Mystery author Becky Clark’s cozy mysteries tease and entertain with subtly dropped clues, masterly red herrings and lashings of humor, much of it poked at the publishing world she loves. Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Becky talks about the value of networking, her fascination with synaesthesia, and how being number seven in a family of eight influences her writing; Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why she jokes she’s a ‘teenager in a middle aged body’ How a son’s request got her started Her No 1 tip for beginning writers Why she loves an empty calendar The writers she admires most Talking ‘forbidden topics’ with other writers Where to find Becky Clark: Website: https://beckyclarkbooks.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BeckysBookBuddies Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4730815.Becky_Clark Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/becky-clark What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Becky. Hello there Becky and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Becky: Hi Jenny. It’s so great to be here it’s exciting. It’s is my very first podcast. Jenny: Oh that’s wonderful. Look I always start with this question that’s very predictable but I love the answers that I get from it. Was there a Once Upon a Time moment when you decided that you must write fiction or your life had to keep its purpose. And if so was there a catalyst for it. Becky Clark mystery author Becky: [00:00:32] Nothing that I would have felt like I let myself down. But I definitely would have let my son down, because he was the one who challenged me to start writing novels. Jenny: Was this when he was a child or an adult? Becky: [00:00:49] He was a kid. He’s grown now but he was about like 10ish and we were at the library. He was a voracious reader and we couldn’t find any more historical fiction, which is what he was involved in at the time. He’d read everything they had at the library. And so we’re walking out of the library and he says ‘Well Mom, why don’t you just write one?’ And because of course I don’t deny my children anything. I said ‘Well of course, dear, let me just do that.’ And you know long story short took a long time. But I did it. That was my first book. It was historical fiction for boys. You’ll never find it, so don’t try looking for it. But it was a great little book and it was a really good proving ground to see that I could do it and that it was a fun process. And you know I’m glad he challenged me, but it had never really occurred to me to be a writer until then. Children’s books the start Jenny: 00:01:49] So that raises a couple of very interesting questions, one of them is why did he think you could do it? And secondly I’m so interested that it was historical because you aren’t going the historical way at the moment? Becky: [00:02:09] Yeah. Historical fiction. I don’t know, it just seemed interesting to me and that’s what he liked to read That’s how it all started. This first one was a historical fiction for kids set in the Civil War and . . . . what was the first question? Jenny: [00:02:27] Why did he think you could write a book? Becky: [00:02:31] I don’t know. I’m not sure he still thinks that! I don’t know. I mean we are big readers and I had written some stuff, just not novels. I had written personal essays you know, Erma Bombeck type essays. Yeah. You know funny slice of life type of things. Maybe he was just trying to get me off his back, thinking if I was busy writing a novel ‘she won’t make me clean my room.’ Jenny: You’ve written four cozy mysteries, the first two co-authored with Ted Hardwick and the last two under you own byline. Is there a story behind that? Becky: [00:03:33] Ted and I have been friends since college. You know a thousand years ago. And he was very funny and I wanted to transfer from that world of writing for kids because that’s really hard. Writing for kids is easy. But selling kids books is hard, because kids don’t have the money. You have to find the adults in their life to make those deals. So that was kind of taking its toll on me . And also I have a potty mouth, so it’s easier to write for adults than to write for kids. And so I just thought it would be fun to write with him. He’s very, very funny and and it was a ton of fun, but it was hard to do it long distance. Banana Bamboozle – a Becky Clark mystery He’s in California. I’m in Colorado. So after the two books – Banana Bamboozle and Marshmallow Mayhem I got the contract for my mystery writer’s mysteries. Fiction Can Be Murder and Foul Play On Words so I just kind of switched my attention to them. As for choosing cozy mysteries, well you know I write funny. I like to read funny books, and I’m kind of a goofball, so funny comes naturally and cozy mysteries are a good place to show that that humor in writing. You can’t do that in thrillers so much. I mean there’s humor in every book of course, but you know thrillers aren’t particularly funny. With kids books, if you want to be funny you got to do a lot of fart jokes while I can do some pretty good fart jokes it’s not really my forte! So it just kind of evolved naturally. My kids grew and my interests changed. think you’re writing evolves like that if you’re lucky anyway. Jenny: [00:05:37] Yes. Just just looking back to the historical for a moment. Did you just do the one. or did you do a few? Becky: [00:05:44] No I just did the one. I have some other kid books in the drawer that I might go back to because they are a lot of fun and now it’s so much easier to self publish fun quick things. You can just to get them out to the world because I really think I have some things that kids would like. I just don’t wanna go through the business part of writing for kids. The writing part for kids is fun. The business part is much more difficult. So I did have some things I might go back to. I did a lot of research. You know it’s time consuming to write good history stuff. The author’s agent is a good sport Jenny: The most recent two have both featured the same heroine – Charlemagne – Charlee Russo, who also happens to be a mystery author. Fiction Can Be Murder is the most recent book – and its got a delightfully twisty plot where Charlee’s agent is murdered using exactly the same method as in her last book . . So I get the feeling that you get a lot of wicked joy out of giving all these authors involved in nasty business. Becky: [00:07:29] It is funny and I really really really want to thank my own agent for being cool with the murder of the agent. That was okay with her. So that made me feel better. I have very cool publishing partners for this story because we do talk about the publishing world maybe not in the best light but it is fun. I like authors and I like the writing world and I think people would appreciate seeing ‘behind the curtain’ kind of stories. Becky Clark – Foul Play on Words Jenny: And in the one before that Foul Play on Words the action centers around a writer’s conference . . . you obviously enjoy writing about writing! I can’t help feeling that you probably do quite a lot of networking with other writers. Do you use a critique group for example? Becky: I don’t have a critique group right at this moment, but I did for years. Now I have some trusted first readers and my agent reads my stuff early on because I need feedback fast. When you go to a critique group that’s very slow process and I don’t have time to read everybody else’s stuff either. it’s very time consuming to do that. But yeah, I do know a lot of writers. I’ve been kicking around in the Colorado writing community for a long time. Jenny: One reviewer described you as “the queen of the subtle misdirect and the casually dropped clue.” It might look easy – but writing entertaining, funny books is hard work, isn’t it? Writing is hard work Becky: Oh my God it’s so hard. Everything about writing any kind of book is hard work. You know you have to be very disciplined and and then you add a layer of something on that like you know history or humor. And then that just makes it even more difficult. For me there’s no way I could do any of that without outlining. I get the basic story down in the first draft and then I can layer in some humor. Humor is very subjective, which makes it hard, also things that I think are absolutely hilarious sometimes aren’t and sometimes readers find things funny that I didn’t intend on being funny. [00:10:30] People say Oh my God I love that scene, OK. So you do you lose perspective as to what is funny and what is not. But as far as actually physically getting the words – all 75,000 of those words down? It’s hard mentally, it’s hard physically. But I love doing it for some reason. I don’t know why! Jenny: [00:11:01] Do you receive any feedback on the fact that you are an American writer and wondering if English people get the humor? Are you thinking of your audience as being an international way of thinking oh that might be a little bit too regional or a little bit too local for them to understand. I guess you have to make those sorts of judgments. Becky: [00:11:23] Well that’s adorable that you say that, because it never even occurred to me that anybody’s ever gonna read my books! You know it’s a miracle to me that stuff can come out of my brain and my fingers and then go out into the world like this. If I thought about it too hard I wouldn’t be able to do it! But I think that cozy mysteries are pretty universal, because they’re character driven. They’re not necessarily plot driven. There’s a lot of suspension of disbelief in cozy mysteries. The suspension of disbelief You know, an amateur sleuth who goes to investigate some murder of a friend every six weeks? So there’s a there’s a huge amount of suspension disbelief with the readers. And so I don’t really worry about that too much and if you know I have editors in New York City and I’m in a small town in Colorado and they might say ‘What in the world are you talking about?’ They might have no idea. I’ve never had anybody say you know you’re too foreign, because I’m about as ‘white red’ as they come. Jenny: 00:12:49] As a New Zealand reader, the humor works perfectly for me. I know there is a difference between the American and English humor, the English tend to be more ironic. But you’ve got irony in your work anyway haven’t you? Becky: [00:13:03] Yeah that’s true. I was an exchange student in England when I was in college and then coincidentally just this morning this friend of mine from that time period just finished reading Foul Play On Words and he liked it. So I don’t know if it’s because he loves me or because it was really good. I don’t know. Jenny: [00:13:25] You never know that but maybe your time in England made you a little bit more aware of how the English think as well. Becky: [00:13:33] Oh that’s entirely possible. On being #7 in a family of 8 Jenny: You blame your place of #7 is a family of 8 as turning you into a “shameless attention seeker.” Is that why you excel at public speaking? Becky: [00:13:50] I do like speaking in groups – to different groups – kids adults – it doesn’t matter. I am different from a lot of writers in that I don’t mind at all talking about myself, or my books,or my rash, or that humiliating thing that happened when I was a kid. I mean I just don’t care. I’m a completely open book, much to the chagrin of my family who you are not necessarily like me. But I think it is true that when you’re the seventh of eight kids you got to do something to stand out. My younger sister is very very quiet, unlike me, but that’s because she has always had that ‘cute littlest kid’ role, you know. I didn’t have that. There’s five girls and three boys, so it’s not like I could’ve been the only girl! So I guess I decided to be the one who’s seeking shameless attention! And it’s worked out OK. Jenny: On your website you include quite a lot of information about the condition known as synaesthesia. You discuss this in a blog post What Colour is your Alphabet. Tell us about your experience with this fascinating topic. Fascination with synaesthesia Becky: I don’t have synaesthesia. There’s a blog post called What Color Is Your Alphabet, that’s right. But that’s not me. That was written by somebody else. I’ve been fascinated by this condition for so long and I wish that I could experience it myself. Synaesthesia is where your senses get all crossed up. So you might taste emotions or you’ll see a colored alphabet or you’ll physically feel music, It’s the opposite of anaesthesia, where you don’t feel anything. [00:16:06] And one thing that especially interests me about it is that quite often people don’t even realize that they have this condition. They don’t realize they see the world differently from other people, which I find absolutely fantastic, because it never comes up. Usually people with synaesthesia find out as adults that they have this condition but sometimes they find out when they’re like in the kindergarten-preschool age. Remember those wooden alphabet blocks where the letters are all painted in different colors? They’ll be playing with those blocks and a child might say ‘The letter A isn’t red, it’s blue’ and nobody knows what they’re talking about because they’re looking at this wooden block and they see the letter A is red painted red on the block. And that’s how you find out when you’re young. That’s usually how you find out. Mostly these people don’t find out until they’re adults and make some kind of casually dropped statement about something and then you know the friend they’ll be walking with will say ‘What are you talking about?’ And I find that absolutely fascinating. Everything about synaesthesia I find fascinating. An empathetic lead is ‘magic’ Jenny: Have you ever considered writing a synaesthetic protagonist? You’d be in an amazing position to do so . . . We did an earlier podcast with Estelle Ryan who wrote the Dr Genevieve Lenard Art Fraud mysteries where Genevieve registered on the autism spectrum. It gave the whole series a greater depth.. Becky: [00:17:53] Yeah, I’m really really trying. I’ve written a couple of young adult manuscripts with a synaesthetic main character but I just don’t feel I’ve done it justice yet. I want it to be much better than it is. I want people to be as fascinated by this as I am and to not think it’s weird but to think it’s almost magical. So I’m definitely gonna go back and work on those at some point in the future because I love to read books where authors have special insights into these different conditions. You know autism or any even just medical conditions diabetes or anything but that I don’t have. [00:18:42] And but I don’t have that personal insight yet. I have to rely on the synaesthetic people I’ve met over the years. And in fact I was well into this and been talking about it for years when one of my adult nieces said something completely offhand to her mom one time that showed she had synaesthesia. It just does not come up in conversation very often. And so I really I would love to write books with a synaesthetic main character and I I don’t know that they’ll end up being for young adults or for adults. I’m not sure but I would love to do that justice. That would really make me happy. Jenny: Turning to your wider career. Tell us a little bit about your life before you became a full time writer. Becky: [00:20:15] Well it’s pretty boring actually. I was the full time mom of three perfect children who are now perfect adults. Before that I worked in the claims department at a big insurance company. Before that I was in college, and before that was my attention seeking childhood. Networking is essential Jenny: [00:20:35] All of those things of course are perfect training for a life in crime fiction writer! I wonder what;s the one thing you’ve done more than any other that you’d see as being the secret of your success as a writer. Becky: [00:20:51] Networking hands down. It’s by far the most important thing I’ve ever done. Every book deal I’ve received, every blurb on a cover, every class I took, every review, getting my agent, teaching every workshop I’ve taught, connecting on Book Bob with a podcast in New freakin Zealand! Everything is because of forming personal connections with other people, putting myself out there. welcoming others into my orbit. In addition to being good for business it’s personally very rewarding. [00:21:29] You know because you can write the perfect book, but if nobody ever sees, it what good is that. So and you can write a mediocre book but because people love you and you have a lot of a lot of fans in your corner it will do well, and that’s fine too. But if I could give any advice to any writer it would be ‘get good at networking’ and you know networking is not scary. It’s just talking to people. It’s meeting people, it’s having fun yeah yeah yeah. Jenny: [00:22:14] So do you do that by going to conferences? Becky: [00:22:19] I go to a lot of conferences. I go to mystery book conventions like Left Coast Crime, Malice Domestic Bouchercon, those kinds of things. I get to meet readers and hang out with other writers there. I get to do panels at libraries or schools. I get to go to book signings. I’m a member of a couple organizations Sisters in Crime. We started a Colorado chapter of Sisters in Crime here. Oh I want to say about three years ago. Yeah. And that’s just women crime fiction writers and we get together and you know we just have a ball and you don’t have to explain to people what you’re doing. You know we talk about all of the most gruesome kinds of things and you don’t have to explain why you’re doing that why you’re talking about that, why why arson is so exciting. New and different ways to kill people. Let’s talk about poison for a minute. [00:23:28] So I have all kinds of all kinds of fun groups that I get to go to my husband. You know it’s just me and my husband now. And he loves that. I love writing but he really really really doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t want to do it. That’s for sure. So if I didn’t have my writer pals I would go crazy. On becoming a teacher Jenny: [00:23:51] You also do quite a lot of workshops about around writing itself don’t you and other things like time management that can feed into it. Becky:[00:24:06] I do. I do it quite a bit of teaching. I enjoy doing that when I have time.. Before I was published I went to several big annual writers conferences here that we have in Colorado and then I went there every year. I just loved it. I love the people, I love the topics, I loved you know learning and you know feeling like I belonged to my tribe you know all that stuff. And after a while it felt like I wasn’t quite a newbie anymore and there were things that I could teach. So the organizers kindly gave me a chance to be on the faculty and let me present a couple of workshops and I did. I did a fine job apparently. People liked them so they asked me to do some more. And it’s great fun for me to do that and a way for me to give back to the writing community because people have taught me all kinds of stuff over the years and continue to teach me stuff even now. So the least I could do is start returning the favor. Yeah. And the writing community, especially crime fiction, is very generous and welcoming. It’s a fabulous industry to be associated with. So many good books, so little time Jenny: The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to do just that – binge read. So – turning to your taste in fiction who do you “binge read?” Any recommendations for listeners? Becky: [00:26:26] I do like to go on binges. I love reading series and I I’m so far behind on all my reading, on my new releases you know, especially from friends and stuff, so I get a start at the beginning and binge the entire series. You know just like I do on Netflix. Yeah. My current binge is somebody who’s been around forever Ann Cleeves. She writes the Vera series and I binge that Netflix too. I love being able to start at the beginning of a series especially when I know it’s a long running series, because then it’s like you absolutely know these people, like you live in their neighborhood and stuff. Vera – Ann Cleeve’s sharp DCI with a messy life – made into a TV series. So my current binge read is Ann Cleeves but I also binge on my friends books. I wrote down a list of authors your listeners might not know. Gretchen Archer writes very funny books. Barbara Nickless writes thrillers, she’s very very good. In fact I’m reading one of our Barb’s books now and it almost makes me not want to write because she’s so much better. You know you read and you think well she can write all the books she’s good at. Who else. Cynthia Kuhn writes very funny academic mysteries. Libby Klein is hilarious. Margaret Mizushima writes about a canine handler in the wilderness. Fascinating! Barbara Nickless – best selling thrillers [00:28:07] Kathy Valenti (Kathleen Valenti.) She’s fun. They’re all great. Leslie Karst, Ellen Byron, G.G. Pandian. G.G. writes about a gargoyle. It’s just ridiculous but she makes it work. I don’t know how she does it. Who else? Vickie Fee, Lisa Matthews, Marla Cooper, Kelly Garrett, Leslie Budewitz, Jessica Lourey, Edith Maxwell and Diane Vallere who I know has already has been on your show before. Oh my gosh, there’s just so many more – and so many great mysteries come out every single day. I mean you just cannot keep up. But I will say if your listeners want to subscribe to my newsletter or join my Facebook group I talk about new writers all the time because you know, I only have my own stuff come out every so often. My friends have books coming out constantly so I’m able to give some of those away. And you know, we share when they have, sales on Amazon and stuff so. Oh that’s fabulous. So that’s what we do a lot of on my newsletter and in my Facebook group which I just started. They could be inaugural members of my Facebook group it’s called Becky’s Book Buddies. What would Becky change? Jenny: At this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change – if anything? Becky: [00:29:54] No I don’t think I would. I think the only thing I might change would be to start sooner but then maybe I wouldn’t have been ready. So who knows. Jenny: What is next for Becky the writer? Are you a big goal setter? And what are you working on next? Becky: [00:30:30] Well I love nothing better than an empty calorie (laughs) I mean calendar. I do love empty calories too – doughnuts are my favorite. But what I really love are empty calendars and colored markers to fill them in. I love organizing and scheduling out my year and stuff like that. I have a new series. I mean very new. I can’t quite talk about yet, but it’s gonna be for three books, again cozy mysteries with a lot of humor. They’re gonna want those out every six or nine months which will be fun, a real challenge. I have another series proposal for some cozies that I’m getting ready to send to my agent to shop those around and I have a non-fiction project I need to get done before September so I have a lot in my pipeline. but I’m pretty disciplined you know. I do time management workshops so I’m pretty self-disciplined. I know I’m lucky that this is my day job and so I have plenty of time to get done what needs to be done without too much effort. In the other part of my world, nothing else really suffers because I’m writing. So that’s lucky for me. I love having so much stuff going on, because that is energizing I think. Jenny: You’ve mentioned your new Facebook group. Where can readers find you on line and do you enjoy interacting with them? Becky: Oh gosh I love talking to readers. Without readers I would just be typing words into the void and just disappearing on my Web site. BeckyClarkbooks.com. You can get to know me there. I have a blog on there where I talk about all kinds of fun and interesting stuff. You can subscribe to my newsletter from my website. Find out if I’m doing anything interesting near you. Like I said I have my closed group Becky’s Book Buddies on Facebook. I’m on Amazon. I’m on Goodreads and Bookbub. I don’t tweet so don’t look for me there because I don’t understand Twitter at all. But I’m good at Facebook . Jenny: [00:33:01] We’ll look for you there Becky, that sounds wonderful. Look thank you so much for your time. It’s been a total joy to talk to you. And I can recommend your books. They are really good. (Laughs) So thank you so much. Becky: [00:33:14] Oh well thanks so much for saying that and thanks for having me on today. This is so exciting. My first podcast and I didn’t do anything embarrassing. I’m so glad you can’t me though because I’m in desperate need of a haircut. I probably have spinach stuck my teeth and I’m wearing a jacket that’s probably more dog hair than fabric, But I like podcasts better than video. Jenny: And your dog didn’t bark once. Becky: She didn’t bark and she didn’t even move. I’m looking at her right now. She barely lifts her head up. Jenny: [00:33:44] That’s great. Thank you so much. And have a good rest of the day. Becky: 00:33:51] Thanks you too Jenny. Bye. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

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