The Crime Cafe  By  cover art

The Crime Cafe

By: Debbi Mack
  • Summary

  • Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.
    © 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack
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Episodes
  • Interview with Amanda Lamb – S. 9, Ep. 24
    Mar 17 2024
    Our guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime fiction and true crime writer Amanda Lamb. Join us as we discuss her career in journalism and how close she came to going to law school! Yikes! :) Good call, BTW. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. We also have a shop now. Check it out! Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe The transcript can be downloaded here. Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today has worked for more than 30 years as a television news reporter. She now has four podcasts, has authored three books of crime fiction and three of true crime. She's also written family and children's books. She owns a company called Stage Might Communications. I am very pleased to have with me today the multi-talented Amanda Lamb. Hi Amanda. How are you doing? Amanda: Good, Debbi. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Debbi: Well, I really appreciate your being here, and I am just amazed with the work you're doing. I love that you create podcasts the way I create blogs. You seem to not be satisfied with just one. Amanda: Yes, I developed an interest in podcasting when I was working for my television station a couple years ago, and I really didn't have any idea what it was about. I had done a little bit of listening to podcasts, but I hadn't really ever worked on a podcast, and writing a narrative podcast is like writing a book, or it's like writing multiple documentaries because of the length of a True Crime podcast, for example. But I just really loved it and I really developed an interest in it, and now I'm doing more interview-based podcasts like yours, and I love that as well, because I'm curious about people. I'm interested in people, and it just really fits kind of where I am in my career. Debbi: That is really cool, because I can really appreciate that, because I've often thought of doing other interview-type podcasts because actually I have a journalism background Amanda: There you go. Well, you can try. Debbi: It all started with that, you know. That's where really my writing in a sense, professionally started kind of. Amanda: Yes Debbi: It started with journalism school, let's say. Amanda: Okay. Okay. Debbi: And I didn't go quite the route you did. I went to law school instead. Amanda: Well, you know, one of the things I'm learning - my podcast is called Ageless, and it's about women transforming personally and professionally - and I'm learning that nobody's life is linear. Everybody's life seems to kind of go in many different directions, sometimes to arrive at the same place, but there's nothing about life that's linear. Debbi: Yes, I agree with you completely there. What was it that prompted you to start writing crime fiction and true crime? Amanda: I became a focused crime reporter. Most people in TV don't specialize early on in their careers. You're a general assignment reporter, which means you cover a little bit of everything, but I was always interested, especially in the courtroom process and the criminal justice process. My parents were attorneys. My father was a district attorney, and so growing up, I actually went to several murder trials and I got an opportunity to see how the process worked. I always thought I'd be an attorney. That just seemed like the thing that I was going to do, given my family background. I really loved writing, so in college I started to think more about how could I combine this love of writing with kind of this interest in criminal justice, specifically in the puzzles, because a case,
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  • Interview with Faye Snowden – S. 9, Ep. 23
    Mar 3 2024
    Our guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is Southern Gothic mystery writer Faye Snowden. Check out our discussion of her Killing Series and what inspires her to write. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. We also have a shop now. Check it out! Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe The transcript can be downloaded here. Debbi: Hi everyone. Today I'm pleased to have with me the author of a series of dark Southern Gothic mysteries with strong and flawed female characters. She's going to give away a copy of her first book, A Killing Fire, and her second book A Killing Rain was named by CrimeReads as one of the best Southern Gothic mysteries of 2022. She also won and has been long-listed for various writing awards. So it is my great pleasure to have with me today Faye Snowden. Hi Faye, how are you doing? Faye: Hi there. Fine, Debbi. How are you? Debbi: Good, thank you. And I need to put you in the spotlight if I can manage to do that. I am just a technological mess today. There we go. That's much better. So, tell us about Raven Burns and the Killing Series, and what inspired you to write it? Faye: Oh my. Certainly. This series was actually not my first. I had a mystery suspense series back in the day. But the Raven Burns series is, like you said, southern noir, complete mystery, dark mystery, and it is about a woman whose father was a serial killer. So in order to atone for his sins and to prove that she's a good citizen, she decides to become a homicide detective to right his wrongs in that small town, made up fictional town. She lives in Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana that seems for some reason have a lot of serial killers and she has to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing them. So the series is actually based on - what is it, the four? Is it the four? Oh, I'm kind of drawing a blank there. But it's based on fire, water, soil, and then air. She lives in Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana that seems for some reason have a lot of serial killers and she has to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing them. So the first book in the series is A Killing Fire, and then the second book is A Killing Rain, which is out now. I'm working on A Killing Breath as we speak, and then the last book is A Killing Soil. And in each book, Raven is going to learn something about herself that's either going to push her to be a good citizen of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana, or become more like her father. And in each book, Raven is going to learn something about herself that's either going to push her to be a good citizen of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana, or become more like her father. Debbi: Oh, wow. I'm really hearing some interesting themes that people are basing their series on lately. I've heard the Seven Deadly Sins, now the Four Elements. Faye: The Elements, right. Debbi: Earth, wind, fire, water. Faye: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Debbi: Wow. Faye: I got the idea for the book because - I tell this story all the time, my poor dad - but I am a child of divorce. My mom, who's since passed away - she died in 2015 - but she did not have a fondness for my dad after the divorce, and she would disparage him in front of us. I looked a lot like my dad. I favored him a lot, and I used to look in the mirror and say, well, if my dad's a something and something, what does that make me? What kind of person does that make me? And you know, a writer's mind just takes off sometimes, the imagination. I said, oh, you know, that would be a neat character to write, but you have to up the stakes. So it's like,
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  • Interview with Leanne Kale Sparks – S. 9, Ep. 22
    Feb 18 2024
    Our guest for this episode is thriller author Leanne Kale Sparks. Check out the podcast to hear more about her Kendall Beck series and the authors who inspire her, amongst other things. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. We also have a shop now. Check it out! Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe The transcript can be downloaded here. Debbi: Hi everyone. Our guest today had a short career in law before turning to writing a series of thrillers featuring FBI agent Kendall Beck. Her books are set in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, which is a really cool place. I love that. She currently resides in Texas with her husband and two dogs - a German shepherd named Zoe and her Corgi named Wynn. It's my pleasure to welcome today Leanne Kale Sparks. Hi, Leanne. Leanne: Hi. Debbi: I'm so glad you could be with us today. Leanne: Me too. This is exciting. Debbi: Excellent. Wonderful. I, too, had a career in law before I started writing full-time. Leanne: I think there's a lot of us. Debbi: I think there are quite a few of us who left the profession in a kind of "we gotta do something else" feeling. You were fortunate in making yours a short career though, as you've described it. How long were you practicing law, and what kind of law did you practice? Leanne: Well, I did a little bit of everything in that short amount of time. I did a little bit of family law and ... Debbi: Oh, God! Leanne: I did a little bit of estates, but that was short-term. Mostly, it was criminal defense. Debbi: Ah. I'm telling you, family law right there will turn you off to the idea of doing more. Leanne: It's the most dangerous profession. Everybody thinks it's the criminal lawyers that get it. It's family law. Debbi: Not at all, because at least the clients understand you're dealing with a certain type of system. People going through divorce, acrimonious ones just go temporarily insane. That's my theory. It's temporary insanity. Leanne: And you're taking away kids and money, two of the things that people value the most. In criminal defense, most of your clients, they know they're guilty. They have probably been in the system before, and so they know what's going on. Debbi: Their expectations are well managed right from the start. Oh my. What inspired you to write the Kendall Beck series? Leanne: I lived in Maryland at the time, and I had a friend who had retired from the FBI, and he used to be the person that was in charge of the criminal part of the FBI, the investigations. I had gone online and looked, and there was this really interesting department or group within it, a unit, and they did Crimes Against Children. And so I talked to this guy and I'm like, Hey, can you get me in to see them or talk to them, or have somebody just answer some questions? He pulled some strings and I was able to meet up with some actual agents that work in the unit. It was a while ago and it just always stuck with me, and I thought, I need to have a character. The Wrong Woman started out as a short story just to see if I could actually write a crime thriller, and get all of the red herrings. The first versions of this, it was just like this person died and then we investigated, and yay, I figured it out, so I had to learn a lot about red herrings and things like that, so it kind of evolved. But I really did want Kendall to be involved in the Crimes Against Children, because I really think it's important now. My books don't focus on that. I don't talk about any of the icky, really icky. I don't go in depth with any of it,
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