Please note: This transcript was generated using AI and has only been lightly edited by a human, so there may still be errors or typos.

[00:00:00.000] – Alan Petersen
Hi, Jenny. Thanks for coming on to the podcast. Really excited to have you on.

[00:00:04.670] – Jenny Milchman
I appreciate that. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:06.620] – Alan Petersen
The usual silence comes out October first. It’s already in the top of the chart. It’s available now through Amazon first read. Depending on when you’re listening to this, you can already go get it if you’re on Amazon Prime program. But it’s awesome. I started reading it. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’ve been enjoying it a lot. Just wanted to ask you about the whole concept because it’s pretty in the suspense, of course. It’s a thriller, but the whole background of psychotherapy with children, and I know that’s your background before you started writing. Can you tell us a little bit about how all that came into play? If this book is influenced from your background, your professional background?

[00:00:44.460] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, I think that goes to the crux of the novel. It really does, because I was a psychotherapist. That was going to be my career. It came about because my parents asked me mid-college, How are you going to make a living? Being a writer, especially, I going to be a poet, that doesn’t always pay the bill. I went to graduate school. I studied psychology. I was working as a psychotherapist at a rural community mental health center. I was given this very as a sign, this very scary case, a five-year-old child, and she had done something just very violent. Without going into too many details, it was almost as if my life was a suspense novel. It hit me that if you want to be a writer, what do you read? What do you love curling up with at night? I sat down, began writing my first suspense novel. This is a long time ago. Never got bubbles. But I couldn’t avoid the sirens on the writing anymore. Twenty years went by Before this character, Arles Shepard, who is a psychologist yourself, came to me, and I met with the publisher over at Thomas & Mercer, and they had this creative spark that they gave me. Lo and behold, 20 years past in the usual silence is coming out, and you’re very kind to read it. I appreciate that.

[00:02:04.400] – Alan Petersen
Even before you chose to become a psychotherapist, you were interested in writing, and you’re a fan of the suspense and thriller type novels from before that?

[00:02:12.660] – Jenny Milchman
Yes, writing was the dream, for sure. It was always the dream. For so many of us, we’re little kids and we’re making up stories. I think what clicked for me is that in wanting to be a poet, that’s very highfalutin, and I went to college and I took English literature and this and that. But the novels that I was weaned on, it was the horror and the suspense of the ’70s. I can still remember sitting in the library stacks and one Stephen King after another had to read them there because my parents would have been worried if I was reading stuff that advanced when I was so young. I don’t even remember what got me started on this. But yes, that was always the dream. And the suspense, the thriller, the horror. That’s the good stuff. That’s the stuff that keeps us up at night. Me anyway.

[00:02:54.000] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, absolutely. Same here. I think we all started out with the same book. Wow, I didn’t even know you could write fiction like this.

[00:03:00.140] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:02.030] – Alan Petersen
I’m also very curious, especially since I have a podcast. And true crime podcasts play a role in this with the characters. I know that was Up and Vanished and Serial, of course, so popular. And they’ve actually solved cold cases.

[00:03:17.510] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah.

[00:03:18.060] – Alan Petersen
Can you tell us a little bit about that? How that plays into your sluice here with the usual silence? Are you a fan of true crime podcast?

[00:03:25.540] – Jenny Milchman
It’s a big part of the book. You’re absolutely right. What I was interested There’s a storyline where Cass is married to Maggie, and their daughter goes missing. One thing I should put out there for all your listeners is that you could easily say no children are animals harmed in a Jenny Milchman novel. You’re not going to believe it. If you read the novel, you won’t believe me, but their daughter does go missing. But I will not put you through anything that I could not deal with. Cass, who’s really desperate, the police have not come up with anything, turns to a pair of true crime podcasters. I love these characters. I just think they are so of the moment and so smart and so wise. I think we’re really in a place right now where boots on the ground, the quote layperson is doing incredible things out there. We have lay people who are reviewing books. We have lay people who are solving crimes, as you say. Sometimes cases that have gone too carably cold. So this particular podcast in the usual silence, it’s fictionalized, But I believe it down to my soul. I think these two women could easily have helped with the crime as they did.

[00:04:37.060] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, and that’s something you touched upon, too. These are in real life, very tough subjects to deal with. What’s the balance there? Because obviously, you want to entertain us, a good suspense novel, but you’re also telling us about some pretty awful stuff that happens in real life. How do you balance that to make sure that we’re entertained but not freaking us out too much?

[00:05:00.080] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, it’s such a tough balance. I have a content warning in the acknowledgements or in the afterward because there is. There’s trauma and abuse in my character’s background. At the same time, I feel like it’s real life on the page. A lot of us are struggling with, I believe there’s a spectrum of trauma and abuse, and it’s rare that I meet anybody who hasn’t had at least some experiences where when they read about that in a novel, they feel as if there’s that empathic connection, and they know that they’re not alone. Even if we know that we’re not alone, it can feel as if what I just said about that spectrum and how many people have touched at some point on it isn’t true, and that trauma can be very isolating. That’s one reason why it’s in my books. But the other thing is that a lot of writers, braver than I, deal with these same subjects, and there’s maybe not so much the point of triumph that I am writing to. One promise I make to my readers, and not everybody wants this. Some people really want to see it more. It doesn’t always end well or whatever.

[00:06:05.580] – Jenny Milchman
But one promise I make to my readers is that there’s a reason why these characters are going through it, and they are going to vanquish their demons in one way or another. That’s a long answer to a really hard question, but it’s the best one I’ve got right now.

[00:06:21.470] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it must be nice. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but for you, because you see some in your career as a psychotherapist, you see some terrible stuff. So at least it’s fiction, so you can have a little better, perhaps things turn out a little better than they do in real life. That could be nice for you from what you deal with in real life.

[00:06:41.900] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah. What happens if justice is actually found? What happens if Arles, in many ways, Arles can do the things that I was not able to do. You’re right, it’s super satisfying to give her that power.

[00:06:53.850] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I know you said that this is a series, right? So there’ll be more books. That’s cool. All right. You’re already working on The next one, I assume?

[00:07:02.220] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, I actually just turned it in. This is the first series. I’ve had five other novels published, and they’re all set in the same fictional town, which is a wilderness remote town in the Adirondacks. But this was the first one where my publisher really was like, Wait a minute, what if there’s a character who could come back? We’ll come back. I just turned the second in the series in. It’s exciting. It’s exciting to see what Arles went through in the usual silence influences the second book, and yet she’s back to save another child.

[00:07:31.070] – Alan Petersen
Oh, so your other books were standard loans before this? They were. Oh, okay. So you’re enjoying going back. You don’t have to create everything from scratch.

[00:07:38.870] – Jenny Milchman
I love it more than I ever imagined that way. It’s not even so much the, you’re right, and that’s, of course, a feature of serious, but it’s not even that. It’s more that I can see her life on hold. She’s a 37-year-old woman who has never had a love interest in her life in the usual silence, there’s the first glimmers of one. Then in the next book, I could be like, What would happen with that? When It did happen with that. I almost feel like I’m looking at a portal and watching her life unfold, and it’s very thrilling.

[00:08:06.460] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I was going to ask about that, too, because the character is the neurodivergent autistic individual. Can you tell us a little bit about that? When made you choose to display that? There’s a lot of talk now about representation and fiction. Is that something that was important to you to include a character that’s the Nord Divergent?

[00:08:25.720] – Jenny Milchman
I felt like it was an honor and a privilege to get to try to do it. I was very aware all through the writing. You’re talking about Geary. He’s a 10-year-old boy who’s autistic. I was very aware in the story that this was not my… It’s not my story to tell. He is not a point of view character. I hope that I did write by him in putting really who he is on the page and letting him do his Geary thing. I love this kid. I think he’s just amazing. He communicates and perceives in ways that not everybody does, but he is so smart and intuitive. But in terms of what you said about representation, I tried very hard to show the line of knowing that I am neurotypical myself, and that’s the framework I can speak from. Also just nuts and bolts. We had a culture read because I was so aware that there are ways I was not going to get this right. I was very grateful to my culture reader who showed me where I misstepped and how I could do better.

[00:09:26.210] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. Because he asked somebody, so someone who’s experienced with that and Oh, okay. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. I saw one or two now more on your writing journey because I saw this on your website. I can’t remember where I saw this, but you talked about your journey. A lot of rejection, of course, as writer. We have to have thick skims. Can you tell us a little bit about that, about your journey? I know you mentioned that it was 20 years in the making, but a little bit more about that and how to handle rejections, because I do have a lot of aspiring writers that look into this podcast.

[00:09:57.850] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, I bet. Can I tell you a a little bit, but I can tell you a lot about it. I had seven novels before the eighth one finally sold. The eighth was my first, my debut. It took me 11 years. I worked with an agent that whole time, so I was very lucky that agents were interested in my work right from the beginning. And so that gave me a little bit of that validation. Like, maybe I’m not just going to sit in the woods and write these books for me and nobody else. But it was tough. It was tough. And the best I can say In terms of dealing with rejection is that if you have that sense inside you that you’re doing the right thing, it’s our own inner voice that’s going to get us through. Maybe you don’t have that agent, and maybe nobody is picking up your work. But if you know that’s a story you’ve got to tell, look how many readers there are out there. It’s going to speak to some of them. Who knows what road is going to get you there. In my case, what finally happened is I wrote to an author I really admired, and she read the manuscript that my agent had chopped and had not…

[00:11:01.450] – Jenny Milchman
My prior agent had chopped and had not gotten any offers on. She read it. She gave it to her own editor, this author. And that editor made an offer on my eighth novel. She was at a publisher that had rejected the same book six months before. It can happen in so many different ways. Get out there, meet other writers, go to conferences, whether virtually or live, make those connections, keep writing, and knock on every door, knock on things that aren’t doors. I almost guarantee one of them will open if you just don’t stop knocking.

[00:11:36.180] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s incredible. I never heard a interview with a lot of authors. That’s the most, what do you call that? I love it.

[00:11:41.710] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah.

[00:11:42.340] – Alan Petersen
Is that your eighth novel, which is your first novel. Is that the one that won the Mary Higgins-Clarke Award? It is.

[00:11:49.790] – Jenny Milchman
So this book that won the Mary Higgins-Clarke, I’ll brag on it a little. It was reviewed just because it’s like, whatever, come up in. It was reviewed in the New York Times. It had some really cool stuff happened to it, rejected everywhere. Every publisher turned it down.

[00:12:03.580] – Alan Petersen
Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I was just watching a documentary because I love the TV show, The Sopranos. I was just watching the documentary. And same thing, David Chase, the creator, it was turned up by all the networks.

[00:12:14.490] – Jenny Milchman
I did not know that. Here you go.

[00:12:18.670] – Alan Petersen
And so I also read that you do these cross country book tours. I’m really curious about that, especially since everything’s so virtual now. I love that. Can you tell us a little bit about that and some interesting experiences, perhaps? And can you tell us a little bit, how long did it last? How did it work?

[00:12:33.550] – Jenny Milchman
How it worked? Keep in mind, you’re right, it’s more virtual now. Honestly, the first time we went out was 2013, then 2014, then 2015. In 2017, my publisher sent me out. Even if you’re looking at 2017, it’s still seven years. I do wonder what the 2024, 25 equivalent will look like, and that’s set to unfold. But I will talk about it a little because it’s one of my happiest that set of memories. I do believe that there can be a translation for writers. You said there’s lots of emerging writers listening. I think there’s a translation and a message we can get from those experiences, even in this very modern era. What happened was, 11 years to get published, blah, blah, blah, and met tons of people. I wanted to get out there, and I wanted to say hi to them. I wanted to thank them for their support along the way. My husband and I rented at our house. We traded in two cars for an SUV that could get across the Rockies in February. We pulled our kids out of school. They were in first and third grades, and we car-schooled them in the back seat, and we crisscross the country for seven months, 115,000 miles.

[00:13:42.670] – Jenny Milchman
Wow. We went to bookstores and libraries and book clubs. It was wonderful. People who are listening, go to my website, go to the… I forget which page it is, but there are two little music videos. They’re short, they’re sweet, and it show us just books across this country. It was one of the best times, I would say, of my whole life. Now, I don’t know what that will look like now. I’m with Thomas and Russia, and we’ll see. But for authors who are coming up, I can’t overestimate the power of the face to face. You don’t have to get out there for seven months. You don’t have to rent out your house. Find a bookstore, find a book club, find a library, draw little radiates around where you are, and go out overnight. Make some stops with your book, even before you’re published. Make some stops at these bookish, the the bookish ecosystem and get to know people because it paid dividends for me that are still happening today. I’m still hearing from people who are like, Hey, I met you on the road in 2017. Would you like to come back to, I now have a podcast, or I now have a virtual book club?

[00:14:45.680] – Jenny Milchman
Would you like to come back? When we make those face-to-face connections, I feel like it really enriches everybody’s life.

[00:14:53.610] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think that’s something that’s changed so much in the past few decades of publishing is this connection now with readers is much more personal than it was 30 years ago, probably, and maybe even 10, 15 years ago.

[00:15:06.530] – Jenny Milchman
You can have a relationship now. And so many of those people that I’ve met along the way are my newsletter subscribers, and we email each other. We’re still in each other’s lives.

[00:15:15.270] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Have you ever thought about… I know you’re busy now with your book, but that would be a great memoir of that.

[00:15:21.460] – Jenny Milchman
And everybody says, I know I’m not a great non-conviction writer. I didn’t read it. But yeah, life on the road work, I have thought about it.

[00:15:30.370] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, especially with the whole book angle, too, because it’s so-Right. Yeah. I was also going to check. I wanted to ask you here on the nitty-gritty on the actual writing process, because I was a snoopy about that myself. What’s your process? Do you outline? Do you just start writing?

[00:15:47.710] – Jenny Milchman
I write in a little converted shed. It has electricity, but not much else. It has a heat for our long cat scale winters. I go out there and no outline, but I have a filing cabinet, which is an improvement. Up until recently, it was like a big box. I have a filing cabinet, and they’re filled with envelopes that have little straps of paper, little receipts, little whatever I could get my hands on wherever I happen to be that I’m taking this note or that note, and I order them linear fully, and that is the novel in a file in a cabinet. It’s like little bits of scenes or a line of dialog or maybe a metaphor that I’m going weave in. Then I just sit down and I let the story take me because there’s always a very big point of triumph in any of my works, like published and unpublished. They always are going to this point of you can exhale. The character, whether it’s whoever it is, a psychologist as in my new series or whoever it is, has done something that allows them to live their best life. I let that tide carry me along in the story.

[00:16:58.060] – Jenny Milchman
Then when I know that there’s a place that’s blank, I get up and I go over to my filing cabinet and I pull out the appropriate piece of paper, and then I mush it all together.

[00:17:07.200] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. It’s interesting. It’s a great process.

[00:17:11.450] – Jenny Milchman
I can’t guarantee it would work for anybody else, but- So far. How far it’s worked for me.

[00:17:16.200] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, obviously, it’s worked out very well. So yeah, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

[00:17:20.730] – Jenny Milchman
Exactly. I’m not going to mess with it.

[00:17:23.590] – Alan Petersen
What’s the process then? Because you said you’re with Thomas & Mercer, and I really have been reading a lot of their readers. They really enjoy the readers that they put out, what’s been the process for them? Has it been to enjoy working with them? How has it been so far?

[00:17:36.580] – Jenny Milchman
It’s been a million times. Anything I thought it was going to be, it’s been a million times more. My first three novels came out from Random House, Ballantyne, and then my next two from Sourcebooks, which is an independent publisher, and that was a very cool experience. Then when I made the move to Thomas & Mercer, I was completely unpaired. I knew they were putting a Greek crime fiction. I had judged awards for international thriller writers for a a couple of cycles, and I knew that many of the winning entries or the finalists were Thomas and Mercer. So I had a good feeling about their crime fiction. But then the publisher actually reached out to my agent and asked if we could meet. And from the moment we sat down together and she had this creative spark. Readers are really interested in psychology. Have you ever thought about incorporating your background? And then I began working with my editor, and then it’s just been incredibly creative and inspiring. They really care words over there. My editor and I would go back and forth about the word origin from the Latin, about this or that sentence that I was…

[00:18:38.510] – Jenny Milchman
It’s just been very literary, I think, is what I would call it. It’s been the most literary experience I’ve had since I was in school studying it.

[00:18:47.630] – Alan Petersen
Wow, yeah. It’s like a creative writing course. Master’s degree get crammed in there.

[00:18:51.580] – Jenny Milchman
Exactly. Yeah. It’s been a throw.

[00:18:55.400] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. That’s something that’s in the last few years, I know psychological readers, domestic readers, have been around for forever. But like you said, Thomas and Marcia mentioned that, and I’ve noticed that, too. It’s so popular now that genre. Just curious, though, why do you think it’s become so popular in the last few years? Any insight on that with your background?

[00:19:14.330] – Jenny Milchman
That’s a great question. The author Carla Buckley and I did a panel together once, and I think the topic was something like domestic thrillers, high stakes on the small stage. I’ll say it again. High stakes on the small stage, right? Because it’s like it’s your house, or it’s your neighbor’s house, or it’s a psychotherapy office, and you’re sitting one on one. I think one of the reasons why they must be so popular is that there are life writ a little larger. It actually goes back to something you said just before about how what if you could make it go a little more right? What if it could turn out a little bit better than it would in our messy, unarked, unplotted lives? I think that’s one of the reasons why domestic suspense and thrillers are so big, because it’s something we all relate to and can recognize, and yet it’s going to go maybe a little bit more the way we’d wanted to if we ran the zoo and had all the control.

[00:20:14.220] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think that as a reader, that’s something that I always think there’s so much fun is because I can picture myself in that. I love my FBI readers and Michael Connolly and all that, but I’m not an FBI agent, not a detective. That’s cool to see regular people.

[00:20:30.030] – Jenny Milchman
Right.

[00:20:30.590] – Alan Petersen
In your novel, your character’s, Oh, I can see myself more. It gets us more involved in the stories, I think. Yeah.

[00:20:38.950] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Like you said, I love Reacher. I am never going to be 6’5 and 250 pounds, and it’s great to put myself. After I read a Reacher novel, I always have to be talked down a bit because I feel like I could kill a man with my bare hands, and no, I can’t. But it’s true. When I read some of the domestic readers and suspense that’s out there now, I’m relating in a very different way.

[00:21:01.950] – Alan Petersen
I just thought you mentioned Reacher because I was checking out your website before I hit the record button. That’s got to be the coolest blurb I’ve ever read. I got it right here. Milchman is the Swiss army knife of thriller writers from the one and only Lee Child. How cool was that?

[00:21:19.640] – Jenny Milchman
He’s so smart. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Lee a few times, and he’s super smart and intelligent, and so is Reacher. You can see him in the character. I did. I thought that was a very smart blurb. I had to sit there and think about, What does he mean? Oh, that’s a need if I’m that.

[00:21:35.220] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I was able to interview him on the podcast, and I was blown away how he’s put down the Earth. Yeah, it’s true. Like you said, very smart guy.

[00:21:44.830] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:46.380] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. So can you give us a little… I know you just put the books out, and are you starting now to work on a third one? Or what are you working on now?

[00:21:54.720] – Jenny Milchman
I am working on refilling the bank. So for all the emerging writers, I think it’s super important to, at least for me, my process, to take a breather between novels and let things fill up again. So when I’m in that mode, I’m living in the world and things are coming in, they’re being filtered, but I don’t know exactly what role they’re going to play in which book. Because it’s a series, I do have some ideas for where I think Arles is going to go. At the end of Book 2, something very big happens to her that’s going to change her destiny. In whatever Book 3 becomes, will have to be there. But I don’t know much more than that. I’m letting it gel.

[00:22:36.850] – Alan Petersen
You got to refill the filing cabinet for the idea.

[00:22:39.700] – Jenny Milchman
That’s exactly right. Yeah, it’s literally drawn down. The envelopes are all flat right now.

[00:22:46.230] – Alan Petersen
All right. So one of the last questions I was asked by guests, and I know we’ve already touched on this a little bit, but any advice for an aspiring thriller, suspense writer that’s listening to the podcast?

[00:22:55.990] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah, there’s so much you could say. I definitely recommend join international thriller writers, which is actually free or very low dues if you’re pre-published, because building those connections is one of the most important things I think can happen. If you’re a mystery writer, or even really a lot of the genres are blended. Sisters in Crime is a great organization, History Writers of America. I’m a big believer in joining writers organizations and then going to their conferences. And read. When we talked before about sitting in the stacks and what books you’re weaned on and stuff, That’s how I finally came to the book that was going to break through. As I said, you don’t necessarily know which book is going to make it. You might keep writing, and it might be your second. It could be, I hope it will not be your eighth. If you’re listening to podcasts like this, it will not be your eighth because you’re getting so much good advice. I was very isolated as a writer. But make those connections, read those books, and don’t stop. Just don’t stop.

[00:23:55.790] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s good advice. I think that’s a big one for writers is, yeah, you can’t give up. Most of us, even if you weren’t getting published or anything, probably still be writing just because we have to.

[00:24:07.070] – Jenny Milchman
Yeah. There’s other great advice that I don’t even know who to attribute to, but if you can not write, don’t. Because it’s so punishing. But it’s also just so fun. If you’re living in the fun part of it, the punishing part will go down a little easier. It does end. You’ll get to the other side.

[00:24:26.080] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, great. Awesome advice. Where can the listeners find you? You I know. I love your website. It’s probably the best place to find you.

[00:24:31.950] – Jenny Milchman
I’ll definitely go, yeah, to jennymelshman. Com. I have a newsletter that’s really a community of writers and readers, and I’d love people to join us there.

[00:24:41.630] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, and I checked on your website. You got some cool stuff on there, the book tour and some teaching stuff. You do a lot of talking. Do you enjoy that, going talking to writers?

[00:24:52.310] – Jenny Milchman
I love teaching. I’ve done a few workshops that I morph depending on the audience. Sometimes for for kids, sometimes for adults. There are a few topics that I particularly love teaching about. But yeah, I think teaching writers is one of the most energizing things another writer can do.

[00:25:10.580] – Alan Petersen
Now, I don’t backtrack you, but I just glanced at your book cover, and I was going to mention this earlier. It is so cool. It really stands out. The usual silence. That must have been exciting when you first saw that.

[00:25:21.840] – Jenny Milchman
Oh, my gosh. When that box of books came, I’ve talked about this elsewhere. It was like opening a treasure chest. They looked like rubies, like Bigelow. I can say it because I had nothing to do with it. They’re just so talented over there.

[00:25:36.630] – Alan Petersen
Awesome. The Usual Silence is coming out October first. It’s available now. If you listen to this before the first, you can go to Amazon and order it now. I highly recommend it. Jenny, thank you so much. It was very nice talking to you.

[00:25:46.670] – Jenny Milchman
Thank you. I had a great time. I really appreciate it.