This transcript was generated with the help of AI and only got a quick once-over from a human. So if you spot a typo or something that doesn’t make sense… let’s just blame the robots. 🤖

[00:00:00.100] – Alan Petersen You are listening to episode 243 of Meet
the Thriller Author, the podcast where I interview mystery, thriller,
and suspense writers. I’m your host, Alan Petersen, a longtime fan of
the genre who also writes thrillers. My guest today is Jeff Kerr, author
of the Adam Cash crime thriller series. His latest novel, Deadly Relic,
is out today, September 9th. It’s the sixth book in the series and
follows Adam Cash, a deputy in the Texas Hill Country, as he
investigates the theft of a historic rifle used at the Alamo. Jeff and I
actually met last year at Author Nation in Las Vegas, so it was great to
reconnect and talk about his new book, the Adam Cash series, his writing
process, and a lot more. Before we get to the interview, be sure to
visit thrillingreads.com. You’ll find all of my thrillers there, links
to the complete Meet the Thriller Author podcast archive, and you can
also sign up to get one of my thrillers absolutely free. That’s
thrillingreads.com. And now, here is my conversation with Jeff Kerr.

[00:01:04.460] – Alan Petersen Hey everybody, this is Alan with Meet the
Thriller Author. And today on the podcast, I have Jeff Kerr, who is the
author of the Adam Cash Mystery Series, featuring a sharp-witted
sheriff’s deputy investigating crimes and buried secrets in rugged Texas
Hill Country. His latest novel, Deadly Relic, is the sixth book in the
series, and it’ll be published on September 9th. Jeff and I actually met
at Author Nation Conference last year, so excited to have him here as a
guest on the podcast. Jeff, welcome.

[00:01:37.330] – Jeff Kerr Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:39.000] – Alan Petersen Yeah, absolutely. So, before we get into
the nitty-gritty and discuss Deadly Relic, can you tell us a little bit
about yourself and how you became a crime fiction writer?

[00:01:50.230] – Jeff Kerr Well, I didn’t start out that way. I’ve been
writing for a little over 20 years. Back then, I became interested in
local history. I live in Austin, Texas, and started going around looking
at old— taking pictures of old buildings and then going to the library
and looking things up about them, old pictures and so forth. And I
remember coming home, one night and telling my teenage kids about this
at supper. And my dad, my, my son finally slammed down his fork and
said, Dad, enough. Write a book. So I thought that was a pretty good
idea, and I did. And I wrote a couple more nonfiction books about Austin
history, subsequently, one of which won an award and, got me into the
Texas Book Festival. And I realized I wanted to keep writing, but I no
longer had the desire to spend quite so much time in the library. So
pivoted to fiction, and after a couple of false starts, settled on the
Adam Cash Mystery Series.

[00:02:42.320] – Alan Petersen So that must have been liberating for
you, huh? not having to worry about the, I mean, the history part of it.
He’s still going to let the imagination run wild.

[00:02:49.380] – Jeff Kerr Well, yeah, of course you still have to do
some research, but, I mean, I, when I was writing those nonfiction
books, I was spending hours, if not days, all, all my spare time in the
library. You have to. but that’s not the case for fiction. You, you have
to do some research, but, I can do most of it at my desk these days with
the internet.

[00:03:05.490] – Alan Petersen Hmm. Well, were you a fan of thrillers
and that type of genre before you decided to start writing in them?

[00:03:10.950] – Jeff Kerr Oh, always. I’m, I’m 69, so I’ve been around
for a while, but I grew up in the, ’70s. My dad had a house full of
books and at least half of them were thrillers and spy novels. He was a
big John le Carré fan, Graham Greene, authors like that. and I read
everything he bought. And then, when I remember one of the first ones
was, a book by Len Deighton, and I found out just recently that he wrote
the first book on a word processor back a long, long time ago. Anyway,
but yeah, I’ve been reading crime thrillers and spy stories and such
ever since.

[00:03:50.820] – Alan Petersen And I wanted to ask you, too, because,
like I said earlier in the intro, we met at Author Nation. So before we
get into the other stuff, what do you think about those conferences?
Where were you at that point in your journey, and do you think it helped
you?

[00:04:08.150] – Jeff Kerr I think, yeah, I think it has.

[00:04:09.650] – Alan Petersen That’s a good question.

[00:04:10.380] – Jeff Kerr I’m, I’ve been to two of them now the last
two years, and, you know, I was looking for a conference to go to. I
have found that being around other people writing books really is
energizing.

[00:04:19.970] – Alan Petersen Mm-hmm.

[00:04:20.440] – Jeff Kerr I come back from those conferences all
excited, and I’ve usually met some people like yourself, which is good
to help build a network. and I learned a lot too about self-publishing.
I, it, when I first went, I was completely, self-publishing. And at the
first conference, I met a fellow named James Blatch with Vinci Books and
eventually submitted my work to them and then signed with them. And so
about the past year and a half, my books have been published through
Vinci Books. So again, I owe that to Author Nation.

[00:04:50.950] – Alan Petersen Oh, wow. So wow, so you really got a lot
of it. That’s great.

[00:04:53.360] – Jeff Kerr Yeah.

[00:04:54.950] – Alan Petersen Okay, so for listeners who haven’t
encountered your books before or have read your stuff, can you tell us a
little bit about your, the type of books that you write and about Adam
Cash and everything?

[00:05:05.720] – Jeff Kerr Yeah, when I started the series, or when I
first decided I wanted to write a series, and I came to that conclusion
after, after talking to a bunch of authors. In particular, there’s a
fellow named Jeff Carson who lives in Colorado and has been
self-published for years, although I think now he has a publisher. He’s
got about 20, 25 books out, and he was nice enough to give me some
advice. And the very first thing he said was, you have to have a series
because, you know, you want people to read your book and then hunger for
more. so I was trying to decide what I would have a series in. I knew it
would be in the genre of crime fiction or thriller. And I live in
Central Texas. I spend a lot of time in Blanco, which is a small town
about an hour west of here. And, I realized, you know, I should set it
out there. I wasn’t interested in doing a big city crime series. And, I
settled on the idea of doing a young sheriff’s deputy, modern, that way
I would be able to follow him through several books and he wouldn’t age
too much.

[00:06:03.140] – Jeff Kerr But also because I know the Texas Hill
Country very well. I spend a lot of time out there. A lot of the
characters in my books are kind of based on, people that I’ve met or
know out there. I intentionally did not use the town of Blanco for a
couple of reasons. One is I didn’t want to make people mad. and the
other reason is there’s a fellow named Ben Rader who’s been writing a,
crime fiction series for years using the town of Blanco. So because it’s
such a small town, I didn’t think the world was ready for 2 crime series
about, about Blanco.

[00:06:34.560] – Alan Petersen Yeah, you think—

[00:06:35.610] – Jeff Kerr So I came up with the fictional town of
Pinyon in the fictional Noble County, placed it a little bit farther
west than, Blanco County. again, an area I know well and an area that I
think is of interest not only to people in Texas, but, you know, Texas
has a certain cachet with, with people around the country and around the
world.

[00:06:53.010] – Alan Petersen Yeah, it’s that. So that’s like a big
part of the, of, of the book, right? The actual area is like a big part,
a character, its own character.

[00:07:00.380] – Jeff Kerr Oh Yeah. you know, it’s, it’s, there’s some,
there’s, there’s a lot of beauty out there, but the, it’s a hard, rutted
country. It’s hot. summers are miserable.

[00:07:10.100] – Alan Petersen Mm-hmm.

[00:07:10.550] – Jeff Kerr That’s why I go to Colorado in the summer, by
the way. but yeah, it’s, it, the landscape plays a big role in a lot of
the plots that I come up with. and this character, Adam Cash, he’s, he’s
a young sheriff’s deputy. He’s a little bit impulsive. He, he struggles
with, in each book, deciding, you know, how close he should adhere to
the letter of the law when that doesn’t necessarily seem to be the best
outcome. so anyway, that’s, that’s Adam Cash.

[00:07:41.900] – Alan Petersen And now for the, for Deadly Relic, the
synopsis for the story is fascinating to me. So it begins with a theft
of a rifle carried by, a defender at the Battle of the Alamo, which is
so cool. so how did, how did that all start? Can you walk us through
your process for the story?

[00:07:59.230] – Jeff Kerr Well, yeah, of course. I’ve been to the Alamo
many, many times, and it’s, it’s famous once again, not only in Texas,
but all around the world. Most people, you don’t have to explain too
much when you say Battle of the Alamo.

They, they sort of have an idea in their mind of what that is.

And it just occurred to me, I wanted to
have a book where the Alamo played a central part. And what better way
to do that than to have some famous relic stolen from the local Noble
County Historical Museum?

Now, I had to stretch this a little bit.
There’s only one rifle, as far as I can tell, known to have been used at
the Alamo, and it’s not in a small-town museum like the one in Noble
County. So I made this the second.

[00:08:38.820] – Jeff Kerr You know, there’s now 2 rifles, at least in
my book series. And this one gets stolen. The thief pretty quickly turns
up dead, and Cash has to figure out Not only who would, kill the guy,
but also why and what’s going on behind the scenes.

[00:08:52.760] – Alan Petersen Hmm. And you mentioned earlier about the
research, so I’m kind of curious about that because you said now you,
it’s kind of moved online. So how much research do you put into these
books?

[00:09:01.280] – Jeff Kerr Well, a fair amount. I, you know, I, there’s
a lot of little things you mentioned to kind of, increase the flavor of
the book, the color of the book. And I want all that to be accurate. So,
you know, when I describe, oh, the museum at the Alamo, for example, or
who, who would be interested at the Alamo in housing such relics. Yeah,
I wanted to be as accurate as I could.

[00:09:26.520] – Alan Petersen Yeah, it kind of reminds me, I watched a
masterclass with David Baldacci and he had a folder, a binder like this
big of research on something. And he said only like one little paragraph
ended up in the book.

[00:09:38.060] – Jeff Kerr So I said, wow. Well, that makes me feel
better because as you know, Being an author yourself, you can go down
these long rabbit holes. You spend all afternoon looking up one little
thing for one line in the book. But what I, what I try to avoid is
getting emails from people that say, well, hey, that’s, that’s not
really true.

[00:09:55.150] – Jeff Kerr Because it takes, it takes a reader out of
the book when they come across something like that.

[00:09:58.170] – Alan Petersen Yeah. that’s a nice thing of making up
your own town. ’Cause I do the same thing. I don’t want people to say,
hey, you can’t take a left on Main Street there.

[00:10:04.690] – Jeff Kerr Well, years ago, the classic example to me, I
picked up a thriller book and I don’t remember the name, name of the
book or the author. But in the very first paragraph, the main character
was described as having attended Baylor Medical School in Waco, Texas.
Now Baylor University is in Waco, Texas, but Baylor Medical School’s in
Houston. So right away, I, yeah, I just thought, oh, I don’t know if
this guy did his research.

[00:10:28.400] – Alan Petersen Yeah.

[00:10:28.670] – Jeff Kerr It was a good story, but I, but it, but you
know, it, it, it turned me off right from the first paragraph.

[00:10:33.780] – Alan Petersen Yeah. I’ve encountered those too, and it
does take you right out. You kind of don’t want to continue.

[00:10:37.950] – Jeff Kerr Right. Yeah.

[00:10:39.330] – Alan Petersen So this being your sixth Adam Cash
mystery, I’m kind of curious. So how has he evolved? How’s that? How’s
the process changed for you? Or can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:10:48.060] – Jeff Kerr Well, he started out in the very first book.
He’s not even on the force. He wants to join the force. He’s moved back
to town after being away from his hometown for several years. And he
gets rebuffed by the sheriff who knew him in high school and was a big
bully. ends up being accused of the sheriff’s murder when the, when the
sheriff turns up dead and has to extricate himself from that mess. but
then by book two, he’s a member of the force.

And I’d say over the time
he, you know, over the time of the books, he becomes a little more savvy
at dealing with some of the people that you would encounter in
investigating small town crimes.

There’s also kind of a parallel
subplot involving his girlfriend and that relationship has evolved. I’ve
always, struggled with just how much of that to include. I don’t want
these to be romance books.

[00:11:34.720] – Alan Petersen Mm-hmm.

[00:11:35.010] – Jeff Kerr So I’ve intentionally left most of that kind
of stuff out, but I also wanted a strong female character in there. And
so that, as I say, that relationship has evolved over time and I’ve
gotten good feedback from readers about having her in there. and then
he’s got, you know, a couple of friends that he bounces things off of.

He’s the actual sheriff at this point is somebody he served in the
military with. So there’s lots of people he can interact with, and of
course you can shape your character by showing scenes with him
interacting with those people in his life.

[00:12:08.420] – Alan Petersen And I’m assuming like each book is its
own standalone mystery, even though it’s a series. So can people start
with the sixth one or would you recommend they start at the beginning?

[00:12:17.740] – Jeff Kerr Well, yeah, I’ve read a lot of book series
and, you know, in the old days I would just pick up a book at random and
start reading book one2 in a series. and I realized, You know, if you’re
going to write a series, yeah, a reader has to be able to do that. They
can’t, you can’t assume they’re starting at book one because who knows
where they’ll encounter your book. And so each story is indeed a
self-contained story, just using the same characters. So you can start
anywhere. I think it always makes a little more sense to start with book
one.

[00:12:45.060] – Alan Petersen Mm-hmm.

[00:12:45.750] – Jeff Kerr Just because there might be little things
along the way that you’d pick up that wouldn’t make as much sense later
on in the series. but again, they’re standalone novels.

[00:12:54.590] – Alan Petersen I like your book covers too. Did those,
do you have a say in the process now that you’re with a publisher or
unlike self-publishing?

[00:13:02.120] – Jeff Kerr I have some say. When I, the first, the first
three books were, you know, I was self-publishing then and I found a
fellow, over in England to do those for me and I thought he did an
excellent job. But when I signed for book, when I signed with Vinci,
they said, no, we’ve got our own guy. And it’s a team led by Stuart
Bache. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that cover.

[00:13:20.720] – Alan Petersen Oh yeah, he did the Mark Dawson ones.
Yeah.

[00:13:23.370] – Jeff Kerr Yeah, he, he’s fantastic. And, I’ve been real
pleased with the covers. They do send ’em to me and ask me for any
corrections or, or so forth. The one thing I know I gave ’em feedback on
the very first time was I want these as much as possible. I want the
covers to make it clear that we’re dealing with a modern sheriff and
this is not a 19th century Western.

[00:13:42.440] – Alan Petersen Hmm.

[00:13:42.920] – Jeff Kerr I had at least one email from a woman who was
disappointed to start reading my book and realized she was in the year
2025 instead of the year 1865. So again, and they were able to do that
on one of them. You can see traffic lights in the background or maybe a
car here and there. So I think they’re real eye-catchers and you have to
have that when you’re trying to sell books.

[00:14:04.130] – Alan Petersen Oh yeah, absolutely. So with regards to
your writing process too, can you tell us a little bit about that? Is
it, do you write every day? Do you like have a set space that you always
write in? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:14:16.860] – Jeff Kerr I do. I’m a retired doctor. I retired about 4
years ago. So I’ve had lots and lots of time to write since then. And
most mornings I do something related to my books every day, either write
or work on publicity and marketing, or do both those things. And during
the week, typically I’ll get up, have breakfast, and go to a local
coffee shop. Thank goodness for AirPods because I never understood until
those came out how people worked in coffee shops.

[00:14:42.450] – Alan Petersen Yeah.

[00:14:43.510] – Jeff Kerr But I find that getting out of the house Just
get, I have fewer distractions and I get more done. so that’s, that’s my
usual writing routine is I’ll go there and I’ll write till around
lunchtime and then come home. And if I go back to the books after that,
it’s usually with non-writing activities. and then on weekends, it’s a
little harder to find time because, you know, my wife wants to do things
fun too. She doesn’t want to watch me in my office all the time.

[00:15:09.160] – Alan Petersen Yeah. I’m the same way too. The weekends
are kind of, yeah, like for family time.

[00:15:13.970] – Jeff Kerr Yeah. but I do think it’s important to write
regularly, even if it’s getting 500 words on a page for a day, I find
that if I put it down for a couple of weeks, it’s really tough for me to
get back into the story. I’ve forgotten things that I was aiming for.
And so I try to get into it at least some every day.

[00:15:32.810] – Alan Petersen And, so like, are you an outliner or do
you go with it, the seat of your pants?

[00:15:37.560] – Jeff Kerr Well, it’s my theory that everybody’s kind of
a, a, a blend of that. And I would say that that’s me. I outline, I, you
know, I’ll draw up a one-page outline.

[00:15:46.220] – Jeff Kerr And, then I start writing and I’m always
surprised that the plot takes these wild turns as I’m going through it.
Or maybe I made an outline that didn’t really have a definite way to get
from point D to point E, so I have to think on that. but yeah, I’m, I’m
kind of an in-between, a, a plotter and a pantser.

[00:16:08.130] – Alan Petersen Yeah. I think that’s mo— I think most
people do that. I know that people are very detailed with their
outlines, but a lot of, I think most of the people I’ve interviewed are
in between.

[00:16:15.780] – Jeff Kerr Yeah.

[00:16:17.570] – Alan Petersen And so, and so now, of course, ’cause if
you listen to this, podcast before, I always ask people, what the, what
do you write on? Do you use Word, Scrivener, or something else?

[00:16:29.380] – Jeff Kerr Oh, I use Word. And, about a year ago I
subscribed to ProWritingAid, so I use that as my spell checker and
grammar checker and all that.

[00:16:37.570] – Alan Petersen And so, I was also
wondering too now, so what’s, what are you, what are you working on now?
Do you, are you working on the, I know you’re You’re gearing up for the
launch of, Deadly Relic, but, is there more Adam Cash books coming?

[00:16:49.660] – Jeff Kerr Oh, absolutely. you know, I started this
series not knowing how many books I’d end up with, and I’ve polled my
readers and they all say, as long as you keep thinking of stories, keep
putting them out.

[00:16:57.670] – Alan Petersen Nice.

[00:16:58.310] – Jeff Kerr And, my goal is two books a year.

[00:17:01.140] – Jeff Kerr I’ve been able to adhere pretty close to
that. So as soon as I send in a manuscript, I’m already, I usually have
an idea for the next book already, and I’ll, I’ll start working on that.
And I’m, the next book, book seven will be called, probably Buried
Reckoning, and, it’s, I’m about 50,000 words into it.

It’s a story that
ties some of Cash’s distant past, his distant relatives, in with,
something that’s happening in the present. They, they uncover a body on
a ranch, figure out that it was buried in the 1870s, and it turns out
that this, this murder, and he was murdered, and the murderer has
something to do with Cash’s ancestors.

[00:17:40.470] – Alan Petersen Oh, nice. And so, what do you think for,
for writers, especially, that are starting out? ’Cause I had aspiring
writers that listened to this podcast. Any advice, getting started?
Which, you know, is there so much changes and things going on now? any
advice for them?

[00:17:56.090] – Jeff Kerr Well, 2 pieces of, of advice I got from Jeff
Carson, the author. One was that, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

[00:18:04.220] – Alan Petersen Mm-hmm.

[00:18:04.690] – Jeff Kerr So be patient. And I think that’s really
important, especially when you’re first starting out and you put your
first book out there. Unless you’re extremely lucky, you’re not going to
make the New York Times bestseller list. So just realize that you’re,
you’re building a resume of your books and with time, you know,
hopefully you’ll see some, some success. Carson told me that it took him
about 5 books before he was able to quit his day job.

[00:18:28.530] – Alan Petersen Oh, wow.

[00:18:29.320] – Jeff Kerr Yeah. And Oh, what was the other piece of
advice? It’ll come to me. I can’t remember that now.

[00:18:34.870] – Alan Petersen Yeah. You know, you mentioned that about
Carson too, and that’s something that’s so cool about this community. I
don’t know about other genres, but even established writers and authors
will help people, which I think is so cool is, you know, we’re all
writing about gritty crimes and murders, but we’re all very nice.

[00:18:51.310] – Jeff Kerr Yeah, exactly. I was pleasantly surprised
when he answered my first email. He, and he’s been a great help to me
over the past two or three years. We’re not close buddies or anything.
But yeah, he’s been extraordinarily generous with his advice.

[00:19:04.280] – Alan Petersen Yeah, especially because we’re like all
stuck in our own little world behind computers, so it’s kind of nice to
connect with other people.

[00:19:11.040] – Jeff Kerr Yes.

[00:19:11.730] – Alan Petersen Yeah. Do you make it to any other
conferences or is Author Nation the main one you go to?

[00:19:17.610] – Jeff Kerr Author Nation’s the only one I’ve been to so
far. I always look at others. I almost went to Killer Nashville last
year, but something came up and there was a conflict. I, again, I’d like
to find some smaller ones to go to, but as you know, it, it costs money
to go to travel and to, you know, buy, get a hotel room and all that
other stuff. So, I’m, I’m going to try to be selective with that, but I
do like to get out and meet people.

[00:19:40.830] – Alan Petersen Yeah. All right. So the, well, where can,
listeners find, find more about you, learn more about you, get your
books? where are you online?

[00:19:49.590] – Jeff Kerr I’ve got a website, jeffreykerrauthor.com.
Jeffrey is J-E-F-F-R-E-Y. of course I’m on Amazon and, Facebook,
Instagram. what else is there? X, and Bluesky.

[00:20:04.410] – Alan Petersen All right, Jeff. Well, thank you so much.
It was really nice talking to you and, good luck with Deadly Relic.
It’ll be out September 9th.

[00:20:11.140] – Jeff Kerr Alan, thank you very much.

[00:20:15.480] – Alan Petersen Thanks for listening to Meet the Thriller
Author. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you did, please take a
moment to follow the podcast and leave a rating or review. It really
does help other thriller readers find the show. You can find all the
past episodes at thrillerauthors.com. And if you’d like to check out my
own psychological thrillers and crime novels, head over to
thrillingreads.com. Again, thank you for listening. Until next time,
keep reading, and I’ll see you on the next episode.