Podcasts about Mary Higgins Clark

Dianne Freeman is the USA Today bestselling author of the Agatha and Lefty award-winning Countess of Harleigh Mystery series. She is also a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark and the Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award. After thirty years of corporate accounting, she now writes full-time. Born and raised in Michigan, she and her husband split their time between Michigan and Arizona. Visit her at www.difreeman.comMentioned in the podcast:Haunted Highway: https://a.co/d/fDqZL59To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery in the Gilded Age by Gail MacCollSocial Media:Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DianneFreemanAuthorInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/diannefreemanwrites/Blue Sky Handle: https://bsky.app/profile/diannefreeman.bsky.socialThreads Handle: https://www.threads.net/@diannefreemanwrites*****************About SinCSisters in Crime (SinC) was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sincnational.bsky.socialThreads: https://www.threads.net/@sincnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrimeTikTok:: https://www.tiktok.com/@sincnationalThe SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

Mary Higgins Clark (1927-2020), who died on January 31st, 2020 at the age of 92, was the best-selling author of 51 books, most of them suspense novels featuring women in jeopardy, with four theatrical films and over thirty other books adapted for television. Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff interviewed  Mary Higgins Clark for the Probablitiles radio program on May 24, 1989 while she was on tour for her 13th novel “While My Pretty One Sleeps.” The interview was conducted in her San Francisco hotel room. Digitized, re-mastered, and re-edited by Richard Wolinsky in April, 2020. First posted April 17, 2020. The post Mary Higgins Clark (1927-2020), Queen of Suspense Novels appeared first on KPFA.

Dec 24th.  Our top 10 christmas songs all time.  Why NORAD tracks santa, Plane crash survival story in Amazon jungle, War of 1812 over, One of Columbus's ship sinks.  Todays birthdays - Ava Gardner, Lee Dorsey, Mary Higgins Clark, Deidrich Bader, Ricky Martin, Ryan Seacrest.Two step round the christmas tree - Suzy BoggussHave a holly jolly christmas - Burl IvesRudolph the red nosed reindeer - Gene AutrySanta Claus is coming to town - Bruce Springsteen & the E Street BandMost wonderful time of the year - Andy WilliamsBlue christmas - Elvis PresleyLast christmas - WhamWorkin in a coal mine - Lee DorseyJingle bell rock - Bobby HelmsRockin around the christmas tree - Brenda LeeLivin la vida loca - Ricky MartinAll I want for christmas is you - Mariah CareyI'm dreaming of a white christmas - Bing CrosbyChristmas wrapping - The Waitresses

En Noche de Paz, Mary Higgins Clark teje una historia llena de suspenso ambientada durante la temporada navideña. La historia comienza con la familia Taylor—Catherine, su esposo Tom y sus dos hijos pequeños, Brian y Michael—quienes viajan a la ciudad de Nueva York por una razón crucial. Tom, que lucha contra la leucemia, está programado para someterse a un trasplante de médula ósea que le salvará la vida.Mientras la familia visita la Catedral de San Patricio, Brian se ve involuntariamente envuelto en una situación peligrosa. Al recoger la billetera que un extraño dejó caer, la atención de una mujer desesperada llamada Cally recae sobre él. Cally está involucrada en un plan criminal orquestado por su exnovio convicto, Jimmy, y ve a Brian como un medio para obtener el dinero que necesita desesperadamente para escapar.El corazón de la historia sigue la búsqueda frenética de Catherine por Brian, quien ha sido secuestrado. A pesar del caos de la bulliciosa ciudad y la tensión emocional por la enfermedad de su esposo, Catherine demuestra una fortaleza y determinación notables. A medida que la tensión aumenta, el lector se adentra en las vidas entrelazadas de los personajes, cada uno marcado por la esperanza, el miedo y la redención.En el estilo característico de Mary Higgins Clark, la novela combina un escenario atmosférico, una trama rápida y una corriente subyacente de amor familiar y resiliencia. El trasfondo navideño contrasta con los oscuros eventos, destacando temas de perdón y el poder duradero de la esperanza.Noche de Paz es una lectura breve y cautivadora que muestra la habilidad de Mary Higgins Clark para combinar suspenso con momentos conmovedores.Si te gustó la recomendación la puedes adquirir en libro digital.Recuerda que si gustas apoyarnos en nuestras lecturas y reseñas, lo puedes realizar mediante ☕️ Paypal o a través de nuestras redes sociales o correo electrónico.También te agradeceríamos

Linda discusses founding the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan DA's office - first in the nation - and when Mariska Hargitay and Dick Wolf shadowed her to help develop the concept for the new show Law & Order: SVU, recounts writing her first novels while still working more than full time as a prosecutor, her writing process for her bestselling Alex Cooper novels, addresses the responsibility of filmmakers of the growing number of docu-series that are often fictionalized for dramatic effect and the mounting number of lawsuits against Netflix, her all-star dinner group of top mystery writers (including Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Harlan Coben and Mary Higgins Clark), and Linda and I make a toast to the memory of the great Nelson DeMille. 

Click this link to get $5 off at book outlet and to connect with us on Goodreads https://linktr.ee/theliteraryclubpodcast  . You can also connect with us at literaryclubpodcast@gmail.com and @literaryclubpodcastThe Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter Make You Feel My Love by Robin Lee Hatcher How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley Water Water by Cary Fagan Meet Me at the Starlight by Rachel Hauck The Cinderella Murder by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair BurkeOne by One by Freida McFadden

Today: Sarah made some new friends, delicious food and older mean girls, Mary Higgins Clark and moving furniture, and more! Have a great day, and save the date to see COURAGE perform a supper show on Sunday, October 6th at Hallowed Halls - Check out the story Greg did on them here!

Jenny Milchman is the Mary Higgins Clark award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of five novels. Her work has been praised by the New York Times, New York Journal of Books, San Francisco Journal of Books, and more; earned spots on Best Of lists including PureWow, POPSUGAR, the Strand, Suspense, and Big Thrill magazines; and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness. Four of her novels have been Indie Next Picks. Jenny's short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and a recent piece on touring appeared in the Agatha award-winning collection Promophobia. Jenny is about to launch a new series with Thomas & Mercer featuring psychologist Arles Shepherd, who has the power to save the most troubled and vulnerable children but must battle demons of her own to do it. Jenny is a member of the Rogue Women Writers and lives in the Hudson Valley with her family. Make sure to check out this episode

In the last of the Under Suspicion audiobooks, Golden Voice January LaVoy introduces listeners to the perfect family: Sara Richard Harrington and their twin sons. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile's Robin Whitten discuss this audiobook that begins with a flashback to the eve of the twins' college graduation party. Before the party ends, Sara and Richard are shot to death, and the twins are suspects—but never charged. Now, Laurie Moran decides to investigate. This tightly plotted whodunit lends itself to LaVoy's style and impeccable timing. Fans will not want to miss this last series installment and LaVoy's stellar performance. Read the full review of the audiobook on AudioFile's website. Published by Simon & Schuster Audio. Discover thousands of audiobook reviews and more at AudioFile's website. Support for AudioFile's Behind the Mic comes from Dreamscape Media and their exclusive audiobook, Rifts and Refrains. Dive into the compelling story of Amara Johnson, a talented musician uncovering her family's hidden past while finding love and legacy in Nashville. To start listening, visit Dreamscape Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hollywood rarely makes a positive film about priests. You have to go back a few decades to 1945 to find Bing Crosby in his role as the respected Father O'Malley in "The Bells of St. Mary's." That was way before the decline in reverence for not only faith, but also for the men and women of the cloth. But Fr. Stephen Fichter, a New Jersey priest, wanted to be a part of changing people's attitudes about the priesthood. The feature length film, "Trinity's Triumph," is his offering. It was a 25-year journey, with some notable encouragement along the way from people like Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, and some mentoring from best-selling novelist, Mary Higgins Clark. On this episode of Lighthouse Faith podcast, Fr. Fichter talks about why he wrote the screenplay, and how it shows the real struggles and triumphs of the men who enter seminary. The film is about three seminarians but only one of them is based on Fr. Fichter's life. The other two are based on composites of his fellow travelers. The film pulls no punches, talking about sexual abuse in the priesthood as well as challenging the tradition of why priests are not allowed to marry. But the key line from the movie is said by the film's Monsignor Heck, played by A-list actor Joe Morton (Speed, Terminator 2: Judgment Day). He tells the first-year seminarians, "You are setting out on an extraordinary odyssey to answer the highest of all calls." And that is the film's most positive message about the priesthood. It is a Divine calling of both sacrifices, and the highest of commitment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christmas Eve. Top 10 Christmas songs of all time, and a couple more. Why NORAD tracks Santa. Amazon jungle plane crash survival story. War of 1812 ends. Todays birhdays - Ava Gardner, Lee Dorsey, Mary Higgins Clark, Diedrich Bader, Ricky Martin, Ryan Seacrest.

Not every mystery needs a murder. There are minor details shared for all the novels and stories listed below, but no major plot revelations in this episode. Mentioned in this episode: — “The Flying Stars” by G.K. Chesterton, collected in The Innocence of Father Brown — A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens — The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens — Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie — An English Murder by Cyril Hare — Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon — The Santa Claus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay — Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer — The Smiler with the Knife by Nicholas Blake — Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh — The Case of the Abominable Snowman by Nicholas Blake — "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" by Agatha Christie, collected in a book of the same name — "Stuffing" by Edgar Wallace, collected in Silent Nights, edited by Martin Edwards — "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Arthur Conan Doyle, collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — “The Mystery of Mrs Bardell's Xmas Pudding” by Gwyn Evans — “The Ghost's Touch” by Fergus Hume, collected in The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, edited by Otto Penzler — A Maigret Christmas by Georges Simenon — “The Reprisal” by Michael Innes — Catt Out of the Bag by Clifford Witting — "The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep” by Catharine Louisa Pirkis, collected in A Surprise for Christmas, edited by Martin Edwards — “Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech” by Cyril Hare, collected in The Christmas Card Crime, edited by Martin Edwards — A Highland Christmas by M.C. Beaton — Deck The Halls by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark — “Christmas Eve” by S.C. Roberts, collected in The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, edited by Otto Penzler — “The Necklace of Pearls” by Dorothy L. Sayers, collected in Silent Nights, edited by Martin Edwards NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/themurderlesschristmasmysterytranscript Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Set your sonic transducers to stunning because we're headed to the intergalactic backpages for some casual connections that are out of this world. And a little muppety, if that's your thing. This week's sex workers in space floor show was a mixed bag when it came to interpreting the prompt, but it's JayKay who is most feeling the gravity of the situation as Throb vows to send them to Uranus because Jarvis lost a lip sync a couple weeks ago. We manage to also use up some oxygen on male orgasms, Mary Higgins Clark, Meet the Feebles and the treacherous black hole that is the Dragula subreddit. Want even more Alright Mary? Become a Matreon at the Sister Mary level to get access to our Canada's Drag Race Season 4 coverage, plus movie reviews and past seasons of US Drag Race, UK, Canada, Down Under, Philippines and more.Join us at our OnlyMary's level for EVEN MORE movie reviews, brackets, and deep dives into our personal lives!Patreon: www.patreon.com/alrightmaryEmail: alrightmarypodcast@gmail.comInstagram: @alrightmarypodJohnny: @johnnyalso (Instagram)Colin: @colindrucker_ (Instagram)Web: www.alrightmary.comThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/alrightmary!

Beaucoup des faits divers les plus médiatisés sont ceux prenant place au sein d'une cellule familiale. En France, l'affaire Grégory, l'affaire Dupont de Ligonnès, ou encore plus récemment l'affaire Troadec en sont autant d'exemples.  L'affaire que nous allons vous raconter aujourd'hui n'est pas très connue, du moins en France. Elle a pourtant défrayé la chronique aux Etats unis dans les années 60. Pour la petite anecdote, elle a même inspiré à Mary Higgins Clark l'intrigue d'un de ses romans ayant eu le plus de succès, « la Maison du Guet », paru en 1975. Voici l'histoire des lits vides. Musiques: - Evann Loget Raymond: Generique

The Bookmark Team discusses reads involving moms and houses.....eek. The Bookmark is your place to find your next great book. Each week, join regular readers Miranda Ericsson, Chris Blocker and Autumn Friedli along with other librarians as they discuss all the books you'll want to add to your reading list.

Barbara Pronin worked as an actress, a probation officer, a news editor, and a substitute teacher, which inspired her first book, a  guide to effective subbing. Her earlier mysteries, including three as Barbara Nickolae, earned kudos from best-selling writers Mary Higgins Clark and Tony Hillerman. Her latest mystery, “The Miner's Canary,” was published last November. Her newest work, a World War II historical titled, “Winter's End” will be released in early 2024.The Miner's CanaryTouchpoint Press, 2022A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.

It's time to meet the Queen of Suspense! To kick off her reign, Mary Higgins Clark spins a tale about a wrongfully accused women trying to reinvent herself -- only to be nearly caught by the monster she thought she'd left behind. It's more thrilling than mysterious, so it shouldn't be a surprise that we DO get an answer to the novel's titular question. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. Advertise on Overdue See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bethany Myers went to the Edgar Awards in New York, just honoured to be nominated as the saying goes. She was up for the Mary Higgins Clark award, named after the bestselling - and beloved - American author. The nomination was for her very first mystery novel, a gothic suspense story called "A Dreadful Splendour." Bethany tells us about how the evening unfolded.

Susanna Calkins writes award-winning historical fiction, including the Lucy Campion mysteries set in 17th century London and the Speakeasy Murders set in 1920s Chicago. Her books have been nominated for the Agatha, Mary Higgins Clark, Anthony, Macavity, and Lefty (best historical). She holds a PhD in early modern English history and is currently a university administrator. She grew up in Philadelphia and lives in the Chicago area, with her husband and two sons.Facebook Page www.facebook.com/authorSusannaCalkinsTwitter @scalkins3Website www.susannacalkins.edu*****************Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrimeSinC Auction May 18-21Auction site: https://www.32auctions.com/CrimeWritersForJusticeThe SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

Training Tricks with Your Dog (and Cat)Teaching tricks to your dog is fun and cute, and a great way to improve the human-animal bond. Plus, you get to show off how adorable your pet is.Erica Beckwith is the talented tricks trainer behind A Matter of Manners Dog Training, where she does behaviour consults for dogs and cats and runs online classes to teach a variety of tricks including peekaboo, sit pretty, chorus line kicks, and how to take a selfie with your dog. Kristi Benson and I spoke to Erica about why she loves teaching tricks, where she finds the motivation to spend time working on tricks with her dogs, and what her favourite tricks are. As well, we get some tips on how to train your dog so that you can get a better selfie with them, and the things to consider when teaching tricks to your cat.In news, Kristi's courses now have CEUs available and there are some new courses coming soon. And Zazie will be teaching Making Pets Happy: The Role of Positive Experiences in Good Animal Welfare for the IAABC Foundation.Plus, of course, in the final section we share the books we are reading right now.About Erica Beckwith: Erica Beckwith of A Matter of Manners Dog Training in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Erica is an amazing positive reinforcement trainer who first got into dogs as a volunteer at Busan Abandoned Pet Sanctuary in South Korea. After moving back to America, Erica studied at the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers where she got her CTC. Erica is also a CBCC-KA and a Fear Free certified professional. Erica loves cats too, and earlier this year she graduated with a certificate in Advanced Feline behaviour for Cat Professionals with Distinction from International Cat Care.Website: A Matter of Manners Facebook Instagram   The schedule of Erica's online tricks classes is here .  See Erica's dogs (including Ruckus and the trumpet) in the video Yes Sir, That's My Baby from The Academy for Dog Trainers.  Kristi Benson's website and courses .Making pets happy: The role of positive experiences in good animal welfare. IAABC Foundation, 24 September 2022, 1:00-4:10pm PDT.  The free Companion Animal Psychology newsletter.The books we chat about:Bitch: On The Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke is the Animal Book Club choice. Learn more about the Animal Book Club .  I've Got You Under My Skin by Mary Higgins Clark.Warriors: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter (Author), Dave Stevenson (Illustrator)The Cat Who Saved Books: A Novel by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai. The books are available from all good bookstores and Companion Animal Psychology's Amazon store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/animalbookclub  

We celebrated our 100th episode with two of the people responsible for this project, former SinC presidents Lori Rader-Day and Sandra SG Wong. Join us as we celebrate 100 episodes and catch up with these fabulous people.Sandra SG Wong (she/her) writes fiction across genres, including the cross-genre Lola Starke novels, Crescent City short stories, and the bestselling standalone suspense novel, IN THE DARK WE FORGET. A hybrid author, she has been a Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence finalist and a Whistler Independent Book Awards nominee. Wong has been involved with genre and literary organizations, conferences, festivals, and workshops across Canada and the United States. She served on the Sisters in Crime national board as its first president of Asian heritage, and currently chairs its DEIJB Advisory Committee. She is also an active member of Crime Writers of Color.Website: https://sgwong.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/S_G_WongInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sgwong8/Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar® Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. Her next contemporary suspense novel, THE DEATH OF US, will be released in the fall of 2023. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers' festival Midwest Mystery Conference (fka Murder and Mayhem in Chicago) and served as 2019-2020 national president of Sisters in Crime. She teaches creative writing for Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies.Website:   https://loriraderday.com/Twitter:   https://twitter.com/LoriRaderDayFacebook:   https://www.facebook.com/loriraderdaybooksInstagram:   https://www.instagram.com/loriraderday/*****************About Sisters in CrimeSisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrimeThe SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

durée : 00:53:06 - Grand bien vous fasse ! - par : Ali Rebeihi - Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Mary Higgins Clark, Charles Exbrayat ou les cosy crime, que nous inspirent ces crimes qui se déroulent dans des atmosphères cosy ? - réalisé par : Claire DESTACAMP

Sujata Massey is the author of fifteen novels, most of them mysteries. Starting with The Widows of Malabar Hill, the three books in this historical feminist series set in 1920s India have won the Agatha, Macavity, Lefty, and Mary Higgins Clark awards, and been finalists for the Shamus and Harper Lee Legal Fiction awards. Her earlier mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Rei Shimura is set in modern Japan. Sujata is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and is a former reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper. She lives in Baltimore with her family and travels to Asia to research her books.Books mentioned in the podcast:Big Magic by Elizabeth GilbertThe Artists Way by Julia CameronSeven Steps on the Writer's Path: The Journey from Frustration to Fulfillment by Nancy Pickard and Lynn LottFacebook Page http://facebook.com/sujatamasseyauthorTwitter @sujatamasseyauthorInstagram sujatamasseyauthorWebsite http://sujatamassey.comThis episode was recorded in February 2022.*****The Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award is an annual grant of $2,000 for an emerging writer of color. Submissions are open through March 31. For more information, go to this website. https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/eleanortaylorblandYou don't have to be a member of Sisters in Crime to submit your materials for consideration. *****Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrimeThe SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

Are you an absolute expert in your field — but you're not an expert at running a business? This is the most common roadblock for our clients, including today's guest Sarah Russo who is an alumni member of our Six Figures Lab Group Coaching program.  Sarah is the Founder of Page One Media, a boutique literary publicity and marketing firm for authors, experts, and literary companies.  In this episode, she shares how her love for books evolved into a career, including the aha moment she had when author Mary Higgins Clark visited her elementary school classroom.  Sarah launched her firm after working long hours in publishing and having to constantly tell authors no. Now, she and her team love telling authors yes and are willing to experiment, as long as she believes the strategy will be effective. Sarah shares how her business has transformed since joining $ix Figures Lab — including executing a complete rebrand, hiring two new team members, getting operational support, and planning strategically for the future.  

The "fight" continues! In the third and final part of our second annual showdown, we (finally) find out who had the better reading experience during Mysterious Galaxy's 2022 summer bingo. Smack was ahead at the halfway mark at the end of Part Two, but the only way to know who ultimately won is to listen! We also found out that Mysterious Galaxy has fifty (FIFTY) book prompts for a 2023 challenge in honor of their 30th birthday so we may be doing this...a lot. The books competing in this last segment are: Spell on Wheels, Vol. 2: Just to Get to You (Spell on Wheels #Vol. 2) by Kate Leth, Megan Levens (Illustrations), Marissa Louise (Illustrations) v. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson v. An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed (Elderly Lady #2) by Helene Tursten, Marlaine Delargy (Translator) Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki v. Heartstopper: Volume Two (Heartstopper #2) by Alice Oseman Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal (Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson #1) by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona (Artist), Ian Herring (Colorist) v. Not Your Average Hot Guy (Not Your Average Hot Guy #1) by Gwenda Bond Sabotaged (Sundance #3) by C.P. Rider v. The Date from Hell by Gwenda Bond The Incubus Job (Mission: Magic #1) by Diana Pharaoh Francis v. Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen The Problem with Promises (Mystwalker #3) by Leigh Evans v. Servant Mage by Kate Elliott On Fire by Nancy Holder: A Teen Wolf Novel v. An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (Äldre dam #1) by Helene Tursten, Marlaine Delargy (Translator) Burn (Dark in You #1) by Suzanne Wright v. Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller Among Thieves (Thieves #1) by M.J. Kuhn v. The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block Malice (Malice Duology #1) by Heather Walter v. Heartstopper: Volume One (Heartstopper #1) by Alice Oseman Mr. Wrong Number (Mr. Wrong Number #1) by Lynn Painter v. Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark

Christmas Eve. Top 10 Christmas songs of all time, and a couple extra. Why NORAD tracks Santa, An amazon jungle plane crash survival story, War of 1812 ends. Todays birthdays - Ava Gardner, Lee Dorsey, Mary Higgins Clark, Diedrich Bader, Ricky Martin, Ryan Seacreast.

#PodcastersForJustice #1 international bestselling author of over 40 novels, Jeffery Deaver, returns to rap about his prolific output, an award-winning handbook for mystery writers, and the latest Colter Shaw novel, "Hunting Time." Jeffery Deaver is a former journalist, musician, and attorney best known for his Lincoln Rhyme series – now a hit NBC TV show – and the novel, The Bone Collector, adapted for the big screen starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. The "master of suspense" has been nominated for eight Edgar Awards and served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America, and was recently named a Grand Master of MWA, whose ranks include Agatha Christie, Mary Higgins Clark, and Walter Mosely. His latest is Hunting Time (A Colter Shaw Novel), described as "... a riveting thriller, as reward seeker Colter Shaw plunges into the woods and races the clock in a case where nothing is quite what it seems." Kirkus Reviews described the book as "A fleet, irresistible tale." Jeffery has sold over 50 million books worldwide in 150 countries, and been translated into 35 languages. He has also published three collections of short stories. Stay calm and write on ... Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please "Follow" us to automatically see new interviews. In this file Jeffery Deaver and I discussed: Pandemic survival How he finds the solitude of the writing life What it's like to be mentioned in the same breath as Agatha Christie How he keeps his Edgar Award nomination streak alive Why books are better than Netflix How the author structures his novels with questions and conflicts  And a lot more! Show Notes: JefferyDeaver.com How to Write Commercial Fiction with NY Times Bestselling Author Jeffery Deaver Hunting Time (A Colter Shaw Novel) By Jeffery Deaver (Amazon) How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America (Amazon) Jeffery Deaver Amazon author page NaturalReader app Jeffery Deaver on Instagram  Jeffery Deaver on Facebook Jeffery Deaver on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Mariah Fredericks about her new novel The Lindbergh Nanny (Minotaur Books, 2022). The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr in 1932 shocked the country and made international headlines. The famous Charles Lindbergh Sr became an American hero after successfully flying solo across the Atlantic. He was married to the wealthy and beautiful Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also a pilot. Their son Charles Lindbergh, Jr was suddenly kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey, and the case made international headlines. The parents were out on the night of the kidnapping, but the nanny was home. After the baby disappeared from his bed, that nanny, Betty Gow, became a prime suspect, and her life was never the same. She was known thereafter as the Lindbergh Nanny. Mariah Fredericks is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, set in 1910s New York and nominated twice for the Mary Higgins Clark award. She was born and raised in New York City, graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history and was the head copywriter for Book-of-the-Month Club for many years. Mariah lives with her husband and teenager in Queens and has a beloved French bulldog named Dita. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I talked to Mariah Fredericks about her new novel The Lindbergh Nanny (Minotaur Books, 2022). The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr in 1932 shocked the country and made international headlines. The famous Charles Lindbergh Sr became an American hero after successfully flying solo across the Atlantic. He was married to the wealthy and beautiful Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also a pilot. Their son Charles Lindbergh, Jr was suddenly kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey, and the case made international headlines. The parents were out on the night of the kidnapping, but the nanny was home. After the baby disappeared from his bed, that nanny, Betty Gow, became a prime suspect, and her life was never the same. She was known thereafter as the Lindbergh Nanny. Mariah Fredericks is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, set in 1910s New York and nominated twice for the Mary Higgins Clark award. She was born and raised in New York City, graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history and was the head copywriter for Book-of-the-Month Club for many years. Mariah lives with her husband and teenager in Queens and has a beloved French bulldog named Dita. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Mariah Fredericks about her new novel The Lindbergh Nanny (Minotaur Books, 2022). The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr in 1932 shocked the country and made international headlines. The famous Charles Lindbergh Sr became an American hero after successfully flying solo across the Atlantic. He was married to the wealthy and beautiful Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also a pilot. Their son Charles Lindbergh, Jr was suddenly kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey, and the case made international headlines. The parents were out on the night of the kidnapping, but the nanny was home. After the baby disappeared from his bed, that nanny, Betty Gow, became a prime suspect, and her life was never the same. She was known thereafter as the Lindbergh Nanny. Mariah Fredericks is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, set in 1910s New York and nominated twice for the Mary Higgins Clark award. She was born and raised in New York City, graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history and was the head copywriter for Book-of-the-Month Club for many years. Mariah lives with her husband and teenager in Queens and has a beloved French bulldog named Dita. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Catriona was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the DANDY GILVER historical detective stories, the LAST DITCH mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist THE DAY SHE DIED and Mary Higgins Clark finalist STRANGERS AT THE GATE. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters' Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.http://catrionamcpherson.com/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063049789492 Today's episode is brought to you by John's full series of crime thrillers available right now. You can get them through Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/John-A.-Hoda/e/B00BGPXBMM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share  You can also sign up for the newsletter at http://www.JohnHoda.com to get a free copy of John's new novella Liberty City Nights.Thank you for listening. If you have a moment to spare please leave a rating or comment on Apple Podcasts as that will help us expand the circle around our campfire. If you have any questions please feel to reach out to me via my website http://www.johnhoda.com

Kelly Brakenhoff is an author of six books and an ASL interpreter from Nebraska. She has served as an interpreter for deaf and hard of hearing persons now for over 30 years. You can tell how much she likes her chosen professions by listening to her as you get to do in this episode.   Kelly is especially excited by a series of books she has started involving Duke the Deaf Dog where she introduces readers to ASL, American Sign Language. She is working to help readers, especially children, better understand the deaf and hard of hearing community. On top of everything Kelly has done, she has used the crowdfunding program, Kickstarter, to help fund her newest book. It turns out that another famous author also used this program to fund their efforts. You get to hear all about it.   I very much hope you enjoy our episode this time and that you will give us a 5 rating. Thanks for listening.   About the Guest:   Kelly Brakenhoff is an author of six books and an ASL interpreter from Nebraska, US. She divides her writing energy between two series: cozy mysteries set on a college campus, and picture books featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.  Parents, kids, and teachers love the children's books because they teach American Sign Language using fun stories. And if you like a smart female sleuth, want to learn more about Deaf culture, or have ever lived in a place where livestock outnumber people, you'll enjoy the Cassandra Sato Mystery series.   Social media links:   kellybrakenhoff.com and follow her social media or blog by using this link: https://kellybrakenhoff.com/quicklinks/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is an Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes* Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Hi, and here we are once again with unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected me. And the unexpected, as always, is the fun part of the podcast. We love to carry on different kinds of conversations with people learn about them. And you know what I'm going to say once again, for any of you listening out there, I'd love to have conversations with you. I'll bet you have stories that we should talk about. So definitely reach out. Michael hingson.com/podcast or Michaelhi@accessibie.com. And I'd love to chat with you. But for now, we have Kelly Brakenhoff, who is here with us. She is an author, and ASL interpreter, and a Kickstarter campaign runner par excellence. But does that elevate you are what Kelly Welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you?   Kelly Brakenhoff  02:18 Hi, I'm great. Thank you for having me. today. I'm really excited to be talking to you.   Michael Hingson  02:24 Well, I'm really excited to have a chance to chat with you and learn all about you and and learn why you're unstoppable. When I started this podcast, because we think that everyone has a story to tell, we all have had challenges in our lives and, and we've overcome them. And it doesn't need to be a huge challenge. But still a challenge is a challenge. And when we overcome it, that's great. And when we recognize that we did something that we didn't think we can do, then I think we fall into this concept of being able to move toward a mindset of unstop ability. And so we started unstoppable mindset, and we have a lot of fun with it. Well, why don't we start with your story a little bit? Why don't you tell us about you kind of growing up or anything about that that you think we ought to know?   Kelly Brakenhoff  03:12 Well, sure. Um, yeah, I'm a fan of your, your mindset, your your podcast, I think this is just the coolest thing. So like I said, just super excited to be here today. Um, I've been an ASL interpreter for more than 30 years, and an author for just over three years. So although I'm a veteran interpreter, I'm still a baby author and publisher. I learned new things every day. So I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. I guess. I've moved around. One thing that's interesting about me as I've moved around quite a bit. I grew up in Connecticut. I've lived in Nebraska, Boston, Hawaii, Seattle. And then now we've been in Nebraska for quite a while since Austin. Last Boston, Boston. Yes.   Michael Hingson  04:01 So can you say it pack your car and have a yard? Of course.   Kelly Brakenhoff  04:07 My uncle is from South Boston and so he married my aunt who's from upstate New York and listening to the to talk was so fun. I lived with them for a summer in college. And and I just had such is such a fun time, especially if they like had a little discussion or something you know, and they they get the voices raised and they'd start going in their accent they revert.   Michael Hingson  04:35 I lived in Winthrop, Massachusetts for three years and spent some time in the in the Boston area before then and back a little bit but I love the accent but I love Massachusetts. I love New England in general. And my wife and I have a story about Mr. Connecticut. We were going there for something and And I don't even remember what it was. And we were we were traveling the right way but we were traveling a lot further than we thought we needed to to get to Mystic So ever since I've been saying that one of the things about mystic is it moves around and doesn't stay in one place. So I'm sticking   Kelly Brakenhoff  05:17 to memory of mystic is going there on probably a sixth grade field trip. And you know afterwards, the field trip they take you through the gift shop and I bought a little pewter whale. Yeah, sure. I still have it somewhere in the bookcase somewhere in my house.   Michael Hingson  05:39 We stopped at a restaurant there. The second time we went to mystic and I'm still convinced it wasn't in the same place. It was the first time we went to a restaurant and sat right along the river and watch the drawbridge coming up, which was   Kelly Brakenhoff  05:55 that is really fun. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  05:57 definitely. Yeah. We love New England. And I hope that we get a chance to go back there. I have all sorts of stories about Boston. We went I went a lot over to Daniel hall into Quincy Market and ADA Durgan. Park. Have you ever eaten there?   Kelly Brakenhoff  06:13 I have it in there. Yes, I love Faneuil Hall.   Michael Hingson  06:16 I don't know whether Durgin Park is still open. I've heard it. I've heard that it is. But I'll have to tell you. Well, I'll tell you the story about Durgan Park. It's a Durgin Park, for those who don't know, is a restaurant that if it's still there, serves food family style, and they have tables along the side. That will seat for people. But you have to have four people, if you want to sit at one of those tables. If you have three, you sit at the long tables in the middle. If you have too long tables in the middle. They're very snotty about it. In fact, waitresses and waiters are hired to be snots. It's all an act, but they're supposed to be absolutely obnoxious. They're just what some people would say the typical clothes New England style of of being, if you will, but anyway, we go into the restaurant one night, and it was me and two other people and my guide dog Holland, who is a golden retriever with the most luscious eyes in the world. And the hostess said, you know, I'm just going to let you guys sit at one of the tables for four. So she seats us and the waitress comes over. And she says what are you people doing here? You can't sit at this table. And I said, well, the host has put it put us here. No, she didn't you just snuck in here. You can't sit at this table. And she yelled at us. And we said no. We got to sit be seated here because we have a guide dog under the table. No, you don't I don't believe that. You're not going to fool me with that. You can't sit here and she just went on. Then she goes away. And she comes back and she said you can't sit here I said, look under the table. Finally she looks. There's these eyes just staring back at her. And she just melts. And the next thing we know she goes away. One of the things about Durgin Park is that they serve a when they serve prime rib. It's a huge piece of prime rib that takes the whole plate. She comes back with this plate. She said somebody didn't eat much of their prime rib. Can I give it to the dog? And oh, it was great. But it's just fun memories of all over Boston. So I'm glad you had a chance to be there. Well, enough about me in that. So you've lived all over?   Kelly Brakenhoff  08:29 We have we've moved a lot and you haven't moved a lot recently. But when when I was younger, I moved quite a bit.   Michael Hingson  08:35 Yes. What caused you to be moving around. Um, we   Kelly Brakenhoff  08:39 grew up in Connecticut. And then in high school, my parents decided my mom's from Nebraska so and my dad's from upstate New York. So when I was in high school, we moved our family moved to Nebraska. And then when my husband and I first got married, he worked for a construction company who moved us to Hawaii for five years that works. That worked. That was a great honeymoon, We'd only been married six weeks. And so that was that was a five year honeymoon. That was awesome. Our first couple of kids were born there. And we decided that we after a year or so they really didn't get to see their grandparents very often. So he decided to move back to the mainland and we made a stop first in Seattle and then we came back to Nebraska. So we've been in here for quite a while but I really enjoyed getting to experience all the different cultures and all the different places and I also have a very soft spot in my heart for New England to   Michael Hingson  09:35 Well, it's great to live in various parts of the US shows what a wonderful and just incredible country we are with all sorts of different cultures that can really blend and meld together to form what we get to experience if we only keep the culture going as as really we are the melting pot and that just makes it so Great when we get to see that,   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:01 I totally agree i Yeah.   Michael Hingson  10:04 So how old are your kids now?   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:07 They are grown up. We have four kids, three boys and one girl. And so the oldest is 21 going to be 29. And our youngest just graduated from college last year. So he's 22 in Nebraska, and Nebraska. Huskers everybody's a Husker.   Michael Hingson  10:28 Go Huskers Go Big Red. Yep.   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:31 So um, but we have four grandkids too. So that's a lot of fun. And we're really lucky. They all live in town, so I get to see them quite a bit.   Michael Hingson  10:38 That works. So you see you fix it up. So you now have this this Braden half ghetto, if you will,   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:45 yes, my Twitter handle is actually in Brockville. Because one of my friends quite a while ago used to tease me that I was trying to create my own village. So we call it in Brock anvil.   Michael Hingson  10:59 There you go, that works. Nothing wrong with that. Well, so I know you're an author. And I know that you are an ASL interpreter, and so on, tell me how you got into being involved with ASL. And a little bit more about all that.   Kelly Brakenhoff  11:16 Sure. Um, I in high school, I volunteered at a camp for deaf kids. My parents wanted me to do something in the summer and stay out of trouble. So they kind of sent me to go volunteer. And at this camp. In the end, I didn't know any sign language. So I got a book. And I started trying to figure out a few signs before I first went to this camp. Of course, the first few weeks I was there, I had no idea what anyone was saying, because they were all using sign language. And I didn't know it. But by the end of the summer, I had learned quite a bit and I had made some really good friends. And I just kept learning during the school year, when they went when they were all gone. I kept taking classes and reading more books. And it actually turned out to be my, the language that I took when I was in college, it counted as my foreign language. And I just kept learning and hanging around with Deaf people. And eventually, my mentors in ASL, the deaf people that I was friends with, invited me to try interpreting for them. And I didn't, if I had known, I wasn't very good, but they were very kind. And they they asked me to interpret so I did and it just ended up kind of something I fell into. It wasn't something I intended to do. But it's become my whole life's work, and I really like it.   Michael Hingson  12:40 So is that kind of a full time job? Or are your vocation then?   Kelly Brakenhoff  12:43 Yeah, I would say it, it's my Well, it's hard to say what's my vocation because I also really love being an author, even though I haven't been published until recently. But I've been a writer my whole life in college, I actually majored in English. And I always wanted to be a writer, it just, I guess the interpreting thing just kind of was a very long detour. But I always wrote even when I was interpreting and so in raising my family and stuff, so once my kids started getting into high school and college, and I started looking around for something to fill some of my empty hours. That was when I really got serious about finishing my first book.   Michael Hingson  13:27 Well, from from an ASL standpoint, and interpreting it certainly is something that's, that's a little bit different. What have you learned about deafness and disabilities and so on from being involved in all of that,   Kelly Brakenhoff  13:41 oh, my goodness, we don't have enough there's not enough time in the day to talk about it's just changed my whole mindset, like, like, you've talked about that. I think it's just a way of looking at the world. Like a lot of people think that people who are deaf and hard of hearing, it's about your ears being broken, but it's really just a different way to move through life. So instead of a hearing world do like they have a visual world, so everything is visual. So it's like the opposite of what you experience now. So it's, it's just a way of moving through the world, you know that. And so instead of being like broken and something that needs to be fixed, it's just kind of a way of life. I guess. I just have a lot of respect. I've worked a lot in at the University of Nebraska. So I work with a lot of college students. And I've over the years done just Gosh, 20 Something different majors. I sit in on all the classes. I interpret what the teachers seen at the front of the class, and the discussions that the students do. And so I've gotten to learn a lot of things just by osmosis over the years and I have a really deep respect for the students because you know, their classmates sitting in the same room with them, they can listen to the lecture, write notes, you know, go online and do stuff all while this is all going on, whereas the deaf student has to sit there and watch me. If they want to take their own notes, they kind of have to look down and take their own notes, but then still keep an eye on me. And then if there's a PowerPoint, they're trying to watch that. And if there's a video, they're hoping that it has good captions, and so like, there's so many things going on, that it's amazing that they can get as much as they do out of the classes. And then of course, they have to study so much more afterwards, because a lot of times, they have to go back over the notes or back over the reading to see what they missed, because they were just, you know, a lot of their attention during the class is on me. So it's just given me a really healthy respect for how intelligent and how hard workers the students are. And I've just kind of seen that in all walks of life. I've interpreted for a lot of different situations, and different businesses and all kinds of things. And I just, I'm always in awe of how, how hard workers, the deaf students and just deaf adults in their job, or   Michael Hingson  16:13 how did the students then really get the job of notetaking done? Do they oftentimes have people who take notes for them? Or are they successful enough at taking notes themselves,   Kelly Brakenhoff  16:26 it really depends on the student and their preference. You know how some people don't mind having someone else take the notes, because then they can pay more attention to the interpreter and the PowerPoint and the teacher. But then other people maybe don't, you know, when you take notes, we could listen to the same speaker and your notes would be different than mine. And so some students don't really trust that another student is going to write down the same things that they would have written down if they were taking their own notes. So it really is a personal preference. But luckily, now, with the technology, I have a couple of students who, so they're deaf, and they use ASL and they use interpreters, but they also use cart, which is the captioning service. And so they'll have a laptop, or they also use like an otter, which is an app that the teacher wears a microphone and then it, it makes a transcript of everything that the teacher has said, and then they can save it. So I have a few students who even though they're, you know, pretty much dependent on the sign language for comprehension, they still use the transcript, because then they can go back later and like highlight the parts that they thought were important. And then it's kind of I think more in their control. Or if sometimes, like an English word has, you know, five different signs for it. And so if I do a sign, and they want to know what the exact English word was, they can look at the transcript and see oh, okay, that's the word that, you know, I need to remember or that's the word that I want to know. So I think it's great that they have all these tools. Because, gosh, back in the day, when I first started, none of that existed. And a lot of times, they would just have someone else take notes for them. And if that person wasn't a good note taker, they were kind of out of luck.   Michael Hingson  18:25 We use otter actually to do the transcribing of all of these podcasts. So that one unstoppable mindset is published. There's a written transcription as well. So we use otter to do that. And oftentimes, I will use otter to transcribe a meeting, or make it possible, make it possible for for people to come into the podcast, and listen and watch if you will in real time, which makes a lot of sense. So I found that otter works really well.   Kelly Brakenhoff  19:00 Yeah, I've tried several different apps and different services, because I have a thing to like you, I really want to make my website as accessible as possible, and my appearances as accessible as possible. So I get transcripts made of all the podcasts that I do whether the provider does or not. And so I've tried several different services, and I do agree that I think otter is a it produces a good product, and the price is good, too. So   Michael Hingson  19:33 I certainly right, you're right, the price is certainly right. But also, it does a good job and it's improving over time. Some people have said they're better systems than otter and I haven't really tried other services. And the people who help with the podcasts have looked at various things and we all end up settling on otter it really works well.   Kelly Brakenhoff  19:54 That's good to know. That's good to know, because a couple of years ago I tested several and I haven't read rechecked back into it. And the last six months, it's great. I think the one of the good benefits of the pandemic has been, how everyday people have realized that speech to text. And other, just things that we used to think of as being accessible for people with disabilities are now helpful for like everyone. And people have just come to realize that with all the Zoom meetings, and all of the the work from home solutions, so things that used to be just in the realm of special are now every day and they're all getting better, because we all demand that they get better. So the AI captions and everything are so much better than they were even just a few years ago.   Michael Hingson  20:47 Well, and then look at that you bring a very good point to light, which is that oftentimes, there are things that we use, that when other people start to use them first of all makes them much, much more affordable. But also, that will cause them to improve a lot more than otherwise they would have look at Dragon Naturally Speaking that started out as Dragon Dictate and did okay. And now Dragon is a lot better. I don't think that it transcribes as well as otter does in terms of plugging in punctuations, and so on. But I'm not surprised or wouldn't be surprised if that improves over time. But when you look at what otter does, it's pretty incredible.   Kelly Brakenhoff  21:31 It is it really is. And the What's incredible to me is the the short amount of time that it's gotten better. So I think that's great. But like you said, I think I guess it's sad to me that it takes it took a pandemic for enough people to use the tools that we've all been using for years to you know, demand a higher quality and a lower price. But I guess you know, if that's one good thing that comes out of all this, and that's great.   Michael Hingson  22:02 I think we tend to just get locked in to doing things one way and we, for whatever reason tend to be very slow at looking at other options. And you're right, the pandemic has made a significant difference and look at how many people are using zoom as opposed to pre pandemic, yet, Zoom has been there. The other thing that we've noticed along the way with Zoom is that they have deliberately and absolutely focused on accessibility and inclusion. So when a person who is blind encounters a problem with zoom in something is working right. There is a process to report that and we find that very quickly, it gets resolved, because they have a whole team working on issues to make sure that Zoom continues to be very inclusive.   Kelly Brakenhoff  22:55 Yes, I agree. Because I think when we first started with Zoom, the there was no, the only way you could have captions was hiring a person to do the captions. And then once they started making them automatic and everything that that was huge. That was that was huge. That's I'm glad to hear that they have a team doing it. And I agree, their improvements have have been amazing.   Michael Hingson  23:23 I don't want to put zoom on the spot, but have you compared otter with, if you compare it to otter with the zoom, automatic closed captioning,   Kelly Brakenhoff  23:31 um, I have, I guess if I just stop and think about it, I think they're pretty similar. What's actually kind of funny is when I will do a large meeting on Zoom, where I'm one of the interpreters. So I'm one of the little heads in the Brady Bunch group of people on Zoom. So I'll interpret for some of the deaf people in the meeting. And what I'll do sometimes is I'll turn on the captions because, you know, occasionally I might have a hard time hearing someone talking, or I might miss something or whatever. And so I can look at the captions and see if you know try to correct myself or, you know, check my accuracy. And yeah, so I have seen some pretty bad interpretations on our transcript on on Zoom and on otter, where things just don't come out. Right. It's, it's definitely for people who speak like standard slow American English once you have any kind of an accent or any kind of, if you speak too quickly, then the captions pretty much everywhere are a lot harder to understand. But they like I said, I still think they've gotten a lot better, which   Michael Hingson  24:48 I only asked that just out of curiosity because I know that the service is there to do automatic transcription or captioning. And I've never, never asked anyone exactly how well it does, except I've heard that it does a good job, but I've never compared it to like otter or something. And I bought otter for teens. And the reason I did that is so that it is now set up and integrated with Zoom. So it automatically starts when I opened a Zoom meeting. And what I do usually is unless there's a need to I will stop it. But it automatically starts when I come into a meeting that I that I initiate, and that's great, because then I don't even have to think about it. And it's a an effort of volition if I want to stop it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  25:42 Oh, yeah, that's great. I didn't realize you can set it up that way. That's awesome.   Michael Hingson  25:45 Yeah, the otter for teams. Home, I think, unless the price has changed, it was like $240 a year. And if you're a nonprofit, or whatever, it's half that. So it's not even a lot of money to do it, which is what's great.   Kelly Brakenhoff  26:00 That is That's awesome. Well, thank you. So the more users that use things, then the cheaper the price for everyone. And I think that's what we're seeing now with a lot of these tools.   Michael Hingson  26:12 It is ironic that we have to go through something like a pandemic to see things become more available, and for people to start to see that maybe some of the tools that say a person who is blind or low vision, or a person who is deaf or hard of hearing uses might very well be relevant for the rest of us. I'm still amazed that in driving with people using cell phones, we don't find more automatic use of the verbal technology voiceover for Apple and talkback on an Android, I'm surprised that we don't see more use of those verbal systems. In the driving experience, there's no reason not to do that, and do more to keep people's eyes on the road. Unfortunately, we're going the other way, we're getting more driving experiences with touchscreens, which means somebody's got to watch the screen, or look down and then quickly look back at the road. Why should that even have to happen today? Because we have such good voice technology. And we can also have good voice input technology to go along with it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  27:21 That's an excellent point. That's, that's so true. Yes, there's definitely you know, all the fancy touchscreens. But when I got my latest car, I had to sit in the driveway with the owner's manual for an hour just to figure out how to reprogram the clock. So you definitely don't want to be doing any of that while you're on the road. Well,   Michael Hingson  27:42 if you and I, I love Tesla's and I think that the technology is great, it is demonstrating the state of the art technology that's out there. But it's all controlled by a touchscreen, which means a blind passenger, I can't even do what a passenger would do to tune the radio or turn on a podcast or turn on whatever the services are available, much less anything else, because it's all touchscreen. And there's no reason for that today, we should be able to keep people's eyes more on the road. Even if you have the Tesla copilot function, which can take over a good part of the driving experience. It's not an autonomous vehicle software, but it can help with the driving experience. People should be keeping their eyes on the road not watching a touchscreen. And I'm still amazed that we're not seeing more people recognize the value of audio input and output.   Kelly Brakenhoff  28:36 I did not realize that I wrote in my first Tesla just a few months ago, and it was really neat, but I didn't I guess I just assumed that they had voice input things. I mean, wow, that's that's really shocking. as fancy as that whole system is that is very surprising. Well, let me let me rephrase that Ilan and say, hey,   Michael Hingson  28:59 well, let me rephrase it a little bit. There is availability of voice input for some things, but it's not an automatic process. So you have to invoke it, then you have to do something, I think to make it work every time you want to use it. What I'm saying is, it should be as much a part of the driving experience as anything else. And I'm saying it should be more part of the driving experience than using a touchscreen, it should be automatic. And we don't do that. We're too young to eyesight and we think that eyesight is the only game in town. Just like I'm sure that people who are deaf and hard of hearing would say that most people think that hearing is the only game in town. And in the in reality is neither is true. Exactly. I've said for years that I've said for years that people with disability, well, people who have eyesight, have their own disability and that is their light dependent. They can't do things without light Thomas Edison as the Americans with Disabilities Back would define it developed a reasonable accommodation for light dependent people when he created the light bulb. Let's get real, and I and I don't have the stitches. Lee it's true. You know, it's it's unfortunate that people are so locked into doing things one way that they're missing opportunities to make driving safer. But there you go.   Kelly Brakenhoff  30:22 I love that. I love that idea. I love that idea. I think that should be used to make that a thing as a political movement. I love that.   Michael Hingson  30:31 Yeah, well, we got to get Elon to go along with it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  30:34 Well, you know, he's kind of busy with Twitter right now. So maybe that all wrapped up, then he can he can focus his brain power on this?   Michael Hingson  30:43 Well, once he gets it set up, and if he's gonna do Twitter, then we'll start doing tweets. Oh, there you go. There you go. What a world we live in right now. So you said that you've done a lot of writing, you've been very much involved in writing, since college and so on. Why do you like writing so much?   Kelly Brakenhoff  31:07 Honestly, I don't know. I think it's just how I think how I process things. It's communication, talking to people talking to people like you. That's just kind of how I think it's just, just what I do is is who I am. That's a pretty simple answer.   Michael Hingson  31:26 We'll put Hey, it works. It works. So you said you just pretty recently got involved in starting to actually write books?   Kelly Brakenhoff  31:36 Yeah, I think it was 2014. I joined NaNoWriMo for the first time, which for people who haven't heard of that, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's in November, where, gosh, by this day, by last year, I think it was around 750,000 people around the world, try to write 16 167 words a day for 30 days, and you come up with a 50,000 word manuscript by the end of the month. And that was signing up for that challenge was because I'm kind of competitive. So if I sign up for a challenge like that, I'm gonna do it. So that was like the thing that broke the barrier for me of just having ideas and just wanting to write and whatever and actually finishing a manuscript for the first time. That's what kind of gave me that push to actually do it.   Michael Hingson  32:33 So what did you publish your own books? Are they published through a publisher or what?   Kelly Brakenhoff  32:38 Yes, they are. They're self published, I tried for about a year to publish my firt, or to find an agent and all of that for my first one. And then at the same time, I was also checking into self publishing. And I don't know I think just a lot of factors kind of all converged. And I just decided at the end that self publishing was was the way to go. I'm kind of a control freak. And I like to, I like to have the my input into how to make you know, I hire my whole team. So I have an editor and a cover designer and and proofreaders and all of that stuff. And I get to decide what the finished product ends up to be. And it turns out that, yeah, I'm kind of bossy I guess.   Michael Hingson  33:23 You have a publicist who helps with the PR, and all that. I do.   Kelly Brakenhoff  33:27 I do. It's a it's called creative edge is the one that I use. And, and they've really, I've really enjoyed being part of that group.   Michael Hingson  33:37 I met Mickey a couple of months ago, actually, for the first time, he was introduced to me by someone else that we interviewed on the unstoppable mindset podcast. And she said, you know, he works with a lot of authors who might very well have interesting stories for you. And so that's how we met him. And we've actually started working with him as well. We're just getting started. But having written thunder dog, which was, and we're blessed by the fact that it was a number one New York Times bestseller, and then was published by Thomas Nelson part of HarperCollins. Now, but then we self published our second book, which was called running with Roselle, which was kind of more for youth, but more adults by it than then kids do. And it's the story of me growing up and Rozelle growing up. And then how we met after she became a guide dog in training, and she became my guide dog, and you know, kind of went from there, but I love writing, but I haven't done that much of it. We are starting to work on a third book, and that'll be a lot of fun. And we just got a book contract for that as well. So that's pretty exciting.   Kelly Brakenhoff  34:46 That's great. Congratulations. I didn't know that. That's awesome.   Michael Hingson  34:51 But But I'm curious. You've written I guess basically what two different kinds of books children's books and mysteries. How do you do mystery How do you come up with a plot? And how do you? Do you make it all come together? Because I think mystery writing has to be if you do it well, it has to be a real challenge to come up with a not only a plot, but create all of the scenes, do all the things that you need to do. And essentially, keep the solution hidden until the end of the book unless there's some value in presenting that earlier. And it's really how you get there.   Kelly Brakenhoff  35:30 Yeah, that's a funny question. Because I definitely write in extremes. I mean, I write 70,000, word mysteries, and then I write 500, word picture books for the children's books. So very different, very different approaches. But yeah, the mysteries and thrillers are kind of the things that I have always read my whole life. So I thought when I wanted to do that first NaNoWriMo challenge, I decided to kind of mash up all of my experiences. Like I said, I've lived in Hawaii and Nebraska, the East Coast, Seattle. So I kind of took all of those different elements working at a college and I put them all together into this murder mystery. And I got about two thirds of the way through and realized exactly what you said that writing a mystery is hard. It's actually one of I think, the most difficult genres to do because exactly for the reason you said, you want to make that mystery puzzle complicated enough that it can't be solved too early. Mystery readers are very smart people. And so it's very challenging coming up with enough suspects and clues to keep people guessing until the end. I guess I just love a challenge. I think it's it's fun, but it's also just what I love to read and write. So a read so it was kind of the most natural thing to write.   Michael Hingson  36:59 I think you just hit on it. Essentially. mysteries are puzzles and puzzles are as good as it gets. Who are your favorite mystery writers?   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:10 Oh, I have so many.   Michael Hingson  37:12 Yeah, me too. Yeah.   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:15 I think like my, you know, the ones I kind of grew up with was like Sue Grafton. So that letter A is for those Jana Ivanovic. There's Stephanie Plum Siri   Michael Hingson  37:27 plum. Hey, come on. We all love diesel, but that's another story.   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:30 Oh, yeah, diesel's awesome, too. Well, I'm sure being you live. You said you live in New Jersey, right? Oh, yes. Yeah. So you're very familiar with tenants. Definitely. Trenton definitely fun. And then I also just love like John Grisham and James Patterson and Michael Connelly. I mean, gosh, I just, that's all. I haven't really met very many mysteries that I didn't like.   Michael Hingson  37:54 Yeah. My my favorite still is Rex Stout with the neuro wolf series. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they I've never solved any of his books before the end. And I worked at it. I love Mary Higgins Clark. But I was able to basically figure out all of the, the mean people in that before the end of the book, still, they were fun to read   Kelly Brakenhoff  38:20 is fun, right? I mean, as long as it's a good story, even if guests are having an idea of did it by the end, as long as the character still keep you in it. And a lot of times this setting is kind of a character to then I don't mind, you know, reading to the end to confirm that I was right. I think what's funny since I became a writer, and I don't know, you can tell me if this is true for yourself. But since I became a writer, an author, I kind of ruined for reading, like I read a lot. But I read now to learn and to see what when I read a really good book, I love to pick it apart and and see why it's good. And not just the structure of it. But like if I if that paragraph was beautiful, I'll go back and read that paragraph several times and try to figure out what is so great about that paragraph, or when someone throws a twist or a turn in or I thought I knew who it was. And then at the end, I find out it was someone else. I just love that. That thrill of like, oh, you fooled me, you know, and I really like to think about all of that. But that means that a lot of times I'm not really enjoying the book. I'm like studying the book. And so I have found that if if I really get so sucked into a book that I am not doing that, that means that it's a really, really good book because if it took me out of my analysis into just enjoying it, then that's a me that's the mark of a very good book.   Michael Hingson  39:53 Sue Graf passed away from cancer did her last book ever get published? Because I don't think she finished it, did she?   Kelly Brakenhoff  39:59 It did not odds are one of those.   Michael Hingson  40:01 Zero Yeah,   Kelly Brakenhoff  40:03 yeah. The sad things. Is it never it's, it's not finished. I don't even know how far she got in it. But it wasn't finished enough to be published. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  40:12 yeah, I guess that's kind of what happened. But her mysteries were definitely some of the best. And we read them all. And some twice, which is always fun if I if I want to read a book a second time. And I don't have that many hours in the day that that's easy to do. But if I want to read a book a second time, then I know that there is something about it that I must have enjoyed. And we read here, a lot of books on audio, audible and other sources. The reason we do is that instead of watching TV, we pipe books through the house, my wife has learned to listen to audio. So we listen to books together. What I've been occasionally finding are editor mistakes where they said something and then later on referring back something, they say something different. Somebody messed up in editing it, and I don't see it often. But I do occasionally see it and I always find them. Which is a fun.   Kelly Brakenhoff  41:15 It is it's i It's funny, because, you know, even though my books are self published, I work really hard not to have those kinds of errors. Yeah, they go through an editor, at least one editor, numerous BETA readers, numerous proofreaders. And then, you know, six months after I published it all open it up, and I see a typo. And it's like, at first I used to get so frustrated at that. And then now I saw something one time on Facebook, it was like, cheers to you, you typo you made it through three rounds of editing, 10 proofreaders and you still made it you you go, you know,   Michael Hingson  41:58 I when I was in college, we used in freshman and sophomore physics, a series of books called the Berkeley physics series, because it came out of there. And I had a dorm mate, who looked in detail at every single book, looking for a mistake, because he said a lot of books, there are editing mistakes. And he said he finally found one in one of the Berkeley physics books, but he said it was so fun looking just to see any error. And he couldn't find them in the Berkeley physics series. It was just incredible that he spent that time. On the other hand, he was an excellent student. So I guess he learned from it as he was reading.   Kelly Brakenhoff  42:43 Have a niece who's a doctor and they actually some textbook company paid her. I don't know if she just got free books. Or if she actually got paid her last year of med school, they they paid her to go through the as she was going through the textbook to note down any errors that she found.   Michael Hingson  43:03 See, it's always good to to read as much as possible and proofread as much as possible. And you're right. There's nothing like a good editor to help.   Kelly Brakenhoff  43:12 Right, exactly, exactly.   Michael Hingson  43:14 So how hard was it to write your first mystery? Oh, must have a lot   Kelly Brakenhoff  43:22 of courage. And it was a lot of it was a lot of I think I must have gone through 10 or 15 jobs. It took me five years to finish it, it was ugly, there was a lot of tears. But you know, you just learned so much I kind of consider it like getting a master's degree. I just did it at home with my, my own process. But you know, I just had to learn a lot. You have to be humble, you have to be willing to accept criticism and advice from other people. But I feel like it taught me a lot. And of course, then the second book teaches you even more and the third and you know, each one you do, I think you just learn more, either about yourself or about writing. I'd love to read books about writing craft and how to do better. You know, I want every single book that I write to be better than the last. I think most authors are that way.   Michael Hingson  44:15 They get easier the more you write. That's a   Kelly Brakenhoff  44:18 funny question, because I'm right in the middle of writing my fourth mystery right now. And I've been stalled for quite a while. And what it's taught me is just about myself and my process and what I thought my process was versus what I'm finding. I thought I could speed it up, but it's actually making me slow down. So that means that I was not speeding it up correctly. If that makes sense.   Michael Hingson  44:46 Yeah. Well, and I don't know whether it becomes easier or not. I have been very blessed when we did thunder dog. I had someone to collaborate and help with it Susie Florrie And that happened because she actually found Me, because she was writing a book called Dawn tales, which was 17 stories about dogs who had stories. And she wanted to include Roselle in that. And she did. But as we discussed my story, she said, You should really write a book. And so we got started down that road. And I met her agent who became my agent, Chip McGregor on thunder dog. And we, we had a good time and collaborated well. And I think that there was a lot of value in that for me, because I know that I don't have the writing experience as such. But I know what's good when I read it. And I also know that I can add value. So we really had a very collaborative process of writing thunder dog, a lot of it is hers, and a lot of it is mine directly. And we blended the two which was great. Now with the third book that we're getting, which is getting ready to do, which is going to talk about fear and controlling fear and people learning that they can overcome fear and not let it blind them, if you will, to being able to make decisions. The working title is a guide dogs Guide to Being brave, and I'm doing that with a friend of Susie's Carrie, Carrie Wyatt can't. Because Suzy is in a Ph. D. program. Yeah, we love the title. We'll see what the publisher does. We've got a contract for it. We'll see what the publisher does with it over time. But so far everybody likes it. That was a carry creation, because I was going to call it blinded by fear, which was more accurate in some senses. But I think a guide dogs Guide to Being brave is a lot better title.   Kelly Brakenhoff  46:35 Yeah, it reminds me of that one. Is it the Art of Racing in the Rain? Yeah, yeah, it kind of reminds me of something like that, where it's it's a little off of what the theme of the book is, but it's still engaging, and it makes you want to know more about it.   Michael Hingson  46:54 It was a good book. And so   Kelly Brakenhoff  46:57 you said something that really resonated with me, you said, I know, it's good when I read it. And I think that's a big obstacle for beginning writers. And is that usually, if you're a writer, you're a reader first. And so I've read tons and tons of great books, and I know what great literature is, and I know what a great story is. And then when I write my first one, it's not very good. So you kind of have that, that huge gap between what you know is good and what you've produced. And so it's, it's, it's hard, you have to overcome that, that feeling of, of my stuff is really bad, you know, and then you have to work really hard to make it as good as, as you want it to be, you know, as good as it is to be able to actually share with the world, you know, to get up to that level of what your your bar is the bar that you've set. And so I think that's something that stands it's a barrier to a lot of people. And that's where I think a good editor comes. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  48:05 Yeah. Well look at John Grisham. You mentioned earlier the first book he wrote If I recall was a time to kill but it was the third one published the first one that he wrote, and it was published was the firm and then I'm trying to remember what the second one was. Was it the Pelican Brief the Pelican Brief right? And then A Time to Kill, which was the Jake Brigantes initiator, if you will. But if you look at all of them, you can see how the the books evolved over time in his writing style. So it's it is a natural progression. And I mentioned Rex Stout, a Nero Wolf, if you go back and read fair to Lance, which was his first book, and you compare it with especially much later writings, you can see changes, but you can see where everything is starting from and you get engaged in in fact, fair Lance was not the first mirror wolf book I read. by a longshot. It wasn't the first, but having gone back and read it. Even though everyone in the book all the characters developed a fair amount and since then, and his writing style improved. It was engaging. Mm hmm. Well, tell me about your mystery series,   Kelly Brakenhoff  49:26 sir. Um, it's about a college administrator named Cassandra Sato and she lives in Hawaii. She gives up her her life in Hawaii to move to Nebraska because she wants to accept her dream job at a tiny college called Morton college in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. And she and her eventual goal is to become a college administrators or college president. So she thinks this is you know, the Path is gonna get her there. But of course, moving from Hawaii to Nebraska is a very, very large cultural, cultural shift. And so she encounters all kinds of problems, discrimination, barriers, everything. And a few months into her job, a student turns up dead on campus and see has to be part of the group of people who figures out what happened to the student and then find justice.   Michael Hingson  50:28 Yeah, come on. Cassandra really did. And she's been hiding a whole series. Yeah, that's   Kelly Brakenhoff  50:33 the end of the series. It was Cassandra.   Michael Hingson  50:35 That will come later on about the hundreds book, right. That's awesome. When Karen and my wife and I are talking about who did it in various books, we, we usually do things like that. We've been reading a lot of the JE NACHA as well, we read a chance to but the JD Robb books, the in depth series, have you read those. And so I read very many of those now, we we oftentimes will spin a story how Eve Dallas really did it. Or Roark did it and had just a lot of fun with it. But again, a great series of books is there's a lot of sex in those books, but they're still taking Ross. Yeah, they're great mysteries.   Kelly Brakenhoff  51:20 Yeah, a lot of times people like the ones that I write well, obviously, I have four kids and grandkids. And my kids would cringe if I if they had to read a sex scene that I wrote. So, you know, my kids were like, high school and college age when I started writing. So I decided all the sex in my books, there's gonna be behind closed doors, and yeah, nobody, nobody wants to have their mom. Yeah, no.   Michael Hingson  51:46 I've, I've talked to several authors who say that who, one who said I would never any more, I would never let my daughter or my wife, wife read the books, or I changed the sex so that they could read them. But the value of having them read them as they're great critics, and so it's worthwhile. But yeah, it is fun to to see how people react. But, you know, a mystery. Doesn't need to have all the violence thrown at you right out in the open, which is why puzzles are so great. At James Patterson tends to be a little bit more violent, but not nearly as violent as he could be. So we we've always enjoyed Of course, the Alex Cross series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  52:33 Yeah, it's there's such a huge variety in Yeah, the violence level and all that stuff. I myself, I have a pretty vivid imagination. I don't really need people to spell some of that stuff out for me. My mysteries are technically like cozy mysteries, which kind of means that there's no like blood on the page. There's no swearing, there's no sex. So like, even you know, high school kids can read them and, and that kind of thing. So I guess that's just, I just write what I like. So that's only because I like to read. So that's what I like to write.   Michael Hingson  53:12 Come on. That's only because Cassandra is trying to hide everything, but we know the truth.   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:18 That's right. She's really Voldemort.   Michael Hingson  53:21 Yeah, she's really Voldemort. Speaking of another good series of books   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:28 that's that's a whole different ballgame.   Michael Hingson  53:30 But but you know, looking at the Harry Potter books, again is another one where going from Book One through Book Seven, just how it evolved. And they're so fun.   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:42 They are they're definitely one of my I, I like all genres. So yeah, I loved Harry Potter Lord of the Rings, Narnia. I mean, you name it, it's I thought during the pandemic that I would just read all day every day but it turns out I actually have to do other stuff too.   Michael Hingson  53:59 So I hate it when that happens.   Kelly Brakenhoff  54:02 There is no laundry fairy I hate to be the person to tell you this but there is no laundry fairy,   Michael Hingson  54:07 I haven't found one either. And I get to do the clothes washing at our house which is fine. So for me, I love the brainless activities on Sunday. So there are three tasks that well for that I do on Sundays. It starts with doing the laundry or starting the laundry. Another is we I take the cat box out we use a litter called litter one it's not sand, it's all pine kernels. And you buy them and they come in a disposable box. So we just use in different new box every week. And it's about the same as using regular sand that you buy in the in the store. But at the end of the week, you just throw the whole box out and put a new one up and the cat is very demanding when it comes time to change the box. So that happens on Sunday. I take the trash out on Sunday. And then we have a little If we do get housecleaning help during the week, Karen's in wheelchairs, he has been in a chair her whole life. So it's kind of hard for us to do some of those things. So we do have a housekeeper that comes on Thursdays, in fact, and today's Thursday. So Jeanette is here, but we have a robot vacuum and I do the vacuuming again on Sunday with the robot in our bedroom, because that's also where Alamo my guide dog sleeps. So we get all those. So those are my four tasks on Sunday. And they're they're all pretty brainless in a sense. So I can read while they're going on, which is fun. And Karen is a quilter. So she's usually in sewing. And and she's reading the same thing I read. So it's a question right now, who finishes which JD Robb book first?   Kelly Brakenhoff  55:44 Yeah, that is definitely the the good thing about audiobooks is being able to multitask on some of those things that you don't have to pay so much attention to.   Michael Hingson  55:54 Tell me about your dupe the deaf dog ASL series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  55:58 Well, that is the second series that I started after I finished the mystery novels, I kind of had a moment where I realized that I, you know, I started my own publishing company. And I just had a thought, I mean, it's kind of cliche, it was actually a dream that just came to me of like, what I could do with this publishing company, if I just kind of unleashed it. And so I came up with the idea of, of this orange, English spaniel dog who is deaf and all of the people in his or all of his family can hear. And so it's just about different experiences that he has as the only person in a family of hearing people, and trying to get deaf and hard of hearing children to see themselves and their everyday life experiences on our pages of our books. But I also want kids who can hear to understand what it's like to hear differently. We just finished the third book, and I'm actually actually we just finished the fourth book, the third book just came out. But the fourth book is in production right now. And I had no idea when it started, what it was going to end up being but it's actually turned out to be more successful. And I would say even more fun than my mysteries, the mysteries are kind of like my thing that I enjoy. As far as, like you said, creating the puzzle and, and the challenge of it, but the Duke, the deaf dog ASL series, is kind of what I feel like I'm taking my 30 Whatever years of interpreting and hanging around with really cool Deaf people, and then like sharing that with the world.   Michael Hingson  57:49 So it's not a mystery series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  57:53 No, it is not. They are picture books. So they're only like less than 500 words. And each one is a different situation that do gets into so there's like a different message. And each one more than 90% of children who are born deaf or hard of hearing have parents that can hear I did a lot of research to before I started the books, and there's very few books for young children that have deaf and hard of hearing characters. Once you get into like high school age, or even beyond, there's more books that have deaf and hard of hearing characters. But at the kindergarten, first grade age, there's very few books. And you know, my kids had lots and lots of choices of books to read. So I feel like deaf kids did have lots and lots of choices, books that have characters like them in there. So each book has a different message like the first one was called nevermind. And the message is that everyone deserves to be included in conversations. I mean, how many times do we tell people nevermind when they ask us to repeat ourselves? Or maybe we have, like a older parent or spouse who doesn't hear well, or even like someone who's just a little bit slower to act, or to understand a lot of times we just get impatient and say forget it. I'll explain later. And this book like after I published that first book, I've had so many deaf people come up to me and tell me stories of times when they've been told nevermind. And they thanked me for sharing their stories because they want hearing people to understand how hurtful those words are and what it feels to be left out. So I have a pretty long list of situations I've seen throughout the years that I plan to incorporate into the books and I I'm only stopped by my amount of time and and money to hire illustrators at this point.   Michael Hingson  59:55 Back to mysteries. Of course there's the cat who series Lily and Jackson Brown and also Rita Mae Brown and sneaky pie Brown. But in thinking of the cat who books, why not have a Duke, the Duke, the deaf dog series, solving mysteries, and also deal with all the frustrations that Duke has of trying to get his humans to listen? And how he has to figure things out, not being in a hearing world himself.   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:00:27 Yeah, that's a good thought. I'm actually like I said, I have so many ideas that it's really limited by my time and money, but um, the picture books are more like so Duke's a dog. Right? It's more like he's like a pitbull, like, they stand on their hind legs. And they kind of like even his dad wears like a tie. So they kind of are like human, but they're dogs. But it's a nice way to be able to show diversity and like breeds of dogs and colors of dogs and abilities and body types and stuff without actually having like different children in there. So it's kind of like, like, I don't know, if you remember the Mercer Mayer series, little critter. That's kind of what I thought of, as I   Michael Hingson  1:01:13 was able to read them. Yeah,   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:01:15 that was like my, my model, I guess of who I thought of it's like, so Duke is more just like a character, a fictional character. But I do have a couple of other ideas for series for like middle grade age kids. And those would be mysteries, and those would use some characters. I have a couple of young characters in the Cassandra Sacco series. I did a Halloween short story last year called scavenger hunt. And that two of the main characters in there were 10 year old kids. And so I think I want to do a separate series with them and have those be mysteries because I agree, I think I can incorporate a lot of the things that I know about the Deaf community and Deaf culture and ASL into a mystery, and they get kind of fun that way. And   Michael Hingson  1:02:05 it's great that you're using this opportunity to teach people more about deaf and hard of hearing. And not only as a culture, but as just as much an included an inclusive part of society as everyone else. I am concerned when you're talking about do looking like a character and looking a little bit like people. I just don't want to see a new book coming out about do the deaf dog ASL series goes to Animal Farm just saying. But Duly noted. So So you you did one of your books. As a Kickstarter campaign?   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:02:43 We did. Um, the the most recent one that just published in January, I did my first Kickstarter campaign.   Michael Hingson  1:02:51 Now why did you do that? What brought Kickstarter into it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:02:54 I went to this conference last fall in Las Vegas, and I met some authors who publish their books first on Kickstarter, before they release them more widely and other stores. And listening to them made me realize that Kickstarter might be a good way for me to reach new readers. The nice thing about Kickstarter, which I think you said that you've supported a couple of campaigns, honestly, before I had gone to this conference, I did not think starter was something I needed to do, I hadn't really gone on there, I hadn't pledged sponsored anybody else's project. So I just kind of went into it blindly. But I realized that the cool thing about Kickstarter is you get to develop a direct relationship with people who want to buy your product. So in my case, it's a book, but I've gone on there. And since then, I've supported all kinds of different projects. I've done a board game, and a coloring book and a purse. And I mean, there's so many neat, creative ideas that people come up with and put them on Kickstarter, just to see. So then the the customers can come on and pledge money towards that product and say, Yes, I think that's a great idea. The world needs that. And I'm willing to plunk down my money to pre order that thing that you want to make. And so if enough of those people say that they'll pre order the product, then the project is successful, and it funds and then the person who listed the project goes ahead and makes it. So that's been really exciting. But you have this direct relationship where the creator is sending you messages and keeping you updated on the progress like, okay, you know, we're finished in publishing, you know, in the case of publishing, you say, Okay, we finished the illustration and we're waiting for them to be printed and then I actually personally boxed everything up and mailed them to the people with personal note and some extra stickers and everything. So I think I'd really enjoy that contact with people and that communication because it goes both ways, then people can actually respond to me. If I just sell stuff on Amazon or in the local bookstore, I don't really know who buys my, my books. And so the Kickstarter has been a really cool way to just kind of, I guess, learn more about what people want and what people like about them. And it's kind of a neat way to have this direct relationship. It made me I funded my first project successfully, we raised $2,500, which was enough money to buy some hardcover books. In the past, I haven't been able to afford doing those books, as a small publishers. So it's great to be able to order those books and get those into people's hands they came with, they're very well done on nice thick paper with really vivid color illustrations. And then there's photos on each page of different ASL signs. And the photos are really clear. So it was definitely worth I guess, the experience. So I'm actually going to be doing another one in July for the, for the next Duke book. But as a person, like you said, you you have a contract to do your next book. And so you get a lot of times authors will get paid in advance, this is kind of almost the same thing where I'm making this idea. And then I'm, like pre paying some of the costs that it cost to produce the book, like, you know, the illustrating, or the printing, or all the different things that are associated with making the book, it's like a way for me to almost get like an advance except this directly coming from the customers instead of from the publishing company.   Michael Hingso

Michele Weinstat currently serves as General Counsel at The Fortune Society, a not-for-profit agency serving those impacted by the criminal justice system.  In recovery for over 33 years, Michele is herself a formerly incarcerated person, who returned to the practice of law following disbarment due to a drug-related felony conviction.  Prior to The Fortune Society, Michele has served as a V.P./Labor Counsel at an agency that finances affordable housing, as well as the chief ethics prosecutor for New York City, responsible for enforcing ethics compliance for 300,000 City employees and elected officials.Michele is also the author of three published novels.  Writing under the name Michele W. Miller, Michele has written: “The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery” (a satirical romp through the apocalypse with a group whose addict/alcoholic gene protects them from the zombie virus - http://bit.ly/1yK0Qjx) and “Widows-In-Law” (a first and second wife must get along and find out who killed their husband or die trying) http://bit.ly/2UKCbAP). Writing as Michele Weinstat Miller, Michele's newest novel “Gone By Morning,” has received wide critical acclaim.  In “Gone By Morning,” two unique women—a City Hall press officer and her previously-incarcerated neighbor—face down dangerous men in the world of New York politics. “Gone by Morning” was named an outstanding mystery/thriller selection by Library Journal. Kirkus Reviews calls her “Mary Higgins Clark with teeth.”  (https://bit.ly/GoneByMorning). Michele lives in Manhattan with her husband, a high school chemistry teacher, and 19-year-old twins sons (currently in college), as well as a very large dog and two needy cats. If you would like to get in touch with Michele, please reach out on www.michelewmiller.com or follow her on Twitter: @MicheleWMiller_. To get in touch with our host, Jamie Brickhouse please follow him on TikTok: @jamie_brickhouse or visit www.jamiebrickhouse.com!Support the show

Prolific author among other things. Diane Bator has written 13 mysteries and has five more in process. In addition, she works for a theater where she lives which has given her the opportunity to begin work on her first play.   Diane is a mother of three adult children. She is extremely active in the writer's community in Canada.   If you were to ask her about writing your own book Diane would encourage you to do it. Personally, I agree. Everyone has stories they can and possibly should tell. As an author coach, Diane puts her money where her pen is. That is, she actively encourages aspiring authors. After listening to our episode here, reach out to Diane and see where her coaching may take you as a writer.   About the Guest:   Diane Bator is a mom of three, a book coach, and the author of over a dozen mystery novels and many works-in-progress. She has also hosted the Escape With a Writer blog to promote fellow authors and is a member of Sisters in Crime Toronto, the Writers Union of Canada, and a board member of Crime Writers of Canada. When she's not writing and coaching authors, she works for a professional theatre. No surprise she's written her first play, which may lead to more.     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson  01:20  Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today we get to interview Diane Bator, and gee, what can I say she's a mom. She's a coach. She's written a bunch of books, 12 mysteries specifically. And she also says she has many works in progress. That sounds scary, maybe she'll give us some clues. She also has been writing and been involved in the escape with a writer blog escape, we'll have to explore that. But she's been very involved in writing in a lot of different ways. And that's really kind of exciting, and really looking forward to learning more about all of that. So Diane, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Diane Bator  02:05 Oh, thank you, Michael. It's so great to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:08 And before we started, we've been been talking about all sorts of things like one of my files disappeared. And so the aliens came and took it, obviously, and maybe Diane can write a mystery about that and solve it. But you know, we'll go on. Well, tell me a little bit about you growing up or anything that you want people to know. Oh,   Diane Bator  02:27 my goodness.   Michael Hingson  02:29 How's that for an open ended question? Huh? Right.   Diane Bator  02:31 Oh, my goodness. No, I'm, I'm, I live in Canada. So I grew up in Alberta, in the prairies. And I currently live in Southern Ontario in a small town, which actually was the inspiration for my very first book that I got published. The bookstore lady, I set in two places in town, a local coffee shop, as well as a local bookstore, which is kind of fun to go to both of them and say, Hey, your story is in here. So that was that was very cool. I have three boys who are all young men now off doing their own thing. And they've all been very encouraging of my writing. And when I told my one son who was doing podcast, he was so excited for me. So it's a lot of fun.   Michael Hingson  03:21 Well, that's pretty cool. And so you, you obviously went to school, did you go to college,   Diane Bator  03:28 I went to college, I actually took Business Business Business Administration, and I did a couple of years of university, but I just couldn't get into what I wanted to get into. I guess I just wasn't enjoying it as much as I hope to so I just went off and did business school and got into life and had got married had kids, that sort of thing. So   Michael Hingson  03:50 So college and university, it just wasn't you.   Diane Bator  03:53 Well, I like I said, I got my diploma in business, but the university stuff was Yeah, I had a bit of a struggle. So   Michael Hingson  04:02 happens. Yeah. So you got your business degree as it were. And then what did you do?   Diane Bator  04:08 Um, basically, I got married, had kids. And then I started to working once we moved across the country. Basically, I started working in just was trying to find a job I really liked. And I ended up working at a karate school. So I was a receptionist at a karate school, which inspired a whole other series of books on my Gilda write mysteries. And currently I work for a live stage theater. So I run the box office at a theater and I've written my very first play. So we're, I'm waiting on that we're supposed to be workshopping it, so we'll see what the future   Michael Hingson  04:52 brings. When you say workshopping and what does that mean.   Diane Bator  04:55 That just means they bring in some actors and they just sit around a table and read the script. At or do it virtually whatever works the best.   Michael Hingson  05:02 Right? So when you do that, and you get to hear other people reading what you wrote, does it also cause you to maybe think about, oh, I need to change this? Or does it cause you to reflect? Are you pretty satisfied by the time that happens?   Diane Bator  05:18 Usually, that's why you workshop, the play before it ever goes to stage is that you can listen to it. I've been fortunate I actually did a writing conference last fall, and a couple of members of the group said, Hey, can we read a little bit of your play during the open mics section? So I got to hear a little bit of it. Actually workshopped then and went, Oh, okay, well, there's a couple little tweaks I have to make here. So it works. So that's I mean, that's what workshopping is for is to actually listen to it, make sure everything works. I mean, you can read something 100 times, but until you hear it out loud, in your, your, your words coming from someone else. It's like, oh, okay, I get that this works. This doesn't work, that sort of thing. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson  06:05 know, as a speaker, I always enjoy input from people. But also, how do I say this, I enjoy hearing myself speak because I think that I tend to analyze probably more critically than anyone else, because I'm close to the subject. So hearing myself, and when I do these podcasts, I go back and edit them, and listen to them. I listen to every one. So I also get a chance to listen to how I deal with questions and, and deal with everyone. But I also get to hear the other people again. And it's one of the ways that I learn a lot, not only about subjects, but I do get to learn a lot about how I'm doing and hopefully improve over time. Right. And that's, that's an important thing to do. I I'm a firm believer and people who have listened to this podcast before have heard me say I'm a firm believer in self appraisal and sales analytics, analytical behavior and introspection. And I think that we should all do a lot more of that than we do. So I'm glad you're doing the the workshop that'll that'll be pretty interesting.   Diane Bator  07:12 Oh, absolutely. I'm looking forward to it.   Michael Hingson  07:15 Well, I want to be in the audience when you win a Tony.   Diane Bator  07:18 Yeah. Me too.   Michael Hingson  07:21 I think it would be I think it would be kind of fun. We watch the Tonys every year. I guess. Angela Lansbury is getting a lifetime award this year. And that'll be fun. As always, like Angel and spear. Yeah. We've seen her and, you know, not just Murder She Wrote, but we actually saw a few plays with her on television. never got to see her live, but I bet it would be a lot of fun.   Diane Bator  07:43 Oh, a bat. She's just so in such an interesting person, for sure.   Michael Hingson  07:48 Well, what I learned this morning is she started performing at 17. And she is 96. So go Angela.   Diane Bator  07:55 right within inspiration.   Michael Hingson  07:59 So you were in a karate school now. Where was that?   Diane Bator  08:03 Um, that was here in orange Ville where I live. Okay, it's a goes your roof. So it's hard, soft, you know. And they trained for a few years along with working there. Which kind of gave me the inspiration for the series and everything.   Michael Hingson  08:19 You said you moved across country. So where did you come from? Um, we   Diane Bator  08:23 lived in Edmonton, Alberta. Ah, okay. So it is kind of a cross country. It's kind of a cross country. Yeah. It's about 2000 miles.   Michael Hingson  08:32 So cold is cold in the winter. So you know,   Diane Bator  08:35 yeah, yeah. I'd mentioned cold is a whole lot different than, than Southern Ontario cold.   Michael Hingson  08:42 But it's still cold. It's still cold. It's   Diane Bator  08:45 dry cold when your nostrils freeze shut that sort of   Michael Hingson  08:48 Yeah. Yeah. More humidity and in Ontario?   Diane Bator  08:53 Absolutely.   Michael Hingson  08:55 We're live on the high desert in California in Southern California. So we're very used to the dry heat. And here, we did live in New Jersey for six years. And before that I lived in Boston several years before that. So had my own exposure to the humidity. And I was born in Chicago, but don't remember much about the weather for the first five years when I was going to Well, growing up to be five and going to kindergarten and all that. I don't remember the weather much. But Chicago also has its level of humidity in the summer and of course cold weather in the winter. Oh, yeah. So how did you get into writing?   Diane Bator  09:33 You know, it's one of those things I've always kind of done. I've always written stories and that sort of thing since I was in school. And actually, I still have copies of things I wrote when I was in junior high. So though in when I was actually in the ninth grade, I wrote a poem and my teacher physically grabbed me by the arm and took me down to the school newspaper and said, Okay, you need to publish this. So that'd be became my first published piece. So it was a really good that particular teacher, Mr. Coleman was fantastic and very encouraging and, and really opened my eyes to different genres as well as whatever, you know, silly things I was doing on my own thought, ah,   Michael Hingson  10:19 is the newspaper try to grab you to be a writer for them?   Diane Bator  10:23 I ended up being a writer for the newspaper. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  10:26 There you go horoscopes? Did you? How did you do that? How did that work?   Diane Bator  10:33 Wing in a prayer. Sometimes, you know, people going through things and kind of make a little thing directed at them, but not really. So yeah. And it was funny how many people would come over and go, Oh, my gosh, that was so true. I don't know how you knew that. Like?   Michael Hingson  10:53 Did you do? Or do you do any kind of research to look at whatever's going on with the stars and so on on a particular day to help with the process? Or do you just make it up as you went along? Oh,   Diane Bator  11:04 not back then I was only, like, 1415. So yeah, it was just make it up as you go.   Michael Hingson  11:11 Hey, whatever works. That's it. But it it made it into the newspaper and help with copies. And so the editor must have been a little bit happy.   Diane Bator  11:20 Oh, yeah. And she had fun doing it.   Michael Hingson  11:23 Did you do any other writing for the paper? Besides the horse cup? Did you write any other poems or articles or anything?   Diane Bator  11:30 Oh, my gosh, that's such a long time ago. Um, yeah, I know, I wrote little bits here and there, just depending on what we needed to, if we needed space fillers, or whatever the case, so   Michael Hingson  11:40 I didn't write much. I did a little bit of writing in a couple of English courses. But I went into radio as opposed to the newspaper, the new university, the new you at UC Irvine. We had a couple of radio people who were pretty talented. And one was especially a writer, he actually went to work at some point for the Philadelphia Inquirer and just retired not too long ago from doing that. But I remember some of the articles that that he wrote, and he had a lot of fun doing. And he also had a lot of fun doing radio, so we got to to work together. I was the Program Director of the station at the time. And John and a friend of his Matt had a show on Sunday night right after my show. So there's a lot of fun, they did a lot of creative things. And yeah, like writing, radio, and writing are creative. And you can do some some things. The only thing I kind of miss from radio that I never did was really created something from the beginning, there are some science fiction things I would have loved to have seen, actually turned into radio broadcasts or radio series and still have not done anything with that. But it'd be kind of fun, because I can see some of the some of the things would be great. Well, so you got into writing, which was great. How did you get from writing of one sort or another into the whole idea of fiction? And mystery specifically?   Diane Bator  13:10 You know, I always kind of wrote fiction stuff. I've never really been big on the nonfiction, I'll read it, but I don't really write it. It was my gosh, but 2010 and I stumbled across. It was a contest, it was called murdering, Inc. and it was put on by a small publisher here in Ontario. And the premise was you take one of those old murder mystery party games. And they would give you all the characters, all the clues, everything, you had to work it into a story, you had to write it into 10 chapters, and each chapter was in the point of view of a different character, and kind of going, Okay, well, if I can do this, I can do anything because this is crazy. But I did it. And I also won the contest, which was my very first novella that was published. And it was just really a great lesson in making your characters voices and everything. It was a lot of fun. And it was, what was really cool is the very first copy that came off the press, the publisher, put it in an envelope, which it's still in the envelope to this day, it says on their first book, and it's still on my shelf as my first book in the envelope on touch. So that was very cool. But doing that I kind of sat there and let you know, I kind of like writing this mystery stuff. And that's how I started on the path down the mystery genre.   Michael Hingson  14:39 So if all of your books been separate books, or do you have a series   Diane Bator  14:44 actually have four series. One of them the Khan lady, which has just come out in March is the final book in my wildblue mystery series. And that's the one I started to write when I moved to Ontario and kind of That loosely on the small town where I live now,   Michael Hingson  15:03 can you have three other series?   Diane Bator  15:04 I do. Sorry, I have a dry spot. dry throat. Yeah, I have my karate series. So Gilda right mysteries is based on a karate school. Glitter Bay mysteries is in a small town in Oregon with two young ladies who run a small vintage boutique. And my fourth series is sugar with mysteries which is set in a small Ontario town. And Audra and her friend merrily run a craft store, and it's cozy mystery. They get into all kinds of trouble.   Michael Hingson  15:39 I've heard the term cozy mystery referred, while referring to a lot of different kinds of mystery books. What are cozy mysteries,   Diane Bator  15:47 cozy mysteries are set and smells when we were talking about Angela Lansbury. Right. Murder She Wrote, she wrote a sick, classic, cozy mystery sweat in this small town normally, or a small town character who has a reason to solve these mysteries. There's usually not a lot of swearing, blood, guts, Gore, that sort of thing. It's just quaint, small town. You know, just a nice, light friendly read.   Michael Hingson  16:16 For me, I like those kinds of mysteries more than most anything else I really although we we read some James Patterson and stuff like that. I like puzzles. And I like mysteries that really present puzzles. That's one of the reasons I think I've always been a fan of the Rex Stout, and now Robert Goldsboro follow on Nero Wolfe, because Rex Stout always wrote puzzles. And if you really read them, you you may not be able to figure them out. And usually, I had a pretty hard time I worked hard at figuring them out. I was more successful figuring out Mary Higgins Clark, but Rex Stout I had significant problems with but by the time we'll solve the cases, yeah, that was pretty obvious. Why didn't I pick up on that? Which was of course, the whole point.   Diane Bator  17:07 Yeah, I know. That's for me. That's always been a big thing. I love puzzles. I love just the mystery of it all. And just trying to put things together. And, you know, I love throwing up the red herrings because I don't like it when somebody beta reads a book and goes, Oh, I knew that from page three. Yeah, like, well, that's not fun.   Michael Hingson  17:28 Yeah, that doesn't help the mystery. The mystery process at all? No, no, my favorite one of my favorite television shows it was only on for three years. Start Georgia part. It was called Banacek Banacek. Assurance investigation. I love Banacek I've got to go find them somewhere because I'd like to watch those shows again, but he always was involved with puzzles. Yeah,   Diane Bator  17:51 yeah. We got a channel called cozy TV and I found Banacek on there a couple of times and Murder She Wrote all those great   Michael Hingson  18:00 ones. Well, yeah, a Hallmark Channel down here. He has Murder She Wrote most every night. And of course, obviously that's worth watching and, and a number of murder. She wrote stories have been in books on Donald Bane and others have written murder. She wrote books. So they are fun, man. Again, it is puzzles, which is great. Until you see Angela Lansbury. And something like Sweeney Todd. But that's another story.   Diane Bator  18:25 Actually, one of one of my Facebook friends just started writing the murder. She wrote series, Terry Morin. She's just taken over for the last two, I think she's done to one or two now. Just trying to remember but   Michael Hingson  18:40 look her up and see if we can find any of any of hers because that would that would be fun to be able to to get them and have access to them. But Murder She Wrote is is a fun series by any standard. So they're, they're fun to have.   Diane Bator  19:00 I was enjoyed, like one of my first real cozies I started reading was the Kathy series.   Michael Hingson  19:07 Yes, yeah. Lily in Jackson Browne. Um, we have read all of those. I've taught my wife along the way to listen to books, she, she also has a disability. She's in a wheelchair, but she sees and likes to read. But since we don't find a lot on television, usually worth watching. And obviously, if you're watching television, it's kind of hard to do a lot of stuff if you're really focusing on the screen. So I read audio books anyway. But I've taught her to be able to listen to an audio book as well. So we pipe audio books around the house. And so we've done a whole bunch of the cat who books that way. And the ones that she didn't read that way she has read in paper form, but also we've we've put them out there so she gets access to them anyway. Now she's really into what we bought With our JD Robb Oh, yeah. Which is a little bit more in the violence side, but still always a great puzzle. So, Karen, well, we're both on number 22 in the series. And so we've got a ways to go, Well, how do you come up with the plots? How do you create a plot and create an idea for a mystery?   Diane Bator  20:23 You know, it sounds silly. So well, sometimes, they just kind of come, you just kind of get an idea out of the blue. And sometimes it's things you see in the newspaper or on television, even something else spark of thought that goes a completely different direction. Just things you see things you hear, like just about anywhere,   Michael Hingson  20:45 so something, something piques your interest, and then your brain just starts to work and you create a story around it.   Diane Bator  20:54 Yeah, pretty much.   Michael Hingson  20:56 It's, it's fun to be creative, isn't it?   Diane Bator  20:59 It really is. And you can take things, you know, like you said, even if you see something on television, and it's just like a little blip of a thing that you just go, that's pretty neat. I could make this different and do a different spin on it. And that's, that's the part that I love doing.   Michael Hingson  21:18 Have you ever looked at real life events of one sort or another and turn them into some sort of a mystery and use that as the springboard for it, or even just taking something that happened in life, that was a mystery that maybe got solved and thought about writing a book about it? It's kind   Diane Bator  21:35 of funny, my publisher, they've decided to do a Canadian historical mystery series. So they have one writer from each province, and you have to come up with kind of a local mystery that you write about, and it has to be historical. And as soon as she mentioned that, to me, I started kind of Googling and going local mysteries, I don't really know too much. The story that came up out of all the weirdest things in the world. There's a local rumor, and it's only a rumor. Nobody's ever substantiated it, that Jesse James buried gold, about 20 miles from here. So I'm like, oh, you know what I can take that. It's sort of has a weird basis in truth, but not really. And I can just take it and run and make it a totally fun, historical mystery.   Michael Hingson  22:30 Well, do we know that Jesse James was ever up in Canada,   Diane Bator  22:34 there is rumors, and that's pretty much all it is, is a rumor, because the story goes that somebody from his gang was related to somebody that lives in a town nearby. So they had reason to come up and hide out in the area. And they, you know, the guest is, oh, he buried all this money from this last for one of these heists. Right. And, and it's like, it's not completely true, but it's not completely false either. So there's just no proof. Yeah. So when possible, but yeah, yeah. That's what makes it fun, though. That's it. That's what I figured.   Michael Hingson  23:13 So your books have been published more traditionally, as opposed to doing self publishing? Yeah, I   Diane Bator  23:19 actually, big long story. But I ended up with this wonderful little together a little bit. They're not exactly a small publisher. They're a little bit bigger than that. But they're out of Alberta. And they've been fantastic. I've been with them for my gosh, but 10 years now 11 years, and 13 books in and we're still going and they still ask me to write stuff. And they pick dates and say, Okay, can I send you this one for this time? And they're like, Sure. So it's, it's been really good, a great learning experience for sure.   Michael Hingson  23:57 If any of the books made it to audio, or they just all been print,   Diane Bator  24:02 right now, they're all just in print. Audio, they don't do audio there. Because it's just too much for them right now. But I've been looking into it. I just have to know sometimes money can be kind of a little bit of an issue, but   Michael Hingson  24:20 I don't know how it works. But what about something like Audible? They have audible originals. So they take they've taken books from other people or had work specifically created for them and they've converted into audio. Have you explored that?   Diane Bator  24:32 I have not? No, I definitely will though.   Michael Hingson  24:36 It seems like that might be an interesting way. If you've had success as a writer and you obviously have and you've had success with publishing books, then maybe it would be something that audible would be interested in doing. It'd be a little bit of a different process for you, but it would probably be kind of fun and they think their own people to do it.   Diane Bator  24:57 Now that sounds like a great plan to check I do when   Michael Hingson  25:01 we did thunder dog, and it was published in 2011, Thomas Nelson Publishers had arranged for Oasis audio to record the book. So I don't know how any of that happened and what the arrangements were. But the book did get recorded, and then was also sent to Audible. And so it was done. So I don't know all the ins and outs of it. Some people have also explored just using computer generated voices to, to if you will play or read out loud a book and the problem was computer generated voices are still not totally human sounding. So it isn't as natural.   Diane Bator  25:41 Yeah, I have a couple of friends that they listen to their books with the computer generated, and   Michael Hingson  25:47 oh, I can do it. But it isn't the same. And it's not something you have to concentrate more on. So it is still where an issue where human reading is better. Maybe someday it will get to be better than it is to be able to have a computer generated system, but not yet. Yeah. So it's a process. Well, so you've done 13 books today. They've all been mysteries. Yeah. So with that in mind, how many books do you have coming up? Or projects do you have going on right now?   Diane Bator  26:24 Right now? I'm probably oh my gosh, I've got one book for this year, for sure. Two more for next year. And then probably two more for the year after that. So probably about five than that. That's the only things from my publisher that doesn't include any little side projects or anything like that.   Michael Hingson  26:46 Have you started on all five to one degree or another? If they're   Diane Bator  26:51 not, I don't really plot them out. But I do have like little blurbs about what I'm going to write about. So everything is kind of got blurbs, at least the one for this fall, I'm just finishing the rough draft to get into editing. So a new series or? No, it's actually Book Two of my sugar wood series.   Michael Hingson  27:16 Yeah, so all of your series are like three or four books long, and then you end the series.   Diane Bator  27:23 Um, it depends my first series, The Wild Blue mysteries, the con ladies book five. And that was, that was the final book in this series. But it still kind of leaves me a loophole to come back later if I want. And continue on. But for the most part, I aiming for about three, but we'll see how the series goes.   Michael Hingson  27:48 I interviewed someone a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about writing series, he's not a great fan of series, because he says he likes to see things in and wants to stay alive long enough to see the end of a series. And I can appreciate that. But we mentioned JD Robb A while ago, the the other side of the fact that she's written now what 353 or 54, in the in depth series. They're still all standalone. That is you can read any of them without reading the ones before or after. Although if you start from the beginning, the beginning you can see an evolution in the process. And so, you know, I went when you write a series, is it really probably best and most important to start at the beginning and go through the series? Or can each of the books be read by themselves without too much of a problem?   Diane Bator  28:43 I think in particular for wildblue mysteries, I think they can all be read as a standalone until the end. And I know somebody said well, the last one's great, but now I want to go back and read the rest. So I don't know if that meant that they didn't quite get something or they just wanted to go read the rest of the books. But for the most part there, you can read them as a standalone.   Michael Hingson  29:08 We started reading the Joe Pickett CJ box series. Have you ever read those? I have not. CJ box is the author. The protagonist is a game warden in Wyoming. And when we discovered it, we we started reading book 18 and fairly close to the beginning. We got very intrigued but they made a reference to something that happened in the previous book. We could have gone on and read it but we just decided to stop and because we were intrigued and we really liked the portrayal of the character is weeping. My wife and I. We went back and started at the beginning. So it was like over a year before we got back up to book 18 And what happened in the previous book was relevant and interesting. It wasn't necessary for the reading of book 18. But it sure made it a lot more fun to go back to the beginning. And so we we did and, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, I'm anxious to to have the opportunity to read some of yours, maybe I'll have to figure out a way to download them. Or maybe they'll get converted to audio at some point. But if we, we get a chance, I'll have to go hunt them down some way and be able to read them. Are they available? Are they available as ebooks anywhere?   Diane Bator  30:32 They are? Yeah, they're all over anywhere. You can buy ebooks, so   Michael Hingson  30:36 Okay, so we can, can go find them. And that's pretty important. How sales been obviously enough to please your publisher, but if you had any that people classified as bestsellers,   Diane Bator  30:48 I wish not really at this point. I mean, it's a lot of it is the marketing as well. And it's hard to juggle, raising kids working full time doing the marketing, doing the writing, and it's. So I've hired a PR guy lately, just to see if that will kind of help give a boost. And Mickey's been really great. So we'll just see how that goes. Has he?   Michael Hingson  31:15 has he gotten you some good PR?   Diane Bator  31:17 Oh, excellent stuff. It's been a very busy couple of months, that's for sure.   Michael Hingson  31:22 Yeah, I've met Mickey. And we actually started working with him. I think we talked about that, and so anxious to see how that how all that goes because we did thunder dog, but that was published through Thomas Nelson. And we couldn't get running with Roselle to be picked up by a publisher. It was written more for youth, although more adults by then than youth. But in the time that we had when it was written, no one seemed to want to pick it up. So we self published it. And so we're looking forward to Mickey helping to make that one more visible. We just started writing our third book, which is going to be talking about controlling fear and continuing not the story, but to teach lessons of things I learned that helped me survive on September 11. But doing it from the standpoint of the fact that I've used a guide dogs, and so we're going to have a very strong animal involvement in terms of how animals help enhance what we do, and a faith involvement as well. So that one, however, has been picked up. And we've signed the contract and we're riding away on it.   Diane Bator  32:34 Oh, congratulations. That's exciting. So that   Michael Hingson  32:37 will be a lot of fun. And I hope it will help people learn that they don't need to let fear overwhelm them. And by not doing something that just allows you to be completely as I would call it blinded by fear. You can make more intelligent and substantial relat well reasonable decisions in your life, rather than just doing it out of fear. Yeah. So we're hoping that that goes, well. Well, what do you think the best thing is about being a writer,   Diane Bator  33:06 I get to make up all kinds of stuff and do all kinds of stuff in my head. I think it's really awesome to be able to sit down and make up like whole worlds whole towns, whole, all kinds of people and to be inspired by people and things around.   Michael Hingson  33:23 So as you're making things up here, you're obviously using your own experiences to create the towns and the scenes and so on. Oh, absolutely. Do other people give you ideas for scenes Do you? Do you let anybody look at your writing and they come along and they say things like, you might want to consider adding this in or adding this scene in or making it appear differently than maybe you originally started? Not normally.   Diane Bator  33:48 Usually nobody sees it until at least the rough draft is written. I get lots of people going, I have an idea for a book you should write. So I have a few of those kicking around. And I actually have a friend of mine. He's been wanting to write a book his whole life. And he's 65 now. And he doesn't he doesn't consider himself a writer. But he makes the line and gives it to me for every chapter so that I can do the writing part of it. So one day, we'll get it done.   Michael Hingson  34:25 Collaboration. Yep. There's nothing wrong with with doing that. So what does your family think of you being a writer and having all these things that you create and so on?   Diane Bator  34:37 My kids love it. They think it's very cool. My youngest when he was I think I can't remember if it was kindergarten at grade one. He needed to pack a shoe box for school. And he's got this shoe box and he's got all these things in it. So I'm like, Well, what did you bring in your shoe box? I'm curious and one of the Things was my very first book my novella. And so why do you have my book in there? And he says, Well, I know from this that if you can write a book, I can do anything. So I just say it was always like, Oh, he got me right in the heart. So, so that just was always cool. And one of his brothers, my middle son always tells me well, when your books are made into a movie, we're going to take the limousine down to the premiere, like, okay, fine, there you go. Right. So they're very encouraging. Well, we're   Michael Hingson  35:33 looking toward the day, the thunder dog will be a movie, we've got some people who are working on it. And we're making progress, nothing that we can talk about yet. But it should be a movie, in my opinion, and a lot of other people have said the same thing. And if it if it is, hopefully, it will be able to keep the same kind of motif and theme of the book, and that it will help teach people about blindness, and it will help people maybe learn some lessons about September 11. But also, it's important that it be entertaining. So it'll be kind of fun. No, that's so cool. My, my agent for writing thunder dog is still advocating to this day that he wants Brad Pitt to play him not that he had a big part in any of it. I said, Well, that seems fair to me, you know. But, but we'll see. Yes, any   Diane Bator  36:25 input on the script, he'll have a bigger role.   Michael Hingson  36:30 We haven't given him that. But it will be kind of fun to just see how it goes. How old are your kids?   Diane Bator  36:38 Oh my gosh, my youngest just turned 21. It makes me feel really old. 2123 and 25.   Michael Hingson  36:49 Yeah. Well, so now what is your husband think of all of this?   Diane Bator  36:54 I'm actually divorced. So divorce, so he doesn't think about it. He didn't think a whole lot of it. So it kind of contributed No   Michael Hingson  37:03 fun.   Diane Bator  37:04 No, no,   Michael Hingson  37:05 but you got? Yeah, go ahead.   Diane Bator  37:07 No, I was gonna say when somebody tells you writing is not a career, then that's yeah, it doesn't work out. So well.   Michael Hingson  37:15 Gee, what did he do for a living?   Diane Bator  37:18 Um, I'm not sure what he's doing. Now. He was not a plant manager. But he works for big plant. Well, operations and stuff. Very logical thinker.   Michael Hingson  37:31 Well, that's fine. But even managers have to write budgets and other things. So what a thing to say to you. Yeah. Ready comes in all forms. And people, and people have made writing a great success. I know Suzy Florrie who I worked with on thunder dog does a lot of writing. And then the book we're writing now Carrie Wyatt, Kent and I are working on the carries a friend of Susie, Susie is in a Ph. D. program. So didn't have time. But Carrie and I are working on this. And we're we're very excited about the directions that this book is going to go. But clearly, she also has made a career out of it. And needless to say, there have been a number of people who make careers out of writing. Of course, it's a career of course, it's a worthwhile endeavor. Yeah, I just told them never say that to Stephen King. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Partly because you never know where you might end up in a book, or, or in real life. You know, you could be the next person in pet cemetery, but you know, right. And he continues to be sick and look at his kids.   Diane Bator  38:40 Go, yeah, yeah, it's amazing.   Michael Hingson  38:44 And going back to mysteries, not with too much more graphics, but Clive Cussler, and the directed series and so on. Yeah, he's had a little success at making making books a good career. And he did. And, of course, he's passed away, but the family is continuing it.   Diane Bator  39:00 Yeah, I was fortunate to get to have a video chat with Robin Purcell, who was riding with him as well. So ah, yeah, that was very interesting.   Michael Hingson  39:10 Then there's always the Louis L'Amour family. And of course, talk about, you know, everybody can scoff about westerns and so on. But he made a an incredible career out of it. And they're continuing that process. And I've never got to meet any of those people. But I think it'd be a lot of fun.   Diane Bator  39:29 Very neat. It would be really great discussion, that's for sure.   Michael Hingson  39:33 I think it would well, if you ever get a chance to to know any of them and, and get a chance to refer them to us to talk on the podcast. We'd love to do it. I think it would be a lot of fun. Well, so if you had something that you wanted to advise people who are interested in writing to do or, or thoughts that you would have for people about being a writer, what would you say to   Diane Bator  40:00 do it anyways, you know, just write what you love to write, find an editor, somebody who actually knows how to edit a book, not just, you know, the guy next door who likes to read, and just do it, give it your best shot, you got nothing to lose.   Michael Hingson  40:20 Good editors are hard to find. But also good editors really understand what it means to help you shape the book, rather than trying to write it the way they want it written. Yeah,   Diane Bator  40:33 there's nothing worse than having somebody edit your book and take your voice out of it. And it's just, it's very frustrating. And I know I've worked with a few different writers as well. And in a very intentional to leave in things that are them. Things that are obviously very wrong, we can we can have to tweak that, because that doesn't work. But things that are very much them and how they're, how they would speak and how they would write, those things have to stay.   Michael Hingson  41:06 So when you're, when you're working with people, you've you've, you've done some things you we talked about your blog, writing the blog piece, and so on. And you've been a writing coach, tell me more about that, if you would,   Diane Bator  41:18 I that was something I started through COVID. So I've only worked with a handful of people. But I was working with people before then. And doing the same thing, just doing the edits and helping to make sure that book flowed and worked. And the story made sense. I was just doing one for somebody not too long ago, he's actually doing rewrites right now. And the very first read of his very first chapter, I sent it back to him. And he said, This reads like a textbook, or a movies scripts, like it's a very point for more than an actual story flow. So he's reworking right now. But we'll see what ends up happening.   Michael Hingson  42:00 I wish we could get textbook writers to make their books less boring. I think even even the most calm, well convoluted or incredible textbook could have stories in it. You know, a lot of people when I was getting my master's degree in physics, a lot of people talked all about the math and physics. And they talked about the philosophy. But the books, did all the math and never really discussed in in a more engaging way the philosophies of physics or these authors who were very famous physicists didn't tell stories in them. And I submit that they would get a lot more engagement from people, if they really talk not just about the math part of it, not just about the physics itself, but the philosophy and tell stories of how they got where they did and engage people to be more interested, especially at the undergraduate level, I would think,   Diane Bator  43:03 Oh, yeah, I agree with that. Just make it more relatable and more. Yeah, I think that's great.   Michael Hingson  43:10 How do you get how do you get people to do that? It's a challenge. So tell me about the blog, what kind of things have happened with your blog, and what that's doing for folks.   Diane Bator  43:22 I started escape with the writer in September 2018. Because I'd had a blog forever, and I was awful at keeping it up and writing stuff on it. So I thought, You know what I'm gonna share. And I started sharing other people's works on my blog. I still, you know, once every so often I take a day, and this is my stuff. But I work with Mickey, I've got a bunch of his writers who I post their stuff on it, and the people that I find that I post personally, I always send them questions to answer and we make it really personable and fun. And you get to know more about the person, the writer, as a person, as opposed to just here's my book. Yeah. So I think that's, that's the part I have a lot of fun with.   Michael Hingson  44:15 Well, it makes it more engaging and more relevant all the way around, because it's, it's great to read books and so on, but it is nice to know more about the writer, the people who are writing the books and getting more engaged with them, and then makes you more interested and fascinated in what they write. No, absolutely. So you've had some success with the with the blog.   Diane Bator  44:39 It's still going. I started with two days a week and now I'm at three days a week and I could probably do four if I want to. But it's takes up a lot of time. So three is just right for now. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson  44:54 haven't had the discipline to keep my blog up like I need to and that's one of the things that I have to Want to work toward Chris being involved with accessibe and helping to make internet websites more accessible? Takes a lot of time. And the podcast is probably the things that keeps me the most busy right now. But even that engagement, we need to be out there doing more writing stuff. So it's one of the efforts that's gotta happen over time. Yep, exactly. But it is all fun to do when it is fun to interact with people. What do you think that social media has done in terms of affecting the writing industry affecting what you do and so on, not just your blog. But in general,   Diane Bator  45:40 there's lots of good and bad for sure. I mean, in the good side, you can get connected with writers all over the world. So I've been fortunate because of that, that I've had writers literally from just about every country can think of that had been on my blog that I've gotten to know in a different way than just, you know, liking their posts. And then other ways, you get people that are just downright nasty, and they know everything and tell other writers, you know, give up what you just posted as awful. Or there's a typo in the meme, you shared that somebody, you know, 80 people removed for you and had posted, right? So it's just you have to, there's lots of good, but sometimes you just have to take the bad with it.   Michael Hingson  46:26 Yeah. And you kind of wonder about some of the people who just do that sort of stuff. I wonder if they would do it face to face, you know, and that's the problem with social media is that you're not really making the same level of connections. Yeah, that's very true. And we lose and have lost so much of the art of conversation, because that happens. And it's so unfortunate that we don't connect like we used to. And I realized that the other side of that is that we live in a world where there is so much technology that gives us the opportunity to connect and so on. But we don't really connect if we don't take full advantage of that. And when we just get in social media, and we don't have conversations and other things like that, then we're really missing a lot of what's available to us.   Diane Bator  47:18 Oh, absolutely. That was one thing that I know. Canada In particular, we had a lot of lockdowns, especially in Ontario. So there was a lot of things we could not get to do. But joining some of these groups, like I part of Sisters in Crime and crime writers of Canada and that sort of thing, and being able to sit in on some of these really great webinars, and even just a meeting where people are chit chatting back and forth, which was really great, because you get to meet different people and learn different things. And, you know, people, we have a writing group that literally has writers from Vancouver, all the way over to Halifax, so from west to east, and everybody in between, which is really neat, because we never would have met otherwise. And you can have those kinds of conversations,   Michael Hingson  48:11 all sorts of different writing styles. So not just mystery, and not just fiction.   Diane Bator  48:16 No, it's the one particular group was with the writers union of Canada, and everybody's very mixed genres. You know, we help each other out, we give each other support and it's just just a really nice group to hang out with.   Michael Hingson  48:31 Do you ever associate with any of the writers groups or whatever? Through writers in Canada? Do you associate with any of the groups in the US?   Diane Bator  48:40 Absolutely. Sisters in Crime has been really great because they have groups all over the place and I've been able to sit in on different webinars and different meetings. Oh my gosh, Grand Canyon has a great group Arizona together group I was with I can't even remember where they were New Jersey, I want to say something like that.   Michael Hingson  49:04 There's a lot of crime to talk about back there. But there's a lot of   Diane Bator  49:07 crime everywhere. It's been really great to get all these other perspectives and and just some great ideas. Well, that   Michael Hingson  49:18 is, you know, really cool. And that's of course, the whole point by connecting with other people. You do get other ideas, don't you? So now you have to create a a book or a series involving all the Sisters in Crime and but you can have a lot of fun or that   Diane Bator  49:35 actually, I've had some kind of a similar idea to that. But yeah,   Michael Hingson  49:40 how about brothers in crime?   Diane Bator  49:43 Maybe you know,   Michael Hingson  49:44 equality after after   Diane Bator  49:46 course. Well, Sisters in Crime also has brothers in there. So it's not just sisters out there.   Michael Hingson  49:54 There you go. Have you thought of writing any other genres like you know, science fiction or, or, or other kinds of fiction types of things.   Diane Bator  50:04 Actually, this, the book that I'm collaborating on with my friend is fantasy. So he's a huge fantasy buff. And he's, like I said, he's making all the notes and making all the little fine tune details. And I just have to sit down and write the story. I also have a YA fantasy that I've been working on, when I have nothing else to do. And that will come out one day as well. And I also wrote my first stage place. So that's when they, you know, we'll end up doing the workshop with and then we'll see what happens. So like, what can you tell us   Michael Hingson  50:39 about the play?   Diane Bator  50:40 It is a ghost story.   Michael Hingson  50:43 Now we're getting there, right?   Diane Bator  50:45 Because I work in the theater. It's a very old book. The building was built in 1875. And, yes, we have our ghosts. I haven't seen any of them. But every now and then you something will happen. They get let go. Okay.   Michael Hingson  51:01 Of course, down here in California, in San Diego, there's the Del Coronado hotel. I don't know if you're familiar with the del, but they have ghosts, there is a one room where a woman has died. And she she haunts that room. And a number of people have said that they have seen her. She's not a mean ghost. Now they've stayed in the room. And they've seen her in the halls. But people have said they've seen her in the room. So everybody wants to stay in that room, of course. But the Dell apparently has several ghosts, and nobody is near as I read. Recall, her understand, seems to be a bad ghost, which is good. Yeah. And it's, it's a lot more fun. But well, I'm looking forward to hearing more about the ghost story when it's done. So you don't have to come up and do a book with a blind character. And I'll be glad to help you with that. But we haven't seen that many that are that are really portraying blind people very well, in in a lot of things with disabilities in general. There have been various books of one sort or another. And of course, there have been plays in movies and television shows. But a lot of the time the actors aren't people with disabilities, which really leaves out dimensions that we would add to it. Dakota, of course, won the Oscar this year for Best Picture. And I think part of what made it successful was that they were really dealing with people who were deaf, which is important.   Diane Bator  52:24 Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we should   Michael Hingson  52:27 should talk about doing a book with blank character   Diane Bator  52:30 works for me characters.   Michael Hingson  52:31 There you go. Well,   Diane Bator  52:33 we can do that's great. For sure.   Michael Hingson  52:34 Well, any last thoughts that you have? We've been doing this for a while, are there any last thoughts that you'd like to bring up about anything we discussed or advice you want to give to people?   Diane Bator  52:45 Just as I say, you know, if you if anybody out there you're looking to write a book, do a little research, find out anything you need to know any questions you have. Find people who have written books, ask questions, contrary to what you may hear on social media. And my favorite saying is there are no stupid questions I've already asked them. So ask the questions, look for people to help support you and write the book.   Michael Hingson  53:15 I am a firm believer, and there is no such thing as a stupid question. Or I think that when people ask what you regard as stupid questions, sometimes you do wonder how much they observed. For example, I once spoke to a book club, they said, we read your book, we read Thunderdome, we'd really like you to come in and talk with us. And we happen to actually be in Novato, California, where I was living at the time. And all these people said, we read it, we really want to talk with you about the book. I go and we start talking and I open the floor to questions. And the first question that someone asked is, why were you in the World Trade Center? Now, we spent a lot of time talking about that in the book, which makes you really wonder what they were thinking and maybe they were just trying to be engaging. But to ask that question. Is is still what have you been observing? And how much did you absorb of what you read? There are so many other ways to have asked that and gotten more content into it. But then I took the question and said, well, the vision issue isn't what I was doing in the World Trade Center on that day, but how I got there, so I you know, you can you can deal with that. But still, I'm amazed sometimes at what people observe and don't observe. Yeah. Which goes back to your comment about negativity on social media a lot of the time, but we we we cope. Oh, absolutely. Well, if people want to learn more about what you're doing, if they want to learn about the blog and possibly start reading it, if they want to find your books and so on. Can you tell us all about that? How do they do that?   54:58 easiest place to find it Everything is my website. And it's Diane Bater.ca. Links. Yeah, D I A N E B A T O R are all one word, dot a, you're saying you have links. I have links to all kinds of fun things that needs a little bit of updating the blog, the escape with the writer blog, I've got some fun little videos that I do up, we go up on to Lake Huron, and I take a bunch of little 22nd videos, which just kind of peace and quiet and calm. All of my books, there's links to buy sites for all of my books. I've got, oh, my goodness, books that I'm helping other people with, or have helped other people with. You name it stuff about book coaching.   55:52 Well, great. Well, I hope people will go to Dianebetor.ca. And check it all out. And we'll engage with you, I assume that there's a way to contact you on the website. Yeah, definitely. Cool. So I hope people will do that. This has definitely been fun and informative. And I think that it's always exciting to to meet people who are creative and write and are able to express themselves and engage other people. So I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. And giving us a lot of your time and information.   Diane Bator  56:31 Oh, thank you. I appreciate being on cares. I loved reading about your story and finding out what you do. So this has really been fascinating for me as well.   56:41 Well, it's definitely figuring out ways to work together, I'd love to explore that. That sounds terrific. And for all of you listening, reach out to Diane and Dianebator.ca and engage her. And also we'd like you to engage us so please feel free to email me if you've got thoughts or comments about this or any of our episodes. You can reach us at Michaelhi, M I C H A E L H I  accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. So MichaelhI at accessibe.com. Or you can go to our podcast page, which is www dot Michael hingson.com M I C H A E L H I N G S O N.com/podcast. And we'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope that you will give us a five star rating after listening to this episode. And when this goes up, Diane, we will definitely make sure that you know about it and you can share it everywhere you'd like to share it as well.   Diane Bator  57:45 Absolutely. I'll put the link on my website as well. So well thank you   Michael Hingson  57:49 all for listening. And we hope that you enjoyed this and that she'll be back next time and Diane once more. Thanks very much for being with us.   Diane Bator  57:56 Thank you as well Michael, really appreciate it.   Michael Hingson  58:02 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Naomi Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winning author of multiple traditional mystery series and noir short stories. Her Mas Arai mysteries feature a Los Angeles gardener and Hiroshima survivor who solves crimes. The Japanese translation of her seventh and final Mas Arai mystery, Hiroshima Boy, is nominated for two awards in Japan. Her first historical mystery is Clark and Division, which follows a Japanese American family's move to Chicago in 1944 after being released from a California wartime detention center. The book recently won a Mary Higgins Clark mystery award and a Lefty historical mystery award. A former journalist with The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, Naomi has also written numerous non-fiction history books and curated exhibitions. She has also written a middle-grade novel, 1001 Cranes.Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/NaomiHiraharaBooksTwitter @gasagasagirlInstagram @gasagasagirlWebsite www.naomihirahara.com*****************Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrime

Join us for a chat with John Riddle, founder of I Love To Write Day. https://ilovetowriteday.com/ "My goal for I Love To Write Day is to have people of all ages spend time writing. They can write a poem, a love letter, a greeting card, an essay, a short story, start a novel, finish a novel…the possibilities are endless. But I want people to take the time to put their thoughts down on paper. They will be amazed at the results. “Writing can be fun, but also challenging. People need to be challenged, and writing is but one of many creative ways to express yourself. I am very excited because I Love To Write Day activities are already being planned all across the United States. “For many people, that will be the beginning of their writing career. I Love To Write Day has the potential to launch the career of the next John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King or Toni Morrison.” Be encouraged with John's latest book: The Flying Nun, A Light Bulb Moment and Me: 40 Years Making Money As A Freelance Writer (Hey, You Can Do It, Too!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JB63C5P/

Alafair Burke talks about her beginnings in Wichita, the back story on her latest release FIND ME and the magic of collaboration with the late Mary Higgins Clark.

Author Alicia Bessette joins us to chat all about beachy cozy mysteries, including her debut cozy Smile Beach Murder! We're also chatting about Mary Higgins Clark, book store cats, and more! Thanks for listening!

Zibby is joined by Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of 14 crime novels, including her most recent book, Find Me. The two talk about which real true-crime facts inspired elements of this story, why Alafair's father's suggestions that she become a writer like him led her to pursue a career as a prosecutor instead, and how collaborating on six books with the late author Mary Higgins Clark prompted her to shift from being a pantser to a plotter. Alafair also shares how female friendship factors into this novel as well as her next standalone project.Purchase on Amazon or Bookshop.Amazon: https://amzn.to/3NMwFp9Bookshop: https://bit.ly/3tyWGRhSubscribe to Zibby's weekly newsletter here.Purchase Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books merch here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES AS AMBER HEARD TAKES THE STAND - Johnny Depp Amber Heard Defamation Trial FUN TOOLS | Random Advice Generator | Random Affirmation Generator WG Media now operates 50+ shows on ALL major platforms: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify Podcasts | Amazon Podcasts SUBSCRIBE FOR BENEFITS: Bonus Episodes | WG Originals | Early Access | Exclusives | Archives --- GET JORDAN PETERSON SELF AUTHORING SUITE HERE --- THANK YOU TO OUR TOP SUPPORTERS Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,J. K. Rowling,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Text,Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,JJKRowling,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Ernest Hemingway,Jane Austen,Gabriel García Marquez,John Steinbeck,Margaret Atwood,Agatha Christie,Daphne du Maurier,Arthur Conan Doyle,Mary Higgins Clark,Gillian Flynn,Stephen King,Bram Stoker,Mary Shelley,Edgar Allan Poe,Anne Rice,Flannery O'Connor,Neil Gaiman,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,Junot Diaz,James Joyce,George RR Martin,J K Rowling,Diana Gabaldon,CS Lewis,JRR Tolkien,Joan Didion,Nora Ephron,Frank McCourt,Mary Karr,Anthony Bourdain,Roald Dahl,Dr Seuss,Madeleine L'Engle,Ludwig Bemelmans,Bill Martin, Jr,Jon Krakauer,Ron Chernow,Jon Meacham,Betty Friedan,Stephen Hawking,Nora Roberts,Nicholas Sparks,Emily Giffin,Taylor Jenkins Reid,Christina Lauren,Orson Scott Card,Ray Bradbury,Aldous Huxley,Andy Weir,George Orwell, Jessica Elephante --- The Self Authoring Suite provides access to all four of the Self Authoring exercises: the Present Authoring: Faults, Present Authoring: Virtues, the Future Authoring, and the Past Authoring. NO AFFILIATE / DISCOUNT CODE: DOWNLOAD HERE

SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES AS AMBER HEARD TAKES THE STAND | Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial -- FUN TOOLS | Random Advice Generator | Random Affirmation Generator WG Media now operates 50+ shows on ALL major platforms: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify Podcasts | Amazon Podcasts SUBSCRIBE FOR BENEFITS: Bonus Episodes | WG Originals | Early Access | Exclusives | Archives --- GET JORDAN PETERSON SELF AUTHORING SUITE HERE --- THANK YOU TO OUR TOP SUPPORTERS Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,J. K. Rowling,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Text,Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,JJKRowling,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Ernest Hemingway,Jane Austen,Gabriel García Marquez,John Steinbeck,Margaret Atwood,Agatha Christie,Daphne du Maurier,Arthur Conan Doyle,Mary Higgins Clark,Gillian Flynn,Stephen King,Bram Stoker,Mary Shelley,Edgar Allan Poe,Anne Rice,Flannery O'Connor,Neil Gaiman,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,Junot Diaz,James Joyce,George RR Martin,J K Rowling,Diana Gabaldon,CS Lewis,JRR Tolkien,Joan Didion,Nora Ephron,Frank McCourt,Mary Karr,Anthony Bourdain,Roald Dahl,Dr Seuss,Madeleine L'Engle,Ludwig Bemelmans,Bill Martin, Jr,Jon Krakauer,Ron Chernow,Jon Meacham,Betty Friedan,Stephen Hawking,Nora Roberts,Nicholas Sparks,Emily Giffin,Taylor Jenkins Reid,Christina Lauren,Orson Scott Card,Ray Bradbury,Aldous Huxley,Andy Weir,George Orwell, Jessica Elephante --- The Self Authoring Suite provides access to all four of the Self Authoring exercises: the Present Authoring: Faults, Present Authoring: Virtues, the Future Authoring, and the Past Authoring. NO AFFILIATE / DISCOUNT CODE: DOWNLOAD HERE

Speakers: Jim Rohn FUN TOOLS World Map Quiz for All Ages | Random Advice Generator | Random Affirmation Generator WG Media now operates 50+ shows on ALL major platforms: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify Podcasts | Amazon Podcasts SUBSCRIBE FOR BENEFITS: Bonus Episodes | WG Originals | Early Access | Exclusives | Archives --- GET JORDAN PETERSON SELF AUTHORING SUITE HERE --- THANK YOU TO OUR TOP SUPPORTERS Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,J. K. Rowling,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Text,Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,J. K. Rowling,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Ernest Hemingway,Jane Austen,Gabriel García Marquez,John Steinbeck,Margaret Atwood,Agatha Christie,Daphne du Maurier,Arthur Conan Doyle,Mary Higgins Clark,Gillian Flynn,Stephen King,Bram Stoker,Mary Shelley,Edgar Allan Poe,Anne Rice,Flannery O'Connor,Neil Gaiman,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,Junot Diaz,James Joyce,George RR Martin,J K Rowling,Diana Gabaldon,CS Lewis,JRR Tolkien,Joan Didion,Nora Ephron,Frank McCourt,Mary Karr,Anthony Bourdain,Roald Dahl,Dr Seuss,Madeleine L'Engle,Ludwig Bemelmans,Bill Martin, Jr,Jon Krakauer,Ron Chernow,Jon Meacham,Betty Friedan,Stephen Hawking,Nora Roberts,Nicholas Sparks,Emily Giffin,Taylor Jenkins Reid,Christina Lauren,Orson Scott Card,Ray Bradbury,Aldous Huxley,Andy Weir,George Orwell, Jessica Elephante --- The Self Authoring Suite provides access to all four of the Self Authoring exercises: the Present Authoring: Faults, Present Authoring: Virtues, the Future Authoring, and the Past Authoring. NO AFFILIATE / DISCOUNT CODE: DOWNLOAD HERE

- Trude Espås: The Geiranger Murder Mystery - The Bizarre Disappearances of Eve Ho, Jackie Li and Kevin Lim - William Starchfield: The Boy on the Train - The Mysterious Death of Iris Whistling Elk - The Peasenhall Mystery - The Towitta Mystery - The Mysterious Death of Charles Walton - The Monster of Montreuil - Charles Cutler: The Night Watchman Murder FUN TOOLS World Map Quiz for All Ages | Random Advice Generator | Random Affirmation Generator WG Media now operates 50+ shows on ALL major platforms: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify Podcasts | Amazon Podcasts SUBSCRIBE FOR BENEFITS: Bonus Episodes | WG Originals | Early Access | Exclusives | Archives --- THANK YOU TO OUR TOP SUPPORTERS Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,J. K. Rowling,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Text,Clea Shearer,David Baldacci,Heidi Murkoff,School Zone,Megan Logan MSW LCSW,J. K. Rowling,Emily St. John Mandel,Marilyn Sadler,Margaret Wise Brown,Colleen Hoover,Paulo Coelho,Laura Dave,Wonder House Books,Zachary Auburn,Jenna Bush Hager,Robin Wall Kimmerer,Shannon Bream,Julia Quinn,Alice Schertle,Alex Michaelides,Eric Hill,Colleen Hoover,Alton Brown,Julia Quinn,Randy Rainbow,Jennie Allen,Eckhart Tolle,Naibe Reynoso,Rupi Kaur,Sandra Boynton,Julia Quinn,Sarah Young,Julia Quinn,Ray Dalio,Amir Levine,Jordan B. Peterson,John Sandford,Brené Brown,Bridget Coloring Press,Chris Voss,Bobby Lynn Maslen,Ernest Hemingway,Jane Austen,Gabriel García Marquez,John Steinbeck,Margaret Atwood,Agatha Christie,Daphne du Maurier,Arthur Conan Doyle,Mary Higgins Clark,Gillian Flynn,Stephen King,Bram Stoker,Mary Shelley,Edgar Allan Poe,Anne Rice,Flannery O'Connor,Neil Gaiman,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,Junot Diaz,James Joyce,George RR Martin,J K Rowling,Diana Gabaldon,CS Lewis,JRR Tolkien,Joan Didion,Nora Ephron,Frank McCourt,Mary Karr,Anthony Bourdain,Roald Dahl,Dr Seuss,Madeleine L'Engle,Ludwig Bemelmans,Bill Martin, Jr,Jon Krakauer,Ron Chernow,Jon Meacham,Betty Friedan,Stephen Hawking,Nora Roberts,Nicholas Sparks,Emily Giffin,Taylor Jenkins Reid,Christina Lauren,Orson Scott Card,Ray Bradbury,Aldous Huxley,Andy Weir,George Orwell, Jessica Elephante GET JORDAN PETERSON SELF AUTHORING SUITE HERE

Sujata Massey is the author of fifteen novels, most of them mysteries. Starting with The Widows of Malabar Hill, the three books in this historical feminist series set in 1920s India have won the Agatha, Macavity, Lefty, and Mary Higgins Clark awards, and been finalists for the Shamus and Harper Lee Legal Fiction awards. Her earlier mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Rei Shimura is set in modern Japan. Sujata is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and is a former reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper. She lives in Baltimore with her family and travels to Asia to research her books.Books mentioned in the podcast:Big Magic by Elizabeth GilbertThe Artists Way by Julia CameronSeven Steps on the Writer's Path: The Journey from Frustration to Fulfillment by Nancy Pickard and Lynn LottFacebook Page http://facebook.com/sujatamasseyauthorTwitter sujatamasseyauthorInstagram sujatamasseyauthorWebsite http://sujatamassey.com********************Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrime

La poeta Ana Merino nos presenta su segunda incursión en la novela después de ganar el Premio Nadal. Se trata de Amigo (Ed. Destino), una historia que reivindica el poder de la amistad y la figura de Joaquín Amigo, miembro todavía bastante desconocido de la Generación del 27. Antes, leemos un fragmento de El museo de la rendición incondicional, de Dubravka Ugresic, novela sobre los exiliados de la Guerra de los Balcanes que la editorial Impedimenta recupera ahora y que nos parece alumbra el drama al que se siguen enfrentando los refugiados de nuestros días. En nuestro buzón de voz un oyente nos hace una doble recomendación: Un cadáver en el armario, de la reina del misterio Mary Higgins Clark y Cómo hablar para que los adolescentes le escuchen y cómo escuchar para que los adolescentes le hablen, (Ed. Omega) de Adele Faber y Elaine Mazlish Por su parte, Ignacio Elguero nos sugiere tres lecturas: La linterna de papel (Ed. Literatura Random House), disección que hace el británico Will Burns del comportamiento de la clase alta durante la pandemia; Guía de pasos perdidos (Ed. Páginas de Espuma), un conjunto de cuentos de Javier Vela protagonizado por personajes solitarios y excéntricos; y Sinsonte (Ed. Impedimenta), una distopía del estadounidense Walter Tevis. Javier Lostalé se adelanta a los estrenos de la cartelera hablándonos de Compartimento No 6 (Ed. Alianza), una historia de la finlandesa Rosa Liksom cuya adaptación al cine está a punto de estrenarse y que arroja luz sobre el carácter y la complicada historia de Rusia. Para terminar, Mariano Peyrou mira la historia reciente de nuestro país a través de Ritual del laberinto (Ed. Bartleby), poemario en el que Julio Mas Alcaraz da voz a dos mujeres, nieta y abuela, que reflexionan sobre el peso de la Guerra Civil, el olvido y la memoria. Escuchar audio

Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling mystery author who has written more than 40 novels, including The Bone Collector, part of the acclaimed Lincoln Rhyme series, which was adapted in to a hit film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and NBC television recently aired the nine-episode prime-time series, Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. He was recently named a Grand Master of The Mystery Writers of America, whose ranks include Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Mary Higgins Clark and Walter Mosely. His latest Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Midnight Lock, was released in 2021. John Gilstrap is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty thrillers, two of which, Nathan's Run and At All Costs, were optioned for movies. In 2009, John wrote No Mercy, which started the massively popular Jonathan Grave series and in 2021, Crimson Phoenix initiated the Victoria Emerson series, the latest installment of which is The Blue Fire, released in 2022. These good friends share their perspectives on genre writing: the difference between mysteries and thrillers, the elements of the perfect thriller, and who outlines stories before writing (plotters) and who writes by the seat of their pants (pantsers). They also get personal, getting into their mutual love of music and skiing, with an emphasis on their apres ski rituals.

My guest today and I have never worked together before despite having a combined 20 years in Club Med and 45 mutual friends. Her first season was in November of 1990 in Club Med Paradise Island as an au pair Snorkel/Picnic G.O. From Montreal, please help me welcome, Silvy Dufour! Silvy initially went to Paradise Island as a G.M was but was invited to come back as a G.O by the interim manager. Her first season was jam-packed with talent and there were a lot of future CDV's in Paradise Island that season: Xavier Corne and Saber Fajr (both at Tennis) and Jean-Marc Desy (Golf) and ET (Animation) and Momo was the Chief of Sports. She also worked alongside Jenner and Red at Snorkeling. As you can imagine, Silvy has many great stories to tell. To meeting author Mary Higgins Clark, actor Antonio Sabàto Jr., Judge Judy and former NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg. From teaching three-time Super Bowl champ Emmitt Smith how to snorkel in Eleuthera, to helping build Sharkies bar in Turks, to hanging out with Pavel Bure and Trevor Linden from the NHL, to watching internationally renowned marine photographer Bob Talbot in action in Columbus Isle, Silvy has got them all! You have got to hear her 1992 NYC/Martinique charter story! It has to be heard to be believed, trust me!! **My First Season podcast has always been free to listen to. My First Season is available on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Podbean App, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible, TuneIn + Alexa, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, Pandora and Listen Notes.  

Escucha este audiolibro completo aquí: https://bit.ly/3K3lNlCNarrado por: Jane SantosSolo desea huir de la humillante escena del arresto de su prometido la víspera de su boda. Celia Kilbride, experta en joyas, acepta un puesto de trabajo en el transatlántico Queen Charlotte para escapar de la atención pública. Allí conoce a Lady Emily Haywood, de ochenta y seis años, dueña de un collar de esmeraldas de incalculable valor que desea donar a un museo tras el crucero. Pero el tercer día de travesía encuentran a Lady Emily muerta y el collar ha desaparecido. La lista de sospechosos no hace más que crecer. Celia se dispone a encontrar al asesino sin darse cuenta de que se ha puesto en peligro mortal antes de que el crucero llegue a su fin. #penguinaudio #audiolibro #audiolibros #Mary #Higgins #Clark #MaryHigginsClark See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

LISTEN to my March 31st, 2021 WIOX show with my guest co-host, the erudite poet and novelist, Lee Slonimsky.  Lee invited poet and eminent physician Robert Charles Basner to read and discuss his evocative and original poetry.  Robert Charles Basner, holds the titles of Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Columbia University, and Special Lecturer in Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is an internationally recognized physician and biomedical researcher, author, editor, editorialist, and educator. A former faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and current faculty member of his alma mater, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he is a laureate of an NIH Academic Career Award of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and of the Sidney Zolot Music Award of the City College of New York. He has published poetry in numerous journals including the Columbia Review, Promethean, and Chronogram and is working on a first collection of verse, “Ancient, Autumnal” as well as a sequence of musical settings for voice and viola.  Lee Slonimsky has published nine full-length volumes of poetry.  His third book, Pythagoras in Love, has been translated into French by Elizabeth J. Coleman, Greek by Stamatis Polenakis, and most recently into Polish by Henryk Cierniak.  With his wife, Hammett and Mary Higgins Clark award winning mystery writer Carol Goodman, under the pen name Lee Carroll, Lee has co-written the Black Swan Rising trilogy featuring vampire hedge fund manager and poet Will Hughes.

This week, we're reading a new writer's first completed script, and it's a super fun one! Brotherly Scholars is about a group of college students who get caught up in a plagiarism scandal as they scramble to finish their final project. Our writer, Michaela Hartigan, talks about some of her favorite shows, mechanical engineering, and being an early bird. Detours: Deck the Halls (Carol and Mary Higgins Clark), Below Deck (Peacock), History of Swear Words (Netflix) Contact Michaela Hartigan: michaelahartigan1@gmail.com Writing, acting, and music submissions: tglsubmit@gmail.com Become one of our producers on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/thegreenlight Make a one-time donation on PayPal at tglsubmit@gmail.com! Check out our new show, Who is that? The Masked Singer Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-is-that-the-masked-singer-podcast/id1531834551 Check out our YouTube channel with both of our shows, J&L Closet Pods: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUY4LtkBlJSmI5Hzbi0JiPQ Follow us on social media at @tgl_pod on Instagram and Twitter and @greenlightpod on Facebook! Follow Lauren on Instagram and Twitter: @hunkeleberry Follow Jackson on Instagram and Twitter: @j_woodward_c