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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...