Coyote Hills: Kellermans on Crime, Family & Legacy

0:00You're about to make a trade. Which you do you listen to? Is it get optioning those options? or let's do a little research. Learn more at finra.org slash trade smart. This book in particular is the sixth book in a series. At this point, our protagonist, whose name is Clay Edison, and over the course of that series, he transitions out of being a law enforcement officer. He's established himself as a private investigator who has a very sort of interesting and collaborative relationship with another private investigator who lives down in Santa Cruz. And this book opens with her bringing him a case that she can't handle.

0:43She sort of punts to him. Coyote Seals is an exciting book. Agatha Christie's, you know, a huge success. She created a great puzzle, but her characters did not evolve. We want to write real characters and change over time. It's a novel like any other novel based on character, but the catalyst is a crime. It is so full of twists and turns and surprises literally to the last page.

1:32Thank you so much. Absolutely. I mean, you guys are, you know, we got to chop it up a little bit before we hit record and before the show started. So I'm just really excited about this conversation because one of the things that we touched on was the fact that you guys get to do so many of these things together. It's a great bonding experience. And I'm looking at your guys' relationship in real time and how you guys edify each other. and I can just hope and pray that when my children get older, we can have a side-by-side conversation and them feel the same about me and me about them. So, you know, kudos to you guys.

2:10I just turned 76 years old and you, I don't like to introspect because I think introspection is the enemy of creativity, but you do look back and I said, you know, I've written a lot of books, but the thing I'm most proud about are my children and, and all four of them have turned out, they still seem to like me, or at least they're faking it. And I love the people that they married. So I joke that my in-law kids are my favorite kids because they call me dad and treat me nice. I didn't pay their tuition or go through their adolescence. So it's much more important to me to have collaborated with my beautiful wife to create these four amazing human beings.

2:53I couldn't be prouder of my children. They're really all gems. Amazing. And they're highly accomplished, all of them. Happily married and prolific in producing other children. Especially this guy right here. Five kids. Good lord. And he works hard at it. You know, I think well, yeah. I think my dad and I, when my dad and I started working together, we both realize that the relationship is much more important than the collaboration the relationship preceded the collaboration it will it will continue after the collaboration ends assuming it ever does it who knows maybe we'll be doing these things the rest of our natural lives but but um you know i think that level of um trust and and mutual respect both as people and as craftspeople is what has enabled us to be so productive together.

3:53Well, you never know what it's going to be like until you do it. And we kind of fell into it, because I had started a book and I was writing another book. I have a series that I write. I did a non-series book and I did about a hundred pages of it. And it was just too much and I needed, I just, it was too much. And Jesse happened to be visiting with his family and he saw this pile of papers on my desk. He said, what's that? I said, oh, it's a book I started, but I don't think I'm going to finish it. And then he picked it up. He said, this is really good. We should finish it. I said, okay, we'll finish it together.

4:29And it was a bestseller and it was a great book. And we had so much fun, we decided to do another one and that was fun. So we kept going and it's been a wonderful experience. First of all, I liken it to playing in a band. You know, I've been playing guitar most of my life and I've done a lot of different types of music and I played semi-pro and it really makes a difference. I'm sure in sports, it's the same way. You want your teammates to know what they're doing. It really makes a big difference. When you play with people who know how to play, it just goes better for you. same thing with writing jesse was already a highly accomplished writer uh when he was right out of college he won the princess grace award for best young playwright in america and he had his own bestsellers so he was highly accomplished so it wasn't a nepotism thing wasn't a nepo baby this guy was accomplished you know he he got into harvard law law school didn't go and he he had his own deals.

5:28And so it was really, it's been fun. And I never understood these people who, like there was a British novelist, Kingsley Amos, very successful. His son was Martin Amos, more successful. And they asked Kingsley, what do you think of Martin? He goes, oh, is he the skinny one? You know, he just was competitive and scornful. And I don't understand that at all. You love your children. You're not going to compete with them. But fortunately, Jesse has a lot of talent, so we enjoy writing together. It makes it a fun process. And I can honestly say in all these books, honestly, we've never had an unpleasant syllable between us.

6:07Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, it is kind of amazing because he was a teenager and gave me quite a bit of grief at times, but he's a grown man now. He's mature and he was a great kid. I'm not saying we had major issues, but he was, he's not a saint. He, you know, he went through adolescence. All my kids did. It's part of life. But as a writer, he's fabulous. I mean, it's just great. It's amazing. Yeah. What's your take on all that, Jesse? Well, you know, I think that, um, so, you know, I think one important thing to, uh, to understand about me is that I come from a theater background. That was sort of where I was for many, many years.

6:48I was doing playwriting. I was directing. And that really primed me to be able to collaborate and work together with somebody creatively without your ego getting in the way. Writing novels is generally a one-person operation. You're the director, the scenic designer, you're the actor, you're putting the words in people's notes. So I think for a lot of novelists, it's very hard to let go of that level of control. Whereas for me, since I cut my teeth writing plays, I was very comfortable with the idea that what I do is part of something larger. A script is a blueprint. It's not the finished product.

7:31product and i was also uh comfortable and excited with the idea of of of coming to somebody and having that rapport and bouncing things off somebody like i love to to sit around and you know and and and shoot the breeze with with my with my friends and and and this is in some ways no different from that it's it's sitting in a room or a virtual room with with somebody and it's uh it's the yes and it's it's the yes and of improv okay what about this and oh what about this and and that state of creative permissiveness and freedom that allows you to build a total that's much greater than the sum of its parts.

8:08Don't get me wrong, I love to write my own books and I still work on my civil rights. But in addition to my dad, I also collaborate with other people just because that dynamic is super fun for me. I wrote a collaborative comic book with a friend last year. We're developing it for television. So there's a lot of fun and also comfort in being able to go to your partner, assuming you trust them, as my dad said, and that they're skilled. And you don't feel like you're dragging dead weight. And we've all had that experience too, like on group projects where you're dragging people behind you. So the important thing is pick your partners carefully.

8:50Pick your partners carefully. Same thing in marriage. You'll be fine. You know? Hey, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our Powered By sponsor. We're proud to announce a partnership between White Sands Treatment Centers and the Determined Society. With multiple locations across Florida, White Sands provides luxury, top-rated addiction treatment. From medical detox and inpatient care to outpatient support and long-term aftercare. Their resort-style campuses, expert clinicians, and holistic programs create real, lasting recovery. Together, we're committed to bringing hope, resources, and healing to those who need it most.

9:31White Sands Treatment Centers. Yeah, that's amazing to hear. The thing that I love, everything that you guys said, but the one thing that sticks out to me is most great things come out of things that are unexpected, right? It's true, for sure. That you're not forcing. And, you know, Doc, you had a book that you were trying to write and you're like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to finish it. Jesse picks it up and is like, hey, this is great. Let's do it together. And then that partnership and collaboration in the professional world developed. And from that point, you guys have done amazing things together.

10:07is just for the listeners to really think about, right? We cannot judge every single moment as it's going to be the end all be all. We have to be open to the fact that things can develop and can evolve into something completely different than we had envisioned. And what can be born? An amazing run of amazing books and collaboration. I think that's really an important thing. Obviously, you want to do the hard work so you know what you're doing. You have the chops, you have the talent. but you have to be open to spontaneity and new experience in my in my life certainly that's the way it's been almost right from the beginning uh even finding jobs as a psychologist things just kind of kind of happened to me i i've never a really i'm not a big planner obviously you want to be organized i'm not a right i'm not a flake but there's a limit how much you can plan things And I think you're 100 % right.

11:05Some great stuff. It's like romance, like meeting my wife. I didn't plan to meet her. You know, having children, I don't know how they're going to turn out. You kind of have to go with the flow to some extent. and there's no lies there man in in creative work as in life it's this balance between being having goals and and structure and also being receptive to what the universe is is is giving you right i i i think right and you can't you can't do it at i at either extreme and you know sometimes you're you're you're working more in the mode of okay i got i gotta like you know write this outline i gotta figure this plot point out i got i gotta build this skeleton and sometimes you're more in that receptive phase where you're sort of letting letting things flow through you but there is no sure way to choke off your creativity than to say i'm going to be creative now like that that's just not it's just not a thing it's it's it's it happens in a state of relaxation it happens in a state and for me and i would bet for you dead also almost when you're you're doing you're doing something else your mind is elsewhere right and it's not quite so locked up so that's why people have good ideas in the shower or whatever like when i'm exercise when i'm exercising when i'm walking if i feel if i feel like i'm sort of like starting to starting to to to um sort of like run in run into problems i stop what i'm doing get up and i walk away from the computer well i and there's there's nothing better for sort of like relaxing the channels again.

12:40I agree. It might have been Stephen King. We talk about the Chinese finger puzzles, those straw fingers. The harder you pull, the tighter it gets. You have to kind of relax it. You know, we talk about left brain and right brain stuff. That's a cliche now. The guy who invented the concept, late Robert Ornstein, who was a neuropsychologist at Stanford, he regrets it because it's been simplified and vulgarized. The truth is it's not an either or thing. You have two hemispheres, right and left. For right-handed people, generally the left is omelet. For lefties like Jesse and myself, we never know until we take an EEG.

13:17But there's a little bunch of nerves in between those hemispheres called the corpus callosum, and that's the freeway that transmits messages across, and that's what you need. And to me, writing a novel is the perfect job, because think about it. On the one hand, you need what people traditionally think of as, you know, as just organized stuff, lepering stuff where you have grammar, you have spelling, you have structure, you have logic plots that hold together. And then there's the crazy stuff where you're making up people and you're fantasizing. So it's a fantastic job because it engages your whole brain constantly, constantly back and forth.

14:01Wow. And Jesse's 100 % right. You need to be in a receptive, relaxed state to be able to free your brain up to do that kind of stuff. So it's a great job. It's interesting. It's interesting because if I have a block in creativity, right, it used to be to your point, Jesse, I would go harder. I'm like, no, I need to sit here and I need to figure it out. And then I just get frustrated. And then I don't pick it back up for a week. Like what I started to really rely on is just be present in the moments that I'm not creating, whether it's in the gym. So many of my ideas come from in between sets or in the middle of something.

14:43It's just like all of a sudden it pops and you're like, what the heck? Like to a point where this show was created in a moment that I was driving down the interstate in 2021. and I was like whoa wait a second I wasn't even thinking about this you know but it was in the moment of relaxation thinking about something else you know really just just driving down the road and then all of a sudden I created the show and we have built to a certain point and now we are here but even to now if I get to a point where I get to frustration I'm like I'm going to go play with my kids. Like I'm going to go hang out with them.

15:26And that kind of centers me because they have such a curiosity and such a playful nature and anything is possible. Like if I could just have the confidence of my six, eight and 11 year old, like, wow, what could I truly do? So I really do believe in not like the Chinese puzzle, not forcing it because everything gets tighter and constricted. You have to have a point of relaxation to where you can remove the resistance and then move forward. So I love hearing things like this. Well, you know, that's the basis of hypnosis. When I was working at a children's hospital, I worked with cancer patients for about a decade and we were exploring different ways of relieving pain and hypnosis was one of them.

16:06So I learned how to do it and I learned about it. All hypnosis is, is strong relaxation and focused concentration. And they have done studies where they would go in and hypnotize kids in the classroom and their learning actually picks up because they're relaxed. But on the other hand, you have to be able to do the hard work, which when you relax, you could do something with it. Others just sit around smoking weed and nothing happens, you know, so there's relaxation, there's relaxation, but a hundred percent, you have to be receptive to it. And you talk about the word confidence and i think after writing a bunch of books both of us know that if we get into a fix we can get out of it so we don't worry too much about it absolutely jesse i believe you were going to say something as well i would just i was i was going to say to that point about um you know how how you access that that um that side of your of yourself um and become receptive i think for me and for my dad as well we have a lot of outside interests and hobbies um so for me so we both play music my dad paints um i cook i i'm also like a big gym rat and it's all stuff that is non-verbal and i think and i think that that's actually really important but particularly with things like music or cooking or painting it's still creative like you're still in a in a flow state a lot of the time and and and i would i would argue i don't know how you feel about this sean but like even in the gym there's there is a flow state going on there like if if if you're like very focused um you know i i i power lift and you really have to concentrate on what you're doing so you get killed or crushed so so so but it's non-verbal right you're in your body right or you're in your hands as you're playing music or in your ears and it just sort of like takes the pressure off the the verbal higher uh higher uh higher parts of your brain that that are constantly spewing out words.

18:08For my dad, and I think for me, our brains are very busy places. There's a lot of, you're noticing things, you're remembering things. I think, again, I won't speak for my dad, but I would guess it's the same thing. You live in a constant state of recalling and imagining and experiencing, and it's just, it's like this constant fire hose of words and images. So trying to, like, it can be overwhelming at times. And so I think that, like, things that enable you to temporarily step outside that stream can be very, very healthy and helpful. It's true. I mean, there's a neurological aspect to it, which I learned about, because two of the things that I like to do for fun are painting, which is actually what I'm best at as painting and playing guitar, playing classical guitar.

19:04And I noticed that after a few hours of writing fiction, I can play guitar, but I really had trouble painting. So I asked this guy, Antonio Damasio, who's one of the world's greatest neuroscientists, like he studies the nature of consciousness and he's Italian. And I said, Antonio, why do I have trouble painting after I'm writing? And he thought of, I said, John, When you are writing, you're painting pictures with words. You are probably exhausting the same neurons that go toward painting pictures. And it makes total sense. Music's a different part of the brain. So you can do it. And I thought that was a great answer.

19:49I never thought of it. So, you know, things get fatigue. Neural cells empty out. they need refurbishing you need to rest you need minimal stress you know and i and i want to say i want to see i've never tried to describe this to anybody before but here but and again i don't know what my father's experience when i'm looking at a screen right i write on my computer i'm looking at the page i'm seeing the words but there's a completely separate part of my brain that is playing of a very detailed visual image of of what i am right it's like you're seeing but not seeing at the same thing your brain is just going in and out of the words and the image and the words and and they sort of this is really interesting because i've never like tried to uh encapsulate what what this experience is like it's almost like it's it's a form of self self-hypnosis and everything sort of fades away time fades away it's a flow state but but insofar as the visual the visual component of this is really really really strong for for me like i think for me as a writer being able to and i was as i said i was a theater director so being able to like picture my character move them around in space like i i want to know like how close is he to the door so like if he's this close to the door what's the perspective on the room what what is the light look like from that angle if he walks further in like how does the sound change you know all of these all of these things you really want to embody and and experiencing and experience it experience it as as you're writing about it and the words themselves are almost like uh secondary they're like where you deposit these these images it's really true i mean i've had that's that describes my experience almost exactly when it comes to what your family eats and drinks you know your choices matter.

21:42You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. you're in an altered state of consciousness one thing that's amazing hypnoidal states hypnosis like states you generally experience distortion of time generally it's constriction of time where you look up and two hours have passed that's true of writing i mean i will write for two hours and it seems to have been 20 minutes and i look at the clock and it's been two hours and it's it's crazy.

22:33They say time goes quickly when you're having fun. And I think it's an element when you're engaged and you're focused, but it is tiring. It's tiring. It doesn't say two hours of writing feels like eight hours of another job, at least to me. I'm tired after two, three hours. I bet, you know, I think you guys are touching on what really makes you guys successful authors. truly because you can have an idea and think about an idea and try to get it on paper or try to create something different in life but if you can't see it well like it's much harder the thing that it's not as effective the thing that i've noticed about those of us who are who are long-standing writers i've been doing this for 45 years stephen king dean dean kudz even Jesse's a young guy, been doing it for 20 years.

23:24Those of us who keep doing it are professionals. We attack it professionally. The movies always portray the writer as living some glamorous life and he's got his feet up and he's just thinking about stuff and having a martini and there's some good looking chick is doing this. There can be an element of that to fame. I mean, some people like it, but those of us who take it seriously, it's a job. It is a great job but it is a job and it means you show up on time and you do your job and and that's i think the other way writers are portrayed as as this like a complete disaster like like where they haven't showered in a week and and and they don't know how much money is in their bank account and right and right so so like either one is a uh is a romantic and not very realistic portrayal of of what writing life is like writing life is about you know so funny like a um a friend of a son's friend who's like 18 or 20 or something um and and like really sort of wants to be in in in the creative world um texted me recently he's like can i shadow you for a day and i said to my my dad is laughing because like he knows how absurd that way i so i said to you you know, do you want to like sit in my office and watch me as I type?

24:45Like, that's not going to be very helpful. So we went to lunch and I walked him through sort of the mechanics of the book industry. And I walked him through the mechanics of how a book goes from, you know, what the various stages are from idea to, you know, development to outline. You can chunk these things into discrete tasks, but it's artificial. It's an artificial framework that you're imposing upon it to be able to explain it to other people. Really, it's just sitting down in a chair day after day and letting your brain do what it's supposed to do and then going back and fixing the mistakes and polishing it.

25:30There's nothing romantic or particularly interesting. I once had an idea. I was like, maybe I should rent a storefront, like a commercial storefront. And I would just sit in the window and write all day long. And like, just like, right? Because it's such an absurd, everybody's laughing because it's such an absurd thing. But people, I think people who don't do it, they just don't understand what the act involves day to day. It's a very, it's an internal, repetitive. repetitive. All the action is taking place up here and on the page. The pleasure isn't typing. It's what's going on in your brain and what you produce.

26:12It's just, I found a big difference when people would come up to me and say, I want to be a writer. That wasn't going to happen because you're really getting caught up in the persona, which is a lot of BS. If someone says, I love to write, or even I hate to write, but I'm driven to do it and they concentrate on the activity, there's a little more hope there. And the other thing is, I would have kids come up and say, how do I publicize my book? I go, have you written the book yet? No. And you're thinking about it. Because there's so kind of an influencing in the internet and a lot of BS. You got to produce something.

26:47Then we'll talk about publicizing it. And the other thing is people, I have an idea. I said, well, you know, to be vulgar, ideas are like assholes. Everyone's got one. and, you know, transform your idea into a book is a big process. You know, I can speak to this because, you know, I've self-published a book, but then I just recently signed my first contract with a publisher. Oh, good. Congrats. For my book that I have to have the manuscript done by December. But I look at this and like, this is very interesting to me because you talk about flow state, you talk about all these different things and all these different experiences I'm going through real time.

27:29And you guys have literally unknowingly, unknowingly of giving me really good tips on how to get in flow state, how to see the situations in my life that I'm really trying to bring to the reader and the blueprint of determination and what it really means, what it really looks like. Exactly. Right. And so that's really helpful. I want to touch on one thing because Jesse, you've mentioned something and then I want to get to Coyote Hills. Okay. Okay. Um, is, um, you mentioned how writers are portrayed in, you know, films and a whole bunch of different things and, or just how the public perception is of a writer, right?

28:08Just sitting there struggling, you know, messy hair, not, you know, about to get evicted from the apartment. I look back at the, um, the Bradley Cooper movie limitless. That's how writers were, are portrayed in, in most, in most films, right. Right. Until they're inspired and they're this this massive intellectual. But, you know, I think that's a is a poor way to to depict authors and professional writers. But you just triggered that thought. And I wanted to bring that to the conversation because I don't know. Have you seen that movie? I haven't. But Jesse has. I'm sure. Yeah. Check it out, doc.

28:44I think I think, you know, like. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded. so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. Very, it's not just writers who get this treatment in film, right? film or books, they need to make something exciting and external.

29:25That's the job of a film. They need to make it external and exciting. So a lot of stuff gets, you're turning the contrast way up on life to an unrealistic point. And that can serve a dramatic purpose for sure. I think, and maybe I'm just unusual in this respect. For me, I often want to know what things are like in the normal moments for somebody. We've talked to a lot of law enforcement because we write a crime series. We talk to a lot of law enforcement over the years, right? And most of law enforcement is paperwork. It's not shootouts and stuff like that. Now, you can't write a 400-page novel and 10-book series about paperwork, but understanding the reality of what somebody actually does day-to-day is so helpful, I think, for creating characters who have a full life and are not these cartoons.

30:22I think we need always, always, always to think character first. The person and the personality comes first, and that's where the story emerges from. You can tweak the contrast, right? You turn it up when you put a real person in an extreme scenario. But what you don't want is a caricature or a cartoon. That's not satisfying to anybody. So, Doc, you're talking about the frameworks of a house, the foundation, and the character, right? People remember the characters, but you can't have a character until you have a great framework. So, right. Let's talk about this as it relates to Coyote Hills. Well, that's what we spend most of our time discussing.

31:09We have Jesse lives in a different city. So we do a lot of once in a while I fly up there, he flies down here and we talk. A lot of it's over the phone. We have these conferences and we're trying to figure out this labyrinthine plot. The characters kind of work themselves out because, you know, he's a talented guy. So he knows how to play in food. So this book in particular is the sixth book in a series. And at this point, our protagonist, whose name is Clay Edison, he's pretty well-developed. He's well-developed as a person. His backstory is well-developed. His family life is well-developed. And we've been following him sort of in real time as he gets older, gets married, starts to have kids.

31:57And against that background is sort of his professional life. So he starts the series as an Alameda County Sheriff, specifically working in the coroner's office. So Sean, you were telling us off camera that you're from Concord, California. I live up in Berkeley, California. So you are definitely familiar with the territory. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So one of the things we really wanted to do with this series, because I think it's a really interesting geography, and there's lots of different pockets around here, was take each book and sort of move the camera around to different locations in the Bay, particularly the East Bay.

32:41So it really doesn't focus. People think of the Bay Area as San Francisco. That's not my experience. My experience is the East Bay. So the books are set in Berkeley, they're set in Oakland, they're set in Fremont, they're set in San Leandro, all of these places that don't get a lot of exposure and treatment in fiction or film, but are really, really, really interesting. And over the course of that series, he transitions out of being a law enforcement officer because he gets himself into a certain amount of trouble. By the time we catch up with him in this book, in Coyote Hills, he's established himself as a private investigator who has a very interesting and collaborative relationship with another private investigator who lives down in Santa Cruz.