#24 - Kathy Reichs' Perspective on the Book Publishing Business

This podcast includes the full and unabridged audio feed of the Kobo in Conversation interview with Kathy Reichs conducted by Bob Ramsay and hosted by Kobo's Senior Director of Communications Tracy Nesdoly.

The interview covers the following:

• The “Big Bang Break” that happens in an investigation – that one moment when realization explodes and the search hurdles forward on the right trajectory.
• The new YA writing she is doing in collaboration with her son
• How, even though she has sold millions of copies of her novels around the world, has a television series based on her popular recurring character Temperance Brennan, she is still on tour and treats every new book with the same enthusiasm as her first book
• Kathy’s perspective on the book publishing business and the promotion and sale of books in the next five years, with respect to the fact that recent UK stats of Kathy’s books show print sales up 30% and the electronic sales are up 68%
• The importance of a presence on social media and the fact that Kathy does all her own Twitter
• The difference between the book “Tempe” and the TV “Tempe” – and how on the TV show Teperance Brennan is a writer who writes a series about a fictional anthropologist named Kathy Reichs (a little tongue-in-cheek inside joke for her readers)
• The electronic-only “Viral” series of stories that feature the Tempe’s great niece (Tory Brennan) and is about kids using science to solve cold cases.
• How Bones Never Lie is Kathy’s second book about a female serial killer.
• Behind the scenes on the inspiration for Kathy’s novel Monday Mourning, based on Kathy’s real-life experience involving the eerie discovery of bones in a cellar.
• The terrible occupational hazard that comes with cases in which the victims are truly innocent.
• The forensic work that Kathy has done in places such as Iraq, the World Trade Centre and an interesting trip in which Kathy and a group of other authors took a Black Hawk helicopter to thank front-line troups in Afghanistan.
• What Kathy’s next book is going to be about and how it is drawn from intrigue and mystery from the Carolina Mountains.
• How and when storytelling came into this scientist’s life, including “The Mystery in the Old House” a hand-written “novel” Kathy had written when she was 9 years old.
• How a forensic examiner has to learn how to be objective and separate themselves from the personal in order to properly investigate and properly represent the victim.
• Thoughts about the “Holy Grail” of forensic mysteries.
• How Kathy writes “good old fashioned” murder mysteries, but where the key element in solving the mystery is science.

KWL Director Mark Lefebvre talks a bit about the concept of “write what you know” based on Kathy’s experience, the experience of author Melissa Yi and for writers who don't have first hand knowledge.  The key, of course, is research.  Mark references a great article by KWL’s Shayna Krishnasamy called “I’d Rather Not Be Talking to You but I’m Writing This Book: How a Shy Writer Tackles Research” in which she outlines research options for writers and Mark also draws from his own personal experience doing research for non-fiction (Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores & Libraries) as well as fiction.

LINKS:

Kathy Reichs website

Bob Ramsay website

Kathy's books at Kobo