Cold Caller HQ is closed for Memorial Day, but we thought this might be a good time to highlight some of our author interviews from the last couple of months. Whether you’re a new subscriber or you’ve been here a while, here’s your chance to catch up on some great conversations.
I’m also going to sneak in something new here: If you’re a writer or editor with a project you’d like to talk about, send us an email with the subject line “INTERVIEW QUERY” and a short pitch. We’d love to hear from you.
And, as always, thank you for calling.
David Bruns, author and founder of the Thriller & Mystery Author Directory
“My sincere hope is that writers on Substack are at the leading edge of the Next Big Thing for book promotion, discoverability, and genuine audience building. If I can move the needle in the direction of goodness toward that goal, sign me up.”
Anthony Neil Smith, Murderapolis
“I knew from a really young age that I loved books and stories and wanted to write them myself. I'm talking second grade, like seven years old. It started with the school library book fair, where I bought my first books - still remember that day - to when I discovered the mystery novels on the library shelves. Over the years since, I faded in and out of a lot of other interests - comic books, guitar, songwriting, but I always came back to books and writing.”
Nick Kolakowski, Where the Bones Lie
“I cringe when I flip through early notebooks and read the dialogue I thought was cutting and hardcore when I was 20. I switched from coming up with fictional tough-dude dialogue to recording interesting and funny things I heard on the street, in airports, in bars, and then applying those words and rhythm to whatever I was writing in the fictional realm.”
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Pool Fishing
“Talking to writers has shown me that there are all sorts of ways to write and progress in your craft. Sometimes we get caught up in the myth that there’s only one way: You must write every day! or Outline! Plot! Know where you’re going! or any number of myths. We’ve got to find what works for us. There may be more efficient ways out there but what works for you?”
Benjamin Bradley, What He Left Behind
“Small towns are important too because they provide an almost closed-door setting for a mystery. What I've seen firsthand is that these types of places can often start to feel closed off from the world, so when something or somebody crosses their boundaries, it can really throw off their equilibrium. That's just the perfect catalyst for a good mystery novel.”
M.E. Proctor, Bop City Swing
“Ten years ago, I decided to go all in and wrestle this writing thing to the ground. Crime fiction is by far my favorite reading genre, always has been. I had just completed the science fiction series and I wanted to sink my teeth in realistic and contemporary fiction. Why not write what I so loved to read?”
Andrew Scott, Naked Summer
“Professors can have a powerful influence, and I eventually had to consciously shake off the influence mine had on me. The publishing and academic worlds my professors had known were eroding even while I was their student, and their advice about how to make one’s way through the world as a writer, provided with good intentions outside of the classroom (never inside), was almost always wrong once those sands started shifting. How writers mesh with academia has changed a lot over the decades. It’s not the world my professors had known in the 80s and 90s.”