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The Crime Cafe

The Crime Cafe

著者： Debbi Mack
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Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.© 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack アート 文学史・文学批評 社会科学
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  • Interview with M.M. DeLuca – S. 12, Ep. 5

    Interview with M.M. DeLuca – S. 12, Ep. 5
    2026/08/09
    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer and screenwriter M.M. DeLuca. Among other things, we discussed what it was like for her to study with a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. For a copy of the transcript, click here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everybody. Today my guest is the author of five critically acclaimed suspense novels, including her latest novel, The Divorce Party. Originally from Durham City, England, after studying at the University of London Goldsmiths College, she moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where she worked as an English literature teacher, then as a freelance writer. (01:20): It’s my great pleasure to have with me Marjorie DeLuca, who writes under the name MM DeLuca. Hey Marjorie, how are you doing today? Let me see if I can get you in view. There you go. Awesome. Marjorie (01:35): It’s great to be here. Lovely to talk to you. Debbi (01:38): Well, I’m very pleased to have you on. It says, oh, how are things in Manitoba, anyway? How are things in Winnipeg? Marjorie (01:48): Hot and humid. Debbi (01:50): Hot and humid. Marjorie (01:51): Hot, humid, windy with periods of rain. Debbi (01:54): Oh my, that sounds like us. Marjorie (01:57): It’s greener. Greener than usual. Debbi (02:00): Well, there you go. There’s that. Marjorie (02:01): Yeah. Yeah. Debbi (02:03): Let’s see. Now in your bio, it says that you studied advanced creative writing with Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Carol Shields. What was it like to study such a subject with a Pulitzer Prize winner? Marjorie (02:17): It was like meeting a rock star. It really was. We were her final class before she retired, and we were all sitting there that day in awe because she just won the Pulitzer Prize. We were sitting there just waiting for her to come in, and she slipped through the door. She was this very petite, quiet lady, and she was just amazing. She had a charisma about her, and she wasn’t just your teacher. She was a friend, a mentor, and she loved to meet with us outside of class and we’d all go for lunches and she’d say, “Tell me the gossip. Come on.” And she was just a wonderful teacher. And actually, a lot of the things that we did in class, I used as an English teacher, but she had a profound influence on my career. It was an amazing one year that we spent with her. (03:22): And after that, she moved away to the coast, to BC, and sadly passed away some years after that. But yeah, it was a fabulous experience. Debbi (03:36): Was this during, I assume these are graduate studies? Marjorie (03:43): Yes, it was, but you had to send in a piece of work or several pieces, and she selected the participants. So it was a one-year, just once a week course. Yeah. Debbi (04:00): Sounds very much like a fellowship or something like that. Marjorie (04:04): Yeah. Well, she was a professor at the University of Manitoba for many years. And when she won the Pulitzer Prize, I think she was the only female professor at the time. Debbi (04:15): Oh my goodness. Marjorie (04:16): The other male colleagues were a bit miffed, I think. Debbi (04:20): Oh, dear. Marjorie (04:22): She won the prize. But anyway, no, maybe that’s not fair, but she had been there quite a while as a teacher, a professor. Debbi (04:34): Well, that’s just extraordinary that you had that opportunity. That’s fabulous. Marjorie (04:38): Yes. Debbi (04:41): What genre would you say your writing falls into? Marjorie (04:45): I’m all over the place, really. I get bored in one genre. I started off in sci-fi, young adult sci-fi when I was teaching grades 10 to 12. And around that time, The Hunger Games came out and the kids just loved it, even reluctant readers. So as I was reading them, I thought, “I could write something like this.” And so that’s when I really started getting serious about putting something together. (05:18):And I wrote a trilogy called The Forevers. Here’s the cover of it. I couldn’t find a publisher, so I self-published the trilogy and actually did pretty well. And later on, I adapted it into a series, and I actually got shortlisted for a Netflix call for submissions with my pilot and pitch, but they didn’t pick it up, but I’m still hoping that someone will. So I started off with that. Then you can see I’m all over the place. (05:57): Then I went into historical fiction and wrote this family saga called The Pittman’s Daughter. And that’s based on my mother’s reminiscences as growing up in a culinary town in Durham, near Durham in the northeast of England. She was a Pittman’s daughter, a coal miner’s daughter. I couldn’t get that published by a publisher, so I self-published it. And then I really love historical fiction. The first book I got published was this, The Savage Instinct, which is fact meets fiction set against the trial of real life serial poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton. So that’s when I started getting into suspense. I wrote another suspense book called Lilah, and then began a string of ...
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  • Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4

    Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4
    2026/07/26
    This week’s guest is William Stuart, executive producer and director of the popular scripted podcast American Afterlife. Imagine, using a scripted podcast as a proof of concept. Because we talk about that here Download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest is a veteran entertainment executive with extensive industry experience. As president and CEO of Aurora Productions, he oversees its slate of film, television, and podcast projects. He’s also executive producer and director of American Afterlife, a highly successful scripted podcast adapted from the best-selling YA trilogy. (01:23): It’s my great pleasure to introduce my guest, William Stuart. Hi William, how are you doing today? William (01:29): Very good. How are you? Glad to be here. Debbi (01:32): Very happy to have you on. I’m very interested in your podcast. I’m interested in scripted podcast in general, but what’s the logline for your show? William (01:43): Yeah, I don’t know that we fall quite in the crime drama, but we’re going to get there. Debbi (01:48): Okay. William (01:51): The idea is based on fact, but then becomes fiction. So Pedro Hoffmeister, who lives up in Eugene, Oregon, has been writing about the big earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, and everyone up there is sort of bracing for it. And as a writer like yourself, he sort of said, “How do I fictionalize this and what would happen if?” And he wrote his novel, his book based on the fact that the earthquake happens. And one girl, a 15-year-old girl decides she doesn’t want to get rescued by the National Guard and be skirted away, but she decides she has to look for her mother. And as you can imagine in this post-apocalyptic world where authority is gone, electricity’s out, dams have broken, that it’s a new world. In terms of visually, we’ve been talking about The Last of Us or Station Eleven, this sort of post-apocalyptic world where many of the rules are thrown out and you just have to survive. (03:15): And that’s what our heroine Cielo has to do or tried to do. Debbi (03:21): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very interesting concept, frightening concept. William (03:26): Yes. Debbi (03:27): Also very suspenseful. I think it falls pretty well into a thriller genre in any event. William (03:37): Well, there’s two aspects to it. One, it’s certainly a thriller and even a bit of a psychological thriller with her, a young girl in this new world. But then it develops into a crime series. There’s been a number of murders and we don’t know who’s responsible. And at first she’s even blamed for them, but then we find out it wasn’t completely her doing, but she was involved. Debbi (04:10): Interesting. How does adapting something like that into a podcast differ from adapting for film and television other than the need for sound versus visuals? William (04:25): Yeah, it’s a very good question. Something that was a challenge for us, but we knew from the beginning this really had to feel like a movie. I hate to say that, or a TV series, as if you closed your eyes and were watching it. Debbi (04:42): Exactly. William (04:44): So the performances, and especially that of Scarlett Estevez, our lead, and Josh Mesnik and Ted Owens had to be spot on. And then with the soundscape that we designed, that brought the audience into it. So you can imagine Scarlett, who’s done a lot of voiceover and animation, was very comfortable with it because she’s usually just reading from a script and not acting with other people. But there is the advantage that usually they will show you the picture and the character you’re voicing, and you’ll look to that. In our podcast, I had to ask her to create a whole new persona. There was no Scarlett, no Cielo in real life. So Scarlett went away with the scripts and came back with what she thought the character should be and should sound like. And she was really great and I think got it 99%. And the other 1% or what have you, we worked on in the room, in the studio. Debbi (06:02): Wow. It sounds like you really had a collaborative process going with the actor, that actor at least in particular, and others, I assume? William (06:10): Yeah, all of them. Debbi (06:12): All of them. William (06:12): Yeah. It was an interesting process because of scheduling and such. In the beginning, they were all in the studio with us separately, and they were doing their own pieces. And I had heard obviously Scarlett’s piece, so then I could tell Josh what he was reacting to. And then we could tell Ted Evans where he had to be. And then eventually we thought it would be really cool to get all three of them in the room, which we did. And that was amazing. I mean, we went back and fixed some stuff. I was able to put Scarlett sitting opposite Josh, which is what they’re doing if you know the podcast. It’s an interrogation in that sense. So now they’re sitting opposite each other and we got even better performances, ...
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  • Interview with Caleb Husmann – S. 12, Ep. 3

    Interview with Caleb Husmann – S. 12, Ep. 3
    2026/07/19
    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is poli-sci professor and crime writer Caleb McGee Husmann. We talk a little about his academic specialty–political science–and mostly about writing and crime fiction! For a copy of the transcript, click here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of several novels, including Exteriors and Interiors, Feral Chickens: A Hawaiian Comedy, and Owen O’Shea: Stay-At-Home Dad, Wannabe Detective. I love that title. Originally from Minnesota. He now lives in North Carolina with his wife Beth and their daughter, Jo. (01:18): It’s my pleasure to have with me today, C. McGee. He writes as C. McGee, but his name is Caleb Husmann . Hi, Caleb. How are you doing today? Caleb (01:28): I’m doing well, Debbi. How are you doing? Debbi (01:30): Just fine, thanks. So according to your bio, you are both professors in the department of two at a small university. Now, is it the subject that is so arcane that only two people are doing it or is the university so small that it can only afford two people in that department? Caleb (01:51): Option B. Option Be. We only got a thousand students. So it’s a small school in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. So William Peace University. So we’re it, the Department of Two. My wife is my boss, so she’s my boss at work and at home, all the time. Debbi (02:10): I see. I see. And what subject do you teach? Caleb (02:14): We’re political scientists. So we are the entire department. We do a little bit with the criminal justice department as well and then pre-law, but political science is the main thing. Debbi (02:25): Well, it’s an interesting area to be in right now, I guess. Caleb (02:28): There’s always world events happening. That is one, I overall view it as a positive about being a political science professor is even when you’re teaching the same topics, it’s still new because you tie in current events that are happening now. And so I’m whatever almost 15 years into being a professor. I honestly think if I was teaching a subject that didn’t refresh every semester, I would kind of be exhausted of it, but I love it because sure, I’m teaching federalism again, but this time it’s California’s trying to go independent instead of Texas trying to go independent from four years earlier. It’s always something new, which is great. Debbi (03:09): Exactly. Yeah, that’s true. When did you start writing fiction? Caleb (03:16): Graduate school. So it’s funny I say that because in graduate school you’re already writing a ton. You’re writing for class and you’re writing your dissertation and all that sort of stuff. But actually it was during the summer I was interning in DC and usually I was working on the Hill for my member of the house that I worked for, but on my days off, I started to write. I guess I started writing a little bit short stories and stuff before that, but that was the first time I started to write a novel. I don’t know. I guess I was looking for, I played a lot of soccer growing up. I played soccer in college, had a couple trials with some pro teams, and then it didn’t work out. And then I was like, “Well, crap, I got to do something else.” And then I ended up going to grad school and figured out I still needed something that I could really strive for that I wasn’t sure I was going to succeed at. (04:14): I think that was part of the draw of soccer. I love playing soccer, but there was no guarantee that you were going to make it, and so you were striving for something that was kind of out of reach. And with writing novels, I mean, it’s somewhat the same as it’s a tall order and finishing it and getting it out there. And then can you get it published and that whole ordeal? It’s a monumental task, but I find those sorts of challenges draw me in for some reason. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sadist, who knows? Debbi (04:45): I think most writers have a tendency to think of themselves as masochists. We are always seeking ways to challenge ourselves and do better. Caleb (04:56): Yes. Masochist. There you go. That’s the word. Debbi (04:59): Yeah. We are sadistic to ourselves. Caleb (05:01): Yes, there you go. There you go. Thank you. Debbi (05:04): Split personality. Caleb (05:05): Better vocabulary. Debbi (05:07): We have split personalities. We have a sadistic side that picks on our masochistic side. Caleb (05:12): That sounds right. Debbi (05:14): Let’s see. Now your writing style seems very humorous. I like that about it. I love the tone of the O’Shea story. Caleb (05:27): I think it goes along with my personality. I think all of my writing is humorous. Owen O’Shea is definitely the novel that’s, the main character is the most me. The other novels, I definitely had to think through, okay, what would this character be thinking at this time? With Owen O’Shea, I was basically like, all right, what would I do? So it was the easiest to capture that voice ...
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