Mindy: Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
Mindy: We're here with Jeff Lindsay, the author of The Dexter series, which is very well known. We're here to talk about a new series that began in 2019 with the character of Riley Wolfe that is a master thief who targets the wealthiest point 1%. Kind of like a Robin Hood type of character. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your new character? Riley.
Jeff: I'd have to say Robin Hood with an attitude. He's been so successful as a thief that money really isn't the thing with him. It's the challenge, and he loves taking on something that everyone says is impossible, proving that they're wrong. It's not impossible for him, and it makes it just a little sweeter if he could take it from that 0.1% over privileged born into money jerks that he has had a lifelong grudge against, I think mostly because of his background.
The thing that fascinates me the most in writing is the characters. I've always taken pride in, you know, even the minor characters are not just cardboard cutouts. And with Riley and Dexter both, I worked with psychologists and tried out different scenarios until I found something that fit. So Riley's backstory, which has been explored somewhat, by the way, in the first Riley Wolf book, Just Watch Me. That's out in paperback now, too, By the way, since I'm trying to learn how to plug subtly, I hope that was it. No one caught on that I was plugging, right?
Mindy: No one knew.
Jeff: Okay, he's not, he's not a cold killer. But if there's someone in the way of a job, he doesn't mind pulling the trigger or pushing them off a roof or out of a helicopter. Again, it's a lot sweeter if it's one of the 0.1%. But for Riley, the real thing is the thrill, getting something done that is just jaw dropping and impossible. There's an old cliche of, you know, be careful what you wish for, you might get it. This time around in Fool Me Twice, what he gets is really and truly impossible. Normally, when someone says that can't be done, he goes, Just watch me. Which, coincidentally, is the title of the first book now available in paperback. But this time he hears the job, and it's like, No, no, that that really is impossible. I mean, there's a limit. This cannot be done, Period. End of story. A small problem - If he doesn't do it, he's going to be killed by one of the most dangerous and ruthless people in the world. That's kind of where the book starts.
Mindy: Most people are familiar with Dexter, your first series, of course by no small means because of the Showtime show. I was familiar with it when, um it was, for lack of a better phrase, just a book and always really enjoyed it. I am also drawn to the bad characters. When I was young, for example, I was always more interested in, you know, the other team and seeing what they were doing and wanting more depth on them. Because a lot of the time, especially when I was growing up in the eighties, the bad guys were just cardboard cutouts, the bad girls, even worse. There was never any depth to them. It was Let's see how black we can paint them. So I really, really can sink my teeth into an anti hero and not necessarily a villain, but an anti hero. With your work, that is a huge theme. So can you talk a little bit about that attraction for you as a writer or even just as a consumer?
Jeff: Its’ a balancing act. I never really understood the attraction to bad people, even when I was dating and someone would say, Come on, she's bad. You could, you know, probably score. It was like, Yeah, but why would you? It really started as a writer, my wife, who's also a really good writer Hilary Hemingway, She had a saying that if you want a good hero, you need a good villain to oppose them. That makes so much sense, and I started working on that.
At a certain point, I became more interested in the villains And now, as I said, that's a balancing act. Nobody wants to watch a story about someone who is just horrible. There have to be redeeming also. You gotta balance the good with the bad. And like with Dexter, we know right away he would never harm Children. And he's funny. He's got this sort of Alex de Tocqueville thing of observing his culture from the outside. I try to make them interesting, and Dexter was kind of an experiment to see how far on with the dark side I could go. Would people go - God, this is horrible. I don't want to read about a serial killer. And that would be the end of it.
It didn't quite work out that way. The first meeting with the PR team for the very first Dexter book, crowd took me aside and said, I shouldn't say, but I have such a crush on Dexter. It seemed to be the reaction. So with Riley, I didn't want to make him a psychopath. He's more of a situational psychopath.
Mindy: I’m a situational monogamist. So I understand.
Jeff: We’re learning so much about your dating history, first with bad guys and now situational monogamy.
Mindy: I know. I try to get those little nuggets in there for the kids. Tell me about working with a Psychologist, You said earlier when you were writing Dexter, but then again with Riley, that you worked a lot with psychologists. And I really, really, really appreciate that, because as a reader and someone with a small amount of background in mental health, so often, I see words like psychopath or sociopath being thrown around because they're just part of the, you know, normal discourse. Now people use them without really knowing what they mean. Schizophrenia is a big one. Schizophrenia is usually not represented correctly so I really appreciate the deep dive. So why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?
Jeff: It is interesting. Those two terms - sociopath and psychopath - we tend to use psychopath as someone who is a killer. And sociopath, as you know, someone who's just ruthless or something more. I dove into it. I wasn't sure what the difference was, and finally a psychologist I was talking with in Australia said, there is no difference. It's just a matter of, you know, usage.
With the first Dexter book, when I was writing it, I was lucky to have a couple of psychologists in the family. Hillary had some cousins who were both psychologists, and it's like Christmas morning. They had a winery in California, and we would go stay with them and tell them our troubles and they get us drunk and give us analysis. So it worked out well, and when I was developing the character, I called them up and say, How about this? '' Would this seem right? And they go, No. Think about taking it more in that direction. The more I read, the more I talked to them, it started to click, and at one point I had this idea and I called up. I said to the psychologist cousin, I had this idea about how this would work and it's this and she said, Yes, that's excellent. Where did you come up with that? And I said it just seemed right to me. There's a pause and she said, I need to talk to your wife for a minute.
So with Riley, I had again a basic idea of the character. I met a woman who's a psychology teacher, and she's uh, she was a fan, and I asked if she'd be willing to help me with developing this character and so I would have things like, You know, what about this dream sequence that does this to him? And she says, No, you know, dream sequences are sort of corny, Why don't you try going this way with it? And once again, it just I think it paid off. I think Riley is a very complicated, interesting and riel character. You know, I took the time to talk to the experts. More people need to do that, talk to experts and listen to them.
Mindy: Talk to me about writing Dexter versus writing Riley. You've been writing Dexter for really a long time. Was it kind of a relief to move on to something new?
Jeff: It really wasn't a relief. I always wanted to have a Series and just let it run. That's what I grew up reading. Nero Wolfe, Travis McGee. Those were my favorite characters, and those series just went on, I guess, until the writer died. I was kind of hoping for that because you click into a groove. But I think I mentioned that theatrical background. It's a little bit like if you have an acting part as the crazy neighbor on a long running sitcom and you come in every week you put on the costume, you become that crazy character, and then you take off the costume and go home and you're a normal person again.
And when you have a long running book, Series like that, It's kind of the same thing. You click into the head and you write it, and it's a lot easier. With Riley Wolf, it's harder, it's not that the character is harder to click into, but the plots are a lot more intricate. They're basically caper books. It has to be tight and perfect and a lot of unexpected turns. And so I'm not always in Riley's voice. I have to get five or six or 10 or 15 different voices going in each book. It's a lot harder.
Dexter, I felt like... I won't say it was easy, but it was a lot more comfortable and, you know, maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe we need to grow. Every writer you ever talk to says, Oh, I don't read my reviews. Well, I kind of do. One from U S A Today, it said “Jeff Lindsay keeps getting better.” That's my goal. I want to keep getting better and different and more interesting. I guess Riley has a pretty good tool for that because it's harder work right now than Dexter was.
Mindy: No, I understand. I think that getting comfortable, of course, has its benefits because you can sit down and rip something off, but at the same time, like you're saying you're not necessarily developing new skills or deepening some muscles that maybe could be strengthened. So, yeah, I think that's really interesting. I'm lucky that I jump genres a lot, my publishers are pretty awesome about allowing me freedom. And so I get to experiment in those ways, which I really appreciate.
Jeff: I do not get to jump in genres. I have, like, 3000 pages, which I think is the first two volumes of a fantasy Series. I have a lot of other things, you know, different science fiction and so on. And I've been told quite firmly, No, sir, no, that will not do. Typecasting, I guess.
Mindy: I think maybe that's some of the benefit to being a midlist author is that you can hop around now. I can't say that my readers necessarily follow me all the time. Interestingly enough, my fantasy Series, since you mentioned the genre, was the one that has done, I would say the least… Well, if not flat out poorly. Ironically, it took the most work, and I put the most effort into that particular genre.
Jeff: So I grew up with the mysteries and adventure stuff, but I also grew up reading fantasy and sci-fi. I've written a couple of five books or, you know, we had one early on with my wife. That's something I feel comfortable with, too. But I Guess that's off the table. The fantasy one was, it was more exciting to me than almost anything else I've done for a long time. It just took off and I say 3000 pages - and it was going at 150 pages a week. It was just flowing. It just doesn't happen like that for me, I guess.
Mindy: No, not generally. That's impressive. And, yes, I know the feeling. Sometimes when you tap into something and it's just going to run and you let it.
Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
Mindy: So talk to me about Showtime bringing back Dexter for a limited Series. Now Dexter ran for quite a few seasons, and I love the show. I was a big fan, never missed it. And, you know, a lot of people were really disappointed by the ending. I can't say that I was. I mean, personally, I thought it was actually extremely fitting. I also at the same time, understood the backlash. Obviously, that's not your baby. I’d like to Just get your perspective on the show, ending the way it did the reaction and the fact that it gets to come back.
Jeff: I'm really glad it's coming back. And I thought that probably was going to happen at some point. So why not now? As for the ending, I get hate mail about that. And everywhere I go, someone says, you idiot, Why did you end it that way? And you know, I didn't. I had nothing to do with it. I still put that out there because I don't want my house firebombed.
So I have nothing against it either. My wife calls it the Wolverine ending. You know, he just goes, I'm a lumberjack. Why not? Sure. Worked for Wolverine. We can always do it better. And I'm sure that the writers of that episode probably go, Yeah, we could have done it better, but you really have to understand the pressures of TV writing. It's like being on the moon without a spacesuit. It can grind you down.
I don't hold any grudges against any TV writer ever because I've seen it first hand. And although I've never had to write on a TV, Series like that, Early on I was a production assistant and I saw what they looked like at the end of the week after, you know, all the all-night rewrites and so on and so on and so on. Overall, the show was terrific. I don't think there's any argument that if people felt that the ending was a letdown, well, you know. A lot of the press has been saying - Here's a chance to make up for that.
Mindy: One of the things that I just fell in love with this show, as you say, and many people don't realize that once something has jumped mediums like that, the author doesn't have control anymore. But I do love - just to get your opinion. When I sat down to watch Dexter the opening title sequence, which never changed throughout the course of the show, I think, is a piece of magic. Everything about it is so perfect and tight and controlled, and it just shows violence in every day actions. And I absolutely love the opening title sequence. So do you have any thoughts about that?
Jeff: Yeah, I agree. I love the opening title sequence, and when I sit to watch the show, I hear the opening part of the music. I'm thinking, Here it comes - my favorite TV show! And then my name would pop up on the screen. I go, but what? Oh, right, yeah, I loved it. Just two things of interest to me.
First of all, the guy who composed it found there's the instrument that starts it out. I forget the Spanish name for it, but it's the one that goes (scratchy noises). Normally, it's made from two pieces of wood, one piece notched. He happened to find, I don't know how, two of these things made from human leg bones. That's what you're hearing when you hear the opening of the Dexter theme song. So that adds a little dimension.
The other thing and it used to drive me crazy because at a certain point I realized it's basically the theme from The Odd Couple, just changed around a little. You know, Dexter is like this (humming) and The Odd Couple is (humming) I always, you know, I go, Oh,Here it comes, my show. And then, wow, my name. And then uh huh Oh, The Odd Couple!
Mindy: I won't be able to un-hear that now. Last thing, Why don't you tell us where listeners can find you online, where they can find the second Riley Wolf book, which is called Fool Me Twice?
Jeff: Fool Me Twice could be found just about everywhere good books are sold and in a couple of places where they sell bad books to, online or at your local bookstore, which I'd like to encourage you to support. The first Riley Wolf book, Just Watch Me is just out in paperback as well. So it makes a great Christmas present to combine the two and give this little gift package to you know, everyone you know, and I hope you know, a lot of people.
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