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​This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, Death at Sea, Old Case Files and Personnel Records. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode 35 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. I'd like to thank Gold Shield patron Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com and Coffee Club patrons Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian, Rebecca Jackson, Daniel Miller, and Natalie Maran. Your support keeps the lights on in the bureau.

Please support all of these amazing authors by visiting their author websites and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/35. And I keep telling you if you have your own author business, please consider joining Patreon. It is free for you. It allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro payments just like these patrons are doing for me. So give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, just visit writersdetective.com/patreon and that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

​Can you believe it is already the end of March? Man, the year is flying by. I'm going to be sending out the March All Points Bulletin, the APB email on March 31st. Now, if you aren't on the APB mailing list yet, you're welcome to join right now. So if you aren't aware, the APB is my curated list of links to resources on the internet that I think you'll benefit from knowing about. And I'm not talking about like a bunch of affiliate links or books to buy or courses or anything like that. These are things like real procedural manuals or white papers that are going to help in your writing research or police discussion forums that may give you some insight into what a potential character of yours might be thinking.

So many of these links are actually ones that I find doing my day job, actually working in law enforcement, and so I squirrel them away all month along and then at the end of the month, I send them out to you guys if I think it's something that will tie into what you're trying to write about. So if you'd like to get those kind of things in your inbox on the last day of each month, you can go to writersdetective.com/mailing list to sign up. When you do sign up, be sure to check your inbox right away for a confirmation email. And once you confirm your sign up, you're going to receive the January 2019 and February 2019 APBs right away. That way, you get to see exactly what you've signed up for. And if it isn't for you, you can unsubscribe by clicking at the bottom of the email. I promise if you unsubscribe, it won't hurt my feelings too badly. So again, the link is writersdetective.com/mailing list.

Also today, I was one of the lucky I think 850-ish people to secure a ticket to this year's 20Books Vegas Conference, which will be held in November. And I saw in the conference listing in the description that they're planning to have a legal police procedural panel as one of the events during the conference so I am looking forward to checking that out. My favorite Cops and Writers sergeant, Patrick O'Donnell will be there for sure so I'm looking forward to catching up with him. And be sure to like Patrick's new Facebook page. You can find it at facebook.com/copsandwriters. He's another great resource for you guys. So facebook.com/copsandwriters for Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell's page. And I know he's got a book coming out soon. So once that's out, I'll be sure to have him on the podcast as well.

Anyway, if you are attending 20Books Vegas, let me know. We might put together some sort of meet up during the conference and I'd love to get a chance to meet you in person 'cause this podcasting thing is pretty one way kind of a communication form, kind of like writing most of the time. So let's change that. I want to hang out in Vegas if you're going to the conference. So let me know what you think of the meet up idea and send me a question while you're at it. Just drop me a line by going to writersdetective.com/podcast. All right, now let's get on to this week's questions.

So my friend, Chris Niles at chrisnilesbooks.com submitted this week's first question. She writes "If a person dies at sea in international waters, what's supposed to happen? How much flexibility is there in making things more difficult or easier for my main characters? Does it matter if there's a body or if the body is gone, say eaten by a shark?"

What a whopper of a question, Christine. So there are a lot of parts to this one even though it was a pretty simple question so bear with me with this. First and foremost, we are dealing with a huge issue of jurisdiction obviously, especially when we're talking about international waters or the high seas as you may also see it referred to. So the overarching Law of the Sea Treaty comes from the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea. So we'll call it UNCLOS, U-N-C-L-O-S.

The US participated in the negotiation conference of this treaty, which took place over several decades and despite 162 countries and the European Union joining the convention, the US has not ratified the treaty despite bipartisan efforts across several decades to pass this ratification with the required two-thirds vote of the United States Senate. So despite our legislative ineptitude and political BS, the US still at least recognizes the Law of the Sea as customary, even though we aren't legally bound to it. We believe in it.

We just can't get our politicians to...                                                                                                                                                     Continue reading... 

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​This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, understanding death, good Samaritan CPR, and after-action reports. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. This is episode number 34 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction. I'd like to thank Gold Shield Patron Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com and Coffee Club patrons Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian, Rebecca Jackson, and Daniel Miller. Your support definitely keeps the lights on in the bureau.

Please support all of these awesome authors by visiting their author websites and buying their books. You can find the links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/34. And if you have your own author business, consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micropayments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

Since you're listening to this, I'm going to make the big detective assumption that you're a fan of writing podcasts. I have a few to share with you, and I know I've already mentioned Natasha Bajema's Authors of Mass Destruction podcast, but next week, she will be releasing her interview with me, where we talk about all sorts of topics, like how local law enforcement responds to WMD events and even why getting my DNA analyzed probably wasn't the smartest idea. So again, check out Authors of Mass Destruction.

The next podcast I want to mention is the SPA Girls, S-P-A Girls podcast. S-P-A stands for self-publishing authors, and these lovely ladies live in New Zealand, but they write fiction based in the United States, and they were kind enough to invite me on as an upcoming guest on their podcast. We just recorded the episode, and I had an absolute blast speaking with them. It was a lot of fun. The episode we recorded won't be published for another month and a half or so, but I definitely want you to start listening to the SPA Girls podcast. It is a great one to subscribe to, especially if you are a self-published author.

And finally, I want to mention Gavin Reese's Authors on the Beat podcast. Gavin is a cop, an author, and the host of Authors on the Beat. Gavin and I do have a podcast interview date scheduled for the near future, but Authors on the Beat is another writing podcast worth checking out if you're writing crime fiction.

Let's have a quick little discussion, a different kind of discussion, about death. Now, death is inevitable, obviously, and we all have varying levels of seeing and experiencing death, and we all respond to it differently. When death is part of your daily life, like it is for any homicide detective, I don't want to say you get used to it, but the emotion attached to it can start to subside, sometimes, and other times not.

This relationship between a homicide detective protagonist and death is something that a lot of writers tend to struggle with. Now, the trope is that we are either immediately queasy if we're a rookie or we are completely indifferent to gore if we're a veteran. But the reality is that it lies somewhere in between, and at different levels for all of us.

Now, in looking at this and trying to explain it in a more relatable way, I came up with my own analogy that I think may help you understand it, especially if you are a parent. Now, if you aren't a parent, you may find this analogy as equally disgusting as the topic of death, so what is this analogy that I came up with? Well, death to a homicide detective is like poop to a parent. I myself do not have kids, but I have many friends who do, and I've seen the stages that new parents go through in the never-ending battle with baby poop. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it starts with that natural reaction, right? Of, "Ew, that is disgusting. The smell, it's so gross. I don't want to even look at it. There is no way I am touching that or letting it get on me."

But then, after a few months, you start to get a little battle hardened, right? "That's not the smelliest diaper he's ever had. As long as it doesn't get on my clothes this time, I'll be happy,"...                                                                                                                                        Continue reading...

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, cop dialogue, overdoses, and justifiable homicide. I'm Adam Richardson. And this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

This is episode number 33 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. I want to thank Gold Shield patron Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com and Coffee Club patrons, Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barrelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmill, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian and Rebecca Jackson. Your support keeps the lights on in the bureau. Please support them by visiting their author websites and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/33 and if you have your own author business, consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micropayments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. ​

This week's first question comes from Laurie Sibley and she writes, my main character is a homicide detective. I found myself at a loss for some of the filler stuff he would be doing between big breakthroughs in the case and action scenes. Sometimes he and his partner just need to have a conversation while whatever they're working on is happening in the background. My problem is I'm not exactly sure what that background work would consist of. I wondered if there was a basic day in the life scenario you could run for us that would include both excitement and paperwork ends of the spectrum. Thanks. Thank you Laurie. The reason I like this question is because I think it's something every writer struggles with when writing about any kind of police procedure. So let's start by simplifying what a homicide detective needs to accomplish. So for starters, everything they do is written in a report.

So we'd obviously don't want to make this story all about report writing, but day one, responded to the scene of the crime and interviewed the responding patrol officers that that right there is a report. Canvas the neighborhood and interview any witnesses. Each witness interview is a report. Forensic unit notifies detectives of evidence findings at the crime scene, which technically is a report that the forensic folks would write, but it's something the detective would need to follow up on to make sure the report is completed and that they read that report and include it in the overall case file or murder book, whatever you want to call it. They would have to attend the autopsy and collect any evidence from that, that again is a report. Anything that identifies someone as a potential suspect, that of course is a report. And then that interview and/or interrogation of that person is another report.

You obviously get the idea, and you certainly don't want to bore the reader with cops writing reports of course. But you as the writer need to do two things. One, take the logical next step in the investigation and two, keep the story moving. So what would you, as you sit here listening to this podcast, what would you do next after you've left the initial crime scene of a murder?..                                                  Continue reading...

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, quitting, tourist deaths, and drug possession for sale. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. This is episode number 32 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality, crime-related fiction. I want to thank Gold Shield patron Deborah Dunbar, from deborahdunbar.com and Coffee Club patrons: Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian, and Rebecca Jackson. Your support keeps this podcast going, so please support all of these amazing authors by visiting their author websites and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/32. If you have your own author business, you should be getting patrons yourself, so consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments, so give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more. Visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

I want to talk to you about quitting. Contrary to every sporting goods advertisement and pep talk you've ever heard, quitting is an option. A few episodes ago I talked about how I went back to school full-time while working as a detective, and then when I graduated, I had a whole lot of free time, or at least it seemed that way after such a crushing schedule. Back then I decided to pursue something that I thought would be fun to kind of fill that time. I somehow found myself going down this internet rabbit hole, where I found a course called "Adventures In Voice Acting," and it was taught by Tony Oliver. Tony was the voice of Rick Hunter in the 1980s anime series, Robotech, which I have to admit, I definitely watched as a kid. This class was held at a real-life working voiceover studio in Burbank, California.

We, this class of outsiders interested in this world of animation voiceover, got a chance to record ourselves reading dialogue that was translated from Japanese into English, and it was ... We were doing this while trying to match the action, the tone, and the timing of the Japanese anime video, the cartoon playing on the screen in front of us, and everyone in this class, I should mention, was brand new to this. It was an absolute blast. It was just the kind of like little kid kind of fun I was looking for, after finishing at the university, and it was ... I guess it was like a field trip to the center of the anime universe, or at least that's how it felt, and I really wanted to play. I wanted to voice a cartoon character, or a video game character, something fun that had nothing to do with my day job.

I did get a chance to do a few little gigs here and there, but I really did want to give this a shot. I kind of combined the two, this voiceover thing and my work. I was working an undercover assignment at the time, so I took this new interest of mine, and signed up to attend a voiceover convention using my undercover name, and I joined several hundred other wannabe and established voiceover artists at this convention. I learned a ton, and it also helped to cement my online undercover persona a little bit by instantly having a hundred and something real Facebook friends a week after the convention, so there was an added bonus there. But at this convention, I actually met one of the top voiceover coaches in the country, and shortly thereafter I became one of her students. She is a no nonsense coach, and she is not there to coddle you or stroke your ego.

​She was all about transforming her students into working professional voiceover talent, that routinely booked high paying national advertisement spots, and her name is Nancy Wolfson. In my opinion, she is the absolute best in the business, and to this day I'll hear advertisements that I know were done by one of Nancy's students, just by the way that they read the ad copy, because they're just perfect. Nancy has an incredibly smart design to her curriculum and she doesn't want you messing up the foundational building blocks of these lessons by taking outside courses while you're in her program. But, of course, a new friend that I met at that voiceover conference invited me to a cartoon voiceover class at another voiceover studio. I was the only newbie in the room, and this class, was taught by the Emmy Award winner, Charlie Adler. If you watched any cartoons in the 1980s, you definitely heard Charlie Adler's voice, and helping run this class was the late Carol Anne Suzy.

She was a little firecracker of a woman that you would likely know as the voice of Mrs. Wolowitz, the unseen mother of Howard Wolowitz, on The Big Bang Theory...                                                                                                                                                                               

   Continue reading...

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, Authors of Mass Destruction, bad guy feds, and uniforms. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode 31 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. I wanna think Gold Shield Patron Debra Dunbar, from DebraDunbar.com, and Coffee Club Patrons Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian and Rebecca Jackson. Your support keeps this podcast going, so please support all of these amazing authors by visiting their author websites, and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes, at WritersDetective.com/31.

If you have your own author business, you should be getting patrons yourself, so consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially, through monthly micropayments. So give your fans a chance to show their support, by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit WritersDetective.com/Patreon, P-a-t-r-e-o-n.

​​Wow, I cannot believe it is March already. Yesterday I sent out the Writer's Detective APB, which is my monthly newsletter, and it's an email packed full of links to websites, articles, PDF documents, that I create with you, the crime fiction writer, in mind. And I send it out on the last day of each month, so if you missed the January and/or February APBs, you can sign up right now by going to WritersDetective.com/mailinglist,which is all one word, and once you confirm your email address, you'll get the January and February ABPs sent to you immediately. And then you'll be set up to receive all the future ones as well, so this isn't a bunch of spam or stuff for you to buy, it's just links to things you will actually find useful for your writing research. So again, the link to join is WritersDetective.com/mailinglist.

And speaking of useful research, my friend Natasha Bajema is launching the Authors of Mass Destruction Podcast on March 3rd, so we're just two days away. Natasha's an expert in national security, weapons of mass destruction, and emerging technologies, and she's also an author. Her podcast is all about relating these topics to your writing, so be sure to subscribe to the Authors of Mass Destruction Podcast starting March 3rd, and you might even hear a familiar voice in an upcoming episode, talking about law enforcement responses to a WMD event, and why getting my DNA tested probably wasn't a good idea. That's the Authors of Mass Destruction Podcast, on iTunes, Google Play, and most of your other favorite podcast listening apps, go check it out.

And before I get into this week's questions, I wanna say congratulations to my friend Max DiLallo, on his new book The Chef. It's a book he co-authored with James Patterson, you may have heard of that guy, and they just hit number one on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List, and number two on the New York Times Bestseller List, so congrats, Max, celebratory drinks are definitely on me next time. And for everyone else, yes, Max has a standing invitation to come on the podcast, but like most great writers, this whole public speaking thing goes against so many levels of introverted nope. But I'm trying to wear him down with gentle pressure applied relentlessly, we will get him on the podcast eventually, you hear that Max? Eventually you'll get on here, it may take a couple cocktails, but we'll get you on here. So congrats again, Max, I am so happy for you.

​​Todd Payne writes, "Hi Adam, I'm a new and aspiring screenwriter. I'm still working my way through your podcasts, which are fantastic by the way," thank you, Todd. "I just listened to the podcast about jurisdictions, and have a question about law enforcement turned criminal. Who would be the primary investigator if a CIA, FBI, or other federal agent were arrested by local law enforcement as a suspect in a crime? Maybe they were captured, and later discovered to be an active or a suspended agent. How would the federal agencies be involved, if at all, and what about active military personnel? Not sure if you've addressed this already, but looking forward to your answer. Thanks, just getting started with this stuff, so nothing to promote yet. Todd."

Thanks, Todd. Now, in most cases that I can think of, the local law enforcement agency that arrested this agent would still remain the investigating agency. The way the federal agency would get involved would be in how the local law enforcement agency's criminal investigation would end up kicking off an internal investigation by the federal agency. You've likely heard of Internal Affairs, or IA, as we often call it, as the name for this kind of unit, but that can vary. I know that the FBI calls theirs OPR, which stands for Office of Professional Responsibility.

So, if a police department considers an FBI special agent as a suspect in a crime, then...                                                             Continue reading...