a threat to your bloated, bureaucratic excuse for an institution. Hell, I’ve cracked more cases than half the stiffs in this precinct combined, but because I lack a shiny badge and a government-issued sidearm, you’ve got to keep me dancing. Throwing out half-assed threats, bringing me in here under bogus pretenses. Squeezing me for intel like some two-bit snitch, all so you can slap your name on my hard-earned work. Classic. I bet Sherlock had to wade through this bullshit all the live-long day.”

She follows the officers’ gaze and turns around, then points a finger at me like a gun. “Hey, I know you.” She winks. “What took you so long?”

The curtain of coiffed, bright red hair, neck tattoos, and way too much eye makeup doesn’t hide a damn thing. That’s my face staring back at me.

It’s Vivian. My identical twin.

About the Author

Lindsay Kent, aka The Hallucinarrator, is a filmmaker and psychedelic historian whose work explores the intersection of storytelling, consciousness, and psychological transformation. Her work spans decades, from global feature films and streaming series to campaigns for nonprofits and Fortune 500s. Her 2016 cult documentary Going Furthur retraced the electric pulse of America’s counterculture, while Plant Medicine dives deep into the visionary heart of an Ayahuasca retreat center in Costa Rica. With years of research into the cultural and emotional impact of altered states, she brings a rare combination of narrative craft and intellectual depth to the thriller genre. Her writing bridges art and awakening—using fiction as a way to make complex inner experiences accessible, human, and emotionally grounded. My Twin the Murderer is her debut novel. She lives in Half Moon Bay, California, with her husband Jim and their four-legged comic relief, Bodhi. Her twin lives five minutes away—and so, in a very real sense, so does she. More at: THEHALLUCINARRATOR.COM.

Beneath the Rings Q&A with Joe Battaglia

About Beneath the Rings

The Doha 2040 Summer Olympics are supposed to be about gold medals and global unity. Instead, they kick off a descent into terror when 12 Israeli and Lebanese athletes vanish, leaving behind only the chilling threat of The Obsidian Hand and an impossible $500 billion ransom. Veteran journalist Nova Mendelsohn finds herself entangled with a cryptic Ancient Arabic note and a mysterious local merchant, forced to race the clock. Her pursuit of the truth will take her from the glittering Olympic Village into the city’s darkest corners and onto the blood-soaked sands of the desert, where a centuries-old vengeance threatens to ignite a catastrophic final act. What secrets lie beneath the surface of the Games, and what will it cost Nova to uncover them?

Q&A with Joe Battaglia, award-winning sports journalist and author of Beneath the Rings

Q: You’ve spent years covering the Olympics—what’s something most viewers would be surprised to learn about what really happens behind the scenes?

One of the biggest surprises is the sheer intensity of the Olympic Village—it’s less a serene athlete sanctuary and more like a high-stakes, hormone-fueled college dorm on steroids. After years of brutal training, isolation, and pressure, athletes are suddenly thrown together in close quarters with thousands of the world’s fittest, most attractive people at peak physical condition. Organizers distribute massive quantities of condoms (hundreds of thousands in recent Games, sometimes running out quickly), and the vibe is celebratory and uninhibited once competitions wrap up.

Viewers see the polished podium moments, but behind the scenes there’s the raw grind: athletes dealing with early call times, strict recovery protocols, shared rooms, and the emotional whiplash of “what now?” after their event ends. Many describe it as exhilarating yet strangely anticlimactic—no dramatic fade-out, just packing up and returning to normal life. The Village fosters wild stories of connection (and yes, plenty of hookups), but it’s also a pressure cooker of nerves, jet lag, and logistics that TV cameras rarely capture.

It’s a reminder that these superhumans are still young people chasing dreams under immense scrutiny.

Q: The story is set during the 2040 Summer Olympics in Doha—what drew you to that setting for Beneath the Rings?

Doha in 2040 felt like the perfect canvas for Beneath the Rings because I’ve visited the city three times for international track and field competitions and completely fell in love with its unique character. The way historic Gulf architecture—traditional souqs, wind towers, and heritage districts—sits in striking juxtaposition with gleaming modern developments along the Corniche and state-of-the-art sporting venues creates this vibrant, layered energy. Walking those waterfront promenades at dusk, with dhows on the bay and the futuristic skyline glowing, you sense a place that’s rapidly evolving while staying rooted in its culture. That blend became the ideal backdrop for a story exploring ambition, legacy, and the human stories unfolding under the Olympic spotlight.

Beyond the personal connection, Doha’s proven track record as a global sports hub made it a natural choice for a near-future Olympics. The city has successfully hosted the 2006 Asian Games, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, multiple world championships in track and field and other sports and is set to welcome the 2030 Asian Games while actively bidding for the 2036 Olympics. Its world-class infrastructure, passion for sport, and vision for the future allowed me to imagine a believable 2040 Games that builds on real momentum. Setting the novel there let me weave in authentic details from my visits while exploring themes of progress, identity, and what it means to host the world’s greatest stage.

Q: How did your real-life experience in sports journalism influence the characters and plot of Beneath the Rings?

My two decades in sports journalism—particularly producing Track & Field coverage for NBC

Olympics—directly shaped the core characters in Beneath the Rings, especially Nova Mendelsohn, the fierce, unyielding 53-year-old independent journalist at the heart of the story. I still remember the adrenaline of sitting in the NBC Olympics booth in the media tribune for the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games, refreshing the homepage every few minutes while athletes poured in raw emotion right after their events; that chaos, alongside my years collaborating with trailblazing reporter Alan Abrahamson (who later founded 3 Wire Sports), inspired Nova’s battle-hardened drive and her platform OlymPulse as a space for unflinching Olympic truth-telling beyond the medals.

Her personal roots echo my own upbringing in Newark, New Jersey, with a teacher mother like my Fran and a steady father figure like my Ted, plus education parallels from Solomon Schechter Day School near Seton Hall Prep to Syracuse and a law detour at Seton Hall before returning to journalism. Inspirations from fearless reporters like Lara Logan and trailblazers like Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, and Helene Elliott infused Nova with her audacious truth-seeking edge.

The plot itself grew straight out of the operational realities I lived through and historical ones I learned about, which also fueled Nova’s grit and her relentless pursuit of the Olympic underbelly. I saw firsthand how digital media can elevate Olympic moments one minute and exploit them the next. Setting the story in 2040 Doha let me weave in that same high-stakes media ecosystem I navigated, turning real-world scars and stories into a narrative about what happens when the world’s biggest stage collides with ambition, frailty, and modern storytelling.

Q: What skills from your background in journalism have been most useful in writing a thriller?

My years as a sports journalist honed a skill set that has proven invaluable in writing a thriller like Beneath the Rings: the relentless drive to immerse myself in history and turn real events into gripping narrative fuel. Journalism trained me to dig beneath the surface, so when I needed to craft the novel’s central conflict, the years I spent embedded in Olympic history allowed me to draw inspiration from the harrowing details of the 1972 Munich Massacre. Those accounts—of athletes and coaches taken hostage, the failed rescue, and the lasting shadow it cast over the Games—gave me the authentic emotional and logistical blueprint for the Obsidian Hand’s plot. What started as background research became the heartbeat of the story, letting me translate cold facts into the kind of high-stakes tension that keeps readers turning pages.

That same journalistic instinct for rigorous, unflinching research also taught me when to pause and go deeper. Five chapters into the draft, I realized the Obsidian Hand characters’ radicalization needed to feel painfully real rather than invented. So, I stopped writing entirely and spent the next two months immersed in declassified reports, survivor testimonies, and timelines of real-life Middle Eastern conflicts.

I cross-referenced everything from the rise of specific militant ideologies to the personal stories of radicalization that mirrored the paths my antagonists would take. That willingness to hit pause and ground fiction in verifiable truth ensured the thriller’s conspiracy feels both terrifying and eerily plausible, the same way my reporting always aimed to make the Games’ human drama unforgettable.Q: Beneath the Rings operates on a global scale, but it’s also a very personal story centered on protagonist Nova Mendelsohn. How did you approach balancing those high stakes with a more human narrative?

I approached the balance by making Nova Mendelsohn the emotional anchor for every global escalation. The 2040 Doha Olympics and the Obsidian Hand conspiracy deliver the thriller’s high-stakes machinery—terrorism, IOC intrigue, and a city on edge—but I never let those elements eclipse her private world. Nova’s solitary runs through Doha’s Corniche at dawn, her quiet grief over the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and her parents’ 2017 car crash, and the complicated friendship with her estranged sister are the lens through which readers experience the chaos. By filtering the spectacle through her hazel-eyed perspective—her hyper-vigilance forged in real trauma, her red hair a banner of defiance—I ensured the personal always felt as urgent as the geopolitical.

That same journalistic instinct I honed covering multiple Olympics guided the craft. I wrote the novel the way I once produced athlete features: start with the human heartbeat, then layer in the larger drama. Her late-night hotel-room doubts, the way she second-guesses a source while the Opening Ceremony fireworks explode overhead, and the tender, complicated reconnection with an old flame all keep the story grounded. The result is a thriller where the fate of the Games matters because Nova’s fate—her scars, her stubborn hope, her refusal to look away—matters more.

Q: You’ve spent much of your career reporting facts—what was it like shifting into creating suspense and shaping a narrative where you control the outcome?

Shifting from two decades of sports journalism—where every deadline meant chasing unscripted truth under live pressure—to writing Beneath the Rings felt like stepping off the sidelines and into the director’s chair. In reporting, I was a witness: I produced athlete features, and shaped coverage around events I couldn’t control, like the raw emotion flooding in after a race or the chaos of a breaking story.

Suddenly I was the one engineering the suspense—deciding when the Obsidian Hand’s threat would tighten around Nova Mendelsohn, when her past traumas would collide with the 2040 Doha Games, and how the conspiracy would unravel. It was exhilarating and strangely vulnerable; for the first time, the outcome was entirely mine to shape, which meant I could give Nova the justice or reckoning the real world rarely delivers.

What made the transition work was the very discipline journalism had drilled into me: rigorous research paired with an instinct for human stakes. That same muscle let me build suspense not through cheap twists, but through Nova’s intimate betrayals that hit harder than any geopolitical bomb. Journalism taught me to make facts unforgettable; fiction let me make the truth I invented feel even more real.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from Beneath the Rings?

I hope readers finish Beneath the Rings with a deeper appreciation for the Olympics’ unfiltered soul—the magic of human achievement mixed with the gritty realities of politics, ethics, and global tensions I’ve witnessed firsthand. Beyond the thrill of the conspiracy and chase, I want them to reflect on how sport can expose truths, bridge divides, and inspire resilience, just like the real Games that shaped this story.

Additionally, I hope Beneath the Rings leaves individuals inspired by Nova’s resilience and journalistic courage, turning personal trauma into unyielding truth-seeking. For communities, it models how shared humanity—seen in fleeting moments of connection between Israeli and Lebanese athletes—can bridge deep divides. At the world level, I want it to provoke critical reflection on the Olympic movement’s glittering facade versus its real costs: IOC ethics, geopolitical tensions, and the ever-present shadow of terror, strengthening demands for accountability so the Games truly advance peace and progress.

*****

About the Author

Joe Battaglia is a seasoned and award-winning journalist who spent years in The Olympics arena. With over two decades in sports media, Battaglia has led content creation across news, politics, and athletics, including a role on the NBCOlympics.com team that earned a Sports Emmys for Outstanding New Approaches To Sports Event Coverage for the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Summer Olympics. He currently lives in Texas with his family. Joe is the author of the award-winning children’s book, The ABCs of Track & Field: A Fast Start For Future Runners Jumpers & Throwers, and Beneath the Rings is his debut adult novel. .

More new releases in May

Finished and previously reviewed:

Five by Ilona Bannister

Now reading:

Ash Land by Matt Harry

Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister

Dawn Before Darkness by Liz Lazarus

Next up on my TBR:

In Case I Go Missing by R. N. Swann

Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler by Amelia Tait

The Anniversary by Alex Finlay

The Bone Door by Frances White

The Edge of Forever by Meghan Browne

The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny; Mellissa Fung

Hurricane Room by Kim Sherwood

More releases in May:

I, Spy by L.M. Kemp

Moonlight Murder by Uzma Jalaluddin

Shadows on Sidewalks by James Grady

The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews

Dirty 20 by Bill Schweigart

In the Blood by April Henry

My Name Was Gerry Sass by Tiffany Hanssen

Mob Justice by Chad Boudreaux

Salomé by Leslie Baird

The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb

Murder Most Delicious by Danielle Postel-Vinay

Vesper by Evan Marks

What no book reviews in May?

In all fairness, I’ve been just a bit busy what with serving as a judge in an awards contest (which required me to read about a thousand quite a few short stories), getting ready to make a second short film, and coming out with my latest novel, plus appearing at a few author events (plus participating in a comedy film blogathon) when I’m not tied up in physical therapy and trying to find an occupational therapist who understands and can treat dystonia effectively.

We may be making some progress on that last point. However, we don’t yet know for certain, but (again) remain optimistic, because I’d rather not feel bad about it.

But I’ll be happy to pop in a review of an oldie, but a goodie!

‘Calamity Physics’ Indeed
Review of SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS (Penguin Books 2006)
Author, Marisha Pessl
(review originally posted on July 4, 2008)

I’d read a bit about this book and what an amazing piece of work it was (especially coming from such a young author). Naturally, I was intrigued. So I picked up SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS while on vacation.

Marisha Pessl is an amazing writer. She is obviously one who is well-read, intelligent and hopelessly enamored of words. She loves words and wordplay so much, she writes with the giddy enthusiasm of a kitten chasing a string or a child, running from one Christmas gift to the other, trying to figure out which toy to play with first. In her energetic prose, Pessl does tend to pile on the metaphors, like a customer at an all-you-can-eat buffet piling mashed potatoes onto her plate. She crams them onto the page, like rush-hour commuters onto a subway car. And her sentences (frequently interrupted with sometimes long parenthetical thoughts that may occasionally drift from the original topic of the sentence, but that’s okay) are often a profusion of words, tumbling over each other, much like boulders in a landslide.

And then there are the citations (plus illustrations or, as they’re called in the book, “visual aids”). Yes, a clever device (some even do double duty as metaphors, such as, “We walked by what had to be Bethany Louise’s room, painted gum pink, a pile of clothes on the floor (see ‘Mt. McKinley,’ Almanac of Major Landmarks, 2000 ed.)”) that demonstrates the protagonist, Blue Van Meer’s, scholarly upbringing under the tutelage of her itinerant professor father. (Not to mention that she’s incredibly well-read. Is there a book or article she hasn’t read? Is there no source she’s unable to quote at the drop of a hat?)

Blue’s mother having tragically died in a car crash after a long, tiring night of working on her butterfly and moth collection (her specialty), the father-daughter duo set off on an extended road trip, in which Blue gets to attend a multitude of schools over the years, treating each new venue as a place to observe human behavior, rather than develop close ties (which will only have to be broken when she moves yet again) and develops a close relationship with Dad that some people might envy (compare Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon, 1973).

Yes, it’s a youthful, showy, poetic, almost gymnastic kind of writing. The kind that, when it puts one so young into the exalted heights of the New York Times bestseller list, might lead an older, more jaded person to feel a bit put out (see F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce in Amadeus, 1984).

But you know what? While part of the charm of this book is its abundance of zeal and cleverness, and we can forgive a gifted young writer any tendencies to soar like a hawk and do loop-de-loops like a stunt pilot with her words, what really matters (and what’s really true) about this book is that it tells a terrific (in every sense of the word) story about someone you can really care about.

Pessl’s story has a well-structured plot, in which Blue finally settles in during her senior year at a private high school with a group of favored students known as the Bluebloods--and, given her unconventional upbringing, Blue’s desire to be included with them surprised me, even disappointed me a little (see Lee Fiora of Prep by Curtis Sittenfield (Random House 2005)). Nonetheless, it’s the only way you can really get to know Hannah Schneider (who we learn right from jump dies by hanging), become familiar with her dark secrets and delights and take a glimpse, along with Blue, at how the other half lives.

And what starts off looking like a father-daughter road trip chronicle turns into a coming-of-age story, in which Blue starts to rebel (ever so slightly) and keep secrets from her father, which all leads up to the scene where Hannah’s found dead. That’s when Blue (thinking things are not what they seem, always observing, looking for the truth) starts checking into the whole thing. Her investigation leads from one revelation to another and the plot twists come so fast and furious, they leave you breathless. Until, at the end, Blue is left pretty much feeling like this (see Visual Aid below):

I have to say that, as a mystery writer who’s come to expect the unexpected, I actually anticipated the final, apocalyptic revelation (and even expected it to be worse). But it did nothing to ruin the book at all. In the end, like any great mystery novel (and although this is not genre fiction, it is at its core, a mystery), the reader is left, mouth agape, saying, “The clues were right in front of me. I just didn’t see them.”

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention that this book ends with a final exam! (No kidding.) In keeping with the pedagogic nature of the work, Pessl finishes the story off with a set of questions--true/false, multiple choice and one essay--that actually raise some interesting theories about the story and suggest topics for discussion, much like the suggested topics for book club discussion at the end of other books I’ve read. And, no, Pessl does not provide answers.

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My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Gregory Poirier.

Check out what Gregory has to say about screenwriting, as well as crime writing!

You can download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Our guest today is an acclaimed screenwriter, director, and producer whose work spans film and television. His credits include National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Knox Goes Away, and Rosewood. A graduate of the USC School of Theater and the UCLA Master’s program in screenwriting, his debut novel, A Thousand Cuts will be coming out very soon. In fact, you can probably pre-order it today. It’s my pleasure to have with me, and I forgot to ask how you pronounce your name, so please just say it.

Gregory (01:31): Gregory Poirier.

Debbi (01:33): Gregory Poirier. Thank you so much. The one thing I forgot to do at the beginning of this.

Gregory (01:40): I pronounce it a little more technically than that in France, but ...

Debbi (01:43): True. Yes, yes. France is ... Yeah, they would do it totally right, and we do it totally wrong, but whatever. Sorry about that, France. So anyway, thanks for being here today.

Gregory (01:58): Yeah, my pleasure.

Debbi (01:58): After a career in film and television, what prompted you to write your first novel?

Gregory (02:04): Well, it actually was sort of an organic thing that came up. I mean, there’s a lot of conversation now amongst me and my friends about how this business of ours is changing, and it’s becoming a lot more challenging because it’s shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

Debbi (02:23): Oh, yes.

Gregory (02:24): And I’ve been very fortunate that it hasn’t shrunk me out yet, But you never know. And I actually had this idea for this story and I was trying to work it as a screenplay. And I just at some point just decided that the sort of specific voice that I was going for and the sort of tone that I was hoping for wasn’t really coming across that well in the screenplay version. And I finally decided that it’s an action thing. The way that I started this thing was I wanted to do a film that was the film that Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum or one of those guys would make if they were alive now, something with a real sort of noir weigh into it, but with a modern sensibility, modern action, all that kind of stuff. And so that’s what I was trying to achieve. And for whatever reason, it wasn’t coming across. I know I can write a noir because Knox Goes Away was a noir, and that’s probably the favorite movie of mine that I’ve ever done.

(03:33): But this was something different and it just wasn’t working. And I was sitting with my gang of writer friends at the Farmer’s Market one week and one of them said, why don’t you write a novel? And I thought I might have the perfect thing to try that. And so I just basically started it as something to try and to see if this story worked better in that form, which it definitely did. And that’s how we got here.

Debbi (04:02): Why do you think it works better as a novel?

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For our final regular episode of this season, we have screenwriter, producer, and crime author Gregory Poirier with us. So check it out, because there’s a capsule course on screenwriting tucked in there. The real story of screenwriting! Not for the faint-hearted. :)

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Another Chapter of Past Imperfect

Here’s yet another peek at my third Erica Jensen mystery! Coming in May, I hope! :)

CHAPTER TWO

With characteristic stoicism, Sully told me the body was discovered when a neighbor was asked to check in on Heidi after she failed to show up for work. When Heidi failed to answer the door, the neighbor called 911. Sully explained this in the hallway, crime techs and the otherwise authorized ducking in and out of the crime scene.

“There are no obvious signs of foul play. Only a half-empty pill bottle next to her bed.” Sully said. “Of course, we’ll need a call from the ME on cause of death before we make any decisions.” A female officer—her dark blue uniform still perfectly creased and squeaky clean—approached us, gave me a tight smile, and spoke inaudible words into Sully’s ear.

“I see,” Sully said. “Thank you.” With that, the officer went away. Sully turned back to me.

“How did you know the deceased?” she asked.

“We met while I served in Afghanistan. She was with a contractor who provided transport services.”

“How well did you know her?”

“Well enough to say hello to now and then. I know she enjoyed movies.”

Sully seemed to mull that over. She nodded, as if finally solving a puzzle. “When did you last speak with her?”

“It was just yesterday. She seemed anxious to talk to me.”

“She contacted you?” Sully asked.

“Yes. Can I ask something?” Without waiting for her answer, I continued. “Was there a note? Does it look like an accident or suicide?”

Sully shook her head, either in answer to my first question or refusal to answer at all. “Mmm. Too soon to say.” Indeed. Mmm. “What time did you speak to her yesterday?” she asked, notebook and pen poised.

I thought back. I’d been in the midst of shutting my laptop down when the phone rang. I ignored the call, my mind focused on a more important matter: what to eat for dinner.

“Around six,” I said. “She called and left a message. I didn’t recognize the number, so I thought it might be spam at first. I called her back right away. She sounded like she could use a pep talk.”

Not to mention the help I could provide, as a fellow participant in the war effort. Plus, I had applied for a private eye’s license, after being declared “sane-ish OR sane enough” by my court-ordered therapist. Couple years ago, I’d had a legal dustup when a guy in a bar got handsy with me. The court ordered me into therapy, and I’d managed to get a clean bill—and not punch anyone else in the face.

“And what did you talk about?” Sully asked.

I paused, my attention caught by the opening door and the flash of a white-suited figure, snapping photos within. “Not much really. I hadn’t seen her in ages. But she asked me to meet her for lunch today. Something was bothering her, something that happened while we were over there. When I asked what the problem was, she said she’d prefer to discuss it in person.”

Sully noted this, or at least I assumed she was taking notes. “Anything else you remember? Did she sound depressed? Angry? Anything?”

I thought back to the sound of her voice. “Just intent on meeting me. Anxious, I guess.”

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“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Not since my time on active duty.” I put some effort into recalling our occasional conversations over there. Well, I could say she was a huge fan of Tarantino and the Coen brothers. She struck me as smart, the kind who would use her active service as a springboard for starting a business. Meanwhile, my only goal had been to make it out alive. “We used to talk about movies a lot. It didn’t go much deeper than that. She was personable.” Given conditions in the field, that was saying something.

“You were in hospital for a week or so, due to a concussion. That was before your return, correct?”

I murmured agreement, sifting through the memories of nearly getting blown to pieces en route to an LZ—the landing zone of the helo (or chopper or copter, depending on your generation) meant to whisk us back to civilization. A young man driving the vehicle had died as a result. I still had the nightmares.

The awful buzz of memories merely underscored my annoyance at the question about my head injury, as if it made me unreliable.

“Is it possible you’ve forgotten anything significant she might have mentioned?” Sully plugged away at this angle. She was giving me a headache.

“If I can think of anything, I promise to tell you.” It took every ounce of self-control not to snarl the words.

“Can you think of anyone else who knew her then? During your time overseas.”

I thought back over the past decade. Seemed longer. “I’d have to give that some thought.” Heidi hadn’t been with the Marines but served as our support. Our separate assignments gave us fewer chances to mingle. However, “fewer” isn’t “none.” I could check my photos from back then for any instances her people might have hung out with mine. The ones I’d kept.

“What about family?” Sully persisted. “Do you know of anyone we should contact?”

“Nope.”

Sully nodded, as if I’d passed a test. She stopped taking notes and handed me a card. “In case you lost the last one I gave you,” she said.

With that, I was dismissed.

But not for long.

Incidentally, this month Damaged Goods, the first novel in the Erica Jensen mystery series, is only $2.99 as an ebook until the end of April!

2021 SHAMUS AWARD NOMINEE

This Marine veteran may have survived combat, but will she survive this case?

Unlicensed private eye and Marine veteran Erica Jensen works as a "researcher", who performs background checks, conducts surveillance, and takes on other dubious assignments, while battling post-traumatic stress and an opioid addiction. However, when a wealthy man hires her to find his missing daughter, Erica ends up with more work than she bargained for.

While trying to find the daughter, Erica stumbles across a murder victim, along with evidence that raises even more questions. Did the missing daughter know the victim? Could the dead man have been connected with an artifacts smuggling ring? Where does a threatening letter written in a Cyrillic script fit? As Erica continues to probe, she attracts the attention of people willing to kill to keep their secrets.

WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID

“Best private eye novel I’ve read in ages. Pitch perfect pace and plot with a well-drawn protagonist.”
— M. Ruth Myers, Shamus Award winning author of the Maggie Sullivan mystery series

“Marine veteran turned unlicensed PI Erica Jensen is a flawed and intriguing heroine in this meticulous mystery. Charlie Fox would work alongside her any day!”
— Zoë Sharp, author of BAD TURN

“A gritty, stunning portrayal of the impact and response to post traumatic stress, packaged inside a compelling mystery.”
— Frank Zafiro, author of the CHARLIE-316 series

“Erica Jensen is the tough PTSD-suffering Marine veteran and unlicensed PI in author Debbi Mack’s new series (apart from her Sam McRae books). In Damaged Goods, an apt metaphor, Erica seeks a missing person but stumbles onto antiquities smugglers—or worse. Offering up sleek prose and adopting the world-weary detective’s First Person style to great effect, Mack keeps the action rolling along while fleshing out a keeper of a protagonist. Excellent read for neo-noir and private eye fans!”
— W.D. Gagliani, author of THE JUDAS HIT and the Nick Lupo Series

Featured excerpts from new releases!

The Silver Fish by Connor Martin

PROLOGUE

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

An hour passed before they found the body. Billy Demirjian should have been long gone. Instead, he was across the road, watching through the railing on the second floor of the neighboring building.

Traffic buzzed by in both directions. Coach buses, tro-tros, mopeds beeping past hand-pulled carts. Billy crouched low, hidden in shadow, with a good view to the car where a Nigerian telecom executive named David Ibrahim lay dead in the front seat. The sky was hazy, reddened by the harmattan winds. Billy waited, motionless. The wind coated Ibrahim’s car with a thin layer of dust the color and consistency of cinnamon.

Then people began to yell. A sudden crowd congregated around the car—men pushing to the front, scolding each other excitedly, banging on the hood and the windows with the flats of their hands. The door was wrenched open; the dead man pulled from the passenger seat. He was big. They could only get him halfway before he slipped from their grip and his torso flopped onto the pavement.

Billy felt empty. Shocked. It wasn’t the killing: during his three tours of active duty, he had been personally responsible for removing four people from this life, that he knew of. It was the killing like this. Up close and intimate. With his hands. In the quiet of a parked car, twenty feet away from where ordinary people were walking down the street.

This had started three days ago, when his case officer had sent him a signal for the first time in months. Billy had been visiting the same café he was required to report to every morning for exactly this purpose. He’d taken a bite of his bread roll and was stirring powdered milk into his Nescafe when the vendor had said, behind his back, “Did you hear? A ship sunk in the harbor last night.”

Billy had turned around slowly. “Run aground?” he asked.

“Capsized.” The vendor’s face was stenciled with a lifetime of poverty. He shook his head, convincingly rueful. “Bad weather.”

By these codes, Billy knew which drop spot to check for his orders. When he did, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. David Ibrahim was a big deal in West Africa’s telecom industry. He imported millions of dollars’ worth of the equipment that made cell phone networks functional and kept the internet online in Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal. And according to the paper Billy held in his hands, he was being run by Chinese intelligence. Targeting somebody like this was a major escalation.

But it wasn’t Billy’s job to question. He was the sharp end of the stick, and the protocol was clear.

Do it quick, do it clean, and be gone.

Last night, his case officer, a man who went by the name of Ford, had met with him to review the plan. Follow the target to his girlfriend’s house, where he spends an hour every Tuesday and Thursday after work. Slip into his car while he’s inside. Hide in the back seat. After an hour, the target will get back in the car and close the door. He’s thinking about going home to his wife, he’s rehearsing answers to her questions. He’s freshly showered, as he always is at this hour.

“And then you do it,” Ford had said. “Knock him out, no drama. In his pocket there will be two cell phones. They never leave his side. You secure them, and you bring them to me.”

Quick, clean, gone.

After Ford had left, Billy had stayed awake until dawn, turning the orders over in his hand. The manila envelope had contained two sheets of paper, with information on Ibrahim corroborated by a double agent, who was pretending to work for the Chinese while funneling information to the United States. There was something touching and insubstantial about this packet. He wondered whose soft hands had pressed down the stapler, in what hushed office. The small, precise motion—as conclusive, as violent as anything that Billy would do afterward.

The instant Ibrahim had shut the door to his car, Billy had hinged upward from the floor of the back seat where he’d been hiding and in the same motion grabbed Ibrahim’s throat from behind and pulled it against the headrest. Ibrahim was a big man. But when you surprise someone there’s nothing they can do. Their hands fly to their throat. They don’t even realize yet what’s happened—only that something is wrong with their body, very wrong, which they are desperately trying to fix. Soon enough the lack of oxygen causes them to pass out.

But that was when the plan had stopped working.

Ibrahim had continued to struggle, his large hands grabbing blindly at Billy’s face, scratching, pulling, twisting. A finger dug into Billy’s eye. Reaching across the steering wheel Ibrahim managed to pop open the glove compartment, and a long knife fell out of it onto the passenger seat. Billy could feel that this man was still strong, still dangerous. He was fighting for his life.

And then something happened inside Billy that had never happened before. A blank white space opened up. A sensation of falling.

Suddenly he was leaning over the front seat, and the knife was in his hand, and with a burst of energy he was stabbing Ibrahim through the neck and ribs again and again and again and again and again. He heard shouting—heard himself screaming the names of Ibrahim’s wife and children and cursing them and promising that before today was over he was going to kill them all too.

Finally the man died.

In the abrupt silence, Billy’s panting had filled the car. He had looked down at his dark T-shirt, slick with gristle. Startled, he threw himself to the floor of the back seat, away from the glare of the daylight that was now pouring through the car’s windows on all sides. The silence rang like a bell. He felt watched, as though by an audience that refused to applaud. He felt, in a strange way, humiliated.

Be gone, the protocol said. Ditch your clothes and your weapon, now. Resume your cover identity and await your next order, as though nothing has happened.

Prepare to wait a long time.

But when the body was finally found an hour later, Billy was still there, crouching on the second floor of the deserted laundromat across the street, frozen, Ibrahim’s bloody phones in his pocket.

Everything had happened just like the intelligence had indicated. Which meant they were now in business with an honest-to-god double. As he watched the growing commotion, watched as the world discovered what his hands had done, Billy thought about this Double. What would he think of the scene inside the car?

Of course Billy had never met the Double. Intelligence wasn’t his job; if anything, he was the last to receive it. Only Ford saw the whole picture. It is the case officer who approaches somebody like Ibrahim. Say they learn that the target likes to play golf on Saturday mornings. They show up the next weekend with a terrible swing. Shank one shot after another, until the target takes pity and comes over to give him some pointers. Maybe the target and the case officer shake hands. The next Saturday, maybe they go for coffee afterwards and talk about their wives. The officer makes sure his golf swing doesn’t improve too quickly.

It doesn’t always end in violence. More often, the case officer will try to turn the target—bring him on the payroll. When that fails, somebody like Billy gets the call.

And when Billy fails?

Because that was what was bleeding all over the car seat: Billy’s failure. Nobody had told him to murder David Ibrahim. He had lost control and disobeyed orders.

He was sure there would be blowback. Billy wasn’t dumb, no matter what Ford and people like Ford thought of him. In the forty-eight hours that he had tailed David Ibrahim prior to killing him, he had observed plenty. At least once a day, Ibrahim had passed in and out of the offices of a Chinese-owned shipping company called Dongsha, near Madina Market in the city center. He had worked out at a public gym by the beach. Pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups by the hundreds. And he had liked to dress stylishly, expensively—especially on the days he visited his girlfriend. On the afternoon he was killed, Ibrahim was wearing a pair of pressed chino trousers that stopped well short of his ankles, and a green satin coat with wide lapels, like a smoking jacket. On his feet were immaculate white Adidas trainers. As Billy watched the crowd haul him out of the car, his open throat flapping, a little boy, whom nobody knew, pulled off one of the trainers and ran away with it, evading outstretched hands.

Published with permission from the copyright holders.

About the Author

Connor Martin is a writer and former senior US national security official, most recently serving as Deputy Director on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) at the Treasury Department. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and he splits his time between Washington and Brooklyn. THE SILVER FISH is his first novel.

Ash Land by Matt Harry

Excerpted from Ash Land, by Matt Harry. IFWG Publishing, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

This scene shows the main character, a detective named Kai Braddock, tracking down an escaped fugitive via remote-operated drone. He has managed to corner his bounty in an arcade on the abandoned Santa Monica Pier.

I nudged the drone forward into the arcade. Thin sunlight filtered through the front windows. The wooden video game cabinets were dark and dusty, but the width of them offered plenty of places to hide. For the first time, I realized how many of them were based around world-ending events. Time Crisis. Mortal Kombat. Jurassic Park. Even Dig Dug was about a guy in a hazmat suit defending himself from monsters. But what all of them got wrong was that when our real doom came, it would be no more scary-looking than a pile of dust bunnies, and nearly every weapon we had would be useless against it.

BANG! The sound blew out my headphones momentarily, and a flash illuminated the dark arcade.

A gunshot.

Luckily the bullet went high, impacting on a ceiling panel and sending out a little puff of plaster. Three bullets left. I yanked back the altitude stick on my controller, dropping the drone to the floor. The barrel of the tranquilizer gun clicked on the linoleum. Keeping the Triton low, I strafed around to the point where the gunshot had originated.

I came to a stop at the south end of the arcade, hovering just beside the clear glass prize cabinet. Plastic necklaces and wax lips were piled inside. The cabinet’s flat surface amplified the high-pitched whine of the Triton V’s rotors, but at least this way I had a view of the entire room. I turned on the drone’s external speakers. What the hell, Nguyen could hear where I was anyway.

“Hey there, Danny. My name’s Kai Braddock.” I switched briefly to the thermal lens, but there were no tell-tale flares of heat yet. I went back to the muddy green night vision. “I’m a private detective. Formerly LAPD. Gotta say, I’m impressed you managed to stay on the run for this long. The cops, they expected to catch you on satellite weeks ago. But I figure you had someone helping you stay out of sight. Am I right? ‘Cause I know you’re too stupid to do it yourself.”

No reply. Damn. I’d been hoping to goad Nguyen into a response. I was beginning to wonder if he’d managed to sneak out some hidden back exit when I finally spotted him. A green lump crouched behind a Star Wars original trilogy game pod. His pupils glowed white in my drone’s infrared camera beam. Then a Beretta muzzle obscured his face, and two flashes made my infrared lens flare white.

BANG! BANG! The gunshots echoed in my headphones, making my eardrums vibrate painfully. I squeezed my eyes shut and banked left, feeling the controller vibrate as the Triton bumped into a nearby change machine. The bullets struck the prize case, sending glass shards plinking off my drone. One bullet left.

I popped the Triton upward, giving Nguyen a good look at me, then immediately dropped back down. Up, and down. Up, down. The fourth time I popped up, Nguyen fired. BANG. I dropped the drone again. His final bullet went wide.

Time to bag my bounty.

I slammed the Triton forward, lining up Nguyen’s torso in my targeting reticule. He was less than five yards away, a sitting duck. I squeezed the trigger —

Just as Nguyen hurled his empty Beretta. Unfortunately, it was his most accurate shot of the day. The heavy pistol struck my drone dead center, cracking the camera lens and spinning the UAV sideways. The tranquilizer dart intended for Nguyen skittered off through the video game cabinets.

Realizing my intentions, he scrambled to his feet and bolted for the arcade exit. I panned my head to track him and fired another dart. This one was closer, thunking off a Skee ball lane mere inches from the perp’s back. He pushed open a side door and sprinted out onto the sunlit pier.

Since I was piloting a lightweight drone, I was forced to circle back and leave the arcade via the broken window. When I finally made it outside, Nguyen was fifty yards away from the building, zig-zagging through the amusement park rides and carnival game stands. He was making for the western end of the pier. His hazmat boots kicked up gray puffs of Ash behind him.

I nudged the Triton upward to about seventy-five feet. The pier’s old Ferris wheel sparkled in the afternoon sun. I zipped over the abandoned churro stands and ice cream shops until I was just above my bounty. The poor bastard was moving like he was underwater. As he reached the end of the pier, he cast a glance behind him. His chest was heaving from his efforts.

I dropped the Triton V down to Nguyen’s eye level. “Dead end, Danny. Now I’m gonna be nice and give you a choice: either you calmly walk back up this pier with me, or my associate comes down and drags your unconscious ass. What’ll it be?”

“Fuck you!” Nguyen shouted, still struggling to catch his breath. “I go on house arrest, I’m dead anyway.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said, inching the drone forward as Nguyen backed toward the pier railing. “From what I hear, you get access to books, food delivery three times a day, and video call visits with your family.”

“I can’t go into custody,” Nguyen insisted. “They told me if I was caught, they’d go after my family.”

He was five yards away now, perfectly positioned for a center mass shot. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger. But I was curious. “Who’s ‘they’? Who’s targeting your family?”

Nguyen turned to look out at the Pacific. The water was a crisp sapphire blue. “Fifteen years,” he muttered. Resignation lay heavy in his voice. “Fifteen years I lived less than ten miles from here, but I never made the drive. Too much traffic, I always said. Too busy.” He gazed out at the water. “It really is beautiful. Except for the last time I was here, when—” He broke off, hopefully remembering the faces of his dead sightseers. Grape-colored skin, blackened veins, eyeballs oozing blood.

“You can still make it right,” I told him. “Turn yourself in, maybe do some community service—”

He laughed, dry and humorless. “Community? Look around you, drone man. This world is already dead.”

Nguyen suddenly ran full-tilt at me. His hands reached for the rotors of my drone, straining to snap them off—

But I pulled the trigger before he could come close. A tranquilizer dart stuck into the man’s chest, making him stagger to a stop. He looked down at the dart like a confused animal. Then he raised his eyes, already wet with tears.

“No,” Nguyen whispered.

With a wince, he pulled the tranquilizer dart from his chest. There was a hiss as the pressurized oxygen began to escape from his hazmat suit.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at him. “The Ash will get in. Use your patch kit, cover the hole, before—”

But instead Nguyen reached up to grab the sides of his helmet. He closed his eyes, then twisted the helmet sideways to unlock it. There was a gasp of air as he pulled it off his head. I could only watch, helpless, as the helmet hit the pier’s warped wooden boards. He turned once more to face the Pacific.

A tendril of Ash spiraled up from the ground, encircling Nguyen’s head like a curious cloud of gnats. He stood frozen for a moment, his eyes and mouth squeezed shut. Then, with his last bit of resolve, Daniel Nguyen inhaled.

“Shit,” I muttered. I dialed 911 from a drop-down menu on my HUD, but I knew it was already too late.

Nguyen’s chest jerked as if an invisible fishing hook had tugged on his ribcage. He doubled over, his limbs twitching unnaturally. I could hear the breach alarm blaring inside his hazmat suit. He fell to the pier, groaning as millions of tiny xenobots burrowed through his body, their leechlike mouths gnawing on muscles and organs. The veins in Nguyen’s face darkened. His eyeballs began to bleed. He retched, and a cloud of gray Ash spewed from his throat.

Then, less than five minutes after Daniel Nguyen had exposed his body to the outside air, he gave one final, shuddering gasp and lay still.

*****

About the Author

MATT HARRY is the author of six novels, including Sorcery for Beginners, which was optioned for television by Boatrocker Media (Palm Royale). He has edited over 25 novels, created two immersive plays, and taught hundreds of students in creative fields. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons, all of whom (thankfully) like to read.

More new releases in April

Click on the link for the book, to learn more or pre-order/order a copy!

A Thousand Cuts by Gregory Poirier

Colossus by Ross Barkan

Dear Mother by Rea Frey

Double Shadow by Andrew Ludington

Hope Rises by David Baldacci

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Kill Dick by Luke Goebel

Liar’s Dice by Juliet Faithfull

Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung

Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block by Jesse Q Sutanto

Return of the Mary Celeste by Stephen Hayes

Shadow Strike by Brad Taylor

Spies and Other Gods by James Wolff

The Council by Matthew Betley

The Drop by S.R. Masters

The Girlie Playhouse by V. N. Alexander

The Girls Trip by Ally Condie

The Last Woman of Warsaw by Judy Batalion

The Monk by Tim Sullivan

The Scoop by Erin Van Der Meer

The Verdant Cage by Jess Lourey (review below)

Too Close to Home by Seraphina Nova Glass

Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg

My book reviews and more in April

My Book Review of ‘Five’

My Book Review of ‘Dollartorium’

My Book Review of ‘The Verdant Cage’

And on the Crime Cafe podcast!

Interview with Liz Lazarus - S. 11, Ep. 20

And coming soon Episode 21 with Gregory Poirier!

Plus movie reviews!

‘Caged’ (1950) and ‘Death of a Cyclist’ (1955) Reconsidered

My Review of ‘T-Men’ (1947)

And in other news

One (Relatively) Internet-Free Week Later

Seen around the Net!

Read more