Note: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain errors or inaccuracies. Please refer to the audio for the most accurate version of the conversation.

[00:00:01.100] – Alan Petersen
You’re listening to Meet the Thriller Author, the podcast where I chat with writers of mysteries, thrillers, and suspense books. I’m your host, Alan Peterson, and this is episode number 216. In this episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Marcie R. Rendon, an award-winning author, poet, playwright, and an enrolled member of the white Earth Nation. She’s the creator of the Cash Blackbear mystery series, which follows a sharp and intuitive young O’Gibway woman solving crimes in 1970s Minnesota. Her latest book in that series, Broken Fields, is the fourth one, and it was published just recently here in March. It dives into a gripping rural murder mystery filled with cultural depth, community strength, and rich atmosphere. Can’t wait to dig into that and learn more about Marcie and her work here in just a moment. But first, a quick heads up. I’m very excited about this announcement, especially if you are a fan of audiobooks. My psychological thriller, The Basement, is now available for pre-order on Audible. I’m excited to be partnering with podium to bring this story to life, and it’s performed by two incredible voice actors, Vanessa Johansson and George Newbern. If you love twisty readers with Dark Secrets, I’d love for you to check it out. Just visit ThrillingReads.Com/AB and pre-order your copy. The audiobook will be released on May 13th. But like I said, you can pre-order it now. I really appreciate your support. All right, let’s get into today’s conversation with Marcie R. Rendon.

[00:01:28.690] – Alan Petersen
I’m excited to welcome Marcie R. Rendon on the podcast today. She’s a powerhouse storyteller, award-winning crime novelist, playwright, poet, and advocate for native artists. Her latest novel, Broken Fields, is another gripping installment in the critically acclaimed Cash Blackbear mystery series. I always love talking to a Minnesota-based author. My wife is from Minnesota. I went to college in Winona. We lived there? Yeah, we lived in Twin Cities for many years before moving out here, out West. So I’m really excited to talk to you today. Red Broken Fields. Really enjoyed it. This is the first novel that I’ve read from Cash Blackbear series. Such compelling characters. I wanted to ask you right off the bat, what was your inspiration behind her? And did you always envision her as a serious protagonist?

[00:02:15.900] – Marcie Rendon
I had been trying to write crime novels and was failing at it. I’d written three that I knew they were bad. I knew they just were bad. And so I thought, Well, I can’t do this. I should try something else. I was trying to write a chick novel, I guess. Cash Blackbear appeared in my head, and she was like, Oh, no, no, no. And this whole other story came out that was my first Cash Blackbear novel, murder on the Red River. Even as I was writing it, I could tell that it was working. With Cash as a character, it’s like I can see her, I can hear her, I know how she moves physically through life. That’s how the whole series started was with that introduction to Cash Blackbear. In terms of who she is and being an inspiration, I think that she is a combination of all of the native women that I know. Native women, when you say, What’s your superpower? Well, for many native women, the superpower is being a native woman. We, they are extremely powerful, resilient, take on hard things, accomplish big things. Cash is a combination of all of these different women that I’ve known throughout my life.

[00:03:34.470] – Alan Petersen
You’ve written in lots of different fields, like from magazines and plays. I’m just curious, was this your first crime novel or have you written other novels before?

[00:03:45.220] – Marcie Rendon
Cash Blackbear was, well, she would have been the fourth crime novel because the other ones were written, but they’re never going to get published.

[00:03:53.530] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I got a few of those.

[00:03:56.890] – Marcie Rendon
Yeah, that’s my fourth one, but it’s I’m the first published one. And Broken Fields is the fourth in this series. I got about two paragraphs written on Book Five. I have another crime novel where they last saw her that came out in September. Of 2024. And that one is a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. But before that, in the ’90s, I had two non-fiction children’s picture books published, and I I have a couple of other ones published since then. Like you said in the intro, I write anything, basically.

[00:04:38.990] – Alan Petersen
Have you always wanted to be a writer? For how long has that always been with you?

[00:04:42.350] – Marcie Rendon
I’ve always been a writer. No one told me growing up that as a native person, I could grow up and be a writer. It was just never even mentioned or talked about. I have a whole career. When I was growing up and going to college, the thing we were supposed to do was get a degree where we could go back and help the tribe. And I studied pre-law criminal justice and American Indian studies. So I had a whole career where I worked within the state prison system here in Minnesota, going into the five prisons, doing work, release, pre-release kinds of things. And then I worked in an adolescent treatment program and then an inpatient hospital treatment program. Before I ever said, Okay, I’m done. I’m going to make my living as a writer, which is why I write everything, because without a six-figure book contract, you just got to keep producing.

[00:05:41.520] – Alan Petersen
Yes, exactly. It’s a fascinating background, too. Were you able to draw from those experiences? You know the prison system and all that? Is that the stuff that you’ve been able to parlay into your fiction?

[00:05:57.850] – Marcie Rendon
I actually don’t.

[00:05:58.950] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s what I’m a little When you’re working with real people, it feels unethical to use their stories for my gain, I guess.

[00:06:10.990] – Marcie Rendon
So I just don’t do it. The crimes that happen in my novels are things that they’re just made up in my mind. They could actually happen. But also I grew up rural Minnesota, Northern Minnesota, and know how those rural communities work. People can literally commit murder and away with it because you’re so isolated and people don’t talk. They’re just like, didn’t see that. That’s mostly what I draw on is the isolation and the distance that happens in rural America, where people can commit crimes are committed and they go unsolved. In the Cash Blackbear novels, things do get solved. I think that that’s part of the attraction in the series Yeah, I think that’s really cool about the backdrop, too, of your novels and other novels that I read like that.

[00:07:05.630] – Alan Petersen
My grandfather was a farmer down there by the Iowa border, by Jackson, Minnesota. The isolation, like you said, as a writer, whenever I’m visiting over there, I’m like, Gosh, you could really bury 10 bodies here. Nobody wouldn’t know.

[00:07:19.020] – Marcie Rendon
That’s right. Even if people did know, in those isolated related areas, you are required to rely on the people around you. You may not like them, but if your car breaks down in the middle of a snowstorm and they’re driving by, they’re the ones that are going to give you a ride. There’s a relationship that is required.

[00:07:48.420] – Alan Petersen
I thought it was really cool. In broken fields, too. I didn’t realize it until I started reading it. Is that a set in the 1970s? Can you tell us about that? What drew you to that time period and how does it shape your stories?

[00:07:59.510] – Marcie Rendon
I I was trying to write a totally different book, Contemporary, About a Woman, that was going to Nashville to break into the music industry. Cash, that story appeared. It was set in that time. It was those people, those characters, and that storyline. It was almost like I didn’t have to think that hard about it. I did have to think about phones. That Google app it.

[00:08:24.950] – Alan Petersen
There were not cell phones.

[00:08:27.930] – Marcie Rendon
There was the phone that was hooked to the wall, and it had a long cord that stretched in and out or whatever. Those kinds of things, but it’s working. Once that first novel worked, and I had the idea for the second novel, once I finished the second novel, I had the idea for the third. I think that that time in history, there was a lot happening. There was the civil rights movement, there was the Vietnam War, there was the feminist movement, there was the rise of the American Indian movement. There was all of these world-changing events that were happening that were actually impacting small town America. Those instances, those historical historical facts actually color some of the stuff that happens in the novels and people’s perceptions of the world in the novels, the character’s perceptions.

[00:09:24.360] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, in your book, we have a lot of real-world issues, like farm labor abuse and the foster care system. Is that something you think about when you plan to write these? How do you balance that? You’re crafting a compelling mystery for us, but then you also want to shed some light on these issues. How does that balance work?

[00:09:41.410] – Marcie Rendon
The truth is that when I sat down to write the crime novels, I’m trying to write the crime novels that I like to read. You pick them up at 3: 00 in the afternoon, and you can’t put them down till 3: 00 in the morning. That’s my goal, is to write that compelling of a novel. The fact that Whether it’s the Indian Child Welfare Act, issues about boarding school, issues about historical trauma, or in the second book, the Kash’s Brother shows up, and he’s on leave from Vietnam. With severe PTSD. They tell you to write what you know. I’ve lived my life as a native woman in Minnesota. I’ve never lived any place else. This is what I know. The fact that those issues show up in the books, the intention wasn’t there to give people a history lesson or a social studies lesson, but I don’t know anything else. These are the people that I know. This is life. So it shows up in there. My first editor, The Murder on the Red River, was published by Cinco Puntos Press, and Lee was my first editor, wonderful editor. But there were things that she didn’t know.

[00:10:59.160] – Marcie Rendon
On page 24 or 27 of my very first book, there’s a line where it says that Cash never saw her mother or her brother and sisters again. I’m just writing, and that’s what I write. Lisa says, You’re going to have to change this because nobody will believe it. I said, What do you mean nobody will believe it? It happened all the time. 60% of kids from Red Lake were removed, Red Lake Reservation, north of Minnesota. During that time period, they were removed in place in white foster homes. From white earth, they know it was Between 40 and 60% of the kids were taken and placed in white foster homes. That’s everybody that I know, practically. I’m just writing what I know. But Lee had no idea of that piece of history, and that It wasn’t just Minnesota, it was across the continent, right after the boarding school era. Then there was this forced taking of kids and putting them in foster homes. Lee said, Well, you’re going to have to write more about that in this book. I said, No, I’m trying to write crime. I’m trying to I don’t want to… My intention wasn’t to make that a key issue, but it was there because that’s what happens.

[00:12:09.120] – Marcie Rendon
It’s like if an author sets a book in New York City, they probably mention the Empire State Building because that’s there. Many of the things in the books that they’re there because they’re in my life, they’ve been a part of my life, they’re part of the lives of the people that I know. I’m not thinking about that. I’m trying to write a crime that will… A novel that will pull people in, that it’s exciting enough, that there’s enough action happening that people just keep reading, and then they want the next one, and build compelling characters that people are very invested in.

[00:12:46.200] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I noticed that in your book, you also had the cash has intuitive abilities. Is that a way of putting in that? Can you tell us a little bit about that, too? How did you develop that aspect of her character?

[00:12:57.460] – Marcie Rendon
Again, I’m writing what I We all. For a Jibwe people, we have a big belief in listening to your dreams. We get up in the morning, I say to my grandkids, This is what I dreamt last night. They say, This is what I dreamt. And there’s this sharing of dreams, and you’re taught to pay attention to them, and you’re taught to pay attention to those gut feelings or those, like you said, intuition. That’s just part of what we’re taught. And apparently, that’s educated out of many people in the educational system that most of us go through, where you’re supposed to think with your brain, and everything else is just like fluff or weird or fantasy. And again, It’s in my book because that’s the world that I know. I know that there are authors who try to create a psychic character, and I’m not trying. I’m just writing.

[00:13:58.690] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I see that now, too. I don’t know, because the last few years, there’s been, at least, there’s more conversation on that, on all the missing of native women all over the world, really. And HBO, The True Detective, I don’t know if you saw that. It had those elements in there, too. What do you feel like now? The word is starting to get out a little bit more. A little bit more, probably, right?

[00:14:24.170] – Marcie Rendon
It is. A number of years ago, I wrote a short story for an anthology called Down to the River. Again, An editor was in New York, and my story involved a woman that attempted murder, and she’s rescued from the water by two women in red dresses. In my bio, I wrote, In memory of MMIW. The editor says, What’s this MMIW? So I told him, At any given day, there’s between 5,000 and 7,000 missing native women across this continent. That was the first he’d ever heard of it. He said, Well, you need to write more about this. Put more in your bio. I said, Well, I only I have 50 words in there. It’s like people are unaware. There has been a rise of awareness because it was women, First Nations women in Canada, who first said, Are women are going missing? They’re being murdered? Or they’re just gone along that highway in Canada, over on the western part of Canada. They started compiling the names of Missing & murdered Indian women. I think it was in 2015 or 2017 that I wrote a performance, a spoken word piece. Initially, I was just going to read the names of, at that time, the Missing and murdered Indian women that people knew of.

[00:15:38.590] – Marcie Rendon
It was 90 pages, single-spaced names. I turned that into a spoken word piece. Then I’ve since then turned that into a play, a performance piece that I’ve been working with Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, to produce, and with Munguizhik Theater here in Minneapolis to produce. We just had it performed up at the White Earth Heart Health Conference, February 14th. It’s a huge issue that’s directly related to extractive industries and the man camps that spring up around those camps, whether it’s gold, uranium, oil, water. It’s any place where there’s extraction that’s happening, but it requires large numbers of men. There’s no social construct there. There’s no churches, there’s no schools, there’s no police force. Most of the things in a community that compel people to behave, those things are absent in these man camps. And so you see a huge rise in trafficking of anybody that’s in the surrounding area. It’s not just native people, but we’re the ones that have spoken out about it the loudest, I think. And then there’s the introduction of hard of drugs or other drugs that aren’t typically in those areas. That message comes across in a lot of my writing.

[00:17:08.300] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I noticed that your book is really captured, like I said before, a really strong sense of place. Can you tell a little bit for the readers about the Red River Valley and how it plays into… I believe some of the areas that you write are made up by you, but they’re based on real places, right?

[00:17:27.180] – Marcie Rendon
Yeah, the people are all fictitious. There is not a Cash Blackbear, there is not a Wheaton, the farmers, there’s Borgerund. No real people. But the places are real. Fargo-moorhead is a real town. Ada, Hallstatt, Minomen, White Earth, Ogama, Bemidji, those are all real towns. The Red River Valley goes from Breckenridge up to Lake Winnipeg in Canada. Then the reservations that are along that Eastern border, White Earth, Leach Lake, Red Lake. When you get up on the other side of Canada, I think it’s Roseau River. Those are real places. Farm life is real. People are planting wheat and corn and strawberries and beets and potatoes. That’s that life. The books, because of the… That’s when I cash… That is Cash’s job. She’s a farm laborer. That resonates with people from rural America, apparently.

[00:18:30.860] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, absolutely. I remember that from reading your… The opening a book in Brooklyn Field, she’s plowing the field with a tractor. I thought about my grandfather.

[00:18:41.340] – Marcie Rendon
That’s what people do in this part of the world.

[00:18:44.520] – Alan Petersen
They ride snowmobiles and they hook a…

[00:18:51.400] – Marcie Rendon
They go out there and combine and stand in line at the Crystal sugar plant in a beet truck. That’s that life. It’s not just native people participate in that as workers. I mean, even today, they go work when the potato harvest happens. They’re probably not out there in the field with burlap bags anymore because there’s machinery that does the work. But there’s still a need for workers. Same with sugar beet harvest or the combining season.

[00:19:27.230] – Alan Petersen
Before you started writing the The crime readers, were you a fan of the genre beforehand?

[00:19:34.280] – Marcie Rendon
Yeah, that’s basically all that I read.

[00:19:37.310] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I figured, you always start reading enough of them. You’re like, Maybe I could write one of these. Is that a company that you had?

[00:19:45.340] – Marcie Rendon
Well, I’m a compulsive reader. I’ve been writing as long as I learned how to write, and I’ve been reading since I learned how to read. But my primary genre has been crime, Whether it’s fiction or true crime, I’ve probably read everything that Anne Rule has written. They just tell you to write what you know. I thought, Well, I’ve read enough of these. I think maybe I’ll do it. Then failed three times, but eventually got it.

[00:20:16.540] – Alan Petersen
What’s your writing process like? Do you outline or are you one of the discovery writers?

[00:20:21.930] – Marcie Rendon
With the Cash Blackbear novels, I sit down and I write from beginning to end, and I know what the crime I know that Cash is going to help solve it. And so far, by the time I reach the end of one book, I’ve got the idea for the next book. When I’m working on where they last saw her is the standalone novel, and that has more of an outline, and I’m working on a second standalone, and there’s more of an outline for that. I don’t know if it’s just a different… Cash is such an alive character that the character propels the story, where with the standalone novels, I think they’re more outlined because the story is the thing and the characters inhabit that world. That makes sense?

[00:21:12.620] – Alan Petersen
Absolutely, yeah. What do you use? I always ask this because I’m so curious about what the other writers tools that they use. What do you use to write them? Do you use Word or something? Do you prefer something else?

[00:21:24.000] – Marcie Rendon
Must be Word. I write on the computer. Yeah, it’s Word.

[00:21:28.810] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I read it a lot of people. I think 90% is word.

[00:21:32.910] – Marcie Rendon
I have a friend who does Scrivener.

[00:21:38.030] – Alan Petersen
Oh, yeah. Scrivener. Yeah.

[00:21:39.570] – Marcie Rendon
Yes.

[00:21:40.650] – Alan Petersen
That’s another popular one. I was wondering, too, about your writing routine, can you share that with us? Are you an early morning writer? Do you always write from the same spot? Can you tell us about that?

[00:21:50.900] – Marcie Rendon
I’m a parent. I’ve been a single parent of raising my own kids and grandkids always living here. My process is a lot of in my head. I’m writing in my head when I’m cooking, when I’m driving somebody to and from school, when I’m doing the laundry. A lot of it is happening in my head. When I wake up in the morning, I try to answer emails and type down ideas that are right there. Then I got to get a kid to school, come home, more emails. If I don’t have a bunch of other things that I have to do, I can crank out anywhere from three sentences to 2,000 words in a day, and then got to feed a kid at night. Then before I go to bed, it’s another round of emails and getting a few more words out. I can write any place. My kitchen table, in the car, in a doctor’s office. It all depends on what deadline I’m on, what I need to have happen. I’m writing. That’s my job. That’s what I do every single I don’t have another job. Also, once a year, I try to do a minimum of a three-week writing residency, where I live in Minneapolis, where I can get far enough out of the city so that no kid can call me and need me.

[00:23:19.410] – Marcie Rendon
If I can get three weeks, I can get as much written in three weeks as it would take me three months here just because I don’t have the interruptions. I try to do that at least once a someplace, some way.

[00:23:32.190] – Alan Petersen
That’s the crunch time for you, too, because broken field comes out on March fourth, I believe, right? So you have to talk to people like me. How’s that process? Do you enjoy that or do you just want to be back writing?

[00:23:46.530] – Marcie Rendon
My first mentor was Jim Northrup. He was an O’Gibbey author from Fondalack Preservation in Northern Minnesota. When we first met, I was extremely shocked. Why? He told me, like he said, Mercy, you can write, write, write, write, send your stuff out. He said, But one thing you’re going to have to learn how to do is talk to people, because if you’re going to be an author, you’re going to have to talk to people. I was like, Oh, my God, no. But I took speech classes, acting classes, performance art classes, spoken word classes to get myself okay with getting up in front of people and talking and answering questions, doing these interviews, was doing the book readings and book signings. It’s been a process of learning how to do that, where if I was just left to my own… I actually thought that you just wrote a book, you sent it out, it sold or it didn’t sell, and then you wrote another one. I didn’t know that there was this whole book tour thing. I didn’t know that awards were a thing. I literally didn’t know that… I guess it’s… Well, where they last saw her is a…

[00:25:04.000] – Marcie Rendon
It’s gotten reviews all over the place, good reviews. I didn’t know that some of those were important things. In my world, I read People magazine, and I saw where People magazine had a book reviews. In my mind, I thought, Oh, I’ll know I made it if I get a book review in People magazine. And then I did.

[00:25:29.510] – Alan Petersen
That was a bit of a quote.

[00:25:30.440] – Marcie Rendon
My other measure of success was, I would say in my head, I’ll know I made it if I walk into an airport bookstore and there’s my book. That’s happened. I think that other people have different benchmarks for their success or something. New York Times review or a best-seller list of some kind, where those just were never in my vicinity.

[00:26:00.160] – Alan Petersen
I want to mention, too, the covers for your books are so amazing. What was that like when you first saw the first cover?

[00:26:09.250] – Marcie Rendon
Thank you. With Soho, they do… I No, they have somebody on their staff that does the covers, and they are amazing covers for the Cash Blackbear series. The covers match the story, and even the colors match the mood of the book, I Yeah. With the standalone novel, well, with the first two Cash Blackbear books, the cover was by a native artist from White Earth, and I think that Soho has… I’m not sure if they switched the covers on those two, but mostly I think they have an in-house person that does the cover for Broken Fields. They send me four different versions of that cover, and I pick the one that I like the most, and they pick the one that they think will sell the best. With Where They Last Saw Her, that cover is by Nicole Hatfield. She’s a Comanchi artist from Oklahoma. The publisher found her and found the cover for that book. I want to back up. You talked about, I think it’s Dark Winds or the True Crime. True Crime. True Detective?

[00:27:27.650] – Alan Petersen
True Detective, yes.

[00:27:29.250] – Marcie Rendon
Yeah. Isabella Le Blanc is a Dakota actress from the Twin Cities here. I’ve known her since she was a little girl, and she was in True Detective, and she has been the reader for the audiobook Sinister Graves and Broken Fields, which is pretty cool. There’s a native reader for Cash Black there.

[00:27:55.280] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s got to be great, too, then for the representation and understanding of what it feels, what it really is like compared to somebody else. You said you’re working on the next Cash Blackbear. Is that what you’re working on now, and when is that coming out?

[00:28:13.800] – Marcie Rendon
I have no idea when it’s coming out. Soho wants to know when I have a copy for them, and I’m just like, Oh, my God, I don’t know. I’m writing on that. I’m writing on the second standalone novel. I I have another children’s book that will come out in 2026. Actually, I have two children’s picture books that will come out in 2026. I had a meeting yesterday about a different play and possible It’s part of a 10-minute Native Play series that will probably be produced in, I guess, 2026. So it’s just a 10-minute play as part of a group of other 10-minute plays. Like I said, I’m working on all of these projects all of the time, and I don’t have a release date for the next Cash Blackbear or the next standalone novel.

[00:29:14.640] – Alan Petersen
Well, but we have a Broken Fields, which comes out March fifth. By the time people listen to this, they’ll be ready. That’s it. It’s on pre-order now. I would like to close things out. I want to ask you by asking my guests, because I have aspiring writers that listen to this. So Is there just any advice, and especially if there’s native readers out there or writers, aspiring writers, any advice on how to write a book like this?

[00:29:41.080] – Marcie Rendon
I don’t know that people need advice on how to write because People who are compelled to write will write. I think that what I mostly encourage native writers to do is to find a supportive group of other people who will encourage your writing and will open doors for you. They will tell you the names of agents to send your work to. They will send you the names of publishers who might be open to seeing your work. The key thing is to get it written and then start submitting. Risk that rejection. With my first Cash Blackbear novel, it was five years of rejection before I ever got a publisher. I just kept sending it out and sending it out and sending it out. That’s the primary thing that I think that people need to do is get the work written and then send it out.

[00:30:34.730] – Alan Petersen
All right, Marcie. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really enjoyed talking with you.

[00:30:38.760] – Marcie Rendon
All right. Thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

[00:30:41.320] – Alan Petersen
A big thank you to Marcie Rendon for joining me on the podcast today. If you haven’t read Marcie’s books yet, I highly recommend to check them out. That’s one of the things I love most about this podcast is getting to introduce listeners to new authors or helping you discover even more about a favorite one. You can learn more about Marcia and her work at marcierendon. Com. And just a quick reminder, my psychological thriller, The Basement, is now available for pre-order on Audible. It’s produced by Podium and performed by the amazing Vanessa Johansson and George Newbern. You pre-order it right now at thrillingreads.com/ab. Thanks again for tuning in. I’ll be back soon with another great author interview. Until then, take care and keep turning those pages.