Todd Borg’s private eye Owen McKenna has been acclaimed as a hero who walks in steps of classic gumshoes like Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and Lew Archer. But his best-selling – and award winning – Tahoe series has one attraction its predecessors lack – and that’s Owen’s side kick – a good natured Great Dane called Spot who’s become a big hit with readers. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Todd talks about how he came to have “the best job in the world,” why Tahoe is a great locale for a mystery series, and the reasons readers keep coming back for more. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How Owen McKenna is different from his famous predecessors The unexpected success of side kick Spot The ‘feel good’ factor in successful writing Self pub versus trad pub – and where he sits The importance of multiple books Todd’s pick for the classic detective series of all time Where to find Todd Borg: Website: toddborg.com/ Blog: http://toddborg.blogspot.com/ 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 Todd. . Hello there Todd and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Jenny: Beginning at the beginning – was there a “Once Upon A Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction? And if there was a catalyst, what was it? Tahoe mystery author Todd Borg Todd: You know what? There wasn’t any great “once upon a time” moment; I had no epiphanies or anything exciting like that. I got serious about writing in my late twenties. I always felt I came to this whole novel business late, and I remembered when I started writing novels that when I was twelve years old, my best friend said to me once “you know what? I think I’d like to be a novelist when I grow up”. I actually thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard! It seemed obvious to me that writing a novel would be far too much work, and you’d have to have some kind of specialised imagination. I could never do such a thing. So when I started writing seriously in my late twenties, I thought back on that. But with time, I remembered back in the sixth grade I wrote a mystery play and we performed it in front of the parents of the kids. When I was in fifth grade I wrote a little short story. I have a younger sister, and when my family would go on car trips and she would sort of get a little restless, she and I would sit in the backseat of the station wagon and I would tel her a story- I’d just make stuff up. It was literally a “once upon a time” kind of thing. Of course all those stories were probably ridiculously stupid, but clearly as I think back on it, I always kind of had it in my blood you know. I was probably a good liar as a kid, making up stuff but I don’t remember that very well. Jenny: And tell me, that friend who said he was going to become a novelist- did he ever become one? Todd: No! No, he didn’t. It’s so funny the way those things work! For me, it always seemed like the idea- when I started to get serious about it- at that point as I got older I was like “if you could actually do this and pull it off, it’d be the greatest job on earth!” Because you could sit around drinking coffee, making up stories. You would have no boss, and you could sleep in for as long as you want, for as late as you want. It seemed like a pretty good way to go through life, and I had a lot of imagination! So I just dived in. Jenny: And has it turned out to be the best thing you could possibly do? Is it like that- do you sit around drinking coffee? Tahoe Deathfall – Book One Owen McKenna series Todd: Absolutely! It’s absolutely the best thing I could ever imagine. I’ve had other jobs, and writing is a dream job. When you think about it, we’ve all read books by people with illustrious careers. It’s axiomatic that people with other careers- once they find success at writing, they always quit their other career. It doesn’t matter if they’re a heart surgeon, or a lawyer, architect or professor. They always quit because writing is so much more rewarding. Not only do you get to do what you want, but then you get to wake up every morning to fan mail telling you how great your book is. It’s really quite remarkable! So yes, it’s the greatest job on earth. Jenny: That’s great! I hadn’t ever thought of that before, about how people who start off part time always give up the other job. But you’re quite right; that’s so true. Todd: You don’t ever need writers to say “yeah, I used to be a writer but I went back to school and I’m a lawyer”. It’s always the other way around; if you can find success as a writer, you always abandon the other job because of course the other job is more work, more tedious and less fun. And writers get to live in a fantasy world of their own making! Jenny: When you decided to write, why did you choose the mystery genre? Todd: Well, you know I was weaned on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and I graduated to Agatha Christie. This was just because my parents had all those books, and they liked them so that was something I was imbued with. Although my first novel was a thriller- I didn’t write a mystery for sometime, but four different books that are still in a drawer. One was a detective story, the other three were third person thrillers. I think I segued as a kid from the Agatha Christie into the Robert Ludlum, Dick Francis kind of world. So Owen McKenna as a detective and as a feature in a series of ‘Whodunnit’ kind of novels; that wasn’t preordained that those would be mysteries, although I did always like detective novels as a kid. I devoured all the Robert Parkers and the John D. MacDonalds and so forth. It was logical for me to try that at some point, and I’m still a fan of thrillers. At times I’ve thought I may want to write some mainstream stand alones. But for now, Owen McKenna is doing well so with that I’m pleased. Jenny: Each book uses Lake Tahoe as a backdrop for adventure and mystery – and from your blog I get the impression you love the wilderness experience Lake Tahoe offers. You’ve blogged for example about hiking trails, about a baby coyote and seeing a bobcat near your property . . . how much of you is there in Owen? There’s the appreciation of art he has, and I understand you paint? And in Tahoe Deathfall there’s a terrific sequence where Owen flies into Tahoe at night – piloting a small plane – which is so realistic it made me think you might have flown a plane into Tahoe yourself . . . Todd: I did take flying lessons as a kid, but I never got my pilot’s license. But yes, I love flying like Owen. Owen and I share some things. I’m not a painter by the way, my wife is a painter. I do enjoy some of the things Owen enjoys, but in many respect we’re really quite not alike. He’s a much nicer guy then I am! I’m more of a cynic , while he’s more social. I’m more of an introvert; I’m not shy, but I think of me as a gregarious introvert. Owen however is a loner by default because his girlfriend won’t marry him and so forth. Physically we’re nothing alike. He’s a strong guy with a lot of hair; maybe that’s wishful thinking of Owen on my part! I’m not a strong guy, and I don’t have any hair! Great Dane puppies But we both have Great Danes- my wife and I have owned three Great Danes. So when I was originally dreaming up the idea of Owen, I thought about the American fictional detectives. So many of them often have sidekicks ; (Arthur Conan Doyle’s) Sherlock Holmes had Dr Watson, (John D Macdonald’s) Travis McGee and Meyer, (Robert Parker’s) Spenser had Hawk. So I thought Owen should probably have a sidekick. I couldn’t come up with one that was satisfactory, until one day I was out walking one of our Great Danes. I thought- a Great Dane would be great sidekick! Great Danes aren’t the serious, intense dog that are a working breed. They’re considered a working breed, but of all the working breeds they have the least work ethic. They want to be lovers and loungers, and lie on the couch with their head in your lap and eat popcorn with you. So I thought that would be a counterpoint, and give a sort of levity counterpoint to Owen McKenna. So when I created his sidekick Spot, a Harlequin Great Dane, that worked out very well. I knew that Spot would be important; I didn’t know how important! I’ve learned from readers that Spot is critical. But like all Great danes, he’s a little bit goofy and not super well trained, although I will say he’s better trained than our Danes were simply because I’ve figured out it’s easier to train a fictional dog than a real dog. Jenny: Owen has trained him as an attack dog too; I’m not sure there are many Great Danes that are attack dogs? Spot has become an unexpected hit with readers Todd: He’s trained him just a little bit. He’s done a little bit of police dog work with him, and not so much attack but more intimidation. Spot can do his intimidation just by growling, but then he doesn’t have a mean streak in him! He’s also trained in scent trails and that kind of thing, and so we’ve got a little bit of that! But in every case, Spot is rank amateur. He’s not like a professional search and rescue dog, he’s not like a professional police dog. Owen can fake a suspect into thinking- you know if a suspect hears Owen saying “I’m going to send in the dog”, the suspect will get worried because the suspect doesn’t know that Spot really isn’t very good at this! Jenny: Owen has been compared to iconic private eyes like Sam Spade (Dashiell Hamett – the Maltese Falcon) and Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler – the Big Sleep) Is it important to you to be working in a classic tradition? Todd: No- the only thing I thought about when I was creating Owen (of the classic detectives I was thinking of) was I wanted Owen McKenna to be different. I didn’t want him to be a wise cracker in the Phillip Marlowe tradition. I didn’t want him to be dark and depressed. I don’t mean to slam Lew Archer (Ross MacDonald)- he struggles with depression and such- and I didn’t want Owen to be just overwhelmingly powerful in the Spenser Tradition. But I also didn’t want him to be kind of apologetic. For example Dick Francis- his protagonists are often somewhat meek which is very interesting and intriguing, but I didn’t want Owen to be meek. He’s not an in your face tough guy, although he can be tough when he wants to be! So I mostly thought of him in terms of the differences between him and some of those classic detectives. I think perhaps the protagonist who is most close to what I like in Owen is Travis McGee. I think the Travis McGee and the John D MacDonald series are the greatest American detective series, even though they’re not classic detective series. So that was a strong, strong influence. Of course, I’m very pleased and flattered that some of the reviewers have thought of Owen McKenna in some of the terms of those classic detectives. Travis McGee – The classic detective series Jenny: You are publishing your sixteenth Lake Tahoe series mystery in August – did you have any thought when you began it would take you this far? Todd: Well, you know when I wrote the first Owen McKenna, I had already completed four novels and gotten my pile of rejections like most writers. I had written many other partial openings, headings and character sketches- enough to discover what works and what doesn’t work. I had been through the business in the sense of submissions and going to writer’s conferences and all of that. I understood the likelihood, or the lack of likelihood of finding success. So when I started the Owen McKenna idea, I took a different approach to the other books I’d written; instead of coming up with a hook that was catchy and diving in, which of course is a fine thing to do- Stephen King writes that way- I thought that I would try something different and dream up a set of characters and a structure before I started writing. That was a new idea for me. So when I did that, as part of that concept, you think “well, what if the next approach were to be successful?” Having always devoured series, I was attracted to that. I knew the likelihood that the first book would never go anywhere, it won’t get good reviews, but what if? That sort of ‘what if’ scenario, I thought I should set this up in a way that would allow it to be a series. And so I chose the elements of the characters and the stories so if it did work, I could continue on. So I came up with the first two books one month apart. That was inspired when John D MacDonald would have already written thirty novels or whatever when he came up with the first Travis McGee’s. His editor came up the idea – let’s do three Travis McGee’s and release them a month apart. So in April, May and June in 1964 they did three books n a row, and I thought I don’t have three books ready, but I have two, so let’s do that. So when they did well from the beginning, I thought great! This was my dream come true. From that point on, I could see the potential that could exist when I wrote a bunch of these. And it’s done very well, so I’m pleased. Jenny: It’s interesting to me that you mentioned that John D MacDonald did that in 1964, because that idea of rapid release publishing is something that is a hot thing at the moment. It’s even something that’s talked about online as being the way to go. I actually did think that it was a result of digital books, but obviously not. It has been around for quite a long time. Todd: Yes. You know how it is with writers when they come out with their first book, they are fortunate enough to have readers like it and the very first question readers ask is “are you going to be a one book wonder, is there another book coming?” Sort of “what’s next, is this a series- are you going to make us happy with more stories? And so with the explosion of digital publishing, that has been a double edged sword. On one hand it’s wonderful that the threshold has been lowered so that anyone with a little study can come up with a book. Of course the other side to that is that there’s a million other books every year. So if you want to get noticed- and of course not everybody does- if your desire is to find an audience, then that begs the question; how in the world are you going to get noticed when there are a million new authors every year. The other thing to the component of getting noticed is the vast majority of readers when looking for a new book always turn to their favourite authors. They don’t generally say “I need a new book, I finished this last one – I’ll look for a new author”. They go, “I like this dude, I’m going to get them all”. So the new author has a very difficult task of getting noticed. One of the very best ways that a new author can get noticed is among librarians, reviewers and just readers in general. Don’t publish a book until you have multiple. Jenny: I think also – I mean I know myself a little bit- if you see that there’s a series there, you think if I like it there will be more like it to read. So it’s an incentive to start when you know that you really like it, and there’s going to be more than one to continue on with. It kind of gives you a bit of confidence that it’s worth investing the time in the first book. Todd: Absolutely, absolutely. I remember when I just had a few books out and I would do events and people would just look at the books and go “you’ve got four of these, I wonder if they’re any good”. By the time I had ten books, then people’s responses were completely different. They would say “oh, ten books- they must be at least pretty good”. The reality is that they might have been terrible! But when a reader or reviewer sees there’s more than just one or two lonely books there, they’re much more likely to give it a try. I always use the metaphor of a restaurant analogy- a restaurant that only has one item on the menu. That restaurant will have a very hard time interesting new diners, but one that has multiple items on the menu that look good will have a completely different response. Tahoe Payback – Todd Borg Jenny: The decision to “go indie” or be trad published is one confronting many authors – and you seem to have decisively chosen the indie route and done it successfully. What is the appeal of that for you? Todd: Well you know, I’ve always had an agent. I’ve had an agent since point A and she loved Owen McKenna, the very first one I sent her. She got a great response from the editors she submitted to- we call them rave rejections! She would tell me even jokes you know- “I had lunch with an editor today. She was very intrigued with your book, but she’s never heard of you and what’s this Tahoe? I thought that was a type of lake”. I’m impatient, and I’m not young. You know how the world is fascinated by authors in their twenties, especially if they’re charming on TV or whatever. When I came up with the very first Owen McKenna’s, I was in my forties and my agent called me up and said do you have any videos? I said no, and she said that she had an editor who was interested in my platform- which of course was non existent- but she wanted to know if I had any platform. I said, “Barbara, the reality is that I would have no idea about TV – the lights would bounce off my bald head and blind the camera. I don’t think I’m that kind of person”. But at that point in the mid 90’s- this would be 1996- the publishing business was completely switching over to authors who have a platform, not the books so much. I remember hearing a talk by Michael Pietsch, who at the time was Editor in Chief at Little Brown and now he’s publisher at Hachette, the biggest publishing company in the world. He said that the book is important, but what’s far more important is your platform. Why is anyone going to buy your books, there’s so many books out there. And he pointed out someone that after winning a Nobel Prize for Literature had a book he couldn’t publish because they knew they weren’t going to sell it. The CEO of a giant company has a platform because the 25,000 employees are going to buy the books. So I had no platform, and after multiple rejections I said to my agent I was thinking of self publishing. She said “no don’t do that. You’ll be confined to the ghetto of self publishing and you won’t get reviewed”. We went back and forth, and she eventually agreed to help me and give me advice and all that. She’s still my agent, and she’s been wonderful for me. She’s only had one book to sell for me, and that’s the one that sold to a French translation. But I went ahead because I was stubborn, and I thought I could see what was going to happen. I was going to be 90 years old some day, and I would have wanted to do something with those books. Of course this was all before digital publishing, before most people had heard of Amazon. So I decided to do it in a traditional way. I started a company, and so to be accurate I’d say my books are traditionally published – published offset, shipped to the warehouse. The only difference is that I own the company. It’s not a big deal; it’s just a small business that does my book. From the very beginning I got good reviews and Publishers Weekly and book lists, and it just went very well. So I self published as a reaction to the change in the industry that you couldn’t get published anymore unless you represented a newspaper column, or were young and beautiful and had a sports show on TV- that kind of thing. Moving to a more general focus, away from specific books to your wider career Jenny: Is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career more than any other that’s been the secret to your success? I wonder if that is it- having the courage to take that step and self publish? Tahoe Heat -‘no bleak’ in the way they end Todd: That helps with success. I didn’t think it was critical, but it does help because the author more than anybody understands what it is they want to put across. So if the author is in charge, they can choose covers. Many of us don’t choose good covers ourselves, which is universally a mistake I think. But the author can decide the marketing and the big picture stuff. So if you look at most New York published authors, you’ll see they’ve been through multiple publishers. They end up with a hodge podge of books that have different formats, different sizes and different cover designs. There isn’t a cohesive network of books because the authors didn’t have control. So that’s not to say that isn’t a good way to go; the Lee Childs of the world do very well. But the struggle for new writers- I had a guy I know who was an ‘orphan’, he was dropped. He had no reviews, and he asked how to get them. I told him you just sent copies out, and he said he called his publisher at Simon and Schuster and they said “well we didn’t send out your book. We have 500 authors and you have to come straight in the top 10”. So he got no support. In that case, self publishing if you do it can be a huge help. But I think the difficult thing to success for me, and I’m not saying this will apply to other people- but it is writing books that make people intrigued, but also make people feel good. For example, my books all have justice at the end. There’s a little bit of a feel good at the end, and the bad guy always gets caught, not like in real life. There’s no bleak in my books. So there’s a quality if someone finishes the books and they like the characters. It’s kind of a quality if at the end of a book you go “that’s good, I like the way that ended”. Then they get another. I think that’s one of the most critical things to success. The other is you have to be doggedly persistent. There are many writers who do four books and then give up, saying it’s an awful lot of work and they didn’t make any money and they were discontinued. In writing lots and lots of books, you learn the tricks and the techniques and you develop and get better and better. I think that’s the single greatest thing a writer can do. I’ve never met a writer who has written 20 books and hasn’t been successful. We’ve all met an astonishing number of writers who have given up, even though they’ve written good books and got good reviews. Jenny: If you were going to recommend a “Tripadvisor magical mystery tour” of Owen McKenna’s favorite places – say visitors were coming to the Tahoe area for three to five days – where would you recommend they go….. They’d have to go to the Red Hut cafes, where Owen periodically eats out . . . for example? Todd: I’ve had multiple people tell me that when they read the books, they make notes of the places they want to visit and then they go on their own Owen McKenna tour. One woman hired a rental bus for a family reunion, and it was going to be a Owen McKenna tour! I think the key is that people would concentrate on the physical aspects of Lake Tahoe. There are some good businesses and some intriguing cultural things, and you could do a literary tour if you wanted and go and see where Steinbeck lived when he lived in Tahoe. I think what makes Tahoe different is those physical things. There are people who go to Tahoe and never go to Emerald Bay- that would be like going to Denver and never going up to see the Rocky Mountains or something like that. So I’d say you have to take a trip around the lake and whether you take a bus tour or you drive- most people drive- you have to go to Emerald Bay and you have to go to the shore. At the shore we have these massive beaches- we have rocky shores that you can hike down. But it’s from the shore that you see and get that essence of oh my gosh, you can see 60 feet straight down into the water. You can see the mountains are reflected, and you can see these astonishing views and you can’t do that if you’re sitting in a bus. So Emerald Bay and the shore I would definitely say to get up from above and look at. So if you’re a hiker, climb one of the local mountains and if you’re not, ride the gondola or the cable car up to the top. And you look down from the top, because once you’re up there you go “oh my gosh, that’s amazing!” It’s a remarkable place, but for those reasons. When people come to Tahoe and they gamble, that’s a tragedy for a man like me! You can gamble anywhere- but at Lake Tahoe, you’ve got to go and see the lake! Emerald Bay Lake Tahoe Jenny: I can see why National Geographic has you as a geotourism advocator on their site! Jenny: The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to read series . . . .And series really are the “coming thing” as you’re proving So – turning to your taste in fiction, who do you “binge read” ? Todd: I like a lot of readers. The more I get into writing, the more I feel guilty about reading because I think I haven’t got time to read! I have a lot of stories I worry about not having time to get to, so what am I doing kind of thing?! I read broadly, although I used to read narrow and deep but now I read and broadly and shallow. I’m more interested in reading new authors than finishing all of the bookshelf of James Lee Burke, or Robert Crais or something like that. I like to sample the books that intrigue me and such. If I really want to do binge reading, I’ll sit down and power through any of my favourite authors. I’ll go back and reread Dick Francis just for the joy of it, but also to see how he works the magic. I’ll go back to Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky. These are highly lauded writers, but they’re more important than people give them credit for having created the whole female protagonist detective genre. These are very important people, and it’s good to go back and immerse yourself in a bunch of them; not just one, so you see the whole picture comes together. Sara Paretsky a favorite Jenny: That’s interesting- so you look at them from a craft aspect as well? Todd: Yes. Reading is the second best way to learn about writing- the best way is writing. You need to get out there and do it to learn the process. I do like to binge read the classics – I go back and read a half dozen John D MacDonald’s every few years. Circling back to the beginning at the end Jenny: At this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change – if anything? Todd: I’ve been very fortunate- if I hadn’t been fortunate, I might say I would change everything dramatically. But of course hindsight gives our choices credibility or dis-credibility, depending on what happened. Having been fortunate, I probably wouldn’t change much. But I would, having written four novels that are in a drawer before I started what became the first Owen McKenna, and having written a bunch of other partial novels, I would expand that. I would do more like Hugh Howey, I would decide, before I ever raised my hand and said hey look, I wrote a book, that I had ten novels completed or more. That’s because what you learn in the process of writing multiple books is beyond what you could expect in advance. So at any stage when you have experience, that’s a benefit. So I lean towards that direction when writers ask me “I’ve written a book- what’s next?” My strong sense of what’s next is to write another book, and then to write another book. And don’t call an agent and don’t send it out or risk embarrassing yourself, or rush to publish. You can take your time and develop your craft, because if you are successful people are going to want the next book. So if you’ve already got the next one or ten written, well how great is that. Jenny: There’s a successful romance author Stephanie Laurens, and I’ve got a quote of hers on my wall. Whenever writers ask her “how are you a success as a writer?” she says “write the next and the next. Don’t expect to get anywhere until you have six and possibly as many as ten books out there”. Todd: Absolutely. It’s the only common denominator for successful authors. We all come from different backgrounds and different places, we speak different languages, we look different- everything about us varies. There’s only one common ground that successful authors have with very few exceptions, and that is we’ve written a few books. Even the one book wonders out there, when you do your research you realise they were a one book wonder on that name, but they wrote 24 romances under a different name before that. It’s just like figure skaters- the ones who succeed are the ones who really put in their time. And then you get the rewards, and you’re glad you did it. Jenny: So what’s next for Todd the writer? I see in a recent interview that you are working on a second series and you say will publish “when you have three books completed” What have you got planned for the future? Todd: Owen McKenna pays the mortgage, so I’ll continue to do one of those every year. I’m working on two other series actually- and those are something I won’t do anything with until I have multiple books ready to go so that I can release them one month apart. I probably shouldn’t even mention, but I am working on other stuff. Jenny: Are they mysteries, can we ask that much? Todd: Both of them are thrillers. No ‘Whodunnit’ puzzles, a little bit of a puzzle like most thrillers, but not the intricate puzzle you’d expect from an intricate ‘whodunnit’ mystery genre. Jenny: We are coming to the end, so where can readers find you on line? Todd: They can go to my website, and if they want to contact me there’s an email out there for everybody to use. I respond to everybody; it may not be immediate, but I do. Unless I get some sort of computer glitch, you can count on my response! I do have a weekly blog that is wide ranging, and may interest some and not others. It’s got all sorts of subjects. You can Google that at Todd Borg blog, or you can find the link on my website. So that’s my online presence. I don’t do social media – I don’t have those kinds of skills or the time. There is a Facebook page under my name- it’s a fan page a fan put up, but I’m not involved with it. I have nothing to do with it. Jenny: You’re very generous with your responses online- I’ve seen people asking about moving to Tahoe and where they should go, and what real estate prices are like and you seem to very generous in just sitting down and conversing with people on quite a wide range of topics. Todd: Well you know I’ve learned as all writers do that people are very generous with help. In the old days before Google if you wanted to research something and you called up a cop or something, people are always so generous. I’ve also had the experience that many writers ahead of me were generous with me, and I think that’s something that should be returned. It’s an incredible luxury to have a reader, and I don’t take any reader for granted. There are so many distractions out there- to think that a reader would put down their video on their phone to contact me about anything is a huge gift, and it’s up to me to respond as much as I can. Jenny: Well that’s lovely, it certainly leaves a very nice feeling when you’ve got that attitude. It’s been wonderful talking to you today, it really has. Todd: Thank you so much Jenny, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. 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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