Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:

John David Bethel: My advice always is, don’t tell me you want to be a writer. Don’t ask for my advice. Just sit down and start writing. And that’s the best way to go. And I said, but if you’re going to write, you have to want to write. You can’t think that I’m going to be writing the great american novel. I’m going to write a novel that’s going to be made into a movie, and I’m going to be walking down the red carpet. None of that’s going to happen. If you want to write, write, because the chances of you doing anything other than finishing a book, are slim to none.

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat 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 StoryBeat We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, novelist John David Bethel, was a speechwriter to cabinet secretaries at the departments of Commerce and Education during the Bush 41 and 43 administrations. He also served as a press secretary and speechwriter to members of the US Senate and House of Representatives. Additionally, David worked as a communications strategist for a number of national and international public relations firms, including Burson, Marsteller and Conan Wolf. He began his career in government and politics in 1972 as a speechwriter for the legacy of Parks program in the executive office of the President. In the Nixon administration, he joined the staff of California congressman Burt Talcott and later Nevada senator Paul Laxalt. As his press secretary and speechwriter. He helped craft the speech senator Laxalt gave, nominating Ronald Reagan to be president. David also wrote the lead article celebrating the second inauguration of President Reagan called we the an American Celebration. David also spent many years in the world of business as a writer in various capacities, writing books, speeches, opinion pieces, and white papers for such companies as Monsanto, the Sheraton Corporation, Uniroyal, as well as the Urban Land Institute, the American Forest and Paper association, and others. David’s an award winning novelist whose books include Evil Town, Hotel Hell, Unheard of, holding back the dark, and a Washington trilogy. Recently, he published mapping the night, which I’ve read and can tell you is a terrifically exciting murder mystery thriller set in New York City and featuring characters more comfortable in the night than the day. With wonderful twists that include government intrigue. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a truly great privilege for me to welcome the outstanding, multitalented writer John David Bethel to story today. David, thanks so much for joining me.

John David Bethel: Well, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Steve Cuden: All right, let’s go back in time just a little bit. What were your earliest inspirations and influences that got you into the writing world in the first place, let alone into politics?

John David Bethel: Well, when I was, growing up, my dad was in the foreign Service. so we spent most of my performative years, in fact, till I was 14, traveling all over the world. I was in Europe. We went to various places in Europe, Japan, the far East, Cuba, the Caribbean. The reason I’m mentioning all this is because I would miss large swaths of school during this time when I was traveling. And my parents would make me read. They weren’t much with math, but they had a, you know, they had piles of books that they would make me read. So I got interested in writing by being a voracious reader. And also, when we were in Cuba, which, was my dad’s final post, I had an opportunity to meet Ernest Hemingway. And my dad had been reading me his short stories for some time, and I’d been reading his novels. He read me when I was little, he read me his short stories. And then when I grew up, as I was growing up, I read a lot of his novels. So all of that mishmash put together kind of got me into the writing world simply because I read a lot. I figured, well, hell, if I, you know, enjoying this, if I can write, something myself to make other people enjoy it. Let me give it a shot. And that’s basically it.

Steve Cuden: Hemingway, did you learn anything from him?

John David Bethel: Not really. I was a little vainglorious, maybe, to say I met Hemingway. I met Hemingway, yes, I did a couple of times. He used to, go to a restaurant in old Havana called Bodeguita delmedia, where my dad, my family went quite often, and my dad just became friendly with him and some of the other folks who used to go there, among them, Errol Flynn, who I also met because he was the press attache at the embassy. So every time these people came into town or they were in there and they needed to meet with the press, or the press wanted to meet with them, my, dad was the intermediary. Long story short, Hemingway was at, Buttigiega del medio a couple of times. And one time I was having my birthday party there, and he came over and wished me a happy birthday. So now I knew who he was. So, of course, it was very impressive, and I enjoyed that. I don’t think. I really think he back. I didn’t know the magnitude of what was going on, of meeting Ernest Hemingway. I knew he was a writer. of course I didn’t know who he was, other than someone, a name I recognize. So when you ask if it had an effect on me, it had an effect on me to the degree that I met a writer. I knew a writer, and I wanted to be a writer. So, you know the way that is, kid, meet a baseball player, he wants to be a baseball player. Some of these kids grow up and become, baseball players because of a meeting like that. So perhaps maybe it had that effect.

Steve Cuden: Well, but not every kid gets to meet babe Ruth.

John David Bethel: I met Jackie Robinson.

Steve Cuden: Wow. Okay. So between Jackie Robinson, Errol Flynn and Ernest Hemingway, you were starting off pretty good.

John David Bethel: Yeah, yeah. It was, a very exciting, way to grow up. And I don’t think I truly appreciated it until I was, much, much older, because, you know, you don’t have any relative experience when you’re that age. So I guess you figure everybody’s dealing in the same world that I was. I didn’t realize until later that these were very special things, but I do now and I do appreciate the opportunities that I had.

Steve Cuden: For sure. And because you were in that situation where you were reading a lot, even though it wasn’t, in a formal school setting, you were learning about writing just by being a reader. Yes.

John David Bethel: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I would miss so much school. Well, maybe until a few years ago, really. Until a few years ago. And as you mentioned, I was a speech writer, and I was in the world of writing. I couldn’t tell you an adjective from an adverb, couldn’t diagram a sentence or anything like that. I learned how to write by reading. Seriously, that was it. Because today, if I sat down and had to take a fifth grade test in grammar, I’d probably fail it.

Steve Cuden: I’m not far behind you. I mean, I have a little bit of understanding of it, but linguistics and all that is way beyond me. And yet I’ve had a very healthy, happy career as a writer. It’s if you understand how the world works and how sentences work in extremely well written books, you’ll kind of figure it out if you’re paying attention closely at all, I think.

John David Bethel: No, I agree.

Steve Cuden: And that’s what you’ve done. So did that feeling of you wanted to be a writer. Happen very early in your life. What age were you when you said, you know, I’m gonna be a writer?

John David Bethel: Fifth grade. Fifth grade, yeah. The reason I remember that is that we were on our way from Japan to Norfolk, Virginia, on our way to Cuba. we spent six months sometimes at home before we went to these other postings that we had. I remember this is an interesting story We were on the ss us hoover, which is a big, huge ocean liner. And I decided that I wanted to write a short story so I sat down and I wrote this short story A few months later, when we got to Cuba, my dad had his secretary type it up for me. He put a little plastic thing on it. So I was a published writer. I was thrilled to death. That was my first written, you know, written product. And that’s when I decided, this is great. I want to be a writer.

Steve Cuden: And did you know at that time that you were good at it at all, or did it take you a while to understand that?

John David Bethel: Probably took me a while. I don’t think I thought about Good, bad. I just knew that I wanted to write and that I liked doing it and I liked the product. I think later on, and probably not until high school maybe, some teachers said to me, you have the ability to write here. and then by the time I got to college, I realized that I could bullshit my way through tests, by simply being a good writer. So that helped as well.

Steve Cuden: Well, you know what? That probably held you in extremely good stead once you got into politics.

John David Bethel: Absolutely. Actually, there are people that say I’ve been writing fiction all my Life, especially since I was in politics.

Steve Cuden: Did you get into politics because of your father?

John David Bethel: Well, yes and no. He knew some people in Washington. He knew a senator from Florida who had just been elected, and he needed an intern. So, you know, in that sense, yes. I became an intern with this particular senator because my father happened to know him. After that, it was pretty much finding my way around Washington, and finding a job simply by papering the hill with, my resumes. That’s the way it worked out.

Steve Cuden: So you didn’t go in starting as a speechwriter, you went in as an intern?

John David Bethel: Yes, I started as an intern in the senator’s office. And maybe this is to back up a second about being good at writing. when I got there, as with most interns, they really don’t know what to do with you. somebody gave me a letter to answer. I answered the letter. I guess someone figured out, this kid can answer letters. So then, a little bit down the line, they had what, they call congressional record inserts. It’s an insert in the daily dialogue of Congress that they put out at the end of every day. And at the back of the congressional record, they have inserts that the elected officials can write, can add to their comments, or laud a citizen, or whatever the hell it is, National Ice cream Day, write something about national. So they started letting me do that, and again from that, I jumped to, writing, some articles for some magazines for them. That’s when I figured out that I had a career in writing. Now, as, you know, someone who wants to write and says they want to become a writer, that’s a pretty tough thing. Not many people can make a living writer writing. I don’t know too many of us who do that. I think I read somewhere like 0.01% of people who want to make a living as a writer can actually do it. But I kind of lucked into the fact that I figured out real early that people in Washington need people to write for them. So that’s where I went back to.

Steve Cuden: Interesting. Well, we’re going to talk more about speech writing a little bit later in the show, but I’m just curious. You eventually become a novelist, and we’re going to talk more about your novels and especially mapping the night right now. But I’m wondering, did you think of transitioning to novels early on, or did that take a long time to get to?

John David Bethel: Probably a long time to get to. I wasn’t thinking about that at all. When I was working in Washington and working as a speech writer and a press secretary, it didn’t really enter my thoughts. And maybe, I don’t know, 20 years down the line, when I was starting to transition out of politics and government, I had some ideas, in my head of things that I wanted to write, fiction that I wanted to write based on things that happened to me during the time I was in Washington that I thought, you know, you noodle around with ideas, and I was noodling around. And I, when I retired from, you know, officially from the profession of politics and government, I just sat down at the typewriter one day, and, I mean, at the. That’s how old I am. Typewriter.

Steve Cuden: Well, you and me both, we both.

John David Bethel: Started on typewriters, so I sat down at the keyboard and started writing. And, you know, there we are. It’s 13 books later. Here I am.

Steve Cuden: That’s impressive. So do you prefer writing fiction to the fictional nonfiction that you wrote in Washington?

John David Bethel: Yes, I do. First of all, I’m not, you know, I’m not writing for somebody else. I’m writing for myself. I’m not writing in a very structured situation, although that’s not true. You have to have a discipline if you want to be a novelist.

Steve Cuden: No kidding.

John David Bethel: But, yeah, you know, I’m writing for myself. I’m writing for my audience, so that, yes, I prefer that.

Steve Cuden: Now, I know in mapping the night that you do have a political angle in there. Do most of your books have some form of government or politics in them? Is that because of your proclivity, or is this just unusual for mapping the night?

John David Bethel: No, most of them do. when I first started, my novels were all political thrillers, so there was a lot of politics in the first four or five novels. And then I transitioned into writing these psychological thrillers, and it just sneaks in, because of my background. I see an opportunity presents itself to work in that vein, and I slip it in there. Sometimes it’s not even conscious. It just happens.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s where you spent so much of your Life. I mean, it’s part of who you are.

John David Bethel: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: I think it would be very hard to scrub that out of you unless you were really intending to. Are there kinds of stories that you tend to avoid? It’s not your metier.

John David Bethel: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I couldn’t write a romance to save my Life. I just don’t have an interest in it, and I don’t think I’d be very good at it. So I stick to, as they say, a writer should stick to what he knows. Although my psychological thrillers can be a little, intense, writing about serial killers and deviants and so on and so forth. So I wouldn’t say I know much about it. I’ve learned quite a bit about it, and that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy trying to get into somebody’s head and figuring things out.

Steve Cuden: I think it did that extremely well. I’ve only read the one book of yours, but I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it clearly is written by someone who knows what they’re doing and understands character and language. We’re going to talk about that. Would you say that there are common themes throughout your work? Is it government or is it the psychology of people? Are those the common themes?

John David Bethel: Yes, it’s probably both. The way I started to get into the psychological thriller, genre years ago, I was approached by a man who was a, private investigator, and he had a story that he brought to me, one of his cases, it’s really a tangled case. A man was kidnapped, and he was, taken to a warehouse. This is before Internet and all the rest of it. So it was Film noir kind of stuff. They kidnapped him, they put him in this warehouse. He was very, very wealthy. They basically extorted all his money, tortured him for 30 days, then tried to kill him, by running his car into a telephone pole. And he survived. And, you know, one thing led to another, and, he ended up in the hospital. But the story was so weird when he told the story to the nurses and tried to get them to, you know, have the cops come and talk to him. Plus the fact that he was a Latin American, he was from Argentina. And this story was set in Miami where the whole cocaine cowboy thing was going on. So they thought the police kind of dismissed it, at the beginning, thinking, oh, here’s another one of these guys. They’re trying to use us, you know, to have us go after someone who was settling a score with them. Long story short, his name is Ed Dubois. Ed brought me this case, wanted me to write a true crime book about it because he was working on a movie at the time, pain and gain, I think it was called, where he was the, he was an advisor, a consultant to the movie on this subject, on this kidnapping. But he discovered they were making a black comedy out of it. And actually, that irked him. How can you make a comedy out of something like this? Especially since they took the guy, the one who was kidnapped, and made him into a kind of a villainous, to work with the black comedy part of it. They made him into a villain. So, anyway, Ed had enough. He came to me, asked me if I could work on this book with him. It didn’t work out because I only had, like, a month or two to write it. So I asked him and Mark Schiller, the guy who was actually kidnapped and who I got friendly with, if they would mind, if Ed and Mark would mind if I turned it into a novel. So I turned it into a novel that kind of kicked off my interest, in psychological thrillers, having written that. And I also discovered that Ed was involved, the private investigator was involved with hunting down the key West serial killer. So I got a lot of information from him on that. And again, here I am writing about serial, killers indeed.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk about mapping the night. Tell us a bit more about it. Can you tell us what the story is so that. That the listeners get a sense of it?

John David Bethel: Well, let me back up a second and tell you how I got the kernel of the idea. And that’s how I begin most. That’s how most of my novels are born, the genesis of most of my novels. I’ll read something, I’ll hear something, I’ll watch something on tv, and it sticks with me. And it’s one of those deals as a writer, you know, you’ve got a StoryBeat: In your head, and it’s got to come out. You got to sit down and write it out. For mapping the night, I read an article in the New York Times crime section about the police were doing a domestic run on a house, apartment in New York where a woman and her son had not been seen for days by the, people in the apartment. They were worried, so, they called the police. Police came. Unfortunately, they discovered her in the apartment dead. she had been strangled and raped. And her son, when they walked into the room, her son was sitting by her bed with some ice, putting it on her forehead because he was trying to revive her. He couldn’t comprehend that his mother is gone. And so they walked into this scene, and he said, I’m trying to make her better. This is what she did when I was six. She would bring ice and put it on my forehead. So that scene haunted me. I sat down and I wrote that scene out, and I studied more about the crime and found out that the person who perpetrated the crime had actually done the same thing to a number of women in the area. And there were two other elements to it. The apartments in all of these cases were, like, immaculately cleaned. I mean, police said it was not so much to up the idea that someone had been there. They’ve seen that before. They’ve seen evidence of that. Whoever it was, it was something that was in their psyche that they had to clean up after themselves. So all of these apartments were immaculately cleaned, and he only killed single mothers of young boys. I put all those elements together and came up with the beginning of mapping the night.

Steve Cuden: Interesting. And so have most of your stories come out of true Life stories of some kind, or are they mostly from your imagination?

John David Bethel: They start with, I’d say, I don’t know, maybe 75% of them start with this kernel of an idea that came to me. And then I go from there. You know, I just go, I sit down and I start writing. And wherever it leads me, it goes. I call it writing by the seat of my pants. I don’t have outlines. I don’t have a character backgrounders or anything. Like that to get me going. I just sit down and write, and sometimes I don’t even know what’s coming in the next page. I just write until I get to the end of the novel. I have no idea how it’s going to end until I get there.

Steve Cuden: You don’t even know who the characters are before you start, then?

John David Bethel: No. No. As I walk through the book and have to introduce characters to keep the action going, that’s how I’ve had find out who my characters are, who is going to extend this action, and that’s the way I develop my characters.

Steve Cuden: That’s very interesting. It’s always been like that for you. Yes. You didn’t start writing outlines. You’ve always just jumped in, is that right?

John David Bethel: I never used outlines for speeches or anything else. Just sat down and started writing.

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. And have you ever been befuddled? Have you ever gotten blocked because of that?

John David Bethel: No, not really. sometimes I will write myself down a rabbit hole where I realize, wait a minute, this can’t be happening, because the person I’m writing about now couldn’t have known what was going on because he didn’t know Joe blow from chapter one. Then I go back and introduce him to Joe blow in chapter one and then go from there. But no, I haven’t ever gotten to the point where I said, oh, my God, Jesus Christ, I have no idea where I’m going with this. I just keep writing, even if it’s nonsensical. I’ll just keep writing, and then I’ll go back and patch it up until it makes sense.

Steve Cuden: So you are a rewriter. You’ll take what you’ve got and work with it. You’re not a one time through, and that’s it.

John David Bethel: Oh, no, no, no. I rewrite quite a bit.

Steve Cuden: And the same with, your speech writing. I assume that that was a lot of revising and rewriting as well.

John David Bethel: Initially, yeah. it got to the point where I was experienced enough with it that maybe not so much, but then again, you have to realize that the people that you’re writing for at that level, they have their own ideas on what it is that they. How they want to say things. So they will do a lot of the editing. You’ll write the first draft, they will edit it, and then you’ll edit their editing. So that’s the way that works.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, I imagine that’s, a very collaborative process. So how long did it take you to write mapping the night?

John David Bethel: Oh, well, I had a number of things happen during the course of writing, the mapping, the night that took me away from the novel, family issues. To answer your question, it normally takes me about four to six months to write a novel.

Steve Cuden: Okay. And so you set on using New York City as your backdrop because that’s where the kernel of the idea came from. Out of a real Life story.

John David Bethel: Yes, yes, yes. that’s where the kernel of the idea came from. But also, I mentioned to you that I traveled most of my, early Life into adolescence. And my parents, my mother was from New York. She, was born and raised in Brooklyn. So a lot of times when we came home to the United States, we would come home to New York. So that was. I wouldn’t say it was my home, but it was the only american city that I really knew growing up. So it had a special place for, me. So when I had an opportunity to write about New York, I took the.

Steve Cuden: Opportunity, because, obviously, you could have set the StoryBeat: In any city in the world. You chose New York City.

John David Bethel: Yes.

Steve Cuden: There wasn’t anything particular that I can recall about the story other than the actual setting that needed to be New York.

John David Bethel: No.

Steve Cuden: But New York is a fantastic setting, let’s face that. That’s for sure. especially the Plaza Hotel, which is a big part of it. Did you know, aside from what you’d read in the paper, did you know anybody like the characters in the book ahead of time? Were they based on anyone you knew?

John David Bethel: No. No. They were. It’s all. That’s all my imagination.

Steve Cuden: All your imagination. So then I’m very curious. One of your lead characters, Warren Winston, has this very unusual medical condition called xeroderma pigmentosum. How did you come up with that? Where’d that come from?

John David Bethel: I don’t know. I do know that it occurred to me. If I want to set my. Most of my book during the wee hours of the night, I had to have a character who belonged in those wee hours, who wasn’t a weirdo or, you know, wasn’t. Wasn’t, part of the, you know, the bad element. How do I do that? Somewhere along the line, years ago, I read about this disease somewhere. It stuck with me. So when I had to have a character who had that, who had to be out at night, it occurred to me, wait a minute. There is a disease where people cannot be, cannot expose themselves to light. So I did some research on it, I found out about it, and I gave it to Warren.

Steve Cuden: So the disease comes out of the necessity of having the story that you want to take place at night.

John David Bethel: Exactly. And actually, it’s a condition. Let’s not call it a disease.

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, it’s true. It’s a condition. And it’s where they’re basically allergic to light, right?

John David Bethel: Yes, they’re allergic to light. If they get to. If they. If they’re exposed to light, it’s like, an infection. Their skin will become infected. And for most of these people, as soon as they get infected too many times, their whole system goes down and they pass away.

Steve Cuden: He meets up with a young, woman named Maddie, and she has basically terminal brain cancer.

John David Bethel: Right.

Steve Cuden: We get that early on in the story And so it’s an awful condition, disease, whatever you would call it at that point. But it’s a little more common to have brain cancer than xeroderma pigmentosum. So was that a contrast that you intended, that the contrast between something very, extremely odd and rare or with something that was more common?

John David Bethel: No, I think I did that purposely, but what I really wanted to do is to contrast their personalities. Maddie, who is, despite her disease, is a very vivacious, and sarcastic, young woman with a real big personality. Warren, by contrast, is. Is much more reserved and introverted. So I needed to play them off against each other. As far as the disease I gave her, I wanted to have something that would show the reader that she was running against her disease. She was not going to let it keep her down. And she gave that element to Warren. Warren is much more reserved, who is probably not. And he became almost, agoraphobic because of his disease. She was telling him, you don’t have to live your life like this. Look at me, I’m dying. I’m not living like this. You don’t have to live like this.

Steve Cuden: And in fact, she sort of brings him out of his shell quite a bit.

John David Bethel: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: And so I’m curious if you don’t think about either plot or structure or whatever before you start. And you also don’t know who your characters are before you start. Many writers would immediately fall into the trap of developing rather cardboard characters. They would be stereotypical and somewhat flat. But your characters are very well developed. How did you get there? Is that just by banging away on the keys and working through them, or how do you build a character?

John David Bethel: I’d say it’s just by banging away on the keys. I can’t give you any secrets. I don’t know any secrets. I wish I did. It, would make writing a lot easier, because it doesn’t happen that easily. It only happens after hours and hours sitting at the computer and then rewriting and then figuring out, well, how am I going to play these two off against each other? He’s got this condition. What disease should she have that, you know, gives him the. That gives her the. The personality that can play off of him? I don’t think that happens. I’m not thinking about it when I’m writing it only. It only comes to me as I am writing. And in the rewrite, I then perfect it.

Steve Cuden: Do you feel like you’re channeling something from some other source, from the universe or whatever you want to call it? Do you feel like you’re channeling that information?

John David Bethel: No. No, that’s. That’s way too complicated for me. I don’t have a muse like that.

Steve Cuden: You’re just doing it. You’re just out of your head.

John David Bethel: I’m just doing it.

Steve Cuden: So how much research did you need to do for this book?

John David Bethel: Well, quite a bit. as you know, having read it, there’s. There’s a lot of, about New York in there. The history and the central park. It used to be, you know, a place where they raised goats and sheep. And there’s discussion of that, discussion of the architecture of these various buildings. so quite a bit. And also, I carried a lot of information from my other books over this about the deviant personalities that we’re dealing with in this book. The FBI has, a special unit, the behavioral analysis unit, that deals with these kinds of personalities. And they produced a lot of information, a lot of books, journals and so on and so forth. All of which. Well, not all of which, but many of which I’ve read in order to create, you know, a real character. Not, as you would say, a cardboard character. A real, real live character.

Steve Cuden: Well, they’re three dimensional. Your characters are 3d.

John David Bethel: Well, good to know. Good to hear, indeed.

Steve Cuden: so when you are developing them or as you’re writing them, things are just coming to you? You’re not actually sitting around and you don’t have sheets where you’ve worked out the characters at all?

John David Bethel: No. When I’m not working on a novel, I can’t help but reflect on things I’ve written and where I want to go. But, no, I do not, do, do that. You know, there’s no big board with all my stuff written on it.

Steve Cuden: When you started the book, did you go up to New York and wander around to remind yourself of things?

John David Bethel: Well, my wife and I spend some time in New York, you know, periodically, anyway, our son lives up in the area. So, yes, yes and no. I mean, I didn’t go specifically for this reason, for this book, but we do go up there occasionally. For instance, we’ve stayed at the plaza a few times. We have friends who lived up in the, in the upper east end of New York. We spend time, in the park, in Central park. So, you know, you pull all that together. I didn’t write notes or anything like that. I didn’t go up there specifically with that in mind. But once I decided that I was going to write this novel, and it was going to be, you know, it was going to be centered in New York, I also did some research to augment the things that I know about New York from having spent time there.

Steve Cuden: So how did you know so much about police procedures and the FBI? And how do you know those procedures?

John David Bethel: Again, it’s from the research that I’ve done for previous books. again, to repeat myself, the FBI has all of that stuff written out, and I’ve studied a lot of that information.

Steve Cuden: It’s just long time just being around it. In your research for other things.

John David Bethel: Yeah, yeah. It’s not like I’ve myself done any police work or anything like that. But again, I go back to my time I spent with the private investigator ed du bois. I also borrowed some of his knowledge, to write the, the book way back then. And I’ve transferred that in each of the books, since then.

Steve Cuden: Do you know, as you’re writing that it feels like you really are onto something, that it’s working? Can you tell as you’re writing it?

John David Bethel: Oh, yeah. I mean, mapping the night was one of those books that came to me easily, you know, writing and it flows and. Yes, I do. Now, I’ve had books where they’ve been a little. I’ve been a little frustrated with them. again, I’ve never had a book wherever, you mentioned. Do you ever have get blocked? No, I just keep writing. But with mapping the night, there wasn’t a lot of going back and seeing. Well, does this make sense? What’s the chronology and all? It just flowed and it was one of those books. It was easy to write.

Steve Cuden: And when you’re in it, do you just write every single day?

John David Bethel: Yes, I sit down at eight, o’clock or earlier every morning, and usually write till twelve or 1230. Now, there are times when I, if I’m really going, I’ll go longer. There are other times when I’ve just reached a point where I just can’t write another word and I’ll stop it. Generally from 08:00 to 12:00 every day.

Steve Cuden: And about how many pages do you get through a day, approximately?

John David Bethel: I’d say I don’t know about pages. Maybe a thousand words.

Steve Cuden: Thousand words. So that’s probably somewhere between four and six pages, depending upon how you’ve set it up. That’s a good, healthy chunk. And by the way, that’s pretty close to what Steven King does everybody day.

John David Bethel: Oh, really? Okay, well, I’m in great company then.

Steve Cuden: At, ah, least that’s what he says when you hear him talking about it. So you don’t use structure, which I find very interesting. You don’t set it out in a structural way. Have you gotten deep into a book, like two thirds of the way in and went, I have a problem, and you’ve had to go back way into the book and correct.

John David Bethel: So far I haven’t had that problem. Knock on wood.

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. that’s amazing to me.

John David Bethel: Well, and maybe I’m just so stubborn that I just refuse, refuse to, allow that to happen to myself. I mean, as you know, as a writer, there are times when you do get frustrated with what you’re doing. You don’t think you’re doing a good job. Huh? I just don’t allow myself to get to the point where I just quit on it. I’ll just sit there and keep writing until something happens.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s classically one of the loneliest professions there is. If you are a writer and you’re working along and you don’t have feedback from anyone else for a very long period of time, in your case, it could be six months or longer, and you have little or no feedback from anyone. It can be very daunting sometimes to see your way through, what you’re doing. You have a good mental attitude toward it in which you say, no, I’m just going to keep plowing forward. I think that’s a great attitude to take.

John David Bethel: Well, I should say, too, that I’m very fortunate to have a saint of a wife who puts up with me, being basically physically, mentally checked out for six months. She reads a lot of my stuff as I go along, too, and she’s, at times she’s told me, this is a bunch of crap, or she’ll say, this is good, it’s flowing, keep going. So there is that I do get some feedback from her and tells me when she thinks I’ve, fallen off the edge of the earth or whether I’m doing what I need to do. I’m very fortunate with that. I’m not totally alone.

Steve Cuden: Well, you are very fortunate in that way.

John David Bethel: I am. And as I said, she’s a saint.

Steve Cuden: That’s a big plus to have in your Life, for sure. So I think that your book reads very much like it could make a great movie. Have you been approached by anyone, or have you tried to sell your books as movies?

John David Bethel: I’ve not been approached by anybody, and I leave that in my agent’s hands. I’m assuming that if someone has expressed an interest, she’ll let me know.

Steve Cuden: Well, I would hope so. I would definitely hope so. What would you say makes great dialogue? Great. You’re good at writing dialogue. What do you think makes dialogue work?

John David Bethel: Writing it plainly. Writing it in plain speech. One thing you learn as a speech writer. There’s a big difference between writing, words to be spoken and writing words to be read. But I think in a novel, you are writing a kind of a speech. Because you want these words to be heard of, and not read. So, you know, plus, I just. Maybe I have an ear for it. I will sit in rooms and listen to people talk. I find that fascinating. I’m a real people watcher. I, hope I never creep anybody out. But I will sit for hours and just watch people and listen to people talk. I try and take that in.

Steve Cuden: Do they know you’re sitting and listening to them?

John David Bethel: I hope not. No one’s ever hit me or anything.

Steve Cuden: Do you take notes while you’re listening?

John David Bethel: No, no. I think that would be a little overwhelming. No, I don’t do that. I just listen.

Steve Cuden: Well, there’s a really excellent exercise that we sometimes teach in class. Where we instruct students to go out into a very public place. Like, a restaurant of some kind or a park where there are a lot of people. And to put your back to where people are. And to actually write the dialogue down that you’re hearing. But they don’t watch you writing because your back is to them. And that way you actually learn. Oh, people don’t speak like we write. It’s not nice, neat packeted sentences. It’s just that dialogue is a very specific thing to learn how to write.

John David Bethel: Well, you. And you have to learn, too, that you don’t write. In a lot of times, you don’t write dialogue in complete sentences. And that bothers a lot of people when they read it. Wait, wait. This isn’t a complete sentence? Well, no, it’s not because you wouldn’t talk in a complete sentence, you don’t.

Steve Cuden: That doesn’t bother me at all.

John David Bethel: Yeah, well, you don’t begin a sentence all the time with I or I or me. Or even the first word that you would normally write down. You begin in the middle of a thought. I think that’s a lot of my dialogue. I begin in the middle of a thought, and I’m okay with that.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s the way to do it. I think that’s an excellent way to do it. And I think that’s why your books read as well as they do, and you’ve sold as many as you have. Describe the process of working with a publishing house. Do they give you an editor on top of your wife, or does it go to them because your wife has edited it and it’s ready to go?

John David Bethel: No. They will often take it and suggest edits. you work with an editor, you send your stuff there. Now. Also, back up a second. Sometimes my agent, when she reads it, she’ll make some suggestions. So it starts there, and then she sends it off to the publisher, and he will then. I’ve been fortunate. I haven’t had someone say, you have to rework this chapter, or anything like that. I mean, there are points with us. This grammar is not right. Or did you realize you mixed, past and present tense in this particular instance here? It’s mostly that stuff. I’ve never had anybody say, we have to rewrite this whole damn thing.

Steve Cuden: It’s more clerical.

John David Bethel: Yes.

Steve Cuden: They get after technical.

John David Bethel: Technical.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, technical, clerical, whatever. Yes, for sure. And that’s a very good sign. It means you know what you’re doing. But of course, you’ve been writing for a very long time, so one would hope that. And you’ve been paid for it. So if you’ve been paid for it for a very long time, it means you know how to do something with the word that people will understand.

John David Bethel: Yes, I’m very old.

Steve Cuden: So what did you do in the beginning of writing? I’m not going to comment on the h comment. So what did you do in the very beginning of writing novels. That you have either learned to continue to do or learned not to do anymore?

John David Bethel: Overthink. Again, my process is one of not overthinking, just sitting down and writing. Initially when I wrote, I was more of a, ah, this has to be perfect before I can go on to the next paragraph. Or this sentence has to be perfect before I can go on to the next. Next sentence. I’ve learned, you know, not to do that. Just write and continue writing until you’re exhausted yourself, then go back and rewrite. And that’s. I think that’s probably the main thing I’ve learned from the early days to now. I don’t, it took me a year to write my first novel because I just, want, every sentence had to be absolutely perfect.

Steve Cuden: So one of the things that we teach that maybe you’re talking about is to purge draft, to get it out, and then worry about making it better as you go. You were doing it where you were correcting as you were going, versus getting it out on the page.

John David Bethel: Right? Exactly. And that’s, in my view, that’s a mistake.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk about speech writing. I know that you had this long career in politics and in government. What are the biggest differences? I think they’re pretty obvious, but I want to hear you tell us the biggest differences between being a speechwriter and then ultimately being a storyteller.

John David Bethel: Well, I mentioned a few minutes ago that when you’re writing a speech, you’re writing it to be heard. And, well, first of all, when you’re writing a speech, you’re not writing a story So, I mean, that’s the most obvious thing, I would think. Plus, you have, when you’re writing a speech generally, I found way back then, you’re writing on policy, on a specific policy, on a specific subject, about a specific, time period, short, period of time. it’s all very structured, it’s all very constrained. in a novel, you have to be much looser. You have to be willing to just go outside all of those constraints that you had as a speech writer, writing in this very small little window of opportunity, window of subject matter. And a novel is much broader. It encompasses, more, well, encompasses characters, encompasses story There’s nothing about writing a speech that compares to writing a novel, I guess, is what I’m getting at.

Steve Cuden: I imagine they’re extremely different. Though I am curious. You still are, though. You’re not telling an imaginative or a fictional story you still have to present a story about what it is you want to get accomplished. Am I correct about that?

John David Bethel: Yeah, I think so.

Steve Cuden: Well, for instance, when you watch the news at night, they’re giving you news stories. And if the senator is going to communicate to the public that this is what his intentions are and this is what he’s trying to achieve and accomplished, I would assume that you have to kind of lay it out in a way that the public finds it palatable. And so that’s a kind of telling the story of how you want to achieve your goal.

John David Bethel: It’s mostly talking points, speaking, as a press secretary. Now, backing away a little bit from the speech writer element. You just, you know, addressing what you. Just the scenario you presented. You have talking points that you, that you use all the time. It becomes a stump, speech. It becomes almost a reaction, the way you respond to things when you’re working in that world. So it’s very structured. Again, you have very small, little, elements that you want to get across, very structured ideas. with a book, it’s much broader. You’re just dealing with a whole different world. I’ve been asked before the difference between speech writing and novel writing. And I would say, you know, there’s, in my view, there’s, other than being able to sit down and write a sentence, they’re not a whole hell of a lot alike.

Steve Cuden: Not alike. Would you develop with the senator or with the congressman, would you develop these talking points? And then they would become sort of a memorized thing where they could say it at the drop of a hat if they were approached by a reporter.

John David Bethel: Yeah, that’s the way it works. But when I’m working with, when I worked, on the Hill, was writing speech speeches or doing any kind of press work, after a few years, well, not even a few years, after a few months, you mind meld with them. You know, their speech patterns, you know, the way they think when it’s very important, too, to go into an office, at least having some philosophical similarities between the two of you, or you’re never going to, you’re never going to get it anyway. You develop this mind meld so that you don’t have to constantly be bothering them to ask, well, is this the way you’d say it? Or how do you want me to say this? Or what subjects do you want me to cover? I would get the request to write a speech. I’d sit down, write the speech, and give it to him after a while, and he would edit it, and then he’d give it back to me. Now, I knew that there were certain elements. We always talked about, three or four things we always talked about. No matter what the speech was about, no matter what we were asked in a press conference, we always had three or four things we always said. So that made it somewhat easy to begin with.

Steve Cuden: How hard was it to keep being fresh with those same ideas over and over again?

John David Bethel: not really, because you’re not working in a static environment at all. I mean, in politics, there’s so many crazy things that happen every day, you’re juggling. So you have to be able to juggle. And while you’re juggling these ideas and various things you’re working on, you’re also juggling these three or four ideas that you want to get into that Act of juggling. So maybe that’s a good way of describing it.

Steve Cuden: And is a large part of your job being diplomatic and political with people?

John David Bethel: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, well, you know, I say that, and I’ve been away from politics. What goes on in Washington today, I haven’t a clue.

Steve Cuden: It’s probably different.

John David Bethel: Oh, it must be so different, because we. I always use the example. I worked for a conservative Republican by the name of Paul Laxalt. He was good friends with Ted Kennedy, and today that would never happen. They worked together on the labor committee, and we would meet with their staff all the time. And, you know, you go into these negotiations on various things. Everybody takes their list of ten things that they want, realizing that the top five, they’re never going to get. somewhere, maybe there are three elements that each side knows that they’re going to get, and you try to work towards what we used to call the common good. That sounds so corny, but that’s the way it was back then. and then you went off and you wrote your press release saying that, well, I got exactly what I wanted. They went and they wrote their press release saying they got exactly what they wanted, and everybody went away happy. But the public got what they needed. Today. I haven’t a clue. These guys, did they say the most God awful things to each other? So I haven’t a clue how it works up there today. But back then, my answer would have been yes. You have to be able to get along. To go along.

Steve Cuden: So the cliched phrase is, in your day, they were able to disagree without being disagreeable.

John David Bethel: Absolutely. And that was key, or you’d never get anything done.

Steve Cuden: And now it’s just like a bar brawl all the time.

John David Bethel: That’s the way it looks to me. I’m so glad I am not involved in any of that today.

Steve Cuden: Well, and I’ve never really been involved in politics at all, so. And I look at it with just. With wide eyed despair over it, because you don’t want these guys yelling at each other, and that’s part of their storytelling. I go back to that again, that we do communicate every day by telling each other a story of some kind or another, you know, what did you do today? Well, and then you tell a story about what you did during that day. And it’s sort of the same thing in politics, where you’re trying to tell the version of how you want things to be, and it’s so much better when people are just being, you know, ordinary, nice, decent humans, even if they’re disagreeing with each other.

John David Bethel: Absolutely. And again, that was the. You always, you realize you were walking on hot calls anyway because you’re dealing with issues that you. That you’re not ever going to agree about, but you find a way to put on, you know, each of you puts on shoes to walk across those hot coals so that you can get to the other side. And today, I don’t understand. I, you know, I don’t get it.

Steve Cuden: Can you think of anything in your career, politically or in your novel writing career that you would call a potential disaster or a disaster, and how you recovered from it?

John David Bethel: I remember once when, when I was up on the hill, I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but an american fighter was shot down over North Korea or somewhere over in, that part of the, you know, that part of the world. And we had to get information very quickly to figure out what had happened so that we could issue a statement as fast as we could on it. So obviously, we had to work with the Pentagon, we had to work with the state Department to get the information. And as it turned out, if I remember correctly, whoever the other side was, they made a mistake in shooting down this plane. So then you have to decide to yourself, well, what am I going to say? are you going to say, kill the bastards? Or are you going to try to say, we need to get more information before we move on, which is kind of a namby pamby way of going about it. Now, I can’t tell you at the moment exactly how we resolved our own internal conversation about how we were, going to react, but I can tell you that that is the kind of thing where you have to sit back and you have to take, you have to take a breath and you have to move forward. After you have all the information, you.

Steve Cuden: Have to actually take that step back and not go Crazy by trying to get something out ahead of the curb.

John David Bethel: Exactly. Yes. Yes, you do.

Steve Cuden: How much pressure was there in that job? Was it pressure all the time?

John David Bethel: I wouldn’t say there was pressure all the time, but there was enough pressure. I think it’s a young person’s job. I don’t think that people last, successfully in that kind of environment forever. I left the hill still as a young as a young man and got into the more, what would you call it, intellectual pursuits of speech, writing and strategic communications, later on. But, yeah, there’s enough pressure that you could get an ulcer if you allowed yourself to.

Steve Cuden: So what did you do to not feel like you’re under pressure or how did you depressure yourself?

John David Bethel: I ran, and I played rugby. Rugby, yeah.

Steve Cuden: And you still have all your teeth.

John David Bethel: I still have all my. Actually, though, these are not my teeth, to tell you the truth. I played, football in college, so I had a lot of chills. Teeth and everything else. So, yes, I still have. Basically have all my teeth and everything else, but, yeah, that’s the way I did it. Physical activity to get out of your body is, I guess it’s the best way to say it. And I continued reading.

Steve Cuden: Reading. And you were burning it off physically?

John David Bethel: Physically, boy, yes. I would run like mad.

Steve Cuden: So how do you currently stay sharp and disciplined? What do you do to stay sharp?

John David Bethel: I’m not sure I can answer that. I think I just follow, a, routine when I’m writing that allows me to stay sharp. I don’t allow myself not to write. I force myself to sit down at the computer in the morning and not get up until I’ve written those thousand words that I need to write.

Steve Cuden: And was that discipline always there from the very beginning of your career?

John David Bethel: Yeah, I think so. And again, I would ascribe that to sports. I played sports all my life. And you have to be a very disciplined person to succeed as an athlete. So I think that helped.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that that’s something the listeners should really pay attention to. To succeed at pretty much anything, you have to have a degree of discipline about it. And even if what you’re doing is somewhat loosey goosey in the world, you still have to be disciplined about being loosey goosey. So it’s a very important thing that I think a lot of people don’t quite get when they enter into, especially the arts, that you have to discipline yourself because nobody’s really going to come around and tell you in the morning, David, get up. You’ve got to write. You have to discipline yourself.

John David Bethel: Absolutely. And I always get a chuckle out of people say, well, I’ve got a novel in me. And, you know, gee whiz, one of these days I’m going to write it. My reaction, you know, if they ask me, I says, well, you don’t have a novel in you unless it’s out of you. So, you know, unless you have the discipline to sit down and write the novel. I don’t want to hear that you have a novel.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s absolutely accurate. I’ve had many, many people come up to me and say, I want to be a writer. Well, you don’t want to be a writer. You’re either a writer or you’re not a writer. If you’re a writer, you write. It’s just that simple.

John David Bethel: Yes. someone once said, maybe it was Hemingway. A writer writes. That’s it.

Steve Cuden: a writer writes is exactly right. Well, I’ve been having the most fun conversation I’ve had in a while with John David Bethel, who’s written, did you say, 13 novels at this point?

John David Bethel: I’m working on my 13th now, today.

Steve Cuden: On the 13th. So you’ve published twelve and you’re working on your 13th. That’s a big chunk of writing. And so clearly you’ve. Between that and your work in government, you’ve met lots of people, and I’m wondering if you can share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny.

John David Bethel: yeah, I think I can. I was at a reading. Well, actually, it was more or less book, signing. And I was asked answering some questions from some people in the audience, and some lady I’d introduced, my wife, she was sitting there, and the lady looked at my wife and she said, given the kind of novels he writes, which are pretty dark and dreary, do you ever worry about him? My wife and I were nonplussed. We didn’t know quite how to react to that. And Carol. Carol, my wife, says, well, I’ll tell you one thing, if I’m ever dead, you’ll know he knows how to do it.

Steve Cuden: Oh, my goodness, you’ve spent too much time thinking about that stuff.

John David Bethel: Yes, exactly. And my wife says, you know, I don’t mind reading your novels, but if someone told me what your novel was like, and I wasn’t married to you, I’d never read one of your novels.

Steve Cuden: Well, you get the special break by being married to her.

John David Bethel: Exactly. Like I said, she’s a saint.

Steve Cuden: So, last question for you today, David. you’ve given us a lot of advice along the way here, really? Already. But do you have a solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give people who are starting out, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level?

John David Bethel: Well, we’ve discussed this previously and talked about the discipline of writing, and my advice always is don’t tell me you want to be a writer. Don’t ask for my advice. Just sit down and start writing. And that’s the best way to go. And I said, but. But if you’re going to write, you have to want to write. You can’t think that I’m going to be writing the great american novel. I’m going to write a, novel that’s going to be made into a movie, and I’m going to be walking around down the red carpet. None of that’s going to happen. If you want to write, write, because the chances of anything of you doing anything other than finishing a book are slim to none.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that that’s extremely wise advice, because that’s the way it works. You can’t go down to The Local store and buy yourself a novel for you. You have to write it yourself. And that takes work and discipline. So I think that’s terrific advice. David Bethel. This has been a fabulous hour on story, and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom, and just please keep writing for us.

John David Bethel: Oh, I will. I can’t help it. I’m a writer.

Steve Cuden: That’s the way to be. thanks again. I really appreciate your time.

John David Bethel: Thank you for having me.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat 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 StoryBeat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast 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.