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[00:00:00.000] – Alan Petersen
Welcome to Meet the Thriller Author. I’m Alan Petersen, and this is episode number 232. This is the podcast where I sit down with some of the best thriller and mystery writers working today to talk about craft, careers, and the stories behind the stories. Today’s guest is a true legend of the genre, Jonathan Kellerman. Jonathan is the number one New York Times bestselling author of more than 60 novels and the creator of the iconic Alex Delaware series. His latest novel, Jigsaw, is the 41st book featuring psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis, one of the most enduring and beloved duos in American crime fiction. In this episode, we talk about writing a long-running series how Jonathan’s background as a clinical psychologist shaped Alex Delaware, how his writing process has evolved over the decades, and how, after years of interest and multiple options, Alex Delaware is now in development as an Amazon Prime series. If you enjoy conversations like this, you can find more episodes, short notes and book recommendations at thrillingreads. Com. And don’t forget to rate and review the podcast wherever you’re listening. It really helps the show. All right, let’s get into my conversation with Jonathan Kellermann.

[00:01:14.060]
Hey, everybody. This is Alan Petersen with Meet the Thiller Author. I’m thrilled to welcome Jonathan Kellermann, the creator of the iconic Alex Delaware series. His latest release, Jigsaw, is the 41st Delaware novel. The series began in 1985 with When the Bough Breaks and has been captivating readers for 40 years now. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

[00:01:34.120] – Jonathan Kellerman
It’s my pleasure to be here, Alan. Thanks so much.

[00:01:36.420] – Alan Petersen
Before you became a full-time novelist, like your character, Alex Delaware, where you were trained and worked as a clinical psychologist. Yes. What led you from that world to the fiction and specifically writing crime fiction? What drew you to that?

[00:01:50.480] – Jonathan Kellerman
Well, the interesting thing is writing actually preceded my work as a psychologist. I was one of those kids who loved to write, loved to read, and started writing writing stories from about the age of nine. I was always one of those kids in school who would write other kids’ essays for them. I won all the writing contests. I went to college, and I actually got a gig as a cartoonist for the UCLA paper. Once I was on the paper for four years, I did a cartoon a day, five days a week for four years, I started to also write for the paper. I was an editor, I was a journalist, I was a columnist. I got to sample everything a college paper had to offer. Then I won another writing award, the Goldman Award, when I was 21. I figured, Oh, I got an agent. I’m a big shot. Thirteen years of rejection. It’s very interesting because I wasn’t good enough. There’s no mystery to it. I was successful in publishing other things. Lots of op-ed columns, non-fiction, a couple of books on psychology. I got a PhD, became a medical school professor, so I did a lot of scientific writing.

[00:02:59.640]
But Full length fiction eluded me from 1971 till 1985, when the When the Bough Breaks was published. When the When the Bough Breaks was actually written, 1981. Basically, I wrote a whole bunch of books in my garage from 11: 00 PM to 1: 00 AM and kept getting lots of nasty rejection slips and people telling me I should not be in publishing. All those people are since out of work, and I’ve got 40, 50 bestsellers. Anyway, but the truth is I wasn’t good enough. And I finally figured out, Duh, Write what you know. And by that time, I had lived a little bit. I was in my 30s. I’d worked as a psychologist. I had life experience, and I sat down and wrote this book. But nobody wanted to publish it because even though they said the writing’s great, it had a subplot or really a main plot of child abuse. And in those days, that was an unusual topic, and people thought it was too yucky. But finally, someone took a chance on it four years after it was written for a very small advance. I calculated. I’ve been quoted many times. I got three bucks an hour to write When the Bough Breaks.

[00:04:10.540]
I was already pretty successful as a psychologist. I had a big practice. I was a professor. I said, Gee, I’m no longer a diluted psychotic. I am now a novelist, but I hope I can afford to do this again because, man, this takes time and doesn’t pay the bills, and I’m busy. Then for some strange reason, it became a best seller. I remember the day I found out I was seeing patients, and psychiatrists and psychologists have this 45 or 50 minute hour, and in between we’re charting notes, and I’m charting notes. It was a busy day, and I’m in LA, and my agent calls me from New York, and he says, John, you’re on the list. I go, What list is that? He goes, The New York Times best seller. I go, Oh, is that a big deal? He goes, Yes, idiot. It’s a big deal. I I was shocked. After that, I said, Okay, I’ll write another one. That became a best seller. I’ll write another one. Because I was lucky, I guess. It took me a long time to break in, but when I broke in, I guess I had something to offer that people wanted to read I’ve been doing it full-time since 1990 when I gave up my practice.

[00:05:20.740] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. So you were doing both for five years or so?

[00:05:23.670] – Jonathan Kellerman
Yeah, for five years, I had five best sellers as well in full-time practice, still writing in my unfinished garage from 11: 00 PM to 1: 00 AM. First of all, I love my practice. I like treating children and families. I really enjoyed it, and I had a big practice. I had three people working for me. We had several offices. I did a lot of legal work. I was an expert witness, and I really liked it. Very rewarding because you know you’re helping people. The thing about child psych is generally short term and everyone gets better. You feel like a hero. It’s really a successful field. I didn’t believe that this writing thing was really going to last. But after five straight bestsellers, I said, I couldn’t do both because my publishers were asking me to tour and I couldn’t leave my patients. I said, Okay, let me give this a try. I didn’t walk away from patients. I just stopped taking new ones. I gave my practice away to my three youngest associates. I didn’t sell it, and I gave it a try. Fortunately, it worked and I’ve been doing it ever since. I never thought this would be my main gig.

[00:06:33.280]
It’s strange the way life works out.

[00:06:35.900] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, and 41 novels now with Alex Delawer. Alex Delaware.

[00:06:39.400] – Jonathan Kellerman
I’ve written over 65 books between non-nonfiction and fiction. People think I’m such a hardworking guy. I’m not. I’m just efficient.

[00:06:50.200] – Alan Petersen
I’m curious, so who were your literary influences when you started to think about writing and you started to write these?

[00:06:57.160] – Jonathan Kellerman
It’s very interesting. As I say, I was a kid who read a lot. From the age of nine, I was reading a book a day. I gave myself myopia and I needed glasses. I was just reading constantly. I was lucky in those days to keep walking to a library. No one would say, You can’t read this, you can’t read that. My parents had tons of books, so I read a lot of stuff. I loved Count of Monte Cristo and Victor Hugo, all those classical adventure stories. Then my parents had a book, books by by the New York writers of those days, like James T. Farrell, who most people haven’t heard of, but a very well-known writer in the ’40s. They had a book of his short stories, totally inappropriate for an 11-year-old, but no one was paying attention. My parents were busy. I picked it up and read it and didn’t quite understand all the adult themes, but was really entranced by this whole notion of writing fiction. Then I had a teacher who was very encouraging to me. She told me I had a lot of talent, blah, blah, blah. So I almost everything.

[00:08:03.200]
And then it crystallized after all the failed novels, I wrote Comedy, and I wrote this, and I wrote that. I was going to work at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, which is on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. And I’m driving early in the morning, 7: 00 or 8: 00 in the morning, 9: 00, along Sunset East toward East Hollywood. And I see there’s this sign, Used Bookstore, Going Out of Business, Sale. Great. So I go in and I bought a bunch of books, and I picked up a book by Ross McDonald called The Underground Man, which was, I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work, but he’s one of the great hard-boiled writers, Southern California. His books took place in Santa Barbara, but he gave it another name, Santa Teresa, I think. Same as my late long-deparded friend, Sue Grafton, who I loved. I read this book, and he was a great writer. I mean, people love Chandler. Chandler is fine. As James Elright calls him, Ross the Boss, a much better writer, but not as well known. I read this book, and it crystallized it for me. I said, This is amazing. This is family psychopathology and crime in Southern California.

[00:09:23.320]
I like that, and I think I can do that. That was a very epiphanous moment. I started to read everything that he wrote. Then I read Chandler, and I read all the other hard-boiled novels from that era, Frederick Brown and Horace McCoy, and David Goal, all the stuff people haven’t heard of. I became immersed in hard-boiled Southern California fiction and try to put my own spin on it in the ’80s. When I first handed the first draft of When the Bough Breaks into my editor, he said, John, this is great, but a little too derivative of Ross McDonald. So I had to de-Ross McDonald and develop my own voice. I think the Delaware novel is looking back. I never intellectualize or think these things through. I’m an experiential guy. I don’t sit out and say, I’m going to write this type of book. I just write the best book I can. I think in retrospect, Delaware is a combination of that Southern California private eye thing with Sherlock Holmes. He’s a Sherlockian guy because he’s super smart and really observant. Sherlock Holmes is great. I loved him as a kid. I have a whole set of Sherlock Holmes.

[00:10:40.590]
Brilliant. But let’s face it, it’s pretty gimmicky, all that crazy stuff that he does. But it’s wonderful. Delaware, I try to be more naturalistic and more feasible. Essentially, he’s a guy who is so highly observant and focused that he sees things other people don’t see, not in a magical way, but I try to keep it logical and naturalistic. In retrospect, I think he’s that guy. This was crystallized for me because finally we’re doing a series with Amazon Prime. I got so tired about, How come they haven’t done a movie out of your books? I don’t know. I’m very, very excited about this deal with Amazon Prime. They came to me. I didn’t solicit it. And very good showrunner named Jennifer Johnson. And we’ve talked, and talking to her, it became a crystallized thing that we want to create this semi-hard-boiled but compassionate Sherlockian character.

[00:11:43.720] – Alan Petersen
But there was I was looking at the website, and I didn’t realize that in the early ’80s, they did a TV movie of- Novel.

[00:11:51.920] – Jonathan Kellerman
First novel and nothing since.

[00:11:53.810] – Alan Petersen
It was Ted Danson, too.

[00:11:55.210] – Jonathan Kellerman
Ted Danson. Teddy’s a great guy. What happened was this happened in a crazy way. Ted was the most important guy in TV due to cheers, and he had the capacity to be an executive producer. And his partner happened to be in a mystery book store in New York and said, Do you have anything for Ted? And Carol Brenner, the proprietor, God bless her, said, You got to read this Jonathan Kellyn book. It’s fantastic. And they loved it and decided to do the book. And here I got three bucks an hour to do the book, but a lot more to do the movie. And it never happens. It’s just they came to me and we did. I ended up writing. It was a strange thing because they hired a writer who turned out a crap script and then left to go to an ashram. Ted said, I’m not going to do this. No, because he was an executive producer on it in addition to being the star. My agent calls me and says, John, you got to rewrite this. I said, I don’t know how to write a script. It’s my first book. He says, You got to do it.

[00:12:55.360]
We sat up in the production company, and Ted and a secretary a female, read the script line by line, and he read all the male parts, and she read all the female parts, and I rewrote it. But I didn’t get credit for it. I didn’t get paid for it. And the script won an Edgar Award for this other guy. So That’s Hollywood. So it was a hugely successful movie of the week. It got 37% share. This was prior to cable television, 1986. It beat 60 minutes. It was a huge… You would think they’d want to do more. It was the most successful movie of the week that NBC had had in years and years since. Blockbuster TV success. Ted didn’t want to do television anymore. He wanted to be a movie actor, and without him, they didn’t want to do it. Since that time, I had many people trying to do my books from various networks and produce. I made a lot of money on stuff that didn’t happen, and I rewrote a lot of bad script. Well, I rewrote one more bad script, lots of bad scripts. Dealing with Amazon Prime has been a lot more pleasant than dealing with networks because they’re business-like.

[00:14:07.420]
They want to produce something good, and ego doesn’t get in the way. With network guys, you have a network head He leaves, someone else comes in and takes his pardon and destroys everything the predecessor did. And they give you nonsensical stuff like, Delaware’s too perfect. Give him a limp. That’s actually something somebody told me. I just did I didn’t want to get involved in film, but Amazon came and they made me a great deal, and I’m going to allow myself some optimism here.

[00:14:38.020] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s exciting. I really enjoyed what you did with Bosch.

[00:14:41.460] – Jonathan Kellerman
Yeah, Bosch worked and Reacher worked. People have different approaches. I think Michael Connolly really wants to get involved. I think he really would like to be a big producer, and I think he really took over. Lee Choub was like, Here’s my book, goodbye. I’m more like Lee. In other I’m not into control. I’m not a control freak. I’m a novelist. I’m a psychologist. I’m not a movie producer. I’m not a director. The contract says I have to be available for consultation, which I will do. But I’m hoping I can just trust good people. My philosophy is when you’re dealing with talented people, don’t intrude too much. It’s worked in my life. I don’t like people telling me what to do. It’s the same thing.

[00:15:26.900] – Alan Petersen
That’s exciting. We’re looking forward to that.

[00:15:29.860] – Jonathan Kellerman
It’s cool. I hope in a year we’re talking again, it’s been produced and it’s a big hit.

[00:15:35.000] – Alan Petersen
Absolutely. That’d be awesome.

[00:15:37.480] – Jonathan Kellerman
It would be great.

[00:15:39.260] – Alan Petersen
Now, with the Jigsaw, it must be surreal. 41, that’s going to be one of the longest series out there that I can think of. I guess Connolly and- No, it’s much longer than Connolly because I’m older than Michael.

[00:15:51.860] – Jonathan Kellerman
I’ve been doing it for 10 years more. Wow. I think it’s the longest running crime series in American history ever. There may be some obscure books came out in the 1800s. I don’t know. But I think from what I’ve been in, and maybe in the world, and I’m still going. I have another book finished coming out in a year. I’m working. I just finished a book today, literally right here, and it’s coming out in ’28. Oh, wow. There’ll be more, and I have more books to do because I like doing them. It’s interesting writing a series. You want to keep it fresh. One thing that’s been gratifying to me is that I’m getting some of the best reviews of my life now on books 38. Maybe they feel sorry for me because I’m old. I don’t know. I move into… No one knows who I am, but I’m elder statesman because I’m 76 years old. But I’d like to think it’s because I I kept the quality up, and I don’t find it difficult to do because, like I say, why bother doing it if you’re not going to do it well? So I approach each book freshly, and it’s a series, but within the series, I have so much flexibility to write about almost anything because he’s a shrink.

[00:17:04.540]
So I’m not that bound.

[00:17:07.600] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I really like it. In Jigsaw, it opens up as a straightforward case, but then it quickly starts turning into something more? Is that when you were shaping the story? I know this is the idea. How did you get the idea for the book? I have to ask that. Can you tell us a little bit about that process for Jigsaw?

[00:17:28.540] – Jonathan Kellerman
The process is interesting. I’m just lucky I have a warm mind, and ideas are not the problem. In fact, when I hit a certain age and my short-term memory started to fade, I started to write down plot ideas, and I literally have a file with well over 100 novels in it. Sometimes I go back there, but sometimes I think of something else. Coming up with stuff is no problem. Turning an idea into a novel, that’s a process. For me, writing A novel is a year long process. Half of it is planning, half of it is writing. So six, seven months planning, six, seven months actually writing the book. By doing that, by framing it, by outlining. So it’s basically I get an idea, I think about it. Sometimes it’s in my voluminous files. Sometimes it’s a combination of two or three things. Sometimes I like to set a challenge, like in this book, in Jigsaw, I said, What if I take disparate elements? How can I make them work together? It’s almost like a puzzle. I’m not I’m not like a math guy, but I like crossword puzzles, and I like to do hard ones in Ben.

[00:18:34.360]
So I do enjoy the puzzle part of writing crime novel. The interesting thing is plotting is very important to me. You have a story that makes sense and being fair. But that’s not what people remember. They remember the characters, but you still need it. And I liken it to building a house. You have to frame it up. Then the writing is the interior, the decoration, the design, all All the things that makes it beautiful. But without that frame, it falls apart. So no one sees the frame, but it has to be there. It’s just this book is like any other. I just start thinking about stuff, and I wake up at 3: 00 in the morning and I write something down, and I get up and I think about it. Then the next morning, I write it down, and I’m jotting notes and thinking and reading and researching. Then I do a general outline, which I then send it to my publisher, and they send me big check, so I’m happy about that. After that, I then do a chapter-by-chapter outline, and I really try to structure it, even with dialog in it occasionally. However, the interesting thing is, Alan, that often I look back at the finished novel, and it’s really different from the outline.

[00:19:50.080]
But I think the outline gives me confidence and gives me structure. I’ve never experienced what people call writer’s block. Never. I don’t know if you ever had a chance to meet Robert Parker, who did the dispenser series. But Bob was before me. He was a slightly half a generation. Bob was really a funny guy, and I was on a symposium. The first time that I met Bob, he said, You’re too smart to come from LA. He was great. We were at this symposium and so I was, Mr. Parker, what inspires you to write? He goes, I have a contract. So I loved him. My favorite Bob Parker quote, and it’s really relevant, Do you ever get writer’s block, sir? He goes, When you call a plumber, does he say, I can’t come because I have plumber’s block? I think we’ve both been fortunate, and I think it’s true of a lot of guys who have long careers like Steve King and Dean Coons. We’re really professional about it. It’s not like in the movies where the writer is some guy sitting with his feet up with a laptop and there’s a good-looking blonde behind him and he’s partying.

[00:20:55.400]
If you do too much of that, you’re not going to be productive. That happened to Norman Mailer. Brilliant writer, started to be Norman Mailer, never turned out another novel. So it’s not a glamorous thing. It’s a job like anything else. I sit at the same computer where I’m sitting talking to you. I go into the office and I do my job, and I enjoy my job. Otherwise, I will stop. Because I don’t need to do it now, but I really enjoy it, and I like writing the best book I possibly can. That doesn’t mean everyone’s going to like it, but most people seem to like what I do, and it’s very gratifying. So I just generally shape it and sculpt it. And then when I’m ready, a half a year later, I sit down and start writing it. And I rewrite, and I rewrite, and I rewrite. Now, Parker claimed he didn’t do any rewriting. I’m not that smart. I’m rewriting all the time.

[00:21:53.000] – Alan Petersen
Your character is too. Like you said, I saw somebody in other interviews for Milo Sturgis, for example, You said that you wanted to feel different from the standard Homicide Cop, and you decided writing these. So you decided to make him a gay… This was back in the early ’80s.

[00:22:12.160] – Jonathan Kellerman
’81.

[00:22:12.920] – Alan Petersen
’81. So did you get a lot of pushback on that?

[00:22:16.480] – Jonathan Kellerman
Yeah, well, the interesting thing was all part of the same thing. You need to understand, I’m a failed writer. I’ve been trying for 13 years since I was this hotshot kid who won a writing price, and I’m getting rejected, and I’m sitting in that garage. Which, finally, I figured out, Write what you know. I said, I want to avoid cliché. I was obsessed with avoiding cliché, which is why I created the character of Robin, who is a guitar maker, because I said, Let’s have a couple where the male deals with human emotion and the female deals with power tools. How revolutionary is that? Then I said, But I’m writing a crime novel, and I really detest amateur detective books where the amateurs show up the cops. I think that’s just stupid. It doesn’t work that way. I want to write a naturalistic book, semi-naturalistic. So I’m going to need a Homicide Cup. I said, But we have to avoid the cliché of the tough grizzled Homicide, hard drinking Homicide Cup. I said, I’ll make him tough. I’ll make him experienced. I have some friends who are gay, and I know the LA Police Department in those days, very homophobic, claims there were no gay policemen.

[00:23:23.340]
It was not true. So I said, Let’s make him gay, but so what? Let’s make him not hiding himself, but not really coming out. Some intermediary stage. There’ll be some tension there. It wasn’t to be politically correct. I just thought it would be interesting and non-cliché. I didn’t get In my whole career, I have gotten one nasty letter from a crazy adolescent who could barely write. It shows how tolerant people are. However, the reactions of gay people may have changed over time, although a lot of them love the books. Early on, I got a lot of mail from gay men, especially saying, Thank you so much because crime novels are so homophobic, and this is great. I really enjoy it. Or guys saying, I’m just like Milo. I’m not a typical gay guy. I’m a big gruff guy who’s gay, blah, blah, blah, blah, no big deal because to some extent, I don’t want to sound arrogant, I was a pioneer. I wrote that child abuse book, When the Bough Breaks. As my son, who is a novelist, says, I turn on TV and people are imitating you. I mean, every Scandinavian noir book is still imitating When the Bough Breaks.

[00:24:49.630]
It’s still a child abuse, something. To some extent, now gay cups are there, and it’s no big deal, but Milo endures. I have friends who are gay, and they still appreciate them. They still like him. I know it made a difference in a lot of young gay men’s lives. But I’m glad, but I didn’t set out to do that. I just set out to write an interesting, non-cliched book, and I keep doing that. And I just don’t… I hate Woke, but my books are diverse because LA is diverse. I like to write naturalistically. I like to write it. Of course, any novel is a suspension of disbelief, but I like to write the books so you’re not noticing that.

[00:25:34.700] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s something, too. Alex Delaware himself, too, he’s changed over time. Yes. So how do you decide how far our character can evolve without losing what made it popular?

[00:25:47.560] – Jonathan Kellerman
Well, one thing is, who knew I was, A, going to get published, and B, write a series? I had no clue. I didn’t know I was writing a series until I’ve written three of them. Then I took a break and wrote a non-series book. Then I came back with Silent Part, and I said, Okay, I’m going to keep doing this. And subsequently, I wrote a bunch of standalones, but now I’m concentrating just on Delaware. I never knew it was going to be a series. Then I have to figure out how am I going to age him. Now, it’s interesting. People do it in different ways. Sue Grafton put all her novels in the ’80s. All her novels are in the… All those Kinsey Milhoun stuff take place in the ’80s. I decided just to ignore it. I I was 35 When the Bough Breaks came in, so was Delaware. I’m now 76. Delaware is still in his 30s, so I just don’t age him. But it’s a suspension of disbelief because I’m old enough to be anachronistic, either The early books have pay phones. You have to adapt to technology. There were no cell phones. To some extent, you’re playing a finesse thing, but you just ignore it.

[00:26:56.850]
If it’s a good story with good characters, people don’t sit around Hey, Dillard and Milo are 76 years old. Why aren’t they on a cane? So evolving him, yes, from the beginning, we need him to evolve. Agatha Christie, very popular, read her as a kid, not going to put her down, but she never developed a character. Poireau was poireau. Marple was marple. They were vehicles for solving a puzzle. They’re not real changing people, which is fine. It’s just not what I wanted to do. I have evolved him gently but firmly, but minimally. You don’t know that much about him. I think that comes from my experience as a psychologist. Because if you’re a psychologist, clinical or a psychiatrist, it’s all about the person you’re talking to. It’s not about you. You keep yourself out of it. If you don’t, you’re a bad shrink. It’s all about helping another person. If you would come into one of my offices, there were no pictures of my family, nothing about me except my diplomas. To some extent, Delaware is a vehicle for telling a certain type of story. He’s an interesting character, and some of the books have focused more on him, Silent Partner, the fourth book, because that was the point where I said, Okay, I’m going to do a series.

[00:28:22.040]
We’ve had three huge bestsellers. I wrote a non-series book. Then I need to learn more about him. I’m learning more about him as the series evolves, but I’m trickling it in. It’s just this balance. It’s this tight rope. The other balance is you want to write a series, but you want someone to be able to pull out any book in the series and enjoy it without having read the series. You want to be kind to your habitual reader so they feel what I call the comfort of the familiar. They say, We’re back with Diller and Milo. But you don’t want to be so in-joking that a new reader who picks a book number 35, feels excluded. I like a challenge, and that’s a constant challenge.

[00:29:06.480] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I’m also curious about that, too. How do you keep track of 40 years of writing this? How do you know?

[00:29:13.810] – Jonathan Kellerman
Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I screw up. The only time I’m going to go back to one of my old books is when I’m doing a little research. But I tend to be a here and now guy and not go back in the past a lot. I’m pretty familiar. I mean, It’s strange that I’ve created these serious characters that I’ve known almost as long as I’ve known my wife. And they’re like homunculized sitting in my brain, Alex and my other talking to me. I’m just comfortable with them. It’s a bizarre thing when you think about it, and I deal with it by not thinking about it.

[00:29:46.930] – Alan Petersen
That’s good. Yeah, it’s working phenomenally for you.

[00:29:50.640] – Jonathan Kellerman
Well, one of my models is, introspection is the enemy of creativity. If you sit around thinking about stuff too much and studying your navel, you’re never going to produce anything. It’s just about just working hard. I like the fact that I like a challenge. I don’t like to phone it in. My personality won’t allow me to do that. So far, it’s been great because as we said, it’s, I think, the longest running series, and not everybody likes what I do, but enough people like what I do that I can keep doing it.

[00:30:24.080] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s amazing, too, with your family because your wife’s a very well-known writer, and You’ve written some books with your son as well? Yeah.

[00:30:33.330] – Jonathan Kellerman
Well, Faye’s story and my story together is very, very bizarre. We’ve been married 53 years. I met when she was 18, I was 21. She has a bachelor’s degree in theoretical mathematics, math, physics, genius, and beautiful, and brilliant, and also a doctorate in dentistry. She was trained as a dentist. She thought of going to med school, but she didn’t because she wanted a family. She hated dentistry, never practiced, graduated six months pregnant with our first of four children, said, Okay, I’ll go back when he’s a little, when he’s come down. Had another kid, finally she said, Who am I kidding? And unbeknownst me, started writing. And there was nothing in her background that would have led me to believe that she’s going to write a book. As I say, math, science. I knew she was a creative person. And one day, it was so bizarre, we had our third child. It was 1985. I wasn’t even published yet. My first When the Bough Breaks had just been sold. I’m sitting holding the baby, and Faye comes in to me and go, Shoves a manuscript at me and goes, Here, read it. You’ll hate it. I’m thinking, Oh, shit.

[00:31:39.360]
Yeah, I’m going to hate it. She has no talent. She’s a math scientist. What is she doing to me? This is all I need. I’m in a tough position. I read it, it’s pretty good. It’s really good. I’m shocked. Where did this talent come from? Who knew? We’d known each other for 13 years at that point. I say, Honey, it’s really good. Oh, you’re patronizing me. I call my agent, and I was not a big shot. I hadn’t even published it. I said, I know what it sounds like, but my wife wrote a book. He said, later, his eyes were rolling back in his head. Sure, I’m going to send it. He reads it, goes, This is great, and he sells it right away. Oh, wow. It was different I got published right away. I got published after 13 years of failure, but every book has been a best seller. She got published right away, but it took her, like P. D. James, several books for her to become a best seller. We’re the only married couple to have been on the New York Times list at the same time for separate books, and we’ve done it twice.

[00:32:32.500]
It’s a strange story. Given that genetics, you would expect some of our kids at least, are going to want to write. Jesse, our son, he had six, seven successful, including some international bestsellers before we worked together. He had a book called The genius. It was a huge international bestseller. So he’s a talented guy. Our youngest, actually in 11th grade, wrote a young adult book with Faye, and she actually wrote it. Instead taking SAT prep. She spent her time writing a book. And she’s been a writer in the finance industry and in business, and she has a few novels in her, too. The two in the middle have PhDs in psychology. They’re very successful psychologist. It’s a strange thing. That’s the genetic thing there. It’s a crazy story, but here we are.

[00:33:25.040] – Alan Petersen
How is it working writing a book with your son? How was that dynamic? He’s curious about.

[00:33:29.300] – Jonathan Kellerman
Now, what the It happened by accident. So many great things are serendipitous. What happened was, I had… Faye and I had gone to Prague several years ago, and I loved it, and I became very entranced with the golem story. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but there was a golem of Prague. It’s a Jewish folk tale about this. It’s basically the Basin of Frankenstein. They create this monster, and then the monster gets out of control. All of Prague, it’s one of their most biggest tourist attractions. It’s based on a fictitious tale of a real rabbi. This real rabbi, there’s a statue of him in town square in Prague. The irony is that he was an Orthodox rabbi, and you can get a golem burger made out of pork in Prague. It’s funny. I was in transfer. I said, I’m going to try to write a golem book. I wrote the first 100 pages of a book called The Golem of Hollywood. I thought, Let’s bring the golem to Hollywood. Then I was busy with a Delaware in another book. It was too much. I put it aside. It was a tough book, book to Write.

[00:34:31.500]
Jesse happened to be visiting with his family. He said, What’s that, Dan? I said, It’s this book I started. He read it. He said, This is really good. You need to finish it. I said, You finish it. He said, Let me take a look at it. He started to work on it. We were Together. We published it. We sold another book, The Golem of Paris. I think they were great books. Stephen King said they took his breath away. They didn’t do well. People didn’t want that from us to our chagrin. So we stopped doing it, but we enjoyed writing together so much that we created another series based on Clay Edison, who is a coroner’s investigator in Northern California, where Jessie lives. And so we’ve been doing that. Writing with Jessie has been very, very good. I don’t know if you ever play an instrument, but I was a musician. I played guitar, and I played in a lot of bands. And any musician will tell you that if you play with good musicians, there’s a certain magic happens. If you play with bad musicians, it’s really hard. And Jessie He’s a very good writer.

[00:35:31.260]
He has what musicians call chops. We have a very harmonious relationship. He does a draft, I do a draft, he does a draft. We also spend a half a year plotting and talking. He’s just a talented guy, and we’ve never literally exchanged an irritated syllabus. It’s been very harmonious, which I can’t see was true of his adolescence. It’s not like we have. We had the same stuff with teenagers that everyone else did, but he’s a man with five kids of his own now. So I think he appreciates us more.

[00:36:04.460] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s what you understand more when you come around.

[00:36:06.680] – Jonathan Kellerman
All my kids have apologized to us for their adolescents. Oh, Mom, they are teenagers now.

[00:36:13.620] – Alan Petersen
And I’m also very curious, too. When you’re writing your books, do you use Word?

[00:36:19.480] – Jonathan Kellerman
I use Word. My first few books were written prior to computers, and I wrote them on a typewriter with whiteout. Then the minute I heard about something called word processing, and I was still in practice. I said, This will help with my practice, too. It was prior to word. It was a promo called Einstein Writer. It was quite primitive for its day, quite progressive for its day, but primitive by today’s standards. Then when word came, I started using word. I use a computer, and it just makes life easy. It’s a double-edged sword because you write much faster, but then you have to rewrite more. Whereas if you’re on a a typewriter, you’re taking your time. But it sure makes life easy. Sure makes life easy.

[00:37:06.720] – Alan Petersen
Before I let you go, I always ask my guests, I have aspiring writers that listen to this podcast. For writers listening who dream of building a long-run series like you have, any advice for them?

[00:37:18.740] – Jonathan Kellerman
Yeah. I think the thing is be a professional. Be a professional. If you’re going to do it, don’t wait for inspiration. Don’t wait for the muse. Find something that’s interesting to you and spend a lot of time planning it. Find something, and this is true of life in general. I tell my kids and my grandkids, I have over a dozen. I have 13 of them. I say, Find something you like. Don’t let anybody tell you what else to do and do it yourself and work hard at it. It’s just a matter of… I don’t think everyone can do it. It’s like music. It’s a talent. It’s like being an athlete. But if you have that talent and you’re that guy or that woman who loves to write and your teacher is always been telling you’re really good, sit down, find something interesting to say, create a good story, and create surprise, whether it’s a crime novel or not. Everybody wants to be surprised. You want a reason to turn the page. Don’t be self-indulgent. Just take your time with it and don’t show it to anybody. I mean, it’s a big mistake because people are going to criticize you and then you lose your confidence.

[00:38:27.770]
Writing is a a solitary profession. If you can’t tolerate solitude, don’t even start. As you can see, I’m a friendly guy. I have tons of friends. I’m very social, but I like solitary things. I love writing because I sit in a room by myself as opposed to a TV writer where you sit in a room full of people and they bullshit around, No, I don’t like that. When I left academic medicine, I said, No more meetings. That’s it. I felt true to it. Just focus on what you want to do. If you Have that talent and understand that it’s a tough gig because people may not agree with you, but try to avoid clichés, try to use the language in a fresh manner, try to be original, but mostly treat it like a job and don’t get too puffed up about it. I’ve written over 60 books, and I don’t care if people know who I am. I mean, all of us who’ve been doing it for a long time, we don’t get distracted. It’s all about creating the best book possible. Also, yes, you I want readers to love it, but you have to write for yourself and don’t think about what’s politically correct or what the…

[00:39:36.430]
I will have young writers come to me and say, How do I market my book? Have you written the book? No. That’s horse and cart thing. Write the book first. Having an idea is meaningless. It’s transforming it into a book. It takes time. If you don’t… Some people hate it, and they still I’m driven to do it. I’m lucky. I like it. At my age, I wouldn’t do it anymore. It’s no purpose to it.

[00:40:07.160] – Alan Petersen
I hope that’s helpful.

[00:40:08.590] – Jonathan Kellerman
I hope it’s helpful.

[00:40:10.020] – Alan Petersen
Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. Especially of treating it like a job. Like you said, a plumber doesn’t show up, he doesn’t get paid.

[00:40:16.740] – Jonathan Kellerman
Some people are a lot more driven than I am. Like, Dean, Dean Coons, he works way harder than I do. He’s been doing it a long time. I work every day or four days a week now, and I stop when I’m tired.

[00:40:32.020] – Alan Petersen
All right. Well, thank you so much. So Jake Seye comes out on February third, so by the time people are listening or watching this, it’ll be out and it’s out for pre-order right now everywhere. Highly recommend it. It’s fantastic. So thank you so much for talking to us.

[00:40:48.800] – Jonathan Kellerman
My pleasure. And let’s do it next year.

[00:40:52.300] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, absolutely. Please come back. Especially if Amazon’s on, that’d be awesome.

[00:40:57.520] – Jonathan Kellerman
We might have a show by then. Who knows? Yeah, who It was. Okay, Al. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to Meet the Thriller author, hosted by Alan Petersen. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a view on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other Thriller fans discover the show. You can find all past episodes, show notes, and author interviews at thrillerauthors. Com, including conversations with icons like Dean Kuntz, Freda McFadden, and Lee Child. If you’re looking for your next gripping read, check out Alan’s own Psychological Thrillers and Crime Fiction Novels at thrillingreads. Com/books. Until next time, stay safe, keep reading, and keep the thrills coming.