In Reference to Murder

Author R&R with Mike Cobb

A native of Georgia, Mike Cobb splits his time between Midtown Atlanta and Blue Ridge, a tiny lake town tucked in the North Georgia mountains where Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina intersect. His body of literary work includes both fiction and nonfiction, short-form and long-form, as well as articles and blogs. He is the author of four published novels, Dead Beckoning, The Devil You Knew, its sequel You Will Know Me by My Deeds, and Muzzle the Black Dog. While he is comfortable playing across a broad range of topics, much of his focus is on true crime, crime fiction, and historical fiction. Rigorous research is foundational to his writing. He gets that honestly, having spent much of his professional career as a scientist. In his spare time, Mike enjoys reading, cooking, boating, and spending time with his family, including four granddaughters.

In Muzzle the Black Dog, when a mysterious stranger appears at Jack Pate’s isolated cabin door, his life is forever changed. The stranger’s cryptic message sets off a chain of events that lead Jack on a harrowing journey to uncover the true meaning of his own existence. As a series of unexplained fires threaten to consume everything he holds dear, Jack is forced to confront his deepest fears and question everything he thought he knew about himself. Set in the aftermath of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Jack’s search for the truth takes him to the edge of sanity and puts him on a collision course with a dark and powerful force that has been lurking in the shadows. Readers will join Jack on a gripping and thought-provoking quest for answers in this tale of self-discovery and redemption.

Mike Cobb stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

I was a scientist before I became a writer, and while the tools have changed, the instincts and rigor remain the same. Curiosity still drives me, and research is where I feel at home—whether I’m digging through archives or reconstructing a vanished world on the page.

When I set out to write Muzzle the Black Dog, I knew the story would brush up against real, painful events that I remember well. The novel draws in part on the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Eric Rudolph, and his brother Daniel. To get it right, I immersed myself in newspaper coverage from the time, sifting through headlines, timelines, and firsthand accounts. I combed archives for details that had long since slipped from public memory—what streets looked like, how events unfolded minute by minute, what the air might’ve felt like that day in the park.

It wasn’t just about facts—it was also about feel. I spent time in the places I was writing about, trying to capture the texture of the environment, the cadence of speech, the lingering tension in the aftermath of trauma. And because the book is fundamentally a work of fiction, I let my fictional characters speak to me and help me interweave their story around the panoply of historical events.

Just as I once studied data in a lab and scientific journals, I now study people, places, and moments—hoping to translate that understanding into fiction that feels true.

This deep-dive approach to research isn’t unique to Muzzle the Black Dog. It’s something I’ve brought to every book I’ve written and published. Whether I’m writing about a historical moment or a fictional crime, I ground my stories in real places, real people, and the real-world forces that shape them. I’ve spent countless hours in libraries, archives, on city streets, and in quiet corners of the internet, chasing down the smallest details—a street name, a weather report, the scent of a room—because those are the threads that help a story come alive. Research, for me, isn’t just a step in the process—it’s the heartbeat of the work.

 

You can learn more about Mike Cobb and his books at his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Goodreads. Muzzle the Black Dog and Mike’s other books are available from Amazon and all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Jeremy D. Baker

Jeremy D. Baker grew up in Italy, Florida, and Maryland. After dropping out of college at 19, he joined the US Army as a counterintelligence agent and HUMINT collector. He is a combat veteran and PTSD survivor. For the last 20 years he’s worked in national security, with a focus on intelligence, counterterrorism, and transnational organized crime. He lives with his wonderful family in Maryland, where he keeps a little garden and writes about the things that keep him up at night.

His debut novel, The Guilty Sleep, follows veteran Dexter Grant, who is suffering from PTSD and on the verge of divorce when he is approached by his former Army buddies to help save the life of their interpreter in Afghanistan. It means robbing a lot of money from a vicious queen pin. But not to worry. They have it all worked out, and if anyone can pull it off, it's Dexter's former team lead Staff Sergeant Saenz. Tempted by an easy score that could make his own problems disappear and imbued with new purpose, Dex agrees to play his part. But as in combat, the best laid plans don't survive first contact, and when the heist goes off the rails, Dex's wife and daughter become targets for bloody revenge. Dex must call on all his strength and training to save them, and in his quest he will learn there was much more to this robbery than he ever imagined.

Jeremy Baker stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

 

Disclaimer:  As with all writing experience and advice, my take here is very subjective to my own personal experience.  And now that that is out of the way, let me lay down a gold-plated, iron-clad, tungsten-hearted absolute maxim of writing:  have some freaking fun with it.  If what you’re writing doesn’t bring you at least a modicum of enjoyment or entertainment, what are you even doing?  Yeah, sometimes we’re going to write about dark, challenging, hurtful stuff—this is a key to compelling fiction, right?  But you should also be enjoying the act of writing, the act of creation, the act of telling your story as only you can.

For me, one of the main elements of my personality that has directly translated into enjoying my writing, is that I am a fundamentally curious person.  I always like to learn more about the world we live in, how it works, where we came from, and where we’re going.  This inherent curiosity made me a decent interrogator an adequate intelligence analyst, and a good investigator.  And it’s made me an author who loves to research!

My novel, The Guilty Sleep, is about an Afghanistan vet and former Army Counterintelligence Agent, Dexter Grant, who’s broke, reeling from PTSD, and on the verge of divorce when his old Army crew approaches him to help save the life of their former interpreter.  To do that, they need to rip off a vicious drug lord’s illicit proceeds.  Things, as they do in these scenarios, go very south very quickly, placing Dex’s family squarely in the crosshairs. 

Now, I’m a former Army Counterintelligence Agent and combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan.  I battled PTSD for years, and my life was once saved by one of our interpreters.  And for the last 20 years I’ve worked in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security.  In other words, writing The Guilty Sleep was squarely in my wheelhouse of personal knowledge and experience.  That said, I never personally ripped off a drug lord, engaged in money laundering, got in a shootout with corrupt cops, or many of the other things that happen in my novel.

Which meant I had plenty of things I needed to research, even for such a personal novel:  Maryland divorce law, for starters, plus things like vehicle kill switches, anti-listening device technology, the geography of west Africa, cargo ship transatlantic travel timetables, and successful bank heists.  These were just a few of the things I dove into.  Why?  Well, partly because I wanted to tell a good story, and good stories have an underlying current of absolute truth, even if they’re fictional.  Readers, I think, want believability and verisimilitude in crime thrillers.  They want to know that the way you describe, say, a criminal enterprise’s operations, at least roughly corresponds to how a criminal enterprise operates in the real world.  Just as important to my way of writing, the other reason I dove into these issues was that good ol’ curiosity.  Is there such as thing as a little box the size of a deck of cards which, when switched on, automatically create a 20-foot buffer that subsumes listening devices, wi-fi and cell signals, and video surveillance?  Is there such a thing as a chip that can be plugged into a vehicle’s on-board diagnostic port that allows remote access via phone app?  How would I pull off a bank heist with three teammates, an unmarked van, and 30 miles of country roads, going up against a feckless bank manager and some very annoyed drug dealers?  (The answer to those questions is—maybe, not yet that I could find, and with extreme caution.)  Taking the time to dive into those details through extensive research (internet, interviews, and the library were my friends) brought an extra level of detail and believability to my novel that wouldn’t exist if I’d just winged it!

Here's the other great thing about curiosity and research in my writing experience.  I could be looking for one particular piece of information and follow my yen to learn new and interesting things down a series of research rabbit holes that uncover completely unrelated stuff that either fits into the current story, or sparks a completely new idea.  I write in both the crime/thriller and speculative fiction genres.  In researching the idea of a vehicle kill switch that plugs into the on-board diagnostic port, my research trail directly led to point-to-point encrypted communication phone apps used in furtherance of crime (which makes an appearance in my novel), then somehow onward to a discussion of the old Silk Road caravan route in Central Asia, which led to a comparison of Ummayad versus Abbasid caliphates, which led to a deep dive into the Umayyad state of Córdoba circa 800 CE and the fascinating Andalusian polymath Abbas ibn Firnas, the DaVinci of the Islamic world, who may have been the first person to achieve (unpowered) flight…which led to the idea for a short story that I’m still unraveling!

What I’m getting at is, for me, curiosity begets research begets knowledge begets verisimilitude begets writing, and a curious writer is a happy writer.  Give your curiosity free rein, because you never know where it’s going to take you.

Now, about that Andalusian polymath…

 

You can learn more about Jeremy D. Baker via his website and follow him on BlueSky, Instagram, and Facebook. The Guilty Sleep is now available via Diversion Books and can be purchased from all major booksellers.

Author R&R with R. John Dingle

Author R. John Dingle was born and raised in New England. In fact, despite extensive travel, a move to Australia represents his only bragging right for actually residing outside the six-state area. John and his wife currently call a small island in Mid-Coast Maine "home," both living, writing, and boating from their restored 200-year old house (which they continually assure their three adult children is not haunted). The psychological thriller, Karma Never Sleeps, is John’s first novel and the first in the Gus Wheeler FBI Series.

In Karma Never Sleeps, a quintessential New England small country town is home to a group of women ("the posse") who spent their adolescence at the top of the food chain. But, now as adults, a secret from their past comes back to haunt them. When one of them is found murdered they’re all-too-comfortable chalking it up to a random act of violence. But when a second woman from their group is found dead, FBI agent and profiler Gus Wheeler and his partner are called in to determine if this is a serial killing. He’s intrigued by a clue hidden on the body: a memorial picture of a teen who died 25 years ago. Instead of helping with the investigation, the long-term friends stonewall the agents. But Gus can smell fear beneath their calm masks, fake smiles, and politely vague answers. Digging deeper, he discovers they are being terrorized by cyberstalking, spying, threats, and mysterious break-ins. When a third member is hospitalized after a brutal attack, Gus suspects someone in the posse is the hunter instead of the hunted.

John Dingle stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

 

I was amazed at how much research was involved in writing a commercial thriller / mystery novel. Someone told me early on it’s the details that matter and, oh how she was right. Jumping in, I found I really enjoyed doing that behind-the-scenes work to get those details right. And I quickly found that I’d find that tiny, unseen nugget I could use as either a breadcrumb to lead the reader along or as the actual kernel of the plot I was looking for. Oddly, that entire process is part of what I find so satisfying in writing mysteries – finding that one detail that’ll trick the reader until the end.

For Karma Never Sleeps, I had research to do in so many areas it was both exciting and daunting. The story revolves around a group of women being targeted and psychologically tormented, someone anonymously providing the investigators with clues along the way, and the FBI investigating it all. So, for starters, I needed to research the FBI on several fronts – how their profilers operate in real life, how their investigative process works and even when they are / are not called into a town to investigate. I read articles, blogs and official documents released from the FBI to tie it all together. I then had to dive into crime scenes and how they’re processed and for that I read everything from ‘Crime Scenes for Dummies’ to forensic articles on blood splatter and where and how a fingerprint could be lifted.

Next, as the story progresses the FBI begins to get anonymous messages they cannot trace providing them clues. Fortunately, I was able to find an expert in cyber security that helped me with the details in so many areas – encryption methods, computer servers and bouncing connections among them, etc. And, finally, I wanted the suspect to be able to paralyze their victims while also allowing them to still feel pain. I’ve always been intrigued with the concept of creating medicines from nature – a younger me watching The Serpent and the Rainbow and being fascinated by the concept has always stuck in my mind. So I researched medicines created from nature, pain blockers, etc. and honed in on what I wanted. I then found an expert in that specific field and contacted them and they helped enormously. As an aside, I’ve always found that experts in most fields generally like talking about that field, their passion.

So, with all of that, I had to temper what I included in the story to provide the right balance of details, while also propelling the story along at a fast pace to keep it engaging. And, once that was accomplished, Karma Never Sleeps was born.

The second book in the Gus Wheeler FBI Thriller series (now in editing) presented different research challenges. Where the first story is based in a small country town, the second is based in a mid-sized, downtrodden former textile New England city so has a very urban vibe. In this story, the killer abducts his victims and appears to disappear without a trace from crowded music clubs. For this book I had to research the textile industry and its evolution in New England, Prohibition-era architecture and building practices and processes for mapping vast cave networks and communicating within them. I did most of this through reading historical accounts of that time period, watching videos of Prohibition-era speakeasies and the many methods used for hidden rooms where they’d store the alcohol. I also spoke with experts in the area of cave networking mapping technologies and learned the differences between high and low-frequency sound waves. All very technical, yet used properly lays the groundwork for some pretty cool nefarious activities (I hope!).

Also, while my agent was shopping Karma Never Sleeps to publishers, I wrote a stand-alone thriller based on a group of misfits that solve a string of murders through using online sleuthing and social media. For this story, I relied on the cyber security expert previously consulted to teach me about online hacking, how remote communication devices work and how crowd-source technology works in tracking devices and how it could be easily hacked and used for bad purposes. I then consulted experts in each of the more popular social media platforms – namely, Reddit, blogs, Instagram and X. All this, combined with getting on these platforms and learning by using, gave me all the research I needed.

I’m now just beginning the 3^rd book in the Gus Wheeler FBI Thriller series and the story revolves around a fanatical religious church and its congregation in a remote area of upper Maine. Having just completed the initial research and backstories of the characters, I can already tell I’ve just scratched the surface of the research I’ll need to do on the Old Testament and many other aspects of Christianity.

So, as you can see, I’ve learned the devil really is in the details but also in not letting those details cloud or bog down an otherwise great story with engaging characters.

 

You can learn more about John Dingle and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. Karma Never Sleeps is now available via Tule Publishing and all major booksellers.

 

Author R&R with Ted Mulcahey

Author Ted Mulcahey’s observations and stories are formed by his stint in the Army, his sales, marketing, and entrepreneurial activities, and his life growing up as one of nine siblings in a typical Irish Catholic family. Starting in New England, he managed to find his way to the Pacific Northwest where he has made his home for over three decades. He now lives on an island with his wife and trusted GSD, Emma, in the middle of Puget Sound. The oddly shaped land mass of picturesque landscapes and small-town charm supplies plenty of fodder for the quirky cast members he brings to life.

In his new novel, Ferry Tales, beneath the tranquil charm of Whidbey Island, a storm of deception and danger brews. When Deputy Sheriff Roger Wilkie stumbles upon a sinister polygamist sect with a violent enforcer, he’s pulled into a relentless game of cat and mouse. The deeper he digs, the more he realizes that beneath the island’s postcard-perfect scenery lurks a deadly undercurrent of corruption, power, and murder. But Wilkie isn’t facing the darkness alone. Armed with his signature dry wit, a rogue’s gallery of eccentric islanders—including an ex-con with a knack for trouble—and two sharp-nosed German Shepherds, he sets out to bring the killers to justice. As the body count rises and the stakes grow higher, Wilkie must outwit an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried.

Ted stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book.

 

Almost all of my novels are the product of the life experiences I’ve enjoyed and the places I’ve lived. From the exploration of Vancouver Island in Bearied Treasure to the encounters with like-minded gamblers in Teed Up for Terror, and the life and times on Whidbey Island in the remaining six novels, there is a smattering of truth in all of them. I guess it’s one of the benefits of spending this much time on planet earth.

Front and center in Ferry Tails is the Washington State Ferry System, which, if you’re an island dweller, is the lifeline connecting our kind to the rest of civilization. My good fortune in having a pal who is a former ferry captain was immeasurably helpful in understanding the complexities of transporting over eighteen million passengers a year. In addition to the ferry-related aspects of the story, my two years spent in Southern Utah provided me with enough material for a dozen novels. The majestic beauty of that part of the country, juxtaposed with the smaller towns and outposts dotted throughout the region, was the inspiration for one of the character’s travels and encounters. A great deal of time was spent researching the history of several religious cults that still call the area home.

Every story I write leads me to places and people —some real and some imagined —that give me a reason to delve into their backgrounds. Writing about Francis’s encounter with the German Shepherd at Best Friends Sanctuary in Kanab was especially fun. Having had the pleasure and good fortune of spending a dozen years with one of these extraordinary creatures has given me new insight into the tremendous loyalty and dedication this breed has to their pack. If you have one, you know what I mean.

I’m often asked who I use as models for the characters in my books, and the answer is nobody in particular, but aspects and quirks of almost everyone I’ve ever met. I suppose I tend to exaggerate both extremes—the good stuff and the bad—but that’s where the fun is. I like to use everyday confrontations and situations as opening scenes and develop the story from there. More often than not, the characters and their personalities take me places I never initially considered, but somehow, when they do, strange things happen.

With the proliferation of search engines and databases now available, research is considerably more straightforward than it was years ago. However, because so much information is available, there are times when I get lost in the possibilities. A simple blurb in a scientific article discussing the future of vanadium flow batteries led me to imagine what it would be like if these giant storage batteries were miniaturized, and what that would do to the world. The result was the backstory for Juiced.

In Lone Lake Road—a real-life road on the island—an isolated curve where the temperature is always four or five degrees cooler than the surrounding areas led me to consider why. As it turned out, it was because a chubby little warlock named Buzz Aldrin lived there, and the story began to unfold.

I’m never quite sure when or where inspiration will strike me, but when it does, I hope I’m aware enough to recognize it, because that will be the foundation for another adventure.

 

You can learn more about Ted Mulcahey via his website or follow him on Goodreads. Ferry Tales is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Paul Crawford

Paul Crawford is a British novelist and multi-genre author, who is also founder and the world's first professor of the field of health humanities, advancing creative wellbeing. He directs the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health at The University of Nottingham. His first novel, Nothing Purple, Nothing Black achieved critical acclaim and optioned for film with award-winning filmmaker Jack Emery at The Drama House. Crawford led the creation of a new series of animations, What’s Up With Everyone, with Academy-award winning Aardman (Wallace & Gromit, etc.) and was the researcher behind award-winning filmmaker Chi Thai's (e.g. Raging Grace) new production, Astronaut. His second novel is The Wonders of Doctor Bent

In The Wonders of Doctor Bent, when everything is falling apart, who do you trust? The worlds of Jason Hemp, an English lecturer, and Dr Bent, the unlikely Medical Director of high-security psychiatric hospital Foston Hall, come together in this dark tale of murder, revenge and abandonment. Attempting to track down his twin brother's killer, Jason finds his life unraveling in unexpected and frightening ways, whilst visionary Dr Bent attempts to reform Foston Hall into a place of comfort, all while facing his own mental health challenges. Will both men survive the death of trust?

Paul stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching his novels:

 

My latest novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent, is a loose sequel to my first novel, Nothing Purple, Nothing Black. Both are dark literary thrillers with a core focus on mental health. My fictional writing is essentially hybrid rather than wholly geared to any particular genre. The next novel will be in a similar vein. What made The Wonders of Doctor Bent particularly different for me, however, was a more direct turn to a sub plot of crime and how this carried into the whole business of forensic mental health services, namely a high-security mental facility, Foston Hall.

How did I go about research and writing this element? 

Well, in terms of mental health and the law, I came pre-packed because I was writing about something I knew intimately at a professional level: the human mind, mental capacity, various disorders framed by psychiatry and psychology, and a range of criminal behaviour. Indeed, the field of mental health frequently leans into criminality, especially in cases of drug use, arson, sexual and domestic abuse, and, in this novel particularly, the business of claims of diminished responsibility following extreme violence that attract indefinite hospital orders. My line of work has brought multiple opportunities to visit relevant environments such as courts, prisons, police stations, etc.

This pre-packing of nearly forty years of practice or research in mental health has proven invaluable. I currently direct the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health, The University of Nottingham. Over the years, I have developed expertise in diverse mental health challenges from anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder, to schizophrenia, personality disorders and so forth. I have also experienced and researched grief reactions. 

In the novel, there are a variety of mental health and social care settings providing dementia care, psychotherapy/psychoanalysis, and care in acute/urgent, community and forensic contexts. My in-patient and community-based mental health work, research and multiple site visits across the country and overseas, has afforded great familiarity with how people are situated in such facilities and endure or respond to their mental health challenges. This provided the precision required in a realist novel such as The Wonders of Doctor Bent.

Yet on the crime side, I had to research additional, more granular aspects for action and procedural steps to achieve credible plotting of the core crime elements in The Wonders of Doctor Bent. For a start, avoiding spoilers, I read specialised information not ordinarily or widely known widely online and through library access. I double-checked key details with third parties who had relevant expertise. I also read multiple congruent reports and accounts of the core criminal activity in the press. When I used online sources, I did begin to wonder if data analysts somewhere had marked me up as a potential terrorist!

Importantly, lived experience also informed both the mental health aspects and criminality of the novel. This experience includes insights into emotional responses and therapeutics. This is a kind of naturally occurring research. It is the inside track complemented by the outside, standard research. It is, if you will, the governor for the creative engine and character build in the novel. Characters need a kind of blood pressure and reality to walk through the hallucinatory world that you scaffold for the reader to experience. It also provides an emotional resonance difficult to achieve from outside such experiences. For example, if you have not had depression or suicidal ideation, it is hard to enter fully or profoundly the embodied and potentially disembodying experience.

The locations for the novel cohere around the Midlands, notably Nottinghamshire, yet bring elements from other places across the UK. Some of this social and environmental detail is from random recall and some is from researching (re-looking) at particular locations in mind. For example, Foston Hall emerges from several mental health facilities visited over the years, combined with places that are familiar to me, such as Rampton high-security hospital. I also make use of an entirely contrived area of Nottingham, Ardinweald, which left great freedom for invention and setting out feasible, local character mobility.

Overall, my strategy as a writer has been around achieving sufficient detail and cogency to allow the reader to do their job, hallucinating their own unique world of action. It is about finding and delivering the sparks for firing their imaginations but also ensuring switchback revelations and routes to deeper emotional and intellectual sharing. In The Wonders of Doctor Bent, I think I struck the perfect balance between the drama of words and that of silence.

 

You can learn more about Paul Crawford via his website or follow him on LinkedIn and BlueSky. The Wonders of Dr. Bent is now available via Cranthorpe Millner Publishers and all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Brandi Bradley

Brandi Bradley is an indie author and educator who lives in the great city of Atlanta, Georgia. She writes short stories and novels about crime, family drama, flea markets, cowboys, rowdy girls, and gossip. She has had short stories and essays published in Juked, Louisiana Literature, Carve, and Nashville Review. She teaches writing at Kennesaw State University. Mothers of the Missing Mermaid (2023) is her debut novel of secrets by the sea in Destin. Bradley’s second book, Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is being released today.

About the book: When a young entrepreneur is killed, everyone in town points fingers at his picture-perfect fitness influencer ex-girlfriend, Gabbi – including the victim's best friend, Jenna. As detective Lindy D'Arnaud and her partner Boggs search for a motive, they begin to wonder if this is a case of jealous violence or something much deeper. In Lindy's personal life, things aren't much clearer. When Lindy's wife's ex-boyfriend–and sperm donor to their baby–decides to move back to town, she finds herself competing for her wife's affection. Told through the shifting perspectives of Lindy, Gabbi, and Jenna, "Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder" is a page-turner brimming with quick wit and juicy gossip.

Brandy stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

 

Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is about the murder of an up-and-coming small town entrepreneur, Ethan Moll, but it’s really about the women he surrounded himself with before he died, and the woman who solves the case.

When working on this novel, I kept recalling how a writing instructor once told me to make sure I include something in my books that’s just for me, something that makes me smile. Because writers get so much feedback on what works, what doesn’t work, what people want, what readers want, what agents want, and after a while it’s like your book is no longer your own, because you are trying to make everyone else like it. She suggested that I always keep something in it just for me.

For Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder, because so much of it is about a drive to reinvent oneself, I allowed one of my characters to live their glow-up journey out in the open. I thought it would be fun to show someone under the influence of a self-help personality.

I read lots of self-help books: self-help for creativity, self-help for writers, self-help for spirituality, self-help for productivity, self-help for finances. I enjoy hearing tips and tricks and figuring out whether it works for my life. But some of the fun of self-help is the personalities of these people who write books designed to tell absolute strangers how that person should live their life. These are people who say they have all the answers.

And that takes such chutzpah.

One of my characters – and one of the more fun chapters to write – stumbles upon a lecture led by a self-help personality and she gets recruited into this person’s orbit. It was so fun to develop this hybrid character of different self-help personalities– these people who are charismatic and exacting, but also clearly making money. While my character waits for her book to be signed she is surrounded by tables full of not only books, but affirmation decks, journals, workbooks, bookmarks, flyers for additional events. She’s singled out by a member of the staff and is invited to an “intensive” retreat. It’s all very love-bombing, but also empowering for this character. I mean, who doesn’t like to be told they are smart and can do anything they set their mind to? Even if it comes with an undertone of “all of this for $19.95.”

I also wanted to show how parts of the self-help guidance worked for her. As the story progressed, I could pepper in how the character returns to this self-help personality’s products when she needs answers – she’s got audio books, she’s got physical books flagged and annotated, she quotes this person. She was able to change some negative patterns in her life. And it was fun having other characters eye-roll at her new self-satisfied attitude where she thinks she has all the answers, too.

When writing that scene, or actually just while writing this novel, I revisited a lot of old self-help audio books and listened to them while commuting around town. Which had a double benefit, because the person on the audio is telling me I’m pretty and smart and can crush all my goals, but then I would hear an affirmation or interesting quotable line and think, “Oh, that would be so good for the book!”

When I think of research, I flashback to my school days looking up academic articles on JStor and Academic Search Complete, but the truth is everything around me is research. The self-help books, the true crime podcasts I listen to, the stories my best friend tells me when we have one of our three-hour conferences, the crime story long reads my husband sends me with the comment, “relevant to your interests.” All of it goes through my brain, churns around, and comes out as new stories. And this kind of “research” is far more fun than googling answers.

 

You can learn more about Brandi Bradley via her website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with D.W. Layton

D.W. Layton's life has been a journey as adventurous as the stories he writes. Inspired by James Michener's The Drifters, he set out to explore the world after college, experiencing life as a vagabond. He ran with the bulls in Pamplona, stomped grapes in Greece, and pulled giant crab pots from the depths of the Bering Sea. After law school, he attended Cambridge University, earning an advanced degree in international law, and spent over 35 years in practice, often representing governments in disputes at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. In addition to his legal career, Layton has always been passionate about the arts, even appearing in two operas at the Kennedy Center. He and his wife of over 45 years split their time between homes in Florida and the South of France, enjoying a life rich in culture and adventure. His debut novel is Otello's Oil. 

Otello’s Oil is the first of the "Saga of Blood & Oil" duology set at the beginning of the next decade when the global demand for oil is increasing, supplies are limited, and competition for what’s left keen. The story begins when the US Secretary of State invites Kuwait’s Oil Minister to dinner in Georgetown followed by opera at the Kennedy Center. In Act III of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello a shot is fired, but no one hears a thing. The Minister slumps in his seat. Blood oozes from his chest. The Secretary was only inches away. Was she the target? Was she in love with her guest? Elliot Jones, a Special Agent with the US Diplomatic Service, is tasked with finding out. He soon discovers that the Oil Minister was in the crosshairs of a global battle among the super powers for energy.

The idea for writing Otello’s Oil first came to Layton thirty years ago. Back then he was a lawyer at the US Department of Commerce in Washington and a friend introduced him to the Washington Opera Company. One thing led to another and soon he appeared as a supernumerary in Aida, followed a few years later by, Otello, in which Layton was cast as the captain of the guards. In the opening scene of that opera, as the curtain jumps skyward and the orchestra explodes into Verdi’s opening Esultate in C-sharp major, Layton led the other guards at a full sprint across the front of the stage and up the stairs of the castle to see if they could spy Otello’s ships returning from battle. It was commonplace then, as it is now, for dignitaries and other VIPs to attend the opera in Washington. More often than not they would sit in the front row.

Layton stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book and series:

Otello’s Oil

I wrote Otello’s Oil in less than a year. How is that possible? Well, as a lawyer, you learn to write fast. No client, no matter how wealthy or how important the case, is going to pay for a brief or memorandum that takes years and years to write. Nor is any judge or arbitrator going to sit around and wait for you to finish a filing at your leisure. I also made a point in Otello’s Oil of writing about things I know. The examples are legion: the assassin from Egypt had the same part in Otello that I did, I used to own the same car, a 1954 Jaguar XK120, as that driven by DSS Agent Alice Lake, and Mrs. Layton and I once stayed in the same hotel room in Bali that US Secretary of State Lynne Farnsworth and her Qatari lover stayed in.

Otello’s Oil is also an international political thriller. The settings are, inter alia, an international diplomatic conference in Jakarta, the U.S. Mission in Geneva, and the White House. These are all places I have been and all things I have done in the course of my legal career. As a result, I did not have to perform that much research to write Otello’s Oil. Yes, I had to make sure my dates and details were accurate. For example, if I said Lynne Farnsworth, before she became the Secretary of State, was Majority Staff Director for the Senate Finance Committee, I had to make sure Senator Lugar, her sponsor, was chairman of the committee at that time. But for most everything else, I was able to write about things I generally know.

The only time I had to perform extensive research was when the story went far afield from my personal experiences. For example, I was never a Navy Seal. Indeed, I have never served in the military. And I’ve certainly never been the head of Egypt’s Bureau of Homeland Security, inside the Al-Seif Palace in Kuwait City, or inside private rooms in the Kremlin. On those occasions I needed to perform very detailed research. Thus, I would read books on the subject. Watch podcasts. Basically, devour anything I could so that my story and its details were accurate.

The ultimate goal being to write a story that was believable to as many readers as possible -- both the initiated and the uninitiated. I don’t want readers who are versed in these subjects and places to say: “that’s not right” or “that would never happen.” In this regard, I try to write like Tom Clancy did. Almost like I am writing historical fiction, or as I prefer to think of it – “contextually accurate fiction.”

St. Crispin’s Eulogy

The next book in the "Saga of Blood & Oil" is tentatively entitled St. Crispin’s Eulogy. Students of history and readers of Otello’s Oil will know that the Kuwaiti Oil Minister was killed on St. Crispin’s Day, October 25. St. Crispin’s Day is famous primarily because of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 when the English army, led by King Henry V, achieved a decisive victory over the numerically superior French forces. St. Crispin’s Day is also well known because of William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which includes the famous “St. Crispin’s Day Speech”:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.

I like this title because the readers of St. Crispin’s Eulogy will learn that the Kuwaiti Oil Minister was not the only person killed on October 25 at the hands of forces aligned with the global fossil fuel industry and its supporters. A group of idealistic and mainly young investigators in London who are trying to shed light on the labor practices and abuses taking place in the oil fields of the Gulf will also be killed on that day.

St. Crispin’s Eulogy will be both a sequel, a midquel, and a prequel to Otello’s Oil. It will, among other things, force my protagonist, Elliot Jones, to see Farnsworth’s Qatari lover, Saman Khalil Al-Fhani, in a new light. In fact, Jones will save Fhani’s life and expose the truth behind the deaths on St. Crispin’s Day.

You might think writing the second book would be easier than writing the first. It will not. In Otello’s Oil I could take the story anywhere I wanted. I wrote, as it were, on a "blank slate." In St. Crispin’s Eulogy the story must align in every respect with Otello’s Oil. Yes, the story will grow and the drama will increase, but it can’t conflict with anything in Otello’s Oil.

One Last Personal Observation

I think I may have been a teacher in an earlier life. I love to teach, to help people understand things. Over the years, I have taught classes and spoken at conferences hosted by countless organizations, including Georgetown University, American University, George Mason University, the American Bar Association, the Foreign Ministry of Iceland, the Foreign Ministry of Mexico, the Federation of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo, and the Foreign Ministry of the former Soviet Union. This probably explains, as much as anything does, why I take the time in my books to teach the reader a little something about everything from the Five Eyes Alliance exposed by Edward Snowden to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also explains why I delight in reviews that describe Otello’s Oil as "uncommonly sophisticated" and "educational."

 

You can learn more about D.W. Layton and his writing at his website or by following him on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. Otello’s Oil is now available through all major booksellers, including Amazon.

Author R&R with J.W. Jarvis

J.W. Jarvis lives in sunny California but is originally from the suburbs of the Windy City. After working in the IT and AI fields, he turned his hand to writing young adult action novels, including the First Responder series. When he’s not thinking of ways to create inspiring characters and nonstop action stories, you can find him reading, golfing, traveling, or just sipping a hot vanilla latte.

Jarvis's latest novel is the adult technothriller, Artificial Age. Determined to escape a wheelchair-bound existence, paralyzed Navy SEAL Michael Cooling undergoes surgery to integrate an untested hi-tech endoskeleton into his ravaged human flesh. And as he trains tirelessly to adapt to his new synthetic body, he develops an unprecedented strength and speed he hopes will help him crush those who would see the USA fall. But while technology gives him new life, it may also prove to be the world's undoing. Inspired by The Six Million Dollar Man, J.W. Jarvis imagines a thrilling next chapter in which a highly decorated Navy SEAL is given a second chance to serve his country through technology.

J.W. Jarvis stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the book:

 

Researching: Readers want to be taken away, not taken for granted.

When I plotted my technothriller, I knew my main character was going to be a worldly man. He has years of military experience and has received many decorations. He commands an elite navy unit, and his missions have no borders or barriers to entry. The problem—I’ve only visited countries in three of the seven continents. To be fair, I have no desire to visit Antarctica in my lifetime. That still leaves three. How can I write about a well-traveled super-agent? One word, research.

For example, my research helped when one of my book characters visited an Eastern Europe restaurant. Every country has certain dishes that are part of the local cuisine. The reader wants to feel like they are right there enjoying it, too. I knew I hit the mark when my editor told me his mouth started watering. Readers crave facts despite reading fiction. Using accurate information to describe a location helps take the reader there. That place may just end up on their bucket list someday. If they’ve already visited, nostalgia is an incredible page-turner.

My new thriller book’s plot is part fan fiction. Fan fiction is creative writing that builds on popular works from the past. In my case, it was a TV series from 50 years ago. At the time of its airing, the bionic man dazzled viewers with its unprecedented technology. Even today, people use the iconic sounds of the bionic man in video clips. Fast forward five decades and humans are now receiving bionic arms to aid with their disabilities. I wanted to break the technology barriers with a new story. My advanced prosthetics would not only be believable, but also achievable. The good news about fiction is you just need an eccentric billionaire character to make the money problem go away. And so, I investigated superior technology. Derived from natural resources that are not only efficient but sustainable.

I wrote Artificial Agent with a rigorous mindset. Everything I wrote must be possible. It didn’t matter if I was writing about the latest military technology, material science advancements, or the location of a train yard. For example, in today’s world, carbon fiber materials are very popular. Compared to steel, carbon fiber weighs much less and is significantly stronger. These benefits make the material an excellent candidate for aerospace, automotive and sports applications. I could have used those materials in my book but dug even deeper. Carbon fibers are 3-D crystalline materials. The future, however, is 2-D allotropes. Essentially, allotropes highlight how a single element can have its atoms restructured for unique applications. Such is the case with the element boron. The nanotechnology mentioned in my book enhanced my protagonist’s weaponry.

The pace of thriller books is unmatched by other genres. To guide the reader to the next suspenseful scene, the writer must elaborate efficiently. That means more research than the typical book. Plot scenes change frequently. This keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Alternate book genres don’t require as many locations or physical references from the real world. Consider romance novels. They can have an entire chapter devoted to a sensual encounter. Fantasy novels have world building that is more imaginative than researched. Thriller readers need to believe that ordinary characters are thrust into extraordinary situations. Thrillers prey on readers’ fears that could happen in everyday life.

Book research can also be extremely rewarding. Authors can identify plot variants they may have never imagined. It can expose weaknesses in areas such as government, technology, and medicine. Evil characters can capitalize on those deficits. Good characters can protect them. In Artificial Agent, I investigated the military might of many of the Eastern European countries. I also determined if a country would act as my antagonist’s friend or foe. Last, I found some countries lacked key weaponry to put up a proper fight. This made it all too easy for my bad guy.

In closing, try approaching a person born between 1997 and 2012, otherwise known as Generation Z. Ask them what an encyclopedia is? We have it easy today compared to the past. Methods of research are literally at our fingertips. The days of opening a thick encyclopedia labeled (Aa - Al) or heading to the library to scroll through microfilm readers are gone. Those research venues are hard to maintain. The information is as old as the paper it’s printed on. The internet, search engines, and now GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture gives people easy access to massive amounts of information. Updating technology is relatively easy. The only downside to so many ways to get information is the onset of mass misinformation. The research may have gotten easier, but the validation of that research has gotten harder. Perhaps that’s a good thing, so book readers get what they paid for. An economical way to go somewhere new or experience things they may never see in the real world.

 

You can learn more about J.W. Jarvis via his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Bookbub. The Artificial Agent is now available via all major booksellers.  

Author R&R with Raemi A. Ray

Raemi A. Ray is a Boston-based mystery author who enjoys taking inspiration from current New England events when writing about the region. She has a JD with a background in intellectual property and lives in Massachusetts with her two house demons, Otto and DolphLundgren. When not writing or working her much more boring job, she spends her time traveling, or wishing she were traveling.

A Chain of Pearls, Raemi’s debut mystery and the first in her Martha’s Vineyard Murders series, centers around the mysterious death of a famous journalist and the cover-up that implicates important Martha’s Vineyard residents. When London-based lawyer Kyra Gibson arrives on the idyllic island to settle her estranged father’s affairs, she ends up partnering with world-weary detective, Tarek Collins, as they uncover a web of intrigue and corruption involving a powerful senator, a dubious energy company, and a brutal murder.

Raemi stops into In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the series:

 

Thank you for having me. This is such a cool question and I’m sure everyone approaches it a little differently. I can speak to my personal experience and process, which unsurprisingly starts with college.

I wasn’t particularly studious in college (or before, to be honest). I chose classes where participation and attendance were not a part of the grade. This worked great for about three years until I had to declare a major. I went with the subject I’d already accumulated the most credits in: Medieval European History. Seriously. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision. Most of those classes required some sort of research paper instead of a test. There weren’t any prerequisites or labs, and I liked the stories. The political intrigue, backstabbing, the royal escapades, wars, it was way better than the dry fiction they’d had us reading in British Literature (still cannot stomach Alexander Pope, but adult me does like Chaucer) and, most importantly, I didn’t have to attend lectures. I did have to spend a lot of time in dingy, dusty library basements, though.

This was before Google Books and other private research databases scanned in the collections of academic libraries. I didn’t have the ease of the internet at my fingertips and I had to do research in person. My university’s special collections were stored in these creepy humidity-controlled basements, always with spotty lighting, some with movable stacks on rails that I swear were bespelled to squash snoozing students. In the theology school’s collections (where most of my source material happened to be) I’d have to request what I needed from a bored-out-of-his-mind (read: stoned) freshman, put on these weird gloves, and read through original manuscripts. Fun fact, I had to leave my notebook and pencil in a separate room and walk back and forth. Note-taking became my cardio.

In retrospect, I realize that it’d have been easier just to go to class and take a multiple-choice exam, but I think that experience is where I got my taste for figuring things out on my own.

Nowadays, my research occurs about ninety percent from the comfort of my reading and writing chair, but the other ten percent is going to the places I’m writing about. The Martha’s Vineyard Murders series takes place on a fictional version of the real-life island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ve been traveling there for years and truly love it. When I decided to write a mystery, I knew that the location was half the hurdle. All the greatest mysteries have such an immense yet specific sense of place: Rebecca and Manderley, The Dublin Murder Squad and Ireland, Chandler’s Los Angeles, Sherlock’s London. These books wouldn’t be the same without these settings.  

I conceptualized the Martha’s Vineyard Murders (then titled “My Mystery Book”) in the spring of 2021. The World was still under travel restrictions and I didn’t have the option of traveling to a remote place to study it for my story. (I’d originally wanted to put the book on the isle of Skye.) I knew that to keep it authentic, I had to go with what I knew. Lucky for me, there were a few places conducive to a mystery series that I knew like I knew my own name: Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Of course having this basis of knowledge, didn’t mean I didn’t have to make frequent trips, draw dozens of maps, stalk Facebook groups, or consume local news articles like I was planning to run for a selectperson seat, but it gave me something to start with and I think that first step is the hardest one.

The first two books in the series, A Chain of Pearls and The Wraith’s Return include quite a bit about boats and sailing. Prior to the MVM series, my knowledge of watercraft was limited to Disney Land’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I had to teach myself the lingo, the parts, how it all works, and quite a bit about marinas and harbors generally. Luckily, I know a few boaters who were happy to chat with me, and of course the internet is a goldmine. Now, I’d probably be considered a sailing expert, which is ironic since I get seasick looking at boats, but I need to understand something thoroughly in order to determine what to include and what information is too niche and can be left off the page.

Another part of writing the MVM series is that there is just so much death. I’m happy to say I don’t have first-hand experience with being murdered, or finding any corpses, so I’ve had to learn quite a bit about human anatomy, and how people actually die from the injuries they sustain. I’m confident I’m on an FBI watch list with what I’ve been researching over the past few years. My search history is a terrifying place, and I tend to go down rabbit holes when I’m learning of unique ways of torturing and killing my characters. Much to my surprise, I find that I often lean on my background in Medieval history. Those guys were no joke when it came to creative (horrible) ways of killing people.

I think the biggest challenge for me with regards to research is learning those innate things people do that I don’t have experience with. These aren’t things that one can look up, but are common behaviors. For example, where do men keep their wallets? Their phones? How does it feel to lift a child? What does it take to host Thanksgiving dinner? Do doctors really carry doctor bags? What does an accountant really do? Thankfully, I have friends who have lived these experiences and they’re kind enough to share with me. Probably, the funniest thing I do, is I have a group text with my male friends, where I can ask “guy questions,” like the wallet thing, how they pack a suitcase (packing cubes and the ‘roll method’ seems to be a winner there), pretty much anything about professional sports. They’re very, very supportive.  

That all said, the result of my research, how I internalize and apply the information I’ve gathered is such a subjective process and I’m sure I’ve made errors. Writing in the mystery genre, I probably have more leeway with creative license and the plots can be a bit more fantastical. Making it just believable enough is what I think my readers will engage with. They can see themselves in the same position as my main characters.

 

You can learn more about Raemi Ray via her website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. The books in the "Martha’s Vineyard Murders Series" are available now via Tule Publishing and all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Simon Marlowe

Simon Marlowe is an up-and-coming British crime thriller author, and was a selected author at the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival 2024 (Harrogate International Festivals). A consummate wordsmith, he has excelled as a darkly comic crime author, with his fast paced and action-packed Mason Made trilogy. Like reading a Guy Ritchie movie with a Ken Loach conscience, Simon skillfully blends social and political issues to create a compellingly relevant narrative, on a par with the best in modern crime fiction today. Simon spent his formative years living in South London, indulging in political activism and music, graduating from a number of universities in politics, education and management. He eventually moved back to his home city in Essex, and after studying for a creative writing MA, settled down to developing as a writer. Since 2017, he has been successfully publishing, making people laugh, cry and scream!

In Marlowe's latest darkly-comic-crime-meets-spy-thriller, The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, Steven Mason has an axe to grind and just needs to work out who deserves it. Falling fully into the darkness of Hell, Steven lives a crude, rude, cruel, and heartless life in the streets of Amsterdam, cutting himself off from his old life to indulge in drug-fuelled debauchery. In an attempt to reestablish his criminal career during the coronavirus pandemic, he immerses himself into the blood and guts of conspiracy and Far-Right politics, war crimes, and war criminals. But nothing is as it seems, as Steven is propelled by covert love into festering darkness. When faced with an ultimatum, in the form of becoming a member of the ruthless Bloodaxe gang—knee-deep in dealing and drug trafficking— will he pull himself out of the darkness he’s become so accustomed to? Or will he sink even further down?

Simon Marlowe stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book and series:

The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, is the final installment in my darkly comic crime thriller trilogy Mason Made (so check out, The Dead Hand of Dominique – Book One, and Medusa And The Devil – Book Two). And for my protagonists next little adventure, I have Steven Mason, now a jaded drug-fueled criminal, indulging in extremes: personally, professionally (i.e. illegally) and politically.

It may be bold of me to claim the ‘Cruel Hunter’ has captured the zeitgeist of our time, but with Far Right riots, Far Right parties democratically elected in Europe, and Far Right ultra nationalist wars (I’ll leave you to speculate where you think that might be), I felt I would be failing in my thematic duty if I didn’t integrate the political contemporary issue into a bit of crime, murder and mayhem.

Hopefully, if you indulge in purchasing the ebook or paperback (available online from all major retailers!) and you take the obvious next step to read it, you may be surprised to learn that about 90% of the novel is based on fact. Not that I want to stray into Baby Reindeer territory here, because I will say explicitly that the ‘Cruel Hunter’  is a dramatization of Far Right politics, and the ‘facts’ have been integrated to fit into the narrative.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time where nationalism, power, and propaganda are dominant forces, perhaps pushing the world ever closer to some rather unpalatable governing systems. But you’ll be glad to know all is not lost, not if art and literature can be used to laugh at the thugs, tyrants and demagogues.

Mercifully, my anti-hero, Steven Mason, has sufficient moral ambiguity to indulge in criminality whilst retaining a sense of what is right and wrong. Murder, for Steven, is necessary to survive, crime is a way of life (and also happens to pay his bills), but that is nothing compared to the Far Right characters he encounters on a journey that has an underlying purpose which is gradually revealed. Steven may start off unhinged, but that is nothing compared to the bonkers antics of the Far Right criminals and politicians he needs to pander to, characters who are ideologically maladjusted with one thing in common: they think anything that is different should be systematically exterminated.

Perhaps, if we were not living in such strange times, and we considered the Far Right as a poorly psychiatric patient, we would be able to treat them successfully, integrate them back into the community, following a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and grandiose delusions. However, talking therapies in such cases would be ineffective, and any rational doctor would probably recommend large doses of anti-psychotics, a regime of electroconvulsive therapy followed by an irreversible lobotomy. Although I would still worry, that dulled and subdued, the radical conspiracy supremacist, would still be a danger to themselves and others.

But rest assured, Steven Mason has no liberal constraints holding him back. He knows that if he were to ever find himself reading a book called The Heart Is  A Cruel Hunter, and a rabid dog is running towards him, he will throw the book at it to stop it in its tracks.

 

You can learn more about Simon Marlowe and his books by visiting his website and can follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The Heart is a Cruel Hunter (Mason Made Trilogy Book 3) is now available from the publisher, Cranthorpe Millner, and all major bookstores.