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Sophisticated Suspense with Gary Braver · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast, Read those writers you emulate those writers
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that you want to grow up to be just white just like yeah, and
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don't read for plot. Study them. See how they get in and out
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of scenes. See how they manage in a strip of five lineer lines of
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dialogue can create distinct characters. How there is a look at them the way
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a carpenter looks at a house. In this simple Welcome to writer Con,
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a gathering place for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world.
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Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of The Red
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Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, award winning author the wantln Files
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book series. Hey Their Writers. I'm joined today by our sound engineer,
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Jesse Ulrich and my co host and wife, Laura Bernhardt, the award winning
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novelist, the host of reader Con, and also the managing editor for the
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New writer On magazine. Laura tell us about this magazine. This is going
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to be an indispensable tool for any writer at any stage in their career.
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We load these editions with helpful advice, tips from professionals, and honestly just
1:19
tea for the soul. Something comforting, something to keep you writing, something
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to let you know that we have your back, we're here for you,
1:27
we support you. And then to top it all off, we ad fantastic
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interviews from authors who want to reach out to others who are coming behind them
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and give them a helping hand to perhaps help them for their career. Right
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Lisa Gardner in the first issue, right, and absolutely the interview. I
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was blown away. She's wonderful. Some great people coming too, and some
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of those articles. Tama or Grantham has a terrific article in there, so
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topical AI and related stuff. Anyway, you're involved with magazine obviously as an
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editor, and our daughter Katie has done the design right. Yes, so
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we're pretty keen on writer Comrentine. So you're saying I'm not unbiased, but
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I still stand by that. I think it's an excellent piece of work.
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We worked very hard to make sure that it would be something helpful to anyone.
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Probably not unbiased about anything we talk about on this, but as we
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have books I've written or the conference we put off, I'm usually pretty passionate
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with my beliefs. That is true. Well, that's the life to have,
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though, isn't it where you get to choose your passions and work in
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that world. I mean, that's as good as it gets. Really.
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Yeah, I would say, like, if you are someone who does a
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thing, you are usually a harsher judge of that thing, like, for
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example, podcast producer. I am very critical of podcasts that I like that
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are produced by editors better than me and judging their quality. So I would
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say like you, you all would probably be even harsher on a written piece
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of work than a non author would be. So's something. If something's going
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to have my name attached to it, I want it to be the very
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best version of whatever it is, absolutely correct. Jesse, Thank you for
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that. Yeah, I'm the I'm the annoying person who points out ad R
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things in film now because I just this is what I do now. So
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I noticed these things and everyone hates me. You know. Here's something thank
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you. You like that segue where I use the word noticed. Yes,
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you were decided whether you were hated or not. Sorry, but here's what
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I noticed at writer or com This here is something I don't think I knew
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before. There was a big revealed during karaoke night. Jesse, you're a
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good singer. Oh, thank you, thank you. I here's what I
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know. I know I can carry a tune, and that's that's really all
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you kind of need to do to sing karaoke. Well, and so I
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think I did an okay job. So I think it's the enthusiasm. Well
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I am, I am enthusiastic. So the energy put forth I think helped
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Dorio I did when the Supremes or something. Literally, I met those people
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fifteen minutes before that happened. We were just sitting on the table in the
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back, and we're like, we should do a song together. That's just
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what extroverts do. So I was on the side. I was on the
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side. Yeah, no, yeah, we get love. We do so
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much fun stuff. Yeah. It's just a reminder that karaoke points points out
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how little you know about the songs you think you know. You're like,
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no, there's so many more lyrics in this song than I thought they were.
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I like the idea of what extroverts do, because everybody assumes the writers
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are going to be introverts. So did you just happen to be at the
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table with the only other two extroverts in the room. Well, I came
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into the room, I saw some people who were like dressed in outfits,
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and I was like, these seemed like my people, and so I sat
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by them and I was right. So now it all makes sense. Yeah,
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okay. Our interview today is with friend of the podcast, Gary Braver,
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a longtime friend and a great guy and one of the most intelligent thriller
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writers in the business. He's got ten successful published novels. You may remember
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he was on this podcast last because he performed a duet with Tess garrettson.
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They co wrote a book called Choose Me. Now he's got a solo thriller
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and this may be the best book yet in his extremely distinguished career. We'll
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talk to Gary right after the news segment, Jesse take us away. Well,
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today we're leading the newscast with a scam warning, something we unfortunately have
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to do from time to time. I don't know why so many people send
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target writers. What did writers ever do to you or books except make the
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world better? But anyway, the world is what it is. So quick
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warning to writers and others in the publishing community regarding either a person or a
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group of people who appear to be impersonating book ends and their agents. And
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I'm saying book Ends b Okay Capital e NDS, which is a legit company,
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but people are masquerading as them to take advantage of. If you know
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anything about this or you are subjected to it, the address to contact is
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info at book ndsliterary dot com. That'll be in the show notes. But
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let me just say up front, no agents from Bookends will ever ask for
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money or a reading fee. I don't work for Bookends, I don't have
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any connection to, but I'm as sure that they don't take money, just
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as no legit publisher will ever ask you for money to be published. So
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if they're asking for money, or it looks like it's coming from some other
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URL, avoid it because you don't want to get scammed, Laura, is
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it just my imagination? It seems like lawyers not lawyers, they deserve to
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be scammed. I'm sure I can say that to but writers are particularly subjected
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to these scams. Does seem like an emphatic yes from me. There are
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so many people out there looking to prey upon people's hopes and dreams, and
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it makes me sick. I actually just heard a story at a conference I
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was at last week. The keynote shared something that I applaud her for sharing.
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I'm sure it was an uncomfortable story for her, but during her address
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she mentioned that many years ago, before she was successfully published and was hitting
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bestsellers lists, she bid for a charity event on an editory, sorry an
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edit of a manuscript for herself from a well known person. She bid a
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significant sum of money, and she paid it and then discovered that the entire
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thing was fraudulent. The charity was not involved and didn't receive her money.
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The well known woman who she believed she would be working with to edit her
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manuscript was being impersonated and was also not involved and didn't receive any money to
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give to the charity. So neither entity was even involved in this. But
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it looked completely legitimate. It took a lot of people in and very kindly.
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The woman who had been impersonated promising to edit actually did work with her
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to help her edit her manuscript, as she had been coming from a place
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of good faith. And so I think it now. I don't want to
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say it had a great ending, because somebody still absconded with her money,
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but we can all be taken in so easily, even when our hearts are
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in the right places. We have to be so careful and protect ourselves.
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Jesse, you're our tech guy. What can people do to protect themselves against
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these online scams. It's one of those life skills where you have to remember,
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like if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
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And if something is offering you the things that the thing that you have been
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wanting and searching the airne f for advice on how to do, you don't
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trust that thing. Like, good things don't come via an email from someone
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you've never met most of the time ninety nine percent of the time, and
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anytime people want money or for that matter of years, Yeah, BacT information
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and you can't. Why don't do it? Yeah, it's it's always better.
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Like here's the thing. If it's someone you don't know, then like
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they'll keep bothering you if you don't answer them, just let it go.
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If it's something that like maybe it's from a company you have some sort of
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association with or I've talked to, like call them, right, Like phone
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numbers exist. Now you can also get scammed via phone too, but if
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you're calling a real company, if you google them, you should be able
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to find a real number and at least try to get a real answer,
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right. Okay, News story number two, of course, it's Amazon back
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again. As we covered last week, the if DC has filed some kind
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of antitrust action against Amazon. We also mentioned last time that they've limited the
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number of books you can upload per day to three, apparently trying to stem
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the tide of AI generated books. Well, now they've changed their whole policy.
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When you upload a book to KDP, you have to indicate not pay
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attention to the words. You have to indicate whether it was AI generated content,
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meaning text, images, or translations. You are not required to disclose
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AI assisted content. And that came straight out of Amazon's content guidelines. Let
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me say it again, you are not required to disclose AI assisted content.
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So if AI generated something, I guess I'll buy itself, that's got to
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be indicated. But if you just used AI to help, that's okay.
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Now, how would Amazon know? Why do they care? I don't understand.
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I'm confused by the difference between those two things. But I mean,
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I guess you could ask. I mean, okay, I guess it's a
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difference between asking Amazon to write a book and you asking, Sorry, you
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asking AI to write your book for you, and you asking AI like I
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don't know, some like pedantic question of like how long would it take for
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someone to travel from blank to blank? You're exactly right, Jesse. I
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work in an academic field outside my day job, and we are we are
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facing this right now where we're having to keep a careful watch for AI written
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papers. It's one thing to go to use this as a resource to so
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someone might use grammarly to check their grammar. Well, if you could ask
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a tutor to assist you with something like that, they're checking the work that
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you you did for errors, that's one thing. But unfortunately, we have
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had reports of paper that was completely turned in AI generated and it left in
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a big paragraph where it simply said I am just an AI and I don't
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feel like I can answer this question like it flipped a first person and it
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so it kind of gave it away that it was completely AI written. It
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kind of gave it away. Listen, I love I love the laziness of
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that person to not even like search for the word bought or AI in their
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AI assisted essay, Like that's the one if you're going to save yourself that
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time. The one thing you can do is like just some keyword search US,
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right. I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm getting the
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impression because Amazon certainly doesn't explain it, But I get the impression they're more
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concerned about AI generated images like on the cover of the Rror than they are
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about words. You know, yeah, they could be more easily sued.
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I don't know, what do you think? The question is what are they
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going to do with that? Number? One? Anybody can click? Know?
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I mean, how are they going to know if you even telling the
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truth? But but then what are they going to do with that? That's
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what I want to know. Why what are they doing with it? If
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Amazon was really concerned, they would limit the books you could publish to one
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a week instead of three a day, because like, who's writing three books
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a day? No human being is writing that exactly. It's conceivable that there
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could be like a publishing company. I doubt it, but there could conceivably
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be like true, I mean, well, like, yeah, let's say
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you were an author and like all of your books had been published in print
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first, and you had never done an ebook, and you're like, I'm
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gonna do all my books on the book and post them all on the same
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day. In that case, like there could be a separate Amazon person you
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need a email to warn them of that. But just random people on Amazon.
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Uh, you know, self publishing releasing three books a day. If
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you do that more than twice, like it's it should be suspicious. Yeah.
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Well, here's the other bizarre thing that Amazon also did recently. And
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I probably go to Amazon every day, but I didn't even notice. Still,
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somebody pointed out to me that the look inside feature is gone now.
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You know, used to be next to the cover of Big Error that said
15:22
look inside and you could look the first fifteen or twenty pages. That's gone
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Now on the ebooks, they've replaced it with a little button on my computer,
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it's on the right that says read sample, or if you've already bought
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the book, it'll say read now. But that's just on the ebook by
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pages. It's smaller, it's a little harder to find, but it's still
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there. But on the pages for paper books gone at least in many,
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if not most cases. Now, why would Amazon remove a feature that's helpful
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and everybody likes it and other sites are doing it. Somebody explained this to
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me. I don't get it. I think it's a case of wanting to
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improve something, and I'm actually going to I'm going to go with the hot
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take here, I'm going to take I'm going to go with the hot take.
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I went and looked up my books because I was concerned about this,
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and I actually kind of like this. Underneath the book it says read sample.
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I will say it is not as obvious. I don't love that because
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you have to know to look for it. But once you click on it,
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it does automatically bring it up with the e book. But up along
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the top you can click to view the print. And I like this because
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people can see how beautiful the interior of Red Rain is. I went and
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took a look at that. It's got some beautiful artwork within the pages of
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it that doesn't translate well into the e book, but it is in the
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print book and even underneath that click here for an audio sample. So while
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I was at first very unhappy with this change, once I went in and
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started looking, I thought it could be better, could be better presented,
17:15
It could be a little more obvious, But if you know to go look
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for it, it does have some benefits to it. The Wantlee file series
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seems to be exactly the same. You can click any of those things so
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you can get a sample of my books. Anyway, if my print book
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wasn't there, I'd probably be less happy about it. Are you saying there
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was a read sample button on the paper book page. It doesn't. So
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it's just underneath the book, and it automatically brings up It brings up the
17:45
ebook automatically, but up at the very top, you can select the print
17:52
book. You can flip to the view for the print book online online.
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Not everybody may find that to be the case, but mine did do that,
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and I liked it. A book that you that's a button you clicked
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on the ebook page initially, right, Yes, so it came up on
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the ebook. I clicked to it, and yes, but it gives you
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both. You can toggle back and forth between the two. This conversation brings
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up the whole point I think of why this feature got removed anyways, Amazon's
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not. Amazon's website is terrible and has always been terrible. It's u I
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is not useful or helpful in any way, and so it doesn't surprise me
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that they're try to they're probably tweaking things not telling you about it and not
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that frustrating. Yeah, it's very it's a very apple way of doing it.
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What happened We used to be able to look inside and now we can't.
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Well it turns out we actually can. They didn't do a good job
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of letting us know anything was coming. Huh. Yeah, that's very possibly
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all there is to it. So we felt like it wasn't broken and it
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didn't need fixing. But I guess, like Jess said, maybe they're trying
18:56
to improve some features and yes or yeah, or maybe they laid off the
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people who did the look inside feature and so had to move inside something else,
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like it's a it's an international conglomerate, like who knows why they do
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anything? Yeah, good point. All right, you have the music,
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Jesse. Let's talk to Gary Brave. Gary Braver, welcome back to the
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podcast. Thank you, Bill, it's good to be back with you.
19:22
Good to see you. All right. I know I've asked you this before,
19:26
but who knows, it's at least a year. You might have a
19:27
different answer now. So traditional first question, if you could offer writers one
19:33
piece of advice, what would it be? Read those writers you emulate,
19:41
those writers that you want to grow up to be just like just like yeah,
19:45
and don't read for plot. Study them. See how they get in
19:48
and out of scenes, See how they manage in a strip of five linear
19:53
lines of dialogue can create distinct characters. How there's a look at them,
20:00
the way a carpenter looks at a house, and the symmetry, how themes
20:04
are built up. Look at the sentences. See in action scenes there's very
20:08
short, muscular sentences, and all the in the predicate. You have all
20:12
the adjectible and iburbial phrases. You don't gum things up with details, and
20:18
just just read very closely, don't speed read. Study those authors you really
20:23
wish you can write like or you. That's interesting? What what I hear
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you're saying? Tell me if I'm wrong. But it's like when you said
20:30
don't worry about the plot. You're not saying plot isn't important. You're saying
20:33
don't get distracted by it. Don't exactly right. I mean, if you
20:38
are a writer who wants to generate stories at a plot driven as well as
20:42
having fleshed out characters, see how other writers flesh out the characters yet keep
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a narrative thrust. In a plot moving quickly. Yeah, yeah, it's
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all right, Well, tell us about Rumor of Evil. Your new novel.
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It's about truth and beauty. It is a It is the first in
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a series. With the success of Choose Me, with I wrote with Tess
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Garretson, who was writing on My My, My, My, My,
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My coattails, I decided that I wanted to do a series of my own.
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Two previous books had copt in them, but I did. They were
21:22
all standalones, as all the other nine books of standalones, and so I
21:30
because detectives are more important than detection, as is your guy, and I
21:38
wanted to develop interesting characters. And what in DearS readers two detectives and gives
21:48
them empathy is they have baggage. They have they have some demons that they're
21:53
dealing with. I mean every novel, and particularly in a Who've Done It
22:00
mystery, there are two quests. One who left the body of Charlie Smith
22:04
in the opening scene. That's the professional quest, and then it's a personal
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quest, how do I get over my demons? And so I needed to
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have two detectives. The male detective, Kurt Lucien is homicide detective in Cambridge,
22:18
Massachusetts. He's married to Olivia. A year or so ago, their
22:23
daughter got hit by I hit and run and was killed, and they went
22:26
into a deep funk. He got so dysfunctional and so grief stricken that he
22:33
could not attend his wife's own needs and her own grief and the loss.
22:38
So they ended up separated. So the novel opens up their restraints from each
22:42
other living separately. His partner is a woman married to another woman. Her
22:51
baggage is she had a terrible upbringing. Her mother was raped that she's the
22:55
product of that. The guy who did that ended up in prison. So
23:00
she has all this baggage. And she also is impulsive. She's very very
23:06
smart, did very well in the academy, but she's impulsive, and so
23:10
she's being mentored by Kirk two so she won't go off the reels. So
23:15
those are the two characters. And she's also a gay woman and otherwise traditionally
23:19
straight male profession, so she's got you know, there's stuff that's working against
23:23
her. So I took two kind of people with a lot to lose and
23:29
made them my detectives. And it opens up in Cambridge. The opening scene.
23:33
This is not giving much away. There's a woman who is hanging by
23:36
the neck in her backyard in the hottest male zone in eastern Mats Schuetts O.
23:41
Two one three eight, which is right a Harvard Square. Why does
23:44
this woman have everything going for her? Why is she hanging there? And
23:48
growth detective smell rat this has been staged, so and it's it's a cover
23:53
up of something that happened twenty years before. And then I'll get into that
23:56
later. So is this officially the first book in a New Seat? Correct?
24:03
Yeah? And so you're the second. What is that in the middle
24:07
of the third? Now? Fantastic? But I think what you're retired.
24:14
I think you're referencing an element in your story that involves this decades old murder.
24:18
Is that right? And it involved a sixteen year old exchange student who'd
24:22
been accused of witchcraft? Am I where did this idea come from? Okay?
24:26
Okay? Like you do, both of you and other writers, particular
24:30
crime fiction. I have a file which I keep some strange and fascinating crimes
24:37
in real life, and one that stuck in my mind came out of twenty
24:41
fourteen. You may have heard about the slender Man case. Two twelve year
24:47
old girls from Wakashaw, Wisconsin lured a twelve year old girlfriend into the woods
24:52
and stabbed her nineteen times, and she survived, and the two girls are
24:57
still in psychiatric incident tutions. So I was fascinating, you know, it's
25:02
fascinate about the motives. Your motives never come through in trials or where you
25:04
know, and people who analyze these kids. I did it because I wanted
25:08
to appease slender Man, who I think would have killed our families if I
25:14
didn't sacrifice our girlfriend. I mean, it's it's silly, but I was
25:18
fascinating, fascinated with the mindset of adolescents who commits us brutal crimes. And
25:26
I did research, and there's a real scourge of adolescence in America that threatens
25:30
both the mental and physical health. It's bullying. So I looked into bullying
25:36
and did research on bullying, and I learned what bullies are, the profile
25:41
of a bully, and a profile of the bullied. Bullies go after kids
25:47
who seem weak or shy, or have some unusual features. They were too
25:52
big, too short, too fat, too thin, they may walk with
25:56
a limp, or they have odd behavior. They speak with the lisp where
26:00
they have an accent, or they come from a different socioeconomic demographic that maybe
26:04
foreigners. And so I put together a victim escapegoat. I had a young
26:11
exchange student from pig farmer in Slovakia come and live in affluent Lexington, Massachusetts
26:18
for three months as an exchange student. And she is attractive, but she's
26:23
not cool. You know, she's got funny kind of clothes, she got
26:26
strange braids, and so the kids have fun americanizing her and giving her a
26:33
nickname Lulu. Her name is Badima Lupeshku. And because she's of romany extraction,
26:42
she is unusual. And at a pizza party she is reading palms and
26:52
something turns very weird. And then a few days later, bad things start,
26:56
dark things start happening to and their families. And of course what I
27:03
did was I may hear the ultimate outsider, the ultimate victim. She is
27:07
Rumany and isn't that like what the gypsies are? And don't they put purses
27:12
on people? And don't they steal your belongings? And in the Middle Ages,
27:17
didn't they start mobotic plague? And don't they drink the blood of Christian
27:22
babies and aren't they really witches in disguise? So I had all this using
27:26
all these denigrating, awful myths and related to assailm which trial is not too
27:33
far from here in Boston, and ultimately we're seeing that and the attitude towards
27:41
immigrants. So those themes came into the book. And bullies are those kind
27:47
of alpha kids who want to show their peers they're superior, they'rey smart,
27:52
they're very strong, and they often have come from broken homes and dysfunctional homes,
27:57
and they may be jealous of There are victims who may be odd but
28:03
also have loving homes, and they end up scapegoating these weaker kids. And
28:12
so I used those profiles in setting up the backstory. And because it takes
28:19
place on Halloween, there is no slender man in the book, and there
28:22
is nothing supernatural in the book, but I exploited those myths of gypsies and
28:29
to supernatural and and lease that in and so but it's a it's a who
28:32
done it? Really? I can tell a lot of research went into this.
28:36
That's really fascinating. How you've taken all those elements and what you're together.
28:41
But you guys do it too. It's you know, yeah, I
28:44
mean it's it's subductive. You just got to know how much to put it
28:45
in, how much to leave out. Yeah. Yeah, So you you've
28:51
got an endorsement from Lee Child and Steve Berry and William Martin. That's going
28:56
to feel great. Yeah I lucked out there. Yeah, I know them
29:00
from It's a good book. So yeah, Okay, I've got a question
29:07
for you, Yarry. And this goes because I remember hearing you give a
29:11
talk at the Hawaii Conference, which doesn't exist at least in that state anymore,
29:19
and that was more than a decade so if I remember you clearly made
29:26
an impression with that talk. Anyway, what I remember you talking about is
29:30
the importance of first sentences. And use the example of Fahrenheit four fifty one,
29:34
which I've read many times but never thought about how important that first sentence
29:41
was. You know, it was a pleasure to burn, which you pointed
29:47
out to me, has so many different possible mentions. And then I'm starting
29:49
this new book of yours and I read this first sentence and I thought,
29:53
oh wow, I wonder how much time he spent on that. Let me
30:00
share this with everyone the dead woman was suspended by the neck from a rope
30:04
tied to a low branch of a flaming sugar maple in her backyard. I
30:10
mean, one sentence and I'm in good, Thanks, thank you. So
30:15
do you have a other than just enormous amounts of work? Do you have
30:21
a theory of the first sentence? What are you trying to achieve there?
30:25
Yeah, I mean this does not do This may may invite you to go
30:30
to the second or third sentence, but the one I use in my writing
30:33
classet, it's absolutely supreme, is the opening sentence of Ray Bradbery's Fahrenheit four
30:40
fifty one, and the opening sentence is it was a pleasure to burn.
30:45
Now, what's brilliant about that is to burn is both a transitive and intransitive.
30:49
It means you set on fire, and it means and it makes to
30:52
be on fire. And if you in the opening scene, you've got montag
30:57
what is you know is flaming suit gone? He's torching books. If you
31:02
burn books, you kill yourself. I mean it's a self destructive act.
31:07
And I don't think anything came close to that. Maybe call Ishmael, I've
31:14
heard that one. Yeah, I've heard that one too, Yeah, but
31:15
I mean, if one can accomplish what Bradbury did in that book that broadcasts
31:22
the theme of the novel, it's a brilliant stroke. Yeah. I haven't
31:26
done that. You referenced the teaching which you taught at Northeastern in Boston,
31:34
is that right? Yes? Yeah, for many years, I think too
31:38
many years. Yeah, how did you? And that was you were teaching
31:42
writing. Yes, I had introduced fiction writing back in the early eighties,
31:53
and that was because no one else was teaching it at Northeastern, and I
31:57
had taught really cool courses in science fiction and horror fiction, bestsellers and detective
32:02
fiction, and people were complaining, there's no one who taught creative writing.
32:07
But I had to wait until my first the second novels were published, and
32:08
I felt legitimate enough to do that, and it was fun, and so
32:13
I started doing short stories with kids and Lara. What really seemed to work
32:16
is they wanted to write something big. So I, you know, the
32:21
only fourteen weeks I Bill could turn out a book in fourteen weeks with these
32:25
kids can and so I said, start a novel. I want you to
32:30
get three slam dunk chapters and if you can, and this is a tough
32:35
part, see if you can come up with a synopsis of the story,
32:38
just some kind of a story arc. That's hard because you don't term your
32:42
story. I can do your halfway through the book. And it worked.
32:45
And I had some really sharp students, and they seem to have gotten something
32:50
out of and they when they had time, they can go back to it
32:53
because they got great feedback from each other. Great start, absolutely start for
32:59
them. Yeah. Yeah, did you balance? How'd you balance the two
33:01
careers once your writing started to take off? How did you keep going with
33:06
both? Yeah? A full load was two courses a semester. And after
33:12
my two sons moved out and became adolescentale. After adolescent age they went off
33:17
on their own with the college and got jobs. I had more time,
33:22
and I don't need a lot of sleep. I think five hours would probably
33:25
do it. So I would on the days off, I engineered jealous.
33:30
Yeah, it happens when you get older. I guess on my days off,
33:35
I would devote those two writing unless I had any kind of papers to
33:38
work on grade and all that, and so I was just able to do
33:43
that. And on weekends, if I had time, and Kathy and I
33:45
aren't doing anything. I socialized and I'd grab it when I can. But
33:49
I'm sure you guys probably feel the same way. You need a large chunk
33:52
of time to rev up, then say, then, you know, Denumont,
33:58
you know, but I can't do it an hour and do things in
34:00
between. I have to Yeah, right, I could maybe revise, but
34:04
not generate a first draft. Yes, exactly. Now. I remember you
34:07
telling me once a story about and this has been years ago too, but
34:12
having David Benioff, I may be mispronouncing that the author of the city at
34:16
that time, he was just Jet That's not right. He was the author
34:21
of City of Thieves, and you had him come in and talk to you
34:25
and class. Of course, since he's been on Game of Thrones and now
34:29
he's doing movies, right, yeah, Yeah. The thing is he never
34:31
did come to class. I had Venis and Stephen King, a lot of
34:35
other people, but close he got so involved with the Game of Thrones that
34:39
he could not pick time off to come from New York or wherever he was
34:45
Iceland and come to Boston. But that would have been a coup. But
34:50
I did have you know, Tess Garrettson, and that one real coup was
34:53
having the students read Mystic River see the movie and Dennis came in in the
35:00
next week, which was ye Boston, so that was easy. But yeah,
35:06
I would love to have Benny off though, but he was remarkable.
35:07
Yeah, lucky students probably didn't appreciate how lucky they are. Yeah, that
35:13
was kind of fun for them. Yeah, Okay, here's another one I'm
35:16
going to pluck out of my Clearly increasingly shouldn't be depended upon memory. But
35:23
you won the Massachusetts Book Award for your book Flashback, right, Yeah,
35:29
which was a terrific book. And having been there, I'm of the opinion
35:35
that anything people are calling a genre novel probably has to be roughly sixteen times
35:42
is good to justify itself to an awards committee. Or is that just how
35:46
I feel about it? What's the question? I'm sorry, So the question
35:52
is when your book was the first thriller ever to win the Massachusetts Book Award,
36:00
how did that feel? It felt great? I mean, you know,
36:04
I just didn't. It came in a letter to me and said I
36:07
cannot believe this. I called Kathy this said this really addressed to me and
36:12
said, yeah, I mean, and because they never considered anything other than
36:15
literary books that I writen by seven people in the universe. So this was
36:20
a real and this is a real honor. And I think it's in part
36:24
that I wanted. I I worked on fleshing out the characters. In part
36:34
it was also based on experience. My aunt, who would fill a room
36:39
with their presence deserve, very smart and very successful business person, began bumping
36:44
down the staircase towards nothingness. And having spent time with her while she was
36:52
fading with Alzheimer's, that gave me the idea of what I have taken cured
36:57
the disease. And while I was sitting with her, this is now,
37:00
she's deep into the disease and she's just something that attached to tubes in a
37:06
bed. I had a very freaky experience. And I was with my cousin,
37:13
her daughter, who could speak Armenian. I don't speak Armenian, and
37:15
all of a sudden, my aunt Nancy, who was in bed and just
37:19
babbling, suddenly lapsed into Armenian, articulate Armenian in a thin, little girl
37:27
of voice, and she was having a full conversation with her mother who had
37:30
died eighty years before, and this is a goose rash up my body.
37:36
And so that became that got me to do research on it and spending time
37:43
with a pharmacologist who would go from Alzheimer's wars to Alzheimer's wars in Massachusetts and
37:52
New Hampshire, and I followed them around. So it was I became so
37:55
imbued in these poor people that just blanking out that I saw their characters and
38:04
I saw and I drew from what I experienced with those characters. And so
38:08
I think that had something to do with it. And it's the book,
38:12
really does you know? It's it's so empathetic towards these victims, so they're
38:15
not any part of it. You know, it's a great book for many
38:17
reasons. Okay, Gary, if I knew this, I've forgotten. I
38:23
plucked this out of your bio this morning. You have a degree in physics.
38:29
Yeah, seriously, So you're a smart person, not a good physicist,
38:37
though. How did this happen? Well, I had two uncles who
38:42
were signed as one was a metallurgist and the other one was a chemist.
38:45
And I got it. I got a I was a poor kids. So
38:49
We've got a scholarship to Worcester Tech, which is only seventy five miles from
38:53
apart for Connecticut, where I was born. And I did a lot of
38:59
write in high school, but it was the age of you know, going
39:02
into space and nuclear physics and all that, and I thought I wanted to
39:06
be one. By the sophomore year, I realized I was much more interested
39:09
in words. I can deal with words. I couldn't deal with Adams.
39:13
And I was editor of all these school stuff newspaper and this and that,
39:17
and so I ended up having to take courses at Harvard, at Clark and
39:24
Worcestern other schools to build up enough credits so I can just go right into
39:30
graduate school in English, because I knew that's what I wanted to do,
39:32
and I wanted to write. And it sounds bizarre. I learned how to
39:40
write when I became a college professor. I learned how to read when I
39:45
became a college professor. If you want to know how Bill Bernhardt writes,
39:49
teach one of his books in class. You do plumb the depths, you
39:54
do studies. I studied how the book is put together. So that got
39:59
me to understand how books were written, and I had a great job at
40:06
Northeast. I taught anything I wanted to teach, and so that is how
40:08
I did. I have never regretted the background in science because in the seventies
40:14
I started, of course, in science fiction, which was not done anywhere
40:15
else, and to the grid of my colleagues, I considered science fiction kitty
40:21
litter, and so it was, and I was up with a challenge and
40:25
having to take respectable titles from Frankenstein on. But so I did not regret
40:30
that because I learned the science and science fiction that helped me understand that stuff.
40:34
Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Well, many of our listeners are
40:39
writers, and they're always interested in learning more about process. So one of
40:45
our traditional questions is are you a cancer or a planner or an outliner?
40:52
When I first started, I was. I was an outliner. And I
40:58
remember having ninety singles that these pages and outline when my early novels nuts.
41:05
It was crazy, and I said, now three of those I got a
41:08
book. So and then you know, and you're halfway through, very yeah,
41:14
very in different direction. So I never really followed the outline, and
41:19
so I just jump in. Now it's a dark and stormy night and see
41:21
where it takes me. But the but I do make plot points. I
41:28
do say this is the you know, kind of define an actually get a
41:30
spine or something, so I kind of know where I'm going to go,
41:34
hoping that when I get to a certain point, I'll figure out what the
41:37
next step is. But at least I have something of it, of a
41:40
trace line to follow. Yeah, so a loose a loose outline. I
41:45
think this is what we recommend, at least the loose outlines. You've got
41:47
the idea, but absolutely give yourself the freedom to let it adapt. And
41:55
my stories always transition as I'm writing them. I mean that the final iteration
42:00
does not look like the first iteration. So and then when I go back
42:04
to my original sure ideas, it never quite matches. I kind of laugh.
42:08
I think, oh, yeah, I was going to do that.
42:10
That was terrible. I didn't. That's not a good idea. But recycle
42:15
them for maybe possible other books to mart. Yes, So what does a
42:19
typical writing day look like for you? I get it around four thirty five,
42:23
jack myself up with a good cop in the French roast, and then
42:28
just read the news and get the pressed then plug right in and you're ready
42:32
to write. Right, how many hours can you spend like let's say that
42:37
you were in your first draft stage. How many hours can you spend creating?
42:43
This is this is interesting to me because I have I feel like a
42:45
finite point of hours that I can truly create beforem exhausted. What is it?
42:51
What about you? Right? Well, I said earlier, the large
42:55
blocks of time. So I'd probably start writing for about six o'clock to noon,
43:00
and then I'd either go to the gym or take a bike ride or
43:02
maybe take a nap in the afternoon. After that, and then right to
43:06
five o'clock when I flatline. And after that, you know, I read,
43:08
if I can absorb or anything, or watch a movie or something.
43:13
But it's usually about eight hours a day. I put in seven or eight
43:15
hours a day, and and you know what it's like. Once you're in
43:20
that zone, you almost forget what the time is. And if it's going
43:22
well, it feels great and looks, oh my goodness, I can't believe
43:27
it's seven hours of past. But and now being you know, because I'm
43:31
retired, I have more blocks like that at time to work and then I
43:39
leave, I leave a scene kind of open, not even not even finished
43:45
in in a theoretical way. I remember, way back I read that William
43:51
Faulkner would leave in a mid sentence. What you didn't know is he just
43:55
drank a bottle of bourbon and fell off his chair. I just couldn't come
44:01
up with the word. So, and then I polish, the next thing
44:07
I often do. I don't do a draft. I do go back and
44:13
polish and polish until I know that's that's humming okay, and it needs more
44:19
changes. I'll do that later on and then try to move ahead. And
44:22
his kind of dances back and forth. What about your own style? I
44:25
mean, Bill, I mean you work. It was amazed listening to you
44:31
at how much that sounds like me, because I get up earthly and I
44:37
like when the you know, the house is quiet and it's dark, and
44:42
the cat bothers me, but really it's quiet beyond that, and I can
44:46
get a lot done and then, like you all, usually take a midday
44:51
break, although often that means I come back and work on publishing or writer
44:55
con or this podcast or whatever. Yeah, lots of iron in the firebill.
45:00
Yeah. Hey, one last question, which you may have already answered,
45:05
Gary Bett, what are you working on next? The second book,
45:09
it's called Heat at the Moment. It takes place in an English department at
45:14
the Boston again a fictitious Boston University. This doesn't sound very fictitious. Getting
45:22
back at my colleague and I have a very very right being professor who has
45:28
murdered in the opening scene and he's got a Fijian war club stuck in his
45:34
face. And no one has a clue where this Fijian war club came from
45:42
or why he's dead. But he's in this liberal institution. And so there
45:46
is five five suspects, and as you go through the book, they each
45:53
have legitimate reasons for killing this guy, some of political, some are personal,
46:00
some are you know, he he violated some people in the past and
46:07
did not let their degrees. So that's what that is called the heat of
46:09
the moment. And the detective struct forgot who was driven in the heat of
46:15
the moment to lead this guy with a smash their head, you know.
46:17
And we're there for g and WARKLP coming from anyway, and we can expect
46:22
that next year hopefully. Yes, yeah, fantastic. You need to come
46:25
back on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you all right, Gary,
46:30
thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thank you Bill. Nice meeting
46:34
you. Laura, me too, byebye. Thanks. Bill already guessed what
46:42
the parting words and says. Laura and I both have books to talk about,
46:45
and I already mentioned I think my new book just out, Partners in
46:51
Crime on sale everywhere and paper and eat book quick explanation for this novel.
46:57
In nineteen ninety one, Kincaid hit the literary scene in my first published book,
47:04
Primary Justice, which sold around half a million copies and led to a
47:08
series of nineteen novels. In twenty eighteen, Daniel Pike hit the scene in
47:15
The Last Chance Lawyer, which became a number one bestseller before the book was
47:20
released and led to six novels. And people really have been asking me to
47:24
team up these two guy lawyer characters, and now it's actually happening. And
47:30
that's why it's Partners in Crime. My two best lawyer characters teamed up and
47:37
it's a lot of fun. That's Partners in Crime now, Laura, this
47:40
being October, I think we need to talk about the Wantlan File series.
47:45
Yes, everyone else is excited about Pumpkins, Spice Lattes but I'm excited because
47:51
it's time for ghost stories and supernatural suspense and I love it. My Wantland
47:55
File series is just what you need. The X File meets ghost hunters,
48:01
a little bit of creepy, little bit of mystery, and a lot of
48:05
fun. Great books. How many of them now? Laura? Five?
48:07
Five and another one working on the sixth, working on the sixth's come in
48:15
and that can be you writers? When was your first book published? Laura
48:21
twenty sixteen, late in the year six She's got seven that could be you,
48:25
my friends. So until next time, keep writing and remember you cannot
48:31
fail. Quit See you next time.