Latest / Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft / SWRT 357 | Writing Villains with Michael MacBride and Rob Jung

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SWRT 357 | Writing Villains with Michael MacBride and Rob Jung · Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft

0:01
SPEAKER_03: This is the Story Works Round Table,
0:05
SPEAKER_03: conversations about craft for writers and readers curious about writers.
0:15
SPEAKER_03: We've got a really fun conversation for you this week at the Story Works Round Table.
0:20
SPEAKER_03: Michael McBride and Rob Young join us to talk villains.
0:26
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you've ever struggled with your bad guy or wondered how many different forms
0:34
SPEAKER_03: that villainous presence in your story can take or You know,
0:40
SPEAKER_03: just wanted some different ways to think about villainy,
0:44
SPEAKER_03: then this is a great conversation.
0:46
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0:59
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1:01
SPEAKER_03: storyworksroundtable.substack.com,
1:05
SPEAKER_03: where you can bet we're going to be doing some new, fun, exciting stuff.
1:12
SPEAKER_03: Like joining us at the Round Table to talk about this month's episodes and go deep
1:19
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1:20
SPEAKER_03: Bring your ideas, bring your questions, join the conversation.
1:25
SPEAKER_03: We would love to have you.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: All right, enjoy today's conversation with Rob Young and Michael McBride.
1:36
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3:01
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening and now enjoy this conversation at the Story Works Round Table.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to this week's Story Works Round Table.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: Today Kathryn and I are thrilled to be talking villains with Michael David McBride
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SPEAKER_03: and Rob Young.
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SPEAKER_03: Michael's career has taken as many twists as a well-plotted novel.
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SPEAKER_03: Originally from Michigan and now based in Minnesota,
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SPEAKER_03: he currently focuses on writing,
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SPEAKER_03: co-running Bell Cow Productions with Rob Young,
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SPEAKER_03: helping authors publish through Salty Books Publishing,
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SPEAKER_03: and hosting and producing the Veritas Views podcast,
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SPEAKER_03: all while somehow balancing a regular job, too.
3:48
SPEAKER_03: Michael's love of storytelling drives everything he does,
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SPEAKER_03: including diving into deep and occasionally absurd conversations on podcasts.
3:58
SPEAKER_03: When he's not working,
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SPEAKER_03: writing,
3:59
SPEAKER_03: or publishing,
4:00
SPEAKER_03: he enjoys traveling and spending time with his wife and two boys,
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SPEAKER_03: although he's probably still mentally drafting his next book while doing it.
4:12
SPEAKER_03: Welcome, Michael.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: We're glad to have you here.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's great to be here.
4:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: And Rob,
4:19
SPEAKER_03: Rob Young has spent a lifetime chasing stories from his early days as
4:23
SPEAKER_03: a newspaper writer to his decades as a lawyer,
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SPEAKER_03: historian, and globe-trotting traveler.
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SPEAKER_03: A Minnesota-based author,
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SPEAKER_03: his novels often draw inspiration from real historical events uncovered
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SPEAKER_03: in his journeys across six continents.
4:39
SPEAKER_03: Antarctica, you're on notice.
4:42
SPEAKER_03: Rob is the author of Cloud Warriors,
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SPEAKER_03: an action-adventure novel, and The Chimera Chronicles, a thriller trilogy.
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SPEAKER_03: He also produces and hosts Minnesota Mystery Night,
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SPEAKER_03: showcasing top crime and thriller writers from the Midwest,
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SPEAKER_03: and co-runs Bell Cow Productions with Michael McBride.
5:03
SPEAKER_03: Rob, welcome to the Roundtable.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Wow, I was looking over my shoulder to see who you were talking about.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful introduction.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Can I leave now?
5:19
SPEAKER_03: Why not?
5:20
SPEAKER_03: Right?
5:20
SPEAKER_03: Why not?
5:22
SPEAKER_03: Leave on a high note.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: So Rob and Michael, we actually met.
5:28
SPEAKER_03: We are all Minnesota authors and members of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: And we met At an author event recently in Rosemont,
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SPEAKER_03: so it's extra fun to have people on the podcast,
5:45
SPEAKER_03: I get to say,
5:47
SPEAKER_03: I've seen in person,
5:48
SPEAKER_03: like face-to-face, physical bodies, not just the bust over Zoom.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when you go to those festivals, you never know who you're going to sit next to.
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SPEAKER_02: And you may as well have a conversation with them because they're fascinating people.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: So it was great.
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SPEAKER_02: I think we were sitting right next to you and got a chance to chat with you
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SPEAKER_02: and pick your brain and learn about the podcast and your writing as well.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely.
6:12
SPEAKER_03: So we are talking about villains today.
6:16
SPEAKER_03: So I want to kick us off with a question for both of you to answer.
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SPEAKER_03: Who is...
6:25
SPEAKER_03: The favorite villain you've invented and written in one of your stories and why?
6:32
SPEAKER_01: I'll jump in.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: I have a villain whose name is Henri Hawk.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Henri Hawk is a Parisian by birth, lives in Barcelona, and is an international fixer.
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SPEAKER_01: He is...
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SPEAKER_01: He is as round as he is tall, tall being about five foot one.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: He is suave and smooth and very wealthy because he knows how
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SPEAKER_01: to manipulate every deal to his economic benefit.
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SPEAKER_01: He has been described as so slippery that he can follow you into a revolving door
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SPEAKER_01: and be there to greet you when you come out.
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SPEAKER_01: I
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SPEAKER_01: invented him because I needed a not violent,
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SPEAKER_01: not nasty, not obnoxious character to play the bad guy.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: In the first book of a trilogy that I did called The Chimera Chronicles,
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SPEAKER_01: the book was called The Reaper.
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SPEAKER_01: And he wasn't supposed to hang around,
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SPEAKER_01: but he just is that kind of a person that he's sort of like a tar baby.
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SPEAKER_01: Once you stick your fist in him,
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SPEAKER_01: when you try to get rid of him,
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SPEAKER_01: then your other fist gets stuck and he just He just clings to you
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SPEAKER_01: and he's become my favorite villain.
8:22
SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: And he appears in a number of ways then,
8:26
SPEAKER_02: including your most recent book as well, which is a collaborative book.
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SPEAKER_02: So yeah, he's an interesting one.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: I enjoy that character as well.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad he stuck around.
8:36
SPEAKER_02: So for me,
8:40
SPEAKER_02: like the question of invention is hard because a lot of times I The characters
8:45
SPEAKER_02: in my books are drawn from people I know.
8:48
SPEAKER_02: So the one that comes to mind is from my novel, Lies from Beachwood Drive.
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SPEAKER_02: And she's also the protagonist, but she is kind of the villain of the novel.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: She's a small town gossip.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: Most people who grew up with me, her name is Esther Fuhrman in the novel.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: Most people who grew up in Selene will recognize this person and know their actual name.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: But the funny thing is,
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SPEAKER_02: what I realized is,
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SPEAKER_02: though I knew her as a kid,
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SPEAKER_02: this woman who would know everything that was going on in the small town,
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SPEAKER_02: and she would literally just kind of walk through doors without knocking
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SPEAKER_02: and see what was going on in people's houses and all these things.
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SPEAKER_02: I realized I really didn't know very much about her.
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SPEAKER_02: So the character is actually crafted from all of the adult women that I really knew
9:40
SPEAKER_02: during that time.
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SPEAKER_02: So it's funny when someone's like, ooh, I know who that is.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, really?
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SPEAKER_02: Because like, there's a lot of you in there too.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, she's, she stores up trouble.
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SPEAKER_02: And I kind of like her because As a kid, I always was like, oh God, she's coming again.
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SPEAKER_02: Like you could see her in this like power walk coming down the street
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SPEAKER_02: and you just knew like go inside the house and lock the doors
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SPEAKER_02: because like you didn't want to get stuck in a conversation with her.
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SPEAKER_02: So it was fun getting a chance to kind of invent her again and make her wander
10:09
SPEAKER_02: through my stories.
10:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: I love that, Rob,
10:15
SPEAKER_03: you said your favorite villain was you needed him to not be creepy and evil and All
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SPEAKER_03: of these typical things.
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SPEAKER_03: And Michael, your villain is also the protagonist.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: Let's see.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: Are you on mute, Rob?
10:34
SPEAKER_03: Are you talking?
10:35
SPEAKER_03: It looks like you're talking maybe.
10:36
SPEAKER_03: No?
10:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: No, no.
10:37
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: Just open me up for my nap.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Not true, but.
10:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I think there's something...
10:48
SPEAKER_01: I think a good villain has to have qualities that allow you to
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SPEAKER_01: sympathize or,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, relate to.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: I
11:05
SPEAKER_01: mean, obviously there are the
11:10
SPEAKER_01: guy from Silence of the Lambs, whose name slips on my head.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Hannibal Lecter, who you'd be hard to find anything good about them.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: But I think for the most part,
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SPEAKER_01: villains are, well, number one, they're the heroes of their own story, obviously.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to get readers to relate to somebody that's all bad.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: I remember taking a class once where they talked about the,
11:39
SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: the antagonist is the mirror image of the protagonist
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SPEAKER_02: and like there was this whole thing.
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SPEAKER_02: And I was like, it doesn't really work that way.
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SPEAKER_02: You know, they definitely need to be in conflict with one another.
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SPEAKER_02: They definitely,
11:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: are there to,
11:54
SPEAKER_02: like Rob said,
11:55
SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: they're, they're the, in their mind, they're the hero, they're driving the story.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: And
12:01
SPEAKER_02: To make that character well-rounded,
12:03
SPEAKER_02: you need to make them more gray and not just wearing a black hat and saying all
12:11
SPEAKER_02: the evil things and revealing their plan at the last minute or something like that.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: It's unrealistic and not really enjoyable to write.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: I like a villain with a code of ethics.
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SPEAKER_01: It may not be the same code that you have or that the protagonist has,
12:30
SPEAKER_01: but But they do follow a code.
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SPEAKER_01: And Hawk,
12:36
SPEAKER_01: this villain I was talking about,
12:37
SPEAKER_01: this particular one definitely follows the code of the clandestine in
12:43
SPEAKER_01: the underworld.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: And there is honor among thieves.
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SPEAKER_01: And that becomes a very critical point in a story that was just part of a book
12:56
SPEAKER_01: that just was released a week ago called The Kill Code Collective.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Where five authors got together, took one of the characters out of their own books.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: And we put them all together and solved a crime.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Which was really an interesting two and a half year project.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: But the book came out and it's been very well received.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: So it was fun.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: And I got to write the only villains in the book.
13:22
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
13:23
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: That sounds like a cool project.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:28
SPEAKER_03: So...
13:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to go with a pretty deep craft question here.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think the conversation is begging for it.
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SPEAKER_03: So good villains,
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SPEAKER_03: good antagonists,
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SPEAKER_03: we need to be able to sympathize with them or relate to them in some way.
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SPEAKER_03: They can't be all bad.
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SPEAKER_03: They even have their own code of ethics.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: And I think we all know if we stop and think that the villain is the hero
13:56
SPEAKER_03: of their own story, right?
13:59
SPEAKER_03: But You know,
14:01
SPEAKER_03: so many people today,
14:03
SPEAKER_03: so many writers today jump to giving the villains a point of view in their story
14:11
SPEAKER_03: or almost everyone in their story gets a point of view.
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SPEAKER_03: So I'd like to hear whether or not you give your villains a point of view.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, if it's the protagonist, you do.
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SPEAKER_03: If so, why?
14:29
SPEAKER_03: And when would you advise against that?
14:31
SPEAKER_03: Because we've got to make them somewhat sympathetic and relatable and all
14:35
SPEAKER_03: of these other things, but we don't necessarily need a point of view for them.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: I'll say, I mean,
14:42
SPEAKER_02: I'll start,
14:43
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
14:44
SPEAKER_02: from Beachwood Drive, I mean,
14:46
SPEAKER_02: with Esther Furman being the main character,
14:48
SPEAKER_02: you definitely get a point of view, but I weirdly dislike writing in first person.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: It's something that I don't know, for whatever reason, I just kind of resist.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: So I get away from it that way.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: Instead,
15:00
SPEAKER_02: you get a narrator that's somewhat objective,
15:02
SPEAKER_02: that can kind of contextualize what she's doing,
15:06
SPEAKER_02: and it's a little bit of a playful narrator.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: So it kind of butts up against her.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: So you don't really get her direct thoughts and things like that,
15:20
SPEAKER_02: which I like, because then there's still some mystery.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: You don't really know exactly what's going on under the hood.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: In a more recent book I wrote called At the Wake,
15:32
SPEAKER_02: there's the villain is this father who commits murder and ends up in prison.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: And the story is told in all kinds of first person perspectives from all
15:43
SPEAKER_02: the different characters.
15:45
SPEAKER_02: And it would have felt disingenuous to not give him some chapters.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: So I did give him some perspectives there as well.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: But they are really kind of
15:56
SPEAKER_02: They're like storytelling things.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: They're monologues, really.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, so you don't really, you don't get kind of these internalized thoughts.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: It's him talking to somebody else.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: And I thought that was a good way of kind of giving voice so
16:12
SPEAKER_02: that you can hear what this person sounded like.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: Directly from their mouth as opposed to being relayed by a different character secondhand.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: So you got that direct perspective of what it would be like to be in conversation with him.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: And then I think the example of a book that I enjoyed a lot
16:33
SPEAKER_02: that Rob actually turned me on to was The Butcher and the Liar and the villain in
16:38
SPEAKER_02: that one, at least for half the book or so, you don't get his perspective.
16:46
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes that is deeply unsatisfying where you're like,
16:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm waiting to understand why this person did this thing.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: But she pulled out a really neat trick where it begins where the main character,
17:01
SPEAKER_02: Daisy, is like nine years old or 10.
17:03
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember the exact age.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: And so she's just a child.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: And this is her father committing murder.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: As a kid, you're really susceptible to what your parents provide you.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: And that's your reality until somebody holds up another example of like,
17:20
SPEAKER_02: hey, not all parents do this.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: This is abnormal.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: And so it kind of made sense that you don't get exactly what was motivating him.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: But until I saw that one,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: I hadn't seen a good book recently where you don't get insight into that Villain or
17:38
SPEAKER_02: that, you know, antagonist that way.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: I talk long enough to give you a time to think of one, Rob.
17:45
Yeah.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
17:47
SPEAKER_03: Before we go to Rob, can I just highlight the word recently?
17:51
SPEAKER_03: Because I think this is a trend in recent years where writers are really leaning
17:57
SPEAKER_03: into point of view.
18:00
SPEAKER_03: And I think you just gave us a list of reasons why we Could and even should do it.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: I think it's so dependent on each particular story, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_03: And maybe after Rob addresses this,
18:13
SPEAKER_03: we can talk about some of the reasons when writers shouldn't give their villain
18:19
SPEAKER_03: a point of view.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: Okay, Rob, your turn.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: But you're right.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: It depends upon the situation.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: It depends upon the story.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: It depends upon the
18:35
SPEAKER_01: The breadth of the character, in this case, the antagonist within the story.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll just use the anecdotal example of the book that we just finished, The Kill Code Collective.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: There are two villains in this book.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: One is Henri Haque.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: He's sort of villain-lite.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: And then there is the real villain who is,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: is the bad,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Person through and through, not necessarily, that you never see her point of view.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: She's never,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: we know she's there,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: we know what she does,
19:17
SPEAKER_01: we see it through the eyes of a different point of view,
19:21
SPEAKER_01: but she doesn't get a point of view in this.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Hawk, on the other hand,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: because he's such an integral part of this, definitely has a point of view.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: For me, the particular reason for this character is he's a loner.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And so you could,
19:43
SPEAKER_01: and you do in the books,
19:45
SPEAKER_01: you get to know him through other people's points of view,
19:49
SPEAKER_01: but you don't really get to know him at all.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: All you're doing is getting somebody else's perspective.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: So you have to get inside his head.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: You have to understand this,
20:02
SPEAKER_01: like I mentioned it before, that he does live by this code of ethics.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: You might have to understand that when he's not fixing things,
20:10
SPEAKER_01: he's dancing at the Moog in Barcelona,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: and he is an awesome dancer, and he's wealthy, and he's also bisexual.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And so he is sort of one of the kingpins of the Barcelona dance scene.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Completely apart from him.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: That's a different part of his personality.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: So you need to have a point of view from his,
20:37
SPEAKER_01: you need to be from his point of view to understand those kinds of things about him.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: I think there are times when it's not necessary.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: If you have multiple bad people, You know, multiple villains.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: If you have
21:02
SPEAKER_01: a gang rape, there is no need to be inside that point of view, in my opinion.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: If you have,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: the Western,
21:18
SPEAKER_01: the bad rancher with his ranch hands,
21:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you want to know the rancher,
21:23
SPEAKER_01: but you don't need to be in the point of view of the ranch hands,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: even though they may be the ones that are carrying out all the violent stuff.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: So I think there are times where it's unnecessary,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: but there are definitely times where if you want to get to know your villain,
21:36
SPEAKER_01: if you want your reader to get to know your villain,
21:40
SPEAKER_01: and if you're going to use the villain consistently or in multiple books,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: I think it's important that you do give them a point of view.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: The point about series is kind of interesting.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're right,
21:55
SPEAKER_02: a villain that is too flat doesn't last into another book or let alone three books
22:01
SPEAKER_02: or four books.
22:03
SPEAKER_02: You know,
22:04
SPEAKER_02: it's kind of,
22:06
SPEAKER_02: I think about the Marvel movies,
22:07
SPEAKER_02: like I couldn't help but think about Black Panther,
22:09
SPEAKER_02: which is one that I really enjoy.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: Rahab Killmonger, who is,
22:14
SPEAKER_02: you know,
22:14
SPEAKER_02: he has this motivation from childhood and like you can really feel that story
22:19
SPEAKER_02: and It is really compelling.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day,
22:24
SPEAKER_02: he is kind of a small bad and they're building towards this big bad in the universe.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: So there's always a bigger one on the other side.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, that seems like that's kind of a direction that a lot of these ones go to.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: You might have these low
22:44
SPEAKER_02: henchmen kind of things.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: And then,
22:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
22:46
SPEAKER_02: you're moving on to something even worse than them,
22:49
SPEAKER_02: which humanizes the henchmen kind of,
22:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
22:52
SPEAKER_02: and it builds them up as somebody that's a little more gray than just black
22:56
SPEAKER_02: and white.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: So when,
23:05
SPEAKER_03: other than multiple villains,
23:07
SPEAKER_03: when should writers Either avoid giving the villain a point of view or another angle
23:14
SPEAKER_03: to this question is what mistakes have you seen writers make in books
23:19
SPEAKER_03: where they do give the villain a point of view?
23:21
SPEAKER_03: I
23:24
SPEAKER_02: mean, I think one of the dangers of giving the villain a point of view is,
23:29
SPEAKER_02: I
23:33
SPEAKER_02: mean, sometimes it comes down as, I don't
23:37
SPEAKER_02: know.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: You struggle between either muddying the water so much that whatever the point of
23:45
SPEAKER_02: the story is,
23:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:47
SPEAKER_02: whatever you want the reader to take away becomes lost or you end up,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: giving this villain such a clear point of view and perspective that
23:59
SPEAKER_02: then it almost beats the reader over the head with he is bad.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: These are the bad things he's done.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: And I definitely have read a number You know,
24:07
SPEAKER_02: I got to be a judge for the Minnesota Book Awards and for the Midwest Book Awards
24:11
SPEAKER_02: before.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things you get is a big box of books and you have to read all those things.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: And I got to read the genre category,
24:18
SPEAKER_02: which is admittedly kind of a stupid category because it's like fantasy,
24:23
SPEAKER_02: thriller, mystery, romance.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: Like it's all it's all thrown in there.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: And it's like I don't even know how to anyway.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: But but in there, like some of the ones that you could tell were early writers.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: The villain got a point of view,
24:39
SPEAKER_02: but the point of view was always so extreme that you didn't really need that.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: It didn't serve the story.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: It didn't really add anything other than, yeah, yeah, I get it.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: He's bad.
24:52
SPEAKER_02: He does terrible things.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: He killed all those animals.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: He did all these things.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: At a certain point, you're like, one example's enough.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Let's move on.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the dangers in giving the villain A point of view
25:07
SPEAKER_01: or too much exposure, if you will, is you take some of the tension out of the story.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Part of, well, tension is what makes us turn the pages.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And part of the problem with making,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: you know, shining the light too brightly on your villain is you see too much.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And the unknown creates the tension a lot of times.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: So I think in those situations,
25:38
SPEAKER_01: you have to be very careful about how much you feature or give a point of view to
25:46
SPEAKER_01: the bad character or characters in a book.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: But I do think there is a thing about
25:57
SPEAKER_01: villains as
26:00
SPEAKER_01: serial characters
26:04
SPEAKER_01: that
26:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think back about some of the many stories that have been written
26:15
SPEAKER_01: about Jack the Ripper.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: And in all those stories,
26:23
SPEAKER_01: allegedly in real life,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: if it wasn't just an urban legend,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: what keeps the tension going is not knowing.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Is this the suspicion that I go all the way back to the Scarlet Pimpernel.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: The same thing.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: It's because nobody knows who the Scarlet Pimpernel is.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, in this case, he's the protagonist.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: But but if there's too much light shown on it, the tension goes away.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: The mystery goes away and we close the book and move on to the next one.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's one of the biggest mistakes I see in.
27:03
SPEAKER_03: With writers I'm editing or coaching who give the villain a point
27:09
SPEAKER_03: of view is they broadcast to the reader what's coming up next through
27:15
SPEAKER_03: that villain's point of view.
27:16
SPEAKER_03: And then when they get to the protagonist and that dreadful thing happens,
27:23
SPEAKER_03: we already know what's coming.
27:26
SPEAKER_03: So we don't get to experience the protagonist's shock and true reaction.
27:31
SPEAKER_03: We don't get to live it To its fullest,
27:34
SPEAKER_03: vicariously,
27:35
SPEAKER_03: because we already know the machinations of it through the villain's point of view.
27:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Just a shrug of the shoulders at that point.
27:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
27:47
SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: It's like when you see a movie and all the best bits were in the trailer.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: So you're just like, well, okay.
27:55
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, he saved me two and a half hours.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:06
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28:12
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28:14
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28:59
SPEAKER_03: So serial killers, you mentioned Jack the Ripper.
29:03
SPEAKER_03: That's a special brand of killer.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: Do either of you write serial killers?
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Not serial killers.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: Not yet.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Hawk has been a bit character in three books.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: He has never been the main attraction in any of them.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: But without him or someone like him, the books would not have been...
29:28
SPEAKER_01: Nearly as interesting or intriguing, I don't think.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: So in a sense, he's a serial villain that has a lot of other characters and qualities.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: But I've never done a serial killer.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: In fact,
29:47
SPEAKER_01: I guess I have killed a character or two in my books,
29:50
SPEAKER_01: but that's not usually my mode of operations.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I have not done any series books.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: There are three books that I wrote that are kind of loosely connected and
30:04
SPEAKER_02: that they all happen in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: And there was one character that kind of creeps from one book into the next one.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: But I don't know.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: For some reason,
30:14
SPEAKER_02: I've always been really moved to do something completely different
30:18
SPEAKER_02: and try something else.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: Like, what's this thing like?
30:21
SPEAKER_02: So the idea of a series is kind of fascinating to me.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: Rob knows.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: I ask people about it all the time, like, how do you do that?
30:28
SPEAKER_02: How do you keep writing the same character?
30:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm fascinated by this idea.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: And then,
30:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:33
SPEAKER_02: obviously a serial killer is like, I mean,
30:36
SPEAKER_02: not that they have to exist in multiple books,
30:38
SPEAKER_02: but they could certainly survive just one book entirely.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: But I don't know.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the dangers that I fear with a villain is,
30:50
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:50
SPEAKER_02: giving too much of a platform to something that seems like Making it seem like
30:56
SPEAKER_02: a good idea or something,
30:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:58
SPEAKER_02: like they,
30:58
SPEAKER_02: some of their,
30:59
SPEAKER_02: like you want to know like what motivated,
31:01
SPEAKER_02: what motivated these people to kill these people.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, they're mentally ill. Like there's something wrong with them.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
31:08
SPEAKER_02: it's like,
31:09
SPEAKER_02: I don't really care if they have a manifesto or not,
31:11
SPEAKER_02: you know, there's, so I don't know.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: They don't seem super interesting to me from that standpoint, I guess.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, and it's not just killers.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is people that,
31:33
SPEAKER_01: There's a book that I've thought about writing for a long time.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: It's about domestic terrorism.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: And I just can't bring myself to write it because I don't want to give somebody an idea.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: So I think authors of
31:51
SPEAKER_01: Particularly authors of fiction that deal in areas where we have killers
31:59
SPEAKER_01: and violence and terrible things happening have a moral obligation to
32:11
SPEAKER_01: figure out
32:11
SPEAKER_01: a way to temper the bad so that it is understandable that it is fictional.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: And it is also understandable that in real life, it's not a really good idea.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: Well, and you and I, I think both are fairly hopeful people.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, so that,
32:28
SPEAKER_02: that may be us being anomalies,
32:30
SPEAKER_02: but there certainly are some pretty, some pretty dark books out there for sure.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
32:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
32:38
SPEAKER_03: So as readers,
32:40
SPEAKER_03: then maybe not as writers in my mystery series,
32:44
SPEAKER_03: I've got a different villain in each book.
32:47
SPEAKER_03: Um, So maybe not serial killers,
32:49
SPEAKER_03: but serial villains like Hannibal Lecter, Moriarty, Voldemort come to mind.
32:56
SPEAKER_03: So what are your thoughts on serial villains or series villains and issues of,
33:06
SPEAKER_03: you know,
33:07
SPEAKER_03: stakes and tension,
33:09
SPEAKER_03: escalation over the series,
33:11
SPEAKER_03: keeping them interesting,
33:14
SPEAKER_03: And significant, just what have you encountered as a reader and writer?
33:21
SPEAKER_03: What are your thoughts on that?
33:22
SPEAKER_03: And Kathryn, jump in any time you know.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: I have a question, but it'll wait.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: It'll wait until after you answer that one.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: All right.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Tension is the magic word for writers and for readers, even though readers may not realize it.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: So the stakes always have to get bigger and bigger.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: I think it's important that if you have a serial villain,
33:53
SPEAKER_01: and I use the villain that can be anywhere from Hannibal Lecter to the woman who was
34:05
SPEAKER_01: the main character in The Devil Wears Prada, or you're hideous.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, mother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner that ruins everybody's holiday.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: So any of those can be a villain in my book.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: But I think if you're going to have one that is going to be repetitive throughout,
34:29
SPEAKER_01: first, you have to make them human.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Second,
34:32
SPEAKER_01: I think you have to give them faults and you also have to give them Something that
34:39
SPEAKER_01: the reader can identify with.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: Because I think if all they have is faults, you're going to wear out the reader.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God, he's back.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Or she's back.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: I've had enough of the gossip from Beachwood Drive.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: You've got to give them some reason to be able to connect with that person so
35:04
SPEAKER_01: that they can continue to At least acknowledge them as an active and good character
35:11
SPEAKER_01: in your books.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: And to do that, in addition to making them human, you've always got to ratchet up the stakes.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: You've got to raise the tension.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: The bar has to go up, I think, with every time.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: And I think at some point in time, if it's a one-on-one, like Moriarty and... Yeah.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Mr. Holmes.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mr. Sherlock.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: Then you need to have the mystery
35:47
SPEAKER_01: of both knowing the villain,
35:49
SPEAKER_01: but also the unknown between the two of them.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: I think that's an important aspect of it.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: The Moriarty Holmes thing never really got explained why that came about until later
36:02
SPEAKER_01: on in a series of books.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think after it did,
36:08
SPEAKER_01: it sort of went,
36:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:10
SPEAKER_01: and then it sort of ended and they jumped off the bridge,
36:14
SPEAKER_01: you know, or over the falls.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: I think, I mean, I think you're right.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: You need to understand the villain to some level if they're going to reappear.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: But I think as the writer, you need to hold some of those cards back.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: Like they can't know everything in book one.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: There needs to be an unpredictability about them.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: And with the examples of just famous ones like Moriarty and Hannibal Lecter,
36:46
SPEAKER_02: the question is like, For Moriarty, it's like, is he behind this?
36:50
SPEAKER_02: Did he do it?
36:51
SPEAKER_02: Not all the time.
36:52
SPEAKER_02: You know, like, sometimes he's behind it.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he had some piece of it.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Maybe, you know, in the grander scheme of it, he's behind the inner workings.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: But in that particular thing, no, he wasn't.
37:03
SPEAKER_02: So as a reader,
37:04
SPEAKER_02: you're like,
37:05
SPEAKER_02: you have the seed planted, but you're not sure that that's where it's going.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: In the case of Hannibal Lecter, You know, I mean, he is a wild card.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: Is he going to help out?
37:15
SPEAKER_02: Is he going to do something that is completely self-serving?
37:18
SPEAKER_02: Or every once in a while, he, like, just gives something away.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, wow.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: You know,
37:23
SPEAKER_02: and as a reader,
37:24
SPEAKER_02: you're kind of,
37:25
SPEAKER_02: you're left wondering, you know, how he's going to handle that situation.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean,
37:30
SPEAKER_02: I think for me,
37:32
SPEAKER_02: that's what makes a good serial villain is one that,
37:36
SPEAKER_02: Feels plausible, understandable, and yet also completely unpredictable.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: So that when they show up, you don't know what's going to happen.
37:45
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:46
SPEAKER_03: And I think that goes back to making a case for not giving your villain a point of view.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: Because,
37:53
SPEAKER_03: you know,
37:53
SPEAKER_03: thinking about what we learn about these characters,
37:58
SPEAKER_03: how much we learn,
37:59
SPEAKER_03: how long it takes over the course of a series to learn the little bit of backstory
38:04
SPEAKER_03: or Reasoning that we do get behind this character's,
38:10
SPEAKER_03: you know, history, motivations, et cetera.
38:14
SPEAKER_03: If we had a point of view besides potentially ruining our attention in the story,
38:22
SPEAKER_03: I think we would diminish the mystery,
38:26
SPEAKER_03: which would then diminish our curiosity and fascination with the villain,
38:32
SPEAKER_03: you know,
38:32
SPEAKER_03: and thinking of like, um,
38:34
SPEAKER_03: Harry Potter,
38:35
SPEAKER_03: we never go into Voldemort's head,
38:37
SPEAKER_03: but we learn some of his backstory through devices like the diary,
38:42
SPEAKER_03: like the pensieve.
38:43
SPEAKER_03: So there are these moments where we kind of get to go back in time and learn
38:50
SPEAKER_03: about this character in different ways,
38:53
SPEAKER_03: which gives us that kind of boost to the fascination.
38:58
SPEAKER_03: It's like just enough when we need it the most to keep us invested
39:03
SPEAKER_03: In this character and to prevent him from just being the black cat.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I had the exact same examples going around.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm wondering if it's traceable back to film,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: to visual media, to wanting that point of view from the villain.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the way that visual media has to do that a little bit more.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: You know,
39:32
SPEAKER_00: they show the scene from different perspectives so that they can actually show
39:36
SPEAKER_00: the villain.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering if that temptation to dive into their head comes more from
39:42
SPEAKER_00: that platform than from literature.
39:45
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to think of things that predate film that have an easy perspective from the villain.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Cause I think there's some benefit to that constraint.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: Like Alida,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: you were talking about for me,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: the Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter is just a really good one for me
40:05
SPEAKER_00: to it's like concrete, right?
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Like you get that backstory of the villain,
40:10
SPEAKER_00: you get his childhood,
40:11
SPEAKER_00: you get all this pain and anguish and you get that emotional understanding
40:15
SPEAKER_00: of what may have happened to him.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: But he has no point of view.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: It's all through Harry's interaction.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: So it's tempered by Harry's empathy.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: So it's a different experience from the reader because Harry's reading it as a boy
40:30
SPEAKER_00: without a family, as a boy who So he's got that same empathetic connection.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: So I think if we'd gotten it from Voldemort's perspective,
40:39
SPEAKER_00: it would have completely changed the way we interacted with him and the way that
40:43
SPEAKER_00: the story played out.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that maybe people need to think more of is
40:47
SPEAKER_00: if I impose this constraint,
40:50
SPEAKER_00: how does that Affect the story that I'm wanting to tell rather than,
40:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're both on the side of write it first, right?
40:58
SPEAKER_00: And then look at it and say, wait, if I don't do this, what changes?
41:02
SPEAKER_00: Or if I change this so that he's not speaking, you know, that sort of a thing.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: So I'm wondering how much of that comes from that,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: current media and not thinking in constraint, but more in, you know, opening it up.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of that,
41:17
SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of the trends in fiction that we see today,
41:23
SPEAKER_03: the recent trends come from the vast quantities of visual storytelling
41:30
SPEAKER_03: that we all consume through television and film, you know?
41:35
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to be on a panel of authors where you do not get examples from TV or the big screen.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: Or something when they're making a point about something.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: So obviously it does affect what we see is it affects how we write.
41:57
SPEAKER_02: I'll throw out a...
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Kind of a weird example, but it's my very favorite book, which is Don Quixote.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: So like we're talking 1609 and 1615, like ancient books, right?
42:08
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, lived during the time of Shakespeare.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: They're contemporaries, which is bizarre to think about.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: But in those books,
42:15
SPEAKER_02: in that book,
42:16
SPEAKER_02: and it's really two books that was written with a gap in there because you want
42:19
SPEAKER_02: to be a playwright, you end up with Very strange villains.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: Like there's the Duke and the Duchess in part two,
42:27
SPEAKER_02: and they are just rich people with too much time and money on their hands.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: And so they just mess with Sancho and Don Quixote and,
42:35
SPEAKER_02: you know,
42:36
SPEAKER_02: they just make them perform tasks and kind of go through things
42:40
SPEAKER_02: for no reason whatsoever.
42:42
SPEAKER_02: And you don't get the perspective,
42:43
SPEAKER_02: but it's pretty clear,
42:44
SPEAKER_02: like, these are bad people, you know, and you kind of see the other side of that.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: But at the core of that second book,
42:53
SPEAKER_02: Really kind of the world is kind of the villain because they all know what happened
42:58
SPEAKER_02: in the first book.
43:00
SPEAKER_02: And so everybody who encounters these guys know what happened.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: In that first book,
43:05
SPEAKER_02: their internal thoughts,
43:06
SPEAKER_02: all of this stuff, and they poke fun at them and they mock them as well.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: And so it's kind of a neat trick when you don't get that perspective and you're also
43:16
SPEAKER_02: then kind of forced to be the villain in a weird way because you're laughing and
43:20
SPEAKER_02: then you're going like, why am I laughing at this?
43:22
SPEAKER_02: This is terrible.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: They shouldn't be treating people this way.
43:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there are a lot of great examples we can learn from older
43:34
SPEAKER_03: Literature, you know, like in True Grit, we've got, what was her name?
43:42
SPEAKER_03: The protagonist.
43:45
SPEAKER_03: But anyway,
43:46
SPEAKER_03: the protagonist,
43:48
SPEAKER_03: whose name is right now eluding me,
43:51
SPEAKER_03: is this like 13 year old girl who decides she's going to avenge her father's, well,
43:57
SPEAKER_03: not avenge,
43:57
SPEAKER_03: but she's going to bring the man who killed her father to To justice,
44:01
SPEAKER_03: she's going to track him down and capture him and,
44:04
SPEAKER_03: you know, enlists Rooster Cogburn's help to do this.
44:09
SPEAKER_03: And the whole time,
44:11
SPEAKER_03: the villain,
44:11
SPEAKER_03: the bad guy is the one who killed her father,
44:14
SPEAKER_03: but she never encounters him in person.
44:18
SPEAKER_03: He's almost a specter and she's in pursuit of him.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: And in the meantime, she's up against people, you know, uh, Underestimating and misjudging her.
44:30
SPEAKER_03: She's up against hurdles to getting her mission started.
44:33
SPEAKER_03: And then there's distance and the elements in nature.
44:38
SPEAKER_03: And there's,
44:38
SPEAKER_03: you know,
44:39
SPEAKER_03: and in the end,
44:39
SPEAKER_03: when she finally does encounter him,
44:43
SPEAKER_03: ultimately it's the rattlesnake that,
44:46
SPEAKER_03: you know, kind of brings her down that is the worst consequence of this mission.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: And so the villain is more of an idea.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: There's no idea than a presence on the page through the majority of this story,
45:03
SPEAKER_03: and it still works.
45:06
SPEAKER_03: The story is driven, the stakes and tension are there.
45:09
SPEAKER_03: And I think if writers wanting to learn craft and grapple
45:15
SPEAKER_03: with these questions turned some of these older novels,
45:20
SPEAKER_03: mid-century and beyond,
45:21
SPEAKER_03: some of the real classics like Don Quixote,
45:26
SPEAKER_03: Their minds will be open to so many possibilities that we don't see
45:30
SPEAKER_03: in mainstream media.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: It's hard, though.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you write what you ingest,
45:37
SPEAKER_02: you know, and if you ingest current books, you pick up those trends.
45:41
SPEAKER_02: And like when you're starting as a writer, I mean, you mimic your favorite writers.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: You know,
45:47
SPEAKER_02: it becomes part of you one way or another,
45:49
SPEAKER_02: I think,
45:50
SPEAKER_02: whether you're actually watching the TV shows and going like, oh,
45:53
SPEAKER_02: I can do this in writing or,
45:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
45:56
SPEAKER_02: a film or you're just reading a book that is current that moves you
46:00
SPEAKER_02: for whatever reason.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: So what were you going to say, Rob?
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: No, I was just musing on this conversation.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the things that That I,
46:13
SPEAKER_01: as the old guy on the podcast,
46:15
SPEAKER_01: can say with a straight face is that we have to be careful about being too anchored
46:21
SPEAKER_01: in what has been in the past because what we do is forever changing.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: It is, I mean,
46:31
SPEAKER_01: the writing and the book industry and the craft has actually evolved in
46:36
SPEAKER_01: the last two decades in unfathomable ways.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: Magnitude.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, we can learn a lot by going back to the classics.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: But we also can learn that if the classics,
46:53
SPEAKER_01: some of the classics were written today, they would never get published.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: We would have never heard of the Bronte sisters, as an example.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: Oh, they would have been self-published.
47:06
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: In today's 30-second world,
47:13
SPEAKER_01: nobody's going to read Wuthering Heights to listen to 60 pages
47:17
SPEAKER_01: of flowery description before you ever get to a story.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: We've got to be open to the fact that we are in the midst of a fairly significant change.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: We're in a balancing act.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to be
47:40
SPEAKER_01: Contemporary and we're trying to abide by the traded true of the past and like our stories.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: There's a tension there.
47:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:53
SPEAKER_03: I think personally,
47:56
SPEAKER_03: every story I set out to write makes demands on me,
48:00
SPEAKER_03: whether it's first person or third person or multiple third person point of view.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: And so my aim is to be true to the needs.
48:09
SPEAKER_03: Of that story.
48:10
SPEAKER_03: And to your point, Rob, I think I agree with you.
48:14
SPEAKER_03: And I also think that the way media works today with algorithms and AI,
48:20
SPEAKER_03: and you know,
48:22
SPEAKER_03: you like this,
48:22
SPEAKER_03: so you're also going to like that,
48:24
SPEAKER_03: whether it's on Amazon or Netflix, we can end up in a kind of echo chamber.
48:29
SPEAKER_03: And if we can be grounded in today,
48:33
SPEAKER_03: but also plant some roots in the tradition of literature,
48:38
SPEAKER_03: then We've got more opportunity to explore,
48:43
SPEAKER_03: more influences to consider and choose from that can
48:49
SPEAKER_03: then help further our own creativity.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember who it was.
48:55
SPEAKER_02: It was probably a professor I had or something like that,
48:58
SPEAKER_02: or who knows,
48:59
SPEAKER_02: maybe it was An author doing a talk,
49:01
SPEAKER_02: but they said, like,
49:02
SPEAKER_02: read in your genre, like,
49:04
SPEAKER_02: know the other people writing that,
49:05
SPEAKER_02: but also read deeply and across genres,
49:08
SPEAKER_02: like, because you can get stuck in that echo chamber.
49:11
SPEAKER_02: Like, this is what all mysteries sound like in the last 20 years.
49:14
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
49:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is what I need to write.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, at the minute.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
49:20
SPEAKER_02: But the minute you kind of stretch outside of that and you're like,
49:23
SPEAKER_02: okay, what is, you know, what does a true crime nonfiction look like?
49:27
SPEAKER_02: What does this look like?
49:28
SPEAKER_02: You know, and you can kind of draw some of those things in it.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: If nothing else, it muddies your voice and your perspective a bit more.
49:36
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I think you're right.
49:38
SPEAKER_02: You need to know what you're writing and how it serves the story,
49:41
SPEAKER_02: but then also what the other possibilities are outside of the obvious things.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: I think we get really stuck on villains being a person.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: And like,
49:53
SPEAKER_00: I like that example of True Grit, Alida,
49:56
SPEAKER_00: where you're talking about,
49:57
SPEAKER_00: you know, all these different things that she runs up against.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: And it brings me back to, I wanted to talk really quick about, Rob said villain light.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like There's so much value in recognizing when you have someone
50:09
SPEAKER_00: who rubs up in conflicts with the protagonist and causes them to grow or change
50:13
SPEAKER_00: or it affects the story,
50:15
SPEAKER_00: but they aren't necessarily the big bad that must be conquered, right?
50:20
SPEAKER_00: There's villains who we encounter in the story that are different.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like, Michael, your villain is also a villain light.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we could talk briefly about the difference between those two.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: And I guess you guys both talked about perspectives on those villain lights, too.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious as to whether that perspective is because they do have some sort
50:41
SPEAKER_00: of redemptive quality or because they affect the story in a way that is not all bad,
50:46
SPEAKER_00: all negative.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's why you chose to do that.
50:51
SPEAKER_02: Michael, can you tackle that first?
50:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I find...
51:03
SPEAKER_02: I like stories grounded in reality.
51:07
SPEAKER_02: Part of it is figuring out what I feel comfortable telling a story about,
51:13
SPEAKER_02: and often the way my stories originate is sometimes it's a
51:20
SPEAKER_02: if it's gonna be science fiction,
51:21
SPEAKER_02: it is a world or something that is slightly different than how it currently is.
51:26
SPEAKER_02: But in those stories, I try to make them as grounded in reality as possible.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: So then when I make these leaps, it's less egregious or whatever.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: In the case of Esther Furman, like, I knew the person that I wanted to base it on.
51:41
SPEAKER_02: But I didn't really Because I was a kid and I was like 10 when she was operating
51:46
SPEAKER_02: in my neighborhood,
51:47
SPEAKER_02: I didn't really know what the adult perspective was or what was going on.
51:51
SPEAKER_02: So as an adult then,
51:52
SPEAKER_02: sitting back and looking at her,
51:54
SPEAKER_02: I got to kind of figure out what were her motivations.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: And I don't really know what her motivations were, but I obviously came up with them.
52:04
SPEAKER_02: So for me, she could never really be villainous.
52:10
SPEAKER_02: She spreads misinformation, which does cause the city damage.
52:15
SPEAKER_02: There is a person that she accused of being a child molester,
52:17
SPEAKER_02: and he ends up being shamed by the town.
52:22
SPEAKER_02: And he was innocent.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: There are bad things that happen,
52:26
SPEAKER_02: but she's not going around killing people on the wall of the night.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: Because in truth, I think that wasn't my reality.
52:32
SPEAKER_02: It just didn't happen in my old town.
52:35
SPEAKER_02: So it would have felt like too big of a leap to do that.
52:38
SPEAKER_02: Not that murder doesn't happen in small towns, of course, but it just didn't in my world.
52:43
SPEAKER_02: And then, yeah,
52:45
SPEAKER_02: the perspective I think for me was I like fiction that has kind of
52:52
SPEAKER_02: a playful narrator.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: So that's always going to be part of my,
52:57
SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't say always,
52:58
SPEAKER_02: because I've certainly done exceptions where that's not the case,
53:00
SPEAKER_02: but that's my preference.
53:02
SPEAKER_02: That's the world I kind of like to play in.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: And so it's very rare that you're going to get a first person perspective On that villain.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: And what I liked about that then is I didn't have to reveal everything about her.
53:14
SPEAKER_02: You know, she wasn't spilling the tea constantly.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: She just kind of was was moving around and I was following her kind of like a camera
53:22
SPEAKER_02: to follow like the, you know, TV and and film metaphors that we're talking about.
53:27
SPEAKER_02: And you just kind of reporting almost on her comings and goings.
53:31
SPEAKER_02: But what about you, Rob?
53:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, the
53:38
SPEAKER_01: I've been struggling because I had sort of the same question in mind about not as
53:47
SPEAKER_01: a villain as a human being,
53:49
SPEAKER_01: but a villain as a wraith or as an imaginary thing or as something like that.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: You had alluded to it from True Grit.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: So I guess the point I'm trying to make in light of your question Now,
54:09
SPEAKER_01: Kathryn,
54:09
SPEAKER_01: is that the villains come in all shapes and sizes and degrees,
54:17
SPEAKER_01: and not all villains,
54:20
SPEAKER_01: perhaps using the word villain is unfortunate because of the connotations.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: It suggests that,
54:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:32
SPEAKER_01: that there's going to be violence that suggests that somebody's going to be dead or,
54:36
SPEAKER_01: you know, maimed or something.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: But a villain can be, you know, as much psychological as it can be human or violent.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: So when you have villain light,
54:54
SPEAKER_01: if you will,
54:55
SPEAKER_01: a degree of something that is different from,
55:01
SPEAKER_01: I keep thinking of the movie, what was it, The Hateful Eight?
55:08
SPEAKER_01: Where they're all in the cabin.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, where there were 16 characters in the movie and they all ended up dead at the end.
55:19
SPEAKER_01: You don't need that.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: But when you have the villain that is sort of middle grade,
55:28
SPEAKER_01: I think you need to...
55:31
SPEAKER_01: I think they're different.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's put it down.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to treat them differently because I sort of think of villains as...
55:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, imaginary but real.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: And we deal with them in every book we write.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: Michael mentioned in his answer that he has this point of view,
55:53
SPEAKER_01: this sort of, I would say almost whimsical point of view.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: That kind of whimsical point of view through much of
56:03
SPEAKER_01: the trilogy I wrote actually comes from From Henri Hawk.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: He's the one with a whimsical point of view.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: He is the one that doesn't take himself too seriously.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: And yet he's the one that if you want something fixed, he'll fix it for you.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Or he'll get someone to fix it for you.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: And that's a lousy answer to your question.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, Kathryn, but I'm...
56:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, let
56:34
SPEAKER_01: me build on it.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: There's so many layers and dimensions to villains,
56:39
SPEAKER_01: just like there are the protagonists, that
56:48
SPEAKER_01: it's difficult to categorize.
56:51
SPEAKER_02: I remember a very basic writing class,
56:53
SPEAKER_02: or maybe it was even just a You know,
56:57
SPEAKER_02: a literature class or something,
56:58
SPEAKER_02: and they said, oh, there, you know, there are three stories.
57:00
SPEAKER_02: There's man versus man, man versus self, man versus nature.
57:03
SPEAKER_02: And it really feels like the world we've kind of in literature being geared towards
57:09
SPEAKER_02: that man versus man or person versus person or whatever.
57:13
SPEAKER_02: And you're right.
57:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what we're missing are those other things like those internal struggles,
57:18
SPEAKER_02: the nature thing.
57:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean, though Esther Fuhrman is,
57:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
57:22
SPEAKER_02: essentially the The villain of my novel,
57:25
SPEAKER_02: the villain really is the gossip and the misinformation.
57:27
SPEAKER_02: She just kind of is the vessel.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of the nature of people gathering and sharing stories.
57:34
SPEAKER_02: And if nobody passed on her stories, nothing would have happened from it.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: So as much as she's the thing that made that happen,
57:44
SPEAKER_02: everybody else also is complicit in spreading that information.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: And I do wonder, true grit is
57:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think nature kind of encapsulates all of those ideas,
57:57
SPEAKER_02: whether it's literally the,
57:59
SPEAKER_02: you know,
57:59
SPEAKER_02: earth fighting back,
58:00
SPEAKER_02: you know,
58:00
SPEAKER_02: creatures or storms or whatever,
58:03
SPEAKER_02: you know, maybe that's what's missing more in fiction these days.
58:07
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
58:09
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
58:10
SPEAKER_03: I think it depends a lot on the genre.
58:14
SPEAKER_03: You know,
58:14
SPEAKER_03: if you're in one of
58:16
SPEAKER_03: the broader Less defined genres like contemporary literary women's fiction,
58:23
SPEAKER_03: you encounter more of those everyday antagonists and antagonistic forces like nature
58:32
SPEAKER_03: or like gossip or secrets, things like that.
58:35
SPEAKER_03: When you're looking at thrillers and mysteries and even sci-fi or fantasy,
58:41
SPEAKER_03: I think we get kind of more locked into that idea.
58:47
SPEAKER_03: Of the villain,
58:48
SPEAKER_03: you know,
58:49
SPEAKER_03: but what you were saying,
58:51
SPEAKER_03: Michael points,
58:52
SPEAKER_03: makes a great point that even when we have an antagonistic force in our book as
58:59
SPEAKER_03: the main source of conflict,
59:02
SPEAKER_03: we need agents to enact that force on the stage of the page.
59:07
SPEAKER_03: And so in your example, gossip, we need people to invent the gossip and to spread the gossip.
59:14
SPEAKER_03: And we need the gossip to cause trouble.
59:17
SPEAKER_03: You know, story ensues.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book that where the villain,
59:29
SPEAKER_01: the protagonist and the villain were the same people physically,
59:37
SPEAKER_01: but there were really three characters.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to do a buzzkill on it,
59:46
SPEAKER_01: but It was an interesting exercise because I had a very
59:56
SPEAKER_01: not nice person as
59:58
SPEAKER_01: the protagonist.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: I had, and she had two more personalities.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: One was very sweet and very young,
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: and one was Hannibal Lecter,
1:00:15
SPEAKER_01: murdering,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: violent, And I got to write all three characters in one
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: human or one body.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: It was really an interesting exercise to write the book.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: The book is called Judgment Day, if anybody's interested.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: But it was sort of a...
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: Psychology 101 in the lessons of the stages of villainy.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_03: So that reminds me of Fight Club where I think,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_03: so I think Tyler Durden or Durden or whatever is the The beefy fighter guy, right?
1:01:13
SPEAKER_03: And then the skinny guy.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: I forget his name now.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_03: But, Rob, were your characters aware of each other or was part of the arc okay?
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure she was ever aware.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she went through a whole series.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: The book is...
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: Basically 16 psychological sessions,
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: or part of the book is,
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: as this psychologist tries to ferret out exactly what is going on.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: Oh, interesting.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to talk about it without giving the whole thing away.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_01: But it was an interesting exercise in writing.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: And as she became more and more aware of something,
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: not necessarily the other personalities in full flower,
1:02:23
SPEAKER_01: but aware that there was something going on
1:02:29
SPEAKER_01: cerebrally inside her
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: that she couldn't quite grasp or identify.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: Give the title again.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: Michael's wife and my oldest daughter are both psychologists.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_01: The name of the book is Judgment Day.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_03: Judgment Day.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure some people are going to be jotting that down and grabbing a copy now.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: So before I ask you about that banner I see over your shoulder,
1:03:07
SPEAKER_03: is there anything we haven't brought up in our discussion of villains
1:03:11
SPEAKER_03: that we should touch on today?
1:03:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: know.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: Love your villains.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_03: Love your villains.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: I like it.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_01: They need TLC too, you know?
1:03:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: They aren't half the story after all.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_03: All right,
1:03:33
SPEAKER_03: so I can see over Zoom that you've got a banner for the Moriarty Award
1:03:38
SPEAKER_03: over your shoulder.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_03: Why don't you tell us about that?
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: so Michael and I formed Bell Cow about a year ago for the specific and sole purpose
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: of trying to promote the work of independent fiction authors.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: And toward that end,
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: Michael has developed a series of podcasts,
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: we have done an electronic catalog,
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: and we have launched the Moriarty Award,
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: which is the one and only
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: literary award or prize that recognizes the writers
1:04:16
SPEAKER_01: of great villains or antagonists.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Came out of an idea I got at the World Mystery Conference,
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: VultureCon, in New Orleans a year ago.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_01: I was a moderator of a panel on loving your villains, basically.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_01: And I walked out of that panel thinking,
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: we've got awards for everything, but not for somebody who writes great villains.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_01: And as somebody who really likes to write villains,
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: I thought, maybe we ought to do something about it.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: So I said to Michael, what do you think?
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: And he said, absolutely.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: And away we went.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_01: Like we do with most of our ideas with Belkow.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: So the Moriarty Award is an award that will be awarded for the first time in
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: the fall of 2027 for writers of the best antagonist or the best villain.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: We've been just spreading the word about it this year.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: Starting probably around Thanksgiving,
1:05:19
SPEAKER_01: we'll start to seriously solicit entries,
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: and then we go through the process,
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: hopefully, of sorting out lots of entries and coming up with an answer.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: And hopefully some will be creative.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_02: We try to really push that idea that it doesn't just need to be somebody with a gun,
1:05:39
SPEAKER_02: you know, that the villain can be anybody.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_02: Like Rob always likes saying,
1:05:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:05:44
SPEAKER_02: your mother-in-law at Thanksgiving or whatever, but,
1:05:47
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:05:47
SPEAKER_02: it could be illness or gossip or who knows what,
1:05:50
SPEAKER_02: you know, and anything somebody can dream up, we're eager to read those.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't even have
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: to be a person.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_02: We're honoring
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: the writer.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: And if someone can write True Grit and have the villain be this sort of amorphous,
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: non-tangible thing that scares the liver out of everybody,
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: that's just as likely to win the more irony award as someone
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: who kills all 16 characters in their book.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_03: So what are a few of the criteria for judging great villains?
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: Michael, I'll leave that one.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I get that?
1:06:46
SPEAKER_01: As a resident judge, you get to deal with that.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's honestly, I mean,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_02: we have kind of a framework,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_02: but we picked some judges that we're really interested in working with.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_02: So when we get closer to that, we're going to solicit some ideas from them.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
1:07:03
SPEAKER_02: in my mind,
1:07:04
SPEAKER_02: a great villain is one that is complicated and yet understandable,
1:07:10
SPEAKER_02: you know, like that there is some kind of logic to it with that unpredictability.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_02: I want someone who,
1:07:19
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_02: that you're both looking forward to when they show up in the book but also kind
1:07:26
SPEAKER_02: of dreading it because you know something is going to go wrong you know
1:07:31
SPEAKER_02: for your protagonist and or or the world I suppose
1:07:36
SPEAKER_02: as well um you know I want I want something that I haven't seen before yeah I think
1:07:42
SPEAKER_02: a lot of times we we um
1:07:46
SPEAKER_02: When people ask me what I like in fiction, I really like something that's novel.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_02: Literally something that is new and different that I haven't seen before.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_02: Part of why I really enjoyed The Butcher and the Liar was because that was novel on
1:08:02
SPEAKER_02: a number of levels.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_02: It really was kind of a breath of fresh air.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, wow, there's a ghost, but it doesn't behave like other ghosts I've seen.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_02: There's a father who's a serial killer.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_02: But we don't fully understand what's motivating him.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_02: That's really interesting.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking for something new.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure Rob has his own ideas as well.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_02: And part of what I'm looking forward to is the disagreements that happen.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_02: I love this one.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_02: That kind of thing.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_02: Because on the other places where I've been judges before, we ultimately get into those.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_02: Some of them have been virtual, some of them have been in person.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_02: And you fight for your books that you think are the ones that should win.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_02: And everybody has a good argument for it.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of fun to see what comes out in those moments.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_03: And where should listeners go if they want to get all the details about the Moriarty Award?
1:08:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the easiest place is just bellcowproductions.com and you'll see the Moriarty at the top.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_02: You could do bellcowproductions.com slash award.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_02: That'll take you right there.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's exciting.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_03: So where can listeners find you?
1:09:17
SPEAKER_03: Rob, why don't you go ahead and go first?
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you can find me as an author
1:09:27
SPEAKER_01: at robyoungwriter.com.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: Young spelled J-U-N-G, R-O-B-J-U-N-G, writer.com.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: You can find me as a producer and host at mnmysterynight.com.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, you can find Michael and I both at bellcowproductions.com.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_03: Michael, how about you?
1:09:52
SPEAKER_02: And mine's easy too.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_02: Mine's just Michael McBride.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_02: The only tricky thing is my last name is M-A-C-B-R-I-D-E.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_02: Weirdly,
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: sometimes there's a G people insert in there or it's M-C,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_02: but it's M-A-C and then bride, like brideandgroom.com.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_02: That's got all my stuff, links to Elkow and all those as well.
1:10:13
SPEAKER_02: So that's probably the easiest place.
1:10:15
SPEAKER_02: What about salty books?
1:10:17
SPEAKER_02: Salty Books is linked there as well, saltybookspub.com.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_02: That's my little hybrid publishing press that I do.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_02: Five to seven titles kind of a year,
1:10:27
SPEAKER_02: mostly local authors, although a couple in Michigan and one in Virginia.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_03: Great.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_03: And if anyone missed all that,
1:10:37
SPEAKER_03: we will have links in the show notes for this episode over at storyworkspodcast.com,
1:10:44
SPEAKER_03: like always.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, you two.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_03: This has been such a great conversation and so much fun to have you with us today.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Kathryn.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_02: It was wonderful.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_01: It's been our honor to be on your podcast.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for talking villains.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was fun.
1:11:11
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1:11:50
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1:11:54
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