Latest / The Daily Writer / From a Law Enforcement Career to Writing Crime Novels | Patrick O'Donnell

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From a Law Enforcement Career to Writing Crime Novels | Patrick O'Donnell · The Daily Writer

0:09
SPEAKER_01: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our Summer Expert Series.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, I talk to a lot of writers who are just getting started in their 40s and 50s, and that was certainly the case for me.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: I was a college professor for many years, and then I made the transition to ghostwriting and author coaching when I was in my mid-40s.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: And I can honestly name dozens of other writers who have made similar transitions to a writing career midlife.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: I know it's tempting to feel like you're getting a late start, but I believe the opposite is actually true.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: You have a head start because you have a wealth of knowledge from your previous career that you can now apply to your writing.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: And that's certainly the case with my guest today, Patrick O'Donnell.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: He's built a very successful career writing fiction, and I know that you'll be inspired by his journey just like I've been.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you a bit about him.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell worked in one of the nation's largest police departments for 25 years.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: He's been in charge of thousands of crime scenes and investigations, including homicides, sexual assaults, and robberies.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Now, as an author, he helps people write the best crime-related novel or screenplay possible.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Patrick is the product of two young Irish immigrants.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: He was born and spent his early childhood in the great city of Chicago.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: He lives with his wife, kids, and three dogs.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Patrick has published self-help books under different pen names and also made Amazon's bestseller list various times.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: His hobbies include physical fitness, travel, and riding motorcycles.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: In this conversation today on this episode, Patrick and I discussed how he became interested in writing after a long career in law enforcement.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: We talk about his experience working with a co-writer.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: We dive into how he develops stories, and also how he uses podcasting in his business and how he markets and promotes his books.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: You can connect with Patrick and find out more about his resources and books at copsandwriters.com.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: That's copsandwriters.com.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: And yes, there will be a link in the show notes.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: And with that, here's my conversation with Patrick O'Donnell.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Patrick, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Excited to talk about your career as a writer, as a police officer in your former life, I suppose I would say.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, thanks for being here.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Super excited about this conversation.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Kent.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: I am super excited as well.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: It's this is gonna be great.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: So maybe let's start here, and listeners will have already heard an introduction where I give kind of a rundown of your background and what kind of material that you write and the fact that you're a podcaster.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: So you're doing you're doing lots of cool things here.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: But I would love to to dive into first of all, how did you get interested in writing novels uh after a long career in law enforcement?
3:02
SPEAKER_01: That is not a transition you hear of all that often.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really curious how that transition took place.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me, Joseph Wambao, you know, there's a couple of us out there.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, it it kind of found me.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, my degree is in sociology.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: I started out in music and I wound up in sociology.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And before I was a cop, you know, armed with my sociology degree, I found a job selling cars at the time.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: That's all I could find.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: If you don't go into education, that's pretty much all you're gonna get.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So I got a job selling cars, I was bartending, I was doing whatever I could until I became a cop.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So what happened was you know, I after six years, I wind up being, you know, a cop in Milwaukee, but I would also always help like family and friends buy cars because I was at the other end of the desk, I was on the other side of the desk.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And somebody that knows more than me said, Hey, you know what?
3:58
SPEAKER_00: You should write a book about that.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Me, come on, I'm no kind of author or anything.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: So I started listening to podcasts, and back then it was like Simon Whistler, you know, rocking self-publishing, I think it was called, and Johnny Sean and Dave, you know, the self-publishing podcast.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I think I could do this, so I wrote a book and I had to do it kind of like on the down low because any kind of off-duty employment, and this would because you're being compensated, you're getting paid, has to be approved by the chief of police, and it takes months and months and months.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Wow, and I didn't I didn't think he would understand it to tell you the truth.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: So I just wrote it under a pen name, and I called it I Never Wore Plaid Insider's Secrets from a Former Car Sales Person, and you know what?
4:46
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't light the world on fire, but I was shocked by it.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, I'm getting paid every month for this thing that was more or less a glorified PDF.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, it this is back in 2013, I think.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it actually sold, and to my astonishment.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: So, what happened was I started attending conferences because I wanted to learn more about you know self-publishing and the publishing business.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And I wrote a few more books.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: I went through a nasty divorce because when you become a cop, you know, they give you your badge, your gun, and a divorce attorney's information because it's kind of inevitable.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Our numbers are really scary when it comes to that, and so I wrote a book about that.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: And you know, okay, now I'm starting to get into the author communities.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: I joined 20 books to 50k, I became really good friends with Craig Martell, and I saw our mutual friend Honore give a keynote at the first 20 books conference in Vegas back in 2017.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was super cool.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: I loved what she had to say, I love what Craig had to say, and I'm like, you know, this is all neat, and a lot of times at these conferences, the magic happens at the cocktail hour or you know, that kind of thing, just chit-chatting with other authors.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And people were just coming up to me, and I wasn't wearing a cop t-shirt, nobody knew me.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: They're like, Oh, you're that cop guy, and I'm like, I am um okay, sure.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, hey, my character is in this position, you know, would they need a warrant?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, would this really happen?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Can you get fingerprints off of rocks?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're asking me all these questions, and I'm like, sure, I'll be more than happy to help you.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Then before I know it, you know, people that know more about this business than I do is like, you should really write like a book or books geared towards you know, crime writers because you have the experience, because a you know how to write a book and publish it, and b, you you have all this information that you know people want.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of just half-assed just fell into it.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And that's isn't that funny that that's the way it happens, I think, within many of us is we we find ourselves with this body of knowledge, and then people ask us questions, then we kind of just start finding our way in the dark through this, and then before long we have a career doing something related with sharing knowledge or running a community or or podcasting or writing books or whatever.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: So I love that I love that story how you just sort of fell into it, which is I completely relate to that.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: I think my whole life is just me kind of accidentally falling into careers half the time.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, and the thing with me was I knew one of the advantages of being a police officer was okay, after 25 years, you know, you're eligible for a full pension.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of like the gold standard for me.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like New York, I think it's 20, LA, I think it's like 25 or 30, or you know, it depends.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: But for us, you know, in Milwaukee, it was 25.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: So it was looming on the horizon.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, okay, I got five years to go.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Now what?
7:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, all right, and I'm a huge fan of you know, dig the well before you're thirsty, right?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: I I love that saying, you know, it's like I don't want to wake up, you know.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: I I retired January 16, 2020, and I knew that's when I'd be retiring for you know, like since day one, and like this is the goal, you know, make it to your 25.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want to spend any more time, and I absolutely loved my job.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was the best job.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: I got promoted about seven years into my career to sergeant where I was on the street every day in charge of the cops, so I got to go to all the cool stuff.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: If something was on fire, somebody's dead, whatever, I'm there, and I'm like, this is like the best thing ever.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: I I thought front row seat to the greatest show on earth, but I knew it was coming to an end.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's like okay, what's next?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And then this writing stuff happened.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, why not?
8:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll try it.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: Now, as a police officer, are you are you forced into retirement, or could could you have stayed on longer if you had really wanted to?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh the feds will force you after a certain age, local, like where I was, do not.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: But hey, it's a young guy's game.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: It ain't it ain't a six-year-old guy's game, man.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Pushing around in a squad car for 25 years, take it's like I I'll tell I tell people it's like dog years, you know, it kind of multiplies.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't want to be old doing that job unless you got some cush inside job, then yeah, sure.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But financially, it makes more sense to retire when your time is up with cola and all that other kind of stuff.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: That makes sense, yeah.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: So I'd love to talk about your your novels.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: How many novels have you written to this point?
9:36
SPEAKER_01: It's been what eight or nine or ten?
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm working on number 10.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, the rough draft for 10 is done and it's in the queue, the the good collar.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, tell us about the how you write.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: I guess that there's several questions related to this.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to know how you write in a series, how you develop your stories, what your rhythm is for your writing process, how many books you publish in you know per year, just all the things that you can share with us about how do you actually work as a novelist and how do you think about that?
10:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm all over the place.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm a hot mess.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I uh started working with Michael Anderly with LMBPN, and I wrote four books in six months.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's you know, that's his model is you know, rapid release.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: And when your feet are to the fire, you can do it.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, you just bite it off in chunks, you know, it's like, okay, if I do 1500, 2000 words a day and don't take any time off, I can do this.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I don't have to worry about book covers, I don't have to worry about editing, I don't have to worry about marketing.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I'll take that back.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: I still marketed every book that I've written, but you know, as far as ads go, that kind of thing, you know, when you're with a company and you have a co-writer, it makes it a lot easier, right?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, again, I I would refer to myself as a binge writer, you know.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: So I started, I wrote the last um Bruce City Blues book, and then I had this idea of this vigilante police chaplain, kind of like Dexter, but a police chaplain, right?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I'm going to book signings and all this, and people like the Bruce City Blues stuff because it was kind of like Hill Street Blues, but set in Milwaukee and it's modern.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's the best way to explain it.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: But then I started talking about Dexter and like vigilanteism and kind of dark stuff.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: People's ears perked up like you wouldn't believe that.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I like that.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Really?
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, okay.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: So I started that project, and this book has taken me a lot longer to write.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, probably it's about 82,000 words, and it took me gosh, almost six months to do it.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: So my my plan now is this is gonna be a series, and I'll probably write two, maybe three books a year, somewhere in that ballpark.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm a binge writer, and as far as you know how I do it, it's like I developed the story mostly with experiences of my own.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: I have you know, I have a duffel bag filled with memo books, I mean, just filled of 25 years worth of police stuff, and it's just you know, like bullet points, but then boom, it's it it sparks a memory.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Then all of a sudden, I'll just like, oh wow, that's kind of cool.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: So most of the stuff is stuff that happened to me that I write about.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: There is some embellishment to keep the story going.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, it's cool to write about chasing a bad guy down an alley at two o'clock in the morning that's got a gun or driving a squad car at over 100 miles an hour after a homicide suspect suspect, but it's not real cool to be writing about the eight hours of paperwork, you know, afterwards.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: That's yawn city.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm really like, You want to put your reader to sleep?
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then then there was a comma I didn't put in.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, you know, it's the end of the world.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, then my boss yelled at me before, yeah, nobody wants to hear that.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I go all over the place, but as far as the writing goes, you know, I have a general outline in my head of what I want with the book.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you know, the book will take you in different directions when you start writing it, and literally, and this is no lie, I'll have dreams about it, and I'll I wake up and I write it down right away, or I put it in my phone right away in in notes, or I'm just driving along or I'm at the gym or whatever, and something will pop in my head, and I'm like, Oh, that needs to be in this book.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: So, right away, I you know, I put it in there, so that's a big part of it.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: I call myself a planter, you know.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: I'll I don't plot heavily, you know.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: I have an idea of what the outline is, but a lot of it is just lying by the seat of my pants.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: But if I get stuck, I'll start plotting.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I'm like in the middle and I'm kind of stuck, I'm like, oh shoot, what should I do now?
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Then I'll start as like, okay, I'll pull up plotter, I love that software, and I'll just start plotting the story.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And for my brain, that works like lucky charms.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: That works out really well.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: I've heard of the in fact, I've had one of the guys from Plotter on the show, I think it was about a year and a half ago, and uh was just talking about his process for writing novels too.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: And I know that Honore Corter uses plotter some too, so it it sounds like a lot of people uh that that's really helpful to a lot of people in just flushing out their stories and especially when you get stuck, then you can use that to yes, kind of get yourself a little bit further down the road.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know if that's the most efficient, but that's the way I do it, you know.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: But it works right, and also something that I wish every author would do is when you're done with that rough draft, or when you hit you know hit publish and it goes live, celebrate.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, I drink a bottle of champagne with my wife, or we'll go out for like a nice meal and we will have champagne.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: We both love the bubbles, so it's like, okay, I accomplished something, and like right now I've got a really good bottle of Bollinger in the refrigerator waiting for me to hit publish, and I can't wait to drink that.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: What are readers looking for when they come to the kind of books that you write?
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Are they looking for exciting scenes?
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Are they looking for great characters?
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Are they looking for uh a plot to be resolved in a really surprising and satisfying way?
15:35
SPEAKER_01: What do you feel like your readers are looking for from your books?
15:38
SPEAKER_00: I think all the above.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think you know, with my fiction, and I've written, you know, non-fiction as well, but with my fiction, you know, the the latest book, because you know, that's what's on my mind the most right now, because I just finished it, you know, Dexter.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's the same thing as you know, my my character Michael Collins.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, everything everything's going great, his world gets turned upside down, and he's kind of forced into this world of vigilanteism.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: It was the same thing with Dexter, you know, there's certain tropes.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, there was Death Wish, there was you know the equalizer, there's you know John Wick.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, okay, there's some kind of tragedy in their lives, and they're like, you know what, they're so sick of all these bad guys, you know, going away scot-free because of some flaw in the system or whatever the case may be, and they take the law into their own hands, and they have they have this like moral issue with this because you know, like, hey, if you're a cop, you know, you're sworn to uphold the law, but now you're kind of becoming what you loathe the most.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: And how do you deal with that?
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's the fun of it, I think.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you know, so they expect that they mean the stakes have to be high, you know.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: It can't be it's like uh if I get caught, maybe I'll spend a couple of years in jail.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Or no, it's like, oh my god, this is life and death, you know, and just when you think your stakes are kind of high, push them up even more, almost be corny about it.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what people really expect from these books.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that's that's a great point because especially in the the crime genre or I guess police procedural genre, you know, and I know there's all these subgenres, uh these uh these kinds of books where I mean the stakes are pretty high.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And I'm assuming, and I'm not, of course, speaking from experience, but I'm assuming that pretty much as a as a law enforcement officer, any day that you're out on the job on the streets is a day that the stakes are pretty high because you're just by definition getting into situations that are potentially life-threatening.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, just a normal day as a cop, especially in a big city, it's like okay, you pull over whoever for whatever, and there's no such thing.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: I hate the term routine traffic stop.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing, you have no clue who you're stopping or what they're trying to get away from, or what they were gonna do, or whatever.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, it's like one minute you could be eating lunch in your car, and literally two minutes later, you're chasing a homicide suspect going 90 miles an hour down the city streets, and your heart is literally pounding out of your chest, and you're like, There's a part of you that's like, God, I can't let this guy get away, but I I don't want to hurt any innocent civilian by doing this.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: But is this guy gonna kill somebody else?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, or it's yeah, yeah, you're you're just scratching your head, and then you might have seven hours of complete boredom just taking routine calls and like this is god, I'm getting paid for this.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: This is easy.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can imagine that uh any given day is a mix of complete boredom and also moments of heart pounding excitement and life-threatening situations.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, again, you know, it's like okay, you know, you're at whatever call, and then before you know it, you're in a basement going after somebody that you know has a gun, and there's no working electricity in that house, so you're just not you know, it's just you, your flashlight, and your pistol, and whoever your backup is, you know.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And then it I liken it, you know, people ask me, you know, it's like what's the feeling?
19:27
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, it's a lot like being on a roller coaster when you know you're going up to the top and you're getting a little nervous because you're at the top, then when you just start going down, your heart just goes into your throat.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: It's that same feeling.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: I uh I remember this video I saw.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: This has been a few weeks ago.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes YouTube recommends the most bizarre things to us, and it it recommended uh there's and I know there's a bunch of channels on YouTube where it's like these police videos, it's body cam videos basically.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: And there was this one where a police officer was chasing this guy on a motorcycle, and he was going like 120 or 130, you know, on all these roads.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, man, the skills that must be involved in maneuvering a full-size police car on any highway at 130 miles an hour.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's insane, it's absolutely insane.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: And I just my heart went out to this guy because I thought, man, he's risking his life so that other people's lives are not risked.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: I just had such immense respect for that.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's that's probably one of the funnest parts of the job that I, you know, when I was new or newer or new ish, we chased everything and there was almost zero restrictions.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you had to be mindful, of course.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: You had to use uh you you had to be careful enough to where you didn't want to hurt innocent people, and you had to weigh sure the benefit of getting this person, you know, etc.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: But we were in chases like literally every night.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: I worked midnight to eight for 13 years.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Wow, and a big chunk of that was in the busiest part of the city, and so there's foot chases, car chases every night.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: We we would get into something like that, and it was so much fun.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, you know, we just had a blast, and then people started looking at these um videos, especially the brass and then the mayor, and you know, common councilman and all this other kind of stuff, and it's scary, it's spooky scary.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of near misses, especially in a heavily populated urban area.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I can imagine, yeah, and that really curtailed and restricted the chase the squad chases.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: But what happened then was there was this like lawlessness that occurred because it's like, oh, if you have like a we're not gonna chase you anymore, well, then I'm just gonna commit whatever crime I want.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: To yeah, you know, you know, we had this super restrictive um policy of like you know, unless it's an axe murder or something like that, you're not chasing them.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Fatal car accidents went up 400 percent in the city, 400 because that stop sign that doesn't mean anything to me.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: That stop light, please.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm not stopping for that.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And all these innocent people started getting killed, so then the chief kind of backpedaled, you know, that's all politics and BS and whatever else, but there has to be a happy medium, and it is dangerous.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, police work is dangerous, yeah.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: I get a kick out of like fight scenes that you see in TVs and in movies, etc.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Um 99% of them are completely just garbage, you know.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: You see, you know, the well-placed one karate kick and this 300-pound guy that could be uh you know a defensive tackle for the Packers, you know, goes down like a ton of bricks.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, he he'd be laughing if you kicked him off that.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like no, yeah, most use of force are ugly.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing pretty about it, there's no cool Jackie Chan or Chuck Norris like karate moves or anything like that.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: It's just biting, you know, biting, spitting, hair pulling, just it's just nasty.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's ugly.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: There's no nice way of putting it.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: There's no nice way of doing it.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: We'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a moment to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
23:37
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23:45
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24:06
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24:18
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24:23
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24:27
SPEAKER_01: Now let's get back to the conversation.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious about your your experience working with a co-writer.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: So I know that writing by yourself is one thing.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: When you're working with a co-writer on a novel, how does that process work?
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Are you working together to come up with a storyline and you're dividing up scenes?
24:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's the process of actually working with somebody to flesh out a novel?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: The way I did it with uh Michael for LMBPN was you know, he came again.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: This is because of the podcast.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: We uh I interviewed him and Craig, and when we're done with the interview, I was just chit-chatting with Michael, and he's like, you know, I'm looking to you know go into crime fiction.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty hot genre right now.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, before you know it, it's like boom, we we struck a deal.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, all right, I did the bulk of the writing because that's what I know.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, he doesn't know that world.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: He's an awesome sci-fi writer, uh, fantasy.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: That guy is a machine, he can he do and he's got a huge following, but you know, he wanted to expand.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, so through the magic of Zoom, you know, we would just sit down and he's like, Well, what do you want to do?
25:35
SPEAKER_00: So we talked about it, we chatted about it, and it's like, yeah, let's come up with this series, and it's loosely based on my experiences in Milwaukee.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's like Hill Street Blues, but Bruce City blues, and what was nice about it is whenever I was stuck or had a problem, all I had to do is schedule a zoom with them and we'd work through it, yeah.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, as I mean, as you know, and every other writer that's listening to this, you know, it's very solitary, and sometimes you get stuck and you're just scared staring at a blank screen, kind of pulling what's ever left of your hair out, and you're like, Oh my gosh, you know, this kind of sucks, but it's nice to have a wingman or a wing girl to you know help out with that, and that's what for co-writing for me, that's what it looked like.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: So, in that particular case, that it was really you're more the writer, but then the co-writer aspect really is more guidance and marketing and publicity and the and platform, those kinds of things.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, absolutely.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: See, that's really interesting, and I I that's actually very similar to the dynamic of ghostwriting, um where pretty much I'm doing the bulk of the writing for projects, and every project is different, of course.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: But then sometimes if my name is on a project, sometimes most often it's not, but occasionally it is.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: But then we're we're creating this thing for that person's platform.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's a really interesting kind of dynamic.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes a lot of people outside the ghostwriting world don't realize that co-writing can happen in a whole huge variety of ways.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not necessarily dividing up the writing 50-50, it's it's a partnership of some kind, right?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, you know.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Do you know Joshua Lysic?
27:24
SPEAKER_01: I have heard of him.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, a friend of mine actually turned me on to his stuff recently.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he uh wrote a book called So Good They'll Call You a Fake.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: It's got the movie with like grocho glasses on it.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: But I interviewed him, and yeah, he has done a ton of ghostwriting, and he's done almost every political book.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: He said, any president that has done like their memoir, he's done those.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Nice, and he's like, Yeah, spoiler alert, those guys don't write anything.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: He says, I do all the writing.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, very cool.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious the role that um that podcasting has played in your business, Patrick.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been a podcaster for a long time.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you've you've got a very successful show.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: What role do you think that podcasting has played in building your network and in marketing your books and building your platform?
28:14
SPEAKER_00: It's been huge, you know.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: First off, it's fun, you know, but it's also a lot of work, as you know as well, I'm sure.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: But you get to meet people you never would have before.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, okay, I interviewed Jack Carr, Jack Barski, who was a KGB agent during the Cold War, here embedded in the United States, and he finally got caught by the FBI, like just as the cold war was ending.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Rick Prado, a CIA operative, who wound up being, I think he was like number two or three in command of the whole CIA, and he was like in the jungles in Honduras fighting the Contras.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: This guy is super interesting.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: He he was in Cuba when Castro invaded, he was a little kid, and uh Batista was overthrown, and he was slated to go to Moscow for retraining, he was like five years old or six, but he had a real high IQ, you know, against his parents' wishes.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: So his parents put him on a plane and were able to get him to the United States, and he was in America for like two years by himself.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: He wound up in an orphanage.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Wow, you know, and yeah, just you know, Mark Cameron, he wrote the last seven Tom Clancy books, uh Joe Kenda.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just a bunch of people I never would have you know had contact with before.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: But the thing about having a podcast, it's kind of like being an author of a book, it gives you that instant credibility that you wouldn't have otherwise.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, like agree you write a book, you know, author, you're an author, authority, you know.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: The same thing with podcasting, you know.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Now all of a sudden people take notice of you that they wouldn't have before.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: So building my platform, keeping my platform, keeping my community, it's all interwoven.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: I started the podcast to promote the cops and writers books, the nonfiction books.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, I thought, you know, maybe a couple people will listen.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Big deal.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, no, you know, I invested, you know, like 80 bucks on a microphone and some headphones, and I already had the computer.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, eh, what the heck?
30:17
SPEAKER_00: I'll give it a try.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, holy cow, just exploded.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I never would have dreamed of it, but I never would have got the book deal with Michael if it wasn't for the podcast.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I probably wouldn't have sold the the amount of books that I've sold if it wasn't for the podcast.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, recently, within the last year, year and a half, I've been having film companies coming up to me, and I uh was a consultant and narrated on two different true crime mom uh series on TV.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: One was on TV for uh it was Miss Murder Simcoe.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: I did episode two, and then this I'm getting actually I'm filming tomorrow with a British film company for another true crime documentary.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna be in front of the camera for that one.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: And none of this would have happened.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: People either it's a former guest or a producer will come, you know, say, Hey, I caught your podcast.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: You know how to you were a cop, you know how to tell a story, and we like your voice.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, it's one thing after another.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: And I never thought in a hundred million years any of this would have happened, like you know, let's say six, seven years ago, I'm like, you're joking, or five years ago, or four years ago, there's no way.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: Do you think this all started for you when you made the decision to write that first book?
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Would you say that was really the inflection point for all these other good things starting to happen in your life?
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Because if I didn't kick that off because okay, I learned the mechanics, but I also had the mindset of I can do this, even though it's like I'm gonna be special, right?
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, please, I'm not, you know, like Stephen King or James Patterson or anything like that.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: See, but I would say that you are because you mentioned earlier you you know, when you're writing 1500 to 2000 words a day, I think I heard that that's about what Stephen King writes to about 2,000 words a day, which is you know what, maybe what 10 pages worth or something like that.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably it's not a massive amount, but if you multiply that over six months or a year or several years, I mean that's actually a lot of books.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, the last book that's you know going out to my editor at the end of this month, you know, I some days I only wrote like five or six hundred words, some days I didn't write at all, and then other days I wrote like 4,000 words.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was just so up and down and binging.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: It I drove my wife crazy.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: She's like, shouldn't you be writing today?
32:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'll get to it.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: I'll get to it.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't you be writing?
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is good to have somebody egg y on like that.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: From a reader's perspective, is there such a thing as having too many books?
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Assuming that they are good quality, they're in your author branding, the marketing is good, you know, all those kinds of things that we can assume would be good.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Is there is there such a thing as having too many books in a series or releasing too fast?
33:17
SPEAKER_00: No, I I don't think so at all, because you're gonna find that reader that wants it.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, as far as like too many books in a series, I don't know, the barometer is that if people stop buying them, yeah, yeah, you know, that for me it's like okay, I'll stop writing them when people stop buying them.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: If I keep up with, I mean, I've interviewed some mid-tier authors that have series that they have uh 10, 11, 12, 15, 20 books in a series, and they're still chugging along, man.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: They just they have that fan base and that community that like they want that next one.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: I was reading some stuff the other day about Brandon Sanderson, who, you know, of course, every sci-fi fan knows him.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: I've never read any of his stuff because I don't really read sci-fi stuff, but I was really impressed with just the way that he runs his whole business and how fans seem to really love what he does.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: And he has like his own bookstore, I think, and he has these an events and stuff.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: And I just was just like, that's really cool.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: So I I love I just love the idea of being able to create the things that you want to in your career that serve your readers and that you think are fun at the same time, whether that's a bunch of books, events, you know, special communities, whatever it is.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: What are some other ways that you that you'd like to market and promote your books?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you're guests on podcasts, which is what we're doing here.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh, do you use things like social media, email newsletters, uh any kind of paid advertisements?
34:56
SPEAKER_01: What are what things in your wheelhouse really are working for you in terms of book marketing?
35:01
SPEAKER_00: All the above.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: It never stops.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: The whole thing.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Yep, every day I'm putting out some kind of content for my brand.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, I do the traditional ad stuff, I do have a newsletter, I put it out once a month.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I lean into things that I'm that I'm fairly competing and good at, and I have learned to farm off stuff that I'm not.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, at first you want to do everything yourself, and then that just doesn't work.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: So I hired a VA.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, she does my um website and she does my newsletter.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I write the newsletter, and then she put she does her magic and you know, gets put out, and she knows, like, okay, this open rate, and then you know, I'll put it out again, you know, in midweek.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yeah, whatever, yeah, just keep doing what you're doing, you know.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: I I love it, you know.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Just thank you for that because I have no clue.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Then I have a Facebook group, you know, it's got 7,500 members, and that's start.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: It started with my editor and a couple of friends, you know, just like the podcast.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think anything would come from this, but word spread, and it's all word of mouth.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: I never advertised it, I never will.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: And I've got what four or five admins that help me out because otherwise, there's no way I could wrangle this thing, otherwise, it just become a beast.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's I give, give, give, give, give, then strategically ask.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like I'm gonna give out all this free information, I'm gonna help you as much as I can, and then every now and then I'm gonna ask.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, hey, I've got this new book coming out, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: I was just talking to somebody, uh, this friend of mine today.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: We were having a conversation about people that you haven't heard from in a long time, and then they just appear out of the blue and they ask you for something.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh in his case, and this was actually the case with me too, we both had people who we hadn't heard from in two or three years, and they send an email that says, Hey, I've got this book coming out.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh, well, first of all, it's not them that actually sends the email, it's like an assistant.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: So they they're kind of like doing an end run around the personal connection, but then they're saying, Hey, would you promote my book in your email newsletter, or would you read my book and review it?
37:17
SPEAKER_01: And we both kind of agree that this is ridiculous.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: They're they're totally dissing the relationship that we have.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's not been any check-in, or how are you doing, or how can I support you?
37:28
SPEAKER_01: It's hey, I've got this book coming out.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Please buy it and review it and do all the things.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: So I love the fact that you're approaching this with a giving attitude.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's what was it?
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Gary Vanderchuck, Gary V.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's like, you know, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, hook.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's you know, give, give, give, give.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Then ask.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's gotta be strategically and can't be seem real spammy.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, again, I I go out on all the cont on all the different socials.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh I also believe in, I'll tell you a quick story.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm a huge believer in making your own luck.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had a book signing at a cigar lounge where I do some of my work last fall.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And before that, I contacted a local newspaper, a few uh papers actually, and one you know seemed interested, and she called me and she interviewed me over the phone.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I've got this, you know, event, you know, do you want to come?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Yeah, that sounds great.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, she canceled the night before, and I'm like, Okay, I'm kind of bummed, but so what?
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Take a bunch of pictures and I'll make sure I'll include some of these.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Okay, so of course I had a ton of pictures, and I was shocked.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: I probably had 50, 60 people show up at this event, and you know, I advertised a heck of it.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't do any paid advertising, but I had a friend of mine, his daughter is a graphic like artist, and she did a nice flyer for me.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: I put it up on all the socials, you know, a few times, etc.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Hey, book signing, yada yada, lake country cigars in Delafield, Wisconsin.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Thursday at 8 p.m.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: or 7 p.m.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: or whatever it was.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: I made sure I had some whiskey out there and some bourbon and some donuts, you know, and yeah, and all these cops showed up and other people's family, friends, and we got a bunch of pictures, and she wrote two, not one, but two stories about me and my books.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's amazing!
39:26
SPEAKER_00: But it wouldn't have happened if I didn't try to make my own luck, you know.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: If I just stood there and it's like, okay, I'll have this event, I won't advertise it, I won't tell anybody about it.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: I just hope that people just show up.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: Yep, life doesn't work like that at all.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's just one example.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know what?
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, get out there.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, again, you know, I'm thinking to myself, what else can I do?
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So I actually pitch some radio shows.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, people forget about radio.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: A lot of radio is also podcasts, they're turning their shows into you know weekly podcasts, and there's still a dedicated fan base to people listening to the radio, you know, just it's it's hard to believe, and it's local.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm local, these books are about Milwaukee.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: There's a you know, there's a theme here.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: So, excuse me.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: So, what happened is I got picked up by a local radio show.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: So, I was supposed to do I had a 30-minute spot with this guy who that's gonna interview me.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: I wound up talking for two hours with this uh guy.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: It just again, it helps to have the gift of gab, it helps that I've been behind the microphone for a while, so I mean it's not foreign to me.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: When I was in college, I was a DJ, so I mean, I I enjoy that kind of stuff.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: So now I again I'm I'm networking, and this DJ that I did the show with, he said, Hey, there's a lot bigger show than what I have, you'd be perfect for it.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing that next week, yeah.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: So again, that's marketing, also attending conferences.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, I alluded to you know 20 books to 50k.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, then I want the first one I volunteered.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: I just you know nobody knew me and I didn't know them, so I'll just volunteer and put myself out there.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: Then before I know it, I'm on panels and I'm running panels.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: And you know, as the years go by, I was at Killer Nashville back in August.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: I got to hang out with Honor and her husband.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
41:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, just I had a lot of fun.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she mentioned she went to that.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I I was on three different panels, and I told you what, it was so surreal.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: In this, you know, this conference was for crime writers specifically.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: And the cool thing was that I had people coming up to me and they're like, Oh, I'm in your Facebook group, you really helped me.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: Could I get a picture with you?
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Could I get it?
41:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't tell you how many people is like, could I get a picture with you?
41:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, Are you kidding me?
41:58
SPEAKER_00: This is like shocking.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm sure, of course.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: This this is kind of mind-blowing to me right now.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: And they're they're talking about my newest book that's coming out, you know, when they start talking about it without you even saying anything about it.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's that's magic, man.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: I I absolutely love it.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that is so cool.
42:21
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it helps to have to have books in a series where you you are creating this universe, you're you're creating this world that people don't just enter into one time, but they're entering into a universe that is multi, it's connected through multi-layered books and multi-books.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, basically they they're having not just one experience in the universe, but they can dip their toe into it a lot of different times.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: How helpful do you think that is in creating people who are really dedicated to your universe of books or your author platform, as opposed to let's say a novelist who who writes, let's say uh romance books or sci-fi, but every book is kind of its own animal.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: So, do you think it's helpful to have that shared universe kind of a thing?
43:08
SPEAKER_00: I think it's huge, but also, you know, what's the expectation and what again, you know, what genre are we talking about?
43:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, that boils into it too.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, there's standalones that are fantastic, absolutely, but series, you know, I want to make money, I'm not shy about it.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't want to be spammy or you know, kind of an ass about it, but I want to be compensated for what I do, I want to make some money off of this, and the best way to do that is a with a series, yep, and I want to have that fan base.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
43:45
SPEAKER_00: And they start like even though it's fiction, they start kind of like going into that like community themselves.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: It's really cool sometimes, you know.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: It's like they'll start dressing like your characters or start like talking like your characters.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Or whatever the case may be, it's kind of neat to see what kind of impact that could have.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's fascinating.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: When people get into a fictional world, then then they, you know, we just got back from a vacation.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: We did a Disney cruise and we spent a few days at Universal.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: And of course, Harry Potter is huge at Universal.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: And man, the number of people who you're not just you're not just being entertained by the stories.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: You want to physically enter into that world.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not I'm not a like a massive Harry Potter fan necessarily, but I have to tell you, when I went on that Hogwarts Castle ride at Universal, that was really impressive.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Really, really impressive.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you feel you literally feel like you're stepping into a movie.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's cool that as authors, we can do that with fictional worlds and letting people enter into our universe.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that's really Star Trek.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Look at Star Trek, for God's sakes.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people are dressing up like Klingons or Starfleet officers or whatever.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's huge, and that's from every walk of life.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: It is.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: And Marvel and DC, and you know, all the different universes and stuff.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, well, Patrick, this has been an absolute blast.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to tell you, I have enjoyed this interview immensely.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: I've taken some notes and I can't wait to re-listen to it so I can pick up on all the things that you mentioned that uh that I want to go back and catch the things that I missed the first time.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: How can listeners get in touch with you and find out more about your books, your podcast, all the things that you're doing?
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Everything's on my website, copsandwriters.com.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Everything's on there.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: If you want to email me, I'm at Sarge at copsandwriters.com.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Copsandwriters.com.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I love the email address.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: No, I was just gonna say thank you so much for having me on the show.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: This has been so much fun.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: I it's so much fun talking to somebody that's like-minded and you know understands your world a bit because yeah, a lot of times people are just scratching their heads like, what you do oh that's nice, you know, like okay, whatever.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: No, I love what you're doing, I respect it immensely.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: And uh, if by the way, one more question: if people were going to start with one of your books, with one of your novels, which one should they start with?
46:19
SPEAKER_00: I guess it depends what they want.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've like I said before, I wrote some nonfiction books.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: If you're a crime writer and you want to get your facts straight, the Cops and Writers books, there's two of those in a series, those are nonfiction.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you want some kind of middle-of-the-road police fiction, heavy on the police procedure, the Bruce City Blues series, there's four books in that.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: And if you really want to be entertained and kind of go down some dark alleys with me, then uh the good collar is probably uh a great place for you to start.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: Nice, nice.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, I love that you have a variety of things going on there.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Patrick.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: Thanks again.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: This has been an absolute blast, and uh can't wait to catch up in the future.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on the show.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for joining me for another episode of The Profitable Rider.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you taking time to listen as always, and I'm looking forward to the next episode, which features a conversation with author Steve Woodruff on how he has used his books to build a training and consulting business.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: On the Profitable Rider podcast, we talk a lot around here about building multiple streams of income.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: So if you're wanting to grow your business with new products and services, you'll definitely want to make sure and tune in for that episode.