Kobo ReWriting Life - #44 - Writing Best-selling Crime Fiction with Karin Slaughter

0:06Hey, writers, you're listening to the Kobo Rewriting Life podcast, where we highlight an episode from our backlist that will bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. I'm your host, Tara Kremen, director of Kobo Writing Life.

0:24This week, I've chosen this great episode with Karin Slaughter from 2020. Karin talks all about her career, what makes a great crime novel, how she plots and researches her novels, and the double standards that are imposed on female crime writers. It was a really great interview. And also, what else could Karen Slaughter be if not a thriller writer? She's got Slaughter in the name. It's so good. Okay, enjoy. Thank you, Karen, for joining us on the podcast today.

0:52Karin Slaughter: My pleasure. So before we get into it, can you just tell our listeners a bit about yourself and how you got your start in the publishing industry? Well, so about myself, you know, I'm incredibly young and vivacious. People are often shocked. Of course, yes. I'm not a teenager, but I've been published for 20 years. And I had the goal when I got out of high school to be published before I was 30, because that felt really old to me. And I got my contract when I was 28 and my book was published when I was 29. So I was right there under the wire and it worked out, but it at the time was horrifying because I had a sign company, a business that I owned, and I sold it so I could concentrate on being a writer and took a huge pay cut.

1:46Karin Slaughter: And this is something that I've talked to about Lee Child because he was basically in the same position when he wrote his first book. And he could either, he lost his job and he could look for another job or he could write this book. And for me, I purposefully lost my job and was living on starvation wages so I could write. And cutting that safety cord was what really pushed my butt to get down to the business of writing. Because there's writing and then there's the business of writing. And those are two very different things. You can't be precious. You You have to show up and do the work. And he had a certain amount of time on the dole, and I had a certain amount of time before the bank would ask me if I was going to continue to pay my mortgage.

2:30Karin Slaughter: And it worked out for us both, obviously, but I would not recommend it because it was really at the seat of my pants that this happened. I got really lucky that I had the right agent, that I had a publisher who was looking for female crime writers from the South. So I hit all of those criteria for this guy. And, you know, that's how it started is with that first book contract. And fortunately, I keep getting book contracts and hopefully will continue. Well, your books have been translated into 37 languages by RS Reckoning, and you've sold over 35 million copies. So to say that you are successful is a bit of an understatement.

3:13What do you think draws readers to your work and your books?

3:15Karin Slaughter: Well, I mean, I think it's a couple of things. I like to say it's because I'm the best writer on earth, but we all know that there are some really bad writers who sell lots and lots of books. So I think a part of it is luck. A part of it is my work ethic because I can write a book a year. And that's something that publishers rely on with brand authors is they know they're going to have, you know, it's called unpublished slaughter on the balance sheet every year when they're doing their numbers. And they rely on me to deliver that book so they can have the sales. And so that's something I take very seriously, is that this is a business.

3:56Karin Slaughter: But also, I have to make sure that my creative side is rewarded, because I really love writing. It's so important to me every time I write a new book. And I'm starting number 21 now. And I feel just as passionate about it, but perhaps even more directed now because I've met my fans and a lot of my readers and I feel a responsibility toward them to give them the best story I can give them. And, you know, I always think about my college self when I was a poor student and how meaningful it was for me when I saved up the money to buy a book from my favorite author. And if that author had clearly phoned it in, I took that as an affront.

4:44Karin Slaughter: And it made me so angry and so disappointed. And I, you know, not only the hours I had to work to save up the money to buy the book, but the hours I spent reading it. It's like, you know, we have a contract here. I support you. You're my favorite author. And you clearly just wanted to go on vacation and you dash this off and you didn't even worry about figuring out if the plot made sense. I mean, that kind of stuff makes me insane. And so I think about that when I'm writing. And even when I'm tired or, you know, something's not working, I take a step back and remind myself that it's my job to write the best book I can write.

5:24Karin Slaughter: And I think that that really helps me when I'm writing to keep it fresh, to keep it interesting. And I read a lot of crime novels. I mean, I read a lot of fiction, period, and it's a lot of nonfiction, but crime is my passion, and everything has to hang together. Everything has to make sense. I want to play fair with the reader, and I really want them, you know, even if they're like, ah, I hate this story, they're not going to say, boy, she didn't do any work on this. She didn't care. You know, you can say all you want about how it's to this or not enough that, but you're never, ever going to be able to say, I didn't put the work in.

6:00So you mentioned that reader expectation kind of makes sure you're on top of your game when you're writing a book How do you keep the interest of readers when you're writing a long series? So like your will trend series has 10 books How are you keeping yourself interested but also readers when they're reading a new story?

6:17Karin Slaughter: Well, it's really weird to say this since i've just spent all this time talking about how I value my readers But I don't think about them at all when i'm in the middle of it because I write the stories for me you know I mean it's more like if I'm tired and I want to go to sleep or I'd much rather be petting a cat or go to a movie back when remember when we had movies I do yeah so you know I I think no you gotta do this you can't be precious about your time you have to you're an author that's your job you need to show up and do the work but that being said I don't really think about them as far as what I do in the plot.

6:57Karin Slaughter: But I am conscious that there's people that have read every single one of my books. I know for a fact, unless they're all liars, which they could be, that they read the books again before one of the series comes out. And with this one, they've been reading Grant County and The Wheel Trent. So that's like 16 books that are not, I'm sorry, not 16, 15 books they have to read before this one. And so I am really aware I've got to find new things for those longtime readers to keep them interested. But I've also got to give information about the characters so that new people who've never read Will Trent before think, wow, you know, this is an interesting person.

7:40Karin Slaughter: And, you know, they don't feel lost like they need to read all these other books before they jump into this one. Because I, you know, I'm a very strict, have to read things in order kind of reader, but I'm aware people go in and out. So I have to reward both of those readers. And, you know, with this book, it was a great opportunity to talk about Sarah, who I've written 16 novels featuring her, but to talk about her, actually not 16. Did I mention I'm really bad at math? Because she wasn't in two of the Will Trent books. So 16 minus two. Okay, I was an English major. Cut me some slack. I mean, I'm also terrible at math.

8:17So yeah, okay.

8:19Karin Slaughter: Well, in the 320 books I have written about Sarah, you know, I wanted to show a different side of her personality. And so I chose to write about her right after her divorce from Jeffrey, because this book takes place in the present and the past. And so you see her with like a surgical anger castrating him at every turn, right? And you've never really seen that side of Sarah. You know, you've seen little pieces of it when she gets really pissed off, but you also see her completely lose her shit over Will in a way she never did with Jeffrey because they're very different relationships, you know, and so that was a lot of fun to write, and I think readers who've never read it before will find Sarah interesting, but also longtime readers will see this new part of her personality that's been hinted at over the years.

9:12Karin Slaughter: And, you know, hopefully that pulls them even more into the story. Do you have any plotting tips for longstanding series like that? Do you have some kind of master document where you keep track of everything that's happening? Oh, yeah. It's called Wikipedia. And a lot of times, and sometimes you can tell when I do not look at this master document, because in one book, Will is 34, and in the next book, he's 32. So, you know, hey, it's fiction. But I did have to, because I did write about Jeffrey. I haven't written about him in many years. So I had to go back and I didn't read. I just kind of flipped through pages to get an idea of his voice again.

9:52Karin Slaughter: And it came back to me very quickly. But it's very hard to read my earlier work because I'm always editing it. You know, a lot of times people will say, oh, you should read your your audio books. And I think I cannot imagine anything more torturous than that because I would be constantly questioning and re-editing and changing words and that sort of thing, which you're not allowed to do when you read for audio book, obviously. But I do have in my head most of the emotional story because that's, you know, and people should understand this as they're plotting their own books, that there are two plots in each book.

10:32Karin Slaughter: And one is the emotional plot and the other is the basic mystery of the book, you know, and there's every book has a mystery, whether it's a crime novel or not, you know, you can look at any like To Kill a Mockingbird. I mean, to me, that's a crime drama. It's a courtroom drama. But, you know, any Dickens, any you look at it and there's this mystery of character. What are they going to do? What's going to happen? And there's a tension from that. So I really pay attention to both of those things, the nuts and bolts of, you know, I always know who the bad guy is before I start. I think that's a really important thing to do when you're writing crime novels.

11:08Karin Slaughter: Don't figure it out along the way, because it's a lot of work for you to have to go back and layer it in. Because, you know, crime readers are very savvy, and you never want them to write you angry letters saying, I knew in the second chapter who this was, right? And the other part about the emotional stuff, You know, I write very unflinchingly about violence and the emotional balance to that comes through the love the characters have for each other, whether it's, you know, Amanda and Will, you know, this boss who has all this secret knowledge about Will and she really cares for him, but she's also really mean to him.

11:47Karin Slaughter: or Faith and Will, who have a kind of brother-sister relationship, or Sarah and Will are lovers, obviously, but they also have this great foundation of respect for each other. But the tension from their emotional response balances out, I think, a lot of the tension from the violence that's happening. How important is it to you to balance that character-driven versus plot-driven, those aspects of your writing? I think it's the most important thing to hold both of those things in tension. Because if you can have a fantastic plot, and if no one cares about the characters, then it's really not going to be a successful book.

12:27Karin Slaughter: And I don't mean financially successful. I mean, just as a book to be something held up as successful, an artistic sort of thing. And if you have extraordinary characters that people love, but nothing really happens, or, you know, that there was some sort of weird trend to not have the bad person revealed in crime novels a while back, which you just can't do that. But you can't sacrifice one for the other. To me, they have to work in tandem. And if you look at Denise Mina, for instance, who writes about very small things, small crimes, and what is more typically a real crime. You know, I write about murderers and serial killers and all these people that are not, you know, I mean, there's no cop on earth that has experienced as many horrible people as Will Trent.

13:19Karin Slaughter: That just doesn't happen in a career. It's a great suspension of disbelief. I mean, he'd be in a nut house, basically. But Denise writes about the regular crimes where people just make stupid mistakes, and then they keep making more stupid mistakes to cover up for them. And they just snowball and snowball until everything is out of control. That's the typical criminal. And she is so good at writing about that. You know, and Mo Hader also does an excellent job of that. When I'm looking for books, you know, I mean, there are some great books that rely on forensics, but I know quite a lot about forensics.

13:54Karin Slaughter: So unless it's someone like Kathy Reichs, who really knows what she's talking about, you know, I'm a little wary of reading novels that are driven by forensics. And that's another thing going back to plotting, you know, forensics should not explain your plot. It should be, it should have an emotional revelation, not a, unless that's the focus of the work. A scientific revelation is not generally satisfying because, you know, a fingerprint matches, but yeah, go talk to the person or, you know, DNA or whatever, but talk to the person, you know, have that old gumshoe figuring it out. That's the kind of thing I like.

14:30Karin Slaughter: And that's what Denise does, you know, because the base average criminal is, it's really stupid and really lucky. And cops know that. And they know that generally a case is not going to break wide open because somebody left DNA at a scene. It's going to break open because somebody made a mistake. Somebody talked to somebody, somebody bragged to somebody, somebody bought$300 ,000 car when they're living in a trailer park, you know, stupid kind of stuff. And, you know, I think it's really important as a writer to be conscious that those sorts of crimes, while they're smaller, they're much harder to write about.

15:08Karin Slaughter: And it goes back to that emotional side of it. If you look at Ripley, right, Patricia Highsmith, Ripley did some really stupid things. And the tension came from you liking Ripley so much, even though his psychopathy drove him to do incredibly horrible things. but you're rooting for him as the reader, right? I mean, that is an amazing trick to do as an author is for the reader to have this sympathy for this character who's a really bad person and killing people. And the reader's response is, oh no, Ripley, be careful. The police are on to you. You shouldn't be doing that. I'm just wondering about your research process.

15:45Do you do it for every novel or has like over time, you feel like you've learned enough that you don't need to be doing it for every specific book that you write?

15:54Karin Slaughter: I love research. I mean, every writer loves research. People who aren't writers love research. I mean, it's just, it's crazy, especially with the internet. I like to figure those things out myself. I don't hire a researcher with the exception of one book I wrote called Cop Town. And I hired this guy to gather all this material for me about policing in the 1970s, so that I could read it. You know, I just, I didn't have the capacity to search for it. So I'd say, I need to know this, and I need to know this. And he would get me the articles and the stories from the newspapers at the time. But to me, you know, every book, I need to do something different and new.

16:35Karin Slaughter: And I've got to be interested in it, and I've got to learn about it. With The Silent Wife in particular, you know, there's this scene where Sarah comes upon a body in the woods. And one thing I loved about writing about Grant County is Sarah tended to be right there when the bad thing happened. And she'd roll up her sleeves and, you know, get to work on the body or whatever. And so I was talking to my doctor friend and I said, look, I want Sarah, and I should say my doctor friend has advised me since the second novel on things that Sarah can do. And I said, I want Sarah to start to do what we all know, you know, that the field tracheotomy, where you slice the, into the throat and you put a pin in there and the person breathes through that and they've saved their lives.

17:20Karin Slaughter: Well, what happens if there's a blockage, right? And so we walk through that. And I would say this to your would-be published authors too. It's very important to have an expert, but it has to be the right kind of expert. Because early on, I learned this very quickly. Some people you go to and you say, I want to have a character do this. And they say, that's not possible. That wouldn't happen. And that's the wrong person to help you. Because they're always going to be pushing back against anything you come up with and just say, that's not possible. Well, it's fiction, right? Yes, everything is possible.

17:54Karin Slaughter: I mean, in the scheme of things, Sarah would be like Fauci level doctor, right? I mean, people would, she would be the best doctor in the world if she did all this stuff in real life. People would write articles about her constantly. But my friend David, who is a doctor and he worked in an ER and he also taught in a school, a medical school, and he loves teaching. And so when I say to him, you know, I want to do this, he says, well, do you want the patient to live or die? I mean, that's the first thing you have to figure out. And sometimes I let my people live because I think that's important, you know, especially when you're talking about violence against women.

18:30Karin Slaughter: We don't often hear those stories. We just hear the violence happen. You know, there was a rape, a sexual assault. And, you know, honestly, we don't even hear about that on the news unless the woman has been murdered in the process. And then, of course, in America, in many other countries, if she's a white woman, then she's more likely to be at the top part of the news. So, you know, there are all these things that we don't hear about that happen to women on a daily basis. And so sometimes I have them live and David helps me figure out how to do that. And it's a great collaboration. And I have a medical examiner I talk to.

19:06Karin Slaughter: Actually, I've got three or four because there is one who says that will never happen. And I always go to him because I think I need a sounding board on this. You know, I want to know what the naysayers going to say and figure it out from there. But I love figuring out those little medical details, the forensic details. I love when I find a way for Sarah to be doing an autopsy and find an actual physical clue right then and there. I mean, let's be honest, blood work, labs, all that take months to get back. So there's no way she's going to know alcohol content or whatever, you know, or succinylcholine.

19:43Karin Slaughter: or that's just not going to be on her bandwidth when she's doing an autopsy. So I like coming up with those details. And a lot of that comes through reading journals, reading papers, talking to police officers, talking to medical examiners. And that's the part of the research that I really love. You just reach out to these people or try to stick to your friends? Well, I try to stick to my friends. You know, the one thing you realize when you publish a book, and this happened with my first book, I'd have a lot of guys come up to me and say, hey, would you like to see a live autopsy? And my first question would be, are you at all attached to the coroner's office?

20:22Karin Slaughter: And a lot of times they weren't. They were like, no, I have a cousin who works at this who can probably get you in. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. But I was really lucky because my dad is very good friends with the Speaker of the House for the state of Georgia. and he introduced me to the director of the GBI at the time. And I had already written a couple of Will Trent books. And the director of the GBI, obviously, at the time was a very busy man. He's retired now. And so he handed me over to his communications director who said, I am so glad to meet you because I get calls about an agent named Will Trent and we don't have an agent named Will Trent.

21:04Karin Slaughter: and you know people asking about him and and he said I had you know he's not a big reader he's more of a shoot-em-up kind of guy likes his Tom Clancy movies but he said I started reading these books and I want to know where you're getting your information because it's pretty damn good and he introduced me to a lot of the agents and I got to talk to them and you know it's been a really rewarding kind of relationship for me as a writer, but also they know, they trust me because they know I'm not going to embarrass them. You know, in my book, the GBI is always the good guy, right? And we see that play out actually in real life because, I mean, you look at this case in Brunswick where they shot that African-American man in cold blood and the local prosecutors were just throwing their hands up saying, well, we can't do anything.

21:55Karin Slaughter: And the GBI came in and arrested someone two days later, right? And that's what the Georgia Bureau of Investigation does. I mean, they're highly educated, extremely well trained. And I put that in my books, you know, I'm really proud that we have them in the state. So, you know, sometimes they're investigating local police forces that are really rotten, but they're always going to be the heroes. And I think that is one of the reasons why they keep answering my phone calls. The research process sounds really fascinating, I have to say. There's something I was wondering about, and I don't know if I'm going to phrase this right, but I feel like there's maybe a bit of a perception that male writers are allowed to write really gory, violent scenes, and woman writers aren't expected to, or they're surprised when people do.

22:40Karin Slaughter: Is that something that you've experienced as a female crime writer? Absolutely. From the very beginning. And some of my reviews, I remember very clearly this one review from my first novel, women should not be writing about this kind of extreme violence, is exactly what it said. And, you know, it's, as a woman, as someone in publishing, we all know 85 % of all fiction buyers are women. So women are reading these books. That's a statistical fact. Women are more likely to be victimized by these types of crimes. That is a fact. Why would we not want to write about them. I mean, that never made sense to me.

23:21Karin Slaughter: And I would get really annoyed at the adjectives they would use about my writing. They would say they were muscular. Or my favorite was, she writes like a man. It's like, no, I'm actually a woman. And the reviewers were not comfortable with women writing about this sort of thing. And most of the reviewers I was talking to were men. There were some women who also had the same response, you know, oh, why would you want to write about this? And I would say, well, do you read these sorts of books? Oh, yeah, all the time. I love them. Right. And it's gotten a lot better. But very early on, I mean, I remember Mo Hader, who's a fantastic writer.

23:58Karin Slaughter: She was on an airplane from where she lives in Bath flying to New York to start her U.S. tour. And this review came out while she was on the flight. This review came out that said she was too violent, that she had no business writing this sorts of violence, that the book was snuff porn, and that she should just go home. And she landed and found out her entire tour had been canceled. Oh my God. And if you've read that book, Birdman, The Treatment, I mean, that series is amazing. And it had already done, it was like a number one bestseller in Germany, in the UK, in Ireland, all over the place. And then they said she was just too violent.

24:41Karin Slaughter: And so it was a double standard. And it was really hard for people like me and Moe and Kathy Reichs and Patsy Cornwell. You know, we were the women writing about stuff that people felt more comfortable with men writing about. And, you know, if you look at like the history of women in writing, first, it's just like was not ladylike to be a writer at all. So women had to use male pseudonyms or go by their initials or that sort of thing. So it's been a big pushback, but it's totally changed. I'm not saying it's 100 % better because there's still a lot of that sexism in this business. If you look at who wins the awards, who gets nominated for awards, that kind of thing, or who gets the New York Times reviews and, you know, just like the glowing raves about writing about domestic issues or family, where they call them family issues when men write about it and domestic when women write about it.

25:37Karin Slaughter: But I mean, you look at Gillian Flynn, for instance. I mean, she's a fantastic writer. And the books she wrote before Gone Girl were really amazing, but it was tough for her. I mean, Gillian would be the first to say it was really tough going because she was writing extremely psychologically dark, insular stories that had she been a man would have been received completely differently. And then, you know, I think Gone Girl just hit at the right moment. But it's really opened up. I remember, you know, very early in my career, women would say to me, oh, you know, I just, I feel so embarrassed. I love reading your books.

26:14Karin Slaughter: And now they're like, yeah, I love reading your books. They're fantastic. More gore, please. Interesting. Let's say you get a review like that. Is the publisher, are they supposed to back you up? Like, I've never worked for a publisher, so I'm not sure. like how far are they supposed to be defending your work? Is this, I don't know if this is a dumb question. No, it's a really good question. And it's a really, I think you could extrapolate it to a lot of things that are going on right now. And yeah, I absolutely do think your publisher should back up, back you up a hundred percent. And, you know, I mean, it also weirdly depends on how successful you are, right?

26:53Karin Slaughter: Like, I mean, if you look at all the controversy around crawdad singing and like the whole, we have to leave this country because we're going to be accused of murder and this sort of wonderful story of the South and the black struggle is told through a white lens, you know, that sort of thing. That book is super successful. No one, people could take it on and no one is going to not support her at the publishing house, right? I mean, that's just the way it is. So I would say if you're going to write something very controversial, you better sell a hell of a lot of it to get backing. And, you know, I don't even know who Mo's publisher was at the time.

27:34Karin Slaughter: And, you know, she got a week in New York because they're like, you know, we're not going to make you go home, have a week in New York in a hotel room and go see some shows and it's all on us and we're very sorry. The bookstores were the ones that canceled it, right? Not the publisher. So, you know, in that regard, I think they did support her. But also, I think, you know, if you look at publicity, a publishing house has to be really on board with what you're doing. That's why I love where I am right now. HarperCollins is amazing. My publicist absolutely gets me. You know, I had a publicist many years ago who said, I can't read your books.

28:09Karin Slaughter: They're too scary, but don't worry. I'll promote them. And I thought, thought, well, I won't tell you what I thought because we're not allowed to use those words on this program probably. But I didn't stay with that publisher. I'll tell you that. And I just thought, God, why are you, you know, it's, I don't even understand that. Why you think you're going to be a good advocate for my books if you don't believe in them. But absolutely. That's, I mean, that's something important. Not that you asked about this, but it's really important who you do business with, that they believe in you, your agent, like everybody needs to be behind you.

28:44Karin Slaughter: You've got to really feel that, that they believe in what you're doing, especially writing thrillers because, you know, you might get some pushback because thrillers write about society. They write about what's going on in the world. But, you know, as a knock on to this topic, Lee Child and I wrote about the exact same thing one year. And he read my book before I read his and he said, I promise you you know you're gonna laugh because I wrote about this you know we brought our own spin to it but it was basically the same subject and I got slammed I killed like three people in my book he killed 3 ,000 and I got slammed for writing about this subject matter and people like celebrated him doing it.

29:29Wow that really makes you think would you ever have considered writing under a male pseudonym? Or do you think it was worth taking that kind of nonsense and just saying, no, this is my name, this is who I am?

29:40Karin Slaughter: Yeah, I was in that camp. I have always thought, I'm not an arrogant person, I don't think, in real life. I mean, don't be fooled by the rocks I got. I'm still Karen from the block. But I've always just had this arrogance about my writing that I'm a really good writer and you need to come up to my level. I don't need to go down to yours. That's just been my, I mean, and I don't know where that comes from, but. That's great. Yeah. So I, so I've never had an issue with that. It's always been about, you know, I'm going to write what I want to write. I'm going to put my name on it. I'm not going to worry.

30:17Karin Slaughter: I mean, slaughter, let's be honest. That's, that's a good thing to have, but I'm just. Is it your real name? Yeah, it is. It is. I paid for it. Yeah. But I mean, as a marketing tool, it's really great. so no I never even ever thought about a pseudonym and I know some people do for very good reasons but it just wasn't something I mean I'm sitting here having done well so if I hadn't you you could be talking to Jack Spratt right now yeah um Steph has a note to ask if you are a fan of murder podcasts oh yeah I was gonna be like I would assume but maybe not I am but you know I have to be really careful because that's all I would listen to.

30:58Karin Slaughter: I did. I read the most hilarious tweet the other day. Somebody was talking about defunding the police and who's going to solve all the mysteries if we defund the police. And somebody tweeted back, white ladies would podcast. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, you're not wrong. They're not wrong. No. I mean, look at what Michelle McNamara. I know, right? Look at what she did. That's pretty freaking amazing. I mean, I'm all for podcast solving the unsolved mysteries personally yeah well you know and as from a police officer standpoint at least the ones i've spoken with now if they're going to speak to a crime writer they're probably more open than the average cop to begin with right but they're all for it as long as the person takes it seriously right and is not there for titillation or whatever because they want to catch the bad guys i mean honestly they're cops because because they're extremely competitive and they want to track down these bad guys and girls.

31:55Karin Slaughter: And if a podcast can blow that open, then bring it on. That's always, I'm always waiting for like the story to come through this podcast, solve this mystery. Yeah. Yeah. Not yet. One day. Pivoting a little bit from writing, I wanted to ask you about your nonprofit, Save the Libraries. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. And this is a passion project for me and we've raised almost half a million dollars for libraries and we give it all away. We have zero overhead. It just goes straight to the libraries. And what we do is we do block grants. We used to do fundraisers. And then we figured out that when libraries do fundraisers, basically whatever money they raise covers the cost of the fundraiser.

32:38Karin Slaughter: And so we thought, okay, well, that really sucks showing up and saying, throw us a fundraiser. So I got all the authors involved. Lee did one, Charlene Harris, Tess Gerritsen, Kitty Stockett, Mary Kay Andrews. And we would show up, we would pay our own way. We didn't even ask anyone to pick us up from the airport. And we would just be at the library and raise money that way. Right. And so then I thought, well, God, why are we doing this? why don't we just give them the money, right? So if they have a broken toilet or if they need to paint the walls or they need a story time, we funded a story time in Griffin.

33:18Karin Slaughter: One of my retired GBI agents is on the board of the library and she hit me up for a donation. We were really happy to do that, to have a reading circle for children there. We gave money to the Ferguson Library during the riots because, you know, nothing makes a kid more anxious than not having school as we're all seeing right now, or, you know, now anxious about going back to school because they could die, but that's another story. So, you know, it's something that we felt really strongly about that we should give them money so they can stay open and help them in any way we can. And that's what we've been doing since 2008.

33:58Karin Slaughter: And I hope to, you know, keep raising more money and keep doing what we can because right now cities are looking at their budgets and they're saying, you know, how are we going to pay for police officers and trash pickup? And the library is very low on that, even though it's probably one of the most important. I mean, we saw this with hotspots. A lot of libraries in rural areas were sending buses out as mobile hotspots so kids could do virtual learning because they didn't have the internet at home. Or you could go to the local librarians sit in the parking lot and use their Wi-Fi to do virtual learning.

34:34Karin Slaughter: And a lot of libraries now are doing curbside pickup and whatever they can. So we need to support them. They're a really important part of our, not just our education system, but of our society. Absolutely. Can you tell listeners how they can help if they want to? Well, you know what? I always say don't send money to us. Save the libraries because we're pretty good and aggressive about how we're fundraising. Donate to your local library. And if you live in a town that has a really good library system that's well-funded, go to the county next door because it's very likely they don't have it. And, you know, a lot of people, it's great to invest in your own community, but don't live on an island.

35:19Karin Slaughter: and if you help kids in the adjoining community, you're really helping your own community because kids who read are fluent readers, do better in school. They do better in school. They're going to go to college. If they go to college, you're going to have a better paying job. If they have a good job, they're going to pay higher taxes and you're going to get that money back and you're not going to be spending money on juvenile justice, on the court system, on, you know, adoption, all of these other things, if you can just help people have access to reading and to an easier way of life. Definitely.

35:55How important was the library for you growing up?

35:58Karin Slaughter: It was probably the most important thing in my life when I was a kid. It really, I didn't come from a reading family. And my dad realized that I loved reading. And he made sure that I was at the library every weekend. And those librarians put the most important books that I read as a child in my hands and pulled some of them out. Like, you know, they, for my cold dead fingers, they would pull lace and flowers in the attic. Loved a good incest story. And they're like, you know what, why don't you read Patricia Highsmith or Daphne du Maurier or anything other than incest. and it was a hard sell, I'm going to be honest.

36:40Karin Slaughter: But eventually I moved up and went on from there. Flowers in the Attic is wild. I didn't read it until not that long ago because it had been talked about so much. Steph, have you read it? I haven't read it, but I read the 21st century version of it, like my high school book that came out at that time, if you know what I mean. I'm trying to think. Oh, Forbidden, it was called. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. those books are like a hallmark and there's so many i wasn't i was in college in a feminist reading course and if you've ever been in a feminist reading course you know there's always a guy in there who's a feminist but he's actually a total dick and he was always interrupting us and someone mentioned flowers in the attic and he said that's disgusting that's incest and i was like oh my god it's incest and it had not occurred to me until then because it was such a beautiful love story.

37:34Karin Slaughter: So yeah, I was legitimately 19 years old before I thought, oh wait, incest, that's wrong. It's just a wild ride. I can't believe so many people read it when they were so young. Millions. Millions. Yeah, it's a real page turner though. Yeah, it is. I should have gone to the original. Yeah, there's like 40 sequels. Yeah. Yeah. No stuff you should read it. We'll discuss. Should be our book club pick. That's what we're going to do. So just switching gears a little bit, I was wondering if you had any regrets from when you first started publishing, but hearing that you were so confident basically from the get-go about your writing, I'm wondering if you don't have any.

38:14Karin Slaughter: You know, I always think there are two types of people. And they're like, if you say, here's a time machine, do you want to go to the future or do you want to go to the past? There are like two types of people, past or future. And I'm a future person, definitely, because I want to see what's going on. So looking back at my career, yeah, I think absolutely. I made some mistakes. I made some horrible mistakes. I made some stupid mistakes. But I also was raised by a father who would say, okay, well, you made a mistake. What can you learn from this? So you don't make it again, or you make a different mistake the next time, right?

38:50Karin Slaughter: And so that's something I think that's really important, especially in publishing, because you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You're going to make a lot of business mistakes. You might say something unfortunate to a bookseller. I mean, there's just all kinds of stupid things you can do. Now, I will say I'm really arrogant about my writing, but that extrapolates to like nothing else in my life. I mean, you can just talk to my cats. They know who the boss is. But I did make a ton of mistakes. And I'm also a person who says, okay, well, hopefully I learned from those mistakes. And if I had not made those mistakes, I might not be here.

39:28Karin Slaughter: So would I change them? I mean, I don't want to hurt people. I'm really conscious of that. My friendships are important to me. And any of my friends will tell you that I work really hard just to be a kind person. So hopefully I haven't been unkind to anybody, but I have absolutely made some stupid face-planting mistakes. Do you have any advice for veteran authors? Maybe what's one of the best things you've done for your business? Well, I think the best thing I've done is look at it as a business, right? Because it's such an emotional thing to write a novel. And when I got a lot of rejections the first time, I mean, my first book that my agent shopped out did not get picked up.

40:12Karin Slaughter: And I listened to why they rejected that novel. And they said, we love your voice, but this isn't a good story for us, right? And you have to understand in publishing too that they are looking, you know, different editors and different agents are looking for different types of books. And so if you are rejected, you know, there's a difference between someone rejecting you and saying, this is crap, man, you need to stick to your day job, which some people will say, or rejecting you because it's not a fit for their agency. you know so I guess my best advice would be to find the right agent who is into the kind of stuff you're writing and the best referral you can get for that is find a book that is in the genre or it's similar to what you're writing and look in the back of the book and if they thank their agent then that means something because it you know if you freaking hate your agent you're not going to thank them in the back of your book.

41:14Karin Slaughter: And it's very important. I've been with the same agent since the beginning. And it's very important to look at that relationship with an agent as a marriage almost and think, okay, well, this person is really excited about my work right now, but what are they going to do when I get rejection after rejection? You're right. Are they going to go, oh, sorry, it didn't work out. Are they going to do what my agent did when I got rejected, which is she said what do you want to do next so you you have to look at it as a partnership and I would just really say that you have to look at it as a business relationship and make sure that agent's business values are the same as yours because there are some agents out there who are jerks or who will get you really really big money for your first contract and you know that's great big money is great but then your second contract they don't care so you want someone who's going to be you know in your corner and is going to keep working for you and keep advocating for you uh through your career so not the not the flashiest one not the biggest agency not the you know just someone you really have a good vibe with and who believes in honesty and who's straight up going to represent you the way you would represent yourself.

42:42Have you had to go through a few different agents, editors, people that you work with to find the right fit for you? Or have you been pretty lucky with finding someone who works really well with you?

42:52Karin Slaughter: I was very lucky with my agent. And like I said, I've been with her from the beginning. My editor in the UK is actually my primary editor and she's been with me since the second book. Now, so I wrote Blindsided, my first novel and then my U.S. editor went on maternity leave and she's no longer in publishing so I can say this she she kind of rubber stamped my second novel because she was she you know understandably she had a baby about to come out of her so she was like uh this book is not as important as this crowning head so she rubber stamped it and I wasn't happy with it and I didn't, I wasn't in the position to say, wait a minute, I want to keep working on this, right?

43:39Karin Slaughter: I didn't have that knowledge that that's something I could do. And so my UK editor called me and said, hey, I just got the manuscript. And, you know, she was great. But then she was like, are you happy with this? And I was like, actually, no, I think it ended two thirds of the way through instead of at the end. And she said, oh, I'm glad you said that. I agree. And we started talking and our relationship develop from that. I mean, that's the kind of thing where, you know, it's one of those things you learn from is, wow, I didn't know I could say, if my editor is saying, this is great, you know, go with this.

44:15Karin Slaughter: I could say, you know what, actually, I'm not okay with this. I need more time. I want to do something different. I need to have a conversation with you about why I think this is not working. And Kate, my UK editor, gave that to me. And it was really valuable and extremely helpful because, you know, I've been with her for 19, almost 20 years now, and we've grown up in the business together. I followed her when she left my first publishing house. I followed her to the HarperCollins, and it's probably, I always call her my brain's best friend because, and, you know, we all have authors we love, but we think, huh, you will not be edited it anymore, will you?

44:58Karin Slaughter: And she edits me. I want to be edited. That's where I learn how to be a better writer and to understand story. And it makes my job easier because I have learned over the years, okay, Kate's going to say, you know, you got to do this or why is this character doing this? And so, you know, I've learned by having a good editor how to edit myself. Yeah, I can see that. I can also see how it might become more challenging as you get more successful to find somebody new that is willing to challenge you or push back or ask you to justify things. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen that happen where, you know, an author gets an editor, not fired, but off their book.

45:40Karin Slaughter: And I just think, okay, well, if you're not getting along, that's one thing because, you know, personalities matter. And I love my U.S. editor, Emily. She's really great. But, you know, I think it's important to have someone you trust who can give you your opinion. Because I've had editors I haven't trusted and thought, eh, no. And if you're going to talk to me about editing, then I need to understand where you're coming from. And I need to understand why, you know, that's the great thing about Emily. If she's going to give a note, it's a really valid note. It's not just, hey, I'm also here. I'm your U.S.

46:18Karin Slaughter: editor. I need to make my mark on this. She's not that kind of person. And a good editor doesn't do that. A good editor really looks at the work as a whole and understands the body of your work or what you're wanting to do with future work. And, you know, gives you support and makes you feel like you have a safety net when you're writing the book. Do you have any predictions for publishing over the next five or 10 years? um my favorite joke about publishing is do you know what the second book gutenberg printed after the bible was and it was how publishing is in trouble and uh the the industry will collapse you know it's a crazy business it really does not make sense you know they say here's some money write a book and uh you know uh hopefully we'll sell it i mean and then they print the the price on it i mean nothing has the price printed on it except in publishing so it is a crazy business but i also think they do know what they're doing uh and i i do i like the proliferation of self publishing but i also worry because i i know i need an editor and i'm a pretty damn good writer and I worry about people who aren't getting edited or they're hiring editors that aren't particularly good, you know, because the thing is when you hire your own editor, they need to be able to tell you the truth.

47:52Karin Slaughter: And if you're paying them and you might not pay them anymore, if they upset you, it's a very weird position to be in. So if you do hire an editor, I think you got to like commit to it and say, you know, I'm going to do my research and find out who else is this person edited? What do they bring to it? And, you know, make sure that they're professionals and they've got some chops. But then say to yourself, look, here's your chance. This editor really knows what they're doing. I need to listen to them. And I can disagree with them. Absolutely. But I need to listen to their opinion because nobody can write a book and it's perfect.

48:35Karin Slaughter: Nobody can do that. And if you think you have, then you need to go to the doctor because you probably have an aneurysm. Now, I think that's a really good point. And I think that that holds true for the authors that are successful in self-publishing are all working with editors. And that's a really, really important part of the process. I don't think it's something that you can do yourself. So this is our favorite question. What have you been loving lately? It can be a book, movie, TV show, something you think someone needs to check out or has inspired you recently? Well, TV, I really enjoyed The Morning Show.

49:07Karin Slaughter: Oh, yeah. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I really, really liked it. Book-wise, Camilla Lackberg's The Golden Cage is pretty damn good. I like a good woman snapped kind of story. I'm also reading a handbook on how to survive federal prison. It's called a comprehensive survival guide. It's really fascinating. It's basically for white collar criminals, how not to get raped in prison. And yeah, I mean, it's a serious book. It's not a jokey book. It's like if you're a Bernie Madoff or something like that, you need this book. And I think Madoff may have even bought it. uh so that that's uh that's really it's expensive but i'm also reading i'm so eager i love emma donahue she's so fantastic and she's so multi-talented i mean she's a playwright she is a short story writer she's a novel writer she's like a brilliant person she's just freaking brilliant and she's got a new book i think it's out uh this week uh about the flu pandemic which well done, Emma.

50:19Karin Slaughter: I know you've been working on this book for a few years. I do kind of wonder if she did cause the virus, just like as a marketing ploy. So I'm looking forward to reading that because my next book that I'm working on for next year, I want to include the virus, not as the focus of the story, but as in like, this is what our lives look like. I'm really interested to see how people incorporate that kind of stuff going forward. Right, because I write very of the moment stories sometimes. And I want to, are we going to have like a test we do at home? Are we going to be on rolling quarantines? The character's a lawyer.

50:57Karin Slaughter: So what is, our prisons are horrible hellscapes right now. But what everybody, everywhere, there are COVID hotspots. It's really disgusting how people are being treated. But you know, what is a courtroom going to look like? What is, I mean, all that kind of stuff I have to think about. but I think a lot of the clues to how we're going to go on are in the past and I'm really eager to see what Emma came up with because she wrote a book called Slammerkin 20 something years ago which is probably one of the most fantastic books I've read in my life and like I said she's just an amazing person but I love when she does historical fiction what was the book called the one that you just mentioned s-l-a-m-m-e-r-k-i-n and that's slang for the sort of dress a prostitute wore uh during that time period and it's actually set it has the same setting as the crimson petal and the white but that book got massive massive attention i mean it was a great book but emma's was so much better it's like oh my god you know i can't believe that this isn't a bigger book than it actually is, but it's a beautiful, beautiful story and heartbreaking.

52:10Karin Slaughter: And I just, it's one of my favorite books ever. All right. Added to my list. Thank you. Yeah, these sound great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We've covered everything, I think. Great. Yeah. Thank you. You give us so many insightful tips. So thank you. We really appreciate your time. My pleasure. And to everybody who wants to be a writer, put your butt in the chair and keep doing it. That's how you get there. Thank you for listening to the Kobo Rewriting Life podcast. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And do follow us on socials. We are at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and TikTok.

52:48This episode was hosted by Stephanie McGrath and Joni DiPlacido with production by Terrence Abrahams. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham and our theme music is composed by Tearjerker. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at Kobo.com slash writing life. Until next time, happy writing.