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TRUTH FROM REVELATION #2 Pastor George Lehman   The heart has no secret which our conduct does not reveal. Is God HONOURED OR DISHONOURED by your life? Amos 3:3 - Can two people (you & God) walk together without agreeing on the direction? (Answer is: No, you can't) We need to line up with God and not God with us. Isaiah 14:27 - The Lord Almighty has spoken – who can change His plans?  When His hand moves, who can stop Him? The ONLY WAY is to get into God's plan. That's why the book of Revelation is a book of warnings and of blessings: God says “choose life” - while you can - time is running out… 2 Peter 3:9 - The Lord does not delay and is not tardy or slow about what He promised, according to some people's conception of slowness, but He is long-suffering (extraordinarily patient) toward you, NOT desiring that ANY should perish, but that all should turn to repentance. God has given us His word (The Bible) and especially this “book of Revelation” as a guideline for accurate living. Revelation chapter 2 and 3: Discusses 7 churches. These churches were the outflow of what happened after Acts 2:38-43. As Paul and the apostles, Peter, James, Timothy, Barnabus began to establish God's church - here on earth which is His precious bride. The purpose is to get us ready for the marriage of the Lamb. Revelation 19:7 - Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and the bride (church) has made herself ready. These 7 churches are warnings and encouragement for us who read and obey, “Keep themselves true to the things written in it” Revelation 1:3. Let us look at what those character traits are, so we can live as God desires from us and not just any old way we think fit. (You can't serve God on your terms and conditions.) Here's the urgency – VERY IMPORTANT!! To each church Jesus said: Ephesus – Rev 2:5 - I will come to you Smyrna – Rev 2:10 - I will give you a victors crown Pergamum – Rev 2:16 - I will soon come to you Thyatira – Rev 2:25 - Hold on till I come to you Sardis – Rev 3:3 - I will come Philadelphia – Rev 3:11 - I am coming soon notice how near He is: Laodicea – Rev 3:20 - Here I am I stand at the door 1st Church – Revelation 2:1-7 1. “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. (Note: You can be so busy with God's things and miss God completely) 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.  5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favour: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Ephesus – it's very clear that God watches us – 2 Chronicles 16:9  - “For the eyes of the Lord search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward him, so that he can show his great power in helping them. What a fool you have been! From now on you shall have wars.”   Here is a breakdown: Revelation 2:1-3 - He saw: A) good works, patience, ENDURANCE, sound doctrine, church discipline and the hatred of evil. B) Verse 6 - Jesus said they had this in their favour – I also detest it – you hate the works of the * The Nicolaitans* were a group of people who began to allow compromise to creep into their lives, so that they could enjoy the sinful pleasures of the world. Compromise:  Is accepting less than what the standard calls for, i.e. lowering God's standard to suite your own standard. Jesus has strong words for those who make excuses to sin. Verse 4 - This church of Ephesus – their warning was that they left their love they had at first. Verse 5 - is the warning. They were a busy church and doing all the right things.  Obviously, it was driven by the wrong motives. Mark 12:30 (LB) – You must love Him with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Jesus wants to be Lord of all – if not, He's not Lord at all. Matthew 24:12 – Because the increase of sin the love of most will grow cold. (Remember they were hot at some stage). A loveless heart produces: Hardness Harshness Arrogance Fault-finding Critical spirit – negativity toward the ministry and people What we do with Jesus NOW will determine what God does with us LATER. Notice verse 7 – if we hear and listen and go over to action, the result will be a (victorious) overcomer. Every church – all 7 - are called to be overcomers:  How?   Romans 12:21 – Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. (Evil: Morally wrong, anything that contradicts God's word) 1 John 4:4 – You are of God, little children and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 1 John 5:4 – For whatever is born of God overcomes the world – and this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith (faith with action) God is not expecting us to do something He has not empowered us to do. Revelation 12:11 – And they have overcome him by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. To every church there was a great reward to the one who overcomes. CLOSE: A fact to realize and never forget: We are all engaged in a struggle to overcome – Matthew 24:13 - Not HIM who starts the race, but HIM who endures to the end will be saved. To overcome is a purposeful mind made up commitment that every child of God must make.      

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Lewis from MuleSoft join us. Lewis, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Lewis Baird: Well, firstly, thank you very much for having me. I’m very excited to share what we’re doing over here at MuleSoft and to share a little bit more about what I do specifically. My name is Lewis Baird, I’m originally from Scotland, now living in Australia, and I’m currently heading up the partner enablement for MuleSoft, which is now part of Salesforce. I’m responsible for our go-to-market strategy, responsible for what industries we’re going to be looking at, and also responsible for spearheading the overhauling of our enablement practice globally as well for MuleSoft. So, no pressure. SS: Well, I am extremely excited to have you join us. Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about partner programs because I know that that’s part of your scope. What are some unique challenges of delivering enablement programs to partners, and how have you overcome those challenges in the past? LB: Yeah. One of the biggest issues with partners is that question around the so what. Why should I take time out of my busy day in my busy schedule to learn more about what you’re offering and why your technology is better than others? Sometimes the issue as well is coming from a vendor or you’re trying to sell something, we think that we are the center of the universe and that nothing else matters. We need to overcome that question of, we’re not the only technology out there, we’re not the only thing that someone is focused on, so how can we ensure that the programs that we deliver are really adding value? What I call this is enablement with intent. When we design our programs and we start getting that pushback around “I’m not attending, I don’t see value,” we ask, why don’t you see value? What can we add to your role specifically? What can we bring in terms of knowledge of MuleSoft that really aligns to what you’re trying to do in the context of your everyday, the context of your customer transformation programs, and in the context of what will actually enable you to go further in your career as well? When we start answering those questions, that’s when we start to overcome those problems. But again, there’s particular areas of our partners where you’re never going to win them over. You just have to take the small wins and then start building up from that. SS: That’s fantastic, Lewis. Now, you also mentioned on LinkedIn that one of your responsibilities is driving engagement between your partners and the MuleSoft sales team to really drive revenue opportunities for both parties. How do you see enablement fitting in to bridge the gap between the two and really enhance each other’s efforts? LB: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the reasons that I took this role at MuleSoft. I used to be on the sales team and thought to myself, what do partners do every day? I’m not getting any value from partners. They come in here and talk about things that just make no sense and they don’t know about our product. What’s going on? And then partners were also sitting going, why am I here? They’re not giving me anything. They have not earned the right to have access to our mutual customer, so I’m not going to attend that, see you later. You know that meme with the four pictures that has what they think they do, what you think they do, what they should do, and what everyone else thinks they do. That’s exactly what happens within partners and our internal teams. They expect each other to be providing information that hasn’t necessarily been providing the context as to why they should be meeting. The amazing thing about enablement is it’s the bridge between the partner and the internal sales team. The awesome thing about enablement, I think it’s the most crucial role actually in any company, because we are neutral. I honestly wouldn’t care whether you chose MuleSoft as a technology or something else, as long as we provided you the best enablement and education around MuleSoft. If it was a fit, fantastic. If it wasn’t, then that’s just how the cookie crumbles. What we do is that we don’t base what we deliver on assumptions. Sometimes what we see within sales teams specifically is that if they hear that our partner is doing something with a customer, they don’t necessarily care about what the partner thinks, they just want to be introduced. That just doesn’t work. What we have to do is create programs that not just enable our partners and the context of what our sales teams are trying to do, but also take that information from our partners, take it back to our sales team, and enable them on what our partners are doing. Do you understand what the point of view is within the industry for the partner to have that mutual accountability and have that mutual success? It’s all about enablement really bringing home the bacon, shall I say, in terms of bringing them information and nibbling on what’s important, and also carrying that through until the end result as well. SS: Absolutely. I think that’s a fantastic perspective. Now, explain to our audience, particularly those that may either do partner or direct, how can the approach to sales enablement differ for partners then for internal sales teams, and when an organization has an internal team and a partner team, how do you balance enablement resources to support both adequately? LB: Yeah, absolutely. What tends to happen, well, I can talk from a MuleSoft perspective as we do have an internal enablement team and then I look after our external enablement. I am not saying that we are perfect in terms of our alignment and our resources, but what I can say is that consistency across enablement if you’re looking at partners and internal, it shouldn’t be different. There should always just be one question in your mind when you’re delivering enablement and it’s, does this bring value to my team? Will his enable them to sell better and sell larger? That’s the same questions that we ask within the partner ecosystem. Do our teams have the specific sales messaging and the same kind of buzzwords and go-to-market strategies internally as they do externally. Do we have consistency across that messaging? What that does is that it brings these teams together because everyone’s getting that same messaging. Effectively, what you need to do if you have an external and an internal enablement team, they shouldn’t be working without knowing what each other are doing. It’s very, very likely, and I’ll speak from a partner perspective, for any internal sales team that is working on a prospect or an account, it’s 99% likely that a partner will be in the account as an advisor, as a technologist, and may well be evaluating your technology. As an external enablement, if we’re not providing that information to our internal teams, that’s not going to work in terms of being successful. I like to call it one team, one dream and killing two birds with one stone. The other nuance to that is we may have people within internal enablement that are taking a lot of things from global and HQ, and there may be a few people on the call thinking, “Oh yeah, a lot of our programs and a lot of our strategy comes from HQ, and we just regurgitate what’s available.” Enablement, whether it’s internal or external, needs to be regionalizing their content. What I mean by that is you can build the foundations of what is coming out of HQ, but that can’t be delivered in the form that you have been presented it in your region because it’s just not going to resonate unless you’re really targeting what the focus is within that region. For example, our HQ is in San Francisco. We get all this information, our internal and external teams will look at it, and there’ll be particular things in there that just won’t work in APAC, for example. We have to ensure that when we’re spreading resources, we’re putting them in the right place. You can have a really high-caliber team, but if they’re focused on the wrong things, then it’s just a waste of time. If people are struggling with, “Oh my God, there’s only two people on our enablement team, how can we get this across hundreds of partners?” Really focus on what the value is and leverage what is going to be a quick win, leverage what is relevant within the region. That’s when you start to see whether you’re a team of 2 or 100, that’s when you actually start seeing value in what you’re delivering. It’s certainly quality over quantity. SS: Absolutely. Now, you touched on this a little bit earlier, how partners will often have very competing priorities and I know that you’ve been very focused on making sure that you’re delivering training paths for partners. How do you ensure that you not only get participation, but also engagement during your training programs? I would love to hear if there are some tips or tricks that you have on gaining mindshare with partners for enablement programs. LB: Absolutely. I’m kind of different in the sense that the way that I am in work is the same as I am out of work, which means that I’m a bit no filter and what you see is what you get. The reason I say that is because within sales or enablement, people buy from people and people get excited by other people. I don’t necessarily go, wow, I really want to learn about MuleSoft today, this is amazing. No one thinks that, but what they do remember is someone that goes damn, he was pretty funny, and people should learn about this technology in a much more exciting way. In terms of getting mindshare from your partners, be your authentic self, have a laugh, have a joke because you’re not there to be selling to a customer account or a prospect. You’re there to go, hey guys, this is awesome, we really want to deliver this for you, we think that we can, and we think that we can do it in this really, really fun way. That’s just one tick at the box. The second tick is not assuming that you have earned the right to deliver enablement or programs. Just because that partner uses your technology or possesses your technology does not mean that you can go to a partner and say, well, we should deliver this because you need it and because you sell our product, and we are going to do this. You really have to ask them, can we come in and deliver something different? What is the value to you? What is the value to your organization? Where we started here was basically calling out, and I think enablement is really, really in a strong position to effectively ask this. If you think to yourself, how many sales teams say this there’s probably not many, but what I say to partners is, “I don’t think that we did a good job last year in terms of our pipeline, in terms of our ACV, in terms of our sourced and it’s my responsibility and enablement to make sure that you’re provided as much value and support as possible. What did we do last year that we should do this year?” Nine out of 10 people will not ask that because the assumption is that since there’s a partnership, there that there shouldn’t be that ask, you should know. It shouldn’t be based on assumptions. Once you ask that question, partners will completely flip and go, wow, we’ve never been asked that, that is amazing. Yeah, let’s do that. Then what that tends to do is start leading down this path of you understanding where the gaps were last year around your partners, around the technology. Why weren’t they possessing your technology? What you actually find is that there are just fundamental knowledge gaps at the very base level. What you do with that is that you start building from the ground up, where you’re casting that net weight, so you get as many people into your sessions as possible. It doesn’t matter who it is, whether it’s the CEO down to the coffee lady, it doesn’t matter. Get as many people as you can into those sessions and start building that traction and the awareness because if people don’t know the basics of a MuleSoft or a Salesforce, how can they possibly identify opportunity and the context of the industry that they’re working in? It’s just not going to happen. Once we call that out, that’s when these programs start running with intent, they start running a value, and that’s when partners go, yeah, this is really delivering on what we are trying to do this year. One of our partners, for example, by using this technique we went from having maybe three or four people attending programs to over 250. What that’s done is that it’s now opened up the global partner to enablement and enablement is reading that, leading that by the front. That’s what I mean by just asking them, what did we do last year that we should do this year? It’s not a stupid question. I get really passionate about it this part because I think what tends to happen is a lot of people within enablement don’t ask those questions because they think “oh, if I ask that question, they’re going to beat me down with a stick because I should know that.” Well, no, you shouldn’t because there are thousands of people in a partner organization and asking that question will really open up doors. SS: I love that question. Now, to call things out as well, or maybe even to highlight, you recently received MuleSoft’s team player award. I’d love for you to talk to our audience about, how does cross-team collaboration help enhance your own partner enablement efforts? LB: You hear this thing called focus on your swim lane. That tends to transcend not just from a sales team, but to all the other teams. Enablement should not just focus on their own swim lane because enablement is that bridge between all functions, all the external and internal partners. What we try to do is if it has not been tried, just try it. This is where we built this cross-collaboration around, well, I could go and do what you tell me to do, but no, I’m not going to do that because I don’t know if that’s the right approach because I haven’t asked specifically. What you’ll find is that enablement tends to come across as a support function, comes across as a way to have other functions maybe not do as much work as they should be doing. Enablement as a function should not be viewed as supportive. It should be viewed as pivotal and delivering success for the business and delivering success for partners. There was one thing that really got me going on this, and it was something from our global team where we had our awards and someone had said in the messaging channel, “it’s so amazing to see enablement right next to channels. Wow, we are valuable.” I thought to myself, why is someone putting that in the channel, that we are valuable as if we’ve never been valuable? It should be ingrained in your mind with enablement that you are probably the most valuable function in any organization. Without enablement, your organization will not function, and it will not function externally either. Once you start thinking to yourself, yeah, I’m going to own this, I’m going to go to every function and understand what their priorities are and how I can bridge these gaps. I’m not going to wait for someone to tell me what the issue is or what the gap is, I’m going to be really proactive and get out there and speak to as many people as possible and design programs where I think I see gaps. We are neutral in enablement. If you’ve got customer success or sales, there’s always a hidden motivation around, I need this because I want that. Whereas enablement is, we’re going to give you this because we think that this will enable you to do a better job. That’s what I started to do last year with our team, which was not wait for someone to tell me where their gaps were but go out. I would definitely say be more proactive than reactive within your organization. Start speaking to people that you haven’t spoken to before and really step outside of your comfort zone. Then you should hopefully see a difference between your internal and your external sales teams and functions as well. SS: I love that, and I couldn’t agree with you more. Sales enablement is such a strategic function for an organization if utilized appropriately, so I absolutely agree. Lewis, in closing, you also mentioned that sales enablement contributes quite heavily to the success of the organization. Now, in order to do that, you have to think about how you’re measuring the impact. How do you go about measuring the impact of your partner enablement efforts? LB: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a brilliant question because it varies across organizations around different metrics and different MBOs. From our end, our enablement was based upon certifications. Successful enablement was when we had to get 300 architects and developers certified on MuleSoft. If we did that, that was considered successful. However, I did not think that that was a suitable metric for success. Sometimes, what tends to happen is for anyone that’s measured on technical aspects of enablement, there’s a difference between practice development and enablement. We know that practice development is, how are you building your ecosystem to deliver on a technology or deliver on a platform? Whereas enablement is that top of the funnel. We’re going to arm you with the best messaging and the best techniques to identify those opportunities to drive that pipeline. When I joined the team last year, I thought to myself, wow, this is not how enablement should be run and I’m not going to run it this way. What I had said was, “I don’t expect you to really care about enablement or care about what we offer. If we can’t help you drive pipeline or ACV or opportunities, there’s no justification for you to do this.” What we’ve done this year is move away from this whole obsession with technical certifications, the whole obsession with project delivery around enablement in its purest sense. What we now measure on is enablement being able to identify opportunities. We are measured on how many opportunities can we influence through our sessions. We obviously get measured on our feedback. It’s very important as well that it’s not just black and white MBOs or KPIs. You have to have good feedback so that you can better improve or edit your next set of programs. Also looking at ACVs, did any of our enablement sessions contribute to the close of a deal? What that does is that it really puts enablement at that forefront of, where are we really adding value? Where do we not? And where can we expand our footprint? SS: Thank you so much for the time today, I appreciate it. To our audience. Thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

"What about this one?" I asked, passing several oil paintings and pointing to another large needlework. "It looks like a coat of arms." "It does. Although about a third of the stitching is gone. I wonder if it was done here, or in England? Stitching coats of arms was more common there. Americans didn't have family crests or coats of arms." The coat of arms was in poor condition. The glass protecting it was cracked, and dirt had sifted onto the embroidery. Threads were broken or missing in several places, so only part of the crest was clear, and the linen backing was torn in several places. Still, it fascinated me... -- Lea Wait, Thread Herrings Such a delight today to talk to the extraordinary Lea Wait. Life-long advocate for single-parent adoption and the adoption of older children, writer of historical books for young people and cozy mysteries for adults, Lea is as fascinating as her novels. Start by checking out her website, which includes discussion guides for her Antique Print Mystery Series and teacher guides for her books for children. Like Maggie Summer, the heroine of her first series, Lea has worked as an antique dealer. She credits her grandmother -- also a dealer, in dolls and toys -- with sparking her love for antiques and auctions. The warmth in her novels is clearly echoed in our conversation when she talks about her family and the community of antique dealers -- which didn't stop her from plotting to kill some of them off! On the page only, of course. Lea has so many books, I'm going to fail in any attempt at getting them all in order. However, her own website does a terrific job of parsing them so I'll link you back to that, and of course to her author page on Amazon. Although they're not mysteries, if you have children in your life, do check out her historical novels. As you'll see from our conversation, they give a very nuanced look at life in the 1800s. In addition to her website, you can keep up with Lea on Facebook and Goodreads.  As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! -- Laura ************************************************************************************ Transcript of Interview with Lea Wait Laura Brennan: Author Lea Wait has written historicals, children's books, nonfiction, and not one, not two, but three cozy series set in her home state of Maine. Lea, thank you for joining me. Lea Wait: It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for inviting me. LB: You are so interesting and accomplished that I almost don't know where to start. But since I'm a theater person, let us start with college because you majored in drama and English. LW: I did indeed. It's been actually an immense help. I'm not sure my family was enthused at the moment, but I always wanted to be a writer and by working the theater, I learned a lot about dialogue. LB: Well, you are writing professionally pretty much from the get-go. You are writing speeches and films. How did you get started? LW: Well, actually, I did think I was probably just going to go on to graduate school -- writers, they teach, so -- but I ended up with a job interview and I ended up talking to someone who had graduated from the Yale School of Drama, and he said, "You write plays." And I said, yes. He said, "Have you got any with you?" Of course I was young, I graduated from college early, so I was 20, long blonde hair, protest marches on weekends -- dates me a little bit. LB: Not at all, no. [Laughter] LW: But I pulled out, I think it was a play -- children's theater, so was like a chipmunk and a rabbit or something, definitely simplistic stuff. And he actually sat at his big mahogany desk and read several pages and looked at me and said, "You can write dialogue." And I said, "Yes, I can." And he said, "Then you can write executive speeches." The first executive speech I wrote was for the president of what was then part of AT&T, the Western Electric Company. I became fascinated.

Andi Battaglia entered the house and carefully covered her nose and mouth with her handkerchief before proceeding. Cops say once you smell the odor, you know it instantly, an observation that doesn't make the effect any easier to handle. June in Florida with the air conditioning off had turned the house into a vile-smelling sauna. Andi greeted the man and woman who stood near the patrolman, ready to transport the body either to the local mortuary or to the Medical Examiner in Fort Pierce if there was to be an autopsy. Andi hadn't been called, but she'd been in the area when she heard the report on her car radio. If it was a homicide, it would be her first in her new job as a detective, and she'd notified the station that she was going to the scene. No one would argue -- certainly not the other detectives who didn't want any more work than they already had.  Holding her handkerchief tightly over her nose and breathing through her mouth, Andi entered the bedroom... The man's eyes were open, his eyelids drooped half-shut... -- A Reason to Kill, Carole Sojka I have the great pleasure this time of interviewing one of the most lovely and interesting of writers: Carole Sojka. Carole has lived a lifetime of adventures, notably with her husband as one of the first thousand Peace Corps volunteers, and traveling all over the world. She worked, traveled, raised a family, and in retirement, turned her hand to writing. And so a new adventure began. Carole has two books to date and a third on the way in her Andi Battaglia police series, set in Florida. The first, A Reason to Kill, introduces Andi as she tries to break away from her past and start fresh. But of course the past always has a way of sneaking up on you. In her second book, So Many Reasons to Die, it's Andi's partner Greg who finds that the past is hard to lay to rest. Especially when she winds up murdered on your turf.  Carole's third book is a stand-alone, Psychic Damage, about a woman who is addicted to visiting psychics -- right up to the moment one of them is murdered. Oh, and if you're looking for more information about the fascinating House of Refuge which features in A Reason to Kill, you can check it out here. Carole gives a shout-out to author Doug Lyle, who I've had the pleasure of hearing lecture. A terrific writer and a generous spirit, you can learn more about him at his website. If you are a mystery writer, I can't recommend his book, Forensics, highly enough. Carole also mentions one of her favorite writers, Julia Spencer Flemming, whose work inspired Carole to get her detectives out of Florida and into the snow in their next adventure. And finally, Carole gives a shout out to her friend and editor, Candy Somoza. You can see Candy read from her own work here.  Meanwhile, keep tabs on Carole, see her fabulous pics from Somalia, and check out excerpts from her books via her website: http://carolesojka.com/  As usual, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! -- Laura *************************************************************************************** Transcript of Interview with Carole Sojka Laura Brennan: My guest, Carole Sojka, writes mysteries -- and lives adventures. She and her husband were among the first thousand Peace Corps volunteers and they have traveled to every continent except Antarctica. Her mysteries capture that sense of adventure and romance -- although of course the bodies do tend to pile up.  Carole, thank you for joining me. Carole Sojka: Thank you for having me. LB: You have led a very exciting life. CS: It doesn't seem like that in retrospect, but I guess it was, or it has been. LB: Did it seem like that at the time? When you took off for Africa and the Peace Corps, did it seem like this is the most exciting thing I'll ever do? CS: Yes, it did. I remember that no matter what was going on during our Peace Corps time,

Lyle Deming braked his Mustang hard and aimed for the sandy shoulder of the desert road. Luckily, his daughter Sam had been looking down and didn’t see the body. He passed a thicket of creosote and manzanita and pulled onto the dirt as soon as he could. “Stay in the car,” he told Sam in a tone that precluded discussion. He trotted 200 feet back on the road, around the brush, to reach the parked vehicle—and the unmoving, bullet-riddled body he’d seen next to it. -- Mark S. Bacon, Desert Kill Switch Mark S. Bacon is a prolific writer, first as a reporter -- and yes, that included a stint as a police reporter, be still my heart! -- then as a nonfiction writer, and finally in the realm of fiction. You can keep tabs on him (and read sample chapters and even some of his flash fiction stories) on his website, right here. Speaking of flash fiction, Mark gives a shout-out to some practitioners of the genre, including Margaret Atwood and Ernest Hemingway -- that's some pedigree! In fact, if you yourself want to give the genre a try, there is an annual competition in Hemingway's honor presented by Fiction Southeast. Be warned: it's addictive to write as well as to read. If you're looking for more, Mark has an entire book filled with only flash fiction, and in our preferred genre as well: Cops, Crooks & Other Stories in 100 Words.  As always, below you'll find a transcript if you'd rather read than listen. Enjoy! -- Laura ******************************************************************************************************************* Transcript of Interview with Mark S. Bacon Laura Brennan: Mark S. Bacon is no stranger to crime. In addition to writing his Nostalgia City mystery series, Mark worked as a police reporter and is a master of the ultra-short story: his collection Cops, Crooks and Other Stories is full of murder and mayhem, all in 100 words each. Mark, thank you for joining me. Mark S. Bacon: Thanks for having me, Laura. LB: So you have been a writer for a long time. Not necessarily of mysteries, but you have made your whole career as a writer. MB: That's true. I went to journalism school and started working for newspapers, and then I moved into advertising. And I became a copywriter, writing TV commercials, radio ads, that sort of thing. Then I went into marketing and at the same time I started writing nonfiction books and did that for quite a while. I've always been a fan of mysteries, I've always read mysteries from the time I could learn to read virtually. Finally the chance came to start writing mysteries, which is the kind of thing I read all the time and really enjoy that. Some writers say they write to entertain themselves, and I think that's partially true with me. I enjoy getting my characters into tight situations and figuring out how they're going to make it out. LB: You have a journalism background, but the journalists in your novels are not necessarily the easiest people to get along with. MB: Ha! That's an interesting observation. Yes, newspaper and broadcast news people tend to be kind of nosy and they want to find out everything they can. And I was that way when I was a reporter. So, when you're trying to solve a mystery, solve a murder, and in the case of Nostalgia City where there's a lot of issues involved with the public image of this theme park, my characters are kind of at odds with the news media even though one of them was actually a reporter for a short time. Yes, I make my reporters pretty nosy. LB: Yes, you do. Well, when you were a reporter, was that fodder for you? Was that grist for the mill for being a mystery writer? MB: Oh, of course it is. And the biggest part I think was doing police reporting. I showed up at the police department every morning and read reports and talked to cops and went out at crime scenes and learned the lingo of police. I learned what the procedures are and that kind of gave me the background so th...

Charlie stopped barking as soon as he saw me. I knew now why he had been quiet for the past few minutes. He'd been digging away in the dirt, which he resumed upon my arrival. I looked for his leash and spotted it a few yards away, half buried by the dirt he flung to all sides. I picked up the leash before Charlie could get to it first. As soon as I did, I also spied what appeared to be an animal bone. Most likely a deer.  But when I turned to see what Charlie was digging up now, my heart sank. It was another bone, but not one belonging to a deer. In fact, it was far more than a bone. It was a human skull.  -- Sharon Farrow, Blackberry Burial I am so excited to be talking to Sharon Farrow, and not just because I'm a fan of her Berry Basket Mystery Series. With her friend and fellow author Meg Mims, she also writes the delightful Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mysteries as D.E. Ireland.  In fact, Sharon talks a little about how writing the first book in that series, Wouldn't It Be Deadly, was somewhat challenging to the friendship. Luckily, the partnership survived; not only are the books themselves great fun, I think Sharon and Meg win the Best Cozy Title Award with every novel.  You can also check out her romances, written under the name Sharon Pisacreta. Truly, Sharon has written something for everyone! Sharon's Berry Basket mysteries make use of berries in every possible way -- as clues, as scones, as wine. Sharon gives a shout-out to her inspiration, The Blueberry Store in South Haven, MI, and I offer you a link to their mouth-watering Pinterest page. Blueberries, yum... Sharon also makes a great case for why cozies matter. Those of us who love them don't have to be convinced, but there are times when cozy novels are dismissed as unimportant. As Sharon says, there can be enormous comfort in a good cozy, and that is just as valuable an emotion as those generated by a good thriller or noir. She herself reads Laura Childs, Cleo Coyle, Bailey Cates (who was new to me, woot!), and she mentions her debt of gratitude to Gillian Roberts for her Amanda Pepper mysteries, which helped Sharon through a difficult time. I don't normally ask for comments, but if anyone wants to share a book that helped them through a rough go, I think that kind of recommendation is a real gift we can give each other. Here are Sharon's own mystery series, in order: Berry Basket Mysteries 1 - Dying for Strawberries  2 - Blackberry Burial  3 - Killed on Blueberry Hill (available for pre-order) Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mysteries 1 - Wouldn't It Be Deadly 2 - Move Your Blooming Corpse 3 - Get Me To The Grave On Time You can find Sharon at SharonFarrowAuthor.com, the D.E. Ireland Facebook page, and on Twitter as both @SharonFarrowBB and @DEIrelandAuthor. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! -- Laura ************************************************************* Transcript of Interview with Sharon Farrow Laura Brennan: My guest today is the author of the Berry Basket Mysteries, delightful cozies full of friendship, warmth, and, of course, murder. But Sharon Farrow is no stranger to the genre. She is an award-winning author of romantic stand-alones, short stories, and -- as half of the writing team D.E. Ireland -- the Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery Series. Sharon, thank you for joining me. Sharon Farrow: Thank you for having me, Laura. LB: You’ve been writing professionally for quite a while. SF: Yes. LB: You had an award-winning debut novel. You kind of jumped onto the scene with Stolen Hearts. SF: Yes, that was gratifying because I didn’t grow up either reading romances or even planning on being a romance writer. And I sort of stumbled into the genre. And to have my first novel win Best First Book was a surprise and quite wonderful. So, yes, I’m very pleased about that. And I’m still surprised. Looking back,

The man on the park bench stared at the empty space above the knuckle of Nora Pennington's pinkie finger.  Strangers were always hypnotized by this gap. They would gaze at the puckered skin stretched over the nub of finger bone for several awkward seconds before averting their eyes in disgust, pity, or both. Like most strangers, the man's attention could only remain on Nora's pinkie for so long. She had other fascinating scars... -- Ellery Adams, The Secret, Book & Scone Society What a treat to get to interview Ellery Adams! And (perk of the podcast!) get to read her new book, The Secret, Book & Scone Society, the first in a new series. A blend of mystery and women's fiction, The Secret, Book & Scone Society has at its core the developing friendship between four women -- none of whom makes friends lightly. Brought together by an unexpected death and realizing that, without them, it will go unpunished, they bond over books, scones -- and their darkest secrets. Feeling goosebumps yet? Ellery Adams and I chat about the new series, as well as her many cozy series (spoiler alert for those who haven't read Killer Characters, the last in her Books by the Bay Mysteries) and the challenges of blending genres. We give a shout-out to Jeri Westerson, who, like Ellery, dreamed parts of a book's plot. Oh, the creative mind of an author... Ellery is a writer who loves books. That is evident in her Book Retreat Mysteries (new one, Murder in the Locked Library, coming out in the spring!) and also in her new series: "bibliotherapy" is a central concept in The Secret, Book & Scone Society. What is that, you ask? Nora, Ellery's protagonist, helps people overcome problems by giving them a list of books to read. And Kensington, Ellery's publisher, has set up a site where Nora can do that for you. Go ahead, check it out here. But come back, because then you should check out Ellery's Facebook page, where she's running giveaways galore throughout November. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below,  Enjoy! -- Laura *********************************************************************************************** Transcript of Interview with Ellery Adams Laura Brennan: My guest today is the prolific and beloved author, Ellery Adams. Ellery lays claim to a lifelong love affair with stories, food, rescue animals and large bodies of water -- all of which make their way into her mysteries. A New York Times bestselling author, she has written more than 30 novels and has just launched a new series with The Secret, Book & Scone Society. Ellery, thank you for joining me. Ellery Adams: Thank you so much for having me. LB: You are such a beloved author in the mystery world, how did you first get started writing? EA: Oh, boy! I have been writing since I was a kid, and I was always charging for my work, right from the get-go. I don't know if it was because I was one of three kids, or the middle child seeking attention, but I used to write little stories about my friends. And they would always be the hero, and they would always get a happy ending, and I would do some illustrations and I'd sell it to them for a quarter. LB: And then you started doing it professionally, and you started right away in mysteries. EA: I did, but I had lots of other jobs in between. Some really difficult jobs like working in a dry cleaners and doing catering work, and then I became a sixth grade language arts teacher for a while. So I didn't go right from childhood into the writing. I had to have some real life experiences first. And it was only when we moved from North Carolina to Virginia and I really didn't know anyone, and I was really homesick for North Carolina. I was working at Barnes & Noble, the bookseller, and one of the great things about working there is you can just constantly read and be exposed to new titles. And I think I had read about three mysteries in a row where I just found them la...

Honoria took the cloche off and shrugged off the coat with the white fox collar, laying them on one of the small tables flanking the door. She sniffed. Thanks to the croup, her sense of smell was still off. Yet something did not smell right. She turned toward her bedroom. The young woman lay sprawled at the entrance to the back hall, her eyes open and staring. -- Anne Louise Bannon, The Last Witnesses If you haven't yet read Anne Louise Bannon's Freddie and Kathy Mysteries, what a treat you have in store for you! Set in the Roaring Twenties, filled with bootleg hooch and murders aplenty. Here are the books in order: 1 - Fascinating Rhythm 2 - Bring Into Bondage 3 - The Last Witnesses In addition, Anne has written a very useful book for writers -- Howdunnit: Book of Poisons -- and has a blogged novel, White House Rhapsody, which she continues to update. You really must go check out Anne's website -- she has so many projects going on and so many interesting publications to her name, it's best I send you to the source. Do not forget her wine blog! She also gave a shout out to several authors, including Avery Ames, Mary Higgins Clark, Phyllis A. Whitney and the incomparable Dorothy L. Sayers. Enjoy! -- Laura Transcript of Interview with Anne Louise Bannon Laura Brennan: Anne Louise Bannon has made not one, but two careers out of her passion for storytelling. Both a novelist and a journalist, she has an insatiable curiosity. In addition to her mystery novels, she has written a nonfiction book about poisons, freelanced for such diverse publications as the Los Angeles Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Backstage West, and edits a wine blog. On the fiction side, she writes a romantic serial, a spy series, and her wonderful Kathy and Freddie historical mystery series, set in the 1920s. Anne, thank you for joining me. Anne Louise Bannon: thank you for having me. LB: On your website, I noticed that you introduce yourself through an avatar: Robin Goodfellow, who is better known as the impish Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. ALB: Yes,that is only my favorite character from my favorite play in the whole wide world. I love A Midsummer Night's Dream. LB: How do you see yourself as Puck? ALB: It's not so much physically, I'm not the fastest moving human being on the planet. It's mostly mentally. My brain is constantly going and there's throwaway line from the end of Act II: "I'll put a girdle around the earth in 40 minutes." Maybe my body doesn't move that fast, but my brain certainly does. It was something about Puck that I really loved. I also love the fact that he's a bit of a stinker. A pre-Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny, if you will. LB: You are in every medium I can think of. So, let's actually start though: how did you get started writing? What came first? ALB: Oh, being a day-dreamy, moody teenager at age 15. I mean, I was spending an awful lot of time daydreaming. I finally figured out if I was going to spend all this time daydreaming, I should find a way to justify it. So I started writing. And that summer I turned 15, I cranked out my first novel. LB: Why mysteries? ALB: I've always liked mystery, as a genre. As I got older, I just started reading more and more mysteries. I stumbled onto Dorothy Sayers, and Nero Wolfe was popular on TV with, I think, William Cannon at the time. One of my favorite books as a kid was called The Mystery of the Green Cat by Phyllis Whitney and I really enjoyed Nancy Drew, and fell away from it for a while as a teenager but got back into it as a young adult, even before I finished college. I would pick up mysteries as my relaxation from grad school work and stuff like that. LB: How do you think your training as a journalist impacted your fiction? ALB: Well, given that my journalism happened way later, as an adult... Here's the story: I had a really bad first marriage. As part of that, I ended up writing a lot of stuff,

Given the stuff on TV at the time, and especially conditioned by the dreck on which I'd been working for the past few years, I really didn't expect much. But, alone in that room, within a few minutes I was convinced that finally, here was a show I could be as enthusiastic about as I was for my own series concepts. The new series, developed by Peter Fischer and the remarkably talented William Link and Richard Levinson, was Murder, She Wrote. -- Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of the REAL Tom Sawyer I couldn't be more excited to be talking to (the real) Tom Sawyer about his writing career, which spans not only two political thrillers and a lively PI series, but television stints on some of my favorite shows -- including both The Law and Harry McGraw and the iconic Murder, She Wrote. The stories he tells in the interview are only a taste of the insider stories he shares in his new memoir, The Adventures of the REAL Tom Sawyer.  In addition to chatting about his Hollywood career working with Angela Lansbury, Jerry Orbach and Tony Curtis, among many others, Tom gives a shout out to The Maltese Falcon -- and a great story about the influence it had on Murder, She Wrote. We also discussed his books on writing (Fiction Writing Demystified), as well as his thrillers, The Sixteenth Man and No Place to Run. And I was happy to learn that he's writing a follow-up to Cross Purposes, which launched his Barney Moon, PI series. But as Tom's memoir, The Adventures of the REAL Tom Sawyer, makes clear, he's done more than we could ever talk about in one twenty-minute interview, including a musical about JFK (Jack); a film which he wrote, directed, and produced (Alice Goodbody); and a book about what it takes to succeed (9 Badass Secrets for Putting Yourself in Luck's Way). To learn more about these and his many other projects, check out Tom's website, ThomasBSawyer.com. Tom graciously sent me an autographed copy of a Murder, She Wrote which he'd written, and at the end of May, 2017, I will be giving it away to one lucky person on my mailing list. So if you're not on my mailing list yet, now is definitely the time to sign up. I send out one newsletter a month, and I never share your e-mail with anyone else. So sign up now, in the box on the top right. Good luck! -- Laura Transcript of Interview with Tom Sawyer Laura Brennan: Tom Sawyer has written for the stage, television, movies and mystery novels, and his memoir, The Adventures of the REAL Tom Sawyer, launches today, May 1st. While his adventures -- and accomplishments -- are legion, two are of particular interest to Destination Mystery listeners: first, his crime novels, which range from thrillers to a PI series; and second, his involvement with none other than Jessica Fletcher, as a writer, producer and showrunner on Murder She Wrote. Tom, thank you for joining me. Tom Sawyer: Well, thank you for having me, Laura. LB: You have had a career writing for just about every possible medium, and now you've turned your hand to memoir. And your adventures are just amazing. TS: Well, thank you. They amazed me as I had to revisit them to write the memoir. It was one holy moly moment after another because at the time that these extraordinary things were happening in my life, with most of them, I had no perspective. I just figured, oh, this is how it works. Next. LB: You have done some amazing things. Let me see where I even want to start. I think, you working in New York as a visual artist. TS: Well, that was my boyhood ambition. Back when I was a kid, they did story comic strips. Realistically drawn, three panels a day with dialogue balloons. The idea, of course, was to sell newspapers, to get the readers to want to buy the newspapers so they can find out what happens next in your comic strip. And that became my goal from the time I was 12 years old. Went to New York when I was 20 and started working in comic books.

If only I could learn to say no, I wouldn't be perched on a barstool in a redneck bar, breathing secondhand smoke and pretending to flirt with men sporting baseball caps and Confederate bandanas, their eyes riveted on my Victoria's Secret-enhanced cleavage... I hit the rewind button on my life and stopped a few days earlier, at the point where Phyllis Ross threw a cup of coffee in Nina Brown's face... -- Maggie King, Murder at the Moonshine Inn Maggie King says on her website (which you should definitely go check out) that she writes cozy with a touch of noir -- traditional mysteries that sizzle just a bit more than your usual cozy. Well, with a book group as the focal point, what did you expect? There are two books so far (and counting) in Maggie's Hazel Rose Book Group Mystery Series, Murder at the Book Group and Murder at the Moonshine Inn. She is also the author of several short stories in a variety of anthologies: Virginia is for Mysteries, Virginia is for Mysteries II, and the upcoming 50 Shades of Cabernet. Maggie gives a couple of fun shout outs: to writers Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Gillian Roberts and Joan Smith; and to two favorite characters from the old Little Lulu comics (I remember those!), Witch Hazel and Little Itch.   Alas, our audio fell out a few times, but I want to make sure you know that in addition to her website, Maggie blogs regularly on Lethal Ladies Write.  Finally if you're on Instagram, follow her here! As always, if you'd rather read than listen, a transcript is below. Enjoy! Transcript of Interview with Maggie King Laura Brennan: Maggie King’s novels are a sassy, suspenseful cross between traditional mysteries and cozies. Her protagonist, Hazel Rose, is a romance writer who wants nothing to do with murder. And yet, more than once, it falls to her to uncover the truth. Maggie, thank you for joining me. Maggie King: Thank you so much for having me, Laura. LB: You write the Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries and in fact your first novel was called Murder at the Book Group. So, I have to ask: did you join book groups because you had an idea for a murder, or was it being in a book group that made you want to kill somebody? MK: (Laughter) Well, that's a great question. The first book group I was in was back in the 1990s in Santa Clarita, California. And it was a themed book group, very much like the book group in Murder at the Book Group. We read by theme, it could have been mysteries set in New York City or books where the detectives were journalists, something like that. And all the people were just absolutely lovely. And it occurred to me, well, what if they weren't so lovely? What if they had secrets and scandals? I've been in many book groups ever since, a lot of my characters are based on people who I have known a book groups. I can't say that anyone was ever murdered, or that I even wanted to murder anybody, but there's always a certain amount of conflict in book groups because there a lot of opinions and people are very passionate about books. LB: Well, I was thinking about book groups: they're one of the ways in which we re-create villages, you know? We create a small community of people who are bound together in this case by a love of books, but they may not all get along. It makes me think of Miss Marple in her village, to see how all of your characters interact. And your book group as a whole functions with a desire for justice. MK: Yes. Yes, they are very strong advocates of justice. LB: That really resonated with me. Do you think that's one of the reasons why we're drawn to mysteries? MK: Absolutely! Absolutely. We want to see justice. So often in the real world, we don't see justice served. And I think that's one of the reasons I like to write mysteries as well, because I have a strong sense of justice. I have to say though, I play a little looser with the justice in my short stories.

When I was lying in the hospital three months or so ago, after the boys and their children had gone home, Alan came back and kissed my forehead and said, "It's time you wrote it down..." I didn't have to ask what he meant... -- Sally Wright, Behind the Bonehouse Sally Wright's mysteries are beautifully written tales that wrestle with moral issue and the complex motivations of everyday people. You can learn more -- and see photos! -- on her website, SallyWright.net, where she also lists both of her series, in order. Two of the books we talk about in depth are her latest, Behind the Bonehouse, the second in her Jo Grant series, set in horse country, Kentucky; and Code of Silence, the prequel to her Ben Reese series, and featuring as a key plot element the Venona Code. Sally gives a shout-out to different authors who have influenced her writing, including P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Josephine Tey, but also Tolstoy and Jane Austen. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! -- Laura Transcript of Interview with Sally Wright Laura Brennan: My guest today is Edgar Award Finalist Sally Wright. In addition to elegant writing and plotting, Sally does intense research for her novels. She has studied rare books, falconry, painting restoration, the Venona Code, and much more to write about her hero, Ben Reese, an ex-WWII Ranger and university archivist. Her latest series, the Jo Grant mysteries, focus on Kentucky’s horse culture and the families who live and die there. Sally, thank you for joining me. Sally Wright: Thank you. LB: Let's start with your Ben Reese series. Publish and Perish is the first book, and Ben is a rather unusual protagonist. He's not a cop, he's not a PI, he's an archivist. SW: Right. LB: And it's set in 1960. How in the world did you come up with the idea for the series? SW: Well, because I met a man who was an archivist at a university -- and this would've been probably about 1973, when I had my first conversation with him. And I knew him as an archivist and he seemed to be World War II age to me, and I asked him what he did in the war. And he gave me a jive response, and I kept just kind of pushing him. And he said, well, I was a behind the lines scout in Europe. I worked for Army intelligence. And I looked at him and I went, if I ever write a mystery novel, you're the character for me. Because I was so interested in a man of action who could do the really dangerous things that he had done in the war, who would come out of that war and do something highly intellectual and very different than what he had done previously. So that really appealed to me. So if I was can write that character, I had to do it at a time when his age -- I wanted to do it when he would have been in his late thirties or something. When he would have been in his prime. LB: So, when you started, you started with him in academia. Then you said that you wanted him to have a little bit more scope. SW: First of all, in knowing this gentleman, he traveled all over the world, he had worked studying archival matters and artifacts in several countries and that's what he would do in the summer when he had time off. And I went, I could put him anywhere. The plot could be based on an artifact or person he meets who owns the artifact or is looking for one. It really gave me tremendous scope. And then I got to go to very interesting places and meet very interesting people that I never would've met if I hadn't been working on the books. LB: You have a wonderful website that we're going to link to in the show notes -- SW: Oh, good. LB: SallyWright.net, correct? SallyWright.net SW: Yes. LB: And you talk a lot about how you come up with your ideas. There always seems to be a connection almost from one book to the next of where you get the idea for the next book -- and even for your next series, you got it traveling for the Ben Reese series.

The last time I saw Lisa Campbell, she was naked. It was almost thirty years ago, when I was in junior high and she was the latest Hot Young Thing, smiling invitingly at me -- and thousands of other lonely guys -- from the pages of Playboy Magazine... Now, as she stood in my office waiting room, cashmere sweater folded neatly over her arm, I had to admit that the years since had taken their toll... -- Dennis Palumbo, Phantom Limb I had such a terrific, full conversation with Dennis, I almost don't know where to start the show notes. First, make sure you check out his website, DennisPalumbo.com, where he has info on all of his books, not to mention news and links and even short stories to read.  Speaking of short stories, you can read his wonderful Christmas mystery, "A Theory of Murder," which features no less a detective than young patent clerk Albert Einstein, at Lorie Lewis Ham's online magazine, Kings River Life. It appeared on Robert Lopresti's list of 10 of the best mystery short stories he's read. Check out the multi-author blog SleuthSayers.org (what an awesome blog title!) I go all fan girl on "My Favorite Year," one of my favorite movies ever. If you haven't yet seen it, you are in for a treat. And if you have, well, it's always a good time to re-watch it. Here are Dennis' Daniel Rinaldi books, in order: 1. Mirror Image 2. Fever Dream 3. Night Terrors 4. Phantom Limb In addition, he's written a sci-fi novel (City Wars), a nonfiction collection of essays (Writing from the Inside Out, which we discuss in the interview), and a collection of short stories (From Crime to Crime). His first Daniel Rinaldi short story will appear in February in an anthology from Poisoned Pen Press.  And if you are as fascinated as I am by his combination of Hollywood experience and psychological insight, you can also check out his Psychology Today blog, Hollywood on the Couch. Finally, we gave a shout out to Vicki Delany, who also wrote novels while holding down a full-time job. You can check out my interview with her right here. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! -- Laura Transcript of Interview with Dennis Palumbo Laura Brennan: Dennis Palumbo is a former Hollywood screenwriter, a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, and the author of the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series. He also writes short stories and essays, blogs for the Huffington Post, and contributes a regular column to Psychology Today called “Hollywood on the Couch.” Dennis hasn’t just done it all, he makes it all look easy. Dennis, thank you for joining me.  Dennis Palumbo: It's my pleasure, Laura. LB: You have done so much, so well, let's start at the beginning. Did you always want to be a writer? DP: Pretty much from my youth, I would say from about 10 or 11 or 12. You know, reading comic books and comic strips and right around then I began reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood. I've just always loved storytelling. And particularly mysteries and thrillers. And, yeah, I’ve always liked writing and liked doing it. It was my favorite thing to do in high school and college, was writing essays or short stories. I actually came to Hollywood and was still writing -- the only writing I had done that had seen print was writing for the Pitt News, which was the newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh from which I graduated. And when I came to Hollywood, I was writing short stories and sending them all over the place and also writing scripts trying to break into television. It was very unusual, the same week my then-writing partner and I got our first writing job, which was the first episode of “Love Boat,” by the way. The same week that happened, I sold my first story, mystery short story, to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It was just amazing, that week, I'll never forget that week. I was only like, 24, 25. That was a good week. I was very, very lucky.

It was entirely my own fault, of course. I know better than to ignore the voice. At least I always do in retrospect... -- Jessica Estevao, Whispers Beyond the Veil  Jessica Estevao has launched a terrific new series with Whispers Beyond the Veil. Set in 1898, it has everything you could want in a mystery: rich characters, superb settings, and of course, murder. First and foremost, Jessica gives a shout-out to her blog mates over at Wicked Cozy Authors. They include Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, Sherry Harris, J.A. Hennrikus/Julianne Holmes, Barbara Ross, and Edith Maxwell/Tace Baker/Maddie Day. What a team! We talk about research into the past, including the Harmon Museum, the Lily Dale Assembly, and her neighbor Daniel Blaney, who literally wrote the book on Old Orchard's history. She also wants to give a shout-out to Sisters in Crime for all they do to help writers, both new and established.  Finally, Jessica was kind enough to share her own personal story of a time when trusting her instincts -- and a voice in her ear -- saved her life. I have to use this as an opportunity to recommend Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear. I can't recommend it often enough. Very few books can save your life; this is one of them. Read it. And if you'd prefer to read the interview, as always, it's below. Enjoy! -- Laura Transcript of Interview with Jessica Estevao Laura Brennan: My guest today is an accomplished, award-winning novelist with a brand new series. As Jessie Crockett, she has the delightful Sugar Grove cozy mysteries, feature mayhem and maple syrup in equal doses. As Jessica Estevao, she has just launched a new series, set in 1898, and featuring a heroine with a dark past and an otherworldly gift. Jessica, thank you for joining me. Jessica Estevao: Thanks for having me. LB: I want to talk to you about your writing career. You have both a cozy series, a couple of other books, and now a new historical series. But first I want to ask, why mysteries? JE: I love mysteries. When I was a small child, my father used to travel on business and when he was gone, my mother would let me stay up and watch Agatha Christie mystery movies on television with her, which was of course a hugely special treat. So that was one aspect of it I suppose. But I think one of the reasons also was that the first chapter book that I remember reading was The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore. And I just remember feeling so accomplished at reading a chapter book instead of a picture book. And I think that sense of delight associated with mysteries has remained my entire life. As an author, one of the things that I truly love about writing in the mystery genre is that the challenge is to conceal as well as to reveal. And it's really delightful to use that scaffolding to tell a story and to challenge yourself to tell both of those stories, what's real and what's misdirection. LB: Now, your first book was Live Free or Die, and you took home a Daphne for that right away. JE: I did. LB: You took the world by storm. So how did that book happen? JE: It kind of came as a response to a semi-tragedy here in my village. My postmistress in the village had been here for years when I started to write that book and then she retired. And I missed her terribly. And it seemed that the only way to get back the right sort of postmistress was to make my own. But in reality, we have had a couple of truly lovely postmistress and since then, but I like to think that sending out that energy to the universe got them for us. LB: It got you back your perfect postmistress. JE: Yes. The postmistress in a very small village really is a wonderful character, to be at the heart of the town and to set the tone and hours did it beautifully. And I just really wanted to honor that and recapture that in writing. LB: You wrote that first book, you really did take the mystery community by storm. But you went into a new series. JE: I did.

Today's guest is the multi-talented Ellen Byron. Her Cajun Country Mysteries are charming, funny and lightly romantic -- the perfect cozy capers to keep you turning the pages. The series is set in Louisiana, a state Ellen loves. As this interview goes live, Louisiana faces a massive natural disaster with deadly flooding. For people who want to help, Ellen suggests the Red Cross. Here are pictures from the first week of the flood, and Charity Navigator's view of top charities working the crisis.  Ellen's passion for Louisiana comes through in her writing and the world she creates for her heroine, Maggie. She named one of her characters after her friend Gaynell Bourgeois Moore (here she is on YouTube singing The Nascar Blues and here's her very own CD!) Ellen also talks about a Facebook page she loves, New Orleans Plantation Country, and mentions two real plantations, Houmas House Plantation and Ashland-Belle Helene. I give a shout-out to one of the TV series she worked on, Maybe It's Me, which (criminally!) is not available on DVD. Yet. I continue to hold out hope. You can check out her plays, Graceland and Asleep on the Wind, and if, like me, you are a fan of her Cajun Country Mysteries, you can pre-order Body on the Bayou, which comes out on September 13th. The delightful first book in the series, Plantation Shudders, was nominated for an Agatha, a Daphne, and a Lefty (for best humorous mystery).  As always, if you'd rather read than listen, here is the transcript. Enjoy! Transcript of Interview with Ellen Byron. Laura Brennan: My guest today is multitalented writer Ellen Byron. Ellen has written over 200 magazine articles, her published plays include the award-winning Graceland, and her many television series include "Just Shoot Me," "Wings," and “Maybe It’s Me,” one of my all-time favorite sitcoms. Most of all, she is the author of the Cajun Country Mysteries, set in Louisiana.   Ellen, thank you for joining me. Ellen Byron: Thank you for having me. LB: You are such a prolific writer! Articles and books and plays and television -- which came first? Where did you start? EB: I started writing plays. I actually started as an actress, quote unquote. Because it feels so silly to say that now. Got my union card doing a commercial while I was in college. I ended up writing a play that was inspired by my friends and I, I cast my friends in their roles and none of them did a really good job of playing themselves. And after that I took a class at Ensemble Studio Theater in playwriting because I'd never studied it. I wrote one play there and then I wrote Graceland. And then I kept writing plays, but I couldn't support myself that way so I started writing freelance magazine articles. And the playwriting path was so torturous in terms of readings and readings and readings until you got productions, that I remember I was on the phone with the man who ran the workshop at Circle Rep Theater, which was a great theater in New York that is no longer in existence, sadly. I was taking notes from him, and I remember the exact moment when I thought, you know, if I'm going to take this many notes, do this many rewrites, someone should be paying me for it. And that's when I decided to switch over to TV. LB: So were you in New York at the time? EB: Yes. I'm from New York, I went to school in Louisiana, Tulane. But I didn't really want to leave New York because I love New York, it's really where my soul is. But unfortunately there are way more TV options in California than in New York so in 1990 I made the move to Los Angeles. Kicking and screaming. LB: I totally understand. Especially, there is such a culture difference between New York and Los Angeles. EB: Yes. LB: If someone hasn't yet picked up your series, could you give me just a brief overview of what launched the series? EB: Maggie Crozat, she is an artist and she went to school in New York. And she had a boyfriend,

I am thrilled to be talking to New York Times Best-Selling Author Denise Swanson. She has two cozy mystery series -- the Scumble River Mysteries and the Devereaux's Dime Store series -- as well as the Change of Heart Romance Series. She also has some incredible stories to tell: her writing career came out of what she has called a face-to-face encounter with evil. You can find all her mysteries in order on her website, and if you're looking for the romances, here's that link. The 19th (!) Scumble River Mystery has the irresistible title of Murder of a Cranky Catnapper.  Catnip! As always, if you'd rather read than listen, here's the transcript. Enjoy! Transcript of Interview with Denise Swanson Laura Brennan: My guest today is New York Times best-selling author Denise Swanson. Her mystery series include both the Scumbel River Mysteries and the Devereaux's Dime Store Mysteries. And if that weren't enough, she also writes the Change of Heart Romance series. Denise has multiple awards and nominations including the Agatha award, the Mary Higgins Clark award, the Reviewer's Choice award, and was also nominated for RT Magazine's career achievement award, alongside Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich. Denise, thank you so much for joining me. Denise Swanson: Thank you for inviting me. LB: Okay, so I was counting up all your published books -- plus, I know you must have more in the works. And you're creeping up on 30 books in the last 16 years, is that right? DS: I think that close. Yes, I have -- the 19th Scumble River will come out in September, which is Murder of a Cranky Catnapper. And the 6th Devereaux's Dime Store book will come out next July. And I have four romances published so, getting right up there. LB: You had a career as a school psychologist, correct? DS: Yes. I worked for 22 years as a school psychologist. I worked every age level from preschoolers all the way through high school, but my favorite was the junior high, that's where I spent most of my time. LB: How did you then make the shift from helping junior high school students survive -- DS: And their parents! LB: -- and their parents, bless your heart -- to writing mysteries? DS: Well, I've always wanted to write. I've always written. I actually wrote my very first book in kindergarten. I am an only child and I grew up on a farm and my mom had a lot of time, she was a stay-at-home mom. So I was reading by the time I went to kindergarten. When I was in kindergarten, the teacher didn't really know what to do with me and she she sat me into the corner and said pretty much, amuse yourself. Because she had to teach everybody else. So I used my big chief tablet to write an alphabet book. And I have to say that when I brought it up to show it to my teacher, it wasn't quite the reaction I was expecting. I brought it up and I said oh, look what I've done! And she paged through the tablet and said to me, you've used your whole tablet. What will you use for the rest of the year? So that was my first bad review. The message came across pretty clearly that this was not an activity that she encouraged. So I started writing again when I was in junior high. I had been reading Harlequin Romances, and you know back then, in the dark ages, they were pretty tame. If the hero and heroine held hands by the end of the book and had little kids was a pretty hot book. So, this was the seventies and my 13- and 14-year-old friends were doing much more than that. So I wanted to write a more realistic book. Unfortunately, my English teacher caught me at it and made me read the section I was working on in front of the class. The interesting thing was, I had been working on a French kiss, and the moment the word 'tongue' came out of my mouth, she whipped me out from the front of the class and sent me down to the principal. So I had my second bad review. LB: I have to ask, given this, what in the world prompted you to go into a career in which you w...

  Claudia Rose, the protagonist of Sheila Lowe's Forensic Handwriting Mystery series, is a handwriting analyst -- as is Sheila herself. The stories are the best of both the mystery and thriller worlds: high stakes and plenty of adrenaline, but solid mysteries, plenty of clues, and a lot of heart. Let's lead with the important stuff: if you are reading or listening to this before August 16, 2016, Sheila is having a book launch party and you are invited! Click on the link to learn more. Plus, here is the pre-order link for the new book, Outside the Lines. In addition to having written The Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis and Handwriting of the Famous and Infamous, Sheila is the president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, which has resources for those interested in learning more about handwriting analysis. AHAF is also has resources for an important, and at the moment, often overlooked skill: cursive writing. They recently released a paper on the importance of cursive writing in the digital age. Want to help your kids learn cursive? You can learn more about New American Cursive here, and there's yet more information at CursiveIsCool.com. She gives a shout out to the Enid Blyton children's books, particularly The Rocking Down Mystery, which appears to be out of print, although used copies can still be found (thank you, Internet!). I recommend Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, a brilliant book on how to read people and situations. And here is the link for Women Against Gun Violence. Finally, Sheila has also written the stand-alone psychological thriller, What She Saw. Here are the Claudia Rose Forensic Handwriting Mysteries in order. Enjoy! 1 - Poison Pen 2 - Written in Blood 3 - Dead Write 4 - Last Writes 5 - Inkslingers Ball 6 - Outside the Lines Transcript of Interview with Sheila Lowe Laura Brennan: I am so excited today to be talking to my guest, Sheila Lowe. Sheila’s wonderful novels of suspense feature Claudia Rose, a forensic handwriting expert -- territory Sheila knows well, because she herself is one. She hasn’t merely written the book on handwriting analysis -- although she has done that -- she’s also developed Handwriting Analyzer software that has been used around the world for over twenty years and she is the current president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation. Her Forensic Handwriting Mystery series blends the art and science of handwriting analysis with complex characters and intricate plotting. Sheila, thank you for joining me. Sheila Lowe: Thank you so much for having me. LB: I have to ask, how did you get into the field? I wasn’t even sure there was a field of handwriting analysis. When did that start, and how did you get into it? SL: Well, for that we have to go back in time a long way, back to 1967. I was a senior in high school and my boyfriend’s mother read a book about handwriting analysis, and she analyzed my handwriting. And I was, from then on, I was totally hooked. For about ten years, I read books, everything I could find at the library or the bookstore. And then to my great delight, I found that there were courses I could take. So I did, and I ended up getting certified in 1981. By 1985, I became a court-qualified handwriting expert. LB: That’s fascinating. Now, does this have a long history, or is this a fairly recent area? SL: No, it’s been around for hundreds of years. It was researched quite thoroughly in Europe, but Hitler outlawed it. Well, it’s kind of a long story, but he had a friend who practiced it and he outlawed all of the other methods except for this friend. He outlawed it under the fortune-telling laws. Which, it has nothing to do with fortune-telling. But it kind of went underground for about 50 years and has had a big resurgence in the last number of years. LB: You’ve actually testified in court, this is something that is used to help convict or just to help cle...

Today's author writes a cozy mystery series with echoes of my favorite film, "The Thin Man." (Dashiell Hammett's book is darn good as well, but I'm a sucker for Myrna Loy and William Powell.) Her Nick and Nora mysteries feature a crime reporter starting over back in her home town and a cat who may -- or may not -- be the reincarnation of a missing detective. Together with a wonderful supporting cast, they solve crimes and mete out justice. Meow If It's Murder is the first in this charming series. Toni and I chat about a lot of things: favorite authors (including the delightful Krista Davis, who you can hear interviewed here) and two charities she actively supports: Kids Need To Read (founded by Denise Gary, P.J. Haarsma, and actor Nathan Fillion) and Alley Cat Allies. To learn more about Toni, be sure to check out her author page and of course the blog she shares with her cat, ROCCO. He interviews mystery authors and runs frequent book giveaways, so don't miss it. As always, here's the transcript if you'd rather read than listen. Enjoy! Transcript of T.C. LoTempio Interview Laura Brennan: T.C. LoTempio is the national bestselling author of the Nick and Nora Mystery series, as well as nearly a dozen other books, ranging from paranormal mysteries to rom com. Meow if It’s Murder introduced Nora Charles, a crime reporter who longs for a quiet life, and Nick, the cat who adopted her. Toni, thank you for joining me. T.C. LoTempio: Thank you for having me, Laura. LB: Tell me a little bit about yourself. What got you started writing? TL: Okay. Well, I’ve been writing since I was ten years old. My mother used to read me stories at night, and I wouldn’t like the ending, so I’d make up my own. And then I’d buy comic books, and I wouldn’t like the way those ended, so I’d make up those stories. And it just progressed from there. I used to write fairy tales, you know, and I was always good at English in school. I got away from it a little bit. I got married, life got in the way as they say. And then, after my parents died, I kinda got back into it. I was at a training session with a friend, and we were learning how to do e-mails at the time, that’s how long ago this was. And she said to me, “Oh, you write such good e-mails. You should probably be a writer.” And I said, “You know, I think I am one. I just have to get back into it.” And it just took off from there. LB: You’ve actually written many, many different kinds of novels. Are you finding your genre? TL: I think it started out that way. Actually, the type of novel that I enjoy writing the most is the one that I stopped because agents would tell me there’s no market for it. It’s Horror. Stephen King-type books. And they said, unless you are Stephen King, there’s no market for it. So I figured, well, if I want to get published, I’d better write something else. LB: I find that hilarious, since I’m a member of the Horror Writers Association and a lot of people are actually selling horror these days. TL: Well, that’s good to know, if I want to start writing it again. LB: Certainly in movies, almost the closest thing there is to a Whodunit is a horror film. TL: I would tend to agree with you. I must’ve seen “Halloween” at least three dozen times, if not more. LB: Yeah, and it’s too bad, too, because they used to make movies very much like -- to bring this back to your wonderful series -- very much like “The Thin Man.” And they don’t make those anymore. TL: I know, and isn’t that a shame? I think maybe more people might go to the movies if they did that. LB: Absolutely! So, tell me how “The Thin Man” -- was “The Thin Man” really your inspiration? Because it trickles through your series so beautifully. TL: Well, it was kind of a combination of William Powell and my cat. LB: For those who haven’t yet read your series, just a little background. It’s a cozy series about a woman named Nora who’s in her thirties and she’s been very suc...

First of all, congratulations to Amanda Flower: earlier this month, she won her first Agatha Award at Malice Domestic for her middle-grade mystery, Andi Unstoppable. With six series underway and a seventh one starting next year, there doesn't seem to be much that Amanda Flower can't do. You can find out more about her at AmandaFlower.com and also here on Facebook, where she loves to chat with her fans. When we talked about her most recent series, the Magical Bookshop Mysteries, we talked about Emily Dickinson, and I wanted to give a shout-out to the poem we discussed, one of my very favorites. Here's the full text of Because I could not stop for Death and here's a link to a charming site, The Emily Dickinson Museum, for those wanting to know more about the poet. The next book features Edgar Allan Poe, and he, too, has a museum. If you'd rather read than listen to the interview, simply scroll down for the transcript. Meanwhile, here are her series, in order: Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries (written as Isabella Alan) Prequel e-Novella!: Plainly Murder 1 - Murder, Plain and Simple 2 - Murder, Simply Stitched 3 - Murder, Served Simply 4 - Murder, Plainly Read 5 - Murder, Handcrafted Andi Boggs Mysteries (middle-grade) 1 - Andi Unexpected 2 - Andi Under Pressure 3 - Andi Unstoppable Appleseed Creek Mysteries (complete) 1 - A Plain Death 2 - A Plain Scandal 3 - A Plain Disappearance 4 - A Plain Malice India Hayes Mysteries 1 - Maid of Murder 2 - Murder in a Basket Living History Museum Mysteries 1 - The Final Reveille 2 - The Final Tap Magical Bookshop Mysteries 1 - Crime and Poetry 2 - Prose and Cons Transcript for Amanda Flower Interview Laura Brennan: My guest is USA Today Bestselling author Amanda Flower. Over the past five years, she has published seventeen novels, including the Amish Quilt Shop mystery series, as Isabella Alan. Her most recent book, Crime and Poetry, launches a new series with a magical touch. She has been nominated for three Agatha Awards, including best first mystery, and this year she won the Agatha for best children’s/young adult novel, Andi Unstoppable. By day, Amanda is a superhero -- I mean, a librarian, my favorite people in the world. Amanda, thank you for joining me. Amanda Flower: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. LB: So first of all, congratulations on your Agatha win! AF: Thank you. It was incredible, a truly surreal moment. And I cried and I shook, and it was everything you’d imagine winning an award like that would be. LB: Did you always want to be a writer? AF: Yes. My first book was Maid of Murder. LB: So then how did you decide to write about, to write Amish mysteries? AF: I was pitching ideas to my agent and she didn’t like any of my ideas, some of which I thought are still great. So I said, well, I used to live in Amish country in my early twenties. And her eyes got all big, and she sold the Appleseed Creek series and the Amish Quilt series within a couple months after that. So it was just timing. LB: One of the things I really like about them is that your heroine in both is not, she’s not Amish. She’s an outsider, but she has deep ties to the community. And there’s a great affection for them, for that community. And I love that you bring a diverse perspective. AF: Something I learned from living out there is that most people think, Amish -- an Amish person’s an Amish person. There wasn’t that much variety. But that’s not true. The Amish are very different between orders and between districts. It’s just what their bishop says that they’re allowed to do, how they interpret their rules. The Amish have a lot of variety. LB: You have a new one coming out -- I cannot believe how prolific you are. You’ve had three books come out this year so far already. AF: I have! Crime and Poetry came out in April. The Final Tap,

If you're looking for fast-paced thrillers with well-rounded characters and plenty of chills, look no further. Peg Brantley delivers. We talk about the inspiration for Red Tide; culture and vulnerable populations in The Missings; her most recent novel, The Sacrifice; and what she admires about her characters.  Also, she gives a shout-out to two books: - A debut cozy getting great buzz, Cynthia Kuhn's The Semester of Our Discontent, and - A WWII novel, Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys.  Her next novel, Trafficked, is due out this fall. It centers on human trafficking -- the same topic I discussed when chatting with Désirée Zamorano, author of Human Cargo, if you'd like to check out our conversation. Don't forget, if you want a chance to win April's bundle of books -- thriller All In (signed by author Lisa Klink), noir Dead Soon Enough by Steph Cha; and cozy The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss by Krista Davis, along with a $10 Amazon gift card, sign up for the monthly newsletter in the boxes on the right. If you'd rather read than listen, here's the transcript. Enjoy! Peg Brantley Transcript Welcome to Destination Mystery, a podcast for readers who love a good mystery. My guest today is thriller writer Peg Brantley. It’s no accident Peg Brantley’s thrillers feel so terrifyingly real. She immerses herself in research, interviewing crime scene investigators, FBI agents, and human trafficking experts, and studying topics as diverse as arson dogs and Santeria. She’s gone through the citizen’s police academy and obtained her concealed carry permit, all in an attempt to bring realism to her stories. Her third novel, The Sacrifice, was a finalist for two Colorado literary awards. She’s currently working on her fourth novel, the second in the Mex Anderson series. Laura Brennan: Peg, thank you so much for joining me. Peg Brantley: Thank you for asking me. LB: Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get started writing? PB: My bonus son had a heart attack when he was 40, no 39 years old, and we moved him home with us. And I lost track of everything else that was going on in my life. I was paying attention to him. And after about a year and a half of that I decided, you know I've always wanted to write a book, and I'm home all day. Why not? So it was out of his tragedy, family tragedy, that got my heart where it needed to be. LB: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that. PB: He's doing well now, by the way. LB: That is, that was the question. So your son came home and you had to take care of him and you ended up writing as something for yourself, within that. PB: Yeah. LB: You know, I find that really interesting because family relationships are such a big part of all of your novels. Are you close your family in general? PB: Yes. Yeah, I really am. You know, I was estranged from my mom for a number of years but thankfully before she died we were able to reconnect and take care of everything. I just think that part of who makes each one of us who we are, are the family dynamics and the relationships that we have with other people. And I try to have my characters be at least a little well-rounded where those are concerned. LB: Family dynamics and family secrets play a big role. So I'm not gonna pry into your family secrets. Tell me about the inspiration for Red Tide. PB: I read an article about a man who died in prison. And he left behind a photograph. And the question was, why this photograph? It wasn't person, it wasn't a place, it wasn’t an event -- well, it was a place. It was a field, just a field with trees around it. But he kept that photograph. And people said, well, there can’t be any special reason for him keeping that photograph. And I thought, well, what if there was a special reason? And it turns out that that is the dumping ground for bodies. LB: Is that what led you, then, to your heroine's job as a body retrieval specialist?

Episode 1 features thriller author Lisa Klink and her terrific book, All In. You can listen to it here or you can listen on i-Tunes. I am giving away a copy of All In, autographed by Lisa, as part of my April giveaway, in one big bundle o' books: All In plus Steph Cha's noir, Dead Soon Enough, and Krista Davis' cozy, The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss. And a $10 Amazon gift card. If you'd like a chance to win the book bundle, all you have to do is sign up for my newsletter before April 30th. Everyone on the list at midnight Pacific Time, April 30th, will be automatically entered to win. No spam, by the way, just a monthly newsletter. I won't sell, rent, lend-out, or ransom your e-mail address. In this interview, we talk about Lisa's novel All In (thriller) and her work in The Dead Man book series (horror/thriller). If you'd rather read the interview than listen, here's the transcript! Enjoy!   Episode 1: Lisa Klink Welcome to Destination Mystery, a podcast for people who love a good mystery. I'm Laura Brennan. Lisa Klink started her career in the world of Star Trek, writing for Deep Space Nine and Voyager before coming back to earth on shows such as Martial Law and Missing. In addition to writing for television, she scripted a theme park attraction and authored graphic novels, short stories, and three novels in The Dead Man series. Lisa is also a five-time champion on Jeopardy, but most important for today's chat, Lisa is the co-author, with Joel Goldman, of the thriller All In. Laura Brennan: Lisa, hi and welcome! Lisa Klink: Hi! How's it going? LB: I'm doing very well. I'm so excited to be here. I loved All In. LK: Oh, thank you. LB: You're welcome. And I want to talk to you about it, and about the genesis of the project, but the first thing I want to do is gush about Cassie. Because it's so rare that we see, I mean it's not rare these days to find a kick ass woman protagonist, but to find a book where the woman is actually more kick ass than the man – – LK: Yeah. LB: I mean, love Jake, Jake's great and he's great at what he does, he's super fantastic at poker and at his life – – LK: Mmm-hmm. LB: And his livelihood, but you know, Cassie's the one who saves their ass. Again and again. So tell me a little bit about her first. How – – was it deliberate? Did you guys decide – – because you wrote this book with Joel Goldman. LK: Yes. LB: Did you guys decide to do that deliberately? LK: I wish I could take full credit for Cassie, but Joel Goldman is actually the one who came up with Cassie and Jake. He has written several ongoing series with detectives and cops and lawyers. He has a whole bunch of series going on and he wanted to start a new series with this pair Cassie and Jake, an asset recovery specialist and a poker player. So he kind of had all of that in his mind when he brought it to me, and had a couple of paragraphs bios for each of them. So he was the one who decided that she was going to be the pro at this, kind of doing the Oceans Eleven stuff. And that Jake was going to be, as you said, talented in his own way but kind of the sidekick in her business in a way. LB: Oceans Eleven is a very apt comparison, not just because of the casino settings but also for the tone and the depth of the characters. It's such a well-balanced book, it's hard to call either of them a sidekick, certainly in terms of their emotional development. It's really Jake almost who gets more of that, in this first book anyway. LK: Yeah, well that obviously is the interesting part. I mean you can have all the fireworks and escapades that you want but really what you're reading for and hopefully what you're reading a whole series for is the people. And they need to start from a place that needs some development. LB: All of the characters are so distinct. Even your thugs are not just sort of the typical henchman. They have back stories and personalities and -- how much of that was sor...

"Nature has been defined as a woman, and both nature and women were then defined into objectification and therefore into objects of violence. Ecofeminism is a celebration of the creativity of nature and the creativity of women," says Dr Vandana Shiva, world renowned Indian environmentalist, activist and scientist, in this conversation with Pod Academy's Lucy Bradley about her book, Ecofeminism (co-authored with Maria Mies, Zed Books). This podcast, which also includes the presentation by Vandana Shiva at SOAS, in October 2014, is produced and presented by Lucy Bradley. Vandana Shiva has written many books, (including Staying Alive-Women, Ecology and Development;  Monocultures of the Mind;  and Soil not Oil) and Lucy started by asking her how this book, EcoFeminism, came about: Vandana Shiva:   Well the book has a very interesting genesis. Maria Mies had written Patriarchy and Capital Accumulation on a World Scale, I had written Staying Alive and that had done very well and it was the first time a title was connecting, the issues of the paradigm of development happening to women in the third world and what was happening to ecosystems in the third world. Zed [publishers] asked if both of us could do a book combining North and South perspectives. Of course we didn’t have the time to actually sit together so we just decided to write our chapters and share them every month. And it shows there are common patterns [being experienced in these different places] because we’d write chapters and they’d be about the similar phenomena. And one was in rich, rich, rich Germany and the other was in India - which at the time we wrote it was not part of this ‘shining’ India campaign – and the book chapters then just fell into place, not because we’d planned and said we’ll write chapters on this, but because both Maria and I do thinking engaged in activism. There’s an illusion that you have to be either an intellectual or an activist and the two don’t meet. In my view, real reflection of the world we’re in can only come from engagement in that world, not by sitting in an ivory tower and imagining you know all. When you don’t write with a vested interest, when don’t write because you are serving some master, when you write in the freedom of your mind and your spirit, with a deep connection of compassion and involvement and inclusion with every being and every person whose being trampled on you don’t get dictated [to]. Lucy Bradley: And what’s the main thesis of the book? VS: Eco feminism is really looking at the dominant world view and structures it has created which have been driven by the convergence of capitalism and patriarchy, and looking at it from the point of view of nature and women. This is for a number of reasons, first because the oppression of nature and women served the building of this paradigm; nature was defined as a woman and both were then defined into objectification and therefore into objects of violence. Ecofeminism is a celebration of the creativity of nature and the creativity of women and it is basically in a way waking us up to see the illusion that capital creates. The new edition of Ecofeminism of course is an update. [But] everything we said –whether it was the violence had just gotten worse and whatever we said about alternatives have just flourished better, and I’m sure if we were to reissue twenty years from now, I don’t’ know if we will be around, but the two trends will just have deepened. LB: You have anticipated my next question, is ecofeminism gathering momentum? VS: when we wrote ecofeminism there was a whole new generation of young women who were fed up with academic feminism which had in a way totally turned it’s back on the women’s movement. We mustn’t forget that women’s studies grew out of the womens’ movement and in the early days theorising and activism was one, and then you got into this academic strand. And what happened was at that time when young women who were ...

"Nature has been defined as a woman, and both nature and women were then defined into objectification and therefore into objects of violence. Ecofeminism is a celebration of the creativity of nature and the creativity of women," says Dr Vandana Shiva, world renowned Indian environmentalist, activist and scientist, in this conversation with Pod Academy's Lucy Bradley about her book, Ecofeminism (co-authored with Maria Mies, Zed Books). This podcast, which also includes the presentation by Vandana Shiva at SOAS, in October 2014, is produced and presented by Lucy Bradley. Vandana Shiva has written many books, (including Staying Alive-Women, Ecology and Development;  Monocultures of the Mind;  and Soil not Oil) and Lucy started by asking her how this book, EcoFeminism, came about: Vandana Shiva:   Well the book has a very interesting genesis. Maria Mies had written Patriarchy and Capital Accumulation on a World Scale, I had written Staying Alive and that had done very well and it was the first time a title was connecting, the issues of the paradigm of development happening to women in the third world and what was happening to ecosystems in the third world. Zed [publishers] asked if both of us could do a book combining North and South perspectives. Of course we didn’t have the time to actually sit together so we just decided to write our chapters and share them every month. And it shows there are common patterns [being experienced in these different places] because we’d write chapters and they’d be about the similar phenomena. And one was in rich, rich, rich Germany and the other was in India - which at the time we wrote it was not part of this ‘shining’ India campaign – and the book chapters then just fell into place, not because we’d planned and said we’ll write chapters on this, but because both Maria and I do thinking engaged in activism. There’s an illusion that you have to be either an intellectual or an activist and the two don’t meet. In my view, real reflection of the world we’re in can only come from engagement in that world, not by sitting in an ivory tower and imagining you know all. When you don’t write with a vested interest, when don’t write because you are serving some master, when you write in the freedom of your mind and your spirit, with a deep connection of compassion and involvement and inclusion with every being and every person whose being trampled on you don’t get dictated [to]. Lucy Bradley: And what’s the main thesis of the book? VS: Eco feminism is really looking at the dominant world view and structures it has created which have been driven by the convergence of capitalism and patriarchy, and looking at it from the point of view of nature and women. This is for a number of reasons, first because the oppression of nature and women served the building of this paradigm; nature was defined as a woman and both were then defined into objectification and therefore into objects of violence. Ecofeminism is a celebration of the creativity of nature and the creativity of women and it is basically in a way waking us up to see the illusion that capital creates. The new edition of Ecofeminism of course is an update. [But] everything we said –whether it was the violence had just gotten worse and whatever we said about alternatives have just flourished better, and I’m sure if we were to reissue twenty years from now, I don’t’ know if we will be around, but the two trends will just have deepened. LB: You have anticipated my next question, is ecofeminism gathering momentum? VS: when we wrote ecofeminism there was a whole new generation of young women who were fed up with academic feminism which had in a way totally turned it’s back on the women’s movement. We mustn’t forget that women’s studies grew out of the womens’ movement and in the early days theorising and activism was one, and then you got into this academic strand. And what happened was at that time when young women who were ...