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Bone Up on Writing with Kathy Reichs · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Khn podcast. Right every day if you can but
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find that block of time, whether it's one hour a day, or one
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day a week, or one hour you know, every weekend. Find that
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block of time and write. Don't let yourself say the muses are not with
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me or I'm not in the move. Welcome to writer Khan, a gathering
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place for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
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hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books
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on writing, and Renee Gutteridge, best selling author of over thirty novels and
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screenplays. Hey they're writers. I'm joined today as usual by our sound engineer,
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Jesse Ulrich and Renee Gutteridge, one of my co conspirators on writer Kahn,
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which is only a few weeks away. Now, I should mention that
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in addition to all the you know, the teaching, learning, writing craft
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educational sessions, more than seventy of them actually, we also give people a
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chance to have private consultations with an author, editor, agent, and your
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script review and to pitch to some of the finest agents and publishers around.
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As you might imagine organizing all those pitches is incredibly complex, which is why
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I always punt that to Renee. Renee, talk about this, listen.
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We call this incredibly complex. I think it's incredibly complex for a right brain
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person. I think a left brained person would have this done in an afternoon.
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So you know, you just have to understand. The creatives are working
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on this. It's just a little harder for us sometimes, but we're getting
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it done. Jesse. I've also been watching all the email you've been exchanging
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with our av people. You're going to record each in every session, right,
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and make them available after the conference to those who want them. Sounds
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like this might keep you busy. I don't know. Yeah, well,
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I was feeling confident about it until I discussed with Michelle, who pointed out
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my strategy of just letting the USB drives record all day might not be the
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smartest strategy because what if one of them is not working? So I will
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be running or if you're at rd Con, you'll be seeing me running to
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the back of every room every hour or so, just to make sure things
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are being recorded. You can duplicate as timekeeper, you can give people it's
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right. Yeah, yeah, I'll be like this, but it's not even
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being recorded. You can stop talking and live remotes from the writer con floor
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when you're not doing anything else. Of course, that's right, of course,
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all right. Our interview today is with the acclaimed author Kathy Reichs.
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She, of course, has written the best selling Temperance Brennan series, which
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of course was the basis for the Bones television series. Her first novel,
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Deja Dead, won the Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was an international
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best seller. To date, she has written twenty two novels featuring a forensic
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anthropologist who is based at least in some part on the author herself, because
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doctor Reichs is in fact a PhD anthropologist herself, with several scholarly articles on
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this subject. To her credit, She's taught it, she's done it.
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She's one of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology,
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and she writes about selling books. I mean, how incredible is that
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We will talk to Kathy right after the news segment, Jesse take us away,
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all right. Our first news story has to do with our friends at
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Draft to Digital. You may remember on a previous podcast we mentioned that they
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had acquired self Pubbookcovers dot Com, which is basically a marketplace where self published
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authors can buy pre made book covers at a very low cost, and they're
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good covers anyway. What I didn't realize at the time was that this was
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part of a much larger expansion for Draft to Digital, which has been known
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as a distributor of ebooks primarily. But now they're starting at what they call
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an Author Success division, and Author Success will be headed by an employee and
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novelist, Nick Thacker. He's been working at Draft to Digital for some years
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now, so put this into perspective. Last year Draft to Digital bought smash
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Words, and now they've bought this self pubcover company. There they were and
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are becoming even more so, a major force and resource for the self publishing
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community and of course a counterweight to Amazon KDP. So there hasn't been a
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huge launch yet because this Author Success service is still under development, but the
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platform is up and running in open beta and they already have eight or nine
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hundred active users. You can sign up. New users are added manually.
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They are vetted first, but you know, in time this service will become
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more widely available and their goal obviously, is to provide author specific solutions to
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the various things all authors encounter. For instance, after cover, you might
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want to set up a newsletter, which means you've got to have a mailing
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list, right, and you're probably in the past people of use services like
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mail Chimp. Well, Draft two digital is about to offer that for you
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too. I mean, Renee, don't you wish something like this existed when
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you were first starting out? Oh my goarness. Listen, there's a group
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of authors who were writing before the internet, and then the Internet came,
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and then we were writing after and we were like the the I don't know,
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guinea pigs of all of this, and like they just threw us into
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it. They're like, hey, you need to be successful on this internet
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website thing, and good luck with that. Anything that has author and success
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and division. If even my publisher had had the author's success division, yes,
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I would have loved it. I mean, we had to find our
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way through all of that, and many of us not well in some areas.
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So yeah, that sounds like a fanatic ideas. To summarize my opinion
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once again, Draft to digital is doing a real service for authors, all
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right. Second news story book sales update for the first five months of this
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year. According to the Association of American Publishers, which, as we've mentioned
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before, favors traditional publishing houses. Amazon is not a member anyway, adult
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book sales are flat as compared to last year, and children's and young adult
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books fell in sales by almost eight percent, which is huge. The main
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weakness appears to be in children's hardcover books to such an extent that Barnes and
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Noble has become reluctant even stuck those books because they're not selling and they end
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up having to return them. Similarly, a Big five publisher, Hashet has
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seen profits decline sixteen percent compared to last year, and they are also in
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part attributing that to children's books. Circana book book Scan reports that sales have
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romance print books wait for it, romance print books sales increased fifty two percent.
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Fifty that's more than half again as of an already huge number during the
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twelve months ending in May of this year. The press release that book Scan
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sent out says quote much of this growth can be attributed to the contemporary interests
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of new younger readers, with book talk and page to screens. Streaming TV
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projects leading the sources of discovery. I'm guessing like that Red, White and
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Royal Blue movie that my daughter told me she was going to see yesterday,
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which of course is deriving from fan fiction that became a book later. Jesse,
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how is it you haven't written a romance novel yet? Honestly, at
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this point, I can't see why I shouldn't. Soot possibly think of a
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few, but it seems like a no lose situation. Renee, same question,
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how is it? I mean, some of your books have had romance
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in them, but not category romances as such. You think that's in your
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future? I mean that's where the men. I mean, I'm with Jesse.
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The problem is I don't have a romantic bone in my body. I
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mean, this would be so challenging. But I'm with Jesse and I you
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may find both of us in the romance writing course we have at writer Con,
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because I'm rethinking my entire life right now, and that's happening right now.
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It's happening. Yeah, we're doing it. Can we live stream the
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planning sessions? Yes, yes, it will be. It will be if
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you give money. If you give money to the writer Con Patreon you get
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to see the live streams of Renee and I trying to write a romance trying.
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I like that a lot, okay news story. Three Finally, this
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was my favorite author, says Ai. Artificial intelligence is writing I should put
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that in snicker quotes writing unauthorized books being sold under her name on Amazon.
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And this then involves a friend, Jane Freeman, who, as some of
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you will know, has written many books and consulted working in the writing and
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publishing industry. And apparently it was not her but one of her readers who
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found out about this and told c an Inn about it, specifically about new
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books being sold on Amazon under her name, except she didn't write it.
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They appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence. They look like something they'd
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write. They're in her wheelhouse. Were they titles? Were they listed,
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like attached to her Amazon selling account? Like, well, I would assume
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they would link in since they're using her name. But if that's the case,
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like, who was getting the money from it? Well, whoever posted
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them? Not Jane Friedman? Well well, but as someone who has helped
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people produce audiobooks and even put ebooks up on Amazon, like to get attached
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to an author's name on Amazon, you have to also have their what is
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it acx and other accounts as words, Yeah, combined. I don't know.
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Maybe it wasn't LinkedIn. Maybe it just looks like yeah, I mean,
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it just looks like it. But yeah, I'm Jane Friedman. We
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don't need to go down that rabbit hole. But I'm very curious about how
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that guy pulled off so well. I mean, it just even if it
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didn't link with their other books, there's her name and the titles something she's
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write about, But the text she said, read as if someone had used
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a generative AI model to imitate her specific writing style. This is a quote.
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When I started looking at these books, looking at the opening pages,
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looking at the bio, it was obvious to me that it had been mostly,
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if not entirely AI generated in quote. And the worst part of this
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maybe that even after this was brought to Amazon's attention, they were slow to
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response. They all but had to be threatened with legal action before they would
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take these imposter books down. Yeah. I know, really, Jesse,
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you're our a tech expert. How can we authors protect ourselves? It shouldn't
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be this hard, Like, I don't see the legal reason why Amazon,
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after a very short investigation, could see that this was not the case and
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take those books down. It's very much like if you've ever a problem with
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like a Google product or Facebook product and trying to get their customer service on
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the line, you realize they have no customer service and you're just stuck in
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and you know, support chatbox hell for weeks. I mean author, I
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guess authors just have to either have somebody either themselves, someone who works for
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their publish or whatever. It's constantly checking to make sure that this doesn't grow
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too big, because it's probably easier to nip in the bud with one book
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then it's like ten books. Yeah, you would think you would think,
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who knows? Well, Jane, if you're listening, we hear a writer
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con support you one hundred and ten percent and if there's anything we can do,
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you just let us know. All right, Jesse, que up the
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music. Let's talk to Kathy Reichs. Kathy Reiks, welcome to the podcast.
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Well, thank you for inviting me. Oh thanks for coming. Okay,
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we have a traditional first question. If you could ask writers, no,
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if you could get writers, what piece of advice, what would it
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be? Oh right, every day if you can, but find that block
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of time, whether it's one hour a day, or one day a week,
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or one hour you know, every weekend. Find that block of time
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and write. Don't let yourself say the muses are not with me or I'm
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not in the mood. You find that block of time and you sit down
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at that keyboard and you write, because you can't edit a blank page.
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Got to produce something that's absolutely right. All right, well, congratulations,
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you have just released the twenty second Temperance Brennan novel is a right twenty second
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two see Lurking over my Shoulder. It's the Bone Hacker. So tell us
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what this one is about. This one starts out in Montreal. Tempe is
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in a small boat on the St. Lawrence River with Ryan. They're watching
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the fireworks. Montreal hosts the International Festival of Fireworks every year, and a
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storm comes up. They make it back to shore, but a man is
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struck by lightning up on the Jacques Cartier Bridge. His body falls into the
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river, and the next day Tempe is asked to help recover him and identify
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him. She finds he has attach too. She has it run through the
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FBI tattoo database and it links down to a gang in the Turks and Caicos
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Islands. She calls down and the detective down there says, I'm coming to
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Montreal. Tempy says, you do not have to do Nope, She's coming
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to Montreal. She shows up. She has ulterior motives. She wants to
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persuade Tempy to go back to the Turks and Caicos because they have a serial
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killer operating, someone who kills He targets young male tourists and he hacks off
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their left hand. Sell the bone hacker. But while she's there, the
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FBI becomes involved in the investigation, and it turns out there is a whole
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entree into the world of cybercrime and spying and spyware and hacking the other use
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of the word hacker into software. Oh nice, that's all I'm going to
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tell you. That's fair. Here's what I'm wondering, is I hear you
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give this pitch perfect plot summary? Is it getting easier to write these Temperance
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Brendan novels or harder? Some things are easier, some things are harder.
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One of the harder Yeah, one of the harder things is you have to
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this book maybe the first book that a reader has picked up, but maybe
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the twenty second book that a reader has picked up. So you have to
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reintroduce your characters, your central premise in each book, but you have to
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do it new and creatively so that you're not going to board your returning readers.
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So I've done that by Temperance Brandon friends againthropologists, works for crime labs,
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works for corners, and medical examiners. I've done that by having her
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be in a faculty meeting and she's bored to death, so she starts writing
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her autobiography. I've done that having her on the witness stand and she's being
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qualified as an expert witness by prosecuting attorney, and so it brings out all
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of that information about her professional life, so that that gets harder and harder
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to find creative ways to put that little bit into every book. We should
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have Kathy teach a class on this, shouldn't we built, because that is
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it's one of the questions we did a lot from writers, is how to
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do that? So that that's some some technique that has learned I think over
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years and years of writing. Okay, so the pr for this book promises,
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some ripped from the headlines plot elements. Can you give us a hint
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well, the idea for this book. Sometimes my ideas come from cases that
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I've worked on. The earlier books tended to rely a lot more on my
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own casework and my experiences in the autopsy room. Some of them are what
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we used to call in the writer's room, ripped from the headlines. This
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one, the idea came from a story, an expose, rather lengthy expose
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in the New York Times by Ronan Arrow and I can't remember his co author's
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name. About NSO and Pegasus, which is an extremely powerful spywear software and
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it was created in Israel. It is a no click spyware, which means
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the user of their device, their phone for example, doesn't have to click
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on anything. It can get downloaded into their phone without them having any knowledge
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of it or any involvement, even if it's unknowingly in it. And it
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can be used to spy on by governments to spy on their citizens. And
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the United States government was thinking of buying it for a while a number of
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governments have purchased it, but in the end they chose not to. But
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it got me thinking about, Wow, what if some nefarious villain out there
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creates a spyware that's able to do that, that's able to be dropped into
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people's devices and can be used for whatever purposes. Wow, that's and I
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did remember reading that. I follow aroun in He's a fantastic journalist. So
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interesting. So okay. So the next question was about being on top of
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recent scientific breakthroughs in any additional scientific breakthroughs in the book as well, maybe
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any forensics or anything else. Oh, there's always forensics. I try to
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put a different aspect of forensic science in each book because I don't think my
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readers want to read about bones after bones after bones. For bone clues in
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the writer's room for the TV series, we always had to have X number
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of bone clues and she had to do her bone whispering things. So there
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are of course bone clues in there. Like the impact of lightning on you
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know, someone who's been strike by lightning, how does that impact impact their
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skeleton? Oh gosh, it's hard becase, you know, I'm so immersed
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in writing book twenty three that I've got to think back about totally understanding.
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Yes, yes, I will definitely be some interesting forensics. Well, you've
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already piqued my interest with how lightning affects bones, so that's enough for me.
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Quipped with that, Kathy, I read about this on your website site.
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Tell everyone about the no My Bones campaign, No My Bones campaign.
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Gosh, that was years ago? Really okay? Well you want really asked
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about something more recent a T shirt that said no My Bones and I was
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the spokesperson for. I think that was for the National Osteoporosis promotion. Kathy,
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I know you've been involved in a lot of charitable activities. Can you
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tell us what have you been doing lately in that. Well, one of
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the more recent things I've done is I went on a USO tour to Afghanistan
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and curt to Afghanistan and Kyrgistan, and the other one to Cuba. It
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was a small group of writers. There were five of us to Afghanistan,
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Sandra Brown, myself, Clive Custler, Mark Bowden. I think there were
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five of us and somebody else, and we went to thank the troops for
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their service, and they spent their whole time thanking us. So it was
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a really moving experience. So in the next book, when I got home,
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I was about to start book number something, so I sent our character
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to Afghanistan. Oh wow, so okay. Shifting gears a little bit to
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the writing process. We have, of course, a lot of writers that
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listen to our podcast, and they always want to know from big shots like
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you. Are you, first of all a pancer or a plotter. I'm
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more of a panzer. I do a little bit of outlining. I think
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about it a lot, and the pieces kind of float around like minestroney soup
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in my head. Plot I mean, the science I'm going to use,
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what the crime is going to be, how the body is going to be
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discovered, what the main characters will be, the periphery characters will be,
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what the setting will be. Eventually, all of that can jeals into what
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will be the storyline, and I do some outlining. I will outline maybe
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six to eight chapters with just a little paragraph in each, and then I
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just start writing, and I know how the book will end. I don't
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know. I write murder mysteries, so it's a bit of a formula.
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Somebody gets caught and somebody gets killed for doing the deed, and it's it's
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They're different in that the solution is science driven, so I know what science
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will be brought to bear on the question of who done it, and then
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I just start writing. Sometimes I don't even know I know how it will
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be resolve the crime. I don't always know who the actual villain is until
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I get much closer towards the end of the book. Well that's fun.
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That's what we pansers like to hear, because that's part of our process,
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is discovering as we go. So in your writing day, what does your
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typical writing day look like? Are you a morning writer, evening writer?
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What beverage must you have, etc. I'm a morning writer. I can't.
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My son is also a writer. Oh and is he a plotter?
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I mean he has big white boards and color coded cards and every character,
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every scene, every I don't do that. But he works at night too.
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He'll start at like eleven at night and work until four in the morning.
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I cannot do that. I'm a morning I mean, I don't fire
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out at dawn anymore. When I wrote the first book, I did have
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to do that because I was teaching university full time and commuting between the Carolinas
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and Quebec doing forensic casework, so I had to squeeze it in. I'd
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get up at John and I hated it right for two hours before going on
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to campus. I don't do that anymore. I try to get at it
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eight thirty ish and then I have coffee in the morning. I fill my
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mug and drink one mug of coffee, and you know, I quit around
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one thirty two o'clock and then do other things. Well, that sounds fun.
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So how do you handle research and you know, in particular staying up
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to date on all of the things that you have to stay up to date
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on, which is changing very rapidly with technology. Does it take a lot
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of time? Well? I, as a general course of activities, I
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stay in contact with my colleagues and the annual meeting of the American Academy of
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Forensic Sciences. I get online with a zoom call every Wednesday night with six
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Forensic Anthropology Board certified women who are forensic anthropologists. I read the journals so
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I'm not at a loss for ideas for storylines and answer your question, and
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then I do the research. I do a big chunk of research before I
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start to write. When I've decided I'm going to use blood spatter pattern analysis,
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or mitochondrial DNA extracted from animal hair, whatever it is I'm going to
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use. I contact. I'm lucky that I am in the field, so
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I have colleagues that I know in the different specialty areas. So I will
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set things in motion. I will contact someone I know who's a specialist in
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hair and fiber analysis or whatever, and then they will send me I will
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get I'll do my research so I have reasonable questions to not waste the time.
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But then they're always willing to help me and send me so that I
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have that in advance when I get to that point in the writing, that
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I don't have to stop and wait. Also, as I'm writing, I'm
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constantly researching. It's a feedback all the time, every little thing. As
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I go. I'll have my character driving you a Saint Catherine Boulevard in Montreal
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and have her make a left. Wait a minute, can she make a
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left on Google Earth? And I'll check it out or ways or whatever.
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So I constantly check everything as I go, which is just as you know,
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you'll hear about it if you can't make a left turn there right.
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In an earlier book, I've had a character with green eyes and they're back
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now and I say they have blue eyes. Nope, you'll hear about that.
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I wanted to just point out to our readers something very important I think
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that you've said, Kathy, which is, how do you prepare yourself even
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being an expert in the field. You prepare yourself well before you reach out
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to colleagues or other experts, so that you have knowledgeable questions. That's not
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wasting their time. You're not asking broad based questions like how do you do
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this? You've researched and then yeah, I get questions like that, I'll
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get a really broad question, would you wan I'm telling me what forensic anthropology
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is. Yeah, i'd mind telling you about your website and then come to
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me with specific questions and I'm happy to help you. Right. Well,
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I'm guessing that PhD in anthropology gives you a leg up two plus all the
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years of experience in teaching, Right, that's true. That's h And I
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mentioned to you we're getting ready to put on our annual writer's conference, so
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we're very concerned, you know, making sure we invite the right people and
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give people the right information. But perversely, I'm going to ask you,
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what's the worst piece of writing advice you've ever heard or been given. Oh,
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I won't say this was bad advice, okay, Steve King, Stephen
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King once told me just get it down, get it down really quick,
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shove it in a drawer, go away, and then come back and edit
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it. It's probably good advice. But I can't write that way. I
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have to polish constantly as I'm writing, and I think that comes from when
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I wrote the first book, Deja Deet, I had no publisher. I
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just decided I was going to write a book and worry about, you know,
28:10
publishing it when it was finished. So I had to have that manuscript
28:15
absolutely as perfect as it could be before. And what I did is I
28:18
just blind mailed it off. In those days, you mailed off the whole
28:22
hard copy manuscript. So I think the habit of constantly polishing, editing,
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editing comes from the fact that I began writing in that way. Yeah,
28:33
that makes a lot of sense. So at this point in time, you've
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done twenty two of these tempi as you called her books, and you've done
28:41
a standalone and I know you've collaborated on books with your son. So this
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has been a long and very productive writing journey, or are there any tips
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you've learned along the way or things you didn't know that when you start that
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seem you know vital importance though, Oh gosh, I was unaware of how
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much promotion is involved in the publishing industry, you know. I thought you
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wrote your book and you sent it in and you got editing help, and
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then they put it out there and then people bought it. Right, I
29:14
had no idea how much travel. And although there's less travel post pandemic,
29:21
I think we've a lot more of this kind of virtual promotion. But that's
29:27
I think you don't you're not aware of until you get into the industry.
29:32
Right. Well, I think that's a great answer too, because I know
29:34
a lot of people listening are probably thinking, oh my gosh, Kathy Rex.
29:37
She's a huge best selling author and she's had a television series. She
29:41
probably just sits in her pajamas typing all day and doesn't actually do anything.
29:45
But no, Well, what are you working on next? What can we
29:52
look forward to? I'm working on book twenty three in the Temperance Brandon series.
29:57
It is tentatively title Old Fire and Bones. It's set in Washington,
30:03
DC, and it starts out, not surprisingly with a fire, with a
30:10
number of fatalities in the fire and will there be bones? I'm guessing later
30:15
I got the impact of fire on bones. We're gonna learn a lot about
30:18
the history of the Foggy Bottom area of ec back in the twenties through the
30:23
fifties. Sounds fascinating, can't we treat it? Kathy, Thank you so
30:30
much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Oh, thank you
30:33
for inviting me. Hey, Renee. My favorite film of twenty twenty two,
30:41
I have to say was Family Camp, which I think he had something
30:45
to do with. What's going on with that movie? Now, Hey,
30:48
you know what, that wasn't a romance by the way, the Buddy films,
30:51
so you would have made a lot of more money. I know,
30:53
I don't know what I'm thinking, but I don't know. I don't think
30:56
romance films are doing well. Yeah, well, looks what books. In
31:03
any case, it got nominated for a dev Award for Best Your Feature Film,
31:10
so we're excited about that. In good company. Jesus Revolution is one
31:15
of the other ones, which I thought was a fantastic movie. So anyway,
31:19
that's exciting yet and of course you know, I'm going to mention Ryder
31:26
Khan because as this goes out, we've got something like three weeks till it
31:30
happened, September one through fourth, that's Labor Day weekend in Oklahoma City.
31:34
We have dozens of best selling authors, a terrific roster of agents, probably
31:40
the best we've ever had, publishers, much more, contests, manuscript reviews,
31:45
all those things in they's handling because they're incredibly complex. You can even
31:49
get a great author photo for free man at Ryder Khn. We do it
31:55
all. And if you didn't believe me before, let me just say two
31:59
words. Food trucks. Yes, food trucks. So you know it's going
32:04
to be a party. Sign up for writer Con. If you want to
32:07
know more about it, visit our website, which of course is writer Con
32:12
w R I T E R c O N dot c O M. All
32:16
right, until next time, keep writing and remember cannot fail if you affuse
32:24
to see you next time