Crafting a well-written, fast-paced book is not easy. Reading a lot in your genre and attending courses and conferences can get you far, but there is nothing as powerful as starting a book and finishing it; going through the process of actually putting together the first scene and then writing an ending is the single most important thing you can do to level up your writing.

In this episode of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast Vancouver based author Sam Wiebe explains what makes a book worth reading, why it’s so difficult to translate our experiences into dramatic terms and what strategies we can use to level up our writing craft. Sam also mentions a number of useful books that can help writers at different stages of their author career and shares a number of experiences that defined his writing journey.

This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources. 

Complete Episode Transcripts

This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources. 

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 036: Writing Crime Fiction with Sam Wiebe

Sam Wiebe: Hi, I’m Sam Wiebe and you’re listening to the strategic authorpreneur podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about crime and detective fiction.

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We’re here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal Hunt: Welcome to episode 36 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we’re talking with author Sam Wiebe about writing crime and detective fiction. But first, what have you been up to this week? Michele

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: So the book that I would like to suggest to you this week is a bit different from the usual, and the title of the book is Start With Why: how great leaders inspire everyone to take action, from Simon Sinek. And you can see the cover if you’re watching it on YouTube. Now, why did I say that is a bit different?

It’s because I read this book sometime ago and it was suggested to me by a couple of different people and I didn’t really know what to expect by this book. I thought it might’ve been on the motivational side which, I was looking forward to read something motivational, but it turned out to be slightly different. So Simon Sinek is also like a speaker. But what’s interesting for this book, at least for me, and that, really made me think of a few possibilities that I’ve never really thought about, was that Start With Why, it’s basically presenting an idea that I’ve never really elaborate on and it’s more on the idea that great leaders, but also great companies, like he uses in the book the example of Apple, they inspire others by putting the Why, which is basically the purpose, before the How and the What. And How would be the process and the What would be the product.

And that never really thought of a person or a company in this terms. I never told him the Why and the What and the How. The thing that makes for me this book very interesting is the approach that he uses.

And I think us Crystal, as authorpreneur, we can use that for branding. The Why of the product that we are releasing to the person can be, mine can be different from yours. The process we use, it might be similar, but I think the Why would be for me the heart, but more on the business kind of term, not just, any kind of terms.

So I really thought that this book was interesting because it was enlighten me in a way that I never seen before possible how to see a product, a company, or a person in this case leaders, from a very different point of view, the point of view of the Why, and then the How, and then the What. So if you’re thinking of a leveling up your understanding on the that point of view, and you want to explore this different way of approaching the world really, and the way also, I would say some kind of arts are created, I would definitely suggest you to go check, Start With Why by Simon. So that was the book of the week for me and I really hope you enjoy it. So we’re going to get you the title and subtitle everything on the resource section. So if you’re interested you can click an buy it. Regarding what I’ve been up to, Crystal, I’ve been really trying to understand from the data that I gathered in the last five to six months on Amazon ads where do I want to go from this point on. So I’ve learned a few things, by using those, and I’m not really sure where to go from this point hence why we had a lovely conversation sometime ago about, how to use them and how to scale them.

And that’s something that I have to say a bit scares me to scale Amazon ads or ads in general, because it’s really the very first time that I’m doing this more on the serious scale, using Amazon on, using ads actually on a consistent basis month after month after the month. And we’ve been lucky in the sense that we actually had some good results, not amazing, but good results.

And I just want to double down on those and see if we can go further, faster with this new venue, if you will. So I’m very excited that I’m trying to study a bit more now to use those and, hopefully in the next three to four months I’m going to have a bit more data to see what’s working and not, but I’ll definitely keep you updated.

So stay in the journey. And what about your journey Crystal? What have you been up to in these past seven days?

Crystal Hunt: The big excitement was that I finished my journal. So I got to have a new journal book, which is always exciting and they didn’t have the kind I usually get actually. So I got this one with some elephants and it says: ‘when you love what you have everything you need’.

And I’, just going through and basically simplifying my life at the moment and reducing all like the monthly expenses as much as I can, as I’m making a shift into being a full-time author, and I’ve downsized all of my consulting business, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of that side of things. A lot of the things I was subscribing to were business expenses that made sense when I was doing client work for dozens of people or hundreds of people and keeping all that stuff straight, but as a single solopreneur author, it doesn’t make sense to maintain all of that stuff and be committed to monthly expenditures. So I went through all of my books as I’m doing the sort of closing out for the end of the year of the business and just cleaning everything up.

And that was a really good chance to just reflect on basically as you go through line by line and your credit card expenses and double-check everything from the year and do all the reconciliations, it’s good to get a really solid financial picture of what’s happening, where and what that all looks like.

And, as part of preparing for that shift and making that shift, I have been reading Atomic Habits, which so you can see by the fact that there’s 57 post-it notes in it, and I have scribbled on it and highlighted things all over the place. That is one of my favorite books on habits and really helpful when it comes to making yourself a new life style.

So lots of really good advice in there, but there’s two pieces that I found particularly helpful. They’re just sets of questions that he asks and James Clear is the guy who wrote the book and he talks about two times a year doing a bit of a review for his business. And in the new year, he usually sits down and ask themselves three questions, which is: What went well this year? What didn’t go so well this year? What did I learn from whatever happened? And so those are three really great questions, which I have been doing some journaling and my shiny new journal about and then he also does something which I thought was really interesting and which he calls an integrity report, which is: he asks himself, what are the core values that drive his life and work? How am I living in working with integrity right now? And how can I set a higher standard in the future? So I’ve also been working through those questions and I think as I realigned my business focus and move forward, I really want to make sure that I’m doing so completely in line with what I believe in and making sure that the channels I’m choosing and the approach I’m taking to the writing and publishing process, all lines up with that.

And of course, building a more regular writing habits. I have historically been great at what I call binge writing, which is just, I get in the zone and then I might write 10,000 words a day for several days, and I just keep going basically until the book is finished, but that isn’t very sustainable long-term so even though it pains me a little to approach change, I am going to have to actually shift so that I am writing more often, more regularly and not burning myself out with each project, basically, because that’s what happens when you go too hard, for too long, and I do have an assistant coming onto help me, which means that I have to be providing stable output in order for her to have consistent job duties throughout the year as well, and so that is an extra bit of motivation to really shake things up and make those changes. So for me, that has been a week of thinking, pondering, re-inventing and just trying to get everything all aligned for this next part of the adventure.

But I had a really fascinating conversation with Sam Wiebe about writing crime and detective fiction. So I think we should go listen to that. And then we’ll be back at the end to talk about what we heard, break it all down for you as always.

And just before we go, if you want to buy us a coffee to contribute a little bit to the cost of the podcast. The coffee is a metaphorical thing. We’re all writers, we get that, the buy me a coffee button on our website we probably won’t actually spend on coffee because I don’t think either of us drink it, but we will put it to words hosting for the website and we’ll put it to words paying for the podcast distribution and the transcription costs and things like that.

So for anyone who has hit that button already, thank you so much. And if you haven’t, it is at strategicauthorpreneur.com right in the center on the front page. You can just give it a click and see what happens when you do.

It’s a pretty cool tool, actually. And so if you’re looking for ways to fund your own creative endeavors, you can also check it out as a little bit of a research experiment and see how it works and it might be something that could help you fund your own creative projects as well. Now onto Sam, we go.

About Sam Wiebe

So we are here with crime fiction writer Sam Wiebe, and we are going to be digging into the gritty world of the dark side of things a little bit, and learning a little bit about what your writing process is like, and how you became a writer and what that journey looks like.

First, I’m curious if you could tell us a little bit about what brought you to being a writer in the first place.

Sam Wiebe: It’s one of those things where I always wanted to be a writer, I always read voraciously and, I had done a bunch of terrible stories and stuff, earlier in life, but in, in grad school, whereas I was starting grad school, I just had this feeling of put up or shut up, like his is the moment to actually, put all of my effort into getting good at this and try to get published and, or just give it up completely because that’s like half in half out, it was just driving me crazy.

I really worked at it, wrote a novel that didn’t go anywhere and then wrote the book that became Last of the Independents, which was the first one that I had published. And it’s been smooth sailing from there.

Crystal Hunt: Yes, as most writers journeys, they’re not, you know that moment where you just coast top of the hill and then grass smoothly after your destination. Yes. So you said grad school. Did you go to school for writing or was it something else that you did in the background?

Sam Wiebe: I did a bachelor’s of English and History.

And then I did a master’s in English and I wanted originally to be a technical writer. I thought I would hate teaching and just love writing manuals or something. But, I actually really like teaching so I pursued that and I really liked the literature side. I just never could… I never had the money for a creative writing MFA and I never had the, like I always wanted a job out of it rather than just teaching creative writing.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, for sure. And what was it that sort of led you into crime fiction in particular? I know you have some other stuff as well, but that seemed to be one of the highlights at the moment. So where does that passion come from for murder and mayhem?

Sam Wiebe: Yeah, it’s funny. I loved crime fiction before I knew I loved crime fiction.

I just assumed I was the kind of person who read everything because I did, I’d love lit fiction and, I used to read like westerns and weird historical books and true crime, like just, across the board. But, there was a moment when I was about twenty-five or so I just remember looking at my bookshelf and it was all like Elmore Leonard, crime novels, Sue Grafton, detective novels and stuff like that.

And just be like, Oh, okay. I guess this is what I’m into. And, very shortly after that, my writing just went the same way. And it was just almost admitting: look of all these great options this is the one that you care about, this is the one that, when I was a little kid, I loved Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys and all those kinds of stories and then gravitated to my parents detective novels like Johnny McDonalds, his series and like Dashiell Hammett and stuff. And then just really, had to have that moment of being like, Oh, okay, this is actually what you want to focus on. You know that it actually clarified things and made it easier. I have definitely done stuff that’s not in there, but I’ve also done stuff where I’ve started out being like I’m going to write a great lit novel and 10 pages in there’s a body and a cover up and guilt and you’re just like, yeah. Okay. This is, I guess I know what I like to do.

Crystal Hunt: And that’s, I think that’s a really important thing to acknowledge, so many people, will have such a strong passion for one particular genre that is all they read and they just consume that all the time.

And yet they don’t give themselves permission to actually write in that genre. I think it’s something that a lot of people struggle with, but, as you said, the path is not always a smooth one. And so if we are doing something we really love and immersing ourselves in it and hustling to make a career over a long period of time, it’s going to be so much easier if you are really in an area of passion where you have internalized so many of those story arcs and everything as well, that makes a huge difference. Can you tell us a little bit about your Wakeland stories? I know, like you’ve got a couple different novels that are in that same series and just for those who haven’t read them, just a glimpse into what kind of detective, you’ve got and settings, and things like that.

Sam Wiebe: Yeah. Dave Wakeland is a Vancouver based private detective and he and his partner, Jeff Chen, mainly handle a combination of missing persons cases, because that’s Dave’s, passion and very high end corporate cases, because that’s what Jeff, Can make money off. Most of the books, focus around a missing persons investigation that spirals into murder and conspiracy and all that great stuff.

I like to think of them as what Raymond Chandler or, Dashiell Hammett would be writing if they were writing now. Like it’s that sort of, I guess you call it like a literary detective novel. It’s very much about the city and the social issues that are going on. And, really trying to just capture how I look at Vancouver and the sort of disjunction between the very public tourists friendly face in Vancouver and then what’s what I think is really going on.

Crystal Hunt: We have a lot of grit and interesting kind of history and subcultures in the city here. It’s very interesting. There’s lots of stuff going on that people are really, if you’re not tuned into or not paying attention, just have no idea that’s what’s going on. When it comes to developing those ideas that come at you into a novel, what does that process look like for you?

Are you a plotter or a pantser or, how do you approach the writing journey?

Sam Wiebe: I usually have some idea. It might be just a loose outline or a series of beats that I know I’m going to hit. I don’t really like plotter in pantsers terms, but there’s one called plotser, which is in the middle, which I hate even more but I also feel like, yeah, that’s how I do. So I try to have an idea, maybe not so much what’s going to happen on every page, but, the logical development of the plots and the clues and things like that.

I do tend to work out a little bit of that early, and then, also what I want to build to what’s the climax of this book going to be, what’s the moment that’s gonna… that this is all really going to hang up?

And, so I try to build back from there a little bit, but it’s very much, whatever happens on that day or in my life, it kinda ends up in the books too, so yeah.

Crystal Hunt: I am with you on the, not loving the terms. I usually go with discovery writer where, you have a framework and then you’re learning the characters and you’re learning the story and it’s getting born as you’re going through the process of creation. And I love that there’s pieces of, whatever happens in your day, that ends up in your work. How do you handle fictionalizing some real inspirational things? Like for people who are maybe newer to this and worried about putting too much reality into their books, what are some tips that they could maybe balance a little bit of that?

Sam Wiebe: I do a lot of research and a lot of talking to people. I mean to me, the main thing is I want people to get a sense of Vancouver. So if I have to change a couple of names of things to convey that sense accurately, I think that’s a smart move and it’s a good, dramatic move.

If there’s a restaurant that I really like, I want to include it, or a bar that’s, Wakeland ends up going to, I want to include it, if it’s, If it’s, if I’m going to say that it’s owned by some sort of biker gang and there’s horrible things happening there, I don’t want to … COVID is closing enough cool restaurants, I don’t want to like, add to that. So I’ll just, change the name a little bit. But most people who live here Oh yeah, that’s that one. Or, and then there’s also just the fact that places closed just because of gentrification.

So by the time the book comes out, there are places that are gone anyway. So nobody needs to worry about offending the owner of the Mountain Shadow Pub, because sadly it’s not here anymore.

Crystal Hunt: I remember that one.

Sam Wiebe: Love it. And then just with people, it’s the same thing. Trying not to, I don’t try to draw from any one person, it’s more just like getting a sense of who the characters are and, finding my way to relate to them.

Sadly, any character probably has a little bit more me than, any one person.

Crystal Hunt: And do you ever have trouble getting yourself to sit down and write? Or is that something that, just comes? I know that’s always, the motivation piece is always an interesting thing to look at because every writer has their different strategies or different sticking points.

Sam Wiebe: Yeah, I try to, I try to do it first thing, I have a pretty good schedule most of the time where, my girlfriend is an electrician, so she leaves really early in the morning, like quarter to five, and I don’t start teaching until noon, so I have that chunk of time to do prep, but also do a couple hours of writing and I set goals and, I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to making the time. Sometimes what you rate sucks though and it’s just this agony of, I’m putting in my thousand words and I’m sitting here and it’s just not coming well. There’s a great tip by Raymond Chandler where he said just block off a period of time and you don’t have to write, but don’t let yourself do anything else. And by that, you’re just like, okay, if I’m not playing solitaire or whatever, like, either I’m going to get some work done or I’m going to sit here very unhappy, but either way, it’s going to be, more productive than just giving into the distractions.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, if you’re sitting there anyway, you might as well be trying to generate some words, even if they’re not great, it will keep you entertained for sure. Now, from all your teaching and you were the writer in residence at the VPL as well, what did you learn from working with other writers or what did you find were some common things that were people were having challenges with?

Sam Wiebe: I think that the most common thing that I’ve seen with writers of all ages is having really cool experiences and then not being able to translate them into dramatic terms. There’s someone I’m working with where their background is like high finance and they want to do like a John Grisham thriller.

And I’m like, yeah, this is really cool. But, that writer will describe, what, some like term, and it’s just like a page of, technical jargon. So you’re like, okay, no, like you actually have to reverse engineer this, create a character who doesn’t know the term and then have somebody explain them and be funny and be, cutting and show their different personalities.

So it’s really working, to take what people have lived through or what they’re interested in, what their passion is, and then finding ways to turn that into effective stories. It’s hard.

Crystal Hunt: Yes, it is. Especially to do it well. So if someone is looking to better their craft, do you have any favorite go-to resource books or websites or courses that you, like to send people to?

Sam Wiebe: Yeah, all the standards, Stephen King’s On Writing is great. I teach at Humber now and their coursework is by Jean …And that’s very, that book’s very good. David Mamet has a couple of really great drama books. One’s called Three Uses of the Knife, which is just about structure, but it’s not a, it’s not like Save the Cat, like here’s what you do on page five. Here’s what you do on page 10. It’s What’s the purpose of an introduction? What’s the purpose of act two? How come when I get to act two, I feel really like de-energized as a person, what’s going on there and how does that mirror what the characters are going through?

That’s a real favorite. But like they’re all great. I just love, well-written books about writing. I love the William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade book and Which Lie Did I tell? Juts because it’s fun to hear, and he’s such a great voice. You can kind of learn from all of those.

Crystal Hunt: I’m curious. So did you ever think of going Indy? You went the traditional route, and was there any point in the process where you thought, Oh, should I do this myself? Or was that kind of a straight shot for you?

Sam Wiebe: I have more of a appreciation for indie authors now, because I know what… I think that what I love about that approach is that you actually learn every part of the book publishing process.

I don’t know anything about marketing because I’ve had people market books for me, and some of them have been wonderful and some of them have been terrible, but I don’t have those skills. For me coming from traditional publishing, I have to work on all those things. So I actually look up to, to indie writers a lot.

I think, they get a bad rap and some of it can be very, there’s a lot of sloppy writing out there across the board, but, there’s a lot of indie writers where, like, they hire good editors and they get good covers and they really care. And it’s, it’s about control. And it’s about having … I want this to look this way, so when the reader picks this up, it has this feel and this typeface and you know, I really respect that.

Crystal Hunt: But not tempted yourself, which is I think, useful, information as a writer to know where your skill sets are and where your preferences are and, if that allows the focus, I think you’re already, you said you’re teaching as well as writing so there’s already two jobs on your plates, in combination. So how do you balance those two things?

Sam Wiebe: Just before we leave that I did, I did put out a short story recently through my newsletter where I edited and formatted and did the cover myself. So like I, and I’ve done a lot of research on that.

So I have been studying indie publishing just in the idea that, if this doesn’t work out or if I get a feeling of: Oh, I could do this better, I love that, that thing. So no, it hasn’t attempted me yet, but, I’m very close to it. I don’t know about the balance. Like it’s, it varies by my bank account really.

Crystal Hunt: And do you have find there are different seasons in the year? Is the teaching consistent all year round or do you have chunks of time where it’s more one or more the other?

Sam Wiebe: I do teach, three semesters a year so that’s pretty consistent. There’s a little bit more time off in the summer, and then the fall is where there’s all the literary events. Time tends to get more precious in the fall. But, it really varies project to project when I’m writing a novel, like I need all those days in the morning to just get the first draft and then edit it.

Crystal Hunt: And how long does it take you usually to do a first draft? Is that a consistent kind of process for you or do you have a timeline on those things?

Sam Wiebe: I try to … it just states for months and months, but, once they start working on the first draft, I try to get a thousand words a minimum a day.

Sometimes we’ll take off weekends and a lot of the times I’ll get, more so I budget about three months for the rough draft. And sometimes that is woefully optimistic and it takes five months or six months. But that’s just to get the first draft and then it’s about the same amount of time to edit.

And I like to do three or four passes through it. So it’s about a year until I have something that like I’m happy sharing with people.

Crystal Hunt: Nice. Okay, here’s a question for you. If you were going back to give yourself advice 20 years ago, what advice would you give to yourself to help make this path a little easier?

Time machine: You got to have it in a time machine and off you go,

Sam Wiebe: I think, not worrying so much about, like literary aspirations, and that sort of idea of Oh, if you’re a literary writer, you’re going to be looked on as a, I think a lot of people, especially when they’re starting out have that fear, that, pretension of like, Oh, I’m going to be a great man of letters or a woman of letters and I’m going to be someone who just, everyone looks up to you and it’s it doesn’t work like that. So you just have to make the work itself the thing you love and, not really worry about that stuff. Easier said than done, especially when you’re a pretentious like teenager or, someone in their twenties.

But, I think that, writing something you care about and not worrying about whether or not people are going to lodge you for it is the best thing to do.

Crystal Hunt: And what do you think was the best investment you ever made in building your writing career? Whether that’s a tool or a skill that you learned, or an aptitude that you invested in growing?

Best tool investment

Sam Wiebe: The best thing was just taking the time to write and not giving myself any excuses for it. When I started grad school, I was just slammed for time. And, you’re given these like awful like 600 pages Sir Phillip Sidney books to read in three days and stuff. But, I just, I just was like, okay, I’ve got to get something down. I’ve got to get this book down and it’s going to stink but, I went through it and I revised it and I sent it out and it got rejected and rejected and that’s all good. But that process of finishing it, revising it, sending it out was worth any number of courses or advice.

Cause it’s, it’s like we were talking about with indie publishing, like now, all the processes, where you start and, until you know what it’s like to write an ending, you don’t really know how to write an ending. And the first one you do is really going to stink. So you just, do that and then you’re just like, Ugh, don’t want to do that again. And hopefully get better.

Crystal Hunt: Rejection is something that comes up a lot in the writing world and that is definitely, I think, really challenging for people to deal with when you are pouring your heart and soul into something that you’re so passionate about and then you’re sending it off in the world and getting stumped on a little bit in the feelings.

I’m curious, number one, how long it took between when you started writing and when you had your first book published? How long was that?

Sam Wiebe: I was collecting rejections in like late high school, early college and I had my first book when I was 29. So I don’t know, 15? Some of those like rejection slips, they’re actually slipped, they were paper. Cause I submitted, like I actually mailed it. And then they’re like for magazines that are gone now, like they’ve been gone for 20 years. So yeah, like probably 10 years, but it’s it was like writing a bunch of short stories, getting a couple of acceptances, writing a novel, getting some rejections and writing another novel.

Like it’s just, it takes a long time, but it’s worth it.

Crystal Hunt: Which novel was the first one to get published? Was it like the third one you wrote or the second one or the 10th or …

Sam Wiebe: I mean, there was so much crap that I wrote when I was a teenager. I would call it basically my second book, like the second one that I sat down finished and like really revised to the point of I’m proud to show this to people. The first one got rejected by a bunch of publishers, but one guy was like, Oh, I like this, send me something else.

And that was like, just the sort of spur of Oh, like maybe I can do this. So I wouldn’t say second, but, depending on how you tell it could be like the 50th.

Crystal Hunt: You were maybe a few hundred thousand words into short stories and things by the time you get to the actual novel stage, how do you think starting with short stories and submitting and doing all that stuff, impacted your ability to do the novel stuff?

Sam Wiebe: Oh, it’s a tremendous help. I think short stories are … People always say like short stories are harder. Like a great short story, like a really memorable, like a Shirley Jackson, The Lottery or something like that. That’s so impossible to do. But the, but writing a bad short story is easy because short and you go through all the same steps as a novel.

So you’re writing an ending, you’re writing an act two, you’re revising, you’re sending it out, you’re getting rejections and you’re getting all that stuff on a very small, timeframe so that when you come to the novel, it’s like, Oh, okay, I’ve done this before. I just need to do it bigger and better and with more subplots and stuff.

So yeah, tremendously helpful. And I think short story reading is just a real, it always makes me sad when people are like, Oh, I don’t read or write short stories because it’s, some of the best writers are working in the short story, especially like literary writers and, there’s some great literary magazines and it’s also just, it’s a great craft, it’s an Ansel prophet out, but it’s super helpful.

Crystal Hunt: I think you had a very interesting point when you said: that until you’ve written an ending, you don’t know how to write an ending and until you’ve written a whole story arc, you don’t know what that experience is like. And writing shorter allows you to practice the whole process from start to finish in a compact piece.

So it’s not three years invested in writing your first novel, and then you’re ready to learn how all the pieces can really fit together because you’ve done each one. So that’s an interesting opportunity for people to get some practice, not to discount the options of short. So if we bring it back around to crime for a minute, I am curious of all the books that you’ve read and all the ones that you’ve loved and the ones you’ve taught about and written do you have any sort of, let’s say your top three standout examples of crime fiction if people were going to, want to read some very excellent examples of the genre, if they’re just getting started.

Great examples of the crime genre

Sam Wiebe: Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s, it’s such a tough one because. I mean my enthusiasms has changed, but, it’s a very hack answer, but I love Raymond Chandler. I think that, his novels and just his prose are so good. He’s the first writer, I think, in prime fiction where you could, you could point to and be like that is as good a paragraph as you’re going to find anywhere else.

And I love his book so much that I just decided to get rid of my collected works and get another set just because I liked the covers on this other set better. So I would say his works, any of his Phillip Marla novels, Agatha Christie, I think is great. If you’re looking for, someone who represents the best of the English detective series of, like clues where you’re matching what’s with the detective. I think … And Then There Were None. And, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death in the Nile are all so great. And, a writer that I love, he doesn’t quite get as much recognition as, Christie is, Josephine Tey who wrote a great series. She wrote a book called Daughter of Time, which is, I think like the most original crime novel ever, where the main character breaks his leg and is bed bound and is looking at a painting on the wall of the, Richard the Third and he starts looking back on the Richard, the third’s murder of the princess in the tower and how history is shaped by the winners and it becomes this very weird historical prime novel. I just blew me away. Loved that book.

Crystal Hunt: Nice. That sounds very interesting. I will have to go and get my hands on that. I’ve not read that one before. Okay. So one last question. I think as writers, we often come from a place of readers and it’s really quite cool when you cross that divide onto the other side and become a writer and you get to meet all of these interesting other writers.

And so I’m curious, do you have a standout moment where you met somebody who was on your bookshelf?

Sam Wiebe: Yeah, I met, I met Ian Rankin, the Scottish author of the Rebif series. I met him. I’ve met him a couple of times. I’ve met him at the Vancouver Writers Festival one year. And at the end of the talk people line up to ask questions and I actually asked a question and then later in the hall, he, he was very nice.

He’s actually one of those famous people where you’re like, you’re too nice. You didn’t have to be that nice to me. I would’ve liked you if you were standoffish, but like super personable. And, he just said: ‘Remember Sam, we’ve all been where you are’. No at that aspiring stage, I thought that was like very classy, advice and, yeah, respect him a lot.

Crystal Hunt: Nice. Excellent. That has come to the end of our time together. It flies by so very quickly. The tendency is always to make two hour long podcast, but we all have books to write so there are things to get back to. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking time out of your writing and teaching hours to come and talk to our listeners and watchers if they’re out there on YouTube, if you aren’t on YouTube, we should go check it out because Sam has an Epic display of books in the back ground of, his zoom window here. And it gives you a nice peak into the writing cave, which is always fun. So thank you so much for coming and being part of our Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast.

And we look forward to checking out your next books, where should we send people to go and find more information about you or to connect online?

Sam Wiebe: The latest book is called Never Going Back. If you go to Samwiebe.com, you can sign up for my newsletter and there is a free, ebook called Hollywood North, which is a private eye story set in the, the COVID era.

Please check that out.

Crystal Hunt: All right. Awesome. Thank you very much. We will, of course, put the link in the show notes for Sam’s website so that you can go and get your hands on that story. I am super curious too. I’ve not read anything yet that is set in the time of COVID. So I’m going to go and get myself on that list and get a copy so I can check that out. That sounds like an adventure. So thank you so much. And we will see you soon.

Sam Wiebe: Thanks so much, Crystal.

Post interview discussion

Michele Amitrani: So we’re back. There were so many things that Sam said, in the interviewed that made me think of my own writing journey. There are a couple, I just want to share those with you and, Crystal, it really made me pause and, at the beginning of the conversation that Sam had with Crystal, at some point he was hinting at the fact that he really wanted to write, a literary novel, something that people would have said, really, I wish I had written this. He used even better words can he used the concept of the passion of writing to trying to extrapolate what he wanted to say and wanted to do. The passion to write drove him to really write what he wanted. And, he said that at the beginning, he was set up to write a literary novel, and then 10 pages in there will be a body.

And so he was like, I guess what I want to ride it’s crime fiction. And I think like that it made the conversation even more interesting and really leveled it up because when he said, I really guess I want to write crime fiction it’s also, if you turn the head you will see his bookshelf, you will see like most of these books are crime fiction.

Maybe mystery, thrillers. So this is one of the things that I’ve learned from what he said, that it was so meaningful. It’s going to be easier as a writer if you write in an area of passion. So these were basically his words and I completely subscribed to them. As you know Crystal in my 12 by 20 challenge, I’ve been trying on writing different things: modern fantasy, kind of urbanish fantasy, science fiction, fairytale and mythological fantasy.

I’ve been trying to write these kind of things. And then while I was keeping writing I was finding myself on being interested in writing more mythological fantasy. And so I stuck with that basically. And now I have four of those stories out. Four out of nine stories are of that journal. So that’s telling me something.

And I really was very happy that Sam was relating the example of him trying to write a book, the literary one, and then just resulting in something completely different with that body in the first 10 pages and really made me laugh, but also made me pause. That’s for me, the most important thing, make the work itself the thing you love.

And don’t worry about being famous or to write the great American novel, really stick with something that you like, because it’s the thing that you are more sure you’re going to repeat in the longer period. So not five days from now, but five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now.

And I’m using 15 because that’s another number that Sam used. He said if I’m thinking from when I started writing books, my late teenage years until when I was published, that’s 15 years that took me. So I didn’t want to, I really want to know your opinion on that. How do you think, writers that are listening to us Crystal can apply this, that I think it’s a very beautiful teaching from Sam.

Make the work itself the thing you love. What do you think?

Crystal Hunt: That’s definitely something that comes up in the habits book as well is if you have something that is inherently rewarding, when you do it is much easier to form a habit of doing it more often. And so I think when we think about our writing career or writing books, we often think in terms of a single project and not necessarily over time, but in order to actually get enough books written to establish a full-time income and make a career of it to make an actual business of it you’re gonna eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff for years. And if you are super focused and entirely dedicated in your… comfortable enough with your funds, that you’re able to actually focus on your writing right away, you might get away with a three to five year career build, and if you’re doing it part-time on the side of your desk and your free time and your evenings and your weekends, you might be looking at 10 to 15 years before you make that transition, because it takes a long time to build the skills and the catalog and the knowledge to be able to actually do this stuff.

If it’s not something that you love to do, you’re not going to make it for a really long time at that. And if you do, you might be able to force yourself to do it, but you’re not maybe gonna love it. And so that is tricky. I think I’ve always had this rule for myself that if I was miserable more than 20% of the time, if I was waking up in the morning and I didn’t want to go to work more than two days out of 10, then I had to find myself a different job.

And it’s not different if you’re a writer and it’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be hard. But it should be something that you like the challenge of, and that you at least enjoy most of what you’re doing or the environment you’re doing it in, or the people that you’re working with.

All of those things can go a long ways to changing it. And I can totally relate to what Sam said about the, you start writing something and then there’s a body. For me, it’s just start writing something and suddenly there’s two people falling in love. Even when the book starts with a body, I always have a happy ending.

So I totally get that. But I think, it’s great to do an experiment like you’re doing this year, Michele, where you just write a whole bunch of stories and you see what happens, what comes out when you just let yourself write a whole bunch of things and then look for the similar threads in those things, and then find a way to tie those together and then that is your unique sort of approach to things.

So I think there’s a lot of value in just recognizing what it is you love and letting that spill out, because you’re also going to connect with the people who love those books, because they’re you, they’re just on the other side of the screen.

So that makes all your marketing efforts much more easy as well. So all of that is fantastic.

Michele Amitrani: Yeah. And since we hinted to the subject of short stories, there’s also a part of the conversation you had with him that was like, you were talking about short stories and the fact that they are hard to do write, and Sam says that sometimes are even harder than books, like novels. But one of the beautiful things is that writing a bad short story is easier than a bad novel because it’s short. And, so you can go through all the steps, same steps as a novel: So you start it, you finish it, you revise it and you ship it, and then you’re starting getting rejection, so same process, in a much shorter timeframe.

And that’s, for me, it’s in a way liberating. It’s like something that frees me. That actually gives me something to think about because if I can fail faster and learn faster from my failure, I’ll definitely take it.

I’m not that the scared of failing because that’s part of the process we spoke about that a lot of times in the podcast and I do believe that’s important for you to understand that’s a stepping stone, actually a failure, and what Sam was hinting at was important.

If you give yourself permission to write shorter and you understand how a story works. Of course the short story is going to be different from a novel because probably you’re going to have one or two main characters, probably one or two locations. It depends on what kind of short story you’re writing, but you definitely learn all of that process of starting, finishing it, revising it, ship it out in the world. I don’t know if you’re a legacy publishing, so you’re sending it to an agent or if you are just self publishing it and then getting rejection either in the form of the agents saying: no, I’m not interested or bad Amazon reviews, those are different kind of form of rejection, but still they are rejection.

And so writing shorter allows you to experience the whole process from start to finish and it’s a compact piece. You can write a short story in less than a week, even if you’re writing a novella or a novelette, you can write it in less than a month. So I would take that, compared to the pain of trying and finishing a book or a novel and taking maybe one year or one year and a half for five years.

So there is for me a misconception for writing short. This is something that I’ve been learning since I started my challenge. Now I am eight and a half basically story in my challenge. And it is really that important. And Sam is not the first person that I’m hearing the same, suggestion: write short before you write longer.

Neil Gaiman is another person that is suggesting doing that in one of the masterclass. It’s consistent. It’s something that it’s repeating itself from different voices, from different people that are successful in different genres. So one of my rule is that if I hear the same suggestion from three to four different sources, I start paying attention.

And this is really something that made me pause and think. Writing shorts might not make your career as a writer, but it can definitely be a stepping-stone on understanding what kind of writer you are. And, I would love to hear your opinion on this because I know Crystal you too write short on the shorter side, but you’ve been able to generate visibility and income from this kind, of let’s call it strategy, if you will.

What do you think of this approach? Writing short is actually making yourself acquaintance to the whole process of writing?

Crystal Hunt: That was originally why I started with shorter stories, I was having trouble finishing the longer ones and I had, been writing for almost 20 years and just finding I couldn’t get to the end of a full length novel, which was very frustrating and also I got really good at beginnings, but I couldn’t push past the middle part and get good at the endings as well.

For me it was really just an opportunity I wanted to practice the whole process from start to finish multiple times and I didn’t realize there was actually a market for that shorter fiction, but as an indie publisher, there are sections of the Kindle store specifically geared at short reads, and I had no idea that you could do that. And so I have found actually a way to monetize those learning pieces. And they’re also, as you’re starting out, they’re faster to publish, they are quicker to get edited, they are cheaper to get edited, they’re quicker and cheaper to turn into audio books. So I actually used my short stuff as a way to learn all the different parts of the publishing industry and really perfect my process in a shorter period of time.

So I actually was able to write and release, eight novellas and short stories in about an eight month period. And so that was me really testing out what happened when you rapid release and then looking at the momentum I could build. And I found I got about 6,000 mailing list subscribers and I was able to make about 20 grand off of a series of shorter stories that normally wouldn’t have maybe even had a market.

So I think there’s some room to play in there and it can be a way to generate enough products that then you have things to give away to get people on your mailing list and you can turn all those early efforts into other things when you have longer pieces or if you have longer pieces, you can box set them, you can do all kinds of cool stuff.

So I’m definitely a big fan of writing short, and I think it’s a great way to jumpstart your skills and also to get yourself established in the market and do some testing. If you’re not sure who your audience is going to be, if you can fire out a bunch of shorter pieces and see which ones do people love? Which are the ones that people are asking for more? Which ones did you love writing? And then find the happy ground in the middle of those things, where your audience is happy and you’re still having fun writing them and you’ve built up a consistent pattern of writing and releasing, and it’s much easier to then make that leap into writing as a career when it’s something that you’ve really ironed out all the bugs already.

Michele Amitrani: Yeah and one very last thing that I thought it was very interesting, Sam is teaching also on a semester basis, always teaching consistently. And there was one thing that he said, that he noticed this the most, when writers asking questions is that most of them, they have very interesting life experiences, but the problem is that they are not able to translate them into dramatic terms.

This is one of the most important things that I think he said in the whole interview. And I think the answer is because that’s craft and that takes time to master. It doesn’t matter if you are very smart, it’s like really something that you have to spend time into understanding the craft of writing which is so much different from anything else.

And I will say even very smart, intelligent people, you can’t really find your way out of it if not just spending hours, it’s really something that you have to build…. It’s like a muscle really. You can be super smart and stuff, but you have to go through the same process that people went through in order to build up really a craft and making sure that experience really translates into believable, relatable, dramatic terms and I think this is one of the things that I’m struggling the most, because really I’ve been running consistently in English, my second language for a couple of years now, it is hard to convey what’s inside here, my mind in my head. And I think it’s important for you to understand, as Sam said, that even people and author that are very successful, they have been exactly in the same spot that you are at now, in this very moment. So I think it’s important for us Crystal to underline this. This it’s a question of it’s like a marathon is not a sprint. I know we said this more than once, but I think this interview with Sam was another occasion to reiterate that important concept that you have to put in the writing time.

What do you think about that?

Crystal Hunt: Yes, absolutely. There is no shortcut except to do it. That is the only shortcut you can cut some time off of things by not procrastinating and putting your butt in the chair and doing the hard work for sure. Now we are going to dig into the curious jar and find ourselves a question for today.

If you could learn to speak one language overnight, what language would it be?

Because we are gluttons for punishment and if you have a question you want to add to the jar, you can email it to ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com and we will put it on a coloured paper and add it into the mix so, when should I stop?

Michele Amitrani: Stop now.

Crystal Hunt: Orange today. Okay. Let’s see here. Ooh. Okay. If you could learn to speak one language overnight, what language would it be?

Michele Amitrani: I think I have the answer. It’s ASL and I think it’s because … Okay, long story short. I took a 10 weeks long ASL class for very basic kind of stuff. And I really loved it. But I wasn’t able to really go over the point of just spelling my name and saying: this is my name. I’m okay. You’re okay. Very basic stuff.

What I really found interesting of this language, that much that I tried to write a story about it, of course it’s a mythological story, but there was the concept of, language based on signs that you really have to pay attention to the face of the person to understand when something is stressed, for example, because if you’re doing something like, If you’re not on YouTube, you’re not going to see this, but if I do this, it means hot, but if I do that means very hot. And I know you can’t see me if you’re not on YouTube but what I’m trying to say is that you have to pay really attention. You have to be focused on the person that is on the other side.

And this is something that I’ve never seen in any other language. And I can speaking Italian, in English more or less, I can speak you can see that, Spanish a bit, I know just enough Japanese to be dangerous at times, but really sign language was like… it was like stepping on an alien planet and learning a completely different skill set and it’s nowhere close to anywhere I would when I was trying and learning all these languages. I would say ASL sign language would be my choice and that’s the reason why. What about you Crystal?

Crystal Hunt: Interestingly, that is also my first choice. I think I’ve always wanted to learn more ASL and only a small amount. Again, I communicated with kids that I worked with and also with friends growing up in my school, but I never really got what I would consider a fully fluent version. And actually when I was young, I got really bad ear infections that I lost my hearing over a period of about a year and, my mom actually didn’t notice because she never speaks to people unless she’s facing them and I had learned to lip read as I was losing my hearing. And I remember, I just, I remember being not able to hear things and the way that felt really isolating and I feel strongly that I would, AB had pretty big risk of losing my hearing again in the future so that’s something that I think personally is relevant, that it just makes sense to learn that, but also, just wanting to be able to make poetry with your hands.

I think it’s really interesting to see language expressed outside our body and outside our mouths in a visual way is really interesting.

So I would love that and to be able to connect with other people as well. The list of languages I want to learn is very long. I clearly need to take a little more action in these directions. But I would love to be better at Spanish. I would love to learn Japanese, Chinese, Italian, German, really anything that has a really different language route, I think is fascinating because you learn a lot about people’s culture when it comes to their language.

And Irish would be another one that I would like, because that is, I learned bits and pieces from the kids that I lived with in Ireland, because they were going to school in Irish classes and they would come home and teach me some words. And I, to read signs and things when I lived there, but it was, definitely a really interesting, beautiful language. I think isn’t being preserved either. So there’s lots, but, definitely ASL still comes out of the top for me.

Michele Amitrani: And please remember for show notes, links to resources that we mentioned, and for coupons and discounts on the tools we love please visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com and join our mailing list.

Also, if you’re listening to this podcast on any of the different platforms this podcast is, please make sure to review it, let us know what you think of it, we’re again, relatively new podcast wise and we will love to hear what you think of us. Thank you very much.

Crystal Hunt: And be sure to subscribe wherever you’re listening to the podcast.

So you don’t miss out on our next episode because we are going to be digging into virtual conferences. So now that everything is online and looking like it’s going to stay that way for a while, we are going to help you try to get the most out of any online conference experience you have. So we’re going to talk about the good, the bad, and the tips, tricks and hacks we’ve developed over the last few months as we’ve been attending and presenting at some ourselves. So until next week, happy writing and we’ll see you soon!

Michele Amitrani: Bye bye!