Tracking Game with Margaret Mizushima – a new K-9 police procedural Margaret Mizushima’s police-procedurals-with-heart mysteries feature K-9 Deputy Mattie Cobb and her very smart partner, a highly trained German Shepherd called Robo. Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Margaret talks about the remarkable real life dog that Robo is based upon, as well as telling the truth of writing what you know, from her experience. Six things you’ll learn about Margaret in this Joys of Binge Reading episode: “Tag teamed’ into a ‘real job’ How red tape ended her first career Why Robo will never be ‘Ole Yeller’ Remarkable scent detection skills The threat to National Parks and forests Why she’d like to have started sooner Where to find Margaret Mizushima: Website: https://margaretmizushima.com/ h Facebook: @AuthorMargaretMizushima Twitter: @margmizu Instagram: margmizu 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 Margaret. Hello there Margaret and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Margaret: Well, hello, Jenny and thank you so much for inviting me to be your guest today. I really appreciate it. Margaret Mizushima, mystery author of the Timber Creek K-9 series Jenny: So we are talking from across the ocean. You are in Wellington, Colorado and I’m in Auckland, New Zealand. And that’s the wonder of the the community we live in. It’s great, isn’t it? Margaret: It is wonderful. Yes. I hope to visit your country someday. Jenny: I think you’d very much like the South Island, actually. It’s got some beautiful scenery, similar to what Colorado has. Now tell us, was there a Once Upon a Time moment when you felt that you just had to turn your hand to fiction and somehow life would be less if you didn’t do that.. And if so, what was the catalyst for that? The Once Upon A Time moment Margaret: I think that I started wanting to write fiction when I was in high school, but my guidance counselor and my mother “tag teamed” with each other to convince me that I needed a career where I had guaranteed paychecks. And it’s probably a very good thing that they did. So I became a speech pathologist and we’ll possibly talk about that more a little later. But the Once-Upon-a-Time moment came when I was working in my own clinic. I had established it about ten years earlier and I realized that I was very tired of that career. It had been very difficult getting the Medicare and Medicaid certification and dealing with all of the insurance companies. And so I was a bit burned out, probably more with the management than I was with actually working with my clientele. There was a catalyst and it was a big change in Medicare reimbursement. And I decided all right, it’s time to move on and I had always dreamed of being a storyteller. Red tape was the killer I had read all of the Sidney Sheldon books back in the 80s and 90s and I just loved the way he told a story. So I went ahead and put my company up for sale. After the company sold, I was able to have just a little bit of a nest egg to go ahead and pay attention to the educational process of becoming a fiction writer. Jenny: Fantastic. So you were almost driven out of that first profession by red tape really? Margaret: I think the red tape is probably what covered me up and tied me down. I just decided “No, enough is enough.” Jenny: So how long ago was that? Margaret: That was actually clear back in 1998. Mattie and Robo’s story Jenny: You’re now on your fifth book in the police procedurals that have become really good sellers for you. I know that you tried your hand at quite a few other things before you got going with this and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But the series that you’re making your name with now feature a K-9 cop called Mattie Cobb and her German Shepherd partner Robo and they are set in the mountains. They are very much outside stories. Killing Trail #1 in the Timber Creek Mystery Series What attracted you to the idea of police procedurals? Margaret: My husband is a veterinarian and we’ve been married going on 40 years. I had never really worked in his office, but I’ve assisted him after hours just countless times and I was amazed at how many of his clients and the people around the stables, whenever he made a call, wanted to watch him work. So I was very drawn to having a veterinarian as a character in the books. I knew I wanted to write a mystery, but I hadn’t decided yet on police procedurals. My husband Charlie came home from work one day and he was telling me about one of his clients who had brought a patrol dog that he had trained for narcotics detection and there they were transferring this dog to the Forest Service because there was a lot of drug trafficking through the mountains and in the National Forests. A dog tracking hero is born And so the Forest Service wanted to buy a dog to try to combat this problem. Charlie told me about this at lunch and the idea was just suddenly born. I decided “Oh, this is what I want to do.” I want to have a K-9 cop who is female and she will have her dog who is trained for patrol and narcotics detection. The community will be threatened by drug traffic and it’ll be a small mountain town near the National Forests and there will be a veterinarian who is male who will be her love interest and together they’ll solve crimes that affect their little mountain community of Timber. Colorado, which is totally fictional. You won’t find it on a map. Jenny: It sounds as if that’s quite a lot of parallels between your own situation You’ve mentioned the personal relationship with a veterinarian husband, but also the setting, I think you’re quite close to the mountains as well? Margaret: That’s right. Our small town is north of Fort Collins Colorado, which is on the Front Range of Colorado. We’re fairly close to – about 30 miles – from the Wyoming border. So we have the mountains to our West and the plains to our East. Tracking Game – fifth book in series Jenny: Great, great. The latest book is coming out very soon. isn’t it? Tracking Game? That’s the latest book, isn’t it? Margaret: That is right Tracking Game releases on November 12th, and it’s available for pre-order on Amazon and Goodreads. Goodreads giveaways are for United States only, but we are getting some reviews on Goodreads as well. Jenny: Quite a few of our listeners are in the States Margaret, so there will be people listening who would be able to enter into that draw. So now Mattie and her partner Cole Walker come up against something very frightening and unexpected in Tracking Game, don’t they?. We can’t give away any spoilers but what sparked the idea for this book? Margaret: I like to write these mysteries so that Cole Walker and Mattie Cobb both have work to do. And I like for there to be quite a bit of work that Robo Mattie’s canine partner has to do also. So when I’m planning a mystery, I sit down and I say, okay what could impact animals and impact humans that could cross over together so there could be a death of a human that my protagonist has to investigate. Award winning mystery – Stalking Ground by Margaret Mizushima Illegal trafficking of wild life species So, it’s Book 5, and I was a little bit stymied as to whether or not I could come up with one of these ideas. I went over to a friend’s house. She’s a retired Wildlife Manager and she worked here for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and we started brainstorming together about species that could be trafficked into Colorado illegally. We won’t give away the spoilers, as to why this might have happened but yes, that’s how I came up with the idea. We were sitting in her living room, and we were just Googling things and and finding species that were being trafficked and the species that I latched onto was it is a species that’s being pretty much abused. So I decided to write about that one Jenny: It sounds really fascinating, I must say Robo the dog is a great character in the book and I understand that he was inspired by a real dog, wasn’t he? Margaret: Yes, he was. I have another friend who is a retired K-9 handler. She’s been an invaluable consultant. I sit and listen to her stories and get all these wonderful ideas for what my patrol dog might be able to do. She worked in Bellingham, Washington and her dog was named Robo and Robo had saved her life many times. A remarkably trained dog He was cross-trained in patrol and narcotics detection, like the character in my book and he had been just a remarkable partner for her. We have regional police dog trials where K-9 handlers get together and they compete in various activities that they practice all the time. Things that help dogs develop certain skill sets, such as tracking agility, narcotics detection or explosives detection, depending upon which way the dogs been trained. My friend and her partner Robo often won at these different competitions because he was just such a remarkable dog. So when I decided to do the series with this dog, I thought okay. I think I want to turn him into a Wonder Dog, similar to Lassie. I don’t know if you watched Lassie back in the day, but I thought well, it was just the way my friend Beth talked about her Robo. I could tell that he was a very special dog and she could teach him to do just about anything. And in fact, she had trained him to do many different skills above and beyond what he came to her with, such as finding spent cartridges from bullets because she trained him on gunpowder and things like that which are not your average things that they cross train dogs for. Burning Ridge – #4 in the Timber Creek mysteries featuring Robo the Gernamn Shepherd Smelling out spent cartridges Jenny: Now that’s right and in Burning Ridge, which is the most recent one apart from the one that’s coming out soon, the dog does exactly that doesn’t he? He actually find some spent cartridges. Margaret: That’s right. Yes, and he actually found one in the very first book, Killing Trail too I shouldn’t say that most dogs aren’t found to do that, because because those dogs that are trained in explosives detection are trained to do exactly that. And they are trained on up to a hundred different scents of explosives that they can detect. But typically an average patrol and narcotics dog isn’t trained to detect gunpowder. Jenny: Gosh. Up to 100 different scents . . . That’s amazing, isn’t it? Margaret: It is so amazing. Jenny: Now, I think you’ve made a promise to your readers. I’ve read it somewhere, that you’re never going to kill off Robo in the series. You say that you don’t want to be like Old Yeller in that famous classic movie where the boy loses his dog. I wonder why you feel so strongly about this and it also do you know what has happened to the real Robo? Is he still alive or did he live out the term of his natural life? A promise to readers Margaret: He did live the term of his natural life, but unfortunately, he was deafened in a warehouse explosion. They didn’t realize there were explosives in thae building, and he was too close when he was doing a search for narcotics. He was forced to retire, but he became my friend’s pet. They’re difficult pets to have because they are so high energy, and but at that point he was he was getting some age on him. And so she was able to keep him until the end of his life and he died a natural death. So that’s wonderful. Yes, I feel strongly about it, I guess because. I’m basically even though I write murder mysteries, I’m basically pretty soft hearted when it comes to animals. I did have a man actually write to me early on right after Killing Trail came out and he said you’re not going to kill Robo and you’re series, are you? And I made the promise to him right then. I was like no. Robo will never die when the series ends. No ‘Old Yeller’ endings It’ll just end. I’m not going to have Robo die. Jenny: Did you watch the movie Old Yeller when you were a child and really feel indignant about the death by any chance? Margaret: I did and yes, I did watch that movie. I can remember pretty much sobbing my heart out that night. Old Yeller – a heart-breaker of a movie. Margaret has promised readers her story won’t end with Robo’s death. Jenny: We’ve referred to the fact that before you got into your stride with these K-9 stories you tried your hand at a lot of genres. And you also mentioned that you really tackled learning to write like it was another skill set that you needed to perfect. So tell us a little bit about those earlier experiments. Margaret: I started attending writing conferences, and specifically commercial fiction conferences, right around 2002 and there was so much to learn about character development, plot development , and how you write and everything. It was all new to me. I thought that I could just sit down and write a story. I thought “Oh, I’ll probably be published in a year or two.” Well, no, that is not how it worked for me. I had a lot to learn. Early days of experimentation I started out by writing some romance, because the conferences I attended were very much focused on romance in those days. Mysteries weren’t that popular. They were actually telling us that the genre of mysteries had really gone downhill at that particular time. But if here’s one thing I have learned in this publishing business. Is that the popularity of the different genres does wax and wane over the years and they are very popular right now. So I did write some romance. I tried writing a medical thriller, but my thriller was really bit of a flop. It was more like a soap opera or a drama instead of a thriller. And then I tried writing historical romance. That won a prize, and at that point, I was becoming pretty discouraged. But that little prize perked me up again, but it still didn’t find a publisher and I was very determined to follow the pathway of traditional publishing rather than self-publishing because I believe that self-publishing involves a whole new skill set and I am not technology oriented. The move into mysteries So I just kept striving towards finding a traditional publisher. And one of my relatives said “why don’t you try a mystery?” And at that point there were several mystery series that had become quite popular. And so I started reading all those mystery series and binge reading and just feeling so excited about the genre, and came up with Killing Trail. It is the first book in the series and it found a publisher. First it found an agent and then it found a publisher. So it was great. It was a great comment for me to go ahead and follow you. Jenny: You found your niche. That was that wasn’t it? Margaret: Yes, I think so. It helps me write what I know, which is what we’re encouraged to do, which is the life of a veterinarian. And also, we’ve always had dogs. I’ve been a great studier of dog language and body language and so it just helped me put together those things that I have gleaned from everything in my past. Margaret Mizushima’s favorite quote… Image thanks to Twitter Writing a series you get to know the characters really well, of course, and I wonder if you ever have the experience that they still do things that surprise you or they refuse to do things that you want them to do. And if that does happen, how do you handle it? Streamlining the writing process Oh, yes, those characters they are wily ones. They don’t always behave the way you think they’re going to. I wrote Killing Trail over a period of about five years with lots and lots of revisions. So I did that pretty much by the seat of my pants. And when the publisher became interested in it, they wanted me to restructure it a little bit more into a traditional mystery because i had set it up more like suspense initially. So I decided on Book Two, because I only had six months to write, it instead of five years. . . Under contract it’s different. Once I got a contract I decided I’d better outline my story . So I did go ahead and outline and and it was amazing because yes, I do have certain things I do, as I start ,as I set up a scene. I know how the plot needs to go. I do have certain things that I want my characters to accomplish in that scene and sometimes that just doesn’t happen. When characters surprise authors And in fact, they show me something different, which happened in Stalking Ground, the second book in the Timber Creek K-9 series. It was very interesting, because my police investigators found the victim’s car and in doing so, when they were investigating that car, they found her diary under the seat. I had no idea it was there until until they found it. So it is a very interesting experience and this last book that I wrote, Book 6, which will come out later, we were talking about Tracking Game, which is Book 5, but this summer I’ve been writing Book Six , and I decided to go back to just writing it by the seat of my pants again, and it is quite fun to let your characters dictate where the story is going . So long as they don’t go down rabbit holes where they don’t belong, it is kind of fun to discover the story with them. Jenny: That’s lovely. The relationship between Mattie and Cole is central. It’s a very gentle romance and at the stage where we’re at in Burning Ridge it’s still a little bit tentative. Do you have any idea yourself where they’re going? And or is that still unrevealed you as well? Love is complicated Margaret: I think the character arc of those two protagonists is pretty set in my mind. I know where I want them to get to. Their their relationship has been pretty tentative because Mattie has a lot of baggage in her past from being molested as a child by her father figure and Cole himself is recently divorced because his wife got tired of his workaholic behavior and him never never being there for the family . In fact, some clinical depression as well, so she left the family and didn’t even take her kids with her and so Cole is very busy learning how to be a single parent and dealing with his busy veterinary practice. I wanted a year to go by before I got them together completely and yes Book 5 has some developments in that area that I was pleased with and I hope my readers will be too. Dogs ‘make our lives whole’ Jenny: Oh, that’s fantastic. You referred to the fact that you keep dogs yourself and I’m interested that on your blog its mentioned that one of your favorite sayings is “Dogs are not our whole lives, but they make our lives whole.” Which is quite a neat little way to put it. Could you tell us about the dogs and your life right now? Margaret Mizushima with the canine family members she and her veterinarian husband care for. Margaret: We have four currently and they’re all working dogs. Three of the four are bird hunting dogs. And one of them is a cattle herding dog. So my husband and I raise Angus Cattle and Tess the border collie goes with him daily, up to his Veterinary Clinic and if there’s any cattle that need to be moved or what not, she’s right there helping him. He does feed with a feed truck and he said she jumps in and she puts her head in his lap every day while they feed out. So I think that’s one of her favorite times of day. We have another German Shorthaired Pointer named Birdie who also goes with him to the clinic every day and she’s our youngest dog, and she’s very very busy and it helps for her to be out of the yard and out of her run during the day so that she can run around. The favoured one is undisputed We have a very elderly yellow lab named Lily who oh, we’ve had her for well over 10 years. I can’t tell you right at the moment how old she is, I’m gonna guess 13 or 14, so she’s getting up in age for a lab. She used to be the one that went to the clinic, but now she’s just happier if she stays in the yard. Then we have a house dog named Hannah who is another German Shorthaired Pointer, but she’s kind of a throwback to English pointers that don’t have much of a hair coat and when we got her and December as a puppy years ago, she was just shivering and cold and my husband brought her into the house. I said well, let’s figure out how to keep her in the house. So she thinks she’s the favorite which she might be because she does get to sleep in the house. All the other dogs do have their heated dog houses and and big runs, so they’re pretty happy too How ‘real life’ feeds into writing Jenny: You say you have the bird dogs. Does your husband hunt or shoot or do they do any birding? Margaret: Yes. They do. It’s really his hobby that he enjoys so much and I think he enjoys training as much as hunting, if not more. So so he has trained all three of the bird dogs. Jenny: Fantastic. Now, turning to your wider career .Tell us a little bit about your life before you became a full-time writer. You’ve talked quite a bit about your Speech Pathology. Did you find out a satisfying career and has it feed into your writing? Margaret: I did really enjoy that career. I worked in a hospital for about 10 years and then I had my own clinic for about 10 years and I did really enjoy working with the people and the physical therapist and the occupational therapist that we would work hand-in-hand, The challenge of aphasia We usually specialized in. people with neurological disorders or injuries. And so that was a very rewarding career. I steered away from putting characters with communication disorders in my books until Book 5 Tracking Game where I do have a character who is part of the family of the first victim in the mystery. He has had a stroke and has a condition called aphasia, which is an inability to communicate with language expressively although he can comprehend what it said to him. In the coming book – a character with a speech disorder, reflecting Margaret Mizushima’s earlier profession as a speech pathologist. That was my first time that I really decided to develop a character that came from my first career. I really enjoyed writing him – his name is Doyle Redmond and. I hope others do too. I combined quite a bit of my history in Book Five because I grew up in a ranching family And this is a ranching family who has lost a family member to murder. And so I combined quite a bit of my previous life in this last book Messing with the symbolic order Jenny: It sounds great. I can’t wait to read it. I’ve actually got a brother-in-law who developed aphasia after a stroke a few year ago. It’s very poignant. He can understand everything that’s said around him, but he can’t do anything more than just nod and say yes or no. He communicates amazingly but he can’t speak. Margaret: It is amazing the way the the individual develops alternative ways of speaking and you would think that a person with aphasia could use some of these specific communication devices like Stephen Hawking did who was the scientist who had ALS but because of aphasia is a disorder in the symbolic system of language they typically can’t handle written symbols and even pictorial symbols can become confusing when they are trying to communicate with those. So a lot of times, you know, they end up just kind of developing a system of communication with their family and their family become translators. The secret of Margaret’s success Jenny: Yes, that’s exactly what’s happened in our case. It’s interesting, because yes, I mean you would naturally think well why not just write it but it isn’t something that Phill feels comfortable about doing. The writing is just as difficult well nearly as difficult. He can do it, but it isn’t an effective form of communication for them So I’m interested to hear that. It is part of the symbolic language system. It impacts both the the people with the disorder and their family members. Margaret: JI was happy to be able to put that into a book because maybe that helps some people Jenny: Yes, absolutely. Is there one that you’ve done, perhaps more than any other, that’s been the secret of your success? Margaret: Oh, well, thank you for saying I am a success. You know, Jenny: Somebody who’s written six books for starters, I see that as success. Meeting up with readers Margaret: In the midst of all of it, as you’re struggling to produce books and promote those books, it sometimes gets lost. I guess one of the things I have done that I feel has been very important is that I attend reader based conferences like Bouchercon com World Mystery Conference and I go to Left Coast Crime here in the States. And these these conferences invite readers to attend their not “how to write” conferences. They’re not like the craft based conferences that I’ve gone to in the past Bouchercon mystery conference – a great place to meet readers, says Margaret Mizushima So I try to do at least two of those a year and I get to meet all kinds of readers from all over and just talk about the books. It’s a lot of fun. Jenny: That’s wonderful. Turning to Margaret as a reader, because this is The Joys of Binge Reading. So who do you binge read now? And who would you like to recommend to listeners? What Margaret loves to read Margaret: I do love some really popular mystery writers. like Lee Child’s mysteries and thrillers. His books have turned into thrillers primarily. And he has his character Jack Reacher who is a retired military police officer and I just love his books. And then I love to read Michael Connelly. I can read those books over and over also, he writes a Harry Bosch character who is a detective and then of course Sue Grafton and her alphabet series. She has them up to “Y” but unfortunately she passed away before she could write ‘Z’ and her yes, so I love those books and I read those over and over as well. There are a couple of local authors that you might have heard about CJ Box lives up in Wyoming and he writes some really nice outdoor mysteries that feature a game warden. And then Craig Johnson writes the Longmire series, which was turned into a Netflix series. He lives up north too. And then two Colorado writers. Scott Graham, if any of your listeners would like to take a tour of the National Parks of the state with a mystery thrown in Scott Graham writes the National Parks Mysteries and he has five out and he’s writing his sixth. Scott Graham – another Colorado author writing mysteries set in the wilds – in National Parks And then I do like Mark Stevens also and he writes stories set on the western slopes of Colorado, in the mountains If I was doing it all over again . . . Jenny: Thank you. We’re coming to the end of our time together. It’s amazing how quickly it’s gone by. But circling around and taking a little pause and looking back over where you’ve come from. At this stage in your career if you were doing it all over again, what would you change if anything? Margaret: I think I’d start sooner. My first book didn’t come out until I was well, let’s see, I was 63 years old and I ‘m at the stage, you know. I’m getting older. I wish I had started about 10 years earlier. That might be what I do differently. Jenny: So what’s next Margaret in the next 12 months? You’ve mentioned Book Six. Is there a title for Book Six yet? What’s coming next. . . Margaret: Yes, there is. I’m so excited about it, too. It’s called Hanging Falls and it’s set up in the Colorado Rockies and a waterfall is very much a part of it. I just finished the draft that went into the editor just this week and so we’ll have several months of editing to go. But right now I’m having a little rest. Jenny: That’s great. So that’ll come out sometime next year will it?. Margaret: Oh, yes. Thank you. Yes, it will come out. In the our US autumn season of 2020 . Jenny: Have you ever had any thoughts about doing something different from the mystery? Margaret: I’ve heard Louise Penny say one time at a conference that she had one good idea and she was going to ride it until it was dead and I sort of feel that way. I do have a couple of historical romances, there’s sweet romance that I really love the characters. So if I do decide to stop writing mysteries, I might go back to those manuscripts and brush them off and revise them again and see if I can get them ready to be published I have. one and a half written. I really do love the characters So we’ll see. That would that would probably be what I’d move on to. Jenny: Margaret, you’ve mentioned that you like to go to these reader conferences. So where can readers find you online? Margaret: I have a website. And it’s Margaretmizushima.com. I can also be found on Facebook. I have an author page and a personal page there. You’re welcome to connect with me on both. They do blend together. I do post some of the same information on both and then I’m on Twitter at MargMizu and I’m also on Instagram, under MargMizu. Jenny: We’ll make sure that those links are in the show notes so that people will be able to find you. Thank you so much Margaret for taking part today. It’s been fascinating to hear about your work and the dogs. Margaret: Well, thank you so much for having me as a guest. If you enjoyed Margaret Mizushima you may also enjoy Christine Carbo’s Montana suspense stories, also set in the mountains. Christine Carbo’s Intense Montana Suspense on the Joys of Binge Reading podcast. 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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