Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat.

J David Bethel: Someone once gave me this advice and they said, if you’re a writer, you write. Now what that means is that you don’t write because you have this ideal that you’re going to write the great American novel. Uh, just go ahead and write because you like to write. Because chances are you’re not going to write the great American novel. You’ll be lucky to get a book published if it gets published, you’ll be lucky if 10 people read it. So make sure that you know what you’re doing and you’re getting into writing for the right reasons. And that is because you enjoy writing.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, the novelist John David Bethel is appearing for the second time on Story Beat. David’s the author of award-winning political and psychological thrillers, including Mapping the Night and Holding Back the Dark. His short fiction has been published in popular consumer magazines and his essays and opinion editorials have been published in respected political journals. David spent 35 years in politics and government. He served in the federal Senior Executive Service as Senior Advisor, Director of Speechwriting for the Secretaries of Transportation, Commerce and Education, Editorial director for the U.S. small Business Administration, and assistant administrator for the U.S. general Services Administration’s Office of Communications and Citizen Services. David also worked as a press Secretary speechwriter to members of Congress. During the first conversation that we had, we discussed Mapping the Night. Recently, I read two of David’s newest books, Squinting at Shadows and Thy Brother’s Keeper, both of which are in the thriller mold of David’s earlier novels. They are intense page turning mysteries that kept me wondering what would happen next. If you like reading thrillers, I highly urge you to check out David’s books. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a terrific pleasure for me to welcome back to Story Beat the excellent writer John David Bethel. David, thanks so much for joining me again.

J David Bethel: Well, thank you for having me.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s a great pleasure to see you again. So let’s go and chat about back in time a little bit. Something we didn’t talk about last time. I know you had to have been a reader as a boy, is that correct?

J David Bethel: Oh, yeah, definitely. That’s what got me into writing, as a matter of fact. My dad was in the foreign service, and we spent most of my life, my early life, first 13 years, as a matter of fact, overseas. I didn’t live in the United States for those first 13 years. Um, and during that time, I went to, like, eight different schools. We were out of these. I missed large swaths of education. And the way I filled in was my parents would give me books, uh, to read and anything else they could get their hands on. And. And that’s what got me into it. I got excited about reading and writing.

Steve Cuden: Were you reading mysteries and thrillers back in that time?

J David Bethel: No, not really. I, uh, was reading mostly. My dad was a big fan of Ernest Hemingway.

Steve Cuden: Well, we talked about Ernest Hemingway on the last show and that you met him down in Cuba. We talked about that, which I find fascinating, but. So when did you start to get interested in thrillers and mysteries?

J David Bethel: Well, that happened while I was writing a book. Book. Uh, I was collaborating with a private investigator who was involved in a very strange case in Miami. And, uh, he had read one of my books. He called me up, he said, look, I. I’ve got an interesting case here. I want you to, uh, to write about it. It was about a man that was. He was kidnapped by a group of thugs. And he was a multimillionaire, had a lot of business interests, was, uh, kept in a warehouse for 30 days. Uh, they. And this is before, you know, all these gadgets that we have now. He actually had to write checks out and things like that, and give them the deed to his house and. Awful story. And they almost. They almost killed him. Uh, he got away by some fluke of fate. And, uh, he called my friend, who turned out to be my friend, the private investigator. And, um, he got me involved in that, in writing about that. And while he was doing that, he gave me a whole pile of files. In that file was one on the Key west serial killer, who, uh. Who he was, uh, working with the Key west, uh, police force to try and find. And that’s how I got into it. I read this file combined with the, uh. With the. With the thing he was currently involved in and that file. And reading that file, I got fascinated by the whole mindset of these people.

Steve Cuden: Interesting. So do you read other mystery writers now?

J David Bethel: Sometimes, yes, I. I mean, I do. I read lots of stuff. I read lots of different stuff in that stuff. Yes, I will read. Uh, I can’t give you the names of the authors now so much because I just read so Much. And then I throw the book away. Uh, but yes. Short answer to your question is yes, I do, occasionally.

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess what I’m leading to is where did you learn to write mysteries, which are a specific genre? Obviously it didn’t come from voluminous reading of mystery writers. Where did it come from?

J David Bethel: I guess I just have an ability to think in the way that thriller writers do. I didn’t know I had that ability. I was writing mostly political thrillers, which is a totally different genre than the psychological thriller.

Steve Cuden: I have to assume, and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, that your many years in Washington, where there’s always a sense of intrigue going on behind the scenes, that. That had to have fed into it somewhat, probably.

J David Bethel: I mean, I can remember being on the Hill or working in these office and doing the what if, you know, what if this. If I had this situation? What if someone was corrupt? Where would it go? You know, I’m playing it over in my mind. My very first book that I wrote was. Was very much of that. It was a senator’s wife was. Was killed. And I always wondered, well, what happened? Who takes over? If. If this would. Something like this would happen. Would it be the FBI? Would it be the Capitol Hill police? How would they go about it? And, you know, from my imagination, I just developed this whole story.

Steve Cuden: So as a writer of many different things in Washington for many years, did you have a sense, as you were working in wherever you were assigned, did you have a sense that you were trying to figure out what was going on, like a detective might?

J David Bethel: Obviously, when you write a novel, there’s a lot of drama that you add to situations that just isn’t there in real life, at least not as overtly, subtly in the background. Very subtly. You can say, well, if, you know, if you just turn, uh, the focus just a little bit this way and your perspective a little bit that way, you can find all of these conspiratorial possibilities. But yes and no. I mean, at the time when I’m sitting down, working in the office, grinding it out, you know, eight hours a day, I’m not thinking that, but in the background, I am sure that I stored up a lot of this. What if. What if this happened and what if that happened, which. Which then was regurgitated as some of my novels.

Steve Cuden: Well, in the three books of yours that I’ve read, there’s a lot of politics in them. That’s something that’s part of and parcel, I guess, of what we would call your thematic Work is that there’s politics involved.

J David Bethel: Yeah, they say write what you know. And I guess this proves that that’s the case. But it’s difficult for me to not see politics as you just said, since I spent so many years in politics, to not see politics as a possibility. In everything that I write, I can start writing about something totally, you know, removed from politics and my mind, My mind goes there.

Steve Cuden: So, um, I’m going to dig in a little deeper. It’s interesting to me. You could, if you chose to, which obviously you have not. You could have been a historian, you could have written about political figures and about their lives. You didn’t. You chose to fictionalize stories and tell stories like that as well as doing it in a mystery that involves politics in some way. But your stories are not about politics, politics. And so I’m curious, what is it about the mystery and the thriller genre that speaks to you? Why did you wind up there? Do you have any idea?

J David Bethel: Um, straight ahead. Political books bore, uh, me, as do true crime books. Um, and I think the reason for that is just, uh, the facts, ma’, am kind of writing doesn’t do anything for me. I want to know why. Why does this person think in this way? How did his background, nature or nurture or whatever it was, push him into the, the dastardly deeds, if you will, that some of my characters are involved with? How did they get there? And the only way I could do that was by writing fiction and by, by doing it, you know, writing a mystery. Because then I could figure it out. I could peel back the, you know, the layers of the onion to get where I, where I thought things would go.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. Well, certainly your work is realistic. It’s not fant. Even though you’re writing it in a fictional sense, uh, it is gritty and realistic. My assumption is that it’s based on, in fact, I know that much m of your work is based on things that have actually happened and that you then take that and run with the ball. Taking the realistic story and making it realistic fiction. That’s what fascinates you, has to be, what is it about that particular tone appeals to you? Why that tone?

J David Bethel: Well, I don’t think I have a definitive answer for that. But let’s take squinting at shadows, which is a kind of, is a fictionalization of, uh, the murder of Senator Percy’s daughter back in the late 60s when I went to the Hill. The first time was then I was still in college and I did an internship in uh, Washington with a senator and did some writing for him. And while I was up there, I found out about the situation with Senator Percy Mercy, where his daughter was killed. I mean, it’s just fascinating. They’re in this big, huge house. The whole family lives in this house. This person sneaks in somehow. There was no evidence of anybody having broken in. He seems to go to just one room. He doesn’t wander around the house. And there’s no evidence that anything was stolen. He beats this poor girl to death. Nobody, uh, hears anything. Uh, on his way out, he did run into the mother who just thought she heard something and got up and was. And was wandering around the fourth floor where all the bedrooms were, and he ran over her to get out. But that fascinated me. And then the fact that they could never solve the crime. They never figured out who killed her.

Steve Cuden: Even to this day, no, not even today.

J David Bethel: They have no idea who did it. And he ran. He was a very well known political, uh, character in the state of Illinois. He ran for governor. He was, uh, you know, CEO of Bell and Howell. So it’s not like a normal person. If I’m a robber or, you know, or a thug, I’m not thinking, geez, that’s an ideal place to go. His Percy’s. Percy’s house. And he’s in the middle of running for the Senate. So that whole m. That whole, you know, ball of wax there just fascinated me. And I decided to sit down and where could this have gone? How can I pull this apart and figure out what. What happened? Obviously I fictionalized it, and it probably went in a direction that nobody ever thought of before. That’s the kind of thing that fascinates me. And that’s where I get my stories from. These little bits and pieces of reality that don’t make any sense to me is that. Where do I go with this?

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, so Senator Percy’s story is really very much reflected in squinting at shadows. And it’s set in Illinois, where he was from. You didn’t choose to set it elsewhere. Um, and so it kind of feels like it’s that story, as you say, uh, evolved through your thinking into a fictional story. Do you feel in any way, shape or form that you are, uh, treading on weird ground, that you’re actually making a fiction out of a real story and kept it sort of similar to what it was? You didn’t change it up that much.

J David Bethel: I didn’t change up the foundation for the story itself. At the very beginning of the story, there’s the statement from the wife, uh, that Gets the story started. And that statement is pretty much, uh, with some changes, uh, what she. You know, what she said. So. So the ground is hard, but I took it in a direction, and I don’t want to give too much away. I want to spoil the story for people, but I took it in a direction, uh, that. That I think is realistic enough for someone to say, well, that, you know, that could have happened, but is far enough from the story that I’m not. I’m not, uh, disgracing Percy’s reputation or anything. I don’t think anybody’s going to think, well, this. This is. Is this really what happened? My God, what a bastard he is.

Steve Cuden: And it’s not journalism. You’re not writing a story about an actual event. Uh, you’re just riffing off of that underlying, uh, concept of this is a murder that happened this way. I’m fascinated always. I’ve been my whole life by, uh, titles. I think titles are extraordinarily important. They help guide a reader, a moviegoer, a TV watcher, whatever, toward whether this works for the story or whether it doesn’t. Sometimes it sells everything. This is an interesting title. You have Squinting at Shadows. Where does that come from?

J David Bethel: Well, I think somewhere in the novel, uh, someone says, uh, something about squinting at shadows. That’s where it came from. But what I’m saying is I don’t have a title for a novel. Going into the novel, it always comes from. From the. From the, you know, the product itself. Uh, and I don’t know, I can’t remember at the moment where. Where it is that. That it made sense for someone to say, well, if you squint at the, you know, shadows, you’re going to find the truth. I do think that’s. That’s the line that someone says. If you squint real hard at the shadows, you’re going to find the truth. And I thought to myself at that point, oh, uh, there’s a great title, Squinting at Shadows. And that’s how the titles of most of my novels go.

Steve Cuden: I think I know what that means. If you squint at shadows hard enough, you’ll find the truth. I think I know what that means. What does it mean to you?

J David Bethel: Well, it probably comes from my political background, because if you know nothing, everything in politics is, um, kind of hazy. Everything’s very subtle. Nothing is right out there on the table.

Steve Cuden: Well, sometimes it’s right out there on the table and you can’t believe you’re hearing.

J David Bethel: Depends on your perspective. Yes, of course, if you, if you have. But that’s the whole point. And I learned this in speechwriting, I think you never say something too terribly direct. I mean, you can go ahead and write a policy speech and say exactly what the way things should be said and lay it out, A, B, C and D. But you always leave something, sort of someone comes back and says, well, what about D? And you can always say, well, that depends on C, B and A. So what I’m saying about that is squinting at shadows is the same way in politics. If you squint real hard, you can see around the words behind that and you can figure it out.

Steve Cuden: Because you’re always with politicians trying to read between some line. Correct.

J David Bethel: Exactly. They’re always squinting at shadows.

Steve Cuden: They’re the ultimate subtextualists. They never say what they actually are meaning. There’s always some hidden meaning behind it. Two of the three books of yours that I’ve read feature two FBI agents, uh, Eileen Prado and Ira Fisher. And I know that they appear or are featured in at least one other book. Correct.

J David Bethel: I’m trying to think. I think it’s more like four, because the book I’m working on now, they’re part of that as well. So I’m trying to think here. They’re in at least four of them.

Steve Cuden: They’re in at least four books. And is this one that you’re writing now, is that a fifth time they’ll appear, or is this the fourth time?

J David Bethel: I think it’s the fourth.

Steve Cuden: The fourth. Okay. So did you know when you’ve created those characters, that they were likely to be, for lack of a better word, serialized or they were going to be featured in numerous books? Did you know?

J David Bethel: No, I didn’t. You know, it’s like with most of my books, and we’ve discussed this before, until I sit down and start writing, I never know where I’m going, uh, other than having the kernel of the idea that then takes me wherever. You know, wherever it ends up to give you an idea. The current book I’m writing did not start. There was nowhere necessarily that I was going to put those two characters. Then there was a point when. When some people were talking to each other and one man says to the other, um, uh, before you know it, we’ll have someone in here talking about Ted Bundy. And at that point it occurred to me, oh, okay. Well, Ira Fisher’s kind of a wise guy. From the background behind the police chief is talking to these people in the background. You hear. You hear somebody say Ted Bundy. And the guy turns around and it’s those two. It just worked its way into the, you know, into the conversation. And once I had them, once I had Ira Fisher there, of course I had to bring Eileen Prado into.

Steve Cuden: Most novelist or TV series writers most of the time when they have characters that repeat and come back and back and back, it becomes a thing. And um, I’m going to guess you’re going to tell me this is not intended to be a thing, is that right?

J David Bethel: It’s not intended to be a thing. It became a thing. It wasn’t intended to become a thing.

Steve Cuden: Are you planning, in your mind’s eye, do you think you’re going to continue to use them?

J David Bethel: I have no idea.

Steve Cuden: I find your process on this very, very interesting because it’s so diametrically opposed to my process. That’s why I find it interesting. And clearly it works. It works for you because you keep producing product that’s out there in the world. Do you know if uh, there’s something about them that keeps attracting you back to them? Is there some quality about them?

J David Bethel: I think so. I think that they, first of all they play well against each other. Prada’s more businesslike and Ira Fisher’s a little bit more wild card. As FBI agents. I always bring them, I have been bringing them into situations in a metropolitan police force where they add an element of professionalism. I would say that’s. And I’m not, I’m not saying that the, that the police, metropolitan, uh, police aren’t professional, but they are super professional because they’re FBI. I mean that’s what they do, that’s what they focus on. And the fact that they, we in most of my novels there is a psychological uh, edge to it. And they both have worked with these kind of serial offenders before. So you know, the recipe is there and I just put them into the recipe.

Steve Cuden: Well, obviously they uh, appeal to you in some way that you go back to them. They do work off of one another very well. I will say this. I don’t find them to be the typical button down FBI agents that we’re used to seeing in movies and tv. They’re a little looser. Uh, there’s a little bit more character to them in the sense that they’re not quite as straight laced as you would think of as your typical FBI agents. And I’m gonna guess that’s probably part of what appeals to, to you about them.

J David Bethel: Uh, yes, yeah, that, that, yes it does.

Steve Cuden: And so was the jumping off point on this book for you Was it in fact the, the Charles Percy, uh, murder case? Is that what was the literal I’ve got to write about this or was there something else that got you to that?

J David Bethel: No, it was, it was the Charles Percy, uh, you know, the unsolved, the unsolved mystery that I’ve been, I’ve been mulling this over for. Ever since I was, you know, as this intern on the Hill. The idea of this, this happening was just so foreign to me that something like this could happen. And I mean they had just thousands and thousands of hours investigation, uh, tens of thousands of people that they talked to and, and so forth and so on. And just the idea, as I’ve said, the whole scenario of someone getting in. By the way, the other, the other element of this is that the, the girl, the daughter that was killed had had a twin and they always slept together in one bedroom. That particular particular night the twin was not there. She was office with some friends. So how did this person know this? Did he know this? Was he planning on going up there and killing the two of them? So you know, that whole thing was just so amazing to me that I had to do something with it.

Steve Cuden: Did you ever know or meet Senator Percy or was that before your time?

J David Bethel: Yes, I did, yeah, a couple of times when I was there as an intern, I met him. He came and spoke to the group of interns, number one. And another time I was at a reception, uh, and I ran into him and, and obviously I didn’t talk about that, but uh, but yes, I did know him. He seemed like, you know, he did run for president. He was a very well respected member of, of the Senate. So yeah, yeah, I did meet him. I wasn’t good buddies or anything, but I did meet him on a couple of occasions.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. But you spoke his language, didn’t you?

J David Bethel: I think so. I mean he was a more libertarian, uh, kind of conservative Republican as opposed to a, uh, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for. He wasn’t hard. Right. He wasn’t a Goldwater Republican. And so that, so yes, I had, I guess there was that appeal.

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess when I say you spoke his language, you worked on the Hill, that’s where you worked.

J David Bethel: Oh yes, yes, of course, yes.

Steve Cuden: So you understood that speak of what I think of as political speak that’s different from the average everyday Joe’s speak.

J David Bethel: Well, yeah, and you have to, I think you have to have worked in politics to some degree. Although, although I know one of the great political thriller writers, David Baldacci never worked on the Hill, but he’s managed to, uh, do that. Uh, but yes, I mean, I think it would be very difficult for someone to write in that genre without having spent some time on Capitol Hill.

Steve Cuden: Well, you can tell when you read your books, and this is true for all three of them. There are passages, you have action, you have things that happen between the characters, and so on. But inevitably at some point, if not multiple points in a book, you will get off into a, uh, corner where the, the politicians are having a political conversation of some kind. And it, it gets deeply, I wouldn’t say deeply into the weeds, but deep enough it gets into the weeds of politics that one can tell that you know what you’re talking about.

J David Bethel: Well, yeah, I do mind my experience to be able to do that. And I think that, that I hope that I don’t write it so in such, in a jargon way that people can’t understand. I want, I, I want them to understand what’s going on, but I also want them to say, well, that’s interesting. I didn. That does bring the story and the conversation to life.

Steve Cuden: Mhm, for sure. Do you think as you were writing this book, and we’re going to get to your next one in a second, but did you think as you were writing this book that you were going to wind up at the conclusion or did you not know your conclusion until you got there?

J David Bethel: No, I did not know where I was going with it until I got there.

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. That boggles my mind, to be perfectly blunt. It just does. Um, how long did it take to write this book?

J David Bethel: Squinting at shadows came rather easily. I think probably four or five months total.

Steve Cuden: Four or five months?

J David Bethel: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: That’s very fast. And you do this with no outline, so you’re really. There’s no developmental process, you’re just writing it?

J David Bethel: Well, I mean, yes and no. There’s no development process in the sense of, uh, maybe what you’re thinking about an outline of characters, backgrounds and all that sort of thing. But there is, I did a lot of research. I read a couple of books on it. I made sure that I had the details of the, the crime Right. And I read some books that, about the case itself. So that’s not including in the. Four or five months, maybe six months, if you put, if you put all that together.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so I’m trying to grasp how this works. You’re, if you don’t know what the story is, the research you’re doing is sort of the general, uh, background or the general gist of it, that’s what you’re researching? Not anything specific in detail in the storytelling?

J David Bethel: No, I just want to know the general background of the crime and uh, that’s basically it. I don’t read it for any other reason than that.

Steve Cuden: So as you’re writing, do you have a tendency to think more about the characters and what they’re thinking, or do you have more of a tendency to think about where you’re going next in the plot?

J David Bethel: Uh, it depends, I suppose, on the book itself. Some are more character driven, some are more plot driven. Most of my books I think are plot driven. Uh, but at the same time, uh, if the process is lending itself to some greater character development, then I’ll go and go in that direction.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. Yeah, for sure. I think most mysteries need to be plot driven because that’s what makes them a mystery. You’re trying to unpeel, as you say, the onion one layer at a time to get to the ultimate answer in the story. Um, were you, had you spent time in Illinois, Were you already familiar with the locations?

J David Bethel: I haven’t spent time in Illinois. I’ve been to Illinois, but I haven’t spent a lot of time there. I spent some time in Chicago years back doing some speech writing for some, for, for some people, but that, that was it.

Steve Cuden: So then how do you know what you’re talking about in terms of locations? Because they’re vivid.

J David Bethel: Okay, well, what I’ll do is I know that Kenilworth was where the crime was. Was committed. I will then do some research on Kenilworth, specifically the area where the crime was, uh, where the crime was committed. If I can find a video, uh, on, on, uh, you know, sometimes for instance, um, there’s, there’s a, there’s a visit that they take to the country of Suriname. In the, in the novel itself. What I did was I found a whole bunch of videos of uh, of Suriname.

Steve Cuden: So you didn’t go there and spend time there?

J David Bethel: No, I did not. I did not. I just got a hold of these videos and made and then double checked it with some folks that I know who had been to Suriname to make sure I was doing the right thing.

Steve Cuden: It’s one of the more unique places that I can think of to write about because you don’t see the name Suriname pop up too often in any kind of books or novels.

J David Bethel: Where that came from was, I was, I was watching a, ah, travel video about Suriname and that’s what popped. That’s why I got interested in that.

Steve Cuden: So when you saw this travel video, you went, wow, that’s an interesting, intriguing name and place, I assume.

J David Bethel: Yes. Plus the fact that Suriname now has, uh, some entree into the world of, uh, OPEC world because they’re discovering oil there. So it made it doubly interesting to me.

Steve Cuden: The other thing that’s a hallmark of your books that I’ve read is that you almost always, if not always, have some thoughts, conversation about morality or moral elements that seems to be within your genre. What you’re writing about, where does that come from? Where does your moral thinking come from so that you can insert it into these characters and what they’re going through.

J David Bethel: To take one, one element, maybe where I write about or have written about these serial offenders, these, these people who are just horrible people. And my interest is, and it’s, it’s really a, uh, it’s really frustrating because when you try and figure out how they ended up, where they ended up, you really can’t, I mean, you can’t think like them. I think somewhere in one of my novels I put one of the all time hallowed profile or said, if you start thinking you can figure them out or you think you figured them out, you’ve got a problem, you need to go see someone. Because no one can think like these people.

Steve Cuden: Well, I was going to say, let’s explore that a moment. I think that as you go through life, uh, even people that have been married for 50 plus years still don’t really know what their spouse is thinking or what’s really in their mind’s eye. We as humans don’t really have the ability, I don’t think, to get truly inside somebody’s head all the way.

J David Bethel: Exactly. But I think all of us realize there are limits, there are barriers that you do not cross as a civilized human person, as a moral, ethical person. These people that some of these people are right about don’t have that. They have no limits at all. How does that happen? And if you ask that question, you have to ask, well, if they’re bad, there has to be. Be good in order to, you know, you can’t have evil without having, uh, you know, good. Good as well. So those two things, when you’re writing about, when you’re writing about one or the other, either, either ethics, moral or evil, you have to, you have to explore both sides of the issue.

Steve Cuden: So not to get too personal, but where does yours come from? From your parents, from your upbringing? Where does your own set of morality come from? And I don’t need to know too Deeply about it. I’m just curious how you have arrived at some of the thinking that you have that’s in the books.

J David Bethel: I mentioned that my dad was a foreign servant. Officer. Foreign service officer. And we spent most of my youth overseas. Well, I was very young, but I, uh, was born in 47. So we went over to Europe in the 1950s, and then I went on to Japan and Cuba. What I’m getting at here is that I met lots of different kind of people. We were in all kinds of different circumstances. Japan, uh, after the war was a mess. People were poor. There was. I mean, it was just. It was just atrocious, as was Germany at the time. You develop a certain empathy for the people. I mean, these things. When you’re that young and you see these things, you develop a, uh. Uh. I don’t know exactly what. I guess a morality. I mean, if things are awful, you have to. You have to ask yourself, why are things awful? What’s going on here? What these poor people are suffering. So I think a lot of that, plus my parents discussing. Because I had a lot of questions. My parents would answer my questions and we discussed it. I guess that’s where it came from.

Steve Cuden: You have empathy for these people. And that’s where I’m guessing that you saw the way that they were dealing with their struggles. And you yourself started to think about how that could be resolved or how you would deal with it, et cetera, et cetera.

J David Bethel: You’re right. Exactly. And of course, I did have the background of knowing that. That, you know, they were. They were on the other side of the, uh. Of the divide, you know, during the war. So, uh, you also start to think, well, did they put themselves in this position or yet? Yeah. And so what I’m looking around, uh, at. Around me is all this destruction. Well, did they bring this on themselves? I mean, there’s. There’s so many facets of all of that that when you’re exposed to it as a youngster, that’s where it comes from, I think, for me, anyway.

Steve Cuden: And one of the things that you’ve had throughout your entire life, throughout your whole career, throughout your youth and upbringing, is you’ve probably met many thousands of people in your life. Would that be accurate?

J David Bethel: Yeah, you know, yes, if you’re. Obviously, we were talking about politics too. You meet people who are constantly talking about these issues now, whether they act the way you want them to act or not. But that. That is all. You know, that’s all part of the, uh. The whole brew. When you’re in politics. Which side of the line are you on?

Steve Cuden: Uh, as a writer, you have been exposed to so many humans, probably more than the average person has. You be just being on the hill for that many years, you met so many people, so you got to see characters, you got to see the way different people fought or projected. And that, to me, is probably one of the most useful things you have in your toolkit as a writer.

J David Bethel: Yeah. And one of the things I think maybe we discussed, I did meet some, quite, quite a number of people. On the plus side, we had someone like Jackie Robinson, who I had the privilege of meeting when I was a young boy. Uh, twice, actually. Um, once in Japan when the Dodgers came over after winning the World Series and they did his tour of the, of the country and, and I had an opportunity to sit and talk to Jackie Robinson. He was my boyhood hero. And this was just, you know, if I died and went to heaven the next day, that would have been amazing. And I, I knew about his struggles, clearly. I wasn’t. I wasn’t just talking to a baseball player. I was talking to a man with, with all kinds of, uh, uh, you know, morals and characters. And then on the other side of the, of the divide, I happened to have an opportunity to meet Fidel Castro. And I went with my. I know we discussed this before. I went with my child.

Steve Cuden: I don’t think so. Fidel Castro. That’s fascinating.

J David Bethel: Yeah. My dad was, uh, as I mentioned, he was foreign service officer. He was in the press, and he put together Castro’s first press conference in Cuba. And he had him in a room, green, uh, room. Um, and he took me down to bring Castro up to the press conference. And so I had an opportunity to meet. To meet, actually, and to sit and talk to Castro. So, yeah, I mean, you know, when you start talking about that kind of stuff, it was a very golden childhood that I had. I was very fortunate, fortunate, very lucky. You mentioned before, I happened to meet. Meet Hemingway. So that was wonderful. And Errol Flynn. I met Errol Flynn. What a character he was. So, yes, to answer your question in the long winded way, yes, I have met a lot of people.

Steve Cuden: Yeah. Uh, that is my point, is that your exposure to huge numbers of people, uh, I think if one decides to become a writer of fiction or, um, nonfiction, I think that that’s a big advantage. I’m saying that for the listeners to understand, if you’re someone who sits around the house a lot or you don’t get out a lot, get out because you need to meet people and be exposed to them so that you can absorb all these different cultures and thoughts and way, uh, people act and so on. And you are. I know you’re a people watcher. We talked about that the last show. And that’s what this is. You’ve. You’ve observed tons of people in your life.

J David Bethel: Exactly. And I think all writers are probably people watchers. I’m of the mind that most writers, other than these flamboyant characters like Hemingway and Mailer and Breslin and people like that, uh, Erika Jeong, most of us are probably the kind that sit in a room and are quiet and that, that all. That all makes it, uh, gives you enough of a character to. To be able to bring things in, rather than. As my dad used to say, you never learn anything with your mouth open. So.

Steve Cuden: What a, What a great phrase.

J David Bethel: Yeah, you just sit. You sit and you learn by keeping your mouth shut and just watching.

Steve Cuden: Well, let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about Thy Brother’s Keeper. Tell the listeners what that book is about. Which, by the way, does not have Prado and Fisher in it. No, but tell the listeners what that book is about.

J David Bethel: Well, it’s about two sets of brothers. Each of the members of those sets are taken in different directions for. For various reasons. It’s how they come back together, uh, at points in the novel. And two of, uh, one set is, I don’t know if you’d say better than the other set, but they, they definitely have a, uh, definite, A, uh, different view of life and how things go than the other set. Now, interestingly enough, this is. Was written totally in a totally different way than, Than, uh, squinting at shadows. Thy Brother’s Keeper came from two short stories that I had written, uh, years ago. And people would read the short stories and they’d say, well, what happened to those people? And that’s what I did. I took the short stories and combined them and made a novel out of it.

Steve Cuden: And so this was something that had been gestating, um, in your mind’s eye for quite some time then.

J David Bethel: Yeah. And it’s total fiction. Usually I have some. Well, there is a small element of truth to it, but I usually have a foundation of truth to build on. In this particular instance, it was just. It’s total fiction.

Steve Cuden: And now that you’ve done that, do you have a preference between writing based on something that actually happened as opposed to making it all up?

J David Bethel: Not really. Um, I will take whatever muse I have, whatever’s stuck in my head. And I need to get out. I will take it in the direction that it goes. Um, I think perhaps having a foundation of true whatever reality based is easier because you have a vase to work with when you are sitting down and using your total imagination. That’s a little more challenging.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, I would say it’s actually a lot more challenging. I’ve always found it a little easier when you have something you’re adapting that already exists or you’re actually taking a real story and making it come to life. I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s much harder to come up with something out of nothing. Uh, and you uh, know. Good on you for doing that. What was the inspiration to get you to write this story?

J David Bethel: Well, in one instance you’ll recall that the younger brother is sitting, waiting for his older brother to come through town. He’s being transported through town by some uh, police because he’s being transported to jail through the town that he grew up in. And the younger brother is waiting for him to come through and the story is set to. You don’t really know how the younger brother is going to react. You know, what he’s going to do. Um, and that is just something again, I think I must have either read something or the story just popped in my mind. You have this small town. What would happen if, if we had this situation. It was actually when I first started thinking about was a Native American story of a Native American boy, uh, who thinks that his brother was, was uh, unfairly judged. And they, and is he, and he’s been brought through town and is he going to do something with his friends to free his brother to get, get to get his. That, that just seemed too, too complicated. Too many people going to get hurt. It’d be impossible to do so. So I came, I wrote the story in another way and that is this young brother who is his is not happy with his brother because his brother has killed his parents. And that’s the whole basis for that particular element of the story of that.

Steve Cuden: And we learned that right at the top. So you’re not really giving anything away.

J David Bethel: Yeah, no, I don’t think it’s giving anything. It. I think the real gestation of the story is in how they come back together.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. Oh that for sure. That’s the big part of the story is how they come back together.

J David Bethel: Yeah. And then the other part of it was I had this story that I had in my mind forever about young two, two brothers, uh, meandering around in a, in a In a forest, in a area near their house that, that, that is, that is forested. Uh, and they come upon, as you remember from the book, they come upon a hut. They come upon an old guy that lives there. And it’s how they, how they interact. It’s kind of a coming of age story. And that combined, because there are two brothers in both of those stories, that’s what I, that’s what I, you know, jumped. That was the jumping off point for my novel, for my.

Steve Cuden: That particular novel and certainly, uh, focused on, uh, troubled, difficult, uh, children, uh, who grow up into very, very interesting and different adults. Uh, and I think that that’s fascinating, um, to watch what happens to them, at least the way that you lay it out. Now, you set this book in Owen, Oklahoma. Why Owen Oklahoma, of all places? Had you been there? Is it something you’re familiar with?

J David Bethel: My wife and I traveled through Oklahoma a couple of years ago. Uh, it’s an interesting state. There is no Owen, Oklahoma. That’s a fictional town. Um, but I also have a very good friend of mine who I worked with in Washington who was from Oklahoma and used to tell me stories about the Okies. He grew up very, very poor. And he used to tell me stories about the Okies and his growing up, his background and how he grew up, which is reflected in the set of brothers that begin the novel. Um, and that’s where that came from.

Steve Cuden: The notion of Oklahoma came from the. This friend in Washington. And so Owen is a fictional town, but is it based on a real place?

J David Bethel: Uh, well, this friend of mine was from a small town in Oklahoma that again, that he told me a lot about. So I suppose it’s based on that. I don’t think. I didn’t sit down with that in my mind to do it that way. But, you know, when you look back and answer questions like yours, it brings up to mind that, yeah, that was probably, that was probably why it became Owen, Oklahoma.

Steve Cuden: So a famous author who people almost never talk about anymore. James Michener was, um, famous for writing big epic stories. Uh, whether during wars or during a hurricane in Hawaii, is a famous story of his. He, uh, was very well known for going and living in a place for a very long period of time, a year or more, in order to absorb the culture and the people and the locations. This is not your, uh, uh, way to operate at all, is it?

J David Bethel: No. And I suppose it’s cheating a little bit because I do, uh, you know, I do probably add elements or don’t have the elements in there that make it truly real. Uh, but I don’t think you necessarily need to because these are stories about people and you find these people and their stories anywhere. You wouldn’t necessarily necessarily have to go live in Oklahoma to tell this story, in my view anyway.

Steve Cuden: So. Does anybody ever bust you on that? Does anybody ever say, you know, I’m, I’m from there, and you’ve got that all wrong?

J David Bethel: No, exactly the opposite. I’ve gotten. People, uh, from Oklahoma have said, oh my God, how did you capture that? Did you spend time in Oklahoma? So no is the answer, and it’s just the opposite.

Steve Cuden: For whatever reason, I think I’m going to guess again that your youth of traveling around as much as you did gave you a sense of being able to quickly absorb a different culture.

J David Bethel: Probably because as I mentioned just at the beginning of this session here, I went to eight schools in eight years. And you learn to adapt. You learn to pick up elements. Uh, in order to get along, you have to go along. So you have to, as a kid especially, you have to, you know, what’s important here. And uh, how do these people work and, and you know, how do I, how do I make sure I don’t get beat up every day in school? So, yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s. That’s probably has a lot to do with it.

Steve Cuden: And going back to the idea, uh, of brothers sort of in conflict or trying to figure one another out. It’s one of the oldest stories we have. It’s a biblical story. It’s Cain and Abel. And uh, this has been around for, obviously for centuries. The question that I have is why do you think that? Is that stories like brothers at odds with one another. We had brothers against one another in the Civil War. And that within a family that you can get stories of people who are at these terrible loggerheads and have to figure out how to live together anyway. Where does this come from in our world, do you think?

J David Bethel: Every family that I’ve come in touch with seems to have that sort of element in their family. There’s always the black sheep. Uh, I’m being very general here. I’m sure there are families where everybody gets along famously and loves each other, but I’d be hard pressed. Even my own family. There’s elements of that. I’m not saying that any terrifying, anything terrible happened, but there are just sibling rivalries. And if you’re a writer and you take a sibling rivalry and you take it to the extremes because that’s the drama of the book, you’re working in. But I think it’s human. I don’t think it has so much to do with family. I think it’s probably more, uh, noticeable. It’s taken to a greater level when it’s within a family. But I think it’s very human. You put people together in a room, you’re gonna, you might, you know, you might have some conflicts, but I’m not sure it’s just because it’s a family.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s also generational. Somebody’s older, somebody’s younger, so they’re from slightly different, you know, times their friends are different and so on. It’s all those things that happen between humans. And so that’s really what I think you’re digging into there now. The two of the brothers, Declan and Connor Ryan, uh, you at one point, you finally reveal. It takes a while to get there, but you finally reveal Declan is dealing with his own sexuality and he’s dealt with it for his whole life, basically. And, and he’s a cop. So I assume that that’s part of what keeps him from, you know, outwardly dealing with his own sexuality. But I’m wondering what caused you to inject that into the story at the point that you went, aha, there’s something I want to make sure we cover. What caused you to want to cover that at that time?

J David Bethel: Well, you know, I know this frustrates you as a different, uh, writer with a totally different process, but I keep having to go back to it. I don’t.

Steve Cuden: It just happens.

J David Bethel: It just happens. I don’t. I remember. The only thing I can say about that is that they were talking about Connor’s experiences in prison. And it’s quite possible.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

J David Bethel: That Declan just wanted to. At that point I said, you know, I’ve never told him. I have to tell him. He’s talking to me about some difficulties he had in prison. It just made sense at that point. He’s probably been fighting with himself for not mentioning this to his brother for all these years. Uh, that it was something maybe that caused him problems when they were younger, because one was probably their personalities clashed. So this just seemed like the point in the novel where it made sense to bring it out now why I made him, why I, uh, drew a gay character in the novel. It just seemed like an element of his personality that would make him more interesting, especially being a cop, as you mentioned.

Steve Cuden: So let’s break this apart just a half a step. Once you have, uh, for lack of a better word, an epiphany, you go Ah. Uh, we’re going to go down this road. And you had not thought of it before. Obviously you’re not planning it out. And now you have a choice as the author. I have an idea. This is something that’s kind of interesting. You have a choice. You can go down that road or you cannot go down that road. You can go down a different road, but you chose to go down that road. So something appealed to you at that moment to say, I want to explore this notion of this character. Do you have a recognition of that happening for you, or are you just plowing ahead?

J David Bethel: Yes and no. I’m plowing ahead. But at the same time, uh, Declan is, uh, in my view, is a very moral, ethical person. He did not want to let this moment go by without mentioning it to his brother. I think he thought this would help us, you know, with the problems that we’ve had in the past. This might bring us closer together. I’m trusting him with this very sensitive information. But then in a broader picture, it adds to his character. He’s a policeman, uh, but to him, his sexuality is very incidental, and it’s not something that’s dwelled on in the novel other than to discuss it with his brother. And you’ll remember later on, one, uh, of the other brothers brings it up to him, saying that, you know, I have a feeling that you’re, you know, that your sexuality, uh, is an issue here, or I could make it an issue here. And. And Declan dismisses him and says, you know, do what you want. I don’t care. You know, I’ve. He doesn’t even. He doesn’t even admit this is. This is true. He just says, you know, I’m just not going to deal with it. And that’s the kind of person he is. That’s who I am. Deal with it.

Steve Cuden: Once he has sort of revealed himself to, uh, Conor, I think that he then has a sense of freedom about it because he’d been bottled it up for a long time.

J David Bethel: Right. And I think once he’s had that conversation with the. With the other politician who happens to be the brother, he’s. He’s more or less dismissed it himself. I’m not going to go there. You can go there if you want, but I’m not going to go there. Uh, and I’m not going to. I’m not going to compromise my own values for this situation.

Steve Cuden: Was. Did this book also take you roughly four months to write?

J David Bethel: This one took a little longer because, as I said, I didn’t have the

Steve Cuden: foundation as an original story. Yeah.

J David Bethel: Yeah. So. So probably. Well, not probably. It did. It took. Took at least six months, maybe into seven.

Steve Cuden: All right, so I know from our last conversation that you talked about that you are a reviser, a rewriter. It’s not first draft, and that’s it. You’re. There are multiple drafts and revisions.

J David Bethel: Well, especially with the process that I. That I use. And, uh, you know, if you’re just plowing ahead and writing, writing, writing, you get to the end, you realize, well, gee, all of these things that I. That I got to. In the end, I’ve got to go back and make sure that everything makes sense. Because at the time that I’m writing at the beginning, since I don’t know what the end is, it could conflict with what I’m doing at the end. So there’s a lot of. There’s a lot of rewriting.

Steve Cuden: One of the trainings that I got as a writer in school was that, uh, you can purge a draft out and then you are inevitably going to go back to the beginning to make everything work as a unified whole. Uh, I guess now what I am curious about is how fast is your first draft versus how long do you revise?

J David Bethel: First draft usually comes fairly easily. Maybe a month, six weeks, sometimes two months. Then the rewrite takes at least as long, probably maybe a month longer than the original.

Steve Cuden: I’m going to also, once again, uh, say that as a longtime professional writer of nonfiction, although some people would say what comes out of Washington is often fiction, but that’s another story. Uh, uh, as a longtime writer, you know how to crank words out. If that’s not a foreign thing to you.

J David Bethel: No, no, it’s just something that comes naturally because of who I am, I guess, in my experience. Background.

Steve Cuden: Did it always come easily to you, even in the beginning of your being a writer?

J David Bethel: No, no. Um, you’re talking about, like when I was in college and when I was afterwards starting speech writing and all that. No, I agonized over every word, but I learned that that didn’t help. Um, that’s where I think I learned my process, because I used to agonize over every word, and I just didn’t have time. When you’re cranking out speeches, you just cranked it out, and then you. Whatever time was left, you went back and you cleaned things up.

Steve Cuden: Did. In doing that over time, uh, did anyone ever say to you, this is junk. Why are you writing this? Or did you got so good at it that nobody knew that you were just cranking it Out.

J David Bethel: I have to say, no one ever said you’re just cranking out junk. So I guess what I was doing made sense to everybody.

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess the reason why I even asked the question is because you just said you got to the point where you realized agonizing over every word was pointless. That means that you were then practicing the craft of writing as quickly as you could. In my world, for me personally, I know that the faster I write, I know the more mistakes I’m making. I just know that. And if I at least spend the time coming back and if I’m not very careful as I’m writing, I’ve got to spend a lot of time revising. I’m a reviser too. So you spend more time then really rewriting than you do writing. I think that that’s important for people to understand. Uh, you’re very good at creating tone in a story. We’ve already alluded to tone once in this conversation. Do you have a sense of what it is that allows you to capture tone of a story?

J David Bethel: I think for me, what sets the tone is my dialogue. And because a lot of my novels, I think are just almost exclusively dialogue. Um, although I try to set the scene in which the characters do their con, do their, you know, have their conversations, um, a few minutes ago, discussed it. I think it’s because I can sit back and I can listen to people and pick up, I guess, the way they’re talking, how they’re talking, what when, when their tone changes. How different people again through a, through 35 years of meeting so many different people and having to get along with people when I was younger just to survive. Um, I think all those elements went into the fact that I can write dialogue and that for me helps set the tone of a novel.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s a very, ah, good self analysis. I think that’s exactly what it is, is that you understand how people are and by being able to do that, you inevitably get to the tone of every scene as what it is and the tone of the whole book because that’s what it is. It’s people interacting with one another other. It’s people in conflict with one another. That’s what we’re interested in anyway. Well, I’ve been having just a fantastic second conversation with J. David Bethel. We’re going to wind the show down just a little bit. As we’ve been saying, you’ve met and dealt with huge numbers of people over your career and your life. Uh, are you able to share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny from all of your experiences.

J David Bethel: Well, uh, earlier in this conversation, we were talking about some of the people I met, one of them being Errol Flynn. And when we were living in Cuba, uh, there was a restaurant, uh, bar, uh, in Old Havana called Boda del Medio. Everybody went there. And my dad being in the press, part of the, uh, of the operation of the United States Embassy, used to come in contact with people like Errol Flynn all the time. Every time they came to town, they, they got in touch with him because he was the one that. They came to town for a reason. Well, most of the time for a reason. They were, they were there to promote a book. And he was at, uh, at Bodeguita Del Medio when I was having my 12th birthday. And he knew my father, and my father knew him. And he came over to the table and he was talking to us. And um, of course my sister and I young 12 and she was 11. We thought of him and knew of him as Robin Hood, you know, and movies like that, Captain Blood and all that sort of stuff. So as he was walking away from the table, my sister looks over at my father. She says, boy, Robin Hood got fat. There’s another story about, about Errol, uh, Flynn. Uh, we got a call about 3 in the morning. I, I was waking up by it. I didn’t know what was going on, but it wasn’t unusual for these calls to come to the house because of the reasons I mentioned what my father did. And my father disappears and he’s gone. He comes back the next morning and he reached the breakfast table with us and my mom’s, you know, what the hell happened? So my dad said, well, Errol called me and, uh, what happened was he was in a hotel room there. And the police, he would, I guess he was being loud, whatever, he was having a party and they wrapped on his door. And uh, so he said, paul, you got to come downtown and get me out of this. So my dad gets dressed, goes downtown, goes to the hotel. He’s walking up to the, to the door of the hotel, and he sees Errol Flynn in a bathrobe on his hands and knees rooting through the grass of the hotel. He walks over, he says, errol, what the hell are you doing? He says, well, when the cops came, I had to throw all my drugs out the window. So he says, I’ve got to find them. I got to find my drugs. Oh my God. So this is the kind of stuff I grew up with.

Steve Cuden: You were dealing with the real Errol Flynn, not the fictional Errol Flynn, right?

J David Bethel: Oh, no, the real Errol Flynn, the guy that’s amazing.

Steve Cuden: And, you know, it’s still true to this day. Movie stars, famous people, they’re just people. They have all their quirks and foibles that everyone else has. Uh, but they’re famous, so they can’t get away with certain things easily.

J David Bethel: No. And what. You know, and again, this is, uh, maybe I bring this perspective to my novels too. You try and paint m people as people as opposed to, uh, uh, the ideals, uh, that you have in your mind of these people.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. Well, yeah, I think you’re very realistic in your writing. Your people are very well drawn. We talked about in the first, uh, show that we did, uh, that you’re very good at drawing realistic people. And I think that holds true in the two books that I’ve read recently. All right, so last question for you today, David. Can you share with us a piece of advice that you think, uh, is useful or helpful for people who are just getting into the business of being a novelist?

J David Bethel: Someone once gave me this advice, and they said if you’re a writer, you write. Um, now what that means is that you don’t write because you have this ideal that you’re going to write the great American novel or that you’re going to be on the New York Times bestseller list. You’re going to sell your story to the movies or television and make wads of money. Uh, just go ahead and write because you like to write. Because chances are you’re not going to write the great American novel. You’ll be lucky to get a book published if it gets published. You’ll be lucky if 10 people read it. So make sure that you know what you’re doing and you’re getting into writing for the right reasons. And that is because you enjoy writing.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s, um, about as good a piece of advice as you can give to people that are, that want to be writers. Writers must write. It’s just that simple. You, no one can give it to you. You have to do it yourself. And the only way to get good at it is to just keep writing. Do you feel like you have gotten stronger as a writer the more you’ve written?

J David Bethel: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, you know, I used to get to a point when I first started writing in a novel and question, well, what comes next? How do I do this? Uh, you know, where do I go with this? And, and now I, I don’t even bother with that. I just keep going and keep, keep writing. You know, I’ve learned not, as I said before, not to agonize over every word. Just keep on going, keep on typing.

Steve Cuden: You’ve learned to trust your own instincts quite well.

J David Bethel: I try to.

Steve Cuden: Well, evidently you must, because that’s how you do it, which I think is fantastic. Jay David Bethel, thank you so much for being on the show with me for the second time. And, uh, you know, if anyone wants to check it out, check out, uh, Squinting a Chatter and Thy Neighbor’s Brother and all of J. David Bethel’s books. Thank you so much for being on the show with me, David.

J David Bethel: Thanks for having me.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcasts, apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.